Reflecting on Luke 22: 14-23:56

Come with me for a moment.  I want to show you something.  Stand here with me in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the high priest.  The temple guards have just arrested Jesus.  Did you hear all that commotion when they marched him up from the Mount of Olives?  Now they’ve got him in the house.  See that man over there, the one with the thick accent?  He was one of the followers of Jesus.  But he keeps denying it.  Let’s ask him for a third time: Surely you were with him, for you too are a Galilean, right? No, he says, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Peter denies Christ by Rembrandt. Canvas, 1660. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Can you hear it?  The rooster crowing?  And now look!  There is Jesus, looking out the window, staring at his friend. What is that message that passes between them?  Jesus has pure love in his eyes.  But his friend’s eyes are starting to turn red, and he runs far away from the fire, far away from Jesus, weeping so loudly we can still hear him.

Listen.  The sound of his crying melts into the sounds of Jesus’ prayers―is that Psalm 88?― as he stands chained in the dungeon in the caves just beneath us.

Two thousand years later, millions of believers still come to this place.  Roosters still crow in the courtyard.  Pilgrims still climb down, down into the pit where Jesus was chained the night before he died.  And the sound of Peter’s weeping meets our own.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Why does the Church remember Peter as her first leader after his terrible betrayal?

Reflecting on John 8: 1-11

Death by stoning must have been a terrible thing to endure, to participate in, and to watch.  Even though the Bible speaks of it, there are very, very few instances of it actually being carried out.  By the time the religious leaders in today’s Gospel pushed that poor woman towards Jesus they had already lost the right to put anyone to death.  They knew she wouldn’t be killed because they didn’t have the legal right to kill her.  However, hoping to indict Jesus by trapping him into a wrong answer, they reminded him that, according to Mosaic Law, she should be stoned.  What did he have to say about that?

With the emergence of the Taliban and radical Islamist fundamentalism, execution by stoning has occurred in recent times. Although blessedly rare, there are records of it in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Iran.  In 2008 a 13-year old Somalian girl was stoned to death for “adultery”.  After her death it was revealed that she had actually been assaulted by a gang of men.

But here’s something fascinating: some Islamic scholars point out that stonings are supposed to be used only as a last resort, and only within those Islamic societies that have eliminated poverty and corruption. Since neither requirement has ever been fulfilled, no society may carry out that torture.

Has any society in history ever met that requirement? No wonder the elders led the way in walking away.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Do you think this same requirement should be met before anyone is ever executed?

Cycle A for the Rites of Christian Initiation (see Sunday Reflections for Cycle C)

Reflecting on John 11: 1-45

Through the years I have had the great privilege of visiting the Holy Land many times, but the only souvenir I have ever kept from my pilgrimages hangs on my wall, directly over my parent’s wedding picture of October 31, 1938.  They smile out at me, these two young, beautiful, hopeful newlyweds, in the everyday clothes common to Depression-era weddings of the day.

Could they have imagined what the future would hold?  The war in Europe was just getting going.  They and everyone they knew would be changed by it.  In ten years their children would finally arrive, and eventually their robust youth would give way to middle age.  They would lose their parents and their siblings.  They would raise their children in the faith, and that faith would sustain them when their own son went off to war.

Lazarus raised

The beautiful bride and groom are gone now.  But their children live on, remembering them, loving them, knowing that at our own deaths we will see them again.  When Lazarus of Bethany heard the voice of Jesus call him out of the cave he climbed, climbed up from his dark tomb.  I’ve seen that tomb.  I have taken a torch and climbed down into its belly, and imagined the sound of Jesus, calling into its depths Lazarus!  Come out! And the dead man came out.

So it was from here that I carried home my sole souvenir, a small mosaic that says “Bethany”.  It keeps watch over the young newlyweds on the wall, and all their children and grandchildren, whose pictures surround them now.  When our earthly bodies lie in death we’ll find an everlasting dwelling place in heaven.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What do you think it must have been like for Lazarus to come out of that tomb?

illustration by Alexandre Bida c. 1874

Cycle A for the Rites of Christian Initiation (see Sunday Reflections for Cycle C)

Reflecting on John 9: 1-41

It’s the last line of today’s Gospel that’s the real zinger.  Jesus, you’re not suggesting that we are the ones who are blind, are you?  Because we know how God has set up the world.  Good things happen to good people, and bad people are blind from birth.  Okay, maybe this guy isn’t directly responsible for his blindness, but his parents must have been sinners, right?  And we know for sure that YOU are a sinner because you brazenly heal on the Sabbath!

Isn’t their response a little similar to ours when we hear about something terrible that has happened to someone we know?  Yes, it’s terrible that she has lung cancer, but she probably smoked, and I don’t smoke, so I’ll never get lung cancer. Yes, it’s horrible about the car accident, but I’ll bet he wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and I always wear my seat belt, so I’ll never be in a car accident.

There is something in us that needs to find a reason why bad things happen to very good people, because it’s too terrifying to admit that they could happen to us too. And if we can admit that, perhaps we are also ready to acknowledge that God can shake us from our cynicism, peel away our layers of bravado, and actually heal us too.  It’s not a trick.  It’s not a plot hatched years ago to make us think the man was blind when he really could see all this time.  His parents weren’t in on it, and he wasn’t in on it.  That man they call Jesus touched him, and now he can see.

And if we can’t believe that, we are more blind than the man who was born blind and now sees.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways have you felt the healing touch of Jesus in your life?

Reflecting on Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

The most shameful thing happened yesterday.  Do you remember last year when the younger son of my friend said to him, “Drop dead!  I want my inheritance now”?  And he gave it to him!  This worthless son went off to Sepphoris—you know that big Roman city with the Greek theatres and the dancing girls?

And, you guessed it, he spent it all!  Now he’s feeding pigs, this Jewish boy.  And he’s starving, of course.  So yesterday

Return of the Prodigal Son (Rembrandt) c. 1669

he shows up at the city gate.  We hardly recognized him, that’s how skinny and sickly he looked.  We all got together and marched to the gate.  How dare this son come home?  And we all waited for his father to say the words the rabbis have counseled for just such a situation:  Get out of my sight.  You are dead to me.

And what does this shameful, prodigal father do? He has rahamin―the love of a mother for her child in the womb―for this worthless son.  He picks up his robe like a woman and runs to the gate before the rest of us could get there.  He calls for a robe and a ring and shoes for this son who deserves nothing.

And you won’t believe this.  He killed the fatted calf and is having a party for him tonight!  The messenger just arrived with the invitation.  Well, I’m not going.  I tell you, I’m not going.  Yes…of course I’m going.

Will you go with me?

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Have you ever swallowed your pride and gone to the party and then been so happy you did?

(Kathy offers a special thanks to Thomas Smith for the inspiration for this column.)

Cycle A for the Rites of Christian Initiation (see Sunday Reflections for Cycle C)

Reflecting on John 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

Coptic icon, Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

One Sunday three decades ago I was distraught over the collapse of the strong parish community I had enjoyed for over a decade.  A new pastor had come in, and a better preacher had been installed in the parish down the road.  Within a few months the vibrant, warm, packed-to-the-gills Sunday Masses had deteriorated, and most of the friends with whom I shared Sunday had moved to the other parish.  It was so painful.

This particular Sunday I stopped by to visit a friend.  He did then, and still does to this day, spend the early morning hours in prayer with the Scriptures.  We talked for awhile about the dwindling numbers and the lackluster preaching, and then we fell silent for a few minutes.

What are you reading today? He looked down at the Bible on the table, open to the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel, and read the Samaritan woman’s challenge to Jesus:   Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you people say the place to worship is Jerusalem.

Huh.  So questions about who’s got the best parish have been around at least since the day Jesus went out of his way to find that heartbroken woman, in the heat of the day, at a well that her great ancestor Jacob had dug.  He invited her into friendship with himself, and she left everything behind to tell the world about this pastor of her soul.  Now that’s true worship, in Spirit and in truth.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Are there ways that you can build up your parish and the worshiping community?

Reflecting on Luke. 13:1-9

Jesus lived in dangerous times, and so do we.  We know about people with histories of mental illness who have access to assault rifles and school playgrounds, and gruesome drug murders (fueled by the American lust for drugs and gun money) just across our borders.  Jesus’ audience knew about Pilate’s murder of some Jews offering sacrifice, and of a tower that fell and killed eighteen people.

In trying to make sense of those random deaths, people asked Jesus if those who had been killed had been guilty of

The barren fig tree gets another chance

some sin for which God was punishing them. Jesus jumped at the opportunity to correct that long-held theology of his day. No, he said, bad things happen to good people every day. And Jesus offered no explanation for why that is.

He did, however, tell them a parable about a barren fig tree that was long overdue to produce fruit.  Cut it down said the owner!  Give it another chance! said the gardener. And so the loving gardener fertilized it, and dug around it, and did everything possible to get it to come around.

Just like parents who won’t give up on their kids.  Just like that Gardener in that original Garden, who called after Adam and Eve, looking for them, longing for them, even after they had rebelled.

Come now, oh God of second chances.  Call us back again.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What memories can you recall of being given a second chance?

Reflecting on Luke 9:28b-36

One hot August 6th in 1985, we were packed and ready to head home after another great summer of study at the University of Notre Dame. During the last few minutes of our last class, the brilliant Nathan Mitchell, OSB sent us home with these words:

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration, that moment in time when the blinding light from heaven enveloped Jesus

Mount Tabor

as he prayed on the sacred mountain. But we also remember today another flash of light, the white light of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima forty years ago today. So, as you travel home, pondering those two very different lights, I offer you this promise: if, through circumstances of famine, drought and war, the arsenals of the world are emptied into every city, every farmland, every mountain and ocean, and the earth is plunged into endless darkness, the light of the Transfigured Christ will burn brighter than that darkness.

I wonder if that’s what Moses and Elijah said to Jesus as they spoke with him about his death and resurrection. He was on his way to Jerusalem to confront the Prince of Darkness at the Cross. I think they were reminding him that things would look very different in Easter Light.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

As you face suffering, what prayers or Gospel accounts give you strength?

Reflecting on Luke 4:1-3

Have you ever received a compliment in public, and secretly wondered what some of the people who know you best would say?  They’re the ones, after all, who know your secrets.  They’re the ones who saw all the stuff you threw into the closet before company arrived.  They may be keeping a straight face during the tribute, but what are they really thinking?

The Mount of Temptation

We find out today that the Tempter― who was no doubt listening in when Jesus was baptized and the voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love”― immediately led Jesus into the desert in order to torment him about that Voice.  You really believe you’re God’s Son?  Prove it.  Prove it. Prove it.

Talk about believing your own press!  Satan thinks that all the kingdoms of the world are his to give over!  Jesus knows to Whom they really belong, and he stands, in his hunger and his thirst, in authority over the author of lies.

Of course, Satan was listening in on the day of your baptism too.  Never, never listen when he tries to tell you that you must have misunderstood the part about being God’s child, forever beloved.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways can you sense the Tempter trying to take away your experience of being loved by God?

Reflecting on 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2

On this cold, cloudy day―a perfect day for ashes, and meditation, and starting over again―I remember the day I learned how to be, as Paul begs us, “an ambassador of reconciliation”.  I had been parking my car on the street, right outside the house that sat next door to the busy parish center where I worked.  For ten years the middle-aged man who lived in the house had pleasantly smiled and waved at me as I walked from my car into work.

That’s why I was so shocked on the day when, out of the blue, he left me a profane, furious note on my car, threatening

Ambassadors of Reconciliation

me with violence if I ever parked in front of his house again.  I was mortified, embarrassed, deeply hurt and a little bit afraid.  I spent several hours plotting my revenge, imagining sending his note to the police, never smiling at him again as I parked six blocks away to avoid him.

And then…all of a sudden I could see what he had seen all along.  I was parking in front of his house!  For ten years!  Without ever asking if he needed that spot, or thanking him for so kindly letting me take over his space.  And so I tried something I had never, ever done before.  I made the first move to get us back on track.  I reached out instead of waiting for him.

I made brownies and attached a note, apologizing for my years of inconsiderate behavior.  I was terribly nervous, but I parked several houses away and walked up his sidewalk.  And when he answered the door the whole story opened up in front of me.  This nice man who had looked the other way for ten years was standing in front of me in a full body cast.  He had been in a bad car accident the week before, and my car was impeding his ability to get into his house.  I looked at him, and he looked at me, and we both cried, “I’m sorry.”

All it took was the grace to yield, to not fight back, to see the world as someone else sees it.  My Lenten fast has been the same since that day: I will pursue the spiritual discipline of not having to be right, but really, really looking at traffic, and the workplace, and home, from the position of the other people who share the world with me.

That’s what makes Lent so rich.  It’s the blessed opportunity to yield.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

How are you an ambassador of reconciliation?