May 18, 2003

Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter - B                                           

Even people, like me, who don’t know much about art
     are able to identify at least some famous paintings.
I know Whistler’s Mother when I see her profile.
I recognize DaVinci’s Last Supper, and I know Mona Lisa’s smile.
Most of us are familiar with a particular portion of Michelangelo’s rendering of Creation
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
You know:  that place in the fresco where a finger of the hand of God
 reaches out and touches a finger of the hand of Adam.

Today’s gospel image of the vine and the branches has something to do with those two                                                               fingers meeting.

Have you ever been in a place where, even though you were surrounded by people,
 you felt all alone because you did not know or recognize anyone around you?
And in such circumstances, have you enjoyed that moment when finally
your eyes landed on a familiar face?

Today’s gospel image of the vine and the branches has something to do with those experiences.

In his novel, Howard's’ End, E.M. Forster writes  what are probably his two most famous words:
          "ONLY CONNECT!
That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,               
  and human love will be seen at its height.  Live in fragments no longer. Only connect...”

And “connecting” has everything to do with the image of the vine and the branches in today’s gospel.

We all know, don’t we, the difference between feeling connected and unconnected.

There is something in the human person that makes us long to be connected
and leaves us in fear of being un-connected or, even worse, dis-connected.
Perhaps it is our first human experience  that nurtures in us this desire to be connected.

Think of the intimate connection of a mother and the child growing in her womb.
There is a connectedness here more intimate even  than the union of the man and woman
 whose joining brought this child to be.

Our lives begin connected to the life of our mothers. And once we leave the womb,
  we spend the rest of our lives seeking to connect, and to connect intimately,
     lest we perish disconnected and alone.

We want to hold someone close.          We want to be held.          We want to be with.
We want to be near.     We want to be close to...       We want to connect.
And we do this in our families,   in the society of the larger community,
   and in relationship with friends, partners, lovers, spouses.

Only connect!

It is precisely at this depth in our hearts and lives that God desires to connect with us.
And, it is precisely at this depth in our hearts and lives  that we desire to connect with God.
As St. Augustine put it:
     “Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you...”

That is to say:    there is a desire for connectedness in our hearts
     that can only be satisfied by our growing closer to God
     from whom all life flows,   and in whom all things find meaning,
     and through whom all things are - connected.

This connection with God in no way replaces or supplants
   our relationships, our love for, our connectedness  with friends and lovers.
Indeed, all our relationships with each other are precisely intended
     to point us TOWARDS our relationship with God,  for GOD IS LOVE,
     and those who abide in LOVE abide in GOD, and God in THEM.

The church community is a community of connectedness.
We gather as church to connect and to collect our individual prayers into                                                                                      a chorus of prayer and support.

We gather as church to celebrate the eucharist,
  the sacrament of connection in which the Lord makes of our bodies a home for his life,
 even as a children make of their mother’s wombs  a home for the fragile beginning of their life.

We share the eucharist in order to celebrate and strengthen  the connection the Lord is among us:
   for we, the church, are his body;   he is the vine and we are the branches...

Our high school graduates have, for 17 or 18 years,  been growing on the vine of their families,                                            their friends, their schools, their community and their parish.
And now some significant “pruning” of the vine is about to take place.
They will be graduates, not students, at their high school.
They will still be our sons and daughters,  but most of them will be transplanted from the vine at                                       home  to dormitories and apartments at school or near work.
They will begin to allow their own branches to entwine with other vines.
They will need, on their own, to learn what needs to  be pruned,
     cut out of their lives, in order for them to grow strong.
They will, in brand new ways, begin to seek connections with new places, new people,
  new friends, and with God.

Our prayer for them is that they keep their connections with the vines that have nourished them
 in these early years of their lives.
And in a special way, we pray that they will remain connected to the vine that Jesus is
          in the lives of us all.

Wherever you go to study or to work,   however far away you might move from Concord,
there will be a community of faith nearby you, waiting to connect with you
     and waiting for you to connect with them.

We pray that you will only connect!
Connect the past and the present.   Connect the visible with the hidden.
Connect with all that is good, true and beautiful. Connect the dots!
Connect with all the ways that God and the church reach out
     to connect with you.

And when you come home, connect with us, here at Our Lady’s.
Your place on the vine of this parish will always be here for you.
Connect with our prayer and song,  and most important:  connect with us at this table
 where the Lord connects us all and makes us one.

Rev. Austin Fleming

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

Homily for Third Sunday of Easter - B         May 4, 2003


“Touch me and see...”

The reason Jesus invited his friends to touch him was simple:
    he wanted them to know that he had risen from the dead,
    and that he was not some illusion, some ghost, some figment of their imagination.
This was no “virtual Jesus!”  He was not a hologram.
He wanted them to know that he was real.

“Touch me and see,” he said...

The faith of our church tradition has been a
    “touch me and see” affair since Jesus rose from the dead.

The first thing we do when we enter a church  is to reach out and touch holy water,                                                                      and then to touch ourselves with that water, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Walking into church we find a place and then we touch one knee to the ground,
 recognizing that here, we are in the presence of the Lord,  in a particular and sacramental way.
Many of us will then kneel in the pew,  and guess what?  “touch” the sign of the cross on                                                  ourselves again.

And what do we do when our prayer together begins?
One more time!    “In the name of the Father...”

So, average Catholics have traced their bodies with the sign of the cross THREE times
    before the opening prayer of the Mass.

Before the gospel we touch our forehead, mouth and breast
    praying that the Gospel will touch our minds, our words and our hearts.
We touch each other with the sign of peace.
We touch the very presence of the Risen Jesus in the eucharist
    by receiving the bread of life and the cup of salvation
        into our hands,  and into our bodies.

Baptism is all about touching.
    We use a thumb to trace the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead.
We immerse the baby in water,  letting the touch of grace surround the child’s body.
We anoint the baby with sweet smelling chrism.
We dress the naked baby in baptismal clothes.
We sprinkle, we touch the people in the assembly
    with the waters of the baptismal font.

Relics,  smudging foreheads on Ash Wednesday,   
  the laying on of hands,  anointings,   
 a bride and groom joining their right hands,  and placing rings on each other’s fingers...

Wearing medals and crosses that touch our skin...

Ours is faith of touching, because ours is a sacramental church;
and ours is a sacramental church because at the heart of who we are as church
    is the Risen Jesus who invites us to touch him, and see...

At the heart of our faith is a Risen Jesus who wants to touch us,
    and who wants us to draw near enough to touch him,
Jesus, who wants us to touch each other with tenderness, and healing, and consolation;
Jesus who wants us to touch our neighbors, to support them, to lift them up, to hold them;
Jesus who wants us to touch especially those  whom others deem untouchable;
Jesus who wants us to touch his presence in all the wonders of nature and the universe;
Jesus who wants us to touch his beating heart, pulsing in everything that is good, true,                                                            whole and pure.

9:30 Mass
People love to hold, to cuddle, to touch babies.
Today we celebrate how God’s love reaches out to touch these two children with grace and love...

11:30 Mass
Today, the Lord will touch our first communion children
    in a special way...

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

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

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 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 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

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

  Previous weeks' homilies

[ Archives Jan - May ] [ May - Aug. ] [ Sept-Dec ] [ Jan-March ] [ April-May ] [ June-July ] [ Deacon Clough ]