Thoughts on the relationship of parochial schools and catholic schools.

 Friends

    Peace be with you.

    I've spent a fair amount of time in my life reflecting on the importance of Catholic schools and whether they are important in today's world. At points, I must admit, that I have come to the conclusion that Catholic schools are an expense the parish is forced to subsidize for a majority of people who have a tangential (at best) relationship to it. Many people send their kids to Catholic schools but do not attend Sunday Mass or have much to do with the Catholic church in general. The majority of Catholic school students who graduate from Catholic schools do not attend or participate in the Catholic Church after graduation. There are other factors, too many to list really, that made me question why we spend so much time and energy keeping a school system afloat that seems doomed to failure. 

    But the more I reflect upon it, the more I have been forced to change my mind. Fundamentally, I think there should be schools where people who do not want their children to learn about religion can send their kids, which I think is one of the benefits of the public school system. However, I also believe that parents who want their kids to learn in an environment that integrates religion into learning, in this case Catholic Christianity, should be able to send their kids to a parochial school. And it is to a religion's advantage to want to teach children because they CAN integrate the spiritual life within each class. My experience in a public school was that religion could only be mentioned derogatorily. When a history teacher mentioned the crusades, religion was at fault. When a science teacher talked about a heliocentric vision of the universe, it was always juxtaposed against the church's more fundamentalist geocentric model and the Aristotle trial would inevitably be brought up. If a literature teacher were to assign the Scarlet Letter, for instance, religion would be brought up as a source of paranoia and bias. There was no context involved in these discussions, no offering the church's or religion's point of view. It seemed the point was to quickly denigrate religion and then move on. 

    Religious schools can fill in the gaps that public schools are forced to leave out. We can talk about how Copernicus, a Catholic monk, was actually the first to propose a model of the universe where the sun was at the center and that the issue with Galileo had as much to do with struggling to deal with the literalism of Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli as anything else. We can say that Pope John Paul II has apologized for the whole affair and said it marks an ugly time for the church and we can show how, consistently, Catholic schools are on the forefront of science and scientific discovery. We can talk about the complexities of the crusades and how it as much had to do with the growth and strengthening of Islam and talk about how Christianity used to be a stronghold in North Africa but was largely wiped out by Islamic violence. We can talk about the Battle of Lepanto and show how Christianity in Europe had to defend itself against this same group of violent Islamists. And, we can talk about the theology of the Puritans and show where it came from and what parts of the Bible is exploited to come up with it's worldview. We can look into the history of Christianity and see connections between it and previous groups in a way that the public school simply cannot out of fear of being seen as partisan. 

    This is not meant to say that a parochial school should be entirely opposed to a public school or that one is inherently better than the other. Actually, I think balancing cooperation with some charitable competitiveness is the best relationship possible. If one school needs the help of the other, I think it is in both school's best interests to offer it. If they can collaborate on some athletics that neither school seems to be able to field, that is best for the kids in both schools. What I find unhelpful is when one school, either the public or the parochial, seems to make it a goal to dominate the other. Most of the time it is the larger public school dictating to the smaller Catholic school what classes or sports or extracurricular activities it is willing to share. I do know of one situation, however, where a Catholic school made sure a public school was not built in their town out of fear that they would lose kids to it. And, more recently, there have been allegations of public money being given to private schools to the detriment of the public schools. But that is a separate column for someone with more expertise than I. I also don't find it helpful for the two schools to essentially disown each other and refuse to collaborate at all. That sets the students, staff, and administration against one another and creates and fuels hostility between the schools. 

    So, what does a relationship balancing cooperation with some charitable competitiveness look like if not the above? I'd suggest that the schools cooperate when they can and seek to support one another when they can't. If one of the schools has a class or sport or extracurricular activity that they're willing to share, they should inform and welcome the other school to send some students. And if one school needs help in academics or extracurricular activities, they should inform the other school and ask for their help. Encouraging collaboration among teachers and coaches for students of both schools to learn together when they can would benefit the schools and the entire community. When there are competitions, strongly encourage students and fans to cheer for each other. Make sure your coaches and players know that this is a different type of game, closer to a brother playing a brother where the point cannot be to humiliate or alienate because you're going to have to live together afterwards. Perhaps even be willing to remove players, parents, or students who seem more intent on turning it into a grudge match than a charitable competition. 

    In the end, I think it has to be a relationship built on mutual respect. There are going to be subjects and activities that are proper to each school that the other simply won't be able to participate in. But where cooperation is possible, it not only helps to foster good will between the students but between their parents and the whole community in general. 

6EB The Holy Spirit is at work even before the ministers of the church.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In a previous assignment, one of my parishes had a sizable community of people who only spoke Spanish. Thankfully, my Associate Pastor, Fr. Don Hertges, could celebrate the Mass for them once a month and take care of ministering to them. However, after a year, Fr. Hertges was assigned to Maquoketa, Preston, and Otter Creek and Fr. Paul Lippstock took his place. Unfortunately, Fr. Paul didn’t speak Spanish. I took one semester of Spanish in Seminary almost 10 years before and had basically not used those skills since so I met with a member of the community named Francisco and told him we really don’t have a Spanish speaking priest right now. He understood and, for a year and a half, there were no Spanish liturgies. After a year and a half, Francisco, approached me and asked if I would consider celebrating a Quincenera Mass in Spanish for one of the girls who had turned 15. I knew this was an important celebration for this community so I told him I would try but to please tell the people that my Spanish pronunciation is very poor. I had heard of other cultures who would shame people who spoke their language poorly so I at least wanted people to be forewarned. Thankfully, my DRE had no such fear. She worked with Francisco to prepare music for the day and got a reader and helped the girl to write petitions and write a statement she read at the end of Mass about what it meant for her to turn 15. In the end, there were 150 people present, some of whom I had seen at English Masses but most who hadn’t been to Mass since Fr. Hertges left. Afterwards, they invited me to a celebration and asked if we could restart the Masses in Spanish. I told them that, as long as they would put up with my poor Spanish pronunciation, I would gladly celebrate a Mass once-a-month for them. In the next two and a half years, I baptized children, celebrated a wedding, did a few more quinceaneras, gave out First Communions, and grew to love the community that I helped to re-form there. But, I’ll admit there were times when someone was speaking Spanish to me asking a question or making a request and I had to rely on my friend Francisco to translate what they were saying. I valued his abilities but I also felt out of place and kind of intimidated. These people had a skill I didn’t have, the ability to speak Spanish fluently, and it was intimidating. Their customs were different than my customs. I had to get past my fear of participating in another culture as much as any fear of language differences that I had.

I bring up that experience in light of what happened in the first reading for today. St. Peter is invited to a person’s house who’s named Cornelius. Cornelius is living in a Gentile city and he and his whole family are all gentiles. But, for some reason, Cornelius is called by the Holy Spirit to invite St. Peter into his house to teach him about Jesus. Now, the first thing that happens probably seems kind of strange to us: they kneel down to worship St. Peter. But, remember that for these Roman Gentiles, there were many many gods and the idea of a god manifesting himself as a human was not unusual. Their Caesar, for instance, would have declared himself a god. I couldn’t help but think of how embarrassed I used to get when an elderly Latina woman would come up to me and kiss my hands as a sign of respect when she would greet me. A priest’s hands are anointed when he is ordained because they hold the host as it is transubstantiated into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus. Plus, we anoint people with our hands and baptize people with our hands. A priest’s hands are intended to be holy. There was a side to me that wanted to tell these abuelitas, these holy grandmas, what St. Peter said about not worshipping me. But it was a little different, or at least I came to see it that way. They were recognizing the calling my hands represented and the person who did the calling of those hands to service, Jesus Christ, not confusing me with him. I saw it as much a challenge to live up to the holy ordering my hands were called to do as anything else. But, St. Peter’s situation is different. He has to explain who Jesus is to a culture that didn’t see God as entirely transcendent, entirely different, from human beings. This was a whole different culture. He felt he had to make it clear that he was just like them, just a human being not a god. But, in this encounter, you can hear St. Peter realize that God was already working in this community, helping them to understand who God was and how he already loved them even before they loved him or knew him. Still, they needed a St. Peter to teach them the particulars of who Jesus really was and to make sure they were included as believers, not seen as second-class citizens since they didn’t follow the Old Testament ritual laws. They needed to be told that “God shows no partialities”, that they were welcomed. 

    

I feel that Pope Francis has really taken up this message of encounter and welcome seriously. I can see events like Vatican II, Pope John Paul II’s apostolic visits to various countries, and Pope Benedict’s encounter with the Muslim world helping to enspire him but I think Pope Francis has pushed things further than his predecessors, much to the chagrin of those who feel like the church should militantly close its ranks to any culture not historically European. But Pope Francis, like St. Peter in the first reading, calls us to be people of inclusion and reconciliation. He wants sinners to experience forgiveness, not wallow in the filth of their own sin. But he also knows that sometimes that means having to encounter cultures and situations that aren’t sinful but are just...different than our own. 

    

Who is God calling us to reach out to that we’re intimated by because they are different and how can we get over that fear to help them feel included?    Peace be with you. 

    

In a previous assignment, one of my parishes had a sizable community of people who only spoke Spanish. Thankfully, my Associate Pastor, Fr. Don Hertges, could celebrate the Mass for them once a month and take care of ministering to them. However, after a year, Fr. Hertges was assigned to Maquoketa, Preston, and Otter Creek and Fr. Paul Lippstock took his place. Unfortunately, Fr. Paul didn’t speak Spanish. I took one semester of Spanish in Seminary almost 10 years before and had basically not used those skills since so I met with a member of the community named Francisco and told him we really don’t have a Spanish speaking priest right now. He understood and, for a year and a half, there were no Spanish liturgies. After a year and a half, Francisco, approached me and asked if I would consider celebrating a Quincenera Mass in Spanish for one of the girls who had turned 15. I knew this was an important celebration for this community so I told him I would try but to please tell the people that my Spanish pronunciation is very poor. I had heard of other cultures who would shame people who spoke their language poorly so I at least wanted people to be forewarned. Thankfully, my DRE had no such fear. She worked with Francisco to prepare music for the day and got a reader and helped the girl to write petitions and write a statement she read at the end of Mass about what it meant for her to turn 15. In the end, there were 150 people present, some of whom I had seen at English Masses but most who hadn’t been to Mass since Fr. Hertges left. Afterwards, they invited me to a celebration and asked if we could restart the Masses in Spanish. I told them that, as long as they would put up with my poor Spanish pronunciation, I would gladly celebrate a Mass once-a-month for them. In the next two and a half years, I baptized children, celebrated a wedding, did a few more quinceaneras, gave out First Communions, and grew to love the community that I helped to re-form there. But, I’ll admit there were times when someone was speaking Spanish to me asking a question or making a request and I had to rely on my friend Francisco to translate what they were saying. I valued his abilities but I also felt out of place and kind of intimidated. These people had a skill I didn’t have, the ability to speak Spanish fluently, and it was intimidating. Their customs were different than my customs. I had to get past my fear of participating in another culture as much as any fear of language differences that I had.

    

I bring up that experience in light of what happened in the first reading for today. St. Peter is invited to a person’s house who’s named Cornelius. Cornelius is living in a Gentile city and he and his whole family are all gentiles. But, for some reason, Cornelius is called by the Holy Spirit to invite St. Peter into his house to teach him about Jesus. Now, the first thing that happens probably seems kind of strange to us: they kneel down to worship St. Peter. But, remember that for these Roman Gentiles, there were many many gods and the idea of a god manifesting himself as a human was not unusual. Their Caesar, for instance, would have declared himself a god. I couldn’t help but think of how embarrassed I used to get when an elderly Latina woman would come up to me and kiss my hands as a sign of respect when she would greet me. A priest’s hands are anointed when he is ordained because they hold the host as it is transubstantiated into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus. Plus, we anoint people with our hands and baptize people with our hands. A priest’s hands are intended to be holy. There was a side to me that wanted to tell these abuelitas, these holy grandmas, what St. Peter said about not worshipping me. But it was a little different, or at least I came to see it that way. They were recognizing the calling my hands represented and the person who did the calling of those hands to service, Jesus Christ, not confusing me with him. I saw it as much a challenge to live up to the holy ordering my hands were called to do as anything else. But, St. Peter’s situation is different. He has to explain who Jesus is to a culture that didn’t see God as entirely transcendent, entirely different, from human beings. This was a whole different culture. He felt he had to make it clear that he was just like them, just a human being not a god. But, in this encounter, you can hear St. Peter realize that God was already working in this community, helping them to understand who God was and how he already loved them even before they loved him or knew him. Still, they needed a St. Peter to teach them the particulars of who Jesus really was and to make sure they were included as believers, not seen as second-class citizens since they didn’t follow the Old Testament ritual laws. They needed to be told that “God shows no partialities”, that they were welcomed. 

    

I feel that Pope Francis has really taken up this message of encounter and welcome seriously. I can see events like Vatican II, Pope John Paul II’s apostolic visits to various countries, and Pope Benedict’s encounter with the Muslim world helping to enspire him but I think Pope Francis has pushed things further than his predecessors, much to the chagrin of those who feel like the church should militantly close its ranks to any culture not historically European. But Pope Francis, like St. Peter in the first reading, calls us to be people of inclusion and reconciliation. He wants sinners to experience forgiveness, not wallow in the filth of their own sin. But he also knows that sometimes that means having to encounter cultures and situations that aren’t sinful but are just...different than our own. 

    

Who is God calling us to reach out to that we’re intimated by because they are different and how can we get over that fear to help them feel included?

4 E B Jesus is our superpower

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Have you ever heard of the superpower dilemma? The magazine Psychology Today asked people if they had the choice between being able to become invisible or being able to fly, which they would choose? How about you, which would you choose? I think I’d choose to fly but I’ve definitely been in situations where I wish I could turn invisible and sneak out of a place without having to talk to someone. As it turns out 70% of people would choose to fly and 30% to become invisible. More women would choose to be invisible than men. I heard about this on a radio program a few years ago and I started thinking about what superpower I would want. I like superhero movies so I know that each superpower can have drawbacks. They can quickly be abused for selfish reasons. Even the Wonder Twins, arguably the two superheros with the most pathetic superpowers, could be manipulated to using their superpowers for evil. 

To understand our first reading, we have to back up one verse. It’s kinda crazy that they clipped it off because it’s pretty important. Peter and John are brought for the second time before the Sanhedrin and asked “By what power or by what name have you done this?” meaning, who told you to go to the Temple and heal a man on the sabbath. Peter’s response is that it was in Jesus’ name and that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament Psalm that we used for Mass today, “The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone”. Actually, Peter sort of intensified this Old Testament verse by saying Jesus is the stone destroyed by you, the builders, who has become the cornerstone. In this case, the cornerstone they are referring to isn’t the stone at the bottom corner of a building where you put the name and date the building was built. The cornerstone, or capstone as it could be called, is the block that sits at the top of an arch that holds the two sides together. So, Jesus is the bridge bringing together the Jews with the Gentiles in one community of faith. Making sure you keep that first question, I think, softens Peter’s conclusion that it is only through Jesus' name that people can be saved. The Sanhedrin asked him by what name they healed the cripple and Peter responded that all of us can only be saved by Jesus’ name.

I look at this and ask myself why St. Peter and St. John were given the superpower to heal. That’s what started this confrontation, after all. Certainly, there are people in the evangelical world who claim to be able to heal people. If you watch Trinity Broadcasting Network, for example, you can see these people at work. Sometimes you wonder how much is the power of positive thinking, like I don’t have a sore shoulder because I’m going to ignore the pain, and how much is the power of Jesus’ name. Or perhaps, and I hate to suggest something like this, how much are they con men who are “healing” people as a kind of performance to get money like Steve Martin in the movie Leap of Faith? Still, if it happened for St. Peter and St. John, I’d think St. John Paul II or Pope Francis or St. Teresa of Calcutta would be able to do this in our time, and not just as a miracle after death to prove they’re in heaven. Why not as their walking and shaking hands with people wouldn’t they stop and say, like St. Peter and St. John did to this cripple, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”

I bring this up because I think some of our evangelical friends miss the whole point of this passage. Some of them think that the message is that we must do everything in the name of Jesus. All their prayers conclude with “in Jesus name, we pray.” Some of them have even abandoned baptising in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, or the Trinitarian form as we call it, in favor of only baptising in Jesus name since, as we heard in the first reading, by his name alone we have salvation. The point Peter was making was that neither he nor St. John were the ones who healed this man who was crippled. It was Jesus who did it because he alone can bring about salvation. By saying that they were doing it in his name, they were humbly admitting that they couldn’t do it if it weren’t for Jesus. 

Which, to be honest, reminds me of two things. First, if a sick person gets better when I pray, it’s not because of any superpower I have. It’s because Jesus healed her or him. When I stand behind the altar and say, “This is my body. This is my blood”, it does transubstantiate into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ because of how awesome of a preacher I am or how available I am throughout the week, it’s because Jesus is both awesome and omnipresent. And, when I say, “I absolve you of your sins” in confession, it’s not because of how forgiving or holy I am, it’s salvation offered to us by Jesus IN the ministry of his priests. 

But, secondly, it does also remind me of how important it is to live my life in Jesus’ name. I was in a meeting this week and I got really frustrated and I let my tongue curse someone not present, basically asking God to take that person to the bad place when they die if you know what I mean. That wasn’t living my life in Jesus’ name. That was pretty transparently living my life in Fr. Dennis’ name. I could go on confessing my sins but I think I leave that to my time with my confessor, Fr. Austin. I’m guessing we could all list times we weren’t living our lives in ways that allow Jesus to work through them, in ways where we basically lose our identity in the identity of Jesus, where people can see the life of Jesus in our lives. If we can’t fly or become invisible, how can we live in Jesus’ name in such a way that others can see him in our actions?

2 E B The family the church is called to be.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Many people have been disappointed when they send their children to Catholic colleges and universities to discover that, walking away from their education, the kids no longer believe or practice their faith. Sometimes the reasons are similar to why any person stops coming to church: because of the scandals or conflicts between what the world prizes and the church teaches or simply because it’s easier not to come to church than it is to actually show up. However, many college students have walked into a philosophy course or a religious studies course or an economics course at a catholic college and been told that the Catholic Church was socialist and should be socialist and has walked away from the church either because they believe we aren’t living up to the standards of socialism or they don’t want to be associated with an institution that advocates it. If the professor is asked what they mean by saying the church is or should be socialist, and they aren’t just regurgitating something they read in a left-leaning journal, they will probably cite the first reading for today. 

Now, let me just say that the Catholic Church doesn’t generally have a definitive teaching on the perfect form of government. For many years, we preferred a beneficent dictatorship or monarch, a good king or leader. It took us a while to trust a more democratic form of government because we feared tyranny of the minority by the majority, especially in countries like the United States where there was a majority of Protestants historically and, today, the largest growth tends to be among those who have no religious affiliations. The Catholic Church tries to keep its definitive teachings for heavenly realities like the death and resurrection of Jesus. However, if you read the first reading, you may get the feeling that, indeed, the church is advocating that people sell all that they have and give it to those in charge and those in charge will make sure that everyone has what they need. That sounds pretty much like socialism to me. 

Still, if you have to look at a larger context to get the real message. We’re only four chapters into the Acts of the Apostles. In the previous Chapter, St. Peter and St. John go to the Temple and, on the way, they see a crippled beggar by the door. They say to the man, “I have neither gold nor silver but what I have, I give you. Rise, and walk”. And the crippled man gets up and rejoices and celebrates. This leads to St. Peter giving testimony about how the people listening to him had just had the savior of the world crucified. Now, remember that Jesus last appearance would have started in that very place, the Temple, with those very people, the crowd, yelling “Crucify him! Crucify him”. St. Peter attributes their denial of Jesus, not to their vindictiveness or their damnation, but because they were ignorant. And he invites them to believe in Jesus. The chief priests and Sanhedrin then appear and take St. Peter and St. John prisoner, an experience that will be normal for the early Christians. They call St. Peter and St. John before them in an attempt to intimidate them with their power. But, not only are St. Peter and St. John not intimidated, but they continue giving testimony and inviting the Sanhedrin into a relationship with Jesus. The Sanhedrin kick them out of the room to think of some way to punish them but when they call them back in, the best they can do is order them not to talk about Jesus and to go away. So, the point of this story is that the leaders of the Jews who appeared so powerful when they convinced the Romans to crucify Jesus are utterly powerless in the wake of the resurrection. 

But, that’s when the first reading begins. The followers of Jesus are so trusting of the leadership of the Apostles that some of them voluntarily sell their homes and give the money to them. It’s not a mandate and it’s not setting up a government. It’s trust. The way I think about it is in the context of a relationship my family had with a neighbor family growing up. If they needed anything, we’d help them out and if our family needed anything they’d help us. When our car broke down before driving to a wedding, they loaned us their suburban. At Christmas time, we’d try and outdo each other in the gifts we gave. The early Christians are like a family. They care so deeply about each other that they’re willing to make tremendous sacrifices for each other. 

I look around these churches and see plaques with names on them of people who gave money at some point in history. And I know that, if we had a plaque for every person who donated to this church, we wouldn’t have any space on the walls left over. The important thing, however, is that it was freely given and never coerced or forced, unlike socialism which is the government forcing people to pay for things it deems a social responsibility. 

There’s much more I could say that refutes the premise of the errant Catholic university or college professor’s theory about socialism but I think I’d miss the challenge we should feel from this story as well. On the one hand, the early church would have been very small and would have easily been able to take care of the few people who had joined the Way, as it was known at that time, but, on the other hand, the community was a welcoming place to new people. One challenge I’ve experienced in some parishes is a tendency to be either not a place that is very caring to the people who come every week because of rifts in the community or sometimes the church is a place that spends so much time caring for the people who come every week that they seem like newcomers aren’t welcome. And sometimes both can be true. One of the biggest reasons that this has happened for me in the past is when monetary fears take over a community and create a kind of possessiveness among a small group, generally from one family that does contribute a great deal to the parish. But sometimes that family kind of thinks it should basically also run the parish or at least make all the decisions as to what the parish spends money on. Sometimes, that family can spend a lot of time spreading rumors that money is being wasted or stolen, rumors that rip a community apart. I’m not saying that money has never been wasted or stolen in a church inasmuch as wondering if time and attention could be better spent elsewhere. Oftentimes, the people who are most concerned about knowing where every cent of church money is spent don’t understand why their children or grandchildren no longer attend Mass or why their family is basically the only one at Sunday Mass. Wouldn’t it be better to spend time calling a sick or homebound person, leading a Bible Study or a couple’s prayer group or finding something else around the parish we can help build up? That is the message of our first reading, not a teaching about what government is supposed to be but a handbook about the kind of servant-leaders the church needs us to be, servant leaders focused on building up the people that come to church and inviting and welcoming others to come to church too. 

Palm Sunday - B: Invitation is the key to encounter

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

It’s difficult to preach on Palm Sunday because the reading is so robust. It’s long and, unlike much of St. Mark’s gospel, rather theologically complex. For instance, let’s look at one of the more bizarre passages that’s unique to St. Mark: a streaker. You may have noticed that, smack dab in the middle of this passage, as the roman soldiers arrive to arrest Jesus, there is a man who is lightly clad who, in his rush to leave, loses his loincloth and runs off naked. You may have thought this a strange detail to include but St. Mark is doing this quite deliberately. Think back on the story of Adam and Eve. When they eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, their first instinct is to sew clothes together and cover themselves because they feel shame. Theologians believe St. Mark is saying that, as Jesus is being condemned for the sins of the world, this man comes to symbolize our life without guilt and without shame. 

But the part that stuck with me are the last two lines spoken by the Voice in our reading of the passion. Towards the end, you could hear four different groups mocking Jesus and refusing to take pity on him. First, the soldiers mock him and spit on him and stip him of his purple cloak to crucify him. Then, the chief priests mock him by saying that if he could save others he should be able to heal himself. Then the people crucified with him abuse him. Lastly, when he cries out to God, the bystanders claim he’s really calling out to Elijah and, rather than give him a little bit of wine to try and numb his pain, they say, “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to take him down.” This is the ultimate in vengeance, the ultimate in spitefulness: to not give a dying man a drink of wine because you feel like he bragged about being God’s son. 

But, that’s the second to last phrase the Voice said. The last was a roman soldier, from the group among whom the mocking had begun. He is the one who said, “Truly, this was the Son of God!” These Roman soldiers likely could have come from our ancestors. They may have been from the Gaul or Goth tribes from whom our German and Luxembourgish and other European ancestors came from. Maybe I just say that because I’d like to think a German can actually do something good in history, I don’t know. I only know this guy gets it. And then, Joseph of Arimathea, one of the high priests, takes the body of Jesus and buries it in his tomb. 

We’ve lost people in the last year. There have been people in my life who have not come back to church because, as they have said to me and others, they haven’t really missed it. We must tell them that we have missed them. We must be the voice in their life inviting them back to church. We must invite them to experience the one who removes our sins, who removes our shame and inviting them back to experience the one who was truly the Son of God. 

5LB Let Jesus declutter our hearts

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    Have you ever wanted to leave a note on a coworker’s desk but worried that, if you did, it would just blend in with all the other pieces of paper and they’d never know they needed to call Jason back about the extended warranty of their car? Historically, that’s the way my desk looked but, as I’ve shared before, I’m making an effort to have a clean desk at the end of each day. In fact, last week, I even took it a step further by removing everything from my desk drawers so I could vacuum the corners and only put back what was absolutely necessary. For instance, did I need three staplers or could Denise maybe use one of them? Or how about that receipt for a pizza I ordered from Second Street six months ago? I figured it’s pretty safe to say I wasn’t going to return it so I threw it away. And those stacks of paper telling me to call Jason about my extended warranty even got recycled. He gets tired of me calling and asking if his refrigerator is running anyway. 

    In my last year of college, I was a Resident Assistant, or RA, which meant it was my job basically to be the Barney Fife of Loras College. My Hall Director boss, whose name was Terri, was a petit but forceful woman determined to run a residence hall where people could feel safe and have fun. In the evenings, it was our responsibility to sit at her desk and respond to any problems in the hall and make sure everything was as it should be. After the first night I did this, I left her desk as I was accustomed to a desk looking: with notes and papers and a couple of Mountain Dew cans sitting on it. The next morning, there was a sharp knock on my door and Terri was standing on the other side looking kind of...frazzled. She simply said, “Come with me” and walked me to her office. She opened the door, pointed to her desk and said, “This will NEVER happen again.” I smiled and said, “Okay, what do you mean by this?” She walked to her desk and started violently moving the papers all around and knocking the pop cans on the floor while saying, “This clutter on my desk. This will never happen again. If you need to leave me or anyone else on staff a note, put it in our mailboxes. If you have garbage, throw it away or recycle it. Put pens and paper and the stapler and other office supplies back in the drawers you got them from. Do whatever you need to do but I will not walk into a dirty desk ever again.” Now, I said Terri was petit but forceful before. She was probably a foot shorter than me and 125 pounds soaking wet but at this point, she may as well have been the size of Hulk Hogan. I was intimidated. So, when she asked, “Do you understand?” I nodded and said yes and just kind of froze in place not knowing what to do. She smiled and said in an entirely different tone, “Good. Then we’re good. Get to class so I can get some work done.”

    In the first reading for Mass tonight, God says he will write his law on our hearts. It won’t be something foreign or external to ourselves, it will be something personal and internal. But God’s not saying that morality is completely personal, as though I could have my moral truths and you can have your completely contradictory ones. God is still the author of the truths, they’re just written on our hearts. But, it does mean we need to pay attention to what is happening internally, what God is writing on our hearts. I wonder how many of us have a pretty cluttered workspace when we try to read God’s writing. Personally, my heart can be filled with things happening at work, the tasks that need to be completed, the discourteous or angry email I received from someone, or a job that I wish I would have done better. There are concerns I have about family members and friends who are sick or struggling with their jobs or families. I have some personal concerns like taxes, or my shower that is leaking or the constant need to wash my masks. And things like television shows, podcasts, and internet videos that are cluttering up my heart as well. If God wants to warn me that the warranty to my life is almost up, he may have to make his writing like the thunderclap in the gospel for me to see it. 

    What should we do to declutter our hearts? I think you may be expecting me to say that we need to give up our devices and TVs and simplify, simplify, simplify. But, in prayer, I decided to go a slightly different way: we should bring all this clutter to Jesus and ask him to help us sort it out. 

    Those concerns about incomplete tasks or frustrations with coworkers and clients or jobs we wish we’d done better: bring those to Jesus and ask for his direction on how to do them better or fix those broken relationships. 

    Speaking of relationships, those concerns about friends and family, we can bring to Jesus and ask for healing and help. We could even ask our family or our friends to pray with us, to bring them to Jesus together. Imagine saying to your wife or your husband that you’re worried about his or her health and asking her to join you in bringing that concern to Jesus. How powerful would that be?

    And all those shows and videos that clutter our hearts, bring those to Jesus and bask with him in the beauty or humor of them with him. Or, if you don’t think he’d find them particularly beautiful or humorous, ask yourself if you should be watching them in the first place and ask Jesus to help declutter them from your heart if you shouldn’t. 

    God wants to write his law of love on our hearts. Are we willing to watch him mess up the papers on the desks of our hearts and take him seriously when he challenges us that, “This will never happen again!” or are we too comfortable in our own clutter to let it go?

3 L B What makes the 10 Commandments so important?

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I’m not a lawyer, nor am I a scholar of the law. But, most legal systems have at least two tracks when it comes to violations: laws that are very serious and laws that are less serious. In church law we divide between venial and mortal sins. In civil law, I believe they’re differentiated between felonies and misdemeanors, with felonies being more serious crimes than misdemeanors. This makes sense because you wouldn’t want the same punishment for jaywalking as you would have for murder. 

As you know, I continue to focus my homilies on the first reading from the Old Testament. This week, we get to focus on the 10 commandments, these immutable laws written on stone by God for Moses to take to the people. Every once in a while, I hear about a controversy involving a stone monument of the 10 commandments. It generally involves a group called Americans United for a Separation of Church and State, the ACLU and, the rather horrendously named, Church of Satan versus the Eagles Club or the Knights of Columbus or some other civic minded individual or group that has been given permission to put the Ten Commandments on public land, like a county courthouse of the state capitol. From a theological perspective and culture warrior perspective, I’m all in favor of reminding people that some laws are greater than a human creation. We didn’t just get together and decide that murder should be off the table. It was built into our consciences by a creator in what we call natural law.

However, then the theologian takes over and I realize that we sort of have a problem. First, there are two different places in the Bible where the 10 commandments appear, the version we hear in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5. It wouldn’t be a big deal except that the two versions don’t exactly match. Further, there are three other places in the Bible, Exodus 34, Deuteronomy 4 and Deuteronomy 10, where they list 10 things and then refer to the 10 commandments. But these things aren’t at all what we would call the 10 commandments. The other issue I bring up is that Exodus 20 is really just the beginning of four books; Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers, which are largely filled with commandments, “thou shalls” and and “thou shall nots”. What makes the 10 commandments we had to memorize in school and written on the granite monuments any more important than the others? Are they the mortal sins, the felonies, if you will while everything else there is just a venial sin, a misdemeanor?

No, once again we have to look to context. In Exodus Chapter 19 there is this kind of confusing scene that happens where God describes how he’s going to reveal the 10 Commandments as we know them to the people. Generally, God’s people wandering in the desert preferred to have Moses as an intermediary between God and them. God speaks to Moses and then Moses speaks to the people. In this passage, God says that his people should stand at the base of Mount Sinai while he speaks directly to them. And he does speak these 10 commandments, apparently. And, after this, the people, who have been told by God that they aren’t allowed to approach Mount Sinai or they will die, are so terrified by what has happened that they have moved far far away from the Mountain. It’s at least a bit surprising that the people didn’t at least try to go up the Mountain since they seem to glory in doing exactly what God told them not to but, in this case, they don’t because they’re scared. God has been speaking to them in words that sounded like thunder and lightning to put the fear of the Lord in them. And right after they are told not to covet their neighbor’s goods, they appeal to Moses that God could just speak to him and Moses can pass along God’s message along to them. 

So these 10 commandments are depicted as coming directly to the people, not through an intermediary. That’s pretty significant. Earlier, I talked about something called Natural Law. Natural Law is a philosophical concept that there are laws that are written in the human heart, not laws that are made by human beings. That’s partly what the 10 commandments are. It doesn’t mean that everyone obeys the 10 commandments or even that everyone agrees with the 10 commandments. It just means that there are these principles that seem to transcend societies, that establish the basic premise that we should do what is good and avoid what is evil. 

The interesting thing is that I doubt anyone has a problem with the vast majority of the concepts put forth with the 10 commandments. The ACLU isn’t arguing that stealing should be legal or moral. The American Society for the Separation of Church and State doesn’t want consequence free murder. Heck, I’m guessing even the church of satan enjoys having Saturday and Sunday off, even if it’s in part to honor the sabbath as celebrated by Jews on Saturday and Christians on Sunday. I’m guessing they have a problem with the first commandment, the one in Exodus 20 that has the most words and most warnings. There is one God, he is a jealous God and he is the source of all blessings. And the way we treat God says a lot about how we treat the rest of the 10 commandments. God is jealous because he won’t tolerate us trying to make other gods than himself. And our world is filled with false gods, money, power, fame, just to name a few. 

But, let’s also look at that part of the first commandment again. It says, “For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God,  inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.” I think we’re tempted to look at this last part as though it was kind of anecdotal or maybe even like this is an Old Testament understanding and we don’t believe it any longer. But I think there’s another side to this. We are called to hand the faith on to our children both in what we tell them and how we live our lives. If we focus on the areas in our life or our world where we wish God would act and constantly complain that God isn’t doing what we want God to do, our children are listening. When we complain about the way father celebrates Mass or the choices father makes as to where the parish office is, our children are listening. When the purpose for Mass is to “get it over with” as quickly as possible or when we willingly go to sporting events, restaurants, retail stores, and our friend’s houses but decide that it’s just too dangerous to come to Mass, what are we communicating to our children? It’s no surprise to me that our lives seem to be a punishment when we put God on the back burner of our lives. And it’s no surprise, as well, that we see the many blessings God puts into our lives when we decide to have a relationship with him. That’s the significance of the Ten Commandments: they are from a God who could squash us off the face off the earth but, instead, God invites us into a relationship as sons and daughters, a holy people called by name to love him and serve him. Our challenge, then, is do we want that or are we going to stop God, say we’d rather he be a little distant so we can complain about what he does and just make sure we aren’t too bad, aren’t disobeying any major rules. Let’s resolve today that we want God’s blessings to a thousand generations, that we will see the good work God has done for us each and every day, that we won’t distance ourselves from God but will invite him deeper into our heart every day in prayer.

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?