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 ASCENSION SUNDAY                                   Rev. Ken Morman                                       May 16, 2010

              Both in the first reading today and in the Gospel we heard the familiar story of how, in the chronology of the Acts of the Apostles, 40 days after Easter, after “presenting himself alive to his disciples by many proofs” over the space of those six weeks, Jesus was lifted up from the summit of the Mount of Olives and taken up into heaven in full view of his fol­low­ers, till a cloud took him from their sight. ? The question of the day is the one that those two men in white garments, whom we are to understand were actually angels, asked, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?   

              That’s a very good question and the one that I would like to have us think about to­day – why do we on the Ascension stand here looking up at the sky, as though that were the significance of this feast?  Why do we even call this feast “the Ascension,” so that the very name we use for it puts the  at­ten­tion on the movement up?  ? One answer is because that vision the disciples had of Jesus “go­ing up” tells us something important about Jesus, and something equally important about ourselves.

              First about Jesus: a theologian would point out that what happened that day on the moun­tain was purely for the benefit of the disciples – Jesus had already been completely, totally glorified on Easter Sunday: there was nothing lacking to him; he already was enjoy­ing complete oneness with his Father in heav­en, which is why in both Luke’s Gospel and John’s Gospel, as you know, the ascension takes place on Easter Day itself. Which means, to repeat, that this vision of Jesus going up through the sky forty days later was completely for our  benefit – since we human beings envision heaven as up and hell as down, God accom­mo­dates himself to that idea and shows Jesus going up as a way of communicating to us that he truly is in heaven. Just as he gave many con­vin­cing proofs that he was alive on earth, so this movement up was meant as a clear proof that he lives now with God in heaven.

              And that would all be 100% correct, but there’s something more to say; and our middle reading from the Letter to the Hebrews says it. ? For Hebrews, what this imagery says about Jesus is the heart of the letter’s whole argument. As you’ve heard me say many times before, in the ancient world, ordinary people like you and me never got into the temples; we worshiped outside; only the priests were allowed inside the actual building itself – that’s why we sign ourselves with holy water upon en­ter­ing the church, to remind ourselves that it’s by our baptism that we have become a priestly people that now we’re all allowed inside the building, to offer worship to our Father in union with Jesus.

              But in any case, as I say, that’s the heart of the argument for the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. He freely admits that Jesus was not a priest in his earthly life; he came from the tribe of Judah, not the tribe of Levi. But, he says, Jesus did better than the ancient priests – ? he didn’t go into the temple building in Jerusa­lem, a human construction, a mere created copy of God’s dwelling place: Jesus by his resurrec­tion went into heaven itself, the actual place God dwells. ? And he brought not the blood of animals that had been sacrificed, like those ancient priests did, which could only sym­bolize a life given to God, but rather he brought his very own blood, his own life actually given com­pletely in obedience to God, thereby undoing the disobedience of Adam and restor­ing our right relationship with God. ? There, in heaven where God dwells, where there is no time, just the eternal NOW, he exists forever, ceaselessly making inter­cession for us, constantly praying for us to God.

              And so Hebrews draws from that fact the conclusion that we heard in our reading today: Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope, for he who made the promise is trustworthy. [He goes on to say in the next sentence, We should not stay away from our assembly, as some do, but en­cour­age one another, and this all the more as you see the day drawing near. – I kind of think that reminder about how important it is that we come to church on Sunday, which goes way back to the very beginning, would have been a nice reminder to in­clude in our reading, but that’s the subject for another time!]

              Anyway, as I said at the beginning, this vision of the Ascension teaches us something quite important about Jesus. But it also teaches us some­thing quite important about our­selves. One of the points I make about Luke when I teach my Gospels courses is that he likes to draw parallels between his volume 1, the gospel, and volume 2, the Acts, what Jesus did his life, and what we’re supposed to be doing in ours – and we see a good example to­day: ? In the gospel, the Jesus’ ministry begins with the Spirit coming upon him at his bap­tism; in the Acts, the ministry as Jesus’ followers begins with their bap­tism in the Spirit in Jerusalem on Pentecost, which we heard Jesus promise in today’s reading. ? In the Gospel Jesus spends 40 days in the desert preparing for his mission; in the Acts Jesus spends the 40 days between Easter and the Ascension pre­pared us for our mission.  ? In the gospel Jesus’ begins with his preaching in the synagogue of Nazareth where he announced that God was offer­ing to all, Gentiles no less than Jews, amnesty from their sins and new hope; In the Acts, we heard Jesus command that that very same message be preached not only in Jerusa­lem and throughout Judea and Samaria, the territory of the Jews, but also throughout all the lands of the Gentiles, to the ends of the earth.

              Which means that we should hear the angels’ question, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?”  as reminding us that since the Ascension, the way Jesus does his work now is through us, his mystical body, and rather than stand around contem­plating that mystical space flight, we should be getting on with doing that work here below.

              So as we celebrate the feast of the Ascension today, let’s indeed come before the Lord with total con­fidence, just as Hebrews said, knowing that we have in the presence of God an intercessor who is just, who is praying for us to God right this very moment, and then let’s go on to spend this next week just as Jesus told his followers that they should that first time round, in prayer that we may be baptized anew with the Spirit – “dunked” into the Spirit, for that’s what the Greek word means – plunged into the Spirit, clothed with his power, so that our actions before all our neighbors may in­deed witness to the Lord, his teaching and his love, not just around Jerusalem and through Judea and Samaria but all the way to this end of the world right here to which he has sent us.

2nd SUNDAY OF EASTER                      Rev. Ken Morman                                  April 11, 2010

             The Church wants to make sure we remember this Gospel – we get it twice each Easter! Not only did we hear it today at the beginning of the season, but we will hear it again on Pentecost at season's end.  It's the Gos­pel for Pentecost because it gives us John's ver­sion of Jesus' sending us the Spirit. We hear it today because it tells what happened on this day, the 8th day, the Sunday after Easter.  When it's read at the end of the season, we'll hear it as the climax of the Fifty Days; when we rad it today, we heard, like an overture, the introduction of sever­al of the themes that we are going to hear over and over as we move through the fifty days of the Easter Season.

 (1)       The first of those themes, which it shares with all the other accounts of Jesus' resur­rection appearances, is the insistence that Jesus really HAS been raised from the dead, that he really is still alive with us here, that he is one of the people in the room with us at this mo­ment, that he really is victorious over all forms of evil, even death itself.  When the gospel opens on this day, the disciples are hid­ing behind locked doors; they’re being held prisoners, locked in not by anyone else but by their own fear, and without more ado Jesus simply walks in. Jesus is not bound by fear; he's not locked in by anything – he is victorious over everything; nothing can harm him.

            I have always liked C. S. Lewis' comment on this scene – he said, Jesus did not walk through the walls and doors because he was more ethereal than they are, as if he were some kind of ghost, but because he was more solid, more real than they are, as when we walk through air or fog. Whatever you might say about Lewis' physics, at least you can say that that is ex­act­ly the theological  point that John is making. It's really Jesus and he's really real; no ghost or phan­tasm. He shows the disciples his hands and side – those wounds prove that this is the same Jesus that they had seen nailed to the cross: he's back.  As with all the resurrection ap­pear­ances – and indeed as John says as with the Gospel as a whole – this scene is a ringing chal­lenge to let the people of Missouri be the "Show me" State, and as far as we are concerned, to instead inherit the blessing Jesus pronounces on those who, whether they've seen or not, dare to believe this good news.

 (2)       The second motif is no less important. Is there anybody here who is look­ing forward to the Last Judgment? Probably not; we tend to be a little nervous about standing before the Lord face to face, guilty with no place to hide.  So how do you think the apostles felt about this encounter we just heard about? They had all abandoned Jesus, their friend; they had fled to save their own lives and had left him to his fate in his hour of need. Peter had vehe­mently de­nied that he even knew him, much less stand up in his defense and try to help him. It doesn't take much imagination to figure what they must have been feeling like the day after – pretty rotten and ashamed of themselves.  Nor does it take much imagination to figure out that they must have been all the more terrified when Jesus him­self bursts upon them miraculously, raised from the dead, in divine power. They’re going to fry!!!

            And yet that’s not what happens – Jesus doesn’t give them a tongue-lashing for their coward­ice; he doesn’t lambaste them or rage in condemnation against them for what they had done – he says: "Peace be with you." Not once but twice: "Shalom / Peace." He forgives them…. And while they're still reel­ing with amazement, shock, and disbelief, as they are beginning slowly, with relief and joy, to start to realize what is happening, he gives them the charge now that they are to forgive others just as he had forgiven them. And so the scene which began with the disciples huddling behind locked doors in fear and shame, ends with them overwhelmed with rejoicing. The message they had heard from the lips of the risen Jesus was the same as the one spelled out in our middle read­ing from the book of Rev­e­lation: "It is I, do not be afraid....I hold the keys to Death and the neth­erworld" – I control them: Because the risen Lord is with us, we have literally nothing to fear.

 (3)       And that brings us to the third theme of this season: Mission. "As the Father has sent me, so I send you,"  Jesus tells his friends. He says the same to us: he gives us the responsibility to do the same work that God gave Jesus to do while he was here – to build up the kingdom of God: we are to live out Jesus' teach­ing in such a way and to such a degree that people experience around us what they ex­perienced around Jesus. It means for a start that we must forgive each other as Jesus forgave us, so that these others experience that same Shalom, that same Peace, that Jesus bestowed on us.

            That's so important. Let’s repeat it again – Jesus did not rub the disciples’ noses in what they had done wrong. He didn’t criticize them, complain about them to other people, pass gossip on about them, make other people think less of them, draw attention to their faults; he didn’t get chilly with them, give them the silent treatment, make sure they realized that he was upset about what they had done. We do that stuff, because we’re still bound by fear – we’re afraid they’ll hurt us again, so we do whatever we can do to make sure they suffer for what they’ve done to us, so they never do it again. We’re trapped / locked in by our own hand against that past evil.  Jesus by contrast just walks right through these barriers we erect; he just quietly does the right thing / the divine thing himself regard­less of their response. As a lady from Lima, OH said in a dis­cus­sion group I had one time, we’ve got to give up the illusion that we can make people do the right thing by our manipu­lations; all we can do is to show them; we can't take the splinter out of our neigh­bor's eye if we ignore the plank in our own. We need to live the life Jesus taught us; if we don't, we're just taking the easy way out and fooling only ourselves in noisily con­demning others for their shortcomings, their sins against us.

            The Gospel that 8th day begins maybe right where some of us are today, this 8th day of Easter 2010, locked in behind closed doors  – discouraged, very aware of our failings, hesitant to begin again – why even try? will it be any different this time? And this morning, right into our heart, bolted up tight in dis­couragement and hesitancy, the risen Jesus steps in today and says, "Peace be with you: It is I...do not be afraid."  What a message of hope! United with Jesus, there is absolutely nothing that can defeat us but that fear of trying itself. The door is locked from our side; it’s from our side that it can be unlocked. We must not be like that Jerusalem crowd in the first reading today who, though they admired the Christians and were impressed by what they saw, did not dare make the commit­ment to join them. We must start again; as Jesus was sent by the Father so he has sent us; we need to take up our responsibilities.

            You and I were not there to see the apparitions of the risen Jesus that first week after that first Easter, but we do have the testimony of people like the Beloved Disciple who were and who tells us that he wrote what he did in his Gospel that we too might believe and find life in Jesus. Now we need to do the same for others. Let's pray that the Lord would help us to overcome our fears and discouragement and hesitancy, and by really living our faith, carry on the mission the Lord has given to us.  That way, when we hear this Gospel again on Pentecost, it will be a warm and fa­mi­liar friend – we will have experienced throughout these Fifty Days of the Easter Season the comfort of knowing that the Lord truly is with us and that he was right: if we stick with him, we have nothing to fear.

3rd SUNDAY OF EASTER                      Rev. Ken Morman                                  April 18, 2010

            I once had a retreat master who suggested a rather simple exercise for us to do – imagine for a little while, he said, that you are walking down a country road in the spring­time – on a day very much like today – and there, sitting on a fence at the side of the road up ahead you see a 16-year old kid. And as you get closer, suddenly you are absolutely shocked to discover that it’s actually yourself as you were when you were 16 years old. You walk down that country road together. Get to know each other again, he said.  What do you think you as a 16-year old would think of you as you are today...? How would the two of you explain yourselves to each other...?

            I suppose the story of each one of us will be different, but I'm sure many of us would feel a little embarrassed to have us as 16-year olds see what we've become as 30-, 60-, or 80-year olds – most of us were so earnest, so full of enthusiasm as young adults; we had such high ideals, and usually by now we have to admit that we haven't managed to quite live up to them, despite all our good inten­tions.

            This is the Third Sunday of Easter, which means it was two weeks ago now that we celebrated Easter, two weeks ago that we said we had died with Christ and were now rising with him to new life.  We made a solemn profession of faith and made some far-reaching promises – that we were done with sin and all that smacked of the old self and were now going to live the new, risen life of Christ. We were going to think thoughts from above where our life was hidden in God, as Colossians said that morning, not things of earth.

            That's what we said. And we meant it!  But now two weeks later probably most of us have to admit that we haven't been able to live up to those lofty commitments the way we had intended.  It would be different if we were one of those tens of thousands that John saw singing the praises of God and of the risen Christ in the second reading, falling down before them and singing, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain; to him be power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and bless­ing!"  But we're not.  We're ordinary human beings worshiping down here at St. Andrew;  we live ordinary human lives, doing ordinary human work, and we have to admit: in the ordinary, human way, we often fail.

            So all this talk about new life, a resurrected life, at this stage of the game may sound a bit hollow.  That's why I think we need the gospel story today; it’s one of my absolute favorit-est ones.  When we go on our pilgrimages to the Holy Land, we go to a spot on the bank of the Sea of Galilee where there’s a statue commemorating this event; it’s so beau­ti­ful and peaceful.

            But we don’t have to go there. We can be right here. Because this story says so much about how it is between Jesus and us!

            So much was going on in that day at the Lake, and all before break­fast! But it's the last part that I find so consoling. It's a very human story. Peter had said over and over how much he loved the Lord.  He had assured Jesus in no uncertain terms that he would even die for him.  But when push came to shove, it wasn't even close – at a charcoal fire in the courtyard Peter denied he even knew him, not once but three times, and Jesus was sent to his death without even one dissenting voice raised in his defense.  And now, here at the Lake, at another charcoal fire, Peter comes face to face with the Lord.

            What do you say in a situation like that? "Uhh, about the other night, uhh, I'm uhh sorry about that........"  And yet even though that had to be what was uppermost in their minds, notice that Jesus, typically, doesn't even bring it up, much less complain or rail at him.  He just sets it aside and asks the one question that's important:  What about now? Simon, son of John, do you love me now?  Three times around that charcoal fire Peter denied Jesus; three times around this charcoal fire he just gives him the chance to profess his love now – Peter gets the point.

            That's the question he asks us this morning too.  He's not worried about our sins, our failures, our past – we know we've done wrong and he knows it too.  And being real­istic, we know that despite our good intentions, we no doubt will fall again in the future. But Jesus sets all that aside and asks the important question:  Do you love me now?

            Yes?  Then that's all that matters.  All Jesus’ attention is on the future, not the past. He simply says, "Then follow me."  He asks us to do what he did and be what he was, to love our God and our neighbor as completely and as totally as we can.

            When I was in high school in our English literature course we had to memorize Shake­speare's "The Quality of Mercy"  speech from The Merchant of Venice. As a 16-year old I knew it. I have to ad­mit I've forgotten virtually all of it by now.  But I hope I never forget the quality of mercy shown in this 21st chapter of John's gospel – it tells us much about what the Lord is like when we ask that he forgive our trespass­es against him, and what he calls us to be like when others trespass against us.

            There’s one other invitation Jesus gives in this scene by the Lake – he says, "Come, have breakfast." That's what he tells us around this altar this morning too: "I’ve fixed you a meal; come, eat!"   It’s not the calories we need, it’s the strength.  Let's accept that second invitation of his this morn­ing, so that we will be able to accept the first – when we receive him in communion this morn­ing, let’s ask the Lord who is so patient and forgiving toward us, to help us to have the same quality of mercy that he has and be equally patient and forgiving toward those who hurt us, and in this way follow him....

Good Friday

Jesus Suffers for Us and with Us

April 2, 2010

Deacon Tim Schutte

Year after year we pause on this day to remember…a murder. That’s right a murder.  An innocent man dies, sentenced by a jury of his peers, executed by the state.  An innocent man dies…murder.  So we remember this murder and this mystery, a murder mystery. However, this mystery will never be totally understood. It can never be solved with a collection of clues. Rather the church calls this event in Jesus’ life a mystery because we will never fully comprehend its deepest meaning.

You see, this mystery in the paradox gives life.  Jesus suffering on the cross, suffers for us and with us.  Death on the cross gives life! The very moment the soldiers drove nails into Jesus’ hands and feet, they were forgiven! When a lance opens his side and water and blood flowed out of Jesus, the man who thrust the lance is instantly cleansed of all of his iniquities with a reverse thrust of grace.

Jesus invites us into this mystery, to trod the Via Dolorosa with him. “Take up your cross and follow me” (Mk. 8:34). “The Lord is kind and filled with compassion” (Psalm 103:8).

I understand taking up the cross, and I’m sure you do as well.   After all our lives are filled with crosses, ranging from daily trials at work, or a diagnosis that is terminal, a child sent into the battle zone, day to day with a special needs child, walking the final journey with an aging parent, foreclosure, being laid off, and on and on. We know our crosses. But compassion…what does this mean for us in the mist of living the mystery of the cross?  From its language of origin, compassion means ‘to suffer with another in love’.

In this great mystery on Good Friday we find human flesh hanging in agony from a cross, while His divine heart willingly suffers with us as we bear our crosses. On the cross, in this great mystery of the crucifixion, sorrow and love come together in the two natures of Christ.  And with every cross we bear, sorrow and love also come together; the painful bearing of the cross and the loving divine compassion of Jesus suffering with us.

In the summer of 2001, Marcy and I attended a funeral of a college sophomore from U.D. While the young man was sleeping in his bedroom in the frat house, his frat brothers downstairs were playing with fireballs; rolled up paper being tossed at one another. The house caught fire and the young man upstairs could be heard screaming in agony blocks away.

Just a few months later Marcy and I attended a 2 day retreat to begin the academic year for my diaconate formation. I took our bags to our room while Marcy mingled with other couples.  After finding the room, I dropped the bags and turned back to the hallway to join the others, only to come face to face with the father of the college boy killed in the fire at U.D. He is a classmate of mine. We looked at each other, I opened my arms, we embraced and sobbed. After regaining composure, he told me while in the court room, during the indictment phase of the trial, he looked at the boys with anger, then tears flowed as he began to pray, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” As he prayed, he said the hatred began to subside.  “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” He could feel peace in his heart for the first time in months. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” He knew that as he spoke these very words of Jesus, Jesus was changing him. He said that he, his wife and other children had journeyed through the cross, and he knew it was not over, for this cross in his life was enormous. He also knew somehow the compassion of Christ was with him in the journey. He was living the mystery, and we are called to do the same. We will never fully understand this mystery, and in a way that is freeing just knowing that. But we can be certain of this:  in this life sorrow and love often go together, but in the next life, sorrow will be left behind leaving only love for an eternity.  We can be certain that to forgive can release bitterness to be replaced with the compassion of Christ, the One who suffers with us. Jesus suffers for us and with us. Let us do the same. Let us live the mystery.

4th SUNDAY OF LENT                                   Rev. Ken Morman                                       March 14, 2010

              There are certain rules that every child learns very early. One is that fairy tales begin with, “Once upon a time...” and they end “...and they all lived happily ever after.” It doesn’t make any differ­ence that even we adults don’t know what “upon a time” means, it’s just a signal that we are about to hear a fairy tale; and the notice that they all lived happily ever after means that the story is now over and we can all go to bed.

              So I suppose you noticed right off the bat today that when we heard the parable in the gospel, it did not begin “Once upon a time...” and it did not end “...and they all lived happily ever after.” Do you suppose Jesus didn’t know the rules? Or is this story maybe not a fairy tale?

              When I was studying in Rome there was playing all over a movie that was a great hit over there; it had been made explicitly to be the European equivalent of the first Star Wars movie in this country – its ti­tle was, The Never Ending Story.  That title, I think, would give a certain per­spective to the story Jesus told in the gos­pel today. For while to be sure it is a pa­r­a­ble, that does not mean that it’s a fairy tale – on the con­trary, it’s a "nev­er ending story." As a matter of fact, that's why he told it.

              This is a story that goes on today.  The character that grabs our attention, I think, is the Prodigal Son, as we usually call him; we even name the parable after him. He's the one who lives the flashy life. Now truth in advertizing – as a matter of fact, we don't really know that the young man who wasted his share of his father's inheritance did anything particu­larly immoral or sinful with it – despite our translation, the Greek sim­ply says that he spent it "recklessly" – maybe he invested in housing stocks or something.  It's the older son – who of course has no way of knowing – who charges that he spent it on prostitutes (as more than one commentator has observed, maybe because that's what he would have done if he'd run off) – but in any case it's to the younger son that our attention seems inevitably drawn.

              And maybe that's alright, particularly during this lenten season, be­cause we all know that in some ways we're all like that younger son; we're sinners, that in many ways we've "let ourselves go" – we’ve followed the path of least resis­tance, given in to the temptation to say things and do things that we knew were wrong but we just wanted to do them. And we all know the experience of coming to our senses and realizing that the happiness that those actions promised was fraudulent and now, sadder but wiser, we want to come home, to ad­mit our mistakes and be forgiven.

              But it would really be truer to Jesus' intention in telling this story if we would call it "The Parable of the Prodigal Father;"  after all, he's the one this story is about – "There was this man,"  Jesus begins, "who had two sons."  If anyone is prodigal in the story it is he, in the sense that he's the one who is so reck­less, so lavish in giving away his love, his forgiveness, not to mention his property for his sons. With this father, when his spendthrift son comes home, there are no questions, no blaming, no "How could you?!!” or “I told you so!" or "Well, it's about time!"  This father doesn’t make the boy grovel, he doesn't even let him finish the speech he been rehearsing all the way home – as far as he's concerned, his son is back and that's all that counts.

              And it's not a polite, formal, business-as-usual kind of acknowledg­ment he gives to his son – an "Oh, hi" and then back to reading the paper or watching TV – this father keeps watch day by day for the kid and so sees him while he is still a long way off; he runs out to meet him while he’s still on the road; full of emotion, he throws his arms around the boy and gives him a bear hug, he calls the servants to bring out the robe of honor, the signet ring, the sandals worn by freemen, and finally throws a humdinger of a party – with music and dancing and even meat, killing the fattened calf for the occasion.  This is not behavior one fakes: this man was happy to have his son back.

              And this too is part of the never-ending story. This parable is not just about us; even more it's about what our God is like.  You and I are always off running after some fantasy that we think will make us happy – cheating on a taxes or a spouse, stab­bing a friend in the back to look good with the crowd we’re trying to impress now, being catty with our gossip, overindulging, running after this or that little bit of illicit pleasure – whatever it may be – and the temp­tation never keeps its promise, the happiness, such as it is, only lasts a fleeting moment and then it always lets us down. And all the while we’re being reckless this way, like the father in the parable, our God is watching for us, an­xious to run out, give us a bear  hug and wel­come us back where we belong. No groveling, no humiliat­ing us.... This is not mere theory or wishful thinking: God sent us Jesus, and in what he went through we have seen the lengths to which our God’s prodigal love could go.

              But of course that's not the end of the story. Jesus didn't conclude the tale by saying, "And they all lived happily ever after." As you noticed, the story actually ended in a question mark. ? Because there's that other son, the good boy. Instead of being glad his little brother is back, he resents the fact that the kid has gotten away with murder, scot-free. "That son of yours,"  he says to his father in laying out his complaint. The father gets the message; but he is as gentle with the older son as he was with the younger. "Your brother," he reminds him pointedly, "was lost and now has been found." He tries to talk him into welcoming the young man home the same way that he himself has. And that's why the story ends in a question mark, because as you noticed, we never find out whe­ther the older son was ever reconciled to his younger brother or not – in this respect too, Jesus has told us a "never end­ing story." This story is going on right now in the Church, in politics, between neighbors, in our families, in our hearts.

              "God has reconciled the world to himself," Paul told us so emphatically in the second reading; "but now he has entrusted that ministry of reconciliation to us." It is we who carry on that work today -- or fail to. Just think a moment: It’s as if the father had put the older son in charge of the celebra­tion for the younger. What kind of party do you think that would have been? If that older brother, despite his father's example, afterwards still refused to speak to his little brother, still refused to be in the same room with him, still nursed this hot grudge/resentment against him – would that younger son truly be reconciled, truly be at home, no matter what the Father did? Could that Father's aching heart still be at rest? I think not. To the extent that any of us are not reconciled with any of the rest of us, to that extent we spoil God's party, we poison that reconcilia­tion which God wanted; we keep God’s children – our bro­thers and sisters, we too are reminded – from still really being at home. That's dirty. As one woman said to me once, God squanders on us and we’re stingy with each other. How sad!

              Just before communion we will again have the kiss of peace, just as we do at every Mass. It's a custom that goes way back to the earliest centuries of the Church. It's a sign of reconci­li­ation among ourselves. Before accepting the sign of the Lord's body broken and his blood outpoured so that our sins may be forgiven, we ask forgiveness of each other, and offer our forgiveness to whoever has let us down; before re­ceiving these eloquent signs of the Lord's reconciling us to himself, we show again our desire to be reconciled with each other. We're all younger sons(or daughters), we're all older sons(or daughters), we've all got the same God, who like the Fa­ther in the parable loves us infinitely more than we de­serve, more than our minds and hearts can comprehend, and who invites us to this rich banquet cele­brat­ing our reconciliation, our coming home where we belong.

              To­day let's make that reconciliation among us real, and make the ceremony the dress rehear­sal for all those other ruptured relationships that are still festering outside of here, so this sign that our God has prepared for us may not be contra­dicted – this week let’s accept our mission – God has en­trusted the ministry of reconciliation to us  – and be on the look­out for opportunities to actively work to be agents of re­concili­a­tion, people who actively, intentionally, help people get along, so that it won't be just in fairy tales, but also in this never ending story that all God’s children can live happily ever after....

Rev. Ken Morman                   5th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR                  February 7, 2010

            We just heard about the awesome calls of three very impor­tant people in biblical history – the call of Isaiah in the 1st reading, of Paul in the 2nd, and of Peter in the Gospel. Each in its own way was a powerful reading. But what I'd like us to think about today is not the call to them so much as the call to US – because in a real sense, that's even more powerful.

            I grant you right off the bat that, as I say, Isaiah and Peter and Paul were some of the most im­por­tant people in biblical history, not like little old you and me, ¿right? And yet as always in telling their stories the Scripture is not focused on how these men were different from us, but on how they are the same, and therefore what we can learn from their experi­ence.  We’ve been reflecting for the last three weeks in a row now on Paul’s analogy of the body and our gifts, and the whole point of his comparison is that the body isn’t just about a couple of major organs that get all the attention, but literally thou­sands upon thousands of little parts and pieces and components right down to the in­di­vid­ual genes in our DNA that turn off and turn on, and all need to do their thing and do it well if the body as a whole is to be healthy and be able to do its thing. 

            In the same way, it's not enough that SOME people, no matter how important or talented they are – not enough even that A GOOD NUMBER of people respond­ to their Christian vocation; if the Body of Christ is to function as it should in the world, ALL of us need to do our part. We prob­ab­ly have all wit­nessed – at least on TV or in movies – the exquisite frustration experienced by someone who’s had a stroke and whose brain knows very well what they want to have their hands or legs or mouth do, but these parts of the body aren’t getting the signals; the brain just can’t get these parts of the body to do it wants them to do: to speak, to hold something, to move. May­be that’s a little of the frustra­tion, humanly speaking, that Christ feels in wanting his body, the Church, to do things in the world today, and parts of the body don’t respond.

            My point is that we need to get beyond the illusion that the Lord calls other people! The fact of the matter is that the Lord is calling us.

            Sometimes, precisely because the Scriptures do focus on the important people, the famous events, the spectacular examples, we find that hard to believe. "Who me?"  When we human beings hire some­one for a job, when we "call" someone, we choose the person who looks best qualified, the most impressive. That's be­cause the future is beyond our control and we have to rely on the past; so we choose someone who has a good resumé, a good track record; it’s the only way we can try to ensure that we will choose a person who will do well for us in the future.

            But God does not call because of the past; God calls because of the future. God doesn't call be­cause of what we are, God calls because of what we can become. As we heard ISAIAH was very a­ware of his own sinfulness: "Woe is me: I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips,"  he said.  PETER was very aware of this too – his response to the miracle of all those fish was not, “Cool! You and I ought to into business together – we could make a bundle!” No, it was, "Leave me, Lord; for I am a sin­ful man." And of course PAUL was actually per­secuting the church at the time he was called – talk about an unlikely candidate! But pre­cisely when these three were shown to be un­qualified, un­worthy by any human standards, that's precisely when the Lord called them to do their part.

            So we  mustn’t fall for that trap of thinking, the Lord can't be calling me; I'm not holy, I don't pray all the time, my mind wanders in church – SO??  The Lord didn't call Peter, Paul, or Isaiah because they were holier than other people; he didn't argue with them that they-were-too! worthy. They weren't – they knew it and the Lord knew it. To repeat, the Lord didn't call them, and the Lord doesn't call us because of what we are now;  the Lord called them and the Lord calls us because of what we can be.

            Some of us have personalities that will respond to the Lord's call like Isaiah, with enthusiasm and eagerness – "Here I am; send me!"  I’ve always been a little in awe of people who have that kind of self-confidence and assurance. I’ve always been, and I know I’m not alone, more like Moses or Jere­miah at their calls – Oh, not me, Lord! Call somebody else!  "Ah, Lord God, I am too young, I know not how to speak!", was the excuse Jeremiah tried. Didn’t work. Never does.

            Because, bottom line, the Lord doesn't want somebody else, somebody who can “talk good” or is older or younger or whatever – the Lord needs you and me specifically to do what only we can do. What we cannot do doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that we trust the Lord enough to do what we can do, what the Lord asks; he’ll take care of the rest – Peter said, "Master, we've worked hard all night long and have caught no­thing, but if you say so, I will lower the nets."  The rest, as they say, is history. He did what he could, not what he could not, and that’s all the Lord needed to do the rest.

            That's all we have to do too – because if we just do what the Lord asks, we have the same as­sur­ance he gave Peter: "Don't be afraid from now on." (For that’s what the Greek verb form means: not just don’t be afraid right now in this situation, but don’t be afraid from here on out.)  Why not? – Be­cause he was such a terrific fisherman? No, because the Lord was, and the Lord would be working through him from now on. We too just need to do our part and then we don't have to be afraid from now on, not be­cause of óur skills, but because of the Lórd’s promise, the Lord’s fidelity. To sum it up the way Paul put it in the middle reading, it's not because we deserve it that God has given us this call, it is just God’s unmerited favor; but by that favor we are what we are; and that favor the Lord has shown to us will not be fruitless.

            Which brings us right back to now: if any of you see a vision of God Almighty on that heavenly throne surrounded by a choir of seraphim singing unceasingly "Holy, Holy, Holy," the train of his robe suffusing this church right now; or if any of you are blinded by a brilli­ant light while you're on the road to Damascus or the way back home, whichever comes first, and hear the voice of the risen Jesus speak to you and call you by name;  or if any of you are suddenly over­whelm­ed by an absolutely enor­mous catch of fish where you know from hard experience that there just aren't any fish, like maybe out in the parking lot -- well then feel free to tune me out and let the Lord speak to you directly. But for all the rest of us, the risen Lord speaks to us today through the words of these Scrip­ture readings we've heard, and in them he calls us and challenges us to do our part here where we are and to not be afraid to do it, to be a part of his body that he can count on to accomplish here at this time and in this place what he wants to accomplish.

            Let’s pray to not be afraid to trust in the Lord and put out our nets to do the work the Lord has for us to do, whatever that may be....

Rev. Ken Morman                                            FEAST OF ALL SAINTS                      November 1, 2009

            We’re interrupting the normal pattern today – in recent weeks we’ve celebrated the 28th, 29th, and 30th Sundays of the year. By rights we should be celebrating today the 31st, except that of course we’re not – we’re celebrating the Feast of All Saints. What makes this feast so important that it over­rides the ordinary Sunday celebration?

            I think it’s because this feast celebrates a truth that’s extremely important, one that’s of enor­mous consolation and encouragement to us. It’s the truth that people like you and me – ordinary people living ordinary lives – make it to heaven.

            Now it's right that we should honor the famous saints, the heroic ones, the bigger-than-life ones whom everybody knows like our own St. Andrew and SS. Peter and Paul and St. Anthony and St. Francis of Assisi and St. Agnes and St. Theresa (both of them) and the rest. But when we concentrate on them, there's also a dan­ger that you or I will, consciously or subconsciously, jump to the con­clus­ion that you have to do extraordinary things like them to be a saint, that you could not live a "nor­mal" lifestyle, have a normal family life, especially in this day and age and still be a saint.  And that con­clusion would of course be not only 100% wrong, but  very dan­gerous; be­cause if something is not possible, then there's no use in even trying.

            And so the Church each year just before we begin the cycle of the last Sun­days of the year, when we reflect on the end of the world, and the end of our own personal world -- at this point each year the Church takes time out for the Feast of All Saints -- to explicitly remind us of all those nameless men and women down through the ages who, without fanfare or fireworks or paparrazi, simp­ly did their best day in and day out to live lives in imitation of Jesus, and who are now with the Lord forever in heaven.  They've never been canonized in any kind of official cer­e­mony in Rome, but they have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and are now sharing in the blessedness of life with God forever no less than any of these big-name saints whom everybody knows.

            What’s more, you and I know these people who John saw in enormous numbers at the base of the altar and around the throne of God – they were our parents, our grand­par­ents, the people who found­ed our parish – people like us who made mistakes and did wrong things – they went to confes­sion just like we do – but who nonetheless when all is said and done, were faithful – and God who is faithful to us, redeemed them, saved them, and gave them life with himself.

            On this feast we are reminded that far more important than anything we do, is the miracle that God has done in us. As you know, St. Paul and the other early Christian writers refer to all the faith­ful members of the Church, even the ones at Corinth where they had some big-league moral prob­lems, as "saints."  That's because they were so conscious of what God does for us in baptism.  The Church wants to be sure that we are conscious of it too, since you and I and our kids today receive the very same baptism as they did, and that means that we share that same status.  St. John said it so well in the second reading today: “Dearly beloved,” he said; “we are already God's children now, even if what we shall later be has not yet come to light.”

            That's why we need the feast of All Saints; we need to be reminded that we have already been made God's children, and that, like all children, we may have our bumps and falls on the way to grow­ing up, but if we just keep trying, just keep picking ourselves up and starting over again, we will grow up to be like our Father and our big brother Jesus.  Even as we honor those who’ve gone before us, the feast of All Saints is meant to be a day of encouragement for us who still are trying to do our best here below.

            We need that encouragement because it’s not easy to live in accordance with what we are. It’s not always easy to be cheerful and patient and generous and kind and all those other things we know we ought to do if we are to imitate Jesus.  We often find it very diffi­cult indeed. But that's where the example of these ordinary, garden-variety saints reinforces the message of the Scriptures today, encouraging us, chal­lenging us to persevere, assur­ing us of God's help when we need it. Because the point is, all these everyday saints in white robes around the throne were no dif­ferent than we are; their times were no easier (or no harder, for that matter), than our times. They messed up too – but they pushed on, they persevered, and are now part of that vast crowd be­yond all number­ing.

            The key is that they simply and quietly, without any hooplah or fuss, did their best to live out Jesus' way, despite all the obstacles they met up with. And that gives us the irre­futable proof that if they could do it, we can too. You and I will probably never get canon­ized in Rome either, but as St. John told us in that middle reading, what we later will be is just the climax of what we already are right now. We have been baptized; we are saints-in-training, saints-in-process.  Jesus' message of en­cour­age­ment in the Gospel today – blessed are you who do these things, because your reward from the Lord is great – is directed to US.

            For that reason maybe it might be profitable to spend some time before this Mass is over, per­haps after communion, to read again reflectively, those Gospel “encouragements” -- for that’s what the beatitudes are -- and as we take each one, to think of some parishioner, some relative, some friend that we have known and who’s gone before us who exemplified that particular one. And then reflect, How did they do it? Were they weird? Did they come from a different planet than we do? I don’t think so. I think they probably just kept trying. We can do that too, and we can learn from their example. And then our own trying will in turn provide the example for those who follow us.

            So today, by all means let's give well-deserved honor and praise to our an­cestors long ago and our predecessors quite recently here who have fought the good fight, as Paul once put it, and have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and now are sharing in that awesome reward God has promised to those who were faithful to him. But even as we honor them, let's also take fresh en­courage­ment from this celebration for ourselves, who are called to follow in their footsteps, that, putting in­to practice Jesus' teachings in our daily life here and now, the day may come when we will be able to join them in that chorus praising the Lord around the heavenly throne, “Praise and glory, wisdom and thanksgiv­ing, honor and power and might to the God who has saved us, forever and ever. Amen!"

FR. KEN MORMAN                             Milford St. Andrew                  October 24-25, 2009

             As beautiful as the first and second readings were, it’s hard to pull away from the Gospel – it too is so beautiful – and so powerful! There are many people in the story – we hear them try to shush Bartimaeus, shouting so inconveniently from the sidelines, and there’s a homily in there! – but our attention cannot rest long on them. We’re drawn to the two figures who meet in this scene. One is that very Bar­timaeus (Son of Timaeus) the blind beggar. That’s all he could do, beg – the fact that he was blind meant that he could not work, which means he could not marry or have a family – he couldn’t support them -- and there were in those days no social security or welfare or other public assistance. He was literally dependent for his life on what other people gave him from their own meager store; just a few coins here and there. It was a completely helpless existence.

            The other figure, of course, is that teacher from Nazareth, Jesus, who’s been traveling through the countryside with an important message from God for his people and who is now passing through Jericho on his way up to Jerusalem.  We know that this will be his last trip to the city because the cross awaits him there, but nobody else knew that yet. They just knew that Jericho was the last stop on the way before having to begin the long, arduous, continu­al­ly uphill climb from very near the lowest point on the land’s surface, the Dead Sea, through the Badlands-like desert up to Mount Zion, from about 1000 feet below sea level to an elevation of 2,500 feet above it. It was a taxing climb through an unforgiving terrain.

            But this was not going to be a solo climb through that harsh landscape – this was more like what you see when the Pope comes to visit a country, only without the crowd control. Everywhere Jesus went there were these same scenes of jostling, shouting, excited mobs of people, trying desper­ate­ly to get near him – to see him, touch him, make their pleas for healing to him.  Also like when the Pope travels, the message he preaches is both hopeful and hard, consoling and challenging – it’s good news: the Kingdom is at hand; God is coming just as the prophets promised, just as we heard Jeremiah do so movingly in today’s first reading – he is coming to save his people. And we are called to sign up – to join the move­ment, to reform our lives, to do our Father’s will in everything, no matter how difficult  – for the kingdom will come when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. And there’s a final point of comparison with traveling Popes – the hard part of the message doesn’t keep people away: he’s a cele­brity / he’s a star! The crowd just lets the hard part of the message slide right past them as they jostle for position to get from Jesus what they want.

            But that’s a different homily too. The point today is that on the outskirts of Jericho, these two men meet. The Son of Timaeus, even though blind – maybe precisely because he was blind and his other senses were proportionately sharpened – couldn’t help but feel the electricity, the excitement, the noise of the crowd already from a distance. The Gospel says he heard Jesus passing by. And that made of the moment what the Greeks call the kairos – As you’ve probably heard before, in Greek there are two words for time: chronos, from which we get words like chronological and synchronize, is just plain old garden variety time; and kairos, which means a special, fateful, decisive moment of time, the point at which everything changes: like a jailbreak, it’s the moment of decision, it’s now or never. Had Bartimaeus not called out to Jesus at that crucial moment – if he had not persisted in calling out when all the crowd tried to shut him up, he would have remained blind forever; he would never have known what he had missed.  But he does call out – he calls out over and over: “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!!”  And Jesus, the Son of David, does.

            That one-liner – “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!!” – says it all: “Son of David” was the title of the Messiah. Bartimaeus, who could see nothing, recognized that Jesus was the Messiah, even though he was so totally different from what everybody said the Messiah would be; the crowd, who all had two perfectly good eyes, were clueless. For them, Jesus was a wonder worker; he could heal – they needed miracles: that’s what he was good for, a walking, talking dispenser of miracles – to repeat, they were in it for what Jesus could do for them, not for what he was saying God wanted of them.

            Do you know what it’s like to be blind and then to be able to see? Some time ago I ran across a little piece by Sheila Hocken. She was a homemaker in England who had been blind from birth until some years ago she underwent a special eye operation that was successful. And after having been totally blind all her life, for almost 30 years at that point, now, suddenly, she was able to see. This is in part how she described the experience:

When I first looked, it was like an electric shock, really, as if some­thing had hit me.  It was almost indescribable....There were so many colors: there were green, dark green, and pale green, a beautiful royal blue which has so much depth.  I didn't imagine blue like that.  All I could say, and all I can still say is, 'I didn't imagine the world was such a beautiful place. It is really fantastic.' You know, when I meet people now, I am always astounded that they are not forever going on about how wonderful things are. When I go out I say, 'Isn't the grass green? Did you see the sunset last night?'...I sup­pose people take it for granted. What a shame to miss a sunset..! When I get up in the morning, it's marve­lous; it's an­other day, and what am I going to see today? Some more flowers may have come out...."

            What happens when someone who had been blind now sees? Reality has not changed; it's no more, no less than it's always been. But now the person sees, now s\he knows what that reality is, s\he experiences it in ways s\he never before imagin­ed. So it is with faith, with the truth about life which the Lord teaches – in one sense everything stays the same, and yet everything is different. “There were birds all around, but I never heard them singing, till there was you,”  the song goes.

            What happened to Sheila Hocken happened there on that road to Bartimaeus. Suddenly he could see. And in an even deeper way than the crowd, who took so much just for granted. It didn’t change the reality that was always there, it just allowed him to know  what that reality was. Now when he heard Jesus teach such preposterously hard things as turning the other cheek, loving one’s enemies, overcoming evil with good, laying down one’s own life for others – in a word, doing our Father’s will on earth as it’s done in heaven – now Bartimaeus can see: it’s profoundly right, what Jesus teaches. It’s not crazy, it’s beautiful. It’s the reality that’s always been there, but we couldn’t see it. Bartimaeus can, and so he has the courage to follow Jesus on the way – to Jerusalem, to the cross – and to glory.

            Why of all the incidents in Jesus’ life would Mark have chosen to include this one in his gospel, and precisely at this pivotal juncture? It’s precisely because Jesus is on his way up to Jerusalem, to the cross, and Mark knows that Bartimaeus’ experience is ours too – or has the potential to be. We too are very inclined to take the low road and value Jesus for what he can do for us; we need him to an­swer our prayers, to give us help and consolation. And he does: he’s very popular with us – we love him, but we susceptible to letting the challenging parts of his teaching pass right over us. We have trouble following in his way, especially when that enormous crowd all around us tries to shush us up and behave, meaning go along with them.  We too need to see. And we are helpless to do it by ourselves.

            Again today, at this Mass  we can hear Jesus passing by – he’s here in this church, at this mo­ment. It’s the kairos, the privileged moment, the moment of decision. We can entreat him earnestly – “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!! // Let me see!” ... Or we can let the moment pass, and leave the church today not much different from when we came, and -- never imagining blue could be like that -- never even realize what we missed....

 26th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR                       Milford St. Andrew                     September 27, 2009

              Well, what did you make of that combination of readings the Church gave us to re­flect on today?! I’m not sure which struck me more, the fact that there were such heavy, heavy things said in these readings, or that there were just so many  of them.

              That last part can be explained easily enough, at least as regards the Gospel – the passage we heard today comes from chapter 9 of Mark's Gospel, which is in the form of a "catena." What this means is that it consists of a whole series of short sayings or teachings of Jesus that are put together in a chain, each one linked to the previous one by some com­mon "link-word." That gives them a kind of stream-of-consciousness feel, but the early fol­lowers of Jesus used that technique as an aid in help­ing them remember Jesus’ teachings in that period before the Gospels were written down. Mark just incorporated one of those ca­tenae lock, stock, and barrel in to this part of his gospel, forming what we today call chapter 9. In the part of the chain that is as­signed to today we moved successively through three or even four of the topics, and that always gives a lot to think about.

              Some years, especially if I’ve just been witnessing arguments recently between good people about what the Church should (not) be doing, or what the country or government should (not) be do­ing, and it’s gotten a little shrill or a little heated, what really grabs me are those words from Moses to Joshua in the first reading and Jesus' teaching in the first part of the gospel chain regarding how we should view those who don’t agree with us, who don’t do things right according to the way we see them: Chill out, he says, "whoever is not against us is for us." I remember one author musing that iron­ically the bit­terest arguments in religion tend to be between people who are the closest in be­lief – we have these volcanic shouting matches not with Buddhists about the nature of God (we don’t care much about what Bud­dhists believe) but with our fellow Catholics about our own liturgy!

              Other years what strikes me is the middle of the catena – the connection between those ex­treme­ly strong and vivid words of James in the middle reading about people who have plenty of this world's riches but still close their hearts in self­ish­ness to people who are in need, with the other side of the coin, those very con­soling words of Jesus in the central verses of the Gospel, the assurance for those who do the op­posite that God won’t even let the giving a cup of cold water to a child in Christ's name go unrewarded. I think sometimes we’re all selfish and sometimes we’re all generous; hearing the warning from James and the promise from Jesus is like the proverbial carrot and stick that make it easier to do the right thing when we’re tempted to be more the one than the other.

              This year I think that it was that third part of the gospel chain, together with a little kick from the first reading from the book of Numbers that I found myself gravitating to­wards. Jesus’ vivid, even shocking imagery about gouging out one’s eye, cutting off one’s hand or foot, etc., was not meant to en­courage self-mutilation; it was simp­ly meant to be a forceful nudge to take stock again about what's really important in our life and what's not, to assess our priorities. It’s only common sense that one should not lose something really valuable for the sake of some­thing that is less so.

              I remember hearing in grade school that the way people in India caught a particularly pesky monkey that was causing problems – knocking over garbage cans, getting into people’s stored food, and so on – was to put a banana through a small hole in the lid of a glass jar that was securely fastened to a stake. The monkey easily put his hand in and grabbed the banana, but then since that made a fist, he couldn’t pull hand and  banana out through the small hole. But he wouldn’t let go, he just kept chattering and jumping around in frustration trying to pull out his prize till the villagers were able to throw a net over him. He lost his whole life over a banana, because he just wouldn’t let go of what he had so tightly in his hand.

              Every time we human beings choose to undergo surgery we illustrate the opposite wisdom – we literally show ourselves willing even to sacrifice a part of our own body to save the life of the whole. Jesus simply applies the principle to a larger canvas – what is our eternal life worth to us?  For us who would so like to find some compromise that would allow us to both have our cake and eat it too, Jesus reminds us that when push comes to shove, it's simply folly to make anything else more important than doing the will of God, and so entering into the kingdom. Who wants to be the monkey holding on to the banana when it comes to our eternal life?

              This is just plain common sense. There’s one weakness with this approach, however; it makes the whole challenge feel very in­dividualistic – worrying about my surgery, holding on to my valuables, saving my life. The context provided by the first reading from Numbers and story line be­hind the first part of the chain regarding other people horning in on our franchise, reminds us that the wider context for what Jesus teaches is the role of the com­mun­ity as such in the building up of the kingdom of God.

              In that context it becomes clear that it’s not about just individuals. It can be very edi­fying to read the lives of the saints and all they did in their lifetimes – or for that matter ex­ceptional people today – it’s only right that we should be very proud of these folks for the sac­ri­fices they have been willing to make to live out the values of Jesus – but that does not mean that now that’s been taken care of – as if the Spirit was given to these special people so they can do their thing and now the rest of us can just go on living our lives as usual – their giving up their banana means that we can still hold tightly on to ours.

              The fact of the matter is that, as both readings remind us, the Spirit of the Lord has not been given just to our leaders / special people (the apostles in the Gospel, the elders in the first reading), but to all of us – and the purpose that the Lord had in mind in giving us this gift is not that it be a mere decoration, a little brocade on the garment, a trophy on the mantle -- but rather the Spirit was given us to enable us to do our part no less than the special people to further the kingdom of God.

              I frequently appeal to advertising in this connection: when I was growing up com­mer­cials often featured guys in white lab coats and beakers and test tubes, and the mantra was that science had researched the whole situation and come up with new discoveries and this new product was the result, and that was the selling point. Somewhere along the line, so-called experts and authority figures lost their credibility and relying on them lost its cachet and now what advertisers know works is personal witness, someone who is not and expert but who is just like the viewer and who can look right into the camera and say, “I use this product, and I know: it works!”

In the same way, it’s not enough for a few exceptional people to witness to the values of Jesus, we’re all on dis­play. The recent spate of militantly atheistic books such as God Is Not Great and The God Delusion are having surprising impact since 9/11 because they say, as Jesus did, “By their fruits you shall know them,” and they are saying their fruits show that religion is evil at the core. What Jesus taught is not measured by what a few leaders do but by what we all as believing people do. We need to ensure that we can look straight at the world and say, “I know Jesus' way works because I'm from Milford St. An­drew, and I've seen it.” That is why the Spirit has been given to you and me and Eldad and Medad in the camp as well as to those who’ve been called out to specialized work outside the place where normal people live and work and raise their families – to make it work here / so we may see the kingdom here.

              So this morning, let’s chill out a little regarding other people and whether they’re perfect or not and rather examine how tightly we’re holding on to our own bananas. Let’s ask that the Lord would help us to be receptive to the Spirit’s action among us so that what we do here in the camp / in our daily everyday life does not undercut what Jesus teaches is the way to the kingdom. Let’s ask today that the Lord would hear that ancient prayer of Moses, and bestow his Spirit on ALL his people / on us, so that each of us might loosen our grasp on what we’re unwilling to let go of, so that all of us together might demonstrate by our joint efforts that Jesus is right, and living according to God’s will is the way to the king­dom and that’s worth more to us than any other considera­tion.

25th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR                       Milford St. Andrew                      September 20, 2009

              Everybody knows how loud commercials are; have you ever noticed how loud silences can be? When he says, “You do love me, don’t you?!” And she says...nothing.  The author of the book of Wis­dom had something very serious to say in the first reading; St. James as usual unloaded a heavy load for us to think about in the middle reading – “Where do these conflicts among you come from?” – But yesterday as I was working on this homily, what suddenly struck me even louder was that huge burst of silence in the gospel reading.

              To fully appreciate it, you need to be aware of one of Mark’s techniques. Just as he gives us 3 temptations in the desert, 3 prayers in Geth­semane, 3 denials by Peter, and so on, in the same way he gives us 3 solemn predic­tions of the passion by Jesus; last Sunday we heard the first, today we reach the second. So this is not the first time the disciples have heard these words from Jesus.

              And each time, Mark reports what happens in the same four steps. {1} first off, he makes some reference to Jesus and the disciples being "on the way."  (This middle time it occurs first as a verb but then explicitly in the discussion in retrospect.) As you know so well by now, that’s a kind of pun: it refers not only to their travel­ing on a literal dirt road, but it also refers to the Chris­tian life as such: "The Way" was the name those early Chris­tians used to ex­press what we now call “Christian­i­ty,” that is, Jesus’ distinctive teaching about life and God and human beha­vior. So in this way Mark sig­nals right off the bat that this teaching of Jesus has to do with the Chris­tian life itself, with our life as disciples of Jesus.

              {2}Next Jesus tells them clearly what is about to happen to him. While that might have been a bombshell to them back then, this part causes no particular problem for us – we've got crosses and cru­cifixes all over: the image is so familiar that it’s no longer consid­ered morbid or maca­bre or goth, the way wear­ing electric chairs or nooses as jewelry or having pictures of executions by firing squad decorating our rooms would be – that Jesus was going to be crucified is an idea that we've gotten comfortable with. What's much harder to take is Jesus’ insistence that what he’s saying is true, not just regarding him, but also regarding us. As a re­sult,

              {3} each time Mark then points out that the disciples don't un­der­stand. But you and I know that the problem was not that Jesus’ words were unclear -- the problem was the op­po­site: they were way too clear. It was not really that they could not understand what he was saying; it was that they couldn’t accept what he was saying. But in any case, to illustrate what he means,

              {4} Jesus then goes on to show how what he says applies, giving them some prac­ti­cal real–life application of what he's saying. Today he uses the child as a concrete example of becoming small / minor, subordinating oneself to other people, laying down our life in ser­vice of them rather than vice-versa.  This four-step pattern is exactly what we saw today, and that’s where this thunderous silence comes in....

              Because that’s the re­ac­tion of the disciples to what Jesus says: they are silent. They don't argue with him. They just humor him. I find that so true to life (at least my life)! We’ve talked about all this before: Back then, these men knew how politics worked; they knew that the Messiah was a king, the son of David, chosen by God to rule over Israel; they, the 12, had gotten in on the ground floor, and when Jesus got his kingdom, they expect­ed some pretty cushy, pres­ti­gious jobs in his messianic administration; what they were doing in their little "discus­sion" on the road today was jockeying for who'd get which posts (who was greater, as Mark puts it). They were doing nothing different from what happens in any political campaign today.

              But the fact that Jesus had this strange quirk about his hav­ing to suffer put them in a high­ly awk­ward position. It was only because they believed that he was the Messiah that they were following him in the first place; but if the Messiah was what HE said the Messiah was, then they heading for big trouble and the only smart thing for them to do would be to bail out now while they were still ahead, the sooner the better. So they had to simultan­eous­ly trust that {1} he was who he said he was, but that {2} they knew better than he did what that meant. In the meantime, especially after the way he had let Peter have it the last time, they knew better than to push that button again. So they don’t try to argue with him on it. They choose to just bide their time on the as­sump­tion that it would all sort itself out once they got to Jerusalem and things started falling into place. Mean­while, they contin­ue to act among themselves, when he’s not listening in, exactly like ev­ery­body else around, in this case negotiating among themselves and forming alliances to get the best jobs in the new gov­ern­ment.

              So when Jesus today repeats this teaching about the cross, that no, it’s about serving other people rather than being served themselves, dedicating one’s life to making life better for other people rather than for oneself, they don't say a word, don't object. And when he accosts them about what they were doing in those fierce, earnest whis­per­ings on the road, arguing over those future cabinet posts, they don't try to explain or defend themselves. They just go...silent...and hunker down like cows in the wind and let the storm blow over. As I say, the important point for me is that in this whole pro­cess they don't change their minds and accept what he says; they just choose not to fight him on it.

              That’s what I find so realistic, so true to life! Isn’t that what we do too? – we just let Jesus say these things about laying down our life and forgiving our enemies and turning the other cheek, and all the rest, and we do not argue with him, just we sort of let it blow over us. We don’t change our minds – we’re remain sure that this is just poetry, that nobody could really live like this, not in the real world (not in our world!)– so like the 12, we just endure it while it lasts, convinced on some level that we know better than he about how the world really works, and in the meantime take our cues from what every­body else does around us, and just go along with that – we don’t want to be fanatics, right?

              There's no question that it's dangerous to take seriously what Jesus tells us. In the application he makes today, he tells us that, like him­self, we have to lay down our life in service of others. He said "whoever wants to be first must remain the last of all, the servant of all." That turns all our cultural ideas up­side down and inside out. That goes directly against the message of our society that to be happy you need to have things good for you;  you need to look out for #1. (For homework, just try to count how many commer­ci­als you hear this week that proclaim exactly that message….) So that when Jesus says the opposite, there's that strong temptation to, like the disciples, just balk: not change our minds and accept his values but to just sit it out, humoring him till next week when hopefully we’ll get a gospel with a more congenial message.

              But we must not do that! One of the prime reasons Mark writes his Gospel, to show that try­ing to make compromises with what Jesus teaches, to adapt what he teaches to the more common-sense values of the culture, rather than transform the culture according to the values of Jesus, just leads to disaster. In this gospel Peter learns that lesson the hard way; as I said last week, despite his bold words at the Last Supper, in the event instead of deny­ing himself as Jesus keeps insisting in these passages, he ends up denying Jesus; and so our last picture of him in this gospel is him sobbing.

              That's what makes this Gospel as relevant – and as dangerous – for us 20th century American dis­ciples as it was for those 1st century disciples for whom Mark wrote this Gospel.  When Mass lets out today, Jesus is going to ask each of us the same question he asked the Twelve – what were you dis­cuss­ing this morning? What were you tossing around in your head today as you heard what I said in the gospel, as you heard that pitiful homily, as you thought about the day ahead and the people you’re going to deal with? Did you let any­thing of what I had to say change you, or are you going to just clam up like my first disciples and sit it out till my words blow over? – “You do love me, don’t you?.........”

Let’s pray now that we might have that “wisdom from above” that James talked about today so we won’t have to just hunker down in embarrassed, thunderous silence when he asks us that, but rather that we’ll be able to actually accept his teaching and follow him on the Way....