Category: Sunday Homilies

Most Christians Hate People like Jesus: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sunday’s Readings: Ps. 123; Ez. 2:2-5; 2 Cor. 12:7-10; Mk. 6:1-6

Today’s liturgy is about prophecy, and about how difficult it is to be a prophet. Prophets are usually vilified and hated. That was the case with Ezekiel whose vocation story we find in today’s first reading. There he is warned that many will reject what God tells him to say. After all, his message was so shocking and blasphemous. At the beginning of the 6th century B.C.E., Ezekiel said that God’s People had strayed so far from Yahweh that the Babylonians would come and destroy the Temple – the very dwelling place of God. That was like predicting the death of God. In modern terms, it was atheistic.

Jesus of Nazareth was also hated right from the start. Today’s second reading shows that. There Jesus finds himself a “prophet without honor” in his home town and even among his own family members. Nazareth saw him as a hometown boy who (as they say in Kentucky where I come from) had “gotten above his raisin’s.”

Who did he think he was trying to teach them anything? He was that kid whose nose they had wiped growing up. He wasn’t a scholar. In fact, he could barely read. He was just a working stiff carpenter. He was the son of that woman, Mary. Who knows who his father was?  (By the way, identifying Jesus by his mother’s name and not by his father’s was extremely insulting. It indicated that his father was unknown. It was like calling him a bastard or S.O.B.) So Jesus was rejected by his neighbors and relatives in no uncertain terms. It is told that following his first sermon in Nazareth, they actually tried to kill him.  

And it got worse from there. Like Ezekiel, Jesus too predicted the destruction of the Temple – a successor to the one that was rebuilt after the Babylonians did what Ezekiel said they would – level it to the ground. When they heard Jesus’ prophecy about God’s dwelling place, everyone who mattered scorned him – the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, the Temple high priests, the Romans. In their eyes, Jesus had turned against religion. Even his disreputable mother and the brothers and sisters mentioned in today’s Gospel accused Jesus of losing his mind. They thought he had gone absolutely crazy.

As far as the powerful were concerned, Jesus had not only gotten above his raisin’s; he was not merely (in modern terms) atheistic; he was an agent of the devil himself. Jesus was possessed. That was the worst insult anyone in Jesus’ culture could deliver. It would be like calling him a terrorist or Communist today. In fact, the Romans did consider Jesus a terrorist. That’s indicated by the form of execution they used on him. Crucifixion was reserved for insurgents and terrorists. Politically and historically, it speaks volumes to say that Jesus was crucified. (What did he do to make the Romans classify him as they did?)

And yet Jesus was wildly popular among the poor and powerless outside of Nazareth. He was one of them. He looked like them. He was unimposing – probably about 5’10” and weighing about 110 pounds (if we are to believe forensic archeologists). His skin was brown. His hands were calloused. And his message was tailored especially for the poor. His initial sermon in Nazareth began: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed.” That was Jesus’ program – a message of liberation for the poor.

Jesus’ message then was not about himself. It centralized what he called “the Kingdom of God.” His was a utopian vision of what the world would be like if God were king instead of Caesar. In that realm everything would be turned upside down. The poor would be rich; the rich would be poor; the last would be first, and the first would be last. Prostitutes would enter the kingdom; the religious leaders would trail after them. No wonder Jesus’ message resonated so well among the downtrodden, the poor and sex workers. No wonder, he was feared and vilified by the rich, powerful and respectable.

And no wonder that kind of Jesus is virtually unknown today. The fact is, he continues to be hated even by those who call themselves “Christian.” I mean, we still don’t like scruffy or poor. We don’t like small, brown, working class or barely literate. We don’t like prostitutes. We don’t like utopian. And we don’t believe, as Jesus did, that another world is possible. So if Jesus came among us, we’d probably respond like his hometown crowd. We’d be like Ezekiel’s audience described in our first reading – “rebellious,” “obstinate,” and “stubborn.” We’re not only unreceptive to people like Jesus. We’re positively hostile – ironically in the name of Christianity itself.

Why is that? It’s because Christianity was hijacked way back in the 4th century. At that point and for various reasons too complicated to rehearse now, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. To achieve that status, the scandalous prophetic faith of Jesus had to be domesticated beginning with Jesus himself. So the champion of the poor was transformed from a counter-cultural outlaw to a “King” – and yes, to a “God” resembling quite closely those war-deities the Romans worshipped like Jupiter and Mithras.

Jesus’ message then became not about God’s Kingdom, not about the “other world” that is possible here and now, but about himself and that familiar “other world” up in the sky to be inherited when we die. Being Christian became about “accepting Jesus as your personal savior,” about being a Good American, and supporting a military whose chief task, by the way, is to keep people like Jesus in their place. That kind of Jesus, that kind of message was acceptable to the Romans and their successors as well as to the equivalents of the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and High Priests. It was acceptable because it was anti-Kingdom as Jesus understood it. Christians don’t like that Kingdom.

Such considerations are not trivial. They are necessary not only for rescuing Christianity from its centuries-long perversions; they are required for saving our very world. I mean Christianity has been turned upside-down and its ship needs to be righted. Ever since the 4th century, Jesus and the church have been used by the forces of conservatism (those who would keep the world as it is) to subdue the weak and support the wars of the powerful against those without public power. It’s happening now before our very eyes.

But who can believe that? We are so brainwashed! Believing that would mean honoring the poor and turning against the rich and against empire. It would mean loving and honoring scruffy, small, poor, brown, working class, utopian, disreputable, illegitimate, and illiterate. It would mean seeing the prostitutes as holier than the pope! In Paul’s terms in today’s second reading, following the Jesus rejected by his townspeople entails finding salvation in what the world rejects as weak and without honor. And which of us can do that in the “most powerful country in the world,” where “pride” is not the leader in the list of Seven Deadly Sins, but an honored boast? “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

No, we just don’t like people like Jesus. Repentance  (for me at least) means reversing all of that. What would such reversal entail? And what does repentance mean for you in the light of today’s readings? (Discussion follows)

Jesus Was a Radical Feminist: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sunday’s Readings: Wisdom 1:13-16, 2:23-24; Ps. 30:2, 4-6, 11-13; 2Cor. 8:7, 9, 13=16; Mk. 5:21=43

All of us, I know, have been following with great interest the Vatican’s confrontation with U.S. nuns. Officials in Rome are disturbed because the sisters have adopted what the patriarchy considers a “radical feminist agenda.” That agenda includes advocating a priesthood open to women.  It also places service of the poor ahead of issues dear to our male church leadership such as contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage.

Towards resolving the crisis, the Vatican has insisted on placing a major national organization of sisters under the authority of a Rome-appointed bishop. The idea is that this man would determine what is best for the women religious.

Not surprisingly, the nuns find the Vatican’s action unacceptably patriarchal, patronizing and insulting. They also insist that the issues Rome finds objectionable are more in accord with the actual teaching and example of Jesus than the focus the hierarchy prefers. After all, the nuns say, Jesus said a great deal about the poor, but nothing at all about contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, or women priests.

Jesus himself might also be considered a radical feminist, some sisters hold.  They point out that in addressing specifically female issues, he favored women who spoke for themselves and courageously exercised their own initiative. Jesus even praised women who disobeyed laws aimed against them precisely as women. He ended up preferring them to females who were passive captives of the religious patriarchy. We find an example of such radical feminism on the part of Jesus in today’s reading from the Mark’s gospel.

First of all consider Mark’s literary strategy. In today’s reading he creates a “literary sandwich” – a “story within a story.” The device focuses on two kinds of females within the Jewish faith of Jesus’ day. In fact, Mark’s gospel is liberally sprinkled with doublets like the one just described. When they appear, both stories are meant to play off one another and illuminate each other.

In today’s doublet, we find two women. One is just entering puberty at the age of 12; the other has had a menstrual problem for the entire life span of the adolescent girl. (Today we’d call her condition a kind of menorrhagia.) So to begin with the number 12 is centralized. It’s a literary “marker” suggesting that the narrative has something to do with the twelve tribes of Israel – and in the early church, with the apostolic leadership of “the twelve.” The connection with Israel is confirmed by the fact that the 12 year old in the story is the daughter of a synagogue official. As a man in a patriarchal culture, he can approach Jesus directly and speak for his daughter.

The other woman in the doublet has no man to speak for her; she has to approach Jesus covertly and on her own. She comes from the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum from the 12 year old daughter of the synagogue leader. The older woman is without honor. She is poor and penniless. Her menstrual problem has rendered her sterile, and so she’s considered technically dead by her faith community. Her condition has also excluded her from the synagogue. In the eyes of community leaders like Jairus, the petitioning father in the story, she is “unclean.” (Remember that according to Jewish law, all women were considered unclean during their monthly period. So the woman in today’s drama is exceedingly unclean. She and all menstruating women were not to be touched.)  

All of that means that Jairus as a synagogue leader is in effect the oppressor of the second woman. On top of that the older woman in the story has been humiliated and exploited by the male medical profession which has been ineffective in addressing her condition. In other words, the second woman is the victim of a misogynist religious system which, by the way, saw the blood of animals as valuable and pleasing in God’s eyes, but the blood of women as repulsively unclean.

Nonetheless, it is the bleeding woman who turns out to be the hero of the story. Her faith is so strong that she believes a mere touch of Jesus’ garment will suffice to restore her to life, and that her action won’t even be noticed. So she reaches out and touches the Master. Doing so was extremely bold and highly disobedient to Jewish law, since her touch would have rendered Jesus himself unclean. She refuses to believe that.

So instead of being made unclean by the woman’s touch, Jesus’ being responds by exuding healing power, apparently without his even being aware. The woman is cured. Jesus asks “Who touched me?” The disciples object, “What do you mean? Everybody’s touching you,” they say.

Finally, the unclean woman is identified. Jesus praises her faith and (significantly!) calls her “daughter.” So what we end up finding in this literary doublet are two Jewish “daughters” – yet another point of comparison.

While Jesus is attending to the bleeding woman, the first daughter in the story apparently dies. Jesus insists on seeing her anyhow. When he observes that she is merely asleep, the bystanders laugh him to scorn. But Jesus is right. When he speaks to her in Aramaic, the girl awakens and is hungry. Everyone is astonished, and Jesus has to remind them to feed her.

What does all the comparison mean? The doublet represented in today’s Gospel addresses issues that couldn’t be more female – more feminist. The message here is that bold and active women unafraid of disobeying the religious patriarchy will save the faith community from death. “Believe and act like the bleeding woman” is the message of today’s Gospel. “Otherwise the community of faith will be for all practical purposes dead.”   

Could this possibly mean that we should imitate the women religious who evidently represent such a threat to the Vatican today? Could today’s gospel be telling us that their bold specifically feminist faith that sides with the poor and oppressed (like the hero of today’s Gospel) will be the salvation of the church which is otherwise moribund? Are they today’s real faith leaders, rather than the elderly, white, out-of-touch men who overwhelmingly claim to lead the church?

Consider some patriarchal history related to today’s Gospel reading. Does it suggest déjà vu?

As late as the 13th century Christian theologians were warning people that it was a mortal sin to have relations with a menstruating woman because sickly or possessed children would result from them. A hotly debated theological theme during the middle ages was whether a woman during menstruation (also called her “periodic pollution” or her “monthly venting”) could receive communion during mass or not. Even worse, the blood of a woman giving birth was considered to be more noxious that the menstrual blood. The Synod of Treves in the year 1227 established that after childbirth women needed to be “reconciled” with the Church – a disposition which combined the Jewish laws of ritual purification with Christian theologians’ rejection of the pleasure that is implicit in every sexual relation. In many cases of that epoch the religious hierarchy determined that women who died in childbirth could not be buried in Christian cemeteries because they had not been “reconciled.”

Such recollections do not inspire confidence in patriarchs making pronouncements on women’s issues. I mention them here only because they show those male “leaders” pontificating quite confidently about women’s biological processes, about the effect of sexual intercourse on fetuses, about God’s attitude towards women during menstruation, and about women’s “pollution” following sexual intercourse and childbirth. And in hindsight all of it turns out to be pure nonsense!  In summary, it reveals that male church leaders never have really understood female sexuality – or sex for that matter. Obviously, pronouncements like those just mentioned (however confident and supported by scripture) have nothing to do with “revelation.” Is it any different – can it be any different – in our own era? 

Today’s Gospel then suggests that it’s time for men to stop telling women how to be women – to stop pronouncing on issues of female sexuality whether it be menstruation, abortion, contraception, same-sex attractions, or whether women are called by God to the priesthood . Correspondingly, it’s time for women to disobey such male pronouncements, and to exercise leadership in accord with their common sense – in accord with women’s ways of knowing. Only that will save our religious community which is currently sick unto death.

All of us can imagine how such suggestions apply to the controversy between the Vatican and U.S. nuns. Let’s discuss that now. (Discussion follows).

Faith Is a Subversive Activity: Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Sunday’s Readings:  Is. 49: 1-6; Ps. 138: 1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15; Acts 13:22-26; Lk. 1:57-66, 80

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. The liturgy this morning focuses on vocation, prophecy, and the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus’ own cousin. This is an important day because John’s ministry highlights faith as a subversive activity. His birthday calls us to adopt such faith in the midst of pedophile scandals, devaluation of women, official support of right-wing politics, and absence of visionary leadership on the part of those who hold the highest ecclesiastical offices.  

To grasp what I mean, begin by considering the Christianity we’ve inherited and its view of Jesus in relation to John the Baptist. Like most matters of faith, we have it backwards. Our understanding begins with Pope Benedict XVI and then runs to the Second Vatican Council, the Council of Trent, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Paul, and ends with Jesus. That line gives us a church-centered Jesus concerned with esoteric doctrines and above all with the sexual preoccupation that has traditionally afflicted our patriarchal church officials.

 A more biblical approach begins in the other direction. It runs from Adam to Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, John, and finally to Jesus. It knows nothing of what comes after Jesus with all of its distortions, misconceptions, and patriarchal abuses. The Jesus that emerges here is not at all church-centered. He is less “Christian” and more focused on the Jewish tradition which is what Jesus knew. Jesus of course, was a Jew, not Christian at all. That more biblical approach helps us see both John and Jesus as engaged with their world specifically as prophets – as possessors of a subversive charism sorely needed by our world in severe crisis and in a church that finds itself in irreversible decline.

Already in today’s second reading, we see the more domesticated understanding of John emerging in Paul whose letters represent the earliest entries we have in the Christian Testament. Paul’s vision is what most of us are familiar with. For Paul, Jesus was the Son of David. John the Baptist heralded his coming as Messiah. He groveled before Jesus at the River Jordan when Jesus came to be baptized. “I am not worthy to loosen the strap of your sandal,” he says “You should be baptizing me; I shouldn’t be baptizing you.” For Paul, John ends up being purely instrumental for Jesus.

Paul’s view finds elaboration in the four canonical Gospels. There we can get the impression of the prophet as a kind of first century Billy Graham out there in the desert. His concern with Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife makes him sound rigidly moralistic and focused on sex – just the way the Church’s teaching has been all these years.

That’s not the John who emerges if we put him in that biblical context running from Adam through Moses, and the prophets. It’s not the John who discloses himself if we consider his historical context. In that perspective John becomes Jesus’ mentor and even his rival. In a sense, he becomes the founder of a Christian movement that understood faith as synonymous with religious and political subversion.

I mean John was a prophet before anything else – a reformer of Judaism. In today’s Gospel, Luke says John grew up in the desert. And that’s where he later realizes his vocation as a sharp-tongued social critic – the essence of prophetic identity. In the desert John led a flourishing reformist sect. As Luke says, people from all over Palestine came to listen to him. His message wasn’t that of Benedict XVI or Billy Graham. Rather, it was the one Jesus took up after John’s execution by King Herod, the Roman puppet. “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.”  (The Kingdom of God, remember, is what the world would look like if God, not Caesar were king.)

John’s location in the desert wilderness is important for understanding the Jewish revival he was leading there. The desert was the original place of refuge for God’s people when they escaped from their first captivity in Egypt.  It was the spawning place for insurgency movements against the Romans who occupied Palestine in the first century.

Above all, the desert was not Jerusalem. It was not the temple. So Jewish religious authorities were deeply suspicious of John and hostile towards his movement. John was not one of them — not a priest or rabbi. He was an outspoken prophet operating at the margins of society. He was radically free from social obligations and expectations as defined by standard Judaism and by the Roman Empire. Literally, he was an outlaw (one living outside the law). Even his clothing and diet showed that.

Additionally, John’s criticism of Herod was seen as politically subversive.  One of Herod’s great rivals was a king called Aretas of Nabatea. Herod had divorced Aretas’ sister in order to marry the wife of Herod’s brother Philip. The people were outraged, and took that marriage issue as a cause of criticism and rebellion. Their concern was not inspired by some first century anticipation of Victorian “moral” scruples. Herod’s divorce and remarriage showed how much their supposed king had strayed from their own culture and had adopted the Roman oppressors’ ways. 

John sided with the people in their criticism. So Herod saw him as stirring up rebellion. He therefore had John arrested. Eventually, of course, he beheaded the prophet. That’s when Jesus then stepped in and took over John’s reform movement.

Jesus seems to have been completely devoted to John. In all the Gospel traditions he presents himself for baptism at John’s hands. The appearance of inferiority implied in that gesture is unmistakable. So the Gospel authors had to reverse that impression by that groveling I mentioned earlier. This was especially true since even forty years after the Baptist’s beheading, many still thought of him as the Christ. What I’m saying is that “Jesus Christianity” found a rival for itself in “Johannine Christianity”

 But despite their desire to emphasize Jesus’ superiority to John, the Gospel authors find themselves compelled to recall that baptism of Jesus at John’s hands. They also record that Jesus lauded John as the greatest of all the Jewish Testament prophets. Even more significantly, they associate Jesus’ message so closely with that of John the Baptist that Jesus is repeatedly understood both by his enemies and his disciples as John redivivus (come back from the dead). Some even see in Jesus’ final cry on the cross, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani!” as a cry to John (himself as Elijah redivivus), “John, John, why have you forsaken me?”     

All of that is to say that John and Jesus are like twins inseparably joined at the hip. And what does that mean for us?

It means that Christianity (Jesus or Johannine) must be prophetic. Remember though what biblical prophets were. They were not fortune tellers concerned with predicting the future. They were social critics with two tasks. The first was to denounce serious departures from the faith of Abraham and Moses. Their second function was to announce a new future – that another way of living out the Jewish faith was possible. That way stood in sharp contrast with the understanding of Judaism embraced by their chief priests, the scribes and Pharisees.  

Being prophetic today suggests that we open our eyes to the similarities between the situations of John and Jesus on the one hand and our own on the other. Both prophets found themselves involved with a faith that had sold out to the Romans, and their puppets (like Herod). It was a faith that identified with keeping arcane rules and social distinctions.

For John and Jesus, that had nothing to do with the faith that had begun in the desert outside of Egypt. In their eyes, it was time to move back to the desert, away from the temple, and reclaim their faith from corrupt “leaders.”

I’m suggesting that our church today has moved as far from the Gospel of Jesus and John as had the high priests and scribes of their day moved from the tradition of Abraham and Moses.

Isn’t it time for us to move back to the origins of the prophetic traditions we celebrate this day – returning in effect to the place where it all began. For John and Jesus that was the desert – away from the temple. For us, it’s home churches and lay-led liturgies like those that characterized the primitive Christian community.

In the subversive spirit of John the Baptist, we’ve got to let the corrupt Vatican and our local bishops know that we are no longer following them, no longer supporting them.  There are many ways of doing that.

Can you think of any?  (Discussion follows)

Stop Being a Control Freak: (Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time)

(Sunday’s Readings: Ez. 17: 22-24; Ps. 92:2-3, 13-14, 15-16; II Cor.5:6-10; Mk. 4:26-34)

It’s June now and most of us are trying to get rid of dandelions. They’re all over the place. Most of us hate them. I’ve long since given up on trying to kill them. I figure the way nature works, they’ll be gone in a month or so anyway.

What bothers me are “trees of heaven.” The hill behind my house on Jackson Street is now filled with them. Some people call them “stink trees.” I cut them down one spring, and the very next, they’re back, more than ever. They just won’t go away. They want to take over and create their own forest. As I’m cutting them down, I imagine them laughing at me. “Your chain saw can roar and smoke as much as it wants,” they seem to be saying, “It makes no difference. We’ll prevail in the end.”

Today’s Gospel reading caused me to think of dandelions and trees of heaven – and some other things as well. It really makes three points. The first is about God’s providence, the second is about those “trees of heaven,” and the third is about Jesus’ teaching method. He taught in parables which help us understand God’s providence, the processes of life, and the inevitably of the Kingdom of God and its mystery.

The first point about God’s providence brought to mind Sir Arthur Eddington. He was a physicist who did his work before the middle of the 20th century.  At the end of his life, he remarked that after all his time and effort, he knew only one thing. “Something unknown,” he said ”is doing we don’t know what.”

In parable form, Jesus says something like that in today’s Gospel. Farmers sow seeds, he says, and then some mysterious force takes over and brings them to fruition. The farmer sows the seed; nothing else is required of him, but to reap the harvest.

“Don’t worry,” is the implication. There’s no need for you to push the river; no need to control. God is in charge. After you’ve done your best, Eddington’s “Something Unknown” takes over. And the outcome is the very best possible. Inevitably, that outcome will be the Kingdom of God whether we want it to come or not.

Central to Jesus’ parable is the notion of faith as “letting go” so that God’s work might be done in God’s own time. That’s so hard for us to accept, isn’t it? Just looking around the world, watching the news, thinking about our own lives, our marriages, our children, most of us find that counsel incredible. We’re convinced we have to get to work, not waste a moment, and clean up the mess.

Yet today, Jesus implies that acting like a control freak is exactly the wrong strategy in life. It leads to unhappiness, nervous breakdowns, discouragement, and to a negativity that brings others down. Jesus was not about any of that. He was about kindling hope not giving in to stress and worry.

Jesus was able to avoid that kind of negativity because he had a guiding vision. Once again, he called it the “Kingdom of God.” That vision held, as today’s Parable of the Farmer and the Seed suggests that God is in charge and so it’s foolish for us to worry and fret.

But what is God up to? Jesus surprises us with his answer. (And that brings me to the second point of today’s Gospel – stink trees.) Jesus says God’s Kingdom is like a mustard tree. That’s like saying it’s like a tree of heaven or a dandelion.  

I say that because, I’m told the mustard tree really isn’t a tree at all. Scripture scholar, John Dominic Crossan says it’s a plant that’s more like a weed. We don’t like weeds, do we – those dandelions again? We don’t recognize them as beautiful or powerful. But they could be seen that way – and probably should be. Deep down we know they have a part in the earth’s ecology. Birds come to the mustard tree (or the tree of heaven), and make their home there, Jesus reminds us.

As for power, have you ever seen a weed move a rock? I have. I think that’s what Jesus meant (with his typical hyperbole) when he said, “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain move from here to there and it will move.” Compared to the mustard seed, a rock of almost any size is like a mountain. Weeds are beautiful; they are part of God’s plan; weeds are powerful. Learn from them Jesus seems to be saying – inevitably, I think, with a mischievous smile.

But learn what? That what we see as small and weak, what we see as negative is all part of the plan. See beauty in what the world sees as ugly. Small is beautiful. But whether you do or not is irrelevant in terms of God’s will. It will be done in any case. You can dig up the dandelions, spray them with Roundup, or cut down those pesky trees of heaven. You can’t stop that Something Unknown from doing we don’t know what.

And that brings me to the third point of this morning’s Gospel – the power of parable. They can turn our worlds upside down. They surprise, delight, confuse, disturb, challenge, or comfort. They’re meant to make us think more deeply and to stimulate discussion. That’s the case with today’s Parable of the Farmer and the Seed, as well as with the Mustard Plant.

Above all, the power of parable is illustrated in the case of Jesus himself. Jesus, after all, is the best parable our tradition holds.  He was a seed sown 2000 years ago that continues to bear fruit today. But he and his message were also like a weed. He wasn’t a Cedar of Lebanon, but more like that mustard plant. Like the rest of us, Jesus lived such an extremely limited life, but he accomplished everything.  

Think about it. We believe Jesus is the very presence of God. Yet in the world’s eyes, he did absolutely nothing with more than 90 % or his life. We know nothing of what he did with his life till he was about 30. And then, history records, he did a few relatively insignificant things in an insignificant part of the world.

Not only that, what he did eventually do all ended in failure. He evidently thought the Kingdom was coming in his own lifetime. But here we are 2000 years later, and not a sign of its arrival as far as we can see.

…  As far as we can see. Our trouble is with our limited vision. We’re expecting God’s Kingdom to be the “Cedar of Lebanon” referenced by Ezekiel in the first reading. It won’t be like that, Jesus says. With a smile, he suggests, it will be something small – even something we see as undesirable, ugly or failed – even like our own lives.

Our perception forgets about the Kingdom vision that was so central to Jesus’ life. In modern terms, we might say, we only see a small part of life’s computer screen – that lower right hand corner for example. We see maybe an inch or so of a screen that’s 21 inches big. On the huge part we’re not seeing, God is up to all kinds of things we’re not aware of – that we can’t be aware of or even understand.

Something unknown is doing we don’t know what. All we have to do is our best at whatever task life has given us, and then get out of the way. That’s what Jesus seems to be telling us this morning.

What do you think? Can we accept that Good News? Can we recognize God at work in the mustard plant, in the dandelion, in the tree of heaven?

The Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ: the Last Supper wasn’t a magic show

Readings: Exodus 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

Today is the feast of The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It used to be called “Corpus Christi.” And the Gospel reading (Mark’s account of the Last Supper) brings us into familiar territory. I mean we observed Holy Thursday just two and a half months ago. And here we are centralizing yet another account of Jesus’ final meal.

Of course, the emphasis on Holy Thursday and today is supposed to be different. On Holy Thursday the Last Supper was part of the account of Jesus’ final days. On Corpus Christi the focus is on the sacrament of the Eucharist itself, what we used to call “Holy Communion.” Today the spotlight is on the “Real Presence” of Jesus, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the “elements” which retain the appearances of bread and wine.

In the past, this was the time for sermons on “transubstantiation,” and the priestly powers conferred in ordination. Corpus Christi was an occasion for processions of the Blessed Sacrament even through town squares, for its “exposition” in “monstrances,” for solemn “benedictions” and “holy hours” of adoration.  

Historically, this feast has been a specifically Catholic affair implicitly contrasting Catholic belief with Protestants who since the Reformation denied the Catholic understanding of the Real Presence.

I won’t bore you by rehearsing the differences between Catholic “transubstantiation” and Protestant “trans-signification” and “trans-finalization.” Somehow it all seems rather quaint and beside the point, doesn’t it? I mean, who cares – except perhaps for a few brief moments on Sunday mornings between nine and ten o’clock? We have so many personal problems with our children, in our jobs, in our marriages. . . . Besides, the world is in such a dark state, who has time for such theological niceties?

And don’t even talk to me about the church; it is so problematic for most of us. How could we spend time and energy on inter-denominational disputes when we find the Mass itself increasingly meaningless? Each Sunday many of us end up struggling with the question, “Why am I still coming here?” Get real!

Well, getting real and retaining hope in the face of darkness on all fronts is actually what today’s account of the Last Supper is really about. It’s not about transubstantiation of bread and wine at all. It is we who need to be “transubstantiated” as people and specifically as Catholics. The Gospel calls us to fundamental change in our faith about Eucharist.

Consider what happened at the Last Supper and then what became of it over the years. Consider what we could make of it today.

For Jesus, this final Passover meal is wrought with anxiety to say the least. Jesus and his friends have now gone underground. After a demonstration in the Temple which turned violent, they are now being hunted. There is a price of 30 shekels of silver on Jesus’ head, and he suspects one of his inner circle is about to turn him in for the reward. The “safe house” Jesus has secured for the Passover meal has been located by a secret sign and a password.

In such dark circumstances, Jesus looks at the bread he breaks, and the action reminds him that his very body is under threat. The cup of wine he passes around becomes for him his own blood that soon could be whipped, nailed, drained and speared from his veins.

But he doesn’t lose hope. In effect amidst betrayal by a close friend, a price on his head, premonitions of his own death, and threatened failure of his entire enterprise, Jesus proposes a toast to God’s Kingdom. Despite everything he remains convinced God’s reign will soon dawn. In fact, takes a vow not to drink wine again until that happens. His fast from wine is another form of his familiar prayer, “Thy kingdom come.”  In the end, Jesus asks his disciples (come what may) to share bread and wine as he has done – with one another and across ethnic and other divisions (with Jew and gentile, woman and man, rich and poor, “clean” and “unclean”), and to do this specifically in his memory.

And that’s what the early Christians did. They broke bread in memory of Jesus, his values and the way he lived. In the early church, they called this a “love feast.” And people would come together with pot luck dishes and share with everyone. Until the 5th century women would often preside at the feast – as they usually do at meals in every home on the planet. Sometimes men would preside too. (It wasn’t until the 14th century that the Eucharistic “celebrant” had to be an ordained “priest.”)

And all would be invited, rich and poor. (In fact, one of the great attractions of early Christianity was the generosity with which Christians shared their bread with the needy.) Twice in the Book of Acts Luke describes the first Christians as leading what could only be called a “communistic” ways of life.  Acts 2:44 reads:

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

That’s what the early Christians made of Jesus’ injunction to “Do this in memory of me.” They truly understood what later would be termed “The Real Presence:” bread is bread; wine is wine; when they are shared Jesus truly becomes present in his Holy Spirit. Early Christians understood that Jesus’ “Real Presence” could not be separated from the way he lived – at the service of the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, the hungry and thirsty.

The rub however is that the Eucharist gradually turned into something else. That business about actually doing what Jesus commanded – you know “Sell what you have; give it to the poor; and come follow me” . . .  That was too much for church leaders after they sold out to Constantine’s Empire in the 4th century. They started living like kings and needed something more comfortable. 

So they transformed the Christian “love feast” into a “Mass.” And as the middle ages progressed, the Mass turned into a magic show. Before our very eyes, bread was transformed into the body of Jesus, and wine became his blood. The priest alone had the requisite magical powers. Belief in that magic act became what the Eucharist was about.

In all of this, focus shifted from transformation of those participating in the Eucharist to transformation of the bread, which eventually became a plastic-like wafer that looks nothing like the bread whose sharing so concerned Jesus.

We could change all of that beginning right now. The Lord’s Supper doesn’t have to be the dreary “hocus pocus” it became before Vatican II and threatens to become again today under extremely conservative church leadership. Like Jesus’ last meal, the Eucharist can reassume its character as an occasion for recommitment to God’s Kingdom, even as we experience a dark night of our Catholic souls and just as human beings. If Jesus wasn’t overwhelmed by his circumstances, how can we be crushed by ours?

In fact, if we open our eyes in hope, we can see many reasons to toast God’s Kingdom despite our many problems as believers. For instance, did you know that a group of Catholics and Protestants of various denominations are forming an alternative Eucharistic congregation right here in our own community? Its intention is not to replace our attendance at Mass, but to supplement it with a celebration that can provide experience of what inspired, life-connected worship can be.

Also, this fall Fr. Matthew Fox, the fiery spiritual teacher, liturgist and theologian will be speaking at Berea College.  He has already expressed a willingness to meet with our parishioners to discuss church renewal with us. Similarly, Sr. Joan Chittister, the Benedictine nun and spiritual leader, will be a Berea College convocation speaker this fall.

Additionally, next November 9th to 11th, the National Catholic “Call to Action” campaign will be holding its annual meeting in Louisville – at the Galt House. We could send a delegation of 20 people or more (including our pastor) to get inspired by world-class speakers and by what other churches are doing to revive the spirit of Vatican II.  Please mark your calendars for that event.  

Besides all of that, this October 11th is the 50th anniversary of the convening of the Second Vatican Council. There will be observances of the occasion all over the world. We could mark the anniversary right here in our own parish with a “tent revival” with invited speakers, and with teach-ins on Vatican II. We could even pool our money to provide tuition for our pastor to update his theology in some progressive theological, liturgical or pastoral program.

All of these events have the potential to “transubstantiate” us as a community – to change us to the core as a community of faith.

So things might not be as dark as we might think. There may indeed be light at the end of this tunnel we’ve been struggling through for too long.

Jesus’ own faith in and hope for God’s Kingdom is our inspiration. If he could have faith and hope in his dreary circumstances, how can we not be hopeful? If he is for us, if we sup with him, who can stand against us? Let’s get on with it!

Trinity Sunday: beyond the gibberish

Readings: Psalm 33: 4-6, 9, 18-20, 22; Deuteronomy 4: 32-34; 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28: 16-20

What a difference a week makes!  Last week, Pentecost Sunday, everything seemed so easy. The disciples received Jesus’ Spirit in the Upper Room. Peter spoke to the crowds in Jerusalem. He proclaimed at the top of his voice that God’s Spirit belongs to everyone. Barriers of gender, language, culture, class, and religion were irrelevant.

What good news and how simple! You and I are vessels of the Holy Spirit; we can channel Jesus’ Spirit any time we choose. We are the way God appears in the world. Treat yourself as God; treat others as God and “be saved” – not in some afterlife, but here and now. Everyone understood Peter’s message whether they spoke Hebrew or not. It was the message of Jesus.

But alas, this week seems to reverse all that simplicity. It’s “Trinity Sunday.” And what can you say about that?  The doctrine is so complex: The Father, Son, and Spirit are One God, but three persons. Jesus is one divine person with two natures (one divine, one human). Through the “hypostatic union,” Jesus is “consubstantial” with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  Dick Vitale would say “Headache City!”

To repeat, no one understands it. And do you know why? Because it really doesn’t make sense – at least to us in the 21st century.  To be charitable, it may have meant something to a very few people in the 4th century. But it sounds like gibberish to us – and probably always has to most people. So do the “clarifications” offered by church councils and theologians. For instance, this is how the Second Council of Constantinople (in the 6th century) shed light on the way Jesus fit into the Holy Trinity:

. . . the union of the two natures in Christ is achieved “according to the hypostasis” (kathypostasin) of the divine Word, or “by synthesis” (kata synthesin), so that from the moment of the incarnation there was in Jesus Christ a single hypostasis/person (subject, autos), of both the divine nature and the human nature, which remains whole and distinct from the divine in the “synthesis” or “composition”.

Aren’t you happy they cleared up the confusion? What we find in a statement like that are theologians who take themselves too seriously. Even worse, they are people who have lost sensitivity to the language of faith which is always the language of metaphor. The fact is, every statement about God is metaphor. “Person” is metaphor; “Father” is metaphor; so are “Son,” “Spirit,” and “Word of God.”  All of that constitutes beautifully imaginative language trying to express the various ways human beings experience the One who is Transcendent and completely beyond the power of words to describe.

Jesus understood metaphor and he kept things simple. More than anything else, he called himself the “Son of Man.” “Son of Man” simply means “human being.” Jesus thought of himself as a human being. You can hardly get more basic than that. By calling himself the “Son of Man” again and again, Jesus emphasized that he is the same as we are. What’s true of him is true of us. “Son of Man” was an expression of solidarity with us.   

If that’s the fact, “Son of Man” makes Jesus’ other title “Son of God” terrifically important for us. I mean besides referring to himself as “the human one,” Jesus apparently also referred to himself as the “Son of God.” So if Jesus is the exemplary “human being” (like us, as Paul said, in all things but sin) and if he’s also the “Son of God,” that seems to mean that all of us are sons and daughters of God just as he was.

It was as if Jesus said: (1) I am a human being like you in every way; (2) You are a human being like me in every way; (3) I am the son of God; (4) Draw your own conclusions. . . . Or better yet, Jesus drew the conclusion for us: Every human being is a son or daughter of God just as I, the human one, am.

But all of that almost sounds blasphemous, doesn’t it? Jesus is God. You are God. I am God. Evidently, theologians from the 2nd century on saw blasphemy there too. So they went into denial and constructed an incomprehensible doctrine of the Holy Trinity to explain how Jesus could be uniquely God who prayed to his Father who is God and sent his Spirit who is also God – all without there being three Gods. Trinity gibberish is the result.

And yet . . .  and yet, there is something “three” about our experience of God – about our experience of life – something that shouldn’t be lost. Think about it. Our initial experience of life is three. There is our father, our mother, and us. That’s our first experience of trinity – and of God.

Besides that, all of reality just in terms of language is described in terms of three. Our verbs are conjugated as 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd – I (or we), you, and it (or they).  Anything we talk about is addressed either as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person. And that includes God. We can talk about God in the 3rd person as St. Paul does when he says “God is love.” Or we can address God in the 2nd person, as we do in prayer, “O God, please help me.” Or we can speak of God in the 1st person as they say Jesus did when he said, “I and the Father are one.”

The fact is that Christians are very good at 3rd person language about God. We talk about God in the 3rd person all the time in homilies like this one. We’re also quite at home using 2nd person references. We do that when we pray, when we address God as “thou” or “You.”  But Christianity’s not very good at 1st person references. We have a hard time – even after Pentecost – acknowledging the divine within us and speaking as Jesus did about our unity with “the Father.”

That’s where we can learn from other faiths. Hindus, for instance, excel at recognizing the divine within each human being.

I remember when I was studying for my doctorate in theology in Rome forty some years ago. I was in a seminar at an international theologate. Aspiring theologians from all over the world sat around that seminar table at the Anselmianum, one of my alma maters in “the holy city.” We were discussing the Trinity and Jesus’ identity as God’s unique Son. One of my colleagues, a priest from Kerala State in India, raised a question that made a profound impact on me. He said, “How are we in India to express Jesus’ supposed uniqueness as the God-Human Being?  In our culture, everyone is believed to be a God-Human Being?” Obviously, I’ve never forgotten that question. It made me wonder: If you translated Hindu concept for concept so it could be understood in the West, would it come out Christianity. And vice-versa.

But even apart from that, the young priest-theologian’s question made me realize how rich Hinduism is in its grasp of what Christians profess to believe. God is present within each of us and in everything we encounter. We can and should act accordingly.

I’d even go so far as to say that Hindu belief in 300 million Gods – yes, 300 million – is more understandable and helpful than the Christian doctrine that there are three persons in one God. The meaning of the Hindu belief is that there are about a million manifestations of God for each day of the year – 300 million for 365 days. It means that if we were really attuned to God, we’d see God’s presence everywhere in every moment of every day.

That sounds a lot like the message of Pentecost; we are temples of Jesus’ Holy Spirit. God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

That’s the real message of Trinity Sunday as well.

Pentecost and Vatican II: “A Readers’ Theater”

For this week’s homily, imagine your local pastor using his sermon time to lead the following “readers’ theater.”

Readings for Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104: 24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27; John 5:26-27; 16:4b-15

Pastor:  Here we are almost half way through 2012. The Mayans told us that this would be a year of profound change in planetary consciousness. The astrologers tell us the Age of Aquarius is actually dawning now – Jupiter aligning with Mars and all that. Yet if you read the daily newspapers we seem to be in anti-2012 mode, don’t we? Anger and harsh words, war and conflict dominate from Afghanistan and Iraq to Chicago and Camp David. Can this really be the dawning of a new age of “Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust?”

Fittingly in our rather darkened context Pentecost calls us to open ourselves to a radically new and hopeful consciousness. And the calendar has poised us to do just that in an unprecedented way. I say that because precisely this year, 2012, marks the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. I want to suggest this morning that by observing that anniversary properly, we in our very own parish could  invite Jesus’ Holy Spirit to visit us here – to make Pentecost among us as never before. Observing the anniversary of Vatican II in the spirit of Pentecost could truly transform us all.  

Hold that thought.   

Before returning to it, let’s try to get the flavor of the first Christian Pentecost.  To help us with that, I’ve asked six people from our community to perform a little “readers’ theater” with me. Readers, please come forward. (A group of six emerges from the congregation, and stands scripts in hand in a semi-circle before the community. The group includes men and women of all age groups.)

Pastor: Recall the picture Luke paints this morning in the first reading. . . . Jesus’ disciples have been gathered in their Upper Room safe-house since they realized on what we call “Ascension Thursday” that Jesus was gone for good. They’re a group of Jewish men and women with a strong sense of being God’s Chosen People. They’re not Christians at all. They’re Jews who think they’ve found the messiah in Jesus. For them, the Jews are God’s chosen; no one else is. And yet as they share remembrances of Jesus in that Upper Room, they find their narrow religious consciousness challenged by recollections of the Master. Imagine their conversation:

Reader One: I’m feeling really abandoned. I mean, what are we going to do now that the Master has left us for good?

Reader Two: What do you suppose he wanted us to do when he told us to return here and wait for the Spirit?

Reader Three: I don’t know. But let’s see what happens. Jesus has never let us down. He’s never been wrong.

Reader Four: We still have our memories of him, don’t we? I think those could guide us.

Reader Five: No trouble there. Jesus seems to be all we’re talking about these days. (Laughing) Remember when he talked with that Samaritan woman?  We were all so shocked. Speaking alone with a woman – and a Samaritan on top of that!

Reader Six:  Yes, he didn’t seem to have much trouble crossing boundaries or scandalizing us, did he? Women, men, Pharisees, tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, the poor who loved him so much – even Roman soldiers and members of the Sanhedrin; he engaged them all.

Reader One: And he cured Samaritan lepers too.

Reader Two: Somehow, he seemed partial to Samaritans, didn’t he?”

Reader Three: Yes, and, you know, he fed those 4000 non-Jews across the Lake just as he did the 5000 on our side. That confused me. How could he do that? It was like he was saying that they mattered as much as we do. To me it seemed like a slap in the face.

Reader Four:  And that gentile woman from Syro-Phonecia? She bested Jesus in debate. I still laugh about it. Here he was virtually calling her a dog, and she disarms him completely by saying, “Yes, but even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”

Reader Five: That was the only time I ever saw him outwitted. And he loved it! He couldn’t stop laughing either. And she wasn’t even a Jew, was she? Do you think she taught Jesus something about God’s love for gentiles?

Reader Six: And what about that Roman soldier, remember him? Didn’t Jesus say the centurion showed more faith than any of us?

Reader One: What was he talking about? That centurion was our oppressor. How could a man like that have faith?

Reader Two: It was like he was showing us that there shouldn’t be any barriers between people – like all peoples, not just the Jewish community, are God’s people.

Pastor: Story after story like those must have been shared. And then someone said:

Reader Three: You know, I’ve been thinking . . . Jesus wasn’t the first of our prophets to show openness to everyone – not just to Jews. Didn’t the Prophet Joel say something about a future when God’s spirit would be poured out on everyone without exception?

Reader Four: Yes, he did.  I’ve committed those lines to memory. Joel said:

 I will pour out my Spirit78on all kinds of people.79

Your sons and daughters will prophesy.

Your elderly will have revelatory dreams;80

Your young men will see prophetic visions.

 Even on male and female servants

I will pour out my Spirit in those days

And everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord

Will be saved.

Reader Five: What if Jesus was the fulfillment of Joel’s vision – no division between “kinds of people,” none between parents and children, young and old, men and women, servants and free? Maybe when we were with the Master we were living out Joel’s dream.

Reader Six: That’s a good point – a really good point. I don’t know about you, but I need some space to think about what’s just been said. (All agree.) Let’s all take some time for silent prayer.

Pastor: So the community in that Upper Room prayed – though they didn’t know exactly what for. They opened themselves to what they remembered about Jesus – to Jesus’ Spirit. After a long time in prayer someone said:

Reader One: Somehow, I’m feeling different now – like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders.

Reader Two: And I as well. My fear seems gone. It’s like a violent wind has blown through my mind, and everything has become clear.

Reader Three: My heart feels like it’s on fire.

Reader Four: And the rest of you are simply glowing – is that fire I see over your heads. (Everyone laughs)

Reader Five: You know, we may finally have learned what Jesus was trying to teach us. Everyone is God’s chosen, especially the poor and people like Jesus himself – the illegitimate, the immigrants, the outlaws, tortured and executed.

Reader Six: That’s incredible. It’s time for us to share this Good News the way the Master did. I think we’ve received Jesus’ Spirit.

Pastor: So all the disciples went out in the street.  Peter made a speech and told everyone what they had experienced. He used that text from the prophet Joel. Surprisingly, everyone understood as if language barriers didn’t exist. It all seemed so simple now and made so much sense to everyone. . . . (Pause)

Thank you, readers. (The readers return to their places. When everyone is settled, the pastor continues.)

Pastor: What a beautiful vision of church and reconciliation. So worth celebrating on a day like today, on Pentecost Sunday. 

But, you know, the vision was lost in the matter of a generation or two. It was. Soon the Pentecost story would be interpreted to mean “Yes anyone can receive the Spirit of Jesus, but to receive it you have to be baptized. To be saved you must call upon God’s name in Christian terms.” All other approaches to God were seen as invalid. Within three centuries, soon after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, those refusing baptism would be put to the sword. Subsequently, the return of the old narrow way of thinking – this time Christian — led to pogroms against Jews, Crusades against Muslims, to the Holy Inquisition, burning of witches, to the holocaust of Native Americans, and to cold and hot wars against “godless” communists.

The time is coming, Jesus warns in today’s Gospel, when killers will do their bloody work in God’s name – in Jesus’ name. That, in fact, happened historically. The Dark Ages were long and bleak. The partisan violence and wars surrounding the Reformation period seemed unending.

But then came the Second Vatican Council. As I said earlier, it began 50 years ago on October 11th 1962, and ended in 1965. So this is its Silver Anniversary. As initiated by John XXIII and implemented by Pope Paul VI, Vatican II sought to recapture the spirit of the first Pentecost as described in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles this morning. Vatican II broadened Catholics’ narrow ideas about God. It recognized freedom of conscience as a human God-given right. The Council was “ecumenical” meaning that it no longer saw Protestants as enemies, but as sisters and brothers. Vatican II recognized that Jews and Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims are all “calling on the name of the Lord” and so can be saved even though we hardly know or can pronounce their names for God. The Second Vatican Council was monumental. Its significance was cosmic.  

However, once again sadly, the church of the 21st century risks losing the Pentecost experience in a matter of just two generations. There’s a return of a narrow understanding of Christianity that contradicts Vatican II. And at times one can even get the feeling that the narrowness is coming from the church’s highest offices. Often church leaders give the impression that Vatican II, which remains the official teaching of the Catholic Church, is now somehow heretical. So we must backtrack on liturgical reforms. We must insist on the privileged position of Christianity in relation to other faiths, and of Catholicism in relation to Protestant denominations.   

Our parish council has decided not to allow our church to be swept along with that reactionary response. More positively, we want to seize the opportunity that the Silver Anniversary of the Council presents. That’s what I meant at the beginning saying that we want to “make Pentecost” here as never before. So we’ve chosen today’s feast to announce a three-year renewal program that we hope will revitalize our parish. The program will begin with an old-time tent revival on our front lawn next October 11th.  Our Parish Council’s President will give the details in a brief presentation immediately after Mass.

All of this is geared towards making 2012 that special year the Mayans promised. We want this fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II to bring the “harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust” promised not by the Age of Aquarius, but by the New Order Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of God.

Join me then in opening ourselves to the Spirit who, Paul tells us in today’s second reading, “prays through us.” Allow the Spirit to pray through you now.

 Come Holy Spirit. Fill our hearts as you filled the hearts of the disciples on that first Pentecost. Renew our parish. May God’s kingdom come.

 (The pastor sits. While everyone prays, “The Age of Aquarius” plays in the background.)

Seventh Sunday of Easter: Jesus Is Not God

Readings:

Acts: 15-17, 20a-26

1 John 4:11-16

John 17: 11b-19

                Do you remember when your faith was simple and childlike? I do. I was a student at St. Viator’s Catholic School on the Northwest Side of Chicago. I was learning my catechism. I was an altar boy. And I was in love with Sr. Rose Anthony, my fourth grade teacher. She was young and pretty, and we were her first class. And I felt sorry for her, because our class was mean and often reduced her to tears. (But I digress already . . .)

                In any case, as a fourth grader (and even before) I remember mastering that first question in the Baltimore Catechism: Who is God? That’s the question raised by the readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Who is God? According to today’s readings, the answer is surprisingly simple. God is love. What God’s love means is revealed in Jesus. We are called to follow Jesus’ example, and to avoid that of Judas.

                That’s the thrust of today’s readings.

                But let me get back to Sr. Rose Anthony. Weren’t we all smart at the age of 9? The good sister convinced me that I knew who God was and everything else the Catechism taught us. Its answer to the question “Who is God?” was: “God is the Supreme Being who made all things.”  That satisfied me. And I believed it with all my heart. It was proven true by the miracles of Jesus which were self-evidently factual. They were “proof” that Jesus was God and that our claims about him were correct. What couldn’t be explained was “mystery” – to be accepted “on faith.” No problem.

                Now it’s very different – at least for many of us, isn’t it? Problem is, we’ve all grown up. And it often seems that everything about our faith has been turned upside-down. They call this the post-modern world. Scientific awareness is a fact of life. We know about evolution, the superego, class struggle, and relativity. Modern scripture scholarship has made us conscious of the fact that the early church transformed the historical Jesus of Nazareth into a “Christ” of faith who would be nearly unrecognizable to his contemporaries. Besides that, we are all strongly influenced by what scholars call the “principle of analogy” whether we’ve heard it or not. It holds that we cannot expect to have happened in the past what is presumed or proven to be impossible in the present. With that principle at work miracles have changed from a proof of claims about Jesus to proof’s opposite. They are cause for skepticism and disbelief. Jesus walked on water? Yeah, right. 

             So we’re skeptical before accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds. And we’re skeptical about miracles and anything “supernatural.” However, most of all we’re skeptical about that invisible man up in the sky watching us constantly and before whom we’ll appear after death to give an accounting of our stewardship. That’s the image most of us have of that “Supreme Being” we learned about in the fourth grade whether our source was Sr. Rose Anthony or Billy Graham. 
               Does that mean we’ve become atheists? Not necessarily.  It does mean however that the God of “Theism” – the belief in a God “up there” in a separate world is no longer tenable for many of us.  And neither is the Jesus up in the sky who transmigrated there liturgically on Ascension Thursday..

               But that God “up there” and that Jesus “up in the sky” is not what we find in today’s readings. The author of the Epistle of John writes not of a Supreme Being. Instead he says that God is love, and the ones who abide in love, abide in God and God in them. What John is describing Is not the God of Theism, but the God of “Panentheism.” No, I didn’t misspeak there. I didn’t mean to say “Pantheism;” I said “Panentheism.”  Pantheism is the belief that everything is somehow “God.” “Panentheism” is the belief that what we call “God” is everywhere and in every creature. God is the one (as St. Paul said) in whom we live and move and have our being. God is the source of life in which I am immersed like a sponge in the sea. That’s the God we find in today’s second reading. God is an energy, a relationship – the most wonderful we have experienced.  God is love.

                But then again, John’s definition might not help us much. The word love, as our culture uses the term, is probably even more debased than the word “God.”  Love is another word for infatuation and the feelings that accompany “love at first sight.”  Often the word simply refers to sex. But of course, none of that is what John is referring to in his letter. Jesus acknowledges that in today’s Gospel. He says that love as he understands it is actually hated rather than admired by the world – and so are those who practice it. The world has no place for the love that Jesus counsels nor for the people who truly follow Jesus’ model of love.

                Why would that be? It’s because the love embodied in Jesus threatens normality.  Jesus lived a life totally at the service of others, of the poor, the sick, the ostracized, and the despised. And the center of his message, God’s Kingdom, had to do with radical social change that would create a world with room for everyone. Our culture doesn’t want change. It’s content with the way things are. It doesn’t even want to admit that poor people exist, though they constitute the world’s majority. When was the last time you heard a presidential candidate even refer to the poor? No, it’s all about the “middle class” and the “one percent.”

                Jesus had no trouble speaking about the poor. It’s an honored biblical category. Jesus himself was poor. In Luke’s version of the beatitudes, he calls the poor “blessed.” He says “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.”  He curses the rich. “Woe to you rich,” he says, “You have had your reward!”

                Commitment to the poor, commitment to God’s Kingdom made the Romans and Jesus’ own people hate him. It made the Romans, it made his own people kill his followers. In the case of Jesus and the early church, embodying love as understood and exemplified in Jesus led to torture and death row.

                The fact is our culture hates people on death row. It hates the people our government tortures. Its discomfort with the poor also borders on hatred. Let’s face it: our culture likes neither the kind of people Jesus came from nor the kind of person he was. It does not like people who, following Jesus, want radical social change.

                 So in the end it’s easier to say “Jesus is God,” than to say “God is Jesus.” We can deal with Supreme Beings who are omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and all those other “omnis” we traditionally ascribe to God. We don’t want to deal with, be challenged by, and be changed by a poor prophet who harshly criticizes what our culture holds dearest – pleasure, profit, prestige and power. We don’t want to struggle with what Jesus might have meant about leaving all we possess, giving it to the poor and following him to the cross.

                  No, it’s much easier to be like Judas who is recalled in this morning’s first reading. There the apostles select Mathias to replace Judas as one of the Twelve. Poor Judas! In today’s readings, he assumes his familiar role as the embodiment of the world’s values. Those who put these liturgical readings together probably wanted to contrast Judas’ greed with the generosity we are called to by Jesus’ example. Be like Jesus. Spurn the “bottom line” concern of “the world.” Don’t love money the way Judas did.  (I’m not sure that’s fair to Judas. We can return to that question another day. For now, let’s just take things at face value.) Yes, the readings invite us to contrast Jesus’ way with the way of Judas.

                  So where does that leave us on this Seventh Sunday of Easter? We are called to re-conceptualize God and our relationship to God.  The God of theism belongs to the past – to our spiritual childhood. Embrace Panentheism our readings suggest. God is in us; and we are in God. God is in everything and everything is in God. Our vocation is to make God’s presence visible in the world. Each of us represents a point in history and in this cosmos where the incredible Energy of Love that burst forth 17 billion years ago in the Big Bang manifests itself today. The example of Jesus, his commitment to God’s Kingdom, and to the poor, oppressed, despised, ostracized, tortured and executed makes evident what Love means. Do we share that commitment? Are we following Jesus’ example?

                  God is love, and the one who abides in love, abides in God, and God in that lover. What could be simpler? What could be more challenging?

Chosen Nation? No. Chosen People? Yes.

Readings for the Sixth Sunday after Easter:

Acts: 10:25-28, 34-35, 44-48

1 John 4-7, 10

John 15:9-17

 Israeli Zionists are no longer God’s people. The Palestinians are. And ironically, the Zionists are their oppressors. That’s the central thought I’d like to leave with each of you this morning. (And don’t worry; you’ll have time to talk back at me after I finish speaking. I want to hear what you think.)

                My conclusion about Zionists and Palestinians is based on four considerations. To begin with it could be reached by just paying attention to the news – to what’s been happening in Gaza for the last two years and more. In Gaza the Zionists have created a virtual prison camp very reminiscent of the ones imposed on the Jews during World War II. In Gaza, Zionists have severely limited access to food, water, and medical care. They’ve have attacked private homes, schools and hospitals; they’ve killed with impunity thousands of men, women and little children.

                Besides the news, my conclusions are also based on the writing of people who should know. Leading Jewish intellectual, Noam Chomsky lends support here. So does Jimmy Carter in his book Peace Not Apartheid. (Remember President Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Middle East Peace Process).  Just this month, Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a hero in South Africa’s struggle against the hated apartheid system of segregation, called for a boycott of Israeli goods. Like Carter, he says the Zionists have created a system of apartheid in Palestine every bit as unjust as South Africa’s before 1994. All  three, Chomsky, Carter, and Tutu might agree that enforcers of a Hitlerian system like the one in Gaza, and enforcers of an apartheid system suggestive of South Africa cannot pretend that they are somehow underwritten by the God of the Bible as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.

                My third reason for saying that Palestinians not Israeli Zionists are God’s people is my own observation. A few years ago I went on a three-week fact-finding tour of Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. My own eyes, and the conversations we had with all sides in the conflict convinced me that the Palestinians, not the Zionists deserve our support as Christians.

                However my real motive for bringing all of this up this morning is contained in the readings for the Sixth Sunday after Easter in today’s liturgy. That’s my fourth reason for saying Israeli Zionists are not longer God’s people; the Palestinians are. Today’s readings tell us that God is love, that Jesus reveals the shocking meaning of that familiar statement, and that in the light of Jesus’ revelation, God has no favored nation at all – not the Israelis, not German Arians, not white Afrikaners, not Americans like us.  

                However, please note: saying that God has no favored nations at all is not the same as saying that God is neutral and has no favored people. God as revealed in Jesus is definitely not neutral. (To understand what I’m saying, it’s crucial to distinguish between “nation” and “people.”  “Nation” refers to nationality, race, and sovereign states. “People” transcends all of that. “God’s people” could be found in any nation, among any race, in any sovereign state – or in no sovereign state as happens with the Palestinians who have no state of their own.) The (biblical) fact is God favors some people over others. God has made what theologians call a “preferential option” for some and not for others.

                To show you what I mean, let’s begin by considering today’s second reading. Today’s selection from the First Letter of John makes two very important statements. The first is that God is love. The second is that the example of Jesus tells us exactly what that means. John is saying that by looking at Jesus we can know who God is.

                Jesuit theologian, Roger Haight, can help us understand. “Jesus is not God,” Haight has said. Rather, “God is Jesus.” That might sound confusing at first. But here’s what he means. To say that Jesus is God presumes we know who or what God is. But, of course, we really don’t. God is invisible. No one has ever seen God. However, to say that God is Jesus addresses our lack of knowledge and the nature of “the incarnation.” It means that Jesus’ example lifts the veil of ignorance between us and God. By looking at Jesus, considering his words, deeds, life’s circumstances, and choices, we get a clear idea of who God is and the nature of his love. Jesus is not God. God is Jesus.

                And what is it that Jesus reveals concerning the love of God? To reiterate, he tells us that it is partial. God’s love favors some and not others. Even before Jesus, the whole idea of “chosen people” supports that, doesn’t it?  Apart from that, however, we have Jesus’ words. He clearly did not approve of his day’s religious establishment or its leaders. He called them “hypocrites.” In Luke’s version of the Eight Beatitudes, he says, “Blessed are you poor,” and “Woe to you rich.” Those are statements about whole classes of people, and about whom it is that God approves and whom he rejects. In the Last Judgment scene in Matthew 25, Jesus talks specifically about rewarding those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and show concern for the imprisoned. Those who don’t do such things are clearly rejected – and quite definitively.  

                Besides all that, the very choices that Christian theology tells us God made in presenting God’s Self in Jesus tell us much about whom God favors.  God didn’t choose to incarnate God’s Self in the rich and powerful, though we might have expected that God would. God didn’t appear as a king, a priest, an intellectual, or even as a respectable person. Rather, Jesus as God’s fullest revelation was the son of an unwed teenage mother. He was homeless at birth. According to Matthew, he was an immigrant for a while in Egypt. The religious people of his day said he was possessed by the devil. They cast him out of their houses of worship – in effect excommunicating him. Jesus’ enemies called him a drunkard and friend of prostitutes and other sinners. The occupying Roman authorities considered him an insurgent and terrorist. (If they had “drones,” they would have killed Jesus that way because he met their “profile” of a terrorist.) In any case, Jesus ended up a victim of torture. He died a victim of capital punishment.

                Those choices on God’s part as revealed in Jesus tell us who God is and where God is to be found. God’s chosen people are the unwed mothers, the homeless, the immigrants, the mentally ill, the excommunicated, those identified by empire as terrorists and insurgents, the tortured, and executed. That’s hard for us to hear, isn’t it? It runs so counter to what we’ve always been taught and believed about God’s impartiality.

                That sort of shock puts us in good company. And that brings us to this morning’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. There the Spirit of Jesus forces a reluctant Peter to draw unexpected and very uncomfortable conclusions about God’s choices, and about his own religious identity. Peter has just been visiting a man called Cornelius, a gentile – a non-Jew who has shown interest in Jesus. (At this point, it’s worth noting, Peter is not himself a Christian. In fact, as Elaine Pagels has recently argued, Peter never was a Christian. He and James and Andrew were Jews who thought they had found the Messiah in Jesus.) So for Peter, there was no salvation outside what he understood as the Chosen Nation – Israel. And yet, in Cornelius’ home, Peter has witnessed unmistakable signs that these non-Jews (Cornelius and his family) have received the Holy Spirit of Jesus. The whole family, Peter finds, is speaking in tongues and prophesying.

                In the face of such evidence, Peter is forced to draw an uncomfortable conclusion: every nation is acceptable to God. There are no chosen nations. Israel is not God’s chosen nation. What a bitter pill that was for Peter to swallow.

                In today’s final reading – from the Gospel of John the Evangelist – Jesus tells us swallow that same pill. John’s Jesus tells us that we are to follow his own example – to love with the kind of partial love Jesus embodied. Realize, Jesus says in effect, that the people we tend to despise are really God’s specially favored ones: those unwed mothers, the immigrants, the poor, the imprisoned, tortured and people, like Jesus, on death row. In the Middle East, God’s favored ones are the Palestinians even though our whole culture, the media, and our preachers and pastors tell us the opposite.

Accepting that means informing ourselves, reading outside the culture. It involves telephone calls to the White House and to Congress. It involves voting. Bishop Tutu says it involves boycotting Israeli products. It involves prayer and reflection.