Second Sunday of Lent (Cycle C)

It’s Good For Us To Be Here 

Genesis 15:5-12,17-17; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36 

In today’s gospel we hear Luke’s account of what we call the Transfiguration of Jesus. Peter, James and John go up a mountain with Jesus to pray. These are the same three who follow Him up the Mount of Olives after the Last Supper and fall asleep during His agony. I wonder sometimes if maybe Peter, James and John suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome because, here in today’s gospel, they fall asleep as well. But when they awaken, they witness a spectacular event. They catch a glimpse of the true glorified reality of Jesus that they had never witnessed previously: Moses and the prophet Elijah talking with Jesus about His “exodus” which would take place in Jerusalem. The “exodus” that they are discussing, of course, is his passage through suffering and death into life. Peter then exclaims “Lord, it is good for us to be here!” and proposes building three tents. Then they are all enveloped in a cloud and they hear the voice of the invisible God proclaim, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.”

In our lives, we too can have our “mountaintop experiences,” moments of a profound and overwhelming experience of God in our lives. Like Peter, James and John in today’s gospel, Jesus invites each of us to a “mountaintop” - times and places of quiet prayer and meditation and self-examination. And there, in the stillness of our quiet and solitude, we allow ourselves to be open to an intensely personal and spiritual experience - moments of grace, “brushes with the holy,” that we do not plan and cannot make happen – moments which are pure gifts of God. And like Peter, we too exclaim “It is good for us to be here” and want to pitch our tent, hold on to the moment, and desire the experience to last. However these intense and extraordinary experiences with the holy can’t last forever (at least in this life). We only get glimpses of God’s glory, and then we have to move on and go back down the mountain.

Yes, as wonderful and as uplifting as it can be when we are graced by the mountaintop experiences of faith, mountaintop moments do not last; we cannot stay on the mountain because the fact of the matter is, we live in the valleys. And we are called back to the valley, to where the need is, to where God’s love is needed. Because it is in the valleys that every night, there are people without a place to sleep. Every day there are children who are hungry, people who are lonely, people who are hurt and grieving and overcome with worry. No, we cannot stay on the mountain. But it is in the valley that a new transfiguration must occur.

There’s a story that once there was a little boy who decided he wanted to go find God. He knew it would probably be a long trip to find God, so he decided to pack a lunch, consisting of four packs of Twinkies and two cans of root beer. (This kid must have read the same diet book that I did!) He set out on his journey and went a few blocks until he came to a park. In this park on a bench, sat an old woman looking at the pigeons.

The little boy sat down beside her and watched the pigeons too. After a while he grew hungry and so he pulled out some of his Twinkies. As he ate, he noticed the woman watching him, so he offered her a Twinkie. She gratefully accepted it and smiled at him. There was something about her smile that fascinated the boy. He thought it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen, and he wanted to see it again. So he brought out the cans of root beer, opened one and offered her the other one. Once again she smiled that beautiful smile.

For a long time the two sat on that park bench, eating Twinkies, drinking root beer, smiling at each other, and watching the pigeons. But neither said a word. Finally, the little boy realized that it was getting late and that it was time to go home. He started to leave, took a few steps, then turned back and gave the woman a big hug. Her smile beamed brighter than ever before.

When he arrived back home, his mother noticed that he was happy, yet somehow strangely quiet. "What did you do today?" she asked, trying to figure out what was going on. "Oh, I had lunch in the park with God," he said. Before his mother could reply he added, "You know she has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen."

Meanwhile the woman had left the park and returned to her home. Her son noticed something different about her. "What did you do today, Mom?" he asked. "Oh, I ate Twinkies and drank root beer in the park with God," she said. And before her son could say anything, she added. "You know he is a lot younger than I had imagined."

God appears in our lives in surprising places. It isn’t often a dramatic blinding revelation like on the mountaintop in today’s gospel. Sometimes it’s more a matter of removing our blinders and looking at what is right in front of us, or more precisely, WHO is in front of us. And we soon discover that God is right there, on the park bench, in the grocery store, on the street, in the house next door, in the classroom, in the living room.

Why is it that we find it so difficult to appreciate the holiness in the ordinary moments of our lives? When a child crawls into our lap needing reassurance; when the hand of the homeless reaches out for a sandwich; when our neighbor knocks on our door in need of a cup of coffee and someone who will listen, when someone with whom we have been disagreeing extends to us the olive branch of forgiveness and reconciliation; and when all there is left to do for someone who is sick is to pray for them.

Each of us is called to imitate the example of Mother Teresa who, while walking the dirty crowded streets of Calcutta looked into the face of a poor, homeless, sick man, and suddenly saw the face of that man transfigured into the image of Christ. And Mother Teresa, like St. Peter, said said, “It is good for me to be here” and took the man in her arms and cared for his needs. Or St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest, who recognized in the face of a Jewish man condemned to die in a starvation bunker in Auschwitz the transfigured face of Christ, and proclaimed, “It is good for me to be here” and gave his life in exchange for his fellow prisoner. Or Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Workers Movement, who committed her life to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer and hospitality to the homeless, the exiled, the hungry, and the forsaken in whom she saw Christ, and proclaimed, “It is good for me to be here.”

And so, here we are in the midst of another Lent – a time that we are called to the mountaintop for prayer and reflection. An opportunity for us to set apart holy times and holy places in order to focus on God, and come to know God, and experience God in deeper, more profound ways. And it is a time to descend into the valley of our ordinary lives to demonstrate charity and service. A time to recognize our glorified Savior in the broken and needy, in those whom Jesus referred to as the “least ones”. And whether on the mountain or in the valley, it is a time of penance and fasting. A time to allow our very lives to be transfigured and for God to transform us from sin to redemption, from death to life, from being hopeless to being saved. It is a time that through the Eucharist, God transforms ordinary bread and wine into spiritual food that gives us strength to do God’s will and be God’s agents in the world. A time when God can transform our earthly, broken humanity into faithful members of the Body of Christ.

The season of Lent . . . It’s good for us to be here.

First Sunday of Lent

Slow Down! Desert Up Ahead! 

Deuteronomy 26: 4-10; Romans 10: 8-13; Luke 4: 1-13 

Today is the first Sunday of the holy season of Lent. During the next six weeks we will devote special attention to the saving mysteries of our faith, especially to the supreme sacrifice that Christ Our Lord made to set us free. The next six weeks are like a musical composition. On a piece of sheet music, in the upper left-hand corner above the notes, the composer writes a word. This word tells the musician or singer what speed the music should be. If it says "presto," that means, "sing it fast." But if the composer writes the word "LENTO" it means to “slow down. Take this slowly." Our word "Lent" has the same root. It means, SLOW DOWN, and take life more slowly. Lent is like a musical composition that begins softly and slowly and builds to a crescendo. The music of Lent culminates with the great feasts of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the joy of Easter Sunday. Lent is a special season. During these weeks, and especially on the last three days, we will join in prayers and songs that are only used once a year. We will wash feet, venerate the cross, and light a candle, using ancient rituals that are reserved exclusively for these special days.

In today’s gospel we read that after he was baptized Jesus was "led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.". Where else but the desert could you have such a meaningful encounter of the Holy Spirit as well as Satan, of the wild beasts as well as the holy angels? The desert was the birthplace of the People of God through the covenant between God and Abraham. The Hebrew people, who escaped from Egypt as scattered tribes, wandered through the desert, arriving in the Promised Land as one nation. It was in the desert that they received the Ten Commandments and entered into a new covenant with God. And, in the course of their history when their love and faithfulness to God grew cold, the prophets would suggest their return to the desert to rediscover their identity, their vocation and their mission as a way of reawakening their faith and strengthening their covenant relationship with God. The great prophets Elijah and John the Baptist were people of the desert: they lived in the desert, ate desert food and adopted a simple desert lifestyle. The desert is the university where God teaches His people. And so, it was the desert where Jesus came to distinguish between the voice of God, which he should follow, and the voice of Satan, which is temptation.

And just as Jesus went out into the desert, away from the busy-ness of the crowds and daily life, to be alone with his Father and to do battle with Satan, Jesus calls us to do the same. He invites us to take a few short weeks out of our daily routine and to slow down - to spend more "quality-time" with God in prayer and reflection; to reflect on the great things God has done for us as individuals, as a family, as a people, and as a community of faith; to do battle with the evil one by confronting the sin that is present in our lives. And so we need to slow down, and take a personal, honest and searching inventory of our lives. What patterns of good are there? What patterns in my life -- the obvious ones and those that are more subtle -- make me less than loving and faithful in my relationship with God and others?

This Lent, as with so many other times in our life, we enter into that desert with Jesus as our companion, example, and guide. We too face the wild-beasts which oppress us and keep us from becoming the instruments of God’s mercy. We hunger through fast and abstinence for the fulfillment of grace in our lives, which are often filled with the un-nutritious fluff of shallow happiness.

So, whether it be in the private disciplines of fasting and prayer or attendance at the quiet reflective rituals of Stations of the Cross on Friday afternoons or evenings, or our Forty Hours Devotion; whether it be in devoting time to some volunteer work in the community or here at church, or in making time to read some biblical, devotional, inspirational literature - Lent is the time for our own personal desert experience. We cannot all afford to buy a camel and head off for the desert. But we can all create a desert space in our overcrowded lives. We can set aside a place and time to be alone daily with God, a time to distance ourselves from the many noises and voices that bombard our lives every day, a time to hear God’s word, a time to rediscover who we are before God, a time to say yes to God and no to Satan as Jesus did.

The desert is God’s workshop. It’s where God gets our attention. The desert is where our true allegiance is revealed. The desert is where the sounds of silence take on distinguishing characteristics, so that the voices which compete with God for our allegiance can be distinguished for what they are – Satan’s seductive voice. The desert does that for us.

On occasion the Spirit drives us there, as it drove Jesus, so we can deal with the things that would seduce us away from God, or identify and do battle with the things that are destroying us – those things that cripple or limit our lives. God drives us into the desert for our own good because it is there, in the desert, that we come to know ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, and our divine calling. And there, in the silence and recollection of the desert, we come to terms with ourselves as we really are. We are reconciled with the beasts and the angels in our lives and then we begin to experience peace in our lives once again.

As we begin our Lenten journey, our Gospel today reminds us that Christ entered the desert and emerged triumphant He faced everything that you and I can face, Satan and all of life’s beasts. Know that whatever the boundaries of your desert, whoever or whatever the beasts, the Spirit has driven you there as God’s beloved one, as Christ’s sister or brother, and will use the experience to draw you closer to himself while defeating the powers of Satan in your own life. You are not in the desert alone.

And so, let's slow down a little for the next several weeks. Jesus spent forty days in the desert. The same length of time is offered to us, between this day and Easter, to step back from the noise and clamoring and despair of civilization and life, and focus instead on God, to choose what is right and good and just and loving. If we take the time to look honestly at our lives, and to take note of our blessings and our shortcomings, with God's help we will be better for that effort. We will be able to remember and celebrate, with greater joy and intensity, the great things the Father has done for us through the death and resurrection of his Son.

And so . . . Welcome to Lent! Welcome to the desert!

Ash Wednesday

Here are a few suggestions for those who might be looking for something different to give up this Lent . . . things that perhaps we've never thought of giving up, but might be more sacrificial and, in the end, more spiritually beneficial than what we've done in previous Lents. Strive to make this Lent special!

• GIVE UP grumbling! Instead, "In everything give thanks." Constructive criticism is OK, but "moaning, groaning, and complaining" are not Christian disciplines. 

• GIVE UP 10 to 15 minutes in bed! Instead, use that time in prayer. 

• GIVE UP looking at ether people's worst points. Instead, concentrate on their BEST points for a change. We all have faults. It will be easier for people overlook OUR shortcomings when we overlook THEIRS first.

• GIVE UP speaking unkindly. Instead, let your speech be generous and understanding. It costs so little to say something kind and uplifting. Check that sharp tongue at the door.GIVE UP your hatred of anyone or anything! Instead, learn the discipline of love. "Love covers a multitude of sins." 

• GIVE UP your worries and anxieties! Instead, trust God with them. Anxiety is spending emotional energy on something we can do nothing about...like tomorrow! Live for today and let God's grace be sufficient. 

• GIVE UP TV one evening a week! Instead, visit someone who is lonely or sick. There are those who are isolated by illness or age. Give someone a precious gift, your time! 

• GIVE UP buying anything but essentials for yourself! Instead, give the money to God. The money you would spend on the luxuries could help someone meet their basic needs. We are called to be stewards of God's bounty, not consumers.

Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (Cycle C)

I’ll Take. . .YOU!

Isaiah 6: 1-2a, 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11; Luke 5: 1-11 

"I'll take ... Bruce."

As a kid growing up, those were some of my favorite words. I can remember so many afternoons on the open field behind our church when 15 or 20 of us boys would gather to play some sport or another. In the fall, it was football. Monday through Friday rain or shine ... 3:30pm ... we were there. On Sundays, we'd go to church in the morning, go home for a quick lunch and be back at 2:00 in time for kickoff. In the spring we'd switch to baseball, but the schedule remained the same - Monday through Friday after school, 2pm on Sunday.

And my favorite words on those afternoons were "I'll take Bruce." You know how it goes. In order to play the game, you have to choose up teams. The two captains stand off to one side while everyone else waits for their name to be called. And it's a nice feeling when you finally do hear your name. Out of all the players that are left to be chosen, for some reason, the leader of the team has decided that he wants ... YOU!

Scripture tells us that there is a Leader of another sort who is also in the business of selecting people to be on His team. But unlike the captains of the after-school warriors, he's not very picky about who he drafts. He invites anyone and everyone to join up with Him, to leave behind their old way of life, and to begin a new adventure with Him as the captain.

The name of this Leader ... is Jesus. And He's a pretty aggressive recruiter. By my count, there are 20 verses in the four gospels that report an occasion where Jesus directly says to someone : "Follow Me." But following Jesus isn't quite the same as playing on a sandlot baseball team for an afternoon. There's a whole lot more involved ... like your entire life.

All three of our readings today have a similar theme. They all recount individuals being called to the service of God. In the first reading, when the Lord said to Isaiah, who lived some 700 years prior to Christ’s birth, “Whom shall I send? He replied, “Here I am, send me.” Likewise, in the second reading, St. Paul recounts that after Jesus had appeared to many other individuals, he appeared to Paul himself. And finally, in the gospel, Peter is convinced Jesus is the Messiah after his boat is overwhelmed and his nets are splitting because of the number of fish he caught.

Each of these men was called in a dramatic fashion. A burning ember on the lips of Isaiah, Paul being knocked from his horse, and Peter having his boat almost sink under the weight of the fish he caught. These were dramatic moments. And if we look again at these very different experiences, separated by centuries, we will find two common elements:

First, there is repentance. You cannot experience something of God's holiness without knowing your own unworthiness. And so, Isaiah cries out that he is a man of unclean lips, Paul confesses that he is unworthy, for he has persecuted the Christians, and Peter falls to his knees before Jesus saying, 'Leave me Lord, I am a sinful man' (5.8).

Second, there is dedication to service. Isaiah accepts the challenge to be a prophet. Paul overcomes his sense of unworthiness to become an apostle and Peter accepts Jesus invitation to be a 'fisher of men'.

These are the hallmarks of true religious experience.

Calling, vocation, being a true prophet or a faithful disciple—that’s the challenge our three readings set before us today. The truth is, God has called each one of us. Maybe we didn’t hear his voice or experience some miraculous conversion, but let’s face it, neither did most other people. I don’t recall Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul ever revealing they had a miraculous calling from God. True, we may not consider ourselves in that league, but everyone has a call from God. Sometimes we don’t remember or don’t even recognize the call.

When I was called to the Diaconate, I didn’t experience any miraculous occurrence. I thought about the possibility, I prayed, and then decided this is what God wanted me to do. Those of you who are married had a call from God. And the young people here this morning, you too, just simply by virtue of you being born and baptized, have a call from God. You might not yet have realized it, or discerned what God is calling you to do, but I guarantee you, God has called you, has personally chosen you, to come follow him and to do great things in his name.

Being a disciple is not a matter of holy people searching for God, seeking out their assignment; it is about God looking for us, coming to us in the ordinary, everyday stuff of life, right where we live and love and work and worry and make ends meet. God may jump into our boat, or join us on our walk, or show up at work, or sit by us in class, or join us in singing a hymn, or speak to us as we read the morning paper. Few of us have such dramatic experiences as did Isaiah, Peter, and Paul, but we do have glimpses of God in the Eucharist, in quiet moments of prayer, and in the love, patience and sheer goodness of people around us. And it can be in these blessed moments that we too are invited to bring our hearts and our hands into the service of God.

The important fact is that it’s not the call the counts. It’s how each person, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, me, you, react to the individual calling we receive. Jesus came into Galilee preaching the good news that the kingdom of God was at hand. He asks us to go out into our world and do exactly the same thing. Jesus calls us to a life of conviction, to a life of urgency, to a life of reaching out with his message of love and forgiveness to all the people we encounter in life. He calls us to reach out to the lonely, to the hungry, to the sick, to the ones in prison, to the disabled, to the forsaken, to the needy, to all of those people who need to hear that someone indeed does loves them and that someone is Jesus Christ. Discipleship will not always mean leaving everything and taking off to follow Jesus. It might mean staying right where we are. It might mean casting out the same old nets, but in a new way, or for a new reason. It might mean doing something different with the fish we catch, or it might mean reorganizing the whole fishing business so that the priorities and goals aren’t focused on us, but centered Christ and on others.

Today, as always, Jesus continues to ask: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” The Lord still needs messengers, men and women who, like Isaiah, will proclaim the Good News of God's love in the temple, or who, like Paul, will announce it in foreign lands to the ends of the earth, or who, like Peter, will speak up for God in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces and bring family, or friends, or coworkers and business partners to know and follow the Lord. Today, as always, Jesus continues to ask: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And today, like the voice I heard on the playgrounds, and football fields and baseball diamonds of my youth, let us hear His voice say: I’ll take . . . YOU!

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle C)

Isn’t This The Son Of Joseph? 

Jeremiah 1: 4-5; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30 

It was a synagogue service pretty much like every other - the people sang hymns and prayed - but then a young man, a guest preacher, stood up to read the lesson: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

Isn’t this the son of Joseph? 

They looked at each other in amazement, overcome by a potent mixture of wonder and pride. Wasn’t the man standing before them, speaking with such wisdom, one of their own? Didn’t he know every rock and hollow on the hillside behind the village? Hadn’t he walked the dusty path to the synagogue beside their own boys and grown up under their watchful eyes?

Isn’t this the son of Joseph?

Then, with dramatic effect, he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down, which is the position rabbis took when they were about to teach. The scripture records that every eye was fixed on him. As he spoke, many scooted to the edge of their pews, ready to listen attentively to what he said. Of course, others scooted back, settling in for a little nap. But the sermon was short that day - short, and to the point: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled, even as you are listening."

Isn’t this the son of Joseph? 

They had heard rumors of miracles in Capernaum — talk of healings and crowds and signs of God’s favor. Most of the people who gathered in the synagogue that day hoped that Nazareth would see what Capernaum had seen—maybe even more . . . much more. He is one of our own — and if he is a prophet, then his own people should benefit first. Doesn’t he have obligations to us? After all, we are his people! His family! His friends! If he would just reveal something marvelous, or arrange a miracle or two, (God knows we have needs!) then we will know God’s power is here — right here in Nazareth, a place where nothing much ever happened.

Because, after all . . . Isn’t this the son of Joseph? 

But Jesus doesn’t respond as they hope, does he? Instead of performing a miracle, He reminds them of a story from Elijah’s time - a time of famine when many Israelites were starving, yet, God provided food for a widow of Zarephath, a pagan from the land of Sidon. Instead of revealing a wonder, Jesus reminds them of another story; a story from Elisha’s time — a time when there were many lepers in Israel yet, God healed Naaman, a pagan from Syria.

The people of Nazareth gathered in the synagogue hoping to be amazed by gracious words; hoping to marvel at mighty deeds. They wanted the hometown boy to bring them signs of God’s favor. But instead, they heard stories of God’s grace poured out, not to Jews, not to friends and neighbors, but to aliens, unbelievers, strangers in a strange land. And hearing this, they were filled with fury. And so they rose up, and drove him out of the town. They led him to the brow of the hill so that they might hurl him down, headlong.

After all, this is only the son of Joseph. 

We meet the Nazarenes in the pages of scripture and view them across a vast gulf of time and traditions. We are separated by language and experience, and by differences too great to even measure. But despite these differences, maybe we are more like them than we know. Don’t we all, sometimes, want a God we can control? Don’t we all, at least sometimes, want a God who will reward his friends and punish our enemies?

Despite our affirmations of justice and inclusion, don’t most of us secretly hope that God shows a preference . . . plays favorites? . . . stacks the deck? If we’re honest, wouldn’t we sometimes prefer a God that will do our bidding, rather than expect us to do the bidding of God? We tend to limit God’s activities to our vision of what God should be doing. We want a God we can tame. But God has been in this business for a long time. And God doesn’t plan on changing careers. And that day in Nazareth, Jesus reminded his friends and neighbors that God’s ways are not our ways. God’s grace is not restrained by our fences or controlled by our prayers.

When Jesus spoke that day in the synagogue of Nazareth, he gave notice that his ministry would embrace the stranger and include the outsider. His message would confront as often as comfort. His teaching would be sharp and pointed and sometimes difficult to hear. Those who cannot accept this may find Jesus an unacceptable prophet. Those who cannot embrace this, may find themselves filled with fury and standing on the brow of a hill ready to hurl him, and his message, headlong down the cliff.

Jesus didn’t go elsewhere because he was rejected; he was rejected because he gave notice he will go elsewhere. That “elsewhere” beckons us, too. Or at least it should. Jesus defines our ministry, tells us the purpose of our being here. We are his body, called to minister in his name, called out of the waters of our baptism, to go to a world full of poor people, dying for some good news, of the broken-hearted, desperately in need of healing, of people enslaved by chains of addiction, materialism and hedonism, of those struggling for relief and release. Our world full to overflowing with those who are stumbling in the darkness, who need recovery of clear sight, of oppressed who need freeing, of those who have yet to hear and understand that God has called them into his Kingdom.

As those who have experienced scripture fulfilled in our own hearing, we should find ourselves strangers in a strange land, traveling a road to someplace more exciting, and following the God we cannot tame.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

That’s the message that Jesus preached in his own town that day. That’s the message he came to embody and fulfill. This is the message that Jeremiah felt in his bones. It’s the same message that we, and the rest of the world, long to hear today.