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Homily for
Fourth Sunday of Lent - B
March 30, 2003
2 Chronicles 36:14-16
Ephesians 2:4-10 John 3:14-21
How would you like to be Nicodemus?
How would you like to be able to sit down with Jesus, face to face, and ask
him all your questions
and get your answers from the source of all truth?
I’ll tell you, it sure would make it easier to be a pastor
if I could sneak off at night and get the real scoop on things right
from the mouth of Jesus.
Nicodemus asked Jesus how it meant to be “born again.”
And he asked Jesus how God’s spirit moves in our lives.
What would you ask Jesus?
I think I’d ask Jesus what he thinks of what his church has become.
I’d ask him for some help on bringing back to the church those who have
left because of the abuse crisis.
I’d ask Jesus why it is that bad things happen to good people.
I’d ask Jesus what he thinks about ordaining women, and married men.
I might ask Jesus to make a guest appearance here in West Concord
as part of a fund raiser for our parish!
I’d ask Jesus what he thinks about war in general, and the war in Iraq in
particular.
I’d ask him if he agrees with the Pope, the American bishops, and
virtually all religious
leaders
on this question, or if he agrees with the President Bush and Prime Minister
Blair,
of if he has an opinion about all of this that none of us has yet discerned.
I’d ask him how the nations of the world should deal with tyrants and
terrorists
without compromising our values and beliefs.
I’d ask him what we need to do to leave our children a world at peace.
I suppose we all have our own answers to these questions.
I wonder how Jesus would answer our questions.
He might be a little vague, as he was with Nicodemus.
”Here’s the answer,” Jesus said. “The light
has come into the world
but some prefer the darkness to the light...
“Those who do wicked things prefer the dark and stay away from the light.
“But those who seek the truth and live the truth draw near the light
so that all can see that their works are the works
of God.”
But we live in world which has learned to see in the dark.
We are a world which has learned to light up the night sky as though it were
day.
What is the real darkness? What is truly the light?
Whose works are good? Whose works are evil?
Who prefers the darkness? Who draws near the light?
Must we be “born again” in order to find peace? And if we must be born
again,
HOW are we to be born again?
And how are we to know when it is the Spirit of God, and not some other
spirit,
who moves in our hearts and minds and deeds?
And that brings us back to Nicodemus, and Jesus:
Nicodemus who waited for the cover of darkness
to meet with the
Light of the world.
We need not wait for nightfall. Jesus is ready to meet with us now,
and to feed us at his table.
He is ready to share with us his life, laid down for us
so that we might have life and have it to the full.
Pray with me that the Prince of Peace whose table we share
will nourish in us a love for the light and
for the truth it reveals.
Rev. Austin Fleming
*********************
Simply
Living Lent - Week Five
MORNING
PRAYER
Dear God,
Slowly but surely there are signs of spring every where I look.
How much I need to see new life springing up
in a world which is shaded by clouds of war.
How much I need to see the greening and flowering of life
which has spent the winter buried beneath the
snows.
How much I need to believe that you who bring the earth back to life
will restore peace to the world, for you will not
forget your children in their need.
Make a spring time in my own heart, too, O Lord:
restore, refresh and bring to flower whatever the
winter of my life has put to sleep.
And I have a special favor to ask of you, Lord, here it is...
You will not forget the people closest to my heart who need your help, Lord,
but lest I fail to remember them today, I
lift up their names to you now...
Lord, in your love and mercy, hear my prayer.
Our Father...
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
FASTING
This week, the particular food or beverage I will give up is
This week, the particular activity or pleasure I will give up is
This week, the old, bad habit I’ll work on is
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
CARING FOR THE POOR
This week I’m bringing nonperishable groceries to church for the Food
Pantry
This week I’m shopping for my gift for the Parish Giving Tree
This week, I’m making a contribution to my Offering Box or my favorite
charity
This week, I’m working on my own outreach to those in need
NIGHT PRAYER
Night and day you watch over those you love, Lord: you are always awake to
our needs.
Your watchful care gives me reason to fall asleep in your arms,
and to trust that you will be with me when I wake
in the morning.
Bless my night with good rest and touch my dreams with your peace.
Watch over those who are afraid this night
and who may be troubled with difficult memories and
dreams.
Stand guard with those who serve and protect us,
and with all who are in harm’s way this night.
As a mother tucks in her child, tuck in your world, Lord, under a blanket of
peace.
Give us good rest that tomorrow we may be respond generously and graciously
to those in need.
Hail Mary...
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
*****************************************************************************
Homily for Third Sunday of Lent - B
- March 23, 2003
Exodus 20:1-17 I
Corinthians 1:22-25 John 2:13-25
The shelves of book stores are filled with self-help books,
and the internet is filled with all kinds of self-help
sites,
each one promising to help us live a happier,
healthier, holier life;
a longer, leaner, love-filled life;
a simpler, safer, saner life...
a richer, rosier,
relaxed life...
the list goes on...
Curiously enough, many of these books and sites model themselves
on the ten commandments.
A quick search on the Internet turned up:
The Ten Commandments of Better
Etiquette
The Ten Commandments of
Counterintelligence
The Ten Commandments of Baseball
The Ten Commandments of Managing
Stress
The Ten Commandments of
Automobile Repair
The Ten Commandments of the
Separation of Church and State
The Ten Commandments of Gambling
The Ten Commandments of Venture
Capital
The Ten Commandments of Yellow
Pages Advertising
Everyone of these is designed as a help,
as a way of assisting someone to do a particular task
in a better, more
productive, less taxing fashion. And that’s exactly why God gave
Israel, and us,
the ORIGINAL Ten Commandments.
The Commandments were a gift, the law was a gift to the chosen
people to
guide
them in living a life which strengthened, rather than weakened,
their relationship with God and with their neighbor.
If we all lived by the Ten Commandments we would not be at war today.
The commandments are designed to enhance our life.
It’s a shame we so often think of the commandments only as negative and
restrictive.
The commandments certainly do set boundaries on our behavior,
but the boundaries are designed to save us from our own foolishness
and mistakes.
The law, as gift from God, was a proud possession of Israel.
The scriptures ask,
“Who has a God as great as our God?
A God who gives us a law by which to live,
a law that will not fail to lead
us to the truth?”
Those who heard Jesus preach heard him say that he had come not to destroy
the
law - but to fulfill it.
And the fulfillment of the whole law is love:
self-giving love which serves the neighbor first as the primary way
of serving God.
As we heard in today’s gospel:
Jesus identifies himself as the new temple of worship in truth;
just as he identifies himself as the sacrifice,
the lamb of the new covenant in his blood;
and he is also the new law, the new commandment.
“Love one another as I have loved you,” he tells us,
indeed, this is what he commands us to do.
As we make our way through Lent in preparation for our celebration of
Easter,
we might do well to review the ten commandments and see how we allow them
to
save us from our own foolishness and stupid mistakes,
or perhaps to discover how much we need them
to strengthen our relationship with God and with our neighbor.
Lent is a time for us to grow closer to Jesus whose law is love,
and whose love is law.
He who is our Lord, our law, and our love, invites us now to the
table of
the
new covenant, the table where we remember that he is the Lamb of God
who takes away the sins of the world, the Lamb whose life was
offered up
because we could not save ourselves from our own foolishness and
stupid mistakes.
Rev. Austin Fleming
******************************************************************
Homily for
Second Sunday of Lent - B -
March 16, 2003
Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 Romans
8:31b-34 Mark 9:2-10
You probably found this insert in your Sunday paper a few weeks ago.
(Hold up insert...)
It’s a long list of descriptive words:
rare
spontaneous unexpected
bold
curious
intriguing
intuitive
fearless
unusual
audacious
brash
undaunted
irreverent
daring
dynamic
maverick
unbridled
soulful
provocative strong
wild
unwavering
romantic
genuine
unorthodox brave
renegade
radical
visionary
a dreamer
Quite a description! Who is being described here?
If you open up the insert it tells you who’s being described here.
(Superimposed on a huge finger print are the words)
“YOU are!”
(and, over a large hubcap, the words)
“IT is.”
What is the IT that so perfectly matches YOU?
(Unfold the ad one more time we find that)
The IT that matches YOU
is the Infinity FX45!
When I first saw this ad, before I opened up to the interior folds, my
homiletic mind
was
already in gear. I thought,
“Hey! This is a list of many of
the things people said about Jesus in the gospels - and in
one way or
another, every one of them is true.”
How do we usually describe Jesus?
Holy? Divine? Savior? Redeemer?
Do the terms we most often use to describe Jesus serve to ATTRACT us
to him?
Or do the words we use to describe Jesus make him seem so much above and
beyond us
that they DISTANCE us from him?
The revelation of God’s identity in the first lesson today is compelling
and immanent.
It commands our attention and engages our imagination. It prompts a response
within us.
We are first horrified at God’s request of Abraham, and then relieved when
Isaac is rescued.
I imagine that the Smart family in Utah could relate to how Isaac and
his father felt
when their daughter, Elizabeth, was delivered into their hands.
In the gospel accounts of the call of the apostles, Jesus walks by the
shore where
fishermen
are mending their nets, he says, “Hey, you guys! Come
follow me!”
and they drop everything - their livelihood - and
follow Jesus.
What was so attractive about Jesus that these men leave their work to
follow him?
In today’s gospel, Jesus is transfigured in the company of Peter, James
and John.
These three are deeply touched by what happens. They are simultaneously
terrified,
and yet they want to build tents to capture the experience.
Do our images of God attract us? engage us? make us want to hold on to the
experience of God?
Or do our images of God leave us cold?
What attracts us to other people? What kind of people do we want to work
with?
live next door to? socialize with? talk to? go
to a Sox game with? go out to dinner with?
Is Jesus the kind of person we might want to work with? go to a movie
with? hang out with?
Is Jesus someone we really want to walk through this coming week with?
Or is it a little more comfortable just to visit with him on Saturday
afternoon or on
Sunday
morning? Is Jesus like an elderly uncle in a nursing home whom we go
to visit on weekends?
Is Jesus someone we find attractive?
The church teaches that Jesus is “FULLY HUMAN as well as fully
divine.”
Then certainly he must be:
rare
spontaneous unexpected
bold
curious
intriguing
intuitive
fearless
unusual
audacious
brash
undaunted
irreverent
daring
dynamic
maverick
unbridled
soulful
provocative strong
wild
unwavering romantic
genuine
unorthodox
brave
renegade
radical
visionary
a dreamer
He was, he IS indeed, all of those things – and many more.
Imagine how shallow might be our personal knowledge of who Jesus is…
-how limited might be the ways in which we can
describe him…
-how impoverished might be our ideas of who he is
for us…
-how dull might be our picture all that Jesus must
be
if indeed he is the
very Word of God made flesh,
become human, for us, fully human and fully divine…
It might be a helpful Lenten exercise for us to ponder what each
of us needs Jesus
to be in our lives. How does each of us need Jesus to be transfigured
in our lives?
in our hearts? in our imaginations?
We can ask Jesus to be what we need him to be for us so that we might be
drawn closer to him
and he might draw nearer to us in a kind of fully human mutual
attractiveness
that is nothing less than -- fully divine.
That’s for the rest of Lent, for now, we can add to that descriptive
list
even more words that also reveal who Jesus is for us.
He is:
table
altar host
server bread
wine
body
blood soul
divinity nourishment
food
meal sacrifice
and supper…
Come share at the table of him who is, indescribably,
our holy, divine, saving Lord and Redeemer.
Rev. Austin Fleming
************************************************************
Homily for
March 9, 2003 - First Sunday of Lent - B
Genesis 9:8-15
1 Peter 3:18-22 Mark
1:12-15
For those of you who did not make it to church on Ash Wednesday, I have
good news:
contrary to popular
opinion and conventional wisdom, Ash Wednesday is not
a holy day of obligation.
More good news:
Ash Wednesday is not the first of the 40 days of
Lent.
So, even if you missed Ash Wednesday, you still find yourself at the
beginning of
Lent
this weekend. (The last day of Lent ends at sundown on Holy Thursday.
If you take your calendar and count back 40 days from Holy Thursday,
you will land, this year, on March 9, the first
Sunday of Lent.
But more good news:
if you missed getting ashes on Wednesday,
you can still get one of our Lenten buttons with
the cross of ashes on it.
But here’s some bad news:
also contrary to popular opinion and conventional
wisdom
(and things your
grandmother may have told you)
the Sundays of Lent are indeed days of Lent.
So, if you gave up chocolate for the 40 days of Lent,
you do NOT get to eat it on Sundays.
For those of us who DID come to pray on Ash Wednesday,
(and who, at this point, are wondering why they
did!)
we got a jump start on the Lenten season and were
privileged to take part
in one of the most curious and beautiful rituals of
our church:
being smudged on our foreheads with a cross
of ashes,
the ashes of last Palm Sunday’s palm
branches,
as a sign of our desire to grow in faith this
Lent.
So Lent, the 40 days of Lent, begin this weekend.
And at the end of Lent, at Easter -- there’s going to be a
QUIZ!
But more good news!
I’m going to give you the questions in the Easter quiz - today!
The quiz is going to be given about half way through the liturgy
at the Easter Vigil and at all the Easter Sunday
masses.
Here are the questions for the quiz.
Question One
Do you reject sin so
as to live in the freedom of God’s children?
Question Two
Do you reject the
glamor of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?
Question Three
Do you reject Satan,
father of sin and prince of darkness?
These questions may sound familiar because they face us
every time we celebrate baptism at Mass in our
parish.
Every time the church celebrates the baptism of a new member
it calls on the assembly of the all-ready-baptized
to renew their baptismal promises -- beginning with
these three questions.
Now, in the first draft of my homily there followed here
two pages of explanation of the vocabulary in those
three questions.
More good news!
I suggest in my letter in the bulletin this week, “let’s live Lent
simply!”
So, in that spirit I have eliminated the two pages of explanation
with a simple story.
A young Cherokee girl noticed that her grandfather, the chief,
seemed very troubled and sad.
She asked, “Grandfather, what is wrong?”
He told her,
“Granddaughter, my heart is troubled
for it seems that there is a battle in my heart
-- like a fight between two wolves.
One wolf is evil:
filled with selfishness, envy, greed, arrogance,
lust, lies and pride.
The other wolf is
good:
filled with kindness, humility, compassion,
purity, truth and generosity.”
The little girl pondered the image and asked,
“Grandfather, which wolf will win?”
And the grandfather replied, “The one I feed.”
This story gets to the heart of the three questions in our Easter quiz.
Lent is a time to discern which wolf we are feeding
in our hearts, our minds, our imaginations, our
lives.
Do I feed the wolf of “sin and the glamor of evil?”
Or do I feed the wolf of compassion and generosity?
Our Lenten practice:
prayerful conversation with God,
fasting, giving up things, and generous care for
the poor
is meant to give us a clearer picture
of which wolf within us we are feeding.
Our prayer, our hope in Lent is that come Easter
the evil wolf will be starving to death
and the good wolf will be healthier than ever.
We go to the Lord’s table now where Jesus will feed us.
He will feed in us only what is good,
what is whole, true, pure and loving.
He will feed us with the life he laid down for us.
Christ will feed the good wolf within us;
the evil one he has already overcome.
The one we call the lamb has overcome the evil wolf.
At Easter we will celebrate our share in his victory.
Rev. Austin Fleming
******************************************
Homily for
March 2, 2003 - Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time - B
A “dowry” was a gift that a bride’s family gave to the groom as part
of the marriage contract.
The dowry might be cash, or jewels, or land or livestock.
In ancient Israel, there was also a gift that the groom gave to the
bride’s family.
It was called a “mohar.”
In our own time and place, I suppose the closest we come to these
betrothal gifts is
the
engagement ring,which the groom gives to the bride, and the cost of the
wedding celebration,
which is usually footed by the family of the bride.
One of these gifts, the “mohar” is in today’s first reading from
Hosea.
Here, the beloved, the bride is Israel, and the lover seducing her into the
desert,
the groom, is the Lord.
Perhaps by the desert moonlight, the Lord would get down on one knee,
offering Israel an engagement ring, asking to take her as his bride.
I tried to imagine what kind of engagement ring God might give to Israel.
Considering that it’s God who makes diamonds, it would have to be
something pretty spectacular.
So, it would probably come from Tiffany’s or Shreve’s,
maybe something like this...
(Bring out silver Shreve’s box with oversized diamond ring,
about 5 inches in circumference...)
The ring is brilliant - it gets your attention. It “engages”
your vision!
It seems to say, as the ads suggest, that this is somehow “for ever...”
And that is just the kind of engaging love the Lord offered Israel -
for ever.
But the Lord’s “mohar” in the reading from Hosea is not a ring.
His betrothal gift is greater.
It was right there in the first reading, in Hosea the prophet:
“I will espouse you, Israel, (not with cattle or
sheep or land)
I will espouse you with justice, with love, and
with faithfulness.”
Such is the “three carat” betrothal gift that God offers to Israel, his
beloved,
the people he wants to take as his bride.
And he offers the same to us, but we will find it hard to imagine this.
It is deeply unfortunate that so many of us imagine God to be
a scolding parent,
a policeman waiting in the bushes to catch us
speeding,
a private detective stalking our every move,
a sentencing judge - someone to be feared, even
avoided.
For some of us, God is an eternal flashing blue light
in the rear view mirror of our lives!
We have almost no understanding of God as
seducer, spouse,
partner, lover,
admirer, close friend,
even though the scriptures are filled with instances of how God is
revealed
precisely in these images of desire and intimacy.
(Go to Shreve’s box to get handcuffs...)
Rather than imagine that God is ready to offer us an engagement ring,
we’re afraid he’s going to pull out handcuffs
and arrest us!
(These are from Shreve’s, too - they’re sterling!)
(Hold up giant diamond ring and handcuffs)
Which image of God do is ours?
Which image do we prefer? Which do we desire?
What “handcuffs” us to our old ideas and fears,
keeping us from imagining God as friend, as lover?
If we are to open ourselves to images of God, new and different for us,
we will need to make changes, and to allow God to change us
just as the growing intimacy of friendship and marriage change us.
If we want to trade the handcuffs for the engagement ring,
we will need new wineskins for the new wine of
God’s desire for us.
Do you remember how Jesus imaged himself in today’s gospel?
As the bridegroom, as the lover!
He says that what he has to offer us is so new, so rich
that it will burst our seams if we stay as we are.
We must change if we want to drink in what he has to offer us.
Lent is just ahead of us. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday.
For many of us, Lent can be the high season of moral handcuffing!
Examining our consciences, finding our sins, asking for
forgiveness,
beating ourselves up, trying desperately to
get our act together before Easter.
Instead of spending Lent trying to get closer to God,
what if we were to spend Lent wondering how God is trying to get
close to us?
You can be sure that God is trying to get closer to us, 24/7!
And you can be sure that God is doing a better job of getting closer to us
than we are in trying to get closer to God!
Instead of spending all of Lent taking inventory of our sins,
what if we were to spend as much time in these 40
days
taking account of all the ways God’s love has
touched us?
What if we actually began to write down in a notebook
the ways in which we have experienced and do
experience
the love of God in our lives?
Instead of spending Lent pleading for a lenient sentence
before God the judge,
what if we were to spend Lent simply telling God, our lover,
how much we need, how much we desire his
justice,
his love, his
faithfulness...
St. Paul wrote to us today that the Spirit of God writes not on stone,
but upon the hearts of God’s people.
As an eighth grader writes over and over again, page after page,
“Billy loves Susie,”
so does the Spirit write upon our hearts, without ceasing,
“You are my beloved.”
Is there any other explanation for our being invited to sit at his table;
to share in feasting with the
Lord, our bridegroom; to be nourished with the life he laid down for us, so great was his love
for us.
It is no coincidence at all that the arms of the crucified Jesus are
wide open, waiting to enfold us,
embrace us, to hold us close.
Will we run away from an image of such great love,
handcuffed by our old ideas and fears?
Or will be allow ourselves to be seduced, engaged, and thus saved
by a God who desires us a lover desires the
beloved?
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.
**********************************************************
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 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 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 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
*********************************************************************
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 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 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
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