Homily for July 22, 2007 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel
Lk 10:38-42

Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”
How many of you feel tension in the Gospel today? Just let me ask how many of you think Martha is not being treated fairly? Okay. And I want to acknowledge that. I've had a lot of conversations with different people about this Gospel in the last week, and some of the things I've heard – well - if you're a woman who loves to be in the kitchen and prepare a delicious meal and cook, this Gospel is an insult. Or if you value being efficient and caring for things, then this Gospel can come across as an insult. And I want to say I have heard a lot of god-awful sermons on this Gospel, and I hope not to repeat one this morning. If you feel a tension, it's good. And let me say first of all, Martha and Mary are sisters. They probably loved each other very much. They probably appreciated each other and got along with each other and needed each other, and they lived together very well. So I don't think they would appreciate our taking a momentary tiff between the two and making it into a Federal case and a big theological exposition. I think they would insist that they really like each other. And you know, they appear together many times in the Gospel. Whenever they appear, Mary tends to be seated at the Lord's feet, and Martha appears to be the practical one. There's another banquet in their home in Bethany where Mary is the one who breaks the jar of ointment and anoints Jesus' feet. And everybody says, "What a waste." When their brother Lazarus died, it was Martha who went out to meet Jesus and Mary sat at home. Martha confronted Jesus and said, "Lord, where were you? If you'd been here my brother wouldn't have died." And Jesus got in a theological argument with her and talked about the resurrection. Mary came and fell at His feet and said the same thing, and Jesus broke down in tears. But I think He loved them both. And oh, by the way, there's a German theologian, Elizabeth Jurgen Moltman, who points out that there were other stories of Martha in the later history of the church. One of them has Lazarus as a bishop in southern Italy and he's kind of a wimpy bishop, and Martha is the power behind the throne. And in the Middle Ages when there was a strong period of feminism in the church, when women were deciding that they could have their own monasteries and did not need to live under the protection of men, devotion to Martha was very strong. There were even images of Martha the Dragon Slayer that had Martha catching the dragon in her girdle and slaying it. So there are some positive images of Martha. But back to the readings today. I was looking for stories that would ease the tension between Martha and Mary. I heard some good ones. One of them said, "Well maybe in today's world Mary would say to Martha, 'Martha, I know you'd like to be in on the discussion too. Let's send out for carry out and bring it in.'" That's a little too practical for Mary. Maybe Martha would have suggested that instead of Mary. Another story I heard was maybe Jesus would go in the kitchen and start peeling an onion and invite everybody into the kitchen for the discussion, so that everybody could participate. Those were both good stories, but I think what they both had in mind is they took away the tension. I'd like to share another story that preserves the tension. I went to see a wonderful movie last week, "Evening." It's up at Keystone Art. It's about a woman who is dying, and her two children are attending her at the bedside. And as she lies in bed dying she remembers her life, and there are many beautiful scenes in this movie. One of them is from when she was a young mother, and she's cooking dinner and is harried to get dinner finished. And her daughter is sitting at the table wanting her attention and crying and pouting, and she' beginning to get a little impatient with the daughter. And then her husband comes with the other daughter and says, "Here," and he hands her the daughter because he has more important things to do. And so there she is feeling this tension, and suddenly she abandons the dinner and begins to sing a song to the two children. And as you see her sitting singing a song to the children and the children smiling, you also see dinner boiling over on the stove, making a mess, but somehow you know it's okay. I'd like to think that in that moment she chose the better part. Do you know what I mean? Now, in the ideal world the children would sit there patiently while she cooked dinner. They would enjoy a lovely dinner and then sit and have a wonderful conversation. But you know, life ain't like that, is it? I would like to think that in the ideal world I would have time to do all of my tasks: I would have time to care for myself; I would have time to exercise; I would have time to pray; I would have time to read and feed my soul and do everything. Is there anybody here for whom life is like that? Usually if I want to find time to listen to life; if I want to find time to listen to my children or my spouse; if I want time to attend to my soul; usually I'm going to have to make choices. I'm going to have to say no to something. And in the world in which we live, what am I going to have to say no to? Some of the social expectations of efficiency, of having everything managed and in place, and everything done well. I was talking to somebody who pointed out to me that when I was growing up, a woman was judged by how clean her house was, how well dressed her children were. Can you throw out some other things? And happily, a lot of young mothers today are finding freedom from that, and they're finding the freedom maybe to neglect the house and spend time doing things with their children. That's one example. Often I find that I come to appreciate myself for who I am rather than for my achievements, or what I'm able to do, or what I'm able to accomplish, or the number of things that I'm involved in. That appreciation doesn't come easily. For me, and for a lot of people, it comes only when there's a breakdown and I realize that I have failed to meet all the other expectations, and I learn to value myself for who I am, not for what I do or what I achieve. In any event, I think there is a tension there. And as I said last week, Jesus deliberately chooses a story in which the woman who chose the better part is the woman who stepped out of all of the social boundaries and social expectations and did what you didn't expect a woman to do in His culture. I wonder what kind of story He'd tell today. I don't know - maybe this thing of the better part, which comes, I think, only in moments of pauses when we step back and when we achieve the freedom in our life to respond to something deeper. It's not something you can define. It's not something you can grasp once and for all. But if you taste it, you know that it won't be taken from you, and maybe you get at it only by telling a lot of stories. So I want to close by reaffirming that Martha and Mary are sisters who love each other very much and who need each other, and invite your imagination about what other stories of Martha and Mary you might tell.

Homily for July 15, 2007 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Gospel, the Story of the Good Samaritan, is very familiar to us. In fact, it's so familiar that it's become comforting and a very comfortable story, and a very good example. But it wasn't that way in the beginning. I want to say, too, today's Gospel and next Sunday's Gospel form a pair that go together, and you have to hear them together to understand.
Next Sunday's Gospel is the story of Martha and Mary, and Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus. So you see, today's Gospel says "go and do." Next Sunday's Gospel says "sit and listen." Well, going and doing, and sitting and listening form a balanced pair in our life. We have to do both. If we just run out and do without sitting and listening, we're going to get in trouble. And if we just sit and listen and never do, we'll be in trouble.
And in both cases Luke makes the point by telling a story. But the stories of Jesus are not nice stories. They're not comfortable. They're not just sweet little pious examples. The stories of Jesus always take us out of our comfort zone.
For example in today's story he could have told a story about a good pious Jew that helped a man out who was in trouble. That would have been a nice story, but he didn't tell that story. He could have told a story about a priest who exemplified the commandment. I would have felt very good about that story. But Jesus didn't tell that story. He could have told a story about a scholar of the law who did what he was supposed to, but he didn't tell that story.
Instead he used as an example somebody that a devout Jew would not have liked. In fact, he used somebody that pious Jews looked down upon as people who were half breeds, who were heretics, who didn't keep the law.
My way of maybe making it relevant to you today is, think of yourself in trouble. Now, think of the person you would least want to be helped by. It could vary. And imagine Jesus telling you a story about the meaning of love where you're in trouble and that person you least want to be helped by comes to your rescue. Is that a nice story?
And, by the way - more about this next week - but the example of sitting and listening isn't a male disciple, but it's a woman who isn't in the kitchen where women belong, but who's sitting out among the men at the master's feet. Why would he tell a story like that? I'll leave you to speculate about Jesus' motive. But you see, in every case when Jesus tells a story, he takes us out of our comfort zone. And, anyway, I hope you can feel that.
And then, what does this story call us to do? Last week I heard 25 different homilies on this Gospel. We were down at St. Meinrad with our deacon candidates, and it was their week to learn to preach. And each one of them had to give a homily on this Gospel, and their homilies were videotaped and critiqued. So I won't summarize 25 different homilies.
What I will summarize is a point that one of the instructors, not me, pointed out to them, and that is when people are learning how to preach, they often say, "you ought to," or "you should," or "you must," or "the Gospel tells us to." Do you know what I mean? And this instructor said, "Where is the good news in that? I mean, where's the good news in the Gospel?" And then he suggested a slight shift in thinking. What if we read this Gospel, and instead of saying, "You ought to," what if we read it and say "you are free to?"
Now, I'd like to look at the Samaritan that way. There are times in my life, and I'm sure there are times in your life, but there are times when I'm like the lawyer, when I approach life trying to justify myself, when I approach life trying to protect myself, when I approach life from my ego, or when I approach life through the law.
There are times in my life when people have asked me what I think, and I respond by saying what the Bible says, or what the church says, or what somebody else has said, and they say, "But what do you say?"
And there are times when I am free to respond to what is there from a wellspring of love and compassion that is already within me. Can you feel the difference in your own life? Do you know what I mean? Can you think of a time when you've responded from your ego, or from your head, or from social convention, or from the rules, and can you think of a time when you've responded from the depth of compassion in your heart?
Moses tells people in the first reading, he says - I'm going to summarize it in a different way - basically, what Moses is saying in the first reading is, "You know, it's not rocket science. You don't have to go to school for 20 years to learn what to do. You don't have to read a book, you don't have to go to a lecture. It's already there in your heart. All you have to do is do it."
And anyway, I think as I reflect on the Gospel today, what it stimulates in me as I move back to the altar is a very simple prayer, that I might be touched by God's grace and that I might find in my life the freedom to respond to the reality around me in a very simple and direct way, from the wellspring of grace and love and compassion that God has already placed in my heart.

Homily for July 8, 2007 14th Sunday

I want to comment briefly on a lot of little elements of the Gospel today. First of all, I have found myself in the last couple years quoting part of this Gospel to people many times, as I sit and talk to people about the difficulty of living their faith in their workplace or in the midst of the things that they struggle with in life.
The phrase, "I am sending you like lambs in the midst of wolves" comes to me many times. Can you relate to that? Think for a moment of the challenge of taking your faith out into the world. How many of you have felt like a lamb among wolves? I know I have many times, even within the Church.
I looked for the other part of that passage today. I couldn't find it. But my memory, which is pretty good, says to me that somewhere Jesus also said, "I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Be, therefore, cunning as serpents but innocent as doves." I think that's wonderful advice. We're not meant to be sent out and be naive or unaware. In fact, living our faith in the world or in our workplace oftentimes does require that we be cunning and clever, but also that we maintain our innocence.
And then He tells them to travel light. Last week in our diocese was the day that many of the clergy appointments took effect, so many priests were moving into their new abodes and into their new parishes, and probably most of them required a moving van to move in. And I would love to walk around it, quote the Gospel, "Carry no money bag, no walking stick, no sandals."
What's that all about? The way Jesus envisioned the Gospel being preached was traveling people who don't carry a lot of baggage with them and who are totally dependent on the hospitality of those to whom they go, so much that he says, "Eat and drink what they set before you. Don't cast your eye on a better place to live once you've settled in. Don't go moving about, but stay and receive the hospitality that is offered."
I think with a few things changed, those words still have relevance for us today. If I were to say to you, "I'm sending you into the world to be a witness to the Good News," stop for a minute and think about that. What would you take with you? What would you need to take with you? I think what the Gospel would say is all we need to take with us is our experience of God and the willingness to share that, and to know that God is with us.
And then, what does he send them to do? To drive out demons and to heal. Think of our world today. I want to invite a little participation. What are some demons in our world that need to be driven out?
[Inaudible responses] Property taxes; drug addiction; politicians, or at least insofar as they might seek only power and gain and not be servants; unjust - when you mentioned property taxes I might say structures that harm people and those maybe who fail to correct those structures.
[Inaudible response] Materialism, the thought that we can be happy without God or without some deeper purpose to live.
[Inaudible response] Racism.
Take anything and put an "ism" on the end of it, and I think you could call it a demon that needs to be exorcized. Would that be fair? Because anything that becomes an ideology that claims to be all inclusive in explaining everything is a demon that needs to be expelled.
And then, what are some things that need to be healed? Those two things: He sends them out to drive out demons and to heal.
I read two things surrounding this Gospel this past week. One, I've been reading Pope Benedict's book on Jesus, which is a very good read and a very good book, and in it I was struck by the fact, last week when I was reading a passage, where he said the Scriptures cannot be interpreted academically, and they cannot be interpreted in words only. You can only interpret them through the lives of the people whose lives have been changed by reading them.
So he was commenting on the beatitudes. He said if you want to know what they mean, look at St. Francis, look at Mother Theresa, look at people whose lives they have changed, and look at the change that they've brought about in their life. And that is the key to understanding them more than anything.
And then I was reading a commentary on this by the theologian and storyteller John Shea. In this commentary he mentions that he is working for a Catholic health care system in California, and he says many Catholic systems - and this is true across the board, by the way - there are many Catholic institutions that were bounded by religious communities, and when those religious communities were there, very actively communicated the values of that religious community.
But now as they dwindle in number, and as the management is given over to lay people, oftentimes who are not Catholic, how do you maintain the sense of mission? And that's the thing that a lot of Catholic institutions and universities struggle with. Many of them will have an office of Vice President for Mission whose only job is to remind them of that mission. But what he was saying is in his work - and the reason I mention that is I want to use today something that he says he uses in his work:
Imagine yourselves, and imagine our mission. Imagine that we are standing in a chain that goes all the way back to Jesus. Can you do that? Imagine here we are, we're holding hands and the chain goes all the way back to Jesus.
Who is standing next to you, who came before you? How many of you could think of somebody? If you couldn't, give some thought to it. Think of that person standing before you. What have they passed on to you? What have you learned from them about our mission?
Now, think of the people who are going to come after you. Whose hands are you holding? And what do you want to pass on to them? I'll give you just a minute to maybe think of that and hold before God what you have learned and received, and hold before God what you would like to pass on. And imagine Jesus saying to you, "Go now and remember that I'm sending you like lambs among wolves."

Homily for July 1, 2007 13th Sunday of the Year

I'm going to invite some participation this morning. First of all, did you see a parallel between the first reading and the Gospel? Elijah calls Elisha. By the way, those two names: Elijah means "God judges," Elisha means "God saves." And so the two prophets had quite different ministries.
Elijah called fire from heaven to consume his enemies, so the reference in the Gospel where James and John say, "Do you want us to call fire down from heaven to consume them?" is a reference back to Elijah.
Elisha wants to go home and take leave of his family. Elijah seems to allow him. In the Gospel a man wants to go home and take leave of his family and Jesus seems not to allow it. So there are a lot of parallels.
By the way, the Church, when it picked that first reading from the book of Kings, thought that it went with the Gospel. Do you think Luke, when he wrote his Gospel, thought of the book of Kings? Scripture scholars would say that he did.
And then, what do you think of Jesus' attitude in the Gospel today? Does it seem, well, what does it seem like to you? "Harsh," Julie said. How many of you thought it was pretty harsh? Yeah.
I mean, the commentaries I read on it, by the way, said, "Well, He's saying that the demands of the Kingdom are unconditional, and we have to follow unconditionally." And I read that, and you know, I have never been able to preach a homily on the demands of Jesus being unconditional and feel good about it, because I've never been able to feel that I live up to that myself. I wish it was that easy, to say you put your hand to the plow and you never look back. How many of you can say your life has been that way?
I wish it was that easy to say, "Let the dead bury their dead, just move on." I've never been able to feel that I live up to that. So I think those of you who might say that the Gospel is harsh, that's my reaction, too. In fact, in my letter in the bulletin I point out that that often is a way of teaching - the rebuke - that points out to you right away, we're not on the same page. And it does it by rebuking you and pointing out to you where your thinking or where your line of thought is just not in line with what's being proclaimed.
I find in my life, sometimes when I am rebuked - well, how do you feel when you feel rebuked? What? Ashamed? Belittled, defensive? Humbled? Anybody ever get angry? It hurts your feelings and you get confused? Sometimes being rebuked does that to me. But do you know, sometimes it opens up a new way of thinking for me, and it points out to me that I'm not on the right page and it opens up a new possibility. Can you relate to that, too? Do you know the difference in your life when it happens? I don't often, but I recognize that sometimes it works both ways for me.
Now, in the Gospel today, the people that were rebuked, the Gospel doesn't tell us what happens afterwards. So let's take the man who said, "I will follow you wherever you go."
And Jesus said, "Well, okay, but I've got nowhere to lay my head.” What do you think he did? What do you think the end of the story is?
Okay. Mike said he'd like to think the man said, "Yeah, I know that. I'm ready." So you might think that there was a possibility that in spite of that realistic warning, he followed Jesus, only with a greater sense of realism about what it might cost him. You could equally imagine that he walked away sad.
What about the other two? What do you think they ended up doing? There is no right answer, by the way, because we don't know. It doesn't tell us. I would like to think that the rebuke of Jesus opened a door for them into a new way of thinking and a new way of being, and that they went through that door with Jesus. And I'd like to think that that's the way our life can be.
You know most of us live in a very real world where we are torn day in and day out between conflicting obligations. I mean, I'd like to follow Jesus, but I've got to live in the world and make a living, and there are very practical demands. I'd like to leave everything behind, but I have family and I have friends. I have obligations in this world, and often I feel torn. Can you relate to that? Is there anybody here who has not felt conflict in your following of Jesus, or in your trying to hear the Gospel?
I'd like to proclaim to you that there is a way that you can come up with a long-range strategic plan that eliminates all the conflict and has everything in place, and if you believe that anybody can do that for you, I've got some real estate to sell you somewhere!
I think more often in our life what happens is we come up against the rebuke, or we come up against the absolute frustration or the blind wall, and either we turn away in anger and confusion or a new door opens for us and we go through that door into new territory. And at least today I'd like you to let the Gospel suggest that possibility to you, that through all of the conflicts we experience in life, what we might really experience is a new door being opened, and that we might be able to walk through that door.