Homilies

Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 5, 2010

Several years ago, while Grandma was still alive, I asked her if she still thought of Grandpa. I had never met him; he died about 45 years ago, before I was born, and Grandma really didn't talk all that much about him. But that day, when I asked her that question, tears ran down her cheek and she said, "I think about him every day and I can't wait to be with him." It was one of those moments of my life, a take-the-air-out-of-the-room moment when once again I realized I didn't have a clue; I had so much to learn about love and death and heaven and faith. About God.

We've all had those "moments": You are sure there is nothing more profound than the experience of being a Mom or Dad, and then you became a Grandparent and you see life started all over again. You think there is nothing a sunrise could possibly teach you until you live through the darkest of nights that you thought would never end. Only when the rising of the sun rescued you from that darkness were you reassured you that there will always be a tomorrow. You think you know your child he come home one day and all you could say is, "You're in love with who?"

We all have those moments, those unpredictable happenings where you come to the realization that as much as you think you have it figured-out, as much as you trust that some-thing to bring you happiness, as sure as you are about your "truths" of life, and then it all crumbles in that moment.

One of the problems with thinking we think we have the answers-those once and for all conclusions of life-is that once we do, we cut God out of the equation. It is as if God has spoken to us and we are telling God that we don't need him to speak any more. Once we've discovered truth about something-anything-we pretty much let go of any need or desire or possibility that there might be another way of looking at this, or that perhaps this is not at all that God wanted us to know (or certainly not the whole of what we need to know), or that we might just be plain, wrong.

Solomon prayed it well as recorded in the Book of Wisdom: Who can really know the counsel of God or conceive what God intends? Scarce do we (ever) grasp the things of earth, let alone things of heaven.

When we can be humble enough to admit that we don't know for sure, or that at least there might be more to learn; when we come to that moment (again) where we can't be absolutely certain or that most of the time we just don't "get it", the more we can believe and trust that God is still at work in our lives. The more we allow ourselves a certain degree of uncertainty, the more we can be certain about God.

It's what Jesus was saying in his typical dramatic fashion: It was not that he hated family. Even at the cross, he gave his Mother to his beloved friend, John to care for and love. Family and clan was everything; it defined loyalty and drew boundaries of love. But He knew that family of God was so much bigger than that and that loyalty and justice and responsibility drew us far beyond bloodlines. It's not that Jesus was saying possessions are evil or bad in and of themselves; he loved a good bottle of wine, I'm sure. But he was telling us that we can't cling to them as if they, alone, can bring us happiness. If we do there is no place for God who can bring us real happiness. It's not that Jesus wants us to suffer, but unless we are willing to take up his cross of love and forgiveness for friend and enemy, of charity and compassion for the poor and the powerless, well, there isn't a chance that we can follow him to the Kingdom of peace and joy and eternal life. It just won't work.

Paul finally got it; it came to him at a moment when he was old and in jail. It was there that he realized something new about the love of Christ. He was operating in a world that accepted the truth that slaves were slaves; they were not the same as free men and women. No one challenged that in his world; it was how their world operated. But now he's sitting in his jail cell with Onesimus, a slave of his friend Philemon. And he realized he loved him as he would love his own child, that slavery meant nothing in the eyes of Christ. So he sent him back to Philemon and told him to welcome him, not as a slave, but as his brother. Somewhere, in his letting go of those boundaries and laws and traditions and ways of life that had remained unchallenged in the world of slavery, he discovered a new "truth". He discovered that when Jesus said to love his brothers and sisters he wasn't distinguishing between those who were slave and those who were free; there was no distinction between who was worthy and who was not, who was welcomed and who was not.

It's scary stuff, isn't it?!

It's scary to think that some of the things that we've held on to as absolutes in our lives might not be all that absolute at all, that God may have another truth for us to yet discover and embrace. It's unnerving to think that what we have come to assume would bring us happiness and peace may very well one day mean nothing to us.

Every age, ever person, every community must come to that realization. If we are fortunate enough to discover that some of our truths of life seem to be the same as others have discovered, that will be reassuring. And if some of the things our ancestors of faith held seem to be things that make sense today, it will give us a whole lot of security in the midst of an ever-changing world. But sometimes, when it all crumbles, we just have to trust that God will get us where God want us to be.

So we pray for the Holy Spirit to enlighten us, to guide us, to correct us, to move us. We pray that the Holy Spirit will give us the courage to let some things go...and in the process...discover what God wants us to discover. And thus will the paths of those on earth will be made straight.

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 29, 2010

When was the last time you stood in front of a full-length mirror and said, "Oh my, you are made in the image and likeness of God?" ‘been a while? That is either the biggest lie or the greatest promise of our faith; regardless, most of us have a hard time believing that.

We are made in the image and likeness of God, but we are not God. We are human; sometimes we forget that. As humans, we have this nagging sense that we are not good enough, whatever "good enough" means. We say things we wish we would not have said and don't speak up when it would be the right thing to do. There are always important things we didn't get around to doing, or promises we made that we are not too faithful in fulfilling, or obligations we have that we fall short of completing. There is this gnawing sense of being unfulfilled that underlies our busy lives. We are woefully inadequate; we have disappointed others; we have failed even when we had every good intention of not failing.

This gnawing sense of inadequacy, this sense of our true selves, we call it humility.

It is a good thing, humility, because when we can honestly accept our imperfections, not as excuses, but as a stand-naked-before-God moment, then-and only then-can we can live with hope. Because these moments, these come to God with no excuse moments, bring us to one thing. Not shame, not excuses, not false ego, not justification, but to prayer, especially the prayer of which we are in the midst of right now, the Eucharist.

Here, like no where else, we can come face to face with our God whose image and likeness we share. Not a God of blazing fire and gloomy darkness, not a God who voices words of condemnation so that we beg He will stop. No. We stand before a God who welcomes our humility-not as an excuse-but as the only stance that we can logically and spiritually and humanly take before God.

In the Eucharist we don't have to stand alone. Instead, we stand with our brothers and sisters who are also inadequate and imperfect and sometimes confused and scared and lonely. In the Eucharist we also stand side-by-side with the angles and the saints and the whole assembly of heaven, hand-in-hand with the spirits of the just made perfect by the sacrifice of Christ. But we never stand alone.

We stand here together staking our faith on an invitation the Jesus left us on the night before he died: To break bread and drink wine in his memory and to trust that this-when all else is uncertain-is exactly what we need to do in our humility. In the Eucharist-more than any other way we spend our time, more than in anything else we do, more than in any cause in which we partake, more than in any other commitment we live-we are being made into the image and likeness of God.

That is the promise.

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 22, 2010

The followers of Jesus were a curious lot; at least they asked a lot of questions. Many of those questions, like the in today's gospel, centered on getting into heaven, their "reward" for being his followers. But Jesus has a way of not giving straight answers to those kinds of questions; this time was no exception.

For one thing, Jesus knew that when they were asking about how many people would be saved, they really were not all that concerned about the actual numbers, or anyone else, for that matter; they were looking for that guarantee for themselves. The answer they were really looking for was whether THEY were going to be saved, and in that, probably were not all that different from us.

Go back a few years and some of you can remember the days when the answer to that question was pretty clear. Who was "in" and who was "not in" was well established. It had everything to do with whether one was Catholic or Lutheran or Baptist or whatever, because everyone was sure THEY were the ones that would be saved. The rest were...shall we say...up a creek without a paddle. In some circles that thinking still exists.

And then even for us Catholics who were so sure of our salvation, there were those darn mortal sins, most of which had to do with sex in one way or another. You could count on being saved unless, of course, you had one of "those sins" on your soul. Then you better find your way to confession right away or at least hope a priest was there for you at the moment of your death, and banking on that was a bit risky for a lot of reasons!

Then, of course, if you were raised in the 70'and formed in the faith in those years, the prevailing teaching was that everyone is saved! I mean, how could God who is love, exclude anyone!? Tickets to the Kingdom of Heaven were cheap and readily available. As long as you wanted to be saved, you could always count on a forgiving God to be there to welcome you no matter what.

The truth is that neither of these are very good answers to the question of who is saved. The real truth is that we don't know. The truth is that somehow there is this all-inclusive, all-encompassing, all-welcoming love of God that dances with a demanding, rigorous, discipline of life that is required of all who have been called. It is the dance of God's love and our call to love one another, of God's forgiveness and the demand to forgive one another, of God's compassion and the compassion that we hold for our brothers and sisters.

Yes, salvation is gift. We receive it from God because God, who is love, can do nothing but offer it. To offer anything less would contradict who God is. And it is true that this gift is given to all, offered to everyone, poured forth lavishly upon all of God's people. Even in the days of Isaiah, God welcomed the fugitives from Tarshish, Put and Lud, Mosoch, Tubal and Jovan. (And if that doesn't sound like a motley crew I don't know what does!) God made it clear to his "chosen" Israelites that this "chosen-thing" was not an exclusive club. All could and all would come to give God glory.

But it is clear that while the redeeming action is done by God and the invitation is all-encompassing and all inclusive, God expects a response-a rigorous and intense and absolute response-to that gift.

Strive to enter the narrow gate! Strive. The word that Jesus uses here was often used in describing athletic training. There is, in salvation, a certain spiritual fitness that must be entered into. There is demanded of us, a response to the gift so freely given. The gate has been opened but we have to get through it.

Let me give you an analogy. Every Christmas Eve since I've been here a group of very generous parishioners all pitch in and gift me a gift of an annual membership to the YMCA. I am humbled and very grateful by their generosity and their concern for my well-being. But here's the catch: I get the gift, but if those guys don't see my down at the Y on a regular basis, if they don't see me running on that treadmill or doing my crunches or climbing the Stair Master on a regular basis, guess what: it's been made very clear that gift could disappear into the thin December air.

This response to God's gift of salvation often is lived out in the choices we make and the lives we lead. And sometimes it is lived out in our response to the trials and challenges and obstacles that we encounter along the way. As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us: Endure your trials as discipline. Make straight paths for your feet (so) that what is lame many not be disjointed, but healed.

The gift has been given. There is an expected response to that gift. Somewhere in the dance of those two truths, we find the answer to the disciples'-and our-questions. Many have been invited; only some will be chosen. Many will try to enter; some will not be strong enough.

So treasure the invitation. Do the work that is required. And that we, too, will be among those who come from the east and the west and for the north and the south and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God.

Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary
August 15, 2010

The other night Bishop Bullock, now retired, celebrated his 30th Anniversary of ordination as a bishop. I thought it would be good that I join him in that celebration; he gave me two wonderful blessings: he assigned me here to OLA as Pastor back in 1996, and his last administrative act as Bishop of Madison (literally ten minutes before he walked out of the office) was to give us permission to build this church. So it was good that I was there. And he was buying at cocktail hour.

He began his homily that afternoon reminding us of the story of Susan Boyle who, just over a year ago, stunned the judges and the audience of the show, Britain's Got Talent with her performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserable. I pulled up that video on U-Tube just to watch it one more time (Yes, I do know how to do that) and it brought tears to my eyes, again. She walked out on that stage, frumpy, unpolished and a bit awkward. She said she had a dream to be a star, as big a star as the British star, Elaine Paige. And they rolled their eyes. And they laughed. Until she sang.

Her voice shattered the cynicism, humbled the judges, brought the audience to its feet and stunned the world. This frumpy-looking, 47-year old woman from a little village in England became an instant and recognizable star.

There was another young, unknown woman; she was from the little village of Nazareth. She dreamed as well, but it was not her dream, it was God's. God's dream was to save the world, to bring salvation to every soul, to open the gates of heaven to all who believe. In the wisdom and the providence of God, Mary was a part of how that dream would be fulfilled; it would happen through the birth of her child.

In the midst of that pregnancy Mary came to visit her cousin Elizabeth and the child in Elizabeth's womb leaped for joy. Then Mary sang out that her song of God's dream in that ageless hymn we cal the Magnificat: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my sprit rejoices in God my Savior...!" She sang of God's dream.

It was God's dream that the world would be transformed, that all enemies would be defeated, even death itself. It was God's dream that the world would be turned upside-down, where every sovereignty and all authority and power would bow before the one who IS.

That same story was told again in images of the Book of Revelation. The new Arc of the Covenant, not on this earth, but now in the heavens, is a woman clothed with the sun and the moon beneath her feet. In this dream, the dragon-the symbol of evil-stood before the woman about to give birth to devour that child. But the child was snatched up into heaven to be safe, and the woman fled to the desert where she had a place prepared (for her) by God.

In this imagery, we see the picture of the world as it unfolded God's plan, a world where evil sets itself to devour the blessed of God, where the cynicism of this world rears its ugly head against God's song, but it did not prevail. In this image the dream of God cannot be shattered.

God continues to create a world where the poor will be lifted up and the powerful will be humbled still lives on in every person who bears Christ into this world. God, by the strength of his arm, will prevail over proud, will cast the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. In this dream the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty; this dream still lives.

This dream continues to have a voice, to be sung in the heart of each and every one of us if we but have the courage as Mary did to say "yes" to God and the confidence of Susan Boyle that day she walked out on stage. Our song, God's song, will baffle the cynics and will humble those who sit in judgment. It will, if we are willing to sing it, bring the world to its feet in praise, not of us, but of God; not for our glory but for God's.

The last line of the song that Susan Boyle sang is: Life has killed the dream I dream. As the epic story of Les Miserable unfolds, though, that wasn't true; the dream did live on.

And certainly, our Feast of the Assumption proclaims in no uncertain terms, it is not true in our faith story, either. Life cannot kill God's dream, voiced through that humble young woman so many years ago. It always will, if we-frumpy as we are-are willing to get on the stage of this world and sing it.

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 8, 2010

A few years ago Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman starred in the movie The Bucket List. It was a so-so movie, I thought, but it did make popular a phrase and offered a good token question to be raised around the water cooler at work and around family tables: If you knew you were going to die, that you were going to (as the title of the movie indicates) "kick the bucket", what would be on your list of things to do?

To ask the question another way, a way that would be more consistent with our faith: What do we do so that we don't leave this world with too much unfinished business? How do we live so death does not catch us unaware?

Maybe there someplace in the world we want to visit or something we'd like to do that we've never done before. Maybe there is a person with whom we'd need to reconcile or someone with whom we'd like to sit and share a glass of wine. Maybe there is someone left to tell that you love them.

Whatever is on our bucket list, I think it's clear that whatever we do, the one thing we can't do is withdraw from life. What prepares us for death, what anoints us for it, is a deeper, more intimate, fuller entry into life. We get ready for death by living our lives as we should have been living them all along.

Several years ago a friend of mine was working her way down her "bucket list" and one of the things on that list was skydiving. No one from her family was eager to join her and it was one of those things I've always wanted to do, so I said I go with her. I was thinking about that the other day as I was preparing this homily, and one word came to mind: trust. Sitting on the edge of the doorway of that plane at almost 12,000 feet and getting ready to jump, all that was left was trust; trust in the jump master connected my harness to my back. I had to trust that she knew what she was doing, trust that she carefully packet the parachutes, (note the plural), trust that she would get me safely out of the plane and not choose to unhook me halfway down, trust that she would at some point teach me how to land without breaking both my legs. It could not have happened without that trust.

It dawned on me that "trust" is exactly what we need to do to prepare ourselves for death. The scriptures back me up on that. Before love (because you can't have love without trust), before faith, (because faith has to be built first upon a absolute trust in God), before you can have peace (how can peace be achieved without first trusting).

To trust is a hard thing for some of us to do. We've had one too many unanswered prayers or listened to one too many politicians promise what they can't possibly deliver. We've offered our heart only to have it rejected and so to offer our heart again seems scary, if not foolish. But to live without trust is to live in fear. To live without trust is to live without faith. To live without trust is to live without hope. And to live without hope is not really living and is certainly no way to prepare for death.

All Abraham had was an undying trust in God's word. He was to follow him into an unknown land looking for the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God. So he and his family packed up their tents and sojourned into that so-called Promised Land. He was told that his descendents would be as numerous as the stars of the sky and more numerous that the sands of the seashore. Abraham was old, as good as dead, the scriptures tell us, and Sarah was beyond her years of fertility. But he trusted and his son was born. Then he was asked by God to sacrifice that son. Outrageous a command as it was, he still trusted. So he prepared the fire and even raised the knife. But the boy would not be harmed.

We live in a world where handshakes have been replaced by multi-page contracts drawn up by attorneys, where a man's-or woman's-word has been reduced to a "maybe". We live in a world where doors are locked because we don't trust our neighbors and laws allow us to conceal our guns. We live in a world where we are still a button away from annihilation, where tourism is preempted by terrorism. We live in a world where pre-nuptial agreements undermine nuptial promises and betrayal is more common than bonding.

I'm not saying that we should live without a reasonable sense of precaution and safety, especially for our children. I'm not saying that we pretend all is well when it is not, or that we remain blind to the evil that is manifest in such ugly ways in our world. But what I am saying is that this is no way to prepare for death. When fear has replaced trust then we can no longer live; we simply exist.

I am around a lot of dying people; it's kind of an occupational hazard. One thing I've learned from dying people is that what makes it difficult for someone to die is not so much the fear of the afterlife-or even the fear of no afterlife. What makes it hard to face death is that so many people haven't lived. What I've come to know is that the only way to prepare for death is to not quit living. And the only way to live, really live, is to trust.

I remember once listening to a reporter interviewing a woman who was about to turn 100 years old. He asked her secret to a long life. She replied, "Don't die." Amen.

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 1, 2010

I grew up in an old farmhouse. It was built in section by section over time; starting with a small structure without indoor plumbing. That, fortunately, was rectified long before we lived there. It had a porch that became the unheated bedroom for my Mom and Dad, which could explain a lot of things. There were three bedrooms upstairs with lots of windows that would let a good breeze and a lot of night-time noises come through. And it had a basement, a real stone-walled cellar that smelled of that kind of dampness that comes from the ground. A wonderful part of the cellar was a wall of these shelves on steroids, shelves that would hold just short of a million Mason canning jars.

Those shelves mystified me. Over the summer months they would be filled with canned peaches and beans and beets, raspberries and carrots and pickles and lots of tomatoes. By the fall there was not a jar unfilled and not an empty place on any shelf.

I also remember the all the work it took to fill those shelves, (not that I, personally, had to do all that much): the planting and weeding and picking and cleaning and cutting and pickling and cooking and canning. I remember the smells and the heat that filled the kitchen and those shiny, gold tops and rings of the jars, and the "burp" of the lid that you awaited to assure that the jar sealed properly.

It was like a hidden treasure there in the basement of that home. Only much later in life did I realize that those shelves were filled out of necessity. If not for the labor of the summer months, there would have been seven hungry kids all winter long.

We were wealthy and dirt poor. We were well-fed with love and with produce but Mom and Dad never had penny in a savings account. Our measure of wealth was in the fact that there was always food on the table, a mostly-warm bed at night, and a safe place to call home. I am well aware how easy it is to romanticize those days and the simplicity of life from my perspective; I am sure that there were many stressful days for my parents and many prayers lifted up, not knowing how bills were going to get paid. But there was something good about the rhythm of those basement shelves that were filled and emptied year after year.

Life becomes more complicated when we no longer measure wealth by how much we are able to can over the summer months. Now it gets measured by the growth or loss of financial investments and depreciation of property, when mortgages are as fragile as crystal and IRAs and even jobs disappear into thin air. Life becomes more complicated when we have more square feet to tend to and real vacations to plan and pay for, when we begin to disvalue other people if they become a threat to our property values or when wars are fought because someone wants what someone else has.

God has never said that wealth is bad and poverty is good, or that wealthy people are somehow less virtuous than the poor. The problem is not wealth; it is what wealth can do to us. The problem is when wealth makes us blind to what is real, real suffering and real joy. Suffering that is unnecessary and joy that lasts.

Neither Qoheleth in the Book of Ecclesiastes who reminds us of how much in our life is vanity that passes like a breeze; nor Paul in his letter to the Colossians who teaches us to think of what is above, not of what is on earth; nor Jesus who in the parable of the rich man warning us of the foolishness of storing up treasures for ourselves but are not rich in what matters to God. None are saying that that wealth is bad. Nor do they say that the poor are virtuous and the rich are not. Poverty certainly isn't glamorous. And we know well that sin exists on both sides of the tracks, that evil has no boundaries.

But they all do say something to us about our closets that are filled with clothes we will never wear and our bookshelves that are lined with books we don't read and our refrigerators that are so full we end up throwing half of it out. They do say something about companies that burden employees with 60-hour work weeks while others are job-less, and so many homes that have rooms that are virtually unused while other families across town or across the ocean that desperately trying to keep a roof over their heads. They do say something to us when we spend more money on lottery tickets win one week that many in the world have to live on for the week. They might even have something to say something to kids who beg for another pair of brand-name shoes when there are other kids that are bare-foot runners-and not by choice.

What Jesus demands of us is that, in our wealth we don't go blind, but rather that we gain a greater vision of the presence of the poor I our life. What Jesus demands of us is that we don't confuse the treasures of this world that will pass, with the treasures of heaven that will always be. Because even shelves lined with Mason jars don't last forever.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 25, 2010

Here's the riddle: I want to get on a train, but it's already moving down the track. Should I stand on the track in front of the train and see if it will stop, or stand on a different track and hope it comes to me or just wait for another train even if it's going someplace I don't want to? Or should I run along side of the train on the same track until I am moving at the same speed in the same direction the train is already heading and just step onboard? Which would you suggest? (This is not rocket-science, is it?!)

So here's the second part of the riddle: Why then do we continue to think that we can possibly stop or in any way change the mind of an already-moving God? Thus is our dilemma of prayer.

• Prayer in the Christian tradition was never meant as a means of changing to the mind of God. God's "mind", God's will already is love and forgiveness and compassion and peace.
• Prayer in the Christian tradition was never meant to inform God of something that God might not know. God is already all-knowing, wonderfully aware of our thoughts and feelings and desires and hopes and dreams, long before we are sometimes aware of them.
• Prayer in the Christian tradition was never meant to somehow persuade God to our way of thinking. How could we possibly persuade God to do something that God-who is timeless and without change-has not already chosen?

The problem is that prayer in the Christian tradition is not usually the way we have learned to pray. We have learned it as an extension of our human experience. In human experience if we beg long enough and become enough of a pest, Mom or Dad will eventually change their minds. In human experience if we just put more facts on the table we can eventually convince someone to move to our way of thinking. In human experience we believe that the one who shouts the loudest gets heard the most-est, that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. All of that is true in human experience, in human relationships. It is not true in our relationship with God.

Now, at first glance it might not seem like that. At first glance it might look like Abraham is trying to changing the mind of God by his persistent and almost annoying questioning. What if there are no more than twenty innocent people...? But if we read the passage carefully we note that while Abraham may have presumed God's intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, there is no indication that that's what God had set out to do. God's will was always that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah would change their selfish ways and in doing so, be saved.

At first glance it might appear that the man in the parable responds to the persistent demands of the visitor on behalf of his friend. But a closer read (and a better understanding of the Greek) reveals that his response comes not from his accepting his responsibility of hospitality to any guest that appears on a doorstep.

At first glance it appears that Jesus is telling us that whatever we ask for God will give us. A closer reading of the gospel is a portrait of a God who gives us all that we need even when we don't know what it is we need or what we want because what God promises us is the Holy Spirit.

Prayer in the Christian tradition is not about aligning God to us, but aligning us to God. It is about putting ourselves in a right place with God, not convincing God to be in our place.

God already is a God of compassion and love, a God who wants good things for us and knows our needs, a God who delights in our joys and knows the sadness of our hearts, a God who has made his will be known and will make it known again, a God who hears the cry of the poor long before the worlds wakes up to that voice, a God who knows our hearts and desires that our hearts be at peace, a God that is responsive to the world as it is in all its potential and in all its sinfulness, a God that is so aware of the spiritual warfare that exist when the ways of the world oppose the ways of God,
a God who created us and already saved us and raises us to be one with Him.

That train is already on the track. That train is already moving. That train ain't gonna stop, no matter who's standing on the track.

Prayer in the Christian tradition is meant to get us moving in the same direction as that train, at the same speed of that train, so that we can gently step on board. Pray well, good people.

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 18, 2010

One of the legacies that John Paul II left behind was a simple action. When he would visit a foreign country, what was the first thing he did upon debarking the plane's walkway?  Right. He kissed the ground. He was on someone else's turf; he was the guest. (I thought of asking us to try it but looking around decided that many of us would never get back up. So I gave up on that idea.) It was simple thing, but we came to expect it of him. When he became too frail to be able to actually get down to the ground and stand back up, it became a custom for the host country to hold up a plot of their soil for him to kiss.

On the surface it is an act of humility. But at a deeper level, it is an essential act of hospitality.

We often think of hospitality as what we do to welcome a person. "Can I get you a cup of coffee? We were just sitting down to eat; let me set another place. The guest room all made up for you." Or as my dad says, "I love it when you kids come to visit and I love it when you leave." We are good at that kind of hospitality. But in order for authentic hospitality to take place there is another simple acknowledgement that needs to happen: the acknowledgement that whenever we come together we are all "on someone else's turf."

It is an acknowledgement on the part of the guest that I am being welcomed, that I exist in someone else's space, I am a receiver. In light of that acknowledgement, we enter into their world. This space, whether we have been welcomed into their home or their heart, needs to be honored. It has been created through their lived experiences, through their joys and pains, through their wonder and their fear. And now, as the guest, we have been welcomed into that space.

And the host also has to acknowledge that the one visiting, the one we welcome into our home or heart, needs to be honored, as well. They, too, have something to offer us through their lived experiences, though their joys and pains, through their wonders and their fears. In a sense, we also enter their sacred space.
Hospitality is first about honoring each other as guest and as host, accepting their soil. Their world is not our world and our world is not theirs. But for this moment, our worlds come together. And we both have something to offer and we both have something to receive.

The story of Martha and Mary is a parable about the blessings of both giving and receiving; of realizing that others have much to give us and we are blessed in their generosity, whether we are host or guest. The "better part" that Jesus speaks of to Martha and Mary is that often forgotten part of authentic hospitality, the humility to receive with gratitude and grace. Martha may be a model of hospitality in her concern of meeting all of Jesus' needs, but she forgot that he had something to offer, as well.

So when Mary mirrors that wonderful hospitality of Martha with her own simple act of sitting at the feet of Jesus, she, in her own way, acknowledged that Jesus had something to offer her. That, too, is hospitality. His stories, his wisdom, his love, his truth were his gift. Jesus did not show up at the house empty handed or with an empty heart. He was the fullness of the Divine, the presence of God's love wrapped up in a human body.

Mary was aware of the divinity of Jesus when she sat at his feet. Like Sarah and Abraham, aware of the Divine One when they welcomed the stranger under their tree and offered him water to wash his feet and food to refresh him. They, too, discovered in their visitor's blessing, the gift of God in that much anticipated, but no longer expected, promise of a child to pass on the ancestry.

Are we aware of the God that exists in those who cross the thresholds of our home, our neighborhood, and our country's boarders? Are we aware of the gift of God that exists in those who cross the thresholds of our hearts, who invade our space, who come-sometimes uninvited-into our lives?

Could it be that our greatest act of hospitality might not exist in what we have to offer someone else, but in welcoming what they have to offer us?

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 11, 2010

This "thing" we are talking about today, we sometimes we confuse with what we call values. But values are defined through culture; they are taught and handed on from generation to generation. And values can change or at least they can be tweaked. What may at one time have been very important to us may become not all that important in light of our experiences of life; things that once meant little to us can become treasured in our lives.

And it's not conscience, that little voice that sits on our shoulders. Conscience is formed over time, through the discernment of values that are learned, through our lived experiences Conscience is something that, while it guides our life's decisions, can be effected when values change, when experience changes, or when the situation changes.

It's different than law. Laws might be based upon values and can certainly reflect a community's objective standard or collective conscience. But we know that laws are fluid, at best. We've seen it happen in courts and in legislature, in our families and even in our church. For better or worse, laws do, and sometimes need to change.

What we are talking about is something that is greater than law, more formative than values, more effective than conscience. We are talking about a voice that lies within us (about right here) deep so deep and secure within us that nothing from the world can affect it or change it. Moses said that is not too mysterious and remote for us. It is not up in the sky or across the sea that we have to go searching for it. It is already in our hearts and in our mouths.

It is the voice that prompted the scholar of the law to ask Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?", when he already knew the answer. It was the voice that led the Samaritan man in the parable to go beyond the laws of his time, and touched him deeper than the values in which he had been formed, and spoke louder than his conscience would take him, and tended to the wounded man.

C.S. Lewis called it the "universal and inescapable" voice. Thomas Aquinas called it the "mind of God". John Henry Newman called it the "keen awareness of the divine". But no matter what we call it, some-ONE is talking to us.

It is the voice of God, the great, universal, intelligent law-giver. That Word is a voice that was once made flesh in Jesus Christ. It is the voice is in us, all of us. It is the voice through whom all was created, so it cannot be given to some and not others. It is not a reward for an advanced degree of faithfulness or a grace that might be offered on a special occasion. It is the voice of the ONE who is before all things, and holds all things together.

That voice speaks to us in spite what our laws might say is legal or not, beyond the echo of any value system that might be operating in our lives, greater even than our sometimes gullible and susceptible conscience. We DO know who our brothers and sisters are. And we DO know how they should be treated. Don't we?!

What a world we could be exist in, what a church we could be a part of, what a community we could form, what a family we could create...if we all just listened to that voice, abided by that voice, if we all tended to that voice of God within! (Can you hear me now?)

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 27, 2010

From our earliest days, it seems, we want more freedom. Just watch any two-year old; they'll find more ways to do declare their freedom and independence that one would think possible in those little bodies. And it just goes on from there. We get to that point where we don't want Mom and Dad around all the time; we can do it ourselves. Then we want to choose the college we want to go to, live where we want to live in the house that we design (or at least choose), marry who we want to marry, work where we want to work. And we all hold the dream to someday be in the position to be our own boss. We don't like it when the government or the church tells us what we should and should not do and when and where we can or can't do it. We want to retire with independence, the freedom to travel and move to warmer climate. We make plans to move to an independent living center to keep us from being a burden to anyone and don't even think to take away our driver's license, our last vestige of freedom. We want to be free from restraints to express and who I am. It's the American way!  When I was you newly ordained priest, my Pastor, Fr. Bernie Pierick described me as "fiercely independent". I don't think he meant it as a compliment.

What is striking about this whole quest for freedom is that the freedom that our faith is built upon is exactly the opposite. Search the scriptures. No where, not on any page, not in any story, not hidden in any book of the bible does God call us to personal freedom, to be free to do what WE want to do. And yet Paul says: For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. He goes as far to say that we were called to freedom.

So what is that "freedom" to which we are called if not the freedom to be free of restraints to do what we want when we want and with whom we want?

God calls us to be free to do what GOD wants us to do.

Today's scriptures bring that point home:  The Lord needs a successor to his prophet Elijah. He sends Elijah to Elisha. Now take note of what Elisha is doing. He is plowing with twelve oxen. An ox, in that time, was a symbol of great wealth and great independence. Only the rich had an ox. And this young man had twelve of them! He must have been the richest of the rich, and with that wealth, the most independent; he's got a lot to lose! God doesn't ask if he'd like to be a prophet, doesn't tell Elijah to interview him and see if he wants the job. God just sends Elijah to throw his clock over this shoulder, for the mantle was a sign of the passing on of authority or responsibility. And how does Elisha respond? He butchers all twelve of the oxen, smashing his plow to fuel the fire to cook them up and gave the meat to his people to eat. He rids himself of all that makes him independent so that he can be free to do what God has called him to do.

Jesus doesn't butcher any animals, but he's no less subtle than Elisha. People were coming to Jesus because they see a good thing; this man is popular, he's got followers, he must be pretty special. And they want to get in on all of that.

I'll follow you wherever you go. Really? I don't even have a home, no place to lay my head at night. Are you really willing to live like that?

To another he said, "Follow me." But he replied, "Lord, let me go first and bury my father." Now remember that burying the dead was very important to the Jews; they had very specific rituals and rules and laws. And yet Jesus turns all of that upside down and said, "Let the dead bury their dead. But you; go and proclaim the Kingdom of God."

And another said, "I will follow you Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home." Now again, remember that family was everything; more important than tribe or nationality or community. And Jesus said that if you're going to plow the field you have to look at what's ahead, not what's behind you. You have a new family to tend to.

The only way to follow Christ is to detach; detach ourselves from that which could keep us from loving as Christ has called us to love, free ourselves from that which might keep us from serving as Christ calls us to serve, rid ourselves of anything that has the potential to keep us from following him as he has called us to follow.

The questions we take away from all this:

What is it that keeps me from loving as Christ calls me to love? What remains in my grasp that I won't let go of? What angers and grudges and memories of hurt and wounds of the past do I hold on to that keep me from freedom?

What is it that keeps me from serving Christ as Christ calls me to serve? Could it be our attachment to our status or our power or some role in life we have worked so hard to achieve? Could it be our attachment to our busyness and our schedule of all those things to which we just can't say "no"?

What keeps us from being truly free to follow Christ? Are there things we feel we deserve or are somehow entitled to, or have earned; those things St. Paul would call opportunities for the flesh?

What is it keeps us from accepting the mantle of Christ on our shoulders? Sometimes it is things that seem noble and good: traditions and goals and yes, even our earthly freedom that we work so hard to achieve can keeps us from doing what Christ calls us to do.

Stand firm, good people, as St. Paul would say (and did) and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. Be free.

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 20, 2010

Let us remain standing for the creed: We believe in One God...

We've got that part down, don't we?! We know WHAT we believe. In fact, the early Christian church began formulating a creed, a collection of beliefs, from the very earliest days. Today's reading for St. Paul to the Galatians was one of the very first and very basic creeds of the Christian faith. Through faith, he wrote, we are all children of God in Christ Jesus. We are all one in Christ. That in itself is a great creedal statement.

The WHAT of our Christina faith we more or less quickly discerned. It's the HOW that seemed to stump us, and still does, even two thousand years later.

Because the HOW of our Christian faith is not as easy as reciting a creed; it is not as easy as, as Peter did, that Jesus is the Christ of God. He was probably expecting a pat on the back for that one and instead was rebuked by Jesus. He may have had the WHAT; Jesus know he and the disciples didn't have the HOW.

The HOW: Like the inhabitants of City of David, who witnessed virtuous life of the unnamed suffering servant, we too have been given glimpses of the HOW of our faith. There have been times where, at least for the moment or for a particular opportunity, someone "got it".

• Parents who sacrifice so much for their children knowing full well they don't and perhaps never will appreciate it.
• Children who lovingly care for their ailing parents without the expectation of the inheritance.
• The owner who goes deeper into debt, so that her employees might keep getting a paycheck, saving their homes and their dignity.
• The person who sits at bedside of their long-time spouse now crippled by a stroke, knowing they will never hear the word, "I love you" again.

We've all heard stories about the "Mother Theresa's" of our day. But they remain the exception. But the Jesus told us that If anyone wishes to come after me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Every day we are called to witness. Every day we have to proclaim the HOW of our faith.

• To open the door of God's love to those who in all likelihood will slam it back in our face.
• To offer the cup of water to the thirsty who, without thanks, may greedily ask for another.
• To give to charity without naming rights, without any expectation of recognition.
• To lift up those who have been beaten down by life who have nothing to offer us in return except a look of gratitude.
• To allow another to sing their song of woe or love or sadness without having to drown them out with our judgment or correction.
• To loan whatever is our treasure without anticipation of it being returned.
• To visit the sick knowing full well they will never be able to return the visit.
• To suffer for the sake of another in the absence of gratitude.

To say we believe is the easy part. We have that down pat; we do it every weekend. To live as if we believe; that's another journey. The WHAT of our faith can be written in a creed. The HOW of our faith can only be lived out in the haunting promise of the gospel: Whoever wishes to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life from my sake will save it.

The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
June 6, 2010

If someone were to hand you a four hundred-page book entitled, The Metaphysics of a Kiss, would you read it? (I wouldn't either) Kisses shouldn't need 400 pages of explanation; they certainly don't need a metaphysical description; kisses just work. A peck on the cheek, a gentle kiss of the forehead of a child, a passionate lip-to-lip kiss, it doesn't matter. Kisses have their own language, a language that surpasses words.

Kisses work when the spoken word isn't enough, when the written word falls short. Next to a kiss, a text message or an email is simply pathetic. But a touch, a silent look of compassion and a kiss; these are things that can accomplish what words can't.

That's why I like the image of the kiss for the Eucharist. The Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ that we share in Holy Communion, is God's kiss for us. It's what God gives when God's words have inspired and challenged and affected all they can. It's what God gives when there is nothing left to say. Think about the times you receive Eucharist, the times you welcome that sacred kiss of Christ in his Body and Blood. In that simple ritual moment, God can feed our loneliness as nothing else can; God satisfies our deepest hungers, calms our anxieties, comforts us in our fears, energizes us to respond, consoles us in the midst of chaos. The Eucharist is the ritual in which Jesus holds us to his heart in an embrace of the deepest love, heals us in its touch, and affects our very being in ways that nothing else can.

It is the language of ritual, ancient, powerful, primal almost, in its ability to touch our deepest self. Ritual was the language of the sacrificial offerings of the Jews for countless generations. It was the language of the disciples when they fed the crowd with loaves and fishes and then with wordless-wonder filled twelve baskets with leftovers. It was the language of Jesus with his disciples at the table as he passed the cup and broke the bread in an act of ageless remembrance. Ritual speaks what words cannot; it communicates what words will not.

I could preach for hours (don't worry, I won't) and not get you there. You could read volume after volume of theology and not get there. You could digest the scriptures from cover to cover and it still not get to where what sacred ritual can get us. But to feel the hand of Christ in yours when you take the host in your hand; to know the kiss of Christ when you place that cup upon your lips, that is to know the wordless love of God. There is nothing greater that God has given us.

Memorial Day-Feast of the Visitation of Mary
May 31, 2010

We have a very personal faith system in which we operate. Sure, we've had our share of dividing seas and pillars of fire and mighty winds. But when God wants to do God's best work, when God wants to make sure we get the message -whatever message it is that God wants to deliver- it's personal. God speaks. God visits. God touches. God sits at table. And today, God stirs a child in the womb.

In fact, the Incarnation itself proclaims this truth. When God wanted to speak most clearly to us, when God's most important message of salvation was to be revealed, God did not rely on natural phenomena. God did not turn back to the old dependable ways like a burning bush or plagues. God did it personally. He came to dwell among us, one like us, born of woman. God came as a child that needed nurturing and teaching and guidance until such a time that this child could nurture and teach and guide other human beings. Jesus had to deal with his own and other's personal emotions and their human imperfections; Jesus had to discover personal strengths and gifts hidden behind the egos of his followers.

The plan of salvation was and always will be made up of very personal moments and personal commitments and personal actions and personal decisions, like the moment we celebrate today. Mary made a personal visit to her elderly cousin who, like young Mary, was pregnant. She stayed with her, helping her with the daily chores and routines. It was Elizabeth's child that stirred in her womb in the presence of the yet-to-be-born Christ.

We have a very personal faith system in which we operate.

Today, as we in this country celebrate Memorial Day, we remember another very personal system in which we operate: the system of peace and justice and freedom, and the personal cost that this system demands. Behind the rhetoric of politics and the power of weapons and the balance of negotiations are human beings who make life and death decisions, personal, sometimes final decisions of who lives and who dies.

It is easy for us to sing a few patriotic songs and to raise our flags and to decorate the graves of our fallen soldiers. But let us never forget that what we are about today is very, very personal. Men and women die; there is nothing more personal than that. They have mothers and mothers whose hearts never heal from that loss. They had husbands and wives and lovers who never fully recover from the love that was taken from them. They have children who grow up with no memory of their parents and others who live with nightmares that Mommy or Daddy are not coming home. Only it's not a nightmare; it's real. Every life that has been lost in war has been personal. They were not a number; they were not a casualty. They were men and women with dreams and hopes and lives yet to live. Their sacrifice, their willingness to serve our country, itself, was a personal decision to fight so that freedom might be preserved, so that justice might be realized, so that peace might be known in our world.

Even this week, as the headlines noted the at-that-time-unnamed 1000th soldier was killed in the war in Afghanistan, let us never forget that this is the 1000th PERSON to die, to leave behind mother and father and wife and husband and lover and child.

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, gives us words of wisdom and direction that leads can carry us into this day of Feast and this day of Remembrance, word to carry with us today and in the days ahead:

Brothers and Sisters:
Let love be sincere;
hate what is evil,
hold on to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection;
anticipate one another in showing honor.

There are many to honor today, those of our faith story and those of our nation's story.

Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2010

The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing,
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,
Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command, leading not following,
Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lusty
flesh clear of taint,
Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors,
as to say Who are you?
Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never obedient
Those of inland America. (The Prairie-Grass Dividing, Walt Whitman)

Walt Whitman wrote that poem more than a hundred years ago. Did you catch what it was the Whitman was saying? Do you have any idea? I'm not sure I do, either, and I must have read it 40 times this week. Wouldn't it be great if Whitman could just appear, right here, and talk us through it? You know, speak to us personally and let us know what was in his heart, why he chose those particular words and that particular syntax? What was it that inspired him? Wouldn't it be great to just hear from his own mouth what he wanted us to gain from those words he scribed so many decades ago?

But even if Whitman did stand before us, can we be sure we would "get it" even then? Or is it one of those things that we may not understand because our hearts are ready? Maybe there are things in life we have to discover or experience before the poetry can really connect. Maybe there is more we need to know of life before his words could possibly come alive with meaning and clarity and power?

Whitman, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Emily Dickenson, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their words will strike the souls of some and slide past the ears of others. So it is with all great poets and writers, composers and artists.

That what-if, what if we could know, really know the poet beyond the poetry, is exactly what happens when we come to know the work of the Divine Poet: God. When we talk about coming to know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we not only have the Divine Poetry within our grasp, but we have the voice of the Poet and we have the soul of the Poet within our grasp as well.

Since the beginning of time God has shared his poetry, his very self. The author of the Book of Proverbs says that God's poetry, God's wisdom poured forth from of old, at the first, before the earth, when there w