2009

“It is finished.” What is finished? That Jesus no longer had to endure any more of the brutal suffering that he had been subjected to since his arrest in the garden? With his dying breath, one could say so, but I suspect Jesus had something else on his mind as he breathed his last. The passage from Hebrews captures for me the sense of mission accomplished.  “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

Being fully human, Jesus had the opportunity to say “No,” to what happened. After the Last Supper, he went out to the Kidron Valley to where there was a garden. What if he had chosen to stay in the Upper Room instead? Perhaps he would have avoided being arrested but he knew he had no choice but to follow his Father’s will. Without hesitation, he ventured forth, allowing others to arrest him. When Peter tried to intervene, Jesus stopped him. “Shall I not drink the cup that my Father has given me?”

Hours later, when being quizzed by Pontius Pilate, Jesus never flinched. Instead, he asserted, “My kingdom does not belong to this world…For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listen to my voice.”

Might he have been spared had he recanted the accusation of others that he claimed to be king of the Jews? Perhaps Pilate would have declared a mistrial and released him then and there. That is a moot question for Jesus never would have denied who he was. Insisting that he could find no guilt in Jesus, Pilate then presented him to the crowds. “Behold the man!”  The crowds clamored, “Crucify him, crucify him!”  And so Pilate did.

Being the teacher that he was, Jesus knew that providing an example was the ultimate lesson he could give his followers. His unwavering obedience for some of us may be a mystery. Given that we live in a society that promotes a “me-first” mindset, the value of obedience is hard for some of us to grasp. Too often, we disobey, opting to have things our way instead of suffering so that God’s way prevails. I say often, because even once is once too often. All it takes is one grave sin to deprive us of God’s gift of salvation.

A teacher can only teach so much. At some point the lesson is done and the students then make the choice to learn the lesson or not, So, we find Jesus on the cross, saying, “It is finished.” As though he is telling us, I am done. Now the rest is up to you.

What is the point of his unwavering obedience? When we obey the Father, we have much to gain, namely the gift of salvation. We save ourselves not only from the pains of hell, but also from the consequences of sin in this lifetime: the hurt, the injury, the mistrust that result from placing our needs first instead of following the example of the master teacher.

Are we striving to do all that the Father is asking of us? When we do, then sin and evil no longer control our lives. If we surrender to the Father’s will, as Jesus did, we shall find peace in this life and the life to come. That is the message of Good Friday.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian, who was condemned to death by none other than Adolf Hitler a month before WWII ended, once said, “Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.” Obedience to God is possible when one has the gift of faith. Paradoxically, faith grows when we obey God. With his ultimate example of love on the cross, our savior breathed his last and expired. May his final act inspire us to take his lesson to heart.
 

Cutting-Edge Christianity

            We live in a culture dominated by advertising and publicity.  We are told that we can have it all.  We are told that we can live the high life.  We can have the best of everything.  In the advertising world, the appeal is always to be on the so-called “cutting edge.”  We have to have a cutting edge computer.  We want a cutting edge car.  Businesses seek to invest in cutting edge technologies.

            Well, tonight brothers and sisters we are reminded that we are called to another kind of cutting edge. It is the cutting edge of Christianity.  Tonight is the beginning of the Triduum, those three days that are a whole liturgical season. They are their own liturgical season because these three days commemorate the most central mysteries of the faith, dealing with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the institution of the Eucharist, the summit of our faith.

Jesus brought his followers to the cutting edge of faith in Him.  To be sure in his public ministry, Jesus worked a miracle of feeding thousands with a few fish and barley loaves.  He talked about God the Father as giving people heavenly bread. He called himself the Bread of Life.

            But in our second reading tonight, St. Paul recalls what Jesus told his disciples about the Eucharist. He forces the apostles, and as Christians us, to the cutting edge of faith in God and faith in Him as the Son of God. In instituting the Eucharist, as St. Paul says, Jesus tells his apostles that unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, they shall have no life in them. He says that they will have life only if they feed on Him.

Jesus was leaving no doubt that about that which he was talking. Scripture scholars tell us that in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke, Jesus was actually telling them that they had to gnaw on his flesh and suck his blood to have life in them.

            Now I would imagine this certainly got their attention. This image was the cutting edge of the faith Jesus was to establish.  For what Jesus called his followers to that day, and what He calls us to today is an incredible intimacy of love.  He would offer his very body and blood to us.  He would pay the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.  He would enshrine the ultimate gift of self in an excruciating death so as to demonstrate his all-abiding love and overcome sin and death through the Resurrection.

            This is why Christ’s institution of the Eucharist begins the Triduum. It is the logical entry into the story of Christ’s Death and Resurrection, and the reason for it.

            But Christianity is not just about what Jesus did a little less than 2000 years ago.  It is a radical, if you will, cutting edge faith because we are called to that same gift of self that Jesus demonstrated.  Now I wouldn’t want Father Rick to think that I told you to gnaw on each other.  That is not my point.  Rather, Christian love at its very essence is service-based. It is the service symbolized by Jesus’ washing of feet before the institution of the Eucharist, a symbolic washing that Father Rick and I will repeat tonight. It is service to the God who gives us all that we have. And it is service to others who we are called to love with the same devotion to which Jesus loved us.

            If we are not prepared to show that kind of intimacy to others, our faith becomes lifeless.  We will lack the love that Jesus, the Bread of Life showed to us.

            This is pretty tough stuff. While as humans, we often seek emotional and physical love as our first objective, Jesus was teaching his apostles in tonight’s Gospel that love is not perfected or complete unless it is grounded in sacrifice.  To be sure, we all have physical and spiritual needs. But those needs are taken care of by the Lord in a mysterious and wonderful process defined by our giving to receive.

            We need to understand that every day there will be situations when we can think of ourselves or we can think of others.  There are little acts of kindness or acts of evil. They can happen at work, going shopping, relating to our families, and relating to our friends, our enemies, and strangers.  We can recall Jesus’ love or we can think of ourselves first.  When we fail to serve, we can have a lukewarm faith, a faith that is fine so long as we are not challenged by it in our everyday lives. Such a faith is not on the cutting edge.

            Many of us are blessed with many material gifts.  We often wish for many more things, things we probably don’t need but nonetheless want.  This is why advertising is so successful.  But when we get them, are we really happy?  Compare that to the times when we surprised our spouse or our children with a special gift.  Compare it to the times when we visited a sick friend or performed some other act of forgiveness, healing, or mercy. Were we not far more joyful than when we got something for ourselves?

            That ought to tell us something. Self-giving is the essence of a fullness of love, a Christian love. This bond of charity is what binds us as Christians to each other and emulates Jesus himself, preparing us for life in heaven.  For what greater sacrifice can there be than to die for others? What greater love can there be than Jesus’; to offer the very body and blood of God so that we all can literally have God in us.  

            And even when we weaken, when we fail to love, we receive the ultimate comfort.  Jesus, then as now, offers us the incredible intimacy of his own flesh and blood.   Through the Eucharist, we can have the joy of being raised to new life as Jesus actually feeds us with Himself.

            Christianity, therefore, has a rather different cutting edge. One day, we will be called by God to make an accounting for our lives. If we partake of the Eucharist in a genuine and faithful way,  Jesus tells us that He will raise us up to share his intimate love forever. If we live as Jesus lived, we will be on the cutting edge of Christianity, not the cutting room floor of a lifeless faith and faithless life.
 

The Three Lessons of Holy Week

I am going to let you in on a secret of the clergy preaching schedule here at St. Hubert’s.  Usually, I preach on the first or second weekend  of the month.  Occasionally, in cases where a particularly important liturgical celebration takes place on those Sundays, or there is some other schedule conflict, Father Rick will preach instead.

We have a particularly important liturgical celebration today.  It is the first Sunday of April, but it is Palm Sunday.  And so a few weeks ago, I asked Father Rick whether I would be preaching, even though it was Palm Sunday.  He got back to me a few days later.  He said I would be preaching, but because of the long Gospel describing the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, his words to me were uncharacteristically blunt:  You can preach, he said, but KEEP IT SHORT.”  And so in due deference to Father’s wishes, I plan to preach tonight this morning for only 45 minutes. If I do that, next year, you most assuredly hear from Deacon Larry Jesmer on Palm Sunday.

As I said, the Gospel from Mark tonight (this morning) is the Passion of the Lord.  The Passion story is a remarkable drama, the most remarkable we will read anywhere at any time.  A moving array of human emotions is laid bare before us, anxiety, fear, agonizing pain, courage, betrayal, death, sadness, and ultimately the redemption and resurrection that follows the Passion.

The most beautiful liturgies of the Church year also take place this week. They are very moving, divine, and sacred theater culminating in the Easter vigil this coming Saturday, the most beautiful of all of our liturgies as Jesus passes over from the death on the Cross to resurrection so that our bodies might too rise again.

We suggest to all of you that you attend as many of the Holy Week liturgies as you can. These liturgies illuminate the meaning of Holy Week in a most beautiful and meaningful way. They help remind you why it is such a joy to be a Catholic. But if for whatever reason you cannot join us again before Easter, I want to leave you with three clear lessons for our own lives that we can take from the commemoration of Holy Week.

The first lesson is this. Fame and riches in this life are fleeting. We hold palms in our hands this morning. (In the procession into church,) (we read) of Jesus’ (had ) a triumphant welcome into Jerusalem, with the crowds hailing him with palm branches. On Palm Sunday, Jesus’ was at the pinnacle, if you will, of his earthly power.  But just five days later, God Himself was given a death reserved for the worst of criminals and the utterly despised.

Human history is full of famous figures that, in a way like Jesus, had their lives snuffed out while at the pinnacle of their power.  For us the less famous, many have experienced the loss of a loved one in the blink of an eye, or seen children die well before what we think should be their time because of diseases or accidents.

It is then we realize that everything we have comes from God.  All we have is given to us to glorify God and serve others.  Yes, we have responsibilities to our families and we need our daily bread. But Christians are called to be ready to lose all of it for the Gospel life.

In the final analysis, as St. Paul says, all that we gain in riches and fame will count as loss, if we are not living the Gospel life. For we do not live for life on this earth, but for the next life. Jesus prepared for us for that next life by his model of living, and by His Passion that we read about this morning.

Second, much as we wish we could avoid it, suffering is a part of life. Americans spend an enormous amount of time trying to have the good life, to limit the amount of adversity they or their children must face.  At one level it is an understandable sentiment.

But such a course will never fully be achieved.  If Jesus, God Himself, suffered horrendously in the Passion story we read about this morning, how in the world are we going to avoid it?  But the reality of suffering need not be ultimately depressing. Our reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah reminds us that we can never be disgraced for the Lord is our help. If we join our suffering to that of Jesus, if we ask for his help, if we ask God to activate the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are joined to His way of life. Suffering becomes an inevitable part of the path toward redemption and eternal life with Him.

Finally, Holy Week reminds us of the incredible, overflowing merciful love of Jesus Christ that we are called to imitate.  God, as St. Paul says in our reading tonight (this morning), took human form and died for people, including us. But people do not deserve eternal union with an all-loving God. We as Christians are not saved because of our actions alone.  We can be saved because God loves us so much that he died for us. He would pay the ultimate price for all of us.  At the heart of Christ’s love, and therefore Christian love, is unbounded service. It is this service-based love, the laying down of one’s life for others, that gives us true freedom. Loving as Jesus loved resurrects us from our sinful bodies into life in the Spirit. Such a life is not about us; it is about God, about others.

Let us pray, brothers and sisters, that God gives us the grace to remember these three lessons of Holy Week; that fame is fleeting, that suffering is inevitable but can be redemptive, and that we are called not only to admire God’s love for us, but live in that love. May we remember and live these three lessons, not just during the moving and inspiring days of Holy Week, but for the rest of our lives.

Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “What was that gospel all about?” If so, I wouldn’t blame you one bit.  Some Greeks said to Philip, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Philip took their simple plea to Andrew.  We have no clue if the Greek pilgrims ever met Jesus yet their request sums up our deepest longings as Christians, doesn’t it? But if we are to see Jesus, then we had better listen to what Jesus said to both Philip and Andrew.

Instead of reaching out to greet his visitors, Jesus gives a reply, which seems to makes little sense. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Amen, amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  I know he isn’t giving us a basic lesson in gardening 101, so what’s going on behind the scene that we are oblivious to?  With just days to go before his arrest, Jesus knows that he has come to a cross road. If he accepts the will of his Father, the time of his death is near.

This insight that a grain of wheat must fall to the earth is not just for him. Intending this message for anyone who wishes to see him, Jesus goes on to say, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life this world will preserve it for eternal life.” By the time he finishes his spiel, Philip and Andrew may have been shaking their heads and muttering, “This is Greek to us!”

Jesus certainly isn’t suggesting that we hate ourselves, so what is his point? This isn’t so much an anti-life statement but an anti-world one when we view the world as anything that distracts us from God. Think back to the passage from Jeremiah where we heard of the Lord talking of a new covenant that would be made with the House of Israel. A covenant that would not be written on sandstone tablets, unlike the covenant he had with Moses, but one that would be written in their hearts. Like a tattoo, God hopes that placing this new covenant in the heart of his people would leave a lasting imprint on them and us.

In scripture, the heart is portrayed as the center of our lives; the seat of our desires, emotions, thoughts and plans; the primary arena in which we meet God and in which God endeavors to cause change, enlightenment and new life within us.

Under this new covenant, God’s laws are to be seen as internal rules and responsibilities that we, as people of God, have made a vital and necessary part of our personal principles. When we honor this covenant, we then respond to the world around us out of love, not self-centeredness or the need for self-preservation.

Have you ever seen the movie, Rainman? Tom Cruise played the role of a selfish, hustling salesman named Charlie Babbit and Dustin Hoffman played the role of his older autistic brother, Raymond, who lives in an institution. Charlie did not even know he had an older brother, much less an autistic one, and the only reason he even cares is that their father had died, leaving three million dollars to Raymond and an old 1949 Buick to hotshot Charlie. Charlie spends much of his energy and time trying to cheat Raymond out of his inheritance. After all, how would a guy like that know what to do with all that money?

In the course of the movie, against his will, Charlie begins to care for Raymond. Before he knows it, for the first time in his life, he is thinking more about another person than of himself. That to me is an example of what Jesus meant by hating our lives in this world.  Slowly, Charlie begins to die to self and live for Raymond.

At one point he has to make a decision to do so, very much like our preoccupied Jesus had to. In doing so, he becomes a different person, a whole person, or as we would say in religious language, Charlie became redeemed. He lost his life for Raymond’s sake only to find it for his own.

Like Jesus and Charlie Babbitt, we cannot avoid making decisions. That is what life is all about. Many of them, however, are made unconsciously, that is, without much thought. We let them slide into self-serving actions. Pulling us out of such preoccupations, this gospel jolts us back to reality and makes us face up to questions we don’t care to face. Who are we? By whose values do we live our lives? Are we committed to the covenant that God has inscribed in our hearts? Or are our choices shaped by the values of our secular world? What means so much to us that we are willing to die for it?

Countless martyrs, even in recent times, have died for their faith. Could you ever do the same if you had to make a choice? Few of us would ever have to make such a life-threatening choice, but what about dying to our own will if that is what it takes to save a struggling marriage or a wounded relationship? What must we let go of in order to grow in our relationship with God and others? Often, the answer is our pride, our self centeredness, or our refusal to seek help. Unless we die to our own will, we cannot really ever see Jesus.

Lent is a decision making time for us. That is the situation Philip and Andrew found Jesus in. He was trying to discern which way to go. Was he ready to fully commit himself to what his heavenly Father was asking of him? Soon thereafter, as we know, he would be arrested, condemned, and executed. In giving totally of himself, Jesus would regain his life in the resurrection.

Like the Greek pilgrims, we seek the Lord but before we can find him, we are being challenged to answer one of life’s most fundamental questions; not Hamlet’s “To be or not to be?” but one posed often by Jesus, “To love or not to love?” One does not need a degree in philosophy to comprehend that we have no choice in the matter if ultimately we want to “bear much fruit” and live life fully.
 

We witness a scene so unlike Jesus in today’s gospel. Making a whip out of cords, he drove merchants and money changers out of the temple area. “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”  Clearly, he was angry, visibly upset by what was going on. Zeal for God’s house consumed Jesus, prompting him to act as he did.

There are two kinds of anger. The more common form is rage that leads to some expression of violence. That is the anger we experience and express most often from road rage to domestic confrontations. Almost daily, we hear on the news of someone taking revenge by going on a shooting rampage.  When this anger is expressed, someone is hurt, perhaps fatally.

Then there is zealous anger.  Zeal is defined as enthusiastic devotion to a cause, thus zealous anger is an anger of passion. Those who demonstrate zealous anger aim their energy toward a common good. Zealous anger motivated Susan B. Anthony to stand up for the voting rights of women. Zealous anger prompted Martin Luther King to challenge the segregation laws of the Deep South. Zealous anger compelled Caesar Chavez to safe guard the migrant workers.

Zealous anger moved Jesus to do what he did in the temple that day. The sanctity of the temple was being violated by those who had lost sight of what the temple stood for. The temple was there to serve God, not the merchants and money changers.

The temple is long gone, but the lesson of this gospel remains relevant to us today. We are temples of the Holy Spirit.  Imagine Jesus zealously striving to clean our temples of the obstacles in our lives to divine grace, that which thwarts us from having a truly intimate relationship with God.

Centuries ago, God led the chosen people out of a life of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land.  As the crow flies, any journey across the Sinai would not take 40 years even on foot, so one can’t give Moses high marks for his navigation skills, but at this point along the way, God provided the Israelites with the most important GPS tool they would ever need. God provided them with the Ten Commandments to free them from slavery, not the slavery they knew in Egypt, but the slavery of sin.

I once assumed that most Christians knew the Commandments but I learned otherwise when teaching a class on the Book of Exodus to some high school kids. None of them could name all Ten Commandments, much less in sequence.  Soon after that, there emerged across our country a campaign to get rid of any display of the Ten Commandments on public property. Atheists, agnostics and the ACLU contend that such displays violated the constitutional separation of church and state.  For five years, the city of Everett fought a suit brought on by an agnostic to remove such a monument that was donated in 1959.  The monument is still there, partially hidden by shrubs. Out of sight, out of mind?

The courts have ruled such monuments may remain if they were viewed as historical rather than religious symbols.  It shall be interesting to see if someone ever sues the Supreme Court, insisting that images of the Ten Commandments be removed from its chambers, images that serve to remind us that the very law of our land is based on our Judeo-Christian heritage. 

For centuries, the Ten Commandments have served as the foundation by which western society has based its law. They have no power. Rather, their value comes from how well they are followed and evidently, they are not always followed well. Many people think of them as being restrictive, calling us to a way of life that is out of tune with much of society, but in fact, God designed them to spare us from the consequences of sin. 

Honesty, respect for parents, fidelity, respect for property, putting God before all else, and taking time to worship God are traits that distinguish those who honor the Ten Commandments.

Out of sight, out of mind. That may be how many in our society treat the Ten Commandments, so by what values do they live their lives? Wherever they are ignored, we find little regard for life, respect for others or their property and commitments. When they are forgotten, we are more apt to respond with rage if things go wrong. The headlines remind us of that too often. Instead, of placing God first in our lives, we place ourselves first, thus greed and materialism prevail. I doubt that we would be struggling with the current economic crisis if we as a country had been honoring God by following the Ten Commandments.

If you remember one thing from these readings, remember that you are God’s temple.  Just as Jesus cleared the Temple of all its corrupting influences, he wants to cleanse us of the same.  Just as he was zealous for his Father’s house then, he zealously cares about every one of us today.  In turn, we are urged to zealously live our lives according to all Ten Commandments, thinking of them as our response to God’s covenant for living life free from sin, that is, being the holy people we are called to be.

Paul’s timeless observation is well worth noting whenever we are tempted to minimalize the Ten Commandments. God is so much wiser than we are.  Think of all the many laws that govern our lives, yet none can foster a greater sense of civility than the Ten Commandments. Any time we ignore them, we are apt to sin and too often, we find out painfully and much too late that sin devastates us and the lives of others.  Sin leads to unhappy consequences. If Lent is to be of any value to us, we should zealously strive to cleanse our hearts of the needless clutter that distances us from the wisdom and love of God.