Homily Archive

A businessman bought popcorn from an old street vendor each day after lunch. He once arrived to find the peddler closing up his stand at noon. “Is something wrong?” he asked. A smile wrinkled the seller’s leathery face. “By no means. All is well.” “Then why are you closing your popcorn stand?” “So I can go to my house, sit on my porch, and sip tea with my wife.” The man of commerce objected. “But the day is still young. You can still sell.” “No need to,” the stand owner replied. “I’ve made enough money for today.” “Enough? Absurd. You should keep working.” The spry old man stopped and stared at his well-dressed visitor. “And why should I keep working?”

“To sell more popcorn.” “And why sell more popcorn?” “Because the more popcorn you sell, the more money you make. The more money you make, the richer you are. The richer you are, the more popcorn stands you can buy. The more popcorn stands you buy,

the more peddlers sell your product, and the richer you become. And when you have enough, you can stop working, sell your popcorn stands, stay home, and sit on the porch with your wife and drink tea.” The popcorn man smiled. “I can do that today. I guess I have enough.”

“Enough” I suggest is point of the gospel. Jesus begins to call his disciples. He sees Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea; Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men”… “I will give you enough.” Then they abandoned their nets and followed him. He walked along a little farther down the beach and saw brothers, James and John, Zebedee’s boys. He called to them as well. He said “come follow me” “… I will give you enough so that you should never want again.” They all abandoned their nets and followed him. And Jesus did as he said – He gave them enough. They left their nets and boats and followed Him. Happily for them and for us they accepted the challenge. Was it a risk? It was a huge risk. But their acceptance was a great example of what happens when we put our faith and trust in God. As it turned out, it was the greatest offer ever made to any individual or group of individuals. But once again, what would we have done? Would we have accepted without question? I don't think so.

I had a Theology professor, a priest, in college who his since become one of my best friends. But when we met, in his class, long before he published three books and began his national lectures; he had this to say about the gospel. He said

“Think about who Jesus calls. He does not call to his side the priests, scribes and the scholars of his day. No, he calls a group of dirty, low on the food-chain, fisherman who are schleps.” Now I really sat up. I wondered where he was going with this. He said, “yup all of them were a few fish short of a full net, and he continued, so are you.” And to borrow – so are you. Think about it: The priests, scribes and others never would have listened to his message; they after all, had it figured out. They were in, and most others were out. Rules are rules.

No, Jesus calls – fisherman (real schleps). He knew they would listen to what he had to say, and he already knew they never had enough.

And think about it, this schlepy group carried his message of salvation into time until we heard it and believed. And precisely because he called the ordinary to do the extraordinary, we have a chance at salvation. You and I are on a great climb. The wall is high, and the stakes are higher.

We are all somewhere along on our journey of discipleship. But sometimes I suspect God nudges us to do more, and we miss that call. Why? Often we attempt to live our lives backwards; we try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what we think we want, so then, we can finally be happier, and content with our lives, convinced then we will have enough. It actually works is the reverse, I think. We must first be who we really are, who we were meant to be, then do what we need to do to become true disciples.

After all we took our first steps when we finally recognized Jesus as the Son of God and our hope for eternity. He gave us a safety harness – the Holy Spirit to meet us along the way and he places the guidebook in our hands as his Word all because our own call to his side. Too often we move too far away from God. It takes work to walk the walk of a disciple and talk the talk, but as Christians this is our mission, our call. It will take a lifetime, but if we stay the course then and only then will we have ever have enough and can rightly take our place next to the schleps of Galilee.

Sometimes, especially when we were are very young, it can seem as if we spend our whole life, watching and waiting. Waiting to be old enough…Waiting to be tall enough…so we can go on that ride with our older brothers and sisters. Waiting for that driver’s license so we can get away from our parents and spend time with our significant other; we wait to graduate high school, college, and go to work – to earn that first million. We wait to meet our princess, our prince, to marry - or not. Then we wait for the marriage to get better, that first child, the second or not. We wait for our spouse to clean his or her act up, for some that separation to work; or finally that divorce. We wait for our children to move out of the house so we can re-connect we each other again. We wait to have our own money and be our own boss… Watching while everyone else seems to make all the decisions and have all the fun.

And then, even when we are finally old enough, smart enough, tall enough, and bossy enough, it can still seem as if we are still waiting. The philosopher Lucan said: “The moment we get what we seek, we don't - we can't want it anymore.”

Last night, I went with a colleague, to see Alro Guthrie at New York’s Carnegie Hall. It is the 40th anniversary of “Alice’s Restaurant.” For those of you old enough to remember, the song was Arlo’s account about his arrest for littering and his experience with the draft board; it was his condemnation of the Vietnam War. As I waited for Guthrie to take the stage, I couldn’t help but ponder that not much has changed in the 40 years since I first heard his Thanksgiving anthem.

I am older now, and I hurt in places that I did know I had 40 years ago. However, one thing remains constant: we are still fighting. We are still waiting for all the wars to stop, for the young, of every country, to stop dying, for a real lasting peace to infuse all people in all places throughout the world. I couldn’t help, as I was waiting, to utter a prayer, another for peace. But, as Mark suggests in his gospel – we wait and we watch.

But in a way, watching is for losers. And yet, that's exactly what Jesus challenges us to do- Watch and wait. Jesus reminds us that for a Christian, watching and waiting are ways of living out our vocation, our faith. They're not just tactics for marking time, but rather, a faith-filled response to an amazing gift. Yet, watching for the Lord means more than just waiting for the end time. It means more than wondering how Christ will come and speculating on which of our neighbors will be saved.

Rather, watching for the Lord is an invitation to see Christ coming-not just in the past, where he can be safely contained in a resin crèche or an illustrated book, but right here, and right now-in places that might be difficult to understand or hard to explain.

Advent It is yet another invitation for us to see Christ coming-not only in the future, in power and glory, but today-in ways that might shock and surprise us. “Emanuel” means - God is with us." Not in the future - but right now. The gospel commands: Watch for God. Be alert.

The urgency of this message is the meaning of Advent. And it's a message we can't afford to lose, buried in the Christmas music playing 24 hours on certain the radio stations, or strangled by tinsel wreaths, or in the Malls’ subliminal directives that tell us when the Christmas season begins. It's a message that we desperately need to hear in a world where poverty and war has become acceptable and strangers are expected to be feared.

I think – He is on his way – or has already arrived and is among us, and it is HE, who is now - waiting and watching.

Advent means so many things but must of all, it tells us to be ready for Christmas, because... He really is alive ….

ildren – sometimes – get it right, when we can’t even read the wOn this joyous of nights the Gospel proclaims: “The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them … I proclaim to you good news of great joy.” The great joy is the birth of the Christ child – a child on which the hope of all humanity depends, a child too often we dismiss as irrelevant in our world. God who sent His only Son, whom we celebrate tonight, says, “never -never underestimate this child.”

Chords. He entered my life 20 years ago, leaning against the doorjamb of the classroom, where I taught fifth grade. He wore sneakers three sizes too large and checkered pants ripped at the knees. Daniel made this undistinguished entrance in the school of a quaint village known for its old money, white colonial homes and brass mailboxes. He told us his last school had been in a neighboring county. "We
were pickin' fruit," he said. I suspected this friendly, scruffy, smiling boy from an emigrant family had no idea he had been thrown into a den of fifth-grade lions that had never before seen torn pants. If he noticed snickering, he didn't let on. There was no chip on his shoulder. Twenty-five children eyed Daniel suspiciously until the kickball game that afternoon. Then he led off the first inning with a home run. With it came a bit of respect from the wardrobe critics of the classroom. Next up was Charles. Charles was the least athletic, most overweight child in the history of fifth grade. After his second strike, amid the rolled eyes and groans of the class, Daniel edged up and spoke quietly to Charles. "Forget them, kid. You can do it." Charles warmed; smiled, stood taller and promptly struck out, anyway. But at that precise moment, defying the social order of this jungle he had entered, Daniel gently began to change things - and us. By autumn's end, we had all gravitated toward him. He taught us all kinds of lessons: How to call a wild turkey, how to tell whether fruit is ripe before that first bite, and how to treat others, even Charles, especially Charles.

The day before Christmas vacation, the students always brought gifts for me. It was a ritual - opening each box, surveying the expensive gift and thanking the child. That afternoon, Daniel walked to my desk and bent close to my ear. "Our packing boxes came out last night," he said. "We're leavin' tomorrow." As I gasped the news, my eyes filled with tears. He countered the awkward silence by telling me about the move. Then, as I regained my composure, he pulled a gray rock from his pocket. Deliberately and with great style, he pushed it gently across my desk. I sensed that this was something remarkable, but all my practice with the other expensive gifts – I was unprepared to respond. "It's for you," he said. "I cleaned it up special. “I've never forgotten that moment in all my years of teaching. Years have passed since then. Each Christmas my daughter asks me to tell this story; it always begins after she picks up the rock that still sits on my desk.

The first words of the story never vary. "The last time I ever saw Daniel, he gave me this rock as a gift and told me he was moving. That was a long time ago even before you were born. "He's all grown-up now," I finish. And, together we wonder where he is and what he has become. "Someone good I bet," my daughter says. Then she adds, "Do the end of the story. "I know what she wants to hear - the lesson of love and caring learned by a teacher from a boy with nothing - and everything - to give, a boy who lived out of boxes. I touch the rock, remembering. "Hi Daniel," I say softly. “I hope you no longer need the packing boxes. And Merry Christmas, wherever you are."

This touching "true" story is the core message of the Christmas Gospel: never underestimate the power and love of this child. He comes to you wherever you are tonight – He does not judge as we do- He brings a peace that the world cannot come close to knowing. The message of Christmas is that God intrudes upon the weak and the vulnerable, and this is precisely the message that we so often miss. God leaves his treasure in the broken fragmented places of our lives – our packing boxes, our defining moments - if you will. Nothing much has changed in our lives just because tonight is Christmas Eve. And yet God’s Spirit is present in all places and with all people. It is a spirit that calls us to hope, a spirit that calls us to share, a spirit that calls us to believe that that something holy and spectacular really did happen. It calls us to remember that there are gifts far more important than the ones under the tree; like the things we teach our children, the way we share ourselves with friends. So His message to all of you on this night – His – night – is, much like Daniel’s - Merry Christmas - wherever you are.

This Gospel certainly offers us a great deal. We see an angry, a very angry Jesus in the temple. We see hints of his humanness – his earthly connection to us, so to speak. We also see the beginnings of recognition of Jesus as Lord by those around him, and we see as Jesus himself says, at peek at human nature in which “He himself [all to well] unders[tands].” But, what else does this gospel have to say on this 3^rd Sunday of Lent? I suggest that it reminds us that not much has changed about human nature in the last two millenniums, especially when it comes to anger and its direct connection to “religion.”

I, as many of you are, am watching the NCAA basketball tournaments, even though Seton Hall fell early and killed my brackets. On day one, some of the teams were held up at their hotel because of a suspicious package found. One the commentators reminded the viewers of the tight security at these sporting events because of threats of violence predicted, of course, on religious idealism gone amuck. This is what happens in the temple as well.

Different people get upset at different things. But there are times when all of us get angry. And sometimes the worst thing we can do is hold that anger in.

Jesus got angry when he saw people exploiting religion for their own gain. People came to offer their sacrifices. Many of them were from out of town. They couldn’t bring an animal with them to sacrifice. So they purchased an animal in the temple court. Unfortunately they couldn’t use Roman coins. These coins were considered impure. So, the money changers were exchanging Roman coins for shekels, temple coins, and some of them were making an outrageous profit at the expense of simple, believing faith filled people. This is what cause the anger to rise in Jesus, deception at the foot of the altar.

He exploded, according to the picture we get in the Gospel. Jesus always gets angry at people who exploit religion.

I have seen this within my life in the church as well. I have heard people speak directly for God. Wow? What a responsibility it must be to speak for God. In my life, I ask for God’s help in trying to figure out what he needs me to do or what I should say but never propose to speak for Him.

This angered Jesus as well, and he also got angry when religious leaders elevated form over substance. At the center of Jewish life are two commandments--love God, love your neighbor--but the Biblical interpreters obscured these two key commands with a host of petty, obscure laws and pointless rituals. After all, it was easier to measure the length of the tassel on your robe than it was to love an old crotchety neighbor, or much easier than loving that religious heretic, the Samaritan, in the next town.

During the Seventh Crusade, led by St. Louis, Yves le Breton reported how he once encountered an old woman who wandered down the street with a dish full of fire in her right hand and a bowl full of water in her left hand. Asked why she carried the two bowls, she answered that with the fire she would burn up Paradise until nothing remained of it, and with the water she would put out the fires of Hell until nothing remained of them: "Because I want no one to do good in order to receive the reward of Paradise, or from fear of Hell; but solely out of love for God." This, I suggest was the heart of Jesus’ attack on the temple. It was, as the cross reflects, done out of love for the other, us and for no other reason.

This is at the heart of everything Jesus did. Law wasn’t as important to him as people. Tradition wasn’t as important to him as people. Even religion wasn’t as important to him as people. Jesus didn’t come to die for the law or for a tradition or even for religion. Jesus came and died for people. All people.

What the money changers were doing had nothing to do with authentic religion; much in the same way that religious violence throughout the world has nothing to do with authentic religion either. Form should never take persistence over the substance of religion; Jesus tells us as much here.

After all - “God so loved the world . . .” That is what authentic religion is all about, and the faith we make our own. It is not legalistic faith that fills people with guilt and forgets to flood them with grace. Not moralistic faith that divides people into acceptable and unacceptable and forgets to remind us that we are all sinners saved by grace. It is a faith that tells us we really matter, not because there is anything remarkable about us, but because there is something remarkable about God. “God so loved the world . . .” Accept nothing less. This is at the heart of Lent and our own journey back.

On this night we remember the passion of our Lord. It is so important to remember that as Jesus steps into the garden, we were in his prayers. As Jesus looks into heaven, we were his final vision. As Jesus dreams of the day when we will be where he is, he saw us already there. His final prayer is about us. His final pain was me and you. His final Passion was for us.

Luke’s Gospel remembers this day with different words. In Luke we hear Jesus in the throes of pain say, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” We still hear those words resonating through time, as Jesus’ Passion continues: As students tear through, or contemplate terrorizing, a high school to shoot their classmates and teachers, he says: “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” People are enjoying lunch at a local Denny’s a gunman begins to shoot; two are killed. Among the broken glass and spilled French Fries, Jesus walks with bleeding feet: “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” A ten-year old is in the middle of a birthday party in Chicago as a bullet rips through the window killing her; she will never see eleven. Jesus blows out her birthday candles and sheds another tear: “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” He laments as a nurse, one who is supposed to heal, silently slips into a hospital room a few miles from here and kills a Catholic priest. The nurse had killed many times before. His eyes well up: “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” He sorrows as a man is put on his trial in Afghanistan because he is Christian, or as he sees yet another soul die in Darfur, Iraq, or the other innumerable places in our world. Jesus looks into his father’s eyes; “…forgive them for they know not what they do.” With each intercession, He steps further into the garden.

But on this night, Good Friday, we recall the scene as Jesus invites Peter, James, and John into the garden. He tells them his soul is “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” and begins to pray. Never has he felt so alone. Have you ever felt like that – so alone? (PAUSE) What must be done, only he can do; an angel can’t do it. No angel has the power to break open hell’s gates. A human can’t do it. No human has the purity to destroy sin’s claim. No force on earth can face the force of evil and win—except God.

His humanity begged to be delivered from what his divinity could see. Jesus, the carpenter, implores. Jesus, the man, peers into the dark pit and begs, “Can’t there be another way?”

Did he know the answer before he asked the question? Did his human heart hope his heavenly father had found another way? We will never know. But we do know he asked to get out. We do know he begged for an exit. We do know there was a time when if he could have; he would have turned his back on the whole mess and gone away.

But he couldn’t. Think about it. He couldn’t because he saw us floundering in our own humanity and sinful failures. Right there smack in the middle of a world which isn’t fair, he saw us cast into a river of life we didn’t request. He saw us betrayed by those we love. He saw us with bodies that get sick, die and with hearts that grow weak and slow down. He saw us standing in our own garden of gnarled trees and sleeping friends. He saw us in the Garden of Gethsemane—and he didn’t want us to be alone.

He wanted us each to know that he has been there. He knows what it’s like to be plotted against. He knows what it’s like to be confused. He knows the pit of grief, that dark hole, in which we fall when we are left behind by those we love, as they travel on to heaven ahead of us. He knows what it’s like to be torn between two desires. He knows what it’s like to smell the stench of Satan. And, perhaps most of all, he knows what it’s like to beg God to change his mind and to hear God say so gently, but firmly, “No.”

For that is what God says to Jesus. And Jesus accepts the answer. At some moment during that midnight hour an angel of mercy comes over the weary body of the man in the garden. As Jesus stands, the anguish is gone from his eyes. His fists can clench no more. His heart can fight no more. The battle is won. You may have thought it was won on Golgotha. It wasn’t. You may have thought the sign of victory is the empty tomb. I suggest, It isn’t. The final battle was won in Gethsemane. And the sign of conquest is Jesus at peace in the olive trees. For it was in the garden that he made his decision: he would rather go to hell for us than go to heaven without us. That is what this night is all about.

If you think about what is happening all around us, the killing, the pain, the anxiety of everyday life in this world, the environmental calamities, and the needless wars, there is only one to whom we can collectively pray. He is here before us. In fact he always has been here. We venerate his cross and ours tonight. When he uttered: “It is finished.” We need to understand the possibilities for all of us had only just begun.

Our prayer on this Good Friday must be: “Father forgive us for we do not know what we do, and we will never know. But we beg and humbly pray for your forgiveness, and we ask for your intercession in our sinful and broken world, on this night, the night you died so that we might live, forever.

Through doors that were locked, the gospel says, “Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you. …As the Father has sent me, so I send you…he breathed on them and said… ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven … and whose sins you retain are retained.’” This is such a rich gospel. I would like to talk about the peace that Jesus brings through our locked doors and the power through the Holy Spirit that the disciples receive to offer forgiveness to those who least deserve it.

Of late, I have often talked about how our world is in turmoil simply because we do not know the peace that Jesus offers nor, it seems, can we ever forgive too easily. I have said many times that the Spirit loosed in our world is manifest in places and in circumstances that we would otherwise not expect.

Just last week, I was brought to see the depths of this. I watched a little girl, who had be shot and paralyzed, forgive her offender in a Boston court. Five-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott sat in the front of the courtroom in her wheelchair and looked directly at the man who had just pleaded guilty to firing the shot that paralyzed her when she was just three years old. At first, she broke down crying, sobbing harder than had when she was shot. It had been nearly three before that Anthony Warren fired three shots at the house where she was sitting on a porch. After a sip of water and some consoling from her mom, Kai spoke. "What you done to me was wrong," she said to the man seated just 10 feet away. "But I still forgive him." As she spoke, tears streamed down her face. The defendant cried and offered an apology Kai’s mother moved, by the unexpected action, by her daughter then hugged the defendant, and she too forgave him. She said her daughter had never cried in her wheelchair until this moment, the moment she released the Sprit to offer forgiveness to the one who had deeply wronged her. Everyone in that courtroom from the hardened, to the curious, was moved to tears. Peace can only come in forgiveness - and that made clear in this gospel; sometimes, it comes through our own locked doors where five-year-olds are the teachers.

Another such moving example is found Mitch Albom’s, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. It is a simple but powerful story. At the book’s end, the protagonist, Eddie, has met his five people in heaven. But the last meeting, the most important, is at the same time confusing.

A little beautiful Asian girl seems to have no connection with Eddie and his life; but of course, she does. Eddie learns that she is the young girl who died the fire in the Philippines. He was POW there in WWII, and as he and his men escaped they set fire to the huts in which they had been imprisoned, burning the huts behind them as they fled. The little girl, Tala, was had been freighted and was hiding in one of the huts. Eddie had failed to save her even though he saw her shadow in one of the huts.

She says to Eddie: “you burn me. You make me fire.” He wept. “You wash me” she says to him. She pulls her embroided blouse over her head. Eddie now sees that her skin is horribly burned. Her torso and narrow shoulders are black, charred and blistered. When she turns around the beautiful and innocent face he first encountered is gone; it is now covered in grotesque scars. Her lids drooped. Only one eye was open. Her hair was gone. “You wash me she says to Eddie again. Eddie dragged himself to the river behind her. He took a stone she handed him and began to rub it on her skin. He rubbed hard, and as he did so, all the burned flesh fell until only healthy skin was revealed. He did the same with the drooped lips and head. Finally the little girl that he first encountered was before him; be was beautiful again. She said to Eddie “I am five, meaning it was the fifth person he was to meet in heaven. But – it was much more than that; it was above all, Eddies’ peace. Peace that only came with being forgiven. In these two story examples, we see that the peace Jesus offers can come from the offering and the receiving.

This is what is happening among the disciples as Jesus stands in their midst. It is a very powerful attribute or virtue to be able to forgive on behalf of God, but that is what we do – when we forgive a hurt that has wounded so deeply. To offer peace or forgiveness is a powerful sign of Christian discipleship. We learn that here as Jesus approaches his disciples; those fair-weather friends who abandoned him to his cross. It is never easy, nor is it always humanly possible to forgive the one who has done so much harm to us. Here the disciples have been wounded deeply – Jesus had been wretched from their midst, crucified as they ran for the hills. They had to be racked with shame, with guilt, with grief – with remorse.

However, they eventually regroup here behind locked doors probably wondering what their next move would be when Jesus appears. He brings them a peace that they have never known. God is at his best when our life is at its worst. God has been known to plan a celebration in a cemetery.

Come, he says and I will give you peace: I will come through locked doors to find you. He says to us as Kai said to her offender. "What you done to me was wrong," "But I still forgive [you]." “As the Father has sent me … so now I send you. My peace take with you as you go.”

A little over a week ago, I was at the Seton Hall University graduation. Brian Williams, the Channel 4 Anchorman was the keynote. The said something that meets us here this weekend. Williams said that he had spent a great deal of time in Iraq with the young men and women serving there. He came to know them in a personal way, their hopes and fears. He then addressed the 2000+ young graduates before him as well as the 10,000 guests in the not so cheap seats. He said: “you can certainly disagree with the war that is your right.” But: “Support our soldiers who are doing what they are asked to do by our country.” Our very right to express how we feel without restriction comes from those who have come and fought before us. He asked the veterans to stand. Today and tomorrow our country will talk of heroes

What makes a hero? Is our culture so superficial that we no longer recognize heroic qualities anymore? Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Boorstein said about this issue, "The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities." So how do we connect this weekend with our gospel? Just as generations have been called throughout time to protect others, Jesus exhorts this of his father for those who have been his disciples and have heard his word and acted on it regardless of the personal cost.

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one. When I was with them I protected them,… I guarded them, and none [not one] was lost … I am coming to you on their behalf: “protect them.” Jesus is in it through the long haul; through humanities’ missteps and all of our personal failures and sins what ever they are.

We worship a God who pursues us to protect us: The disciples of Jesus knew the feeling. They were rain soaked and shivering when they looked over their shoulders and saw Jesus walking toward them. God had followed them into the storm. John the Apostle was banished on Patmos when he looked over his shoulder and saw the skies begin to open. God had followed him into his exile. Lazarus was three days dead in a sealed tomb when he heard a voice, lifted his head, and looked over his shoulder and saw Jesus standing. God had followed him into death. Peter had denied his Lord and gone back to fishing when he heard his name and looked over his shoulder and saw Jesus cooking breakfast. God had followed him in spite of his failure. God is the God who follows and who protects. He followed them and he follows us; he prays for their protection, he prayed for their tomorrows and he prays for ours. …

Let's never forget that our tomorrows were bought with a price. That is what we are called to remember at the table where we recall the intimate sacrifice of God’s son for all of us. A sacrifice made so that we can be truly free to know that we are all headed.

However, But on this weekend we remember those who have gone home too early. Memorial Day is an uncomfortable holiday, if the truth be known. Not only are we confronted with the sacrifices made. We are also confronted with our response to those sacrifices. The whole concept of anyone making sacrifices for us, much less dying for us, makes us uneasy. If we confront their sacrifices, then we must feel gratitude and humility. Even worse, confronting their heroism forces us to stop and examine our own lives. Why did they do what they did? What cause is worth dying for? For our Lord there was one only one cause – us. For the men and woman we honor: Some had to pay with their lives, some with their limbs and some with their mental health so that we can live in a free society today. There is no way we can sufficiently say, "Thank you."

In the revised words of that great hymn, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” "As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free, God's truth is marching on." And that is what we must never forget – especially on a weekend such as this.

What Guides Us to Different destinations in Life
is Determined By the Way We Have Chosen to Set our Sail:
The Storms of Life

The day had been a busy one. Mark says that Jesus had preached his message using many parables. Being exhausted, he left the crowd, took his disciples with him, and got into a boat. They set sail that beautiful afternoon on the Sea of Galilee. The sun was shining and Jesus, weary from the day’s activity, fell asleep. As the late afternoon faded into dusk, trouble began to loom. The stilled waters began to churn with white caps, and then large waves slammed into the side of the tiny boat. The Sea of Galilee was notorious for these sudden and violent squalls. The disciples panicked as the storm blew in and rushed to wake the sleeping Jesus.

The disciples thought the danger lie outside the boat. They would soon learn the real danger lie within. In a word, they lacked faith. And without faith their lives were at risk to the storms which would inevitably come. And they would come to each of of them. So what can we learn from this boat ride in the storm about them and about us –about our own storms?

Storms/Conflicts, as most of us know, come in the space of phone call, an email, a conversation, a dropped word:

The sun, shining so beautifully a minute before, clouds over; in an instant, the storms approach; they pelt us with wind, rain and sometimes hail. They come in many forms, perhaps in: a serious or fatal diagnosis; a conversation, not meant for our ears, but overheard nonetheless; Or in words that leave a scar: “I am leaving – and I am not coming back”; “Mom – I am gay”; “we are letting you go.” “I am truly sorry – we did everything we could – is there anyone we can call?” “I hate college – I am quitting.” “I am pregnant.”; "I am in jail"; Why do you drink so much?" These and countless other situations become our life circumstances, our storms. They come at us all the time from myriad directions; they come suddenly, they come without warning. We just need to alive to partake. No-one, not even Jesus was exempt. This Gospel was considered so important by the Gospel writers that we find it in three Gospels.

Jim Rohn, the business philosopher says. We have come to this church by different routes, we are of different life circumstances, and we are diverse in age. , “In the process of living," he writes, "the winds of circumstances blow on all of us in a never-ending flow that touches each of our lives.… What guides us to different destinations in life is determined by the way we have chosen to set our sail. The way that each of us thinks makes the major difference in where each of us arrive. The same circumstances happen to us all. We have disappointments and challenges. We all have reversals and those moments when, in spite of our best plans and efforts, things just seem to fall apart.…In the final analysis, it is not what happens that determines the quality of our lives, it is what we choose to do when we have struggled and the wind has changed directions.” That is exactly what happens in the boat, the wind has changed directions; adjustments are needed for a new direction. Note that Jesus does not pick up an oar to fight the storm. No, he rebukes it – he challenges it, stops it, he silences it. He is not a fisherman – He is God. And that HE makes very clear. We take our lesson there tonight.

Just a few years ago and still continuing, the church was, and continues to be rocked by the internal sexual scandals and of late financial missteps and embezzlement. From pulpits around the world, we have heard more than we ever should have needed to consider within the walls of our churches at our Masses about such things. As this tragedy continues, I am often asked about my feelings. How can I continue to minister in such a church? Some ask.

I look at this as one of the storms of life. For Catholics, this is our collective storm; we are in this boat together. They have come before to the church, and they will come again because of us, the humans, who were never perfect and never will be prefect on this side of heaven. But – back to the question. How do I continue to serve? For me, it all comes back to the person curled up in the front of the boat; it has always been about him

“Who is this whom even wind and sea obey?” It is the very Son of God; he is our way out, our salvation. We must never lose sight of this, regardless of the storms we face, or this church faces. He is so much bigger than all of us and his church on earth. It will never be easy, Jesus has said as much many times in word and in deed.

Storms can blow up suddenly; they can make us loose our direction, which is the second thing we learn from this boat ride. We can lose our direction too easily. Look around; you have family members, friends and neighbors who have left the church; most look for religion somewhere else. But I suspect those new places have already or will lose their luster. God is not in a building; he is not a minister; he is inside us as the disciples found out. He is in our faith, and that must be strong because the storms of life, as we all know, are intense and never let up for very long. When we find ourselves sinking in the midst of a storm, we will surely drown if we do not turn to God to rebuke our storms?

So where is God when our boat begins to sink? Right there in the boat, as Jesus was with the disciples. God's presence is not a guarantee of protection, but an offer of maximum support. Support to calm the storm in us, support that helps us to realize that, whatever we are called to go through, at the heart of the universe is his Love; it is the axis on which this earth turns. That Love seeks to find expression through us – His disciples.

This gospel is all about pulling back and taking time to recharge. However that is not easy. We see that even Jesus, with his disciples in tow, had a difficult time getting away from and leaving behind, work. In 1960, expert testimony concerning time management was presented to a Senate subcommittee. The experts said that because of advances in technology, within twenty years or so, people would be radically cutting back on how many hours a week they worked, or how many weeks a year they worked, or else they would have to start retiring sooner. The great challenge, according to the experts of the sixties, was what people in our decade would do with all their free time. I'm sure all of you are struggling right now. So what do you do with all that free time you have? We are all connected too much; technology has moved us in the other direction.

At least a few times during Mass a cell phone rings (that is a sin by the way). We are connected by our blackberries, text messaging and now the new snail-mail, email. Snail mail – because even email is too slow for the new generation. “Gotta have it right now.” Our culture drives these connections.

About a week ago I was in Whistler, British Columbia; It is about 5 hours north of Washington and below Alaska. I am teaching a summer class at SHU, and even though I had arranged for another professor to cover my classes, I was still in contact with my students every morning before I headed out for the day. So even though I was in one of the most beautiful places in the world – I was still here. As some of you know I maintain MHR’s web page; I updated the information from Canada. I am sure that the parish secretary did not even know I was 2000 miles away. So while this is good – I suggest it is also not very healthy for our spiritual growth. Especially, if we are trying to get away and recharge the batteries, which is what Jesus was trying to do when he was stopped in mid track by those who sought him out.

The disciples had just returned from their first solo mission, which was very successful. They had a lot to tell Jesus about their experiences. But Jesus could tell that their exertions had worn them out, and that they needed some time away for rest and solitude. So he suggested, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while." So Jesus and his disciples sailed off to get some time alone, away from the crowds. Perhaps they were looking forward to having some time to talk about their experiences together. But this was one vacation that just wasn't going to be. Even while they were still aboard the boat the people on shore recognized them, and word spread very quickly that they were there. So quickly, in fact, that by the time Jesus and his disciples disembarked there was already a considerable crowd waiting. It is akin to a celebrity or rock star of our day trying to slip away to just be alone; it just cannot happen without an elaborate plan.

Jesus says for us to get away for awhile. Our lives were created for balance. One of the great needs each of us has is to spend time one-on-one with God. My question now – is how much time have you spent with him this week? Did you even say a prayer,one? Offer thanks of any kind?

One of the things that happens when we as a church have an imbalanced Christian faith is that other groups come in and meet needs we have neglected. One of the hottest movements in our society is that of spending time in meditation, a good thing. However, this movement is coming not from the heart of the Christian community, but from without--from the New Age movement and from Eastern religions which are penetrating our nation so rapidly. The meditation these groups are advocating is not God-centered, but consciousness-centered. I say this not in a critical sense, but in a cautionary one. There is a difference in getting in touch with your inner voice and directing your consciousness outward and upward toward God to meet him. Meditation has a rich history within our church. It is a history we have in large part neglected. We, like the disciples, have been so busy saving the world, that we have neglected our own need to spend time in a quiet place communing with God. That is our message this morning.

Take the time to stop, to listen and to feel God. We are all human – we need to touch God or He will feel distant in our lives. Whether it is on Whistler Mountain or in the heart of Greenwich Village – We need to stop and to really rest once in a while. In a place that is apart from cell phone, telephones, email and any other advancement in technology that pulls us away from the time we need to recharge our spiritual batteries. After all – our very life depends on that.

In today's lesson, John writes about a time in Jesus' ministry when the crowds are starting to fade away. Jesus' teachings were too hard. They challenged just too many preconceived notions about faith and meaning. His ministry, which had once seemed so promising, was in trouble. Jesus is taking about new concepts, change. Many of us I suspect, like everything better the old way. Change is hard to accept at home, at work or in the church.

Jesus understood what was happening and he was angry. We tend to take people out of life and create cardboard scenarios that are probably very far from reality. For example: In 1776, we see a George Washington all too human; he stumbled through the Revolutionary War, and won. He led a rag-taggle army; he was only in his late twenties and inexperienced. We, sometimes, just see the face on the dollar. He along with many other Americans risked all they had on the slim chance that they might succeed. Conversely, Jesus too, was young, in his early 30’s. He asks (note: he does not demand) the same level of commitment from his disciples. We, some 2000+ years later do not see his reality; we look at it from the pages of scripture, from a safe place.

However, it was real; it was a challenge, a risk that, in many ways, was too much to ask. Jesus gave all of them a clear out if they wanted it. Many of those early followers left and never looked back.

If we look back to American history we see a somewhat parallel request in Washington’s time. Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence; where were the rest? They left; they too wanted out – just too dangerous. Those signers, to this ideal, resulted in untold sufferings for themselves and their families. Of the 56, five were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships of the war.

If we look at early history we see that of the 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence each paid a high price for their commitment to their ideal. That ideal, their sacrifice, still embraces us today a great distance from the suffering that we cannot really see or touch. Their story is one of loss and pain, now lost in the pages of history.

It is a story of the high price of commitment. It also the story of Jesus' disciples who paid the high price of their own commitment as Jesus tells them a story about himself that, in many ways, was just too weird to accept. History tells us that they all died because of their witness to Christ.

But in his day, Simon Peter said it all with one of the most beautiful statements found in the scriptures: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." So then, where does all this leave us today? After all, many have left our Church for myriad of reasons: the scandals, the rules, the size etc. But too – many have returned.
I read an article that focused on "Spirituality in America." The author makes the point that more and more people today are creating their own religions out of a mix of orthodox and non-traditional practices and beliefs. Among the many people quoted in the article was a young woman, a student getting her doctorate in Religion and Nature at the University of Florida. The author noted that this young woman's idea of worship consists of "composting, recycling, and daily five-mile runs" (4). Yahoo……
I hope that works for her. I really do. But I have my doubts. From all the evidence I've seen no alternative faith offers anything that is even close to the power of the words of Jesus, and that makes all the difference in this world and the next.

Believe that you have chosen the right path that are in the right place at the right time – because you are. It is not easy to stay on top of our game when it comes to religion. We have good days and bad days, days when our faith is strong and other days when it seems to wane. But the one we worship offers forgiveness before we ask. He knows every single story in this church, even the ones you have never spoken about to anyone.

So in many ways we need to contemplate the commitments of those disciples who all hung in there, save one; so that we could cross that bridge to the other side – the side, as Peter suggests that moves us to eternal life. The one that we worship here this morning really is “The Holy One of God."

But even with that said – we are totally free to stay or to go; to really believe or not. The choice has always been ours to make.
BACK TO THE TOP

What a week Jesus is having here. Think about what is going on in this section of the gospel. He tells them what awaits him in the future: he'll be betrayed, put to death; then he will rise again. What Jesus says, has the same effect on each disciple: in one ear and out the other. What must have he thought here?

A couple of week’s ago I had a week like his in a manner of speaking that certainly caused me to pause. I was involved in the funeral of 17 y/o Ashley Barton who was suddenly killed as she drove home from school after helping underclassmen as a peer leader. As I was pondering what I might say to her family, I got a phone call that my sister-in law died. I looked around; the sun was shining and everyone else was about their business. I really wanted the world to stop for a second to say: are you listening - do you see what has happened? We really do not know how or when we might be swept from this planet. Sometimes, as in this case with Jesus’ disciples, we argue about things that do not really matter in the big picture. But we all do it all the time – until you have that week.

They never heard what Jesus said because they are arguing for their pecking order in the Kingdom. We may not like to admit it – but we are right there too.

No matter what people say, one really likes to be last. No one. Oh, eventually, if we’re smart, or if we want to fit in badly enough, we learn how to pretend.

We say, “Please, go right ahead. I don’t mind a bit” when we really feel like crossing our arms and digging in our heels and planting ourselves right at the front of the line.

We also shout, “Congratulations! You really, really deserve it!” when we are thinking that life is unfair and some people have all the luck. We clench our teeth and flash a big smile when someone else gets the corner office we had our eye on.

After all, in our society, the only thing worse than a loser… is a loser with an attitude.

As children, we were often told that winning isn’t everything, and that champions learn from defeat. We heard that it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose its how you play the game. But the truth is, when you keep playing through an 0-23 season; when you take chances and always seem to fail; when you become a little too familiar with that view from the back of the line— you may agree in theory that winning isn’t everything. But you know…? most days, it sure does seem like something. And when the medals are being handed out and the jobs are being filled; and the lead parts are being cast— being first appears to be a lot more fun than being Last.

Although the disciples in this passage weren’t arguing about football teams or opening night credits or a talent show trophy, they were talking about losing and winning; least and greatest; first and last.

They wanted to be sure that when this King came into his Kingdom, there would be a place just for them— preferably one on the right. I guess it’s not really surprising.

For the most part, these disciples were men who knew how it felt to be last. Some of them, like Matthew, were despised for the jobs that they did. Tax collectors were just about as popular as rat catchers and as welcome as the plague. They were never at the top of anyone’s list— not even the Romans that they served. Others, like Simon and Andrew were common men with calloused hands and sunburned skin who probably still smelled just a little like fish. Most of them had never been first at anything. And yet, now, for once in their lives, they were part of something exciting— part of something new and big and important. Can you blame them?

Now, they were disciples of a King. It’s no wonder they argued about who would be first, and who would be greatest. And yet Jesus, as he so often does, turned their arguments inside out and upside down.

The last shall be first and the first shall be the servant of all. And the King? He will be betrayed, handed over, killed— yet he will rise.

No wonder they were afraid to question him. Throughout his life, Jesus invited people to look around and see a different world— A world in which the labels, “Winner” and “Loser”; “First” and “Last” had no meaning. Every time Jesus ate with tax collectors and talked to lepers, he showed people that God doesn’t really care about corner offices and bank accounts. Each time he placed his arms around a child or a touched a woman with a flow of blood; he told them that God’s values just might surprise us.

And when he took up his cross and walked the path to Calvary, he taught us that one King’s love can be enough to save the whole world.

Sometimes, in reading the Scriptures, it may seem as if those disciples never ever got it right. Like us, they saw the miracles, but didn’t always understand the message. They heard the stories, but didn’t always get the point. Like us, they found it hard let go of those trophies. Despite their love for Jesus, they struggled with greed and jealousy and a vision of God that was just a few sizes too small. But in one way… one very important way, they got it “right” all along. Following the King, even when they didn’t know exactly where they were going, was the most important thing they had ever done. It is for us as well – it is the only thing that will get us through those weeks that try everything we are made of. He really did die so that we can live with him forever.

Everybody wants to be somebody. Since the dawn of history, human beings have been trying to move up the scale of importance. The clincher used by the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve was "when you eat of [the tree of good and evil], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5).

Henri Nouwen says that ever since then, we have been tempted to replace love with power. The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. This is a theme running through the Bible, through human history and through our own psyche.

This, in some ways, is the story of James and John. But there is a difference. There are many negative things that can be said about James and John. They were ambitious and proud: they wanted, and believed they deserved, places of honor in Jesus' kingdom. They were ignorant and insensitive: their request for places of honor came right after Jesus had told of His coming suffering and death. But there's one positive thing we can say about James and John: they believed in Jesus. Here was a poor, homeless, persecuted carpenter and yet James and John believed he was a king. They really believed that He would conquer the power structure of Rome." Even their crude ambition reflected their faith in Christ.

Over the past weeks the single thread in the Gospels have been that no matter how Jesus explained his future – the disciples portrayed in Mark didn’t get it. Think about it: when the disciples came to the end of the road, they failed. They fell asleep at prayer. They ran away. One denied. One betrayed. Yet all except Judas have been considered saints.

James and John want to get ahead so do we. We know perfectly well what we are asking. We want God to meet our unlimited needs, our prayers, our desires and our wants. I think the gist of this is illustrated in a wonderful children’s story I would like to share.

The trees were talking in the forest one day about their dreams for the future. The first tree said it would like to be made into a cradle, so that it might go on living as a support for the fragile life of a tiny new baby. The second wanted to be made into a big ship, so that it might go on living, carrying important cargo and influential people to exotic new lands. The third tree longed to stay right where it was, existing only as a tree, but growing ever taller, and pointing ever higher, to remind everyone that there is a God in heaven who loves them. Those were their dreams and desires: One wanted to be a cradle, one wanted to be a mighty ship, and one wanted to be a tall tree, pointing people toward God. But then one day the woodcutters came and chopped down the three trees...and destroyed their dreams. The first tree was not made into a cradle, but into a simple feeding trough, a manger for animals. But the manger was sold to a family in Bethlehem, and on the night Jesus was born, that simple feed box became the cradle for the Christ Child.

The second tree was built into a boat, but not the kind it had dreamed of--not a mighty ocean-going vessel--but a tiny inexpensive fishing boat. A man named Simon Peter bought the boat, and on one warm afternoon when the crowds pressed in, Jesus himself climbed aboard that small fishing boats that he might preach good news to the multitudes.

The third tree also was deprived of its dream. It wanted to remain standing tall and pointing toward God. Instead, it was cut down and shaped into a horrible instrument of torture, a cross. But it was on that very cross that Jesus was crucified, transforming a symbol of cruelty into a powerful reminder of God's eternal love for all of us. The three trees were humbled, but in the plan of God, they were exalted.

That's the way it works: That is the point Jesus is making to James and John. When we, in humility, give ourselves to God, our Lord can do great things through us and for us--greater than we can ever imagine. After all, James and John did get want they wanted: they are now seated at the table, but not on their terms, but by the Lord’s invitation. We should all do well to remember this lesson.

Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asks. "Is that your idea, or did others talk to you about me?" Jesus replies.

Jesus was never of the “kingly” type. He was touchable, reachable, and ordinary. If he walked among us today you probably wouldn't notice him among the crowds at the Mall. He wouldn't turn heads because of the clothing He wore, the car he drove, or the jewelry he flashed. He would be normal; he would seem ordinary. He would probably wear blue jeans. Those who walked with Him remembered Him not with a title or designation, (we gave him those things). They knew him as... Jesus.

But it was this “kingly” title that bothered Pilate; essentially it was about two kingdoms in conflict; it still is. Pilate was certainly in conflict with the heavenly one. But who was he? And why has the church remembered him throughout the ages? Even our creed, which does not mention any of the disciples, mentions him: “I believe in Jesus Christ…born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

We know that he was about the same age as Jesus and probably had mixed feelings about his appointment as Governor of Judea. He knew that it was one of the most difficult places to govern because of the religious sensitivities of the Jews, and yet he also must have thought that if he did a good job, avoided making errors, he could be assured of a good future in Rome.

But from the beginning almost everything went wrong. At first Pilate tries the strong-arm approach. He fails. Next he tries the benevolent approach. He fails. Pilate had lost control. Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, and the council, had him over a barrel. He didn’t rule them; they ruled him.

And so by the time the “Jesus incident” arose, what we see is a frightened, insecure, man knowing well that he could not afford to make one more mistake. Pilate has become the most cautious of politicians. This is where we are brought into overhear this conversation between Jesus and Pilate. What, I suggest, is key to the conversation, is not the banter about “kingship” – but about truth. If Pilate could have seen through the moment, he would have touched the truth in ways that we can only imagine. Perhaps, our world today might have been a different place, one at peace, one where our children and theirs never would worry about war again.

However, his decision becomes the hinge of human history for Christians; standing before Pilate was truth and salvation. Jesus said, “I am, born…to testify to the truth. Even Pilate, somehow, must sense something greater about this man, but he pushes aside for political gain.

The truth to which Jesus points is what could have saved Pilate’s world from itself; it eventually crumbled as we know. It can save ours, still. However, we (and our modern day rulers) all too often, are ruled by the dictates of secular life and the politics of the moment. We see this played out in life all around us by the news accounts of violence and scandal that no longer shock us. Anne Murray, had a song a few years ago about this very thing.

There's a local paper rolled up in a rubber band / One more sad story's one more than I can stand / Just once how I'd like to see the headline say "Not much to print today, can't find nothin' bad to say", because Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town /

We sure could use a little good news today.” A lot of these issues, in the world today stem from running from the truth so fast that we become blind to its saving power. That is why the church stops and asks us to consider this very last Sunday before Advent – Christ the King Sunday.

It is a reminder that Christ will return at the end of time as ruler over all creation, all kingdoms. It’s the thought echoed in Revelation, probably the Book in the Bible that scares most of us half to death.

Jesus is king at birth and king in his death but these things are lost on Pilate. If Pilate had only seen Jesus as bearer of the truth, he would have been seen as the greatest man in the world. But he didn’t and unwittingly he played a part in killing the greatest man the world has ever known.

But how to we reconcile all of this as we approach yet another Advent and Christmas: We need to consider the last line of the gospel and ask what does this mean to us? The line: “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Mary has just been visited by the angel Gabriel and told that she will bear a son, Jesus, who will "be great and will be called the Son of the Most High," She has been told that the Holy Spirit will conceive in her -- a virgin -- this child.

Mary is confused – wouldn’t you be if you were Mary? Who can she talk to about this? Her mother? Her rabbi? The only person she knows who will be able to understand is Elizabeth. The angel has pointed to Elizabeth. "Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God." (1:36-37)

Mary hurriedly prepares for a trip to see Elizabeth. She is in a hurry to go that is clear, though. However, I don't think she is primarily motivated by fear. She is just a young teenager, and this is pretty overwhelming and confusing, I suspect. She needs steadying, guidance. She seeks out Zechariah's home in the tiny village, and greets Elizabeth. Elizabeth, now six months pregnant, comes to the door and sees her niece. She hasn't expected her, but now Mary greets her. The Baby Leaped in Elizabeth's Womb the gospel’s tells us. (1:41). We don't know the greeting Mary brings, but it had an effect so powerful that Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and begins to speak out prophetically.

John the Baptist, in Elizabeth's womb, also responds to the presence of the Messiah. Elizabeth interprets this stirring as motivated by joy -- Blessed Are You Among Women – She says (1:42-44) "In a loud voice she exclaims: 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!

The first sentence that Elizabeth utters is familiar us since it is also found in the "Hail Mary" or "Ave Maria" prayer: "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed are you among all women and blessed is the fruit of your womb Mary - Jesus...."[4]

Mary and Elizabeth, two women-- each pregnant with her first child. One a young virgin, the other an old barren woman; both visited by angels proclaiming God's surprises. Mary and Elizabeth, both women of faith and accepting of God's purposes in their lives. God uses them and he uses us – simply because he loves us without conditions.

Untethered by time, God sees us all. From the backwoods of Virginia to the business district of London; from the Vikings to the astronauts, from the cave-dwellers to the kings, from the grandest politicians, to the rock-star, he sees us. Vagabonds and ragamuffins all, he saw us before we were born.

And he loves what he sees. Flooded by emotion. Overcome by pride, He turns to us, one by one, and says, “You are my child. I love you dearly. I’m aware that someday you’ll turn from me and walk away. But I want you to know, I’ve already provided you a way back.”

And to prove it, he did something extraordinary – we hear the first steps in this gospel. Stepping from the throne, he removed his robe of light and wrapped himself in skin: pigmented, human skin. The light of the universe entered a dark, wet womb. He who angels worship nestled himself in the placenta of a peasant, was birthed into the cold night, and then slept on cow’s hay. Mary didn’t know whether to give him milk or give him praise, but she gave him both since he was, as near as she could figure, hungry and holy. Joseph didn’t know whether to call him Junior or Father. But in the end called him Jesus, since that’s what the angel said and since he didn’t have the faintest idea what to name a God he could cradle in his arms. “Can anything make me stop loving you?” God asks. “Watch me speak your language, sleep on your earth, and feel your hurts. Behold the maker of sight and sound as he sneezes, coughs, and blows his nose. You wonder if I understand how you feel? Look into the dancing eyes of the kid in Nazareth; that’s God walking to school. Ponder the toddler at Mary’s table; that’s God spilling his milk.

“You wonder how long my love will last? Find your answer on a splintered cross, on a craggy hill. That’s me you see up there, your maker, your God, nail-stabbed and bleeding. Covered in spit and sin-soaked. That’s your sin I’m feeling. That’s your death I’m dying. That’s your resurrection I’m living. That’s how much I love you.” What a wonderful story – What an amazing love; what an awesome miracle – Christmas.

A few years ago, the Japanese Prime Minister, Mori, was given some Basic English linguistic training before he traveled to Washington to meet the then President Clinton... The translator told Mori, "Prime Minister, when you shake hands with the President please say 'how are you'. Mr. Clinton should then reply: “I’m fine, and you?" Then you respond: 'me too'. Afterwards the translators, will do all the work" It looked quite simple, but the truth is....When Mori met Clinton, he mistakenly said "Who Are You?" instead of "How are you". Clinton was a bit shocked but still managed to react with humor: "Well, I'm Hilary's husband, ha-ha...." Mori replied, "Me too, ha-ha."
Then there was a long silence in the meeting room. This faux pas by Prime Minster Mori was a miniscule moment compared to the anger and visceral rage in the synagogue in which Jesus sat. Mori and Clinton moved on – not so in the synagogue; they could not get over what Jesus said. Who is this upstart, they demand? When Jesus sat down to begin his sermon he applies Isaiah’s words to himself and that created all of the problems. Jesus isn’t just proclaiming restoration; He is that restoration. He is going to complete the work that Isaiah left undone.

Twenty centuries have come and gone since that day, and the world is still a mess. We know it; we see; we live it. We wait for God to do something. Every time we see misery, wars, injustice, and poverty, we can say, “Someday God is going to straighten this mess out.” Blaise Pascal said: “the only time we're truly happy is when day-dreaming about future happiness.” There is much truth to this. But in this Gospel Jesus does not call us to daydream about tomorrow, he calls us back into the present moments of our lives to look for him. He says: I am in your midst – I am your stories, the pieces of your lives. I am there in the highs and the lows. But time and time again we do not see him, just as those who actually heard him – could not see him either. I heard this story and, I think it puts this somewhat in prospective. It is written from the perspective of an older person looking back embraced by the richness and wisdom of age. Her emphasis is on the now of life.

“Old age, I decided, is a gift. I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometimes despair over that ... the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror, but I don't agonize over those things for long.
I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, and my loving family for less grey hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avant-garde on my patio. Over the years, my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when a beloved pet
gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn grey, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. I can say "no", and mean it. I can say "yes", and mean it. Being old has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be but will continue to rejoice in what was and what is now. This our lesson it is what Jesus was trying to convey in the Synagogue. All that you have hoped for has come to pass in me (the Father’s son), now. Look around – he exhorts. Most of us, I suggest, put our own spin on our religious practices and beliefs, and as the Jews before Jesus did the same. How could he be there? Where in their scripture did it say what Jesus was implying? Issues such at this one can lead into deep theological questions. Leading us to ask: Will Jesus come while we are alive; is he present somewhere in the world waiting for that perfect moment to reveal himself again? Is he sitting in a pew among you in this church? Would he be recognized by the world – or would he be killed yet again by humanity. These are questions that we can all debate until eternity beckons, but they are worth pondering. No matter where our theological meanderings go – we must always know that Jesus has always said I am in your midst, and he could not be more fully present in this Eucharist which brings us all together. Has Jesus implored then he implores now. He says: “Let me take care of today, and you will not have to worry about your tomorrows – ever.”

A young man went to visit a monk who lived in the desert. He encountered the monk, who was sitting out enjoying the sun, his dog lying at his side. This spiritual seeker asked, "Why is it, that some who seek God come to the desert and are zealous in prayer, but leave after a short time while others, like you, remain faithful to the quest for a lifetime?"

The old man smiled and replied, "Let me tell you a story. One day I was sitting here quietly in the sun with my dog. Suddenly a large, white rabbit ran across in front of us. Well, my dog jumped up, barking loudly, and took off after that big rabbit. He chased the rabbit over the hills with a passion. Soon other dogs ran barking across the creeks, up stony embankments, and through thickets and thorns! Gradually, however, one by one, the other dogs dropped out of the pursuit, discouraged by the course and frustrated by the chase. Only my dog continued to hotly pursue the white rabbit. In that story, is the answer to your question. The young man sat in confused silence. "You fail to understand, because you failed to ask the obvious question” He monk said. The question is, why didn't the other dogs continue the chase? And the answer to that question is that the other dogs had not seen the rabbit. They were only attracted by the barking of my dog. But once you see the rabbit, you will never give up the chase.

This story is about physical seeing, spiritual seeing and believing; it is about our Gospel passage. In every Baptism there comes a time when we ask the parents and godparents to accept the Baptismal Promises on behalf of their children; we also do this ourselves at Easter. I would like you to consider, literally, what we renew in our own Baptismal promises. Do you reject Satan? And all his works? And all his empty promises?

To tell you the truth, I've been waiting for some smart-aleck to laugh at the questions. Who really believes in the devil anymore? In many ways he is grouped with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. The devil/evil is relegated to more manageable and explainable psychoses that can be named and catalogued. There's nothing wrong with Hitler, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden, and even the fictional Hannibal Lecter that a little pharmacological cocktail can't fix.

However, people usually say, "I do," when I ask them to accept the Baptismal promises. It's relatively simple to make a vow – whether in a marriage, a confirmation, a priesthood or a baptism. Do you promise? Do you pledge? Do you give your word? "I do." No sweat. The harder thing, as we come to discover, is to live it within a marriage, a family, a life. I don't care what you call "the devil and all his empty promises." I've come to believe that the naïve person isn't the one who believes evil is real, but rather the one who believes evil can be rationally explained away.

Many of you know I have a law enforcement background. And over my 25 year career have been close to real evil. I have touched it and smelled its foul breath. Its real presence chills your bones; in its presence you shiver; there is no warmth, anywhere. That has given me an advantage when I hear this Gospel; for me, evil, the devil is real.. No, the devil does have a red cape and pitchfork ( that is the work of artists) – he has a very human shape. Watch the news any night of the week and you can see him manifested in various forms.

We then have to be careful; we are forewarned as Jesus was by a line in the Gospel: It is a haunting line: “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time." This will be an ongoing battle for Jesus. One theologian says, "Being committed to the way of God in the world does not exempt one from the struggle. In fact, it is those who are most engaged in the way of God who seem to experience most intensely the opposition of evil." This is not a one-time shot for Jesus in the wilderness. The battle is ongoing, for Jesus and for us. That is what we are asked to consider once again during this Lenten season, our own on-going inner and outer battles.

Think about what Jesus is offered in this Gospel: three things that look pretty good in our culture, bread, wealth, and power. We normally do not associate these things with the dark side (rightly so) and instead point to horrible social ills. In the Bible and in life, the devil is rarely obvious. That would be too easy. Avoid everything that looks patently evil and we're home free. But the devil/real evil doesn't work that way. He baits us all the time.

But Jesus prevails, and so can we. He renounces the devil and his three empty promises. How does Jesus renounce the devil dressed in drag? There are two ways as far as I can tell. He is ready; he has fasted.

And instead of being skinny and emaciated, he is ready for the fight of his life. Jesus encounters the devil in the strength of forty days of fasting. Jesus is in peak condition, a fighter who has been training hard. When he steps into the ring, his opponent doesn't stand a chance." He is spiritually strong. Second, watch how Jesus answers the devil's very enticing temptations. Does he toss out magic? Does he rely on strong mental resistance? Does he ask God or the angels to rescue him in some impressive way? No, on all three counts. Jesus quotes scripture. Jesus is so utterly bathed in Holy Scripture that he is able to bring the story that is centuries old forward into his own life. The words are not magic they never were, but they are enough to send the devil packing.

His ministry was formed by a story told long before he was born. He saw himself in the story, not outside of it. We take our lesson there. We are not watching – but we are in the story of salvation from our beginning as well. This brings us full circle back to the words of the monk: once you see the rabbit, you will never give up the chase no matter what gets in your way. We must all be mindful to always be faithful to the quest. Let this be our focus as we enter Lent.

This gospel passage is always relevant. Human nature not has changed throughout history. Shakespeare, after all, has captured it in its various nuances through his timeless peak at humanity in his work.

I would like to place the gospel in the original context and then move it forward in time.

Jesus was preaching in the area; he was becoming known. So one day in an effort to trap him and, perhaps, quiet him, a woman was brought to him by a group of proud, judgmental Pharisees. She had been caught in the very act of adultery. Perhaps she was dragged half naked. Quickly a crowd gathered to leer and lust and condemn and execute her. This was a blood-thirsty mob.
The Pharisees put Jesus on the spot by asking him what should be done to her. The law of Moses was clear. She should be stoned to death. Yet such punishment was contrary to Roman law.
Jesus knelt and wrote in the sand. Someone has suggested that Jesus wrote, "Where is the man?" What made her guiltier than him?
Then Jesus stood and declared, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone at her." Jesus was saying, "You may stone her, but only if you have never done or wanted to do the same thing she did." The Pharisees all slunk away. Even they could stomach only so much hypocrisy.

We can look at this and say this is history; nice to know but it is so far removed from 2007. Why do we care?

This still goes on in our world. In Darfur, for example, even in cases of rape women are treated much in the same manner as the woman in the gospel. Doctors Without Borders issued a report about a 16-year-old girl who said,"I was collecting firewood for my family when three armed men on camels came and surrounded me. They held me down, tied my hands and assaulted me. When I arrived home, I told my family what had happened. They threw me out… I was engaged, and I was so much looking forward to getting married. My future husband did not want me anymore; he said I was now disgraced.” She became pregnant as the result of the rape and was jailed because she was pregnant and unmarried. Those who judged her are modern day Pharisees.

Even here in the US, I recently read a story about one leading member of congress who, as it turns out, sat in judgment of President Clinton’s impeachment as he was carrying on his own adulterous affair; the height of hypocrisy; another Pharisee.

It seems that they are all over because they are us. It turns out, it is always easy to point the finger at some else, while secretly hiding our own sins. It went on 2000 years ago – it goes on today. Lent is a call for all of us to change. What Jesus said to the woman – he says to us.

“Your sin is real whatever it is. You are guilty of it. But your life is not over yet. You have another chance.” We are all sinners in some way. However, Christ catches our sins as if they are arrows that pierce his heart. In his time,he was rejected by the majority, but he was still there for all of humanity.

At any point he could have said; “I quit. I’ve had enough. They are a lost cause.” Why didn’t he? What kept him from giving up?

Lee, gave 26 years to the City of NY as a firefighter and retired. But on September 11, 2001 he gave even more. He gave his son Jonathan, also a New York Firemen. Firefighters are a loyal clan – a loyal family. When one of their own dies, in the line of duty, the body is left where it is found until someone who knows the fallen firefighter comes and literally picks him/her up. Lee made the discovery of Jonathan his mission. On Tuesday December 11, three months after the towers fell, his son was found. And Lee was there to carry him out. He didn’t give up. The father did not quit. He refused to turn a leave. Why? Because his love for his son was greater than the pain of the search. Cannot the same be said about Christ? Why doesn’t he quit on humanity? We really are a sorry bunch.

Because his love for us, his children, is greater than the pain of the journey. He came to pull us out. To move us away from our sins whatever they are. Think about that for a moment.

Lent is a time for letting go of those things that drag us down; all those secrets; all those hurts; all that finger pointing. His love will cover them all . The years of broken promises, drugs taken, pennies stolen. Every harsh word; His love covers all things.

What did he write in the sand? I think he wrote: “Go home – your sins are forgiven; they are now mine.”

The good news for us is even better than that woman received, for we live on this side of Easter morning. We know the eternal possibilities of that sunrise…and we have yet another chance.

He came to Simon Peter, who asked, “Master, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing, you do not understand now [Peter], but you will understand later.” It seems that there is a great deal about our faith that we don’t understand now but will understand later. In the midst of personal turmoil or even a devastating loss that we cannot understand, God asks us to trust him just as he asked those at that last supper to trust him.
Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, "Things aren't always what they seem – trust me".

The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest. When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field. The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel: "how could you have let this happen!? The first man had everything, yet you helped him," she accused. "The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you let their cow die." "Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied. “Trust me.”

"When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it. Then last night as we slept in the farmer's bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I told him to take the cow instead. Things aren't always what they seem." “Trust God.”

This is a story with nuances that reflect what happened in that upper room where tradition says, Jesus broke bread in that last meal with his disciples. It is also about not quite understanding all that was to come at the time.

Tonight, all throughout the world, Christians will gather to remember the Last Supper of Christ and his giving to humanity the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the core, the center of our faith, without it there is no faith, but oftentimes we do not reflect that understanding as we approach this table week after week; it becomes routine. Tonight as we approach Easter is another yet chance to reflect on the Eucharist and all that it means in our lives. The teaching of the Church is that it is not only the Body and Blood of Christ, but it is the soul and divinity of Jesus as well. What does it mean to know the soul of another? In those whom we have loved that have died, I suggest, it is their essence that moves beyond this life, after their human body dies, It is that part that we feel, but can no longer physically touch in same ways that we did in the past.

After all, you can touch someone's body with affection; you can hold someone close in an embrace of love. But to share their soul is to know them at their very core, their essence; it must be a gift, freely given up.

Tonight we share that gift and are asked to take a long and loving look into the eyes of the one who washes our feet, the one who knows our deepest poverty, our sins, our pain; the one who gave his life to ransom the likes of us; the one who poured out his blood to convince of us his love. He bled for us, he took the spear for us, the nails he felt for us, and the sign we share tonight he left for us. And all he asks is our faithfulness and our trust. Why trust? You already know.

The one, who is exalted above all, bends tonight to wash our feet. We must do the same. For we are assured: “when we do [this] for the least of [our] brothers and sisters, we [do] it for [him].” (Mt 25:40).
Someday, for all of us, our own last supper will come. There will be no second chance to correct our errors. The clock that is ticking away the moments of our lives does not care about winners and losers. It does not care about who succeeds or who fails. It does not care about excuses, fairness or equality. The only essential issue is how we washed the feet of others. We still have all the time we need. We still have lots of chances - lots of opportunities - lots of years to show what we can do. For most of us, there will be a tomorrow, a next week, a next month, a next year and maybe another Easter.

But unless we develop a sense of urgency, those brief windows of time will be sadly wasted, as were the weeks and months and years before them.

I have not invited you here tonight, Jesus has. He has spotted you, forgiven your sins, and he invites you to feel his divine embrace, to look into his eyes and trust him, to perhaps, experience the Eucharist for the first time. And no matter how difficult this Easter may be – trust him. Because with God, things are never what they seem.

Destiny Is Made Known Silently
3rd Sunday of Easter
This Gospel is rich and goes in many directions; but first and foremost it recalls, devastation, loss and despair. All of the disciples have just seen their world collapse. They had put all their hopes in Jesus, and they watched their world unravel piece by piece, ending with Jesus’ tortuous death at the hands of the Roman occupiers.

Ever been there? I am sure you have – we all have been there. You have been there after a job loss, an injury, a serious diagnosis, the death of a loved one, a divorce, through a child moving off in a direction that you would not have chosen. We were there together this week as we learned of the terror on a campus in Virginia that led one student to write, "Thirty two people woke up today, probably worrying about trite things we all worry about every day and now they are all dead." These horrible life events bring us to the black hole of life; we risk failing in and never being able to climb out.

We have the same questions: where do we go from here? We have one main goal, to bring our world back to where it was before. But as we all know as hard as we try, it does not work: our world is changed, forever.

This is where Peter and the gang are. They are trying to pick up broken lives, trying to forget all that had gone on. Peter is guilt racked – he denied the Lord three times as you recall. So out of them all – he is burying himself on the beach in the work of fishing. Peter finally says to the Zebedee brothers, [“I don’t know about you, but] “I am going fishing.” They said, “We also will come with you.” So off they go. All night they fish. To add insult to injury, they catch nothing. They can’t even fish, it seems. But on the beach – Peter is given new direction, new life.

In the midst of their greatest failure and despair, Christ comes. First, he shows them his love in the cooking of a meal. Then he reveals to them that they are still part of his plan for the kingdom. Finally, he puts them back to work. Christ coming to the lakeside, and, cooking breakfast, allows Peter and the rest of the disciples to get their eyes off of their present woes and focus them once again on the person of Jesus Christ. He objects to their resignation and gives them a new assignment.

This is where we come in, He still shares the same ministry us, his followers. Do not be afraid to bring your failures to Him. As a matter of fact, the only way we can fail is if we do not bring our failures and leave them at the foot of the Cross. It is there in-between his outstretched arms that he holds us in the midst of our personal failures, sins and tragedies. History reveals that Peter and the other disciples picked themselves up and got back into the race. Author Joseph Campbell writes, "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." We have to learn this lesson. There is the life we have constructed for ourselves, and there is the life that Jesus is calling us to. Many times this pulls us in two separate directions; they are rarely the same.

On the beach IN THIS MOMENT, JESUS RE-CALLS HIS DISCIPLES. He re-commissions them to go out with renewed commitment and spread the good news. It’s decision time for these rugged fishermen. Someone once said, "No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently." That's where the disciples are.
Management consultant Peter Drucker says there are four kinds of risks. One kind of risk is the risk you simply MUST TAKE. You have no other option. A second is one you CAN AFFORD TO TAKE. You calculated the cost, and it's worth it. A third is a risk you CANNOT AFFORD TO TAKE. The results would be too disastrous. And fourth is a risk you CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO TAKE. It is a risk to respond to Jesus' call. But obviously it's a risk that the disciples cannot afford not to take. Full of joy, they begin rowing toward shore to greet Jesus. Simon Peter doesn't even wait for the boat; he jumps into the water and swims to the shore. This is it! From this time forward, there would be no turning back. No longer would they be fishermen--but now they would be fishers of men.

There is a classic story that comes out of humorist Robert Benchley's college days. For one of Benchley's final examinations, he was to write an essay on fish hatcheries. He hadn't cracked a book all semester. Undaunted, he started his final something like this: "Much wordage has been devoted to fish hatcheries. No one, however, has ever covered this subject from the point of view of the fish."

It does us well to look at this biblical account from the point of view of the fish. Because that's who we are. We are the fish. The nets represent the unity of the disciples and of the church. And the fish represent all the souls who will be brought to salvation by the witness of the disciples. And that includes you and me. If these disciples had stayed in their comfort zone, you and I would never have heard the Gospel. Jesus would be a footnote in history, not its redeemer. We are their harvest, their catch, their reward for leaving their boats to teach and preach leading others to Christ. We know through our own faith carried from those disciples from that beach: our lives are not futile, our failures are not fatal, and our deaths are not final. It is now our turn. We must preach and we must teach in the midst of a human world that seemingly is failing apart. This Gospel calls us to do so.

As I prepared this homily, I couldn’t help but reflect on the state of our world and the seemingly endless violence of war, violent crime, street gangs infiltrating our schools and the other senseless acts of violence that we hear about every single minute of every day. We ask – is there any hope? Not really wanting to know the answer.

Then, of course we hear this gospel, where Jesus says, I know your world I lived there; I walked your streets met you in countless people who listened to the promise of my father’s kingdom. Before I left, I promised not to leave you to fend for yourselves, and I did not. This is where we step off in this Gospel: He says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.” He did not say, sometimes

He has sent us that advocate, and we see it in those who are willing to try to change the world person by person. Some of you are those modern day saints; you sit among us. Oh – you may not save “the world” – but you will save the one with whom you live, your family, a friend – perhaps, someone you met just once. That is your mission prodded by this advocate.

There are many surrounded by this Spirit. I have been fortune enough, in my own journey here, to have met some – some who are truly angels. Some I clearly recognized, others I have missed. You have know some too. You know it when you stand in their presence; they are surrounded by this Spirit. It is, I suggest, this advocate of which Jesus refers. It is through some of these that we can even hope to be worthy of the Kingdom to which Jesus refers. Oscar Romero, an Archbishop the Bishop in south America, who was killed in 1980 for his own outspokenness, said this about making the kinds of change that can change the world prodded by the Holy Spirit. He said:

…We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s word. Nothing we do is complete, …No statement says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. This is what we are about.
We plant seeds that one day will grow or maybe die. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and do it very well. It may be incomplete but it is a beginning. A step along the way. An opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the results.
But that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are the workers, not master builders. We are ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own. And it is the Sprit of God, the advocate that prods us to move into areas that are sometimes uncomfortable.

As we talk about this advocate, our God among us; it is a good time to really pause to remember what we celebrate over this long three day weekend, which is so much more than parades and barbeques and college graduation parties.

We remember those who have fallen through all of history – some will fall today, tonight so that we may continue to live in freedom. These heroes are surrounded by that same Spirit. One such account:

The Marines entered a house in Fallah, Iraq. They kicked in the doors of two rooms that proved empty. But there was another closed door. It was unlocked, and Sgt. Rafael Peralta, 25 years old opened it. He was immediately hit with AK-47 fire in his face and upper torso by three insurgents. He fell out of the way into one of the cleared rooms to give his fellow Marines a clear shot. During the firefight, a fragmentation grenade flew out of the room, landing near Peralta and several Marines.

The uninjured Marines tried to scatter out of the way, two of them trying to escape the room, but were blocked by a locked door. At that point, barely alive, Peralta grabbed the grenade and cradled it under his body. His body took most of the blast. One Marine was seriously injured, but the rest sustained only minor shrapnel wounds. He died so others could live – a familiar story. Peralta's sacrifice should be a legend in the making, but it is not. Somehow real heroism doesn't get the same traction in our media as being a victim, villain or celebrity these days. Peralta is the Sprit manifested in our world.

Some day, it is written, that the world we know will come to an end. Revelation says, about evil in all its forms. God, "seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, and tied it up for a thousand years and threw it into the abyss, which he locked over it and sealed, so that it could no longer lead the nations astray."

Only then will there be a world without war and violence. However, until that time, we must trust this Sprit who surrounds and us and occasionally prods us to do things in the name of God; things that we would never do on our own. These are opportunities as Bishop Romero says: “For God’s grace to enter and do the rest.”

Today we celebrate the Birth of John the Baptist; it is a midsummer feast just as the Birth of Christ is a midwinter feast. John was marked out from his very birth to be the herald of Christ. That is he pointed to Jesus as the one who could save humanity from itself. God has marked each one of us out for mission in the world. Maybe we already know where God wants us to go and what he wants us to do and maybe not.

Today’s gospel has for us a model of discipleship. We often hear the phrase, faith hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. But, which is listed first? Faith, is hard to put a finger on. Faith is more than belief, faith is like love, it is an action word.

We live in a conflicted world, a time and a culture that constantly gives us choices. Even the least of us gets to choose a multitude of TV Channels. And there is still nothing on. How did we ever make it with four stations? Even the least of us gets to choose whom we vote for, even the least of us gets to decide whom we love and don’t.

We are blessed and cursed to live at this time, in this space. Cursed because the abundance of choices lull us into thinking that is the way it is with everything, including our number one relationship -- our relationship with God, He is a choice only when we really need him. When our relationship with God becomes one of surrender it is then that we have real choices -- real freedom. It is also about how we chose to treat others. After all, we too, are Christians that should be pointing the way, and often it is just about us, our immediate need and gratification of the moment. We just do not have the time to deal with unimportant people.

Our culture is one of distant stares, impersonal relationships with our neighbors, and the stampede of greed to get the most toys, excluding God unless we need him in a crisis; then, of course, we fall to our knees and beg for him to hear us. Our lives must be about how we treat those around us – even the least of his people. Here is a simple story I often share with my students that offers profound truths about how we should act as disciples of Christ. It is called, “Be Kind to the Pizza Dude.”

If I have one operating philosophy about life it is this: "Be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it's good luck." Four principles guide the pizza dude philosophy.

Principle 1: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in humility and forgiveness. I let him cut me off in traffic, let him safely hit the exit ramp from the left lane, let him forget to use his blinker without extending any of my digits out the window or towards my horn because there should be one moment in my harried life when a car may encroach or cut off or pass and I let it go. After all, the dude is delivering pizza to young and old, families and singletons, gays and straights, blacks, whites and browns, rich and poor, Christians, and Jews, vegetarians and meat lovers alike. As he journeys, I give safe passage, practice restraint, show courtesy, and contain my anger.

Principle 2: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in empathy. Let's face it: We've all taken jobs just to have a job because some money is better than none. I've held an assortment of these jobs and was grateful for the paycheck that meant I didn't have to share my Cheerios with my cats. In the big pizza wheel of life, sometimes you're the hot bubbly cheese and sometimes you're the burnt crust.

Principle 3: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in honor and it reminds me to honor honest work. Let me tell you something about these dudes: They never took over a company and, as CEO, artificially inflated the value of the stock and cashed out their own shares, bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy, resulting in 20,000 people losing their jobs and pensions while the CEO builds a home the size of a luxury hotel. Rather, the dudes sleep the sleep of the just.

Principle 4: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in equality. My measurement as a human being, my worth, is the pride I take in performing my job -- any job -- and the respect with which I treat others. I am the equal of the world not because of the car I drive, the size of the TV I own, the weight I can bench press, or the calculus equations I can solve.

I am the equal to all I meet because of the kindness in my heart. And it all starts here -- with the pizza delivery dude. Tip him well, friends and brethren, for that which you bestow freely and willingly will bring you all the happy luck that a grateful universe knows how to return. John in his own time a place was the pizza dude. He was mostly ignored.

John was considered the weirdo on the fringes out there in the desert baptizing believers. Imagine the names he was called and the stares he evoked because he was not considered important. Some must have said: “John you need a real job.” Yet John was hinge pin in pointing to the new way. He was eventually killed for what he believed. He was on the least of the people list, but was one of God’s greatest servants. That should be our mission too, to herald the way in a world that is increasingly becoming deaf.

We are called to be a voice proclaiming the presence of Jesus in a world that has little use for a Savior because there are just too many other choices. We are called, as John was, to point to Jesus as the source of fulfillment in life, as the only one whose life can really fill us with a joy for living in this life and the next.

This gospel has come to mean many things, and it only appears in Luke. Overtly it is about hospitality; it is about women ministering to Jesus, but on a much deeper level it is about finding balance and identity in life. What we see in the mirror is not necessarily what God sees.

Some years ago, The Archbishop of Canterbury was rushing to catch a train in London. In his haste, he accidentally jumped on the wrong passenger car and found himself on a car full of inmates from a mental hospital. They were all dressed in hospital clothing. Just as the train pulled out of the station, an orderly came in and began to count the inmates, “1-2-3-4…” when suddenly he saw this distinguished looking gentleman there wearing a business suit and a clerical collar and he said: “Who are you?” The answer came back: “I am the Archbishop of Canterbury!” And the orderly said: “5-6-7-8.” When Jesus looked at Martha in that emotional scene, he saw some red flags, some warning signals, some danger signs, and some destructive attitudes within her which were more harmful to Martha herself than to anyone else. Jesus loved Martha. They were good friends and that day, he saw a different side, a side turned from away from him, a side he did not recognize.

Mary is described as sitting by feet of the Lord listening to him. Martha is doing the physical serving and she is becoming angry at her sister, who is not sharing in any of the physical labor, our response, certainly. She is so angry that she asks, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?” He replies: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her." Martha has a problem that we all share, want. She wants to serve the Lord, she wants his recognition, she wants his attention, and she wants help from Mary, who is simply listening to Jesus. What is the message – what does this mean to us now? I suggest it is all about want. We need to find a balance between our wants and our spiritual nature. Want imprisons us and clouds our spiritual perception. For the moment it has created a divide between Martha and Jesus.

You have seen want’s prisoners. They want something bigger. Nicer. Faster. Thinner. They want. They don’t want much. They just want one thing. One new job. One new car. One new house. One new spouse. They don’t want much. They just want one. It is Martha’s story. She wants Mary to help. If Mary helped, would that have settled the issue here? We do not know. But if our quest for happiness is any gauge - the answer is no. There will always be a want for more – it is our collective human nature. When we get what we want – we will be happy.

Well – the new car smell passes, the new job gets old, the neighbors buy a larger flat screen TV and put in a media room. The new spouse has bad habits and the list goes on. We say but – Lord just this once and I’ll stop.

Let us put this in a modern perspective. Think about the things you own. Think about the house you own, the car you drive, the money you’ve saved. Think about the jewelry you have inherited, the stocks that you have traded and the clothes that you’ve purchased. Envision everything (possessions) that you love. I have them too. Now – here are two biblical truths

Your stuff isn’t yours. Ask any funeral director. No one takes anything with them. When on of the wealthiest men in history, John D. Rockefeller, died, his accountant was asked, How much did he leave?” The accountant replied. “All of it.”

All that stuff is not ours, it does not, nor should it define us. Heaven does not know you by what you have. Heaven knows your heart. That is why Jesus lifted up Mary – she had chosen the better place. We all look at outward appearance – the Lord looks to the heart. He has said this clearly through Mary. We have come here to worship a God who hears us, his Spirit is within us. We have heaven in front of us. If we for once, would sit at the Lord’s feet as Mary did and really listen, he will give us the grace for every sin committed, direction for every turn, a candle for every dark corner, and an anchor for every storm that we could ever encounter. We will have everything we ever needed or really wanted. And who can take that anyway? No-one. We, as Christians, are already part of the greatest work in history. And if we find balance in our lives, no so easy task in today’s world. The Lord will say to us too, as he did, Mary – “You have chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from you, not now – not ever.

This is a continuation of the warning themes in Luke. Not too long ago we were exhorted to stay awake. We hear a bit of that in this Gospel as well. The message may be considered even more extreme. After Luke reminds us that many are invited to the table – one of the disciples asks the question that resonates through human history. "Lord,” he asks. “Will only a few be saved?" As with any question of great importance that is addressed to Jesus – he does not answer directly; he answers with a parable. There are many interpretations of this parable, but if we choose the one of who’s in and who’s out – we hope and pray that we are in the number of those who make it in. And, at the same time, with all the Christian charity that we can muster, we hope that those, whom we dislike or have hurt us, will be excluded. It’s pay back time. Of course that is our interpretation, not necessarily God’s.

The narrow gate is like a triangle with the wide end laid open. The open end represents the "wide gate," which appears to lead to freedom: anything goes anyone can come in; it is the easiest route to take. But that easy freedom is an illusion in the long run. As we move through life, the walls close in like the two standing sides of the triangle. The point at the bottom represents the narrow gate of the gospel. Once we enter that gate, we discover that life opens up for us more and more, until finally we reach the "end" and find eternity according to the gospel. One of the great truths of life is expressed here. The door to eternal life and human life is narrow. We all get to that door much too quickly whether we are 4 or 104.

As many of you know, my day job is teaching in college. And since the school year is approaching way too fast, indulge me if you will. An education, I suggest, is an example of the narrow door. I teach research; it is one on my favorite classes, because these days the world of information is really at our finger tips.

On day one I give my students an informational quiz to see what they know about the world around them. I share some of those responses with you. These responses are complied from more than a few colleges and universities for which I have taught.

"Ralph Nader is a baseball player. Charles Darwin invented gravity. Christ was born in the 16th century. J. Edgar Hoover was a 19th-century president...The Great Gatsby was a magician in the 1930's. Sid Caesar was an early Roman emperor. Mark Twain invented the cotton gin...Jefferson Davis played guitar for the Jefferson Airplane. Benito Mussolini was a Russian leader; Dwight D. Eisenhower built a tower in France. Socrates (was an) American Indian chief...." and of course, Tony Blair wrote the Blair witch project. They are equally creative in their understanding of geography. They knew, for instance, that Managua is the capital of Vietnam. Cape Town is in the United States, and Beirut is in Germany. Camp David is in Israel, and Stratford-on-Avon is in New York somewhere by Rockefeller Center. My point to these eager minds is not to highlight how much they do not know, but how much they still need to learn, to go.

Education is one of those narrow doors that leads to limitless horizons, but it requires effort. It requires separating from the pack, moving from the wide gate where everyone enters with high in the sky dreams to those whom make through the narrow door to graduation. The more education you have, in most cases, the greater your options.

It is one of those crucial paradoxes of life. A student quits school because they want to be free. At first it’s great! No studies, no pressure, sleep late, earn money. As time passes, however, they are usually consigned to that increasingly narrow band of jobs reserved for the unskilled – always entry level. They have entered the inverted triangle that gets narrower all the time. THERE ARE MANY other NARROW DOORS in life.

Marriage is another example. We start off thinking variety is the spice of life when we are young and dating, and that is the way it ought to be. But there comes a time in our life when we narrow our choices to one special person, because we know that in a good marriage, there is a growing happiness, contentment, compatibility a life built together. In business there are numerous narrow doors. Honesty. Dependability. Hard work. We know that eventually there is a payoff behind each one. Narrow doors limitless horizons. Jesus said, "Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able." If we have lived long enough, we already know that to be true. It is just too easy to give up.

Jesus was talking about a very specific door, the Kingdom – eternal life in heaven. There are two things we need to see about this door. FIRST OF ALL, IT IS WIDE ENOUGH FOR ALL WHO WANT TO ENTER. There is nothing exclusive about the Kingdom. We will judged by what we have done in this life, how we progressed from the wide door to the narrow gateway. Christian discipleship is demanding, but the reward far exceeds its price.

Someone once said that Jesus Christ didn’t come into the world to make bad people good, but to give dead people life. And it takes a lifetime to learn this lesson.

The parable that was part of this morning’s Gospel has perplexed, and still perplexes, Biblical scholars. Parables are meant to teach. Scholars generally agree on one thing. That is they, the parables, are meant to teach one central idea. This parable is very complex and presents multi-avenues of exploration. If we look at the dishonest steward, we need to ask what his apparent dishonesty endeavors to teach us. After all, he is the central figure in the story. Why? What are we to draw from someone who steals from his employer and gets caught? It sounds business as usual in this state. Is his financial ingenuity and shrewdness to be held up as a Gospel value?

Let me tell you about Harry and Al. Harry saw Al walking down the street and said to him, "Al, I have a great deal for you. A real bargain! An elephant. A whole elephant. Yours for $1,000. Al said, "Are you crazy? What am I going to do with an elephant?" "Al," said Harry, "This is a magnificent beast. All grey. Complete with a working trunk." Then Harry said, "But I have no place to keep an elephant. I live in a small three room apartment." "Al," said Harry, "Did I tell you about the tusks? Two three foot long tusks. This is a beautiful animal. They don't make them like this anymore." At this Al went wild and started screaming, "Look I live on the third floor; I couldn’t feed the elephant, and I don't want an elephant." "You're a hard man, Al" says Harry, "OK, I'll throw in a second whole elephant for only fifty bucks extra." And then Al said, "Harry, now you're talking." This deal between Harry and Al reflects the Gospel, and it reflects the culture in which we all live. We want the best price, the best deal even if it extracts a moral cost.

It is amazing how astute we can be when making business deals. Whether it's buying a used car or selling a house, all of us learn how to get the most for our money. This is not something new. Jesus was aware of this; it was cultural in his time as well. The parable he tells about the steward who had to think quickly to get himself out of a financial jam recognizes human ingenuity and financial savvy. The Lord's point is that we often demonstrate our financial intelligence, but we don't apply this intelligence to the one thing that really matters: our eternal salvation.

This is the central reason, I suggest, that Jesus places the steward as focal point. We often have a financial portfolio in which we hope will pay off sometime in the future. But often times we don’t pay enough attention to our spiritual investment, the only portfolio that travels with us, earning interest, forever. Jesus reminds us that he already knows we are financially astute – and he implores us, through the steward, to use that same strength to fulfill our Christian mission –as disciples.

The distinctive feature of Luke's gospel is the deep concern he shows for the dangerous situation of wealthy or talented individuals who have become so engrossed in managing their riches that they are fatally distracted from the real purpose of human life. We all know people like this, or we are those people. In these situations, they/we may be so distracted that they will discover, only when it is too late, that they have wasted their lives. Luke does not condemn wealth as such. What he does condemn is a preoccupation or obsession with riches that precludes the need to place the awareness of others and of their needs at the top of our list of responsibilities. When the gospel says that we must choose between God and mammon, it is asking us to declare where we finally put our trust. Wealth and talents can serve God's purposes, but they must never replace God as the center of our attention in life.

The closer we come to eternity the more material possessions lose their value. When life draws to an end, riches prove worthless and are ALWAYS left behind. Money will buy books, but not wisdom. It will buy a house, but not a home. It will buy a crucifix, but not a Savior. “Money is an instrument that can buy everything but happiness, and purchases a ticket to every place but heaven.” We take nothing with us except the good that we have done. It may take us a lifetime to learn this lesson.

This gospel certainly is an indictment of contemporary culture in some ways. We are a generation who are used to getting what we want; in fact we demand it, sometimes.

We come to Mass every week – we consider ourselves to be good people, and we are. After all we are here every week publically showing our faith and commitment to God, at least on Sundays.

Jesus, through this parable, is asking us to look in the mirror and see what he sees, a work still very much under construction.

He suggests that there is no hope for people who think they have already arrived. Jesus came into the world to introduce us to a new reality. There was no need for him to waste his precious time with those who thought they already knew it all. Jesus likes sinners, first of all, because they know they still have room to grow.

When I first pondered the call to become a deacon some 15 years ago; I too felt that I arrived. I was active in the church, the community, the holy name and other catholic organizations and the bishop said - yes; I was worthy.

However, as I journeyed through the five –year diaconate formation program and began to understand the enormity of my commitment and responsibility to God and his people, the less prepared and confident I became. As I was ordained a deacon – I felt less than ready, less than holy and not worthy to stand at His table and raise the cup at all. God said to me in his own way that is exactly where you should be.

I know now, I will never be worthy on this side of heaven. As the host is raised and the celebrant says, “This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” we respond, “Lord I am not worthy to receive you – but only say the word and we shall be healed.”

We have to live those words and drink in that phrase. We will never be worthy. If you think you are – I wish you God-Speed.

The struggle that we only just leaned of that Mother Theresa had with her faith and her own worthiness – should bring us great comfort. It moves us all closer to the table.

If we have it all or think we do, God becomes a distant participant in our lives. In fact those people will not be here this weekend at all, perhaps, we’ll see them at Christmas. This was especially true of Mike Gill.

For 25 years, he was known as Michael Gates Gill, but that was when he was an advertising executive, a self-described "master of the universe" who put his job first, his wife and four children second and God not even on the map. Then he was fired. He was 53, replaced by someone, he says, "younger and cheaper."

These days, at 67, he's simply Mike, the friendly barista at a Starbucks in suburban New York. He's happy, he says, making lattes and cleaning the bathroom.

Gill, Yale-educated, has written an improbable memoir: 'How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.'

The book is mostly about the joy of doing a job he likes and how he feels more respected at Starbucks than he did as a creative director at J. Walter Thompson, the giant advertising firm. It also deals with the low points of his life, his divorce and brain tumor his fall from his own self grandeur. Gill is in another place now only by the grace of God. Gill, on many levels, is the personification of this gospel.

Our transformation may come differently – but I pray that it comes for all of us.

God accepts us as we are. There's not a sin too black, not a deed too awful, not a thought too horrible for him to forgive. What cuts us off from his forgiveness and the freedom such forgiveness brings is our thinking that we have to justify ourselves. Trusting in our own righteousness does not bring God's verdict of not guilty. Trusting in God's righteousness does.

Gregory Peck, the actor was waiting for a table in a crowded LA restaurant. He and a friend had been waiting for some time. They weren't even that close to the front of the line. Peck's friend became impatient, and he said to Peck, "Why don't you tell the maitre d' who you are?" Gregory Peck responded with great wisdom. "No," he said, "if you have to tell them who you are, then you aren't."

That is what I would like to leave you with this morning: If we have to tell God who we are than we aren't, either. We need to recall the words of the tax collector whom Jesus lifts up: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner." We will never be worthy to hold this cup – and by the grace of God that is okay.

Today is the last Sunday of the Church Year. It is called Christ the King. It will be awhile before we hear from Luke again. Next week we begin to travel through Advent and into Christmas and then onto Mathew’s gospel accounts. All the Christ the King gospels: Luke, Matthew and John have their own stories, but the one we heard this morning reaches back and touches Good Friday.

Jesus has been whipped, tortured and nailed on a cross to slowly die, as have two convicted thieves on either side of him. All, were subjected to brutal Roman justice.

Think about this, the human Jesus is dying. The pain has to be unspeakable. The two thieves begin a conversation, probably shouting back and forth for as much as their ebbing strength allows.

One, “the bad thief” that tradition names, Gestas calls Jesus on his divinity. “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us." The other, “the good thief,” tradition says was Dismas says,

"Have you no fear of God, … we have been condemned justly,… but this man has done nothing criminal." Dismas then says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Jesus was abandoned by almost every one of his disciples and followers. The Choirs of Angels are silent and have gone missing as his blood runs down the crossbeams. However, in all of this, he’s surrounded and grounded by his faith in the kingdom to come, of what is to be.

He does not lament his fall from grace here, although he would be right to do so in my book. His body is collapsing in on itself with the weight of gravity; he can barely breathe. You would think it would just take too much energy to speak, so I would expect a silent Jesus. Instead – he speaks.

He offers consolation and spiritually reaches out to the thief who asks Jesus to remember him as he moves from this world to the next. His human arms are pinned to the cross, but the power of God that is growing inside the dying human body says, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

He says this to Dimas then, but he reaches through time to our own worst moments, to those moments when we lose someone.

Look carefully at what Jesus says, at what has to be the lowest moment of his life on earth. He has been jeered, he is hated; he is a failed Prophet. He certainly does not have God-like abilities, or he would make small business of the cross and his enemies.

But what comes out of his mouth – changes everything. “…today you will be with me in Paradise.” He does not say tomorrow or a thousand years from now, but today - this very moment! "When the pain is over," says Jesus, "you will not be alone. I will be with you. And you will be with me forever." And, he says this to a thief. A thief who admits he is a thief and has been condemned justly. He is also there for us today when all seems lost in our own lives.

Randy Pausch is a married father of three, 46, a very popular professor at Carnegie Mellon University—and he is dying. He is suffering from pancreatic cancer, which he says has returned after surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Doctors say he has only a few months to live.
In September 2007, Randy gave a final lecture to his students at Carnegie Mellon that has since been downloaded more than a million times on the Internet. (I put the link up for those who might want to view it) "There's an academic tradition called the 'Last Lecture.' Hypothetically, if you knew you were going to die and you had one last lecture, what would you say to your students?" It can be an intriguing hour, watching healthy professors consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them.

Some professors have given lectures titled: "Get Over Yourself," and "Desire." Randy says, "Well, for me, there's an elephant in the room. And the elephant in the room, for me, it wasn't hypothetical." Despite the lecture's wide popularity, Randy says he really only intended his words for his three small children.

"I think it's great that so many people have benefited from this lecture, but the truth of the matter is that I didn't really even give it to the 400 people at Carnegie Mellon who came. I only wrote this lecture for three people, and when they're older, they'll watch it," he says.

Life will go on after Randy dies and after we die. Death is not the end but the gateway to paradise.

Jesus could have uttered many profound things on the cross for his followers to carry through the streets and into the gospels. He does not. He directs his simple words to those in pain. It was his own greatest last lecture. Dr. Pausch's speech was taped so his children, ages 5, 2 and 1, can watch it when they're older. His last words in his last lecture were simple: "This was for my kids." Sound familiar? They come from the cross: “This – all of this was done for all of you…to get back to paradise.”

All Soul's Day is a day of remembrance for friends and loved ones who have passed away. The day purposely follows All Saint's Day in order to shift the focus from those in heaven to those in need of our prayers.

While today it is our promise to pray for them; we should also ask for their intercession, in our lives, as well.

I always say one of the perks of being a deacon is where I sit. From here I can look out over the congregation, and even if I get here late on Christmas Eve, I have a good seat.

I can also keep attendance because you all sit in the same seat week after week, and I know you get upset if someone is in your seat that doesn’t belong there.

But the most important aspect is that it helps me to remember and pray for those who are missing in those specific seats, those souls whom I have come to know over my time here and have since gone home to our Lord.
When I see those empty spaces, I remember, and I lament their loss and think how quickly time really passes – and then I pray for their intercession in my life. It is my prayer that they help me to get where they are.

A great deal is made of the soul: there are good soles, bad soles, empty soles, poor souls, lost souls, soul music, and to give the Phillies their just due – Philadelphia Soul.

The soul is often thought of as the spirit or essence of a person, the core of our being that we can influence but never own, for belongs to God alone.

Whatever the soul is – it connects us to those whom we have loved. It is, I believe, an eternal connection that never dies. It is that presence we try to feel, and sometimes do, in a memory or at the grave of a loved one.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege to meet and spend some time with Andre Da-buse III, (Dubus) the author of The House of Sand and Fog, which you may recall became a movie staring Ben Kingsley. He is the current author of The Garden of Last Days.

We did not talk about his book too much – we talked about his father Andre Dubuse (sic), a short story writer, in his own time, who died in 1999.

Andre learned of his father’s death while he was in San Francisco on a book tour for Sand and Fog. He flew back to Boston where he grew up to be with his family.

Dubus said about his father, ''He went through a lot of changes after his accident. (He was severely injured in an accident after he stopped to help stranded motorists; he lost the partial use his legs (one was amputated) and needed a wheelchair from then on ) “Afterwards, his father would say about himself that he was more of a listener, less of a talker," the younger Dubus said. ''He was more centered spiritually. He was just there more. The elder Dubus found that the loss of his mobility drew him closer to God, and renewed his Catholic faith at a deeper, personal level that wasn’t there before. Those who knew him admired the peace and acceptance he had achieved, as well as his ability to live his life without bitterness or self-pity. I think Andre was describing his father’s soul, his essence. The accident was the catalyst that created the window to his soul that those around him saw.

Before his father’s death, they were discussing a short story that Andre senior had finished in which a character dies, and the family builds a coffin and buries the individual in just a few hours. Andre and his brother laughed the time sequence in the story. Their father had never done any type of manual labor as Andre and his brother, Jeb a carpenter had. They said “Dad – you can never do all this in a few hours.” His father, a bit peeved said – “Okay when I die you can do it for me – we’ll see.”

That is exactly what the brothers did. After Andre arrived in Boston, he picked his brother up and together they went to the lumberyard to choose some wood for their father's coffin. They stayed up all night building it. In the morning, Andre's wife and mother came to line it with the sheets from the father's bed; he liked satin sheets. The brother’s always joked about that as well; the tough Marine liked satin sheets.

Before their father was placed in his coffin, Andre got inside he says for two reasons. One, he says, was that “my father’s nose was like mine and I wanted to make sure we could close the lid; and two, I wanted to know how it felt to be where my father was going.” The Dubus men dug their father's grave themselves. Andre told me it took him and his brother more than 12 hard, hours to dig the 8 foot long by 5 foot wide by 6 foot deep grave.

What a powerful conversation that was. As Thomas Lynch writes, “We humans are bound to and identified with the earth, the dirt, the humus out of which our histories and architectures rise -- our monuments and memorials. And each stone on which we carve our names and dates is an effort to make a human statement about death, memory and belief. Our kind was here. They lived; they died; they made their difference…

Since the first cave-dwelling Neanderthal awakened next to a dead kinsman and knew something would have to be done about it, we humans have looked into the tomb or grave or fire and asked ourselves the signature questions of our species: Is that all there is? Can it happen to me? What comes next? For us, Jesus has already revealed that mystery. He says in John, “…I should not lose anything of what [my Father] gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father…” This is our hope; it is our faith that the soul does live on

So let us remember our eternal connections to whom we have loved as we pray for them on this side of heaven, on this ALL SOULS day.

Today we continue to move towards Christmas as we move into the 2^nd Sunday of Advent. Although I have to tell you, I was in a store on election night and heard Christmas music. I looked around wondering – is this just me, or did we loose it collectively, and I missed just missed it?

Today we hear the beginning of Mark’s Gospel with the introduction of John the Baptist in the desert. John is there specifically to make way clear for, as he says, “[One] mightier than I.” He is the herald of Jesus. It is appropriate that we hear this gospel as we move towards Christmas once more through a rapidity changing world, one that is moving faster than all of us, one that is hard to comprehend.

John was marked out from his very birth to be the herald of Christ. He pointed to Jesus as the one who could save humanity from itself; we need to think about that seriously as we watch the world change. John lived on the fringes of his society. He certainly would be marginalized by those in the mainstream. The Gospel tells us, “John was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He fed on locusts and wild honey.” Why this would be mentioned, unless it was not normal look this way. Mark’s point to all of us is – “be careful whom you judge.” John – pointed to Jesus, and baptized him. That moment in time changed all of human history.

We too have to be careful not to dis those who point the way; our very lives may depend on recognition on the One who is coming. The Gospel is clear; they come in the most unexpected ways. Here is a simple story that I think makes the connection. It is called, “Be Kind to the Pizza Dude.”

If I have one operating philosophy about life it is this: "Be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it's good luck." Four principles guide the pizza dude philosophy.

I am the equal to all I meet because of the kindness in my heart. And it all starts here -- with the pizza delivery dude. Tip him well, friends and brethren, for that which you bestow freely and willingly will bring you all the happy luck that a grateful universe knows how to return.

John in his own time a place was the pizza dude. He was mostly ignored. John was considered the weirdo on the fringes out there in the desert baptizing believers. Imagine the names he was called and the stares he evoked because he was not considered important. Some must have said: “John you need a real job.”

Yet John was hinge pin in pointing to the new way. He was eventually killed for what he believed. He was on the least of the people list, but was one of God’s greatest servants. That should be our mission too, to herald the way in a world that is increasingly becoming deaf, especially as we move into the darkness of Advent and into the light of another Christmas that somehow began in October.

We are called to be a voice proclaiming the presence of Jesus in a world that has little use for a Savior because there are just too many other choices.

We are called, as John was, to point to Jesus as the source of fulfillment in life, as he is the only one whose life can really fill us with a joy for living. After all, only Jesus knows what’s coming next.

Suppose you could give a gift to Christ, what would it be? How could you possibly select a gift for the One who not only has everything, but who made everything?

The Wise Men did. They can be an example to us. In addition to the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they gave the Jesus some gifts we can give him today: their hope, their time, and their worship.

When everyone else saw a night sky, this small band of men saw the light. The sight of the star sparked a desire in their hearts that send them packing. They went, seeking Jesus.

When night comes to your world, what do you see? The darkness or the stars? Hopelessness or hopefulness? It makes all the difference.

Alice's twin boys were exact opposites. Bill was an eternal optimist. No matter how dark the cloud, he always found a silver lining. Bob was a hopeless pessimist...always finding the negative no matter how good the situation. Alice asked a psychiatrist what to do about Christmas. The doctor told her to buy all the toys she could for Bob, the pessimist; and to get nothing for Bill. In fact, he told her to wrap up some horse manure for Bill.

Christmas morning, Dave and Alice came downstairs and found the twins by the tree. She asked Bob what Santa had brought him. "A BB gun, he said, but I'll probably hit someone in the eye and blind him. And a bicycle, but I'll probably get run over and be killed while riding it. I also got an electric train, but I'll probably electrocute myself," said Bob. Realizing it wasn't going well, Alice asked Bill what he got. "I'm not sure!" he replied excitedly. "I think I got a pony, but I haven't been able to find him yet."

Sometimes we have to look to children for guidance; they are untainted by the world and can see were we have forgotten. They are able to see the pony; what a gift that is. It is an epiphany.

Sometimes, just as he did so long ago, God uses the darkness to reveal his stars—“The light shines in the darkness” says John’s Gospel.

The epiphany means just that; a sudden understanding of something that was there before but a bit cloudy. As many of you know I teach. And for those of you who remember college English – you must remember English composition and MLA citation. However, probably not with the love you should. I teach comp. to my first-year students. I watch them struggle through the semester trying to figure out a proper academic citation. I tell them it will come as I watch their frustration mount. And more often than not, I am there to witness those eureka moments – when they finally get it – it all comes together. It is great to see.

I think God wants to see those moments in us as he watches our journey, through those highs and lows, the loudness, the silence, the dry spells, in grateful thanksgiving or through crushing grief. In all of those human emotions, they bring us to our own eureka moments, our own epiphanies. Those moments when we get to comprehend a tiny bit of the Kingdom, perhaps, it occurs only once in this lifetime. But when it all comes together and we finally get it – God must rejoice in our epiphanies.

The Wise men give us great guidance– even today. Their wisdom was, and is, simply this - they sought wisdom, - they were willing to journey in faith to personally discover what God was doing in their lives. They did not hesitate to ask for help along the way, and finally they accepted what they found - even though it was plainly dressed; they believed.

So when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and Magi are home, when the shepherds are back with their flock, and our decorations back in the attic, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry; these can be external or internal needs. We all have been broken lost or hungry at some point. To look for that a peace that does not yet exist in our world or in us: and finally…. give God, our hope, our time, and our worship. Give him those things we have promised so many times before, but have not yet delivered; 2009 gives us all yet another chance.

What a beautiful vision of the Lord Jesus this is. He is true God, who has the power to heal all those who were brought to him. And he is true man, who got tired from overwork. This is what makes Jesus real to us – connective to human life. He is in it with us – in all the messiness of life.
But like Jesus, we should also get away, really away, when it just gets to be too much. Of course this is easier said than done, especially in this economy where more is expected for less. If we can, it does feel good to leave all the pressure behind and go someplace. But can we? Unlike Jesus, however, we don't get as much out of our get-aways. We are just too connected, with cell phone texting, blackberries and WIFI Internet service; we never leave our world behind.

As many of you know, I teach college, and I often watch my students texting during my class; not only is it rude, I often wonder if they ever have alone time, down time. It seems to me anyway that they are always connected: 24/7.

However, I am almost as bad sometimes. Each year the deacons in the diocese gather for a retreat weekend. This year, during the second weekend in March, we are going to a retreat house in the middle of no-where Pennsylvania for that down time and to reconnect with God in a way that hopefully will be stronger than normal. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not.

Last year the retreat weekend was the perfect storm for the English professor; four classes handed in 88 papers the Friday we all left for the retreat. So I, being as anal as I am, decided to bring the student papers to the mountains in case there was any down downtime. Guess what I did.

All of Saturday afternoon – instead of reflecting, I was correcting. I just could not leave the world behind; it followed me. Although correcting the papers made the following week easier, I lost something on that weekend. This is what Jesus points to in this Gospel.

When we spend time with God, we need to pray more. The more tired we are the more we need to pray. This means more than just the same old prayers we pray regularly. Good as those prayers are we need along with them to pray prayers that open up our lives to God as we give everything to him.

Before choosing his disciples, Jesus prayed all night for guidance. Before he asked them, "Who do you say that I am?" he prayed all night. We too have been invited to pray without ceasing.

When we pour out the concerns, he makes the burden his own if we give them fully over; again that is the hard part. Sometimes we are superficial when it comes to our understanding of prayer.

"Hey, Father," said a man talking to a priest. "You got it all wrong about this God stuff. He doesn't exist. I oughta know." "Why's that,?" asked the priest. "Well," the man said, "when I was ice-fishing in the Arctic far from the nearest village, a blizzard blew up with wind and blinding snow. I was a goner. So I got down on my knees and prayed real hard, begging God for help." "And did He help you?" asked the priest. "Heck no," said the man. "God didn't lift a finger. Some Eskimo appeared out of nowhere on a snowmobile and showed me the way back."

Prayer can be a potent force in the life of the believer. It is so potent that some followers of Christ have devoted their lives to nothing else.

A few weeks ago we all heard about “The Miracle on the Hudson.” Many on that plane had mere moments to pull their lives together, for what they thought were minutes left to live. Many prayed, but what they also did was left the world behind, because at that moment when the pilot said “Brace for impact.” Nothing else mattered, not work, not projects, not school – just God and what’s coming next.

We need to take inventory of our lives to determine what's important and what is not.

The Gospel says, the next morning when Simon and the other disciples awoke, they discovered that Jesus was nowhere to be found. Perhaps they panicked. They actively searched until they chased him down. They interrupted his prayer time. "Everyone is searching for you," Simon tells him. To this Jesus answers, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do."

He knew where he was headed. Nothing else mattered. That should be our life’s calling as well – to know were we are headed. If we are not careful, we will find ourselves majoring in minors and ignoring the really crucial needs in our lives.

Some of you are familiar with the writing of Madeleine L'Engle. (Wrinkle in Time - children books) She has inspired many people with her work. She reports that one Sunday she visited a unique church in New York. A man stood up in that church and said, "I hope this is appropriate to ask. I was an abused child. I'm terrified of being an abusive father. I need help and prayer. " L'Engle knew then this was a church she could stay in. "Because people are willing to be vulnerable," she says, "this church is very different. Sometimes it gets messy, but that's okay. People are not afraid to ask questions. We're able to admit we're all broken, we've all made terrible mistakes, we're all in need, and we all want things we don't have."
The five o'clock Eucharist is largely street people --on drugs, HIV-positive, or with AIDS." One member told her it was the only place where he was called by his name. "It's a church in which a mother whose 27-year-old son has died is free to say, People think I'm terrible because I can't pray.' And I can reassure her, you don't have to pray. We're praying for you. That's what the body of Christ is about.'" That is what the church is all about. Some churches are known for the people they keep out. My guess is that makes Jesus very angry. That is what set him off in the temple.

We see an angry, a very angry Jesus. We see hints of his humanness – his earthly connection to us, so to speak. We also see the beginnings of recognition of Jesus as Lord by those around him, and we see Jesus give us a peek at a human nature in which, “He himself [all to well] unders[tands].”

But, what else does this gospel have to say on this 3^rd Sunday of Lent? I suggest that it reminds us that not much has changed about human nature in the last two millenniums, especially when it comes to anger and its direct connection to “religion.”

Are there some people who exploit religion today? Oh, yes. There are some religious hucksters who get rich by taking advantage of hurting souls and there are those religious zealots who speak directly for God.

Jesus was reacting to the injustice of the whole religious system of the Judaism of that day. The marketplace values that had crept into the Temple are but one example of a general and widespread problem. Jesus believed that the religious officials, by their hypocrisy, had emptied their worship of all reality. Jesus got angry when religious leaders elevated form over substance. At the center of Jewish life are two commandments--love God, and love your neighbor--but the Biblical interpreters obscured these two key commands with a host of petty, obscure laws and pointless rituals. After all, it was easier to measure the length of the tassel on your robe than it was to love an old crotchety neighbor, or much easier than loving that religious heretic, the Samaritan, in the next town.

Jesus had called these religious leaders to open the eyes of their people to the presence of God in human hearts and in human relationships, instead they ignored the real spiritual needs of their flock. Official religion is rarely open to criticism of its practices and typically destroys the messenger in an attempt to destroy the message. The expulsion of the merchants from the Temple was the only sign Jesus would give at the time that it would be they who would be expelled from God’s presence, not he.

Tradition wasn’t as important to him as people. Even religion wasn’t as important to him as people connected to the message of the Father. Jesus didn’t come to die for the law or for a tradition or even for a religion. Jesus came to die for all of us – everyone, even those we exclude.

What the money changers were doing had nothing to do with authentic religion; much in the same way that religious violence throughout the world today has nothing to do with authentic religion either.

After all - “God so loved the world . . . that he sent his only Son so we might live” Ours is not a legalistic faith that fills people with guilt and forgets to flood them with grace. Not moralistic faith that divides people into acceptable and unacceptable and forgets to remind us that we are all sinners saved by grace. And, as L’Engle says, “Sometimes [life] gets messy, but that's okay.” Jesus knew that – thus the anger. Our faith tells us we really matter, not because there is anything remarkable about us, but because there is something remarkable about God.

This message is at the heart of Lent and our own journey of coming from and going too that brings us into the possibility of reconnecting to the glory of another Easter, both internal and external.

Who or What is Responsible for Jesus’ Death? There is plenty of guilt to go around. The Passion Narratives of all four evangelists focus on the part the disciples played. They represent not only human nature, but human nature as it battles with Christian belief. We see, reflected in this story, our own failures to reconcile our Christian faith with the world in which we live. We, I suggest have all switched sides in one-way or another at some point. Have you ever agreed to something, that in your heart you knew was wrong or it compromised your principles, but because it was the safe thing to do – for your boss, your job, for the extra money, or for a promotion you did it anyway? If you have, then you are there in the streets – yelling "crucify him, crucify him."

Palm Sunday involves Christians on a journey, uncomfortable though it may be. We have to arrive at the cross in order to get beyond it.

After all suspended on its cross beams is the greatest claim in history; a crucified carpenter claiming to be God on Earth. Divine. Eternal. On many levels, this week should bring us face to face with the cross; it is at the very heart of our faith. We need to see it unadorned, naked, bloody and not gold-plated.
Henri Nouwen tells a disturbing story about a family he knew in Paraguay. The father, a doctor, was active in protests against the military. He spoke out repeatedly against its human rights abuses. Local police took their revenge by arresting his teenage son and torturing him until he was dead. It was a horrible crime. Townsfolk wanted to turn the funeral into a huge protest march. But the doctor chose another means of protest.

The father displayed his son’s body in the local church. However, he was not dressed in a fine suit. And the funeral director applied no make-up. The father displayed his son as he had found him in the jail. The son was naked, his body marked with scars from the electric shocks and cigarette burns and beatings. It did not lie in a coffin but on the blood‑soaked mattress from the jail. It was the strongest protest imaginable, for it put injustice on grotesque display. This, for me, is reminiscent of Fr. Mykal Judge the Franciscan Priest and NYFD Chaplain killed when the south tower collapsed. At 9:59 AM, that morning debris went flying through the north tower lobby, killing many inside, including Judge. At the moment he was struck and killed, Judge was repeatedly praying aloud, "Jesus, please end this right now! God please end this!." His broken body was then carried and laid on the Altar of Trinity Church nearby.

How powerful these scenes must have been, the love of a father poured out unadorned for a murdered son, and a priest rushing to aid the dead and dying and overcome by the unfolding scene. The cross is held together by this same love and passion.

Jesus hangs there naked and unadorned. In reverence of Christ, paintings show him with a loin cloth, but that was not the practice for crucifixion. The condemned man hung there naked. The execution was always carried out publicly, which enhanced the humiliation. God watches; His heart must have broken, but His point is made. The promised is fulfilled and reverberates through the heavens. So where does this leave us – a people who run? It leaves us in love. In the love of God – a love that is not of this world, a love that never switches sides. It is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow; it was that love held Jesus on the cross. A purer love does not exist in humanity. We didn’t deserve it then; we don’t deserve it now His Passion speaks of an amazing love, a sacrifice and hope in the presence of an evil that still exists and freely roams throughout our world in violence and oppression. In the last 3500 years there has only been about 230 years of peace.

So what does this week say? It says Jesus would rather go to hell for us than go to heaven without us, and that you can take to the bank. And that single investment in humanity will always be there gaining interest no matter what the Market does.

The gospel tells us Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered. Judas his betrayer also knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. This place was familiar – it was safe. There was conviviality among the group; as we know it all begins to change; it goes bad.

Begin by noticing how Jesus saw Judas. “Jesus answered, ‘Friend, do what you came to do.’ ” (Matthew 26:50) Of all the names I would have chosen for Judas it would not have been “friend.” What Judas did to Jesus was grossly unfair. There is no indication that Jesus ever mistreated Judas. There is no clue that Judas was ever left out or neglected. When, during the Last Supper, Jesus told the disciples that his betrayer sat at the table, they didn’t turn to one another and whisper, “It’s Judas. Jesus told us he would do this.”

They didn’t whisper it because Jesus never said it. He had known it. He had known what Judas would do, but he treated the betrayer as if he were faithful. It’s even more unfair when you consider the betrayal was Judas’s idea. The religious leaders didn’t seek him, Judas sought them. “What will you pay me for giving Jesus to you?” he asked in Matthew (26:15). The betrayal would have been more palatable had Judas been propositioned by the leaders, but he wasn’t. He propositioned them. And Judas’s method … again, why did it have to be a kiss? (Matthew 26: 48–49) And why did he have to call him “Teacher”? (Matthew 26:49) That’s a title of respect. The incongruity of his words, deeds, and actions—I wouldn’t have called Judas “friend.”

But that is exactly what Jesus called him. Why? Jesus could see something we can’t...

Jesus knew Judas had been seduced by a powerful foe. He was aware of the wiles of Satan’s whispers (he had just heard them himself). He knew how hard it was for Judas to do what was right. He didn’t justify what Judas did. He didn’t minimize the deed. Nor did he release Judas from his choice. But he did look eye to eye with his betrayer and try to understand.

The garden, in some way, must have been peaceful compared to the noise of Jerusalem. There was the shouting; there was the unruly crowds hungering for a show, demanding blood. In the shadow of the cross lies the noise of our own world. It is full of too much hate, full of pent-up, destructive anger; it is full of betrayal just waiting for a target..

The noise that surrounds us too is loud, mind numbing, demanding and sometimes disabling; it is driven by the same foe that Jesus battled. Just listen to the financial collapse, listen to the plummeting housing values, and listen to the five million people who have lost their jobs facing an uncertain tomorrow the noise gets louder. Listen to seemingly daily gang violence a few miles to our north, or listen to Massachusetts where a young man takes the life of his family, savaging killing his five-year old sister, or hear the gunshots ring out in the upstate New York; the noise is unbearable.

There is also the distracting noise of grief: listen if you’ll celebrate a marriage anniversary alone this year, Jesus speaks to you through the loud static of disbelief. Listen, if you learned more than you want to know about disease, listen if your dreams were buried; God shouts through all the noise. As ominous as the headlines are, Good Friday gives us hope. It comes on the cross beams of the cross.

Jesus calls Judas friend because he saw and heard something we can’t... he sees something in us, in our world we cannot; it is hope in humanity. As you step up venerate the cross tonight, on this Good Friday; give to Jesus that noise, whatever it is, that stops you from clearly hearing his voice.

It is only He that can lead us to the peace and quiet that comes with a sincere faith that does not waver, in the face of a world that we do not much recognize anymore. Only he can bring us to the Easter that is inside everyone of us.

Today we hear Jesus say, I am the Good Shepherd. We have heard this before. We have heard about shepherds throughout the gospels especially in the nativity scenes, where the ANGEL appears to the shepherd on that quiet hillside when the rest of the world is asleep. We need to look at language here, I suspect. If there is a Good Shepherd, there must be one who is bad.

I think that we can all agree that a shepherd leads, whether they are good or bad. Robert Frost says in his poem, “Two roads diverged… / and sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveller, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could / … Then took the other, as just as fair, / and having perhaps the better claim / Two roads diverged … and I -- I took the one less travelled by, / and that has made all the difference. Although you have probably heard this poem used on occasion by those great and small and will probably hear it again, as it always plays well at graduations; it connects us to the Shepherd – the good one. We see what happens when the shepherd is cast aside, and the wrong one is followed, the wrong road taken. Many of us take the short road sometimes and, I suspect, are lured by the bad shepherd personified in: the wrong things, the wrong people and in the places. The world mirrors this, and I do not need to preach about it here; you live the results with me everyday.

Jesus portrays himself as the model shepherd who knows his sheep intimately and loves them so much that he lays down his life for them.

While Jesus is making it clear, albeit through the use of figurative language, that he is both divine and the divinely-sent ruler of his people, he is also teaching his followers how to exercise their “authority.” Authority has more to do with conduct than control, conduct of self rather than control of others. Ah, if humanity could only learn this lesson; we would all be better off

The more our attitudes are closer to his, the more we will experience what he experienced and the less we will worry about the things of the world. We all worry about things over which we really have no control; this week it is Swine Flu next week it will be something else.

One of my favourite theologians, the late Irma Bombeck, says it best: “I’ve always worried a lot, and frankly I’m good at it.

I worry about introducing people and going blank when I get to my mother. I worry about a shortage of ball bearings; a snake coming up through the kitchen drain. I worry about the world ending at midnight and getting stuck with three hours on a twenty-four hour cold capsule. I worry about getting into the Guinness World Book of Records under “Pregnancy: Oldest Recorded Birth.” I worry what the dog thinks when he sees me coming out of the shower; I worry about scientist’s discovering some day that lettuce has been fattening all along.

While this is funny, I suggest, it contains some profound truths about what we lament over. It also can help to center and redirect us to the one who can take the best shot the world can throw and catch it every time. The good shepherd is the one who died so we could live, the one who constantly points to the right road; the road that has always been the one less travelled.

So – what to we need to take away this Sunday? When my children were small my wife taught them their prayers. I remember her trying to teach them the 23 psalm that begins, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Of course that is the easy line to remember; they could never get through the psalm without adding comical sound alike words in places.

But now looking back all these years later, I see they memorized the most important line of all: “The Lord is my shepherd…” that’s all they needed to know and remember; it is all we need to need to know and remember. All the rest is just stuff… anyway.

“They went to Galilee…’ the Gospel says, but “When they all saw him, they worshiped, but [still] they doubted.” They were with him. Ever felt like that? – Yeah God I know you are there… but just let me see more, let me feel more.

There is just something about our human nature that does not let us completely surrender to God. It is like the mountain climber, who while drinking in the majestic view, slips over a precipice and falls. As he falls, he grabs onto a single, tenuous branch; he is now suspended in the air in real trouble. He yells… “Is anyone out there?” God responds, “Yes, I am here – let go… I’ll catch you.” The climber: “Is anyone else out there?” Thanks – but let me try again that is sometimes our song as well.

However, the gospel contains the last words of writer of Matthew: “[Know], I am with you always . If we take these words to heart, we will know that whatever happens to us in life – we will be safe. After Matthew writes the last words he is finished; he closes the book. Most authors want to leave a last impression as they close out their text. Matthew, I suspect, wants the same.

He recalls Jesus’ words as he stands before those who have followed, sort of. It was more like they were pursued.

Think about a God who pursues: The disciples of Jesus knew. They were rain soaked and shivering when they looked over their shoulders and saw Jesus walking toward them. God had followed them into the storm. John the Apostle was already banished on Patmos when he saw the skies begin to open. Lazarus was three days dead in a sealed tomb when he heard a voice, lifted his head, and looked over his shoulder and saw Jesus standing there. Peter had denied his Lord and gone back to fishing when he heard his name and looked over his shoulder and saw Jesus cooking breakfast. God had followed him in spite of his failure. So these are the individuals whom Jesus trusts to spread the word on earth? Are you kidding? One theologian calls them, “shelps.”

Think about the choice. Most are fisherman or farmers. They have no wealth and barely eek out a day to day existence. If they were the chosen ones – who are left out? The religious leaders for one; they can not be trusted; they would argue about meaning, importance, intent and interpretation. The royals could not be trusted as they would put themselves in the spin as god-like. And certainly not the government; Jesus already knew they would kill him.

No, Jesus trusts regular people with the must important message that had ever been given to humanity because he knew they (the schleps) would carry it faithfully through time. And, if we think about it, these simple men those who Jesus left behind did just that. They told the story, and others who heard it told others, who then told others until it was carried through time until somebody told us, and we believed.

How did this happen? What was it that held the faith together for over two thousand years? We can look to the cross – the symbol of the trinity. Look to our windows – from the hand of God springs all …

This weekend we celebrate its mystery. It gives us hope, love, strength and a sense of who we are as Catholic’s. Three persons in one God bound together by love. As complex as the Trinity may seem, we should never look on it as a mystery to be solved, a puzzle to be worked or something designed to test our faith. Every time we gather to worship we begin by making the sign of the cross. This alone is a public expression and affirmation of our faith. You, in essence are washed, with the shadow of the cross.

Trinity Sunday brings home how intimate and personal God’s love is for us. It shows God taking an interest in every single person. It is the love of a father for us his children, and of a Son who redeems us and a Spirit that guides us through an uncertain world. There is no deeper love on earth. And, most importantly it connects to the very last words of Mathew: “[Know], I am with you always, until the end of the age. These words are part of our story and the story that we must carry to others.

This weekend usually makes our American roots a bit more conscious. Besides the BBQs, the weekend infers so more. The Declaration of Independence was not entirely popular. If Gallup had taken a poll back then, it would have shown that a fairly sizeable number of the early fathers and mothers thought it would be suicide to defy the British Empire. The frustration felt by the founding fathers in trying to convince people that their idea would fly is similar, in many ways, to our gospel in that it examples frustration experienced because of familiarity. How could these local farmers, who everybody knew, change anything? How could Mary’s boy be the one?

Jesus knew how it felt to be frustrated by people's lack of faith. It was the Sabbath day in his hometown of Nazareth and he was teaching in the synagogue. His friends and neighbors were astonished. BUT said more than one, “Isn't this Jesus, the carpenter who is teaching? Isn't he the son of Mary, the brother of James? Aren't these his sisters here with us?" They knew him. They knew his family. Mark tells us that they were offended by him. They must have thought: “Who does he think he is?” Jesus feels this negative vibe and speaks the often quoted words recorded in Mark: "A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own family." How true that is. One definition of an expert is that you have to be more than 200 miles from home.

This is where we still travel sometimes; we don’t recognize the talent and the gifted people that sit beside us because they are too close to us. When I was teaching at Seton Hall, I used to invite my students into NYC, on an unofficial trip, the week before we broke for Christmas break to experience NYC in a way that many did not. To most, NYC was the Garden, Midtown and a basketball game; they knew nothing of Downtown and the neighborhoods. I would sometimes get a group of about 15 ,-20 who would take me up on my offer, and we would meet under the big train sign in Penn Station. Of course on these kinds of trips you always get to know your students better and then get to know you as well; in many ways, it was the highlight of my semester. By subway we would make our way down to Union Square and the Christmas village; afterwards, I took them to a famous pizza place on Bleeker St. While we waited in line to get in, a few students budding musicians, went into the guitar shop across the street and played around on the guitars.

They came back the line ebbed and we ate pizza, talked music in the heart and soul of Greenwich Village. We returned home; the break came and went; school went on and the semester ended. After the end of that school year, I received an email from Greg, a student on the trip, who was considering leaving college; he struggled with the idea of going into music fulltime – his true love and leaving school. He asked me for advice. What does college professor say to such a student? I am not sure, but I told him to follow his heart that school would still be here in another year.

Since, I have changed schools and Greg moved on. Early last year Greg tracked me down through others. He emailed and thanked me for my advice. He wrote, “After my freshman year, I was asked to play bass for a band… and tour professionally with them. I've been in the music business for almost 3 years now and have learned so much about recording, musicianship, and life. I honestly never believed this would happen and I feel extremely blessed. Whether you realize it or not, your support in my career and musical interests helped influence me to take this job in the first place.” I was humbled by the email. Most students just pass through. And of course, at the time, I did not even know who the Jonas Brothers were; yes, he is their bass player. My point is that Greg is the same person, the same young student who sat with that unrecognized talent and a dream in my freshman English class, except now he is traveling the world and living his dream.

Let’s come back and reconnect to the Gospel. Jesus too is in his hometown – the same Jesus that heals and brings Words of God, but they, those who know him, do not see who it is in their midst because he is after all “just a hometown boy.” They miss the holiness, the talent and the hope that he brings; how can he be anything more than the carpenter’s son? When we look at the stained glass windows of our churches and cathedrals and see the saints suspended in sunshine for all eternity, we miss their humanity because we are too distant; we did not know them, but some did. And, I suspect at the time, they too missed really understanding in whose presence they stood.

Even Jesus could not do mighty work when people did not believe! The first step in achieving is to believe. If we do not believe, then we will not achieve anything. This gospel is calling us to look around us for the holiness that is found in those by whom we are surrounded, by those we take for granted everyday, least we miss the miracles that are possible right here. Mark’s gospel calls us to really believe because without belief the miracles cannot happen.

This morning is about food. That's a relevant subject for most of us. The two biggest sellers in any bookstore, according to Andy Rooney, are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell us how to prepare the food and the diet books tell us how not to eat any of it.
The gospel also refers to food – eternal food, the bread of all life.
A poll was taken: church goers were asked questions about their devotional practices. One of the questions asked was: "When do you feel most a sense of being at worship with God?" More than 80 percent of those surveyed said they most felt a sense of worship during the celebration of the Mass, especially receiving the Eucharist. There is something about taking the bread and the cup that lifts many of us to a higher plane, but what is it?
There is a part of each of us, I suggest, that knows we are unworthy to take the bread and the cup. Perhaps, it is that very knowledge that stirs us. We may not understand what Jesus really meant when he said that we could not share in his kingdom if his body were not broken and his blood shed, but we know that whatever it means we are not worthy of it. And thus when we take the bread and the cup, we sense grace: God's unmerited love for us, sinners one and all. That touches us deep down where we really live.
PERHAPS, ALSO, IT IS BECAUSE WHEN WE TAKE THE BREAD AND THE CUP WE DO IT AS HIS FAMILY. HE ALLOWS US TO REACH OUT AND TOUCH ONE ANOTHER. I used to do a retreat with a priest and he used to end the weekend by saying, “Let us not say good-bye but so long until we meet again in the Eucharist.”

William Barclay says Admiral Nelson was buried in St Paul's Cathedral; a party of his sailors carried his body high into the cathedral. His coffin was draped with a magnificent Union Jack. Later they carried his body to the graveside. One who saw the scene writes, "With reverence and with efficiency they lowered the body of the world's greatest admiral into its tomb. Then as though answering to a sharp order from the quarter deck, they all seized the Union Jack with which the coffin had been covered and tore it to fragments, and each took his souvenir of the illustrious dead." All their lives that little bit of colored cloth would speak to them of the admiral they had loved. "I've got a piece of him," they said, "and I'll never forget him."

In a similar sense, when we leave here this morning, each of us will take with us a part of Christ with us.

Of course, theologically we realize that it is not we who are able to reach out to him. Rather, it is he who reaches down to us. The "Eu" in Eucharist, means "good," and "charis" is the root of our English word "caress." The Lord's Supper is the "good caress." In this sacrament God comes to us spiritually and physically, touches us and says, "I love you."

Jesus says clearly, “I am the One you seek;” if you have sinned, I will absolve you, if you are sick, I will cure you, if you have failed – I will help you up, if you are lonely- I will give you my hand.” Too many times: we seek the wrong food, the wrong path the wrong prayer. Many, if not most of us, equate the degree success to the direct proportion of acquired possessions and wealth. So the person who works hard all of his or her life, to afford the best of everything, is seen as a success by the standards of our society. They win. But all this passes away too quickly; Michel Jackson is just one reminder; you have your own examples I am sure.

The irony is that by the time that they can enjoy the results of their hard work, they are too old, or too infirm, or too dead.
In a world obsessed with food and wealth, Jesus gives us the bread that is eternal, and that is priceless in any language or currency exchange.

The miracle story probably reflects an actual incident in his life. However, it also is aimed at those members of the community who, because they would not hear, could not speak about the work of Jesus. Not only could they not hear, they could not see who he really was, this is a recurrent theme in Mark.

Until the last week of his life, Jesus generally kept out of the spotlight. Whenever he felt that his miracles were attracting too much attention, he moved on, quickly. More than once he asked those cured to keep their healing a secret.

But then he comes to a town where the people want something from him. Mark doesn’t say whether Jesus was planning on doing any works of healing. But his reputation had spread even to this distant place. When he arrives, people are waiting for him. Think about it; if you heard of someone who heals - would you not travel there - take the chance? It could be true. I’m going was the recurrent thought here. What have I got to lose?

However, OUR FAITH SHOULDN'T RELY ON MIRACLES. If it did, I suspect we would be in some other place. We've already noted over the past few weeks that Jesus warned against basing faith on signs and miracles. No one questions God's ability to perform miracles. God created everything that is. God can do anything. But, if I give a glowing testimony of how God cured a person of cancer, (and I have seen that) what does it say to the one who is who has three young children and dies? After all he/she is just as deserving, but even through the torrent of prayers and desperate pleas they are not physically healed. That's the hard side of miracles. We, and all the theologians in the world, do not have the answer why this is so; that is in God’s domain alone.

And, it might sober al of us a little to recognize that all miracles are temporary. Jesus brought his friend Lazarus back from the dead, but eventually Lazarus died. Otherwise he would still be with us. I think, if we had our way, none of us would die or ever face real hardship. But that's not the reality of the biology in which we all live.

Even if we do experience a miracle, it is only temporary. The mortality rate in this world is still 100%. Our faith will eventually fail us if it is built on signs and miracles alone. That is why Jesus cuts to the chase here; can he heal? You bet. But is that the center? No, he says as much in Mark.

Jesus cured to demonstrate that the new age, the new era; the new rule had begun in him. These were real physical cures, but also they were meant to be signs (external expressions of internal realities) of a deeper cure. For this reason, we can, centuries later, see these physical cures as pointers to us of Jesus’ compassionate desire and effective power to heal us in our inner, core being.

AUTHENTIC FAITH IS BASED ON GOD'S LOVE AND GOD'S PROMISES. It is a love that pulls us into eternity if we let it. However, Jesus was both divine and human, and the human side is clearly torn here. He simply could not bypass suffering. If confronted with human need, he responded.
God loves us regardless of our circumstances. We cannot explain the great disparities that people experience in this life, but we know these disparities are not a reflection of how much God loves us.

Marks says, a group of friends brought to Jesus a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and asked him to lay his hand upon him and heal him. This man who could neither hear nor speak but had something far more valuable than either hearing or voice, he had friends and those friends brought him to Jesus. That is the core message of this gospel; although it centers on healing – it is about coming to Jesus with our needs and bringing our friends.

This is one of those Gospels that force us to confront an issue that is uncomfortable, divorce. However, we must look into the context in which Jesus is living in his own society. The Pharisees, who placed so much emphasis on lesser things, treated a divorce as they would an argument over burned breakfast toast. They could just about allege anything against a female, especially adultery and a divorce was easily granted. The fall in society was swift for the female.

We still see that mindset in the struggle for women’s rights in the Middle East, where, in many areas, woman are still treated as property. And if we move to the Congo where women are raped in “the spoils of war,” we can see where Jesus is coming from.

One woman says, “I was forced to open my wrap for someone other than my husband. He reduced me to nothing,” is the way the victims put it, knowing that their husbands, children, and the entire village are aware of what happened. “In our custom, a man will refuse to take back a woman who has had relations with another man, even if it was a case of rape. It’s considered an act of infidelity.” Many of these rape victims are repudiated by their husbands, in a society where an unmarried woman is relegated to the bottom of the social ladder.

This is what Jesus rails about. He takes a hard line about divorce and the Church follows his lead today. In fact Henry the VII separated from the Roman Catholic Church because they would not grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. So this very passage of Scripture has caused a great deal of controversy as it travels though time to meet us here again tonight to ruffle some more feathers.

Current statics suggest, the normal lifestyle of American young adults is to live together for a period of time in a type of informal trial marriage.

These same stats say these relationships frequently do not endure. Couples also enter into their first marriage at an older age than in the past. And a growing percentage of committed couples have decided to live in a common-law relationship rather than get married. This is particularly true among some elderly who fear reduction in government support payments. Other estimates say that "Probably, 40 or possibly even 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce if current trends continue.”

So what do all these complexities have to do with us – with marriage today? Since all of us our bound by family or a friendship – it has a good deal to do with us. We are all affected or touched, in some way, by divorce at some point in life.

In Jesus' time, marriage and divorce were not just about the man and the woman. They were about two families representing many generations, property, honor, and status. Divorce was not just an individual event; it was a risky break of confidence that could lead to family feuds, shame, and hardship for numerous people. The hardness of heart Jesus speaks of seems not only to point to the potential suffering of the woman, who must return in shame to her family of origin; but it also points to the suffering of two entire families and the greater community.

For those of us today who have lived through the pain of divorce, whether our own or others', this ancient understanding of marriage and divorce seems to ring more true than we might think at first. Even today, marriage and divorce affect many more that just those who sign the forms and enter or dissolve the legal contracts. They often affect our parents, our friends, and siblings, who wrestle with the part they played or failed to play in a marriage that didn't work; and they certainly impact our children as their schedules and lives must be forever altered.

Of course, the reality is that there will continue to be divorce. And it will be painful. No contract, prenuptial agreement, or any other carefully crafted parting of the ways can get us off that hook.

All of us married or not, are called to pray for and support our brothers and sisters who are married, as well as those who are divorced or are living in a difficult situation. Jesus provides no direct answers for us, except that he implies that each of us may be God’s means of grace for those who need it most. What God calls us to do, God provides the grace we need to do it.

An Insurance salesman visited a woman who had recently been widowed. For the last 35 years she and her late husband sacrificed much in order to pay the premiums on his insurance policy. Her husband often told her how determined he was to provide for her should something happen to him; and so here I am said the insurance agent; “I have your check for $500,00 dollars.” The widow tearfully accepted the check. She wiped her eyes and said, “but nothing can replace my wonderful husband who left me this money, but I can tell you this; I would give half of it up, to just to have him back”.

The Scriptures today tell of widows, but we should note that the stories are much deeper than they appear on the surface. One thing, which may escape us today, did not escape the original audience. The widow is a symbol. In a society that did not have, annuities, insurance and social security; to lose ones husband was to lose one’s livelihood, and to become marginalized in society. They are at the mercy of economic exploiters. Thus those who devour a widow’s savings as Jesus put it; deserve the harshest of judgments. Another thing we might note is that the gospel story is not about virtue. It is about a generous widow. After all, the widow receives no reward. Jesus does not directly praise her. But more importantly, he notices her. Jesus does not take in the high and mighty that everyone else notices; he picks out someone whom everyone else overlooks. He notices her quiet act of fidelity, kindness and generosity, so much so that he comments on it.
That is where we step off this morning. Jesus notices. Our small deeds are observed, cherished, celebrated and remembered. No one else may know them or comment on them, but Jesus notices.

A couple, newly weds, were traveling up a country road, when one of those sudden cloud burst storms fell upon them. The road was washing out and becoming a mud pit. Unable to go any further the couple got out of their car and trudged to a nearby farmhouse. They had seen a light in the window. When they reached the farmhouse they were met at the door by an elderly couple carrying a kerosene lamp; they had lost electricity in the storm as well. The elderly couple had been watching them struggling with their car on the muddy road. Meeting them at the door the young man explained their predicament. He pleaded, “Could you please put us up until morning? Any place; on the floor would be fine.” And as he was speaking the young bride looked at her husband. The elderly couple also exchanged glances. “By all means you can stay here” the elderly man said. “You can have our guest room.” So they used the guest room that night. They got up very early the next morning and called Triple A on their cell phone. The storm had broken and the road was passable. The groom left a $20 dollar bill on the dresser with a note of thanks. They both came quietly out of the bedroom, and there sleeping on the couch was the husband, and crumpled up in a chair was his wife. It was then that the young couple realized that the generous couple had no guestroom. They have given freely to strangers. While the rest of the country was watching, Letterman, or Leno the night before, Jesus was watching this elderly couple and two newly weds.

This is a gospel of noticing, there probably will never be a parade in our honor in the canyon of hero’s, but Jesus will notice the small things you and I do for others along our way. When you call a friend whose husband has walked out her; Jesus notices. When you tend to a sick child at two in the morning; Jesus notices. When you say hello to someone everyone else ignores; Jesus notices. When you say yes, when you really want to say no, He notices. When you give someone on the street money, no praise, no hushed tones of holy generosity; Jesus notices. When you forgive someone who has hurt you badly; He notices. To some it up; this gospel contains three simple truths; Number One; we count, Number two; what we do counts; Number three, which is the greatest of all: Jesus notices.

If we look at the Sacramentary; you can see ribbons, place marks. This is the order of the Mass; the mass is celebrated the same way around the world because of these markers. In each Mass, the celebrant moves around the book to complete the Mass. The markers by themselves are just random pieces of material; they can tear easily and mean nothing. However, all pulled together, they point to the richness of our Mass and the strength of our tradition.

In the reading we heard a lot of names; they all come from different places in the book. They are markers that in themselves mean nothing to us in, 2009. But they all point to John, who heralds the One who is to come.

John, then, is a bridge from the old to the new, preparing the way for Jesus’ first coming into the world as its savior.

An old story tells of a little boy playing hide-and-seek with his friends. For some unknown reason they stop playing while he was hiding. He waited and waited. He began to cry. His old grandfather came out of the house to see what was troubling him and to comfort him. The grandfather said, "Do not cry, my child, because the boys did not come to find you.

Perhaps, you can learn from this disappointment. All of life is like a game between God and his children, only it is God who is weeping, for His children are not playing the game fairly. God is waiting to be found, and the children have gone off in search of other things." This is of what Advent speaks. It is another reminder that too often we are in search of other things, and God is minimized in our lives. That is until we need him.

John the Baptist is the voice crying out in the wilderness. How appropriate such a view is for this second Sunday of Advent, for without Christ the world is winter world, a world without light, without warmth, without hope.

The words of John are poetic and beautiful. They are certainly a rich metaphor for life and our daily struggles whatever they are. He says there will come a time when “Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. How many valleys or mountains have you encountered? Sickness, untimely deaths, job loss, family issues? “The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.” How many crooked roads have you traveled, roads that you would avoid if you could do a do over? Roads that you wish were straight; roads that are safe? John says – do not worry, repent;“all … [will] see the salvation of God.” Salvation is what Christmas is all about.

In Kansas City, there is a tradition simply known as the “Secret Santa.” Every Christmas, this “Secret Santa” seeks out people who are down and out, and he quietly slips them an envelope with a crisp, brand new $100 bill slipped inside.

A few years ago, someone tracked down this “Secret Santa” and asked him, “Why do you do this?” The man replied how life had blessed him with an extremely successful business venture. But this was not always the case. In 1971 he was an out of work salesman who was reduced to living out of his car. One morning he had not eaten for two days. He was incredibly hungry, so hungry that he walked into a diner in Houston, Mississippi to order breakfast with no intent of paying for it. He couldn’t! He had no money, but he was so hungry.

As he hungrily ate his breakfast, he wondered how he was going to pay for this meal, or how he was going to get out of paying for this meal. When the check came, he fumbled around in his pockets pretending to have lost his wallet. The owner of the diner had already sized him up and knew he didn’t have the money.

The owner came around the counter, approached the man, and bent down as if to pick up something. The owner said to the man, “Well, looks like you dropped this $20 bill.” Now he had enough to pay for breakfast and a little more to keep for the road. He never forgot this totally undeserved act of generosity and goodness. He now gives to others as someone once gave to him. This man is but one ribbon in the book of life, we are called to be others. Advent calls us yet again to preach a sermon with our lives. This Advent we need to reflect on were we have been and where we are headed.

In Luke we look back at a key day of the Life of Jesus. It was the day the small door leading to the carpenter’s shop closed for the last time. The meek and lowly Carpenter headed toward the Jordan; as he arrived, he probably saw that group of scowling Pharisees standing off to the side after the John called them, “vipers.”

John's is a story of such great significance that we hear parts of it every year -- twice, sometimes three times. If you have ever done any Biblical studies, you noted that all of the stories in the Bible do not appear in all of the Gospels.

Each community of writers recorded that which they thought were significant events. This is why we must look closely at John and Jesus here. The entire universe came together in that River, on that day; it was an event so big, the four gospels tell the story. Perhaps, they tell it a bit differently, but a core truth emerges: Jesus is God’s chosen one, God’s beloved son. A voice from heaven declares, “You are my beloved.”

John is one on my Biblical favorites; he is out there in the desert – in his own Woodstock. He is drawing crowds who are listening to what he has to say; some think he might be the Messiah. However, in the presence of Jesus, John sees his own sinfulness. All the gospels agree that Jesus’ public ministry begins with this open and public baptism in the Jordan River.

What was it like to be there? We all have been at events that completely consume us while we are in the moment. We live in that glow, whether it is from a concert or a good play for days. However, when we describe it to friends, our description never quite captures the electricity that was in the air. You just had to be there.

As he is baptized, listen. What do you hear? Do you hear the soft flutter of God’s Spirit settling on his shoulders? Everyone there saw it – felt it. And then - they heard it: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

What has this Son done to merit such approval? He hasn’t taught. He hasn’t triumphed over Satan. He hasn’t preached a single sermon, cast out a demon, healed one sick person nor made a single disciple. He just waded out into the middle of the Jordan and allowed Himself to be immersed. And the heavens roared approval! Baptism is very important!

I have been ordained almost 14 years now and have baptized hundreds of children. Sometimes Baptisms are noisy, sometimes distracting, but there is one point that it always comes together, and amazingly it is at the same point in which Jesus meets John; it is in the Baptism itself – the pouring of the water. Those of you who are here with your children that I have baptized, know that this is true. In every single case when I have poured the water, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Sprit a certain Peace exists. In the hundreds of babies baptized, not one has cried at that moment. And you think they would; after all, they are held out over the font and angled down; It cannot be that comfortable. However, as the water is poured many look beyond all of us – or seemingly through us. I like to believe and I tell that the parents that is their last look back at God on this side of heaven.

I think that is what happened to Jesus – he saw God, and from that moment in that River – the New Age began.

But even with the glory of that moment in the Jordan River, Some missed him. Some miss him still. We expect God to speak through peace, but sometimes he speaks through pain. We think God talks through the church, but he also talks through the lost. We look for the answer in our own faith, but he’s been known to speak through the other faiths as well. We think we hear him in the sunrise, but he is also heard in the darkness. We listen for him in triumph, but he speaks even more distinctly through tragedy.

Like it or not we live in a time of great uncertainty. Things that seemed so sure and solid have turned out to be much more fragile than we thought, and things which we though could never fail have crumbled and fallen. We’re not so sure just what’s durable and dependable anymore, and we feel like our present and our future is on such thin ice, it could all fall through at any time.

The only thing that stands though time and always has, in this world through the next, is our faith, a faith that was given as a gift to us by those who loved us. They loved us so much that they carried us to a font like this and shared their faith. So let us not forget that we too looked back and once saw the face of God – although I suspect we have forgotten what he looks like. So this year we have yet another chance – our prayer must be: – “Oh God let me too hear your voice clearly.”

A woman was at work when she received a phone call that her 5 year old was very sick. She left her work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some Tylenol. When returning to her car, she found that she had locked her keys in the car. She was in a hurry to get home; she didn't know what to do, so she called home and told the baby sitter what had happened. The baby sitter suggested: "You might find a coat hanger and use that to open the door." The woman looked around and found an old rusty coat hanger in a trash can by dry cleaners.

Then she looked at the hanger and said, "I don't know how to use you. – but I will try" She also said a hasty prayer to God for help. Within five minutes an old rusty car pulled up with a dirty, greasy, bearded man, who was wearing an old biker skull rag on his head. The woman thought, "Great God. This is what you send ?" But, she was desperate, and she was also very thankful. The man got out of his car and asked her if he could help. She said "Yes, my daughter is very sick......I stopped to get her some medication and I locked my keys in my car, I must get home. Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car." He said, "SURE". He walked over to the car, and in less than one minute the car was opened. She hugged the man and through her tears she said, "THANK YOU SO MUCH..... You are a very nice and kind man."
He replied, "Lady, I am not a nice man, see, I just got out of prison today. I was in prison for car theft and have only been out for about an hour." The woman hugged the man again gave him $20 - and with sobbing tears cried out loud....."THANK YOU, GOD, FOR SENDING ME A PROFESSIONAL!!!!"

This is the opposite of what she expected – but it was certainly what she needed. This is exactly what is happening with the people to whom Jesus is addressing in what is known as Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Jesus was a master at keeping his listeners off-balance. He always said the unexpected. He praised people others despised. He lifted up those others put down. Jesus comes down with the twelve and stands on a stretch of level ground. The language here suggests that Jesus “came down” on a “level” stretch of ground. He is with them – eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, and breath to breath. He has been there or is going there and wants to make this very clear.

He is speaking to Gentile converts who are struggling to maintain their faith. And, He says – "Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.” He offers hope and a future that they cannot see. They are embraced by poverty, hunger, despair, and religious persecution; it kills, and it maims. We, on the other hand are so far way from the hill, in way ways. How do we hear this message today, where most of us have not missed too many meals?

If we are hungry it is because we were running from one place to another and have forgotten to eat. We live in a world where the reason for not staying in touch with our families is because they do not have an e-mail address. A world where we call our children’s cell phone to tell them dinner is ready. And, then they text us back and ask “What are we having?” It is becoming a world where using real money, instead of a credit or a debit card is becoming a hassle. A world where we are technologically connected so much so that when we disconnect from the Internet, we get this awful feeling that we have just “pulled the plug on a loved one.” Funny – ironic and all true. So back to my question.

How do we relate with the Gospel? Are we connected to the simplicity of the hillside on which he speaks?

I suggest yes; we share the same problems as in those gathered, perhaps differently – but we are of the same human nature. There are many readings of Matthew’s Beatitudes and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain – but the bottom line, in both, pulls us back to the beginning story of the stranded woman.

To understand this connection we first must realize that God did not create us to live in poverty, to be unhappy and miserable, or to live in rejection. Rather God comes to us in Jesus. And where is Christ to be found? Among those who have received life’s cruelest blows and in those who are in trouble; he is in Haiti now – he we be someplace else tomorrow. Have you ever been hungry? We all have been hungry, hungry for relationships that are beyond repair, for a love that has died or is dying, for a just one more moment, another second, to speak one final word to a loved one who is gone - but not let go. Yes, Jesus always meets us where we are and twists our reality in an attempt to let us peak at his. Sometimes we understand the message, often times we do not.

We have heard this Gospel countless times before. And, in many ways – although we see the compassion of God, it is hard in our own humanness to see why the son was welcomed home with such open arms, and the son who stayed loyal was left wondering - what happened.
Since we have heard it so often, we do not question the official line: the prodigal son represents us – and God represents the welcoming father. While this may be one reading, it is good that we should again look at the story in Lent. As is so often with anything thing that Jesus says - we must stop re-listen, reread, re-think and unfold that which lies between the lines and catches us.
Of course as we all know, parables are meant to teach; they are didactic literature. The late Henri Nouwen a wonderful, holy, priest and spiritual writer, in our own time, has written many books – but one that is relevant to our reading this morning, is called The Return of the Prodigal Son. His work is based on Rembrandt’s painting of the same name. Nouwen was so taken by the painting that he spent hours and hours in front of the original, which still hangs in St. Catherine the Great’s Hermitage, St Petersburg Russia.

In those many hours and days (all times) that Nouwen spent immersed and mesmerized before the painting in person as well as in his mind later on, he was moved by the figures in Rembrandt’s masterpiece – which depicts the loving father - his hands wrapped around the shoulders of the returning son, who is dirty, seemingly broken, and on his knees. The work also depicts the brother who stands apart from both his father and his lost brother. He is not happy at all. He appears present but distant. There are two others in Rembrandt’s work as well; they appear to be bystanders. Nouwen, came away with an entirely different take on the Prodigal Son after spending so much time with Rembrandt’s.

     He suggests that we are not only represented in the broken son before the father seeking forgiveness – but that at times throughout our lives we are represented in all the figures in the painting. If you have forgiven someone you love – who has wounded you badly– then you are represented by the forgiving father. If you have ever been jealous or envious of another’s place that should have gone, in your view, to you, perhaps, a job, a promotion, an inheritance, good health, a successful marriage, children, then you stand in for the unhappy son. If you have ever been sorry beyond words, in something that you have done or omitted – then you are on your knees before the father.
     If you have not become involved in a issue that you should have – or thought it was someone else’s job, when underneath you knew – then perhaps you are represented in the complacent onlookers. Yes, I suggest, we have all been there. We have played all the parts not only in the painting – but in the parable itself.
    However, we might also say – I could never be the lost son. I say – we are all the time, because, like the son, we are always searching for the greener grass. We demand it all now; we don’t have a moment to spare – give us our inheritance; dam the torpedoes and dump the incumbents seems to be the rallying cry these days.
       We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when they are: Sponge Bob and Curious George – drives us crazy. After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with – the late nights, driving and texting, new boyfriends and girlfriends every few weeks; and – it’s always those that are not on our check list that they like best.
     Then we say we will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage. Then we tell ourselves that our life will be more complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, or when we get a nicer car, when we are able to go on a more upscale vacation, buy a shore house or when we retire. The truth is there's no better time to be where you are than right now; this is the message of the parable. This is how it reaches through time to where we are at this moment and tells us to get off our knees and live life in the fullness of the grace that God offers all of us. Our lives will always be filled with challenges and many perspectives from which to step off in our own painting.
     So we need to regroup and reassess now and then. Lent is a perfect time to meet God where we are right now.
It does not matter who we are – the father, the prodigal, the angry brother or the on- lookers. God calls us to continuing conversation - now. However, I guess we could wait until the house is paid off, or the kids leave; until the summer, the fall, Christmas – or even next Lent. But then – we will be further from God and away from home – too long. But God being God always leaves us the freedom to go or to stay.

He came to Simon Peter, who asked him, “Master, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing, you do not understand now [Peter], but you will understand later.” It seems that there is a great deal about our faith that we don’t understand now but will understand later. In the midst of personal turmoil or even a devastating loss that we cannot understand, God asks us to trust him just as he asked those at that last supper to trust him.
Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, "Things aren't always what they seem – trust me".

What does it mean to know the soul of another? In those whom we have loved that have died, I suggest, it is their essence that moves beyond this life, after their human body dies, It is that part that we feel, but can no longer physically touch in same ways that we did in the past.

Tonight we share that gift and are asked to take a long and loving look into the eyes of the one who washes our feet, the one who knows our deepest poverty, our sins, our pain; the one who gave his life to ransom the likes of us; the one who poured out his blood to convince of us his love. He bled for us, he took the spear for us, the nails he felt for us, and the sign we share tonight what he left for us. And all he asks is our faithfulness and trust. Why trust? You already know.

The one, who is exalted above all, bends tonight to wash our feet. We must do the same. The hard message in this text is not that we will have to give; it is that, but before we have anything to give, we must receive from Jesus. Jesus did not wash the feet of only one disciple; he washed the feet of all of them. He did not wash Peter's feet alone and then say, "All right, you have the idea. Now Peter, you do that to James, and James to John." No, each disciple was obliged to put his feet in the basin, to feel the water between his toes, to experience the hands of Jesus, his teacher and Lord, rubbing away the dirt and drying his ankles with a towel. "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me" (John 13:8).

The same is true of all Christians. The church has no wisdom but God's, no mercy but Christ's, no insight but the Spirit's. Unless we stretch out our dirty feet toward the basin of Jesus' grace and allow ourselves to receive from him, we have no gifts to give.

Someday, for all of us, our own last supper will come. There will be no second chance to correct our errors. The clock that is ticking away the moments of our lives does not care about winners and losers. It does not care about who succeeds or who fails. It does not care about excuses, fairness or equality. The only essential issue is how we washed the feet of others. We still have all the time we need. We still have lots of chances - lots of opportunities - lots of years to show what we can do. For most of us, there will be a tomorrow, a next week, a next month, a next year and maybe another Easter.

But unless we develop a sense of urgency, those brief windows of time will be sadly wasted, as were the weeks and months and years before them.

I have not invited you here tonight, Jesus has. He has spotted you, forgiven your sins, and he invites you to feel his divine embrace, and, to, perhaps, experience the Eucharist for the first time. And no matter how difficult this Easter may be – trust him. Because with God, things are never as they seem.

                                                                              2nd Sunday of Easter
                                                   Honest Doubt Is Better Than Dishonest Faith Anytime

     On the evening of that first day of the week when the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst; he showed them his hands and his side. Thomas was not with them. He said to them later, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." In many ways, we are all like Thomas. We want to see first; then we believe. There is a great painting by Caravaggio called the Doubting Thomas. (1602-1603.) I will put the link on the web page for those who might be interested.

How many times have we said: this I’ve got to see? Say what? No way? You’ve got to be kidding? Doubt shows itself again and again. Thomas tells us in this Gospel that our faith does not forbid questions. In many ways, the contemporary sexual scandal of the church was allowed to happen because no one asked any questions. From the very beginning Thomas asks. And, one thing to note very carefully is that Jesus does not rebuke him for his doubt, instead he challenges him.

Touch my wounds, feel my skin; Tom it’s me. Doubt is the act of questioning, the expression of uncertainty. Doubt is the humility of a mind asking real questions seeking real solutions. For all the answers we have, rather significant questions still remain. Lord why after all my prayers did you take my husband, my wife, my only son, my daughter? Why am I sick? What really happens when we die? These are real questions that bring us to the edge of faith everyday, somewhere.

Real doubt, coming from a reverence for truth, is from God; we must never forget this. God is in every question. He does not forbid the questions. Instead, he reaches beyond our human understanding and asks us to trust him, to believe in that which we cannot see.

Honest doubt is better than dishonest faith anytime. When Thomas came to faith, he came completely. For a Jew (Thomas) to call another human, "my Lord and my God" would be incredible. It would be blasphemy and punishable by death. After all, it was the same words, in a manner of speaking, which got Jesus in trouble in the first place.

Faith can change the direction of an entire life, but it never removes the questions. For most of us, I suspect, life’s pain simply catches us off guard: you are told your services are no longer needed, as a security guard shows up at your desk to escort you from the building. You ask - Why me God? I have always done my job; I have been faithful. There are no answers, only silence. Doubt overtakes us sometime because of the suffering that screams in our ears as we hear in the Middle East another Jersey kid barely out of his teens - falls. No time left for him to love, to marry, to have children, to have a life. “Why?" We ask. For answers we need to look back to last Sunday as the sun came up. It is in that glory-filled moment that gives us hope and helps us through the never-ending doubt of life, through the difficult questions with no answers on this side of heaven. The truth of Easter is that all of humanity is blessed with a God who defies the human locks of logic, grief, fear and the doubt of all the Thomas’s put together.

It is an Easter God who blesses us, and then sends us out fresh and filled with hope, back into a broken world. So like Thomas, it is OK to doubt but to believe in a God that grounds and surrounds our world.

It is very important to see that Jesus didn't wait for the disciples to figure out that they didn't need to be afraid any more and unlock the doors. He didn't wait for Thomas to stop doubting. He didn't wait for any of them to do anything different, or to be anything different; he loved them for who they were doubts and all. The Indian poet Tagore writes, “the faith waiting in the heart of a seed promises a miracle of life which it cannot prove,'' and so it is with us. Faith is not a static thing that comes once to us - only to lie dormant until we need it. It must be nurtured and sustained with belief everyday.

6th Sunday of Easter
"I'll Love You Forever, I'll Like You For Always For All Eternity My Children You Will Be.

The Gospel passage that we heard is rich in its message. Jesus will be leaving his disciples alone, and he is trying to prepare them for his departure and the decent of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. While this is certainly one of the core messages, I would like to explore Jesus’ concept of peace. He says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives,” but as I do.” His peace, in many ways, grounds and surrounds his unconditional love for humanity.

The peace that he offers to world has never been truly experienced. At any given moment there are more than 30 known major conflicts around the world; each day people are killed, maimed and tortured in the name of some aggressor or cause. And then of course there are the environmental and natural calamities. On a smaller scale, there are problems on the streets and in some in our own families. How do we then experience this Peace? I do not think the peace of which he refers is found on this side of heaven. The closest we can come, I suggest, is in parental love, the unconditional love for a child.
     On this day we pause and honor all mothers; many who personify the love of Jesus; they exude a peace that only a mother can. Many like Jesus have left their fingerprint all over our lives. They are birth mothers, adopted mothers, grandmothers, god mothers, mothers in law and those who we consider to be our mothers.
     There is a children’s book titled, I Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. This is one of those books that cross over with a universal message of peace and of love. The book is about a little boy and his mother; its theme is that whatever the little boy does his mother loves him. I suggest it breaks through to our gospel this morning; it examples the peace and love that Jesus is trying to explain to his apostles that they don’t quite get.
   It begins with a mother holding her new baby. She rocks him and sings a little song: I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, My baby you'll be. As the years go by, of course, the baby grows. He becomes a toddler, and gets into everything; and his mother says: This kid is driving me CRAZY! But at night she still sings him their special song: I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, My baby you'll be.
    The baby grows some more; he is nine years old, never wants to take a bath, and says bad words when his grandma visits. His mother feels like selling him to the Zoo. But still, at night, she sings their song: I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, My baby you'll be.
   The boy becomes a teenager, and, of course, that's the worst! He has strange friends and he wears strange clothes, and he listens to strange music, and has gotten a tattoo. His mother feels like she lives in a Zoo! But guess what? At night, when he is safely asleep, she still sings to him: I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, My baby you'll be.
    Finally, the boy is all grown up and moves into his own house. But sometimes, on dark nights, the mother drives across town to his house, creeps into his house, and sings--well, you know what she sings: I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, My baby you'll be.
    At last, the mother is old and sick. She sings to her boy, but she isn't able to finish the song. Her son, however, has learned his lesson well. He knows what to do. Holding his mother close, he rocks her in his arms, and sings to her: I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, My Mommy you'll be.
    And when he returns home that night, he stands for a long time at the top of the stairs. Then, going into the room where his own new baby daughter is sleeping, he takes her in his arms and sings: I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, My baby you'll be.

The cycle of love between parent and child begins again. This is what Jesus is saying to his disciples; you must now do what I have done for you. He also says I am sending help, the Advocate, the Sprit,

The love of mother to child and of child to mother pales to God’s love for us. But, in many ways, we will come as close as possible in this life to feeling God’s love and peace in parental love. He says, “My peace I give to you” We, the entire world, must respond, “It is your peace - we take Lord.”

And so in the midst of honoring our mothers: those who are seated next to us, those who are sick, those at a distance from us, and those who are with God looking down on us this day. God says, through them wherever they are; "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always for all eternity my children you will be. May my peace also be yours” Happy Mother’s Day.

A man was driving home from work one day when he saw a group of young children selling lemonade on a corner near his home. The kids had posted the typical sign over their lemonade stand: "Lemonade - 10 cents." He pulled over to the curb to buy a cup and to give his support to the children's financial effort.
A young boy approached his car and the man placed his order for one cup of lemonade and he gave the boy a quarter. After much deliberation, the children determined that the man had some change coming and finally came up with the correct amount. The boy returned with the change with the man's cup of lemonade. However, he just stood there by the car and stared at the man as he enjoyed his fresh lemonade. Finally, the boy asked the man if he were finished. "Just about," the man said, "but why?" The little boy said, "That's the only cup we have, and we need it back to stay in business." It's difficult to operate a lemonade business if you have only one cup!

But you know this is something of a parable for what Jesus saw in the religious leaders of His day. When it came to love, they had only one cup. They taught people to love, but it was very restricted, limited, narrow, conditional love that they lived out themselves, and called for from their followers. "Love those who look like you and act like you and dress like you and talk like you and eat like you and think like you and shun everybody else." Love only those we have admitted into our inner circle and see everybody else as the enemy, the adversary, the outcast.

But then along came Jesus with a different idea and a different approach. He loved everybody. He accepted everybody. He included everybody. He reached out graciously and intentionally to those who were down on their luck and to those who were hurting; to those who were poor and needy, to those who were in trouble, to those who were sick or afflicted, to those who were labeled as outcasts and tenderly, He drew them into the circle of love. When it came to love, He had lots of cups to share.

Now, we might not have too much sympathy for this woman. After all, she was "a woman of the city . . . a sinner." You could tell it by the way she dressed; by the way she made herself up, perhaps by her mannerisms. She was not fit company for decent folks. Her place was on the streets, not in the house of a Pharisee. Yet here she was kneeling at the feet of Jesus, weeping, and watering his feet with her tears and using her long hair to wipe them dry. Kissing his feet and anointing them with ointment. Altogether it was quite a pathetic display of emotion.

If Jesus really were a prophet, thought the Pharisee who was playing host to him that day, he would realize what kind of woman this was, and he wouldn't even allow her to come near him much less let her kiss his feet. But Jesus made no effort to stop the woman “even though he knew his host disapproved. What's going on here? Why is Jesus allowing this quite spectacular show of remorse and affection?

PERHAPS, FIRST OF ALL, IT'S BECAUSE ONLY JESUS COULD SEE THIS WOMAN'S HEART. Only he knew what she was really feeling. Only he knew what had brought her to this place.

In his book, HEALING FOR DAMAGED EMOTIONS, David Seamonds deals with people who have scars that nobody else can see. He uses the analogy of those beautiful giant sequoia and redwood trees in the far western part of our country: "In most of the parks," he says , "the naturalists can show you a cross section of a great tree they have cut, and point out that the rings of the tree reveal the developmental history, year by year. Here's a ring that represents a year when there was a terrible drought. Here are a couple of rings from years when there was too much rain. Here's where the tree was struck by lightning. Here are some normal years of growth. This ring shows a forest fire that almost destroyed the tree. Here's another of savage blight and disease. All of this lies embedded in the heart of the tree, representing the autobiography of its growth. "In the rings of our thoughts and emotions, the record is there; the memories are recorded, and all are alive. And they directly and deeply affect our concepts, our feelings, our relationships. They affect the way we look at life and God, at others and ourselves."

If we could look into the heart of this woman, we might not be so harsh in our judgment of her. Jesus also knew that acceptance changes lives.

THE CHURCH IS CALLED TO BE AN ACCEPTING COMMUNITY that is clear in this Gospel. We are not an exclusive club. We are not a representative sample of the best people in town who gather each week to congratulate one another on our virtues.

In the family of God the prodigal can always come home, thank God. The door is never locked. Jesus showed us the heart of God. Only Jesus could see this woman's heart. Only Jesus could see God's heart. And one thing more: ONLY JESUS CAN FORGIVE SINS.

We may not be a woman of the city, but there are sins that break our hearts as well. But there is one who sees into those broken hearts and HE cares, HE forgives, HE heals, and HE makes us whole if we let him in. It is that cup that he shares with all of us.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one that is familiar. The story certainly fits in with our own hurried culture. We are always in hurry, rushing here and there, and we miss the beggar all the time.

Jesus asks us time and time again to get close to the roadside, so close that we taste dust. (bike walk or run you seem more) But, our response to the beggar is anything but close up: it sometimes goes like this:

“I was hungry and you formed a humanities club to discuss it. I was imprisoned, but you just complained about the crime rate. I was naked, and you debated the morality of my appearance. I was sick and you thanked God for your health. I was homeless and you preached to me about the shelter of God's love. You seem so holy and so close to God; but I'm still hungry, lonely, cold and in pain.” So, does it matter?" You bet it does, and this is where we step off (this morning), into the heart of the Good Samaritan.

The lawyer, in the gospel, wanted to reach his goal, his desired finish line of obtaining "eternal life" by doing something, by achieving something, and so do we. The Good Samaritan parable demonstrates that we cannot do discipleship. We must be disciples.

Only when we become Christ's tangible messengers of faith, love and hope in this world, do we become truly alive on this side of heaven. Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "The greatest danger is that of losing one's own self can pass off as quietly as if it were nothing.”

I often hear people say and I DO: – “Ah – life was much simpler then…” I think this is where Kierkegaard is going. We all are in a state of come from and going too. This involves change as we move through life in its separate stages. However, the change, Jesus implies must be for a good, or as Kierkegaard says, we will lose our real selves along the way and that is a real loss to whom God wants us to always become more.

In our rush to where-ever it is we are off-too, we often miss God at the roadside, and we do not see the pieces of our- real essence fall off along the way; every other loss -- that of an arm, a leg, a spouse, even five dollars, -- we notice, but we don’t notice our own transformation, from whom we wanted to become, to whom we are. Jesus is saying stop, with a capital S. (for Samaritan).

There was once a monk in a small village in Russia who vanished every Friday morning for several hours. The devoted villagers boasted that during these hours their priest ascended to heaven to talk with God. A skeptical newcomer was determined to discover where the monk really went. So, one Friday morning the newcomer hid near the small church, and watched the priest rise, say his prayers and put on the clothes of a peasant. He saw him take an ax and go into the forest, chop down a tree and gather a large bundle of wood. Next he proceeded to a shack in the poorest section of the village in which lived an old woman and her sick son. He left them the wood, which was enough for the week. The monk then quietly returned to his own house. The story concludes that the newcomer stayed on in the village and became a disciple of the monk. And whenever he heard one of his fellow villagers say, "On Friday morning our monk ascends all the way to Heaven," the newcomer quietly adds, "if not higher." And that is what Jesus challenges us to do this morning to go from talking the talk to walking the walk ascending higher and higher as we move through life.

Luke is not concerned with telling us a story about two pregnant relatives who meet one last time before the birth of their babies. Luke provides a theology of God’s plan of salvation through Jesus. The two mothers to be are gathered in the praise of god for the work of God is doing in and through them. Mary and Elizabeth are two great women of scripture who listen to God’s voice.

The angel told an awestruck Zechariah that his child (John the Baptist) would "bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God." Zechariah protested, saying that he and his wife were too old, but the angel was telling the truth. Zechariah left the Temple unable to speak. Everything happened just as the angel said it would, Elizabeth became pregnant.

God might have chosen a younger, more energetic couple instead, but our God is full of surprises. God's way is not necessarily our way. Six months later that same angel, Gabriel pays a visit on a young girl," Perhaps, the most amazing thing about this encounter is that Mary believes without question. She simply replies, "I am the Lord's servant." Mary places all of her trust in God. In this scriptural text Mary becomes the great gift and model for the church.

Throughout history God has come to us through angels, dreams, visions and what I like to call “nudgings.” And, in many ways, these dreams and visions lead to great change.

A few years ago I was asked by the diocese to preach at several churches, recruiting deacons in churches where there were none. It was how I found myself at a Saturday evening Mass in a small parish not far from the Delaware River in a remote coroner of the Diocese of Metuchen. The church was small, built in the 1800’s; from the altar I could see Main Street out the front doors as I preached the homily. After the Mass, the pastor invited me out to dinner. Over dinner I asked him, “So then why did you become a priest?”

He said, “Do you really want to know?” I said “yes,” and he unfolded a glorious story.

He said, “When I was about seven my older brother Randy who was15 got sick. He had a blood disorder that was not curable then. He was seven years older and we really did not know each other all that well. We were not close. He had his own room. I slept in my mom and dad’s room. One day my mom came to me to tell me that my brother died and went to heaven. I remember feeling sad. Then my mother led me into Randy’s room and said, “This is your room now.” It was filled with all his things, things that I always envied. There were his bats, his baseballs; his gloves even his ice skates. I was happy to have the room, but I felt so bad and so guilty about feeling joyful. I went to sleep that night for the first time in my new room. I awakened suddenly about two in the morning, and realized that I was in my brother's bed. The house was quiet, and I was afraid.

It was then that I noticed a bright blue light in the corner of my brother’s room. It grew bigger and bigger and soon, my brother was standing in that light. He spoke to me, He said “I am in heaven, I have no more pain, I am happy, and this is a wonderful place. Then he said, “You did not take these things from me, pointing to his old “stuff” around the room; I am giving everything to you.” He said, “be happy,” and he was gone as quickly as he came.”

Whether it was a dream or a vision, I do not know. The young priest added, “From that day on I wanted to get to that place where my brother is, and help as many other people as I can to get there too.” That really is the story of Mary and Elizabeth. They are pointing that way through their children. In the end of our Gospel Mary sings, “The Magnificat”, the great New Testament song of liberation.

The good news of the Magnificat is that it is not too late to find the salvation of which Mary speaks.

We may not have a life changing dream or vision, but we still have time for a change of heart, a change that leads us to a spiritual awakening and a new way to move through life. Our prayer should also begin: My soul too, proclaims the greatness of the Lord.

Today’s parable is regarded by many as the greatest parable Jesus ever told. It is a parable that fits in well with one of the favorite themes of Luke, namely: that Jesus has come to seek and save the lost, the poor, the outcast and sinner. A priest-mentor that I had in college once told me that most people can identify with the Prodigal Son; we see ourselves as people who have come to our senses, as people, who, while we wander away from home every now and then have, in the last analysis, get it together, as people who are at last on the right track.

At different times in our lives we play all the parts, the prodigal, the father/mother, and the second son. Thankfully. God the father is the final overseer.

I have a small framed copy of Rembrandt’s painting of The Return of the Prodigal Son. The original hangs in Catherine the Great’s Hermitage, St. Petersburg Russia. In the depiction, although you can’t really see the boy’s face fully you cannot miss the fathers. Tears are glistening down his leathered cheeks. One arm holds the boy up so he won’t fall; the other holds the boy so close he will not doubt. The child may have been out of the house but never far from the father’s heart. He may have left the table, but he never left the family. Don’t miss the message here. You, and I, may be willing at times to stop being God’s child. But God is not willing to stop being our father.

But what about the second son, doesn’t he have a right to complain? I suggest he does according to what is logical in my world, but not in God’s. This is why, on some level, we will never understand the ways of God. His thoughts are not our thoughts and never will be.

Maybe, in the end, those we thought saved will be lost and those lost will be saved.

We are thinking; preserve the body; we buff it up. God’s thinking, save the soul. We dream of that pay raise; he dreams of raising the dead. We avoid pain and seek peace. God uses pain sometimes to bring us peace. We say, “I am going to live before I die, God says, “die so you can truly live.” We love what rusts; he loves what endures. We rejoice at our successes, he rejoices at our confessions and conversions. We shoe our children the Nike basketball stars, and we say be like them. God points to a crucified carpenter with bloody lips and a torn side and says; be like Him.”
He has a different agenda for us, his adoptive children.

Adoptive parents may understand this more than we biological parents. Biological parents know well the earnest longing to have a child. But in many case our cribs were filled easily. We decided it was time for a child and a child came. In fact in some cases the child came with no decision.

I have heard of unplanned pregnancies, but I have never heard of an unplanned adoption. That is why adoptive parents may understand, in a deeper way, God’s passion to adopt us. They know what it means to feel an empty space inside. They know what it means to hunt, to set out on a mission, and take responsibility for a child with an unknown past and a dubious future.

God sought us out, signed the papers and took us home. He will never turn away, and the doors to his house are never closed. I tell the parents of children I baptize: that they (their children) have to know from this day, they, can always come back to this table (the altar) no matter where they are in the world or what they have done. They are always welcome here.

We all need to be reminded from time to time that it is right to call God Holy; we speak the truth when we call Him king. But if we want to touch his heart, we need use the name He loves to hear and that is, Father. Wherever we are… or whatever we have done…. one arm holds us up so we won’t fall, and the other holds us so close that we will not doubt that he is in all of this with us. This is especially close us today as we remember the events of 9/11/2001.

Works Cited; Lucado, Max. The Great House of God. Word Publishing: London. 1997.

They were entering a village when they came upon a band of lepers. There were ten both Jews and Samaritans. It is amazing how misery cuts across social, religious and racial lines? "Jesus, Master," the lepers cried out, "Have mercy upon us." How could Jesus deny their request? This is why he had come. When he saw these lepers, he said to them, "Go show yourselves to a priest." The Old Testament required the cured leper to have his cure validated by the temple priest. Can you not see them jumping, and shouting, and praising God? You’ve felt it when a test came out negative for you or someone close to you. What a celebration they must have had. They must have been delirious with joy; the cancer is gone.

"Were not ten cleansed," asked Jesus? "Where are the [other] nine? Was no one found to return and give thanks but this foreigner?" And he said to that grateful Samaritan, "Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well." JESUS KNEW THAT THESE LEPERS WERE NOT COMPLETELY HEALED UNTIL THEY HAD LEARNED TO SAY "THANK YOU."

I once interviewed for a teaching position at a university some years ago; I didn’t get the fulltime teaching job and ended up 2nd on the list of final candidates. After I learned of the interview’s result, I bumped into another professor, a friend. I asked him if I should send the Chair of the department a “thank you for the interview” email. I wasn’t exactly feeling thankful at the time. He turned to me and said, “Where are the other nine?” I never forgot his advice or this piece of scripture since; I sent the email and received back a wonderful encouraging reply.

There is an ancient legend about two angels who flew to earth to gather people's prayers. Wherever people bowed in prayer the angels stopped and gathered the prayers into their baskets. Before long the basket carried by one of the angels grew heavy with the weight of what he had collected, but that of the other remained almost empty. Into the first were put prayers of petition. "Please give me this....Please I want that." Into the other went the "Thank you" prayers.

"Your basket seems very light," said one angel to the other. "Yes," replied the one who carried the thank you's. "People are usually ready enough to pray for what they want, but very few remember to thank God when He grants their requests."

There's an old story about an Irishman who was down on his luck and was panhandling on Fifth Avenue before the St. Patrick's Day parade got underway in New York. As a couple strolled by, he called out: "May the blessing of the Lord, which brings love and joy and wealth and a fine family, follow you all the days of your life." There was a pause as the couple passed his outstretched hand without contributing. Then he shouted after them, "And Never Catch Up To You!" That's the way a lot of us live our lives. We're thankful but only when we get something.

During one of his homilies, Fr. Fred, who helps out in the summer, said something that resonates here. He said all blessings are borrowed. So, while we all seek God’s help with our petitions – do we then stop to pray in thanksgiving for blessings received?

I read an article about a woman, Cheryl Stephens, who definitely had thankful attitude even as she was dying from cancer at 44. Before she died she wrote a poem: She writes,

Remember me not for who I was / But for who Jesus was in me. / Remember me not for the things I've done /But for the things Jesus did through me. / Remember me not as one who loved / Without remembering that "He first loved me." / Remember me not as one who gave /But one to whom much was given. / Remember me not as one who spoke of God / But as one who knew God through His Son. Remember me not as one who prayed / But remember the One to whom I prayed. / Remember me not as one who was strong / But as one who cried out to God to be my strength. / Remember me not as one who died / But as one who lives forever because I have believed.

Cheryl Stephens knew, not only the presence of Christ in her life, she also had the Attitude of Gratitude, of thankfulness for a life that was very much collapsing.

This gospel asks us to consider those blessings that have been freely given us, to pause and pray in grateful thanksgiving for our many, many borrowed blessings. Where are the other nine? I don't know, but I am here.

In all three Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), just before the passion narrative, there is a “sermon” on the “last things.” The verses are not a continuous sermon but a collection of isolated sayings of Jesus put together to summarize his teaching on the end of time.

While it is true that Jesus used familiar “apocalyptic” imagery- the falling of stars from the sky, eclipses of sun and moon, political upheavals, wars, pestilence, famine, hurricanes and floods- he used them to illustrate, dramatize, emphasize his more profound points than to describe actual occurrences.

Such occurrences, he pointed out, happen all the time, in every age. They are not necessarily “signs” of the End. They are signs of evil, always present on earth; evil flares up at times and becomes painfully and undeniably obvious.

Jerusalem represented to a Jew his/her whole “world,” his /her whole world of meaning. All the meaning of life was wrapped up in what Jerusalem symbolized. For that city to come to a physical end meant the collapse of their world, wherever they might physically live. Jesus predicted that it would end and it did.

We have the same sort of experiences in our lives. We experience the “end” of many things and the “loss” of many people in a lifetime. The physical world as we know it can be destroyed by flood, hurricane, fire or earthquake. The whole earth does not need to be destroyed just our little part of it, for us to know what Jesus is talking about.

Our social world can be destroyed by “final” arguments ending in divorce, being disowned by our family. And as we saw a few weeks ago at Rutgers, the touch of a button, a “Tweet,” can bring horrible consequences that ripple far beyond a Blackberry.

Our political world can be destroyed by war. Our economic world can be destroyed by depression, recession, or unemployment, not to mention famine, hunger, disease and epidemics. We live in many “worlds,” spheres of meaning, and any of them can collapse at any moment. Our questions then are no different from the early disciples: Are there signs?

Anyone can point to the apocalyptic signs we find in the Bible- false messiahs, wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, strange events in the skies and link them up with current events.

As such, they do become “signs” for us, but very different ones than for those who erroneously think they have found the key unlocking the secret of when and how the physical world will end.

When the physical world will end (if at all) is a scientific question, not directly related to our salvation, not really a religious question.

“I rolled out of bed this morning / Kids had the mornin' news show on / Bryant Gumbel was talkin' 'bout the fighting in Lebanon / Some senator was squawkin' 'bout the bad economy / It's gonna get worse you see, we need a change in policy / There's a local paper rolled up in a rubber band / One more sad story's one more than I can stand / Just once how I'd like to see the headline say "Not much to print today, can't find nothin' bad to say", because Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town / Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down / Nobody fired a shot in anger, / nobody had to die in vain / We sure could use a little good news today.” The events a bit dated perhaps, but the news/events are the same as they were in the time of Jesus. Human nature does not really change through time.

We surely can use some good news. That Good News stands before us in the person and divinity of Jesus Christ. He is the salvation of this world.

Ever since Jesus appeared among us, Christians have been praying for a whole new world. No matter how or when this world may or may not fade into oblivion, Jesus promises to be there for all of us when that time comes. That is the constancy of his message. As it is said, “No one knows the hour or the day.”

He says to all of us, “Have faith in whom I am and what I came to do… not a hair on your head will be destroyed…by your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

CYCLE A	CYCLE B	CYCLE C
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