Easter 2022 - C What it’s like not to be believed

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

A few years ago, the NBC morning show, the Today Show, premiered a shocking discovery around this time of year. They were interviewing a person who claimed to have found a lost burial box from the family tomb of Jesus. They started the show with one of the anchors in an undisclosed location standing among a bunch of clay rectangular boxes called ossuaries. An ossuary is what was used a year or two after a person had died at the time of Jesus to bury the bones of a deceased relative or friend. The particular ossuary has been the subject of much discussion in more recent years from people claiming it is a well done forgery and people claiming it is completely legitimate. On the side of the ossuary is written in Aramaic “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”. There are many problems with knowing for sure whose bones were contained in this box at one time including the appearance of a change in handwriting for the “brother of Jesus” part of the inscription, the fact that the box was located on the antiquities market instead of in the ground, and the fact that all three of the names are incredibly common. But, it was almost comical the way the morning news people handled the story because they acted like, if they did find the burial box of James, the brother of Jesus, they needed to keep its location entirely secret because Christians could want to come and steal it out of fear that the truth would get out. I couldn’t help but wonder why these anchors would think Christians would be worried about knowing that St. James the Lesser, as he is often called in the scriptures, who is called the brother of the Lord in the Bible, died. However, the truth is that it fit into a larger narrative that these anchors felt would rock the Christian world: That they have found the family tomb of Jesus. And, of course, if they have found the family tomb of Jesus, they must be close to finding an ossuary that will contain the bones of Jesus Christ himself and, ultimately, disprove the resurrection. In 1980, so forty years ago, some archaeologists in Israel found what they believe may be the family tomb of Jesus which they call the Talpiot Tomb. It contains some ossuaries which mention the name Yeshua, which we translate into English both as Joshua and Jesus on their sides. The best archaeologists, even those who are not particularly kind to religion, are extremely skeptical of the conclusions these people have drawn. Still, the filmmaker who made Titanic, James Cameron, made a documentary claiming to have found the Lost Tomb of Jesus. The conclusion of the documentary seems to want to push people toward the belief that archaeology will one day find the burial box of Jesus Christ himself and his bones presuming, of course, those nasty Christians didn’t destroy or hide it away. 

Yet, I’m here to tell you that they will not find it, not because of some sinister thing like we, Christians, have them hidden deep in the bowels of the Vatican. They will never find the bones of Jesus because…they are not here. They are not on earth. Jesus truly died on Good Friday. It wasn’t simply a case of near death or the temporary stoppage of his heart. His heart was pierced by a soldier’s lance and blood and water poured forth from his side. He was taken down from the cross without brain waves being active. He was put into a tomb, not his family tomb by the way, but in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimithea. He was put into the tomb quickly before a sabbath that commemorated the feast of Passover for the Jews. Everyone thought the story was over. The Gospel of Luke clearly explains what happens when “the women who had come from Galilee…took species they had prepared and went to the tomb.” They couldn’t have anointed his body after his death because of the controversy surrounding it and because they couldn’t violate the sabbath rest. So, early on Sunday morning, the first real time they can get to the tomb, they approach it to anoint his body expecting to find it lifeless on the same slab their friend Joseph had put it on Friday afternoon. However, as we heard, when they get to the tomb, it is empty, a fact that doesn’t say anything to them initially but speaks volumes when two men appear to them in gowns eerily similar to the ones Jesus, Moses, and Elijah wore at the Transfiguration. These men ask, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised.” The men remind them that Jesus had told them what was to happen and then the women remember. So, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, go back to the upper room, the location of the Last Supper, and find the eleven, Judas is gone, to tell them what they saw. How do the disciples of Jesus, the ones who heard exactly how this was going to play out, react to the news that his body is not there? It says, “their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them.” Peter goes to the tomb and he notices something that Luke doesn’t say the women noticed, that the burial cloths were still there. This becomes an important detail for the early church, because had people stolen the body of Jesus, they  wouldn’t have taken time to unwrap the body first before removing it from the tomb. It would have been easier to leave it all wrapped up and hauled it somewhere else. It’s possible, though not mandatory as far as my faith is concerned, that we still have this burial shroud of Jesus in Turin, Italy. It makes sense to me that, if the early church saw it as important they would have prioritized keeping it safe and that could have included it ending up in Italy. But, again, I’m not basing my faith on the presence of a burial shroud but on the absence of what may have been contained in that shroud: the body of Jesus. That’s why people like James Cameron and the other journalists, who published books at the time the burial box was reported to the media, so badly want to find the tomb and, ultimately, the bones of Jesus of Nazareth: because it would completely disprove the validity of Christianity. Why is faith in Jesus’ resurrection so threatening to them?

I think it’s rather telling that belief in Jesus sometimes means people will not believe us. It’s a hard thing to believe. God sent his son into the world to die on a cross in order to free us from original sin and impart the life of grace on the creatures created in his own image and likeness. Yet, Jesus also rose from the dead to show us that, even that most evil act in all of creation, the destruction of human life, cannot terminate a person living the life of grace. In other words, we may die but, if we have faith and live lives of hope filled with God’s love, we may one day be raised with all the faithful in the resurrection of the dead. We may follow him whose resurrection we celebrate today and Jesus is just the first among us, therefore, to share in this resurrection. It makes sense that people don’t believe this, doesn’t it? To most of the world, it seems like nonsense and they don’t believe us, to paraphrase what St. Luke said. But, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t believe it or share it with others. Jesus has been raised body and soul and we celebrate it today on this Easter Sunday. 

Living a life of faith can often seem unbelievable to other people. Just to give one example: As Christians we are called to look at marriage and family life differently than other people. A husband and wife are called to see their sacramental marriage as a different kind of bond than one that starts up at the State Park or in the court house. Christian marriage is not just based on two people who find pleasure in each other or find a soulmate with whom you always get along. Christian marriage is a union of a man and a woman in God’s love, a unique relationship in that it carries with it the possibility of creativity, of making new life. The goal of sacramental marriage, again unlike secular marriage, is to get your spouse and any children you may have, into heaven by leading lives of holiness on earth. That seems like nonsense to the rest of the world and most people won’t believe you but that is exactly what marriage is meant to be. 

It can be hard to not be believed by others, to base our life on what the rest of the world so often thinks it can disprove. We may have family and friends with whom we will share an Easter meal that we know don’t believe a single word of it. Yet, isn’t that at least part of the Easter message? They didn’t believe Jesus when he invited them to believe he was the messiah, the apostles didn’t believe the women when they said Jesus had been raised. It’s okay if they don’t believe us. They’ve been trying to disprove the truths of Christianity from its very foundation. Our challenge is to keep the faith, to keep believing despite their unbelief, and keep sharing the story in the hopes that even the deepest skeptic will stop believing this is all nonsense and run to the tomb to see the burial cloths of Jesus and believe. 

Alleluia! He is Risen! Alleluia! Amen.

3 L C Having God help us find forgiveness through suffering

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

With everything happening in Ukraine right now, I started thinking about this question: What’s the first experience of real life violence you experienced or saw? It happened for me when I was in Israel. In the Fall of the year 2000, fighting broke out between Israelis and Palestinians and that was the semester I lived in Israel. We were repeatedly told that we were safe but there was one day when there was a car bomb close to a coffee shop we would frequent and one day when a gunfire fight was happening in the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem, which was located a quarter mile at most away from where we lived. We could hear the gunshots and sheltered in place until the fighting moved outside the Old Walled City. Still, I think I was able to feel a little sheltered from the violence because it wasn’t my home, it was Israel, someone else’s home. That’s why I was relieved when we got back to a very cold St. Paul Winter in 2000. Little did I know that, just 8 months later, I would walk out of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of our seminary and see the secretary at the front desk with a TV sitting in front of her watching the news because an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center and they weren’t sure what was going on. We would later, of course, find out all the details of September 11, 2001, in which terror struck in this country, violence that was much closer to home. Or, even in more recent years, when there were racial protests with rioting and looting happening in St. Louis and St. Paul, that’s getting really close to home. Still, I’m guessing with all of this, we feel kind of okay living in this small town that probably isn’t going to be the target of a terrorist attack or isn’t going to have such deep seated racial issues that it boils over into protests with rioting and looting. 

In the Gospel, it appears that people were developing theories for why bad things were happening to their neighbors. There were people living in the northern part of Israel, in Galilee, in the part that contains the towns of Nazareth and Capernaum and Caesarea Phillippi, who were killed by Herod and their blood was mingled with the sacrifice in the Temple. Now, this would be a horrible abomination for the Jews: to have the animal sacrifice they’re offering to God to pay back the most high for their sins be mingled with the blood of people. One way to make sense of it is to say that the people who were killed were terrible sinners and they deserved exactly what they got. Or, the Tower of Siloam, which was probably located right next to a pool the people would have gone to in order to bathe and be made ritually pure in order to be able to enter the Temple and other holy places, when it collapsed and killed people they said that it happened because the people killed were such terrible sinners they didn’t deserve to be cleansed. It’s like there are good people who deserve to be forgiven if they make a mistake and there are bad people who are evil and cannot ever be forgiven, which is proved by the terrible things that happen to them. 

I’m guessing we’ve all taken pleasure at seeing other people get punished. It’s March Madness, and, if you watch college basketball, you’re counting on at least one upset of a big ranked team. We love to see a Duke or Arizona or Kansas get beaten. When it happens, there’s something satisfying about it. I’ve mentioned in other homilies that there’s actually a German word for this called schadenfreude, meaning happiness at the misfortune of others. Mr. Recker reminded me this week at a meeting about this concept. I think many of us like to see powerful people or vengeful people or arrogant people get their comeuppance. 

Still, let’s listen carefully to Jesus’ parable today about the fig tree. There’s a fig tree that hasn’t produced fruit for three years. The owner of the farm wants to cut it down because it’s just taking up space. But the gardener wants to give it one more year, basically one more try, and then, if it doesn’t produce figs, cut it down. I think the message Jesus is telling us is that if we think bad things happen to bad people and we think the fact that bad things haven’t happened to us is proof that we are good, we’re being delusional. How are we going to handle it when bad things happen to us? Just because something bad had has happened to someone else hasn’t happened to us doesn’t mean in never will. 

The struggle with all of this is that the people make such a strong connection between other people’s personal sins and their suffering, people suffer because they are bad. The truth is that personal suffering can be redemptive. It can help us grow if looked at in the right perspective. At the men’s conference, one of the speakers talked about how there was tension between the people of Poland and the People of Ukraine because of a genocide that happened between 1942-1945. But, today, as refugees fleeing Ukraine have entered this place in which their ancestors once committed genocide, they are being welcomed into people’s homes and into public facilities such that they have not had to set up a refugee camp. God is using the suffering of the Ukrainian people to heal the wounds between some Polish people and some Ukrainian people. It doesn’t mean the war is good or the fact that the Ukrainian people are becoming refugees is good but, even from those evils, God can make something good happen. 

We must be a people of forgiveness and reconciliation. Admitting when we’ve made a mistake and owning up to it is crucial to the life of grace. Apologizing to the person against whom you have sinned is part of this but going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and confessing your sins to receive forgiveness is also important. Hopefully it won’t take a tower collapsing on us or being killed by a political despot to help us see God working even if our suffering but we know that there’s always some kind of redemptive suffering in our lives. The challenge is if we can connect that suffering to Christ’s life by striving to be like him, meaning humble and forgiving, instead of striving to be vengeful and hateful as the world and the evil one always tempts us to be. 

8 OT C Making sure Christ is still teaching us and not this world

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    Who were your favorite teachers? It could be a high school or middle school or grade school teacher. It could be a college professor. Or it could be someone who trained you how to do your job. Think about two or three of the people who were good teachers. What did they have in common? I think of a guy I met at my Uncle Jim’s bowling alley when I was a kid. He was a 300 bowler who looked over and saw a kid struggling to bowl and came over to help give me some pointers. I remember him showing me how to twist my wrist and aim for a diamond on the lane. I’m still not a 300 bowler like he was but I’m better than a 40-50 pin bowler. I think of my high school German teacher, Herr Brinkmann. He was patient but challenging with us. We wanted to do our homework so we could talk to him in the next class in German when he asked us questions. I also think of my high school english teacher, Mrs. Maulin. I thought she hated me until she walked up to me in the lunchroom one day and asked me why I wasn’t in AP Speech. I kind of stammered that I didn’t know but the truth was that I wasn’t in AP speech because I didn’t view myself as being AP material. She knew when a student needed to be pushed a little and wasn’t afraid to do it. 

    Our readings today invite us to reflect upon the quality of the people who are our present teachers. Now, we may be tempted to say that, if we are not in school, we don’t have any teachers in our lives. But, let’s ponder that for a second because I think we have even more teachers, just doing it in subtler ways. Aren’t our coworkers and employers also teachers. I don’t just mean because we have to do our jobs to their specifications but because we also probably find ourselves acting like them. If they have a foul mouth, we probably also find ourselves using bad language. If they are passionate about a television show or a hobby or a sport or a political party, we probably either find ourselves becoming supportive of those things or rolling our eyes whenever she or he starts talking about it and struggling to work with that person. Think about our television shows or movies or whatever we watch on our computers, tablets or smartphones if you’re a streamer. They are extremely powerfully forming us. In the mid 90s, Americans were in agreement that the nature of marriage was that it happened between a man and a woman. Then, beginning with a show called Will and Grace, almost every television show to this day has a “good guy” gay character in it so that by the mid 2010’s, Americans were overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage. We were formed in it. The same thing has been happening with the idea of fluidity in gender, that a man can choose to become a woman and vice versa. We are still very much being formed by the culture we allow ourselves to participate in with our various forms of media. So, it’s worth listening to these readings to hear some cautionary tales. 

The first reading from Sirach says that you can judge a teacher by the way they speak. I think this is a particularly important thing in my life. One of the things that makes me love the Benedictine movement in the church is because they prioritize listening. There have been many meetings, even a few in the last few days, where I’ve been tempted to speak and answer a question that’s hanging in the air only to find that it was important to listen and allow the person to reveal their true motives, which were far from the innocent ones they initially portrayed. We need to listen and discern first and foremost if the person is even someone we should allow to form us.  

    Jesus, in the gospel, challenges us to make sure the people forming us are clear sighted and bearing good fruit. I think the clear sighted part has to do with whether the person is reformed from sin or if they’re still mired in it trying to tell us how to get out. Someone who has conquered alcohol or conquered addiction to pornography can be helpful to people who are still mired in it but someone who hasn’t found the way out themselves are like the blind guides Jesus cautions us against in the gospel. They may know the principles that can get a person out but they can’t show a person how to do so by the way they’re living their lives. A person that uses the Lord’s name in vain or swears often may be great at showing us how to do a job but they're leading us down a poison path if we find ourselves following in their footsteps. 

    That’s why we should turn to the second reading, the last reading we’re going to hear from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, to hear the challenge of being formed. St. Paul says that we need to take off corruptible things and put on incorruptible things, stop engaging in mortal pleasures and engage in immortal ones. But who is our teacher if what we should be seeking the incorruptible and immortal things? St. Paul makes it clear that we are to “be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We are to be in the Lord. In other words, we aren’t just learning from a mentor but working inside the church, which is the body of Christ. That should be what is forming us. 

    Let’s think about our typical week. How much of it do we allow Jesus to be forming us? What’s the first thing we do in the morning? I’ve picked up this terrible habit of looking at my phone first thing in the morning. Eventually, I put on the Bible in a Year Podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz on my phone but I’m probably going to look at the weather and make sure it hasn’t changed overnight. I’ll probably look at Facebook or YouTube to see if anything happened…and watch a couple of stupid videos. But, eventually, I will put on the Bible in a Year Podcast just not first like it used to be when I started it. Is there a way I could more easily get to what is forming me in God and spend less time in what is taking me away? Now, here’s the good news: We’re just a few days away from Lent, that time of spiritual transformation and correction. Tomorrow/today is a good day to ask ourselves: what can I do this Lent to make sure Jesus is forming me and not this world?

6 OT C To believe in God even if we don’t benefit from it.

Friends

Peace be with you.

Do you participate in an activity that you don’t really get anything out of? I Now before anyone answers me “Yeah, your homilies!”, I’m only asking because we are hard wired to do things because we get something out of them. I think about an episode of the TV sitcom The Office involving the two main antagonists, Jim and Dwight, and something called classical conditioning. In this particular episode, each time Jim turns on or reboots his computer and it makes the Microsoft tuning on sound, he offers Dwight a mint. We are led to believe he does this for several weeks or even months until, one day, Jim turns on his computer and Dwight instinctively holds out his hand to receive a mint and Jim looks at him confused. Dwight also seems oblivious to the fact that he’s been classically conditioned that, when he hears the sound, he assumes he is going to get something positive. One of the reasons I put effort into my homilies is because I appreciate people who thank me for them or tell me that something I said really helped them with the death of a loved one or helped them through a difficult time. So I can’t really use this as an example of something I don’t get anything out of even if some of you may say that. Some people may say being a parent can seem like something you don’t get anything out of. You work all kinds of hours to provide a nice house and nice clothes and the kids get mad because you’re never home. Or you spend hours preparing a nice meal for your kids and they snarf it down in 10 minutes and complain that you made corn instead of carrots. I’m sure all of that is true but I also hope there are other times when they do remember to get you something nice for Valentines Day (Remember kids. Valentine's Day is Monday. Get your parents something nice) or when you see them succeed and realize it was because you made them do their homework or made them practice hitting and catching a baseball rather than letting them goof around all Saturday staring at their phones. Or it may take until you finally get grandchildren to realize that having children was worth it. Regardless, I feel like most people find being a parent to be something where you do get something good out of it. I worry that police officers may feel that they don’t get a lot out of their job quite often. I’ve had a couple of homilies recently where I have used police officers as foils in my jokes. We’ve recently seen, even in our local media, pretty severe criticism of the police. I would guess it would be quite difficult, one minute, to arbitrate disagreements between arguing parties and, five minutes later, patiently be explaining to an angry person why they can’t squeal their tires going fifty miles per hour past the grade school, and, five minutes after you get the ticket written and are working on the associated paperwork, responding to an accident involving an injured individual’s family who can’t understand why no one stopped that idiot squealing his tires and going 50 miles an hour through town before he hit their father. It has to feel like a rather thankless job at points. I do hope they know how much we appreciate their hard work and dedication to fairness and justice.

I would guess, if we were honest, one of the reasons we stay in the church is because we find some part of it rewarding. It may be because we have the hope of eternal life in heaven if we are a part of it. Or it may be because we feel like it makes us better people by having a moral code. However, I know, for some people, they feel invested in keeping their parish open and the reward comes in knowing that, if they show up, there are parishioners still coming and still a reason for the big bad mean Archdiocese not to close their parish. Remember a few years ago when we counted the number of people in church during the month of October? I can remember seeing people who were spotty, at best, in their Mass attendance in the other eleven months, making sure that they came every Sunday during the month of October. One year, I decided to have the ushers count every week and just put the average in for the October count in the hopes that those people would come every week. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. And I was told I needed to put the numbers for the weekends in October and not just the yearly average. Well, I tried…

Each of our readings, in one way or another, asks us if we could still be faithful if there was no reward. It’s most obvious in the first reading from the Prophet Jeremiah where the good guys, the holy ones, are those who trust in God rather than in human beings. They are those who don’t live by today’s morality or the fashion of the moment but seek the truths that are deeper and more profound. This theme gets picked up by our Lord and deepend to explain that, to drink deeply from the stream of holiness means being poor, hungry, weeping, and being hated by the world versus the people who desire the esteem of men, who are rich, filled, laughing, and have people speak well of them. Jesus is juxtaposing those who are yearning to receive a reward with those who have already received it by saying we need to yearn for something better.

St. Paul, in the next part of his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us a rather interesting illustration of this by continuing to deal with factions in his little community. Some give credit to their faith to him, while others do to someone named Apollos, and others to St. Peter. St. Paul has to constantly remind the Corinthians that it makes no difference who told them the Gospel first because their allegiance is to Jesus Christ not one of his apostles. In today’s second reading, we can more clearly hear the real challenges these factions pose to the unity of the community. Some within the community believe that you can call yourself a Christian but not believe in the resurrection. Last week, in the second reading, St. Paul began explaining why this was not compatible when he explained how the resurrection was revealed. He gave a list of all the people who saw Jesus was resurrected, including himself as the last and lowest of them all. Today, he builds on that list by asking if they think everyone, including himself and St. Peter, were liars. If so, he asks, what is the point of Christianity? The problem for the people who doubted the resurrection was that it was in contradiction with their philosophies. For some Greek converts, their philosophy separated out the terrible evil body from the good soul so that the resurrection could only be spiritual in nature. For some of the Jewish converts, the concept of the afterlife meant purely a sleeping in heavenly peace in what they called sheol. The reward these folks desire is to have a better, more nuanced, understanding of Christiantiy than those other people who were trained by other apostles. They want to think they are better because they have a better understanding from whoever trained them or whatever philosophy they were taught before they became Christian instead of having to change their hearts and minds to be a follower of Jesus. St. Paul says to them that the resurrection of Jesus changes everything because, as Jesus and Jeremiah alluded to in the first reading and gospel, it means we seek eternal rewards over temporal ones.

It leaves us to ponder a couple of questions. Do we think of faith as something that deserves immediate rewards, like an answered prayer or warm fuzzy feelings from a hug from God? Do we think of faith as something where people will look up to us because of a squeaky clean life or a strong moral compass? Or do we think of faith as opening us up to the deficiencies in our lives, as showing us why we are truly poor, what we hunger for, what we are mourning for and where we yearn too much for the esteem of people, in other words all the places in our lives that are really gaps that only God can fill?

Baptism of the Lord - C: Grace let’s us live temperately, justly, and devoutly

 Friends

Peace be with you 

There’s a funny scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where the family is sitting at the table and all the food is cooked and the patriarch of the family, Clarke W. Griswald, suggests that 80 year old Aunt Bethany should lead them in the saying of grace. Aunt Bethany, who doesn’t have the best hearing, turns to her husband Uncle Lewis looking confused and asks “What dear?” to which her daughter yells “Grace!”. Aunt Bethany responds “Grace, she passed away 30 years ago.” Uncle Lewis then painstakingly gets it through to her that they want her to lead “The blesssing”, to which she leads them in the Pledge of Allegiance. From a Catholic perspective, I always find this especially humorous because of the number of times in the 20 years of I’ve been a priest, someone comes into the confessional, makes the sign of the cross and launches into “Bless us, O Lord, for these” instead of “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.” It happens more often than you’d think. But, the other thing that is more central to the point of the baptism of the Lord is more of a question than it is anything else: what is grace?

In the second reading for Mass today, St. Paul is writing to his friend, St. Titus, and talking about grace. When I was an Associate Pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, a parishioner one time asked me why we don’t talk about grace anymore. Of course, I wanted to quote Aunt Bethany and say, “Grace, she died 30 years ago” but I was afraid the person wouldn’t have a clue as to what I was referring. And, the person had a good point, despite the fact that it’s a pretty important theological principle and, arguably, the distinctive component to the life of the baptized, we generally don’t talk a lot about grace, even in homilies. So, what does Paul mean by grace? In the second reading, St. Paul says that the grace comes from Jesus' incarnation, the fact that God became a human being. But it still doesn’t really help us understand what it is. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, 

1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.

Grace brings us into the family of God. It makes us a part of God’s family. We are no longer visitors or mere acquaintances of God, we are now able to be his daughters and sons. And, we hear in this paragraph that baptism is the normal way we begin to participate in the life of God. Yet, as the Catechism will emphasize elsewhere, grace is a free gift of God not something we can merit but, instead, something that causes us to live differently than the rest of the world. St. Paul emphasized three words to describe the changes that grace causes in us: temperance, justice, and devotedness. Let’s look at each of these.

When we hear the word temperance, we may be tempted to think of the anti-alcohol temperance movement in this country most active in the 1920s and 1930s during the prohibition era. However, temperance actually has to do with being self-restrained or self controlled. Whether I choose to buy a book on Amazon that I’ll probably never get around to reading or give that money to the poor is a question of temperance. Whether I use the Lord’s name in vain or use non-vulgar language when I’m frustrated is a question of temperance. Whether I go home at 3:30 to go for a walk on my treadmill or go home and sit on my couch and eat Christmas sweets is a big question of temperance. Temperance is about self love, whether we love ourselves enough to make the personal choices of a person desiring to go to heaven. 

Justice is a different thing altogether. It’s about how we treat other people. In any given interaction, am I respecting their rights while also asking them to respect mine? That’s the heart of justice: I have rights and you have rights and figuring out whose rights are right in any given situation is what justice is all about. Sometimes, we prioritize our rights over pretty much everyone and ruin a sense of justice. If every time someone annoys us while we’re driving and we think it’s their fault, we may have to think about if we are being just or not. If we get angry at a server in a restaurant, ask yourself if you’re being just or just expecting that a person handling way too much is overwhelmed and can’t get your darn Coke right now. If your neighbor doesn’t clean her sidewalk and you are genuinely concerned about other people falling, it’s good to give her a call and ask her to clean off their sidewalk but even better to give her a call and ask if she’d mind if you did it. It’s a sidewalk, after all. It’ll take you an extra two minutes and it may mean the world to your neighbors AND it’s a million times better than calling the police. 

The last word St. Paul uses is devotedness, which has to do with our relationship to God. Are we taking time to pray each day or are we allowing screen time and other distractions to overwhelm it. When we wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, do we ever just think of a favorite passage of scripture and talk to God about it or do we allow the day’s concerns to overwhelm us? Do we make Mass a priority or does pretty much every other thing take priority over it? 

In baptism, we entered into a life of grace making us members of the family of God. In so doing, it set us up to a life of holy relationships with ourselves in temperance, with others in justice, and with God in devotedness. Grace is the free gift of God but it can only work through us if we are open to it. What is one thing you want to ask God to increase the grace in your life so you can be more temperate, more just, or more devoted?

Christmas 2021: The Romans declare a census and God invites with his glory

 Friends

Peace be with you. And Merry Christmas! Christ is born for us and we join the angels in singing “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to people of good will”. 

One of the things that astounds me about the way God works versus the way humanity works is that humanity likes to mandate things. Ever pulled up to a stop light late at night right when it is turning red and there isn’t another car in sight? Did you feel frustrated? Why do we have to follow the law when it isn’t protecting anyone? It’s just making me another minute or two later to get into my bed. But there could be a camera pointing at me. There could be a police officer hiding somewhere just waiting for this scenario and, suddenly, instead of missing a minute or two of sleep, I’m missing 30 minutes, a hundred dollars, and a whole lotta peace. So, I  just sit there and wait while grinding my teeth. 

As I was praying over these readings, I noticed something I’ve never really paid too much attention to from the Gospel of Luke. The reading starts off with a census, or an enrollment as St. Luke calls it. The enrollment is a mandatory return to your hometown to make sure no one is being missed during the tax collection. It appears, you would have to go back to you or your husband’s town of birth until the census is complete and then you’d get a signal that you could go home. Mary goes there with Joseph at some point after she’s already three months pregnant. How do I know that? Because St. Luke said she spent three months with Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s mother, before returning home. Maybe, in fact, she had to return home because of the enrollment. They likely travelled through Capernaum, down the Jordan River, through Jericho and Jerusalem before getting to Bethlehem. Imagine, if you can, starting somewhere up by Postville, walking over to Gutenburg and following the Mississippi River until you got to Bellevue and then walking from there through Springbrook to Andrew because that’s where you were born. I think that would roughly be the equivalent of how far they walked. As I said, they stayed in Bethlehem until they got the all clear because they were forced to by the government. It’s not clear if the all clear came before or after the birth of Jesus because this isn’t a story about a census, despite how entertaining that would be. It’s a story about a humble birth of the most powerful messiah and Lord to ever be born. It’s a story of contrasts.

In contrast to this forced relocation, there are shepherds out in the fields, most likely to the east of Bethlehem, so let’s imagine they’re in that valley that is a mile or so to the East of Andrew. Now, remember for a second that, in the Old Testament, King David was a shepherd in Bethlehem. He may very well have worked in these same fields with the ancestors of these sheep. It says a single angel appears to them to tell them the details we just learned, that a child is wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger back in town who is messiah and Lord. It says that the glory of the Lord appeared with the angel, which is quite striking because, since the time of King David’s Son, King Solomon, the glory of the Lord only appeared in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. The last detail that we learn is that these same shepherds find themselves surrounded by countless angels singing Glory to God in the highest. 

What is the response of the shepherds? This is why I wanted us to hear both the reading for Mass at night and Mass at dawn: because we have to hear how they reacted. The angel didn’t force them to go to Bethlehem. Instead, they say, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” They choose to freely go. Now, when they do, there’s something important that happens. They share with Joseph and Mary about the angels that appeared to them singing glory to God in the highest. It says here and in a later verse that “Mary kept all these things reflecting on them in her heart”, leading some to speculate that it was Mary herself who related this story to St. Luke for his inclusion in the gospel. Recently, someone asked me how we know any of this took place, how we can know that there’s truth in these infancy stories considering the gospel writers don’t join until much later. I think St. Luke is telling us how: because he may be working with original sources. 

But, secondly and more importantly, what happens to the shepherds after they see Jesus? It says they go back to their flocks glorifying and praising God. They have had a transformation. Shepherds are laborers staying out in the weather and constantly having to protect their flocks. It’s possible their job has been made harder because of people like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph because the “in town” places they where could have kept their flocks were being used as guest rooms while the enrollment was going on. Shepherds weren’t known for their holiness of life. Quite on the contrary, they would have been rough both in their appearance and in their manor of life. These guys would have known how to swear and how to fight to protect their flock. They’re tough. And they return glorifying and praising God from Bethlehem. This is significant because the name Bethlehem means “house of bread”. So, they freely go to the house of bread  and witness the real presence of their messiah and Lord in the person of a tiny baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. You’d think it would be the glory of God as manifested by the angel or the heavenly chorus of angels singing Glory to God in the highest that would have changed their life but, no, it was witnessing Jesus in the manger that causes them to return and, at least for a time, glorify and praise God. 

Each sunday, we are given a choice whether we want to return to the house of bread that is the church to witness the real presence of Jesus. It’s given to us freely. We took God up on his offer today and praise and glory to God for that. Can we freely choose to do it again next week?

3 A C: Let go of anxiety in favor of joy

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

One of my favorite scenes from the musical Come From Away tells the true story of a group of people from a country in Africa that were flying to the United States on September 11, 2001. The attacks started happening while their plane was over the Atlantic so they got rerouted to a small town of nine thousand people named Gander in Newfoundland, Canada. The poor African passengers had no one that could speak their language so they exited the plane and boarded the provided buses several hours after landing in Gander with a certain reluctance and anxiousness. They were bused out to a camp the Salvation Army had set up in the middle of nowhere. The Salvation Army workers, wanting to look professional and impressive to their visitors, had dusted off their old uniforms, which only added to the anxiety the African people felt. They worried they were being taken out to the middle of nowhere to be executed but they couldn’t understand their bus driver and their bus driver couldn’t understand them. Finally, the bus driver noticed that the woman sitting next to the man who seemed to be in charge was fearfully clutching a Bible. He knew he couldn’t read the words to her but he counted on the fact that Bibles have a common order and number system. He found Phillippians 4:6, which is a part of our second reading for Mass, and pointed to it while handing the Bible back to the man. The man, in his language, heard St. Paul say, “Be anxious for nothing” or, as it is translated in our second reading, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” And, as it says in the play, that’s when they started speaking the same language, a language of joy and hope translated by an Apostle who lived 2000 years before them. 

What’s making you anxious today?

Are you worried about the omicron variant and wondering if it’s going to mean that, once again, some members of your family won’t feel safe gathering with everyone else? Are you anxious about interest rates increasing and the cost of everything going up? Are you worried about Archbishop Jackels talking about the need for pastoral planning to happen in our Archdiocese, meaning we may have to close parishes? Are you anxious about a confrontation you recently had with friends or coworkers that has made the relationship tense or has made you so angry that it seems like the only thing you can think about? Are you worried about a friend’s health or your own health? 

There are points where anxiety can’t be easily overcome by pointing to Phillippians 4:6. With all due respect to St. Paul, just telling someone not to be anxious doesn’t always make the anxiety go away. Sometimes we need to talk to a professional and get help. And that’s okay. We need to do what we can to keep removing the stigma attached to people talking to counselors and psychologists and psychiatrists. Anxiety and depression can’t always be removed simply by willing it to happen or telling it to go away. We need to and help and support, not mock or belittle, people who have anxiety. 

Still, there are times in our lives when anxiety is more situationally based and less having to do with the chemicals in our brains. In those situations, I think St. Paul offers us the perfect antidote. Begin by rejoicing in the Lord always and in all things. In the good weather and bad weather, in the hard relationships and in the deep friendships, in things we do well and in things we do poorly, rejoice in the Lord always. St. Paul says joy and kindness should be the hallmarks of Christians. Instead of anxiety, when it arises, say a prayer to God and then trust that God will answer that prayer. 

Have you prayed to God about what is causing your anxiety? If so, remember that prayer isn’t your way of ordering God to do it your way but your way of asking God for help while understanding that it is always about God’s will and not our own. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been praying for God to take away the coronavirus ever since March of 2021 but it’s still here. How can we be people of joy and kindness despite its continued presence? If you’re worried about the cost of things increasing and how it will affect your business or your ability to get necessary things, how can you find joy and hope in possibly having less? If you’re worried about your parish closing, have you prayed to God asking him to send more priests while encouraging your sons and grandsons to consider it? Have you talked about the church in a way that makes them want to be a part of it or are you constantly running down the Archbishop or me or Fr. Dave or the church in general? I should make it clear, by the way, that Archbishop Jackels doesn’t have a secret list of parishes he intends to close and that there is much work to get done before any decision on any parish will be made. What we would be wise to do if this is our concern is to bolster the identity of our parish and not get anxious and, therefore, defensive. We should be even more joyful and even more kind. We should be inviting people to be a part of our parish and welcoming those who are here. We should be looking for ways to serve the poor and shelter the homeless. We can’t get angry and spiteful and expect the Archbishop or anyone else for that matter to see in us a parish that really deserves to stay open. 

Over and over again, what inspires me about that small town of Gander on September 11, 2001, is that they responded to a very anxious situation with nothing but joy and kindness. On this Gaudete Sunday, let’s take St. Paul seriously, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near.”

CTK - B Revealing that Christ is King not you or anyone else.

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Our second reading today comes from one of the most befuddling books in the Bible, the Book of Revelation. It is both the last book sequentially and chronologically, meaning it contains the last words you hear andis believed to be the last book written historically. It’s attributed to St. John who protected and accompanied Mary, Jesus’ Mother, after Jesus’ Ascension into heaven. St. John gets the credit for writing the last gospel, three New Testament Letters, and the Book of Revelation, making him one of the most prolific and diverse writers in the Bible. There are some scholars, however, who say that it was probably not written by St. John himself but by a community of disciples he helped to form. Nonetheless, for simplicity I’m going to say it was St. John. In the end it doesn’t really matter because, regardless, it is Sacred Scripture and, therefore, worthy of our reflection, despite the fact that most priests really hate having to do so. 

Let’s face it: the Books of Daniel and Revelation are hard to understand and even harder to explain. They have been abused historically by charlatans to scare people into giving them their money and their property and their loyalty since the end of the world will make the money and property worthless and will mean people are scared enough to follow a leader over a cliff. I think that’s why it’s important we take some time today, on Christ the King Sunday, to read them. 

So, let’s get something straight: The point of apocalyptic literature in general and the Book of Revelation in particular isn’t to make you afraid. The word apocalypse comes from a Greek word meaning to open the curtain. That’s why, when we translated the word “apocalypse” from Greek into Latin and, eventually, English we used the word “revelatio” or “revelation”. It is a revealing of the truths of God. And what is being revealed? Part of the challenge of answering that question comes from the fact that there are certain particular truths that are being revealed to seven particular churches with certain particular problems. For instance, the first church listed is in the town of Ephesus, a town in modern day Turkey. St. Paul wrote a letter to the Ephesisans and we know it is, therefore, an important and ancient center of Christianity. In Ephesus, at the time, they had figured out who was a real Christian and who was a fake one and they had not tolerated the evil done by fake ones. However, St. John also says, “I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first. Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first.” What were the works they did at first? Why did they stop? The people at the time would have known but, unfortunately, we don’t. The other issue, that may be related to this, is that this was written during a time of persecution. So, the writer deliberately uses coded language intended to protect the readers from being discovered if this ends up in the hands of the Roman authorities. 

Nonetheless, there are certain things that we can learn from this piece of apocalyptic literature, especially from the first chapter, which is the origin of the  second reading for today’s Mass. In it, Jesus has three important qualities. He is faithful witness, firstborn of the dead, and ruler of the kings of the earth. He also has three relational qualities: He loves us, freed us from our sins, and made us into a kingdom of priests for God. Lastly, St. John says he has three temporal qualities or time qualities, he is, was, and is to come. A trinity of trinity descriptive words. St. John is grappling with the notion that the Word existed at the beginning of creation with the Father and the Spirit, yet was incarnated, fully God and fully human, for a period of time on earth in the person of Jesus Christ until he ascended into heaven, and he remains with us in love but will also come again as judge of the living to take the faithful to his kingdom of peace. St. John is revealing, pulling back the veil on, the trans-historical nature of Jesus and the particular ways throughout history that Jesus has revealed himself. He does this by reminding us, first and foremost, that he loves us, he freed us from sins, and made us into a kingdom. I think that’s done deliberately because judgment can seem so frightening. I’ve worked with people who are aware that they are going to die sooner rather than later. One that I continue to think about was a woman who went to Mass every day she could and prayed the rosary constantly. She insisted on being anointed immediately after she had her fatal diagnosis. When I finished anointing her, she admitted she was frightened because she wasn’t sure she had been good enough to get to heaven. I told her that none of us have but that it didn’t matter because Jesus has been good enough for us all. I tried to assure her that she had shown faith by coming to Mass and being anointed but her daughters admitted to me when we prepared her funeral that she shared the same concerns with them, that she didn’t feel worthy of heaven. The daughters, who had stopped coming to church long before and whose lives had gone in very different directions than their mother, sort of made fun of her in a way that almost made it seem like they figured she was foolish in believing God would have any qualifications for getting into heaven. As I walked away from the funeral home, I wondered who was better off: the one who struggled to be one hundred percent certain that she was saved or the ones who figured they were owed it because at least they weren’t Hitler. 

St. John, in the second reading, gives a very brief account of what the second coming will be like. Borrowing from the Book of Daniel in the first reading, he says Jesus will be the one coming in the clouds and “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. All the peoples of the earth will lament him.” I think, in today’s world, we tend to think of the spectacle of it all and maybe be tempted to see thunderstorms or hurricanes as pointing to the reality and the closeness of this event. St. John was less concerned about the “coming in the clouds” part and more wanting us to focus on what our reaction will be when we see the King coming in the clouds. He says that we will look on him, even those who pierced him, and lament him. He’s saying that we will see how our sins contributed to the need for the crucifixion. We will see the wounds in his hands and his feet and see the gossip we spread about others piercing him. We will see the wounds from the crown of thorns and see the times we didn’t feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, or shelter the homeless. We will see his scourged back and see the times when we tried to be our own king, the king of our own castle, when we put liberty over obedience and license over what is morally right. 

St. John thinks that that revelation either has happened, is happening, or will happen for everyone. He hopes that, for the majority of his listeners, it has already happened but he knows that some are starting to fall back into former lives of sin. He hopes that the evangelizing work that is happening will bring more to see Christ as their King and they will come to love him as much as they are loved and forgiven. But he knows that, for some, it will only be when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds that they will lament the loss of the opportunity for conversion. They’d been obstinate during their lives in their refusal to come to know the one who is, who was, and who is to come and they’ll likely continue being obstinate even when he is standing right in front of them. Where we are along this continuum. Do we already lament the sins we have committed knowing how they have pierced Christ the King or do we still have more work to do? Are we so settled in our conviction that we are saved that we don’t recognize the sins we committ today and tomorrow and the next day all the away until the end of our life as needing to be lamented, as worthy of being spoken to a priest in confession? Have we allowed our own arrogance, our own need to be in total control and have total say over everything that happens in our life that we have stopped looking for the one coming in the clouds and, if so, how can we remind ourselves that Christ is King?

30 OT B: Like Jesus, we are called to fulfilll God’s plan for us in our weaknesses.

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    About every other week during the past couple of months, I’ve been accompanying Julie Schmidt, our DRE, and some parish volunteers down to the public school and walking the kids who want to participate in our after school Faith Formation activities back to the Kruse Center. The last time we did it, it was a bit cool and rainy but, until then, it’s been fun for two reasons. First, the weather has been absolutely smashing, which makes for a great excuse to take a half hour or so and go for a walk. But, the other reason is that, when we walk past the daycare kids, I get identified with the most-high God. That’s right. The little kids think I’m God…and I’m kind of okay with that. Actually, it makes me chuckle because it happens so often with little kids and they seem to unlearn it just as quickly. None of the kids walking over to Faith Formation, for instance, greet me at the school by saying “Hi God!” but their little brother or sister might have just done so. I generally just respond that I’m not God, I just work for him. But I think that’s even harder for them to understand so I don’t push it. 

    I hear stories about priests who would be very comfortable being identified with God. I tend to associate that with the priests ordained prior to the Second Vatican Council: meaning guys ordained in the 1950s and 1960’s. Though, I’ve met younger guys who had a sense of self importance that they felt was integral to priesthood. I worry when I see it because this was the era of rampant sexual abuse in the church. The good old days when priests could do no wrong weren’t always all that good for some people. 

    Priests aren’t called to image God, even though, like all people we were created in the image and likeness of God. A priest is called another Christ or to be in the person of Christ or “in persona Christi” in Latin. I think that’s what makes our second reading from Mass kind of challenging today. The writer to the Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the high priest, a comparison the Jewish listeners to this homily would have understood that may be a bit challenging to us. The high priest took care of the Temple and offered the sacrifices there. He had a bunch of rules that he had to live by and would have been revered for his holiness. He also would have had to have been related to the ancestral tribe of Levi, one of the brothers of the Old Testament figure Joseph. The writer says that there are two ways that Jesus is like the high priest. First, the high priests aren’t above other people but they sympathize with them because they also have to offer sacrifices for their own sins. In the past few passages, the writer has been talking about how important it is for us to not confuse Jesus with a pagan god or an angel because he came down from heaven and was a human being like us. Jesus, though without sin, is like us and we know that because he took on our sins and offered them up to the Father. I appreciated how the writer says of the Old Testament priesthood and Jesus that, “He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and the erring for he himself is beset by weakness…” Secondly, Jesus is like the high priest because he was called to this position by God. Now, this is significant because of how he was called. Whereas, the temple high priests had to be both holy and of the tribe of Levi, Jesus was not of the tribe of Levi. He was of the Tribe of Judah, meaning he couldn’t be a Temple high priest. However, the writer to the Hebrews points out an example in the Old Testament of a righteous high priest named Melchizedek who ministered before the birth of Levi and is still remembered reverently by the Jewish people. He’s even mentioned in the first Eucharistic Prayer, which I’m going to pray at this Mass. So, he says that Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek instead of Levi. Melchizedek took bread and wine, gave thanks to God, and gave it to Abraham and it was credited to him as an act of righteousness. 

    I think it’s significant that the writer to the Hebrews isn’t saying that Jesus’ priesthood is so much better than the priesthood of the Temple high priests. I would have expected him to say that but he at least begins by pointing out similarities between the two before he starts to highlight the differences. As a priest, I am grafted onto the Old Testament priesthood through this priesthood of Jesus Christ. And, at baptism, each of us were called to a priesthood, not the ministerial priesthood that I exercise, but the priesthood of all believers. That means we share in these same things that Jesus did as well. We sin. I sometimes get frustrated when I hear people talking about Christians as though we think we are so much better or holier than others simply because we call a sin a sin. I believe sin exists and, indeed, that all have sinned and fallen short of of the glory of God. I believe that sinful acts should be confessed and that people who sin are always capable of repentance and forgiveness. But people who come to church are seeking to be holy, not already there. We sin just like those who don’t come to church. 

Still, I wonder if the second part is as much of a challenge for you as it is for me. Jesus is like the high priest because he was called to this role by God. God had a plan for him that included his high priesthood to be carried out by the forgiveness of sins of the world offered by his own personal sacrifice on the cross and being through a personal calling instead of a tribal relationship to Levi. And God has a plan for you as well. God planned for you to be a husband or a wife or a single person. God gave you gifts to be a farmer or a construction worker or a teacher or a politician or whatever way you use those skills for employment. I’ll be painfully honest, perhaps a little too honest at this point, and admit that this part is a weakness for me. I love being a priest but don’t always love being a pastor. When I have a meeting with people complaining about things I don’t think are worth getting as angry about as they are or people wanting to turn things into power struggles, it makes me want to leave and go to a different assignment. This struggle I feel is similar, I would guess, to someone having a difficult time in marriage or at work: is it worth sticking it out or is it time fish or cut bait? What if God called you to that marriage? Would it change how you treated each other or how willing you were to walk away? What if God called you to that job? Would you let a owly coworker or boss move you somewhere else? It’s always possible that God is moving you somewhere else. If there’s abuse in your relationship, God would want you to leave that relationship. If you find corruption in your workplace that is systemic and is beyond your ability to root out, God would want you to leave that workplace and find another. But, that decision should be the result of prayer and consultation with other trusted advisors like your family and close friends and maybe even me. 

Oh, and by the way, I do plan to be here for at least another 9 years because I do believe God called me here. He didn’t call me here because I’m perfect. I’m not. He called me despite my imperfections so that he could show his own perfection through this imperfect person, which is so often the way God works. He has a plan for you and is carrying out that plan right now. It might not be as exciting or fun as you wish it could be but that’s okay, It’s still your plan. We may feel like we don’t have the skills to do it but, in our imperfections God’s perfections shine through. I am not God because no human being is God, despite what the kids at daycare will tell you. I sin. But, I know God has a plan for me just like he has a plan for you and a plan for each one of those precious little voices yelling “Hi God!” from daycare. Do we trust in the plan of God despite our sinfulness or do we sometimes forget God’s plan because of it?

29 OT B A sympathetic God

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In the 1992 movie, Leap of Faith, comedian and actor Steve Martin stars as a traveling evangelist with a troupe of musicians, a circus tent, sound and light technicians and even a behind-the-scenes person listening into conversations of those congregants in attendance so Jonas, Steve Martin’s character, can reveal to them their ills and make them think it’s being revealed to him by God. When he’s revealed by the local sheriff to have had a rather sordid past involving shoplifting, possession of marijuana, grand theft auto, selling fraudulent art works, and passing bad checks, it looks like the jig is up and Jonas has been revealed as the con artist he is. But, after a deliberate pregnant pause, Jonas responds, 

“Everything you’ve said it absolutely true. Yes, I ran with a bad crowd that taught me to smoke weed and steal. I hung out in bars and I hot wired cars. I grew up mistreated so I lied and cheated. I learned hard crime and I served hard time. I have walked that crooked road and I have danced with the demon Satan. I’ve been down in the gutter and looked up into the face of God. I say to you, if you wanna give up the bottle, who you gonna talk to? Someone who’s never touched a drop? If you wanna give up womanizing, who you gonna talk to? Some pale-skinned virgin priest?”

I watched this movie at a pivotal moment in my life and remember thinking that it was a fairly accurate critique of priesthood. Similar sentiments have been offered regarding things like marriage prep and men in the pro life movement. How can an unmarried priest do marriage prep? Or how can men tell women that they aren’t allowed to have an abortion if they’ve never been pregnant or given birth. Now, if you follow this line of reasoning, it does become a bit ridiculous. Would you insist that every doctor has to have had your condition in order to be treated for it? Or would you say to a firefighter that they can’t put out your house fire unless they have also had their house on fire? 

Still, I get the critique that it’s easier to believe someone can help you if they can sympathize with what you’re undergoing than if they seem somehow above you or completely disconnected from you. In the second reading, the writer to the Hebrews wants to emphasize this about Jesus. After spending the majority of chapter 4 comparing and contrasting Jesus with the greatest Old Testament figure, Moses, he shows how Jesus is an even better high priest than Moses. If the high priests were super holy and Moses is even holier than them, it would be surprising to hear that there’s anyone who could be even holier than Moses. But, as the writer to the Hebrews says, Jesus is just such a high priest. The reason he is better is, despite coming down from the clouds, he is not unable to sympathize with us despite being without sin. He became human so that he could know fully what it is like for us. He even knows the depth of human depravity because he suffered and died. 

We want a savior who is like us but also slightly better than us. I think this is true in a lot of things. It would be hard to take piano lessons from a virtuoso. We’d probably rather take them someone who knows what it’s like to struggle to learn how to play. Or if we want to learn to build houses, we should probably learn from someone local who does it rather than someone who builds mega mansions for the rich. There are only a few mega mansions but, as anyone who has tried to buy a house locally knows, we need more people building houses. The challenge always is that, while we want someone who we can sympathize with, someone we can relate to, someone with whom we can have a beer after a long day; we also want someone who can actually teach us something because they know the trade. We may not want to learn from a virtuoso but we probably do want someone to teach us piano who is more advanced the plunking out Three Blind Mice with one finger. We may want to learn how to build houses locally but we don’t want to learn from someone whose hair has a little extra curl in it because of the number of times he’s tried to do wiring when he should have called in an electrician.

    That’s why Jesus is sympathetic but is also without sin. We may not want some pale skinned virginal priest helping us with womanizing but you know who is even worse? A womanizer. Someone who hasn’t kicked the habit himself trying to tell you how to kick the habit. We need someone who can relate to our problems while also not being bogged down by them. 

    I sometimes wonder if this is why we don’t have more people coming to confession. I wonder if some people don’t come because they’re concerned with how I will react if they tell their sins because their sins are more than missing their prayers or saying bad words. And, even though I can assure you that I’ve worked for several years for college students, you know, the years we do especially stupid things, I get it. If you’re worried that the priest is going to run out of the confessional screaming “I need back-up on this one!”, you may not be willing to come. The only thing I can say is that, despite hearing confessions for nearly 20 years, I’ve never been shocked or scandalized by what people have told me there. I’ve only been grateful because you trust me enough to say it. It is always an experience of setting aside Fr. Dennis for a moment and letting Jesus work through the imperfect servant that I am. If I am not a testament to the fact that Jesus can forgive in broken humanity, I don’t know what is. 

    Which is exactly why I think Christianity is different than other religions, why I think it is a fuller understanding of who God is. Jesus is not above us. He is relatable. He’s fully human. He lived a life very similar to ours but lacking in one thing only: sin. If we’re going to turn to someone who is relatable to help us overcome sin to get to know the Father, we need someone like him. The challenge for us is do we take the time to get to know him. Do we take the time in prayer to relate to him. There have been times in my life when I’ve assumed someone is too important or too knowledgeable or too much of a celebrity to pay any attention to me. But that’s not Jesus. He is relatable. He wants to get know you and wants you to get to know him. Are we open to this type of relationship with him?

22 OT B: Show no partiality to others or to ourselves

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

For some reason, during the heart of the pandemic, I watched a filmed version of a concert called American Utopia by a man named David Byrne. Now, this is definitely not a concert for everyone. In fact, I would bet most of you would shut it off in the middle of the first song. I know a person who refuses to even get that far because the performers don’t wear shoes or socks and you can see their bare feet. It’s politically liberal and there are some really weird songs in it. Still, I started watching it and was prepared to hate it but there was something kinda captivating, kind of beautiful, about it. If the name David Byrne sounds familiar, it may be because he was in an 80’s rock band called Talking Heads. And, sure enough, at one point in the concert, David Byrne grabbed his guitar and started singing Once in a Lifetime, one Talking Heads biggest hits. As a kid, when I would hear this song, I had no context to what Byrne was singing. But, as I prayed over the second reading for today, I found the words to this song sort of floating through my head…

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"  

St. James begins chapter 2 of his letter by saying that, if we have the faith of Jesus Christ, we should not show partiality toward a rich or poor person. What’s interesting is that he goes on basically to say that we should show partiality to the poor. The next two verses say, “But you dishonored the poor person. Are not the rich oppressing you? And do they themselves not haul you off to court? Is it not they who blaspheme the noble name that was invoked over you?” So, what is James really saying? I think it’s easy to want to associate with rich people. We see them driving a nice car or living in a nice house, maybe inviting us to come to the vacation house they own. They’re attractive people with nice clothes, nice faces, and nice personalities. Then we look over at poor people who are asking for financial help or asking for a ride because their old beater of a car is broken. They aren’t beautiful, of course. I think that’s why St. James says that we probably should favor the poor: because we naturally want to be around the rich. They have better stuff. 

St. James offers two reasons why we should be aware of this unconscious bias, if you’ll allow me to insert a phrase he doesn’t use. First, because the rich have power, they can haul you off to court. If you can be seduced into favoring rich people, so can the police and the government. A rich person can build walls to protect the outside world from knowing they’re fighting but a poor person is exposed. And, hopefully, the rich have fewer things to fight about because they have a large automobile, with a beautiful house and a beautiful spouse. This is, in many ways, a pragmatic reason to not show partiality: because the rich are powerful and they can use that power against you so don’t get too close or too far from them. 

But the second thing St. James says, which I think poses the greater challenge from a faith perspective, is that, if we are going to have the heart of Jesus, we have to operate under the law of freedom. Now, what exactly is the law of freedom? We can’t be so attached to our possessions or the things of the earth that we lose sight of our true home in heaven. The truth is that both the rich and the poor can lose sight of this. I know people who are very poor who do nothing but lament that they lost something, some store has closed or some building was torn down. I know part of this has to do with struggles to deal with historical change but I think there can also be a kind of idolatry that happens when people can’t imagine something needing to change. I’m reminded of some groups on social media where all people do is look at old, dilapidated buildings and click their tongues at how sad it is or claim that someone should buy it and make it into a home.

St. James, therefore, wants to make sure that, when people come to a Christian gathering, we show no partiality to who they are or what they have because we don’t don’t want them to show partiality to us simply because of who we are or what we have. Even if we’re rich, there is someone richer with a larger automobile, a more beautiful house, or a more beautiful wife or husband for that matter. 

In the past few weeks, we’ve been taking a few extra collections to help people in need. I heard someone remark that they were visiting with someone who complained about how we’re always asking for money for yet another group. I tend to smirk at these comments because it’s not like someone is forcing you to donate. I often wonder if the comment is really a sign of guilt that the person hasn’t donated more to Haiti or the victims of hurricanes or for the unborn. But I also wonder if, perhaps, the person has a misplaced sense of charity. They see their donation to their church as a gift to a charity and say that donation should be enough. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad people donate to their parish. We couldn’t keep this place open without it. However, I hope we can also see that there’s at least a level of selfishness if that is our only gift to a charity. St. James sees the law of freedom tied to mercy. He says, “For the judgment is merciless to one who has not shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”

I’m guessing we’ve all found ourselves, at one point or another, asking “how did I get here?” How did my priority become keeping a large automobile or a beautiful house with a beautiful spouse. The question St. James wants us to ask ourselves is: do all these things get in the way of our care for each other and, if so, how can we put our priorities back where they should be?

22 OT B Be doers of the word not hearers only

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    One summer in seminary, I went to a bar with a group of seminary students from various denominations who were all studying hospital chaplaincy. We were all involved in a summer program called CPE, or Clinical Pastoral Education, and were at a wrap-up conference processing what we had all learned. In general it was not a great use of time so we decided to unwind and complain a little at a local watering hole in the town that was hosting us, Grinell. I remember feeling a little out of place as we walked in, wearing a dress shirt and pants in what most people would call a dive bar. After a couple of drinks, I was about ready to head for the door when I felt this hand on my shoulder and heard a voice from someone standing behind me say something like “I’ve been listening to what ya’ll have been talking about and I want to let you know I think it’s terrible that you’re here and that you’re all going to hell.” Somewhat stunned, I started to turn around but I knew already that the person was a forty or fifty year old woman who had been playing pool with two men nearby. Some women sitting with me who were training to be ministers in other denominations started to engage her by asking her questions about herself and she calmed down a bit and admitted she didn’t practice her religion anymore because she felt she was just too sinful. She said, in fact, that anyone who would hang out in a bar was just too sinful to go to church. I listened for a while and, when there was a lul in the intervention, I said to her that it was possible to come in and have one or two beers and then leave. Unfortunately, either because I was a man or because I was Roman Catholic I’m not sure, that must have triggered her because she got angry again and told me that was impossible. You only go to a bar to get drunk and do sinful things and we were all sinners for being there. I had had enough at that point so I decided to leave. The next day, when I talked to some of the people that stuck around, they said they tried to continue to engage her because she was so broken but it was futile. She was unwilling to admit the possibility of anyone entering that bar and entering the kingdom of heaven. The pastor she had growing up had taught her that and there was no changing her mind. Still, there are times when I’ve wondered if more of my time was spent in the local bar getting known and trusted by the people there, if there would be more conversions than by just sitting in the confessional hoping people would show up. But if I did that, what would you all assume about me?

We begin this week with the book of James, a book that could be summed up with the phrase “Be doers of God’s word and not merely hearers.” This book is often invoked by Catholics to answer the protestations of our Lutheran friends who will misquote St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians by saying “We are saved by faith alone”. The trouble is that each letter had its own purpose. Whereas St. Paul was worried about people believing that they could be saved without faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, St. James is worried that some believe that salvation means you don’t need what is classically referred to as “charity” or love. If you get a chance today or tomorrow to sit and read the entire first chapter of James, you may be struck by two things. First, like our Lord in the gospel today, St. James believes that evil comes from the inside of a person not from someone else’s influence. St. James would not be in favor of the excuse that the devil made me do it. Second, St. James believes that faith is a free gift offered to us by God but that, if we don’t put that free gift to use, it will be wasted. He says it’s like a person who looks at himself or herself in the mirror and, when the person walks away, she or he forgets what she or he looks like. That used to sound impossible to me until I lost my hair and, yet, still have dreams where I do have hair. I wake up and quickly realize that it was a dream because I had hair and, therefore, I’m not going to be late for my final exam in biology. Somewhere in my subconscious mind, I’ve forgotten what I look. 

So what’s the solution? St. James concludes this chapter with the same two suggestions we hear at the end in the second reading; “To care for widows and orphans in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained in the world.” So, care for those who have no one else to care for them and, yet, remain holy and unstained by the world in the process. It is possible to do both. We can care for people who may be rough around the edges or who are sinners, while also keeping our lives focused on holiness. The truth is that a lot of people who walk into bars do so because they intend to sin, to drink to excess or hook up with someone or get into a fight with someone. And you probably should be concerned if your priest was spending a lot of time down at the bar claiming to be doing so to get converts. Priests can be alcoholics too. Still, I think it’s too easy and too comfortable to use concerns about contact with some place or someone as reasons why we don’t treat someone with love. Keeping ourselves undefiled has more to do with what is happening in our heart, than it does with where we are at or to whom we are talking. Are we seeing the image and likeness of God in every person we meet and the God who is always with us even in the dark valley and the shadow of death or are we too worried about seeing the devil to be doers of the word and not merely hearers?

21OTB Don't just be subordinate, love one another like Christ.

Friends

Peace be with you. 

One of the hardest weddings I ever did happened in a previous assignment and is something I will always regret doing. I have never refused to perform a marriage. Sometimes, if one of the people need an annulment and I have to tell couples “not yet”, they decide there are easier solutions than getting married in the Catholic Church. Still, this was a different scenario. All throughout the preparation, there was something off about the couple. They needed a different sponsor couple than our normal ones for him to feel comfortable talking with any of them. It had to be someone he already trusted and knew. He answered almost all the marriage questions with unsure instead of agree or disagree, including whether he was almost always relaxed around his future spouse. They both always had excuses but they tended to be pretty flimsy ones. He’s shy. He doesn’t trust people. He doesn’t trust people because his parents were bad role models. It took until after the wedding for things to become clear for me what was happening. The groom was isolating the bride from all her friends, even moving her to a whole new town far away from everyone she knew. He was driving everyone who cared for her away, including me after the wedding. He would pick a fight with one of her friends and then go and tell her that they were mean to him and she shouldn’t talk to them anymore. And, wanting to make the marriage work and find a way to fix him, she always did it. I tried to contact her after the marriage but she blocked me on her phone and all social media and we still talked to each other since sadly. 

Still, I think of her on this weekend when we hear Ephesians 5:21-32, “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church”. For some people, that’s all they hear when they hear this reading. And there is many a preacher who is willing to stand up and say that St. Paul clearly meant that the man runs the show in a family, that he is in charge and the woman and any children they may have have to listen to him. However, be very careful if you decide to accept that interpretation because, when preachers interpret St. Paul that way, they are missing his entire point. 

Let’s look, first, at how St. Paul starts the passage. He says to everyone “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This should be a clue that St. Paul is doing something different here. It’s mutual subordination that he is seeking, not a one-sided subordination. To demonstrate this, he writes the two verses I quoted before about wives being subordinate to husbands, which was a common belief in the middle-eastern culture of his time. But what he says next is shocking because he also imposes demands upon the husbands. “Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her…” He repeats over and over again that husbands should love their wives. I think we may be tempted to say the poor wife who is called to be subordinate gets the raw end of the deal and that definitely is true if we don’t understand what Paul means by love. Love isn’t just a warm feeling for St. Paul. Love is an act of the will that commits you to a certain life. And what life are husbands committing to? To die to your self and all your selfish desires and everything aside from focusing on what is best for your wife. You see, we don’t hear it this way but dying to your self should be harder than being subordinate. It’s supposed to sound more difficult but, as I say, because we tend to think of love as a touchy feely emotion instead of as a commitment to put the other person’s needs and wants before our own, to put their well being, their livelihood, their everything before our own, we distort what St. Paul says and, instead, justify seeing the man as being the head of the household, the one that makes all the decisions when, in fact, husband and wife are meant to be equals, each subordinate to the other. 

Now, I know some of you may protest that, if there is no singular person who is in charge, that means the couple is essentially a ship without a pilot. First, it doesn’t mean that there can’t be division of labor. A husband may look at his wife and realize she’s a better cook or cares more about cleanliness or is better at maintaining their vehicle than he is and they may decide those are areas she is better in charge of. And a wife may look at her husband and realize he’s better at dealing with lawncare or better at organizing the family finances or better at cooking than she is and the two may decide that those are going to be his gifts. Those kinds of decisions are good to decide early into the relationship and also good to communicate about while the relationship goes on and changes with time. But, also, if there are children that come about as part of the union, it’s even more important for the kids that the parents be in charge of the kids while subordinate to each other. Parents who are not on the same page when it comes to discipline or education or religious involvement or even involvement in sports will not only frustrate themselves but make their children miserable. When parents support each other in their decisions, they will at least have one other person telling them they’re sane despite possible protests from the children and it’s good for the kids to see a model of healthy adult relationships.

I hope you can hear how this passage, Ephesians 5:21-32, not only shouldn’t be a justification for spousal abuse but should be one of the main arguments about how Christians can’t tolerate it. If you are in an abusive relationship, I hope you are getting the help you need. Please, when you are safe, contact Catholic Charities for help or, if it’s really bad, call the police. And, if you are an abuser, whether it’s verbal or physical in nature, please know that, by, justifying it because of these and similar passages, you are abusing God’s word for your own ends. Today is the day to recommit your life to the gospel. Get the help you need to die to yourself so you can rise with Christ.