1^st Sunday of Lent February 26, 2012

In Today’s Gospel we hear Jesus was driven out into the desert.  As we reflect upon this Gospel we should realize from the beginning of time the desert has been an ever changing barren place where humans place their life in jeopardy when they venture there.

If one camped out in the desert in a tent and a hill was to the right of the tent, in the mooring the hill might have been shifted by the wind to the left.  In the desert one might freeze during the night or be roasted alive in the afternoon. The desert is a no mans land where humankind has never had the ability to control.  As such the desert is a place of the creator’s domain.  A place which facilitates ones encounter with the one true God.

Jesus was driven like one who is pushed, pulled, yanked and shoved by the spirit out into the desert.  It was an overpowering force he could not ignore – The Spirit of God himself sent Jesus, his son into the wilderness to endure testing and to encounter wild beasts.  Jesus remained there for forty of testing not just one!

Forty days is a symbolic echoing back to the forty days of testing of Moses on the mountain top and Elijah in the desert.  Forty days is the yarn that has woven the single tread garment of God’s salvation history together.

Jesus is showing us struggles and temptation are in themselves good for us.    This is a Providence story.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches   Providence is the stumbling block of evil.

Further it is a story that demonstrates the honor for the 1^st and 2^nd commandments.  I am the Lord God – there is no other.  Do not create false Gods before me.

The opposite of these commandments is what is taking place in our nation today.  It is called Polytheism.  Secular progressive American humanism and worldly idols are being fostered as tough the authority for our rights come from this human authority that knows better our Creator God.  We are being tempted to exchange our rights, the truth and freedom for silver, gold, technology, sex, lust, power, control, and greed.  All of these are Empty idols which lead us into bondage and slavery.

The lesson is simple, we cannot serve multiple Gods!

Evil is an unavoidable, painful, mysterious question with no quick answer.  Only Christian faith constitutes an answer to the question of evil.  Angles and people have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love.  God respects the freedom of his creatures and mysteriously knows how to derive good from evil.

We are living in providencial times.  We are living in the desert of temptation from every possible angle, political correctness and human secular progressivism are demanding power and control over our God given freedoms.  God is watching just as he did in the time of Noah?  Will the people remember His covenant He regularly sends them in the form of a rainbow or will they turn away?

Will the people of America condemn themselves and their children to learn first hand ancient lessons of bondage and slavery in the desert for forty years before they awaken and turn around to the only spirit that can save them?  Return to me with your whole heart and soul and all your being!

Do we realize the wild beasts of our life originate from deep within our  human condition and the place we make our free choices?  Even Jesus had to confront His human nature for we know He was fully human and fully divine and yet could not escape His human condition.

Today’s scripture teach temptation is an inner test, a struggle that strengthens each individual’s character and teaches each of us valuable lessons.

Lent in the Catholic Church is a time we can prepare for this moment of truth and the wild beasts running loose in our world and Satan who confronts us face to face.  We cannot avoid this encounter it is upon us here and now – yes here and now in 2012.

These forty of days of lent are a gift from God to help us prepare ourselves to come to understand and accept in the midst of turmoil God loves us exactly as we are this very moment.  The question is do you love ourselves more than our worldly stuff?  We are created in the image and likeness of God.  We are each given a soul and the freedom of choice.  The Lord wants to love that spirit which he placed within us.  He wants us to love our own  soul so that we can be opened to begin to love all those who we encounter on the journey through the tumultuous world of 2012.

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time – September 18, 2011

In the Gospel of Matthew, when did the landowner go out to hire workers? The landowner went out at dawn.  What time did he need to get out of bed?  What time of day does dawn occur?  Dawn is the time when sun light first begins to break over the horizon.  Deer hunters know dawn occurs thirty minutes before the sun actually peeks over the horizon from the east.

Dawn is also a term we use to describe the moment there is sufficient intellectual understanding / light so one can see.  Could it be Jesus is teaching His disciples and followers with this parable to give them the spiritual light they need to understand the point of this gospel!  How about you and I?

One of the realities is our human, social, political and even religious experience is they often serve as automatic emotional stumbling blocks, rather than receptors for spiritual insight and truth.

Individual rights, the idea of basic human fairness, the usual daily wage, fair pay, workers and union’s rights, equality of race, gender, and age can all capture and sometimes hijack our ability to listen with an open heart and mind.  How do we sort through the tsunami of images and sound bits of crises of human social and economic images being streamed at us at “4G” force 24/7 in our world of 2011?

How we counter act, the worlds cry to unsettle and over power us with artificial crises and hidden agendas.  Sometimes, we just need to sit down, open our mind, spirit and soul and pray for the graces we need to achieve spiritual insight!

Today’s Gospel provides such insight.  Jesus addresses an audience beyond the community of his disciples – an audience opposed to Jesus himself.  A community upset, because of his open and public reception of the “scoundrels, tax collectors and sinners” from all walks of life.

Jesus teaches using parables.  He does so because parables rob the listener of the ability to create an opposing argument while Jesus is still teaching.  The listener is not only forced to listen but must digest the message before sufficient understanding can occur for one to begin to express an opinion for or against.  The human process of digesting parables provides the spirit of truth a window of opportunity to penetrate ones soul.

This is a moment of truth for you and I!

Jesus cannot be locked up and kept in a limited human created and conceived convenient box by religious or civil authority.  As for me – Silly me, in the past I discovered I had locked Jesus up in my own conceived box without the benefit of the wisdom to know our God is a Big God and escaped before I could close the lid.

Jesus telling us this story to open us up?  When the work day is done, the land owner turns the tables on us and pays the last hired first and finally the first are the last paid.  What did the land owner pay them?  Each received the usual daily wage.  Each received a denarius or enough!  The land owner provided what the world considered the exact amount to satisfy the worth, dignity, shelter, sustenance of each laborer.

But what is this story really about?  Isaiah says my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways.  As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts, says the Lord.  This wage they received must have communicated much a higher meaning.

What is the just and usual wage Jesus is teaching about.  Each receives enough – enough to meet their needs – enough to fill them full – light sustaining enough.

Each and everyday we enter a spiritual market place with the opportunity to work in the vineyard.  But most of the time we are like the laborers in the story – we are idle for some reason and perhaps even unaware of the vineyard that surrounds us.

Like the laborers, we are waiting upon the lord to supply us with what we need to survive each day.  But what is the ingredient we need?  Grace?  The good news is God’s grace is always available.  The good news is God’s grace is always enough.  The good news is it doesn’t matter if we decide early or late his grace is enough to save us.  The good news is God’s grace is enough for those who had been righteous all their lives and enough for the scoundrels and wicked who messed up their lives completely.

The great news in this story is, each of us live in this market place and can step into the vineyard without moving our feet.  All that is required is an open heart!  The vineyard is connected to the location we inhabit no matter where we go!  This is the message of hope all us long for!  No matter how lowly we think we are, how wicked we may have been or untrustworthy or even been a scoundrel there is hope for us.  If we have fallen, crashed and burned there is hope for us!

People of God, we call this hope God Grace!  It is everywhere and it is free!

To obtain Salvation the objective is to be last — Listen to the reading from Isaiah.

Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near.
Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts; let him turn to the LORD for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.

Note did we hear the scoundrel and the wicked were called to seek the Lord.  Are they the ones we would think of first?  Now is the time while the Lord is near.  Turn to the Lord for mercy!  God does not act according to human standards, ways or thinking!

God does not work on a rights or deserts scale, but simply on loving scale because that is what is at the heart of God’s being.  We are each called to open your hearts, enter the vineyard with confidence, where God will provide enough to each, so we can be a light unto a world in desperate need of an encounter with love.

Have we locked God in a Box?  And if we have, will be let Him escape?

It is not merely the time that we put in. It is the heart that we put into the time we have.

In God’s kingdom people are treated according to their spiritual needs, not according to their deserts.  People are treated with love regardless of their status or time they show up.

God does not work on a rights or deserts scale, but simply on loving scale because that is what is at the heart of God’s being.  We are each called to open your hearts, enter the vineyard with confidence, where God will provide enough to each, so we can be a light unto a world in desperate need of an encounter with love.

The job of the Christian is to overcome evil with good.  In 2011 recognizing evil has become much more difficult.  The evil of untruth is routinely propogated aned camafloged within a language context which may contain some truth, but is designed to avoid the real truth in the hopes of escaping being recognized as an outright lie.  Tell an untruth enough times and the untruth may be accepted by some as the truth.  We Christians are called to reshape culture with the truth rather than submit to culture.

In the gospel we hear Mathhew tells us Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.

Were you paying attention?  Let’s see!  How did Jesus tell them?

One day, while I reading a book, my 3 year old grand daughter told me she had learned the Lord’s prayer.  She asked, do you want to hear it?  I said sure, as I continued to read.  My grand daughter asked again, do you want to listen to me Paw Paw?  Sure I said, go ahead I am listening!  No Paw Paw, I want you to listen to me with your eyes.

Jesus was teachiung his disciples to listen with more than their eyes so they could learn to discern the truth – listening with one eyes is the secret to discerning the truth hiiden within behavior – does behavior match the spoken word.  Jesus was teaching his discples to use the whole essence of their being, spirit, mind, physical eyes and ears and yes yes yes their spiritual eyes and ears!

It is very very difficult not to conform to the wonder and image of this age!  The techonological advances in our world has lead people to work overtime creating pleasing language and visual images designed to support an agenda rather than address truth.  Should we look closely at behavior, we often discover ones behavior does not support the images and the words spoken.  The truth is always the truth.  A lie surrounded with pleasing words we want to hear is still always is a lie.

One who seeks and speaks the truth will encounter what Jesus encountered in His day!  We cannot separate Jesus from the Cross.  The way Jesus taught was through the example he set for his disciples!  Jesus knew he must walk the walk for the lessons to be heard with the physical and spiritual eye to be fully understood.  When one lives the truth one may expect to suffer.

The Catholic Cathechism teaches in the process of conversion; one must recognize the Lord exists, one must suffer and then become converted.  We don’t get to skip the suffering.  Modern day Americans seem to have lost the wisdom of Jesus teaching for so many will sell their soul to escape suffering.  Listen – Learn & suffer!

(The following is sung)

Oh Lord – set me on your knee.  Oh Lord won’t you set me on your knee.

Though I scared, tired and worn, it’s on your knee that I’m reborn.

Oh Lord set me on your knee.

On your knee is where the stories are told, that give me courage and make me bold.  Oh Lord won’t you set me on your knee.

From your knee I can clearly see you are the only source of truth that sets me free.  Oh Lord set me on your knee.

To be discouraged and yet find beauty in the fire of the spirit buried within suffering, trial and discouragement, paints the picture of one who accepts a prophetic call.  The Lord calls each of us by name to transform the world.  His call causes us to search our hearts to the bone for the truth.

Are we content where we stand?  Are we who we want to be?  Are we communicating the truth in how we act and speak?

In the reading from Jeremiah, we hear the prophet Jeremiah loudly lamenting his situation in life.  Jeremiah was in the midst of an internal crises.  We hear him complaining bitterly about being duped by the Lord.  All of his prophetic skills and talents at this point had been used only to root out and tear down.   Jeremiah had become a prophet of doom.  Can’t you hear Jeremiah asking the lord, “When Lord, do I get to play the part of the good guy prophet?”   Perhaps Jeremiah was a little incredulous himself.  When do I get to rejoice in the pride of my prophetic calling?  When do I get to be recognized and accepted as the good guy by the people around me?

This pericope from Jeremiah is a passionate soliloquy.  It’s as if Jeremiah is being goaded by the despair of his day.  Though Jeremiah is lamenting, he admits that God’s word is like a consuming fire rising in his bones.  This disclosure speaks to us about the nature of inspiration that merges from within the discouragement and hardship of the prophetic calling.  And the actions of Jeremiah shout to a suffering world the spirit of Hope revealed in the words of truth flowing from the heart of the speaker amplified by by actions mirroring the word spoken!

One does not need a prompter to sing a message of hope that spring from it’s home in the heart of truth.

Does anyone here know who we Christians are?  Can anyone tell me who we call ourselves?  What is the name of today’s Solemnity?  The Body of Christ!

Are you ready for a story about our history!  Children, this is a triple history story of the people of faith and our family right here at St. P.  Our stories are treasures to be carried in our hearts and to be revealed to our children, grand children and the people you encounter in life!  To top things off my grand children are here today.

Children are you ready to take notes?  Meme give them a note pad!

From the Book of Deuteronomy – For forty years He directed all our ancestors journeying in the desert, so as to test them by affliction to find out their intentions!  He tested them with hunger and feed them with manna in order to show us, not by bread alone does one live, but by every word from the mouth of God.  There is a hidden lesson in this story not to be missed.  My grand children’s mother is celebrating her 40th birthday this weekend.  Write it down – it often takes us humans forty years to begin to fully open up our spiritual ears so we can hear the truth revealed in the story.

And do not forget who brought us out of slavery; who guided us through the vast and terrible desert, with poisonous scorpions and serif serpents, with its parched land and waterless ground, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock.  Throughout lives God is with us through it all walking at our side waiting for us to acknowledge His presence.

Did you know, children, we have people right here in this parish, St Peter the Rock, who can identify with the spiritual journey of the Israelites through the desert for forty years?  We have our own unique story.  We have a beautiful tradition as well when our young children invite or come and sit with our elderly children who know the journey through the desert – living saints tho they would not call themselves such.  Don’t lose that open invitation to be melted into one body no matter each persons age!

We are the off spring of a people who journeyed in adjacent towns for 46 and 48 years respectfully without a parish or a dedicated priest.  We are the off spring of a people who were virtual church orphans and were passed on from circuit priest to priest.  We too are a people tested to find out whether or not it was our intention to keep the commandments to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as our self.

We are the off spring of a people who took ownership for keeping faith alive.  We are a people who elected to let individual mission self interests die.  We are a people who were willing to risk death of one dream, for the hope of the birth of a new dream.  St Peter the Rock was born from the ashes of dreams willingly surrendered.  Two small communities decided to die that they could become one.

My own grand father helped build the first Catholic Church in my home town, the second largest Belgium community in our nation.

http://stbavochurch.com/

He was one the leaders who went to the local bishop to recruit a priest to minister to his people.  He and his wife ran a grocery store during the great depression and world war two.  The two of them willingly assisted the local community with food when food was rationed and money was scarce.  They carried a heavy cross when those same neighbors did not pay them back or support their local store when the war was over and chain stores arrived.  Their family built parts of the University of Notre Dame as well.

My father was a member of the Knights of Columbus and my dad took ownership for carrying metal folding chairs from the second floor of the Knights building down steep narrow steps to our car and then carried them up three sets of steps to the second floor of St Joseph school every time our community held an event.  I still remember as a second grader climbing those steep steps – that building would probably be condemned today, yet we never complained.  Year after year our family just did what necessary to support our larger faith family.

Each of us here has a rich family story to tell.  We are descendents of a people who clearly communicated in word and action the unity of the Body of Christ we celebrate at Mass as the Body of Christ.

Children this is a lesson to be remembered particularly on this Solemnity!  Self interest must die so that we preserve the unity of the whole Body of Christ.

The Catholic catechism teaches we are a people who gather around the altar that is the symbol of Christ himself, present and united in the midst of the assembly of his faithful people journeying though life.  It is in the sacred gathering of God’s people at the Eucharistic Mass that we encounter the fullness of unity.  It is during the course of the Mass that we are taught and experience a melting away our individual self and become united with Christ into one Body.  At the end of Mass we take that Spirit of Christ out into a world thirsting and hungry  for the truth and hope that can only come with a change that takes place in the spirit of ones heart.

The celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice is wholly directed toward an intimate union of the faithful with Christ through communion.  We become the Body and Blood of Christ in union most clearly when we receive the Body and Blood of Christ at communion.

Who do we say we are?

Sixth Sunday of Easter May 29, 2011

I want you to use your God given imaginations today.  Pretend you have a mirror in your hand.  Oh I know, the women are better at this than men.  But when we men are honest, we know when were teenagers we spent a good deal of time in front of a mirror prepping for that moment we might encounter that girl of our dreams.

Hold up your mirror in front of your face and gaze into it!  Here’s looking at you!  The Holy Spirit seeks to draw the one looking back in the mirror into the unfolding story of salvation history.  It is a Spirit of unity and evangelization in this Easter season as the feast of Pentecost draws near.

We hear the voices of the early Christians, a Deacon, the Apostles, Peter himself and Jesus Christ who teaches He is always in unity with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Each voice is calls us out to an adventure by participating in the evangelization of the world.

Are we ready?  Simultaneously we are confronted by a world unable and unwilling to recognize, let alone encounter the spirit of truth.  As such the world creates artificial boundaries and stumbling blocks for us.  It works on our expectations of who is the one called to this job.  So whose job is it?  It’s the pope’s job!  It’s the Bishop or priest’s job!  No it’s the deacon’s job!  Well it’s not my job?  The works overtime to an escape artists attitude in each one of us!

We have been taught and know the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one.  The Commandments come from one, the Word Incarnate comes from another while the spirit of the advocate comes from yet another.  Today’s scriptures teach while each may appear to move independently the Trinity always moves and works in harmony and unity of purpose.

It is our worldly view that contaminates and prevents us from seeing the fullness of the truth.

Acts Chapter 8: 1.  On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

What a mess – what a mess!  The early church confronted a mess from the very beginning!

And before we can take a breath, we hear of Steven, one of the seven chosen to wait at table to serve widows and free the apostles to pray, teach and preach.  Not expected is Steven chosen as a waiter and there he is out preaching the good news in the street for which he is stoned to death.  And who is standing in the crowd but Paul the unexpected converter of the gentiles.  Remember Paul who is watching as Steven is being stoned to death is still hard at work hunting down and persecuting Christians.

That is the back drop of today’s liturgy of the word describing the formation of the early church.  God reveals himself in salvation history by calling and opening the unexpected folk to step into the role of evangelist.

Because of the persecution, the early converts fled into Samaria.  Today’s reading describes what may be the first-time advance of the gospel across the cultural threshold into Samaria.

Again in this story we hear of Philip!  Who was Philip?  Philip like Steven was one of the original seven deacons.  And true to the deacon’s call, Philip is in a foreign world of Samaria and steps into the middle of a spiritual encounter on behalf of the pioneering evangelization spirit of the church.

The Samaritans were noted for practicing sorcery and magic.  They were a society steeped in occult magic and syncretistic religious practice.  Syncretistic means they were willing to merge differing and even opposed beliefs systems which in truth were in conflict.  Confusion about the truth was subverted not so unlike it is today.  Political correctness practiced in our day is syncretistic.

Philip was reaching out, preaching, teaching and healing a people who had an awareness of faith and scripture but lacked a personal encounter with the spirit of truth.

We hear when the apostles heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John who prayed for them that they may receive the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit had not fallen on them yet, until the apostles laid hands on them and they received.  Why was the Holy Spirit delayed?

The Holy Spirit is the advocate that unites and preserves the unity of the church while the world continuously seeks to create human animosity between peoples like the Jews and Samaritans.  The unfolding story of God’s plan reveals the laying of hands through the apostles is the process of the church unifying peoples.  The Holy Spirit converts on both sides of the cultural barrier between peoples.   The fullness of Holy Spirit seeks to open and reveal Christ through the process of people finding each other. Samaritans and Jewish Christians were assured that the Samaritans were truly regenerate and the spiritual equals of regenerate Jews.

The symbol of the unity of the Church through the Holy Spirit is revealed through the laying on of hands.

So how does this affect me?  Back to the mirror in your hand!  Listen to 1 Peter again!  “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks for a reason for hope!”  The people of our nation and the world are desperate and starving for hope and an encounter with the truth of who they were created to be!

The one looking back in the mirror was created for this day and time.  The one looking back in the mirror is the unexpected one who encounters people everyday who thirsts for hope and purpose.

“Do it with gentleness and reverence keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct may themselves be put to shame.”  God’s counter to political correctness is the truth!

Yep each one here is called to Go into the world and proclaim the Good News.

Sixth Sunday of Easter May 29, 2011

The Holy Spirit seeks to draws us into the unfolding story of salvation history.  It is a Spirit of unity and evangelization as the feast of Pentecost draws near.  We hear the voices of the early Christians, a Deacon, the Apostles, Peter himself and as always Jesus Christ who is always in unity with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Each voice calls us to venture out and evangelize the world.

Artificial Barriers and Stumbling Blocks for the Spirit of Truth:

Are we ready?  We are confronted by a world unable and unwilling to recognize let alone encounter the spirit of truth.  As such the world creates artificial boundaries and stumbling blocks for us.  So whose job is it?  It’s the pope’s job!  It’s the Bishop or priest’s job!  No it’s the deacon’s job!  Well it’s not my job?  Escape artists are we!

3 in 1

We know the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one.  The Commandments come from one, the Word Incarnate comes from another, while the spirit of the advocate comes from another.  Today’s scriptures teach, while each may appear to move independently the Trinity always moves and works in harmony and unity of purpose.

World View Contaminates:

It is our worldly view that contaminates and prevents us from seeing the fullness of the truth.

Acts Chapter 8: 1.  On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

What a mess – what a mess!  And This where we start! 

Before we can take a breath, Steven, one of the seven is out preaching the good news in the street for which he is stoned to death.  There standing in the crowd is Paul watching on.  Remember Paul is still hard at work hunting down and persecuting Christians.

That is the back drop of today’s liturgy of the word describing the formation of the early church.

Because of this persecution, the early converts fled into Samaria.  Today’s reading describes what may be the first-time advance of the gospel across the cultural threshold into Samaria.

In this story we hear of Philip!  Who was Philip?  Philip like Steven was one of the original seven deacons.  And true to the deacons call, Philip is in a foreign world of Samaria in the middle of a spiritual encounter on behalf of the pioneering evangelization spirit of the church.

Samaritans = Syngenistic (Merging even opposed beliefs):

The Samaritans were noted for practicing sorcery and magic.  They were a society steeped in occult magic and syncretistic religious practice.  Syncretistic means they were willing to merge differing and even opposed beliefs systems which in truth were in conflict.  Confusion about the truth was subverted not so unlike it is today,

Philip was reaching out, preaching, teaching and healing a people who had an awareness of faith and scripture but lacked a personal encounter with the spirit of truth.

The Laying of Hands / Unity of Spirit:

When the apostles heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John who prayed for them that they may receive the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit had not fallen on them yet, until the apostles laid hands on them and they received.  Why was the Holy Spirit delayed?

The Holy Spirit is the advocate that unites and preserves the unity of the church while the world seeks to create human animosity between Jew and Samaritan.  The unfolding story of God’s plan reveals the apostles came to unify peoples, converts on both sides of the cultural barrier.   The fullness of Holy Spirit seeks to open and reveal Christ through the process of people finding each other. Samaritans and Jewish Christians were assured that the Samaritans were truly regenerate and the spiritual equals of regenerate Jews.

Unity:

The symbol of the unity of the Church through the Holy Spirit is revealed through the laying on of hands.  So how does this effect me?  Listen to 1 Peter again!  Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks for a reason for hope!  Do it with gentleness and reverence keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct may themselves be put to shame.

Yep each one is called to Go into the world and proclaim the Good News.

Easter Vigil April 23, 2011

This is the night of hope!  This is a night when the story of salvation history is told.  This is the night our savior spent in a tomb waiting for resurrection day!  This is a story of hope bound up in a story of human brutality that took place over 200 years ago.  Yet it is this hope that transcends time and is fully alive in 2011!

The salvation history stories of the Old and New Testament rekindled a history story that shook my life as a young man yet still a boy.  Does anyone remember November 22, 1963 and what took place on that date?  Has anyone watched the video replay of the events that took place at the Dallas hospital when President John F Kennedy was assassinated?  I will never forget.  I was still just a boy!  I was glued to the TV for the next several days as I watched the events of that day being retold as history continued to unfold before my eyes.

There is one very brief moment I wonder if anyone noticed.  It was a moment I missed but my mother did not.  While President Kennedy was laying on the gurney in the emergency room, partially undressed in the Dallas hospital, he was surrounded by security, police, nurses and doctors all seemingly frantically doing what they could to save his life.  It was a scene of near panic, chaos and emotional turmoil as people were desperately working to save his life while trying to digest the deadly seriousness of the circumstances that surrounded them.

There at JFK’s feet stood Jackie Kennedy.  She appeared disheveled yet seemed the most composed person in the room.  With great calm she bent over and kissed her husband’s feet.  In all the chaos, panic, turmoil and darkness that surrounded that moment, Jackie kissed JFK’s bare feet.

My mother didn’t miss the tenderness and love communicated displayed in that moment of utter emotional panic and darkness.  It was a gesture of unconditional love!  It was a gesture of being blessed no matter the outcome!  It was a gesture I am with you no matter the nightmare that surrounds.  It was a kiss of hope that can only spring from the deep recesses of ones spirit.

This is the night from which that hope springs forth like the son’s rising in the morning.  There is Hope for us no matter the darkness of any moment of darkness we encounter.  This Hope sustains our spirit to resist the temptation to lay down and feel sorry for ourselves.  This hope opens the doorway to our hearts to embrace the possibilities of the promises released by the resurrected spirit of Jesus.

Do not be afraid or lament our circumstances.  It is not a mistake that we are here at St. Peter the Rock this day.  It is not a mistake that we are encountering the difficulties of our day in 2011 on the journey home.  We were each born for his day!  The joy and success we encounter on our journey lies in our ability to let the son shine in.  It lies in the real spiritual possibility we can be born again!  Our hope lies in the power of resurrected Lord, in the birthing of a new day and in our willingness to open our hearts to following the pathway to the truth our Lord promised would set us free.

Listen to the words of Matthew again.  Behold Jesus unexpectedly interrupted their fearful yet overjoyed running.  He met them in the midst of the unknown and uncertainty of the moment.  They were not just running, they were running on the wings of hope.  They were running to announce to their brothers and sisters the news of Hope that came alive in their spirits and was shouting from their hearts!

And what did they do when they encountered Jesus?  Their fear must have left them.  They not only approached him; they knelt down and even embraced his feet and did him homage.  Can you imagine that?  Imagine what his feet must have looked like?  The nail marks, the bruises, the cuts, the blood stains and the dirt.  Most of us could not have imagined embracing some ones feet and we would automatically withdraw!  Yet something more powerful was at work.  It was hope, it was joy, and the realization that the impossible was possible; was exploding in their minds.  It was an encounter with pure compassion, mercy and love!

On Holy Thursday, we gave thanks and remembered the night Jesus washed his disciples feet, stinky, dirty feet.  This same Jesus who came in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of “the suffering servant” modeled again for his disciples and for you and me proper humility for successful leadership.

It is this same Jesus whose crucifixion embraced and kissed our dirty stinky feet and in the process washed us clean.

Then what did he say to them?  Do not be afraid!  Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there I will see them.

First an angel and again Jesus told the women “do not be afraid!  Both gave them a command – what was it?  Quickly Go and tell his disciples and his brothers hope live – He has been raised from the dead!

And what will be the consequences of doing what they had been told?

Go and tell and then go again and you will see the Lord.

That my friends, my brothers and sisters what was the first command given to the women of the Church at the dawning of this new day!

“Do not be afraid”.  “Do not be afraid”.  “Do not fear”.

Go – Go tell the world to Hope, for He has risen!

4t Sunday of Lent – April 3, 2011

1 Samuel 16: 1b, 6-7, 10-13a, Ephesians 5: 8-14, John 9: 1-41

The readings were long this morning!  Did they put you to sleep?  (singing) Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead, open your eyes and see the light of Christ. 

A disciple of Christ must keep the faith and profess it, confidently bearing witness to it, and spreading it: “All must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, expecting human persecutions which the Church never lacks.  One must have their eyes open!

How do we do that?  Time to get some mud in yer eye.  One day at the ATL airport, the passengers had been delayed and were waiting for the pilots to show up for their flight so they could depart.  The pilot and co-pilot finally show up.  Both appear to be blind as they walk past the passengers; the pilot is using a white cane, the co-pilot with a guide dog.  Both have their eyes covered with sunglasses.  

The passengers board the aircraft with some anxiety.  The engines start, and the airplane taxi’s out to the runway with some jerkiness adding anxiety and uneasiness.  They look at each other and whispering begins.

The plane finally begins accelerating rapidly, and the people sitting in the window seats recognize they have passed the normal lift off point and begin to panic.  Some passengers begin praying aloud.  As the plane gets closer and closer to the end of the runway their voices become more hysterical.

With less than twenty feet of runway left, there is a sudden change in the pitch of the shouts as everyone screams.  At that very second, the plane lifts off and is airborne.   

Up in the cockpit, the co-pilot breathes a sigh of relief and says to the pilot: “You know, one of these days the passengers aren’t going to scream, and we won’t know when to lift off!”

The scripture readings today are long.  There is a reason they are so long.  Today scripture is trying to teach us about the length and extended degree humanity will go to attribute culpability which can lead to spiritual blindness.  Oh we may have perfect 20-20 eye eyesight, but spiritually we can be as blind as a bat.  Somebody just has to be at fault for every problem. 

Look at how hard the people in this gospel worked to identify the culpable one.  At the on set the disciples questioned Jesus about who was at fault.  Once healed the people began to question healed blind man’s neighbors, then the Pharisees were brought in, then they all went back to the healed blind man, still his word wasn’t good enough so they rounded up the blind mans parents.  His parents were afraid and sent every one back to their blind son.  Then the Pharisees confronted the blind man again and being unhappy with his response had him thrown out.  After Jesus hears the story he confronts the Pharisee in us all.  He consoles the bind man after the Pharisees had him thrown out!  Back and forth, back and forth they went until — I am Out of breath!

One could analyze this story and draw an analogy that the people in this story were so bound and determined they would stomp through a puddle again and again to until it became a mud hole simply to satisfy human natures desire to attribute fault. We humans are sure someone is at fault, yet at the same time complain about why the water in the mud puddle we are stomping through has become so awfully muddy!  We humans will continue to make the mess worse and worse until like the passengers in plane everyone is ready to scream!

Yet in all of this mess there is hope!  In salvation history, the Lord God and in this case Jesus takes the mud we humans create through our misguided nature and turns it into light.  Jesus came to teach us that those who can not see might seeand those who see might become blind.  The lesson is clear we the people are going to go blind walking back and forth through the mud puddles of life until we open our stubborn hearts and minds to the healing light the spirit of Jesus offers us in the middle of the mud puddle.

We don’t have to look far.  Cosnider our families, our relationships with friends, community isses and yes even our national politicians as they purposely misuse the English language to vilianize their opponernt in an effort to lay blame on someone toher than the ones who created the mess in the first place.  The truth is to be avoided because the hidden within the truth is the light of Christ from which no one can hide!   

How long had the man in our Gospel had been blind?  From birth, but was that twenty years or fifty years?  He could have thought of himself as a born loser.  When he was healed he could have very well said, “Twenty wasted years … fifty years … almost my whole life.”  

He could have gone about the town trying to shame those who had given him nothing, during those years of begging and scrounging.  He could have demanded he be compensated for his suffering.  But no! Instead he worshiped and gave praise to Jesus, and went about giving thanks for the gift of sight and the hope of a new life.  He was filled with gratitude and focused on the rebirth of the possibilities for the future in spite of all the people who were caught up and still stomping in the mud puddle.

The Gospel story reminds us that it is Jesus who ignites dreams, kindles the light of hope, and opens eyes of the blind.  If we want to clear the muddy puddles in our family, with friends and even solve our states and nation’s muddled up mess’s, we must turn to Jesus Christ with open hearts and eyes.   

So let us recapture and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to all those we meet.  By saying “Here’s mud in your eye.”

Coming soon!  4th Sunday of Lent Already?  The gospel of Jn 9:1-41 or 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38. 

Night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground
and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,

I gotta get to work – Oh Holy Spirit – the idove what you have in mind for your people??

To be followed by a Tax day Tea Party Event – April 15, 2011 – the Spirit starts in the gut, makes it’s way to the brain, sinks down into the heart where it lites a fire that leaps up through the lips!