Reflecting on Matthew 13: 1-23

Don’t ask us what we were thinking.  In this challenging economic climate, and with big chains just blocks from us, my pharmacist-husband Ben and I bought a beautiful retail space and opened up an old-time drugstore/coffee shop.

Ben Lager & Kathy McGovern

I’m not sure I could really articulate why we needed to do this until the other day.  I looked around and saw neighbors who live just houses away from each other finally meeting and enjoying their children together out on the front sidewalk.

Some generous and kind new friends from the neighborhood sat outside, talking to another friend and me about the bitterness they feel when religion is forced on them, when people carry Scripture signs to football games, when businesses put religious quotes on their billboards.  Now, I actually like these things, and was getting ready to say so.

But a dear and wise friend of mine happened to be in the store right then.  She moved closer to them and said, “Tell me more about your pain.  Tell me why you resist faith.  Let me help you touch your wounds.”

And then the floodwaters opened, and all their frustration, and feelings of isolation, and confusion and resentment poured out.

A few days later they returned to the store for a prescription.  Jane (not her real name) hugged me and said No one has ever asked me about my loss of faith before.  That conversation was more healing than three years in the religious setting of my childhood.

And it happened just because some faithful sower took the time to plant a seed in fertile ground, to listen, and then to be brave enough to invite strangers into the intimacy of their own struggles.

And I’ll bet that seed bears fruit and yields a hundredfold.

In what ways have you seen the fruits of the seeds sown in your life?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Matthew 11:25-30

Have you ever had the blissful experience of having a burden lifted from your shoulders?  Maybe you’ve been worrying something to death, and a friend finds the perfect words to set your soul at rest.  Or maybe it’s a physical comfort, like having someone stronger take your heavy grocery bags, or grab your snow shovel and say, “Let me clear your walk for you.”

That’s grace.  That’s Jesus, lifting away your sad spirit and replacing it with His yoke, which is always peace, consolation, perfect rest.

So here’s your summer assignment.  Ride your bike to the park.  Find a spot under a big, leafy tree.  Lie down on your back and look up.  Now, here’s the blissful part.  Just stay there.

Ah.  Can you feel it?  That is the rest that Jesus invites you to today.  Do you labor under the stress of family problems?  Just lie there.  Let the sun warm you.  Look in awe at the thousands of astonishing things going on in that tree as it stretches to the sky.

Are you heavily burdened with illness, or unemployment, or bitter disappointment?  Don’t move.  Let Jesus give your soul a perfect rest as you soak in all the grace that exists in a single tree.

Let your eyes take in just a fraction of the breathless beauty that is summer, our Creator’s gift of grace.  Can you hear that bird, singing in the branches?  Here are the words she is singing:

Come to Him.  Find rest in Him.  He has already left your burdens under the Tree.

What experience have you had of a burden lifted?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

I know that I’ve never been actually hungry. Food is all around me and I can take it at any time.  But when I hear Moses say “He let you be afflicted with hunger, then fed you with manna….that you might know that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word from the mouth of God” I really resonate with that.  I have counted calories and dragged myself away from the table and fought off food cravings just about every day of my adult life.  I think I know what it is to be hungry, to go to bed hungry, to fixate on food and dream about it.

Today Moses tells the Hebrew people who lived and hungered with him in the desert all those years to remember what it was like when they were utterly dependent on God for the astonishing manna—a food unknown to their parents—sent from the sky six days a week to heal their hunger.

That’s where hunger can take you—weak enough to be ready to accept the gift of healing which God alone can give.  This manna wasn’t what they were used to.  It came from the sky and was probably some sort of chewy dew.  They were grateful to accept it, and their bodies were made strong with it, and there are no accounts of a single one of them dying of hunger during the 40-year sojourn.

So on this day of gratitude we process, hungry, towards the Body and Blood of Jesus.  We remember our hunger, and who alone can heal it.  Come to the feast.

Can you remember any experiences of the power of the Eucharist in your life?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

We were sitting out on the porch with our adorable nieces and nephew when I finally understood the theology of the Trinity.  The three older kids (9, 7 and 5) had set up their special picnic bench, a few feet away from the grown-ups and right next to the swing set so they could jump up and play while eating their hot dogs.

They belong to each other

Their baby sister Lauren, up until this moment eating her dinner propped up on a chair next to her dad and mom, suddenly climbed down from her chair, toddled over to the kids’ bench and sat down.  Her delighted sisters and brother moved over to make room for her.

In that huge developmental step she demonstrated that she knew who she was.  She was a member of a family. She had a loving mom and dad and lots of other adoring family members.  She had a brother and two sisters.  She was a child, and her place was at the child’s table.  She could leave the safety of mom and dad and place herself right there on the bench with her siblings.  And somebody pass the potato chips.

That’s when I got it.  Our hearts are restless until they rest in God, and God isn’t solitary.  God exists in a relationship of Three.  We are made to find our place in the world, always in relationship with others.  We leave that place of infant unconsciousness and firmly place ourselves at the table, where we belong to others and they belong to us.

And of course none of those relationships happen without fathers.  Thanks, dad.

In what ways did your father help you find your place in the world?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

A PENTECOST SEQUENCE

Come, oh Holy Spirit, come!

And make us ever more your own.

In flooded farmlands, send relief.

And where faith falters, send belief.

Where tornados maim and kill

Let us feel your presence still.

Touch the unemployed once more

With strength to find that open door.

And where assassins lurk and prey

Bring them to the light of day.

Touch our own hearts too, we pray

To see the ways we’ve turned away.

The blind eye cast, the hardened heart,

Help us, Spirit, see our part.

Renew the earth, renew us too!

In Jesus’ name, we beg of you.

In what ways can you sense the gifts of the Holy Spirit active in your life?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Matthew 28:16-20

First, we should probably talk about the strange disconnect between Luke’s account of the Ascension in the first reading (Acts 1:1-11) and Matthew’s account in today’s Gospel (28:16-20).  Although he doesn’t specifically state it, the site of the Ascension in Acts has to have been in Jerusalem. Why?  Because they are enjoined not to leave Jerusalem until the gift of the Father (the Holy Spirit) comes upon them.  So the Ascension must have taken place in Jerusalem.

The Ascension of Christ (Rembrandt)

But Matthew says that the Eleven gathered in the Galilee for Jesus’ Great Commission.  It was on a mountain—which of course reminds us of the mountain at Sinai and the mountain of the Beatitudes —where Jesus promised that he would be with us always, even to the end of the age.  Mark’s Gospel (16:7) sets this in motion when the angel at the empty tomb tells the women to tell the other disciples to go to Galilee, where they would see the risen Lord.

But here’s what’s interesting: it seems that in the Gospel today, Jesus appears to them as a manifestation of his already ascended state.  There is no mention, as in Acts and Luke’s Gospel (24: 36-53), of Jesus ascending to heaven as they watched.

So even in the earliest memories of the Church the specifics of the when and where of Jesus’ ascent to heaven are purposely clothed in mystery.  What a perfect metaphor for our own journeys.  Crazy predictions of the end of the world will go on. But our deepest intuition and faith that our Christ is with us always, right up to the end, lives on.

In what ways do you sense that he is “with you always”?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on 1Peter 3:15-18

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.

The Martyrdom of St. Peter

Isn’t that beautiful?  The author of the second reading today is talking to the earliest converts to the faith, urging them to have a good reason on hand for why they are hopeful in their terrifying first-century world.

I like to think about those earliest Christians.  According to tradition, every single one of the apostles listed in the Gospels (except for Judas) experienced torture, and most of them martyrdom, because of their hope in Christ.  They “took on Christ” during the most violent years of the Roman Empire.  They faced up to Nero and Trajan and Domitian, and often converted their own jailers, who went to their deaths with them.

I recently saw the shatteringly beautiful movie Of Gods and Men.  It tells the true story of eight Cistercian monks who chose to stay with their Muslim friends in a besieged Algerian village in 1997.  Two eyewitnesses who survived recorded their memories of the agonizing community meetings that took place before the abduction and murder of the other members.

Why did they stay when they knew their lives were in imminent danger?  We know from the survivors that the love of Christ compelled them.  Their love for their neighbors, whom they doctored, and cared for, and worked side by side with, gave them the strength to face their radical Islamist assassins when they came for them one dark and freezing night.

The Christ who called them to Himself was the reason for their hope.  And hope does not disappoint.

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 14:1-2

There are some things that the authors of the Gospels thought we knew.  But we read the ancient texts at a great distance, historically and culturally.  When Jesus says to his frightened disciples the night before his death, “In my Father’s house are many mansions” he isn’t speaking in metaphor!  He reaches into the most sacred vow a Jewish man can make.  He uses the exact words that a man speaks to a woman when he betrothes himself to her.

In Jesus’ day, as in ours, the betrothal of a man and a woman was a sacred celebration.  At the ceremonial meal the bridegroom said to his betrothed, “Do not let your heart be troubled.  In my father’s house are many rooms.  I am going now to prepare a place for you.  I will come back  for you, so that where I am you also may be.  If it were not so I would have told you.”

And then he left her.  He went back to his father’s house and built an extra room on to the family home where his new bride would live and they would raise their children.  A generation later, the sons born in that house would make the same solemn promise to their betrothed, and another room would be added on.

So that means that on the night before he died, Jesus the Bridegroom betrothed himself to us forever.  That’s what the author of John’s Gospel thought we knew.  And I guess that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever learned in all my years of studying Scripture.

In what ways do you sense the covenant Christ has made with you?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 10:1-10

Several years ago, while traveling with a group of pilgrims into Bethlehem, our tour guide asked the bus driver to stop so that we could all flash our pictures of an extraordinary sight for all of us city dwellers: actual sheep, being herded by an actual shepherd!

Our guide then told us a very moving story.  When he came to Israel as a young man he was put in leadership over the small group of Christian churches in his particular denomination.  One of the elders of that group advised him that, before he ever tried leading anyone, he should intern as a shepherd for at least a week.  It was during that long week that he learned the tenderness of the shepherd in today’s psalm.

The good shepherd knows that sheep will drown in moving waters, and so leads them to still, restful waters.  In the dark valleys and steep mountains, the good shepherd calms the fears of the sheep by walking beside them, drawing them back from the cliff with his rod and staff.  At the end of the day, while the sheep rest in verdant pastures, he cleans the build-up of mucus out of their eyes with oil so that they don’t go blind.

Finally, at night, the good shepherd leads the sheep into the sheep gate, and then he sleeps outside the gate.  If any predators come looking for his sheep, they’ll have to get to them over his dead body.

Ah.  On this Good Shepherd Sunday, may you rest in the safety of the One who knows your voice, who knows your needs.  May goodness and kindness follow you all the days of your life.

In what ways do you feel tenderly cared for?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 24:13-35

And so it comes around again, this most beautifully developed of all the appearance stories.  It’s not new to us, but our hearts burn within us as we hear again of those two disciples who left Jerusalem that Easter morning.

Caravaggio

We know the name of one—Cleopas—but the second disciple goes unnamed.  I think she was probably Mrs. Cleopas.  Might this traveler have been the very Mary, wife of Clopas who stood at the foot of the cross in John’s Gospel?  If so, then her companions that dreadful Friday had been no less than Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus.  And yet now she and her husband, after the terrifying event, are leaving the city and returning to their home in Emmaus.

The tomb is empty.  Where is he?  What can it mean?  Is there any reason to hope that he’s alive?

And then of course they are met on the road by a fellow traveler.  Hasn’t he heard of all the events in Jerusalem these past three days?  And they begin to let their hearts break a little as they tell the stranger about him whom they love.

I wonder.  What if, in these Easter weeks of First Communions and Confirmations, we walked with our children for just a little bit and told them about him whom we love.  Take a walk this week with someone and talk about Jesus.  I’ll bet you he’ll show up right there, on the road, on the journey.  Draw near to him and watch him draw near to you.  And then get ready for some heart-burn.

In what ways do you sense the presence of Jesus when you speak with others about him?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).