Christian Freedom

Freedom.    It is the theme of our celebrations this week.   It is the theme of the readings today.     Paul says, “It is for freedom that you have been set free.”

But what kind of freedom is Paul talking about?  What are the characteristics of Christian freedom?

One hint that the Church gives us is in the first reading.  Elijah the prophet is commanded by God to anoint a new king for Israel, and a new prophet.

There were 3 kinds of people anointed in the Old Testament.  Prophets, priests, and kings.  People were anointed to symbolize the fact that they were consecrated to God, used for his purpose, it symbolized this fact and provided the power of God to assist the person in accomplishing it.

Prophets were anointed for the purpose of sharing the word of God.  They spoke the truth to those in power, even when unpopular.  They resisted injustice and stood up for the oppressed.  They spoke comforting words to the downtrodden and hopeless.  They were mouthpieces for God.

Priests were anointed for the purpose of making sacrifices and prayers for the people of God.   They offered sacrifice to take away sin, prayed for people when they were sick or troubled, and blessed the people.   (Bow your heads)

Kings were anointed for the purpose of governing the people of God according to God’s law and promises.

Christ, whose name means ‘anointed’, was the fulfillment of these three anointed offices.  Christ was the perfect prophet, priest, and king.

And as we Christians, whose name means “little anointed ones”, are baptized into the body of Christ, we are anointed with this oil.   The sacred Chrism, it is olive oil mixed with balsam perfume, blessed by the bishop during Holy Week, and distributed throughout the diocese for the sacramental needs of the people. 

It is used to anoint bishops and priests when they are ordained.  It covers the hands with which they will bring Christ to people, forgive people, and bless people.

It is used to consecrate things permanently to the Lord.  Including altars like this one, which was at some point covered with the holy oil.

And…each one of you was consecrated with this holy oil.  At your baptism.  Right after you were baptized the priest or deacon anointed you on the head with Sacred Chrism, making you a Christian, a little anointed one.  And by that anointing you share in Christ’s triple dignity of prophet, priest, and king.

You are a prophet in that your baptism calls you to know the word of God, and to be able to share the good news of our faith with others.  To speak truth.  To oppose injustice.  To comfort the downtrodden and hopeless. 

You are a priest in that your baptism calls you to be a source of forgiveness and reconciliation in the world.  Where you see division, or gossip, or betrayal, you are supposed to bring healing and forgiveness.  And you are called to bring Christ to people.  My priesthood, and Fr. Zipple's priesthood, the sacramental priesthood, is at the service of yours.  To nourish yours, to call down Christ for you, so that you can carry him to the world.  (Eucharistic minister.  We need them.  No one sick or alone should be without)

You are, at your baptism, anointed a king.  (4^th of July = getting rid of kings)  Your kingdom is yourself.  You rule yourself.  Refuse to be controlled or manipulated by someone or something else.  Self-possessed, confident, and free.  Free from the control of other people’s opinions of you.  Free from addictions.  Free from manipulations.  Free from turning wants to need.  Free from the absolute tyranny of perfectionism. 

And this freedom, the freedom of the little anointed ones, is not just the absence of external control, or, as Paul says, simply being able to do whatever you want.  It is freedom for a mission.  As Paul puts it: “Serve one another, rather, in works of love.”  Freedom w/o purpose is mere license.  Our freedom is meant for the purpose of service, and to be able to give and receive love.   

And Jesus himself gives us some characteristics of what that love looks like. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” 

So, today, my little anointed brothers and sisters, we ask ourselves how we are using our threefold dignity.  How are we exercising our priesthood, prophecy, and self-rule?  At the end of Mass I will use the OT formula to bless you.  Bow your heads and pray for the grace to engage more deeply your call as prophet priest and king.

Jesus behaving strangely

This is one of those passages that I like to call, “Jesus behaving strangely.”  The familiarity of this passage, and passages like it, attenuates or even eliminates the weirdness the radicality of what Jesus is doing and saying.  

Make no mistake, our Christian faith has all the resources we need to begin to transform the world into the place we want to live in, a place of faith, hope, love, and justice, we just become complacent and familiarity dulls our ears.  

So let’s take a fresh look.  Pretending we are hearing for the first time.

First, Jesus is spending time praying alone with his disciples.  Nothing strange here...a good reminder, but not surprising.                                      

But then he stops praying and asks a question: “Who do the people say I am?” 

He doesn’t ask, “What are the people saying about my teachings.  Or, “What do the people think of my miracles?”  Or, “What are the people’s opinions of my ethical theory?”  He says, “Who do the people say I am?”

This is odd.  And striking.  Because the reality is that although Jesus did teach, he was not simply a teacher.  Although Jesus did perform miracles, he was not simply a miracle worker.  And although Jesus did preach about right conduct, he was not an ethical theorist who simply made an advance in human ethics.

To understand Jesus’ teachings, to lay claim to his ability to heal and forgive, to enter in to the way of living and loving that he gave us, is to be able to answer this question:  Who is he?  In Jesus’ words: Who do you say that I am?

In Luke’s account today Peter answers: “the Christ of God.”

And once this truth has been spoken, Jesus reveals more to them.

There is a reason that the first several hundred years of Christianity were a fight about who exactly Jesus is.  The creed is a testimony of the fight and struggle to understand who he is.  And our lives are just the same.  A struggle to understand who he is.

He is simultaneously God and man.  As God he reveals God to us as loving father and friend.  As man he reveals ourselves to ourselves.  He is not a mere teacher, or healer, or ethicist.  He reveals to us the path towards God…the path of love…the path of willing the good of the other as other.

And in today’s passage, after the disciples have indicated that they understood him to be the God-man, he says this very odd thing.

He has to suffer, and be rejected, and die…so that he can rise again.  And this is also true of us.

The path of love is one of suffering and rejection.   And anyone who wants to be a follower of Jesus, he has to willingly take up his cross and follow Jesus.    

(Aside:  Protestant tendency to say that "all you have to do is accept Jesus as your personal Lord and savior."  But "Lord" isn't merely a title, it is a relationship that determines everything else.  A lord governs you.)

Remember, Jesus gives this call to take up the cross and follow him before the crucifixion and resurrection.  Before the scandal and suffering of the cross was lost in gilding.  Before the cross was tamed through use.  Before anyone wore one on his or her neck as mere jewelry.  We forget how shocking this statement is.

Prompts the question:  Why does following Jesus, the person who was God and man, require suffering?  Why does the profession of the disciples that he is God and man, lead to this dark prediction? 

Because God became man to show us the way of love.  It is crucial to understand who Jesus is to understand that he didn’t just live a life and teach some nice things.  He lived the truly human life.  The fully human life.   The transformative life of love.  And he shows us that the way of love is a way of suffering.  It was, it is, and it always will be until we all stand together in heaven.  Accepting him as lord means living in this kind of love.

Examples, ranging in their degree of challenge.

1.     Love means loss.  Blessed are those who mourn.  We are mortal and eventually love always means loss.

2.     Love means sacrifice.  Laying down one’s life.  Family, children.

3.     Love means willing the good of others as other.  Avoiding and stopping gossip about others.  Leads to rejection.

4.     Love means standing up for the poor and marginalized.  It means actively resisting racism, sexism, homophobia...in our selves and in others.  It means refusing to play along with the sinful games that perpetuate the evils that judge, dismiss, or fear based on characteristics over which a person has no control—like gender, race, color, or sexual orientation.  It means rooting out these behaviors in ourselves and challenging them in others.

And I promise as surely as did Jesus.  Living this kind of love.  Will. bring. suffering.  Suffering as our own sin and self-protection and self-absorption cry out.  

Suffering as those around us cry out that we stop being naïve or holier than thou.  

Suffering of disappointment when a stereotype proves itself true, in someone, and we get hurt.

But this is what Jesus puts before us.  The way of love.  And we can only dare to follow it if we can truly answer his question with our soul.  “Who do you say that I am?”

Fathers' Day Homily

The theme of today’s readings is easy to discern.  In all three readings we have portraits of forgiveness.  Portraits which can give us great consolation and hope.

First we have David.  He was a strong, virtuous, and God-fearing man.  God had chosen David to be king of Israel.  God had chosen him to be his viceroy, his lieutenant, his stand in, for the chosen people.  God had chosen David for a position similar in some ways to being Pope.

And at one point in his life, David succumbed to temptation, and committed two of the greatest sins: lustful adultery, and then murder.  Today Nathan confronts David in the name of God about his sins and David repents, he makes a simple deep act of contrition, Psalm, and is forgiven. 

David remains king, and continues to be called the “man after God’s own heart.”  Not because he didn’t sin, but because he learned from his sin, he understood God’s love and mercy, and therefore, made a good king…some would say an even better king, because he knew what it was to be human.  Capable of great love and fidelity, and simultaneously capable of great treachery and destruction.  And this knowledge: every human person’s ability for both good and bad, is one of the steps in wisdom and fulfillment.

The second portrait is of a young woman.  She finds Jesus dining in the home of a religious leader and lawyer.  Although she has no right to do so, she pays no attention to what people might think, she barges in and makes this incredible act of intimate thanksgiving.  She gushes tears of catharsis on his feet and dries them tenderly with her hair.  And then kissed his feet.  Jesus does not withdraw from this display of extraordinary intimacy.  He gives her the gift of this intimacy.  Why? 

Not because she has won his affection through good living.  Not because she is perfect and virtuous and pious.  But because she needs his affection if she is going to be good.  She needs his love and forgiveness if she is going to be virtuous.  She needs intimacy with him if she is going to be pious.

This is why it is so powerful that Jesus taught us to call God our Father.  To realize that God IS Father.  He is our loving Father.

Fathers and mothers don’t love their children because they are good.  They love them, so that they will be good.

Fathers, when your child was born did you think, “hm, this one seems strong, virtuous, and intelligent…I think I’ll love it.”?  No, you loved your son or daughter in total weakness, in complete incomprehension, in absolute ignorance of anything but eating.

It is through your nurturing the child, loving the child, teaching the child, that it can grow up to be strong, good, and smart.

It is the same with us, God’s children. 

He doesn’t love us because we are good.  He loves us so that we can be good.

The primary goal of the spiritual life is to come to have a deep and abiding knowledge of the unconditional love that God the Father has for us.  To feel in our souls that love.  And that even if we, as overall good people, sin big time, even if we sin as terribly as David, lusting, betraying, murdering kinds of sins.  We never lose the love of God, although in sin we can feel cut off from it, and if we just simply turn to him and ask for forgiveness he opens up the storehouses of grace and will help us move beyond the sins that trap us, towards freedom and fulfillment.

And if you find yourself here tonight, harsh and judgmental of yourself, unable to experience or feel the forgiveness and intimacy of God, unable to feel your own soul’s worth…then learn from the woman in today’s gospel.  Don’t care about what people will think, don’t care about what you have or haven’t done, don’t listen: Aren’t good, God doesn’t love you, Lies.  Just throw yourself on the feet of Jesus and let him give you a gift of intimate love, acceptance, and mercy. 

And on this Fathers’ Day I ask you to call to mind one particularly beautiful image of the unconditional love of Fatherhood, from your father, or something you did as a father, or something a friend or family member has done, and carry that image from here and into the Our Father when we pray it. 

My image is the day of my ordination as a deacon, when my Dad told me that he, who had been Southern Baptist all his life, was going to start RCIA so that he could understand and connect to what I was doing in my vocation, and if possible, become Catholic in time for my priestly ordination.

Carry your image or memory from now to the Our Father…Trusting that the Lord God looks at you with this kind of love and support.

Intro to the Lord's Prayer:  It is at the savior’s command, and formed by divine teaching… and today, informed by the image of fatherly love that we have been carrying with us...that we dare to say…

Continuing our reading of 2 Cor. (sorry Barnabas)

Continuing our reading of 2 Cor. (Sorry Barnabas).

Today, Paul is trying to help the church at Corinth understand and deal with frustrating circumstances.  In 1 Cor. he said that he was planning a trip to see them.  Now they get this letter instead of a visit and he feels the need to help them understand the disappointment.  And in the process he provides a very beautiful piece of theology.

First, he simply tells them that his change of plans isn’t due to his lack of affection for them or a change in priorities, but that what he had decided to do had been overruled by God.  This sounds a lot like St. Ignatius when he had discerned to go to Jerusalem, waited in Venice for a while, and was told it was not possible to go to Venice, and went to Rome instead. 

Our discernment is limited by our humanity, and we simply can’t discern something with full knowledge, it is always contingent upon practical realities and the veto power of God.  But God works everything to the good, and usually, even in frustrations, exceeds our previous expectations.  In these two cases: Paul’s delay in visiting the Church at Corinth produced the treasure of this letter.  And Ignatius’ failure to make it to Jerusalem produced the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus.  So we are happy that their plans were frustrated.  And consoled when things don’t work out that we discern or plan.

But then Paul goes beyond the simple issue of the limitations of human discernment.  The context is Paul’s apparent broken promise, but his statement reaches well beyond this.

Paul says:  “For many are the promises of God, their ‘yes’ in Christ; therefore, the ‘amen’ from us goes through Christ to God for glory.”

Paul focuses the attention of the Christians at Corinth on the sure and certain promises of God (as opposed to the contingent promises of people). 

And then he mentions that the promises of God have their ‘yes’ in Christ.  Christ is both the ‘yes’ of human faithfulness to God that keeps up our end of the covenant, and he is the ‘yes’ of divine faithfulness that provides truth, forgiveness, and love.

And through our ‘amen’ we enter into both ‘yeses’ of Christ. 

So at the Eucharist, when you come forward to receive, and I say “the body of Christ” your ‘Amen’ is not just ritual. 

I am presenting you with a dual reality.  Have you ever noticed the ambiguity of the phrase?

When I say, “the body of Christ” I am saying “This is the body of Christ,” and you say ‘amen’ meaning  ‘yes it is’.  And through your ‘amen’ you enter into Christ’s human faithfulness to God.  His faithfulness becomes yours.

But When I say, “the body of Christ” I am, simultaneously, looking at you and addressing you, saying “you are the body of Christ,” and you say ‘amen’ meaning ‘yes I am.’  And through your ‘amen’ you enter into Christ’s divine faithfulness to us, by promising to bring his truth, forgiveness, and love to others.

So today, let us try to get our minds around this reality, and at Communion, let us give a hearty ‘amen.’ 

God consoles us, so that we may console others.

Today we begin reading Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth.

We have some beautiful and consoling words from Paul.  But they are also words of challenge and mission.

“We have a gentle Father, who is the God of all compassion, who encourages us in all our sorrows, so that we can offer others, in their sorrows, the encouragement  that we have received from God ourselves.”  

παρακαλῶν = literally means "to call to one’s side."  The metaphor can be associated with two images.  

First is an image drawn from battle: and is translated like we have today com-fort (to strengthen), en-courage (to give courage).  The image is to have your back in a battle.  

The second image is that of a parent: and is translated as con-sole (with soothing or with tenderness).  The image is of a gathering a child up to your side after he has fallen or been hurt, to sooth them.  

This second meaning is clearly what Paul has in mind.  Our God is not a wrathful Zeus-like figure, or a dispassionate Ultimate Cause, but a gentle Father, who knows our life.  He knows our joys and sorrows.  He knows our good days and bad days.  Knows when we are a bit scraped up. And he soothes us tenderly in any of those circumstances.

And connected to that, in fact inseparable from that, is our mission. 

 

εἰς τὸ = so that.  He soothes us so that we can sooth others in their distress.  Which means knowing the joys and sorrows of other people.  Knowing when they are having a good day or a bad day.  And gathering people to our side when they need it.

Our gentle God’s care for us in inextricably connected to our care for others.  They are the same thing.  They require each other.  If we refuse to love others we cut ourselves off from fully experiencing the love of God.  And if we refuse the love of God, we find ourselves unable to love others freely and generously.

God’s care for us gives us enough freedom to see the needs of others, and to try to meet them.

And in comforting others, we deepen our understanding of God’s care for us.

To be called to the side of the Father, means to call others to our side.

When I was discerning becoming a Jesuit, I was being directed by a saintly Benedictine monk who asked me, “Are you worried about whether or not you will be fulfilled, happy, loved?”  I answered, “yes.”  And he said, “You have to become what you want to receive.  You have to become love to receive love.  So ask yourself,” he said, “what you need to do to become love, and you will see your path to fulfillment, happiness, holiness.”  

His words gave me the courage to become a Jesuit.  

But they are true for all of us.

Prophet, priest, and king.

“Then God, who had specially chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach the Good News about him.”

This passage is a perfect passage to be read this weekend.  

Although today is simply the 10^th Sunday of OT, this is the weekend of our Jesuit ordinations.  Two of my friends were ordained yesterday and both of them will be working here over the next few month.

Newly minted Fr. Jeremy Zipple will say his first Mass here at 9:30 and then have his first priestly assignment here at ICC starting in July.

And freshly ordained Fr. Raul Navarro will be taking my place as associate pastor in August.

In addition, today, June 9, is the one year anniversary of my own ordination.

I know that it is with a lump in my throat that I read the Apostle Paul’s words in today’s second reading.  I’m sure Fr. Jeremy and Fr. Raul would agree.  And so would our mothers.

“Then God, who had specially chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach the Good News about him.”

In many ways this captures our experience.  And I don’t mean just us ordained priests.  I mean OUR (inclusive gesture) experience. 

For God has specially chosen each one of us, while safely tucked away in our mother’s wombs, through his grace and has chosen to reveal his Son to us, so that we might preach the Good News about him.

For in our baptism each one of us is given the tria munera.  The three dignities.  When we are baptized into Christ each one of us is made into a prophet, a priest, and a king.

A prophet so that we might, each one of us, preach the Good News of Jesus to a world that is hungry for meaning, for direction, for purpose…for freedom.

A priest so that we might offer prayers for the sanctification of God’s people, so that we might assist in the reconciliation of people to one another and to God, so that we might make sacrifices so that others can come to know God.

And a king, so that we rule ourselves, refusing to be controlled or used by someone else.  We refuse to be manipulated by others.  The grace of our baptism calls us to refuse to give away our self-rule through addictions or dependencies.

Yesterday a group of aspirants to the Society of Jesus came for a tour of the church and I gave a little talk about what the first year of priesthood is like.  It was 4 guys who are actually becoming Jesuit novices in August, and a few guys who are considering applying to the Society.

I told them how wonderful it has been to be here.  What a wonderful privilege it is to serve you as a congregation and to have you continue to call priesthood out of me.  Help me learn how to be a priest.

One of them asked what the biggest change is after being a Jesuit for 10-12 years, and then being ordained.  I had never thought of this before, but I answered that the first 12 years of being a Jesuit, while we are vowed religious and ministering as novices and then scholastics, is a time to become intimate with the priesthood of the baptized.  The priesthood that all baptized people share.  

We visit the sick, care for the homeless, teach catechism classes, become Eucharistic ministers and altar servers, lectors, study our faith, teach our faith, and learn to live a spiritual life of prayer and sacrifice.  These are the things that all of us are called to in the priesthood of the baptized.

So that with that intimate knowledge, we can help empower and call forth the priesthood of all baptized from the people we serve, as surely as they help us with ours.

Because the purpose of my priesthood, Fr. Jeremy and Fr. Raul’s priesthood, the ordained and sacramental priesthood, is to equip and nourish all the baptized so that we can, together, transform the world through Christ.

So I ask you.  As you hear these words: Then God, who had specially chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach the Good News about him.

Do you feel a tug in your heart?  

Through your baptism God has chosen each of you to be a prophet priest and king. 

Is he calling you to deepen one of those aspects:  

·        To become more knowledgeable about your faith so you can explain it to your children, to your friends, to other people? 

·        To become a EM so that you can bring the Eucharist to people who are sick or homebound?  An altar server?  A lector?

·        To find a way out of some situation of manipulation or addiction so that you can rule yourself as a king?

·        Possibly even calling you to the ordained and sacramental priesthood or religious life?

If so, say yes.  God, who made you, who created your heart, knows its secrets and only calls you to what will bring you even deeper joy.  Say yes.

Feast of Corpus Christi

Listen with me.  You will have to listen very carefully.  You will have to lean in and strain because it’s a tiny sound. 

But more importantly, you will have to strain because you will have to listen back through centuries of time, through innumerable retellings, past the retelling of the words “this is my body, this is my blood” commanded by Jesus to be retold, and echoes at Masses around the world tens of thousands of times a day for thousands of years, words that will echo through me today.

Listen back, past the retelling of even more ancient stories. Of Abraham from our first reading, and the mysterious priest-King Melchizedek, who was not of our covenantial line, not from Israel, not really from our story, and yet a priest of God, who offered bread and wine and, by blessing Abraham, shows himself superior. 

Listen past all of that, to the most ancient of our stories…the story of our first parents in a Garden.

It’s the tiniest sound, a simple twig-snap of a sound, a fruit being plucked from a tree.  (*pick*)

Even though God had warned them that eating the fruit would bring death, Adam and Eve picked a forbidden fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—because the serpent had tempted then with the idea of being like God.  And somehow this relates to who we are.  Explains who we are.

The Garden story and its picked fruit helps us understand ourselves as curious beings—God made us like him, and has always intended to unite us to him, and yet we sin. 

But one of the effects of sin is that we tend to forget or deny both of these aspects.  That each human person is like God…or rather that God is actually IN each one of US.  Or we deny or rationalize our sin—pretend that we can do it on our own, and don’t need God or other people.

And it all starts with a little bit of fruit… food… is the image that captures this meaning, our falleness, and it captures our imagination.  The tiny sound is sin echoing through the centuries.  Pick.

Today we celebrate The Eucharist.  The gift of the Body and Blood of Jesus.  The fruit from the tree of Calvary. 

The food that we do not reach out and take, but that we receive into our hands or on our tongue.  We receive it from someone else. 

And what the forbidden fruit promised—The dual promise of death and divinity—is satisfied in the Eucharistic food.  We share in the death of Jesus, who died for us, so that we can share in the divinity of Jesus and live forever.

As much as the fruit in the garden is trying to tell us that we have a broken nature that is prone to sin, the Eucharist is trying to remind us that God dwells in us.  The Eucharist reminds us of this fact, and it nourishes and causes this reality. 

You see.  We do not obliterate divinity when we consume it.  We do not destroy the Body of Christ when we eat it.  What would that even mean?  We become it. 

The Eucharist trains us to see God, and thereby to transform us.  The Eucharist begins to have its effect on us when we can look at the bread and wine and see—through ritual and incense and ancient words—the presence of God himself.  And worship him there.  To bend our knee before him.  To revere him there.  To care for every crumb and drop as though it was God himself.

But it only has its full effect when we also surge in our understanding that God is present in us, and in the person sitting next to us.  When our minds begin to capture the fact that we do not obliterate divinity when we consume it.  But that we are made divine.  And we should show the same respect and care for one another, that we do the Eucharistic Bread.

We together become Christ’s presence in the world. 

Jesus chose bread and wine not only because they are common everyday items, but also because of a certain kind of symmetry. 

Many grapes are brought together, and by human industry, become wine. 

Many grains are picked, and through human labor, become one loaf. 

And then, once consecrated, the bread and wine—the Body and Blood of Christ—again scatters in us throughout the world to be Christ’s ministers of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation—sanctifying the world by our lives.

So today, during this consecration, as we spiritually lean forward and strain to see God appear in the ritual echoing ancient words, and incense and mystery, pray that God will open our eyes so that we can simultaneously realize the presence of God in the bread and wine … and in every person who participates with the desires of faith. 

And as we hear the tiny sound of the Host breaking, we will know that the ancient curse of that twig-snap … is being lifted.