January 2003

Homily for Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God - B - January 1, 2003
The shepherds were not politicians.
They did not write editorials for the Jerusalem Times.
They did not teach in schools or preach in the temple.
No one turned to them for advice, or counsel, or insight.
They lived in the fields with their livestock and spent their time herding their unruly, smelly animals and, if the truth be told,
they began to smell like the animals they tended.
But to such as these is the news of the birth of the Messiah entrusted.
It would be about thirty years before John the Baptist, a cousin of Jesus,
would begin his preaching at the Jordan River.
It would be some thirty years before Jesus began his public ministry,
    announcing the coming of the reign of God upon earth.
It would be some thirty years before the message of Jesus
    would make its way into the public square, into the houses of government,
            and into the temple precincts.
But for those first 30 years,
God was content to entrust the good news of Christ’s coming
to Mary, to Joseph, and to a group of uneducated shepherds,
none of whom had any forum or platform from which to proclaim this astonishing message.
How patient was God in all of this.
How very understanding of our ways as human beings was our God.
How mysteriously patient was God in letting the news of Christ’s coming steep in the hearts of men and women who themselves did not fully understand what had been told them.
I’m sure the shepherds must have often told the story of how their night’s sleep in the field had been interrupted by angels in the heavens,
and how they had gone to visit this newborn child.
And the scriptures are clear in telling us that Mary
    “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart...”
Keeping the memory and telling the story...
In addition to so many other tasks to which the gospel calls us,
perhaps our first task is as simple as that:
     “to keep the memory and to tell the story...”
One of my first memories as a child is that of my mother including me and my sister in assembling the nativity scene in our living room
and her telling us about the birth of the baby Jesus:
        keeping the memory and telling the story...
What a profound task falls to parents in this regard.
Indeed, the blessing for parents at the baptism of an infant
    includes these words,
        “You will be your child’s first teachers in the ways of faith:
        may you be the best of teachers bearing witness to that faith
        by what you say and do...”
                Keeping the memory and telling the story...
A new year opens before us.
A new year in the long, patient history God shares with us, his people.
A new year in which to
    keep the memory and tell the story of who Jesus is in our lives.
How, in the year 2003,
    will you and I keep alive this ancient memory?
How, in 2003, will you and I tell the story of our faith,
especially to those who have forgotten that story, or been estranged from it?
We begin our new year gathered at the Lord’s table
    where we “keep the memory and tell the story”
    not of the night of his birth, but of the night before he died,
   and how he gathered with his friends at a passover table
    to tell there the story, and to keep the memory
   of how God saved Israel and blessed them with his peace.
In the passover ritual, Israel “kept the memory and told the story”
    which we keep and tell now at the table of the new covenant.
May the sacrament we celebrate and receive
    nourish us for keeping the memory and telling the story
    of how God continues, patiently, to be born among us,
        to die, and to rise again.
Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for Epiphany - B - January 5, 2003
Epiphany Trivia!
Q.    How many kings are mentioned in the gospel story today?
A.    Two (Herod and Jesus)
Q.    How many wise men are mentioned in the gospel today?
A.    None!
Q.    How many astrologers are mentioned in the gospel today?
A.    None!
Q.     How many magi are mentioned in the gospel today?
A.    The gospel doesn’t specify a number!
Q.    What are magi? or in the singular, what is a “magus”?
    (A Persian priest with occult powers!)
But this feast of Epiphany
    is less about the particular characters in the story
    and more about the “news” it announces.
News comes to us in many ways.
Sometimes it comes by way of rumor, or gossip.
Sometimes it arrives in the morning paper,
    or on a website, or over the car radio.
Some of us get our news at the end of the day,
    at 10 or 11:00 on TV.
Sometimes news is good, and sometimes it’s bad.
Sometimes news is true, and sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes news makes us happy,
    and sometimes it makes us cry.
When real news arrives - it changes things.
It changes what was, precisely because what was
    now includes something that “wasn’t” before.
When news arrives it changes how we perceive things,
    it rearranges the landscape,
    it moves around the furniture in the living rooms of our realities.
When news arrives,
    it causes us to pause, to reconsider, to re-evaluate,
        to look again, to understand in light of what has been revealed.
Epiphany means “news,”
    it means “something new is being revealed.”
Epiphany means a manifestation of something
    we had not seen or known or understood before.
Epiphany calls us to deal with what has been newly revealed.
Today’s scriptures tell the story of how Jesus, someone new,
    was “revealed” to the gentile nations,
        to the people beyond the chosen nation of Israel.
These scriptures are about the way in which Jesus made the news -
    and not just the local news,
but how he was the lead story in the world news.
Only Matthew’s gospel
    recounts the intrigue of these magi,
    who arrive from the east following the star of Bethlehem.
The point of all of this is simply Matthew’s conviction
    that Jesus has come not only for the chosen of Israel,
    but for all of God’s people, everywhere.
The revelation of God,
    the manifestation of God’s love in Jesus,
        the “news” Jesus is for the world
            is more than this story or even the whole bible can contain.
And yet this epiphany,
    this manifestation to the whole world,
        takes place in the lives of some mysterious visitors from the east
        whose names are not recorded in the scriptures.
There is simply no limit to the ways in which God might choose
    to reveal good news in our lives.
The news for our church this past year was very often, very bad news.
It did what news often does:
    It changed things.
It changed what was, precisely because what was
    now included something that “wasn’t” before.
It changed how we perceive things,
    it rearranged the landscape,
           it moved around the furniture in the living rooms of our realities.
It caused us to pause, to reconsider, to re-evaluate,
        to look again, to reinterpret our faith and our church
        in light of what had been revealed.
Some have gone away, apart from us,
    to consider the news, the epiphany, and its impact and meaning.
Others of us are still here,
    believing that this old place,
    in this company of known friends and fellow believers
    is the best place to understand, anew,
    what it means for us to believe,
    and what it means for us to gather as church.
The epiphany, the manifestation of who Jesus is in our lives,
    in our hearts and in our faith,
did not end with the visit of the magi - it only began there.
God continues to give us stars to follow,
    news to hear, good and bad,
        and guidance to help us interpret our lives, over and over again,
            in the light of faith.
God’s love is revealed for us at this table of eucharist
    where Jesus is manifested in the bread and cup of his supper,
        to which he invites, anew, every week.
May Jesus who reveals himself in the sacrament of this table
    help us to know, to understand and to interpret our lives
        in the light of the truth of his presence.
Rev. Austin Fleming
THE QUEENS CAME LATE
The Queens came late, but the Queens were there
With gifts in their hands and crowns in their hair.
They'd come, these three, like the Kings, from far,
Following, yes, that guiding star.
They'd left their ladles, linens, looms,
Their children playing in nursery rooms,
And told their sitters:
"Take charge! For this
Is a marvelous sight we must not miss!"
The Queens came late, but not too late
To see the animals small and great,
Feathered and furred, domestic and wild,
Gathered to gaze at a mother and child.
And rather than frankincense and myrrh
And gold for the babe, they brought for her
Who held him, a homespun gown of blue,
And chicken soup--with noodles, too-
And a lingering, lasting, cradle-song.
The Queens came late and stayed not long,
For their thoughts already were straining far-
Past manger and mother and guiding star
And a child aglow as a morning sun-
Toward home and children and chores undone.
Norma Farber (from "When It Snowed That Night," 1993)

Homily for 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - B January 19, 2003

Perhaps the most telling and compelling sentence in the whole bible
    is found in today’s gospel.
Jesus turns to the two who are following him and asks them,
    “What are you looking for?”
Jesus asks the same question of every one of us this morning:
    “What are you looking for?”
I suppose at face value, it seems a simple question.
Something you might ask someone
    who is rummaging through a kitchen drawer.
Of course, the stakes can be higher, too.
If you find someone going through your purse,
    or your bedroom bureau drawer,
        or your desk at work,
            or a stack of personal papers -
in all those situations, the question,
    “What are you looking for?” takes on a different tone.
You might ask someone seeking a new job,
    “What are you looking for?”
        or someone dating a lot of people;
        or someone walking through the mall;
        or someone who seems restless or anxious;
        or someone who endlessly searches the cable channels:
            “What are you looking for?”
But when Jesus stops in his tracks,
    and turns around and looks at us,
as he does in today’s gospel story,
    when Jesus stops and asks what we’re looking for,
        the question resounds and echoes in a unique way.
A good part of the day,
    dogs don’t look for anything,
    until it’s time to look for food, or attention, or an open door.
But human beings aren’t like dogs:
    we are constantly looking for something.
Even when we sleep,
    we are looking for rest or escape.
Even if we dull our search for what we’re seeking
    with alcohol, or drugs, or food, or fantasy -
even then we are looking for something:
    we are looking for a way to avoid having to look at something.
Human beings are always looking for something.
And Jesus wants to know what we’re looking for.
And he wants to know
    (because he knows)
that what and whom we look for will either bring us joy or sadness,
    health or sickness,
    peace or war,
    truth or lies,
    love or loneliness,
    life or death.
And yes, Jesus has a hidden agenda when he asks us,
    “What are you looking for?”
Jesus knows that we were made, as human beings,
    we were made to look for God,
but that we sometimes get distracted, thrown off course, in our search
    by laziness, or selfishness,
    by mistaking the false for the true,
        indulgence for joy,
        desire for love.
Or, as St. Augustine put it,
    “Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you.”
Our search for love and life and joy leaves us restless
    until we discover the true source of what we seek,
    until we discover than in everything we are looking for God:
        for God’s love, as we find it in friends and lovers;
        for God’s truth, as we find it in what is truly beautiful;
        for God’s joy, as we find it in the simplest of pleasures;
        and for God’s peace, as we find it following the One
            who stops, turns, and asks us the question,
                “What are you looking for?”
The Lord asks that question of us:
    as we wake up in the morning;
    as we get ready for school, for work, for the day ahead;
    as we think and dream our most secret thoughts and dreams;
    as we interact with each other all day long;
    as we prepare for war;
    as we make decisions about school, about work, about career,
        about family, about our lives;
in all of this, the Lord continuously stops, turns to us, his followers,
    and asks, “What are you looking for?”
We are gathered at his altar,
    and he asks us here, too, what we’re looking for.
And in prayer and praise and offering and song, we tell him:
    “Lord, we are looking for you,
        and for the life and love you offer us
        in the sacrament of your table.
    We are looking for you in your word,
        and in the people you have gathered around you.
    We are looking for that food, that presence, that love
        that our restless hearts are seeking
        and restless we will be until we find our rest in you.
    Lord, we are looking for you:
        please, help our restless hearts to find you,
        and please reach out and find us in our restlessness.
Rev. Austin Fleming

Homily for January 26, 2003   -   Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jonah 3:1-5, 10        1 Corinthians 7:29-31        Mark 1:14-20
Two contrasting stories of God’s call to serve:
    Jonah, who first resisted and fled,
        wanting to hide from God’s call;
    and then Simon, Andrew, James and John,
        who immediately drop what they’re doing
        and walk down the road following Jesus where he goes.
Who, today, hears God’s call to serve?
Who responds to God’s call?
Well, as of the year 2000,
    83% of persons in ministry in American Roman Catholic parishes
        - were women.
And I suspect that percentage has probably grown in the last two years.
In the year 1950 there were more than 28 million Catholics
    registered in parishes in the United States:
In the year 2000 there were more than 60 million registered Catholics
    in the U.S.:
        an increase of nearly 32 million people
        over a period of 50 years, roughly, my lifetime.
In 1990 there were 24,600 active priests in the United States.
In the year 2000 there were 20,130:
    a decline of nearly 4,500 priests over 10 years.
The number of American priests projected for the year 2006 is 18,200:
    which will represent a decline of 6,400 priests over 16 years.
This decline was in process long before the revelations of the past twelve months.
Twenty years ago the ratio of Catholics to priests
    was 1,000 to 1. That ratio is now 2,200 to 1.
Sobering statistics. Chilling prospects.
(Great job security for me!)
And still, our church refuses, at the leadership level,
    to even entertain discussion
    about the possibility of ordaining married men,
    something that was our practice for the first 1,000 years
        of our church’s history.

And although 4 out of 5 Catholic parish ministers in the U.S. today are women,
    our church steadfastly refuses to concede the possibility
        that the Holy Spirit might be calling some of them to the priesthood.
The argument is that ordaining women was not the mind of Jesus.
Well, the church also teaches that Simon Peter,
    who answered the call of Jesus in today’s gospel,
        was the first pope.
Simon Peter was a married man:
    the gospel recounts how Jesus cured his mother-in-law;
    the first pope, the rock upon whom Christ built his church,
        was a married man.
Is it not fair to conclude, then,
    that married priests certainly were the “mind of Jesus”?
In the meantime,
    as the number of priests dwindles dangerously,
there are millions of Catholics around the world
    who celebrate the sacraments only two or three times a year
        because there is no priest to come and lead them
        in our church’s sacramental prayer.
In Haiti, it is not unusal for a pastor to be responsible for as many as 15-20 parishes,
    and some of that number are in the hill country,
    in places not accessible by cars - only on foot.
Imagine if you could only come to Mass two or three days out of the year.
What would this do to your faith life?
What is this doing to the life of the church around the world?
If some giant food pantry with the capacity to feed the hungry of the world
    chose only to feed them two or three days a year,
    we would consider that selfish, inhumane and cruel.
When our church,
    which has the capacity to feed the spiritual hungers of its people,
effectively withholds that sustenance
    (in favor of observing a man-made law regarding celibacy,
    a law which the church acknowledges is not of divine origin)
is it any less a deprivation?   is it any less starvation? is it any less irresponsible?
The Vatican will, within a year or two, publish new rules for the liturgy,
    including details about when the eucharistic ministers
        may come forward to help distribute the eucharist,
    and who may and who may not help
        break and pour the consecrated elements of bread and wine,
    and who may or may not assist in cleaning the vessels
            that have been used for communion.
I assure you: more time than you want to know about
    has been spent by bishops arguing over and revising these rules -
while millions of Catholic people around the world
        are starving for the eucharist itself.
I have no doubt that God continues to call men and women
    to serve the mission of the church.
In fact, I suspect that God is calling ever louder than before,
    and in the hearts of men and women alike:
        some to ordained ministry and some to lay ministry.
If God is the one who does the calling,
    then at least the statistics for the United States suggest
    that God is calling more women than men to serve in parish ministry.
What are we to make of that?
What are we to make of Catholic women who believe,
    as I believed some 40 years ago about myself,
    that God is calling them to the priesthood?
What are we to make of those men who were ordained
    and who left the priesthood for married life
    and who would gladly resume offering their priestly ministry
        were they invited to do so?
What are we to make of young men who discern a call both to priesthood
    and to marriage - just like, say, St. Peter, the first pope?
Just after Christmas, I received a card from a family in the parish,
    and one of their children, a kindergartner,
    had dictated a special message to me on the card,
    which either mom or dad had dutifully written down.
Here’s the message:
Dear Fr. Fleming,
    You tell us what to do and what Jesus and God tell us to do.
You tell us what Jesus wants for Christmas. He wants sharing and love and kindness. You tell us that he wants us to give to the poor people. Jesus does not want a gift like a scooter or a car - all he wants is us being nice to other people. And you tell us how to pray to Jesus. It’s like calling him on the telephone, but no one knows you’re praying unless you’re in the praying. No one knows what you’re saying because you say it in your heart to God and Jesus.

Did you hear that?
    “No one knows you’re praying unless you’re in the praying...”
I took that Christmas card with me on my recent retreat,
    because I wanted very much to be “in the praying” with Jesus.
This little kindergartner ministered to me every day in the silence of my week away.
The child’s name?
    Julia.
A little girl.
I’d love to have someone like Julia grow up and preach to me.
I’d love to have someone like Julia grow up and help me, and you,
    to hear what Jesus is saying to us and telling us to do.
I’d love to have someone like Julia teach me how to be
    “in the praying” with Jesus.
Perhaps Julia is already hearing God calling her
    when she’s “in the praying” with Jesus.
And if she does hear the Lord calling her,
    I don’t think it’s because she’s a radical feminist.
    I don’t think it’s because she’s hungry for ecclesial power.
    I don’t think it’s because she’s deluded or spiritually mistaken.
It may be that she’s just being as open to God calling her
    as were Simon, Andrew, James, John - and Austin.
In fact, she may be more open to God’s voice
    and the movement of God’s spirit
        than her own church.
St. Terese of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun, sometimes called the Little Flower,
    lived in the late 1800’s.
In her spiritual diary she wrote to God,
    “Perhaps it should be enough to be your spouse as a nun,
        but it is not.
    I feel within me other vocations.
    I feel the vocation of the warrior, the priest, the apostle,
        the doctor, the martyr.”
Many women today feel themselves called to these same vocations.
Times have changed. Almost all vocations are open to women.
Only in the church are Terese’s dreams still waiting to come true.
As we gather at the Lord’s table now,
    (having had a choice of four different times this weekend to do so)
let us pray for those around the world who have an altar
    - but no priest to lead them in breaking the bread of eucharist.
And let us pray that we and our church
    will not run from God’s call, as did Jonah,
but like Simon, Andrew, James, John - and maybe Julia -
    that we will drop our nets and follow Jesus,
    wherever
    he and his Spirit may lead us.
Rev. Austin Fleming