Manna Gathering

As One Having Authority.

2012-01-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

Mark 1:21-28

They went into Capernaum; andimmediately on the Sabbath. He entered the synagogue and began toteach. They were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them asone having authority, and not as the scribes.

Just then there was a man in theirsynagogue with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, saying, "Whatbusiness do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You cometo destroy us? I know who You are--the Holy One of God!" AndJesus rebuked him, saying, "Be quiet, and come out of him!"Throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with aloud voice and came out of him. They were all amazed, so that theydebated among themselves, saying, "What is this? A new teachingwith authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obeyHim."

Immediately the news about Himspread everywhere into all the surrounding district of Galilee.

Several years ago I began to realizethat I always seemed to be in a self-judgment mode. I would beintensely watching myself and my life closely to see if all mythoughts, actions and responses measured up to the accepted spiritualstandards and ideals. Somehow, eveninspiration would rapidly turn into law and there I would be tryingdesperately to make it all work. I would try to grab onto what Ithought was my spiritual authority and use it to bring shape andmeaning to my inner life. It was exhausting, really. I had not yetlearned that the Authority of God is not something that can beapprehended by a force of the intellect or will. We can only beabsorbed into it by knowing the Author.

Scribeshad a huge amount of authority in the Jewish culture. The scribeswere the copyists of Scripture and teachers of the Law.Their functions were to copy, read, amend, explain, and protect thelaw. They were scholars learned in the law, who lectured on it insynagogues, taught it in schools, debated it in public and private,and applied it in judgment on specific cases. (dictionarydefinition of a scribe.)

Jesus was also very familiar with God'slaw. He, too, was able to quote scripture, apply it and debate it.But when Jesus taught the people, they were amazed at his authoritywhich was nothing like the authority they wereused to. Jesus' authority brought change and healing. It broughtlight where there was no light and freedom where none existed. Jesus'knew' the scripture in the same way the scribes did but hisknowledge went deeper and was more intimate. His knowledge of allthings to do with God wasn’t based on principles and laws or amyriad of interpretations of that law; his knowledge was based onrelationship. When he taught the people, he wasn't simply quotingsomething he had learned by rote; he was talking about someone heknew intimately. When he spoke of God the Father, he spoke fromexperience and from his constant connection with the Father. He spokeonly about what God had spoken to him. He could teach love withauthority because he was knew the Author of Love. He could heal withauthority because he was one with the Author of Healing. He couldbring deliverance with authority because he lived within the heart ofthe Author of freedom.

Christ's authority naturally flowed outof his knowledge of the Father. The scribes knew everything there wasto know about the law but, as St. Paul was fond of pointing out, thewritten word is dead and cannot bring life, only awareness of sin andfailure and condemnation. Jesus' intimate knowledge of the Fatherastounded and amazed the people because he spoke of things he reallyknew, not just things he had read about or heard about.

It is interesting to note that theunclean spirits were completely freaked out by Jesus' authority butthose same spirits couldn’t have cared less about the scribes'authority. The spirits knew that dead knowledge (law) regulates andcontrols people only on a surface level but living knowledge goes deepinto the inner heart and sets people free. That's why they wantednothing to do with Jesus.

The lovely thing about Jesus is he notonly was able to share his knowledge of the Father with thepeople, but he wanted everyone to have the same experience of theFather as he did. In fact, that was one reason Jesus came – to showwhat it was really like to walk intimately with God. He came to share thegood news that God is indeed a Father and that God wants a closerelationship with each one of us.

We are all called to share in Christ'sauthority. But what does that mean? What did it mean when I realizedthat I was trying to manufacture and use authority to shape my lifewithout having any idea what it meant to have authority? How does oneget to a place of true authority? For me it meant letting go of allthe ideals, goals, precepts and standards that I thought I had tomake work in my life and be totally poor before God. I had to admitthat in spite of all the spiritual knowledge I had built up in myselfover the years, I knew nothing, could do nothing and had no ideawhere to go. Furthermore, I told God I was not going to do anythingabout it. I was going to wait on him. I wasn't going to seek him inmore books or more speakers and continue to add to the useless andweighty type of knowledge authority I thought was necessary. I was going towait for him to speak the living word to my heart.

What a relief that was to my wholebeing. It was like I had been carrying a mountain of useless andheavy knowledge, knowledge I didn't even know how to use or applyproperly let alone gain authority from it. All it did was sit on myshoulders and condemn me for never quite getting it right. When Isaid, “I'm not carrying this anymore,” it was as if God answered,“Yes!! I've just been waiting for you to say that and to drop thatload. My burden - my authority – is the yoke of lightness. Justwalk with me and stop worrying about 'application' and 'succeeding'and 'doing it right'. Take a break from having to find the rightspiritual tool for every situation. Just walk with me.”

It is always good to regularly reviewyour spiritual life and ask the question: Do I have a primaryrelationship with words, principles, precepts and rules or do I havea primary relationship with the living God? A relationship with rulesand principles is a complex and heavy burden, one that always seemsto point out one's failure. It often involves lots of guilt andself-criticism. It seems when we start trying to wield what we thinkof as authority, all we do is become heavy authoritarians.

A relationship with the living God is avacation. The Latin for 'be still' is vacate. Simon Tugwell O.P., ina book on prayer writes, “God invites us to take a holiday[vacation], to stop being God for a while, and let him be God…Godis inviting us to take a break, to play truant. We can stop doing allthose important things we have to do in our capacity as God, andleave it to him to be God.”

Being loved, not being in control, ispowerful kingdom authority.

The Voice

2012-01-17T19:44:00.000-08:00

Mark 1: 14-20
After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news."
As Jesus passed along the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea - for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Come and follow me and I will make you fishers of people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As Jesus went a little further, he saw James, son of Zebedee and his brother John who were in the boat mending their nets. Immediately he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Is there anyone else out there who secretlythinks the disciples had it easy when it came to hearing the call andfollowing immediately? They heard a voice, looked up and Jesus wasright there. There was no mistaking who he was and what he was askingthem.

There have been a few times in my lifewhere I knew, without a doubt, that God was calling me to dosomething. One of those times was when he told me to become aCatholic. I was a committed Christian and, though my husband wasCatholic, I didn't have any inclination whatsoever to explore theCatholic faith and would have been defensive if anyone had suggestedI do so. I was happy with my faith life and wasn't looking foranything more. Then one evening when I wasn't thinking of anything in particular, a distinct voice inmy head said, “Get into the Church and hide.” The interesting thing wasthat I had absolutely no doubt as to what church the voice meant and the only thing I could say and wanted to saywas, “Yes!” At no point in my journey did I ever doubt the call. I responded because, well, what else areyou going to do when you hear God's voice?

The disciples heard Jesus' voice calling to them, “Drop your nets. I have another kind of fishing foryou to do,” and they immediately dropped their nets and followedhim. What else were they going to do? They had distinctly heard Christ's calland they knew who he was. Of all the sincere Christian people I know, Ican't think of one who wouldn't drop what they were doing andimmediately follow Jesus if they had no doubt it was his voice theywere hearing. The problem is, we don't always hearGod's voice in a way that leaves us with absolutely no questions orfears in our hearts. It's actually a rare and beautiful thing to hearGod's voice in the same way Samuel heard the Lord's voice calling hisname or the way I heard him telling me to become a Catholic. Rare andbeautiful.

Why does it have to be so rare? Why isit so difficult for us to discern God's call for us sometimes? I saidat the beginning that there have been a few times in my lifewhere the call was distinct and unmistakeable. The rest of the time?Hard discernment. “Is this God's voice leading me or not? Am Isupposed to do this or not do it? If I'm not supposed to do this, Godwill close the door...oh please God, close that friggin' door!”Meanwhile, I'm being pushed through the door as I grab onto anythingI can to keep myself from going through. “Quick! Shut the door,Lord! Shut the door!”

Then there are the things I wouldreally like to do but I can't get a handle on whether they're thingsGod wants me to do. “Is God leading me or not? If I'm not supposedto do this, God will close the door.” However, if he actually doesshut the door, I'm ready to find a window and if he shuts the window,I have this fire axe...

Why is it so hard to hear God? From myexperiences, I know that when God reallywants me to hear his voice, I'll hear it. I know this because the fewtimes I did hear him clearly it wasn't because I was engaged in anydeep spiritual prayer and it wasn't because I was actuallytrying to hear his voice in that moment. It was simply his time for me to hear him clearly andthat was that. So, what about the rest of the time when nothing isclear and the struggle to discern is heavy and painful? Is it our fault when God'svoice is indistinct? Is it because we don't spendenough time in prayer or in the right kind of prayer?Does God get frustrated with us because we're so deaf?

I don't believe that. I believe that heallows us to struggle in order to discover that his voice comes in many different forms. He allows us to pray, ask, seek and search some more. If he speaks clearly in onesituation, he may completely change his voice in another because ifhe always made it easy for us to hear, we wouldn't seek him anymoreand we wouldn't discover how immense and all encompassing he is. We wouldbe so busy listening for a single note that we would be missing thewhole symphony that is God. We would wait for a singular voice to tellus what to do and where to go and we would respond like good little robots. We would be'push button Christians'. We need to understand that it's not alwaysabout what God calls us to do; it's often more about ourrelationship with him as we struggle to discern his will. Sometimeshis will is simply, “Stay close and dance with me. Don't try to figure outthe moves or the end results. Just find my rhythm and I'll take careof the rest.”

We tend to focus strongly on end results and accomplishments. God is not all about accomplishments. Heis about being known. If we seek to know him intimately, try to become lesshung up on what to do and more keen on who he is, we will start torecognize his voice in places we never thought we would hear it. He willbecome the Lord of everything we encounter and we will hear his voice everywhere: in silence, chaos,a sentence, a homeless person, an enemy, a rock, ahard place, a fear or a wound. If all we listen for is “Yes, go,” and“No, stop,” what kind of a relationship is that?

At Mass I sat behind a couplewhom I hardly know. The communion hymn was, “Here I Am, Lord.” Ijust happened to glance at the man in front of me and I saw himwiping his eye. Dust? An eye lash? I watched him.There it was...a single tear quietly coursing down his cheek. He hadheard the voice of God in the song. And I had seen the voiceof God in his tear. We were both blessed and probably changed withouta word being spoken or an action made. I saw the voice of my Lord and itwas sweet. He heard the voice of his Lord and was moved. Dare wequestion what was accomplished?

In John 20: 29, Jesus said to Thomas, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those whohave not seen and yet have come to believe." He could well havesaid to any of his disciples, “Have you followed because you heardme? Blessed are those who do not hear and yet follow.” Blessed arethe confused, the afraid, the ones straining to hear, the ones whowould willingly stay or go if they only knew what God was asking ofthem. Blessed are you for when youdo finally hear his voice your joy will be like an ocean. You will know that he was speaking the whole time. You willrealize that you didn't distinctly hear his voice because it wasn'ttime for you to hear it distinctly. He reveals his voice when it's time.What will amaze you is how his voice gently guided you and led youeven while you were so achingly praying for clarity and his voicewas the last thing you thought you could hear.

The Lord is calling you right now. Ifhe wasn't, you would have no desire to know his will or to followafter him.

Your desire is the sound of his voice.

Have You Found What You're Looking For?

2012-01-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

John 1:35-42 The next day John again was standing with two of hisdisciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look,here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, andthey followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, hesaid to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him,‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are youstaying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and sawwhere he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It wasabout four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard Johnspeak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He firstfound his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found theMessiah’ (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus,who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are tobe called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).

What are you looking for? If you sat down quietly for 15 minutesand visualized Jesus asking you that question, would you findyourself answering with generalizations – answers that you thinkare what every Christian should be looking for? Would you immediatelythink of all the spiritual gifts and solutions that you think youshould have in your life? Or would you discover that you'renot sure what it is you're looking for? Would you discover that it'shard to pinpoint what you are really looking for?

Don't feel bad if a clear and definite answer doesn't comeimmediately to mind. The disciples who followed Jesus didn't have ananswer to the question either. They didn't immediately say, “We'relooking for the hole in our hearts to be filled. We're looking for afaith that's filled with life and light. We're looking for peace andinner happiness. We're looking to find out who we really are. We'relooking for the Messiah. Are you the one who can give us thesethings?” They didn't even get close to being able to answer withwhat their hearts were really searching for. They asked Jesus wherehe was staying because they had no idea what they were looking for.They didn't realize it but asking him where he was staying was abeautifully right response. It was a Spirit-led response.

We always feel like we have to know the answers. We feel like weshould know what we need in our spiritual journeys and we think weshould be able to find the key to all the answers we need or want inour lives. When our definition of what our spiritual life should looklike doesn't match up to what it really looks like, it is hard on us.We allow the failure hat to sit on our heads and we assume that we'renot doing everything that is required and it's all our fault. We getdiscouraged or we hide behind overt busyness hoping that others won'tguess how close to empty our tank is. When we pray we think we hearJesus asking us to do more, be more, give more, pray more, love more,suffer more and relinquish more until we are are in danger of beingcompletely 'more-tified'.

When we come to this point, we very much need to hear Jesus ask,“What are you looking for?” When we hear him ask that we shouldhonestly respond, “Lord, I don't know. I have no idea what I need.I don't know who I am and I've forgotten who you are. I need to stopdemanding that you come to where I live because I think I'm doing all the 'right' things. I need to leave myself behind and go to where youstay.”

The disciples went to where Jesus was staying. What happened then?They listened to him and came away with a deep sure knowledge that hewas the Messiah. What kinds of things did he say to them? In myexperience, there is always one thing that will connect usimmediately and deeply to the reality of who Jesus is and that ishearing him tell us who we really are – hearing him call us by ourspiritual names. You'll notice that in this week's readings there areseveral references to names:

John points out Jesus and says, “Look, here is the Lamb ofGod.”
The disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi (which translated meansteacher), where are you staying?”
Andrew says to Simon, “We have found the Messiah.”
Jesus says to Simon, “...you are to be called Cephas(which is translated Peter)”
And in this week's first reading, Samuel hears God calling hisname in the night.

I fully believe that Jesus was not only teaching those disciplesabout his identity and mission, he was also showing them their trueselves. He was revealing to each of them on a very personal level whoeach had been created to be. They knew then that theywere in the presence of someone they would follow to the ends of theearth. When Jesus says your true name, you know you have found whatyou were always looking for.

When Jesus saw Peter, he immediately called Peter by his truename: “Cephas” or Rock. Did Peter or the other disciples knowwhere their names would take them or what they would have to do toget there? Absolutely not. The only thing they could do was followJesus and stay with him wherever he was day by day, moment by moment.They could say, “Here I am,” but they could not make their owndecisions as to what Jesus would require of them. They couldn'tcreate themselves. They just had to stay with Jesus in the moment andhear him speak their names – names that not only defined who theyreally were but also were names that reflected an aspect of thenature of Jesus, the one who is the Name Above all Names.

In order to stay with Jesus and hear their names, the discipleshad to leave behind much. Most significantly, they had to leavebehind their own self-conceptions. They had to leave behind theirhalf baked dreams, visions, expectations and ambitions – especiallyspiritual ones – because none of their ideas of themselves, theirdreams, their longings or their theologies were big enough to holdChrist. And neither are ours. As long as we cling to what we think weshould be or how our spiritual life should be, we won'tbe able to go stay with Jesus. Whatever we think we know is too smallfor the reality of Christ or the reality of our names. Peter couldnot form himself into The Rock. Andrew could not turn himself into aFisher of People, a preacher and an evangelist. Only Christ could.But Peter and Andrew had to take the journey of leaving behind theirset in stone ideas of everything andbe with Jesus wherever he was. Peter had to lose himself tothe point where he couldn't even be true to his professed convictionsand he betrayed his Lord. In that terrible act he lost the lastvestiges of all those self-oriented perceptions that kept him fromreally knowing Jesus and knowing himself. Only then was he free tofinally move into the amazing existence of who he really was: TheRock, called so by the Rock of Ages.

Every time you hear Christ speak your name you will grow a littlemore into the reality of that name. Your Name will form you little bylittle, root by root, branch by branch, leaf by leaf. It will slowly draw you away from everything that is not life-giving to who you are.It will form you in a way 'more-tification' never can. This requiresyou to take the time to listen as Jesus asks you, “What are youlooking for?” It requires you to be brave enough to answer, “Idon't know. I have no idea. All I want is to be where you are andnowhere else. All I want is to be with you and hear you calling mytrue Name. I want to know where you are staying, Lord.” And he willsay, “Come and see...”

Go. See. Stay. Listen. And find out what you've always been looking for.

Epiphany 2012. Upsizing For Light

2012-01-03T18:43:00.000-08:00

Matthew2: 1-12
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem ofJudea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where isthe child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed hisstar at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When KingHerod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; andcalling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, heinquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘InBethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: “Andyou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among therulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherdmy people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from themthe exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them toBethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; andwhen you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and payhim homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there,ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, untilit stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that thestar had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering thehouse, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt downand paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, theyoffered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having beenwarned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their owncountry by another road.

Wise men. Magi. Magicians. Astrologers. If these wise men werealive today they would most likely be called New Age practitionersand be looked upon with suspicion and perhaps even fear byChristians. At the very least they would be dismissed. It isinteresting to note that at the time of Christ's birth, thepeople who should have been aware of the significant signsaccompanying the coming of the Messiah, people like the scribes andPharisees who studied the prophetic writings endlessly, had no ideathat the Light had come. They were completely in the dark, blinded bytheir preconceptions of what the 'brightness of the dawn' would looklike. Thick darkness had covered the people. God manifested his signsto all but the ones who saw and responded to these signs were eithersocial outcasts or strangers with strange practices who, according tothe Jewish belief, should have been the last ones to be led to thelight.

This should make us sit up and take notice. It should make usexamine our expectations of what we think it will look like whenChrist manifests his light in our lives. If we have set ideasabout what is light and what is not or where the light will come fromor how it will reveal itself, we may find ourselves groping in thedarkness of skewed preconceived ideas. We all search for the light everyday of our lives. We all hope, like the Israelites, that Christ willmanifest himself in the midst of our sufferings and challenges tolead us to freedom. When he doesn't come the way we think he shouldwe become terribly discouraged and end up blaming ourselves forlack of faith or blaming God for not paying attention to our needs.In the meantime, he is very present, attentive and active but he is unrecognizedbecause we are looking for something entirely different.

Everything about the birth of Christ was an antithesis of allthe common expectations of the Jewish people. Because they thoughtthey knew exactly what the story should look like, they could not seethe unfolding of an astounding Kingdom narrative in which God plantedthe Light deep within the ordinary night. The glory of the Lord roseupon them but their eyes could not see it. “Then you shall see andbe radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice...” wrote Isaiah. But it wasn'tthe Israelites who noted the star, followed it over a huge distance,saw where it stopped and were filled with joy. It was magi from aforeign nation. They were open to mystery however it manifesteditself. “When they saw that the star had stopped, they wereoverwhelmed with joy.” Overwhelmed with joy. That's a strong phrase. It's a little disconcerting to realize that in all thegospels, a respectable Israelite being absolutely overwhelmed withjoy because of Jesus was relatively rare. Samaritans, Roman soldiers,lepers, prostitutes and those on the outer edge of acceptability werethe ones likely to be overwhelmed by joy. For those who wereeducated about the Messianic prophecies, his presence was more likelyto cause consternation, confusion, resentment, anger, fear andindignation. Joy seemed to come most easily to those who didn'treally know who or what Jesus was supposed to be.

The first Epiphany – the manifestation of the Light to theGentiles – was not an event designed to fire the intellect oraffirm traditional expectations. This Light that reached out beyondthe prescribed and acceptable borders was a visceral light, a lightthat moved those magi in their guts. Something far beyond them calledto them and whispered of ancient yearnings fulfilled. Itspoke to them about kingship, priesthood and death. The voice was irresistible. The voice oflight was so magnetic and so consistent that even being led to a poorchild with poor parents in a poor shelter didn't quench their joy;they understood that their minds could not define all the mysteriesof heaven and earth and they knew they had no right to createdefinitions of the Light and keep those definitions in a well guardedbox. All they could do was offer their gifts and weep for a peoplewho could not see the glory that was right in front of them. Gold forkingship and Frankincense for priesthood were the gifts that Isaiahspoke of but perhaps those magi had an intuition that the darknessover Christ's people had only one possible outcome. Myrrh for death.Myrrh for burial. Myrrh for the journey beyond the grave.

We live in a dark world where it isn't always easy to discern thelight but it does us no good to cling to our black and whitetalismans against the night. Like the magi, we need to be able torecognize God's pinpoints of light in the dark universe and bewilling to strike out across a wilderness terrain without all ourtheological comforts around us. We need to be fully aware that the lightcan be a star, a child, a dream, a long arduous journey, a dangerousproposition, a diligent search, an overwhelming joy or a flight backinto the wilderness. It is rarely what we expect.

We need to allow the Spirit to expand and open our hearts sothat we, like the magi, can perceive and recognize the light. Weoften keep our expectations too small, too enclosed, too safe and toorigid to play host to a light that knows no boundaries and is alwayson the move, changing everything in its path. Isaiah said, “Enlargethe site of your tent and let the curtains of your habitations bestretched out;” (Isaiah 54.2-17) He was telling the Israelites thatthe Light was on its way and the light was bigger than anyone couldconceive.

The light has come. The light is coming. The light will always becoming. It's still on its way.

Enlarge your expectations. Widen up.

The Good Child. Christmas 2011

2011-12-20T12:18:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of annoying andgenuinely disturbing things about the Advent/Christmas season in thesecular world today. There's a lot of materialism and merchants putpeople under a huge amount of pressure to spend much more than they canafford. Political correctness is rampant and many stores andinstitutions now refuse to use the word 'Christmas' at all. Radio stations and stores startplaying Christmas music in November and by the time Christmas comes,you feel like if you hear, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” onemore time you'll throw something. All the business promotions make aperson feel like Christmas should be so peaceful, warm, positive andfun. Song lyrics and advertising images emphasize the joy and comfortof coming home to family which causes a disconnect in the hearts ofmany because 'home and family' to them has always meant discord and pain –and Christmas doesn't change that at all. Once you start seeing theall the hype, materialism, pain and empty promises, it's easy to feel likethe spirituality of Christmas is in danger of being completely lost.

So, as we move through these last fewdays of Advent let's turn our focus to something that is beautifuland astounding. Have you ever realized that no other faith has areligious celebration that has affected the world the way the birthof Christ has done and still does? Certainly, the secular world goesto a lot of effort to subvert the real meaning of Christmas but inspite of its best efforts, it fails. It fails because “bonumdiffusivum sui” which means, “It is the nature of goodness todiffuse itself.” When Jesus was born, goodness and light took upresidence in the world and, as John 1:5 says, “The light shinesin the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Itstill hasn't. Never will.

No matter how the world tries to cashin on the Christmas season and no matter how much those who arepolitically correct try to deflect attention away from the name ofChrist or from the reason we celebrate, light emitting goodnesssaturates the whole season. This is God's glow of goodness becausegood cannot exist outside of him. And at Christmas it seems like heis especially exuberant in the diffusion of his goodness. Every actof giving whether it's based in Christian values or not comes fromthe goodness of God and every person, company or institution thatgives in any way is an instrument of God whether they know it or not.It's as if the light of Christ's birth cannot be overcome no matterhow much the secular world shies away from acknowledging it.

When I listen to the radio, watch T.V.,read the newspapers and scan the internet, I am boggled by theefforts of so many to minister to the poor during Advent and Christmas.There are empty stocking funds, penny drives, charity concerts and amultitude of Christmas meals being offered to those who can't affordone. And food bank drives! Two radio stations in our city had acontest to see which station could get the most food collected. Alocal business invited people to come by with food and gift items andtry to fill up the back of a trailer truck. Even our municipalgarbage collectors are having a food drive. Individuals are doingrandom acts of great kindness. People volunteer to stand outside inthe cold to ring bells and collect money for the poor and everyonegenerously tips coins into the kettle on their way past.

We have a choice. We can look at thenegative. We can cry foul because we feel like Jesus is being leftout. We can be cynical about a corporation's motivations in providinga meal or collecting items for the food bank. We can shake our headsat how Santa is better known than Christ. We can focus on thedarkness. Or we can start seeing that when a holy infant was borninto the world, the world lost the battle against the light. TheLight could not and cannot be kept down. Christmas could be outlawedcompletely and the light would still shine. Goodness would still comebubbling up through the cracks because darkness cannot overcome thelight.

“And the Word became flesh andlived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of afather’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Rejoice, people of God! There is goodnews of great joy for all of you: to you is born this day a Saviour,who is the Messiah, the Lord. The world will try to shut him up. Itwill nail him to a cross. It will twist his words and subvert histruths. It will try to make money off of him. It will attempt toreplace him, negate him, eliminate him and make him into a myth.

But the world cannot do it. It isfighting a losing battle. So, lift up your hearts, seek the face ofthe infant in every act of goodness and generosity you come across.Soon you will see him everywhere and you will know: The child haswon.

Because you just can't keep a good Goddown.

A blessed, holy and GoodChristmas to you all and I also wish you a full, gracious andpeaceful celebration of Mary, the Mother of God on New Years. I willbe taking a bit of a 'blog break' for that week.

4th Sunday in Advent. The Great Disturbance

2011-12-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

Luke 1:26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a townin Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose namewas Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. Andhe came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is withyou.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered whatsort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not beafraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you willconceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. Hewill be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and theLord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He willreign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there willbe no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I ama virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come uponyou, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; thereforethe child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. Andnow, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son;and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. Fornothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I,the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’Then the angel departed from her.

There was a humorous story with variations going around on theinternet recently about a woman wondering why her husband was beingquiet and withdrawn. In her head, she explored myriads of possiblereasons, all having to do with the history of their relationship,current problems and what she may have done to upset him. Herreasonings and conclusions were multiple and complex. Then we get aninsight into what the guy was thinking: “My truck won't start.”

The Gospel this week says that Mary was much perplexed. Inmy Jerusalem bible it says that she was deeply disturbed. I'mthinking that Luke at some point asked Mary about that moment ofannunciation and Mary tried very hard to explain what it waslike to have an angel speaking those particular words to her. Lukeprobably listened patiently for a long time and then wrote down, “Shewas disturbed.”

Fair enough. The Gospels were not written as mini-novellas withall the characters' thoughts and feelings opened up to us. They arerecords of specific events and the teachings of Jesus. Still, thereare times when I'm reading the Gospels that I wish the writer couldhave written a little more than the bare facts. On the other hand,Luke probably could have written a whole book about Mary being deeplydisturbed. I prefer 'deeply disturbed' to 'much perplexed' because Ithink she experienced something infinitely more profound than simpleconfusion or puzzlement over some words of greeting the angel said toher. When I read that Mary was deeply disturbed, it makes me think ofa body of still water over which a strong wind begins gusting,sweeping and swirling. A Ruah wind. The wind of the Spirit wasrushing over her and through her, moving her and evoking senseswithin her that were completely foreign yet strangely familiar - likeechoes of a home known long long ago in a place somewhere far beyondmemory.

The Spirit was roiling the waters in the depths of Mary's being.The moment the angel spoke, she was no longer just 'Mary'. She was'Full of Grace' or 'Favored One'. She was “Blessed Among Women”.She had heard her true name and knew that nothing would ever be thesame again. The dictionary meaning of the verb 'disturb' is“interfere with the normal arrangement or functioning of”. Itwasn't just Mary's surface emotions that God was disturbing deeply;God was in the process of disturbing her whole inner and outer life.

Our God is a disturbing God. But you shouldn't take that statementand think it simply means the struggles and challenges we all dealwith every day. It's not just another way of saying that life ismessy. God seeks to disturb you in the same way he disturbed Mary. Hecalls you by the Name he has chosen for you and if you listen forthat name, hear it in your innermost being and, like Mary, respondwith, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with meaccording to your word,’ you will know a disturbance like no other.Like Mary, you will hear echoes of home. You will never be the same,your life will never be the same and you wouldn't want it any otherway.

The Advent time of conception, waiting and bringing to birth canbe a beautifully disturbing time if you allow it to go deep. It isthe Name God calls you by that invites you and it is the 'Yes!' ofyour heart that opens you. One of the reasons the Magnificat is sowonderful is because Mary was revelling in her name. She knew she wasa lowly servant but at the same time she also knew and fully acceptedwith joy that she was Blessed Among Women and that all generations would callher Blessed. She knew she was a vessel being used to bring forth theSon of God but she also knew how immensely and intimately loved shewas. Her vocational Name and call was to bring forth the Son and ingiving her assent, she found her true self. God called Mary to a rolein salvation history that none of us will ever experience but that doesn'tmean we aren't called, like Mary, to listen, hear, respond and findour true selves in the eyes of the Father. She was the first mysticof the New Testament and opened the way for us all. She didn't livein a monastery or have a lifestyle we normally associate withcontemplatives. Anyone who looked at her without knowing the detailsof what was happening would have said she was an ordinary womanliving an ordinary life.

This period leading up to Christmas is often hard on us inmany ways. It's a time of inconveniences, weariness, pressure andoften pain and loneliness but this is where God meets us and where hecalls our names. Mary's Advent was also full of these things. Lifewas also disturbing on the surface for Mary and it is disturbing for us.But this is the chosen birthplace of the Son of God – in the midstof chaos, struggle, woundedness and uncertainty.

Nothing became easier for Mary because she said yes to her Nameand to her God. She wasn't exempt from the challenges of life. Infact, it became infinitely more challenging and complex for her. ButMary had been given a profound knowledge of something we all haveaccess to within our Names: a deep-seated knowledge that God is.That's it. God is. It's hard to finish that sentence with oneadjective. We can say he is mighty but within that mightiness is ahelpless infant. We can say he is awesome but within that awesomenessis a God who overshadows us in intimacy. We can say he is holy butwithin that holiness is complete accessibility, a God who humblywaits for us to crawl into his arms. The knowledge that 'God is' setsus free to be wide open to infinite possibility.

We can resist the challenges we face or we can open our hearts toallow the disturbance to go deep. We can allow ourselves to crash upagainst our solid God and suddenly discover, as Mary did, that God'ssolidity is like liquid gold that pours into our hearts and stirs upsudden remembrances of who we really are: Advent people, Christmaspeople, people who belong to another world altogether, people who arestrangers in a strange land and are on a pilgrimage home. But beforethat we must learn how to allow ourselves to be disturbed, howto allow the ruah wind to drive us deep into the Shekinaovershadowing, a shadow made of fiery light. We need to learn how tobe open to bringing the Child of the Light to birth in the small partof the world where God has placed us.

During this last week of Advent, try praying as often as you can,“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

And prepare to be deeply disturbed.

3rd Sunday in Advent. The Gaudete Path

2011-12-05T20:42:00.001-08:00

This week, I will be reflecting on thefirst reading, (Isaiah 61: 1-2, 10-11), the psalm (Luke 1) and theGospel (John 1: 6-8, 19-28). If you want to quickly check thesereadings, go to bible.oremus.org/ This is a great site for looking upscripture and the translation is the same as the Catholic Lectionary.

In this week's readings we hear the words of Isaiah, Mary andJohn: the Gaudete Three. Each one was anointed by God to be Christbearers and each one experienced a different essence of rejoicing. Weneed to spend some time with the quality of rejoicing each oneexperienced. None of them entered into rejoicing because life waseasy and uncomplicated or because everything was going their way.From these three we learn that their spiritual rejoicing emerged notout of pleasant experiences but out of a full relationship with God,out of the anointing that was upon them and out of their deep desireto be all that God called them to be. If we are to be a rejoicingpeople, we have to know where true rejoicing comes from.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Isaiah wrote. As Godanointed him to bring his living word to a wayward people, he wasgiven a glimpse of the coming Christ and was filled with theknowledge that there was more to come than an eternity of God angrilychiding his people into obedience. Listen to what he says in thefirst reading: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my wholebeing shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garmentsof salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”Then he speaks of the bride and bridegroom and his joy is the joy ofknowing that the Beloved is coming and he is coming with gifts. Hewill bring beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and thegarment of praise for a spirit of heaviness. Isaiah saw the face ofthe Jesus, the bridegroom who was coming to give himself completelyfor his loved one and to bind up her wounds and heal her shame. Heforetold the virgin birth and he gave us images of the sufferingChrist seven hundred years before the advent of Jesus. Isaiah'srejoicing came from being privileged to understand that God had aplan that was beyond anything anyone could imagine. Isaiah didn'tknow if the Messiah would come in one year or several hundred yearsbut still he rejoiced because he had seen the perfection ofcompletion and knew that the Messiah was coming to save not only thefuture people of God but also all people in all of history, himselfincluded. Isaiah was caught up in the timeless compassion andgoodness of his God.

Mary! Mary possessed Pondering Joy. God anointed her to bring theJoy of all joy to birth but in the beginning of her pregnancy she hadno idea what this would eventually look like. Everything about herpregnancy was completely out of line with the common perception ofthe promise and it was all so much bigger than what her mind couldgrasp. So she became a child and a woman of contemplative joy.Contemplative joy comes from complete abandonment to God. It does notdemand immediate answers to immediate problems nor does it requireGod to conform to any presupposed ideas. As soon as Mary said, “Letit be done to me according to your word,” she lost herself andgained insight into the quiet but explosive creativity of God. Shewas a vessel of his creative love. Pain and difficulty were alreadyher companions but instead of being foes that she had to conquer,they were friends to attend her on her way because she trustedcompletely in the love of her God. “My soul magnifies the Lord andmy spirit rejoices in God my Saviour...” Her rejoicing ran deep and flowed straight to theheart of God – a river of connectedness, a current of immense trustthat caused her to exclaim, “Surely from now on all generationswill call me blessed.” She felt so blessed and her joy overflowed.

“The rejoicing of John.” That sounds like an oxymoron. Inscripture he seems like a terribly serious figure, so sure of who hewas that it didn't bother him in the least to publicly and loudlypoint out hypocrisy and sin where he saw it - and he saw iteverywhere. He knew his anointing was to prepare the way for theappearance of the Christ and no one was going to deter him. Becausewe tend to think of rejoicing as a happy emotion, it's a bitdifficult to envision John rejoicing. But sometimes rejoicing hasvery different overtones from those of exultant happiness.

I would guess that John rejoiced with an awesomely serious joy, ajoy that was born in and shaped by an unforgiving wilderness. Thatkind of joy would be a joy with no excess baggage and very fewexpectations created out of self-oriented desires. It would have beena stark joy of simple purpose and few distractions and anyone who sawjoy as a lovely feeling might not have looked at what John carried inhis heart and called it 'joy' or labelled his responses 'rejoicing'.It may have looked more like grief to them and they would have beenpartly right. What they couldn't have seen was the understanding thatthis terrible need to cry out to a deaf and blind people was balancedby a knowledge of momentous promise. Perhaps he was given a grave andsolemn vision of all the stars and planets in the universe lining upin honor of the One who was about to begin everything the earth andheavens had been waiting for. I believe that out in the wilderness,John knew that all creation was waking up to the realization that theChrist had come and the Christ was ready. It was time. The joy he felt made him want to roar, "People... WAKE UP!"

In the reflection for the first Sunday of Advent I asked you thinkabout what you wanted from God for Christmas. At Mass that week, ourpriest asked the people of the parish a wonderful question: “Whatdo you want to give birth to this Christmas?” Within the answer toeither of these questions is your anointing and your path ofrejoicing. Will you be like Isaiah, a man or woman of far-reachingvision, speaking of the promise of the coming Christ? Willyou be like Mary, a quietly surrendered but strong vessel of thebeauty of Jesus – someone who is pregnant with hope? Will you belike John, determined to clear a way for the one who will save, healand baptize with the fire of the Spirit?

It is your anointing that will fill you with a kind of rejoicingthat cannot come from anything in this world and depends on nothingthe world has to offer. The anointing of the Gaudete Three is youranointing. The same Spirit of the Lord is upon you and he has sent you tobring good news to the poor. He has clothed you with the same garmentof salvation as Isaiah. He has looked with favor on you and has donegreat things for you like he did for Mary. And God has anointed youto bring the same knowledge of salvation to the people as John did.

He is coming. He is here. He is ready. Oh people! Find your pathof rejoicing.

2nd Sunday of Advent. Kingdom Storytellers

2011-11-29T17:41:00.001-08:00

Mark1: 1-8

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending mymessenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of onecrying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, makehis paths straight” ’, John the baptizer appeared in thewilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgivenessof sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all thepeople of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by himin the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed withcamel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he atelocusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is morepowerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down anduntie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; buthe will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

“Historyrepeats itself.” Usually when we hear that, someone is expressingsomething negative about the world and how, as a human race, we neverseem to learn. However, we need to ponder on it in a more positivelight when it comes to our spiritual life. When we listen to theGospel at Mass, we are hearing the Church's story – its history. Asfamiliar as it is, it remains somewhat removed from us unless thestory we are listening to becomes the personal story of each one ofus and becomes a deep part of our own spiritual history. If our ownstories don't correlate to the Church's story, we may need to examineour spiritual life to make sure it's a life and not just a dogma.

Haveyou ever had a John the Baptist in your life? Was there ever a timewhen you were longing for something more, wanting an upheaval thatwould break open a stream of life in the dreary dryness of yourspiritual landscape? Did God send someone who spoke words that drewyou to a river of inner change or who pointed out the One you werewaiting for? The person may have been a friend, a teacher, a priest,an author or a speaker. Whoever it was and whatever it was they said, those mountains that were overwhelming you seemed farless threatening. Either that or you just felt stronger and more ableto move ahead and climb those mountains with excited determinationinstead of fear. Perhaps this person opened the Word in a way you hadnever heard before. Maybe they spoke of the love of God rather thanthe condemnation of God and inspired you to begentle with yourself and eager to open your heart to the Lord.

Ifyou can think of someone like this then God sent John to you. He sent youa voice that cried out to your wilderness, one that made your pathsstraighter and prepared your heart to hear the voice of the Lord. This voice humbly turned you toward the Messiah and said, “There.There is the Lamb of God. There is the one you seek. Go, follow him.”The reason you were able to take the first step toward the Lamb wasbecause you heard the love in John's voice and you knew thatthis Lord who inspired such love was the Lord you wantedto follow too.

Godsent you John. God made the history of the Church part of yourpersonal story and now the story of John the Baptist appearing in thewilderness heralding the coming of the Messiah is the story of you.

Perhapsyou have been a John the Baptist to someone else. Have you ever gonethrough your own wilderness and come out stronger and more sure ofwho you are and who your God is? Have you ever found yourself at theright time in the path of someone who desperately needed the comfortof a smoothed path? In the first reading, God said, “Comfort, ohcomfort my people. Speak tenderly to them. Tell them everything isall right.” Have you ever heard those words of Isaiah and felt astirring within your soul? Then you are John. What you have heardand learned in the wilderness is for the speaking of to the people.The history of the Church is your story.

Maybeyou need a John the Baptist in your life right now. Are therecrooked paths and rocky mountains blocking you? Have you been livingon the edge of a wilderness longing for the Messiah to come to you?You can ask God for a John the Baptist to come to you but rememberthat in scripture, John cried out to many and not all responded tohis words. The ones who came away unchanged and unmoved were thosewho thought they knew exactly what the Messiah should look like whenhe came. They had fixed preconceived ideas about God and who he was.They were unwilling or scared to change their ideas and perceptionsand when John said, “Behold the Lamb,” they could not see Jesusfor who he was. Do you have set parameters in how God can speak toyou or touch you? Are you waiting for a God of the Old Testament, aGod of condemnation, fire, thunder and upheaval? Are you open to aMessiah who may come quietly through surprisingly ordinary events?Are you willing to experience God's love and comfort? There are manywho are not. They don't think it's allowed or they don't think theydeserve it. Some don't think they need it and some are afraid ofchange even though their present spiritual lives are anything butsatisfying. That, too, is part of the history of the Church and isbeing relived in the personal stories of many.

Adventis a good time for seeing our stories in Scripture andrealizing that it is not just history we are listening to; it is thepresent moment Advent of our lives. We have voices in the wildernessamong us and Jesus continues to come to us all. The wilderness iswithin us and the Jordan is available. We have yearned for ourMessiah and we have fallen asleep waiting for him. We have pointedhim out in love and we have been lukewarm and careless about hispresence. We have accepted him and we have made judgments and turnedaway in self-righteousness. We are living out the story over andover. We write our stories daily and each day we have a choice as towho we want to be. We can be John in the wilderness, a broken onebeing submerged in the river or Christ holding out a hand tosomeone in pain. We are free to choose if we are going to be open orclosed. We are free to say yes or no to moving forward and to change.We just don't have the freedom to not be part of the story. Eventhose who think they have absolutely nothing to do with the story area major part of it.

Thereis one other thing that is necessary: sharing our stories with oneanother. If we never communicate with others the flow and rhythm, thevalleys and mountains, the rough spots and levelled paths of our ownpersonal stories, the Liturgical community will never become fullywhat it is meant to be: all of us working together to integrate TheBig Story into the world through the medium of our own stories. TheMass cannot remain to us an individual private time of worshipbecause this is not part of the real story and it is not what leadsto full Advent. When Jesus comes he comes to create one unified storyby inserting himself into each of our histories. If we never share,we never really understand what the coming of Jesus means intotality. If we are all strangers to one another, Mass almost becomeslike spiritual technology – we push the right buttons and click onthe right links and we follow the instruction manual – but weremain isolated from one another, never quite experiencing thefullness of the story come to life.

Thereadings during Advent and Christmas are beautiful and true but theyaren't just 'once upon a time' stories. They are the narrative of our lives,stories we listen to and should resonate with deeply because:

Weare the story. We are words made flesh. We are Advent.

1st Sunday of Advent. And When He Comes Again...

2011-11-22T18:13:00.001-08:00

Mark 13:33-37
Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts hisslaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper tobe on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when themaster of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or atcockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comessuddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’

Welcome to Advent. Welcome to the time of Arrival. Pay attention.Be aware. Keep alert. Keep awake. In the Gospel, Jesus' words have asense of urgency and maybe even of danger. If we're not payingattention, the time of arrival could come suddenly and we could missit. What a tragedy that would be. It would be a tragedy and it is atragedy because we miss him all the time.

The celebration of Advent in the church year has a three-foldpurpose. The first two purposes are easy to identify: to focus ourattention on the first coming of Christ and to reawaken ouranticipation of the second coming of Christ at the end of the world.It's the third purpose that gets lost not only during these next fourweeks of chaotic Christmas preparation but also in the busyness ofour whole lives. And what Jesus said in the Gospel holds true forevery single day of our lives. We don't know when the Master willcome and he may find us asleep when he comes suddenly. The churchgraciously offers us this season of remembrance – a time toremember that not only did our Lord come and will come again but alsothat he is always coming, sometimes at dawn, sometimes during the day,sometimes in the evening and sometimes in the dark of night.Pressures and obligations distract us, we struggle with daily life or we arespiritually asleep and we miss him. It's true. All of us continuallymiss Advents every day of our lives.

So, the Church offers us a season to renew our spiritualattentiveness. But how? How can we sharpen up our awareness so thatwhen the presents are opened, the food consumed and the lights anddecorations are packed away for another year, we still have aspiritual alertness within? How can we develop a habit ofanticipation and longing for his coming and his arrival? Prayer isthe answer but often prayer is dry and uninviting or it hasbecome a dull routine that we tend to hurry through – if we get to it atall with all the demands life dumps on us. The Christmas season is anespecially difficult time to renew our sense of prayerful waitingsimply because of all the added pressures and demands. How, then, canwe reconnect with prayer to make this period of waiting a time oftrue anticipation?

What would you like for Christmas from God? If you could ask forany spiritual gift, a gift that was for you and you alone, what wouldyou ask for? Take some time to think about that and don't just givean answer that you think is the right one or an answer that you thinkwould please your priest, your spiritual mentor or your friends.Somewhere deep inside of you is a yearning and it could be so deepthat you haven't paid a lot of attention to it. What do you reallywant from God? The reason it's so important to name your deepestspiritual desires is because God put them there. Once you recognizeand name a desire, go to God and tell him that this is what you wantfor Christmas. But don't leave it there. As often as you canremember, pray and tell God that you are looking forward to himgiving you the gift of your heart's desire.

This prayer shouldn't be a long one. The shorter the prayer, thebetter so that you can pray it at any time no matter what ishappening. I call it “Pocket Prayer” - a prayer small enough topull out of your heart any time of the day. When we were discussingsuch a prayer in our woman's group, my friend, Margaret, brilliantlytermed it, “Tweeting God”. Think in terms of a prayer 140characters or less. Less is better because in this prayer, wordinessdoesn't count for anything but turning often to the Lord is key.

Recognizing one or more of your inner desires is important forthis Advent prayer because you will then pray from your heart with ayearning that underscores your waiting. Listen to what St. Augustinesaid about desire. “The desire is thy prayer; and if thy desireis without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. Thecontinuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.”
What could be simpler? What could be more in tune with Advent, theseason of waiting daily for the arrival of Jesus? You don't evenreally need words at all. All you need to do is turn to God, openyour heart and show him your desire.

Something happens when you pray often like this. You start todevelop a prayer life not just a prayer time. Because your prayer issimple, short and frequent, you begin to “tweet God' about morethan your inner desires; you begin to speak to him about everything.He becomes the receptor of all your thoughts. You develop a deepersense of the God in whom you live, move and have your being. Youawaken your awareness and you become more alert to the times whenJesus comes to you unannounced. You suddenly catch glimpses of himwatching you from the eyes of another person. You will see him andwelcome him in the middle of a busy mall, while you're at work, whenyou're walking down the street, when you look at the starry universeor when you're gazing at some magical Christmas lights. And then youwill tweet him. “Thank you. The world doesn't know you but you arehere. I can feel it.”

Naturally, I can't guarantee that God will give you the specificdesire of your heart right on Christmas day. God has his own calendarand his own perfect timing. Both Simeon and Anna in the temple waitedpatiently on God's timing for years and God blessed them with theirown personal and perfect Christmases: “Master, now you aredismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyeshave seen your salvation...” and “...[she] began topraise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking forthe redemption of Jerusalem.” If Simeon and Anna had not beenprayer-full people and had not been awake and fully aware of what thesubtle manifestations of God felt like in their lives, they wouldhave completely missed the Christ child. Really...he was just anotherbaby in the arms of his mother. No one else in the crowd sensedanything special or wonderful about this particular child. But thehearts of both Simeon and Anna were so immersed in prayer that theyimmediately sensed they were in the presence of everything theyhad ever hoped for, desired and waited for all their lives. This wasnot a thunder and lightening-bolt revelation. This was a penetratingbut subtle shift in the spiritual atmosphere. All the other weary,busy and distracted people in the temple missed it but Simeon andAnna knew without any doubt that the veil between heaven and earthhad been dislocated just enough for the son of God to slip throughinto the world. They recognized him because they knew him. They wereso familiar with him that even clothed in the humanity of an infant,they knew exactly who he was.

It was enough for them. It was more than enough for them.

Pray. Pray short but pray often and lace your prayers with thanks.Eventually, your prayer will become more than you talking at God. Itwill create within you a vibrant and aware heart that is awake and able torecognize the Lord when he comes.

And he will come.

Rejoice always;pray constantly; givethanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. (IThessalonians 5: 16-18)

Delight yourself in the Lord and He willgive you the desires of your heart.(Psalm 37:4)

The Sparrow King

2011-11-15T18:39:00.001-08:00

Matthew25:31-46 (“Truly I tell you, just as you didit to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you didit to me.”)

I'm going to lookat an aspect of this Gospel that isn't normally emphasized. TheGospel itself definitely a warning message to all of us about howcritical it is to consider each person we encounter as a manifestation of Christhimself but the message this Sunday is not only about caring for theunfortunate. This is the feast of Christ the King and in the firstreading and the psalm we receive the understanding that he is notjust a distant and removed king waiting for judgment day. He is ashepherd king, a king who walks with his people and shepherds them.He is a parent, a father, an older brother and one who suffers withhis people.

A lot of you are parents and some of you are not but you have orhad parents and I would hope that when you were a child you experienced the secure feelingthat came from knowing that if things got really rough, one of yourparents would always go to bat for you. Wise parents allow theirchildren to fight most of their own battles but they also discernwhen a child is in a situation where he or she is just not capable ofdealing with the problem and needs a parent to step in and take control. Thoseof you who are parents can no doubt think back to many situationswhere your child was bullied or was ill or was struggling with asituation where you recognized that adult intervention was definitelyneeded. The point here is that a good parent doesn't just objectivelyrecognize situations where a child needs help; a good parent acutelyfeels the child's pain. Even when parents judge that it's all rightto allow the child to try to deal with the challenge, parents die athousand deaths if they think their child is scared, hungry, alone orphysically threatened. The feeling is, “When you do it to my child,you do it to me.”

When you read or listen to the Gospel where Jesus says, “Truly Itell you, just as you did it (or did not do it) to one of the leastof these who are members of my family, you did it (or did not do it)to me,” think about a king who, like every good parent, is slicedto the core when one of his little ones is hurt, scared, lonely,excluded, sick, hungry or in an emotional, mental or physical prison.

Certainly we should always be aware of easing the suffering of hispeople – and that doesn't just mean other Christians. It meanseveryone. Still, to be able to effectively see Christ in thesuffering ones, the small ones, the Anawim, we need to back up a bitand embrace the fact that we, too, are small ones. We all suffer. Weall experience loneliness, fright, depression, spiritual or physicalhunger and all the traumas that go with being a broken human in abroken world. We all need to spend time pondering the fact that ourking is not a king in absentia. He is not an unapproachableautocratic type king who sits on a throne of terror. He is here witheach one of us and when we are hurt, he dies a thousand deaths. Everyparent knows the truth of that.

When the Israelites of the Old Testament demanded to have a kingover them rather than a judge, they said, “Now make for us a kingto judge us like all the nations.” They wanted their nation to looklike the other nations of the world and God warned them that thekingdoms of the world they were wanting to emulate had rulers whotook from the people. “[The King] will take your sons andappoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to runbefore his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders ofthousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his groundand to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and theequipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to beperfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fieldsand vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. Hewill take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give itto his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and femaleslaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to hiswork. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be hisslaves.”

Still the Israelites insisted on a king and, except for the reignof a few good kings, kingship became equated with dictatorialinaccessibility, cruelty and bondage. Jesus came to turn the entireworldly image of a king completely upside down. He came to releasehis people from bondage. He came poor and whatever he possessed wasfreely given away. Instead of cruelty he dispensed healing and love.Instead of arrogance he displayed humility. Instead of intricatepolitical maneuverings he walked in glowing transparency with nohidden agendas. Instead of building up armies and power, he built agroup of twelve weak men. And instead of maintaining a cold, regaland demanding headship he became our Shepherd, our Father, ourBrother, our Offering, our Healing, our Safety and our Beloved.

He became the Shepherd King, the Parent King who knows when it'shealthy for us to struggle through and when it's time for him to stepin and take over – if we will let him. He knows when we don't wanthim and he knows when we're longing for him like a deer thirsts for arunning stream. But no matter what his wisdom knows is right andappropriate and no matter if he knows we will reject his hand orgratefully cling to it, his heart always acutely feels our pain. Itis imperative that we experience the truth that we are small and lostand that we have a King who comes to us daily with compassion,understanding and an open hand, not the clenched fist of enforcedsubjugation. If we do not first experience our own beautifulsmallness and the astonishing healing humility of our king, ourefforts to reach out to others in need will be sporadic, mechanicaland often patronizing. We will find ways to give so we don't have tobecome involved.

I've said it before: you cannot give what you haven't got. Youcannot share a compassion that truly heals if you have neverexperienced seeing your king coming to you in your own pain, comingin the rags of a shepherd to show that his authority does not residein regalia but in the love he wears.

When you have experienced your king in this way, then when you goto others in need you will go to them with the full authority of theking which is the authority of love. You will go to them as Jesus theKing came to you saying, “You are my brother. You are my sister.Because of this I have suffered with you and whatever has been doneto you has been done to me.” We cannot go to the poor and sufferingas if we are separate from them in any way because Jesus does notcome to any of us separated from our pain.

I love the story of the man who looked out his window on abitterly cold winter day and saw a flock of sparrows huddled in thesnow, perishing from the freezing winds. There was a barn there andthe door was open but the sparrows didn't understand that there wasshelter, safety and warmth in there. The man went out and tried toshoo them toward the barn door but the sparrows would just takefright and fly in all directions before settling back on the frozenground. The man sadly realized that the only way he could get thesparrows into the barn was if he became a sparrow. Onlythen would he be able to speak their language and lead them toshelter.

This is what our King did for us. He became what we are because hefelt our pain. When we know that the king himself has led us to healingwarmth and shelter, how could we not do the same for others? When wedo so, we are at one with the nature of the divine King – the Kingwho does not separate himself from his people.

“... may we come to sharein the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in ourhumanity.”

Buried Treasure

2011-11-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

Matthew25: 14-30
‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned hisslaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave fivetalents, to another two, to another one, to each according to hisability. Then he went away.

After a long time the master ofthose slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one whohad received the five talents came forward, bringing five moretalents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see,I have made five more talents.” His master said to him, “Welldone, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a fewthings, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joyof your master.”

The above is the shortened version of the parable where the masterreturns to find that all his slaves except one had done well with hisentrusted property. The one slave who did not do well was scared of his master andinstead of wisely investing the money he had been given, he buried itfor safe-keeping. It's good background knowledge to know that one talent wasworth 15 years wages for a laborer in those days so even the onetalent the master had entrusted to his slave was not negligible. Thatwas a lot of money and the master had a right to expect at least aneffort to use it judiciously and he was justified in being upset with the slave for burying his talent in the ground thereby relieving himself of allexertion and all responsibility of discovering his uniquecapabilities.

The phrase we need to pay attention to in this parable is “toeach according to his ability”. The master was shrewd and attentiveto the skill levels of his slaves. He understood the abilities of theslave who only received one talent. He did not overwhelm this manwith responsibility he couldn't handle and in the same way, themaster understood the abilities of the ones to whom he entrustedlarger amounts. He knew what he was doing. In that way, he was not only a fair and merciful master but also a master who observed his servants and knewwhat he could realistically expect of each one. Perhaps the problemof the servant who buried his talent wasn't just that he knew hismaster was a hard master; perhaps his problem was that he comparedhimself to the ones who were given more and, when he saw theirskills, became discouraged, gave up and said, “I'm no good. I'llnever be able to make 5 talents like that other guy. I don't know howto wheel and deal in the marketplace like he can. I'm not aggressiveor knowledgeable and all I've learned to do is grow crops. I'm sunk.I'll just bury the talent in the garden where I can keep an eye onit.”

He never thought that with his one talent, an enormous amount ofseed money, he could have used his skills and started up a business ofgrowing food for others. It would have been totally within hiscapacities and it would have made some profit for his master.However, if his idea was that he had to look just like the otherslaves and operate exactly the way they did with the skills they had,it was game over for him. He was definitely going to fail or at leaststruggle mightily to hang on to that one talent.

Who has not gone through that agony of comparing oneself tosomeone else and feeling like an inadequate loser? There is a kind ofbackward spirituality in comparing self negatively to others. It'seasy to feel that if we tell God that we know we're inadequate,we're failures and not as good as someone else, it will forestall himfrom making that judgment on us himself. Maybe he won't point his finger at us ifwe're already pointing our fingers at ourselves. Self examination isa healthy thing but it can also become an unhealthy negative habitwhere we spend all our time recognizing what's bad about ourselvesand being totally afraid to recognize what's good. We end up 'buryingour talents' because we have this image of God as a hard master.Surely he will be happier with us if we bury our one talent becauseat least he'll know we aren't arrogant and cocky.

The master in the parable was, indeed, angry with the servant butnot because he lacked the same success as the other servants. Themaster was angry because he did not give the servant more than whatthe servant could handle and he did not expect the same from thatservant as he expected from the ones who received more talents. Theproblem was that the servant got all caught up in his negativeself-analysis and in his fear of the master and didn't even try. Hedidn't even try to evaluate the positive aspects of himself and cometo an understanding that the master only wanted him do what he wastrained to do and use his gifts in the best way he knew how.

That kind of fearful lack of effort on the master's behalf iscalled going underground as a gifted creation of God. We are afraidof crossing a line and going to the other extreme. “Oh God, I thankyou that I am not as other people. I tithe, I go to Mass on Sunday, Iam busy in your service...” We are honestly afraid of arrogance –or we should be. But if you have a fear of becoming arrogant, thenrecognizing and being grateful for your gifts and abilities will notlead to arrogance; it will cut arrogance off at the root. The trickis retaining and actively maintaining humble gratitude to God foreverything that you are.

I don't blame the master of Jesus' parable for beingangry, knowing that the master symbolizes God. I can understand that theFather would be a mite upset if he created something uniquely beautiful,loved it, shaped it to have a specific reason for existence that noother created being had and then that creature started looking ateverything it was not created to be and decided it was no good. Godmight want to say to that creature, “Who do you think you are? Whogave you the wisdom to decide that you are not beautiful and notuniquely formed for a work made just for you? What gives you theright to second guess my intentions and my decisions? Do you thinkyou are greater than me that you can decide that you aren't goodenough, strong enough, intelligent enough or gifted enough? Have youeven thought about how I define success and value? Do you stop tothink about what's valuable to me? Or are you always looking atsomeone else and deciding they epitomize what I want in everybody?Are you basing your judgments on the world's definition of success?Look at me. Look into my eyes. See what's there? It's called love.It's called delight and desire. You are what I desire –the you I created you to be. Keep your eyes on my eyes and don't everlook away because if you do, you'll start to fall into the bottomlessdark pit of everything you are not.”

What Jesus is telling us is that God would like us to go furtherthan “do no harm”. It's not enough to just maintain theessentials and keep ourselves out of trouble. It's not enough for himand it's not enough for us. It's not enough for him because he hasgiven each of us a unique character, unique gifts and a unique roleto play for the building of the kingdom and it's not ourresponsibility to decide that, compared to somebody else, we don'thave much value or importance. And it's not enough for us because as longas we are judging our own capabilities and our value as insignificantor trivial we stay in a mode of fearing God as a harsh master and welose out on the joy of being a true gift.

A friend emailed me recently. Because of an accident, she hasstruggled for years with her self-worth because she can't physicallyand mentally take on what she was once capable of doing. In heremail, she said that she had decided to appreciate people more and tomake sure she expresses that appreciation to them instead of justthinking it. I don't know if she realizes what an astounding journeyshe could be embarking upon and what that kind of ministry can do forthe building up of the kingdom. If I had to choose between someonewho speaks to thousands at conferences and someone who commits tosaying to someone else, “Thank you for what you did and for who youare,” I would choose the Ministry of Appreciation as the actionthat would have the most long-lasting impact on people and thecapacity to actually change a community - especially if she expressesthat appreciation to those who are usually in the background and whowouldn't often receive appreciation. I hope she does not compare herministry to a ministry that has higher visibility and feel that hersis lacking or insignificant. The Church desperately needs her andmany more people like her.

Unearth the buried treasure that is you. Dust it off and shine itup. It's priceless. It cannot be found anywhere else.

“Oh God, help me to believe thetruth about myself, no matter how beautiful it may be.”(JeanVanier via a powerpoint presentation by David Wells, keynote speakerat a Diocesan conference)

“Do not forget that the value andinterest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to doordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.”(Teilhard de Chardin SJ)

On Wisdom

2011-11-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Gospel message this week is clear: stay awake,pay attention and be spiritually prepared. However, underscoring thewhole message is the Wisdom Edge. There is more to this scripturethan just being ready for any spiritual eventuality, be it the endtimes or otherwise. There is a call for wisdom. Not knowledge –wisdom.

Wisdom is the oil for the flame that lights our way but very oftenpeople get confused between knowledge and wisdom. It's good to striveafter knowledge because knowledge is valuable and very helpful. It'sa great beginning. All the bridesmaids in the Gospel had knowledge,even the ones who ran out of oil. They knew that some night thebridegroom was going to come and 'steal' the bride to take her to thehouse that he was preparing for her. They knew that he was coming -they just had no idea when he was coming because it could takeas long as two years to build a home for his bride. The bride and herattendants had to always be ready to leave suddenly.

This accurate knowledge of the rituals, traditions and the specialevent the night might bring was what brought all the bridesmaids tothe right place at the right time and engaged in the right motions.But five waited with knowledge and wisdom and five waited with justknowledge. The ones who operated just on knowledge of the traditionhad no real inner attachment to the possibilities of what the nightcould bring so they didn't bother to have more than barely enoughprovisions. They were waiting because that's what you do when you'rea bridesmaid. It was the rule. It was the ritual. That was the way itwas always done.

Wisdom goes beyond the way things have always been done; it looksfor the spirit behind them, seeks the depths, senses the promises,envisions the unseeable and listens for the unheard. Then wisdomwaits patiently and hopefully for the consummation of the promise.Wisdom dwells in the spaces between the black and white of knowledge.It's in those spaces that the mystery of God moves and one of themost potent parts of the mystery of God is wisdom. Wisdom is a gift,one that we should all ache to have and seek constantly because it isa light that will keep us ready for the moment the bridegroom comesto sweep us all away to the celebration. We will only receive it ifwe ask for it.

In the first reading from Wisdom it says: “Wisdom is radiantand unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her, andis found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known tothose who desire her. One who rises early to seek her will have nodifficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate.”

Anyone can seek wisdom and what is so wonderful is that the mostilliterate peasant can be full of amazing spiritual wisdom.Conversely, the most knowledgeable person can be very much lacking inspiritual wisdom. Spiritual wisdom is not the same as the naturalwisdom that comes with life's experiences. Life experience cancontribute to spiritual wisdom but there's a point where experiencejust can't prepare us to recognize or touch the heart of God and itcan't build up the grace to wait in patient hope. This is where wediscover that wisdom is sheer gift and grace. Past experience teachesus to wait for something already known so if we experienced Christ ina certain way at one time, natural wisdom leads us to expect him inexactly the same way again. Through spiritual wisdom, the Spiritsoaks us in the understanding that God comes in his own timing,sometimes unexpectedly and often in a form we won't recognize ifwe're depending on what we experienced in the past or on what othershave experienced. Wisdom gives us eyes that are ready and waiting tosee the fresh unknown.

Wisdom expects the unexpected. Wisdom delights in the fact thatGod is always the same but always new, always coming, always here,always a surprise and always more than what we thought or imagined.Wisdom teaches us to wait for the only thing worth waiting for:Christ's coming. Whether it's for his coming at the end of the worldor for his coming into our present moment, wisdom teaches us how towait: with the oil of patience, full expectation and joyful hope.Wisdom reminds us of our baptism and whispers, “You are an anointedone waiting for your Beloved. Watch out...he's coming soon. Keep youreyes open.”

Wisdom is also what teaches us how to appropriately apply anyknowledge we have gained through experience. It isn't always what wethink and it isn't always what knowledge suggests would bereasonable. I love this definition of the difference betweenknowledge and wisdom:

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting itin a fruit salad.

If wisdom's ways were always based on what is reasonable, we wouldnot know the shocking unreasonableness of God's love for all of us.Wisdom goes beyond the rational and the logical into territories weare not always familiar with. Just because we know in our heads thatChrist died for us doesn't mean we have explored where thisastounding love came from. We can only reach that region with wisdomas our guide.

I am going to end this reflection with one of my favoritescriptures. It's from the book of Wisdom, written by Solomon whocherished wisdom above all else and was greatly blessed by Godbecause of it. I'm including it here because not everyone has a biblethat includes the book of Wisdom.

Read this description of Wisdom and then ponder on the preciousmystery that you are called to walk all your days in companionshipwith her.

The Nature of Wisdom (Wisdom7: 22-30)

There is in her (wisdom) a spirit that is intelligent,holy,
unique, manifold, subtle,
mobile, clear,unpolluted,
distinct, invulnerable, loving the good,keen,
irresistible, beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, freefrom anxiety,
all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetratingthrough all spirits
that are intelligent, pure, and altogethersubtle.
For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;
because ofher pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.
For she is abreath of the power of God,
and a pure emanation of the glory ofthe Almighty;

Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and whileremaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generationshe passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, andprophets;
for God loves nothing so much as the person who liveswith wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun,
and excelsevery constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she isfound to be superior,
for it is succeeded by the night,
butagainst wisdom evil does not prevail.

The Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Rekindling The Flickering Flame

2011-10-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

Matthew23: 1-12

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘Thescribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, dowhatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, forthey do not practise what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hardto bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselvesare unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deedsto be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad andtheir fringes long. They love to have the place of honour at banquetsand the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respectin the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. But you arenot to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are allstudents. And call no one your father on earth, for you have oneFather - the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, foryou have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will beyour servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all whohumble themselves will be exalted.

Many years ago, I attended a conference in Banff also attended byall the Liturgical experts of the Canadian Catholic Church. At thattime the phrase “good liturgy” was being tossed around by anyonewho had anything to do with liturgy and I began to notice thatalthough everyone seemed to agree that good liturgy was important, noone really had a clear definition of what good liturgy was. Mythinking was that we should be able to explain liturgy simply andeasily – otherwise something beautiful had become much too complex.So, I decided I was going to approach each one of these well-knownleaders and ask them if they could describe in 25 words or less whatgood liturgy was.

It turned out that this was not an easy taskbecause none of them seemed too keen on hobnobbing with the commonfolk. At the breaks they would huddle together in earnest discussion.I just stood there at the edge of their groups until they noticed meand then I asked my question. They would kind of look at me and thenlook at each other in discomfort. One fellow finally said,“Well...uh...it's all in the books. Read our books.” After Iasked my question a few times I noticed this nondescript little manwatching me. He was quiet and was present each time I approached agroup. Finally he came up to me and said, “I overheard you askingthose guys about good liturgy. It's a good question. Let me introducemyself...” His name was Frank Henderson and most people who hadanything to do with liturgy at that time or in some years to comewould probably have heard his name. He was the editor of and a majorcontributor to The National Bulletin on Liturgy, a publication mostchurches subscribed to and one that all the Liturgy experts wouldhave contributed to regularly. Frank adopted me for the weekend andsat with me at every liturgical celebration as we discussed liturgy,what it was, what it's purpose was and where the challenges were. Wecontinued our discussion by correspondence after the weekend wasover. Frank was not just the editor of that publication; he was alsoan oncologist with a busy practice. And he was a humble man.

Around that time I learned a heck of a lot about liturgy. Iprobably remember some of it, too. However, what had the most impacton me was this man who didn't consider himself tooimportant or too busy to make himself available to someone with aninterest in learning. Liturgical knowledge wasn't Frank's biggestgift to me. He gave me face and affirmed my worth. It was a graciousgift from a kind man who had no need to advertise his status todefine his own value.

Status. Jesus was castigating the scribes and Pharisees for theirdesire for status. He wasn't so much saying that titles like 'rabbi','teacher' or 'father' were bad in themselves; he was saying thatseeking these titles for the status they conferred was terriblywrong. Status seeking is born of egotistical self-love and theconsequences are often heavy. Usually the ones who suffer theseconsequences are those who have no status at all, for as Jesus said,one of the habits of status seekers is to “tie up heavy burdens,hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others.” It's as ifhaving denied themselves the humble and simple joy of being a smallone in the Kingdom, they found it difficult to allow others the samejoy. C.S. Lewis said, "In the midst of a world of light and love, of song andfeast and dance, Lucifer could find nothing to think of moreinteresting than his own prestige."

Status. It's a subtle temptation and sometimes it pulls us in everso deceptively. What can start out with a good motivation to dosomething worthwhile for others can end up as a personal exercise injust maintaining the position. Status feels good. It feels excellentwhen others depend on us, admire us and respect our skills. It'ssatisfying...for a while. And then it's not. Then we need to findsomething else to give us status. Admiration and approval isaddictive. Power is habit-forming. "Badness is only spoiledgoodness." said Lewis. We all need to constantly beon guard against the subtle lure of status.

What Jesus said in this week's Gospel would have shocked all thepeople who were listening, not just the scribes and Pharisees. To allof them, 'long tassels and broad phylacteries' were signs of God'sblessing and approval. Jesus was confronting hundreds of years of aningrained spiritual culture as he tried to convey the truth that thevalues of God's Kingdom were completely different from the ones theyhad grown up believing in. And you know what? He still hasn'ttotally succeeded in convincing us, his people, that the Kingdom does notthrive on the same values and principles as those of the world. Ialmost didn't approach those groups of liturgical experts because Ifelt they were in a higher echelon and were too prestigious to havesomeone like me bother them. I was applying worldly standards tojudge who was important and who wasn't. The sad thing was that theyseemed to agree with me.

God bases his whole Kingdom value system on love. That means thatunless love is the foundation, we are building on sand. God does notcall us or the church to be effective like a corporation has to beeffective. Really. In terms of worldly standards, love is the mostinefficient way of doing anything. It's not logical, it's notquantifiable, it doesn't make money and it can feel like a waste oftime. If you advertise it, it loses its power. You can't wear it tomake yourself part of an identifiable group. You can't legislate itor charge for it. You can't put it in a box and label it or copyrightit. It's often not a winning proposition. You can't analyze itstrends or make an app for it. You can't download it and so far, ithasn't gone viral. Pity.

The standard of love means that the heart of the person right infront of you is more important than the mission statement. It meansthat accepting a brother or sister unconditionally has more valuethan making sure people see you stringently applying the law – orsee you doing anything that gives you status. It means being totallyfine if someone else gets the respect and recognition for somethingyou did. We talk about how love is so important but we've lost theurgency and the understanding of why Jesus castigated the scribes andPharisees the way he did. They had traded knowledge of love for ostentatious almsgiving, long blue tassels and showy prayer habits.While they inscribed the greatest commandment on a piece of parchmentand bound it conspicuously to their heads and arms, they had lost theinscription on their hearts. Their hearts had turned to stone andtheir spirituality had turned into form and show.

If we all wake up and actively turn back to love, if we recognize love as areal power and embrace it as more than an ideal, if we let go of ourpride, our personal goals and opinions, if we try to root out allthat is within us that strives for recognition, approval and status,if we realize that love is, as Jesus said, what it all hangs on andif we start practicing the law of love with one person at a time, wewill be astounded at the life and growth that will flourish aroundus.

Teilhard de Chardin said it wonderfully:

“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tidesand gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, forthe second time in the history of the world, man will have discoveredfire.”

In the Kingdom of God, playing with fire is not only allowed, it's mandatory.

The Third Element

2011-10-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

Matthew 22: 34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he hadsilenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, alawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, whichcommandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “Youshall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all yoursoul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and firstcommandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love yourneighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the lawand the prophets.’

In the time of Christ, all Jews agreed that the greatestcommandment was the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is ourGod, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all yourheart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” InDeuteronomy, God commanded the Israelites to memorize these words,teach them to their children and bind the words on their hands,foreheads and doorposts. Jesus would have learned this scripture assoon as he could talk. However, there was disagreement about what thesecond greatest commandment was. Ultra conservative Jews, led by ascholar named Shammai, believed it was “Keep the Sabbath.” Jewswho were less strict about the letter of the law and more in tune withthe spirit of the law would have answered as Jesus did: “Youshall love your neighbour as yourself.” The lawyer questioningJesus was, among other things, probably trying to discover whichschool of thought or what yoke Jesus ascribed to. Hillel the Elderwas a famous Jewish scholar in the time of Jesus and when someone askedhim for a concise summary of Judaism, he reputedly replied, “Whatyou hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the wholelaw; the rest is commentary.” Jesus was obviously familiar withHillel.

We are all good with the command to love God with everything we'vegot and we all agree that the Golden Rule is an excellent rule tolive by. But I believe our thinking gets a little cloudy when we getto “as you love yourself.” I will bet you anything that if youpressed most people to define that part of the commandment, theywould admit that they never assumed it meant that God commanded us tolove ourselves. They would most likely say that it means we areself-serving and that God wants us to put that energy into servingothers instead of ourselves. Fair enough. There certainly are peoplewho could use a little redistribution of their 'service energy'. But,you know, most people I talk to and listen to don't have thatproblem. They love God and try to show that love through service toothers. Their problem is that they don't love themselves at all.

If Jesus immediately knew what he considered the greatest and thesecond greatest commandments, we have to assume that he lived thosewords. We know he loved his Father with all his heart, soul and mindand we know the dramatic and far-reaching consequences of his lovefor others but there is a question that is never discussed much. Didhe love himself?

Somehow, I just can't see Jesus going to prayer and belittling himself before his Abba. We know Jesus waswithout sin but according to some of the Jewish leaders at the timeand according to common interpretations of the law, he was a majorsinner. As he was growing and developing as a teenager and a youngman, how much did he have to struggle with accepted definitions of the law as opposed to his inner understanding of the heart of the law andthe heart of his God? What finally led him to know that who he was,what he did and what he taught was not sinful? Was it intellectualknowledge of all 623 of God's laws or was it the intimate knowledgeof how loved he was? When he began his public ministry, was he ableto teach, heal, set free, create something out of nothing and raisethe dead just because he intellectually knew the greatest commandmentwas to love his God or was it because he had experienced first handthe incredible love his Abba had for him and saw himself through theFather's eyes?

Jesus loved himself completely. That's not very comfortable forus. Many sources have taught us that self-love is selfish love. Oftenself-love actually is selfish love when it is not thoroughly groundedin a love relationship with God, a relationship that draws one toseek him with heart, soul and mind. Many people can't conceive of aself-love of the kind that flows from deep relationship because theyhave not been told it is possible to completely love themselveswithout falling into the sin of selfishness and egotism. There is acommon feeling that it's much safer to show God how aware you are ofall your failings and inadequacies than to thank him joyfully "that I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14)

Jesus' teachings are whole teachings that lead us to the bestpossible way to live the spiritual life. If egocentricity has uswrapped up in self-love and then we try to love others the way welove ourselves, our love will not be healthy nor very effective. Our love for God would also be limited because ourthoughts would always keep coming back to how God is responding or notresponding to our wants and needs while trying to figure out if we have done enough to earnGod's love. Egocentric self-love sees a relationship in terms of“Quid Pro Quo” or “This for that” - an equal exchange ofgoods or services. There is a tendency for the ego to say to God, “Idid that for you so I expect you to do this for me.” I doubt ifthat's the kind of self-love Jesus meant when he said we should loveGod and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

When Jesus said to love others as you love yourself, I believe hewas speaking of the kind of love he had for himself: a respectfullove, a love that acknowledged the wonder of God's creation andintention, a love that allowed him to be fully in the presence of hisFather without fear or condemnation. He loved his God with abandonand he knew intimately the love God had for him. Not only did he knowit but he accepted it and revelled in it so much that he just had toshare it with the people. He loved God's people so much because,through his experience of God's love for him, he knew the value andbeauty of each person he met. In loving others and beholding them asmarvels of God's creation who were loved unconditionally by hisFather, he would fall in love even more with his God. He dwelledwithin a dynamic circle of eternal delight and from that ever flowingdelight came a river of powerful compassion toward all of God'screatures. The circle of God's love is a creative powerhouse.

God calls us to that circle and calls us to participate in thepower of his creative love. Jesus said, “Love one another as Ihave loved you.” Jesus doesn't call us to hazy reflections or cheapimitations; he calls us to the real thing. He calls us to fall inlove with the Father, with one another and with ourselves.

If two parts of the circle are present but the third is not, it'sa lopsided circle and it's more difficult to experience full joy.Sadly, many people's circles are missing that vital third element ofknowing that God is in love with them. This is a knowledge that goesbeyond catechism lessons and beyond the theology books. It's aknowledge of the heart. If the Father is perfect love and he lovesyou, how can you not love what the Father loves?

When you know that God is in love with you...

...you love being with him, walking with him and listening to him.Who doesn't enjoy being in the company of their Beloved?

...you don't consider yourself perfect or sinless. You know youneed healing for many sins and failures but joy accompanies thisknowledge because you also know God desires to heal you and that hewill heal you. Instead of shouldering the unbearable burdenof your inadequacies and struggling to change yourself, you walk withfreedom and joy in the light of your God who will love you intochange and growth. There's a reason Reconciliation is called acelebration.

...you love others in a different way. Your love is notpatronizing or forced or given because it's expected. Because youknow God delights in you, you are able to see the immense beauty,value and worth of others and you treat them accordingly with respectand even amazement. Because you know God's compassion in your life,you are able to bring forgiveness and true compassion to others as well as receivethe forgiveness and compassion of others.

Love of God, love of others, love of self: the full circle ofBeloved Life. But it's hard to feel 'beloved' if you don't letyourself 'be loved'.

Try it and see.

Go And Do Likewise

2011-10-11T19:54:00.000-07:00

Matthew22: 15-21

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in whathe said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with theHerodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, andteach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference tono one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then,what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me tothe test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.’ Andthey brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head isthis, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Thenhe said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that arethe emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

This is a Gospel passage in which Jesus is not just smart, he isbrilliant. His brilliance has to do with the complex trap thePharisees planned and sent their disciples to execute. It has to dowith how Jesus immediately saw the layers within the trap and neatlysidestepped all of them. There is far more to this passage than justa question of whether Jesus supported civil obedience and taxes, avery hot topic in Israel at that time. The underlying issues involvedin this passage are interesting in their complexity but not really'food for blog'. Not my blog, anyway.

What stood out to me, however, was Jesus' immediate response tothe ones who were challenging him. The Pharisees had sent theirdisciples because they figured that if they came and put the questionto Jesus, he would recognize who they were and be alerted to theirscheming. They wanted Jesus to relax and say what he really thoughtbut Jesus knew exactly what was going on. He could read minds andhearts like they were open books. He could see through flattery andpretenses of innocence. He knew when antagonistic people were in hispresence.

Question: Did Jesus love the scribes and Pharisees who werechallenging him and trying to trap him? Did he love the ones he knewwere just waiting for him to make a mistake so they could crucifyhim? Answer: Of course he did. He died on that cross for them aswell. He loved them deeply and yearned that they would allow him tosoften their hearts. He wished so badly that they could know hisFather's love and be freed from their greed and malicious behavior.But he also had an inner awareness of who could and who could notreceive him.

Jesus had the gift of knowledge and insight that came from arelationship with the Father. He could read people and he immediatelyknew their inner thoughts, intentions and motivations. He could tellif someone had even the tiniest spark of spiritual desire withinthem. Isaiah said, “...a bruised reed he will not break, and adimly burning wick he will not quench.” But Jesus was also giventhe knowledge of when the light had gone out completely or when thethe love of power, status and riches had eradicated all love for God.He knew when it wasn't time to fan the embers. When he discerned aheart that had locked itself tight against his love, he did not wastetime being accommodating or trying to reason with the person.

Jesus could have engaged any one of those Pharisees in a full onTalmudic debate and he could have won with no difficulty. They wouldhave just hated him even more. He could have treated them withkindness and mercy. They would have crucified him anyway. He couldhave taken each one aside and pointed out every wound and everydesire they had ever had that led them to a place of such hardness ofheart. Their pride would have denied it all and they would havelooked even harder for evidence against him.

Jesus didn't seek them out. They came to him. They sought him outto lay their traps and try to find fault but Jesus knew their heartsand he didn't spend time trying to bring them around. There were toomany other people who needed him, wanted him and were ripe for theKingdom. There were so many others who thirsted for his teachings anddesperately needed his healing touch and his love. When the Phariseesor the elders came around to question him, he answered theirquestions but he always got straight to the heart of the matter,exposed their hidden intentions, said what he had to say and walkedaway.

I wonder what Jesus would have thought of the question, “What'sthe Christian thing to do?” There seem to be two main commonassumptions when it comes to that question. The first one is theassumption that the Christian thing to do is to always put up withthe garbage, always give in and always try to do the most lovingthing – and there are plenty of scriptures to support thisassumption. The second assumption is based on the belief that naturalnegative impulses and strong reactions are justified by thescriptures where Jesus showed anger or Jesus got upset with injusticeor where Jesus put the Pharisees in their place.

I think Jesus would shake his head sadly at both assumptions. Ifwe studied what Jesus constantly did so that we could define 'theChristian thing to do', we would discover that Jesus didn't have anagenda. He simply listened to his Father. He was so in tune with hisGod and had such an intimate relationship with his Father that hisunderstanding of what God required of him in any situation wasinstantaneous. Jesus didn't act out of impulsive emotional responsesnor was he saddled by a simplistic generalized ethos of what it meansto 'be a Christian'. He wasn't just making it up as he went along buthe and the Father were definitely creatively responding veryappropriately and powerfully to every challenge, conflict and need asthey presented themselves.

In John 5: 19 and 30, Jesus says ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Soncan do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing;for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father lovesthe Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.” and “I cando nothing on my own.” He did not heal unless he saw the Fatherhealing. He did not teach unless he saw the Father teaching. Noknowledge or miracle came from him alone and there was nothing hesaid to the antagonistic Pharisees that did not first come from theFather. His Father's voice was his delight, his shield, his fortressand his only guidance – and it should be ours as well.

When in doubt, the safest thing to do is love. You can't go toofar wrong even though you may find yourself in a time-consuming,heart-rending, no-win situation with someone who is more likely togrind you down than change their ways. What you really need to do is get close to the Lord. Develop an intimate relationshipwith him. Fall in love with your Father and become familiar with hisvoice so that when it comes time to discern how to respond to thepeople in your life who are anything from challenging to downrightabusive, your whole desire is to know what God sees is appropriate tothe situation and for the person you're dealing with. God may callyou to selfless love or call you to walk away. He may call you to becompletely honest and to set firm boundaries or he may call you totolerance. He might call you to strongly point out an injustice or hemight tell you to walk softly for a time.

Ask for the gift of insightinto the hearts you're dealing with and an understanding of theLord's heart. Whatever he calls you to do, he will provide the graceto do it. Understand that you will never be called to resentment orrevenge and be very wary if you think he is calling you to angryconfrontation. I would check that one out with a spiritual mentor -several times! So much destruction can come out of unleashed rageerroneously labeled 'righteous anger'. Respectful confrontation isone thing but angry confrontation can cause wounds that are terriblydifficult to heal – not only in the one you confront but inyourself as well. It's a two edged sword.

The main thing is not to assume that God always expects you to actin one certain way. He will appreciate your efforts to act in lovebut he will appreciate it even more if you go to him and ask forhis perspective and his direction. Pray and listen – and then prayand listen some more. Seek him without assuming you know the answer.It's difficult to become familiar with the voice of the Lord if allyou can hear is your own mind telling you, “If you were a realChristian, you would...” It takes time to be able to let go ofpreconceived ideas so that you can differentiate between your voiceand God's voice. No, it's not easy. But guess what? It took Jesus 30years.

Grow into a relationship with the Father. It's the 'Christianthing to do'.

Robes Required

2011-10-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

Matthew22: 1-14
Oncemore Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: ‘The kingdom ofheaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for hisson. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to thewedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves,saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared mydinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, andeverything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” But they madelight of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them.The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers,and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding isready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the mainstreets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.”Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom theyfound, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
‘Butwhen the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there whowas not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, howdid you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless.Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, andthrow him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping andgnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.’

Goahead and speak your mind, Jesus. Don't hold back.

Jesuscertainly let the Jewish leadership know that he was on to theirintentions to arrest him and kill him and that they were on rockyground if they persisted in resting on their assumptions that theywere the chosen, the elite, the blessed ones of God just because theywere born to the Jewish race and faith. These parables were dangerousones for Jesus to lay before the Jewish elders. I have this amusingimage in my head of the disciples standing behind the crowd usingmime to indicate that Jesus should shut up. Fingers slashing acrossthroats. Exaggerated pantomiming of zipped lips. Heads deliberatelyshaking while they silently mouthed, “Stop NOW.” But Jesus knewthat there was already a cross with his name on it. Holding back atthat point wouldn't gain him any points. Matthew wrote his Gospel forthe Jewish people and Matthew related parables that pointed out thatJesus was serious that entrance into the Kingdom was not guaranteedjust because someone was born Jewish and had all the rightparaphernalia or even performed all the right actions. God looks atthe heart not the outward show and it's still the same today.

WhatJesus was saying to the Jews was, “Going to the synagogue doesn'tmake you a good Jew anymore than standing in a barn makes you adonkey.” (Modern translation: Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.) No wonder those leaders were out to get him.

ThenJesus finishes off the parable with a somewhat obscure and alarmingaddition where the king orders his servants to bind up a guest andthrow him into the darkness just because the guest had no weddingrobe. Just before that, scripture says the king sent his servants toround up anyone they could find, good or bad. If the king was soanxious to find guests to come to the wedding banquet, why would hepick on one poor soul who wasn't dressed properly? Maybe the guy waspoor and didn't own a wedding garment. Where was the sin?

Inthe time of Christ, the host provided all male guests who came to aJewish wedding feast with a white garment called a 'Kittel' to wearinto the banquet hall. It looked a little like a bathrobe and it hadno pockets. The robe was white to signify unity with the bride. Ithad no pockets to symbolize the act of marrying for love not for whatmaterial possessions could be gained by marrying the bridegroom. For a guest to enter into the banquet hall with no robe on was completely inexcusable and utterly rude. No wonder the guest was speechless. He had been caught out and he had no defense. There is also a possibility that his intention was to take advantage of the all the food and wine available, an act the pocketless robe would have hindered.

So,now another hard question faces us: how often do we go to Mass, thegreat celebration feast, without our wedding garment? What would thatlook like in our attitudes and our expectations?

Thewedding garment that the host provided for the guests was white sothat they could show their unity with the bride who also wore white. Shewore white to signify purity. Our wedding garment was given to us atbaptism where Christ clothed us in himself and in dignity but it iscompletely possible for any one of us to show up at the feast with that wedding garment hidden away. If there is no inner intention of or desire forunity with the bride of Christ or if we come to receive and not togive, the wedding garment has been left in a closet somewhere. Hereare a few ways we can come to the feast inappropriately attired:

• Whenwe instigate or take part in any talk or actions that could bringwounds or division to the community, the bride of Christ – or evenhurt to just one member of the body – we are refusing to wear ourrobes. Disagreement within the body doesn't necessarily meandisunity. It's how we work it out with each other in respect and lovethat shows unity with the bride's garment. We should be wearing thefull robes of integrity, peace, mercy, wisdom, understanding,humility, gentleness, patience, faith... wait, I'm describing thefruit of the Kingdom that Jesus referred to in last week's Gospel.Interesting how all these things weave themselves together, isn't it?

• Whenwe come to get, not give, we are not donning our pocketless robe. Inlast week's blog I spoke of the trap of wanting to possess thevineyard instead of simply being servants within it, dependent on thelandowner's generosity. It is so easy for us to begin valuing andguarding our placement and position at the feast rather than simplyappreciating the goodness of the host. We start making sure thatwe're getting what we feel is owed to us and that no one else isgetting more than they deserve.

• Weall have times when we go to Mass for our own spiritual benefit. Ifwe are not open to interacting much with those around us or we go just to'fulfill an obligation' and to receive our weekly merit badge forMass attendance instead of being there because we are a royalpriesthood called to serve God and one another, we have misplaced ourpocketless robes. Remember, the lack of pockets symbolizes arelationship built on love, on what one can give not on what one canget.

Awhite robe is a great equalizer. When we recognize that everyone iswearing exactly the same garment as ourselves, it's not as easy tocategorize and dismiss others. Nobody is too young, too old, too new,too poor, too rich, too ignorant, too knowledgeable, tooinsignificant or too important; everyone is simply a cherishedinvited guest at the feast participating in a celebration of joy,united with the bride and with one another.

Whiteis not only a symbol of purity; in some cultures, white signifiesdeath. At the wedding banquet, donning our white robes is a kind ofdeath to self-importance. It says “I am no more important orpowerful or needed than you. We are both here for no other reasonthan that the King and his Son invited us to come. They opened theirdoors and their storehouse and sought us out of the highways andby-ways to come and be a part of the celebration. We are here becausethe King wants us, not because we have a right.”

Awedding feast is the celebration of a love relationship. By feastingwith the bride, the groom, the king and all the other invited guests,we affirm that love is the foundation of a holy union and of holyunity. We see the bride and the bridegroom gaze into each others eyesand behold the joy lighting up their faces. We know that in themarried life there will be challenges, struggles, wounds and hardshipand that these messy times are going to affect all of us because ofour unity with them. But we all need to keep returning to the feast,keep returning to the love exchange and keep remembering that it islove that keeps us all afloat. You can have good rules, greatprograms, strong disciplines and cherished traditions and manychildren but if love has been forgotten or lost, it is a cold andempty house.

Thebanquet is ready, the guests are arriving, the music is playing, thebread is broken and the wine is flowing. Let's go to the feast.

Butfirst, if you'll excuse me for a moment, I'm just going to go find mywedding garment, make sure it's clean - and check it for pockets.

They Shoot the Messenger...Don't They?

2011-09-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

Matthew21.33-46

‘Listen to another parable.There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it,dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it totenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come,he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But thetenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stonedanother. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and theytreated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them,saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw theson, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us killhim and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out ofthe vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyardcomes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They said to him, ‘Hewill put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyardto other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’ Have you never read in the scriptures: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing and it is amazing in our eyes"? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.

There is a hardquestion facing us in this week's Gospel: Are we a people who areproducing the fruits of the Kingdom?

There are two ways to look at this question. We could ponder on it from a personal point of view, examining ourselves to seeif our lives are producing good fruit, an exercise we should allengage in regularly. The other more difficult approach to thisquestion is asking ourselves and one another whether our faithcommunity is producing the fruits of the Kingdom. Is there any dangerof God taking our vineyard away and giving it to those who willproduce those fruits?

Nah. God doesn't do that anymore. Does he?

He may not confiscate vineyards anymore but there'sno doubt that innumerable vineyards have experienced the pain ofseeing their vines wither and die. Many of us have belonged to orheard of parishes that were blooming with good fruitful life but thenran into conflicts, challenges and problems with the leadership orwith groups of people within the community. Different factions drewtheir lines and established their territories. Anger spreadlike wildfire. There were hurtful divisions and wounds that festered.There were those who walked out in despair and those who grimlystayed to fight on. Once this happens to a community, it takes a longtime to heal and once again become healthy and fruit-bearing. Nomatter where you live, it's not difficult to find a faith communitythat has gone through the wars. These communities need God to sendthem a prophet to lead them to conversion and healing - and thepeople will only experience conversion if they are ready to listen.It's not easy to hear a prophet point out that your vineyard is nolonger productive.

An anointed prophet does not come to just point outall the wrong attitudes, all the hypocrisies and all the traps peoplehave fallen into; the anointed prophet will also re-awaken people tothe amazing love of God. The prophet points to the withered vines andasks the people, “Will you not put down your swords and pick up thetools of your calling so that once again you will be fruit bearingpeople?” The prophet reminds the hearts of the people of what itfelt like when they were tenants in a loving and healthy relationshipwith the landowner. The prophet will also recognize the smallestglimmer of life still within the vines and, with God, nurture thisfragile life back to full health.

If the people don't want to hear and be healed ornurtured then prophets are usually killed. Sometimes they arekilled by indifference and sometimes by the swords of angryconfrontation and defensive criticism. In that case, even the Son'spresence does little to soften the soil of the hardened hearts sothat the vineyard can become a land of abundant harvestswhere the tenants actively seek the landowner, are able to recognize him andwill openly welcome him. God no longer angrily abandons his people but hewon't force his way into a vineyard that has stopped seekinghim.

In Jesus' parable, the tenants kill the landowner'sson, reasoning that maybe they will inherit the land. What? How canthey think that they will inherit the land from the landowner afterkilling the landowner's prophets and his son? At that time, it wasJewish law that after someone had settled and worked a piece of landfor three years, they owned the land. Kind of like squatter's rights.Perhaps when the landowner was an absentee landlord, the tenants weretempted to feel it wasn't fair for the landowner to claim a share ofthe produce when they were doing all the work, dealing with all theproblems and making all the decisions. If they could just thwart thelandowner's attempts to collect his due for three years, they couldclaim the land as their own.

It is a subtle but common situation within faithcommunities for the people to become possessive of their vineyard.It's an easy slide from an attitude of healthy responsibility,working the land and producing good fruit for the Landowner to an unhealthy attitude ofpersonal possession: “This is ourcommunity, ourgroup, our program,our fruit...” Thelonger one has worked in the faith community, the more tempting it isto feel that one has earned the rights of ownership. Within thehealthy attitude, there is simply gratitude for good provisionreceived: safe shelter, abundant food and the warmth of communallife. There is always an awareness that the land is not their own and that they must always consult with the landowner and his Son before theymake decisions. In the unhealthy attitude, the understanding that theland does not belong to the community is completely lost or ignored. They feelthat it is theirs, that they are the ones who have built it up into aproductive vineyard and that they have a right to form it into their ownimage. This possessiveness creates defensive stances and tendenciesto attack anything or anyone who seems to threaten their right ofpossession or threaten the communal identity. Sometimes this leads toa community that is spending far more time in defensive positioningthan in tending and producing a good crop.

Every faith community, whether it's a parish, areligious order, a diocese or a smaller group within any of thoselarger communities, needs to be aware of the trap of pride ofownership and of the desire to defend their prized possession. Ifthey don't watch out, they will discover that the barriers they buildto protect themselves are not only keeping out threats against theirestablished ways of doing things but are also keeping out theLandowner, his prophets and his Son. If that is the case, God willhand over the privilege of producing his fruit to other communities,ones that have not been destructively divided against themselves orhave not taken prideful possession of the Landowner's property while building walls and arming themselves against the prophets God sends.

A prophet is not just one who has strong opinionsabout what's wrong and no qualms about expressing these opinions to anyone who'll stop forminute to listen. A Prophet is one who, like Isaiah and Christ,experiences a powerful conviction that floods up from the innermostbeing and one who says, along with Isaiah and Christ,

"The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
becausethe Lord has anointed me;"

Now, listen closely to all that the Lord requires theanointed prophet to do:

"He has sent me to bringgood news to the poor,
to bindup the broken-hearted,
toproclaim liberty tothe captives,
and releaseto the prisoners;

to proclaimthe year of the Lord’s favour,
andthe day ofvengeance of our God;
tocomfortall who mourn;
to providefor those who mourn in Zion—
to givethem a garland insteadof ashes,
the oilof gladness instead ofmourning,
the mantleof praise instead of afaint spirit.

Then they (the prophets and the people) willbe called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, todisplay his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
theyshall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair theruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.

May the Lord raise up many prophets for our woundedcommunities.

May they not be killed.

The Power of Conversion. Pt. III

2011-09-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Matthew21: 28-32

‘What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to thefirst and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” Heanswered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went.The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “Igo, sir”; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of hisfather?’ They said, ‘The first.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly Itell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into thekingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way ofrighteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors andthe prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did notchange your minds and believe him.'

I made my Cursillo and worked on several Cursillo weekends back inthe early 80's and I still remember one simple group prayer thatalways struck me. It was prayed quite often throughout the weekend.

“We pray for those who need this Cursillo the most and forthose who think they need it the least.”

Jesus' parable of the two sons seems self-evident. Of course itwas the son who actually made it out to the vineyard who did hisFather's will. That seems so obvious. Jesus compares tax collectorsand prostitutes to the son who changed his mind and went to thevineyard after all which leaves the scribes and pharisees beinguncomfortably represented by the son who confessed willingness butdidn't carry through on his commitment. I'm not sure Jesus' audienceeven understood what he was getting at. As busy religious leaders,they would have seen themselves as very task oriented for God,laboring daily in his vineyard. They would not have found it easy tograsp that Jesus wasn't really talking about working for God. He was talkingabout having enough humility to know they were as much in need ofconversion as the tax collectors and prostitutes.

In other words, they needed to realize that religious busynessdoes not necessarily mean that one has experienced conversion. Johnpreached repentance as the crucial starting point of the Kingdomjourney and when anyone asked him about the practicalities ofrepentance he was simple and to the point. ‘Whoever has two coatsmust share with anyone who has none and whoever has food must dolikewise. Collect no more money than the amount owed you. Do notextort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and besatisfied with your wages.’ Scribes and Pharisees listened toJohn's exhortations but felt no need to change how they were doing anything or be 'altogetherturned around'. That was for other people.

That got me thinking. How easy is it to miss our own need forconversion? What kind of mindset did the first son have that made himthink it was all right to say yes in principle but not carry throughin action? Was he lazy, devious and dishonest - or did he simply hearthe request and decide that he was too busy with all the other thingshe was doing on behalf of his Father?

What about the second son? Was he uncaring and irresponsible? Didhe resent his Father's request but eventually give in to it out ofguilt? Or was he, too, very busy doing what he thought the Fatherrequired? Did he immediately refuse to go to the vineyard because hewas already up to his ears in taking care of what he thought was hisFather's business? He may have been heavily involved in tasks heassumed were important to his Father and those tasks hadbecome his kingdom of operation, a kingdom where he was the boss andmuch depended on him being on top of things and remaining in control.How could Dad ask him to work in the vineyard like a common laborerwhen he had all these other important tasks to do?

Perhaps what the second son became aware of was that his Fatherhad never actually asked him to take care of all the stuff that hefelt was requiring his immediate attention. Perhaps he suddenlyrealized that going to work in the vineyard was actually the onlything his Father had directly asked him to do in quite awhile. Maybehe intuited that it was not so much a request as an invitation andbegan to grasp something that turned his whole attitude around: beingbusy on behalf of his Father was not the same as being inrelationship with his Father and learning first hand what was reallyimportant to his Father's heart.

The only thing that could have changed the son's mind and heartand given him clear insight was a conversion experience. He needed arevelation to make him understand that it was time to find out whathis Father thought was important and stop being so sure that hisagenda was his Father's agenda.

That was the attitude Jesus was railing against. The scribes andPharisees were so certain that they knew God's agenda. They were verybusy men and they had their little kingdoms to look after. Johnpreached a very simple message: “Be honest. Act with integritytoward your neighbor. Be lovingly generous with what you have. Don'tbully people.” This message was far too simple for these very busyand self-important people. They probably listened and thought, “Yeah,yeah, yeah...whatever. That's a message for a sinner, not for agood religious person like me. I know all that.”

“I know all that.” Dangerous words. They're dangerous becausethey block us from what we don't know. At any point in ourChristian journey, admitting that we know very little is a freeingtruth. It is a very humble but awesome prayer to say, “Please,Lord. Teach me what I don't know.” It reminds the innermost beingthat we know so little. It helps the heart recall that the adventureof this life is not to know but to learn and that no matter what wehave learned or how much we have perceived, there is always far moreto discover.

Now, before I find our parish priest at my door with a shotgun, I wantto impress upon you that I am not advocating that everyoneshould up and quit their parish ministries and stop serving in orderto navel-gaze and meditate on, “What don't I know?” What I amsaying is we must not assume that we don't need conversion simplybecause we're busy. Sometimes busyness masks the deeperneeds of our hearts.

The vineyard in Jesus' parable didn't just represent the world ourpriests send us out into at the end of Mass. The vineyard is also theheart of the Father and, like the 'Back to the Land' movement of the60's and 70's, heading into God's vineyard is often accompanied by agreat desire for a return to simplicity. When he asks us to open ourselves toconversion, he is saying, “Come home to the vineyard of my heart.Come and see where I live. Discover your daily tasks in the center ofmy creative love. See with my eyes, hear with my ears, let my handsguide yours as you work with me in the soil I have prepared for you.Don't make your home within your assumptions of who I am and what Iwant because your assumptions limit your understanding and aremisleading. They can never encompass the glorious universe of my waysand my thoughts. In my vineyard, the small becomes large, the firstbecomes the last, the least becomes the most and every day I set up afeasting table under the Tree of Life. Come back to my heart. Comeback to simplicity of a natural spiritual life. Come home.”

Conversion: the act of turning around and being taken back tothe land, back to the vineyard of the Father's heart.

The Power of Conversion. Part II

2011-09-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 55: 8, 9.

For my thoughts are not yourthoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as theheavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than yourways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Matthew 20: 14-16 (Parable of thelandowner who hires laborers throughout the day and then payseveryone the same wage.)

“I choose to give to [the last ones I hired] the sameas I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with whatbelongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

So the last will be first, and thefirst will be last.’

The first readingand the Gospel this week are passages of scripture that are difficultto put into context. We accept the Gospel because it is the word ofGod but it is a contradiction to our natural way of perceivingjustice. Most of us relate to the laborers who resented toiling for awhole day only to be given the same wages as the ones who worked ashort time. It's a parable that's on par with the Prodigal Son. Whowouldn't commiserate with the laborers' shock or empathize with the resentmentof the faithful, obedient older brother who had to stand by and watchhis irresponsible sibling get a party? How can we view thesescriptures in a way that makes us leap with joy rather than grumblein frustration?

Conversion. We need conversion to come close to the heart of thisweek's scriptures as well as to other scriptures that seem to placeGod way out in left field playing his own mysterious game while weall huddle around home plate struggling to learn the moves and play within therules of what sometimes seems like a completely different game.

Conversion. Normally we think of conversion as the one time act ofturning from one thing to another. I was a convert to the Catholicchurch. Unless I decide to leave the church and convert to Buddhism,I won't seek conversion in that way again. As it is, I'm hereand I'm Catholic. Done. However, within the spiritual lifeconversion is a journey that's never done and unless each one of usis aware that we are constantly in need of conversion, our journeywill stagnate. We will stop growing and we will just spend our timemaintaining what we have. It's like brushing our teeth – it's agood healthy discipline but it won't produce new teeth. We're justmaintaining what we've already got.

Conversion: causing something to change in form, character orfunction. Con means 'altogether' and vertere means 'turn'. As soon asanyone says to themselves, “I don't need conversion. I'm fine theway I am,” that person has shut down and has gone into basic maintenancemode. The openness to conversion means an openness to beingaltogether turned around. If you look again at the scripture passageexcerpts above, you will gather that to move closer to the mind ofGod we not only need God to turn us around altogether, we also need him tolift us up to the point where we know that all our thoughtsand all our ways are limited and inadequate when it comes toknowing him. Without conversion, we can know this but it becomes a heavy burden as we tryto shoulder the responsibility for all our inadequacies and limitations.After conversion, knowing how limited we are is a precept of utter joy for it means that wecan let God be God and we can let our old selves – those selves thathad such a poor handle on everything – die and fade away.

We know that dieing is part of the spiritual life but what is harder to grasp is that just because we need to die to something, thatthing is not necessarily bad or sinful. Listen: Unless a grain ofwheat falls to the ground and dies...there will be no conversion.The grain of wheat cannot develop in its present form but its presentform is not a mistake or a failure - it's just not enough. The simple fact is, death mustoccur before a grain can develop into a new and different form oflife. We all need to die to self because self retains incompleteimages and pictures of God that may not be bad but are as differentfrom reality as grains of wheat are different from the stalks andleaves that eventually sprout from them. Self resists changes to itstreasured images of God. If the images can change that means lots ofother things can change too and that is a very insecure feeling. Selfis that ego, that inner identity I spoke of a few blogs ago. The egohangs on desperately to what it thinks it knows. The incompleteimages are part of self's sense of identity. Loss of those cherishedimages could mean a loss of self.

As soon as we capture some images of God and try to makelife work according to images we possess, we slowly lose sight ofGod. That doesn't mean he leaves us or loves us any less. It justmeans we've stopped looking at him and have made our image ofwho he is and what he expects of us into a substitute for his realpresence. Every image we have of him is two-dimensional, inaccurateand lacking in depth and power. I can take a photo of a sunset andhang it in my living room but that doesn't mean the sun is actuallyrising and setting beside the fireplace. The photo is simply areminder of something that happened in the past and has no dynamic life of its own. We have nopower to change our images into present creative life. A conversion moment isa moment when we are given the grace and power to behold a portion ofGod's reality and realize that all the perceptions we had of himuntil that moment are like faded and torn photographs. We no longerdesire to hang onto those old images because they cannot even beginto compare to the beauty of God's present moment reality. Conversion is a series ofturnings: turning away, turning to, turning from and turning into andthere comes a turning point where it becomes quite clear that wecannot capture and own God. Conversion introduces us to a life thatdances on the pinhead of the present moment. We can't 'make it work';we can only be there in gratitude.

Conversion is a gift from God. That means that you cannot convertyourself. You cannot do anything that will make you more or lessworthy of conversion. You cannot demand it; you can only want it andbe open to it. And, yes, you have to turn up at the vineyard. Youmight be first or you might be last, you might be faithful orprofligate, you may be a cloistered contemplative or one who issimply trying to keep up with the frantic pace of secular life but God's gift ofconversion is for all who turn up. Extensive religious knowledge ismost unnecessary. Previous experience will not prepare you. You willnever be able to imagine where conversion will take you untilGod converts you and takes you there. The mind and heart of Godcannot be comprehended in the way we like to comprehend things. Theauthentic spiritual life is not a possession we can 'own'.

Conversion often occurs during or after times of great crisis orstress. Sometimes God has to take us through crisis to strip us ofall the captured images of him that we've got buried within us. Heneeds to disable the sources of inspiration that were right for atime but now are not. He wants to replace garments that we haveoutgrown. If we always have to have a handle on everything, alwayshave to be in control, always insist that everything fits fineand never allow ourselves to experience doubt we can miss thatconversion opportunity. The period leading up to a conversionexperience can feel painfully stormy and uncertain but it is theliving breath of God blowing our boat to shores we never knewexisted.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:7-11,“But we speak God’swisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for ourglory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if theyhad, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it iswritten,‘No eye has seen, nor earheard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared forthose who love him’—
these things God hasrevealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheseverything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows whatis truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no onecomprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God.

We can never plumb the depths of what God has prepared for us. Nomatter where we are in our spiritual journeys, we can never assumethat what we know about God or how we have experienced him so far ispretty much all there is. There will always be hidden treasurewaiting for us. There will always be something more prepared for usif we are willing to let him take us there. There is no saint ormystic who deserved or deserves conversion more than any one of us. Saints and mystics are the kinds of people we think God chooses toreceive the blessings of conversion; however, God has a vastlydifferent take on these things. The first shall be the same as thelast and the last shall be the same as the first – and all arewelcome to the feast.

The only thing we can do is turn, yearn, seek, be open tothe risk - and wait.

...but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not beweary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah40:31)

The Power of Conversion Part 1

2011-09-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

Matthew18:21-35

Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if anothermember of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? Asmany as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, Itell you, seventy-seven times.
‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be comparedto a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When hebegan the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents wasbrought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to besold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions,and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him,saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him andforgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came uponone of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizinghim by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” Then hisfellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience withme, and I will pay you.” But he refused; then he went and threw himinto prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow-slaves sawwhat had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went andreported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lordsummoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you allthat debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercyon your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his lordhanded him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt.So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do notforgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

“Wicked slave!”
“...in his anger...”
“...over to be tortured...”
“So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you...”

Tell the truth, now. Weren't those the words that were rattlingaround uncomfortably in your head after you finished reading theGospel? These are the kinds of words that, taken alone, can form anunwholesome image of the Father in our hearts and create in us anunhealthy fear of God and of our own humanity. We are negativitymagnets. Whatever we read or listen to, what will stick with us isthe negative, the scary, the wounding and the hurtful. Why don'tphrases like, “ out of pity for him...” or “...released him andforgave him the debt...” become the words that inform our heartsand our images of God? Because we are afraid of ourselves.

When we retain words like “slave, anger and torture”, we arereacting in fear because we know we're guilty without even needing todo an examination of conscience. However, the knee jerk reactions weget into such as kicking ourselves, struggling to forgive someonewhen we haven't been successful so far or becoming mired in aself-induced puddle of guilt are reactions that will get us nowherefast. We become like Sisyphus, the king who was condemned to rollinga boulder up a hill, watching it roll back down and repeating theprocess forever.

It never enters our consciousness that beforethe angry lord berated the slave so strongly he had forgiven theslave a huge debt. The slave had personally experienced unconditionalmercy and extravagant forgiveness. The master had given him anoutrageous gift of freedom, joy and relief. The master could have said,“O.K. You don't have to pay your whole debt now. Let's draw up apayment plan that you can handle.” That would have been generousenough but the master, in pure mercy, forgave him his whole debt.Everything. He had to pay nothing, ever. He walked away a free man.

The master gifted the slave with an open door into a new way ofliving in freedom. Remember, Jesus was introducing New Covenant justice to hisdisciples, a justice based on unconditional love and mercy. In Jesus'parable, the master opened a new doorway to a higher spirituality.The slave virtually slammed that door in his master's face andimmediately returned to the old system of justice which was “an eyefor an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” The slave went back to thelaw. He not only took advantage of the master's mercy but he alsoshowed utter contempt for the New Covenant of love. His sin was notso much in turning around and demanding another slave to pay up asmuch as it was in showing clearly that he had rejected the master'scovenant of mercy and was determined to live by the old law.Therefore, the master handed him over to the old law. And if you wantto live a tortured existence, live according to the law, notaccording to love and mercy.

The slave would not have been culpable if he had not personallyexperienced the complete forgiveness of his debt. If he had simplyheard about another slave being forgiven a great debt or if he hadheard some people in the market place debating the idea of debtforgiveness, he would have had just a sketchy intellectual knowledgeof this new order of justice. It wouldn't have made much of an impacton him and if he had come across someone who owed him money, theideological idea of mercy and love would simply have remained justthat - an ideological idea without power or known consequences. His whole point of reference would still have been the Law.

But the slave in Jesus' parable had an eye-opening, intimateencounter with mercy and had known what kind of consequences mercyhas: peace, freedom from fear, a clean slate and room to breathe andpraise. The slave, in other words, had a life changing conversionexperience. He knew the power of that kind of justice but still heturned away and rejected the power of love - and therefore rejected Love himself.

Have you had a conversion experience? Or have you just heard aboutlove and mercy? Have you come face to face with the Master in fearonly to have him tell you that you are completely free and that thereis no debt to pay. No debt. To pay. You owed him more than you couldever have paid back, you were in crushing debt for life and he said,“No, there's no debt. It's been completely cleared by...let's seewho paid your debt...oh yes! Jesus paid your debt. You're free andclear. Remember to thank him on your way out.” Have you had yourwhole world shifted by his immense gift – or have you just heardabout it? Did you grow up hearing about it and have you alwaysassumed that you knew the meaning of 'forgive as you have beenforgiven'? Do you personally know the consequences of forgiveness ordoes forgiving those who have hurt you feel like a boulder God requires you to push up amountainside all on your own?

The problem with endeavoring to live any part of the new spiritualorder without first experiencing the Master's gift of life-shiftinglove is that you actually are trying to move boulders and the onlytools you have to move them with are intellectual ideas and tenets. Loving without knowing God's love, being merciful without havingexperienced God's mercy and forgiving without truly knowing God's forgiveness arehard, hard, hard things to do. Especially forgiving. It's sodifficult because without conversion we try to be our own sources ofpower. We feel like it's our responsibility to be good and do well atbeing a Christian. We are fearful and tight about our limited innerresources and then when someone else depletes us even more by notrespecting our dignity or undermining our authority or by sayingsomething about us that's critical or wounding, we deeply feel ajagged hole within. It's as if they snatched something away from uswithout permission. They stole something from us and they owe us.Whatever they took feels vital to us, otherwise we wouldn't be sowounded and concerned about getting it back.

In the Master's kingdom, as a converted soul you not only receiveforgiveness of debt but also the gift of yourself. As a convertedsoul you see yourself reflected like gold in the Master's eyes. As aconverted soul you know that you are a wondrous creation and yourejoice in that creation. The more you experience conversion, themore you know how beloved you are. The more you know this, the lesslikely you are to experience inner loss at the hands of anotherbecause your value and self-worth do not depend on how other peopleperceive you or treat you. The more you know the Father's love, theless you will feel that everyone who has hurt you owes you becausethey stole something from you.

When you experience conversion and know what it is to have allyour debts forgiven, the only thing you can say to people who have hurt you is,“You owe me nothing. The Lord paid for both our debts and he paidabundantly.” You can say this in truth, honesty and with great lovebecause you know it's true. You've seen it in the Master's eyes and there's nothing else to say. There's nothing else you want to say.

Anyone who experiences such a gift would be crazy to go back tothe law. As I said before, the law is where the torture is. The lawis where God is an 'eye for an eye' deity. The law is where we seehow guilty we are and how we have no ability to do anything about it.The law is a room devoid of love, a city with no mercy and a kingdomwithout Christ. Don't believe me? Read Romans.

Forgiveness without conversion is a cart without a horse. Sure,you can move it a bit by yourself with a lot of struggling but you'llget exhausted and the smallest of obstacles will confound you. And ifthere's a hill? Forget it. Conversion is a Kingdom Clydesdale. Youdon't push it – it pulls you.

Next week: A more concrete look at conversion.

Transitions

2011-08-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

Matthew 18.15-20

‘If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’

After reading this week's gospel, I wondered how Jews in the time of Christ would normally resolve disputes so I looked it up. I discovered that the Jews would ask the “bait din” (house of justice) to meet. Highly educated rabbis who were completely impartial would listen to both parties and award a judgment based on the Jewish law, not the Roman law. Jesus knew that the Jewish system of justice and dispute resolution would not work out well for his community of followers after his death so he had to set up a new way for them to resolve problems and disputes. The 'bait din' or the Sanhedrin was supposed to be impartial and disinterested but Jesus knew that it was rife with corruption. At that time it was an old boys' club where appointments were given to close friends and relatives or to those who had enough money to buy a position. Jesus knew that he certainly was not going to get a fair trial at their hands; his followers would stand no chance of being treated fairly by the traditional Jewish court. Besides, the Sanhedrin operated on the Old Covenant and Jesus was establishing the New Covenant, a covenant in which mercy, love and forgiveness would be substituted for 'an eye for an eye'. If you read the verses leading up to and following this week's reading, you will get the whole context. Jesus speaks in-depth about not hanging a millstone around the necks of his beloved, about leaving the ninety-nine and going out and finding the one lost sheep, about forgiving each other seventy times seven, about receiving God's mercy and passing that mercy on to our neighbors. Jesus was establishing a completely new order of justice.

All this made me think about those good Jewish men and women listening to Jesus and hearing him for the first time speak about this new order. To us, his words are so familiar because we've heard these gospel passages over and over. We're so accustomed to phrases like, 'love your neighbor' and 'forgive as you have been forgiven' that we almost have to struggle to pay attention. It's standard operating procedure. But to Christ's disciples, this was radical and really shocking theology. The more they listened to Jesus the more they were thrust into a time of immense transition, a time where their lives were rapidly shifting and where they suddenly had no maps to guide them. They only had Jesus.

What kind of shock waves did they experience as they went through this time of shifting from one spiritual home to another? Were there moments when they were filled with homesickness for the simplicity of the old ways? Was it tempting for them to go back to a spirituality where they knew the routines, were familiar with the traditions and understood what was expected of them from day-to-day?

Transition from the known to the unknown is terribly difficult. It's even more difficult if the shift was not planned and if the unknown is laced with difficulty. Transition can feel desolate and terribly lonely. There's no easy way through transition. It has to be walked moment by moment, step by step with the eyes focused firmly on God as one navigates the unfamiliar and sometimes terrifying terrain.

Very often, transition brings with it an inability to pray in ways that were once comforting and God can seem confusingly distant, as if he's just an idea with no real meaning. The spirit can feel dry and irritated by spiritual precepts, precepts that were once comforting but now seem more like sharp brittle twigs, not supportive, life-giving branches. The disciples must have struggled terrifically with who God really was, what was expected of them and how they should be praying or acting as Jesus unfolded a completely new theology to them. There must have been times when the temptation to run back to the familiarity of the old law was overwhelming. Some followers succumbed to this desire for comfort and safety and left when Jesus' words were just too radical. “Will you also go away?” he asked the twelve. “Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” What a brave and faith-filled admission that was. “We don't really understand what you're talking about or where we're all going to end up but we have to trust that you're taking us where we should go.”

There are times in our spiritual journeys when our hearts are so dry and confused that all we can say to the Lord is, “Where else can I go? You have the words of eternal life,” and our words are a cry from a wasteland where nothing inspires, there is no nourishment and where moving forward seems impossible. If we experience this inner barrenness and are lost in the desert with no inner clarity or direction, it's easy to feel guilty and to treat it as a personal failure. There is no failure here. There is only the hand of God shepherding us across the wasteland toward fresh water and abundant food. How else can God move us on into the wide and beautiful unknown if there is not first an inability to find sustenance in the known?

At any given point, every one of the disciples always had a choice. They could move forward with Jesus into the confusing and sometimes terrifying landscape of new ways, new thoughts, new procedures, new perspectives, new relationships and new dangers or they could run back to what was safely familiar: the old law and the comfortable old ways. What seems safe because of its familiarity can honestly feel like the best place simply because it is known and understood. However, when God is moving us through transition, running back to what is familiar and safe will stifle inner growth and prevent deeper insights into the wonder of life with a loving God who won't allow us to stay in our comfort zones if we are slowly atrophying and aren't even aware of it.

Being willing to move forward is not a rejection of the past; it is a recognition of the maturing process we should all be embracing. As we grow and develop, our needs change. It's as simple as that. Are you still praying the same prayers as you were ten years ago? Has your image of God or Jesus changed over the years? Has your image of yourself changed? Are you growing more compassionate and less judgmental? Have your spiritual desires become deeper? Do you pay attention to your spiritual desires or know what they are? Has there been an increase in the number of times you communicate with the Lord throughout the day? Are you growing more grateful and graceful? Are you afraid of God or are you discovering the supreme joy of his companionship?

The spiritual life is a whole life. This is the concept that Jesus presented to his disciples every day. He brought them out of an existence of simply attending to the law and into a life permeated with challenges but rich with growth and amazing revelations. Challenge, growth and revelation continued until death for all those disciples who did not turn back. There was no point where any one of them could say, “O.K. I'm all done. I've got the basics and I'll just coast from here.”

Often we don't seek opportunities to move forward and grow because we can't fathom what we could be doing differently or how we could be thinking in a different light or from a different angle. We need to reflect on the fact that from one day to the next, the disciples had no idea what Jesus was going to put on their plates next. There was no way they could have anticipated his next step or his next teaching. They must have woken up every day anticipating what was in store for them and wondering how Jesus was going to stretch them once again beyond the boundaries of what they thought they knew. We have to consider how crucial it was for them - and ultimately for us - that they struggled through their confusion, that they accepted the risks and that they didn't run back to old familiarities. They were called to change and so are we.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

Hatching time!

The Great Denial

2011-08-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

Matthew 16: 21-27

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.

The following is from a recent email I received from my good friend Michelle Holmes and I am quoting her with permission. She is just emerging, full of grace, from an extremely difficult time in her life. She has been discovering the true meaning of taking up her cross and practicing self-denial:

I’ve been thinking a lot about what we discussed during our visit and I am feeling freer and freer all the time. I think that is essential to living in the moment. When you are at the beginning of the journey, trying to balance and understand the church's role in our salvation, 'how to be good' and then wrestling with all that as you develop your own conscience and beliefs - living in the moment is so hard! It's got so much more fear and uncertainty at those stages. You want to ‘cover your butt’ - make sure you are ‘building up enough 'points’, even if not with full awareness. But once you trust that you are truly loved, once you can abandon your future and your salvation to that God who loves you, THEN you can be in the moment. I am feeling freer not to focus on keeping the law. Not to say that his directives aren't important, but they flow naturally out of loving relationship. If you keep trying to follow the directives without the loving relationship, it sort of becomes bean counting, and a 'you owe me based on my faithful obedience' exchange. I want more freedom that that. I want to live NOW, not wait for heaven. I want joy! I want self-sacrifice too, but to have it flow out of joy, not fear, not a bartering tactic.

Michelle’s email is a perfect illustration of how we should listen to this week’s gospel. It would be easy to interpret Jesus’ words as a hard and inflexible perspective about the rigors of following him. In the first stage of the spiritual life, we who are fully committed to our faith, hear him and endeavor to accept all our sufferings and difficulties willingly, not just because Jesus suffered and carried his own cross willingly but also with fear that if we don’t pick up our crosses, there’ll be payback time later on. There’s a subtle hope that if we carry all the crosses that come our way, the payback will be a pat on the back and free entrance into heaven. That’s how the first stage goes. It’s a stage of learning the rules and growing up straight and strong. It’s in this stage that we learn the parameters of the law and develop our inner moral compass. We focus on what’s expected of us. We could say that the first stage is learning self-control.

The next stage is discovering how to be out of control.

(In the following part of the reflection, I will be talking about ‘ego’. I am not referring to the over the top arrogance that we normally associate with ego. Ego is simply the ‘I within’. As the dictionary defines it, it is the part of us that is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity. Ego is not necessarily bad but, like everything else about human nature, it needs redemption and spiritual transformation.)

Last week Jesus told Peter his name was, “Rock On Which I Will Build My Church”. This week, Jesus speaks about his coming Passion and Peter gets right back into gear. Jesus’ statements would have been shocking anyway but Peter was probably still reeling from being told he would be the rock on which the Ecclesial community of Christ would be built. So, Jesus talking about going to his death did not fit in at all with the visions and expectations that were swirling around in Peter’s head. “Jesus can’t talk about dieing! We're going to build a church together!” Peter immediately rebuked Jesus because what Jesus said didn’t fit in with his idea of how things should be. It didn’t fit in with his desire to keep Jesus in his pocket as a talisman – an object to keep around to bring good luck and keep everything and everyone happy. To Peter, Jesus was still the ‘Magic Messiah’: if you rubbed him just the right way, amazing things might take place. Peter was willing to let Jesus be in control as long as what Jesus did fit into Peter’s idea of what Jesus should do. As soon as Jesus indicated that life might not fit into Peter’s perceptions of what was right and good, Peter’s ego kicked in and tried to gain control. ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ The ultimate denial of self is to say to the ego, “You have no idea of what should be happening and you have no capacity to understand what is truly needed in any situation.” What the ego wants to do is make judgments, put everything into categories, decide what is right and what is wrong and then strive like crazy to make everything happen according to those judgments and categories. The second stage of the spiritual life is where we discover that our egos can be faulty and that we have absolutely no capacity to really know how our judgments and actions will affect us or the lives of those around us. The ego would view “letting go” as being flung to the winds of circumstance but when we finally trust in God’s immense love and say, “Your will, not mine,” we start to discover immense freedom. As Michelle put it, “…once you trust that you are truly loved, once you can abandon your future and your salvation to that God that loves you, THEN you can be in the moment.” It is ego that takes us out of the present moment where God dwells, shoves us into the chaos of our own limited visions and makes us fight hard to be in control. We pray but we pray with certain outcomes firmly in mind and do everything we can to make sure those outcomes are realized.

When Jesus invites us to deny ourselves and take up our cross, he is inviting us to be out of control. It is indeed a cross for all of us to step down off the ego platform. The circumstances that lead us to allow God to be in full control are often situations of great inner crucifixion and pain. These crosses present us with cross roads, crisis points where we can either decide to continue to fight and struggle to keep everything in line with our set in stone perceptions of what’s right and what’s needed or we can decide to step down, let go of the awful responsibility of being 'right' and walk into the resurrection power of a life that flows out of the freedom and joy of being with the God of the present moment.

‘For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?’ When our egos are in control and struggling mightily to stay in control, we are forfeiting real life. We can make everything happen that we think should happen, we can line everything and everyone up according to the pictures in our heads and we can be totally right - but the real life of knowing our true names and knowing how beloved and cared for we are is forfeit.

In this week’s gospel, Jesus is inviting Peter - and us - to discover greater freedom and peace by taking our minds off of human things and setting them on divine things. Jesus did say in Matthew 11, ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens (the ego based life), and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

How divine!

The Naming

2011-08-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

Matthew 16: 13-20

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Have you ever noticed what’s missing from this gospel?

When Jesus told Peter he was the rock on which Christ would build his church, Peter said nothing. This is motor mouth Peter we’re talking about. This is the Peter of the gospels who was the perfect example of someone who opens his mouth before his brain gets into gear. If you glance through all the gospels you will often see the phrase, “Peter said…” He is the only one of all the disciples whose words are recorded so often and frequently what he blurted out revealed his proclivity for speaking first and thinking later.

“Go away from me Lord for I am a sinful man.” (What if Jesus had taken him up on that?)

“God forbid, Lord. This must never happen to you!” (When Jesus spoke of his coming Passion.)

“Let’s make three tents up here on the mountain, one for each of you.” (Let’s keep you all up here on the mountain forever.)

“Lord, how often do I have to forgive?” (Once was probably difficult enough for Peter let alone seven times seven. Seventy times seven must have shaken him up a bit.)

“We have left everything to follow you. What do we get out of it?” (Of course, we never say things like that...)

“I will never desert you or leave you.”

“Why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”

“You will never wash my feet…well, OK then, if you insist, but wash everything not just my feet.” (I wonder if he started stripping.)

However, when Jesus told him he was the Rock on which he would build the church, Peter was uncharacteristically silent. He didn’t start protesting that he was a sinful man or that he had no skills to build a church, whatever that meant. He didn’t suggest to Jesus that it would be much better if Jesus was the Rock and he, Peter, would tag along and be a pebble in Jesus’ shoe. He didn’t get all excited and start making plans to start the next week by drawing up committees and getting volunteers. He didn’t ask, “Why? We have a perfectly good temple right now.” Peter said nothing.

I believe Peter was silent because he had heard his true name and there’s not much you can say when you first hear your true name. It is a moment of joyful clarity, a moment of realizing you were moving toward this point your whole life. It is full of the sense that you finally know who you are and who you were always meant to be. It feels like coming home. You fully believe it but you can hardly believe it. It’s a moment where language fails you.

It is significant that Jesus begins this dialogue with the disciples, especially with Peter, by asking, “Who do people say that I am?” and then going on to ask, “Who do you say that I am?” We need to take notice of this and seriously question ourselves as to whether our understanding of who Jesus is comes from what we have heard others say or from personal encounters with him, face to face, not just once but many times. He is always asking you, “Who do you say that I am?” You need to look him in the eye and from your own deep inner conviction and heart knowledge be able to answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And once having said that to him, you need to allow yourself to hear him say back to you, “Blessed are you! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are________.”

Most people don’t stop to listen to him say, “You are________” because they are too busy paying attention to who other people say that they are. Some are totally connected to the negative voices of the past and of the world: “You are unworthy, selfish, inadequate, a failure and a hopeless sinner. Your body is all wrong, you don’t have the possessions you should possess at your age, you lack so many skills and you make poor choices.” Other people listen to voices that define them according what those other voices think they should be doing. Most people think they should be able to find their identity in their vocations and then muddle around in guilt or frustration when they find after a while that marriage, parenthood or the religious life doesn’t necessarily fulfill the deepest desire all humans have: to be unique, effective and wholly loved.

God has a name for you. Whatever that moniker is that everyone calls you by right now is more like a nickname, really. Like Peter’s true name, ‘Rock’, God’s name for you holds everything you were created to be. God’s name for you is a journey of discovery and it will grow as you grow. God’s name for you may look nothing like who or what you are right now so don’t assume anything. Jesus called Peter, “Rock On Which I Will Build My Church” but consider who Peter was in the Gospels. Did he look like a solid and wise foundational rock type person to you? He was an impulsive, rough and poor fisherman with no education to speak of. He was a man those other voices would have sneered at and condemned as a sinner. God does not name us according to how we see ourselves, according to what education we have or haven’t had or according to how others see us or want us to be. He names us according to what he created us to be. He names us and when we open our ears to hear him calling us by name, we begin to grow into the fullness of who we were created to be just as Peter grew into becoming Rock, Evangelist, Healer and Shepherd.

Hearing one’s name does not lead to instant spiritual success. Peter had to fail, fall, fumble and betray Jesus. He had to go through desolation and desperation, otherwise he would have tried to form himself into being a Rock according to his perceptions of what that meant. Peter had to come to a point of realizing that ego had no place in his journey of becoming who God meant him to be and he had to understand that his visions of what the future should look like were completely erroneous. No one could have envisioned all that happened in the Acts of the Apostles. No one could have foreseen the high numbers of people who came to believe in the name of Jesus. Even if it had been predicted, no one would have believed the advent of explosive truth that went so far outside the parameters of acceptable Jewish theology. No one, not Peter nor any of the other disciples, could have anticipated or envisioned what God’s names for them would bring about in their lives or in the lives of the people around them.

Who do people say that you are?

Who do you say that you are?

Now…who does God say that you are?

Listen to him…it will be nothing like what you expected.

Peter's Perspective

2011-08-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

(Matthew 14: 22-33)

Look at me. My hands are shaking and my legs are so weak that I could barely get out of the boat when we reached shore. I wish they would stop asking me if I’m all right and if I need anything. They know I went through something traumatic and I know they’re just concerned but right now, the last thing I want to do is talk about it. I know they’re dieing to ask me what it felt like to walk on water. How can I tell them that it felt like hell?

I’ve always been a strong, fearless man who has never been afraid of storms or taking risks. How can I explain a terror that was like icy fire running through my whole body? Before we saw Jesus walking toward us, I certainly was concerned about the storm but too busy handling the boat to pay attention to my fear. If a fisherman is going to be paralyzed with anxiety every time a storm springs up, he might as well pack it in and take up weaving. This is our life; this is what we do. What we don’t do is face spirits walking on water. I wasn’t the only one who was terrified either. All of them were yelling, “It’s a ghost,” and were crowding themselves so much to one side of the boat that we were in danger of capsizing. They all know better than to do that in a boat but that’s how frightened they were.

Then came the voice. ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ The voice was definitely his but, idiot that I am, I called back, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ What made me say such a thing? What was I thinking? Nothing. I can recall no cohesive thoughts in my head, no logical or reasonable ideas about the whole situation. I just opened my mouth and out it came: “Tell me to walk on the water.” What did I think this was going to prove? If it wasn’t Jesus coming toward us on the water, did I think that this ultimatum of mine would somehow protect us from an evil spirit? Was I thinking that even if it were Jesus, he would never take me up on my stupidity? I have no idea what I was thinking or why I said what I did but when he said, “Come,” I looked into his eyes and I knew it was him and not a ghost. His eyes looked into mine and what I saw in those eyes filled me with an immense desire to go to him and be with him. I wasn’t thinking about storms or waves or danger or risk. I didn’t stop to think about what going to him actually meant. I just wanted to be with him. I couldn’t take my eyes off of his eyes even when I was climbing over the side of the heaving boat. For all the notice I was taking of my surroundings, I could have been walking down a village street toward him on a sunny day instead of moving through deep troughs of violent waves. And then he looked away – not me. He broke eye contact with me and suddenly I was aware of where I was and the danger I was in but I was also aware of much more than that. That’s when I knew fear such as I had never known before. It wasn’t so much the thought of dieing that filled me with dread and panic, it was the thought of living or dieing without him that overwhelmed me with utter terror.

When I shouted, “Lord, save me!” I was asking for much more than protection from drowning. I was screaming for deliverance from an eternity without him and he knew it. I immediately understood that he had broken eye contact with me on purpose in order to give me a glimpse of who he really is and how utterly desolate my life and my death would be without him. He showed me a petrifying reality I could never have seen without him showing it to me. Up until that moment, in spite of his teachings and in spite of the miracles I had witnessed, I still felt like I was weighing and judging his validity and his importance to me. I still felt like he had made a mistake in choosing me and would reject me once he saw how much I still struggled with believing in him. I still felt like I could choose to turn away and go home and there would be no major consequences. In a flash, he showed me what life and death without him truly meant and the vision of it was pure desolation and utter chaos. Then he reached out, caught my hand and lifted me above the waves, above my terror and above eternity without him.

Everyone in the boat heard what he said to me. ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ They probably think he was asking why I doubted that I could actually walk on water but I knew that he was asking me how I could doubt that he was the One who was to come. He was asking how could I have thought that he would ever reject me, leave me or forsake me. He was telling me that he would be with me through all eternity no matter what. He was saying that storms, persecution, distress, death – and, yes, even my doubts and failures – would never separate me from his love. How do I know this? It was in his eyes and in the grip of his hand. By that grip, he bound me to him for all eternity. By that grip, I knew I was saved from far more than physical death.

Yes, they will all want to know what it was like to walk on water. They will want to know what made me get over the side of that boat in the first place. They will want to discuss it, probe me about being part of this outrageous miracle and perhaps a few of them will make subtle insinuations about my failure to make it all the way without sinking. Let them make insinuations. How can I tell them that walking on water is nothing compared to knowing that he loves me and that he has promised to be there for me in all the coming storms? How can I explain that his words were not words of castigation but words of incredible assurance? He was saying that even though I am weak and though my faith may waver, he would be never ever let go of me. To them, walking on water would be the most important and fascinating part of all that happened. I don’t blame them; I would think the same if it had happened to someone else. I would be equally slow to grasp what else could be of more importance than human feet treading on top of water.

I witnessed him feeding thousands of people, saw him walking on water, walked on water myself and saw the storm die down at his command. These miracles were not what transformed my soul and set me upon solid rock. What transformed me was the stunning miracle of a God who reaches down to his people and saves them from drowning in their own brokenness, fear and loneliness.

My legs and hands are still shaking. The perfect man created a perfect storm to show me, a paragon of imperfection, what love is.

***
There will be no reflection for Sunday, August 14th, as I will be on holiday.

The Letter

2011-07-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

(Matthew 14: 13-21. The Feeding of the Five Thousand)

To my honored friend, Nicodemus. Peace be with you.

I have often missed you since you moved from this region; our debates and discussions on the law and the scripture were stimulating and deeply satisfying and I have not found another friend with such keen insight or depth of knowledge as you. I have often wished we could sit once again in the quiet shade of your olive tree to deliberate over the greatness of G_D’s laws but lately I have desperately wanted to put before your shrewd mind an experience that has disturbed me deeply.

You must have heard of Jesus of Nazareth by now. The chief priest has denounced him as a troublemaker and I had no desire whatsoever to seek him out in order to listen to him or witness one of his miracle tricks. I felt that my duties left me no time to listen to madmen and itinerant preachers. However, his name was on everyone’s lips and I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing questions, whispers and speculations about this Jesus. I became concerned about his influence over people, especially over those who are ignorant of the law and depend on people like us to guide them in righteousness. The last thing I thought they needed was to be completely misdirected by some lunatic who claims G_D is his Father.

Two weeks ago, there was great excitement in our region. The rumor was that Jesus was on his way to the other side of the lake where there is that hillside that has a natural amphitheater. People were closing up their market stalls, downing tools and gathering their families as fast as possible in order to go see him and soon the whole area was almost empty. The only ones left in the village were a few of the lame and sick sitting in the streets grieving about being left behind. I exhorted them to cease their whining and told them they were better off staying in town begging G_D to forgive their obvious sinfulness. I was about to return to my duties when I thought, “Perhaps I should go. People will come back full of this braggart’s words. They’ll be confused and pestering me to explain things. I’d better know exactly what it is he is teaching these people so I will know what we’re fighting against.”

When I arrived at the spot where he was rumored to be, I was dumbfounded. I had expected several hundred people to be there but there were several thousand! I was filled with alarm for it was obvious that his influence was more widespread than I thought. I knew it would be difficult to hear him from the edge of the crowd (where I very much preferred to stay) because no man can make himself heard by four or five thousand people, natural amphitheater or not. Crowds tend to be unruly and noisy. So, I shouldered my way as close to the front as possible until I could go no further because there were too many people. I resigned myself to being a short distance away and sat down to wait. I looked to my left and found I was very close to a woman whom I had no doubt was a prostitute and a harlot. She gave me a very disrespectful look and turned her face away quickly. I was going to get up and find some place better to sit but the crowds were too dense. I had no choice but to stay where I was. I glanced behind me and who do you think was sitting right there, his knee almost touching my back? Ezra, the tax collector. Could I have found a worse place to sit? You have no idea how uncomfortable it was to be sitting with such sinners in order to listen to a self-proclaimed prophet as if I, too, was seeking something. I felt quite humiliated.

Suddenly the noise of the crowd died away completely. People who had been standing and milling around in the front sat down quickly and children who had been yelling and chasing one another immediately sat quietly on the grass. It was as if a wave of stillness washed over the whole crowd. Even I, who am not easily influenced by crowd-induced emotions, felt a kind of peace moving through me as if everything was all right. That’s the only way I could describe that stillness, Nicodemus. Everything was all right. I had never had that sense in my life before.

Then a fishing boat filled with several men came close to the shore. The men, upon viewing the crowds, turned to one man sitting wearily in the stern and they were obviously discussing the crowds, pointing back to where they had come from, perhaps indicating that maybe they should go elsewhere. The man they were talking to stood up and gazed at the crowds. The people were still silent but you could feel their hope and yearning palpably reaching out to him. He finally stepped out of the boat and began making his way through the crowd. As he walked, he reached out and touched those he passed by. That’s all he did. A light touch, sometimes a caress on the head…he was especially gentle with the sick and more than once I saw a great stir of joy and excitement after he had passed by and touched someone. The amazing thing was that the crowd remained respectful and orderly even though all desired to be touched by him.

When he reached the top of the hill, he climbed onto a large boulder and began to speak. What did he say? For the most part, I have no idea. He must have spoken for three hours or more and I only remember him saying a couple of things. At one point, he looked directly at me, right into my eyes, and asked with great love, “Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread, and your labor on that which does not satisfy?”

Nicodemus, would you think me a complete fool if I told you that at that moment I felt terribly ashamed? I was ashamed of my gold rings and my fine linen robes which only a few moments before had been proper symbols of my status and of G_D’s blessing. I felt ashamed of…of everything, Nicodemus. I thought of the sick and lame I had left behind in the town, people who had simply wanted to see this man. I felt as though everything I had deemed terribly important and valuable and all the judgments I had ever made were like dust and ashes as his eyes penetrated my heart. But the wonderful thing was that even though I felt ashamed, I didn’t feel condemned. I felt so free as though all the ‘important stuff’ I had been carrying around in my head and heart didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t have to carry it. I had no idea how much of a burden it had been until it was gone.

Before I could think much more about it, I noticed there was something going on up at the front. His followers were talking to him, pointing at the crowd then pointing at the sun in the sky and they were urging him to move back to the boat. He just smiled at them, indicated the crowds and said something. They were at a complete loss. You could tell how confused they were even from where I was sitting. Then a young boy came up to one disciple and handed him a basket that the disciple took to Jesus, perhaps thinking that at least Jesus could eat even if no one else could. Some of the people in the crowd, sensing that he had finished teaching, were standing up and getting ready to go even though it was a long journey to where they could get food or lodging. Jesus told everyone to sit again, held the basket high so all could see it, asked for the blessing of G_D upon it and began to break the bread and hand it to the disciples. He indicated that they were to hand it out to the people.

Things became very confused then and I couldn’t quite see what was happening as the disciples asked more men to help them distribute the bread. Obviously, the bread and fish weren’t being depleted but I couldn’t quite see where it was coming from. It just seemed to keep coming. In fact, it seemed like they were having trouble distributing the food quickly enough before their baskets were filled again to overflowing.

I was just about to jump up and try to see what exactly was the source of all this food when I felt someone tug my sleeve. I turned and there was the prostitute holding out two big pieces of bread and a large fish to me. She looked like a totally different woman. Her face, instead of being hard and resentful, was glowing, warm and soft. Normally I would never have taken food from such a woman but I received it with a sense that I was being given a valuable and beautiful gift. I looked into her eyes and said, “Why don’t you keep it? You need it far more than I do.” Do you know what she said? She said, “He looked directly at me and he spoke to me. He said, ‘The eyes of all look to you and you give them food in due season.’ I don’t know exactly what that means but my heart yearns to share the abundance with you and everyone around me.”

All I could do was accept it with great thanks. Then there was a voice in my head that said, ‘Ezra hungers’. I immediately turned around and said, “Ezra, this food is for you. Eat well and may the blessings of the Lord be on you.” As he received the food, he had tears rolling down his cheeks. I had to turn away because I felt I wanted to weep as well knowing it was not physical food Ezra hungered for but for the bread of acceptance and respect. When I looked into my lap, there were two pieces of bread and a fish where nothing had been a moment ago. Again, I heard his voice resonating inside of me saying, “You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.” I looked up and again he was looking directly at me. I felt like I was a deep part of him and of his ministry to the people and I felt like I had come home.

From that moment until the time I arrived back home, everything was a peaceful blur but since then I have been vacillating between feeling like my whole life has somehow been made right and feeling a kind of terror of not knowing who I am anymore or what I should be doing, as if everything I ever knew and thought was turned upside down and inside out.

I started out this letter to you, Nicodemus, hoping that perhaps you would write back with words that would pull me out of my chaos and set me back firmly on the solid secure ground of law and reason but now, after writing out my experiences, I know that it is not possible. I must accept that the old wineskin has burst and is not reparable. I must be open to the new wine that has penetrated the deepest parts of my soul. I keep remembering the psalm, “The Lord is good to all and his compassion is over all that he has made.” Funny how often I have read that line and never heard it.

It’s no use, my good friend. I have been completely undone by the Nazarene. I know now that he is not a madman or simply another wandering teacher. He is the Son of God and he is everything I have been looking for, even though I didn’t know I was looking for anything. I pray that you will soon have an opportunity to see this Jesus of Nazareth – or better yet, to speak with him. You will never be the same.

May the grace and peace of the beautiful Holy One of Israel be with you and your house.

Your servant,

Joseph of Arimathea

Yours Is The Kingdom, Part 2

2011-07-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

Matthew 13: 44-52

‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered, ‘Yes.’ And he said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’

I’ve been amazed lately at how many popular songs there are that are encouraging people to believe in their intrinsic worth and value. The message is, “You’re great, you’re valuable as a person, don’t put yourself down…believe in yourself.” It certainly is a timely message because the world is filled with people who feel like they are worthless. The sad thing is, a song on the radio won’t help much. That kind of inner brokenness is not healed by a positive message with a catchy tune.

Something that is even sadder is that the Church is filled with people who are convinced of their innate worthlessness. It is heartrending that so many people of a loving and beautiful God have as much trouble as people without faith in believing that they are worthwhile and valuable. Something is wrong with this picture.

The scriptures are multilayered and have many levels of meaning. Of course Jesus is the wonderful treasure, the ‘Pearl of Great Price’ who is worth the selling of all that we own in order to have him in our life. But have you ever considered the fact that God gave all that he had in order to possess the wonderful treasure, the beautiful pearl of great price that is you?

There is a tendency to accept the basic fact that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” but then to see yourself as just one of a billion Christian people who make up ‘the world’. It’s similar to us loving, appreciating and enjoying a tree or a huge mountain but rarely stopping to consider, let alone love, each molecule that is part of that tree or mountain. It’s easy to feel that we are somewhat insignificant molecules within the whole mass called ‘the world’ that God loves. There is even a stronger tendency to feel that he takes the most notice of the ‘you molecule’ only when you are out of line or when you fail to do what you think you should be doing. Do you not get more of a sense of God gazing directly at you when you’ve done something wrong than when you do what you know is right?

Think for a minute. How easy is it for you to allow yourself to come before the Lord to see complete love and delight in his eyes? How willing are you to open the ears of your heart to hear, “You are my Pearl of Great price. I gave everything I had for you even though you’re broken and a little soiled from being hidden in the earth. I created you and I only create wonder and beauty. “…you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” (Isaiah 43.4)

Is this comfortable for you? Do you have an underlying feeling that you’re not good enough to see delight in his eyes or to listen to how much he loves you without also hearing the caveat that you should clean up, shape up and stop being so disappointing? Are you able to spend time with the Lord and simply enjoy being loved by him with no strings attached? Is this allowed?

It’s not only allowed, it’s crucial to becoming a whole and holy child of God. Being immersed in his love is what creates the changes in us that we yearn for and that we mistakenly think are our responsibility. Our responsibility is to show up, be there and stay there. Experiencing the fire of his immense love is what does the work of transformation that we are always striving to do on our own – and failing miserably.

Listen to what St. Catherine of Siena says to the Lord:

"Eternal Trinity, Godhead, mystery deep as the sea, you could give me no greater gift than the gift of yourself. For you are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being. Yes, you are a fire that takes away the coldness, illuminates the mind with its light and causes me to know your truth. And I know that you are beauty and wisdom itself. The food of angels, you gave yourself to people in the fire of your love."

Do you hear how the action is all God’s? It is God’s fire of love that consumes the selfishness, takes away the coldness, illuminates the mind and causes inner recognition of truth. And what does Catherine do? She comes to him. She simply recognizes with utter gratitude that he is beauty and wisdom. She glories in that. She revels in the ‘food of angels’. That kind of experience of God was not given to her because she was so good and finally deserved it. She became the saint she was because she allowed herself to sit before the fire and allowed herself to receive the gift of fierce love. She allowed herself to be treated by God as a pearl of great price and a wonderful treasure.

She allowed herself to find her reflection in the burning eyes of the Kingdom of Heaven.

When you sit before the Lord and simply recognize and receive his love, you will become like a scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven. Then, …like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old, you will begin to recognize and rejoice in the beauty of everything you have always been (what is old) because he created you and you will anticipate with delight all that he has in store for you (what is new) because he is the one who will love it into being.

Look up and look into his eyes. Behold the Kingdom. Behold the love. Behold the real truth of your value and worth.

…for what is the mind to do

with something that becomes the mind’s ruin:

a God that consumes us

in His grace.

I have seen what you want;

it is there,

a Beloved of infinite

tenderness.

(from Consumed in Grace by Catherine of Siena)

Yours Is The Kingdom Pt. 1

2011-07-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

Matthew 13: 24-43

•‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away.

•‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

•‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

Whenever we hear the “Kingdom of heaven” parables, there is a tendency to turn them back on ourselves. We imagine the Kingdom as a static place in which we are called to be and do certain things like sow good seed, grow like trees and be like yeast. We turn the precept of the Kingdom into a place where the price of admission is a list of our spiritual accomplishments. With this kind of imagery in mind along with the knowledge of how we struggle to make ourselves become tiny seeds or grains of yeast, the Kingdom becomes reduced to a place full of dry expectations that we aren’t able to adequately live up to. It feels like a classroom where the subject taught is often difficult and hard to grasp and where we fear a failing grade rather than anticipate joyful success.

This kind of imagery is the Gospel turned inside out, backward and upside down. It reduces God to an exacting schoolmaster and makes the Kingdom life feel like a series of dreaded lessons in vaguely understood subjects we not only never graduate from but are also doomed to repeat. This imagery is so far from the radiant truth that it sometimes makes me think, “An enemy has done this.” Jesus began the parables this week with the image of God sowing healthy seeds only to find that weeds had sprung up as well. In the fertile field of the nature of God, subtle weeds of lies about who he is and who we are have been deviously planted along side the wheat of truth. However, God in his wisdom and goodness doesn’t just rush in and violently pull up the weeds because he knows that the roots of these misperceptions are so entwined with the real truth of who he is that to just yank out the mistaken ideas all at once would do more damage than good to our fragile psyches and would leave us vacant and vulnerable. He will patiently wait until the truth is deeply rooted, healthy, strong and flourishing before he attacks the weeds of deceit.

Then Jesus moves on to parables of the mustard seed and the yeast to show who he really is and how, in the end, these weeds of deception cannot overcome the Kingdom. We are not the mustard seeds nor are we the yeast. The Kingdom of heaven is the mustard seed and the Kingdom of Heaven is the yeast. This changes everything. This turns the Kingdom into a dynamic, vital, growing and spreading life force that has no concern for borders or boundaries. The Kingdom is not a place at all; it’s the complete and full nature of Christ. The earth is so full of it that nothing can escape it. It’s his personality, his energy, his desire, his blessing and his love and he is nothing but lavish in pouring it out for us and on us.

In the parable of the mustard seed, it’s noteworthy that Jesus didn’t liken the Kingdom to just any big tree; he chose a tree that starts out incredibly small and insignificant (perhaps like the son of a poor carpenter from Nazareth?) and has the characteristic of totally taking over the area in which it grows. "Mustard… is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once." (Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History approx. AD 78) This is the Kingdom. It immediately germinates, takes root, takes over and spreads in an almost profligate way. The mustard tree doesn’t actually attract birds to rest in its branches but Jesus, the Kingdom Mustard Tree, magnanimously offers his plentiful branches and invites all who need rest, healing and protection. Our God is full of unexpected lavishness.

The woman adding yeast to the flour was not making one little loaf of bread. Three measures of flour are equivalent to 8 ½ gallons or 38 liters. Jesus is likening himself to a woman mixing in enough yeast to make at least a hundred loaves of bread. In scripture, the number three is used to signify God’s purpose or his will and the number 100 signifies completeness or fullness. Jesus became our Bread of Life according to God’s will and he became the fullness of God completely available to us in the Eucharist. Our God is not stingy or miserly with his love. He is bountiful and extravagant.

Before I attended Mass last weekend, I had been pondering on the Kingdom of God for a few days. I knew I wanted to get across the idea of the overwhelmingly pervasive and free abundance of God but I couldn’t think of words or imagery that would be strong enough or persuasive enough to describe God’s immense love symbolized in the words “the Kingdom of heaven”. Then our pastor, Fr. William Hann of St. Joseph the Worker parish, began speaking of the nature of God in relation to last week’s parable and he said something that made my spirit leap within me with the recognition of the presence of Truth. That evening I emailed him and asked him to send me that particular portion of his homily. Knowing Fr. William’s spirituality, I know these words come straight from his heart and are precepts he utterly and intimately knows to be true. They aren’t just interesting ideas he read somewhere; they are bedrock in his life. Listen to these words that I believe are directly from the Kingdom of heaven:

“… today's parable of the sower invites us not to discount the fact that a gracious God is also part of our world scene, and not as a threatening, a punishing or a destructive God, but as a God who is generous to the point of being prodigal in the way he brings forth new life in our world. It is my firm belief that God is too much for us--too generous, too imaginative and too down to earth … too close. Like the seed bursting open, God will change us--if we allow it. We long to be changed, and we fear it. This parable is of great comfort to us--all of us to whom the gospel has been entrusted. The seed of God is potent and sometimes the harvest is rich. What takes root in our lives bears fruit and can yield even a hundredfold. That's great news and, as someone said, "it's like a refreshing shower" that brings our drooping spirits back to life.”

The Kingdom of heaven is Jesus. He was planted and he immediately germinated to become the bountiful tree of life that cannot be eradicated. Jesus is the powerful yeast mixed in with the flour of God’s will to provide the nourishing risen Bread of Life - enough for all and enough for all time. If we insist on thinking of the Kingdom as something apart from us or something that’s withheld from us unless we get our act together, we will find our ability to be open to change sporadic and often ineffective. As Fr. William said, 'we long to be changed – and we fear it.' We fear it because we don’t understand that God is the yeast that causes the rising action within us. He does the planting. He is the creative seed and the harvest he brings forth is joyously and riotously abundant. We look at our own meager resources and of course we fear change. We fear it because we are incapable and we have too little to work with. We need to turn around and run to a God who is ‘too generous, too imaginative, too down to earth … too close’. If you pondered just those words for the rest of your life, you would find yourself being changed without fear or strained effort and you would know that it was the Kingdom of heaven who laughed you into freedom and loved you into life.

Let anyone with ears please listen. For the love of God…listen!

Grounds For Joy

2011-07-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

Matthew 13: 1-23

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!’

After hearing this gospel, my natural inclination is to examine myself and try to decide: what kind of soil am I? Am I the infertile pathway, trampled and worn with too much traffic running over me? Am I the rocky ground planted with grand plans, exciting ideas and inspirations that never seem to go anywhere and die quickly when things get difficult? Am I thorny, proud and cynical, never able to really commit myself to really believing in anything? Or am I good fertile soil where the planted seed becomes a dependable source of good fruit or healthy grain?

We all hope we’re in the good rich soil category; that would be our desire and our intention. However, it’s not that simple, is it? If I were honest with myself, I would see that I carry within myself patches of all soil types. I am a microcosm, one that isn’t always being sustained in a healthy way. Our inner beings are reflections of the world at large so if we have a tendency to point fingers at the more obvious rocks and thorns we see ‘out there’, we need to stop and realize that whatever is ‘out there’ is also ‘in here’. When we look closely at the various soil types described in the gospel, we easily identify other people that we think fit into each category. That’s easy. The difficult trick is to see how we maintain the same soil conditions in our own hearts.

Funny, isn’t it, how weeds can grow and flourish anywhere, even in the hard pavement of sidewalks and pathways? Do you find it easy to identify those weeds in your family or church community? Do you know of people who are martyrs, ones who do what they are asked but are always letting others know how busy they are, how much they are doing and how little thanks they get? These people aren’t always easy to be around. Even though they are always in service mode, it just doesn’t seem like their service is life giving. They bring to mind the old adage: the only person who can live with a martyr is a saint.

Now look within yourself. Do you allow yourself to be trampled upon and then lay little guilt trips on those around you? Are you passive aggressive? Do you say yes to every request and demand until you are worn out, worn down and have little or no time to allow God's water of life to soak into you? Do you feel like the seeds that do come your way get pecked away before there’s time for them to take root? Are the seeds that are able to take root actually weeds of resentment and self-pity poking up through the hard-pack surface of your heart?

We all have unproductive pathways running through us that are hardened from constant traffic and busyness. We need to look along that path and see if we can find any little signs that say things like, “Jesus is coming. Look busy,” or “Everything that you are asked to do is a direct request from God. If you do it all, maybe God won’t blame you for your failures.” The trouble with that last one is that we can never do enough. We’re way too busy to spend time with a loving God and we always feel guilt and pressure to do more and more. Meanwhile the seeds we receive wither away from lack of care and we blame others for our weary dryness.

Have you observed spiritual trends and ideas that have come along and have grabbed the attention of groups of people causing a great stir of exciting inspiration? Have you then watched these promising movements eventually die out leaving people seeking the next latest and greatest idea or theology to fill the empty gaps? Did you notice that though these movements seemed promising, they didn’t always inspire people to go deeper or further than the next spiritual high? You may also have perceived that some people find it very difficult to adjust to a life where there isn’t always something exciting and inspiring on the horizon.

Now look within yourself. How many spiritual books have you read or speakers have you listened to that you just had to share with other people because the ideas that were expressed or the way they were expressed were so amazing and inspiring. How much of any of those inspirations can you actually remember? How successful were you at taking any of those spiritual precepts and making them a deep integrated part of your spiritual life? How often did a fantastic inspiration get completely lost in the grinding heat of everyday life?

We all have patches where the soil is shallow and where inspiration springs up with great promise but just cannot be maintained. There is always the hope that the next book or the next homily will hold the magic key to an amazing spiritual life. We forget that there are no magic keys; there is only relationship with the Lord. This relationship requires us to dig deep, plant deep and water often or else our spirituality remains on the surface, vulnerable to the hot sun and drying winds.

Do you know of people in your community who always seem to be angry and opposed? It doesn’t matter what the church is endeavoring to undertake or how it’s trying to encourage growth, these people have seen it all, seen it fail and know it’s going to fail again. They might be disillusioned with the system – it’s become too conservative or too liberal. Things aren’t like the good old days or the church is too slow to change. There’s always something wrong and always something to criticize.

Now look within yourself. Are there pockets of disillusionment? Were there times in your life where things didn’t turn out the way you wanted or expected? Were you ever hurt by someone in authority? Did this cause you to put up walls of cynicism and criticism in order to protect yourself from further wounds? How often do you find yourself criticizing rather than commending? Is your inclination to look for the best in people and situations or to expect the worst? We all have walls of thorny bushes that have been cultivated in order to protect ourselves from disappointment and wounds but the problem is they also inhibit the implantation of good seed.

We all have these patches of unproductive, infertile soil. It’s called being human. We also have areas that are made of rich loam full of nutrients and life giving minerals. We have soil that is dry and shallow and soil that produces good abundant spiritual crops, enough to feed others and ourselves. We have barren stretches of arid desert and inviting groves of lush fruitful beauty. The point is not to get stuck in the mud of guilt over the parts of our innermost beings that have resisted the planting of the seed. The point is to be aware that this journey we are on is a Soil Reclamation Project. Bit by bit, little by little, God’s goal is to reclaim the stony hardness of our hearts and expand our arable and fruitful land.

May your inner soil be brought back to the fertility of the First Garden where the earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. (Genesis 1.12)

And may God see that it is good.

The Yoke of Grace

2011-06-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

Matthew 11: 25-30

At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

It’s hard to pinpoint the most beautiful words Jesus ever spoke because he spoke so many words of extravagant love and mercy. We’re so used to hearing all the things Jesus said in the gospels that we often don’t stop to really allow these words of soft Kingdom rain to soak into our dry cracked hearts to soften the soil and make us ready to receive the seeds of his life and love.

“Come to me…” I am often struck by the fact that we have a God who says, “Come to me.” It’s easy to become confused and think we have a God who shouts, “Get over here right now! What do you think you’re doing?” One evening a friend and I were out for a walk when a dog went ripping past us, its leash trailing behind it. The owner came running after it in a panic because it was a busy street and the dog was obviously frightened, running as fast as it could without being aware of its surroundings. The owner, in his own panic, was yelling the dog’s name and shouting for it to “…stop and get over here NOW!!” This just frightened the dog even more. Suddenly the owner came to his senses, stopped, knelt down on the grass and completely changed his tone of voice. He kept all panic and anger out of it, became comforting and friendly and called the dog’s name. The dog immediately stopped its frightened frantic racing, turned around and ran to its master. You could sense the dog’s relief in finding the calm security of its owner. If we could stop and really listen we would realize God’s not yelling at us. He is on his knees inviting us to come back to his safe arms.

“…all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens” Let’s see, who does that leave out? Who is excluded from this invitation? I actually sat for a few minutes and thought about all the people I know, Christian or not. I couldn’t think of one person who is completely outside the category of ‘All Who are Weary and Burdened’. It’s a human condition. Sometimes the weariness and burdens are deeper and heavier than at other times but Jesus knew all the difficulties of walking in this world. He knew weariness and the feeling of being overwhelmed. He was accustomed to the burden of being human and understood what a challenge it is to figure out relationships, to juggle complicated situations, to bear the brunt of injustice, to lose a loved one to death or to watch a child make terrible choices. He walked our lives and faced our fears.

Therefore, the words, “I will give you rest,” were spoken and continue to be spoken with huge compassion. “I will give you rest.” Not, “I might give you rest if you are good and you deserve it.” ‘Will’ is a strong word. When someone says, “Yes, I will…” to us, we take that as a promise and believe it but only if we discern that the person is capable of delivering what is promised. When we hear Jesus say, “ I will,” our initial reaction is to think, “Of course he will.” But, if we examine our hearts, we often find traces of doubt there. We try to have faith that he will do what he said he would do but it’s so easy to find just a smidgen of skepticism arising from times when it seemed like he didn’t do what we thought he would or should do. Does that means he can't be relied upon? No, what it means is that we have definite ideas of what he should do in any given situation. It means we have interpretations as to what his promise keeping should look like. It means we want things to go a certain way and we're not always open to his wisdom. When Jesus says, “I will” he also says, “My will.” We need to understand that he did not ever promise to conform to our wills or to our ideas of how things should go. And thank God for that because our ideas and visions are so shortsighted and limited. We really have no clue yet we still try to be God’s executive directors.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” This is the key. When Jesus invites us to put his yoke on, he is saying, “Take this yoke. It’s exactly the same as the one I wear. It’s the yoke of a heart that is trusting, gentle and humble; it’s not the yoke of a heart that is fearful, controlling and demanding.” It’s in gentleness and humility that the heart finds rest. I definitely believe there are times when we do need to wrestle with the Lord (see my post “And In This Corner…” October 12, 2010) but if we are always in a fearful demanding mode with the Lord and if our attitude is always, “Of course I know what’s needed in this situation, Lord. Any smart person would agree with me,” then we need to step back and ponder on what it means to be gentle with God. Jesus, in his gentleness and humility, trusted God moment by moment to supply his needs. He also trusted that God knew exactly what he needed and when he needed it. If he encourages us to wear the same yoke as he wore, there must be a beautiful and nourishing restfulness of soul within it.

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Jesus was mostly contrasting his yoke to the yoke and the burden of dead law but the yoke of the law is not much different from the yoke of the world. It's the yoke of shouldering all responsibility for one’s broken human condition. It’s the burden of having nowhere to turn and nowhere to run but to self. It’s the load of feeling completely alone with no hope of being forgiven and loved no matter what. When we are weary of trying to be in control all the time and when we finally turn to Christ, gently and humbly saying, “I give up. I just can’t do this anymore,” we will indeed find that his burden is much lighter and that his yoke sits much more easily on the shoulders.

How can we turn to Christ with gentleness and humility? How can we unload the backbreaking yoke of sole responsibility? This is only possible when we stay in the present moment, deal only with what is in front of us in that moment while keeping our eyes on him just for that moment. If we refuse to allow our clamorous desires and fears to become chafing heavy yokes, we can become much more in tune with Christ’s quiet gentleness. This in turn creates within us a gentleness and quietness of spirit.

We can maintain a humble spirit by remembering that we have no knowledge of what the future holds and by understanding that our perceptions of what could go wrong, what we need or what others need are terribly limited. When we assume we know what’s best or what’s wrong with everything or when we allow fear to settle on our shoulders, it creates within us frantic and aggressive prayer that brings no rest for our souls. Without realizing it, we often pray as if God won’t know what is necessary unless we tell him.

Remember, the easy yoke and the light-filled burden is completely available to us in the present moment. He has never asked us or wanted us to carry the burden of the future or of the past. His yoke of grace is now. His burden of light is here. Go to him and receive.

He is on his knees, arms wide open.

The Wonderful Smell of Fresh Bread

2011-06-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

Deuteronomy 8:14-16

He made water flow for you from flint rock and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good.

John 6: 51-59

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

We humans are by nature collectors and hoarders. As you read that, some of you thought of basements, closets and drawers crammed with junk that might possibly be useful someday and mumbled, “Guilty as charged.” Others of you were a bit indignant because you are more likely to throw or give an item away than shove it in a drawer. A lot of you were somewhere in between those two reactions.

However, it’s not just material possessions we are prone to collecting and hoarding. There are so many other things we collect and hang onto without realizing that our mental closets and inner drawers are overflowing with useless items that ‘might come in handy someday.’ What about spiritual knowledge and definitive opinions? How about status or power? In many people’s drawers are tucked away all the major and minor sacrifices made in the past – so handy to be taken out and looked at when we feel God’s not being fair. Some people collect approval and admiration while others hang on to the various ways they have been disappointed, disapproved of or rejected through the years. Every one of us, if we looked closely at the basements of our hearts, would find immense collections of something down there. We are by nature collectors and hoarders.

God knew this. Indeed, he actually created us that way and in times past and in other civilizations, the same inclinations would be called ‘hunting and gathering’. But even though he created us with these inclinations, he knew that when it came to his circle of life, these God-given abilities would become disabilities.

When God provided manna for his people in the desert, he stipulated that they were only allowed to gather as much as each person could use in one day except on the day before the Sabbath when they could collect enough for two days. Anything over and above what they needed for the day would rot, stink and become infested by maggots. Of course, some of them didn’t listen. They gathered more than they needed and then found out that God wasn’t joking and that there definitely was no point in stockpiling the manna. Nobody got to have more than they needed.

In the first reading, Moses says to the Israelites, “He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna…” We are indeed humbled when we are completely dependant on someone else to provide all that we need to live. It is hard on our pride when we cannot ‘own’ the provision we receive, cannot reproduce it, cannot accumulate it as we wish, cannot control it, cannot make it into a power base or use it to increase our status. It stings the pride to receive and not even be able to control how much we receive.

When Jesus came as Manna incarnate, the rules stayed the same. We still can’t own it, control it and stockpile it as if we created it. We could try to impress others with our collection of intellectual knowledge about it but in the end, knowledge doesn’t make much difference to anyone at all. A child, an illiterate peasant, a saint, the Pope, a bishop, a priest or a layperson are completely equal and equally in need at the table of the Lord. All must come humbly and empty to receive the food needed for the journey. All are welcome and no one is more welcome than anyone else. A child will receive the same amount as a Pope. Positions, qualities, quantities, definitions, value systems, knowledge – all the things we love to collect and store away - none of these things are important. The important thing is to come empty and receive.

God knew that if we were allowed to collect and hoard the Bread of Life, we would start to feel like we are the ones in control and that we are the ones who are responsible for satiating our own hunger. We would make sure we had more than enough for our own needs and then we would stop coming to the table. We would stop being humble and needy. Worst of all, we would begin to lose the understanding that in order to have life and have it to the full we need to constantly return to the Lord to receive his food. And with Jesus as Manna, a new dimension was added to God’s provision for us. We still only receive only what we are given – and then we have to give it away!

If we receive the Body and Blood and then go away to live our own life without making our Bread of Life available to others, without ever being sensitive to the needs of those around us and without seeking to freely share all that we have received, then we have gone once again into collect and hoard mode. And we all know what happened to the manna that was hoarded. It rotted, developed maggots and it stank. It definitely was not filled with Bonus Odor Christi: the Good Fragrance of Christ. This is not a pleasant picture but truly, the table of the Lord cannot be just a personal fast food stop. We are receiving the nature of Manna incarnate and the nature of the Christ-manna is to freely give himself away. When he was on earth, he hoarded nothing. He gave it all so that we could have it all and when we have it all, we have to give it all. It doesn’t work any other way.

The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is the Celebration of the Circle of Generous Life: you come empty, you receive the finest wheat, not because you are deserving but because you are loved, you give it all away, even to those who don’t deserve it and then you come back empty to receive again. Then somewhere along the way you joyfully discover that, “a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over has been poured into your lap.” (Luke 6.38)

It’s the only way to have Life and have it to the full.

The Divine Proportions of the Trinity

2011-06-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

Exodus 34: 6 (from the first reading)

The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

John 3: 16 (from the Gospel)

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

(Blessing) May almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’ve been thinking about visual weight today. Let me rephrase that. I’ve been obsessing about visual weight today.

Anyone who has decorated a home, composed a photograph or a piece of art, laid out a page, arranged some flowers or done anything that has artistic elements to it has knowingly or unknowingly dealt with visual weight. A large painting with a dark heavy frame on a wall has a lot of visual weight and a similar sized delicate painting with a narrow light colored frame has much less visual weight. If you have the two situated on either side of a wall, it will feel like the room has the potential of tipping over on the side of the heavy item. It feels uncomfortable and out of balance.

As I was assessing and obsessing on how to balance out the visual weight of an item on a wall, I thought briefly that I should be getting down to writing the reflection for Trinity Sunday. As I thought about that, I recalled an image that always used to come to mind whenever I thought about the Trinity.

First, there was God, the Father, the Almighty: the spiritual heavyweight of the Three in One. My personal image of him probably came from the Old Testament: omnipotent, powerful, a God who filled the heavens with his glorious awesome presence and was definitely not someone to take lightly. His expression was stern. The God of Tough Love.

Next came Jesus, his Son. He loomed large in the line up but his presence was more light-filled than his Father’s presence. Whereas the Father was surrounded by thunderclouds, the clouds Jesus stood on were fluffy and benign. His expression was one of forgiveness but it was always tinged with an ever-present disappointment. “How could you do this to me?”

Then came the Holy Spirit. I think. It was pretty hard to see him. He didn’t seem to have much form or shape at all, let alone a facial expression. He was a shimmering feathery wind with little bits of flame here and there. He didn’t seem to have a real personality or will of his own but was there to carry out the wishes of the Father and the Son. If the word ‘issue’ could be painted, I guess that’s what the Holy Spirit looked like to me. Maybe. Hard to tell. If only he would have stayed still for a minute I might have been able to make out more detail. He was the visual lightweight of the three and non-threatening.

Of course, these images flashed through my mind in the space of a second but what struck me was the visual imbalance of what I used to imagine the Trinity to look like. I don’t think I’m alone in having these subconscious images, mostly because these images reflect how a lot of artists have portrayed one or the other of the Trinity down through the ages. They are common images.

And very misleading.

It’s misleading to have any images of any one of the Trinity at all just because of our limited capacity to understand God. St. Augustine said something to the effect that anything we say about God or anything we envision him to be will be more wrong than it is right. Thomas Aquinas, after contributing so much to Catholic theology as well as composing amazing hymns had, near the end of his life, a mystical experience of God that caused him to write, "All that I have written appears to be as much straw after the things that have been revealed to me."

When we envision the Trinity and see three different manifestations of God’s nature, we are unwittingly dividing him into separate entities and putting each of these individual sets of characteristics into little boxes. And what are we supposed to do with these interesting boxed frozen images? Put them up high somewhere outside of us? Go and look at them when we want to pray, keeping a respectful distance between them and ourselves? Without thinking about it, we create static images with imbalanced weights. Often, we choose a favorite image, one that we feel most at ease with, one that doesn’t make us feel threatened, uncomfortable or out of balance.

It’s not easy to grasp the reality of the Trinity but the importance of that reality is one of the reasons why we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity. There are no different visual weights within the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity is fully and completely God. To put it in very human terms, every quark, lepton and boson (sub-atomic particles – and yes, I did have to look them up) of God is present in all three persons of the Trinity. Every thought, every shape of wisdom, every powerful movement and every atom of sacrificial love and unbounded creativity is fully present and active in God the Father, in God the Son and in God the Holy Spirit.

It would seem harmless but by divvying them up in our heads, we dilute our own grasp of the full power and love of God. By making the Father symbolic of one certain aspect of God and Jesus symbolic of another aspect while the Holy Spirit comes and goes hither and yon, we subtract elements of God from each one of the three, making each of them, in our minds, much less than they really are.

To show you what I mean, the next time you read something from the Gospels, substitute ‘the Father’ for the name of Jesus. I wrote a Good Friday reflection last year and I said that the Father did not abandon Jesus on the cross to suffer alone. The Father was on the cross with him suffering exactly the same things Jesus was suffering. Where was the Holy Spirit in all this? On the cross, dying horribly. We cannot put the Trinity in different places feeling and doing divergent things like random characters in a story.

We read in this week’s gospel the famous passage from John 3: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ You might as well read that as, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave himself, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

What difference will all this make to your spiritual life? Does it seem like what I’ve been writing is all a matter of semantics, something for theologians to quibble about but has little to do with the day-to-day struggles you have? Is there something in all of this that could transform your prayer life and your relationship with God?

It could, if you take the time to contemplate your own strong but very limited images of the Trinity in order to see that the little boxes are too tight, too small and too static. It could, if you begin to feel like you never really knew God at all and that every picture you’ve ever had of him was more wrong than right. It could, if you are suddenly set adrift in a mystery so profound that all you can do is begin to blindly trust in an eternal kindness and steadfast love so immense that there is no way you can ever hope to capture, visualize, or define them adequately. It could, if you begin to realize that prayer should be less ‘to’ someone and should be more ‘in and with’ someone, an entwined intimacy so complex that words become like straw when it comes to precisely describing who you are with – or who you are when you’re with him.

The Trinity is the deepest, heaviest ocean of lightness and balance you could ever find. You cannot judge them visually or describe them adequately. Staying outside of them will keep you uncomfortable and a little out of balance; you can only take a deep breath, plunge into their midst and trust that what you are unable to define is what is able to save you.

May almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pentecost: Making Room For The Creator

2011-06-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

John 20: 19-23

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

Pentecost: a time of renewal and change. Before Pentecost Sunday comes around, we spend time praying that the Holy Spirit will descend upon us in a fresh way to open our hearts and create growth and expansion. On Pentecost Sunday, we sing to the Spirit and ask him to come to fill our hearts and enkindle in us the fire of his love. At the end of Mass, we receive the blessings of Pentecost and are sent out as the disciples were sent by Jesus.

Then on Monday, life returns to normal and nothing feels new or changed at all.

All of us would love to sense the power of the Spirit working in our lives and experience a lively awareness of dynamic changes taking place in our hearts. We yearn to feel the breath of God blowing over us, healing and creating us. We thirst for the Spirit to move within us and fill us with joy. We are all very open to that so why does Pentecost often come and go leaving us feeling like nothing much has changed at all?

Perhaps it has to do with our thought habits and what kinds of perceptions we are locked into. When Jesus appeared to the disciples in today’s gospel, they were locked fearfully in a room. Their hearts, minds and spirits were in disarray and the future, from their perspective was depressing and distressing. Within that locked room, Jesus breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ but it was not at that point that the Spirit began to energize them with power and enthusiasm from on high. A few things had to happen first.

We know that Jesus’ words, ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained,’ foreshadowed the sacrament of reconciliation but let me just put another little twist on them. Perhaps Jesus was also letting them know that before anything could happen, they had to forgive themselves and each other for their failures during his arrest and crucifixion. They had to get past laying the blame for their own defeat and each other’s inadequacies before they would be ready to receive the power of the Spirit.

Between the time he breathed on them in the locked room and the time when the Spirit filled them with power in the upper room, Jesus was at work healing their self-inflicted wounds and inner self-loathing. He filled them with peace and hope. He served them. He told them he loved them and would never abandon them. He told them the Father loved them and would always be with them. We are privy to a beautiful moment of healing and reconciliation between Jesus and Peter when Jesus asked him three times, “Peter, do you love me?” Before the Spirit could fill these men with power, they needed to have their attitudes of self-blame, their fears of rejection, their expectations of condemnation and their pessimistic outlooks healed and changed. It is very possible that there were unnamed disciples who refused to believe in the love of Jesus and refused to trust in his love in spite of Jesus’ appearances and reassurances. Scripture mentions that at the Ascension there were disciples present who still had lots of doubts. It is quite possible that a number of these disciples could or would not allow themselves to be healed of their cynicism and simply went their own gloomy way, missing the visitation of the Spirit on Pentecost.

Reconciliation is one way we can prepare our hearts for the coming of the Spirit. However, reconciliation, as effective and beautiful as it is, cannot prepare our hearts for the bubbling over of the Spirit within if there is no determination in us to put into practice the hope of the forgiveness received. If we leave the sacrament and immediately allow our regular thought habits to fill us again, we are blocking the flow and movement of the Spirit in our hearts. Note that I didn’t say we are blocking the Spirit from being with us. He is always with us. The question is not whether he is present; it’s whether we can be alive to his presence in order to fully experience and participate in his action in our lives.

What are these thought habits that can block the flow of the Spirit in our lives? Here are a few of the more common ones: self-denigration, blaming others, inner complaining, constant criticism of people and situations, resentment, self-pity… There are lots more but you get the idea. These thought patterns and reactions to daily life become normal and habitual – so habitual that often we aren’t even aware that we are engaging in unhealthy negative behavior. These thought patterns are addictive. In the short term, they give us a kind of satisfaction when we engage in them but in the long term, they form us. The longer we think in the negative, the more negative our lives become. These thought habits become our creators.

There’s a prayer we often pray, “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created…” If we are serious about allowing the creativity of the Holy Spirit to form and shape our lives and have full reign in our spirits, then we must be open to building new and different habits of thinking and reacting. We must be willing to replace old negative thought habits with new life giving ones. We must be willing to prepare our hearts so that the Spirit will find within us an environment that is compatible with his holy and exceedingly positive nature.

St Paul says in Philippians 4.8: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Paul knew the power of thoughts and attitudes and how negative thoughts could not only tear apart individual hearts but whole families and communities as well. It’s easy to find what’s wrong with ourselves, with other people and with situations around us and focus on those things but we are called to discover what’s right about ourselves and everything around us and to keep our hearts and minds focused on these things. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. The Spirit is not a dark faultfinder. He is the High Celebrant of all that is good and beautiful.

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt and ego. The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,

"Which wolf will win?"

The old chief simply replied,

"The one you feed."

The Ascension: Home Is Where The Heart Is

2011-05-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

Matthew 28: 16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, "Hope")

In the Sunday gospels of the past two weeks, Jesus was emphasizing our oneness with him. He is in the Father, the Father is in him, he is in us and he will never leave us. Therefore, the feast of the Ascension is not just the celebration of Jesus ascending to heaven; it is also the celebration of our ascendance into heaven with him. This is the anniversary of us becoming Kingdom citizens. If the kingdom of God is within you, then you are in heaven with Christ.

I can just hear your brains turning over: “This sure doesn’t feel like heaven to me.”

One of the most significant turning points in my spiritual life was when I understood that I was not made for this world. Scripture says that we all are “aliens and exiles” or “visitors and pilgrims”. (1 Peter 2: 11, 12) If you accept this as truth, it can make a difference in how you relate to this crazy world. You are in it but not of it, you are a nomad traversing a desert region, you are a stranger in a strange land. You are a landed immigrant, familiar with all the attitudes and customs of the world but not completely at home within it.

The other day I was in a store and a fellow with a lovely British accent commented on what I was holding. While we were talking, he was reminiscing about “the Old Country.” That certainly wasn’t the first time I had heard England referred to as the Old Country but it had been a while and when he said it, it struck me somewhere deep inside. What it stirred up in me was a sense of the Kingdom of God. I have roots in God’s country or ‘the Old Country’ and sometimes it almost feels like I have deep-seated memories of…something. I don’t know what. All I know is that there are moments when something catches my eye, I read a few lines, hear someone speak some words or hear some song lyrics and suddenly I feel like I’ve caught an ephemeral glimpse of my real home. I get homesick.

What do I see? What do I feel? What do I hear? Nothing. Everything. I see the colors of desire. I feel a stir of excitement. I want to weep but I want to laugh more. I hear a voice that’s nothing like a voice saying words that are nothing like words. All I know is that it’s as if a window was briefly opened and I was graced with a whiff of a fragrant, light filled breeze from ‘the Old Country’. I’m always waiting and watching for these glimpses that often come from unexpected sources. I can’t make them happen. The Spirit’s breeze blows in his own good time.

What do these glimpses do for me besides give me a moment of sheer pleasure? They offer me tangible reminders that if I belong to a place so graciously beautiful and so familiar it hurts, it must mean that I am more than what the world would have me believe I am. In this world, I am faced constantly with irrational, unhealthy and distorted goals, goals that are almost impossible to attain. Even if I were to achieve one small goal such as, say, a perfect body, I would immediately be faced with a mountain of ideals I have not attained. In themselves, many of these ideals would seem to be admirable but living in a broken world causes a subtle perversion of these desires. This perversion skews our perceptions and contaminates the purity of the goals. When we think we are simply reaching for a good and worthy ideal, most often what we are trying to attain is acceptance. We desperately want to be accepted and, even more ideally, admired. Much of what we do is to gain approval, fit into the ‘norm’ and show that we are worthwhile. We ache to be considered valuable.

There is a place where we have immense intrinsic value. The ‘Old Country’. Home. This is a place where we have (not just ‘will have’) great beauty and dignity. This is where Jesus went to prepare a dwelling place for each of us. If it were not so would he have told us? His ascension in his glorified body was the grand finale of his saving act – he became the indestructible bridge back to our original home, the place where we truly belong, where we are higher than the angels, a place where we are infinitely worthwhile.

Don’t get me wrong. Being in touch with our kingdom value doesn’t mean we can’t fail, do the wrong thing, say things we shouldn’t, harbor anger or resentment and generally get on the wrong track. But I’ve personally noticed that I am most susceptible to sin when I am focusing on the values of this world and wasting energy on actions designed to gain control and elicit approval, acceptance or admiration. When I am mindful of who I really am, where I came from and where I’m going, I am less susceptible to being stuck in the heart-numbing mud of this earth’s ‘approval mill’. It’s amazing, really, how many of our negative or sinful actions stem from a deep inner need to simply be recognized and loved, which is what we’re really wanting when we seek approval. We just want to know we’re wholly loved, accepted and admired for who we really are – not for what we suspect everybody thinks we should be. Actually, we’d like to know we are more than loved. We understand that God loves us. What we really want to know is that God delights in who we are.

An anonymous person once wrote that we were put here on earth to help each other get home. Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he commissioned the disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” In other words, he commissioned the disciples – and us – to help the world come home.

Next Sunday, June 12^th, is the feast of Pentecost. Why not spend the time from now until that wonderful feast day praying that the Holy Spirit will awaken within you a deep abiding sense of where you really belong…

…and who you are when you’re at home.

Back To The Circle of Love

2011-05-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

John 14: 15-21

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’

Here are a few simple questions: Do you love Jesus? Why? Do you follow him because you have experienced his love for you or because you’re afraid not to?

John, the beloved disciple, loved Jesus. He wasn’t simply attracted to him because Jesus was so different or excited by him because of the miracles he witnessed. He didn’t just follow Jesus because he was looking for an ideology that would create a new political order of freedom and justice. Naturally, he didn’t follow Jesus just because his parents did nor because he thought that if he didn’t, God would be angry with him. He simply really loved Jesus. Peter and the other disciples loved Jesus as well but John intuitively picked up on who Jesus really was and what he was all about. Of all the male disciples, John was the only one who stood by the cross and watched Jesus die. His love for Jesus took him beyond fear of repercussions; he just had to be there. Jesus loved John, too, and because of John’s great love for him, he revealed himself to John. John was given a gift of seeing beyond the surface of Jesus’ words. He saw the heart of Jesus and understood the Spirit of his words.

In both chapters 13 and 15 of John, the commandment Jesus gave his disciples was, “Love one another.” In chapter 13, he finished washing the disciple’s feet and then gave them the commandment to love one another just as he had loved them. Again, in chapter 15 he said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John, alone, recorded these particular words of Jesus.

John understood that love formed the pivotal part not only of Jesus’ message but also of Jesus’ complete nature. John understood that without the holy circle of love relationship, all the words Jesus ever spoke would dwindle into another set of laws. Dead laws. John knew that love within relationship holds the key to kingdom life.

You, as a Christian, understand that loving others is important. That’s something all of us have been taught from when we were little. However, you cannot effectively love unless you have experienced love. You need to have personal encounters with the love of Christ. You need to fall in love with him so that he can reveal himself to you and show you that he is in you, you are in him and you are loved deeply by both him and the Father. How else can you love others? How can you give something if you haven’t received it?

It’s wonderful if you had a deep encounter with Jesus at some point in your life. This kind of experience can totally change anyone’s life - but once is not enough. You need to continue to seek him, watch for him and listen to him. You need to yearn to spend time with him the way a lover yearns to spend time with the beloved. Because it’s so easy to be caught up in the demands of everyday life, long stretches of time can slip by and the desire to spend time with him slips by with it. Gradually, the knowledge of his personality can become hazy and the sense of how loved you are also becomes indistinct. He starts to look more like a taskmaster and a stern judge or you start to feel like he’s a distant and disconnected God; he becomes simply an image, someone ‘out there somewhere’ rather than a real person closely connected with your every thought and movement.

If the understanding of how loved you are has slipped away, the one word that will jump out at you in this week’s gospel is ‘commandments’. That’s because when you lose the love relationship, everything in your head gets distilled into law and punishment. You hear what you ‘should’ be doing, you see all that you’re not doing and guilt sets in making you determined to try harder and get your act together. There’s certainly nothing wrong with endeavoring to do what you should be doing but Jesus wants so much more for you. St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that unless you have love, nothing you do will have any meaning anyway; you’ll be like a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. Jesus is love so really what St. Paul is saying is that unless you are in Jesus and unless you have a love relationship with the author of all love, your love lacks the power and effectiveness he promised to his followers.

If you are walking in relationship with Jesus, however, what will jump out in this week’s gospel is how much love there is in those verses. Jesus instructs his disciples but he also reassures them and gives them great reason to hope. They don’t understand that in a very short while he will die a horrible death by crucifixion but Jesus speaks words of consolation to them anyway. He says he will never leave them. They will not be abandoned or orphaned. He says he will send an Advocate, a helper, someone who will teach them everything they need to know and support them in everything they do. He speaks again of their connection to the Father because of their love for him. Even though they are confused and ignorant of what’s coming and even though he knows they will fail, fall and betray him, Jesus loves them and completely accepts the love they have for him, imperfect as it is. This scripture passage brims over with immense love and promise.

In case it’s been a while since you have spent time in the company of Jesus, have forgotten what he’s really like and are feeling a certain stern distance separating you from him, I’m going to remind you of the nature of his voice. Go back to 1 Corinthians 13 and Paul’s description of love. Jesus is not only the source of love – he is love. So, from this scripture, you know that Jesus is patient and kind. He is not envious, boastful or arrogant and rude. Jesus does not react out of the wounded ego like we do. He does not insist on his own way; he will not coerce you or brow beat you into doing his will and he shows you the difference between conviction and condemnation. He is not irritable or resentful. He does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but delights in the truth. Have you ever experienced Jesus’ delight in you? After all, you are a baptized child of God and there is a great deal of truth within you. Jesus bears all things, believes all things (he believes in you!), hopes all things and endures all things. His love never ends.

The description of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians also has some great definitions of Jesus’ nature. He is loving, joyful, peaceful, generous, good, faithful and gentle. These things are not laws. They are the natural characteristics of Christ and he desires to make them your natural characteristics so that you no longer act lovingly because you should but because it’s your desire to share all that you have received.

Do you love Jesus? Do you know why? Have you been with him lately accepting the love he has for you?

Perhaps it’s time.

Home is Wherever I'm With You

2011-05-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

John 14: 1-12

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’

Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

Whenever I read this Gospel passage, I feel like I’m looking at an intricately woven tapestry, a tapestry where the threads are the Father, Jesus and us. To find the Father thread, you have to find the Jesus thread. Follow the Jesus thread and there is the Father; follow the Father thread and there is Jesus. And then there are all the other threads weaving in, through and around the main threads. These threads are us and we are woven deeply into this tapestry called Kingdom Life.

What a nice picture. The only thing is, Jesus never tried to simply paint pretty pictures for us; whatever he said and taught was the blood and guts of real life so when we come across a passage like this week’s gospel, we need to stop and ask, “Do I really understand what Jesus is saying here or am I as confused about what it all means as Philip was?” No doubt, you all accept what is said in this Gospel but accepting is not the same as walking moment by moment trying to grasp the meaning of the fact that we are in Christ and he is in the Father and the Father is in him and they are both within us.

Each one of us is someone who, through baptism, has a share in the ‘pleroma’ of Christ. The ‘pleroma’ is the fullness of the Godhead that dwells within Christ. In other words, we have a share in the fullness of the Godhead. Listen again. We have a share in the fullness of the Godhead. That’s kind of hard to take in and comprehend but in the second reading, Peter gives us a picture of what it looks like to share in the pleroma of Jesus. Instead of the picture of a tapestry, he gets down to earth and speaks of stones and a structure.

“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Then he goes on to talk about the cornerstone, which is Christ. A cornerstone isn’t much good unless it is the foundation for a building. We are that building. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Every single one of us was created in order to be a vibrant home for God. The question is, can we be dwelling places by default without us really grasping what it means? Of course we can because God is gracious even when we don’t think we are big enough, smart enough, worthy enough or important enough to be a dwelling place for the most high God. But when we do grasp it, when we believe that we have been incorporated into the pleroma of Christ and when we begin to walk in the grace and dignity of our calling, that’s when we become dynamic dwelling places for the Father and Jesus. That’s when we “in fact, will do greater works than these…” because Jesus went back to the Father in order that we could enter into the mind boggling mystery of living in God and having him live within us at the same time.

“If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” I don’t believe Jesus was only speaking of a nice place we can go when we die although I’m sure that’s part of it. Jesus was saying he was going home to the Father in order to establish a place for each of us within his pleroma – within his Godhead. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, we who are baptized are given the right to live within the fullness of God as well as become dwelling places for the Father and Jesus just as he and the Father dwell in each other.

John 6:56. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.

John 14:20. On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

1 John 2:24. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father.

Colossians 2: 9,10. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.

Scripture is clear about who we are. If this is all true, then what are you doing about it? No, no, I don’t mean how are you serving the church. That’s absolutely part of the picture but it’s a part that becomes much more effective after you have come to grips with your identity in the Kingdom. What I’m asking you in particular is what do you believe about who you really are and about your relationship to and with Jesus and the Father? It is so easy to lapse into seeing yourself simply as a scruffy child, a befuddled disciple, a wandering sheep, a loose thread in the tapestry or a pebble stuck into a tiny chink of a grand building: not terribly important nor truly necessary to the complete structure and probably not someone God would be contented to dwell within.

It doesn't please the Father’s heart when we see ourselves that way. I’m not suggesting it’s an offense to God but it must be hard on his heart when he creates a wondrous work of art and the art refuses to believe in its own beauty or when he creates a dwelling place for himself but the door keeps being shut in his face.

Jesus died and rose again and now not only does he dwell in the Father and the Father in him but both of them dwell in you. This is astounding. This is utterly amazing. This is the Good News of the Kingdom. It’s kind of like the Gospel of both “Being at Home” and “Being a Home”.

In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God. (Ephesians 2:22)

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. (Rev. 3:20)

We need to understand that each one of us was created to be a dynamic, effective, living spiritual structure; not a poor cold empty building but a rich family home full of life and ministry.

It’s time to throw open our doors.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3: 14-19)

The Eyes of a Shepherd

2011-05-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

John 10: 1-10

‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

And it's you and me and all of the people and

I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you.

(Lifehouse, ‘You and Me’)

I have learned to pay attention to small random occurrences. Most of the time there’s no significance but every once in a while there is.

I was going around doing some things, thinking about what I was going to write about this week’s Gospel when I realized I had a small part of this song looping through my head and one part was really penetrating my consciousness and evoking in me a kind of yearning and recognition that made my spirit want to fly and weep at the same time. The song is one that was popular a few years ago. Most of the song is not significant at all. What I realized I was hearing repeatedly was, “I can’t keep my eyes off of you.” On top of that, the very same words from a song by Damien Rice (Blower’s Daughter) were also weaving in and around through my mind: “I can’t keep my eyes off of you.” I haven’t heard either song recently so I paid attention. If you aren't familiar with either song, you can listen to them here (it's important to remember that though the words of each song are good, the part of each that pertains to this blog are the words "I can't keep my eyes off of you."): Blower's Daughter: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YXVMCHG-Nk and You and Me: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzFuL_RteXc

Shepherds, the true shepherds Jesus was talking about, could not keep their eyes off their flock. This wasn’t just a matter of keeping a watch on valuable goods simply because it was their job; this was real love. True shepherds were intimately connected with every individual sheep in the flock. True shepherds were always watching to make sure each sheep was well fed, safe and comfortable.

Comfortable? Yes…comfortable.

• “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” A shepherd would go ahead of the flock, find good pastures for grazing and make sure there were no predators and no poisonous plants. A sheep that is lying down is a sheep that feels secure.

• “He leads me beside still waters”. Sheep will not drink from rushing, running water. It frightens them. The shepherd would find clean, still pools for his flock.

•“Your rod and staff comfort me.” The rod and staff weren’t just symbols of protection and discipline. When the sheep went into the enclosure at night, the shepherd would ‘lay down the rod’. Only one sheep could enter the narrow gate at a time and every sheep was examined, its fleece combed through with the rod as the shepherd looked for ticks, burrs and other irritants that might keep the sheep from resting comfortably.

•“You anoint my head with oil.” Flies were a terrible bother to sheep and, if they were irritated by flies, they would be restless and upset and not eat or rest. The shepherd would pour oil on the sheep’s head to keep the flies away.

• “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” At night, after the sheep were examined individually and were at rest in the enclosure, the shepherd would lie across the narrow gate. Nothing could get in and nothing could get out without the shepherd being aware of it. Jesus is the gate and no one gets in or out except through him.

It’s no wonder the Pharisees in this week’s Gospel didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about. They had never been true shepherds, not literally nor figuratively. He was implying that they were the thieves and bandits who came before him. They were thieves and bandits because they did not love the sheep nor did they care for the flock’s comfort and safety. They did not minister lovingly to the flock but ruled with arrogance and selfishness, robbing the flock of its basic needs while attending only to their own love of status, power and authority.

Jesus was having none of that. He could not abide false shepherds who did not love his people, his sheep, the way he did. The way he still does. His heart raged at those who called themselves shepherds but had no concern for the lost, the ‘cast down’ (sheep that had somehow gotten onto their backs and were unable to get back on their feet), the lame, the harried, the anxious, the hungry and the thirsty. The rules were more important than mercy and compassion.

“… I can’t keep my eyes off of you.”

I was perusing a National Geographic magazine recently and there was a heart-rending photo of a shepherd boy weeping in utter devastation and grief because a vehicle had run into and killed six of his sheep. The photo was called “Inconsolable”.

“… I can’t keep my eyes off of you.”

If a sheep was prone to wandering off on its own, the shepherd would use the rod to break its leg – and then the shepherd would carry it everywhere until its leg was healed. By the time the leg healed, the sheep was deeply attached to the shepherd and no longer desired to wander. I don’t know about you but I’ve had my spiritual legs broken a few times. I didn’t want to be carried. I wanted to run, be free, do my own thing and fix my own problems. It didn’t feel right to be incapable and it was uncomfortable to be carried. But now…

“… I can’t keep my eyes off of you.”

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

He came to take back his flock, to lead his sheep through the Cross - through the mountain valleys up to green pastures of abundant food in the high plateaus, places that could only be safely reached by moving through the shadowed valley. He came to rescue his people from the cruelty of the ones who had left the flock to wander alone in the dry wilderness. He came to rescue his own from the ones who had taken their eyes off the flock and no longer cared for the wellbeing and comfort of the sheep.

He can’t keep his eyes off of you.

Feel the Burn

2011-05-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

Luke 24: 13-18 and 25-28 (complete reading: Luke 24: 13-35)

Now on that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about 11 kilometers from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days…”

Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’

There’s a lot more than this to this week’s Gospel than what's above but let’s just zero in on this scene for a minute. Visualize yourself walking along with these two men, listening in as they seriously discuss this whole Jesus situation, both of them struggling with huge disappointment that he wasn’t the Messiah after all. It had all seemed so hopeful, so promising and exciting but now…what a gong show! The whole city was in a state of shock. Everybody was in a flap and all were talking about it, not just his followers. Nobody could believe the priests had gone ahead and actually had him crucified. So many were appalled at how awful Jesus had looked as he carried his cross up to Golgotha, not like a Messiah at all. Most were sharing about where they were when the earth started quaking and how frightening it was. Everyone had heard about the body being missing and there were speculations about where the Romans might have moved the body. Hypotheses were made, opinions were firmly stated, gossip was rampant and rumors were flying. The two men were talking about it all because there was nothing else to talk about.

“Mary said she saw him.”

“Nah, she never saw him. I heard she just saw a gardener and thought it was him. Mary’s a nice woman but not too reliable.”

“Well, the tomb was definitely empty anyway. Some of the women plus Peter and John saw that.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Lucas said the Romans moved him a couple of hours after they sealed the tomb with a stone.”

“How does Lucas know that?”

“I heard he was talking to some Pharisees and they told him that’s what the High Priest had asked the Romans to do. Lucas thinks they took his body right out of Jerusalem so there’s no chance of it being found.”

“Well, no matter where he is now, he’s dead. I guess we have to face up to the fact that he wasn’t the Messiah after all. The Messiah would never have allowed himself to be nailed to a cross like a common criminal. So…what he was really all about we’ll never know.”

“ All I know is I’m not hanging around Jerusalem waiting for the Romans to pick me up. Those women are crazy going around saying they’ve seen angels and that he’s alive. That’s all the priests are waiting for – an excuse to round us all up.”

Then this total stranger comes up to them. Doesn’t know a thing. Never heard of Jesus, the Nazarene. What’s with this guy? Everybody has heard of the Nazarene. He asks them to fill him in and so they do. They talk and talk about the Jesus they saw and heard. They talk about the miracles they witnessed and the ones they only heard about. They tell him about the impact he had on everyone. They talk about what everybody thought he was and what everybody said about him. They tell him about the rumors they’ve heard. They talk about how everyone’s excitement has been extinguished and their dreams shattered. Hope is gone and everything is as dreary and miserable as it was before he came. They talk until there’s no more to say.

Then this strange guy has the gall to say, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!”

I can just hear their thoughts. “Foolish? Foolish? Who does this man think he is? He wasn’t even there. He didn’t even know who Jesus of Nazareth was until we told him. What right has he got to call us fools as if we’re idiots?”

It’s interesting that when we read that line where Jesus says, ‘Oh, how foolish you are,” most of us assume that his tone of voice is one of derision, a tone where we could easily replace the word ‘foolish’ with ‘idiotic’ or ‘stupid’. But in this instance, what Jesus was saying was not that they were stupid; he was saying they were being heedless of all the facts. They weren’t considering the whole picture. They weren’t looking for the divine design or seeking God’s light to illuminate his patterns. They weren’t paying attention.

We’re not like that, right?

Oh, how foolish they were… they needed to pay attention. They had witnessed the wondrous culmination of God’s complete plan of salvation and all they could see was the failure, the loss, the grief and the confusion. All they listened for were words that confirmed their worst suspicions and fears. All they wanted to talk about was why he failed, how he failed and perhaps even that they knew all along he would fail. As long as they could talk, analyze and critique, they felt a little more in control, a little less vulnerable.

But in order to see the larger picture, they needed to lose the thoughts, lose the fear, lose the opinions, lose the limited focus, lose the chaos of words, words, words and…

Pay attention! They needed to pay attention.

Pay attention to what? Perhaps to a single bird singing at dusk, alone but triumphant and strong. Words can’t do it anymore. Words skim the surface and twist it. We line them up in our heads, dig them out, push them around, shape and reshape them, lay them out and then walk away still carrying them. And the birdsong is drowned out.

Pay attention:

To the sky between the notes of the one bird song. To a rarely calm ocean, so still it reflects the deepening burnished sky. Bird song. Still ocean. A sky smeared with the silver of soft beginnings.

Pay attention. Not to the chaos but to the still patterns of God’s incredible design.

In the beginning was the Word. The Word became seed, became lamb, became carved stone, became bread, became flesh, became Word, became lamb, became bread, became full circle…

Pay attention.

In the beginning was the Word. In the end was a cross. In the end was the beginning. The Word.

Pay attention to the design within the patterns, to the spaces between the notes, to the meaning behind all the text.

What was lost became found…what was empty became full, what was broken became healed, what was question became answer, what was death became life… full circle.

Have you found your full circle – any full circle? Do you worship a full spectrum God who creates complex patterns, fascinating eternal fractals and divine proportions - or a black and white linear God? Pay attention.

Let all your words float away. Pay attention to the only Word that matters.

The Word that will set your heart aflame.

Rest In Peace (Divine Mercy)

2011-04-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

John 20: 19

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

The grace and peace of God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you…Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth…Grant us your peace in this life…Deliver us, Lord, from every evil and grant us peace in our day… Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid…The peace of the Lord be with you always… let us offer each other a sign of peace…Go in peace to love and serve the Lord… and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus…Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

O.K. Hands up: How many of you have stood in the midst of the chaos of your life and desperately wondered where this peace is that Jesus is supposed to have given to you? How many of you feel that 'peaceful' is pretty much the last thing you feel most of the time? How many of you have decided that the gift of peace has not been given to you because you’re doing something wrong? You don’t exactly know what it is you’re doing wrong but it must be your fault that this peace that Christ promised his followers is so elusive or generally unattainable.

All right, we can all put our hands down now. I doubt if there are too many Christian people who have never felt the sting of a lack of peace in their lives or felt like they would never be able to achieve a spirituality so virtuous that peace would never again storm off, banging the door on its way out. When we think of peace we think of and yearn for a state of absolute calm where nothing rocks the inner boat and nothing causes anxiety, stress, fear or tension. The problem is, when it comes to the peace of Christ, that’s the wrong definition.

In a previous reflection called ‘Mission: Completed’ (Feb. 15, 2011), I offered another meaning for the word perfection. It was ‘complete’. “Be complete even as your heavenly Father is complete.” In the reflection I wrote for last Easter Sunday (Standing Empty at the Tomb), I suggested that Mary was not allowed to cling to Jesus because he still had to ascend to the Father; his mission had not yet been completed and therefore her understanding of him and of her relationship to him was incomplete. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus says, not once but twice, “Peace be with you.” Guess what the Hebrew word for peace (shalom) means.

The verb shalam literally means to make whole or complete. The noun shalom has the more literal meaning of being in a state of wholeness or with no deficiency. (Ancient Hebrew Word Meanings. Peace ~ shalom. Jeff A. Benner)

The definition also says: The verb form of the root word is shalam, usually used in the context of making restitution. When a person has caused another to become deficient in some way, it is the responsibility of the person who created the deficiency to restore what has been taken, lost or stolen.

When Jesus said, Peace be with you,” to his disciples, he was saying, “Don’t be afraid; everything is all right. I have accomplished what I came to accomplish. By my death and resurrection, I took on your responsibility and I made full payment, cleared the debt and completed the transaction. I have restored you to the Father. Be at peace.”

If we define the peace of Christ as a state of undisturbed serenity and spend our energy looking for it and yearning for it, it’s the same as searching through a big loaf of bread for grains of yeast and when we can’t find the yeast, saying, “I have no yeast. There is no yeast. It must be my fault that I have lost the yeast.” Peace is the yeast of our bread. Christian peace is not one thing nor is it a simple state of being without stress or anxiety although it can manifest itself that way at times. Peace is the medium in which we live move and have our being. Peace is Christ and we cannot reduce Christ into any one simple thing or state because he is a whole and complex person – far deeper and far more complex than any human being. In the kingdom life, if you say, “I have peace,” what you are really saying is, “I have Jesus and everything that he is.” If you pray for peacefulness, you will be shown Christ who became the restitution for your brokenness and your exemption from the crippling and impossible responsibility of paying for all the damage the world, the flesh and devil has ever tried or will try to do to God.

Peace is the water of life in which you were baptized and in which you swim daily by the utter grace of God. Peace is the strong foundation of your faith. Peace is the spiritual air you breathe even when you’re not thinking about breathing it. I’m quite aware that I’m mixing my metaphors all over the place here but my point is that Jesus is our All in All and if we used every metaphor the world has to offer, we couldn’t even begin to give any sort of an idea of all that he is for us or all that he did for us. We just need to be so chuffed that he is OURS! He gave himself to us and he gave himself for us thereby creating peace between the Father and us. We are blessed beyond blessed. The angels are in awe of what we have been given.

If you really had no peace, it would mean you had irrevocably lost Christ and were completely dead to God. If you had really lost your peace, you would know it. It would be the despair to end all despair. I don’t think any of us could survive a moment of truly lost kingdom peace.

The disciples genuinely thought they had lost their peace. They thought Jesus was dead and gone, vanished forever and they were feeling the edges of real despair. Jesus had been with them for three years and I’m sure they were in agony as they considered that they had squandered, wasted and betrayed a treasure beyond all treasures, the Pearl of Great Price. They were lost in the torment of knowing their actions had incurred a debt so impossibly huge that they could understand the despair that caused Judas to hang himself.

Oh, Jesus, my beautiful Jesus. You walked right through the closed doors of despair and you entered that room full of crushed and hopeless men and women. You, who had the right to condemn, immediately and lovingly ministered to their pain. “Peace be with you,” you said. “Peace is with you. See? I am here with you. Look at my wounds. They are the new covenant signed in blood, a covenant that says your debts have been paid in full so that you can have complete and free access to our Father. My peace isn’t easily understood with the mind; it surpasses understanding. It is the peace that comes from having lost everything and then having it all restored to you better than it was before. The world does not understand this kind of peace and has no ability to attain it. But you have it because you have me. I paid the price and I did it because I love you so much.”

Isaiah 53:5 says, “But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.”

Peace is with you. Always has been and always will be because he is with you and he will never leave you or abandon you. Because of the cross, you are safe. You are loved.

Shalom.

Standing Empty At The Tomb

2011-04-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

The following is a reflection for Easter and perhaps should be read after Good Friday. The Holy Thursday reflection has been deleted to keep everything in date order.

When Mary went to the tomb, she was a believer. She believed in the goodness of Jesus’ teachings as far as she understood them. She believed that he had been the most amazing man she had ever encountered. She had come to believe that he was the Messiah sent to bring his people freedom – and she believed he was dead and gone for good. It was that one erroneous belief that filled her with such confusion, grief and pain. The good thing about it was that it brought her to the tomb in a painful state of complete emptiness, drained of hope and sapped of her reason for living. She was a believer and her belief had brought her devastation. You know, to Mary and the other disciples who looked into the tomb, seeing the body gone but the linen cloths still there was worse than just thinking he had been simply moved. To them it looked as though he had been deprived of the last dignity of being wrapped in linen. Whoever moved him hadn’t even had that much respect. It must have ripped them in shreds to see that.

You, too, are a believer. You may be a happy believer or you may be a struggling one but before you go headlong into the Easter season, be a Mary at the tomb just for just a little while. Leave all your knowledge about Jesus, your strong beliefs and your spiritual habits in a small pile on the ground and go as she did to see where they laid the Lord in the tomb. Go in aching sorrow to view him one last time. Go in despair. Go with your dreams shattered. Go stripped, broken, grieving and empty to allow yourself to be confronted by the shocking nucleus of our entire faith: the empty tomb.

When you gaze into that tomb, try to realize that what you are looking at is a stark question of belief. It doesn’t matter how deeply or for how long any of us have believed in the dogma of the risen Christ, we all need to face this unembellished question and face it often. We need to look at our small pile of precepts, understandings and beliefs that we left on the ground and then look again into the empty tomb and try to grasp that unless we have come to terms with the emptiness of our own tombs and have cried out to be shown where the Lord really is, our tidy and correct collection of creeds and dogmas does very little for us. The question we have to deal with is whether we really believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

If our answer is, “Yes, I believe,” then we need to ponder what that actually means.

Whoa! Hold on there! Don’t go running back to that pile you left on the ground at the beginning of this exercise. I know that when you hear the question, “What does it mean to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead?” the first inclination is to run to that pile and pull out all the standard answers. They may be extremely good answers but for the moment, just be a Mary at the tomb. As you stand there, allow yourself to soak in the emotional and spiritual state of a grief of Magdalene proportions. Everything you loved is gone. Your master and your Lord, who was your whole reason for living, is gone. You witnessed him dying horribly on a cross; now he is missing from the tomb. You just wanted to come and be near his body one last time because you never had the chance to say good-bye to him, not one on one, not face to face. You didn’t know that his words about being lifted up meant literally lifted up on a criminal’s cross. You didn’t realize it wasn’t just a disturbing parable or an analogy. All that is left is to be near his dead body but now he’s gone and you don’t know where.

Look again at your pile of beliefs. Mary, too, left behind her a pile of beliefs and desires when she went to the tomb. Nothing was as she thought it would be. Nothing made sense anymore. The future was a bleak empty slate and all that was left inside her was a wild, aching yearning to be with him just one more time. She didn’t want to be with the rest of the community. She didn’t want to discuss endlessly what happened, who did what and why. She didn’t want to hear any more excuses or watch Peter huddled in a corner with his own brand of searing misery. All she wanted was a quiet space to grieve near her beautiful Lord and to not only grieve his death but also the crashing of all her hopes and visions - her small pile of ashes left on the ground. She did not have any theology to fall back on. She didn’t have anyone to whom she could go for spiritual direction, encouragement and maybe some answers. The only one who had all the answers was Jesus and he was gone. Death is death. Gone is gone. There is nothing more brutally final than death. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that. Mary was empty of hope.

It was to this state of complete emptiness that the ‘Gardener’ appeared. Mary probably did not recognize him at first because encountering him alive and well was the last thing she expected. It took the familiarity of him saying her name in the way he had always said it to awaken her to reality. Whenever he said her name before, she felt beautiful, loved and safe. When he said her name at the tomb, there was no mistaking who he was; his voice had been imprinted so deeply upon her soul. It was his voice and nothing else that filled her with living hope.

Be a Mary. Hear your name and allow the dawn of full recognition to slowly light up the darkness within. Let the sound of his voice loving you, recreating you and keeping you safe be imprinted deeply on your soul. Don’t be distracted by all the “shoulds and shouldn’ts” that tend to try to crowd in on our face-to-face encounters with Jesus. This needs to be a moment of pure relationship: desire answered by love, need answered by fulfillment, death answered by life, grief answered by unfettered joy. He has risen indeed!

In the joyous revelation of realizing that Jesus is alive and well, you may be tempted, like Mary, to resurrect your meager pile of beliefs that you left on the ground. Your first thoughts may be, “All is not lost! My dreams, visions and beliefs have not been in vain; they are real because he’s alive!!” But pay attention to what Jesus said to Mary when she clung to him. “Do not hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” In other words, “Don’t cling to me as if nothing has changed and everything is the same as it was before. Don’t hold on to what you thought my mission was or to anything you thought you knew for sure. Everything is still shifting and changing; completion has not yet taken place. Just go and tell my brothers and sisters that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Everything had changed. Mary could not be allowed to hold on to her old ideas; they would only trip her up and keep her from fully participating in the new order of things. They would inhibit her from opening herself to the new and radical dimension of a resurrected Lord. Everything Jesus taught when he was a man walking on the earth was real and true but Mary needed to let go of her half formed perceptions and limited understanding based on the past and allow Jesus to become the door to a completely new Way based on Spirit and Life.

Sometimes we, too, need to have the courage to let our old spiritual habits go, face the empty tomb and simply cry out for a face-to-face encounter with the resurrected Lord.

Be a Mary. Someone is calling your name.

The Conversation

2011-04-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

A Reflection for Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

(The following conversation is fiction. Any resemblance to people living, dead or resurrected is a happy coincidence.)

Jesus, can I be honest with you?

You might as well. I know more about what’s going on in your head and heart than you do.

Ha! Right. Funny how easy it is to forget that and start talking to you as if you just walked into the room and are completely oblivious to the contents of that room. O.K. I’ll start again. You know we’re coming up to Holy Week, Lord…

Indeed you are. Holy Week is my favorite time of the year.

Your favorite time? How can remembering the suffering and agony you went through be your favorite time?

You need to recall that ‘remembering’ is a human activity not totally applicable to the Kingdom but we won’t get into that. I will speak in earthly terms of past, present and future; otherwise, it will get too confusing for you.

In the Kingdom, ‘Holy Week’, as you call it, is a celebration of the highest order and it is an eternal celebration. Of course, the future joy of the Resurrection is a huge part of it but in the Kingdom there is no separation of the two as if there is a before and after to Joy. The thing to realize is that before the Resurrection happened in your timeline, during the time you now call the Triduum, there was a cloud of mystery shrouding a good deal of all that was really occurring.

Was it shrouded to you? I mean, as a man going through the whole ordeal, was it a mystery to you?

After Gethsemane, it wasn’t. That was when Abba completely lifted for me what remained of the cloud. It was then that I was able to fully remember not only the suffering I was to endure but also all that my suffering was going to accomplish. For me it was the Great Culmination of all that had been in process and progress since before the world’s time began. It’s mystery to you because no one on earth has the capacity to fully realize or grasp all that happened in the heavens, under the heavens and through the heavens before, during or after what you call Holy Week. It’s too huge and too awesome for any human to comprehend.

But come…tell me what you were going to say to me ‘in all honesty’.

I was going to say part of what you just said to me. I was going to say that the events we remember and honor during Holy Week are so overwhelming and so bleak that it’s very difficult to grasp it all. I know I try to be very present to the readings and I try to open myself to what it must have been like - not only the agony you went through but also the anguish of those who loved you and had to watch you being arrested, beaten and nailed on the cross. I can’t imagine. That sounds trite but I honestly cannot imagine what it would have been like. So, I find myself viewing it from a distance. It’s almost as if I’m somewhere far away watching it all unfold. I’m reluctant to try to imagine myself any nearer because it almost seems irreverent and intrusive to place myself closer, even in my imagination, to those who were actually there and truly in terrible pain and distress. This makes me feel troubled and sorry. Sorry for not knowing, sorry for not being able to really comprehend and sorry that no matter what, I can never love you or thank you enough for going through what you went through.

Beloved, there are many things that are healthy for you to feel sorrow over but this is not one of them. If you were genuinely uncaring about my death, that would be a different matter but inability to comprehend the depth and height of all that took place during that humanly impenetrable time is not a fault or a sin. It is simply the way it is. My brother, Paul, said it well: you can only see through a glass darkly. What you can see when you envision the crucifixion itself is only a very tiny part of the whole drama that was unfolding – and the only part humanity is able to even begin to grasp.

But it’s an immense part! You’re not saying that we’re looking at something incidental are you?

No, I’m certainly not. It is absolutely the most critical part of the picture but as much as humanity has gleaned about the importance of the crucifixion, no one has even come close to grasping the totality of what led to it, all that actually took place in the heavenly realms during it and what it all meant after, not only to the world but to all of heaven in eternity. As I said before, it’s too big to know. Trying to explain it to even the most brilliant of humans would be like trying to teach a two-year-old quantum physics.

Ah…Beloved. Don’t look so down. You thought you could come to me ‘in all honesty’ and be gifted with a big revelation or epiphany that would connect you deeply to the whole mystery of my death. I could indeed give you a small emotional epiphany but an epiphany often fades away leaving one more dissatisfied than before and perhaps even guilty when it can’t be revived or experienced again in all its intensity. Sometimes it’s better to appreciate and be comfortable with mystery than it is to seek startling but fleeting insights.

Yes, you’re right that I was hoping for some sort of revelation or insight but you knew that before we even started on this conversation, didn’t you? No doubt, you also know that I want to ask about something that happened right after your death. I’m beginning to suspect that it’s a ‘wondering thought’ you planted in me just for this conversation.

You think?

It’s about the curtain, of course, the one in the temple that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple and the people. In the accounts of the crucifixion, it is only briefly mentioned. Scripture says that the sun was darkened, the earth shook, tombs were opened and the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. I’ve been pondering that curtain…

Tell me some of what you’ve thought about so far.

I know that the curtain was incredibly huge, not just a curtain like the ones we see on stages, which is what I used to think it was like when I was younger. I know now that it was approximately sixty feet high and thirty feet wide. The thing that boggles me is that it was woven to be about four inches thick! They say that horses pulling on either side of the curtain could not have ripped it and that it took as many as three hundred priests to move the curtain into place. Lord, it is frightening enough to think that your death caused an earthquake, an eclipse of the sun and tombs to open but the tearing of that curtain like it was a piece of kleenex fills me with a kind of awe that I can’t describe. I know it meant that the Holy of Holies was opened up to all people for all time but the thought of the power that ripped that curtain in two is what strikes me in the heart.

You know, when I walked on earth I hated that curtain with a passion. Oh, I knew that it was there because the Father decreed that it should be there and that it was for the good of the people until the fullness of time but still, I would look at that curtain and ache for it to be gone, ripped away so my people could run into the arms of my Abba. Moses was commanded to construct this curtain because the people couldn't handle the holiness of God. It certainly was not Abba’s desire to be separated so completely from his people but they just could not deal with or comprehend the power of his mercy and love. As time went by, the curtain became less and less of a powerful and comforting sign of God’s enduring presence with his people and became more and more of a reproach and a symbol of terrible judgment. The curtain had to go.

Jesus…who tore the curtain?

I did. Or rather the power of my death did. It wasn’t just my death that was powerful; it was the immense tidal wave of love that was released the second I died. When my body was broken and my spirit was set free, the first thing my love and exultation had to do was rip that curtain apart forever. And I want you to know that the tearing of that curtain, that awful separation between my people and the Holy of Holies, caused such a conflagration of cleansing fire in the universe that the angels went into an immediate uproar of complete joy and it hasn’t died down since. The instant that the curtain was split down the middle, the Father exploded out of the temple and finally the Holy of Holies was made available to the hearts of all people for all time.

Whoa! That’s astounding! That’s…that is so…I mean, it’s…Lord, I really don’t know what to say. Words are so inadequate. There’s just this immense and deep “WOW!!” inside of me.

I know…it’s the eternal Kingdom Wow! And that was just the beginning of all that took place. So perhaps now you have a very tiny microscopic speck of an idea why Holy Week events, not just the Resurrection, sparked the celebration to end all celebrations here in the Kingdom. What you hear in the readings and what you imagine in your mind are like a tiny sparks of the whole reality but those sparks were what set heaven and earth aflame.

Lord…my God, I feel so small right now. You have given me a bit of an insight after all and there is absolutely nothing I can say. I have no idea how to say thank you for all that we know nothing about or for all we think we know everything about. Words, my words anyway, are so ineffective and paltry when it comes to expressing all that needs to be expressed.

Well, that’s all right. Here at Home, we’re not big on words. They often get in the way of real communication so that’s why I usually bypass all your words and go straight to your innermost being. I hear deeply what you are saying. Shhh. Be still, be with me and we’ll just have a heart-to-heart. Then we’ll go together - without words - into Holy Week to listen to and watch the gracious, magnificent and beautiful unfolding…of my favorite time of year.

5th Sunday of Lent: The Human Face of God

2011-04-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

John 11: 17-36 (Full Gospel reading: 1- 45)

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

A couple of questions come to me in reading this scripture. The first is why was Jesus greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved? The second is why did Jesus begin to weep? Was it personal grief over his friend’s death? Was it compassion for Martha and Mary, who had not only lost a brother but perhaps a provider and protector as well? But neither of those options makes complete sense since Jesus knew, from the moment he heard that Lazarus was ill, that he would be raising him up from the dead. John was very explicit about Jesus’ foreknowledge of what was going to happen.

In pondering Jesus’ emotional responses when he arrived on the scene, I was struck by the reception he got. From Martha, from Mary and from the friends of Lazarus there was one immediate reaction to him. Reproach. No one turned to him for the kind of comfort and support that can come from a beloved friend. No one drew him into the circle of mutual grief that everyone was experiencing. No, he was rebuked for not having come sooner and for not having done something earlier.

The Lord of Resurrection and Life was rebuked. On one hand, their rebukes indicated a small measure of some sort of faith in him because they seemed to totally believe that if he had been there, Lazarus would not have died. Martha and Mary had come that far on their faith journey but they had not come to the kind of faith that does not have its basis in human circumstances that are going well. They did not yet have the faith that Jesus is the Lord of all resurrection and life. All of it. They did not yet know that no matter what their eyes had seen, their ears had heard or what their emotions dictated, Jesus and the Father are the masters of life.

But I don’t think it was the lack of mature faith that hit Jesus in his heart. John said in the gospel that Lazarus, Martha and Mary were ones that Jesus loved. This was human love and friendship. Perhaps Jesus had known them for a long time. Perhaps their home was one where he could find a place to rest, where there were some good people willing to ask him what his needs were when most of his ministry comprised interacting with crowds who just wanted him to cater to their needs. So, maybe the rebukes he received from Martha and Mary were hard for his heart to take. Here were two more people expecting him to be there for them to supply whatever they thought they needed; here were two more people not looking at him, not seeing him and not being open to allowing him to simply share their life, whatever the circumstances.

Were not their rebukes really saying, “O.K. Lord, We believed in you and gave you the right labels. We’ve called you Lord and Master and listened to your teachings. If you really loved us, you would have come to us as quickly as possible and you would have kept this bad thing from happening.” Martha said to him, “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” It was as if she was keeping him at arms length. She wasn’t opening herself to him as a beloved friend or someone who could share her grief. She was still making him responsible for an outcome that would be acceptable to her. That was the basis of her faith: outcomes that were acceptable to her.

It must have wounded Jesus’ human heart to be rebuked, to basically be accused of not caring enough and to have snarky remarks made behind his back by the other Jews who were there. But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

We forget that when Jesus was on earth he was fully human. We focus on his Godhead and proclaim that he was and is the Resurrection and the Life. We highlight the Fire of Divinity within him – and so we should. But we should never ever forget that he suffered when friends died, could feel the sting of exclusion and be wounded by an unfair rebuke. We need to deeply ponder the fact that Jesus experienced fear, frustration and abandonment. We need to think about what it felt like to having people crowding him all the time, always wanting, wanting, wanting. We need to stop in this particular Gospel and become deeply aware that he was weeping and that he was greatly disturbed in spirit.

Why should we do that? How is that going to help our faith in Christ, our Lord, and what has all this got to do with Resurrection and Life? Well, I believe in resurrection before our physical deaths. There is the Great Resurrection – the resurrection of Jesus from death, the resurrection that opened the door to heaven and eternal life for us – but this eternal life is right now, where we are and in all the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our eternal life began in the mind of God. (“In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” Psalm 139) Jesus’ eternal life began before he went to the cross; it was a reality before the world was even created. Eternal life is eternal life. It has no beginning and no end so it doesn’t just begin at death. We can be resurrected from the death of original sin and enter into eternal life the moment we say, “Yes, Lord. I believe.” That’s the divine part of journeying with Christ but there is another part to this eternal life: the present moment of being fully human just as Jesus was fully human. His humanity was an intrinsic part of his eternal life.

Jesus lived Life. He was Fullness of Life. The human emotions he experienced in no way detracted from who he was or the completeness of his whole life. He could experience fear without it meaning he was lacking in trust. He could feel burned out without it meaning he wasn’t depending on his God enough. He could feel disappointment, grief and sorrow without it meaning his Father wasn’t enough for him. He didn’t allow his emotions to define his relationship to God. Therefore, he wasn’t spending inordinate amounts of time wrestling with guilt over simply being human. He just walked with his father moment by moment in a relationship so authentic and so connected that he could live out his humanity without fear of being judged unworthy of his relationship with God.

He knew that he was completely and utterly loved within it all, not just in spite of it all.

Listen! He is calling you out of your tomb of self-denigration and guilt. He is calling, “Come out! I want to unbind you and let you go.” He is calling you right now to resurrection so you can be fully human and fully alive.

Sometimes it’s easier to believe in resurrection and life after death than it is to believe in them right in the present moment in the midst of all that’s happening and all that you are.

Do you believe?

4th Sunday of Lent. The Least Expected.

2011-03-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

John 9: 1-41 (shortened version)

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.’ Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’ He said, ‘He is a prophet.’

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshipped him.

So, what do you really know about God? The first reading and the Gospel for this week both focus on the fact that God does not pay much attention to our common assumptions about what his intentions are in any situation. How uncomfortable for us! We surely would like to follow a God who is completely predictable and safe. But if there is one thing that is a constant in the spiritual life, it’s that God is surprising and that he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to what we think he should do according to who we think he is.

In the first reading, Samuel is sent by God to find the one who was to be anointed to be king. Samuel looks at Jesse’s son, Eliab, and is sure this is the one God has chosen. He’s the one Samuel would have chosen and Samuel was a prophet. Eliab had all the right characteristics and qualities as far as Samuel could see. Right there is where we all make our mistake: we see things as far as we can see. In other words: not very far. God tells Samuel that he looks at the heart and not on the outward attributes that everyone else looks at.

In the Gospel, according to the Jewish law and according to the discernment of the Pharisees, Jesus was a sinner. They were totally convinced God did not send him because his actions were not in line with the common perception of righteousness. In their view, he didn’t look like a Messiah, he didn’t act like a Messiah and he didn’t talk like a Messiah. Therefore, he was not the Messiah and people faced expulsion from the Jewish religion if they accepted him as The Messiah.

Now, Jesus could have fulfilled their expectations if he had wanted to. He could have done everything according to the book and according to what everyone thought was holy and right and he would have been a lot more acceptable to a lot more people had he done that. But he didn’t act in order to be acceptable to people and to fit in with prevalent attitudes about holiness or beliefs of what someone sent from God would look like. To the Jewish authorities, the prognosis was clear: Jesus was a write off and a failure.

Another problem with Jesus was that he didn't choose followers who fit the common expectations of who should be the Messiah’s right hand people. He chose the broken, the sinful, the ones who failed to live up to the mainstream holiness criteria. He chose the blind, the excluded and the ones with a sketchy past. He chose those who had been beaten by life, disappointed by broken dreams and beleaguered by unasked for circumstances. These were the Chosen Ones, the ones he discerned had the criteria for true holiness within them: the desire to be loved and a yearning to live. He chose them, healed them and sent them. He never said to them, “You go change who you are and clean up your own mess and then come back to me and we’ll see if you can squeak by on the righteousness scale.” All he did was touch their wounds, open the kingdom to them and ask them if they would believe in him. He chose the ones who could simply accept him.

He has not changed. Every mystic the Church has known will tell you the same thing. He has not changed.

Do you sometimes feel small, inadequate and not up to the task? You are a Chosen One.

Do you feel like you made some choices or were pushed into circumstances in your life that have marked you as a failure in areas where failure really is not an option? You are a Chosen One.

Do you habitually compare yourself to others in your faith community or to the saints and feel like you’re just not making the grade and maybe never will? You are a Chosen One.

He has not changed. Not one of his followers in scripture was adequate for the job and not one of them had the power to do anything about it. Every single one of them had to come before him in all their vulnerability and spiritual poverty. When they saw not only how loved they were but how much he valued them without them having done anything, their joy overflowed and their love for him was pure and full of gratitude. When he sent them out, they didn’t go in order to earn his love for them; they went because they were passionate about expressing their love for him.

If you are like most people, you will read this and agree that in scripture Jesus seemed to be more comfortable with the failures and the poor in spirit but you won’t really believe it’s still the same today. It couldn’t be that easy. Now that the church has been around for a couple of thousand years, we all know better and Jesus expects more of us than he did when he walked the earth because people knew nothing about Christianity or what it is that makes us acceptable to God. Right? If we all go to Mass every week, study the bible, read spiritual books and endeavor to have a consistent prayer life, he’s going to expect more from us than if we were prostitutes or rough, ignorant fishermen or people who are lost, destitute and blind. Right?

He has not changed. He did not choose the ones he chose because he had no choice. He chose the least and the poorest because they had the most capacity to receive him. He has not changed.

Do you know what the Lenten season is? It’s a ‘Come As You Are Party’. It’s a time to drop all your assumptions and self-expectations of what a ‘good Catholic’ looks like and come to the Lord just as you are. Come as the prodigal child, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the blind man, the tax collector, the hungry crowd, the desperate father, the lost lamb, the grieving mother, the sick of heart, the betrayed, the misunderstood, the weary, the doubting, the discouraged.

He has not changed. Just come.

Third Sunday in Lent: Spirituality on the Right Side.

2011-03-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

The gospel for this Sunday is John 4: 5-42, the story of the woman at the well.

A writer friend of mine recently said she had just read, “Writing on Both Sides of the Brain”. Years ago I read, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” and it may possibly be by the same person as the principles are the same. Putting it very simply, the right side of the brain is used for creativity and the left side is used for analytical, logical thinking. Sometimes it ends up that our creativity is often stifled because the left side of the brain has a tendency to over analyze everything; it assumes it knows what things should look like, what is reasonable and what is acceptable. The left brain can be quite the critic.

The functions of both sides of the brain were created by God and both are essential for balanced living. The problems arise when one side is developed more than the other side and, it has to be said, we live in a world that tends to value left brain functions more than right brain functions.

Jesus knew this. Jesus himself was completely balanced in how his brain operated but he came to live in a world and to a religion that valued and trusted left brain perspectives. So, what did he do? Mainly he shocked and confused people because he taught "outside the box” and challenged people to see beyond what they were used to looking for. He used story, he used analogy, he used metaphor – and he used love.

Take the woman at the well for instance. The whole dialog between Jesus and the woman was a dialog between the left and right brain point of view with the woman representing the left-brain and Jesus representing the right. The conversation began with Jesus making a request that was completely outside of acceptable mores of behavior. He not only spoke to a Samaritan woman who is a social outcast but he asked her to get him a drink of water. We think this simply shows how Jesus loved and accepted even the worst sinners, which is true, but it also shows that Jesus valued this woman so much that he desired to communicate something of immense importance to her to let her know how loved she was and he knew the only way to get to that point of true communication was to jar her out of her preconceptions immediately and keep her from dragging the conversation into the realms of ‘the way it’s always been’ and ‘what I know in my head.’

Listen to this first part of the dialog between Jesus (right brain) and the woman (left brain) and see how Jesus refused to allow the analytic and the critic to dominate the conversation.

Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. Jesus knew that this would shock the woman. He was speaking and acting outside the box of normal acceptable behavior; he was pushing the envelope.

The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) She immediately countered with logical analysis of the situation based on common assumptions or traditions and she was a bit critical because she didn’t know how to deal with his words and actions.

Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’ A totally unexpected response. He did not enter into a debate with her about the rightness or wrongness of his request; he simply jarred her a little more and shifted the whole meaning of ‘water’ from the material plane to the spiritual plane by using imagery that was designed to awaken desire in her.

The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ The woman didn’t ‘get it’ and came back with more logic, more criticism and she wanted to debate the issue. She was also slightly defensive in case he was criticizing the Well of Jacob, which held great significance for the Samaritans.

Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ Again, Jesus refused to enter into a discussion based on accepted logic. He creatively opened her to the idea of a full life in God and again used the image of water, something essential to life, to open her ears, eyes and heart.

At this point, because it would be an extremely long reflection if I wrote a commentary about the whole conversation, I encourage you to go and read the whole of this week’s Gospel and see how Jesus kept refusing to fit into the woman’s preconceptions and kept creatively drawing her further and further out of her preconceived ideas until finally she broke through to joyful epiphany and entered into the kind of realization that doesn’t come from the intellect but from the heart. She most likely wasn’t an educated woman but this didn’t matter. Whether one is intellectually brilliant and knows everything there is to know about one’s religion or whether one has little formal education and only knows a smattering of religious law from hearing others talk about it, God is constantly trying to shift us beyond what we think we know. He wants us to dive into the well of his heart to find living water and that experience may not always come to us the way we think it will…or the way we think it should.

In the book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”, the author suggests a simple exercise: take a photo of something you want to draw, turn it upside down and then sketch it. Why upside down? Because when it’s right side up, the brain thinks it knows what should be drawn and unless one is very gifted artist with keen observational skills, what the brain thinks is there is rarely exactly what is really there.

When Jesus spoke to the people he encountered, how often did he turn their ideas of God and spirituality completely upside down using images and perspectives that were foreign to them? He had to do this because it was the only way they could see things from a fresh and living perspective; they needed to have their whole image of God turned upside down. How often do we need to have our images and expectations totally shifted in order for God to open us up to the full reality of his love?

We feel comfortable when we know the rules and have all the right information. We like to know there is a logical progression that can be followed and we feel secure when there’s a definite conclusion that can be reached. We feel more in control when we think that A+B will always =C. But what happens when the Lord meets us at the well and tells us that L+W=J(squared)?

Can we handle a creative God?

Ears Open

2011-03-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

Matthew 17: 1-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter, James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

You’re at Mass. Your priest is saying the words of consecration. He says, “This is my body which was given up for you,” and holds up the wafer for all to see.

Transubstantiation. Transfiguration?

As the priest holds the substantially changed and mysteriously beautiful wafer of bread, a voice suddenly fills the church: “This is my son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” Not only is the church filled by this voice but every heart is filled as well. No one doubts that it is the Father’s voice but later no one can say if they actually heard the voice with their ears. Was it authoritative words or was it an instantaneous complete inner knowing? No one can say for sure but all agree that something radical, immense, critical and astounding has taken place.

What would we do with an experience like that? Form committees? Build a shrine? Organize pilgrimages? That would definitely be our inclination because the first thing we want to do with a mystical experience is somehow capture it, announce it and give others an opportunity to come close to the mystery as well. There would also be the desire to create a sacred space, a place where we could leave the ordinary chaos and confusion of the world and come to re-visit and re-member the mystery and the glorious awesomeness of it. We would want to hold this experience close to our hearts somehow, someway, in order to keep it fresh, real and alive. We would yearn to have a place of silence and respect where we could come, recall the moment and do what the Father said to do: listen to his son.

There is nothing wrong with these very natural desires. It is a wonderful thing to have shrines and sacred places that are set apart from the hurly burly of the world, places that offer rare silence and a touch of peace. These are necessary spaces whether they are found in a chapel, a forest glade or on a deserted beach. But we must never forget that Jesus went with the disciples back down the mountain. There was no material tabernacle built, no physical memorial of an event of huge significance.

Why? Because the Tabernacle went down the mountain with them. We need our set aside sacred spaces but we must never ever forget that the most sacred space of all is within us and that the Tabernacle of God, Jesus, comes down the mountain with us, right into the hurly burly noise, chaos and, as our priest likes to put it, the messiness of ordinary life.

God the Father says to us, “Listen to him! Every moment of every day, get into the habit of listening to my son. Speak with him. Discover that my Tabernacle is within you and that the Holy Presence, the Lamp stand is always lit and always burning in your inner room. Find that place within yourself and learn to say, ‘Lord, it is good for me to be here.’ Speak to my son and listen, listen, listen!”

Too often, we leave the tabernacle behind when we leave Mass. Most of us go out with the understanding that we have been sent and that we have responsibilities as Christians to attend to but perhaps we go a feeling a little naked, a little vulnerable. There can be a sense of, “I’m just one small person trying to make some difference in my corner of the world, trying to be a good disciple of the Lord.” We can feel just a little bit alone and sometimes lonely. But that’s not the case. Jesus is going down the mountain with us. He’s not staying in the church in the tabernacle like an executive director, sending us out on our own to do whatever we can. He’s not hanging out with Moses and Elijah while we head on down the mountain. As we are making our way back into the fray, into the crowds and into the marketplace, he’s with us every step of the way. He doesn’t stay behind and he doesn’t go on ahead without us because he is within each one of us. He is with us in the most intimate way possible. Even the most loving of married couples will never know such intimacy.

“Listen to him!” When the Father said this on the Mount of Transfiguration, he wasn’t saying, “Listen to what my son says before you go down the mountain.” It wasn’t a one off instruction to just Peter, James and John. He was speaking to all of us for all time and it was his intention that there would never be a separation between us and his son – there would never be a space that could keep us from being able to hear him. But we can keep ourselves from hearing. We can forget to listen. We can choose not to listen. We can believe the lie that we’re not good enough to listen and be spoken to. We can have distorted ideas about God and think he wouldn’t be interested in speaking to us. We can get discouraged and think that listening is all right for others but we never seem to hear anything.

Listening is a habit and, like all habits, it’s one that develops and becomes stronger over time. Another way to say ‘listen’ is ‘Pay attention.’ We tend to spend large chunks of our time engaged in the activities of our daily lives, never remembering to simply turn to the Lord to say, “I’m here. I’m listening…” Then when we go to our prayer time, if we have one, we’re all distracted, tense and harried. We try to listen but we don’t know what to listen for. What we mostly hear is the chattering of our minds.

We have to build up the habit of continual listening during the course of our day and what better time to do so than during Lent? All that’s needed is a short and simple prayer of love, one that says something to the effect of, “Open my ears, Lord so I may hear you. Open my eyes so I may see you. My life is yours.” I have suggested to others that a good way to remind themselves to pray often is to choose a small object, like a stone, and put it in a place where it will be seen or felt often: in a pocket, in front of the computer, at the back of the sink – somewhere that will catch your eye several times each day. You could have several stones, or whatever you choose as a reminder, left in different places. Eventually you will not need the reminder; the prayer will rise up out of you unbidden because you will have developed a holy habit of turning to the Lord in a listening mode.

One thing needs to be understood. The act of listening is not an act of simply receiving instructions or answers to our prayers and questions. The act of listening is an act of love. The act of listening is a critical part of any relationship and there needs to be a commitment to learn the language of love – his love. In natural relationships, learning to listen to the language of one’s partner is a lifetime activity. Really listening and hearing goes beyond mere words. Committed married couples learn to read each other in many ways other than through verbal exchanges. Learning to listen to the Lord or pay attention to him is far more than waiting to hear some sort of verbal communication; it’s learning to sense his whole being by paying attention to all the small expressions of his love. Those expressions are always there, coming at us all the time. We need to tune in and learn to recognize the movements that speak his love. God has a sign language all of his own.

May his ‘voice’ be like a stream in the desert for you and may your listening be like drinking cool clear water in a parched land.

Reclaiming the Garden

2011-03-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

Matthew 4

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” ’

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you”, and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’ Jesus said to him, ‘Again, it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is written,

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” ’ Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Love went into the desert for us. This was not a retreat; this was a mission to meet the enemy on his own ground.

The Word went into the wilderness to reclaim what had been too easily relinquished: our innocence.

The Truth went into the wasteland to draw fire and accomplish what we could not.

Adam and Eve were given the kingdom and had everything they could possibly desire: fruitful trees, pure water, shelter and food. They had relationship with each other, with the land and with their God. But they wanted more.

Jesus was led into a barren rocky land and all he had were the words of his Father soaking into the foundations of his being: “You are my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” The whole Kingdom was held within those words and he wanted nothing more. He needed nothing else.

“You are my BELOVED.”

“You ARE my Beloved.”

“YOU are my Beloved.”

It was enough for the job.

The First Ones were convinced they were lacking the most desirable thing of all and traded their innocence for the knowledge of good and evil – that’s intimacy with good and evil, not just recognition of what is good and what is evil. When one is intimate with both, both begin to mesh and become tangled. What is innocent is judged as nakedness and naivety. What is corrupt is accepted as desirable and worthy of attainment. Desire for the false self becomes paramount: self-defense, self-reliance, self-indulgence, self-determination, self-sufficiency…

The Last One walked into enemy territory desiring only good and needing nothing more – he was intimate with his Father and his innocence was intact. He was complete within his true self because he was one with God’s love. He wasn’t selfless; he was Full Self.

He had everything he needed to accomplish what had to be accomplished.

Into the wasteland he went, with nothing more than his innocence and his God. He entered willingly into the furnace of contaminated and defiled desires and faced them in all their guile and fury. His True Self, the Word, obliterated the habitual patterns of false promises and healed the immense chasm that shattered the world when the First ones believed the lie that intimacy with good and evil could make them anything like God. It made them nothing like God. And being nothing like God is an aching nothingness that continually clutches at empty promises of secrets to fulfillment.

Into the dry and rainless desert, Christ went as Word. Three times, as Word, he cried, “NO!”

Three times.

Did he know of a future crowing of the cock and the three denials? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But know this: even Peter’s ultimate betrayal and denial of the innocent Lamb could not overcome the beginning redemption Jesus accomplished in the desert. The Liar and Master of False Self will try until the end of time to re-establish himself as lord of the earth and the shaper of our ends but he has no hope. None at all.

Because Love, the Word, went into the desert for us.

Lent has begun and the desert awaits us all. There may be battles in our deserts or there may be peaceful pondering but whatever awaits us, we must go. The desert has been sanctified for our journey. We can either choose to stop, not enter and simply maintain in our present state or we can go through. There is no going around.

May this Lenten season simplify you and bring you back to innocence.