Rootings

The Voice Of God Is Everywhere

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Who speaks for God? When I was a child, my grandmother told me that my mother and father spoke for God. In grade school, the sisters told me that the priest spoke for God. High school teachers told me that the pope spoke for God. In college my professors assured me that Scripture, the Church and whoever spoke truth spoke for God. I began to sense a direction in these conversations.

Today many people listening closely for the word of God have come to accept that God speaks through life: all life but, most powerfully, human life – everyone’s life. Life reflects God most fully and in the longing for life reflects the longing for God at its most intense.

The more carefully folks attend to human life, the more clearly they see that it can’t be detached from the earth in which it dwells in and of which it’s a part. Seeing this, they have come to think of the entire earth and, to the extent we understand it, the universe beyond, as God speaking to us.

Christians may wonder if this experience of God in all of creation supersedes the experience of God in our Tradition. It doesn’t. What it does do is place the Word of God that the Church has conveyed to us into a context beyond measure.

Today we have to re-hear the story of Jesus. Christians of the New Testament era had to translate the story of Jesus from its Jewish context into the culture of the Greek and Roman world. We have to hear Jesus with the ears of world-wide humanity, of the planet itself and the universe beyond. If just moving the experience of Jesus from the world of first century Judaism into the Greco-Roman world pushed our faith to the edge of its breaking point, what will happen as we immerse it in the world that science and communication are opening up today! No wonder the Church feels so unsettled; God is drastically widening the horizons of our faith.

As our grade school teachers said when we had to cross a busy street, “Hold tight to the hand of the boy or girl next to you.”

We Listen For The Voice Of God

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jonah 3:1-5, 10

In recent comments for a Commonweal article Luke Timothy Johnson, a respected scripture scholar, observed that every theologian’s first question has to be, what is God doing in the world? I’d add, that’s the first question every Christian has to ask!

Many Catholics today struggle to maintain confidence in authority’s ability to provide them a useful answer to that question. It seems sometimes that our leaders fear the messiness of the new experiences and situations within which faith must operate and are simply attempting to mandate attitudes and solutions from a previous age. We view this as a dead end. Accepting that life and faith-life are always lived in a fumbling, insecure and restless world we choose to move ahead bringing what ancient treasures we can carry and counting on the Holy Spirit and our sense of the Tradition to help us construct what we need as we proceed. As we journey, we hold tightly to two basic elements of Catholic life.

First, we are a Eucharistic community. This means much more than that we go to Mass. It means that we’re committed to the promise of Jesus. It means that we’re confident that the Holy Spirit works through our lives. It means we believe that God will accomplish through us the just world that he promised. We celebrate the renewal of that promise every time we pray the Eucharist. We unite ourselves to God’s work and one another’s when we share Christ in Communion.

Next, the world that we live in, as unfulfilled and painful as it often is, is the gift God gives for our joy and fulfillment. It is a sacrament; it is God’s realm. God didn’t enter this world because there was no other way to communicate his love for us. He entered it because it’s his gift to us and he loves it as he loves us. Our world is not intended to be a vale of tears but a wondrous home. Our faith is not to flee this world but to immerse ourselves in it and complete it.

If we know where we’re going, if we’re committed to the journey, if we know what to carry, we’ll arrive in God’s time. We have his promise.

The God In Front Of Our Noses

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
I Samuel 3:3-10, 19

My dad wore reading glasses. One day he couldn’t find them. He searched the house high and low certain that someone, probably my mom, had moved them from their usual place. Complaining loudly, he finally walked into the kitchen demanding to know why my mother had moved his glasses and where she had put them. She looked up from her work and, giving him her best you poor dumb man look said, “For God’s sake, Walter, they’re on your nose.”

Missing the obvious is common. It happens in our faith lives. We hear repeated admonitions to practice some behavior or virtue and it becomes part of the wallpaper: always there, rarely noticed. Jesus agreed with the common rabbinical teaching that the central commandment of Jewish Law was to love God and one’s neighbor. We hear those words thousands of times and yet they sit hidden on our noses.

Part of the trouble is the unfortunate use of the word commandment referring to Jewish Law. We tend to react to law as an imposition on our freedom. What’s the fine for its infringement? How can we circumvent it? Jews, on the other hand, viewed The Law, at least in theory, as the road map for successful living. God had given it to them as their most precious possession. It advanced them above every other nation.

Loving God above all else meant recognizing that a Benevolent Being was behind all reality giving it meaning and direction. Aligning oneself with this Being was traveling the road to success. It was the height of common sense. Loving one’s neighbor as oneself was simply recognizing the fact that the Creator constructs life as a web in which, ultimately, for one to thrive all must thrive. The admonishment to love God and one another was like an admonishment to breathe: not some extraneous regulation but the simple encouragement to commit to life.

We spend a lot of time storming about our world looking for lost peace, misplaced civility, vanished resources sorely needed by millions. The solution isn’t missing. It’s Love God above all else and our neighbor as ourselves. What’s missing is the courage to acknowledge it.
Pray for courage.

Faith's Focus

2012-01-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of the Epiphany
Isaiah 60:1-6

Once arriving home from school for the holidays I was overcome by rare feelings of generosity and asked my mother how I could help her get ready for the festivities. Casting an amused look around the pre-Christmas chaos she quipped, “Gee, I don’t know; just look around and see if anything catches your eye in.” So much for my grand gesture!

Some folks are convinced that it’s crucial to return elements of the mystical to our world. They are certain that the Church has lost its sense of the sacred and has discarded our rich spiritual heritage creating a trivial, feeble, boring religion focused only on what we can see and measure. An earnest young man once informed me that we needed to move past worldly preoccupations and promote what Celtic religion refers to as the thin spots in life, where the sacred world is near at hand and easily grasped. We should stress the wonder of the sacraments, especially the mystery of the Eucharist, and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We should emphasize the world’s holy places like the Vatican, Lourdes, cathedrals and shrines. “Folks today have lost their grasp of the spiritual and divine, they’re drowning in the ordinary,” he informed me. This thinking is strong in many circles and carries significant official backing. Still, it misses a huge point. The sacred is not the other-worldly.

Jewish Scripture repeatedly points out that the world is full of God’s goodness and splendor (e.g., Num. 14:20, Is. 6:3, Hab. 2:14). In the gospel Jesus bluntly points out that those who feed and care for others, especially the needy, feed and care for him (Mt. 25:35). At the heart of our every Eucharist prayer the priest raises his hands over the bread and wine that ordinary folks make in ordinary wineries and bakeries. He asks the Holy Spirit to transform these symbols of our efforts for the life God promises into the divine guarantee that is Christ.

It’s a tempting to seek the sacred and meaningful in a sphere where, by our beliefs, we control the demands and their fulfillment. In the everyday world the demands and consequences of our action or inaction are objective, immediate and measurable: sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail and often we get exasperatingly mixed results. That’s a lot different; a lot tougher. Still, this is the world God gives us and promises to transform into his Kingdom. This is the arena of our faith lives.

Giving God's Image Room to Grow

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of Mary, the Mother of God
Numbers 6:22-27

The young woman in my office was upset, nearly in tears. “My professor said I was stupid and naïve for believing in God. It felt like he was accusing me of believing in the tooth fairy or something.” I happened to know the professor she was speaking of and, though he didn’t personally believe in God, he held others’ beliefs in great respect. The student and I had a long talk about her childhood beliefs and her current confusion about them.

When we begin thinking about God, it’s understandably in human terms. That’s our experience. We know reward and punishment so God rewards and punishes. We know jealousy and anger so God gets jealous and angry. We control things to get what we want so God controls things to get his way. We respond to those who are attentive to us and ignore those who discount us; so we understand God.

Later in life, when we’ve lived more and acquired a deeper wonder, we begin to find the super-human image of God unsatisfying. The Being underlying all being isn’t like us yet is as close to us, as one with us, as we are with ourselves. God becomes impossible to imagine apart from our selves yet equally united with every other being. How can we ask more of the Being who’s the foundation of being. How can we ask for love from Love itself. We begin to know God at once indescribably other and incredibly intimate.

When our faith makes this leap, the childlike ease of explaining and encompassing God is gone, gone as well is the need and desire to do so. In its place is a new, deeper union – one that can be neither limited nor lost.

This was the source of disquiet in the student’s life. This was changing her way of viewing Jesus. This was changing her way of praying. She was secretly excited about her growth but unsure of it and anxious about relinquishing the God of her childhood. Growth, not her professor, stirred her unease. She was young to experience this much growth but it’s there for all of us.

God Is Here

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Christmas Day
1 Isaiah 52: 7-10

“I am worried about my grandson leaving for college. He’s young and immature. He doesn’t think. Anybody can talk him into anything. I’m afraid for him and so is his mother. I constantly pray that God will watch over him. I just never feel I’ve prayed enough.” This is one of countless conversations I’ve had with people worried that their prayers weren’t sufficient to turn God’s attention from heaven to earth.

Why do we speak of God as being out there? For thousands of years people have spoken of God existing in another realm. God may occasionally break into our realm to take care of some situation or other but this isn’t his natural milieu. Even though our faith teaches that God is constantly involved with us, creating our entire universe, we continue to speak of him as external to us. This assumption is so deeply woven into Christian cosmology that it seems inextricable from the faith. But Is it?

What happens if we don’t posit a unique sphere for God? What if we view God existing within our realm, giving it life and direction rather than entering our world from the outside? Are we reducing God to the stuff around us? Certainly not. Our faith is that the universe is meaningful, destined for fulfillment. Everything that exists is good and purposeful. From black holes to kitty cats, with us in that continuum, we give ourselves neither existence nor promise. God alone gives goodness and promise to creation.

Can we speak of God as independent of but inseparable from creation?
Isn’t this the underlying revelation of the Incarnation? Doesn’t this illuminate the enormity of God’s becoming human? Christians have a chronic problem: we’re prone to envisioning God as creating us and sitting back to see if we’ll achieve our destiny. We sometimes speak even of the Incarnation as though it were merely an exception in which God visited our world to straighten us out then returned to his “out there” to observe the results. This isn’t our faith.

We need to know that God is closer to human life than our breath, more involved with material creation than gravity. God is not “out there” somewhere; God is not and refuses to be separate from our lives. We celebrate that every Christmas.

Everyday Messiahs

2011-12-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Third Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 61: 1-2, 10-11

Late one recent evening I stopped in a local store to pick up several things I needed for a home repair. The person who waited on me was friendly and very helpful, going out of his way to make sure he understood my needs and guided me to the right items. We didn’t know one another but for the few minutes that we were together he was caring and pleasant. When he got home later he probably complained about tired feet and having to mother-hen clueless folks like me about home repair. Still, however tired and frustrated he may have been, he went out of his way to assist me and let me know that I was worth his time and energy.

Isaiah anticipated a political Messiah because the oppression his people faced was political. Jesus’ vision was also political but not in the sense of managing power to get people to do what he wanted. Jesus understood that the first step toward peace and justice was to want peace and justice for everyone including those who oppose us. If that isn’t our ultimate goal, we’ll never attain the world we long for; without that goal we can’t accept the world God offers. What does that have to do with a tired, foot-sore clerk in a hardware store?

There’s a mocking element in saying that someone views herself as a messiah. It calls to mind the image of a person who believes that she has all the answers to how the world should act and is willing to do most anything to drag others in her schemes. We generally view would-be messiahs as ludicrous, even dangerous, people. Yet the primary aim of everyone seriously claiming to be Christian is to be Christ for the world. Christ means Messiah.

The core work of Jesus was to free people from fear. He used his life to reveal that whatever their weaknesses, whatever their failures, whatever their history the Creator of the universe stands with folks – without question. Experiencing this divine commitment, each person is free to join with every other in the search for life. It is the work of all who take up Jesus’ mantel to free others from fear, not by intellectual brilliance or the force of an amazing personality but by standing with them, respecting them, loving them – without question.

We begin with the person in front of us, not with the Taliban or drug cartels or some other enemy-of-the-day. We begin with the guy looking for the thingamajig when our feet hurt too much and our day’s been too long. We show that person honest care and respect. We make ourselves one with him and his needs. Our faith promises that this will change us and change our world.

God Busy Here

2011-12-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Second Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11

Early one morning when I was very small, my mother and I stood looking out of our front window at a bright red dawn. “Why’s the sky so red,” I asked. Because, mom replied, “God’s making cotton candy today.” I’d eaten cotton candy but had no idea where it came from or how it was made. But grown-ups said that God gave us good things and cotton candy was good. For a long time I imagined God busy up in the sky making things, among them bright red cotton candy. It just seemed right, though I never figured out how he got it from “up there” to “down here”. It was a letdown, several years later, to watch a sweaty, grumpy woman in a dirty apron making cotton candy at the county fair.

Giving up the idea that God is somewhere out there acting directly on our world comes at a price. Some folks will accuse us of losing our faith – and we may wonder ourselves. If God isn’t directing things, what’s God doing? If God doesn’t control when good and bad things happen, why do we pray? If God isn’t pulling the strings, who is? Anybody?

When Jesus was beginning his ministry, he referred to himself as accomplishing the work of the Messiah; he was announcing the good news of God’s love to the disabled and disenfranchised. He then spent the rest of his life convincing his followers that they had the ability and the responsibility to bring healing and justice to those in need.

God is the living force bringing everything to fulfillment. God is the reality within growth and change, never forcing, never relenting, searching out the way forward. We sense it within ourselves. We thrill to it when we’re strong; we crave it when we’re weak. We are cynical about it when our progress is overwhelmed and we’re thrown back at every turn. We find it getting up and shaking itself back into life when we can see no way forward simply because, for God, not to rise up isn’t an option.

All life evolves as it struggles against the obstacles it faces. We say that Jesus revealed God in his life and death. We know that Jesus’ life was a struggle from his conception to his resurrection. Why can’t we accept that his struggle revealed God – as much as his resurrection.

Maybe one day we’ll be able to see the saint in the sweaty cotton candy lady with the dirty apron. When we do, she’ll be less grumpy.

God Is The Owner, Not The Butler

2011-11-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
First Sunday in Advent
1 Isaiah 63:16-17, 19 & 64:2-7

“I wish God would get it together and help me through this organic chemistry,” sighed the young man as we shared lunch at the university center. “I’ve been begging him all semester.”

Though it’s common to think of God primarily as our problem solver, it’s dangerous. Problems often go unsolved and the explanation that God has good reasons for allowing this leads many to respond to assurances of his reliability with, “Maybe; maybe not.” That seriously weakens our faith’s credibility.

There’s another, bigger problem with imagining God as our divine concierge: we turn God into a domestic. We may consider him a vital resource to be cultivated and respected but we still relegate him to the role of go-to guy in difficult situations. We lose God, the loving hope sustaining every reality.

Jesus’ followers saw him as the Messiah because he re-presented the essential reality of their lives, their hope and their national identity.” The Jews of Jesus’ day faced the cruelty of Roman military, economic and cultural domination just as they had faced the cruelty of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Greece in previous ages. God for these men and women was the reason for their past, their present and their future. God was the promise that their efforts and dreams meant something. God was their destiny.

Today in educated Western communities questions of who we are, the meaning of our lives and future are up for grabs. We’re coming to realize that we, not just our selves and our nation but our world, are an infinitesimal part of an unimaginable let alone controllable reality. After millennia of assuming that humanity is the necessary apex of creation we find ourselves neither apex nor necessary. We’ve always known the fragility of individual life. In the last generation we’ve come to realize that the whole of life is tenuous and our ability to protect it limited. That realization is beginning to shake us to our roots.

We live in a universe we can’t even describe let alone manage. Yet we cling to a picture of God as a prickly butler keeping our house clean and meals on time. We need an understanding of the God of Abraham and Jesus vastly larger than the one with which we’ve grown comfortable. We need to arrive at it together.

Christ: A King Without Airs

2011-11-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
The Feast of Christ the King
Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17

Americans have never been big on kings. There are exceptions but, generally, we view them as autocratic, power-hungry, scheming, pompous, cads. That’s a strange group in which to include Jesus.

Pope Pius XI created the Feast of Christ the King in 1925 to make the point that Christians can never value governmental agendas or political movements above the Way of Christ when choosing how to live. Nazism was on the rise in Germany and Communism in Russia. It wasn’t enough for the Christians to participate in the sacraments, read Scripture and pray to Jesus. Jesus hadn’t come as an other-worldly royal to be praised and assuaged; he came to demonstrate God’s relationship with humanity and the relationship that humans must generate among themselves.

The image of Jesus as King makes another point. We easily overlook the courage and dedication demanded of a king, especially an average king rather than the head of one of the richest and most powerful realms. A king was responsible for defending his people. He was the man in front when the battle started. He was the prime target of all his people’s enemies. True, folks threw him a party if he protected them but failure could also cost him his life.

Ancient, agrarian cultures referred to their kings as shepherds. Those folks knew how hard and dangerous a herder’s life was. Knowing few, if any, shepherds ourselves, we’re largely ignorant of the hardship and danger they endure leading their flocks to water, pasture and safety.

When we imagine Jesus as king of the world, we celebrate our faith in a God totally committed to human welfare and the human future. We claim a God so committed to us that the best way we can speak of him is as a leader willing to give all his energy and even his life out of love for us. Christ the King presents an image of God not as an all-powerful sovereign demanding reverence but a lover willing to risk everything for his beloved.

We Long For A Life Of Intgrity

2011-11-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31

“It worked fine then; it wouldn’t now. Everything’s different. But we loved each other just as much as folks today.” That was how an 80 year old friend in my home parish ended a conversation that began with my asking her how she recalled her younger years as a mother and homemaker in the early 1900s

Our society is much more flexible than past ones. We possess an amazing amount of power which we inject into life creating new opportunities all around. For the most part, we like it that way. Centuries may come when people will look back at us and wonder how we survived such chaos-like freedom. On the other hand, they may view ours as an era of increasingly enlightened humanity. Which view they’ll hold is hard to predict. The focal length of our social vision is shorter than we like to admit.

When we read Proverbs today, its depiction of one sex’s attributes appears applicable to both. It describes behaviors valuable not simply in a spouse but in the entire community.

The life of the Proverbial wife isn’t an extraordinary life. Hers is an ordinary life lived well. She gets up every morning and contributes what she has to offer to the best of her ability to give it. There’s an intentionality and integrity about her day that’s the hallmark of a life lived in God’s Spirit.

I once heard this passage read by a husband to his wife at the beginning of a Jewish Passover Seder. When he finished, every eye in the room was moist not just because we had witnessed an intimate act of love but because everyone longed to hear those same sentiments expressed of them – even if they couldn’t tell a distaff from a decaf. We all sense that God will say to those who live such a life, “You got it and you made a difference. Thank you.”

The Feel For The Faith

2011-11-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 6: 12-16

“He said that I’ve got no feel for the game and I’ll never be any good,” a friend in deep seventh-grade despair told me many years ago. His Little League coach was right. My friend had signed up for a team because he thought girls would like it. He was interested in a lot of things but baseball wasn’t one of them. He had made it a point to learn a lot about the game and was as coordinated as the average thirteen year old; he simply wouldn’t invest himself in baseball enough to get a feel for it. His efforts were doomed.

There’s a feel for Christianity that lies at the heart of successfully living it. It’s not theological knowledge, liturgical sophistication or attention to ecclesiastical concerns, though it might include these. It’s not an emotional response to a one’s image of Jesus, though again, this can be an element of it. This feel for Christianity is a deep sense of what God is doing in our world. Since we’re Christian, that sense is exemplified in Jesus’ actions and attitudes towards life. We resonate with Jesus’ promised future and his encouragement to live it now. His life and promise guides our evaluation and response to life, consciously and unconsciously. That’s the Wisdom scripture so often speaks of. It’s living in God’s Spirit.

That brings me back to my friend and his casual interest in baseball. There wasn’t anything wrong with signing up for Little League to attract girls. Since he never deepened his commitment, though, he saw nothing but bench time in games with less than a five run lead. A feeling for the game doesn’t grow with casual commitment. That’s also true in pursuing the Way of Jesus.

The beginning of Wisdom is honestly asking: Why am I in this faith?

With God For All

2011-10-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Malachi 1:14-2:2, 8-10

A professor once told me that the most important word in the Our Father is our. Too many folks, he contended, think of this prayer as a private appeal to God for their own salvation. It is, rather, a communal plea for all-inclusive peace and justice. In a prayer as dense as the Lord’s Prayer I’m reluctant to choose one most important word but my teacher had an excellent point.

I don’t know if it is true around the world but Americans, and even we American Catholics, find it difficult to give up an individualistic view of our relationship with God. Maybe it’s anxiety about losing our personal independence. Maybe we’re leery of being saddled with responsibility for someone else’s standing with the Almighty. Maybe the difficulty is that we realize that if we take the our in the Our Father seriously, we can never again be casual about others’ material or spiritual welfare.

Whatever the reason, a generation after the Second Vatican Council’s extensive teaching on the communal nature of salvation, many of us have yet to make the idea our own. This makes it impossible to appreciate the liturgy, especially the Eucharist; impossible to understand Scripture and impossible to understand the Catholic moral Tradition. But most importantly when we view our salvation as separate from the current and eternal welfare of others, we deny others the full benefit of the goodness God offers through us.

We are rowers on a stormy sea in a small boat. We can’t afford to think individually. We will find land together or wander forever. Each person’s welfare is our concern.

A what’s-mine-is-mine-and-keep-your-hands-to-yourself attitude is destructive to our civil lives. It is lethal to our faith lives.

We're In It Together

2011-10-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 22:20-26

People who study moral behavior note that the ability to place oneself in another’s shoes is crucial to making moral decisions. Jesus taught that we should love others as we love ourselves. To do that we have to be able to imagine our neighbor’s situation as well as imagine how we would want to be treated in the same situation. Some people’s imagination just can’t stretch that far. They are dangerous because they unknowingly cause others pain.

The more common problem, however, is our unwillingness to place ourselves in another’s shoes. We don’t want to see another’s point of view because we might have to adjust our own. We don’t want to know the pressure or stress they live under because we may find ourselves becoming sympathetic to them. We don’t want to know the weaknesses others struggle with since we may find that it makes more sense for us to adapt to them than for them to adapt to us. We don’t want to know their hearts because we might find ourselves wanting to forgive them. The Christian Way is demanding.

Catholic Tradition has always emphasized praying within a group. It’s not always the most emotionally satisfying way to pray. It’s not always the most intellectually profound way to pray. But it’s prayer that places us next to others, reminding us of our common humanity, faith and dreams. Praying together puts us in a great place to imagine the lives of others, to imagine how they must see things, how they must feel about things, how they must fear and dream.

When we watch people lining up to receive Communion, it is easy to imagine important things about their lives. It’s easy because we see them asking the same promise from God that we ask. There have been times when I didn’t want to go to Mass because I was mad about this or that and I knew that I’d have a hard time staying mad at those I was upset with if I went. It’s so inescapably obvious sitting there all crammed in at Mass that we’re in the same boat – with one another and with God. That’s exactly how it should be.

It’s the start.

Don't Lay It On God

2011-10-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 45:1, 4-6

One morning after Mass a young woman told me of her recent auto accident. She’d been driving to the airport to a catch a flight to a friend’s. On the way she was involved in a fender bender that took several hours to deal with. When all was done she had missed her flight and couldn’t get another that day. Later that same afternoon when she was back home, her father suffered a heart attack and she was there to summon medical help. Though she had a painful whiplash and would probably have to go to court since the collision was her fault, she thought it wonderful how God had arranged her accident to make her available for tending to her father. I was tempted to ask why God hadn’t given her a flat tire or an unexpected visit from a long lost aunt instead of a car crash but I didn’t.

I doubt that the hundreds of soldiers who died so that Cyrus could conquer Babylon were as sanguine as Isaiah about God’s chosen method of freeing the Israeli exiles from captivity. In fact, since it was through a Babylonian invasion and conquest that God chose to teach Israel a lesson and then through a second war that he chose to end the Israeli exile, an objective observer might consider the entire process inelegant at best. Many Christians have developed the habit of holding God responsible for amazing events whether very bad or very good.

Within the past few weeks both ministers and politicians have told us how the recent East coast hurricane and earthquake were God’s way of expressing his distaste for our sinfulness.

When his disciples asked Jesus whose fault it was that a certain man had been born blind, he answered that it was no one’s fault. It was rather, he said, an opportunity for people of faith – he himself in this instance – to demonstrate God’s power and goodness by coming to the blind man’s aid. He then proceeded to cure the man. Stop trying to read God’s mind and be the touch of God’s love was his response to their concerns. It was the same response he gave over and over again.

After two millennia one would think we’d have gotten the idea.

Gift Of Faith: Gift Of Freedom

2011-10-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
28nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 25:6-10

There are times when we ask what God wants us to do; there are times when we simply ask ourselves what’s best to do. The two questions are the same. The answers, however, can be very different.

Asking the question in terms of God’s will places our evaluations and our assumptions within the context of Jesus’ promise of God’s New World. Asking the question without reference to God’s will may deprive us of the support of Jesus’ promise.

Several years ago on a cold January day a young man told me that he had been thinking seriously about life after graduation. He considering the Peace Corps and teaching in a country short of schools and educational funding. “I know it’s risky,” he said. “My parents are leery of the idea and my friends – including my girlfriend – think I’m nuts. But, it’s something I can do to make things better and I think it’s worth the risk of being a few years behind in my career. Jesus didn’t mention being uneducated in his parable about people who helped him when he was in need, but he could have.”

The following year another student told me that she’d been thinking about her post graduation life and had looked into an inner-city community organizing job. It was a paid position, but barely. She would be essentially volunteering. She had reluctantly decided against the job however because she had little hope that it could make a difference and she believed that the practical decision was to begin the career in marketing and public relations she had trained for. “I don’t suppose that’s how things should be but that’s how they are,” she said by way of summing up.

These stories aren’t about two students, one of whom was a better person than the other. They’re about two students one of whom was freer than the other. I have no doubt that both will do good things in life. But from what each told me (and one never gets the full story about decisions like these) the first student felt stronger in the face of life as it is while the second felt more hemmed in and controlled by it. Which student ended up contributing more to life? I’ll never know. I do know which one felt the greater opportunity. And it was the faith context of his decision that opened the door.

Sharing The Gift Of Hope

2011-10-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
27nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 5:1-7

A co-worker I once knew told me that only someone who believes in God can live a moral life. Atheists can do good things but in the final analysis they can’t be moral because they can’t obey a God they don’t believe in. “That’s why,” he said, “atheists can’t go to heaven: they’re never really with God.” I think there are several problems with this understanding of God, faith and morality.

Basic to Christian faith is the conviction that God is giving us life as a gift and wants nothing in return other than that we enjoy that gift to the fullest. The most dramatic indication of this is Jesus’ life and death. Believing that Jesus is the real presence of God in our midst, we see in him God’s disinterest in praise or honors. Symbolizing God’s complete commitment to our welfare was Jesus’ willingness to face execution rather than abandon his work of bringing hope to his people. Unless we understand that God is trying to give to us – not get from us, I don’t see how we understand the basic revelation of the Incarnation.

If God is trying to give us life, everyone who works to make life more secure and more full for others as well as herself is cooperating with God. From our perspective, God’s Spirit is at work in that person’s life. That is not meant to be haughty. It’s a view arising from our faith that life is the hope, the gift and the display of God’s action. The essence of morality is being in harmony with life.

This understanding denigrates neither God nor faith. Jesus revealed God’s commitment to us in order to strengthen our hope in life which the Creator had already given us. Jesus was God’s all-out effort to make hope possible. Our role is exactly the same as his: to do everything possible to increase hope in all we meet. This is the core of the gospel.

Imagine Loving

2011-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 22:20-26

People who study moral behavior note that the ability to place oneself in another’s shoes is crucial to making moral decisions. Jesus taught that we should love others as we love ourselves. To do that we have to be able to imagine our neighbor’s situation as well as imagine how we would want to be treated in the same situation. Some people’s imagination just can’t stretch that far. They are dangerous because they unknowingly cause others pain.

The more common problem, however, is our unwillingness to place ourselves in another’s shoes. We don’t want to see another’s point of view because we might have to adjust our own. We don’t want to know the pressure or stress they live under because we may find ourselves becoming sympathetic to them. We don’t want to know the weaknesses others struggle with since we may find that it makes more sense for us to adapt to them than for them to adapt to us. We don’t want to know their hearts because we might find ourselves wanting to forgive them. The Christian Way can be very demanding.

Catholic Tradition has always put a lot of emphasis on praying in a group. It is not always the most emotionally satisfying way to pray. It is not always the most intellectually profound way to pray. But it is the way of praying that places us in the proximity of others in a way that forcefully reminds us of our common humanity and our common faith and dreams. Praying together puts us in a great place to imagine the lives of others, to imagine how they must see things, how they must feel about things, how they must fear and dream.

When we watch people lining up to receive Communion, it is easy to imagine important things about their lives. It’s easy because we see them seeking the same promise from God that we seek. There have been times when I didn’t want to go to Mass because I was mad about this or that and I knew that I’d have a hard time staying mad at the person I was upset with if I went. We all seem so much in the same boat when we’re at Mass – with one another and with God. That’s exactly how it should be.

It starts there and spreads to the world.

Dancing With God To Life

2011-09-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 55:6-9

My wife and I once attended an evening’s entertainment at Central Michigan University where I worked. After a eating a good meal and listening to many talented performers, the orchestra moved to a large hall where we had few hours of dancing. After my few valiant attempts to move with the music which Barb graciously endured, we took seats at a table to watch the folks who knew what they were doing. We were amazed how some couples moved so effortlessly together knowing exactly where the each other was and how to coordinate their movements. They were beautiful to watch.

I’ve thought often that mastering the Christian life is like learning to dance with God. When do we move quickly; when slowly? When do we touch and when do we create a space? Are we turning left; are we turning right? God leads not for the sake of ego or control but for the sake of the dance. We follow not out of fear or subservience but, again, for the sake of the dance.

The analogy doesn’t exhaust the reality by any means since the dance we do with God isn’t for our enjoyment alone but for the joy of all creation, especially the rest of humanity. Still, the image is useful. What’s the music that God is moving to? Are we moving to the same melody? How is God loving? How do we love the same? What’s God trying to give? How can we cooperate in his generosity?

I've known a few young couples who were excellent dancers but all of the really good dancers that night at Central were older couples. They had learned over many years how to avoid one another’s toes and how each heard the music and liked to move. Their grace wasn’t magic and it hadn’t come quickly.

Well-meaning Christians sometimes think that they can learn God’s steps simply by having a good heart and being determined. They follow the rules – like school children moving their feet on diagrams of printed steps. But it takes watching God and listening to God and growing comfortable in God’s arms. That’s not learning rules; that’s a conversation – with or without words – that’s praying.

Faith: The Most Basic Vision

2011-09-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sirach 27:30 - 28:7

Recently a motor scooter rider and I got into a conversation about riding two wheels in a four wheel world. We shared stories of drivers looking right at us and then heading right for us. “I know I’m not safe until we make eye contact and nod to one another. They don’t expect us so we don’t register,” said the scooter rider. “It’s like they can’t see what they don’t believe will be there.”

That conversation came back to me when a friend, in the middle of a casual gathering, asked, “So; do you think God wanted Osama Bin Laden killed?” That released a storm of Bible quotes, Church teaching, moral aphorisms, ethical equations and warnings of dire consequences. Finally someone commented, “You have to live in the world the way it is. If you can’t deter bad guys, you have to kill them. That’s just reality.”

Living our faith, as opposed to simply accepting doctrines, is about deciding what is. It’s deciding what’s real and what isn’t. Choosing the faith that orients us is the most radical decision any of us ever makes. Subsequent decisions as to whether we believe in a God or not or whether we’ll subscribe to any particular religion are decisions about the framework of our faith. They’re not our faith.

Does life have a direction? Does life mean anything beyond a story we impose on it? Do our individual lives make a difference for good or ill in life’s future?

Ancient Jews believed that life had a direction; it was towards fulfillment. They were convinced that their lives made a difference in its progress. Jesus came along and some saw in him the embodiment of life’s meaning and direction. They saw him demonstrate a way of living that moved all life towards fulfillment. Jesus encapsulated and exemplified the promise of life for those who followed him. They named him the Word of God.

How do we advance life? Do we advance life by killing? Do we advance life by giving our own life rather than taking another’s? It’s a stark choice between visions of reality. It all depends on our vision – our vision of what’s real.

The Practical Needs the Holy Needs the Practical

2011-09-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ezekiel 33:7-9

One very sloppy winter afternoon a student walked into my office to tell me that he wanted to talk about prayer and holy stuff. “I think we make way too much of the religious side of things and way too little of the practical needs of people. When I think about Jesus, the holy stuff takes a back seat to the practical stuff. The point of everything is that people are in need and God wants us to help them.”

“There’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying but there’s an important problem too,” I answered. “Think about what Jesus asks of us: we’re to love others – including our enemies – as we love ourselves. We’re to be merciful. We’re to share what we have with those in need even when that sharing lessens our personal security. We’re to put our selves and our welfare on the line for the welfare of folks who are threatened. We’re to totally focus our energy on the world of justice and love that God wills. Nothing is to be more important to us than that: nothing.

“When we realize all the necessary areas of cooperation with God that Jesus stressed, the task is superhuman. That’s where the holy stuff comes in. Everything that our Tradition holds sacred is something that puts us in touch with God’s involvement in human life. It reveals God’s power at work in and through us. It reminds us that we face faith’s daunting task alone.

“There’s a saying: we can’t give what we haven’t got. The holy stuff strengthens us for the practical stuff. It’s to align us with God’s work day in and day out, when we feel up to it and when we don’t, when it seems to make a difference and when it doesn’t.”

Sometimes it sounds like the holy stuff is all that matters for a Christian and the practical stuff of life is a distraction to faith but it’s not so. The holy and the practical are inseparable. The prayer and sacramental aspects of our lives are necessary for the success of the love and justice part of our lives. And the love and justice part of our lives give meaning to the prayer and sacramental part of our lives. They’re the inhale and exhale of Christian living.

Religious Freedom: Christian and Necessary

2011-08-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 20:7-9

America has a civic axiom: never mix politics and religion. It’s one of those two-handed ideas.

On the one hand, the adage makes perfect sense because religion is rooted in revelation and revelation is amenable to neither verification nor argumentation; it’s a matter of faith. Politics is the art of the compromise; how do we compromise about what we believe to be God’s will!

On the other hand, religion, by definition, is the foundation of people’s understanding of life and their dream of what it should and can be. It guides their decisions in ways both conscious and unconscious. It puts them in harmony with the Creative Principle of the universe. People simply cannot put aside their religion when reflecting, conversing or voting on political issues. To say that they can misunderstands religion. It’s a major element in politics whether we want it, like it, or acknowledge it.

The best way to handle the situation is to accept it. We can then agree on the practical necessity of not forcing our religion or its perspective on others – after all, even God doesn’t do that. We can also admit that standing for and working seriously for a value doesn’t mean that the value has to be or even should be written into civil law. Without general agreement on the goodness of a particular law, it’s better not to make it. Finally, we can recall that the first expectation of our religion is love which doesn’t exist without respect. That love applies to those who disagree with and resist what we want.

There’s another consideration to keep in mind. We can’t deny that God is the source of all truth and that to ignore God’s is the height of foolishness. The problem is that religion, and our religion in particular, has, at best, a spotty track record when it comes to recognizing, interpreting and responding to God’s word. Radical humility is never out of place when we think we are speaking God’s mind.

Religion and politics will always have a messy interface. Honesty about the situation is a good place to begin the discussion.

A Morality of Promise - Not Of Threats

2011-08-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 22: 19-23

Many Catholics can remember a time when they lived in fear of committing mortal sin with the consequent prospect of an eternity in Hell. Some rejected particulars on the list of mortal offenses but, agree or not, few performed a proscribed action without being aware that it was, indeed, forbidden. No one who lived them would revisit those days. Most found the situation a legalistic morass in which one could become mired in fear and guilt for reasons that made little sense.

There was one plus in the situation, however: few were oblivious to the weight of their moral decisions and actions. If inherent value didn’t determine their importance, eternal sanctions did. Mature or immature, reasonable or unreasonable, a lively, sensitive conscience characterized Catholics.

Setting aside the threat of facile damnation has left some with the impression that moral issues, though interesting, are crucial neither to our relationship with God or the success of life. That’s an expensive mistake.

There is today, and has been for many months, a famine raging through much of sub-Saharan Africa. Thousands die daily from malnutrition. Children are most at risk.

Jesus bluntly taught that that those who want to live in harmony with God must respond to his needs by responding to the needs of folks around them. His prime example of a person in harmony with God was a person who feeds the hungry (Mark 25:35). His prime example of a person not in harmony with God was someone who doesn’t feed the hungry.

The issue for Jesus, and for an adult Catholic faith, isn’t a childish cops and robbers game between God and us. The issue is that God is trying to give life to people and we either cooperate with God’s efforts or we don’t. Will we act with or against the Creator of the universe?

Some would return our Church to the middle of the last century because they’re convinced that, like children, we won’t respond to life’s demands and the intent of our Creator without the threat of personal spiritual banishment. That’s a problem. The real issue is much larger, much more important. Just ask the parents of Africa’s children.

Not My, Not Our; Everybody's Religion

2011-08-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7

When I was in grade school, there was a painting of St. Michael in our parish church. He had blond hair, lots of muscles, and looked something like my uncle Gene. There was also a statue of Mary that looked something like my aunt Virginia and my children’s prayer book had a picture of God that looked a lot like my next door neighbor, Mr. Fry, though with a fuller, whiter beard. Everything around me conveyed the assurance that heaven was full of my kind of folks. It wasn’t until high school when a priest brought me a holy card from Tokyo with a picture of a distinctly Japanese Mary wearing a mysterious smile that I later found on many representations of the Buddha that I realized that heaven was more cosmopolitan than I’d ever imagined.

It’s difficult to express how deeply that Japanese holy card impressed me. At fourteen years of age it made me think of my religion in a whole new way: it didn’t belong to me or to my relatives or the priests and sisters at St. Michael’s. It belonged to people whose lives I simply couldn’t imagine – people who viewed it very differently than I did.

It’s easy to nurture the illusion that we hold faith in our back pocket. We think of it as an alphabet of facts about God and morality. Instead, it’s a relationship with our Creator and with all creation. It’s an ongoing activity between people, God and life that never holds still, is never the same from person to person or century to century.

Any boundary that we place on God’s relationship with people, and thus people’s relationship with God, is certainly a mistake. That awareness intimately unites us with the whole of creation.

If we’re to actually serve the richness of our faith to the world and not just lay it on the table with a take or leave it attitude, acknowledging the universality of God’s love and the ubiquity of the Spirit’s action is crucial. Heaven will not look like our family reunions.

The Goal: To Love As God Loves

2011-08-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 19: 9a, 11-13a

There’s a revealing incident in Elijah’s life that precedes the one we read today. Jezebel, the Phoenician princess, maintained 450 prophets loyal to the god, Baal, as part of her court. Elijah, the prophet of Israel's God bested these prophets in a context to see whose God was greater. After demonstrating the superior power of his God, Elijah personally murders all the prophets of Baal. Jezebel then vows to do the same to him. It’s while fleeing Jezebel’s understandable wrath that Elijah encounters God in a gentle desert breeze.

The prophet was exhausted by his labors and the frustration of seeing his efforts go unappreciated by the very Israelites he’d been championing. He was also fed up with God who wouldn’t visit the disastrous punishments on his enemies that Elijah believed appropriate. Elijah wasn’t looking for a breeze; he was looking for a hurricane.

The narrative’s point is simple: think again about expecting God-in-a-hurricane to carry off those opposing our noble efforts. We naturally think that our positions promote the good life for us all. Why wouldn’t God back us up? Why shouldn’t we threaten – even abet – a little divine fury against our opposition? Think again.

God’s appearance to the Israelite prophet as a gentle wind anticipates the Christian experience of Jesus, God’s loving justice personified. He insisted that we love those who oppose our understanding of how life should go. He accepted his own death rather than do harm to those who opposed his own work.

We who strive for the world that God promises will find our greatest power in pursuing God’s vision in God’s way – in Jesus’ way. The day must come when we accept that ultimately our success lies in seeking the welfare of those who oppose us with the same energy and consistency that we seek our own. As disconcerting as it is: in our blow-hard world God is a gentle breeze.

Grunting Isn't An Act Of Faith

2011-07-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 55:1-3

Many years ago a friend of mine desperately wanted to play little league baseball. He prayed that God would get him on a team. God didn’t. Being, even then, the caring soul that I am, I speculated that even God couldn’t compensate for awesome klutziness. Ignoring my cleverness, he kept asking, “Why did he let them cut me?”

Gather a group of Christians for more than a few minutes and someone, somehow, will voice a problem with God’s reliability: typically someone has a friend in need for whom everyone has prayed without discernable results. An awkward silence ensues until someone else in the group grows anxious enough to proffer a stock defense of God; the rest grunt agreement though no one really buys it.

We Catholics often grumble that our Church doesn’t treat us as adults. Setting aside the accuracy of this complaint, it brings to mind a lesson that most of us learned early on. The crux of being an adult is taking responsibility for ourselves. Sometimes authority is happy to see us do that; sometimes not. How others accept the decision to take adult responsibility isn’t the issue.

My point is that grunts of agreement to teachings and answers that make no sense is a costly abdication of responsibility. Every time we roll our eyes and send our judgment out for coffee when authority hands down an opinion, we weaken our faith and our community.

We do our priest, our bishop, ourselves no favor when we hear seemingly senseless statements and close our ears in scorn. We weaken our unity and our power to do good. We weaken the gospel and we deny God’s Spirit in us which, after all, is what we really have to offer our world.

The idea here isn’t to buttonhole every priest about our every disagreement. The idea is that we undertake the effort of thinking through and taking responsibility for what we actually believe. It means discussing our thoughts with others who share our faith. It means acknowledging that agreeing and disagreeing has implications for the strength of our faith vision as well as the strength of our community.

There are many ways to respond to authority. Grunting is never helpful.

A Faith In Common

2011-07-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 3:5, 7-12

One of my childhood memories is my brothers and sister and I saving up money to get my dad a very special surprise birthday gift. It was so special that even we couldn’t know the secret until we made the purchase. The day to buy the gift arrived and my mom took us all to the jewelers where we picked out a shiny gold Bulova watch. As you’d imagine, the money we kids had saved didn’t cover the cost. To make up the difference my mother gave the jeweler a treasured ring that had been her grandmother’s.

There are moments when a child learns lasting lessons about love. I knew that rings carried special meaning. We weren’t to play with them. My mother had a habit of taking her rings off as she did housework. If we found them, the rule was “tell but don’t touch.” I watched her hesitate as she handed her diamond to the jeweler. On the way home she told us several times how proud of us she was that we had saved all that money to buy dad’s present. On his birthday she never mentioned her role in the present as we excitedly explained all we had done to make sure he had a good watch to wear to work.

The opportunity for generosity can elicit an amazing practicality in us. We rarely question the goodness of helping those in need. Yet we’re likely to temper our response to others’ needs with a sharp eye for the risk we’re taking: irremediable losses we might suffer, harmful precedents we might establish or untoward advantage that someone might take of our largesse.

We do face danger when we love to the point of risk. Allowing ourselves to love freely is an act of faith – in others, in ourselves and in our Creator. Someone has to teach us to love past our comfort level. Someone has to support us. Maybe it’s a parent, maybe it’s a spouse or close friend, maybe it’s the person who prays next to us on Sundays – but it has to be someone. We never live the Way of Jesus alone.

Jesus: Revealing God

2011-07-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19

We commonly talk as though we know lots about God. We pretend to know who is in and out with God, who is blessed and cursed. We give the impression that we can see God’s purpose in daily and even extraordinary events of life. We even give the impression that we know God’s mind for the future. Is it possible to have such knowledge? Like it or not the answer is yes and no.

What we know about God, what we can say that we actually understand, is what we know and understand about Jesus. When we say that God is love, it is because we’ve experienced the radical love in which Jesus lived and acted. When we say that God forgives anyone who will accept forgiveness, it is because we’ve witnessed the generosity that characterized Jesus’ forgiving. We speak confidently of God’s promise to bring all of creation to fulfillment. We don’t know that from philosophical musing or messages in the stars. We know it because Jesus taught and lived that message throughout his life and, when evil seemed to triumph over him, God raised him from death.

The Church limits its official teachings about God to what it sees in Jesus. It doesn’t forbid folks from having their opinions about God that they developed in other ways, but it withholds its seal of approval from such opinions.

Sometimes people wonder what to think about God. They worry about God’s relationship with them. They fret about purported plans that God harbors and their place in them. It’s our Tradition that Jesus is our touchstone for testing ideas about God. Getting to know Jesus’ life as well as we can is the way we get an accurate feel for God and God’s ways. It’s a relationship we only build together with other people of faith, whose wisdom and honesty we trust.

Seek the Language of Today's Faith

2011-07-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings*
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 55:10-11

There’s a common sentiment that life is too complicated for an individual to make much difference. That’s an understandable reaction to the immense, entrenched power centers of contemporary society. An astounding amount of influence lies in the hands of relatively few people. It’s tempting to take the attitude that we’re swept along by the tides of modern life rather than aggressively seek ways to steer those currents for the better.

On the other hand, Christian spiritual language is full of images of overcoming the power of the devil. We constantly hear how God gives us the strength through prayer and the sacraments to stand up to supernatural evil and find supernatural blessings. Such ideas held powerful meaning for Christians who saw the powers of heaven and hell controlling everything from planets to plagues, from stars to starvation. Today’s understanding of reality demands a different conversation.

Where’s an understandable explanation of how the sacraments strengthen us to stand in solidarity for economic injustice? Who’s promoting prayer to overcome the nationalism that keeps us fighting wars? How do we pray for the strength, in a consumerist society, to take only what we need rather than all we can grab from life’s platter? Is there a prayer that the Holy Spirit will help us find truth in the babble of information thrown at us? Who’s the patron saint of keeping one’s integrity in the push and shove of democracy?

This isn’t disdainful carping. We face huge difficulties and our Church possesses millennia of experience and wisdom that could help us find the path through them. The question is will we demand those resources from the teachers whose job it is to couch our heritage in a useful form? There’s another question: do we still believe that our Church has practical guidance for 21 century Westerners trying to live the Way of Jesus?

The old saying is that generals always prepare to fight the last war. We can’t afford to content ourselves with spiritual teachings that met the needs of Christians four and five centuries ago.

Step One: Decide What's Real

2011-07-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Zechariah 9: 9-10

“Your hopes and dreams will color everything you ever do,” a professor told me years ago. “They’re the source of your likes and dislikes, your judgments, your decisions, your friendships and your loves. Pay attention to them. Take responsibility for them.”

Those words came back to me recently when someone commented, “I’m a Christian but I’m a realist too.” I’d wondered at such sentiments many times before but, this time the contradiction in the comment really struck me.

If Christianity is anything, it’s a set of hopes and dreams. It’s an understanding of the world’s future and a proclamation of the human behavior that will lead us into it. It’s not a philosophy that wise people have generated; it’s a revelation arising from Jesus’ life and teaching that his followers have passed down to us. It’s a revelation of the universe’s Creator. How strange that anyone would juxtapose such a revelation over against reality!

We might not like everything about the revelation. We might be unsure how to respond to it. We might be unsure whether or not we can live up to it. We might not even accept it is revelation. But, if we do accept it; if we find it believable as the Creator’s truth; if we make it our faith, how can we understand it as anything but reality at its most basic?

The Creator gave his Word: human life will be loving and just. He gave his Word: the power of God working within us will accomplish that just and loving life if we trust it and follow its urgings.

A spiritual life is a life that reflects our beliefs. Christian spiritual life is a life that accepts the Word of Jesus as the foundation of our likes and dislikes, our judgments, our decisions, our friendships and our loves. It’s not easy . . . but it’s not complicated either.

Searching For God We Find Ourselves

2011-06-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of the Holy Trinity
Exodus 34:4-9

William James, the 19th century philosopher and psychologist believed that the central pain of life is the fear that nothing makes any difference. Or, as my young nephew once said after waves washed away his second sand castle, “It’s no use making another one; they just get knocked down. It’s stupid.”

Most of us have wondered whether our lives mean anything. The experience of throwing ourselves into some task, some dream, only to watch our efforts come to nothing is universal. We struggle with the reality of such failure throughout life, often to the hour of our deaths. If we don’t come to terms with it and find ways to invest ourselves completely in life in spite of it, our lives become meaningless.

This painful aspect of our existence underlies the first statement of our faith: at the heart of all reality, there is a loving Creator. That assertion is our refusal to give in to the temptation of meaninglessness.

It’s odd how often we speak as though we can understand God as God understands himself. Such knowledge is impossible given our decidedly un-divine intellects. It's much more helpful to realize that what we know and say about God is what it benefits us most to know and say about God.

The first image in that Trinity, Father, is the source of all and guarantee that the all of the universe is worthy of being. It's the guarantee that we're worthy of being – that the universe and we within it have a lasting destiny.

God, the Father is a statement that, whatever failures we may endure pursuing our most precious dreams, nothing good that we do is ever lost. Everything good we attempt reflects and participates in the creative force of the universe.

That's what my nephew is learning about life and God – and castle building – as he grows in faith.

Searching For The Common Faith

2011-06-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a

This week’s scripture is part of a speech Moses’ made to the Hebrew people. In it he gave them The Law God had dictated to him along with two additional points. He told the Hebrews that God promised to live and travel with them, protecting them and guiding them to a new homeland. Moses also explained that The Law God had given them was a blessing because it enabled them to live as a community in harmony with both one another and their divine benefactor.

This message is the kernel of faiths around the world: we’re not alone in the universe and the Creator guarantees our future.

Though I can't claim universal expertise, it seems to me that religion, in general, focuses on these two basic tenets however they understand and express them. All of us, whether we think a lot about it or not, realize on some level that we exist in a world and universe where we have very little control over our destiny. We also realize that our lives will end before we experience all the goodness and beauty we imagine.

It’s understandable that we long for and believe in an all-powerful Creator who loves us and guarantees our happiness. This is, and will always remain, an act of faith. It’s a faith that, in one form or another, whether explicit or not, unites humanity.

It’s both wise and comforting to recall this commonality of faith. It reminds us that we’re a single family inhabiting the globe. Governments as far back as we possess written histories have understood that to wage successful war a population has to believe that their enemy is different and less human than they. There’s a lesson there for us who seek not war but peace.

Saving Salvation

2011-06-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Pentecost Sunday
Joel 3:1-5

The religious idea of salvation originated among people with an intense need for change in their world. They were also people who believed that God was directly involved with them in a way that made his will the inevitable fact of life.

In the world we call home, however, many of us see no need for such change. Our lives are comfortable; we’re generally secure. Others look for no change because they feel caught in a current of hardship and suffering more powerful than any imaginable rescuer. These folks hope simply to endure, not escape. For both groups salvation is no more than an assurance of comfort after death. To their ears God’s promise to “work wonders in the heavens and on the earth” sounds quaint at best.

Certainly some continue to speak facilely of salvation regardless of how meaningless the term is to most of their audience. The rest of us, however, must set about rescuing the word – or, more usefully, the message behind the word – from its current focus on personal eternities. We face a task essential to restoring the power of God’s promise. It’s essential to opening ourselves to the activity of God’s Spirit within us. It’s essential to fending off the urge to fabricate a relevant faith by resurrecting some past age of piety. Meaningless salvation leaves us with a meaningless religion.

What’s the state of the world we live in? What‘s the deepest hope of the human community? What evil realities do we despair of overcoming alone, without the assurance that life’s Creator stands with us? No one answers these questions for us.

Being adult Christians doesn’t center on determining one or another issue of ecclesiastical policy. It’s a matter of actively fashioning our vision of the world God promises. It’s assuming an active role in setting the best course for our journey to that future.

Never in the history of our Church has every Christian possessed the voice and responsibility that each of us has today. No one has decreed this responsibility to be ours; it has evolved to us within the conditions of our times. No one can take it away. It’s an exciting challenge.

Saved - But From What

2011-06-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Ascension Sunday (7th Sunday of Easter)
Acts 1:1-11

Some time ago several students and I were talking about religion. “I just don’t see the need,” one of them said, “what’s the point?” Another student listed several reasons for being religious but all left the questioner unimpressed. Finally she turned to me, “What do you think? Church and religion never meant anything to me. It’s not bad; just pointless. Am I missing something?” Not only the questioner but the students from our parish seemed surprised when I said I didn’t know.

Immediately someone said, “You’re missing out on salvation: you’re risking Hell.” “Tell her,” he told me.

“You want me to convince her that she has a soul so that I can convince her that her soul is destined for Hell which will make her want to be religious so that she won’t have to be afraid of eternal damnation?” Our Church teaches that even if someone truly sees no reason for God or the Church but puts themselves on the line for justice and love, they’re united with God and destined for heaven. What, exactly, does she need saving from?”

“Well, I always thought being religious was about saving our souls. If you can go to heaven just by being a good person who tries hard even though you don’t know about God or souls or Hell or all the rest, I don’t know what religion’s all about. Maybe we’re better off without it. “

“Good point. Knowing that God doesn’t write people off for honest beliefs or
opinions held with integrity raises the question of what salvation is all about. It’s easy to get so used to words that we don’t question their meaning. We can hear ideas so often that we just assume they make sense whether we see the sense or not. What is there in our real lives that actually needs saving – needs freeing?”

An animated discussion broke out at that point but I wasn’t going to be part of it that night. Eleven p.m. may be pizza time for college students but it’s bedtime for me!

Listening First

2011-05-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
6th Sunday of Easter
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17

Jesus preached to an audience that was totally clear about what it hoped to hear. The Jewish people were looking for their Messiah, a person who would lift the weight of Roman occupation from their shoulders and lead them to the greatness that they believed was their destiny. Jesus’ promise of the immanent triumph of God’s will for the world wasn’t abstract or other-worldly for them. Its hope resonated clearly and powerfully with their hearts.

Jesus’ problem, as far as the majority of his audience was concerned, wasn’t his message; it was his credibility as a messenger and the significant demands that the new world he promised placed on those who would be its citizens. As the number of his followers grew, powerful Judean leaders also began to fear him as a threat to the tenuous political balance between them, their people and their Roman occupiers.
We offer Jesus and his message in a radically different situation than the one he addressed. Our world possesses no unified idea of God. Few in the Western world expect a divinity to enter history bringing peace, justice and greatness to their future.

The world most of us inhabit believes that it originates its own fate. Those of us who live well look for no great overhaul of life. Those suffering chronic deprivation struggle to better themselves. They look only for a fair shake and, possibly, a temporary helping hand. This isn’t the world that Jesus occupied. How do we present his promise now?

How can we justify claiming a unique and superior revelation if we find ourselves no more loving, just and peaceful than people who claim other wisdoms? How can we claim a unique understanding of The Creator’s actions and purpose if people see that we know no more about our world, let alone our universe, than anyone else? How can we claim to possess the keys to a joyous heart if our world finds us lacking an appreciation of their lives and dreams?

We need to become a Church that listens more than we speak.

In Wars Over Faith Everyone Loses

2011-05-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
5th Sunday of Easter
Acts 6:1-7

Hellenists vs. Hebrews: the thought sets few hearts racing now but in the years after Jesus’ execution and resurrection this was the Christian community’s culture war.

The Hellenists were Christians comfortable with opening the new faith to the influences of the world beyond Judea and traditional Judaism (Rome governed the Western world; Greece (Hellas) was the touchstone of culture.). The Hebrews were folks convinced that Christianity had to preserve its Jewish morality and mores unsullied by outside influences. Though both groups found Jesus and his Way attractive and wanted to follow him, they fought mightily over the heart and soul of the infant community. Ultimately the Hellenists triumphed and Jesus’ revelation adopted the language and ways of people beyond the confines and history of Judea. The development made our understanding of faith possible. But the ancient Church’s choice came with great cost.

For over fifteen centuries a feel for the world in which Jesus lived and taught vanished from Western Christianity. His worldview and key ideas were foreign to our faith experience. God’s Reign, being a son of God, even the understanding of words like body and blood lost the sense that would have come naturally to Jesus and his peers. The modern rediscovery of Jesus’ milieu and the revelation couched in its terms is the fruit of today’s intense scriptural and historical study. That research made much of what we cherish in the teaching of Vatican II possible.

In high school my history teacher never tired of drumming into us that the first casualty of war is truth. It’s not simply that each side lies to present itself as good and right. It’s also that both sides are fighting for a point of view, an experience of life that they value and history rarely gets a chance to know the experience – the truth – of the losers.

It’s difficult to see the truth imbedded in a point of view that we are fighting to overcome. Still, it’s important to ask how we might impoverish ourselves when we strive to vanquish our enemies and their vision of life. What truth will our victory kill?

The Key Is The Promise - Not The Problem

2011-05-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
4th Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:14a, 36-41

A mother told me the following tale. She had walked into her kitchen to find her five year old lighting matches and throwing them into the wastebasket. She, naturally, sat him down and gave him a stern talk ending with the picture of the disaster that would have happened had she not walked into the room and prevented it. To her amazement, he tearfully promised never to play with matches again unless she was nearby! Whenever I hear entreaties for us to repent, I think of that story. What does our Creator call us to repent of?

Generally, when folks voice their sorrow for and intent to change some behaviors, they’re referring to actions commonly thought sinful: mistreatment of others, selfishness, abuse of some substance and the like. As harmful as such behaviors are and as important as it is to stop them, faith looks for a more profound repentance.

In the address Peter made to his fellow Jews gathered in Jerusalem he didn’t point to the everyday failings that, doubtlessly, fill their lives. He, instead, pointed to Jesus, the man who revealed the world that their Creator wanted to accomplish through them.

Make Jesus the template for how you view life, what you deem possible and reasonable. Let his love for you – the Creator’s love for you – overcome your insecurity and your need to take advantage of those weaker than you. Move from being self-absorbed to being world-absorbed. End the fight in your heart. Believe that you can be the touch of Love for everyone you meet just as Jesus was. Accept a new reality: a reality rooted in the Creator’s love rather than your fears.

Little boys can be forgiven for not understanding the danger of fire and, with luck, their parents will continue to prevent conflagrations. We, however, have to get the point of Jesus. He wasn’t the morality police. He wasn’t a divine “Miss Manners.” Jesus was a call to rethink life. He was an offer of freedom for us to be what God created us to be and to live in the world that God is trying to give us.

Giving The Life We're Given

2011-05-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
3rd Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:14, 22-33

I remember reading a story about pirates when I was a child. They weren’t very bright pirates. They had waylaid a ship carrying gold pieces to pay an army. They searched that ship high and low looking for the gold never realizing that it filled the old sea chest in the captain’s cabin on which they played cards and rested their feet.

Recently a preacher touted Christianity as the best insurance policy a person could have: it reimburses a faithful person, he said, not with silver and gold but with eternal happiness.

It’s very common but sad to find the relationship that we have with God reduced to this kind of individual affair. We degrade the universal promise of creation’s fulfillment into a private future of eternity-on-a-cloud for a chosen few of us given in trade for our fealty and tribute.

The God we pray to – the God of Jesus – isn’t some super potentate resting on a throne waiting for his subjects to enter his presence with honors and gifts. God’s intent isn’t to offer us a reward for appropriate behavior. It’s difficult for us to realize that The Creator is offering us a chance to co-create the cosmos.

We are life-bearers. In all we do, wherever we go, we have the ability to bring life. Are there other life-bearers? We don’t know; it makes little difference. We are what we are and we can do what we can do. We can knowingly, intentionally work with God. We are not probationers or sycophants; we are co-creators. That’s a role we can’t ignore without betraying ourselves – as well as our Creator.

The Struggle To Be Christ

2011-05-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings*
2nd Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:42-47

Jesus continued to live and act in his disciples after his execution and resurrection. That was the message that Luke wanted to get across in the second part of his gospel that we know as the Acts of the Apostles.

During a Sanhedrin trial of Peter and other apostles a judge named Gameliel suggested that others had claimed to the Messiah before only to have their movements evaporate soon after they died. He suggested that the Jewish authorities not upset themselves over Christians since, assuming Jesus had misguided them, they too would soon fade away.

Luke wrote Acts to make the point that Christians, rather than fading away were increasing in number. They were spreading throughout the Mediterranean world because Jesus’ Spirit was alive and active within them.

The picture Luke painted of the Christian community may have been idealized but it portrayed how they attempted to live and what they tried to be for their world. They wanted to stay faithful to the way of Jesus; they wanted to care for one another so that everyone among them had dignity and worth. They wanted to remember Jesus’ total love for them that they experienced in the sharing the bread and wine. They wanted to deepen within themselves the image of a world transformed into God’s Gift to all people. That vision had filled Jesus’ life and guided his deeds; it would fill and guide theirs as well.

There are days when we all feel our Church is floundering without a sense of purpose. We feel like a committee whose sole goal is to continue to be a committee: it verges on absurdity. If we’re attentive to what’s written between the lines and allow for a certain heroic tone, a slow reading of the Acts of the Apostles gives us a good idea of what it means to be a community in Jesus’ Spirit. It tells of the ongoing struggle to be God’s love in a very imperfect world.

Resurrection: Beyond Harps and Clouds

2011-04-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Easter Sunday
Acts 10:34a,37-43

If you ask a grade school child what Easter means, she’ll almost always reply that Jesus came back to life after he died on the cross. That’s not a bad answer for a grade school child. It might be an improvement if she said that God rescued Jesus from death and took him to a new and better life but her answer works for an eight year old.

For the rest of us it’s important to recognize that Jesus faced death, just as we all do, powerless over it. God raised Jesus from death. God didn’t bring Jesus back to life as he knew it before. God brought him into a new life. We know that his new existence was the fullness of life but beyond that, we can’t imagine it. We can’t simply say now Jesus lives forever. We can’t imagine the life to which God raised him as endless bliss with, as my kid brother used to say, “no school, no bedtime and an endless supply of ice cream.”

About the existence God that has in store for us Paul wrote that our “eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, and minds haven’t imagined” what it will be.
What we do know about existence after our current life is that it centers on relationships. We will be at one with our Creator. We will be at one with all of creation and that will include being at one with ourselves.

The important thing now is that, pointing out how he lived the promise of God in his own life, Jesus taught that nothing stops us from beginning the life God promises today by being at one with our Creator and his creation. That’s an awfully good start – and an awfully good Easter prayer.

Love God; Love What God Loves

2011-04-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings*
Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50: 4-7

When we hear what God is speaking to us, our lives change. When we actually come to realize that God is constantly creating us with a love beyond comprehension and that he creates everything that exists with the same love, we experience a unity with all creation deeper than any divisions we may encounter. As Christians knew from the first, there’s no loving God without loving what God loves.

From the beginning of our Tradition the saints, philosophers and theologians of our faith have taught that there’s no separating God from God’s loving. God is what God does. And God’s loving extends to everything God creates.

There are moments when we like – and we need – to step back from the activity of tending God’s creation to simply praise God verbally and emotionally. We have to catch our breath and enjoy a moment of song, a comfortable prayer. We refresh our souls and restore our wills. We recollect God’s promise, our priorities and what we’re all doing together.

Our verbal praise is only part of the story, however; and not the most important part at that. We can easily convince ourselves that our relationship with God consists in giving him something that he wants. We can forget that God doesn’t want anything for himself. He’s giving us existence and promising to fulfill it through the action of his Spirit in us.

In the end, praise of God, our response to God, isn’t what we say. It’s who we are. It’s being who we are in union with the rest of creation. In short, our praise of God is caring for what God cares for.

Trusting God: Daring To Love

2011-04-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings*
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Ezra 37: 12-14

A man once who told me in all seriousness that he never went to doctors. He simply trusted in God he said. I told him, as nicely as I could, that his logic escaped me. “God never mentioned anything about relying on him instead of doctors,” said I. “Of course not,” he countered, “but he never said to wear a coat when it’s cold either. It’s just common sense that God’s smarter than doctors.” Sometimes a little voice whispers in my ear, “Time to shut up.” I did.

All believers claim great confidence in God but, in my experience, when they give specific explanations about what their reliance entails, they wander all over the lot. It’s hard to criticize them for this vagueness since the guidance teachers and preachers offer them is also all over the lot. Given that we all value the attitude of trust in God, it’s good as part of our Lenten reflections to seriously ask ourselves what we’re talking about when we claim such trust. What do we think God wants to be trusted about?

When we look at Jesus’ teaching, we don’t find him acting as an expert on child rearing or health maintenance. He didn’t prescribe a type of government. He didn’t even give a program for running a church. What he did was promise a world that would be guided by

God’s Spirit and told everyone that the way to be part of this world was to love one another and “one another” included one’s enemies.

It seems, then, that trust, in the Christian context, consists in loving one another, including our enemies, with confidence that such behavior places us within the new world guided by God’s Spirit.

The difficulty, of course, is that trusting God and ourselves to love that much scares us to death. Maybe that’s why it was only after they experienced the
Resurrection that Jesus’ followers could seriously discuss the necessity of picking up the cross and following him.

It's About God's Strength Not Human Weakness

2011-04-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Fourth Sunday of Lent
1 Samuel 16: 1b, 6-7, 10-13a

You don’t have to be big to accomplish big things is a theme that runs throughout the Bible. One can make the case that the entire saga of Israel makes that point: a small, out of the way, third-rate, bumbling power can play the staring role in the world’s drama. We can even view the story of Jesus, the unremarkable teacher in an unremarkable land, as making the same point. God chooses the youngest son who’s capable of nothing more than riding herd on the family’s sheep, to become the next king of Israel and the ancestor of the carpenter turned teacher who will reveal God’s loving presence to the world.
Bible stories are more about what will happen than what did happen.

Don’t settle for the world the way it is. Don’t settle for making the best of the situation. Don’t settle for getting yours and getting out. Don’t wait for superman to come along to make things right. Don’t wait for God to come along to make things right. Don’t tell yourself that the world is naturally a mess but everything will be fixed in heaven. Don’t tell yourself that you’re helpless before evil, injustice, prejudice and suffering.

No matter how small you think you are; no matter how intelligent, powerful, rich, clever, or well-connected injustice may be, if you open yourself to the Spirit of God you will be a movement of God’s transformation. Do not measure your success – that’s God’s responsibility. Measure your faithfulness – that is ours.

Folks generally give up on faith not because they find God failing but because they find themselves failing.

There’s a reason that the story tells how God chooses the least likely child to rescue the nation.

God Against Suffering

2011-03-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings*
Third Sunday of Lent
Exodus 17:3-7

Once, after a religion class, a third grader came up to me and said, in a serious voice, “God sure messes up a lot.” Putting a hand on his shoulder I replied, “It looks like that doesn’t it. But He loves us even when it looks bad.” “I know,” said the little fellow. “I think he tries His best.” At the time I thought it a cute answer. Over the years I’ve come to see it as profound: God tries.

Enough bad things happen to us individually and communally that even those with deepest faith have to wonder what kind of a God they’re worshipping. I’ve listened to people fresh from tragedy tell me in tears that they simply can’t bring themselves to pray to “our wonderful, loving God.” They’re more broken-hearted than angry. They trusted God and feel abandoned by him.

Many people never come to terms with the suffering and loss in a world whose Creator is, according to our scriptures, love. Faced with a choosing between actual experience of how life goes and religious doctrine that doesn’t square with what they see, folks often base their practical decisions on their experience relegating religious faith to a ceremonial role. That’s a costly reaction.

Some folks can accept punishment for sin, a test of faith, or part of God’s plan that will turn out for the best as acceptable explanations for human suffering. Others find such ideas no help at all. Jesus never explained human suffering he simply worked to end it. He also encouraged his followers to do everything possible to relieve it or keep it from occurring in the first place.

We see this response to suffering in his healing of the man born blind and in his own prayer to be spared execution if that were possible without abandoning his mission of revealing God’s love to the people.

Our Tradition teaches that creation is good; it’s a gift to us from an all-loving Creator. When things fall apart, it’s natural to search for an explanation. But there’s a caution: don’t settle for an answer that insults God or people – and don’t substitute an intellectual quest for loving. The call of faith is to cooperate with God in bringing his gift to completion – even when matters remain unexplained.

Offer Or Command? What Do We Hear?

2011-03-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Second Sunday of Lent
Genesis 12: 1-4a

Several weeks ago thousands of Egyptians revolted against a repressive government. They repeatedly told interviewers that they were standing up to their government because they weren’t afraid anymore. They left fear behind for a future of freedom.
As I write this, Egypt’s future is unclear. There’s more to establishing a free society than expelling a repressive regime. As we’re discovering, there’s even more to keeping a free society than establishing one.

There’s a longstanding popular understanding of Christian faith as a series of mandated beliefs, prayers, directions and prohibitions. Those accepting these prescriptions and proscriptions often do so because they expect a divine reward for their loyalty and obedience. The mystics of our religion, however, speak of faith as bringing profound freedom. Once a person accepts that Absolute Loving resides at the heart of the universe, she lays aside the idea of faith as a test of obedience and loyalty and never touches it again. In its place she discovers a security rooted in Love that renders her free to face any menace in the pursuit of humans’ fulfillment.

Knowing Absolute Love, the person of faith is free to love herself without fear, without qualification. Gone is the question, what must I do? It is replaced by the question, what am I able to do? Gone is the question, how should I act to please God? It is replaced by the question, how can I make God’s love more available to my world?

Faith makes us not so much obedient to God as an outside authority as free to follow his Spirit within us to whom we’ve totally opened ourselves.

We can understand in God’s words to Abram a divine command to abandon his territory and form a new and nation that would honor God as he wished or we can understand God’s words as a new and wonderful opportunity for Abram to create with God a future for himself that he hardly dared dream before.

Did God give Abram a demand or a gift? How we hear God's words reflects how we understand our relationship to our Creator.

Love Creates

2011-03-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
First Sunday of Lent
Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7

In John’s first letter he writes “God is love.” That deserves a lot of thought. Though we hear it in our hymns, prayers and religious conversations, it doesn’t always sink in. John goes on, lest we miss his point, that when we participate in loving, we participate in God. That too merits a pause.

John isn’t saying that God’s nice and loves us like a kind uncle or a good friend. He’s saying that God is love.

Every theologian and mystic in our Tradition has made the point that God isn’t just a being among beings. We can’t lump Aunt Tilley, Black holes and green Jell-O with God and say that they’re all beings that exist.

Thomas Aquinas, Catholicism’s touchstone philosopher, taught that God doesn’t exist like anything else exists. Karl Rahner, the greatest theologian of our own times, taught that God is the Ground of being: the source and foundation of all that is.

Before any of us decide it would be interesting to set aside a couple minutes to understand just how God does exist, I’ll note that both Thomas and Rahner, as well as every other Catholic thinker, has said that we’re simply incapable of imagining God’s being because we’ve never experienced anything like God. This would be a good point to practice our humility. Back to John’s letter.

Living with and watching Jesus led his followers to realize that at the heart of everything, at the core of our being and the core of every being is loving. Their Jewish faith was that God creates the sun, stars and people. As disciples of Jesus, they discovered that that the life-giving heart of everything was love: not chance; not uncaring power; not a frivolous, self-centered super-being; not a divine ego fashioning subjects to bow and pander to him but love.

Jesus’ disciples learned something else. Love isn’t a warm feeling shared over a glass of wine. It’s a relationship where one values his bond to another so much that he gives himself for the other’s welfare. They discovered this not in Jesus’ words but in his decision to accept death on a cross rather than walk away from them. In that decision they sensed the loving at the heart of the universe; it changed their lives.

Praying over our understanding of God is time well spent.

Pointed Questions

2011-03-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
9th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deuteronomy 11:18, 26-28, 32

I once had a discussion with a parishioner that concluded with his statement that he didn’t know why, or even if, he believed in God. Maybe he just kept on being religious because, like his parents, it was what he did. Coming to church was calming and restful as well as a chance to see friends that he didn’t see throughout the week. “Maybe I do believe in God but I believe in an expanding universe too and, to be honest, both have about the same influence on my everyday life. I don’t really know,” he said, in a confused voice as he left my office, “I suppose I ought to decide.

Until recent centuries people might argue over how to honor God or which God to honor but almost never did it occur to them to deny that there was a God to honor. Today many people, especially in the “western” nations, see no need to believe in any God and those who do believe often wonder whether it really makes any difference.

Long before Jesus, Jews realized that believing in and honoring God was no guarantee of success or security in life. In fact, they knew that it often brought inconvenience and pain.

The earliest Christians understood Jesus’ sufferings simply as the usual lot of a good and just man speaking God’s will [Luke 13:34]. So, even though some still try to convince us that honoring God insures prosperity, a little observational acumen ends that illusion. No, belief, love and union with God have to be rooted in something other than security and prosperity. But what?

Lent begins soon. It would be good to be able to join ourselves to Jesus and one another in the Easter Eucharist knowing clearly why we want to be there. We have seven weeks to ask ourselves good, blunt questions. Frank discussion and prayer about faith – and love – is liberating and rejuvenating.

Forgiveness For All - Ourselves Included

2011-02-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
8th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah 49:14-15

Not too long ago a friend made an interesting comment.

“I get fed up with politicians’ self-serving decisions packaged as noble efforts for the common good. Church leaders drive me nuts with worthless direction on problems for which they have no feel because they never have and never will face them. I have no respect for folks who complain about others’ selfishness but contribute nothing to the commonweal that law or their job doesn’t demand. But, when I’m all alone, when I’m really quiet, when I pray, what bothers me most isn’t someone else, it’s how little I live up to what I want to be. I know that my frustration with myself often comes out as frustration with others.”

Over the years, people have frequently made such comments to me. Though we don’t speak of it often, being disappointed with ourselves is common. I’m not referring to feelings of guilt. They’re different. Guilt has to do with fear of an outside disapproving force. My friend’s feelings arose from his own hopes for himself. The origin of his distress was deep within him where the promise of life dwells. The sadness of not realizing one’s own potential for goodness is profound.

Jesus constantly taught the importance and presence of God’s forgiveness. The point wasn’t to present God as a nice guy who didn’t sweat the small stuff. His message was that our Creator never gives up on us. He knows something about us that we forget: we have worth beyond counting. Rejecting us simply isn’t an option for God. It can’t be an option for us either.

Of all the acts that we perform in harmony with God, nothing is as crucial as forgiving: forgiving our friends, forgiving those who oppose and hurt us – our enemies, forgiving ourselves. Forgiveness makes love possible; it makes faith possible; it makes God’s will possible.

It was brilliant of Isaiah to personify God as a mother incapable of turning her back on her children. It’s an image with the power to sustain our hope in the face of any evil within or outside ourselves. Forgiveness deserves to be at the heart of our prayer. It’s the kernel of the gospel.

Focus On The Message

2011-02-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18

Given Christianity’s belief that Jesus died for the world’s salvation, it’s ironic how often its message seems to be that the world is incapable of redemption. Many Catholics, growing up before the second half of the 20th century heard repeated admonitions against trading life’s blandishments for heaven’s sure joy. Most of what seemed good in this life, the story went, was either tainted by sin or would lead to sin if pursued too energetically. The only realistic hope of uniting oneself to the love and purpose of God was to leave the world, as far as practically possible, by becoming a priest or sister or, even better, a monk or nun living completely apart from the world.

When the growing tension between rejection and a positive appreciation of the world reached the breaking point, Catholics reacted by turning away from warnings against the world’s evils and embraced the possibilities of life. They searched for and found reflections of God’s love everywhere. Their faith in the Spirit of God’s power led them to view their daily work the arena of God’s ongoing Creation.

Now we face a reaction to the reaction. Those acutely aware of God’s will and the Tradition of his commands point to the refusal of many, especially the well-off, to cooperate. They criticize what they see as a naïve belief in the world’s goodness and a self-centered focus on comfortable happiness when chaos and suffering seem an insurmountable evil. They see in the end-of-the-millennium optimism not Christian hope but a quasi-atheistic assertion of human self-perfectibility.

Are we fated to endure the reaction to the reaction to the reaction? Jesus asked one thing of his community: to carry his promise to the world. We’re not Christians for ourselves. The world hasn’t the slightest interest in our internal theological arguments. It doesn’t care about the good feelings we may or may not get from Mass or our particular spiritual practices.

Do we still believe that we can inspire the world? Do we think ourselves capable of giving practical encouragement to those struggling toward human dignity? Can we be the reason people believe in God’s love for them.

There are things more critical to us as a church than whether we’re liberal or conservative, progressive or traditional, hierarchical or democratic. Do we make God’s love believable to those around us? That matters.

The Essential Hope

2011-02-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sirach 15:15-20

How can we stay hopeful for a world where life is so often cheap and violent? How do we continue to believe that God is working through us for the fulfillment of creation’s promise when we see our own and others’ failures thwart God’s gift of life?

Can frustrated hope be the reason that generations of Christians have exchanged God’s promise of a just and loving earth to a promise of a glorious existence in the afterlife? Has history proved humans too fearful and self-centered to consistently care for our neighbor as we do for ourselves? Even with Jesus’ example, is it naïve to hope that we’ll ever face the choice between love and death and chose love? Are we incapable of the courage to find ourselves in our enemy? Will we always say, “Sure I’m a Christian, but . . . ?”

The biggest challenge of faith isn’t to believe in God or the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus or his presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Such beliefs cost us nothing; their presence or absence in our lives matter little to those around us. What matters is our willingness to anchor our behavior on the promise of Christ. After watching Christians fight over words and rituals for two millennia, it’s our ability to love others at a cost to ourselves that our world searches for. One-time grand gestures mean little. People seek a prolonged, consistent generosity of self from followers of Jesus.

Folks who’ve given up on faith haven’t cooled to some proposition or concept; they’ve despaired of ordinary people’s, especially Christians’, potential to rise above their private self-interest for a future larger than themselves. The self-immolator seeking a martyr’s glory is sad, not inspiring. The fighter willing to die for a cause as long as he can take ten bad guys with him is part of the problem, not the solution.

Many people can’t find the doctor, lawyer, politician, businessman, homemaker, teacher or entertainer whose life echoes and advances the promise of Jesus. Nor can they really believe that God is going to step in and, willy-nilly, save us from ourselves. It becomes difficult for them to hang on to their hope; sometimes almost impossible.

I’m offering a question, not a harangue. For what do we really hope? Why?

The Reign of God: Dream or Goal

2011-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah 58:7-10

“Here’s my problem,” a friend said recently. “God’s supposedly working through people to make the world just and loving. But when I look at human history, I don’t see much good having come from groups pursuing grand designs for the world – including the Catholic Church. People with grand plans whether it’s the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Protestant Reformers, the French Revolutionaries, the Nazis, the Communists - they all begin with high ideals and beautiful fantasies and end up hurting lots of people and seriously muddling things up. Maybe the Kingdom of God is fine talk as long as no one gets specific about how it should look or the particular path we should take to get there. Of course, that means it’ll never be more than a sweet idea – but nobody gets hurt.”

My friend made a good point. The kingdom of God is a wonderful image, something we all long to see realized but not something we have the slightest clue how to accomplish. We’re part of a church that fights tooth and nail over who gets to touch the bread and wine that Jesus left us as his sustaining presence! We’ve cut our ranks in half over the correct date for Easter! We barely tolerate folks who want to use different words when they pray! And God is supposed to work through us to end world-wide hunger and war. Seems unlikely, doesn’t it.

It’s noble to dare good in the face of powerful evil. It’s lethally naïve to boast of extraordinary strength when possessed of intractable weakness. So what are we claiming when we pray the Our Father? How many poverty stricken people did we feed and clothe yesterday; how many new people were born? What’s that math telling us?

Whose plan are we following when we say we’re cooperating with God for a transformed world? Can we imagine anyone advancing a program that we’d all agree to follow?

Ancient Christian wisdom says that the Kingdom of God will never guide the world until the Kingdom of God guides our hearts. God’s Spirit simply can’t accomplish her work in us until we invite Her to guide our thoughts and desires. Are we ready for that – to want Her?

We have lots to pray over.

Morality: It's About More Than The Law

2011-01-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Zephaniah 2:3,3:12-13

A professional pianist once commented to me that another pianist was technically superb but possessed little feel for the music he played and would never be great. When I asked what he meant, he played two CDs for me, one after the other. The first amazed me; the second touched me. I told my friend as much but also that I couldn’t put my finger on the difference. “The first got the notes right; the second got the piece right; he felt what the composer did and you responded to it,” he said.

Once I asked a theologian how he made moral decisions. He replied that he needed three things: first, a love for the people involved, second, knowledge of the situation finally, an awareness of what God was offering in the situation. He told me how much, as a medical ethicist, he had to learn about disease and medical practice. He spoke of the many operations he had observed and the frequent hospital rounds he still made with physicians to experience the reality of their work. He also spent long hours speaking with patients about what it meant for them to be sick and under medical care. Only by doing these things did he think that he could make good judgments and offer guidance to those searching for the most loving response in difficult medical situations.

The pianist and the moral theologian had much in common. Far more than simply playing the right note or teaching the right rule both had to have an intimate knowledge and love for their discipline and their audience, they also needed a feel and love for the possibilities of the music and the person before them.

Morality is never simply a matter of placing tab “A” in slot “B.” We all know that from observing how easily we render judgments about folks we barely know and how difficult it is to make those same judgments about folks with whom we’re intimately acquainted.

Prayer is observing closely, pondering seriously, loving deeply and acting hopefully. Prayer, not calculus, is the heart of a moral decision.

The Problem's Trust Not Stuff

2011-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 8:23-9:3:1

When I was a youngster, I had an aunt who, whenever I got upset about something, reminded me, “Joe, nothing in this world makes much difference. What matters is eternity: heaven or hell. That’s what’s important. Don’t fret about other things.”

Though few today use my aunt’s exact words, her ideas still echo in the on-going criticism that we’re all, especially we Westerners, too materialistic. This critique, broad and unfocused and thus easy to make, is also, I believe, misdirected and troublesome.

It’s true that we’re often self-centered and selfish. We’re also leery of spending much time pondering the meaning of things, not because we don’t care but because those who proclaim themselves arbiters of meaning are so often rigid, closed and angrily defensive about their views. We dislike the battle.

Still, I’ve never met a person who maintains that material reality is all that matters. I know lots of folks, on the other hand, who think that we either deal well with the material stuff of life or get everything else wrong. Jesus’ description of those who are one with God shows the importance he placed on effective stewardship of life’s stuff. “I was hungry and you fed me, naked and you clothed me, thirsty and you gave me water, sick and you cared for me.” These are material needs and meeting them constituted Jesus’ criterion for inclusion in God’s Realm.

We may be greedy and insecure. We may limit the circle for which we care to a few folks with whom we identify. We may try to meet our need for love, community and purpose with stuff even though we know that stuff will never suffice. But we’re not materialists.

It’s time we lay that whipping boy aside. It’s more helpful and accurate to realize that we’re all burdened by a consuming anxiety for a love we do not trust. Our respect and passion for material reality is something we get right. It’s our fear of being unworthy of it that imperils us.

Friends, Not Servants

2011-01-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 49:3,5-6

People tell us from the altar and in religious books that good Christians serve God. They issue calls to pray and take part in various ritual activities; less often they urge us to obey divine prohibitions and carry out task of love and justice. The message is idiomatic Christian teaching generating little disquiet. Christianity’s servant language presents difficulties, however.

Servants provide their masters needed benefit. The two form a mutually dependent relationship. God neither needs nor wants anything from us for himself. We aren’t God’s servants. Understanding this reveals the gratuity of our Creator’s love.
Furthermore, folks dedicate themselves most wholeheartedly to projects they freely choose. We’ve an innate desire to be free, to choose our destiny and path.

Regardless of how nicely some someone packages them, we will never follow external laws with the same enthusiasm with which we pursue internal desires. In that case, servant language used in our relationship with God makes life in God’s Spirit more difficult.

Another problem with presenting Christian behavior as a command given to underlings either directly by God or mediated through human spokesmen is that, sooner or later the because-I-said-so approach engenders resentment in those being told what to do. It engenders a search for ways around God’s will or for the least bothersome interpretation of his will rather than the realization that the divine will is inseparable from God’s loving act of creation.

Servant language hides the practical reasons behind rules, prohibitions and directives that we ascribe to God. Love your neighbor seeks to strengthen the community we need to survive and thrive. Don’t lie protects the reliability of speech: a basic building block of community. Love your enemy makes forgiveness and reconciliation possible. It keeps us connected to those we harm as well as those who harm us. Again, it protects community: the womb of our shared future.

Servant language seeks to promotes realism. Life makes either-or demands. A careless person falling off a thousand foot cliff dies. A person hoarding wealth when others are in need, causes real people real harm; he increases our world’s chaos. A master’s command to his servant is non-negotiable. Only by knowing, respecting and cooperating with God can we realize our human promise. But servant language makes its point in a way that tends to keep us immature and resentful rather that adult and cooperative with the world and the world’s Creator.

Maybe this is why at the last supper John the Evangelist has Jesus telling his followers, “I no longer call you servants but friends.” It’s been over 2000 years now. It’s time.

A Heart Check-up

2011-01-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7

A servant of God has a big heart. That sounds trite and fluffy; it’s neither.

A local radio personality characterizes folks who appreciate many different kinds of music as people with big ears. That’s the sense in which big hearts characterize people who work with God.

We all have hearts for those close to us, for the people we need. Crime films have a stock character of the brutal hit man who dotes on his wife and kids. The role plays on our awareness that we can limit our world of concern to a realm that is astoundingly self-centered. It’s a struggle to widen our love to the point where we value others for themselves, not for what they do for us. Most of us realize only moderate success.

Still, we’re capable of expanding our hearts to encompass many more people than we assume. The issue isn’t how far our hearts can expand; it’s whether we have the courage of faith to acknowledge the depths of others’ needs.

Enlarging our hearts presents with real dangers: we’ll experience the pain of all whose lives we pay attention to, we’ll experience the finite resources we possess to meet the needs that underlie their pain; finally, we’ll face the decision whether to do all we can to meet those needs or to turn our backs on those we’ve come to value. Who knows where such a decision will lead!

Every time we pick up a newspaper, every time we watch the evening news, every time we wander around our town or any other with our eyes open, life – the God of life – invites us to grow a big heart. We’ve been given the spiritual DNA. It’s not a question of human nature; it’s a question of human nurture. A healthy church nurtures big hearts.

Leaving The Game of Favorites

2011-01-02T14:54:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of the Epiphany
Isaiah 60:1-6

“Am I still your best little boy,” I once asked my mother? Everyone has embarrassing childhood memories: this incident, though not the only or worst, is one of mine. My parents had recently brought my second brother home from the hospital and my relatives were making the usual fuss. Alone in the kitchen with my mother I blurted out my sad question. Her exact answer escapes me, probably the standard you boys are all my favorites but I knew I was never getting back my three-year role of best boy. One brother could have been a fluke but two made a pattern. I was definitely demoted.

Reading Hebrew Bible stories, listening to the carefully pruned narrative of Catholic history, the claims of unique gospel faithfulness from various protestant churches and even Islam’s assertion that it alone carries out true worship of the One God; I can’t help wonder if it’s endemic to religion that each spends immense energy clinging to its most-favored-son status.

When a counselor is trying to understand a seemingly ineffective behavior, she looks for the unexpected benefit it brings to her client. One result of a religion’s preoccupation with being larger, more powerful, more honored than others is that it diverts attention and energy from supporting its adherents in being more just and loving. The hard crux of faith is that in our world, as Jesus observed, God’s vision of life can’t come to pass unless we who believe in that vision are willing to accept sacrifice and suffering to further it.

Maybe that’s precisely the reason for all the discussion about the most respected, the fastest growing, the most influential, the most successful event-organizing religion – it deafens us to the real question: does our religion support us in being the most God-like, the most loving we can be?

It’s time we asked adult questions of our religion.

Believe God's Unbelievable Love

2010-12-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
The Feast of the Holy Family
Sirach 3:2-6,12-14

I did what you wanted; now you do what I want, okay?

Though few of us place our relationship with God on such a crass footing, there’s an element of this thinking in most of us. From religion’s earliest days to the present people have searched for effective ways to persuade God to meet our needs.

Hebrew Scripture is full of discussions about convincing God that the Jews deserved God’s favorable attention. Jesus himself frequently used this biblical language in his teaching though his belief in a totally reliable God, always faithful, loving and forgiving, is clear. Christianity has spent immense energy and not a little blood fighting over the nature of God’s care for us. Generally those who want to protect the idea of God’s absolute justice struggle with those who want to protect the idea of his gracious love.

Since the beginning, by fits and starts, the realization that love most accurately describes God has slowly permeated our faith. The awareness struggles because God’s love differs profoundly from our love with its strings, conditions and needs. God’s love is more like love the way that we long to practice it: always unconditional, always forgiving, always attentive, always giving, never counting the cost, never exhausted.

God’s love is so distinct from what we generate in our daily lives that even believing it possible is a stretch for us. Our tendency is to hear the absoluteness of God’s love and respond, Sure, but even God will dump us if we ignore him enough. He’s no patsy.

Doesn’t it make a difference to God whether we lie, cheat or steal? Sure it does; just as it makes a difference whether we hit ourselves in the head with a rock. Doing bad things is bad because we’re hurting ourselves and to one another: the consequences are real and lasting. But those consequences never include God’s withdrawing or diluting his care for us. God simply doesn’t do that. His love is not negotiated; it’s a gift.

The Christmas Promise

2010-12-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Fourth Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 7:10-14

What do we want from God?

What do we expect from God?

If God were gone tomorrow (say, we find a signed note from Him saying that He’s permanently relocating to another universe and wishes us a “nice life”) what actual difference would it mean for us?

These may sound like questions hurled back and forth in a heated relationship argument but they’re not hidden accusations, they’re a faith life self-exam.
Religious images and language are so prevalent in our society, the assertion that we’re a “Christian nation” so widespread, that we can blithely acquiesce to Christianity without consequences. Claiming faith is often easier than denying it. Since the mere discussion of religion or politics is viewed with distaste in many circles, particularly if it progresses beyond the most superficial level, no one will challenge the depth or results of our beliefs. Except for the ritual of a sermon or the safety of a religion class this is often true even within our parishes. Presenting ourselves with a blunt faith interrogation is important: no one else is likely to.

The Christmas story is presented so romantically that we can overlook that it’s a story for adults. The love that God reveals in the birth of Jesus is not a generic warm feeling for humanity; it’s a specific promise to rescue the weak from the exploitation and misery that they suffer at the hands of the strong. From its setting in Bethlehem to its references to King David, from the appearance of shepherds to the words of the angel chorus, the message is that the world is in for radical change: a change that many will resist but a change that God will accomplish through his faithful ones. God’s gifts are ultimately for all but getting to that ultimate place will be neither easy nor painless. Still, God promises success

The Never-Ending Christmas

2010-12-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Third Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 35:1-6, 10

Many have noted that every time a baby’s born God proves that he hasn’t given up on the world. Christmas celebrates the revelation. Every year we pause laying aside our troubles and absurdities to renew our astonishment that God still works with us.

Without in any way diminishing the birth of Jesus, God-with-us, it’s useful to think of that event not so much as the crisis in God’s relationship with the world but as the synopsis of God’s constant involvement with us. Billions of babies have been born into our world. Each birth has been God’s miraculous act; its source, God’s unconquerable creativity. Each birth has brought a new brain, new hands, new dreams: a new person for our future. Each life has searched out and pursued the fulfillment of life as best it could. Each one died unfulfilled yet having contributed. Each one will be present to and part of creation’s completion. This is Jesus’ story; it’s God’s story; it’s our story. That’s why when we understand Jesus, we understand ourselves.

Does contemplating our future or God’s actions in it make any difference? Does the story of Christmas and the Christmas of every birth do more than generate warm feelings of importance for lives inundated by the concerns of surviving and getting ahead? Are we searching for more than a way to give life lasting significance in the face of death’s permanence? These are unavoidable questions. Their answers remain an act of faith. Still we have to ask them.

We can't prove the claims of our faith but they remain the bedrock of life for us and for millions. We refuse to accept that we live for nothing larger than ourselves. We are convinced that the good we do, small as it often seems, matters - forever. That’s the point of Christmas. That’s the meaning of every Christmas since the beginning of human history.

Faith: The Power To Risk

2010-12-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Second Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10

During the riots following Martin Luther King’s murder an angry, looting throng came upon a lone white man in their ghetto. The crowd beat him severely. Finally a voice said loudly, “that’s enough; we’re not going to kill him. Someone call an ambulance.”

“No ambulance's coming in here tonight,” someone yelled back.

“Then get out of the way,” said a man moving through the crowd toward the bloody figure. He dragged the victim to his car. “Get in and hold him up while I drive,” he yelled to a young woman.

After several blocks the two deposited the injured man at a nearby hospital with neither introduction nor explanation. The man lived but never discovered who had saved his life. Somebody had braved a mob of his peers to save a stranger he doubtlessly on some level hated and whose death would have seemed puny revenge for the misery and injustice he and his people endured.

Some folks understand faith to be primarily about what God will do for them. They find their virtue in declaring His power up to any challenge. They pray fervently then wait for God to take care of business.

Other folks understand faith to be about what God can accomplish through them. Such people approach problems that seem prudent to address with confidence that God will aid their endeavors. So far, so good – but only so far.

Faith offers more than a determination to meet life’s reasonable goals: the prudently winnable battles. The point of faith is to equip us for necessary tasks no matter how impractical. Giving love that will never be returned, striving for justice that holds no promise, pursuing the common project that will never win public funding – that’s the stuff of faith. After all, did you ever see a wolf and lamb napping together? How about a lion contentedly gnawing a bale of hay?

Faith’s purpose isn’t to make us exemplary citizens, honorees of the chamber of commerce or president of the parish council. God places an astounding dream in our hearts. Faith opens our ears to its beckoning and strengthens our hearts to settle for nothing less.

Faith's Dare

2010-11-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
First Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 2:1-5

Between the visions of a prophet and the assumptions of a politician exists a chasm few manage to bridge. “What can people do,” the prophet asks? “What will people do,” asks the politician?

“God works in people,” says the prophet, “He frees us from our fears. We can meet our potential. We can become the people God intends.”

“People are people,” responds the politician; “we look for security and prosperity.
Life is short and dicey; we do what we think will succeed. Beliefs and promises about God are fine but life has to work – we have to live.”

The prophet and the politician: they struggled within our faith before it was Christian. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of the tension (Isaiah 7:1-18). Jesus’ and Peter’s relationship revealed the stress (Mk 8:33) that beset the first generations of the Church.

Scholars refer to the strain in the gospels between the already and the not yet in their treatments of the Kingdom of God. On the one hand Jesus proclaimed the reality of God’s promised new world was present in his own life (Lk 4:18-21). On the other hand, the gospels foretold persecution (Mk 13:11) and encouraged virtues necessary to endure the inevitable privations of living a life of loving-justice in a world not yet embracing God’s vision (Mt 5, 6 & 7).

This same tension has always plagued the Church and will continue to dog it until God’s peace fills our hearts and lands. Praying beside us are people who, by personality and experience are politicians as well as people who are prophets. And each of us has our own political and prophetic side. If we look closely and honestly at ourselves we can observe them hammering out awkward truces time and time again. It’s a situation we can neither accept nor escape.

What we can do is acknowledge it honestly and humbly, not shirk the pain that it engenders in us and never, never cease asking ourselves if we’re being as true to the vision of Jesus as we possibly can.

We Need Bigger Arms

2010-11-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of Christ the King
2 Samuel 5:1-3

There was a story going around several years ago about a little girl crying to her mother about how alone and afraid she sometimes felt at night. She thought that she would be happier if she could sleep in her mother’s bedroom. “Why not say some extra prayers while you’re falling asleep,” her mother suggested. “God loves you and she’ll give your heart a hug and you won’t be afraid anymore,” she said. The little girl responded, “I know that God loves me and is with me but I need a hug from someone with arms too.”

That’s a great story. It works because we all know its truth. A mother’s hug is the work of God: it’s God’s hug – with arms! There's an important implication here.

We all know that there are hugs and hugs. Some come from people who don’t like us; some from people who don’t like hugging. Some come from people who are thinking about something or someone else. Some come from people who are afraid to hug. All hugs aren’t equal.

When someone gives a second class hug, God gives a second class hug. None of us is comfortable with that. We’re more comfortable with a God who acts independently of us. We make too many mistakes. We too often give less than our best. We leave God with too little to work with.

We can improve on our shortcomings but, try as we might, the odds of overcoming them all is, realistically, slim. It’s disheartening, even scary, how distant we remain from giving the world the love and competence it needs.

As passionately as God loves the world She’s creating, it’s amazing that She has so much patient love for us. We seem more trouble than we’re worth sometimes. That’s the full mystery of God’s forgiveness: it benefits everyone but it costs everyone as well. Believers have always struggled to understand this – without success; it’s at the heart of the King David story.

Joining The Moral Quest

2010-11-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Malachi 3:19-20

“You know what I can’t stand about Christians,” a friend told me, “they’re so certain that whatever they decide is moral. They never wonder whether they’re wrong. They’re convinced that they know God’s mind and every decent person should think what they think. Even if you get them to admit that they’ve been wrong in the past on things like slavery, religious freedom or women’s rights, they give the excuse that they were just being people of their times. Why can’t they admit that they have to figure things out just like the rest of us?”

There are many Church activities over which we laity have little control. We have a lot to say, however, in the Church’s public moral voice. What we do and say about moral issues often carries more actual weight than pronouncements from Rome or diocesan offices. People may rant about or praise the latest word from on high but they decide what weight that word actually carries when they see how the Catholic next door Catholic puts it into practice.

The truth is that most of us are pretty good seat-of-our-pants moralists. We generally have a clear grasp of the good and bad things we can do in life. We’re also very aware that circumstances play a huge part in morality. We know that deciding good and bad involves more than measuring an action against an abstract rule.

Here’s where our power lies. Honesty about our moral quandaries as well as our moral certainties and a willingness to grant the assumption of good conscience to those who disagree goes a long way to acknowledging that we too put our ethical pants on one leg at a time. We have much more credibility conversing than lecturing.

Nobody asks the laity to hand down moral answers. That’s an advantage. Shoulder to shoulder with everyone else we discover the best way to live in our complex and murky world. We contribute more to the common journey by joining the search for the best path than by claiming to be the tour guide.

Faith - With Help From Our Friends

2010-11-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14

In a society which places as much emphasis on individual achievement as ours it’s easy to forget how interdependent we all are. Even though Jesus spoke of our being brothers and sisters of one Father and St. Paul spoke of us comprising one body with Christ, we still imagine ourselves on our own before God. Our Tradition tries to wean us away from this overblown sense of self-sufficiency by teaching about saints – not just the famous ones with feast days and statues but the little known ones in our own families and neighborhoods. Saints are the people who inspire us. Saints are the people who give us the feel of what we’re capable of if we overcome our fears.

Once we’ve known a saint, whether it’s a parent or teacher, a friend, someone we’ve worked with or someone we’ve known only at a distance, we are never spiritually alone again. A saint can be someone who rubs us the wrong way, someone we’d never vacation with but someone we can see has lived courageously, someone committed to life, someone who has done what was possible to make things better. Such a person takes up residence in our minds and hearts and whispers to us, “You can do what I’ve done. You’re just as capable of loving. You’re as able to give yourself as I. You’ve only to overcome your fears to live as you believe.”

Our world is full of saints. They’re a gift of God to us because they mirror our deepest longings. They’re both strength and challenge for us wherever we go.

Keep your eyes open for saints. Don’t look just in churches. You’re as likely to find them in grocery stores and backyards. They’re found in offices and hospitals, auto dealerships and tractors – and, not infrequently, washing dishes and putting the kids to bed in our own homes. Let them touch your lives; they’ll free you to be who you are.

The God Who Cares

2010-10-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 11:22-12:23

For as far back as we can remember people have looked up at the night sky and found themselves in awe of its magnificence. The beauty and the regularity of the nighttime stars and the life-giving power of the daytime sun made the heavens the obvious home of ultimate power. Whoever could form and govern such immensity deserved all the honor and reverence that people could muster. The ancients found it totally sensible to pray that life on earth would echo the order and peacefulness that they observed in the heavens.

What do we see when we look upwards? We, or at least people of our generation, have flown to the moon and probed comets. We’ve photographed the edge of our universe and speculated about the existence of other universes beyond our powers to imagine. Do we still see the heavens as the realm of God? Do we still stand in awe of the Creator of such immensity?

We know the mechanism of starlight. We understand the nature of gravity. We watch stars being born and we’ve viewed the awe-inspiring destructiveness of their deaths. Some say that our knowledge has squeezed God out of the cosmos. We know how things work; things simply must be as they are. And yet. . . .
We look up at night and we are still thankful to see the sight. We look at photos of galaxies and nebulae and find ourselves pondering not how they could be but how astounding it is that we’re here – part of everything the universe is.

For centuries people have declared God’s growing irrelevance as problem after problem has been solved, unknown after unknown uncovered.

But faith in God isn’t about solving problems. God isn’t a solution. God is a promise. God is a call. God anchors our belief that we can become what we dream of being. God is the word that says we matter.

Jesus' Family Value

2010-10-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18

One of today’s headlines was census confirms recent trend: rich, poor gap widening. The only new part about this news was the recent census’ confirmation of what many observers have been reporting for several decades.

Some folks will hear this fact of life but let in pass with little notice or comment. Others hear it and are drawn up short. This information reveals several dangers: a danger to the individuals who have less than they need to live full lives and a danger to the community arising from the frustration of those denied access to opportunities enjoyed by those around them, even a danger to our economy from fewer folks able to purchase the goods and services others make their living producing.

While the economic and social dangers of unjust distribution of wealth are real and important, our faith concerns itself with Jesus’ teaching that all people are sons and daughters of one Creator and brothers and sisters of one another. Few believers question his point.

We sing about brotherhood, we write poems about it, we even lace commercials with it for a feel-good effect. But as easily as we celebrate the ideal, we find it difficult to live. Brotherhood entails viewing everyone as family and no one pretends that family is always simple or easy to deal with.

Long ago I learned: family are the people who have to care for you whether they want to or not. Why? Simply, family is us. Family is the milieu in which we have to acknowledge that there really is no “I” without “we,” no “we” without “you” and no “they” to be found.

Jesus didn’t put a boundary around family. In his world everyone prayed, “Our Father.” It’s always a challenge to live what we pray.

Trust That God Will Do - What?

2010-10-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 17: 8-13

Trust in the Lord. Turn your troubles over to God. God never give us more than we can carry. The Lord never fails us. Let go and let God.

Some Catholics find these and similar sayings powerful comfort in times of trouble. Others, just as Catholic, find the same sayings unreliable, often simply untrue and always incomprehensible. When folks of these two persuasions meet, they typically do their best to avoid discussing God’s providence. When the subject does arise, they engage in a lot of “uh huhing” and “mmming.” It’s the price they find necessary to remain peacefully in the same church. What’s going on? What do we really believe about God’s care for us?

What every follower of Jesus agrees to is that God loves us, does his best for us and promises that we will ultimately be part of what Jesus named the Kingdom of God. That’s the bare bones of divine providence: stark, abstract, matter-of-fact and emotionally very unsatisfying when the roof is falling in. When Catholics begin to speculate and tell stories about how God’s power works in everyday life, things get lots more colorful and, although often inconsistent and unverifiable, much more emotionally compelling.

Many folks are glad to have answers even if they’re not always iron-clad. They find much in life ultimately unexplainable and ask only that their beliefs enable them to live with courage, love and hope. Others prefer to have no answers about how God cares for them than answers that don’t square with their experience. They observe things going unexplainably well in life but also unexplainably poorly. They find no reason to hold God more responsible for one than the other. They’re most likely to find God directly responsible for neither. They live with that – not always comfortably – without doubting that God ultimately assures the fulfillment of our lives.

Whichever approach to divine providence we find most natural for us; there is a further, crucial element in our understanding of it. Faith in God’s care frees us to fearlessly commit ourselves to the world. That kind of commitment is capable of transforming human life. It is the mark of a mature faith to look not for what God will do for us but to seek to discover what God makes us capable of doing for ourselves and others.

The Measure Of Faith

2010-10-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Kings 5;14-17

Physicians sometimes use medicines in ways their developers didn't intend or foresee. A doctor may prescribe a drug intended to alleviate flu misery to mollify the effects of acne. Whether or not the drug’s producers approve of her decision, they can’t stop her from pursuing such a therapy. Neither can the FDA. It’s within the purview of the doctor to treat her patient as she deems best. It’s also her responsibility to benefit rather than harm her patient.

Religious faith is similar to medicine is some respects. No one can effectively control how we use our faith. If a person decides to bury a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the yard to ensure that his house sells, nobody can stop him. On a graver note, if a preacher teaches that God will bless with miraculous wealth those who send him money, no one can stop him. If a military leader tells his troops that God wills them to slaughter an entire village, no one can prove that God said no such thing?

What can we do about this Wild West aspect of religion? We could establish a commission with the power to decide and enforce their decisions about what God says. We could ignore the issue and pray that all those who claim bizarre things about God won’t draw a crowd. We could simply pay little attention to organized religion diminishing both its power and its danger.

Most ecclesiastical authorities attempt the first option setting up boards of orthodoxy with, at best, moderate success within their own groups and none beyond them. The majority of lay people choose options two or three. We accept a greatly straitened religion as the cost of defending ourselves against its abuses.
Is there anything we can do beyond sitting back, watching and minding our own religious business? Yes. We can put aside our wariness of religious discussion and begin to really pay attention to what people think about life and God. We can make it our business to listen more than we speak and to speak thoughtfully and respectfully when we open give our opinions. We can stop assuming that we need an advanced degree before we can think deeply about belief and morality. Discussions about faith between laypeople need not be quick-draw shootouts. It hurts no one, least of all God, to begin a discussion with an honest I’m not sure about this; what do you think.

The touchstone for a religious opinion is: How will this idea strengthen me to treat others with more love and justice. Naaman became interested in Israel’s God not because Elisha presented him a brilliant theological argument but because Elisha helped him with his skin disease. When all is said and done, love not brilliance demonstrates the presence of God.

Messengers Of Hope

2010-10-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Habakkuk 1:2-3 to 2:2-4
Don’t jump!

If God’s revelation were made into a thirty second tape, that would be its first line. It would fit right next to I know it’s hard. I’ll never quit on you. Together we’ll make this work better than you dream. In countless ways our Creator has said don’t give up on me and don’t give up on yourselves.

When God first created us with imagination, when he gave us the longing for peace between people, for lasting friendship, for love freely given, for plenty for everyone, for children bubbling with life; God knew we would pay a price. God knew we would ultimately arrive at our dream but would also suffer along the way.

Scripture is full of stories about characters who struggled but endured. History books, dramas and novels, our family photo albums and our memories tell tales of those who kept trying and found meaning in their efforts. They left us a better world for their labors. In Christian language these people were true to God’s Spirit; in ordinary language, they hoped in life.

Do folks have to keep trying to live, grow and make life better. No, obviously! We can climb to the hundredth floor and step off. Or, more commonly, we can despair of the larger world’s future and work only for ourselves and our own.

Our Creator knows this struggle. God lives within it and joins it on the side of humanity. That’s the meaning of Jesus. But the Creator can’t strip away the tension between hope and despair in our lives without stripping away the core of our humanity as well.

As God’s incarnation we’re asked to be the embrace of hope for all who struggle, especially for those who feel life’s promise slipping away. We share the rest of the world’s disappointments and we share its dreams. What we have to offer is a promise, God’s promise. We embody it in our loving care.

The Gift of Faith: Freedom To Care

2010-09-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Amos 6:1, 4-7

A father once told me about a disturbing story he had seen on the previous night’s news.

“It was a little kid crying from hunger in her mother’s arms at an emergency feeding station in Africa. She sounded exactly like my daughter crying at night from a bad dream. It made me uncomfortable. I picked up a magazine and began to read to get away from it. Later on I talked with my wife about it and decided that my discomfort was that I was couldn’t do anything to help the little girl.”

“What would you have done if that had been video of your daughter visiting friends in Africa and not getting enough food,” I asked?

“First, I’d never have let her go to a place with such problems. Second, I would have gotten on the internet and sent money to that aid organization immediately. Then I would have gotten myself a ticket on the next plane to that town.”

“So, you wouldn’t be totally helpless. You’re saying there were actions that you might have been able to take if you had to?”

“I guess what really makes me uncomfortable is that I know, ultimately, I don’t care about that little girl enough to do what I can for her. That’s unsettling. What do the things I say I believe really mean? I know I can’t make everything right but I also know I can do a lot more than I do. I’m afraid to let myself care too much because of what it could cost me. And I’m not satisfied with that about myself.”

Thinking about our conversation now, it occurs to me that if Jesus were to sum up his life in one sentence, he might say, “Allow yourself to believe in the faithful, loving God that I’m revealing to you. That faith will free you to love those around you as much as you love yourself and your family.”

Salvation: It's About Life Not Death

2010-09-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Amos 8:4-7

“The Church has gotten too concerned with the world and politics. We’ve to get back to what we should care about: praising God and saving souls. If I want to talk about ending poverty, I’ll go to a Red Cross meeting. I want to hear about God and salvation at Church. The Church is always complaining that we’re too materialistic; it’s as much to blame for that as anyone else. We never hear about the spiritual life anymore. It’s always “justice this” and “justice that.”

The person sharing his frustration with me had much more to say but this gives you the sense of his ire. Many folks – many Catholics – share his dissatisfaction so I offer some reflections on his statement.

Long before Jesus, religious leaders were trying to get folks to see that it makes no sense to pray to the Creator of life while taking or harming or not caring about the life of one’s neighbor.

For Jesus, as for the Hebrew prophets before him, God’s salvation did not begin at death; it began in the present – here and now. To be concerned for one’s salvation means to be concerned for her life. The life we know and the life we can influence is right here, right now.

For Jesus one’s spirituality was one’s union with the divine Spirit that guided him. To be a spiritual person was to live in harmony with the divine Spirit. It had nothing to do with choosing an immaterial reality over a material reality. Such an imaginary choice is not an issue of faith but, at most, one arising from bad philosophy.

Finally, for Jesus faith was inseparably bound up with justice and so with political and social realities. In biblical terms justice equals God’s way of doing things. We are just when we act as God acts. What Jesus taught is that God acts always lovingly to all people. God acts always for the benefit of all people. For us acting spiritually and justly will always entail acting politically and socially.

God Re-Examined

2010-09-12T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 32:7-12, 13-14

I once sat in on a discussion about God with a group of university students. The question was Do you still believe in the God that you believed in five years ago? One student had abandoned the idea of a God who kept score of and punished sins. A younger student said that he now realized that it was by punishing sin that God kept human chaos at bay. A young woman stated that she had realized how God places painful experiences in people’s lives for their own good. Her roommate volunteered that it was exactly such a God that she now rejected in favor of a God who gives us all freedom to make our way through life and react with intelligence, love and courage to whatever life brings.

When the discussion ended, we had learned that though we spoke of one God and prayed to that God together, we held any number of contradictory understandings of who God was and what God did. I was also obvious that it wasn’t theology that held the group together; it was friendship and a hope held in common. Many of our assumptions about God’s ways and even our understanding of his dealings with people were different – even contradictory. Everyone left the room thinking more deeply about their faith and their church than when they entered. One comment just before the break-up was, “I wonder what we’re saying when we say we believe in one God.” Then it was pizza and pop: the ritual meal of college life.

At a time of heated arguments over whether God exists, what God is like and what God is doing; it’s crucial to continually examine our beliefs. They reflect what we think about life. They also reflect our change and growth. Sharing our insights with one another is a wonderful gift – if our friendships are strong enough to accept our differences.

Missing The Plan

2010-09-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 9:13-18

“I know God wants me to marry this guy; I’m absolutely certain He wants us together.” The young woman smiled from ear to ear as she revealed her destiny to me. When we spoke again a month later, she sadly related the story of her breakup and how she figured that she and her boyfriend had displeased God and, as a result, He was banishing them back into the dating wilderness.

Deciding what to do with the idea of God’s will is proving a big problem for people of faith. A deep distrust exists between those who search for and find God’s plan for daily events and those who think themselves totally responsible for determining their response to life. Sometimes the distrust between these two types turns into hostility and they hurl accusations of faithlessness or escapism at one another.

The stakes in this argument aren’t insignificant: one side fears seeing their community beginning to deny any reality beyond what we touch and see while the other fears a society controlled by absolute authoritarians disguising their personal views behind a mask of divine will.

Beyond the societal implications there’s the personal difference between those who long for the security of knowing the Creator’s plan for them and those who value, above all, the freedom and responsibility of choosing their own course in life.

Alleviating the tension in this situation isn’t easy. As totally certain as each group is that its vision of reality is true, neither position is provable. God’s communication – or the lack thereof – is simply not open to objective verification. In light of that, arguing about it is pointless.

Resolving this tension will begin when the parties involved adopt a radical respect for the hopes and a real determination to alleviate the fears of their opponents. We really have to love those with whom we deeply disagree. The alternative is to continue throwing stones.

Sharing: It's About Justice

2010-08-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29

“I really think we should be giving more to the poor,” a good friend once told me over lunch. He was speaking of his own household, not other people’s. “We could do more than we do.” I remember the comment because it expressed a sentiment I don’t often hear. In fact, I don’t recall having a similar conversation with anyone else. Why would this fellow make such a statement? He wasn’t the type to fear some divine punishment for insufficient generosity.

Scripture, both Christian and Jewish, encourages alms giving. The reason: it’s God’s will. When a person does not have enough wealth to live with security and dignity, he or she lacks the blessing of life that God intends for everyone. When we encounter such a person, we have a responsibility to redress the wrong that she is enduring. It’s not a nice but optional activity that we can engage in or opt out of as we choose. Scripture speaks of giving alms as an act of justice: an act demanded simply by the way God creates the world. That is the first reason for giving alms.

The second reason for giving alms is what one might call the spiritual reason. An aware almsgiver acts in a way that reminds him or her of the web of life. Giving to another puts a person in touch with the reality that we’re all intertwined and interdependent for our welfare. Active caring for another puts the giver’s mind and will in harmony with God’s Spirit hence it strengthens his spiritual life. It is a heart-changing action.

We give alms because the balance of the creation demands it; we give alms because doing so unites our wills to the Creator’s and thus fulfills us individually. The wise Christian claims both reasons. In the back of her mind she hears the echo of Jesus’ words: “the first commandment is love the Lord with your whole heart and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.”

We Needs To Listen

2010-08-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66:18-21

A solemn, young Catholic once told me that the first thing that we need to be clear about when talking with other religions is that God has told our church everything important there is to know about faith. As he saw it, others need us, we don’t need them. He wanted Catholics to be clear about that lest we not only lose the truth that God has given us but deny our truth to others and be responsible for the loss of their souls. He saw a great danger that we, in our effort to be friends with other religions, would adopt an everyone-has-his-own-truth mentality.

Why do we have an ecumenical movement? Is it simply to get all religions to play nicely together? That’s certainly a noble goal but there’s a more important one. The central reason for religion is to bring those who practice it into harmony with the Creator and the universe He creates. The ecumenical movement gathers folks from various religions to pool their experience and wisdom about how to do that.

A religion has to enter the ecumenical discussion aware that its truths are contained in words, ideas and rituals that are imperfect. No one can equate their description of God or life with God or life itself. Descriptions are partial, conditioned by factors like time, place, language, culture, perspective and history. This means that we know truth but, especially when we’re discussing the relationship between God and human beings, we never know it totally and we never express it completely. In fact, our ignorance is much greater than our knowledge.

We enter into ecumenical discussion because we desperately need to learn from others what they know of God and what they know of people so that we can improve our ability see and understand both.

All this is impossible if we can’t enter into the conversation without putting aside the fear that learning more will rob us of what we already know. Only when we overcome that apprehension will we learn that truth is always larger than our assumptions.

Keeping Things Straight

2010-08-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Feast of the Assumption of Mary
Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10a

“There’s nothing we can do about the church. They’ve got all the power. We don’t count. They think that God speaks to them so they don’t have to listen to us and they’re sure that we’re too worldly to have anything useful to say anyway. Catholics have two choices: do what we’re told or quit. And, if you’re so naïve to think that quitting sends them a message, think again. They’re absolutely certain that anyone who leaves wasn’t a good Catholic to start with. You can’t win with these guys.”

Now that was a rant!

I’d quibble with little of it. The woman was venting a frustration that many lay Catholics, for good reason, share. Still, it’s not the heart of the Catholic reality.

My brother and his wife often speak of their admiration for the Amish community near which they live. In many ways my brother finds these people embodying Jesus’ vision. It’s interesting that speaking about them he never mentions the internal structure of their community or how they foster unity among their many settlements. He’s not commented on their doctrines, worship services or how they govern their community. What he finds attractive in the Amish is their love and peace.

The soul of our Church isn’t its doctrines, its governance or even its sacramental rituals, as important as these are. The heart of the Catholic Church is the Spirit of Jesus that works through us to bring love and justice to the world. Everything in the Church exists to support the work of this Spirit. Nothing in the Church controls this Spirit. The actions of the Church’s members – lay or clerical – facilitate or hinder the Spirit’s work but they don’t control it.

Back to the rant. The Church lives in a difficult time. It’s important to keep a clear perspective. Jesus’ Spirit is the real power in our community, the real source of our community’s unity is that Spirit. The real goal of our community is to help others become aware of and live in harmony with that Spirit.

We can’t attribute to anyone else the power, the unity or the gift that is the Spirit’s alone.

No Faith Without Trust

2010-08-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 18:6-9

“Honest, I won’t pull the football away this time.”

“That’s what you said last year.”

“But this time I’m telling you the truth. I’m really hurt that you won’t trust me.”

“Alright, alright; I’ll let you hold the ball; but don’t let me down, okay.”

Huff, huff, arrrrgh. Thud.

“Never again; never, ever again! I swear it; I’ll never believe her again – no matter what she says.”

Every year Lucy talked Charlie Brown into letting her hold the football while he kicked it. Every year she pulled it away at the last second. Every year Charlie Brown fell in angry ignominy. Every year millions of sympathetic readers smiled because they knew how Charlie felt. So many people beg for our trust, then let us down at the last second and watch us fall. We all hear “sucker” ring in our ears and blush at once angry and ashamed.

It’s hard enough when a bank or an oil company asks for our trust then betrays it. It’s devastating when a friend or a lover pulls the same trick. But when a church does it, someone claiming to speak God’s truth, something is snatched from our souls that no one can replace.

It is a sacred act to speak for God. To stand before a person and claim God’s truth is so central to a community’s health that is was protected by the second of the Commandments: before murder, before adultery, before even respecting the elders. Do not claim to speak God’s truth unless you speak it. As with all the commandments, the crucial consequence of not adhering to the rule is not simply destruction of the perpetrator; it is destruction of the community!

I’ve lost count of the number of Catholics who have told me that they no longer trust Church leadership. They may still trust this or that priest but the hierarchy as a whole has finally jerked the football away from them one too many times. This is extremely serious.

Without trust our church will not survive. For one another and for our world we all must immediately do everything possible to repair our credibility.

Faith Hopes And Loves

2010-08-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23

There’s a strain in Christian thought that says that most everything we spend our lives working at and worrying about doesn’t much matter. The essential reality is the cosmic battle going on between God and Satan for our souls and our allegiance. Whose side we choose is the only important issue.

Do what God tells you and make the best of life. Don’t ask questions. Don’t expect much. Do you work and say your prayers and turn everything over to God might summarize this attitude.

It’s astounding that so many folks subscribe to this vision of Christian life in the face of Jesus’ assurance that his task was to transform the world. God loves the world: Jesus loved the world. He asked us to love the world: to make life more just, more loving, more generous. Doing that, he said, is the touchstone of faith.

The nub of Christian living isn’t obedience; it’s love: love of our world made possible through love and trust in the world’s Creator. That sounds simple but it’s nearly impossible, at times, to know how best to make love practical.

If we could find an authority that knew the most loving course in all circumstances, one that grasped and reflected God’s vision to us clearly and consistently, we could just salute and carry out orders. Alas, such an authority doesn’t exist.

So we push ahead, buoyed by the faith that God’s Spirit works with us. Arm in arm we feel our way through a lot of foggy days doing our best to make progress. And if, at times, we’re tempted to sigh, “Vanity; it’s all pointless,” we can take heart. Jesus loved and lived for this world. Jesus struggled and wondered just as we do but he never lost hope. He didn’t live in vain.

Just Living

2010-07-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 18:20-32

“You’re going to be tempted many times to count the cost of love and ask yourself whether or not you’re getting your fair share of the pie. The biggest threat to marriage is the desire for fairness. The whole idea of fairness is nonsense; get over it before you stand in front of the altar or you’re through before you start. Give as much as you can and don’t keep score.”

These were words that a friend’s father spoke to him shortly before his wedding. Not only are they observations from a good marriage, they are observations from the heart of life. We hear and talk a lot about fairness but everyone who thinks deeply about life knows that fairness has little to do with anything. It’s not fair that we’re conceived; it’s not fair that we survive to adulthood; it’s not fair that people love us; it’s not fair that we die.

The key to life is justice as scripture uses the word: the will of God for creation. The quest for justice is the effort to treat all of creation – especially human beings – as God wants it treated. Jesus is our model for just living. Often the Hebrew Scriptures offer models of justice but not consistently.

The tale of Abraham cajoling God into sparing an entire city for the sake of a handful of righteous people is a great story. It has humor that we rarely associate with the absolute rule of Abraham’s God but it gives a hint of the justice that Jesus will reveal centuries later. God’s love is never fair; it’s absolute and forever. It’s the kind of love that we would like to give others if we could only conquer our fears and insecurities. It’s the love we pray to imitate.

Tending The Web

2010-07-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 18:1-10

“Always be nice to a stranger and help him if he needs you because he may be Jesus in disguise,” my grandmother used to say. Her thinking seems quaint now. We bridle at the image of God sneaking around to trap us. Still, there’s an important truth hidden in my grandmother’s caution.

In our search for God, we’re chasing a mirage if we think that we can touch him directly. We find him in the people and world He is creating. Behind my grandmother’s prudence (and that of countless other grandmothers) lies the awareness that life, and indeed, all reality, is a web of interdependent being. Mistreat one part of the web and I mistreat the entire web – including the part that I am. God’s life is found in the web he creates even more than a parent’s life is found in the child he gives life or an artist’s in her painting or music.

In many, if not most, places around us folks generally agree with such a thought. If you ask them how often they consider the welfare of the whole web of life when they make their daily decisions, however, or how much they reflect on that web when they’re looking for an experience of God or check the needs of that web when they’re seeking God’s will for them, the answer is typically, “Rarely.”

Most of us are comfortable with the part of Jesus’ great commandment that tells us to love God above all things. We have a much harder time dealing with the part that tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. That, of course, is the more difficult one because it’s measurable and, so, subject to evaluation. Then again, it’s the one where change for the better occurs – the one that demonstrates that we’ve actually come to love the Creator.

First You Choose Then You Live

2010-07-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deuteronomy 30:10-14

“Religion is really a very simple thing,” a fellow once told me. “Everyone knows what’s right. They just have to do it.”

Except for reducing religion to morality, my friend’s comment is hard to disagree with – on the one hand, that is. As usual, the trouble lies on the other hand. Generally, the hard part of acting justly or ethically lies not in knowing what to do but in having the courage and strength to do it.

Acknowledging that mind-achingly difficult situations certainly arise, day-to-day morality is generally not intellectually crippling.

What can be and often is crippling is the fear that accompanies making what we know is the best moral decision. What’ll it going cost me; what’s the downside? What kind of acceptance will my decision find among my peers? Will my effort to act justly make any difference in the long run?

That brings us back to the above speaker’s assertion about religion’s simplicity. Religion isn’t first and foremost about morality; it is about how we view life: its meaning and its potential. An a-theist believes that there is no knowing, caring source of creation. Creation is radically pointless – it just happens – and human beings, as part of creation, are radically pointless. A theist, on the other hand, believes that there is a knowing, caring Being creating all reality. As a result, all reality, humans included, are known and cared for. Our existence is not pointless, our dreams not futile. Over time, the view of life we choose directs our actions.

My friend was correct when he declared that religion is simple. Either we believe in a knowing, caring Creator or we don’t. When we look at the universe and ourselves, we either see promise and love as the most powerful forces or we see love and promise as illusions we create to assuage our fear of nothingness as ultimate destiny.

Can we prove either position? I don’t know how. It’s a choice: a simple choice; a choice made new each day – a choice that determines every other possibility.

Prophets Of Hope

2010-07-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66:10-14

“I’m taking my son out of his classroom,” the young mother told me, “his teacher is so negative. She constantly tells the kids what they do wrong but rarely what they do well. My son says that her favorite phrase is, ‘You’re not getting this.’ There’s no encouragement. I’ve talked to several other mothers who are having the same experience. We’re all having our kids switched to another teacher.”

Whatever the whole story was, that mom had every reason to be concerned if she sensed a lack of hope in her son’s school setting. Life is difficult enough, even in the fourth grade, without someone giving the impression that we can’t succeed.

Too often the image of a prophet is that of a person foretelling disaster, too often of a person offering only jeremiads accompanied by threats of disaster. Too many folks think that “speaking truth” means voicing how badly things are going.

Folks generally know exactly how bad things are. Fear of helplessness or of the cost of change keeps them from acknowledging and trying to resolve problems. There are always a few people who thrive on bad situations and maintain and foster them when they can, but generally the foundation of a mess isn’t wickedness or even ignorance, it’s debilitating fear. Announcing that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket may feel like a bracing defiance of that evil but it’s like taking aspirin for a brain tumor. What’s needed is hope. The contribution of a prophet is hope.

It’s not necessary to have the right answer or the perfect solution to problems to offer hope but it is necessary to totally commit oneself to finding those answers and solutions together with the community. That hundred percent commitment is the language of our gospel.

The gospel of hope that Christians offer the world is not practical solutions to life’s problems. It is the experience of God’s promise that life’s potential will come to pass. We prove that not with doctrines and rituals but with putting ourselves on the line for our world – regardless of the cost.

Proofing Authority

2010-06-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
1st Kings 19:16, 19-21

Catholics, both membership and leaders, are used to saying that the only authority in the Church is God. The Pope acts in God’s name, the bishops and priests too, even parents cite the divinity as the power in whose name they lay down the law. Everyone who claims to govern with Bible wisdom claims God as his or her authority. Of course, it was also common for Christian 19th century American slave owners to claim that they oversaw their charges with God’s authority! How do we sort through such abundant claims to divine right?

The story of Elijah, the prophet, designating Elisha his successor is useful in this discussion. When Elisha asked for permission to say a proper goodbye to his parents before beginning his apprenticeship, Elijah responded, “Hey, you don’t need my permission, I’m just saying what God is offering you. You decide whether and how to accept it.”

Freedom has always been the hallmark of God’s gifts: our freedom to accept or reject them and our freedom to decide how to best use them. If I can anthropomorphize a bit, it must scare God to death to offer us the powerful gifts he does and then imbed them in freedom. Look how it scares parents to let their little ones cross the street or go off to school or get married! If we were God, would we give us free will along with our other powers?

It’s no wonder, I suppose, that those who claim to exercise God’s authority among us constantly seek ways to nullify the gift of freedom that the Creator risks on us. Freedom is always dangerous and often misused. Still, the Creator makes it his signature gift.

In authority we are tempted to play games such as “You can do what you want but if you defy me, I’ll disown you.” We may say, “You have a free conscience, but if you oppose me, I’ll excommunicate you.” The games are numberless but you get the idea.

The touchstone that proves the reliability of one claiming God’s authority is: does this person love as God loves: consistently, unqualifiedly, without deception, freely – without games. If the answer is “no,” it’s senseless to ask such a person to direct us in the context of our God-given freedom.

Religion: For Our Sake - Not God's Sake

2010-06-22T06:54:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Reading
12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Zechariah 12:10-11, 13:1

As we grabbed a moment of peace and quiet in a local coffee shop, I asked a friend of mine why he had left the Church. His answer was interesting. "Once I was riding through town with a co-worker who drove through a school zone at the same speed that he had driven the rest of our trip. I mentioned that it was three o'clock. He responded that he had checked and that there weren't any cops in sight. That's why I left the Church: too many people watching for the cops instead of the kids."

Another colleague once observed that the problem with most people isn't that they aren't religious enough, it's that they aren't human enough.

We Christians speak of faith as though it were frosting spread over life to make it sweet and beautiful - or at least tolerable. Maybe that comes from our view of revelation: we have the impression that God gives us faith directly from some heavenly sanctuary, by-passing the everyday of life. In reality, religion bubbles to the surface from deep within life. As we sense its presence, we ritualize it and speak of God as life's source and promise.

Back to my friend in the coffee shop. Some folks accept the standard view of faith that our prayer pleases God and our sin offends God and that is the point of both. We miss that prayer makes us more appreciative of life's beauty and more determined to transform its ugliness. We are not faithful for God, we are faithful to God for ourselves. That is indistinguishable from being faithful to creation and to life - to everyone's life. The ability to live faithfully is God's gift to us.

Living faithfully is no more about pleasing God than slowing down through a school zone is about avoiding a ticket. How can we not know that!

It's About More Than Forgiveness

2010-06-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
2nd Samuel 12:7-10,13

Many years ago a recent convert to the Church told me that joining up and receiving the sacraments had given him life-changing peace of mind. “How so,” I asked. “I had a lot of guilt over things I’d done,” he said, “but knowing that God forgives me has taken that away. I know that I’m right with God. My sins and failures are in the past.” We who have a strong sense of God can easily forget the people our failures harm.

On the one hand, we are right with God the instant we decide to cooperate with what God is doing. On the other hand, the harm we’ve caused others lingers long after we’ve had our change of heart. Sorrow and apologies – even sincere ones – leave actual injuries unaffected.

An individualistic notion of sin gives the impression that if God still loves us after our failures, all is well. The problem is that God is trying to give love and justice to everyone. If my actions or inactions have deprived someone of that love and justice, I’ve denied him or her God’s gift. God still loves me (truthfully, he never stopped) but I have thwarted the good God is trying to do and that it takes more than an act of contrition to redress the situation.

One danger of being part of a sacramental Church is that performing our rituals can give the impression that we’ve restored some cosmic balance. A hug and a kiss may reassure neglected, hungry children that we love them, but getting up and fixing supper is the only way to fill their stomachs.

There is something unsettling about the Prophet Nathan’s reassuring King David that he’s right with God after his acknowledgment of guilt for murdering Uriah. Uriah’s wife was still a widow. Uriah’s children were still orphans. David’s people would never trust him as they did before his treachery. Of course God loved David. But God loved Nathan’s widow too. There was a huge problem that cried out to be resolved. All was not right!

The Humility Of Mixed Motives

2010-06-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First ReadingsThe Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
Genesis 14:18-20

A story on the CNN website recently told of evangelical churches banding together to resist recent anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona and to work against other states adopting similar laws. Cynics may say that such a move is designed purely to increase Hispanics’ likelihood of joining an evangelical church.

Cynics could also say that U.S. bishops’ activity to encourage immigration reform is designed purely to keep Hispanics Catholic. Both the evangelicals and the Catholic bishops maintain that their motivation arises from a biblically rooted concern for justice. It’s not unlikely that both groups have mixed motives.

In times of uncertainty folks are want to seek out purity – in motives, in beliefs, in commitment, in every aspect of life. We Catholics, as a whole and in our particular subgroups, aren’t feeling all that secure these days. Dip one’s toes in the water of Catholic opinion and it doesn’t take long before the heated rhetoric of purity begins to scald. Catholic liberals look askance at any social justice work of conservatives and Catholic conservatives cast similar glances at liberals expressing doubt that Vatican II was God’s final word on how the Church should work.

It irritates one’s irony-bone to hear a group of Catholics complain bitterly about liberals and conservatives in government refusing to cooperate on obviously good legislation. The same folks can be clueless about the anger of poor folks watching Catholic liturgy warriors squander ecclesiastical time and energy that could put food on their plates and roofs over their kids.

Genesis tells of Abraham, the Hebrew forefather, defending the Canaanite king Melchizedek against outside aggression after which Melchizedek called on his Canaanite gods to bless Abraham in gratitude. Everyone went home happy.

Was there complete agreement between the two men about how kingdoms should be run, about how land should be divided, about whose God was supreme? Not ever. But one king had been saved from defeat and another king had been blessed by a rival. Thousands of ordinary citizens slept more soundly that night. There were mixed motives lying everywhere that evening but peace had been strengthened.

Trinity Reconcidered

2010-05-30T00:00:00.001-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Proverbs 8:22-31

When most of us learn about the Holy Trinity, our response is, Okay; if you say so. Many of us don’t move much past that. Numberless statements of popes, bishops and theologians not withstanding, the mathematics and internal makeup of God simply don’t grab our imaginations. It’s not that we’re impious; the language of a Trinitarian God simply appears too abstract to benefit our faith. That same language presents greater possibility, however, if we shift the focus from what it says about God in himself to what it says about how God relates to us.

God plays three distinct, essential roles in our lives:
God gives us existence;
God removes our fears of death;
God offers us a fulfilling future.

When God offers us a deeper understanding of himself, it’s for our sakes, not to heighten his stature. The understanding we’ve developed of the Holy Trinity – and it’s not that great – isn’t meant to astonish us with God’s complexity or mysteriousness, it’s intended to point out how reliably God is committed to human life, how totally intertwined he is in every aspect of who we are and who we will become.

We can’t hope to imagine God who is totally different from any being we’ve ever encountered. The best statements we can make about God must begin God is kind of like . . . .

On the other hand, Jesus revealed everything we can and need to know about our Creator. God isn’t out there somewhere. God is intimately involved with our every breath and more committed to our welfare than we are. This is the point the language of Trinity tries to make.

Religious authoritarianism (an abuse of authority) makes it difficult to remember that a doctrine isn't a test of our obedience or a medal of allegiance. It's the best understanding of life and God that we’ve developed couched in the most adequate terms we know. Doctrines are not perfect. Nonetheless, we miss valuable aids to living if we refuse to pray over them and subject them to our best intelligence. Take the Trinity for example.

God's Chosen People (Like Everyone Else)

2010-05-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-11

I was three when my younger brother was born. For three years I’d been my mother’s, grandmother’s and aunt’s special little boy. Then one day I walked into the bedroom where my mother slept beside my brother’s crib and heard her call him her special little boy. I was about to learn some life-changing lessons.

Religious people sometimes have a difficult time with the idea that, though they’re special to God, they’re no more special than members of any other religion – or people with no religion. Like children they’re afraid that if someone else is special, they aren’t. They feel the need to prove over and over that their religion is best and thus, they’re God’s favorites. Of course, the dark truth behind this exercise is the belief that the special ones have first claim on God’s attention and gifts with the right to commandeer them should that claim be questioned. The whole idea would be merely childish were it not for this veiled (or not so veiled) assumption.

A mother’s assurance: I love you all the same but each one in a different way is never emotionally satisfying to a child. At some level it boils down to who gets to sit on mom’s lap and who gets the first cookie. In the world of religion it’s who gets to claim God is on our side; God told us His mind and you must think as we think; God wants us in control, not you.

It was a dangerous thing for the bishops at the Second Vatican Council to acknowledge God’s Spirit at work in all religions and all people who try to make life better. They made it impossible for Catholics to back away from a conversation with other religions. We can not justify refusing to honor and learn from their experience of God.

Discovering others’ specialness is the beginning of a life-long journey to humility and community. It ends the illusion of control over one’s parent – or one’s God. It shines a light on the mystery of love – human and divine. It’s a painful, wonderful lesson that takes a lifetime.

Christians At Ease?

2010-05-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Seventh Sunday of Easter
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20

ohn wrote his letter to the Christians in Asia Minor (today’s Turkey) to assure them of Jesus’ rescue from the hardships they were enduring under Rome’s emperors. Some of these folks faced social and economic ostracism; others, situations much more lethal.
Rome didn’t much care for Jews who insisted on a single God. Rome claimed divinity for its Caesars. Most Romans thought Jew’s refusal to burn a bit of incense before the emperor’s likeness quirky at best and, more likely, crazy. The risk for refusing such a petty tribute was too great. It was un-Roman, not to mention impractical, not to go along to get along.
Christians, seen by most as merely heretical Jews, were viewed as not only nuts like all Jews but trouble-makers as well since they caused tension, even open hostility, within the Jewish community. The empire simply couldn’t abide civil unrest in its provinces. It was bad for business; bad for Rome.
John encouraged his brother and sister Christians to stay faithful to Christ assuring them that Rome would end up on the ash heap of history while they would live in eternal glory.
All this sounds quaint two thousand years later. Rome is still around though it hardly bestrides the world in grandeur. America, for the moment anyway, is the big bestrider. And we Christians dominate her religious landscape. It’s been a long time since anyone had her business confiscated or was tossed to angry lions for following Jesus.
When some of us were in college, there was a popular poster that read: If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to prosecute you?
Is today’s world in such harmony with Christ’s Spirit that Christianity blends in smoothly?
Has the Christian way gained such ascendance in modern life that no one dares bother those who travel it?
Are people simply too sophisticated today to harasses or persecute anybody thus allowing even Christians free rein to live as they choose?
What’s going on here? Why do we have it so cushy compared to those who began it all?

We Work: God Makes It Happen

2010-05-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First ReadingsSixth Sunday of Easter
Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23

“When are you going to stop taking your sister’s toys?” the frustrated mother asked her four year old son. Mistaking the angry statement for a question, the little boy, chin aquiver and eyes ever so pathetic replied, “When I grow up.”

There’s a strain in social thought that holds that humans, given enough time, will evolve our way out of violence and injustice naturally. This optimism waxes and wanes in the popular imagination. But, the thinking goes, our intelligence and simple self-interest will inevitably move us all towards cooperation for the common good.

Catholic thought, however, cautions against trusting a natural progression to universal peace. Jesus referred to humanity’s fulfillment as the Kingdom of God because it will be the world that God always intended but, more importantly, because God alone makes it possible.

Many of us who are comfortable with the idea of the Kingdom being God’s vision are much less at ease with the idea that only God can make that vision a reality. Such dependence upon God leaves us feeling a bit like children playing at life while God, the parent, tolerates the game until its time to put the toys away, put us to bed and straighten up the house. Such extended infancy seems irresponsible. But this misunderstands our theology.

Our tradition points to an all-consuming human need for security in the face of the death’s inevitability. Unless this need is met, we face an insatiable drain on our energy that keeps us radically focused on ourselves. Jesus revealed that our Creator stands by us without question, however. Death isn’t the absolute demise that it seems. Faith in Jesus’ revelation liberates us from obsession with our own individual survival so that we can enter fully into the communal relationships of loving care that life both affords and demands.

God doesn’t do for us what we can do for ourselves. God opens the door of life’s promise by guaranteeing our existence but we must walk through it to build the world we desire.

Without God’s work the Kingdom cannot happen; without our work the Kingdom will not happen.

A Person Of Faith Is A Person Of Hope

2010-05-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Revelation 21: 1-5

I’m reading What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe. It contains an account of the 1828 presidential race between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. The similarity between the politics of those days and our own is striking. It doesn’t support optimism for the approach of a golden age. Venality, stupidity and short-sighted self-concern were as rampant then as now. It’s difficult to read these pages without questioning our nation’s moral progress. Is our pursuit of a more just and wise future more than chasing a mirage?

I’ve spoken often with folks about the role they reserve for God in human life. Many maintain that they understand why, in ancient times, people imagined a divine being controlling nature’s power and life’s chaos. Since we’ve made such progress in mastering these realities, however, they find little left for God to do beyond guaranteeing our survival after death. Some find even that unnecessary since, if it turns out that we’ve no post-death future, none will exist to rue its absence.

But always there are our kids and grandkids! What we dream for them! What a future we hope for them! Don’t let them face war. Don’t let them endure poverty. Give them a world where they can trust people. Give them a world that affords everyone equal freedom, respect and actual opportunity. Give them love and joy, discovery and growth.

We want more for our offspring than a continuation of what we’ve always known. We want a new history that moves beyond the ersatz glory and bombastic blather of national exceptionalism to real peace and community. We want our children and their children to rise above the fearful pettiness that we and our ancestors have slogged through. How do we dare entertain such a hope?

For us God isn’t primarily the realization to our private destiny. We look to our Creator to fulfill the promise of life for the entire world: we look for God’s Spirit to lead us beyond the edge of the map that history has drawn. In God we see the promise of life. In worship we claim a future.

God's Gift Of Worship

2010-04-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Revelation 7:9, 14-17

If God can watch over and take care of you day and night for a week, don’t you think you owe him at least one hour of worship on Sunday? I remember hearing our pastor utter those words in many Sunday sermons when I was a youngster. He seemed to miss the irony of voicing his frustration to us in church. I figured that he assumed that we would somehow convey the message to the miscreants sleeping in or mowing their lawns.

Years later I began to wonder about the more central issue of how we could be in debt to God for his care. What could we owe God who makes everything possible for us – including our appreciation of all his gifts? The idea of being obligated to our Creator seems to demean him. It somehow places God on our level as someone who benefits or suffers from what we give or withhold.

Our life is full of those whose love leaves us in their debt. They’re precious to us and we can’t imagine life without them but God’s love has to be beyond that experience. His has to be a love that leaves us debt-free: a love totally without strings. Not only have we nothing to offer God that God hasn’t given us first but a God in any way dependant on us cannot pull us up from our self-centeredness, our cussedness, our fears – our sin.

Then what does it mean to worship God? Why engage in it?

Worship means aligning our minds and hearts with God’s mind and heart. How could we know God’s mind and heart? Jesus’ life revealed God’s vision and God’s concerns – at least those we can understand.

Why worship? If a person can know what the Creator of the universe is doing, who in their right mind wouldn’t hop on that bandwagon. As a friend of mine from India used to say, “In the end, the wise rider goes where the elephant wants.” As my fourteen year old niece says, “Duh!”

Loving God - Loving Ourselves

2010-04-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Third Sunday of Easter
Revelation 5:11-14

Rogers and Hammerstein adapted the story of Cinderella for a television play in 1957. In it Julie Andrews and her prince, sang, “Do I love you because you’re beautiful or are you beautiful because I love you?” Every adult knows that it’s a great question but not easy to answer.

What are we to make of Jesus? Why do we profess such great love for a man who lived two millennia ago in a culture that we can scarcely imagine? Why did John imagine all the creatures of the universe praising him?

Jesus loved, forgave and cured people in the name of his divine Father. He lived in a way that those who knew him realized that they were witnessing God among them. Having seen Jesus executed as a threat to public order, they came to believe in God’s boundless love. When they saw Jesus raised from death, they realized that nothing can thwart God’s desire to fulfill life’s promise. Knowing God’s love for them freed them to love themselves and, in turn, grow in their love of God.

Loving God is inseparable from loving ourselves. Loving ourselves is inseparable from loving one another. Loving God, ourselves and one another is inseparable from loving our universe, the matrix of our existence and our knowledge.

There’s wisdom in our normal way of thinking that divides God, self, other and universe into discreet ideas so that we can understand and appreciate each more deeply. We have benefitted greatly from this way of looking at things.

There’s also wisdom in respecting the unity of self, other and universe with the all-penetrating reality of the Creator. It’s the wisdom that ultimately anchors all our ethics and morality

Deep peace and joy await our rediscovery of this unity revealed in Jesus.

A Difficult Love

2010-04-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
Second Sunday of Easter
Revelation 1:9-11, 12-13, 17-19

Opposition has lined Christianity’s entire journey. Since Jesus, those who shared his faith have met resistance from those who feared it, who ridiculed it, who hated it and those who found it simply incomprehensible.

Faith is pursuing the full potential of our Creator’s gift. Faith is living the way of Jesus. Faith is change. We’ve no reason to be surprised that many don’t understand change, doubt its promise, fear its cost, or find it too dangerous. How we who’ve been given Jesus’ faith respond to those who resist our vision is both important and telling.

I once knew a fellow who declared that he didn’t care what people said about him; he let it roll off his back. He could not and would not, however, tolerate or leave unanswered insults directed against God. The difficulty was that he seemed to consider any disrespect of himself an abuse of God. He constantly discovered enemies of God who deserved his ire.

One of Jesus’ most amazing teachings was that we’re to love our enemies. Doing so attests not only to our participation in the Reign of God but that God is advancing his peace through us.

Loving and doing good for those who obstruct our efforts to better the world runs counter to common sense as well as our deeply entrenched sense of self-righteousness. The key here is remembering that, in the final analysis, God’s power brings about the world he’s promised. Our power and intelligence are crucial to the process only when they’re directed by God’s Spirit.

As difficult as it is, following Jesus means having our arms always open to those who find us foolish and resist our good efforts. Like it or not, God wills to give his gifts even to those who find us obnoxious – even dangerous.

And we thought that the hardest thing about our faith was believing in the Real Presence!

God In Front Of Us

2010-04-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Reading
Easter Sunday
Acts 10:34, 37-43

Years ago I met a young couple preparing to baptize their first child. The dad commented that they could hardly believe what God had done through them. “This child; this new, little person; it’s almost too much to believe – but here she is.” His eyes brimmed with joy.

We don’t bat an eyelash when people comment that God has been at work in their lives when they’ve conceived and born a child. But eye brows climb if those same people remark that God gave them and their children a clean place to live when they finish cleaning or a warm place to live when they finish insulating their home. Does conceiving and giving birth involve God more than cleaning and improving a family’s dwelling?

What if I picked tomatoes from my backyard garden and given a half dozen to my neighbor: has God provided them abundance and love? What if the local high school kids entertain three hundred parents and friends with a production of The King and I: have they brought God’s love and joy to their families and friends?

A witness offers others an experience beyond himself. Parents, homemakers and high school drama students witness to the goodness of God every day.

The world is awash in the love of God. Our demand for that love to be somehow extraordinary blinds us to the everyday wonder and sanctity of life. Restricting God’s activity to amazing events walls us off from the depth of God’s imersion in all we know. We do ourselves a great disservice when we restrict God’s work to events we can’t explain. God creates every heartbeat.

It’s difficult not to place the boundary of God’s involvement in life at the edge of our ability to grasp it. The price of doing so, however, is living a life of make-believe. We can look deeper; not for God’s sake; for ours.

A Time For Prophets

2010-03-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the Second Reading
Palm Sunday
Isaiah 50:4-7

Several years ago, at a parents’ gathering a mother commented that we need to do better teaching our young boys respect: that people aren’t things and that being aggressive in pursuit of a goal doesn’t excuse violence towards another. While many forces work against this idea, she was convinced that it’s attainable if parents make it a conscious priority and support one another.

Prophesy has garnered both abuse and ridicule from the ignorant. They equate the term with parlor room predictions, generally of a religious nature. Social commentators scoff at the very idea of someone foolhardy enough to rise up before others and direct social traffic. Cynics find only danger in anyone’s attempting such a role: at best it’s self-delusion, at worst a charlatan’s play for political power.

Still, there’s a longing for prophets and awe when a true one arises and moves our hearts. Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, Bishop Ken Untener – we watch people like these amazed by their power and authority. We half fear that they’ll reveal feet of clay, succumbing to the tide of public derision but we still root for them to be who they seem, to live what they speak, to demonstrate to everyone the potential lying within us.

Prophesy has nothing to do with foretelling the future, it has nothing to do with being smarter than everyone else. It is observing the direction of life’s hope, vibrating in harmony with the Creator’s longing and openly, boldly living what one knows to be true. Prophesy acts. It may speak, but it always acts. And when it acts, people know that it’s true. They may join in; they may refuse. But they know they’ve witnessed truth.

Every follower of Jesus agrees to be a prophet. Our lives are billboards of hope for a rushing world. We may sometimes speak. We will always act for the future, for life, for justice, for love, for what we all can be, for what God is building among us. Sometimes we will give voice to an honest, prayerful heart in a gathering of parents. But we will be God’s presence. We will be prophets.

In The Image of God

2010-03-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
5th Sunday in Lent
Isaiah 43:16-21

Jesus presented a new image of God. The image he offered was not discontinuous with that given by his Jewish Tradition but he enhanced that image profoundly. His Tradition offered a God violent with his enemies; Jesus offered instead a God of love and infinite forgiveness. His Tradition spoke of a God primarily concerned with one group of people, Jesus offered a God concerned for the welfare of all.

Were there elements of an all-forgiving, universally solicitous God present in the Judaism Jesus inherited? Definitely. But Jesus made them God’s identifying quality.

God didn’t change when Jesus arrived. What changed were the mutually enabling visions of how the world works and how the Creator of the world works. The two are inseparable.

On the one hand, a generous, self-giving Creator and a parsimonious, self-centered world make no sense. A forgiving, loyal God creating a world to run on harsh judgments and qualified love is irrational.

On the other hand, when we find within ourselves a deep desire to love and care for one another even to the extent that parents give their lives for their children and lovers for their beloved, we can’t imagine God doing less for his creatures. When living teaches us that we can’t survive, let alone thrive, without forgiving one another, how can we picture God not basing his relationship with us on forgiveness? Thinking that we can successfully act in a way that differs from how our Creator acts is untenable and self-destructive.

Hearing Jesus end the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5) by encouraging his followers to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” may make us want to roll our eyes and mutter, “right.” But his words make complete sense regardless of how difficult, even unlikely they may seem for us.

The images we cultivate of God and ourselves mature with living. They’re precious. We form them in common with others but we can’t delegate them to others. They define us. They define our possibility.

Knowing God - Cautiously

2010-03-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
4th Sunday in Lent
Joshua 5:9, 10-12

What are we to make of the God of Israel? On the one hand, the God of the Hebrews extolled and commanded justice and loving care for people, including the poor and foreigners living among his people. On the other, he led his tribes in driving out the inhabitants of Canaan, allowing and even approving the merciless killing of men, women and children to create a homeland for them.

It’s a common observation that while God created humans in his image; humans also created God in theirs. That’s often true, often unavoidable and often tragic.

Faith tells us that the Creator of the universe loves us. Beings who truly love are persons. We are persons. It’s natural to give God a human face. Still we take great risks attributing our qualities to the Creator. Even our best characteristics are polluted with fear and self-interest, not because we’re evil but because we’re finite beings possessing infinite imaginations. When we ascribe human qualities to God, God always comes out looking contradictory.

People frequently ask why a loving God allows war and death. In the Hebrew Scriptures God not only allows war and death, he repeatedly commands war and death – ruthlessly.

For Christians, a lot of assumptions begin to fray at this point. We know Jesus taught: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven (Mt. 5:44-48). We can’t square this with a God who sanctions the killing of whole armies and the slaughter of widows and children to create a homeland for his favorites.

Were the God of the Hebrews and the God of Jesus two different God’s? Hardly. But we possess incompatible descriptions of the one God.

Describing God carries huge consequences. We do well to go about it humbly and cautiously. Unless we are supernaturally wonderful, imaging God after ourselves is perilous indeed.

There is much wisdom in anchoring what we know of God in the historical person, Jesus of Nazareth and holding everything else with a very loose grip.

Stop Praising the House and Grab a Hammer

2010-03-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
3rd Sunday in Lent (c)
Exodus 3:1-8,13-15
“Take off those muddy shoes before you come in! Don’t you dare track up this kitchen; I just washed the floor!” As a kid I thought my mom simply didn’t want more work. As an adult I realized how much she wanted a nice place for us all to live. Taking my shoes off outside wasn’t just for my mom’s sake; it was for all our sakes.

That insight came back to me as I reread the story of the burning bush. It sounds as though God is displaying a bit of divine egotism. But God’s admonition to Moses not to approach with dirty feet isn’t about God’s ego; it’s about seeking respect for what God’s doing for humanity and, specifically, for the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt. God wants to impress on Moses that he’s being recruited into an act of liberation implications of which are beyond his comprehension.

It’s important to remember that those who composed the Bible’s stories wrote within the customs and characters of their experience. They could do nothing else. Since magnificent undertakings were the work of kings and pharaohs, the Bible portrays God as an ancient Mediterranean potentate. In Jewish history their liberation from Egyptian servitude and their conquests on the eastern end of the Mediterranean formed the core of their identity. Honor paid to God was honor paid to God’s accomplishments.

The Gospel of Matthew [7:21] quotes Jesus, “Not everyone saying, ‘Lord, Lord’ is part of the Reign of God; only the one who does my Father’s will.” Jesus worked to get folks to realize that we don’t praise God for God’s sake. We praise God for our sake. Praising God reminds us of what God is doing in our lives and encourages us to involve ourselves with his actions. If we remember this, our faith will deepen and mature.

It will be easier to keep our home free of all those muddy footprints too.

Religion: The Same And Changing

2010-02-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on the First Readings
2nd Sunday in Lent
Genesis 15:5-12

When ancient Hebrews told the story of how God used Abram to sire their nation, they used language and customs of their time. To guarantee that his gift of land would be perpetual, God followed a common contract ritual. Jews of that era found it natural. We find the story exotic.

We face a similar situation. To maintain a united and orthodox understanding of God and our relationship with him church authority has enshrined language and images from centuries, even millennia, past. Much of it is foreign to us.

Democracy, facile communication, universal education, the equality of all people and individual rights are fundamental realities for us. Advances in the sciences have fundamentally changed the way we perceive reality. In addition, many possess an unprecedented amount of power for controlling their daily lives. These facts make our world drastically different from the world that gave rise to our religious language and imagery.

There are those who say that “everyone knows” what the prayers and rituals are saying. Sometimes people do. But the language of faith is becoming more and more remote from everyday existence. Consciously and unconsciously we find religion in an increasingly isolated corner of our lives.

Theologians work on this problem. They search out ways of making faith understandable to us. In the nature of things they bump heads with the bishops whose job it is to make certain that our ancestors’ experience of God is fully handed on. It’s a messy process that never stands still and is never finished.

As profound change chases profound change today, nothing substitutes for deepening our faith knowledge. We can’t wait for someone to hand us a new dictionary that translates what we hear in church and read in scripture. We need to grow more confident in pondering our faith and making sense of it ourselves and in conversation with one another. The doctrine that the Holy Spirit guides all baptized people will become a practical reality for us or our faith will end up in the attic of our lives.