April 2003
Homily for Fifth Sunday in Lent - B
April 6, 2003
Jeremiah 31:31-34 Hebrews 5:7-9 John 12:20-33
“I will place my law within them,
I will write it upon their hearts, says the Lord.”
Let me ask you a personal question:
“Who gets to write on your heart?”
Who has access to your heart, such that he, or she, or they have a chance
to write something on your heart?
Talk about intimacy! This is access to the most intimate part of who we are.
Our parents wrote on our hearts, upon our whole lives
through the language of DNA - at the moment we were conceived.
Our mothers were writing their love for us on our hearts, we were writing
on their hearts,
in the intimacy of the womb - even before we were born.
As children, our parents, our families, our teachers, our friends
all had opportunity to write upon our hearts.
Before we had a choice to accept or reject what was written, others were writing
on our hearts
and leaving their messages there.
What some people wrote was loving, helpful and life giving.
What others wrote was harmful and wounding. Sometimes they wrote the
truth,
and sometimes what they wrote was false.
Sometimes what they wrote was illegible and we may be, to this day, still
unsure of the message.
And as we grew we began to protect our hearts.
When we realized what an intimate place our hearts are, we began to shield
them,
allowing only a select few, or fewer, to write upon our hearts.
Sometimes what had been written earlier was so painful to read
that we wanted no one else to have access to such a vulnerable
place.
Sometimes we may have been desperate to have someone write something,
and perhaps we opened our hearts indiscriminately.
Most of us, along the way, chose one other person and handed him or her the
key to our heart
and invited that trusted one to write upon our heart of
hearts.
Some trusted partners wrote words of love. Others betrayed our trust and hurt
us.
Some simply stopped visiting our heart, and left the slate of our heart achingly
empty.
When those we trust abuse their access to our hearts, the pain can be
great,
and the hurtful messages difficult to erase. When those we trust
fail to visit our hearts,
the emptiness can be very deep and the absence of their
words upon our hearts
can read as the most painful message of all.
But when those we trust walk gently into our hearts and inscribe there
words of love and faithfulness,
nothing is sweeter, no message kinder, no memory more
satisfying, no intimacy more lasting.
When death steals from our embrace a loved one who has written tenderly and
faithfully upon our
hearts, we know then, perhaps more than at any other time, how
much our hearts desire to be the
page upon which another writes.
If my words have led you to some place deep in your heart, it’s in that
place, or in an even deeper place,
that the Lord wants to write the word, the law, the promise of
his love.
It’s upon this heart of hearts in you and in me that the Lord
wants to write.
Jesus himself invited his Father to write the word of eternal love on
his heart.
And Jesus allowed his heart to be inscribed with our sins that he might
carry them for us
and with his love and life erase the hurt our sins cause others and ourselves.
To erase the hurt from our hearts, Jesus was willing to have his heart
broken for us
for the forgiveness of our sins.
The Lord is always ready to inscribe our hearts with his love.
Lent is a special time each year to lay bare our hearts
that the Lord might write upon them the promise of his love.
Our hearts are especially vulnerable just now. They are inscribed with
a yearning for justice,
with hope for those who live under oppression, and with prayers for
peace.
Perhaps most of all, our hearts are inscribed with the names of
family members and friends
who stand in harm’s way in Iraq.
This world of ours needs to open its heart
to what the law of the Lord’s love wants to write
within us.
Jesus chose the eucharist, a meal, the food of his body and blood,
the supper of his table, as the way to enter the
intimacy of our hearts.
As we welcome the Lord into our hearts as we receive the eucharist this
morning,
will we also lay bear our hearts that he might write upon them
his word of love?
May the food of this table nourish in us trust in the Lord’s love,
and in the message he wants so much to write upon our hearts.
Rev. Austin Fleming
Homily for Holy Thursday 2003
We watch a war over the airways and the world wide web.
Our church is crippled by crisis.
Our hearts are heavy with hurt and many minds mull over memories too
painful to mention.
And still, we begin our celebration of the paschal feast by returning to the
directions the Lord
gave to Moses to give to the people of Israel, over 2,000 years ago:
directions for preparing a lamb to be sacrificed,
directions for marking their door posts with blood,
and directions for eating a meal -
because on this night the Lord promised to deliver his people from death.
We begin here because there is a truth revealed in these curious directives
from God.
There is revealed a truth about God’s relationship with us
and our relationship with God.
There is revealed here a truth about how God loves us and God’s desire
to rescue us from the
foolishness of our sins even when we are so foolish as to reject the outreach
of his strong and saving arm.
The Lord told Moses to tell Israel,
“Mark your homes with the blood of the sacrificed
lamb,
and the angel of death, seeing the blood,
will PASS OVER you
and no destructive blow will come upon you...”
Oh, for a jar of that saving, protective, shielding blood to sprinkle
on those who are in harm’s way.
Oh, for a jar of that healing, merciful, grace filled blood
to mark those whose bodies are wracked by illness
and pain.
Oh, for a jar of that cleansing, liberating blood to wash away memories
that haunt the abused,
and to free us from anything and everything
that shackles our spirits, hobbles our progress,
impedes our growth or addicts our
imagination.
Oh, for simpler times when a lamb’s body saved a nation
through the sharing of a simple meal; when a
lamb’s blood saved a whole people,
by marking the door posts of their
homes.
We return to this text from Exodus and its strange directives
not only because God’s people have done so
every year at this time,
but because God continues to call us, as of old, and to reveal his desire
for a relationship with us
which protects, shields, delivers and saves us from our sin, and from
death itself.
For us, the people of the new covenant in Christ’s blood,
it is no longer a lamb for every household, but now, one Lamb for all households,
for all time.
No longer the marking of door posts with the blood of the slaughtered
victim,
but now the more intimate marking of hearts, with blood of the one Lamb slain
for all, for all time.
No longer a feast on the flesh and blood of a sacrificed animal, but now a
meal of bread and wine
become the body and blood of the one Lamb, Christ
Jesus, the Lamb of God
who takes away our sins and the sins of the world.
The Jewish people who ate the first Passover supper hoping to be freed from
slavery in Egypt,
came to that meal hungry, weary and in need of deliverance.
This night, we come to the table of Christ who is our Passover and our lasting
peace,
and like Israel of old, we come to his table weary of war and troubled in
heart
by burdens and memories too many to mention.
We come to this table and we need to remember that in baptism
our hearts were washed in the saving blood of the
Lamb
and thus our hearts became a home, a dwelling place for our God.
We come to this table to share in, to feed on, to be nourished by
the life of the one Lamb slain for us all: Christ
the Lamb of God who laid down his life
that we might have life and
have it to the full.
Freely he offered his life for us on the cross.
Freely he offered his body to be broken
that we might be made whole in his love.
Freely he poured out his blood
that our thirst for life might be satisfied.
Freely he suffered as the sacrificial victim
that the burden of our sins might be lifted from
our hearts.
Freely he offers to deliver us from death
and promises us, at last, a life and a peace without
end.
He asks but one thing in return:
that we love one another as he has loved us;
that we serve one another as he has served us;
that we give of ourselves as he has given to us;
that we allow ourselves to be broken, poured
out and shared,
as he was for us.
As the Lord told Moses what they needed to do
to make a sign of God’s saving love;
as the Lord told his friends on the night before he died,
and as Paul handed on to us how we are eat the meal
of the new covenant;
so does Jesus in the gospel this night show us how to make of our own lives
the life of the Lamb
who gave himself for us.
John’s account of the last supper makes no mention of bread and wine,
but rather centers our attention on the washing of
feet.
So real a manifestation of God’s love for us is Jesus washing
his friends’ feet
that this is what John hands on to us as the sign of the last supper.
As we watch the war, and walk as the church through crisis,
as we carry the burdens that weigh upon our hearts, let
us wash one another’s feet,
for Jesus instructed us to do just this
as surely as he taught us to break bread and bless the cup.
We do this in memory of the One who delivered the people of Israel from death,
in memory of the One who delivers us all in
the new covenant of his body and blood,
and shared with us
at the table of the supper of the Lamb.
We do this in memory of Jesus Christ, our PASSOVER and our lasting peace.
We celebrate the memory of his death and resurrection and look for the coming
of that day when he
will return to give us the fullness of peace.
Rev. Austin Fleming
Homily for Good Friday 2003
In this gospel of high drama, Jesus has very little to say.
In the garden after the last supper he asks,
“Whom are you looking for?”
“I am he.”
“If you are looking for me, let these others
go.”
“Put your sword away.”
Before the high priest Jesus says,
“I have always spoken publicly...
Ask those who heard
me what I said...”
“If I have spoken the truth, why do you strike
me?”
Before Pilate Jesus says:
“My kingdom does not belong to this world...:
“Everyone who belongs to the truth listens
to my voice.
“You would have no power over me
if it had not been
given to you from above.”
From the cross Jesus says:
“Woman, behold your son... Son, behold
your mother.”
“I thirst.”
“It is finished.”
As terse as these responses are,
they nonetheless say everything he needed to say:
He identifies himself.
He protects innocent
bystanders.
He shuns violence on
his behalf.
He speaks the truth.
He speaks truth to
power.
He tenderly provides
for his mother and his beloved friend.
And out of his thirst
for life,
it is he who declares his life ended:
“It is finished.”
There is no pretense here.
All is stripped bare and made vulnerable:
his body; his identity as Son of God;
his refusal to retaliate;
his surrender to truth; his affection; and
his thirst.
Jesus, the preacher of parables, the weaver of wisdom,
the confounder of his critics
Jesus, is suddenly, near silent before those who falsely accuse him,
those who threaten violence upon him, those
who have the authority to carry out,
indeed to execute precisely what they threaten.
What are we to make of this?
What Jesus reveals here is his powerlessness.
He takes a stance of powerlessness before those who arrest him.
He chooses to stand powerless before those who accuse him.
He is powerless in the hands of those who haul him from venue to venue
on trumped up charges.
He stands as powerless before those who mock him,
strip him, strike him and crown him with thorns.
He stands in powerlessness before both religious and political leaders.
He is powerless before the crowds who call for his death.
To be sure: in each instance here Jesus is not without power.
Rather: he chooses to empty himself of all the power and authority
he has, that is his,
and he does so for our sake.
Jesus empties himself out for us and takes upon himself
the burden of our sins.
His near silence before guards, the priests, the Pharisees and the governor
is eloquent testimony on his part of the truth of
who he is.
He is the Lamb of God. He is the paschal victim.
He is offering of the new covenant.
He is our PASSOVER and our lasting peace.
In his powerlessness the power of God’s mercy flows upon us
as surely as blood and water flowed from the womb
in Jesus’ side.
In his powerlessness,
the healing of God’s mercy cauterizes the wounds
our sins inflict
as surely as Jesus was wounded for our sake.
In his self-emptying,
we are filled with the promise of fullness of life
as surely as the crucified Christ was raised up from
the dead.
We are his followers.
We follow the one who identified himself by his silence.
We follow the innocent one who rendered himself powerless
for the sake of the guilty.
We follow the powerless one who refused violence as a defense.
We follow the one whose powerlessness spoke truth to power.
We follow the one who, in his most powerless moment, found strength
to care for those he loved.
We follow the one whose emptiness and thirst became the font of living waters
for our salvation.
This night we celebrate the powerlessness of the Lamb of God,
emptied for us, slain for us, that the angel of death might
PASS OVER us.
As followers of the crucified, we, too, must seek ways to empty ourselves
in service of our neighbor.
As followers of the crucified, we must speak truth to power.
As followers of the crucified, we must condemn violence as the solution to
conflict.
As followers of the crucified, we must serve one another even to the
end of our lives.
Christ our PASSOVER has been sacrificed!
Let us approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and
to find grace for timely help.
Rev. Austin Fleming
Homily for Easter 2003
Praise God for the three women who came to the tomb!
Praise God for Mary Magdalene whose love for Jesus woke her at sunrise
and drew her to the tomb of the
Crucified.
Praise God for Mary, the mother of James whose faith opened her eyes
at dawn
and led her to the tomb of Jesus.
Praise God for Salome, whose hope in the Lord nudged her awake
and called her to be close to Jesus
even in his tomb.
Praise God for these three women whose love, faith and hope in Jesus
woke them from a night of restless
grief and loss.
When the men had deserted Jesus in his final hours,
these three had stood at the foot of his cross.
While the apostles hid behind locked doors on that first day of the week,
these three women walked where
others feared to tread.
They are the first to know that Jesus is risen. They are the first apostles
of the resurrection,
sent to announce the gospel, the good news of the risen
Christ.
We also need to keep in mind that these three women came in faith
but they came with every intention of anointing a corpse!
They did not come in expectation of resurrection.
They did not come in hope of finding the tomb empty.
Remember that along the way they asked one another,
“Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance
to the tomb.”
They wanted to anoint the body of Jesus, but something stood between
them and him:
The large stone that had been placed
to seal the tomb.
It is some 2000 years since that first Easter morning.
The stone at the entrance of the tomb was long ago rolled away.
Jesus is risen and has gone before us to Galilee - and beyond -
to the furthest reaches of galaxies and into the hidden
corners of our hearts.
And yet, for many of us, there is still something between Jesus and
us.
There are things, or circumstances, or people; there is prejudice, selfishness
and laziness;
there are memories, hurts and grudges; there is loss,
confusion and grief;
there are fears, dependencies and addictions; there are
anxieties, habits and doubts,
that come between Jesus and us.
Any of these realities can come between Jesus and me and lead me to question,
even from afar,
even before I reach the tomb - lead me to doubt that Jesus
has risen for me.
Who will roll back the stone that stands between Jesus and me,
that blocks the entrance to my believing that Jesus forgives
-and forgets- my sins;
that Jesus desires me as a lover desires the beloved,
that Jesus wants me and wants to be with me?
Does some one, some thing stand between you and Jesus?
Does some one, some thing, something within you and me
seem like a large stone keeping us from the warm embrace
of the risen Lord?
And on which side of the stone do we live?
Jesus has been raised; he is no longer in the tomb.
But perhaps we find ourselves entombed,
waiting and wondering who will come to roll back the stone
so that WE might rise,
so that WE might live,
so that WE might meet the risen
Christ.
Who will roll back the stone for us?
Who will roll back the stone and free us from our fears, our dependencies
and addiction?
Who will roll back the stone that entombs us in our prejudice and selfishness?
Who will roll back the stone and free us from anxiety,
from hurt, and from memories and nightmares?
Who will roll back the stone that keeps nations from making peace, peaceably?
Who will roll back the stone to free the church to minister more and more
in the spirit of Jesus, who emptied himself for our sakes?
Who will roll back the stone that holds the third world in the grip
of poverty? Sometimes, we can roll back the stone for one another,
for our brothers and sisters, for our neighbors.
Sometimes we can find the strength to roll back a stone we have put there
in the first place.
But ultimately, it takes the very power of God to roll back whatever it is
that keeps us from rising from our tombs and falling
into the embrace of the risen Lord.
The question of the three women in the Easter gospel,
“Who will roll back the stone for us...?”
is a great question because, first of all, it acknowledges that a stone
is there.
It is also a great question because the three understand
that a power greater than themselves will be required to
roll it back.
And finally it is a great question because of what actually happens.
Arriving at the tomb, they find that God has already done the work for them.
All that is left for them to do is to announce the good news to others
and to follow Jesus where he leads them.
For us who live in tombs, the power of God has already rolled back the stone.
We have only to turn around and see the daylight pouring in.
At least we can open our eyes and look to the wall at the back of the tomb
and see the light playing there, beckoning, calling us,
leading
us out into the embrace of the Risen Christ.
Easter is that light, shining on us, even in our tombs.
The very power of God invites us to rise up and to step into the light.
Let us reach out and take the hand of Jesus
who reaches in to raise us up with him.
Rev. Austin Fleming
Homily for Second Sunday of Easter B - April 27, 2003
Well, Jesus is only risen from the dead a matter of hours
(not even a whole day)
and here he is appearing to his unfaithful, cowardly friends,
(the very ones who deserted him when he needed them
the most)
and the first words out of his mouth to this motley crew
are words of forgiveness, words of peace, words of
mercy.
Huddled in fear in this locked room are the so-called friends of Jesus
who could not stay awake an hour to pray with him
after the last supper;
who ran and hid when the Roman guards came to arrest
Jesus;
who spoke not a word at his trial except for Peter
who three times denied
that he had ever met
Jesus;
here are the closest disciples of Christ who were nowhere to be found
when Jesus needed help
carrying the cross;
who were absent at the foot of his cross as he was
dying;
who were afraid to accompany the women to the tomb
on Easter morning.
And to such as these Jesus offers words of forgiveness, words of peace,
words of mercy.
Some folks speak of the “mystery” of God’s mercy.
I don’t think there’s much mystery to God’s mercy at all!
After all: God is God!
God is the FULNESS of all things bright and beautiful;
all things just and true; all things sweet
and pure.
That the risen Jesus would find it in his divine heart of hearts
to forgive this unfaithful bunch doesn’t surprise
me at all.
What DOES mystify me is this:
that Jesus invites, asks, even commands us to forgive
each other as fully and freely
as he forgave the unfaithful
apostles, and as he forgives each of us.
And let’s be clear about the forgiveness, the mercy of God.
God’s mercy PRECEDES our sins.
We often think and act as if God’s forgiveness is kept in a big “mercy
bank” in heaven
and that when you or I tell God, “I’m sorry for such and such...”
then God goes to the mercy bank, withdraws a sufficient
amount of mercy
and deposits it in our salvation savings account.
WRONG!
Heaven is AWASH in divine mercy.
Heaven is a RIVER, it’s an OCEAN of divine mercy.
The heart of Jesus is an eternal FOUNTAIN of forgiveness
that never stops pumping, flowing, gushing forth
with mercy that knows no end.
And such a font of mercy will never be turned ON or OFF
by the vagaries of our repentance - or lack of it.
Nor do our sins (small, medium, large or extra large!)
act like a faucet regulating the flow of God’s mercy.
The image we want here is a fire hydrant, opened, gushing and flooding a city
street
on a hot summer’s
day!
Not even the greatest of our sins is powerful enough to build a dam
that might hold back the waves of divine mercy
pounding on the shores
of our souls.
God’s mercy precedes our sins, knows that we will sin,
and forgives our sins long before we even think of
sinning.
Parents do this all the time.
Why not God?
A mother and father look on their newborn infant in all her innocence
and even though they know their daughter will make
mistakes,
even some big ones,
although they know their child may one day hurt them
deeply,
they build no wall of protection between themselves
and child.
Their love, like God’s love, stands ready ahead of time ready to forgive
whatever hurt their child may bring them,
even before the hurt comes.
So is God with us!
That sin you were never able to confess? The sin you have not been able to
bring to speech?
God’s mercy was there to cover, to wash away, to forgive, to erase that
sin long before you did
what you did, long before you failed to do what you failed to do.
God only waits for you to CLAIM the mercy already prepared for you, already
offered to you,
that you might be set
free of what haunts and burdens you.
God has mercy to spare:
eternal SPRINGS and RIVERS and OCEANS of mercy to
spare.
They mystery is that God invites, asks and even commands us
to forgive one another as fully and as freely
as we have been forgiven
by God.
That’s a tall order.
THERE’S a mystery that might well make us run and hide from the one
who offers us so much
and who simultaneously asks so much of us.
Many spend a good part of their lives struggling to believe that God’s
mercy and love
are truly there for THEM.
And many spend a good part of their lives struggling to forgive someone who
has hurt them deeply.
And many will find that they can only forgive others as Jesus forgave those
who crucified him.
Remember? Jesus prayed to his God,
“Father, YOU forgive them, for they know not
what they do.”
Sometimes the hurt is so deep that the only way we can draw near to forgiveness
is to place those who
have offended us in God’s hands.
For now, we go to the Lord’s table to celebrate the Lord’s
supper,
a meal he shared on the night before he died with
those who, only hours later,
would betray, deny and abandon him.
But he broke bread with them, he shared the cup with them,
he gave them at table the gift of his life,
precisely because his divine mercy PRECEDED their failures
and he knew that one day, through his grace, they
would claim the mercy
he had already
poured forth from his heart.
And he waits at this table now for US to come and to claim OUR share of the
that mercy divine
which the heart of the risen Jesus has in abundance
for each of us, and for all of us.
Rev. Austin Fleming
