February 2003

Homily for Sunday, February 2, 2003 - Feast of the Presentation
It’s always good to add to our vocabulary, and today I’d like to add
what’s probably a new word for most of us: anawim.
Can you say anawim? ANAWIM! I knew you could say it!
Now, what does it mean?
ANAWIM is a Hebrew word which means: the poor, the afflicted, the humble -
those who stand faithful before God even and especially in the worst of times.
In Christian art, Simeon and Anna, the man and woman in the temple in today’s gospel,
Simeon and Anna are depicted as elderly persons: Simeon having waited through his life time for the consolation of Israel, and Anna, 84 years old, who “never left the temple,” a way of saying that she never stopped praying. Anna and Simeon stand in this story as the faithful ones whose faithfulness to God
does not wane in their old age - but rather grows stronger.
We all know, in our families and among our neighbors, the faithfulness of older people who, as their years grow long, find their faith more and more important to them.
It is not unusual for me to hear the older members of our own parish say,
“Father, what would I do without God?”
It’s easy to understand, then, the concern of our elders for their juniors and their desire for the children, and grandchildren, to practice and grow in their faith. Our elders are God’s ANAWIM among us today.
But one does not have to be older to be among the anawim.
I think of those young people, our middle school and high school students,
who, against the pressure of intense peer pressure, make every effort to do the right thing, to speak the good word, to befriend the friendless classmate.
It’s not easy to remain faithful to what one believes when those around you making other choices, but many of our young people are faithful in just this way, and can be counted among God’s ANAWIM today.
I think, too, of the people of Haiti whose deep, strong Christian faith is never threatened or overwhelmed by the tragic poverty in which they live.
They stand as God’s faithful through the worst of circumstances, through whole LIFE TIMES of the worst of circumstances.
The people of Haiti and of the third world everywhere are the ANAWIM,
the poor, afflicted faithful people of God in today’s world.
I think, too, of the people in our own parish, people here today, whose plates are full to overflowing with memories, hurts, problems, fears, illnesses, responsibilities and painful family situations which none of us would want to bear. And yet these people, our brothers and sisters in faith, carry all that and more and yet are here, with us in prayer, faithful to a God who often seems so slow to respond to our prayer.
The ANAWIM of God are with us in prayer, here, today.
And although the list could go on and on, I will mention one more group of today’s ANAWIM: those who value the gift of life as the most precious gift of all.
I think of those who work tirelessly to increase our respect and reverence for life in the womb in a culture which orders its priorities in a very different way.
I think of those who defend the value of the human life,even the life of those convicted of terrible crimes. I think of those who, even in face of international danger, faithfully proclaim a gospel of peace and reconciliation.
The ANAWIM who remain faithful to God and God’s word in the best of times and in the worst of times,
in joy and in sorrow.
The ANAWIM are often misunderstood on account of the faithfulness.
Fidelity to God often appears as foolishness to those who do not share our faith.
Jesus, himself, was among the ANAWIM, he stood poor, afflicted and faithful before God
while others stood at the foot of his cross and mocked and scorned him.
That we might be faithful to God, in joy and in sorrow, in the best of times and the worst of times,
we gather in the shadow of the cross of Jesus to be nourished by the meal he gave us
on the night before he died.
Some may think us foolish for considering a morsel of bread and a sip from a cup
as food for our souls, as bread from heaven, as the cup of salvation.
But for those who have ears of faith with which to hear, and eyes of faith with which to see,
this is the food we need that we might have life, and have it to the full.
Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time - B - February 9, 2003
Job 7:1-4, 6-7    1 C Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23    Mark 1:29-39
People sometimes speak of “the patience of Job...”
But today’s scripture from the book of Job is more about “the frustration” of Job.
Listen to Job’s lament:
    “Is not my life on earth a drudgery?
    I have been assigned months of misery!
    My troubled nights drag on. I am restless for the dawn.
    I come to an end of my days without hope.”
Does this sound familiar? Might these be your words, too? Or the words of someone you know, someone you love?
Job’s lament is certainly the lament of those who were abused as children.
And now it becomes our lament, too, the lament of a church struggling to understand,
or simply at some level to comprehend, how so much pain, went so unchecked, for so long...
And not just a few of those among us are staying awake for long troubled nights
hoping and praying and dreaming of finding employment in an economy that doubles the burden of joblessness.
And heaped on all of that is the prospect of war as our young men and women are deployed
to the last places in the world we want our young people to go.
Job’s pain and suffering were real - not imagined.
And in like manner:   the pain of the abused is as real as their haunting nightmares and memories;
the anxiety of the unemployed is as real as their families needs; and the reality of deadly military force
is as palpable as the lives that nations may sacrifice on both sides of this conflict.
Like Job, we well may feel that
    “we have been assigned months of misery! Our troubled nights drag on;
    we are restless for the dawn...”
Recalling that the word gospel means “good news,” is there any good new in today’s gospel?
Well, there was good news for Peter and his mother-in-law that at Jesus’ touch her fever left her.
And there was good news for the people of Capernuam whom Jesus healed of their illnesses, diseases,
and whatever demons plagued them.
In fact, there was so much good news in Capernaum that Jesus had to leave town early in the morning because “everyone was looking” for him.
Are we looking for Jesus?
Are we looking for Jesus to show us the way to reach out to the abused?
Are we looking for Jesus to show us how rebuild a broken church in such a way that systems of protection will always, in every case, tend first to the needs of the hurt, the vulnerable, the innocent?
Everyone in Capernuam was looking for Jesus.
Are we?
Are we looking for Jesus in this tough economy of ours looking for Jesus to show us what we ought to truly value? to show us what we need to work for? to show us that the gifts of the human heart
are the greatest wealth we can hope to receive or have or share?
Everyone in Capernuam was looking for Jesus.
Are we?
Are we looking for Jesus
    as we speak of war? plan for war?
    as we cheer those who call us to war?
    as we protest war?
Everyone in Capernuam was looking for Jesus.
Are we?
Poor old Job had done nothing to deserve the troubles he experienced.
So terrible were his problems that he, a man of great faith, was led to question his faith in God
and God’s love for him:
        “How could God let this happen?”
The abused did nothing to invite the harm done them.
They were innocent. But so terrible are the crimes perpetrated upon them that they are led to question their faith in God and God’s love for them, and to ask,
        “How could God let this happen?”
The ways in which workers are let go from their jobs, often after decades of faithful service,
and almost always leaving families in serious financial straits can easily lead the unemployed to ask,
    “How could God let this happen?”
War, of course, is another question. War is an invention of humankind.
Even those wars which can be judged “just” are not the desire of God,
for when the armies of the world go to war, God sees not “this side” and “that side.”
God sees only sons and daughters, God’s own, made in the divine image.
When we make war, I wonder if it causes God to question his faith in us?
Does God wonder,
    “How could they let this happen?”

I have no answers here, only questions.
They are questions as old as Job.
They are questions that have puzzled people of every age.
They are questions that will puzzle our children’s children’s children.
I only know that these are questions that must be asked:
    What is the desire of God?
    How does God let such things happen to his beloved children?
    How do the beloved children of God do such things to each other?
    Are we looking for Jesus?
In the end, Job did not despair. He found a place of faith in his heart,
a place from which he could cry out,
        “I know that my redeemer lives
        and I shall once again see God, my savior!
        With my own eyes, I shall see my God and live!”
We have a place, you and I, to pose these questions and to ponder them.
We have a place to pray over these problems and to look for wisdom and healing.
We have a place not only to look for Jesus, but also to find him: here, at his table
where he feeds us with the bread of wisdom and the cup of life.
Pray that we find and open that place in our hearts so much in need of the gifts
with which the Lord nourishes our hunger and heals our hurt.
May the food this holy table, and the holy communion we share here,
give us faith to look for him, to find and follow him,
and to live as he calls us to live.
Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for February 16, 2003 - Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - B
Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46    1 Corinthians 10:31--11:1        Mark 1:40-45
Like many of you, I receive mail from a number of religious organizations,
but something came this week, the likes of which I’ve never seen before!
A large envelope addressed to me with this statement printed on the outside:
FOR CATHOLICS ONLY.
PLEASE DO NOT OPEN
IF YOU ARE NOT CATHOLIC.
I began to wonder if it is unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of church and state
for the United States Postal Service to deliver mail marked in this way.
I wondered how many non-Catholic postal workers handled hundreds and probably thousands of these letters - and what they thought of this warning.
Aside from the times of the Inquisition and the Crusades, I can’t imagine a worse moment in history
for mail from a Catholic organization to bear such a label.
And what, you must be wondering, is inside this envelope?
There’s another hint on the outside of the envelop. Highlighted in yellow are the words:
ENCLOSED DOCUMENT
PREPARED FOR VATICAN.
The plot thickens!
Whatever is in this envelope to be opened only by Catholics has something to do with the Vatican - perhaps with the pope!
(Say, did I mention that this sensitive document was sent as bulk mail?)
Well, being a Catholic myself, I opened the envelope.
Inside is a letter from the “Crusade for the Defense of Our Catholic Church.”
It seems that some Catholics just can’t let go of the “crusade” thing!
And the letter introduces a survey form which Catholic only are invited to fill out and return
so that the Crusade can send it to the Vatican for them.
The survey is one of the most skewed, biased, opinion laden instruments I have ever read.
It’s a survey that’s out to prove a point and intent on proving it with sledgehammer accuracy!
Oh - and the Crusade would also be willing to accept a donation from me in amounts ranging from $50 to $250 - or more.
Catholics only!
It is truly unfortunate, it’s sad, it’s tragic that so many people view the Catholic church primarily in terms
of whom the church excludes from its embrace.
Catholics only!
Both Catholics and people of other faiths (or of no faith) are often inclined to define our church less in terms of who we are and more in terms of who we are not.
Of all the questions people ask me as a priest, I couldn’t count how many of those questions
begin with phrases like:
        “Father, if someone isn’t a Catholic, can he...”
        “Father, if someone is divorced, can she...”
        “Father, if someone doesn’t believe in...”
        “Father, if someone is gay can he...”
        “Father, can a Protestant ever...”
        “Father, can you still be a Catholic if...”
Granted:    the Catholic church is an organization and, rightly so, has rules and regulations about membership
and a particular set of rituals for initiating new members.
Granted:    the Catholic church teaches that some things are good and right and other things are bad and wrong and that we need to know and live by the difference.
Granted: any organization must define itself in order for its own members (and those outside its membership) to understand the mission and goals of the organization.
But the Catholic church is not just ANY organization. We are the Body of Christ!
And our image of the body of Christ is the image of the crucified.
Jesus was crucified on a hill, outside the city limits, just as the lepers in today’s first scripture
were banished from the community “to dwell apart,” and to “make their abode outside the camp.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus deals with lepers in a whole new way.
The point of the gospel story is not so much that Jesus healed the leper, as wonderful as that was.
The point is that Jesus SPOKE to the leper - an outcast.
The point is that Jesus TOUCHED the leper - one who was unclean.
The point is that Jesus ACCEPTED the leper - the one who had been banished.
Jesus heals the leper, but the real miracle is the leper’s reincorporation into the community.
I do not suggest that our church do away with its rules and regulations.
That would be foolish.
Many of these rules are crucially important for the preaching of the gospel
and for the living of a life rooted in Christ.
But I do suggest that we need to take a look at how the body of Christ, in the Catholic church, ministers to people.
Are we like the ministry of Leviticus, declaring some clean and some unclean,
some included and some excluded, some welcomed and some rejected?
Or is our ministry modeled on the open arms of Christ crucified?
Will we minister as a church defined by its INclusion of others:
particularly its inclusion of those who are marginalized by life’s circumstances, by gender or sexual preference, by marital state, by faith, by culture, society or the economy?
Will we be inclusive of those who believe they have been banished, sent to “dwell apart, outside the camp”?
An honest reading of the scriptures shows us that the whole ministry of Jesus rejected the exclusionary practices of religious hypocrites and opened wide the doors to any and all who would follow
the path Jesus walks ahead of us.
It has been said that every time we draw a line in the sand, separating “them” from “us,”
we can be fairly certain that in each instance we will find Jesus on the other side of the line, with “them.”
As we come to the Lord’s table, then, let us pray, as Christ prayed at the last supper,
that we might all be one as Christ is one with the One who sent him,
and as Christ is one with us in the bread and cup of the eucharist.
Rev. Austin Fleming

****************************************

Homily for February 23 - Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - B
Isaiah 43:18-19, 21-22, 24b-25        2 Corinthians 1:18-22            Mark 2:1-2
It says it right here in the bible:    “Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not...”          But...
But aren’t we supposed to remember the Shoah, the Holocaust,
in which more than 6 million people were put to death,
most of them God’s own chosen people, the Jews?
Aren’t we supposed to remember how ugly and inhumane were, and in many ways are,
the strains of racial prejudice in our nation?
Aren’t we supposed to remember the millions of times
that the light of new life has been extinguished before birth?
Aren’t we supposed to remember the tragedy of 9/11 and our vulnerability?
Aren’t we supposed to remember the weak yet rigid structures that allowed the abuse of children in our faith community?
Some things must be remembered lest in forgetting them we allow history, our history, to repeat itself.
But something else must be remembered, too:
something we may forget; something we not be able to accept; something we may refuse to believe.

We must also remember the mercy and forgiveness of God.
The prophet Isaiah gives us the Lord’s word here.
Even when we have “burdened the Lord with our sins and wearied him with our crimes”
the Lord stands ready to wipe away our offenses - and to forget that we have sinned.
Such mercy may be too much for us to consider, or believe, or even imagine in our own day.
Many find it impossible to understand how God can forgive what we find unforgivable;
how God can forget what we find unforgettable.
Can the mercy of God reach the hearts of those who carried out the atrocities of concentration camps?
Yes.
Can the mercy of God reach the hearts of those who despise their neighbor on account of the color
of the neighbor’s skin?
Yes.
Can the mercy of God reach the hearts of those who terminate a life before birth?
Yes.
Can the mercy of God reach the hearts of those those who masterminded and executed the attack of September 11?
Yes.
Can the mercy of God reach the hearts of those who abused children, and those who sheltered the abusers?
Yes.
Can the mercy of God reach the sin or the sinner we find unforgivable,
the sin or the sinner we find unforgettable?
Yes.
It may be as difficult for me to answer yes to all these questions
as it is for you to hear that answer.
But my task as a preacher of the gospel is to announce that the mercy of God knows no bounds;
to announce that there’s a wideness in God’s mercy
such that nothing we do, or fail to do, can put us forever beyond the offer, the reach
of God’s forgiving touch.
Somehow, God finds something to love in the hearts and lives of those whom we find most despicable and unlovable.
Indeed, that is how God loves us all: God loves me, and God loves you, in spite of our sins.
It is the mercy of God, not the sinner’s nobility, that invites the sinner to repent.
And what the repentant sinner meets, without fail, is the offer of the gift of God’s forgiveness.
Let us be clear that this in no way implies that God, in forgiving us, somehow condones our sins and failings.
To the contrary.
God’s heart aches deeply,
God weeps copiously over the harm we do one another.
Jesus, in his suffering and death, bears in his own body the damage and pain
we are capable of inflicting on one another’s bodies and souls.
God’s mercy is a gift offered - it is never forced upon us.
Still, the will and desire of God is always, without fail, the healing of the relationship between us and the Lord, and between us and our neighbor. I am not saying that God simply forgives everyone.
I am saying that God offers mercy to any who desire it.
I am grateful that such forgiving mercy is available to me. And I must find a way to “allow” God to deal as mercifully with others as I have been dealt with mercifully.
And God goes a step further! God calls us to love and forgive others AS we are loved and forgiven. Is that not our prayer?
“Forgive us our sins, Lord, AS we forgive those who sin against us...”
Now, if you’re not buying anything I’m saying here, perhaps it would help to paraphrase some popular verses from the book of Ecclesiastes:
        There is a time for remembering
            and a time for forgetting;
        There is a time for anger
            and a time for mercy.
        There is a time to be forgiven,
            and a time to forgive.
There is, indeed, a time for each of these, and often, perhaps always, one time must come before another time may come.
Perhaps, for some, this is a time to remember, not to forget; a time to be angry, not to be forgiving. But even in such a time, we need to hear the promise
that nothing we do or fail to do can put us forever beyond the offer, the reach
of God’s forgiving touch.
If this is a time when we are too angry to forgive, and too hurt to forget,
then let us lay our anger and our hurt at the foot of the cross of Jesus.
Let him show us how to use our anger for the work of justice,
    and how to lift up our hurt for healing.
In laying down our own sins for him to pick up and carry for us,
we will be forgiven, and we will find ourselves loved - in spite of our sins.
Then, in God’s time, we might learn how to love one another - as we have been loved;
to forgive one another - as we have been forgiven.
There is a time for this, even if the time is not now.
But for today, for this time, let us go to the table of Jesus
    where he feeds us with his broken life,
        a life he laid down for us - sinners all -
            so that we might have life, and have it to the full.