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5 Sunday B
The arguments we have seen in recent years over healthcare in the United States reflect some of the deep ambivalence we have toward healing. Of course, we say on the one hand, when someone is hurting they should be helped, cured, healed. But when it comes to figuring out a way to do that, we start taking about death panels and financial mandates. And, should a doctor, in whom we put almost unlimited trust, not heal someone, the next name we probably will call is the lawyer.
We expect so much of healers, even though we know that healers suffer limitations too. Sickness, which is as much a part of human existence as our own bodily existence, deeply unsettles us. Why do we have to get sick? Why cannot everyone be healed? Why cannot science and medicine provide all the answers? Sickness unsettles us because it points to the truth we spend most of our lives evading—it points to our limitations and our mortality.
We can make a mistake when we hear of Jesus’ healings in the Gospel. We might think of them mostly as relieving the ailments of a sufferer. And surely they were that. But they were doing more than just bringing relief. In the time of Jesus, sickness of any kind was an incredible threat to life; it was the shadow of death and the grasp of demonic forces. Jesus heals the sick to demonstrate something essential in his ministry. Jesus not only rids Peter’s mother-in-law of her fever. Far more, he is demonstrating the ultimate power of God over what we fear the most, even over death.
We hear these words from Job and think—well, Job has a tough life. It is not exactly self-pity but it gets close. Job is at least reveling in his misery; like most of humankind, the experience of living was pretty wretched. Job’s voice cries out to God; in Jesus, God shows us that Job’s voice is heard. If sickness represents the deepest fears we have, Jesus represents divine assurance in the face of those fears.
It can be that our relative health today hides the fundamental battle behind human reality. It can be that our reliance on medicine—something that we value and absolutely need—can obscure the deeper dilemmas of human existence. After all, no matter how many replacements, no matter how many operations, no matter how many transplants, we all face death. Jesus heals to help us realize this deeper assurance from God, that not even death can defeat the ultimate life of God, given to us in love.
Jesus seems anxious to get the message out. “Stay in town, they are just getting to like you,” the disciples say. “I must be about preaching to every town; my message cannot be contained or localized.” Mark’s Gospel is one of non-stop energy. The Word of God wants to sweep us up in its movement, its force, its unstoppable power for good. Even the poor woman healed of her fever has to get into the act, serving Jesus and his disciples as soon as she is better. This means, in part, that concern for our own healing has to involve concern for all of humankind, for the ultimate salvation of all. We must move on from our private, personal, concerns.
In our new translation, we are often asked to reflect on the things of heaven. It asks us to raise our eyes above our immediate concerns. Maybe this is the only way we find real energy in our lives, beyond the humdrum agenda of our days, and beyond the crises that put that humdrum at risk. If we could only realize what we were living for! Jesus healed people to show them the things of heaven. He continues his healing in every sacrament, in every Eucharist, in every heart open to him, so that we will not forget how sick we really are—in soul if not in body—and how no medicine can compare to his.
Sunday 4B
I thought I misheard her. “I am going to become a consecrated virgin,” she said. “Why don’t you just become a nun?” I asked. “Because I am not called to be a nun; I feel strongly called to be a virgin, and to live in the world. This is my marriage to Jesus Christ.” I went away scratching my head.
Maybe I have absorbed a lot of the attitudes toward virginity—and sex—that color the modern world, even though I have taken vows myself. How does the world make sense of virginity today? So long as we maintain our modern biases toward sexuality and sexual activity, it is totally baffling. Even though our modern attitudes—that almost all sexual activity is fine so long as it is not criminal or lead to unhealthy consequences—make no sense at all, we still have trouble prizing virginity.
It was not so for most of Christian history, as we can see from Paul’s writing today. Almost immediately, the radical call of Jesus—we heard some of that last week—meant that one just could not live the same way as before. We Christians were to live with a radically new relationship to God in Jesus, and we had to live with eyes on values that transcended the ordinary. The twentieth-century has tried to debunk efforts to restrain sexual activity—in the 60s, when I grew up, there was a slogan that went: Chastity is its own punishment. But Christ’s radical message still remains.
The Gospel is about Jesus’ authority which surprised so many of his contemporaries. He was not like the others who probably hemmed and hawed over issues of faith and law. Jesus underlined the essential, the important. “Authority” can mean power; but I think it can also mean “compelling influence.” There was something decisive about Jesus—his relationship with his Father, of course, and the confidence, and power, that arose from that.
So Jesus is presented as the prophet, sketched in the book of Deuteronomy centuries before Jesus, one who speaks on behalf of God with power and conviction. God would raise up a prophet, the scripture says; and, in the Gospel, we see this prophet in action. “You are the Holy One of God” shrieks the unclean spirit—“holy” meaning the one totally consecrated to his Father, one able to bring the Kingdom into human experience because of that consecration.
So how do we live as if we have heard the radical message of Jesus? Certainly by the confidence we have in our own faith, by our willingness to share faith with others as they can hear it, and by our own commitment to be consecrated—holy—to God. Certainly this can be done in daily, contemporary life; we all know holy people. But, certainly, it becomes harder to do that because we have trouble keeping our eyes on values that transcend the ordinary.
As a result, believers have less authority—compelling influence—on the world; we look like we are hemming and hawing about our faith. The clear lines of faith become obscured. We look blah. This may be why we need virgins, and to prize virgins once again, because their lives prophetically call us to ponder God. And we surely need laypeople, priests, religious and bishops who show their consecration to God in every deed they do.
Aren’t people looking for prophets today? Where are they? Or, more pointedly, where are we?
Sunday 3B
That Denver was crushed by the New England Patriots in the playoffs last weekend hasn’t stopped discussion about Denver’s quarterback, Tim Tebow. Tebow, as I’m sure you know, has become one of the major objects of conversation because of his famous pose, one knee down on the ground, saying prayer to God before and during a football game. People imitate Tebow, half in admiration, the other half spoofing him. “Tebowing” has become a verb.
Fans of Tebow like the way he wears his faith on his sleeve—is open about his values and what keeps him centered, in a world that more and more dismisses faith, all faith, including our Catholic belief. Opponents of Tiebow think that he brings expressions of faith where they do not belong, and, like some religious practicioners in our society, shoves his faith down your throat.
In view of the Gospel we have today, however, I wonder if the problem for all of us is that faith, even that worn on our sleves, does not go nearly as deep as it should go, that what Jesus is talking about, what drew his initial followers, was something far more profound than our modern attitudes of faith. What Tebow does is a bit of a variation on what Catholics did years ago, when they would make a sign of the cross before shoot for a basket or getting up to bat. Faith is what makes my life better. Faith is God on my side.
Jesus, however, presents a faith that goes way beyond our own conveniences and benefits. Notice how Mark frames it: Jesus sees the arrest of John the Baptist, and then begins his ministry. Jesus’ whole ministry lies under the shadow of persecution and death. Jesus knows what the stakes are. But, given this perspective, what do we see Jesus inviting people to do? He invites them to conversion.
And what is the conversion to which they are invited? We hear the word “repent” and think that’s what Jesus was talking about—some set of regrets with some promise not to eat chocolate. But the word Jesus uses means far more than regret, or repent: it means turning our whole vision around, upside down, coming to see everything anew. And that vision is related to the central message of Jesus: we turn our minds around so we can see the Kingdom of God.
Most of the time, we can see only our own interest. Even the Ninivites, detested by the Jews, repent mostly out of their self-interest. It’s something like the way we religious leaders talk about how many people flock to church when they feel under threat. We can always turn to God when it suits us. Jesus, however, asks people to turn to God because it suits God, and because it suits the ultimate purpose of God—we turn to God so we can make the Kingdom of God more visible in the world. We turn to God to accomplish the project of God, namely, the renewal of humankind.
The Kingdom is not some Disneyland thing, nor is it our pale images of ancient Holy Roman Kingdoms, or popes commanding armies. The Kingdom rests in this: a whole new understanding of God’s relationship to us, as a loving Father, and therefore a whole new way of living, in freedom and generosity, with other because our whole lives rest upon total trust in an every generous God. This is what gets those fishermen to give up their nets, and their relatives, even though they’ve barely begun to understand it. This is what lies behind Paul’s radical language in the second reading—how can you live the same way when you know what God is doing in the world.
In this vein, on a weekend when we think about Roe v. Wade, it’s clear that overcoming America’s blind spots about abortion is really about conversion, bringing about a new vision of humankind, God’s vision.
As we listen to these opening words of Mark, the question is not whether conversion is a social irritant or not. The question is whether we have begun to accept the radical conversion that Jesus calls us to. It’s far more than whether my team wins, or whether I look pious, or how politically correct or incorrect we are. It’s about either seeing what God is doing because our eyes have been opened, or missing the Kingdom altogether.
Sunday 2 B
I rarely watch TV, or even read many novels. So over the holidays, I sometimes get a TV series I haven’t seen, spreading the shows out over a week. It’s like reading a long novel. So I saw year 1 of Mad Men after Christmas, a very disturbing show. It overdoes the way we were not politically correct in the late 1950s, dispelling any lingering idealist picture we might have of that time. But it’s basic theme is the emptiness of much of modern life, reflected in the emptiness of advertising.
Don Draper, the protagonist, is one of the most debonair people one could meet. But he’s escaping a traumatic childhood, even to the point of changing his name and throwing away any connections to the past. So he is rootless, and, in his own way, ruthless in business. He knows how to win clients over, knows what will persuade rich corporations to invest in his work, but he doesn’t know who he is himself. He floats through life, with only short but intense attachments, even to his own family.
Who is Don Draper? Can we know that? Perhaps we cannot know who anyone is until we see them find a purpose in life. Perhaps we all wander around without roots until we find something that we can live for? Perhaps every human life needs a calling.
We see the initial contacts between Jesus’ first disciples in the Gospel we have for Sunday. We notice their excitement, their sense of expectation, their feeling of having found something, Someone, different. Jesus calls them by name and, in the case of Peter, even gives him a new name. From this initial scene, we can project forward to the future events of their lives—following Jesus, experiencing his death and resurrection, and then becoming apostles through the Holy Spirit.
But what does it mean to be called by Jesus? We see Samuel in the first reading hearing the call—he cannot know fully what this means. When God calls Samuel, God is beginning something new in Israel—a tradition of prophecy, a tradition of calling people back to their first relationship with God, a tradition of speaking on behalf of God to a world that does not always hear him. “Prophecy” in its root means speaking on behalf of God. To be called, to be chosen, is to speak on behalf of God, and to give oneself in selfless service to others for the sake of God. One cannot be a prophet only sometimes; one lives one’s whole life on behalf of God.
What has to shock us today is that we each have been called by God. “What is your name?” we ask adults when they are baptized. “What name have you given your child?” we ask the parents. We invite those receiving confirmation to receive a name. All of this is speaking about a new identity we have in Christ, to be his followers, to be his servants, and to be his spokespersons in the world today.
It’s easy to think that faith is a leisurely watching of the heroism of other people—the saints, Mother Theresa, Fr. Mychal Judge. But it isn’t. Faith calls us all to involvement, to ministry, to service. It calls us to be disciples, active followers of Jesus. We sometimes realize this when a particular scripture hits us, or we suddenly see a particular need. But most of the time we don’t see it, we don’t see this call to discipleship, to live out our baptisms fully.
Maybe that’s resolution for the New Year, when we listen to the radical power of the Gospel of Mark in the coming weeks, when we, too, get to react to those first, powerful deeds of Jesus. Otherwise are we not Christians without roots, floating, connecting only a bit, but never knowing who we really are in Christ?
The Iowa caucuses are over; so is New Hampshire. On to South Carolina—all to find a nominee, all to see who is called to run for president. Christ’s process is very different—there is only one election—his personal choosing us, calling us by name. Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, Peter, Mary: can we see our name on that list as well?
Epiphany B
When we weren’t hearing news of the endless Iowa Caucuses, we occasionally got pictures of New Year’s celebrations. The first one they showed was Sydney, Australia, well ahead of the rest of the world. The commentators said that it was far better than New York’s. But don’t tell that to a New Yorker. Even when it’s not New Years, Times Square is ablaze in movement and energy. The lights cover whole buildings; you can see them shining from over a mile away. When I’ve brought people to visit, it’s almost like Disney World—to be surrounded by so much color and light.
Because there’s something about night’s darkness that scares us—just try driving a country road in the dead of night, or hearing strange noises while camping. The darkness seems to narrow our vision, narrow our world, because we cannot see what is coming after us. The discovery of fire not only cooked our meals; it gave us light to see in the darkness.
Today’s feast is about light. The whole tenor evokes darkness, from Isaiah’s reading to the Magi’s traveling by a star lighting up the night. The name of the feast means literally, The Shining Forth. Christ is shining forth into the darkness of our lives.
But what is that darkness? What is it that causes us to narrow our vision? What is it in our human experience that needs Christ’s light? Of course the list is endless—just about every vice we can think of is a form of darkness, even when movies try to make violence and immoral sex attractive. But I think Herod, who plays an important role in the background, gives us the best clue to the darkness of our experience.
Herod is arrogant. Arrogant because he is insecure. He is afraid at the birth of a baby. What does he fear? The loss of what he thinks his power is. He is filled with so much self-importance that it leads him to quiver, to lie, and ultimately to destroy the innocent. Herod, like so many of us, has to hold on to the illusions of what makes him important that he cannot recognize where his strength really comes from. “Go, find the child that I too may adore him.” But that’s Herod’s problem, he cannot adore.
But the Magi can, putting the gifts that represent their importance before God-made-man who comes in the utter lack of arrogance of a child. They find their royalty not threatened but reinforced by the newborn king. They trust enough in God, in the graciousness of God’s being, to find meaning in the light God has sent to us in Jesus, a light brighter than all the stars of night, a light brighter even than the sun.
We all have our illusions, our desperate self-images we use to prop ourselves up. Often they help; but often they hurt. Can we let Christ’s light shine on us, a light that tells us our meaning, our self-esteem, rests in God’s gracious love? Can we lay aside our arrogance and place the tokens of our esteem before this child whose gentleness and love reveals the true heart of God? Can we do what this Mass, what every Mass, invites us to do—adore and worship?
Jan 1, 2012
Marley is dead. Those words, from Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol,” framed by Christmas day. I heard them on NPR radio on Christmas eve which presented a re-broadcast sponsored by Campbell’s soup from 1939; and on Christmas Day, my niece put on Jim Carey’s version of the story, done by Disney in 2009. Ebenezer Scrooge, painted as the stingiest and most grasping of people, becomes transformed because of the ghosts who visit him. First it is Marley’s ghost, with his face almost falling apart; then the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.
What Charles Dickens has shown us is the transformation of his character through reflection. The ghosts give Scrooge something he didn’t have before, perspective. His angle on life had been flat: life was about making money. People who could not pay should be punished until they paid what they owed. Only when the implications of his actions became clear, primarily in the suffering of his employee’s family, only then could he change.
So what are the ghosts we let visit us?
That is to say, what kinds of image of our lives, in broader stretchess, do we reflect on? Embarrassingly, we have the option of hardly doing any reflection today—we have so many things we have to do, so many distractions we can involve ourselves with, so many channels on cable, we can spend our lives looking outside ourselves, hardly ever inside ourselves. How our pasts have come to haunt and limit us—how we shrink our lives down to very narrow ranges—how we look ahead without deep visions: it’s easy not to look, to see, to understand.
So we are given the image of Mary, to whom so much has happened in such a short time, precisely as a model for us. Mary ponders. Mary reflects. Mary prays. Mary sees what God is doing in her life; this ability will allow her to engage with all those events "Yet To Come," especially the saving mission of her Son.
This Sunday is dedicated to peace, and rightly so, because so much war, so much fighting, so much residual hatred and resentment arises precisely because we have so little perspective. One nation feels enraged by another nation’s actions. One person feels disrespected by that of another. The fighting goes on because we cannot take the time to think, to reflect and ponder.
As we begin a new year, we are struck again by the passing of time. What has last year meant? What will this year bring? What have my former years meant? What will the years I have come to mean? Ponder, says the Word of God, reflect, see how not ghosts--but the Holy Spirit--will lead us forward, to lives of greater blessing and peace, because they are lives of deeper prayer and reflection.
Christmas Cycle B
Without children, Christmas would not be the same. They provide, I think, most of the excitement. It’s one thing for adults to exchange gifts, it’s another thing for a child to open his or her present. How can they stand the waiting? How can they be patient? What will Santa bring? Will it be what they wanted? They tear the paper off their presents without a shred of patience.
In fact, adults spend a lot of time picking up clues as to what a youngster might want. In a Toys-r-Us store that I dropped into out of curiosity last week, little boys were all over the miniature cars they could drive, but electronic games and gadgets drew the biggest crowds. Will little Tyler get what he wants? Will Tiffany get exactly the doll she’s been dreaming about? Will José get that Mongoose bike? We pick up the hints they drop; we fulfill their expectations.
But, as we think back, isn’t it true that some of the greatest gifts we’ve gotten are the ones that we didn’t ask for and didn’t begin to expect? Isn’t it true that the presents that blew us away were the ones that came as a surprise? An antique ring from grandma. Or a watch that once belonged to Dad? Or a set of drawings by a grandchild? Or a bit of software that opened us up to whole new directions?
That’s the brilliance of this feast we celebrate: Christmas is God’s surprise. It is what God gives us beyond all our expectations. Ancient people maybe hoped for a King to drive enemies away—let’s get rid of these Romans. Or some Priest that would establish religious identity on a higher level. Or, at the least, just a few years without some oppressor breathing down our backs.
This is why the skies light up, and angels fill it with song, and shepherds stare in wonder. What could shepherds expect out of life? The same sheep, year after year, the same menial but essential occupation, the same expectation of going nowhere. Angels always tell us what we can never surmise, pushing our hearts in new directions. “I proclaim to you Good News of Great joy that will be for all the people.” We can see their eyes open, far more than even the eyes of a child who got exactly what he or she wanted.
All of us are like the shepherds. We are all people whom Isaiah says live in darkness. Angels are all around us, telling us of the great light waiting to shine upon us. Messengers speak constantly of God’s wondrous glory—now given to us, a gift of love and life beyond anything humankind could have imagined. “Do not be afraid,” the angel says. In fact, instead of fear, this day is one for unexpected wonder.
Advent 4 cycle
My attention will be taken up this week with the celebration of a wedding. Weddings have always gotten enormous attention, but I think more so now than ever before, especially weddings celebrated in church. To marry now seems braver than at any other time. Marriage today takes place in the midst of all the questions that modern society raises about it, and, most notably, the number of marriages that do not work out.
Marriage, though, is not a bad way to think about our lives in this last, fourth, Sunday of Advent. The messenger from God, Gabriel, associated with divine help, comes to a young woman obviously in the process of being married. Mary represents all our hearts as God’s message comes to her. This is a proposal. Not will you marry me, but will you be involved in the most dramatic and unique demonstration of divine love? What will Mary say?
It is, perhaps, a marriage after all, a divine marriage, not between man and woman, but between God and humankind, coming to its critical point in the heart of this young woman. Will she undertake the role of bring Christ to the world, as hazy and unformed as that role must have seemed to her? Will she be the expression of God’s new and eternal covenant, as we say at Mass now?
In the first reading, we have not so much a marriage as the outline of the terms of marriage, the terms of our relationship with God. We call it a covenant. David wants to build God a house of prayer, as if God needs a house. God says to David, “I do not need you, though I love you. You need me, and I will be with you in special relationship. I commit myself to you; can you commit yourself to me?”
Of course, that is the drama of human history, our inability to complete our side of God’s one-sided, abundantly generous and grace filled relationship with us. That drama will play out for 1000 years since the time of David. The drama now is raised to this moment in the Gospel—will Mary say yes, so that we will hear, know, and accept God’s yes to us definitively in Jesus?
Be it done to me according to God’s will, says Mary. She, filled with grace, shows us how grace works, empowering us to love God in return for God’s unmerited love. She, filled with anxiety and questions, shows us how to trust a God on whom we really have no choice but to trust—who else will always be there for us? She, filled with love, becomes the instrument by which God comes into our world in the deepest way, in Jesus.
So there’s the deal: covenant of love. There’s the question: will you say yes? There’s the model, a simply woman figuring out her life before God. And there’s the result: Christ given to the world. So what do we say? How do we respond? How ready are we for Christmas, for the celebration of unending divine love now shown in the midst of time?
3 Advent B
I have to classify last Sunday afternoon as unrepentant laziness. I spent three hours watching the Chevron Golf Tournament where, for the first time in two years, Tiger Woods finally won. The suspense only grew as Tiger and Zach Johnson seemed to take forever to hit their shots. But when that final put dropped, relief and applause surged forth together. One of my friends texted me—did I think Tiger found redemption? Makes me wonder what we think redemption is.
Did Richard Nixon find redemption after he resigned as President? Or Bill Clinton? What will redemption look like for Herman Cain? When we find some deeply flawed trait in someone we admire, does that make them unredeemed? Is redemption going back to square one, getting a second chance, starting over?
We have God’s image of redemption in this highly influential passage from Isaiah, the 61st chapter, which Jesus attributes to himself several times in the bible. Redemption, in Isaiah’s poetry, means the complete transformation of our lives. It’s far more than not being punished, or not being shamed by others. “As the earth brings forth its plants, and a garden makes its growth spring up, so will the Lord GOD make justice and praise spring up before all the nations.” Redemption in the United States is often viewed as “personal.” “I am saved.” In God’s view, it’s creation itself that will be saved.
This happens because of the coming of Jesus in whose birth God has given the world the definitive sign of peace, and in whose resurrection God has begun the process of renewing existence itself. In fact, when we come to Mass, we are doing nothing less than sharing in that renewed existence. Heaven comes down to earth; we anticipate the final days.
John shows tremendous humility when proclaiming the coming of Jesus. “I am not worthy to untie his sandal strap.” John is not the light; his privilege is to announce the light. Our new Missal translation, for sure, emphasizes humility in a clearer way. Approaching God seems more cautious, more gingerly. It seems that every prayer adds something like, we pray, we plead, we beseech. The liturgy will not let us presume. Jesus comes, as the preface says, to take on our lowly flesh.
But John’s humility is only half the equation. The other half, which we celebrate on Christmas, is this: God comes into our lowliness, God touches us in our poverty, Jesus enters our very humanity and, from within, brings renewal and transformation. Our humility, then, frames God’s enormous generosity toward all of creation, and toward all of humankind. God raises us by a self-lowering that leaves us speechless.
John becomes an ambassador, one who proclaims the Christ. We ourselves, touched even more profoundly than John, are called to be ambassadors as well. We each have the responsibility to contribute to this new world that God wants to bring about through its redemption. We each have to give up our arrogance and our refusal to reach out to others; we each have to mirror the absolutely generous love of God. Are there not the broken, the imprisoned, the confined, the sick, the isolated in our lives? What does it mean for us to bring Good News to them? To be part of God’s redemptive design? We each, embraced by Christ, are charged by him to embrace the world in love.
2 Advent Cycle B
One of the TV series that tanked this year was called “Pan AM,” another replay of the good-old-days of the 1950’s, this time under the guise of how luxurious it was to fly back then. Well, not any more. I was on a brand new 737 this week; the gate agent was almost in ecstasy. It was even more cramped than the old 737s. What was supposed to make life easy—swift and comfortable flight—has become a nightmare.
It starts with arriving at the airport, trying to figure out the screens on the kiosks, then going through security. It’s particularly dreadful at Terminal C at Reagan airport. They have those new machines that scrutinize every square millimeter of one’s body, so you just about have to strip to get through the scanner. Belt here, wallet there, laptop in one bin, liquids in another, and where did I put my ID? Yikes, panic, I think I lost it.
So travel is now, for many of us, a series of obstacles, in the air and, let’s not forget, driving, between tolls and traffic jams. This is a dominant image in the readings we have this Second Sunday of Lent—getting rid of obstacles. Isaiah’s 40th chapter begins what is called the “Book of Consolation,” Israel being consoled after 50 years of exile in Babylon. God’s building a highway for them to return—no obstacles, not even the valleys, not even the mountains; all will be level for God’s people.
This same image frames our encounter with John the Baptist. He is now in the desert building a highway for God’s people. Our spiritual and human exile is now ending. Obstacles are being removed. And what obstacles are being removed? Mark makes it clear: our lack of conversion and our entanglement in sin. That’s John’s primary message: God is going to do something new. Change your life so you can experience it. “John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
The implication is perfectly clear. Among the obstacles in our encounter with God is sin, our sin, the deeds of our lives. While once Catholics looked like we were filled with guilt, we’ve now gotten to the point where we cannot even see our sin. Not just the small imperfections of our lives, but the ways we distort and break the relationships that we have with God and with others. For sin is much more than breaking a law or commandment; it’s breaking a relationship. It’s tearing apart the fabric of our existence, and tearing a hole in reality itself.
One of the ways to see this is to think about how our sin distorts our vision, how we get comfortable with our failings, how we shape our lives around our vices, how we let excuses cover up our dealing with the facts of our lives. I’m not rude, I’m just in a hurry. I’m not ignoring you, I’m just too busy. I’m not critical, I’m just doing my job. I’m not indecent, I’m just curious. I’m not greedy, I’m just doing what I need to do. I’m not angry, I’m just letting off steam.
What all this does is cloud our vision, distort the very souls we need to see God in God’s pure love and grace. What this does is block the way we see each other, creating blind spots that isolate us and obscure others. What this does is limit our sheer experience of life, crimping us down to the pettiness of our own selfishness. Obstacles, all of this, to the vision God would give us in Jesus. We get pretty straight talk from John and from 2nd letter of Peter, all of it trying to wake us up, to get us to see how short time is and how we keep cluttering things up through our sin.
I’ve always been curious about the way Mark put’s the mission of John: in the original language, it’s called a “repentance or conversion into the forgiveness of sin,” as if forgiveness is something we have to grow into, make our own; as if it’s a goal that we have to seek. It’s one thing to make it to Chicago or Dallas by plane. It’s another thing to make it to heaven, to life’s full meaning, to God’s fully love accepted and realized. Travel may not get easier, but God’s grace, once accepted, can become joy itself.
1 Advent, Cycle B
When people find out I’m from New York, invariably they ask “Yanks or Mets?” When I say that baseball is a bit boring, they ask “Jets or Giants?” It’s at this point that I shock them by saying, “Well, I like to watch golf.” “Golf!” they cry. How boring is that! Then I go into my spiel, how exciting golf is, so much suspense because every shot counts. As their eyes blur over, I then say, “Right, and the other thing I love is fishing.” “Fishing?” And then they give up on me.
I find a great excitement and tension in these sports. With golf, it’s the unpredictability of my shots, or my amazement at the shots the professionals make on TV. With fishing, it’s the edgy expectation that some fish may start biting, the little tugs on the lure, the jiggle of the pole: maybe this will be it! Maybe I’ll catch this thing!
That’s the kind of attitude the scriptures call us to cultivate on this, the First Sunday of Advent. The Mark’s Gospel ends with one word that wants to cast its spell over the next four weeks: Watch. Jesus’ parable about the lord of the house who goes away, warning the gatekeeper to stay alert, makes his listeners stretch and strain. You can never let up. You can never be blasé. You never know when the line will jiggle, when the putt will drop, when life’s fulfillment comes.
Jesus certainly knows that the greatest threat to faith does not come from outside, great as those threats might be. More, they come from within, from the way we take faith for granted, or, really, the way we take God for granted. Our faith can become like an accessory in our lives, not the center. Our faith can lose its edge, becoming dull like an over-used pencil.
From where, then, does the sharpness, the tension, of faith come? Advent says it comes from living in constant expectation. Expectation of what? The coming of Jesus. But in what way? Because it isn’t just the historical celebration of Jesus’ birth that forms the core of our expectation. Commercializing Christmas as we have has pretty much burned us out over December 25th. Instead, it’s the continual, ongoing presence of Christ in our lives, a presence which, powerful as it is, we can regularly miss.
Isaiah, whom we will read a lot of during Advent, shows the correlation between our attention and God’s presence. Would that you would come down from heaven, Isaiah cries. And, immediately after, would that we were mindful of your ways. It’s our mindlessness that Advent is trying to shake up, our automatic pilot, our not prioritizing God or the things of God, and our missing the presence of Christ in our daily lives, our families, our tasks, our care for the poor, our outreach to others.
St. Paul makes clear what Christian life is about—being continually prepared for the Day of the Lord, the full coming of the Kingdom, the fulfillment of humankind which stands behind every moment of our temporary existence. Yes, these moments that we have, the simple tasks of our lives, the relationships that surround us—these are pregnant with the Kingdom. These are filled with the presence of the One who became Incarnate for us, who took on our lives precisely to relate our human lives to God.
So what is boring? Fishing? Golf? Baseball? Church? God? Advent says if we are bored with God, maybe we haven’t really gotten to know the God of Jesus just yet. But, hey, there’s still time.
Sunday, Christ the King, B
We continue to have great fascination with the rich, the powerfully, and the royal. Whether it’s a sport’s star, or some celebrity, a Donald Trump, or some prince in England, we perk up our ears when we hear their stories and incidents. The world-wide outpourings of grief over the death of Princess Diana and Michael Jackson prove this true about modern life and society.
Along with information about their fame or wealth, we are also interested in the unfamous parts of their lives. We love it when the butler tells what it was like to serve tea in some British palace, or when we find out where our favorite star shops—yes, we say, they are just humans, they are just like you and me.
Today’s feast asks us where we locate God in our field of interest. In what way does Jesus command the focus of our attention? Christ is called King, but that’s only the beginning of the question. King, indeed, but what kind of King? Is Jesus the kind of King who orders servants around, expecting people to fluff his cushion every time he sits? Is Jesus the King who holds our fates arbitrarily in his hands?
We learn from the Gospel that Jesus indeed is a King who holds our fates, because Jesus remains the ultimate standard of our lives. Having died and risen, he now stands before us as the fullness of life. We measure ourselves by him; or, more precisely, we measure ourselves by his love.
Here’s where the scriptures surprise us. Not whether Christ reins, but where Christ reigns in our lives. Christ comes as the shepherd-king, not to tax us, not to order us around, but to show us that the power of his love must hold sway not in the heavens above, or in the palaces of the rich, or in the bright lights of celebrity, but among the least, the lowest, the neediest, those in most need of compassion and peace.
Ezekiel’s shepherd, who stands in sharp contrast with the religious leaders of Ezekiel’s day, himself does the loving and caring, the giving and rescuing—because the leaders were not doing this. If the King is shepherd, the King is also servant, ranking the sheep so high that the shepherd would give his life to preserve them. Jesus comes as our King because he first is shepherd, he first is lamb, coming among the least, taking on their lives—our lives—to show us what his Kingdom is about.
It’s not a Kingdom for talkers. This should scare us modern Americans who have made faith into some nonstop testimony about ourselves, or how we are touched by God. Not because God does not touch us, and not because we don’t have to recognize that—for sure we do—but because talk means nothing unless it is embodied in action. What kind of action? Precisely the kind Jesus shows us in the Gospel—sharing with the hungry, clothing those who have nothing, sitting with the sick and isolated, visiting those whom society discards as criminals.
Here’s where Christ’s Kingdom has its power; here’s the fame Jesus shows us. This King will judge us not on what we felt or thought or said, but by what we did that reflected his love.
Of course we all dread judgment because we think it will show our weakness. Will judgment be like Bernie Madof’s perp walk, or Kim Kardashian’s publicity-plagued divorce? Jesus tells us not to fear our weakness or our sin. Our fear should concern, rather, those moments when we overlooked the weakness and needs of others because that’s something our God, our King, our Shepherd would never do.