Reflecting on Matthew 5:1-12a

Ah.  It’s November again.  Can you feel it? It’s that sacred month that begins with two days of remembering those who have already gone home to God.  These are ancient Catholic traditions, ancient instincts that we are not alone here, but are all mystically connected in some wonderful way.

Do you have a favorite saint?

Today’s great feast begins a whole month of acknowledgment that the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God.  The saints are with us, in this very room!  Haven’t we always sensed that we are being guided and accompanied by the loving presence of “those who have survived the great time of distress”?  We have friends in high places, and they are interceding for us always. The patron saints of all of our earthly travails—lost love, lost health, lost faith—have been so identified because there was something in their lives, on one side or the other side of heaven, which gained some victory over these earthly enemies.

We too are God’s children, and what we shall be has not yet been revealed.  We wait in joyful hope for that day when we are greeted by the smiles of the martyrs, and our own beloved dead who loved us on both sides of the grave.

All you holy men and women, pray for us!

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Do you have a special connection with any particular saint?

Tapestry from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, CA

Reflecting on Jeremiah 31:7-9

There have been some very bad times throughout history to be one of the “chosen people,” but to be a resident of Jerusalem between 597 and 587 BC. certainly ranks as one of the most terrifying.  By the time Nebuchadnezzar completed his destruction of the city he had killed a third of its citizens by the sword, a third by fire, and the last third were taken to Babylon―the “land of the north” hinted at in Jeremiah’s oracle today.  

But they came back!  They departed in tears, but sixty years later they returned rejoicing.  And their return became the great healing moment for the broken Jewish people, who clung to this memory as they were hounded and murdered throughout the world in centuries to come.

When the Lord brought back Jaycee Dugard, and Elizabeth Smart, and POWs long feared dead, and soldiers safe on both sides of the battle, and a friendship that was lost, and a child who was estranged, and a leg or an arm or a heart that was broken, or a  faith that was on life support but then came roaring back, we thought we were dreaming.  But now, even in the midst of joblessness and insecurity, we remember how God has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What experiences of joyful return can you remember?

Reflecting on Mark 10:35-45

My husband Ben and I had a little windfall last week.  We always buy a raffle ticket for the Boys and Girls Club House contest.  Of course we wouldn’t know what to do with the winning million dollar house, but we love dreaming about it and of course we support the good work of the sponsors.

I did not come to be served, but to serve

Wonder of wonders, they pulled our ticket out of the hat for one of the second prizes!  We won $2500.00 just like that.  We danced around the house and then I went off to my doctor appointment.  When I told my Orthodox Jewish doctor about our astonishing good luck his response was typical of him:  And so, Kathy, are you sending the money down to Ben’s mission in Juarez or are you going to spread it around locally?  Because, as I tell my kids, God gives us wealth so that we can serve, not be served.

James and John, those thundering Zebedee boys who did in fact suffer martyrdom in the years following the resurrection, wanted to sit at Jesus’ side when he came into his glory.  And I’m sure they do, now, in the eternity set aside for all who have learned, on this side of the grave or the other, that God’s understanding of power and glory is all about emptying oneself and taking the form of a slave.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What experience of service have you had that was more fulfilling than being served?

Reflecting on Mark 10:17-30

Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man? That’s Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof, pondering the idyllic life of leisure and prayer and study that he and his family would enjoy if only he could somehow strike it rich.  I think that temptation must touch us all from time to time as we adapt to the stresses of the workplace.

Jesus and the rich young man

The rich young man who had observed all the commandments since his youth was simply trying to stay content with the wealth into which he had been born.  He wasn’t trying to extort or defraud, but just to maintain his status quo.  Jesus, as usual, turns the status quo on its head.

Could it be that Jesus was inviting this young man into the adventure of his life by challenging him to a preview of heaven, where the securities of this world fall away and we see the world, with its astounding abundance, as God sees it?  When Jesus multiplied the loaves he showed us that there is plenty of bread, and when he told the exhausted fisherman to cast their nets on the other side of the boat he showed us that he knows where all the fish are.  Maybe that’s why it’s hard for “the rich” to enter the kingdom.  When we cling to the status quo we can’t step into God’s status quo, and Jesus promises that that’s the only one we really want.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Have you ever stretched yourself out of your comfort zone and then been really glad you did?

Painting by Heinrich Hofmann, 1889

Reflecting on Mark 10:2-16

My friend Celia is getting married next Saturday.  It’s going to be a very crowded church.  Along with her wonderful groom Jack, her mother, her children and their children, the sanctuary will also hold five men and one woman:  Celia’s deceased father, her two brothers and one sister who were felled, one by one, by Cystic Fibrosis, her fourth brother who was killed in a car accident years ago, and her funny, handsome first husband Ricky, who died of an unknown cause while they were jogging on the shore of the North Sea on Good Friday, 2007.

They’ll all be there, these beloved family members who loved Celia and whose deaths taught her, through her agonies,

to open her heart to love again and again.  She is who she is because they loved her.

I often miss the former spouses of my friends who contracted marriages that couldn’t hold.  I see their wedding pictures, so long ago, smiling out at me from old scrapbooks, and I silently thank them for the friendship they extended to me during the years that our lives intersected.  I also grieve for my friends who promised priesthood and vowed Religious life, and yet, for reasons that broke their hearts, couldn’t continue in that way of life.  Most of all I long for my many single friends to find the great love of their lives, as I did.  Someday God is going to heal us all.  That’s the promise of that first Good Friday.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways do you think you could love more perfectly?

Reflecting on James 5:1-6

We can all breathe easier now.  We’ve heard all we’re going to hear from the letter of James.  Enough already with the harangues over the injustices to the poor and the false securities of the rich.  In these recessionary times we don’t really need to be reminded week after week about our responsibility to the children of God who don’t have jobs or health care, do we?

The wages you withheld cry out loud

It is unsettling, though, to hear today that all of our efforts to create comfortable lives for ourselves have only “fattened our hearts for the slaughter”.  James clearly―loudly and clearly―equates material wealth in the light with some kind of fraud and cheating in the dark.  In his experience, the rich could only have acquired their wealth on the backs of those whom they had exploited.

That’s certainly not always the case today.  But we’ve got three years to ponder his challenge before he shows up again in the lectionary.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What is the right use of wealth?

Reflecting on Mark 9:30-37

Wouldn’t you love to know who the child is who is taken and wrapped in Jesus’ arms at the end of today’s Gospel?  We know that Jesus and the Twelve are back in Capernaum, and that Simon and Andrew have a home there.  In fact, Mark

repeatedly implies that this is Jesus’ home base (see Mk. 2:1).  It’s interesting that Nazareth, that tiny village where Jesus was raised, mostly disappears from the story as Jesus’ public ministry is launched, and Simon Peter’s home on the shore of the Galilee (where he and his brother have their fishing business) becomes Jesus’ home.

I’ll bet that little child is one known to Jesus, not some random child wandering into the scene from outside.  Perhaps this is the daughter or son―the Gospel is careful to not reveal the gender― of Simon or Andrew, or any of the Twelve who made their home there at Peter’s house.  When Jesus takes this child and holds it he is embracing the unluckiest members of his culture.  Childhood was a terrifying time.  Infant mortality was as high as thirty percent, and sixty percent never made it to their sixteenth birthday.  Children had no status.  In times of famine they were fed last.  The medieval Mediterranean theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote that in case of fire a husband must save his father and mother first, then his wife, and last of all his children.

And THIS is the one whom Jesus says we disciples should receive.  The last, the least, the one wrapped in Jesus’ arms.  Lucky child.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Who do you think are the least among us in our American culture?

Painting: Christ with Children, Frances Hook

Reflecting on Mark 8:27-35

Sometime during the reign of Tiberias (AD 14-37), a divine voice roared across the Mediterranean Sea, ordering the

Shrine to the god Pan at Caesarea Philippi

sailors within hearing distance to “proclaim to all that the great god Pan is dead.”  But gods didn’t die, especially not beloved Pan (from whom Peter Pan eventually got his name).  And certainly not this god, born at Caesaria Philippi, whose name inspired the city’s earliest designation of Panias.

Did the author of Mark’s Gospel, writing about thirty years later, have this story in mind when he placed Jesus and his disciples right smack in the heart of this Roman capital, an area strewn with temples to Pan and pilgrims coming to worship the Roman emperor?  It’s right there, in that place of wide religious plurality, that Jesus asks the essential question of his disciples: “Who do people say I am?”  And immediately after Peter spills the Messianic secret—You are the Christ—Jesus begins to tell them of his future passion and death.

Yes, Mark seems to say, the gods of the old order are dead, and the true God,  Jesus the Christ, will die too.  But that death will be the doorway to the eternal for those who, like Peter, know who He is.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Who do you say Jesus is?

Reflecting on James 2:1-5

We’re hearing from the beautiful letter of James during these late summer Sundays.  It’s my favorite New Testament

letter, probably because the author is so insightful about the ways of the heart.  It’s from this letter that we get the text of the beautiful hymn we’ve been singing this summer:  what is faith without action?  Go in peace, stay warm and be well fed. The author is scolding the wealthy Christians of the early church, exhorting them to be different, transformed by Christ, rather than to just keep their existing comfortable lifestyle while those around them starve.

And the scandal was that these Christians were enjoying the Eucharistic meal together, but relegating the seating at the assembly according to one’s wealth.  That meant that those who were working, and came to the meal late, were not fed and were placed in the back of the room while those who were more established had the best seats and the meal.

I wonder why it is that all of my friends are beautiful and smart, well dressed and accomplished.  I wonder if this letter is reaching across the ages to speak to me alone.  Or does it say something to you too?

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

How can we do a better job of including the marginalized into our church and into our lives?

Reflecting on Deuteronomy. 4:1-2,6-8, James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

How rich and beautiful all three of today’s Scripture readings are, and they match!  That’s pure coincidence, of course, since the New Testament letters are read consecutively―this summer’s seven weeks of Ephesians, followed now by four weeks of the letter of James, for example―and not selected to harmonize with the Gospel, as the Old Testament reading is chosen to do.

But this week, by a happy accident, even the second reading is filled with the themes of the Old Testament and Gospel readings–that we must not delude ourselves into thinking that we can follow the “law” and still ignore the neediest among us.  How timely that we read this during this summer of honest anxieties about health care reform.  What would Jesus do?  That’s not an easy question, and people of immense goodwill are trying to discern the best ways to repair the huge gaps  and to do justice in a system that needs a lot of help.

How timely that we read this during this summer of honest anxieties about health care reform.  What would Jesus do?  That’s not an easy question, and people of immense goodwill are trying to discern the best ways to repair the huge gaps and to do justice in a system that needs a lot of help.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What is your personal experience of health care?