2 L B It’s no sacrifice

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    This week we get to spend some time reflecting on the notion of sacrifice through the prism of the sacrifice of Isaac in the first reading. So, let’s look at the first reading to make sure we understand what’s happening there. It probably seems rather barbaric, a father, Abraham, feeling like he is being called upon by God to sacrifice his firstborn son, Isaac. He takes him out into a part of the country called Moriah, sets up an altar of sacrifice, ties little Isaac to it, and, right before he plunges the knife into him for the sacrifice, an angel comes and stops him. The angel says it was a test of loyalty and he passed. Abraham is so relieved that he takes a ram that seems almost supplied by God caught in some vines and sacrifices it instead.

    In looking at the surrounding passages to this, you may get the feeling that there’s not much context to why this is happening. Actually, there’s a lot of context that the people of Israel would have understood that is so far from our world that it’s hard to even consider. It was probably a common occurrence for people living in and around Israel to sacrifice a first born son for a religious and a practical reason. From a religious perspective, it would be a way of expressing trust that your god or gods will bless you with many more sons, an ultimate leap of faith. From a practical perspective, while it takes many women to have the necessary number of children to keep a family or village alive, you don’t need as many men. The men of the time would have been seen as an asset if there was a war going on but too many men just means that there will be fighting over who gets to farm the land when their father passes away. So, the solution that many cultures came up with was to sacrifice the first-born son as a kind of population control similar to the one child policy that China has. 

Now, I know this isn’t really all that...pleasant in terms of the context of a homily. But it deserves to be known that it was common and, one of the novelties of Judaism was to bring it to a halt. Instead, God replaced child sacrifice with an animal sacrifice offered in thanksgiving for a newborn child. We may remember a few short weeks ago when the parent’s of Jesus brought him as a child to the temple to offer a sacrifice of “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons”, as it says in the Gospel of Luke. In the rosary, this passage is commemorated as the Presentation and is the fourth mystery of the Joyful Mysteries. And, after the destruction of the temple in 78 AD, even this sacrifice is no longer expected. 

    Still, early into our Christian tradition, we saw a contrast between what happened to Isaac, the first born son to Abraham, and what happened to Jesus, the only begotten son of God. Isaac was called by God to have his life sacrificed by God but was spared. Jesus was called by God to have his life sacrificed and he was crucified. Or, to add even more contrast and be more honest, when humanity asked for mercy from God to spare our sons and daughters, he gave it to us before we even made the first sacrifice. When God asked us to have mercy on his son, we killed Him. 

    Now, I know this can seem like I’m trying to lead us down a path of shared guilt. None of us were alive in the year 33 when Jesus was crucified and, if we were, there’s little chance we would have been in Israel either as a part of the crowd chanting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” or as one of the guards leading him to Golgatha. 

I’d like to suggest that this story of Abraham and Isaac isn’t just a counterpoint to the terrifying religious understandings of the people surrounding these patriarchs or even the foundation of the idea of sacrifice. It’s about being willing to give everything we have for God and seeing the blessing in that. The end of that reading said, “I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing—all this because you obeyed my command.” God’s command is to be willing to give it back, to let everything go, even the possessions and people that are most important to us. It’s a command that challenges the way we think about what we own and the longevity of it. 

Now, I might really upset some of you with what I’m going to say next but I’ve remained quiet on something for many years that I think needs to be said and I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings but I’m just trying to get us to think about how this passage might apply to us here. One of the real challenges in this world, I think, is the idea that, once we possess something, we think we should keep it even if we don’t need it or someone else could benefit from it. I think about our young people interested in farming, for example. They graduate from high school or college and find they’ll likely never be able to purchase a farm on their own because larger, more established farmers purchase land at prices the young people could never afford. And a lot of people would rather keep owning their farms or their parent’s farms and renting the space to a farm management company for the income. Now, I’m not saying you don’t have the right to do this. I’m just suggesting that we may have our priorities off when we do. Wouldn't it be better to let a young, upcoming farmer have the farm so he or she could raise a family and contribute to the local economy? I know that land was a blessing for you. I know it’s frightening to let go of it. But, if your children or children’s children have taken other paths in life than farming, isn’t it time to let someone else get the blessings you and your family received?

But this isn’t just true of farming, of course. It’s true of people who stay in positions of leadership refusing to let someone new do things differently than they do it. It’s true of people who run out and buy all the toilet paper at the beginning of a pandemic so they could hoard it instead of sharing it with the elderly who didn’t realize there’d be a shortfall. It’s true of people who couldn’t imagine turning down their furnace a few degrees during a cold snap to protect the energy grid. 

The problem is that we are so often unwilling to sacrifice our comfort and security and possessions for someone else’s needs. God reminds us today that we may think our blessings come from holding on to what he has given us when the true blessing comes in being willing to give it away in sacrifice. 

1 L B Sometimes we have to accept that people make mistakes

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Our first reading for Mass today comes from the end of the first part of the Book of Genesis. This part is marked because of its mythic character. By calling it mythic, I’m not meaning to imply that it’s all a lie or definitely didn’t happen. I just mean that they describe events that don’t happen every day. Part of the reason for that is, undoubtedly, because they’re kinda weird, in particular surrounding the flood, it moves into the idea of fallen angels and such that we’d rather just relegate to a forgotten past. However, either directly in the second reading from First Peter and indirectly in the Gospel, the story of Noah is referenced. So, just to make sure we understand what really happens in the flood, in order to understand why it was Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert among wild beasts for forty days for instance, let’s look briefly at Genesis chapters 6-9. 

To recap what comes before this in the Book of Genesis, we have the two stories of creation, the story of the Fall, and the story of Adam and Eve’s children Cain and Abel. So, the point is that Adam and Eve were created in paradise without sin and, in two generations, they introduced original sin and fratricide, the muder of your brother. Chapter five is one of those lists of the names of ancestors connecting Adam and Noah with all the ancestors living eight hundred or nine hundred years long. 

Chapter six begins with one of the strangest stories in the entire bible. It says that humanity was expanding and having beautiful daughters so the divine beings or sons of God, depending on how it is translated, come and have children with them. They are some kind of hybrid human and divine being, which really upsets the one true God. We’re not really told why it upsets God in Chapter six just that he decides it’s time to wipe out humanity and give it a fresh start. From a Christian perspective, we can see that the problem is that God already had a plan to save the world with Jesus, who was fully God and fully human. But, these beings, referred in chapter six by the term “Nephilim” and “the heroes of old”, weren’t a prefigurement of Jesus or an honor to God. They were a confusion, something that was not part of God’s plan. Jesus’ human and divine natures, though united in his person, are also separate in time. Jesus’ human nature was born in time but his divine nature existed through all eternity. The nephilim are a blending, a distortion, something not totally divine or totally human. 

So, humanity is so polluted by this new creation, this Frankenstein’s monster if you will, that God decides it needs a restart. But, instead of wiping everyone out and breathing into dirt like he did with Adam, whose name means dirt, he’s going to instruct eight people, Noah, Noah’s wife, Noah’s three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s three daughter-in-laws, on how to survive. They build a large boat, or an ark, and watch as the entire earth floods and wipes out all life not on the ark. The flood is so complete that it covers mountains, leaving nowhere for anyone to survive. It rains for forty days and forty nights, the same number of days and nights Jesus spends in the wilderness, and then takes several hundred extra days to dry off so Noah and his family can exit the ark. 

What I find interesting about the story is the part that is actually in our first reading today. You would think God would say that he’s going to form a covenant with Noah that they would never disobey him again and get as bad as they were before. However, it does get bad after this. In fact, it gets worse. Immediately after the story of the flood is the story of the Tower of Babylon. Then, we’re not all that far from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Human beings sin again and again and again. And, God doesn’t make that the point of this first covenant of the Old Testament. 

Instead, God sets a bow in the clouds to indicate that he won’t try to wipe humanity off the planet again. It’s almost as though God feels bad about what happened right there, like wiping humanity off the face off the earth was a bad idea. Now, let me just say that I recognize what I just said in that last sentence is impossible and foolish. From a theological standpoint, God cannot make mistakes. God cannot do something that would cause sin because sin is disobeying God. God cannot disobey himself or he’d somehow be divided, which doesn’t make any sense. 

But, human beings do this all the time. We are capable of regret. We do things all the time that we wish we wouldn’t have. And we associate ourselves with people who do things we wish they wouldn’t do as well. Have you ever thought to yourself that life would be easier if someone else moved away or wasn’t in your life or, and I know just how dark and evil this sounds, but have you ever wished someone would just die so that you wouldn’t have to deal with their bad actions anymore? Like I say, I know it sounds terrible. But have you?

We are still in the beginning of our Lenten journey and I think it’s fitting to reflect on what I think we are supposed to see when we see a rainbow in the clouds: God knows you and others make mistakes and he still loves you and loves them. He doesn’t love the mistakes. He wishes he could wash them away and he does wash them away in baptism and confession. But, there’s a pretty good chance, even after those sacraments, that people will sin. The first covenant that God makes with us is that he isn’t going to wipe us off the face of the earth because of our imperfections. Instead, he’s going to give us a second and third and fourth and fifth chance to face our demons and come out of the dry deserts of sin to the refreshing waters of his forgiveness. Which leaves us to ask: Can we accept that we and other human beings make mistakes and deserve a second, third, fourth, or hundredth chance?

6 0T B We can learn something from the leper.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

To prepare for this homily, I read over all of Chapters thirteen and fourteen in the Book of Leviticus. If, like me, you don’t have the order of the Books of the Bible memorized, Leviticus is the third book, after Genesis and Exodus and before Numbers and Deuteronomy. Leviticus is named after the priestly Tribe of Levi because much of it concerns actions of the priests and remaining ritually clean. Chapters thirteen and fourteen, in particular, deal with a set of skin disorders identified as Leprosy. Ever since the fourth century before Christ, Leprosy is almost exclusively identified with Hansen’s disease, which is actually a bacterial infection affecting the skin that is transmitted via prolonged exposure to a person’s viral load. Today, Hansen’s disease is relatively easily treatable but, until the present time, it was a very confusing, deadly, and frightening disease. But, as I said, that form of leprosy was not what they were talking about in the first reading for today. 

The way it’s described in the Old Testament is a wound or sore with hair discoloration that penetrates the skin into the body. It not only affects the body but it can affect your clothing and your home. If it’s superficial or does not have the association with hair discoloration, a priest is told that it’s not leprosy so the person can be told they’re clean but they need to check back to make sure it doesn’t get worse. In typical Old Testament mythology, they wait one week and then check it again. If nothing has changed, wait another week and so forth. What I find interesting is that a person labeled unclean with leprosy had a similar prognosis. They were to do the five things we heard about in the first reading: Rend their garments, keep their head bare, cover their beard and mustache, cry out “unclean unclean” wherever they went, and dwell outside the camp. But, after seven days, they could ask a priest to go outside the camp and check them out to see if they were getting better. If so, there was a process of returning to society involving sacrificing a big animal for a rich cured leper and a small one for a poor cured leper. 

One of the big differences between being clean or unclean, therefore, was whether you could be a member of society. A leper was to remain outside of society and make it clear to the rest of society that he was infected. He had to show his torso and head so people would see any pustules and shout out “unclean unclean” so people would stay away. He even had to wear a kind of face mask that would cover his facial hair. I guess we’ve been wearing face masks longer than we even knew about.

We’re tempted to view this in modern terms of transmission of viral loads and concerns about cross contamination. These measures, interestingly, may have had the affect of stopping that but that was not exactly the intent of the Bible writers. The priest isn’t told to recommend a treatment. His job appears to be entirely diagnostic rather than medicinal in nature. He is told how to recognize leprosy and the person who has leprosy is told how to behave. But, it does sort of prompt the question in me as to what was the point of this. If it wasn’t public health, even if it had that as a side effect, then what was the point of these two chapters?

Much of the time, Christians comment on this they’ll say something like “At the time, it was believed that you got leprosy as a punishment from God for sinful acts but Jesus changed all that that in the gospel.” The problem is that seeing leprosy as divine punishment is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Though, if you are cured, you have to give thanks to God and offer a sacrifice, so I could see how that would be a part of it. But, what if we look at this in a slightly different, I would suggest possibly more in line with the Old Testament, way? 

Let’s assume that we all know we’re going to die. I know, that’s a real bummer and, as a Christian, each day I hope for the coming of Jesus taking me to a place where there is no more sin, no more sorrow, no more face masks, no more social distancing, and no more hand sanitizer. But, before we get there, we’re all probably going to die. What if disease was not a curse but a marker that it was likely coming? What if leprosy was seen as something that meant we needed to get ready because it’s probably coming sooner rather than later? The rent garments and bare head are the marks of a person preparing to be in the tomb. The isolation is meant to mirror that isolation and give us the space to prepare for it. And the face mask isn’t meant, as they are for us, to control droplets that spread an infectious disease, but a precursor to the burial shroud. 

In just a few days, we may decide to have someone put ashes on our head. I understand that some of you are going to elect not to do that this year, which is perfectly fine. Actually, one of the concerns I share with our Archbishop is that we’ve allowed the wearing of ashes to turn into either a mark of pride or a statement of belonging to something exclusive. I’ve seen shirts advertised with a black cross meant to look like ashes with cute phrases like “Lent is coming, get your ash to church”. It reminded me of when I learned that there was a competition in Ames between kids of the various churches of which denomination’s shirts were more represented in a bar. The students wearing the ones with more people wearing a particular church’s clothing would win a free drink purchased from the students wearing another church’s clothing. Needless to say, that was not why we started making those shirts and I was at least a little ashamed to learn that’s what some of the students were using them for. 

In a similar way, ashes are meant to remind us that, like so many before us, we will probably follow Jesus to the grave. How prepared are we for that? Perhaps, it’s okay to miss out on ashes this year if they’ve lost that meaning for us. Maybe we could focus, instead, on what acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving we want to undergo. Maybe, instead of thinking that we are somehow better than the leper, we could learn something from him. We all end up in the same place. We all hope for eternal life with God in heaven. How should our preparation for heaven set us apart from the the rest of the world to be better prepared?

5 OTB Just because the work is hard doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

As I was praying over this week’s readings, I couldn’t help but think of a lesson that I took away from the movie U-571. It tells the fictional story of the American capture of the German enigma coding machine. In the story, Lieutenant Andrew Tyler, played by Matthew McConaughey, finds himself unexpectedly in charge of a German submarine in World War II. Earlier in the film, he is told by his commanding officer that one of the reasons he’s continually been passed up for promotion is that he’s too close and too good of friends with the sailors under his command. At the high point of the movie, Lieutenant Tyler has to order one of his more doe-faced sailors, whose nickname is "Trigger", to sacrifice his life in order to save the sinking sub. The movie isn’t great but this question from it haunts me as a pastor: am I willing to demand an employee do something difficult, something that I probably wouldn’t want to do. I’m not talking about murder or anything illegal or immoral. But, if there was a job that needed to be done and I knew no one would want to do it, would I be willing to demand a staff member or a dedicated employee to do it or would I just do it myself? I don’t know. 

Today we hear from one of the hardest books of the Bible to read, the book of Job. It is, like Jonah from last week, most likely more of a parable than a real life story but I wasn’t there so I don’t know for sure that it didn’t actually happen. Having worked in ministry for as long as I have, I’ve seen enough similar things to what is described in this book happen to people that I kind of believe it’s more useful as a cautionary tale than as literal history. 

Job starts off the book very prosperous with a loving wife, many children, great farmland, and a huge variety of livestock. Job is the type of guy who not only honors the sabbath but he offers up sacrifices each week for his kids in case they have done anything to offend God. He knows he’s blessed and he thanks God for that often. 

Then, we hear about a gathering happening in heaven with all the angels, including one referred to in Hebrew as “The prosecutor” or “The Adversary”, which is where we get the word Satan. Satan comes and says he’s been surveying the land. God says Satan surely must have seen Job and he brags up Job’s fidelity. He says, “There is no one on earth like him, blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil.” You know, all those things the devil hates. So the devil says that it’s easy to love God when you have all the Job has. He says, “But now put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and surely he will curse you to your face.” In other words, if you take everything away from him, he isn’t going to seem so great. 

So, God does this very thing. Job’s wife and children all die. His crops all burn up with his livestock. He loses virtually everything but his life. Then, three friends come over and try to “console and comfort him”. Our first reading comes after the first friend, who has the unfortunate name of Eliphaz the Temanite. Eliphaz says that, since God is all good, clearly Job did something to deserve what has happened. If Job apologizes for the sin he has committed, God will have mercy and take pity on Job. 

Part of Job’s response to Eliphaz makes up our first reading for today. He sounds like a person who has watched his entire family die and lost all his property. I’m guessing, if we were honest, we’ve all felt like Job at one point. We’re good people. We come to church. We pray. Why did this have to happen to us? Or maybe it’s someone we know or even someone close to us. Have you ever questioned how God would let someone who never smoked get lung cancer and die at age 50 while someone who smokes a pack every day and never exercises lives to age 95 and dies in their bed of natural causes? It just doesn’t seem right, does it?

The answer to these types of questions comes two-fold. First, the answer God provided to us through Job is that sometimes the plan of God is bigger than our understanding. God’s response to Job is, basically, did you make the world and all it holds and put together a plan to keep it running efficiently? No? Then let me do my job and you do yours. With all due respect to the writer, that just seems kind of anemic. I feel like the Book of Job only makes sense in the light of the cross. You see, when God came to earth, he didn’t come to a rich family in a powerful, prosperous part of the world but to a poor family in a war-torn impoverished part of the world. He didn’t have an easy life with a nice cushy job. He came as an evangelist wondering where his next meal would come from. He didn’t get to have a family and watch his children’s children grow and be prosperous but remained celibate and died an ignominious death on the cross. As Christians, this is the model of holiness for us. 

Suffering is not, by its nature, a good thing. That would be a form of masochism not Christianity. But, suffering for a purpose, suffering to ease someone else’s suffering, can be a good thing. And, feeling called by God to take on this type of suffering doesn’t indicate that God hates you or is punishing you for your sin, but that God trusts you so much that he knows you will do this for him. In u-571, when Lieutenant Tyler orders Trigger to fix the sub even though he knows it will likely lead to his death, he doesn’t hate Trigger. He trusts that he is the only one who can save his fellow sailors. Or when a mother is in labor, God trusts that she will endure the pain of childbirth in order to give life to another person. Suffering of itself may not be good but we can see the good that can come out of it when we look at the cross and find the meaning in our suffering there.  

4 OT B Quiet!

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

One of the challenges with education is trying to accommodate different learning styles in the same classroom. For example, some people tend to be more practical or hands-on in their learning while others tend to be more cerebral or conceptual. You can “learn-by-doing” in shop class much easier than you can in theology. In science, you first have to learn how to do an experiment before you jump in and do it: lab comes after lecture. But, for some kids, they’d rather do the lab and then learn the hows and whys after...or maybe never. Teachers struggle to accommodate both learning styles. I admire the ones who do it well because I never felt like I did. 

Believe it or not, this is some of what is happening in the gospel and first reading today. In the first reading, we’re nearing the end of the first five books of the Bible. You may remember a few weeks ago that I talked about one of the unique aspects of these books is that they represent a time when God spoke directly to the person or people in charge. After this, God will set up a structure, called the prophet, to speak to the person or people who are in charge for him. We hear how God set that up today in chapter 18 of Deuteronomy. God is speaking to one of the most unique figures in all of Sacred Scripture; Moses. He will raise up an ancestor to Moses who will be a great prophet. Now, it’s important to note that this comes after an important part of chapter 18, God talks about how his people are barred from associating with  one who “practices divination, or is a soothsayer, augur, or sorcerer, or who casts spells, consults ghosts and spirits, or seeks oracles from the dead. Anyone who does such things is an abomination to the LORD, and because of such abominations the LORD, your God, is dispossessing them before you.” Now, I know people who visit mediums or watch ghost hunter shows and think there’s nothing wrong with it as long as they take it for what it is: a fraud or entertainment. But, I’d be very cautious of that attitude. There are evil spirits in the world and we shouldn’t do anything that encourages them to interact with us, even in a casual way that seems to deny their existence.

Let’s look, for instance, at the Gospel. Jesus is in one of the holiest places he will be during his life: a synagogue. It’s a place for prayer and a place for study of Sacred Scripture. Only the Temple in Jerusalem would be more holy than a synagogue. But, it’s here that he encounters an evil spirit. Now I know we may be tempted to be think either that this was probably an undiagnosed medical condition like Tourette Syndrome or bipolar syndrome but, though the church has sometimes historically struggled to know the difference between a person struggling with brain health and demonic possession, this is a real demonic possession of a person who had appeared to be just another faithful member of the synagogue. There are stories of Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis having to exercise people at their audiences as they walk among them. And even stories of priests having to stop Mass to exercise someone, though this hasn’t happened to this priest. I can tell you, without going into details, I’ve experienced more evil inside the church than outside.

Now, here’s the good news: evil exists and is powerful but God is infinitely more powerful. Let’s return to the Gospel for a second. The devil asks what Jesus has to do with us, implying he is more “in league” or “connected to” the people than Jesus is. Jesus is the Son of God so what is he doing slumming with people? The demon even tries to have some control over Jesus by threatening to out him as the “Holy One of God” before Jesus is ready for everyone to know him that way. Jesus’ response is simple, powerful, and demonstrative of how weak the evil one truly is. He says simply “Quiet! Come out of him!” And the evil is gone. 

I’d like to suggest that Jesus is being both performative and instructive when he does this. He actually performed an exorcism but he also taught his listeners a hard lesson. On the one hand, if we are afraid of something evil, something that goes bump in the night or someone who seems to not act the right way, praying quietly, “Jesus said, “Quiet! Come out of him” or Come out of here or go away is a pretty good start. 

But, I don’t think it’s just for the demons that Jesus says to be quiet. Let’s return to that first reading. After telling people not to go to someone who “practices divination, or is a soothsayer, augur, or sorcerer, or who casts spells, consults ghosts and spirits, or seeks oracles from the dead” God goes on to speak about how he is going to speak to his people. He speaks through prophets. We believe Jesus is the fulfillment of all the prophets, a prophet even greater than Moses because he was both fully God and fully human, both Son of God and Son of Man. So, we need to listen to Jesus, to his word in Sacred Scripture and to his lived presence in the Body of Christ, the church. It doesn’t mean that everything a church leader says is perfect. Even the pope can err. He’s only protected from that when he sits on his chair and declares something infallible, which has only officially happened a handful of times in history. Still, I think part of what the first reading and gospel remind us that we don’t always get to be in charge of when God speaks to us. We can ask a question or ask for help but it doesn’t mean God is going to jump right up and do it for us. Most of the time, I am reminded of how important it is to ask for something, then be quiet and patient. It may not happen on my timeline but either it’ll happen or God will do something even better that we would never have thought possible. How is God calling you to be quiet?

3 OT B Try again. It may go just as poorly as you expect.

Friends

Peace be with you.

For about the millionth time since the pandemic started, I’m trying again to use my free time wisely. A lot of people have used the time to start practicing a skill or a hobby that they’d neglected or always wanted to pick up. I figured I’d learn to play my trombone again. But watching TV was so much easier. I thought I could practice and get better at German or Spanish or Hebrew . But, watching shows in those languages just led me to watching an easier show to understand in English. I thought I’d play board games alone, and think through all the skill that goes with the game so I’ll be better at them when I play with other priests. However, after I got one of them called Pandemic all set up and started to play, it suddenly wasn’t all that fun to do all by myself. So, I went back to what was easy, watching TV. I’ve started many projects like this and always end up finding a show that I’ve never seen before or always meant to rewatch. Nonetheless, as the new year began, I set up a room in my house that is my new Upper Room prayer space and I’ve found that I can go there, shut the door, and open a book and read. I have to walk past my TV when I get home so I can see what’s going to happen when I’m especially tired. It’s easier just to go in and watch TV. And since I can see that, hopefully I’ll also do what I have to in order to keep walking up to pray and read. We’ll see. My track record isn’t great but, we’ll see.

Our first reading is from one of the most often cited books in the Old Testament: Jonah. Jonah spent three days in the belly of whale, right? Actually, no, he didn’t. The word the King James version translated as a whale is actually better translated as a large fish, which sort of excludes a whale because it’s a mammal not a fish. Granted, I’m not sure the writer of the story would have made that designation or even whether he could have known that fact but it’s one of those things people like to point out. And, to be honest, it’s such a small part of the story of Jonah, it’s not worth getting hung up.

The story of Jonah is a parable, really, about doing something that you know will turn out poorly. Jonah is asked by God to go and evangelize the town of Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Babylon. Remember all those times I’ve preached about the three parts of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah? The bad guys who take the Israelites prisoner were from Babylon. Most people believe Jonah was written AFTER that happened so basically God is saying that he should go and evangelize the bad guys, the enemies that took God’s people prisoner. So, Jonah does what most of us would do, goes the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. He’s supposed to go east but he goes west into a boat preparing to sail the Mediterranean Sea. The voyage, however, goes badly because the weather turns bad and the captain finds out the reason for the bad weather is this crazy prophet he took on board who is ignoring God’s will. So, the captain has Jonah thrown off the boat where a large fish swallows him for three days before he throws him up back on the shore of Israel. I personally think we’re all supposed to picture this as a very comedic moment where Jonah, freshly thrown up from the fish, laying by the side of the Mediterranean Sea, hears God speak the words we heard in the first reading today. Notice God doesn’t say something like, “Did you get that out of your system?” or “You’ve disobeyed me Jonah. Don’t try it again or I will smite you!” He simply says, “Go to Nineveh and announce the message I gave you.” Jonah knows the message. Repent! He’s not afraid of having to say it. He’s afraid they’ll listen to him and do it, that they won’t get the punishment they deserve. Let’s face it, the world would be better off if a town filled with people who take other people captive would be wiped off the earth. That’s what Jonah feels anyway.

Jonah goes to Nineveh, figures it’s going to take three days to walk through the city but, even before he’s completed a single day, the King hears what he’s saying and so believes what he says that he orders a fast and the wearing of sackcloth. And, as it says, God repents of his threat of punishment. After this passage, Jonah is so sad that he goes out in the desert and prays for death. And, kind of like Job, God has to remind him that He’s in charge, not Jonah. And, he has to remind him that mercy is better than revenge, even if we don’t like that message.

After all, it’s a hard message to hear. Don’t we all love to see that person who passed us on our way to Chicago getting pulled over on the Interstate? Or what about that person who brags about how they go running all the time and is in better shape than us who hurts themselves and you think, “See, that wouldn’t happen if you’d just sit on the couch and watch TV like me”? Even in the midst of this pandemic, if someone tells me that they’ve tested positive, sometimes outwardly I tell them and their family and friends how sorry I am for them but inwardly I think that they must have done something to deserve it.

We like to think in terms of revenge, that bad things happen to bad people. The truth is that bad things happen to people. No one deserves it. It just happens. It isn’t the will of God. God’s will is that all people be saved. Whether that person was a gang leader, a white supremicist, a pedophile, or someone else that we think should be far from salvation, God looks on them with the same hopefulness, the same compassion as anyone else until they utter their last breath in the hopes that they'll hear his voice and seek his salvation.

If you’ve thought about picking up a new or better prayer routine either in this pandemic or not but have given up and don’t feel like you can try again, God is giving you the chance to try again. If you’ve wanted to reach out to someone who used to be important but just haven’t because you’re afraid of what the person might say or you’re afraid because you think the person is out of control, God is giving you the chance to reach out and help. If you’ve given up on a gift or talent that you’ve wanted to develop in favor of something easy or familiar, God is giving you the chance to start again.

Imagine each of us are like Jonah. We’ve been thrown up by a fish onto a beautiful beach by the sea. We’ve been given a fresh start to do something we know God has wanted us to do for some time, something that we’ve avoided either because it’s too hard or because we’re afraid of what will happen if we succeed. What is it that God wants you to try again?

2 OT B Listening to the direction of God not the justification of man.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In high school, a friend needed to borrow my car for a while to quickly run to her house and pick up some stuff after school. I let her do it, figuring it would be about a half hour or forty five minutes before she got back. After an hour, she still hadn’t returned. I was annoyed but a friend of mine who was waiting with me4 was fuming and, because he was that mad, I got that mad. I’m honestly not trying to make excuses for myself. In general, it takes a lot to get me angry and being late with my car is not going to do it. I think he thought I needed to be more mad or people would always take advantage of my kindness.  In any case, we sat in his car for an hour and a half, with him making me more and more mad as the minutes passed until, finally, she drove up. I bounded out of his car and just started yelling obscenities while she got out of mine. I didn’t even let her get a word in. She just stood there crying with her mouth agape, handed me my keys, and got in the car her Mom was driving behind her and the two of them left. It was one of those times in life when I realized, shortly after the car pulled away and my dopamine levels dropped, how big of a mistake I had made. 

The first reading from today’s Mass is one of my favorite readings in the entire Bible. I talk about it whenever I encourage someone to think about priesthood or religious life. I think of it when I’m doing spiritual direction with someone who tells me they haven’t felt God’s presence for a while. I think of it when I hear about bad parents or bad priests. It’s such a good reading. Let me fill in some of the context first. In most Bibles, the First Book of Samuel is the ninth book, meaning that it’s still relatively early in the Bible. In some ways, it marks a change for the way God communicates with his people. You have people like Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham, Joshua, and Moses where God speaks directly to the person who is doing the most action. Then, after the Pentaeuch, the first five books of the Bible, God appoints judges who speak on his behalf to others. It’s like he puts a buffer for controversial subjects between himself and the main people acting. These judges are people formally appointed by God to settle disputes and interpret the Law. The judges, however, didn’t last very long and were replaced by the priests. Or, to put it more accurately, a high priest had all the responsibility the judges used to have. And, it appears, by what is written in First Samuel, that God sort of became quiet for a while.

Samuel’s mother is a woman named Hannah. Like many women in the Bible, Hannah had prayed for years to have a child and was couldn't. When she finally does, she follows through on the bargain she had made to give her first born son to God. In other cultures, this would have involved ritual sacrifice. But, in the culture of the Jews, this involved having him go live with the high priest, whose name was Eli. Now, before anyone gets any ideas, neither Fr. Dave nor I are willing to raise your kids for you. It was a different time. Eli had a wife and kids of his own so he should have had a clue on how to raise children. I say “should” because Eli’s children, whose names are Phineas and Hophni, are well known around town as scoundrels. They use their Father’s position, as high priest, to steal money and lord power over people. I think this is partly why God was silent at the time. God is angry and disappointed at the lack of leadership on the part of his priest to be a leader of his own children. 

That’s all lead up to the first reading today where Samuel, who is probably just a teenager, gets a call from God has. Three times, God calls to him. Notice that when Samuel approaches Eli after God calls him, he says, “Here, I am.” Remember that when Moses received the Ten Commandments, God revealed his name as “I AM.” So, Samuel is approaching Eli but really, unknowingly, presenting himself to God. And three times, Eli’s response is, “Go back to sleep.” Now, think about one of the main themes of Advent: “Stay Awake!” Jesus ends many of his parables by telling his disciples to “Stay awake.” It’s like Jesus is speaking to his disciples and telling them, unlike Eli, that when they hear his voice they need to stay awake. Eli tells Samuel to go back to sleep, like many of us would do if some annoying kid kept waking us up in the middle of the night asking us if we’d been calling him. Still, Eli finally gets it AFTER the third time. In storytelling, the rule of three says that the person gets it on the third time. Think of the three little pigs surviving the huffs and puffs of the big bad wolf in the third house made of brick or the prince finding Cinderella by first trying the glass slipper on her two ugly, big footed step sisters. Eli fails at the rule of three because it only occurs to him after the third time that this may be God calling Samuel, not just an annoying kid who keeps waking him up. Who would have thought that God would call someone who is sleeping right next to the Ark of the Covenant, the very box that contains the Glory of God and where the people of the Old Testament encountered that God? Notice that, when Samuel is finally told who it is that is calling him and how to respond, it’s the first time we hear how God is calling Samuel. He calls him by name, “Samuel, Samuel” and Samuel responds by not calling God by his name, but by saying “Speak, your servant is listening.” He changes Eli’s directions by not saying God’s name as part of his response. 

The part that they leave out next is that God next says that Eli will be killed along with his scoundrel children, Hophni and Phineas, and that Samuel will not only take their place but be a thousand times better. He will be the first in a line of Prophets, the new way God will speak to his people. God even promises that Samuel’s words will be especially power. He said, “not a word will be without effect”. 

In my heart, this has always been an invitation for me to think about how God is calling me to use words. I preached a little bit about this at Christmas but let me complete the story about what happened with my friend. I approached her later, calmer and asked what had happened. She told me that, when she got home, her older brother saw her driving my car and he laid into her because what would happen if she got into an accident. He went inside and told her parents who also laid into her for driving my car for the same reason. They forbid her to drive it back and said I’d eventually come looking for it. After an hour of her pleading to drive it back, her Mom eventually relented and said she would follow her to make sure she drove safely. She was already an emotional wreck before she pulled up and I started screaming at her. When she got in the car with her Mom, her Mom said I had every right to be that mad and increased the amount of time she was grounded from one month to two months. I tried to apologize but it was years before we were good again. 

Words have consequences and sometimes we can ruin friendships by using them the wrong way. I learned it was important to listen to the whole story before I jumped to conclusions. On the other hand, I think about Eli and how he basically spoiled his kids to the point that they were the town scoundrels. We can’t be pushovers either. We have to listen to God and God’s plan first and foremost and not just what benefits us. “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening” should be our motto in life. In today’s world, I sometimes worry that people prioritize believing something different than others rather than believing the truth. I know the opposite is just as dangerous, believing everything that the majority of people believe. But there just seems to be a need in some people to constantly deny the simplest, most straightforward answer in favor of whatever fits their political perspective or whatever explanation makes them or their group the hero. I wonder if Eli thought that his kids were the good ones and the ones they were beating up and robbing probably deserved it. Have we taken the time to ask God what his plan is in this world? Speak, Lord, your servant is listening. How is God calling us to serve one another in love and stand up for the oppressed? How is God calling us to stand up for the unborn? How is God calling us to stand against all threats to human life like hunger and disease? We must listen to God and not ourselves. Speak, your servants are listening. But are we really?

God wants to welcome us through his Word, Jesus Christ: Baptism of the Lord - B

Friends

Peace be with you.

It’s so important to feel included and welcomed. In freshman year of high school, I became friends with a guy who was my closest friend throughout my four years. He had been in a different middle school but, as there was only one high school in my home town, we got to know each other and became friends there. It started because Marshalltown High school would let you leave campus for lunch as long as you made it back by your next period. He invited me to his house because his Mom was cooking lunch. I was really hesitant because I didn’t know him very well or his Mom at all. What if she was kinda mean? But, I went anyway and she was the nicest person I ever met. She had food ready and asked about how our day was going and just made me feel welcome. She even hugged me as I left and told me I was always welcome at their house. On the following Saturday, we were going to hang out and watch a movie and I went over and knocked on the screen door. I saw his Mom and Dad sitting in the living room. His Mom turned to the door and looked a little angry and said, “Dennis, what are you doing? You’re family! You don’t need to knock at this house. Just come on in and make yourself at home.” Then she smiled a big smile to let me know that she was only kidding. And, for all four years of high school, I was like a part of the family.

I think of that experience and many others where I’ve been invited into a person’s family on this celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. For instance, let’s look at the first reading from the book of the Prophet Isaiah. This is the bridge between second and third Isaiah, meaning scholars believe this is the last chapter of Isaiah written to the israelites when they were in Exile in Babylon. God speaks a word of welcome to them. Over and over again, he says come to the water, come to receive grain and eat, come without paying and without cost, come to me heedfully, It’s like God knows they’ve suffered enough, they’ve been too far away from him, and it’s time to welcome them back. I hope we’ll soon hear God say to everyone, “Come back to church! The pandemic is over and it is safe again to gather as my people. Come receive the body, blood soul and divinity of Christ” Let’s all pray we soon hear this message!

But we should also hear the other two parts of this reading as well. God is welcoming us, true, and inviting us, even more true. But God also invites us to seek for him because his ways are not our ways nor are his thoughts our thoughts. We are comfortable with a God who seeks us out and hangs out in our kitchen and living room until it’s time for us to go to heaven and then he welcomes us there. But we are less comfortable with a God who tells us that we need to be different than the people around us, better than the people around us. Baptism is associated with dying with Christ in order to be raised with him. During our earthly life, dying with Christ means realizing that God’s ways and thoughts must be our focus instead of the endless search for power, prestige, and wealth.

Our focus, as the last part says, will be the word. God says through Isaiah that his Word will be like the rains and snow which water the earth and make plants to grow. That doesn’t make much sense to us because our snows don’t make plants grow, it kills them. But, in the desert, any precipitation is welcome and snows tend to melt off quickly. There’s no need for snow plows over there. So, God’s Word will not return void but will achieve the end for which God sent it by feeding us and making our faith grow. I think that’s why it’s important to spend time each day with the Bible, reading passages and listening to what God might be speaking to you. I’m always amazed at how, despite the fact that I read the same daily Mass scripture passage every two or three years, it hits me very differently depending upon where I’m at and what is happening. For instance, this past Wednesday, I was, like many of you, very disturbed by what happened in the capitol. It was a sad day for our country. I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened and the news wasn’t helping to assuage my fears. On Thursday, I was praying midday prayer and I prayed Psalm 57 that gave me such comfort…

2 Have mercy on me, God, have mercy,

for in you my soul has taken refuge.

In the shadow of your wings I take refuge,

till the storms of destruction pass by.

I spent a lot of time with those few words and found myself next to the tabernacle taking refuge in the Lord.

You see, God’s word isn’t just scripture. The purpose of scripture is to move our heart to God’s word, who is Jesus Christ. Today we celebrate his baptism and, in the gospel passage from Mark, we hear how Jesus’ baptism changes it from the way his cousin, St. John the Baptist, was doing them. John’s were merely a washing away of sin. But, Jesus’ baptism tears open the heavens so that the Holy Spirit could ascend upon him and the Father could proclaim that Jesus was his son with whom he is well pleased.

Most likely, our baptism was not nearly this dramatic. However, this passage tells us what is expected of us, the baptized. We may not have heard a voice from the Father calling us his son or daughter but we are called to live like God is our Father and we are all brothers and sisters, as though his will is above our will and his ways and thoughts far more important than our thoughts and ways. The Spirit in the form of a dove probably didn’t descend from the heavens but the Spirit did come upon you to empower you to welcome God into your homes, your families, and your lives and to develop the gifts and talents he has given you. And the heavens may not have been torn asunder but God did tear asunder all that separates us from him and invited us into this new relationship of being his son and daughter. It was like, by being baptized, he said to us, “You don’t need to knock on my door. You’re family!” Do we want to be part of the family of God or are we too afraid to open ourselves up to the blessed life God has for us?

Be people who follow the light to see Jesus: Epiphany 2020 - B

 

Friends

Peace be with you.

When I was a kid, my family would often go camping at Twin Acres Campground close to Colo, Iowa. I only bring up the name of it on the off chance that some of you also camped there and had a similar experience. The owner at the time, a man named Earl, would hook up his tractor to a hay rack and, twice on both Friday and Saturday nights, take people around the the campground and the adjoining farm that he owned. The whole thing took about an hour and was very slow and, undoubtedly, too dangerous for today’s insurance folks. But, one of our favorite things to do was to ride the hay rack out to the field Earl owned, which always seemed be planted with corn, and jump off the back when we were in the deepest part of the field. It’d be around dusk and we’d start playing hide and seek for as long as we could. It got more and more exciting and challenging because there were no lights in the field aside from an occasional full moon. At some point, we’d realize it was getting too dark and we’d have to walk back but, in the darkness, we didn’t always know how to get back to where we came from. I remember a few times of having to look intently for the lights of the campers and being relieved when we reached our parents campers and the light and warmth of their campfire.

Today is Epiphany and our readings are focusing us on light. In the first reading, Isaiah is speaking to a people who have recently returned from exile in Babylon to a completely destroyed city of Jerusalem and its center of worship, the Temple. There is little to celebrate, other than their freedom. Yet, God says to them that their light has come. That the light of their decimated city will shine bright and that the other powerful cities will be thrown into darkness, the darkness of cities that have been plundered and destroyed. It will be a brightness that attracts the sons who have been leery about returning home and lead to a kind of hopefulness that will encourage people to start having children again. And, it will be a type of light that encourages the people from Sheba and Seba, the chief competitors to Jerusalem, to give them money and animals.

From a Christian perspective, we see in this a kind of foreshadowing of the events that happened at Epiphany when these visitors from the East, look into the sky, see a star there, and interpret from it the appearance of the King of the Jews. What’s amazing, however, is that, when the Magi follow the star to Jerusalem to meet the King, King Herod tells them that he is actually in a backwater little town called Bethlehem. When I studied in Jerusalem, I walked a couple of times from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and back. It’s relatively short but, even today, the difference is striking. Aside from the Basilica of the Nativity, there is nothing in Bethlehem of historical significance. Yet, the star shines on O Little Town of Bethlehem and illuminates it for the Magi. Please notice, by the way, that the star didn’t lead them to Jerusalem. It just rose and the Magi noticed it so they went where they figured the king of the Jews would be, in the capital city of Jerusalem. Yet, it did guide them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. It’s like the star knew these seers from the East would get the directions wrong if it didn’t walk them directly to Bethlehem. In so doing, however, it’s fulfilling the promise God made through Isaiah to his people so many years before.

We are, therefore, called to be people who follow the light in search of the King of the Jews. Yet, how often do we, instead, find ourselves more fascinated with darkness? How often do we wish something bad “karma” would happen to someone who is behaving badly instead of praying for or encouraging them to do what is right? How often do we justify our own bad actions by saying they aren’t as bad as other people’s or that we deserve to do them because we have had a hard day or because we work so hard? How often do we look at someone who is poor or hungry or stranded by the side of the road and assume that they don’t want our help? Now is the time to stop being in the darkness of our cornfields and, instead, look up to see where the light is so we can search it out.

First Sunday in Advent - B: Are we patient enough

Friends

Peace be with you.

Once a week or once every other week, I have to drive to Dubuque for some errand. Sometimes it’s to pick up something from Dubuque Religious or the music store. I know I could ask any of you who have to make this journey daily to do it for me but, especially in this time of coronavirus, sometimes I just want to get out and drive. The trouble is that, I forget how frustrating it is to get from point A to point B in larger towns than ours. I get so frustrated while waiting at stoplights or waiting to get onto the roundabout for the one guy who seems to have timed it just right to prevent my entrance that I’ve started turning on a stopwatch. That way, when I rack up an hour of waiting at stop lights, I can send the city of Dubuque a bill for an hour of my wages, which, if I’ve done the math right, would mean they would owe our parishes about 30 cents. What frustrates me the most is when you are at one stop light on Dodge Street, just trying to get back into the peace of small town living, and you can see the light turn green but no one moves in front of you because the first car in your line wasn’t paying attention or it takes so long for the line to be able to move that, by the time you get to the light, it’s red again.

We live in a world of instant gratification. If we want sometime at 1:00 in the morning, we can just jump online and order it. If we want to know what time Mass is in the Cathedral in Charleston, South Carolina and whether we have to wear masks or make a reservation before we go, we search for it on the internet. When we want something, we want it now. Personally, I’ve found this particularly true since March. I can get really frustrated if things don’t happen as quickly or efficiently as I want it to. I’m guessing we all can.

This is the type of frustration the Prophet Isaiah is expressing today in our first reading. He pleads, “Return for the sake of your servant! Cut open the heavens and come down. Do mighty things that our ancestors didn’t see you do. There is none who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to cling to you: for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our guilt.” Can’t you just hear the frustration the Prophet is feeling, as he and his fellow Israelites are abandoned in Babylon? You can almost hear the stages of grief that he goes through in these couple of sentences, or at least the first four of them: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. One has to wonder what would cause a Prophet to despair, a man whose job was to tell the people that they have gone too far from God and need to turn from their sin and return to God’s love. Has the pressure just become too much for him? Have the people become so comfortable away from Israel that they’ve forgotten the one true God completely and no longer care about the land he gave them, the very symbol of their salvation as a people? The message of Isaiah is clear, “Return! Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.” Come back God. We miss you. The longer you are gone, the less your people miss you. Come back before they don’t care about you at all.

The answer to this plea comes in the gospel, a gospel that is translated by the skeptic and sinner as, “God is coming! Look busy!”. For the faithful, it is much more profound and comforting than that. The gospel we hear isn’t a fear-based message. It is an incredibly hopeful message about patience in waiting. Jesus is explaining to us that this world is, in some ways, an exercise in waiting for something better. We are waiting for a place in which suffering, sickness, and death have all been destroyed. We are waiting for the fullness of hope, love, and faith of which this world is merely a foretaste.

Today, we begin this season of waiting, a season that tests our patience and forces us to sit still. Now, you may say, “Father, I hate to tell you this but we’ve been in a season of waiting since March. What do you mean we’re entering into it today?” But have we? We probably didn’t have the kind of Thanksgiving or Easter or Fourth of July we’d wish we could and I know many of you are probably feeling like this pandemic is never going to end. Still, there is much that stops us from having to wait in earnest. So, as we enter into this time of Advent, we may ask ourselves: are we willing to wait? For instance, are we willing, when we are home at night and don’t have work that absolutely has to get done, to shut off our TV, computer, smartphones, and tablets so we can spend time talking to the people in our bubble? Or only use them for connecting with someone and not for social media or a game or something else that is more an escape from waiting? Are we patient enough to take time each day to read the daily Mass readings and give ourselves time to reflect on how or whether we are becoming the kind of person we know God wants us to be?

In a few minutes, in the midst of the Our Father, I will pray, “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.” How will our Advent waiting look more like waiting and less like filling the time with busy-ness so that we are filled with the blessed hope of the coming of our Savior at Christmas?

Christ the King - A The Shepherds and sheep are selfish so God’s taking the wheel.

Friends

Peace be with you.

A few of years ago, the country singer Carrie Underwood made a song famous with the title, “Jesus Take the Wheel”. It tells a simple story of a woman who narrowly avoids a car crash while her child is in the back seat. When her car goes into a skid on black ice she cries out “Jesus take the wheel”. After she finds herself safely on the side of the road, the woman stops to pray, attributing the miraculous save to divine intervention by a God who hasn’t given up on her even though she had given up on him amidst a difficult year.

I’m to a point in 2020 that, when something goes wrong, I mutter in frustration, “Great. That’s exactly what needed to happen.” No one is around when I say it and it generally means I’m just done. When I got home last night with my arms full of things from the store and my office and a plastic box fell on the ground that I was carrying into the rectory, I looked at it and said this phrase, as though I was chastising gladware for its insolence. I was late for a Zoom conference call with my friends and this was the last thing that needed to happen. In the midst of the call, I started whining about some of my frustrations and one of my friends said, “Hey, you’re doing a better job than my childhood priest. When our CCD teacher threatened to beat us and that he knew how to do it so it wouldn’t leave marks, when my mom complained to our priest about him, he told her that he was a good giver to the parish and he’d hate to upset him.” Jesus, take the wheel of this church with some, thankfully few, bad shepherds.

Our first reading is from the 34th chapter of the Book of the Prophet Ezekial. It’s not often that we can pretty clearly see the sources of where Jesus is getting his material, like where he learned the parables he shares. But, it appears this passage, and in particular the last sentence, “As for you, my sheep, says the Lord GOD, I will judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats”, played an important role in the gospel for tonight.

There are two parts to this chapter and this verse is the division between them. Thankfully, the two parts are easy to summarize. First, God is going to take over being the shepherd because the ones he appointed have been shepherding themselves instead of shepherding the sheep. Even though there isn’t a lot of clarity as to what they have been doing, I think Jesus fills it in rather nicely. Instead of making sure the sheep had their basic needs met in terms of food, water, clothing, shelter, health, and companionship, the shepherds have been looking after themselves. They’re comfortable so what do they care about the sheep? So, God is going to take the shepherd’s crook and take over. But, there’s more context if we just read on. It says that the sheep have been scattered and the stronger sheep have done this, essentially, by picking on the weaker sheep. That’s why, by the way, in the passage we read, God gathers the lost, the strayed, and the sick but threatens to destroy the strong. From an agricultural perspective, this makes sense. You slaughter the strong sheep for the most and best meat not the sickly. But, from a theological point of view, it makes sense too. When there are lost people, especially formerly faithful who are lost, and we are comfortable being fed on the bread of life, we need to ask ourselves if we are the strong sheep ignoring the lost.

I’ve been inspired by those of you who bring communion to friends, neighbors, and family members who don’t feel comfortable coming to church during this pandemic. You are feeding the hungry and providing the shelter of Christ to those who feel exposed. Thank you for that. And, if anyone is wanting to get involved in this ministry, talk to me or Deacon Loras or Father Dave and we’ll be glad to commission you to do this. Whatever else we can do to reach out safely to those who are lost and strayed, especially if we’re the reason why, please don’t miss an opportunity to do so.

In the end, God has to take over because the people are picking on each other and the shepherds are doing nothing to stop it. The shepherds are valuing comfort and avoiding conflict instead of helping those who really need it. I know I can give into this same temptation, not wanting to upset people or intervene if I’m aware of a conflict between people. Maybe we all should be willing to give up our comfort and upset someone and let Jesus take the wheel.

33 OT: The Church, the woman of strength, inspires us to work hard, be charitable, and share the gospel

Friends

Peace be with you.

This week, like last week, we hear in our first reading from a book that is part of what our Jewish brothers and sisters refer to as “Wisdom Literature”. And, like last week, wisdom is personified as a woman. Now, I’m sure that doesn’t surprise any of us, especially any of the women in the congregation. Women are wise. And it’s common for us to use women as images of wisdom. Think of the Statue of Liberty welcoming people to New York Harbor or the statue of Lady Justice at the Supreme Court building. Still, I think this story may help us understand how we read this poem in the context of the church.

Often, this passage is read at Jewish and Christian women’s funeral services. It is also read at night by Jewish husbands to their wives on Friday evenings, the evening of the Jewish Sabbath. It’s a way for them to remind themselves of their partnership, that the husband should be thankful for his woman of strength and the woman should fear the Lord. That’s a beautiful tradition, really, and possibly one some of you may consider doing. Maybe, instead of reading Proverbs 31 each week, you could read First Corinthians 13, the “Love is patient, love is kind” passage.

Still, what does this have to do with the Christian life? One image of the church is that we are the unspotted bride of Christ. We need analogies like this to set our goals in life. So, if we, the members of the church, are meant to live as the bride of Christ, what does that mean? The church provides this shortened passage from the first reading to help guide us in this. As I read over that first reading, there are essentially three characteristics the worthy wife, which would be better translated as the woman of strength, has that the church should emulate. First, she works hard. Obtaining wool and flax and manually using a spindle would be a hard job, especially without an engine to do the work for you. Imagine having to begin making a dress or a pair of pants by sheering a sheep. In this same way we are to work hard. But at what? I’ll come back to this question.

Second, those hard working hands give generously to the poor. You work super hard to make all that stuff, you’d think you’d be able to just keep it for yourself if you have anything left over but, instead, the woman of strength gives it away to those who cannot do what she can do. It takes a special person to not let the tension of our times harden our hearts to the needs of others, yet that is exactly what the church is called to do. To be a conduit of God’s charity, God’s love, to those most in need of it. And that is what we must do too.

Lastly, rather than focusing on charm and beauty, traits this world still prizes in women, the woman of strength fears the Lord. I think this is a phrase that is easily misunderstood. I don’t think we’re supposed to be afraid of God, as though God were akin to a bully beating us up and stealing our milk money. I think the fear of the Lord needs to be understood in two ways. First, we don’t fear anything but God. That means people can make fun of what we wear or how we look but we shouldn’t be afraid of them. They are, after all, creatures like us, not the creator. And, the fear we have of God is more like respect or awe for a God who brought us into the world and could take us out but, instead, gives us a million notes of love throughout the day. The woman of strength, the church, is therefore called to notice and give thanks for the many ways God sends us these notes of love without feeling entitled to them. We are to be a people who give thanks for everything that we have.

Now, let’s go back to that first point, that the woman of strength works hard. But what are we to be working for? We are to work to build up the kingdom of God, to help ourselves and others develop a relationship with this God of whom we have awe and who calls us to charity to others. I think that’s what connects this reading to the gospel. The point of the gospel isn’t that heaven is made up of venture capitalists who make a lot of money by risky investments that pay off, though there are some who have interpreted this passage that way. If so, no one listening to Jesus’ message would have been saved. Jesus’ audience was scandalized when rich Zacchaeus wanted to join the movement or when Jesus recruited the rich tax collector Levi. No, the point is that, when it comes to evangelization, we have to think like them. We can’t just bury our head in the ground and hope that we’ll be saved, because that is in itself a sin. It’s true to say that we have to be holy but we also have to reach out to those who are not in the household and win them for Christ. That’s the hard work the church is called to do, winning souls for salvation.

It’s hard to be Lady Wisdom, the woman of strength as the church is analogized this week, in this world at this time. People see talking about religion as innately threatening. The coronavirus means people aren’t gathering in places where you can strike up a casual conversation. Heck even the idea of a casual conversation is frowned upon. And the leadership of the church isn’t helping either, with yet another scandal happening this week. Still, there is one person, one friend, that you can reach out to that wants...no needs....to hear the story of Jesus. Work hard this week, be charitable, tell them about an awe inspiring experience of God you had and then ask the Holy Spirit, the embodiment and inspiration of of Lady Wisdom to doubling your talent and finding our faith renewed and sustained.

32 OT A We find wisdom because we have been found.

Friends

Peace be with you.

A number of years ago, I was assigned to an Irish parish and and I was asked, relatively early into the assignment, to do a burial. In case you don’t know, in general, Irish parishes tend to want their cemetery in a different location than the parish church. Luxemburger and German parishes, on the other hand, tend to want the cemetery right next to the church. Think of St. Joe’s in Bellevue, for instance, versus Sts. Peter and Paul, St. Donatus, and St. Catherine. There was a church in the St. Joe Cemetery at one point roughly where the columbarium are located today but, by 1901, the largely Irish population that attended that church moved it blocks away. It’s my understanding that, at one point, Sts. Peter and Paul in Springbrook was located East of town but, when they decided to move the church into the center of town, rather than continuing to bury people out there, they started a new cemetery right around the new church. Okay, you get the picture.

So, I’m supposed to go to a cemetery that isn’t right next to the church but, halfway there, I realized I didn’t know where the cemetery was. I was supposed to meet the funeral home director at the funeral home and he would lead me out there but I got delayed and was a little late and missed the procession to the cemetery. I tried to find it on google maps to no avail. I asked around town and got the kind of directions that help locals. “Take the Frankville highway until you see where the windmill used to be on old Slim Jackson’s farm…” I got so lost and had absolutely no luck in finding anyone who could help me get there that I eventually gave up and went home. I no more than walked through the door when the funeral home director called and asked me why I didn’t show up. I told him everything I just told you and he said, “Well, why didn’t you just wait at the funeral home? You should have known I was going to come back and get you.” I thought to myself, “Should I?” and just apologized and said I’d do better in the future.

I think that’s why I have a certain sympathy for the foolish virgins in the gospel today. I am not always good about planning ahead and being ready for whatever is to come. So, it’s probably good to focus our attention on being wise, a characteristic described rather well in the first reading for today. Now, I know some of you may have noticed rather quickly that wisdom is portrayed as a woman. You may think that’s because only women are wise but it is a little more complicated than that. In the language at the time, God is portrayed as a man and lady wisdom is portrayed as God’s partner, his coworker. The book from which this passage comes, entitled Wisdom or the Wisdom of Solomon, was probably written 100 or 200 years before the birth of Jesus. It’s one of those books that is found in the Catholic Bible but not in Protestant Bibles. It’s a book all about the search for wisdom. What’s interesting is that, at the time of its writing, the Jewish people would have been interacting, with the Greek world, a world of violence, yes, but also a world of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. So, part of what the author is doing is saying that it’s not just the Greeks who have wisdom, we do too. It’s just that, unlike the Greeks who believe you have to go on a long and arduous journey searching for wisdom, “She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire.” Even before we search for wisdom, she is making herself known to us. That’s because, for believers, God existed before us and wisdom, often associated with the Holy Spirit, existed before us and has been seeking us out. That’s why the first reading says, “(wisdom) makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her, and graciously appears to them in the ways, and meets them with all solicitude.”

Isn’t that great? I hope it’s relieving. Instead of having to search in all kinds of places for the wisdom of God, God is searching for us. This really is something that makes Christianity different from most other religions; We have a God who searches for us. Knowing this, it should affect our prayer. Bishop Barron suggests, quite rightly, that we take five minutes a day to remind ourselves that God is looking for you and invite God into our hearts. Don’t be like me, driving all over looking for God. Just sit and be still and let God find you. Also, think about those areas of your life that you feel like you have to control. Recently, I have realized that I’m getting in trouble in this assignment because I’ve started thinking that, if I don’t do some things, they aren’t going to get done. I have to call this meeting because I can’t trust the leadership to do so. I have to set the agenda because, if they do, we’ll never get anything done. I have to be the one to turn the lights off in church or we’ll waste all kinds of electricity. Whenever we make ourselves indispensable in a situation, we lose sight that God is the one who is in charge. It’s okay to ask for help. In fact, it’s a good reminder that we need to take time to trust in others and search out others for their help, if for no other reason than because we need to be able to take time each day to be found by God and we can’t do that when we feel like we have to be in charge of everything. Of what use is a creator when we feel like we need to create everything or it just won’t get done right.

In the end, it’s easy to find wisdom. We just have to let the Father find us and there she is too.

All Saints - A: Being God’s storyteller

Friends

Peace be with you.

In the book “Building Better Families”, the Catholic apologist Matthew Kelly advises parents in nine different ways to be Great Leaders for their children. One of the ways he advises is to be a great storyteller to your children. He says in this rather lengthy quote,


The most powerful story you tell the world every day is the story of how you choose to live your life. This story, your story, affects the lives of everyone who crosses your path...and millions of people whom you will never meet or know...But beyond this very intimate story of your life, let us consider the stories we tell each other and our children in conversation. Are we constantly talking about the latest horrific world event or do we talk about the people who we look up to and why? Are we constantly discussing fame and fortune or do we make time to speak of the ordinary people who are our heroes and mentors? Do you tell your children what you loved about your parents and grandparents? Do they know the stories of the teachers and coaches (I would add nuns and priests) who had the most influence on your life? Do they know the story of your life? Have you told them the story of how you met their mother or father? Stories are powerful, and great leaders continuously develop an inspiring repertoire to have on hand when the right moment arises.



Think about this quote in the context of our readings and our celebration for today. It’s All Saints Day, a time for us to remember the named and unnamed saints who are in heaven. Our readings remind us of this. The first reading, from the Book of Revelation, is situated in a part of that book in which six of seven seals are opened and stories are being read, largely of doom and gloom. They’re talking about a coronavirus pandemic and evil politicians and a derecho. Wait, no, that’s us. They’re talking about signs of the end times that they’re experiencing. However, then they get to Chapter 7 and they remind themselves that, as St. Paul says in the second reading, we are called to be children of God, marked not by the symbols of this world, power, pleasure, and wealth, but with the mark of God on our foreheads. Most of us were signed with this mark at baptism and were renewed with it in confirmation when the bishop or priest marked our forehead with sacred chrism, making us among those who have washed our robes in the blood of the lamb and made them white. The world may not know our story but, that’s okay, because that merely means we are living up to that mark on our foreheads even more because the world also didn’t know the story of Jesus or they never would have put him to death.

In the gospel, Jesus tells us why the world wasn’t interested in his story, because he valued what heaven values not what the world valued. He said we’d be blessed, we’d be happiest, when our stories involved mourning, because we will be comforted. Only those who mourn can desire the comfort of God. Jesus’ story was all about being clean or pure of heart, because only by seeking to be like God can we see God, let alone be known by him. Jesus knew first hand that those who are insulted and persecuted because of him will receive a reward great in heaven, that they’d be blessed by him by living like he did.

What is the story of our life thus far? What would people say were our greatest accomplishments and our greatest failures? Where do we find our deepest pleasure but in God himself? How can we be sure that our lives are telling the story of Jesus and not the story of this world?

28 OT A: Custody of the eyes? What if that was your sister?

Friends

Peace be with you.

A few years ago, it seemed like every July or early August, I would get an email or note from a parishioner that would go something like this…

Dear Fr. Miller

In general, I think you are doing a good job as our pastor. You have a very beautiful voice and sometimes you even have a good homily. But, you need to do something about all these women that don’t wear the right clothes to church. And I’m not just talking about young girls. I’m talking about women who should know better than wearing spaghetti straps and shorts. Don’t they know they are coming to church? I find this very offensive. I don’t come to church to look at bare shoulders and back acne. (I’m not kidding about the back acne comment!) Church is supposed to be a formal place where you wear your finest clothes, not the swimming hole with Opey and Andy.

Yours in Christ

Older, respected woman in the community

I couldn’t help but think of these communications when I was reading this passage. If I were to apply this scripture passage literally, the message is clear: those older, respected women in the community are exactly right and I should have the ushers throw out anyone who comes to church without the right clothes on. I should set up a dress code that everyone has to meet, especially the women. I’m thinking a full length ball gown with a mantilla covering the women’s head is going to be part. Guys will have to wear a suit with a bow tie, preferably a tuxedo but I understand that not every man can afford a tux so any suit would suffice except for a leisure suit or, of course, your birthday suit.

I am, of course, being facetious. I have no intention of implementing a dress code. Having worked on three different college campuses, I think I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen women with tight fitting shirts, short shorts, and thigh high boots come and kneel down in the front row of church and volunteer to help at the parish festival. I’ve seen guys with baggy pants, baggy shorts, body-piercings and tattoos visible everywhere spending time in front of the Blessed Sacrament and who eventually discern a vocation. And I've seen guys in khaki pants, a shirt, and tie come in and act like total idiots in church. I don’t think Jesus was advocating setting a dress code for mass in this parable. He’s using an analogy to get at a deeper issue.

The King in this analogy is God and, as we know, God first made a relationship to the Jewish people. In the first reading, we heard that the end-time was supposed to be like a great banquet that the Lord of hosts would provide on his mountain. But, when God invites his chosen people to attend, at first they refuse to come and then they beat and kill the servants who invited them. The servants that invite them are, of course, the prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus. So, the King has to give up on the guests he first invited and sends the remaining servants out to invite anyone and everyone to the banquet. Yet, when he does this, someone shows up not wearing clothes fit for a wedding. What tells me that there’s a deeper meaning than simple church regulation is that the result of being thrown out of the banquet is wailing and gnashing of teeth. It seems clear that Jesus is using people’s outward appearance to talk about what’s happening in their heart.

I think of the man who comes to mass with his beautiful family after cheating on his wife the night before. Or the nicely dressed woman who stole money from work on Friday and then comes before the Lord in the Holy Eucharist on Sunday. Or the priest who insists on the nicest robes and always wears a suit with French cuffs who can’t be bothered to help the poor person who stops at his door. Those are the garments that matter to the Lord.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts has provided a feast of rich food and choice wine, on this mountain the Lord has provided the body and blood of his only Son. We put on the wedding garments of good works to come to this mountain, even if our outward clothing isn’t always perfect.

24 OT A: Being a bright light of hope in a dark world

Friends

Peace be with you.

This weekend’s gospel is kind of unique. It’s a parallel parable, two events that are similar take place with two very different outcomes. Unfortunately, we probably aren’t as shocked by either outcome because we’ve heard it before and some of the facts kind of need to be translated. So let’s explore some of those facts to help us understand what is so shocking about this parable.

There’s a servant who, roughly, owes his master the equivalent to the national debt of the United States. No kidding, it’s a huge amount and there’s no way he could pay it back so he says “Be patient with me and I will pay you back in full.” The master must have been having a good day or something because, he’s so moved with compassion, that he not only doesn’t throw him, his wife, and his children in jail and sell of his possessions but he forgives the whole debt.

The servant leaves and immediately encounters a fellow servant who is in debt a few hundred bucks. It’s a significant amount but nothing compared to what he owed the master. When this other servant uses the same expression he just said to the master, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full” there is no pity in the forgiven servant’s voice. He throws his fellow servant in jail until the money shows up. And, in the context of the story, it appears the money in fact shows up and he is able to pay the debt. Maybe the first servant knew his fellow servant really could pay the debt and that he was lying. Or maybe the first servant was incredibly poor and needed to collect his debts just to be able to eat. We’re not entirely sure.

This is when the surprising part happens because: When the servant is called back in front of the master, the prudent thing the master would have done is to demand the smaller amount of money the servant got from his fellow servant. I mean, wouldn’t that just make sense? By throwing the servant who is incredibly deep in debt in jail, the master wouldn’t have been able to be repaid at all. It’s better that his servant work and slowly repay the debt over time by, for example, collecting the debts that others owed to him. You’d think, therefore, that the master would be happy that the servant is trying to pay back some of the debt.

The problem and the surprise of the story is that the master didn’t want the servant to repay the loan in the first place. He had completely forgiven it and expected this servant to have a sense of gratitude for that forgiveness. That’s the appropriate way to behave when we are treated kindly. We should want to behave just as kindly to those around us.

The problem is that it’s so easy to forget the tremendous kindness that God has had for us. There is so much darkness and despair in our world that we can follow our culture’s attitude of tit-for-tat vengeance. Our culture tells us that we should only be nice to people who are nice to us. We should only forgive those who forgive us. We should just give to those who give us something. This is the attitude of politicians and advertisers; you pat my back, I’ll pat yours.

As Christians, we are called to a more hopeful, more sacrificial life than this. God loves and and so we must love others without needing them to love us back. God has forgiven us so we must forgive everyone who harms us even if they don’t ask for forgiveness. And God has given his life for us so we must give our lives for others. We must be a beacon of hope in an all too dark world.

The God whose plan comes in a quiet whispering sound

Friends

Peace be with you.

I generally don’t associate the appearance of God with pyrotechnics. A ringmaster at a circus or a performer at a theater may appear center stage after a flash of light and bang of sound but that’s generally not the way I think about God appearing. I bring this up because it’s not true historically. It was common for natural events that are remarkable to imagine to be associated with the gods. Thor is the god of thunder, he appears with thunder both in Norse mythology and in the Marvel cinematic universe. In the mind of the Canaanite people, the major adversaries of the Jewish people, their god, Baal, was the god of fire. He appeared to them in fire. So lightening, the sun, molten lava, and other fiery things were associated with Baal.

In the 18th chapter of the First Book of Kings, the chapter immediately preceding the story we heard in the first reading, the King of Israel, whose name is Ahab, has convinced all the prophets of his day that Baal and the one true God are basically the same and, therefore, they should work for Baal. There is one brave prophet left, Elijah, who is tasked with putting down this false notion of syncretism, the belief that all religions are basically the same, and putting forth the truth that there is one God and that his name isn’t Baal. Elijah’s way of reminding the people of the things St. Paul mentions in the second reading, “They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs the patriarchs,” is to challenge the false prophets to a fire creation off. What’s a fire creation off, you ask. Well, it’s when Elijah invites the false prophets to stack a bunch of wood in the middle of a field and then beg the god of fire to start it on fire and create a place where they can offer him sacrifice. For an entire morning the false prophets of the false god dance around trying to do this while Elijah taunts them that there God might be asleep or away on vacation or possibly even drunk and passed out. Finally, Elijah stacks up some wood, pours a bunch of water on it, and asks the one true God to show them who’s boss. God lights the wood on fire and proves he’s the one true God. Now, normally, if you hear this story this is the end and you get a homily about how important it is to worship God and not false gods like money, power, or pleasure.

However, this isn’t a normal homily. Because, immediately after the fire is going really well and all the water has been lapped up, Elijah tells the townspeople who had come out to watch this fire creation off, to take the false prophets down to the valley and kill them all. Not very nice, right? You can understand why we don’t bring it up normally. But you have to know that to understand what happens next. King Ahab finds out that all his prophets are dead and that they’ve been killed on the word of his nemesis, Elijah, utters a blood oath. A blood oath says either that guy dies or I die, with no intent on the person who said it being the one who dies. He sends out his soldiers to kill Elijah and the one true prophet of the one true God has to go into hiding. He runs for 40 days and 40 nights (remember how the Old Testament loves the number 40?) and finds himself by the same mountain that Moses first encountered God and got the ten commandments. In this Book, they call it Horeb but we’re probably more accustomed to it’s earlier name, Sinai.

And that’s when our reading starts. Except, they’ve left out a bit of dialogue. When Elijah arrives, God says to him, “Why are you here?” and Elijah responds, ““I have been most zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant. They have destroyed your altars and murdered your prophets by the sword. I alone remain, and they seek to take my life.” He feels totally alone and abandoned. That’s when God says to go stand outside and he showers down three things that are fire based. Well, sort of fire based, if you think in the mind of the time. Wind is fire based because it’s violent. Think of the gospel, how the wind and waves blow the boat around. It destroys things. And wind amplifies fire. You need oxygen to make a fire grow. Earthquakes are also violent and they may be associated with volcanic eruptions. And, the last one is fire. All three are false manifestations of the false god Baal. You see, God is saying that Elijah gets it. God isn’t all about destruction and violence. Jesus’ message to the disciples in the boat is the message of God, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Now, if I were to stop there, I think I’d, once again, miss the real point that God is getting across. Because, the very next thing that happens for Elijah is that God tells him that he has a plan and that it involves him choosing his successors and being taken up in a fiery chariot, presumably to heaven although that word isn’t explicitly mentioned. The point is that, even though it’s not the plan that Elijah would want, God still had a plan that worked out in the end. I don’t know about you but, so far, 2020 isn’t going the way I planned. I wouldn’t have planned a global pandemic that keeps forcing us to cancel and adjust things. I wouldn’t have planned for us to be sitting in a less than half filled church with masks on worrying about particulates. I wouldn’t have done it this way. And, even though we may be tempted to sit back and question whether God even has a plan, we can hear in the first reading that he does and we will hear it and see it unfold, not in the noise of the coronavirus or the election or our fears but in the quiet spaces where we encounter God. God has a plan, and we can see it unfold if we stop paying attention to the fires in our lives and, instead, let the one true God unfold it for us.