Homily thoughts for Pentecost, May 31, 2009

When I was in grade school here at Holy Cross, we wrote, "J.M.J." at the top of all our papers. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Every half hour or so, a bell would ring and we would stand and say, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, all for you." Others who went to Catholic schools may remember writing other similar things on their papers. One common one -- I forget the letters because they are in Latin and I forget the Latin phrase -- was "All for the Greater Glory of God."

Devotions! Were they silly? Or were they part of a culture that had a deep meaning? As I reflect, they reminded me from my youth that there was something, someone to whom I should be devoted. That sense of devotion included devotions but it also had the deeper meaning of devotion, the sense that my life, my energies and efforts, my very self were to be given to something or to someone.

Today, I hear people asking, "What can religion do for me?" Or what can church do for me? Or what can God do for me? These questions have something in common: me. Me at the center of everything. Faith, religion, devotion all begin when we turn the question around and ask, "What purpose does my life serve? Why am I here?" One person with whom I shared this answered, "I've been asking that question all my life." I don't mean to suggest a quick and easy answer. it's more of a search that lasts a lifetime.

Most people I know are mixed in their lives and motives, asking in part what's in this for me and in part what greater purpose do I serve. I've met a few people of whom I think there is no ego involved in the good that they do. It's pure devotion to doing what is right and good. I wouldn't consider myself one of them -- yet. As people in AA say, Progress not perfection.

I started thinking about my homily today by asking, "How do we know when we are doing God's will." But that presumes that we want to do God's will, that we are devoted to doing God's will.

So first, I want to invite us to reflect on the question, "What am I devoted to?" Don't answer from the head or even from the heart. Answer as an observer, an objective observer insofar as that is possible. I realize that modern science shows us there is no purely objective observer. We always interact with what we observe. But, if someone followed you or me around, observed our actions, how we spend our time, how we consistently choose what to do, what sacrifices we make or don't make, what conclusions would they draw about what we are devoted to?

In today's second reading from Galatians, Paul tells us that a life in the spirit, a life of devotion in the spirit, yields certain fruits. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Faithfulness, Generosity and Self Control. I would like to stress these as a package. Many things give me the illusion of love. But do they also produce peace, kindness, patience, faithfulness, generosity and self-control. Many things give me the illusion of joy or peace but to they produce the other fruits as well.

Long ago, St. Ignatius of Loyola discovered what many people in recovery from addictions have discovered. Some things bring us a sense of happiness and well being while we are doing them but, when we are finished, they leave us feeling emptiness, shame and sadness. Other things bring us a lasting sense of peace and joy.

St. Ignatius concluded that, when we are acting out of devotion to God's will, there is an abiding sense of consolation. When we are acting out of self-will, there is a sense of desolation.

I would add some things to Paul's list for our modern day. Does it bring us a sense of social responsibility and connectedness. Does it connect us with one another in a community of devotion and practice.

I've been fortunate to meet many people in recovery from addiction. What they have in common is a shift in their lives. They begin to ask, "How do I know I am doing God's will." I've met many other people, young and old for whom this is an important question. How do I know that I am doing God's will.

I would suggest that "Devotion" marks their life. They are devoted to someone or something. This devotion encompasses all of their life, not just moments of prayer or moments of "doing devotions." It encompasses the simple obligations and duties of their life.

I think Pentecost suggests to us the possibility of life in the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth who will guide us to all truth. A way of life that yields Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Faithfulness, Generosity, Gentleness and Self Control A way of life that embraces responsibility for the world and for our daily obligations and that connects us to one another in a bond of peace and love.

My prayer for us is that we find this path.

Homily for May 24, 2009, The Feast of the Ascension and Memorial Day

The homily for this Sunday, the Feast of the Ascension, was an interactive homily. Our Church has a beautiful stained glass window depicting the ascension. It is the last picture on the right wall as you face the front of the Church. I talked about the stained glass windows in our church and what they depict.
1. The Nativity
2. Jesus in the midst of the teachers and doctors of the law in the temple.
3. The Wedding feast at Cana.
4. The sermon on the mount.
5. The sinful woman washing the feet of jesus (she is not Mary Magdalene)
These are the windows on the East Wall.
6. Jesus blessing the children.
7. The Last supper (Jesus is standing in the midst of the disciples with a ciborium)
8. The Agony in the Garden.
9. A blank wall because the bell tower is on the other side. A large crucifix is here.
10.The Ascension.

I talked about how these windows depict the life of Christ and asked if the story ended with the Ascension. The answer was no.

I asked, What comes next.
Pentecost and the coming of the spirit.
What comes next?
The disciples did what Jesus did.
What comes next?
This led to the question of, if our church were large enough and we could complete the windows with another set of windows, who would we put in the windows. Here were some of the answers.

Dorothy Day
The first woman priest.
Franz Joegenstatter, an austrian peasant who, despite the pleadings of his bishop and priest, defied the Nazis and chose to be executed rather than serve in the Nazi army.
Someone mentioned the Cathedral in Los Angeles which has pictures of modern people living out the Gospel.
Others --
Caesar Chavez
Marrtin Luther King, Jr.
Someone mentioned a woman from our congregation.
Nathan the prophet who spoke the truth to power. Who are our modern Nathans?
We closed with the invitation to people to consider how the story continues in our midst.

Also, we mentioned that the beautiful window of the Ascension was the gift of those who served in the World War. (That was WW I) The title under the window was Pro Deo et Pro Patria. For God and Country. We had a brief excursion into the meaning of Memorial Day. Asked for a show of hands of how many had served in various wars. I shared how I grew up in WWII and patriotism was beautiful and simple. My movies were the great war movies with heroes like John Wayne.
Patriotism became more complex as I grew up. How do we "support our troops" and honor the sacrifices our brave young men and women make when we do not agree with the decisions of our leaders to send them in harms way. I mentioned how two Popes pleaded with George Bush not to start the war in Iraq. We concluded with the need for fair minded and charitable dialogue on this topic Also mentioned was the fact that the origin of the word Chauvinism is after a French Veteran of the Napoleonic wars named Chauvin, who was excessively patriotic. Can we be patriotic without being chauvinistic?

The

Homily for May 3, 2009

This will be a show and tell homily. This little lamb was given to me by a First Communion class 28 years ago, in a small country parish down in Dearborn County. It has a banner with the saying, "I am the good shepherd and know my sheep." It sits on the floor in my office where I can see it.
Some days I see it and I feel really good. I remember that date 28 years ago and the kids that gave it to me. Some days I see it and I want to turn it to the wall and hide it, because that phrase, "I am the good shepherd and I know my sheep," makes me feel challenged and guilty. Some days I see it and I feel reasonably good about it. I never feel ecstatically good about it, because there's always room to be challenged.
Well, I brought it out today to share it with you. Think of those words of Jesus in the Gospel. Think of ourselves as a community, and think of yourselves as parents, teachers, friends.
Now, just the adults, repeat after me these words: I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and they know me.
How does that make you feel? Some days good? There's a challenge there, isn't there? I want to invite us to hear that challenge today and to reflect on it, because it means something for us as a community to be celebrating First Communion.
Now I want to show you, the bread we use today for communion is going to be different than the bread we ordinarily use. What's different about this bread?
It's square. It's square, not round, okay. What else is different?
This time we made it. This time the children made it. So yesterday they were on a retreat and they made this bread themselves.
Now, what is this right now? Bread. What will it become?
The body. The body of Christ, okay. When I hold it up and you come up, I will hold it up and say, "The body of Christ." What will you say? Amen. What does "amen" mean? Can anybody tell me? Who has an answer? Yes? What does "amen" mean? "I believe." Yes. "Amen" says, "Yes, so be it."
Now, I was pastor of a parish down in New Albany once, and they had a habit when I went there that I did not try to change. The Bishop was there one Sunday and he tried to change it, but he didn't succeed. When I held up the host and said "the body of Christ," do you know what they answered? Amen? That's what they were supposed to answer, and that's what the Bishop told them they were supposed to answer. But they had a unique answer that was not really correct, because when I hold up the host and say, "This is the body of Christ," I'm asking you to agree to that statement and say, “Yes it is.” But what they said was, "Yes we are." That answer was also correct, because we are the body of Christ.
I'm going to get very academic for a while. St. Thomas Aquinas was a great teacher in the church, and he wrote volumes of books. When he talked about the Eucharist  (I'm going to say some Latin words now, because some things sound a little jazzy and special in Latin)  he talked about the res and the sacramentum. The res is the reality, what is. The sacramentum is the sacrament, the symbol.

Now, I'll invite the adults to join in. What is the sacrament? Anybody want to guess? What do you think St. Thomas said the sacrament was? The Eucharist, yes. The bread on the altar that becomes the body of Christ. What is the reality? I'm getting a little deep, but this is what St. Thomas said: The reality is we become the body of Christ, and that's why Christ is in the Eucharist.
So St. Thomas talked about the reality alone, and that's us as the body of Christ; the sacrament alone, and that's the Eucharist on the altar; and the reality and the sacrament together, and that's us gathered around the altar receiving the sacrament and becoming the body of Christ.
Now, in the second reading today St. John said, "See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God. Yet that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it never knew Christ. But one day we will know him and be revealed for what we are."
St. Paul would say, "See what love God has given us in letting us become the body of Christ, yet that is what we are. The reason the world doesn't recognize us is that it never recognized Christ, but one day all of that will be revealed to us."
So as they receive their Communion today and we say they're receiving the body of Christ, yes, they are, the body of Christ in the bread. But they're also receiving us, the community, as the body of Christ. And when we give them the bread, we are giving them not only the body of Christ in the Eucharist, but we're giving them ourselves as the body of Christ.

Homily for April 19, 209

We're doing a little work through a grant we received from the Center on Congregations, and it will involve two things. First, we're working with an advertising firm to help us identify what brand of Catholicism Holy is. The advertising firm we're working with has MCL cafeterias as one of their clients. And I think this is instructive, because in their work with MCL they've had to realize a lot of people who go to MCL like MCL just the way it is, and they don't want it to change. They like their MCL. But they also need to grow to reach other people. So how do they articulate a message that keeps their old customers and attracts new? I think that's a very appropriate image for us.
The other thing we will be doing is some results accountability training for all of our committees to ask, "What is the result we're really looking for, and how do we know we're getting there?" It's going to be very challenging.
One of our parishioners says working at Holy Cross is like trying to herd stray cats. Somebody else described us as being like a stray dog at a whistler's convention. Every new idea that comes along, we jump after it. So it's going to be challenging.
Anyway, in preparation for that I've been doing a lot of reading about how the different media we use shape our consciousness. One of the delightful books I've been reading is Flickering Pixels, about how technology and the use of technology is changing the way we think. It's written by a man who was an advertising executive. One of his clients was Porsche North America. He thought he was wasting his time selling cars and went to theology school and became a Mennonite pastor.
One chapter in his book begins with the Gospel that I read today. One Sunday Jesus appears to the Apostles. Thomas is not there, and Thomas says, "I'll never believe it." The next Sunday Thomas is there, Jesus appears, and Thomas believes.
Now, I have a very practical question to ask you: What if Thomas had died in the intervening week, between the week where he said, "I'll never believe it" and the week where he saw and believed? What if he had died? Would he be saved? What do you think? How many would say yes? How many would say no?
Good, you're all good Catholics here. You're not Baptist. I'm not knocking the Baptists, but you know, some people talk about being saved as if it is a decisive moment when you turn on the light switch. Our Catholic view is it's more like a dimmer switch, where the light keeps coming on gradually. Do you see the image?
The other thing, as I thought of the Gospel, I was talking to a woman recently who at one time had gone to confession. And she confessed that she had some doubts about her faith. Do you know what the priest told her? That she was excommunicated. Now, he didn't have the authority to do that, by the way. No priest does. But I can see you're all shaking your heads, and what I want to point out when Thomas told the 11, the other 11, that he didn't believe, did they excommunicate him? No. He continued to be with them. He continued to meet with them, to hang out with them. They continued to welcome him as one of them.
I just wanted to share that image with you, that that's what faith is like. I think one of the things that we are conscious about is that we welcome people who doubt, and I like that image of a dimmer switch. We're not full of light switches here, but we all have dimmer switches, and we welcome that.
The other thing I got from this book Flickering Pixels that I want to share with you is, in many languages, when you read the word "you" the language makes clear whether it's "you" plural or "you" singular. English doesn't do that. So when you read the word "you" in English, you don't know if it's singular or plural.
Many people read the Bible as if the word "you" is "you" singular. It isn't. Wherever you read the word "you" in the Bible, it is plural. Shane Hipps, who wrote the book Flickering Pixels, says that in English our neighbors in the south have it right. They say "y'all." So he says whenever you read "you" in the Bible, you ought to read "y'all."
So in the Gospel today, when Jesus breathes on the Apostles he's saying, "Y'all receive the Spirit. Whose sins y'all forgive are forgiven. Whose sins y'all retain are retained."
Now, what meaning does that have for us? I grew up thinking that that phrase referred to the priest and to the priest forgiving sins. How many of you grew up that way? What if it isn't? What if he really meant, "Y'all are called to forgive sins? And if y'all forgive sins, they're forgiven. If y'all retain them, they're retained"? What does that say about us and our mission as a community?
The other thing I've been reading on this communication thing and I think I quoted this last week Marshall McClune, whom some of you may have heard of back in the 60s, wrote The Medium is the Message. How many of you heard that phrase? Well, the medium is by the way, he also said content is like the juicy piece of red meet you throw to the watchdog of your mind to distract it, so the burglar can get in and steal what's there. So anyway, the medium is the community.
In the first reading today we heard the community held everything in common. The community lived together and they shared freely. The community was a community of stewardship.
In my letter in the bulletin today I mention today is earth awareness day. Pope Benedict has identified global warming as one of the greatest moral issues of our day. So have the U.S. Bishops. And I was happy to note, by the way, that our United States government has recently changed its policy and recognized that global warming exists. Isn't that great? Our government now accepts scientific evidence. So forgive me for a political blurb.
You know, so often when we talk about sin we think only of individual sins. In the Bible when sin is spoken of, they mean the sins of the people and the sins of the culture. So I think in all of the readings today if I could summarize the stream of consciousness that's been occupying me in the last week, I would say first of all, doubters are welcome; you're not excommunicated for doubting. Remember Thomas and what a gradual move to faith he made.
Then I would say, think "y'all." Think that y'all are called to forgive sins, and think of the sins of y'all. Think of our sins as a society and as a culture and how we are called to forgiveness and healing for those sins.