November 27, 2011 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 63, 16-64:7 + Psalm 80 + I Corinthians 1, 3-9 + Mark 13, 33-37

Somebody once said that “Time is God’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.” It’s a good thought about something that is today very precious and in short supply: time. It’s odd how we use it and how we waist it; how we guard it, and want more of it. The season in which we live and the culture in which we live it uses time in ways that are often not particularly admirable. We rush and hurry, we look anxiously at our watches, fuss and fume when we have to stand and wait, and it’s almost as though we hurry up so that we can wait again for something else. Waiting is really what we do here.

Among other false gods, we have begun to worship efficency. Bill Gates is quoted as having said: “In terms of the allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient.” He went on to say: “There is a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning.” Communists sacked churches all over the world and turned them into “something useful.” This idol, time, is one of the idols that the Gospel was meant to smash, and the “Sabboth” is one of the hammers used to do it. Like all the other signs in the Old Testament it was intended to point to the Lord of the Sabboth who is our real rest. That is why the tradition of making time holy or of making holy time continues in the Christian tradition of the Lord’s Day and of holy and sacred seasons, feasts, and solemnities. It is a habit of celebrating sacred play time that points to something else: the fact that vast amounts of time are spent waiting around.

Today, this weekend, we begin one of those waiting periods. We have been observing them for a long time. The apostles had one waiting for Jesus to reveal his power and his glory. When he didn’t do it the way they thought, they had another waiting period in an upper room for forty days until the Spirit came upon them. From the stand point of efficiency, this isn’t very productive. But then the whole of history demonstrates the same  thing; a lot of waiting.

Sciences tell us that the overwhelming span of time in creating the universe consists of unthinkable epochs in which humans play no role at all. Best estimates are that the universe is three times older than the solar system. The entire span of time our earth and sun have existed (4.5 billion years) had to pass and then pass again before the universe was ripe enough to have the right planet have the right star, the right poisition and orbit, the right size and composition, the right companion planets, the right moon in the right part of the galaxy, with the right combination of atmosphere, geology, and water, to have the possibility of life. Clearly God is leisurly in his long and slow construction of this cosmic Temple we call, Earth. The human race, both in Genesis and in natural history, come at the tail end of a story in which they play no part except for a newborn that the Father has taken great labor to preapre a safe nursery in a woman of great faith and favor.

The long wait of creation for our arrival is a sign and token that waiting is built into the fabric of things. Human beings are the only creature that God has willed for it’s own sake. The story of our salvation is the story of waiting. In fact, I think that is why the Old Testament is so much longer than the new: it is filled with long periods of waiting. 

There is Abraham who waited so long for a son. Moses who waited so long in the desert.

Israel who waited so long for the promised land. An old couple in the Temple who waited so long to see the Messiah, and even Jesus who waited 40 days in the desert after 30 years of silence. But all of that waiting has not been empty waisted time – it was full of promise and full of meaning.

We are living today in another waiting time and our Advent is just a reminder inviting us to refine our focus and remember what this time is all about: this time we use so carelessly yet so jealously. We are waiting for the climax of history for that moment when all will be over, when time will cease, and judgement will come about how we have lived, used, and made holy the gift of time itself in which God has often enough revealed himself to us who take the time to look, to believe, and celebrate in a way and in place that is hardly efficient and productive.

Those who do not believe in Christ wait in fear. They stock pile stuff to “get them through” the rapture. They spread dour and terrifying images designed to scare and frighten becasue fear is all this world has to offer. “News” these days in this world is about murder and robbery, thieves and tragedy because this world has turned a deaf ear to the “Good News”.  Yet those of us schooled and shaped by the Good News have been taught to wait in hope which the four weeks of this season let us practice so that we might get it right and be ready.

So we practice now and in the weeks to come. We practice waiting. We pracitice keeping our mind, our thoughts, our hopes focused on what is to come and how we must be ready when it does. Against all odds and common sense, in a world filled with economic doom, war, cultural meltdown, social chaos, terrorists, ecologial fears, and all the rest,  we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ: not to Bethlehem of Judea, but to this place so simple and so unknown by the rest of the world that is to busy to look.

In listening to some arabic speaking friends recently, I recognized a word being pronounced in two different ways. When I asked what it meant, one said: Bethlehem. Then the other pronounced the same word with a different accent which meant, Bread.

Think of that my friends, while we wait. Christ is coming to Bethlehem and to Bread.

It has been a long wait, and we must not tire, nor can we waist the time we have as though we did not know what we were waiting for.

November 1, 2011

Revelation 7: 2-4,9-14 + Psalm 24 + 1 1 John 3: 1-3  + Matthew 5: 1-12

The Bible is not the only way to learn about God. It is not the only way God is revealed to us. If you couldn’t read at all, you could still learn about God from the Saints. They are living scriptures. Their lives, their love, their faith, their service all reveal God to us. By knowing them, we can all walk God’s way by the light of saint’s life.

Unfortunately, most of the Saints we can name have by reason of legend and our strange need to exaggerate become larger than life, and that’s too bad. The first qualification the church looks for in the modern process of canonization is humanness, and then the church looks at what grace can do with human nature. The Saints are simply our brothers and sisters who arrived at what God wishes for us all, a true, full, and graced humanity. I call it wholeness, and that is the stuff of which holiness is made.

John in the second reading today goes right to the heart of the matter. This whole idea of being holy is simply living like children of God; living like children who are loved. It is my observation that children who are loved no matter what they have or what they do not have are happy. In fact, those who have very little, but plenty of love are the happiest of all. They laugh a lot, giggle, smile, and tease. They are quick to dance at the sound of tune, and they have all the signs of joy about them.

The fact of the matter is: there are no sad saints. I don’t think it’s possible. I do think that some story tellers for one reason or another may not choose to tell us the fun parts of the lives of saints; and the consequence of that has not been particularly helpful when it comes to imagining ourselves as saints. We ought to just admit the fact that having a sense of humor is a necessray part of being fully alive, emotionally mature, and a psychologically healthy human being. If Jesus was fully human, then he must have had a great sense of humor. If not why would people have wanted to be around him? Why would children have been so attrated to him?

That window up there always cracks me up for two reasons: one is that I imagine that Jesus must have roared in laughter at Peter jumping out of a boat thinking for one minute that he could walk on water. The other reason is that I was looking at it with some children one day, and I asked them what they thought of that window. One of them said: “I could walk on water too if I had feet that big!”

The saints were men and women others wanted to be around. There are no grumpy saints.  Theresa of Avila said: “A sad nun is a bad nun.” She also said: “I am more afriad of one unhappy sister than a crowd of evil spirits.” St Lawrence the martyr who was burned to death on a grill called out to his executioners: “This side is done. Turn me over!” Augustine publically prayed: “Lord, give me chastity, but not yet!” Saint Philip Neri believed that Christian Joy is a gift from God, flowing from a good conscience.” When once asked by a young priest what might be a good prayer for a wedding, he said: “A prayer for peace.” Some of the saints were thought of as foolish for following Christ, and today it’s still much the same. Paul was called a fool for Christ.” The fact is, radical faith is usually seen as foolish.

The happiness of the saints comes from their closeness to God and from a way of looking at and living life that comes from faith. Humor is a prerequisite for sanctity. The saints knew to take the long view of things. They were quick to laugh at life’s absrudities and themselves, and they always placed their trust in God. They had a clear eyed look on life, which simply means that they took serious things seriously and the not-so-serious things not so seriously. They knew the difference.

“A good laugh is a sign of love,” said a famous German theologian. “It may be said to give us a glimpse of, or a first lesson in, the love that God has for everyone of us.”