St Boniface Episcopal Church, Sarasota, Florida
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 5 C – Sunday 07 February 2010
Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
Lord Jesus, your Hebrew name itself means "The Lord Saves." Help us hold that truth always: "The Lord Saves." Help us remember that you alone save us from our wandering desires and preoccupations. May you strengthen us in hope and faith, that we may follow you and become netters of men and women fully alive for the building up of your kingdom of charity, your commonwealth of love.
Amen.
*****
Jesus is in Capernaum, a fishing village on the Sea of Galilee. The evangelist Luke calls it the Lake of Gennesaret. But it's a big lake; about 13 miles long and 8 miles wide. In the first century of our era, the Sea of Galilee featured an extensive fishing industry. Small settlements dotted its shores and most of them were active in fishing.
Being a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee was a tough and hard up occupation. Fishermen had to pay for a license to catch fish. That's one of the things toll collectors did in those villages. In order to live from fishing, the catch had to be sold beyond the villages around the Sea. The fishermen needed fish brokers and carters to take their fish to market. All of these intermediaries in the fishing economy would be paid with a substantial part of whatever fish was caught. No Galilean fisherman going out on the lake got rich doing it.
Catching fish on the Sea of Galilee was marginally easier at night. At night, the ferrying of people and merchandise across the sea stopped and the sea was a bit quieter. At night, insects fly lower to the surface of the water and fish come up to catch them. That's why most fishermen would go out in the night to fish.
*****
So we may imagine how weary Simon and his fishing mates must feel; coming back from a night of working in vain on the sea. They are tired and more worried about their livelihood than usual.
And having landed is not the end of their work. They now need to mend and wash their nets in view of their next expedition. They probably would rather go home to sleep off the bad night. Even though going home would mean facing the family empty-handed.
*****
And as the morning of washing and mending nets wears on, a crowd piles up on the shore to listen to a rabbi, a teacher, whom Simon knows. His name is Yeshua, a diminutive for Yehoshua, a name that means "The Lord Saves." What a good name for a rabbi!
Simon knows Yeshua, the teacher. Luke's gospel lets us surmise that Simon had invited Yeshua in his house on a sabbath day. On that day, in the synagogue, Yeshua had rebuked a demon and made him come out from a man. Then, once in Simon's house, Yeshua had healed Simon's mother-in-law.
Simon and Jesus know each other already. No doubt, the sayings and doings of this unconventional rabbi have been on Simon's thoughts, at times. And on this dreary morning for Simon, Jesus asks to step into Simon's boat to have enough distance from the crowd to teach them all. Simon likes this rabbi and is in his debt for the curing of his mother-in-law. He invites Jesus in his boat and pushes off the shore as requested.
I imagine Simon, half-naked, sweaty and smelly, crouched in the prow of his boat, mending his nets while listening to what Jesus is teaching. I imagine Simon fuming in his weariness and frustration, that "morning after". I imagine Simon thinking "and what now?" at Jesus' request, but being drawn into accepting it anyway. I imagine him being drawn into what Jesus is telling the crowd. Little by little, Simon is going through an attitude adjustment. Progressively, his thoughts move to concerns about the Kingdom of God and what this man in his boat is saying about it.
Eventually, the teaching comes to an end. Luke, the evangelist, sees no point in telling us what the teaching is about. And as Jesus turns away from facing the shore-bound crowd, he seems to turn to the fishermen's more material concerns.
*****
Jesus tells Simon: "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." There is nothing tentative here. But what does a teacher of godly things know about fishing? Simon offers his professional objection, but prodded in a way he does not fully understand, he complies.
He complies in a very teenage manner, if you ask me. "If you say so" he says to Jesus. I suspect a mental shrugging of the shoulders in that answer, mixed with puzzlement and curiosity.
And so, Simon and his partners let down the nets they have just mended and cleaned, back into the water. If no fish is caught, they will need to clean the nets again, all the same. They may be wondering "why are we doing this to ourselves?"
James and John, fishing partners of Simon, remain on the shore, lifting their eyes from their net washing from time to time to watch Simon make a fool of himself by trying another catch in full daylight.
But soon, James and John know something is up. The nets start to show the tension of a catch. Very soon, they see Simon and his folks bringing bulging nets back up. And then, the abundance of the catch becomes obvious as Simon makes anxious signals to James and John that they need to bring their boat along and help. When they get there, Simon's boat is starting to dip dangerously close to the surface. They all struggle to even the catch of fish between both boats. And even so, both boats are precariously loaded with shimmering and flapping fish.
*****
Suddenly, Simon has an epiphany, a revelation. This rabbi who rides his boat to a miraculous catch is more than a simple teacher, more than your run-of-the-mill traveling healer. Simon believes what he heard the possessed man in the synagogue say to Jesus; He is the "Holy One of God!" Simon is overwhelmed in more ways than one.
Every night that Simon goes out fishing, he hopes for a good catch of fish to keep things going. And now, all of a sudden, the abundance of fish is so large that the abundance itself becomes a danger; maybe the boat will sink.
Every day that Simon prays to the God of Israel, he asks for God's grace on the life of his family and community. And now that he perceives the hand of God so close to him, he is daunted.
Simon knows in how many ways he comes short of what God's law demands of him. Maybe he will be judged and found wanting in virtue. He finds himself unworthy of the grace that is cascading over his head. And he throws himself at the mercy of the man who is channeling this grace on him.
I feel great sympathy for Simon when I read "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" I know that feeling of unworthiness; that feeling of not being up to the task of walking humbly with our God. Maybe you know that feeling too.
*****
But Jesus, Yehoshua, The Lord's Salvation is here to change the game. Having shown the abundance of God's grace, Jesus doesn't walk away and let Simon's little fishing community have an easy-going party with the bounty at hand. No, having revealed the nature of his humanity and the grace of God, Jesus reaps in harvesters of people fully alive for God.
Simon knows the big ask; Jesus asks everything. And having understood, if only dimly and intuitively, the awesomeness of God in man made manifest, Simon leaves everything and follows Jesus. What Simon leaves behind is a livelihood, a family, a community that have meant everything of who he is up to then.
This is a radical and risky departure; a scandalous one as far as Simon's community would be concerned. And yet, the evangelist Luke seems to tell us that there was no further discernment needed; Simon, James and John became fisher of people for God's Kingdom.
*****
This is a demanding story for Christians. How shall we, in our settled or unsettled lives, welcome God's abundant grace and respond to the radical invitation it contains? There is no cheap grace. And discipleship has a cost. Are we ready? Holy people of God, do not be afraid, and be daring in your following Christ.
Amen.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
RCL - Epiphany 4 C - 31 Jan 2010
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
RCL Epiphany 4 C - Sunday 31 January 2010
Jeremiah 1:4-10
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
Our Prophetic Call
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our Gospel reading this morning is actually the second half of last week's Gospel. Last week, you'll recall Jesus was in the synagogue and chose for his reading a passage from Isaiah which read:
But as this week's reading goes on we hear these same people of Nazareth turn on Jesus and become outraged by him when he tells them that he knows they will reject his message due to their lack of faith, for no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.
But every time I read this passage, I find myself wondering about these towns people, the very ones who are “filled with rage.” What is it about a prophet that so upsets people? Certainly the prophets' message can be difficult to hear, but I have always suspected that there is more to it than that.
Once, many years ago, I found myself in the presence of a Prophet – a man specially called by God to announce the Good News to the poor and to proclaim peace throughout the land. The occasion was a retreat I was participating in that was led by the Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan, one of the leaders of the Catonsville Nine. The retreat was back in the early 1980's at the height of the brutal repression by extreme right-wing oligarchs and their paramilitary thugs, aided and abetted in their evil ways by the complicity of, first, Jimmy Carter, and then, Ronald Reagan.
Now I knew a great deal about Berrigan and was very excited about the retreat; I also knew that I agreed with at least 90% of what I had read in Berrigan's writings. Though I did not know him personally, you could say that I was one of the hometown crowd. So, not fifteen minutes into the retreat, I began to wonder to myself why I was feeling so uncomfortable. What he was saying was familiar territory for me and the words themselves were not shocking to me. It was something about Berrigan himself that was unsettling me and I simply could not figure out what that was.
And then, many years later, I read Abraham Heschel's book The Prophets and figured out why I had been so unsettled by Berrigan so many years before. In his book, Heschel writes that:
This brings to mind our first reading which is from the very beginning of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. At this point, having heard the call from God, Jeremiah is terrified because he was thinking to himself that “he is only a boy.” “But the Lord put out his hand and touched his mouth” and told Jeremiah:
The prophet then, is called to love. In fact, the prophet is called to be a great lover. The modern day prophet I most admire is Archbishop Oscar Romero. Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador in the late 1970's, and was martyred on the Eve of the Feast of the Annunciation, March 24, 1980 as he celebrated the Eucharist. The murderers were the very people that Daniel Berrigan would be fuming about a few years later on my retreat.
Romero had been a somewhat ordinary priest that the political and church oligarchs conspired to convince the Vatican to raise up as Archbishop. He was conservative. He believed that the Church should not rock the boat. He was "one of them." But upon his elevation, a number of incidents, which is the polite word for murder and kidnappings, occurred that prompted him to speak out. In a very brief time, he became known as a man who would stop at nothing, no matter how dangerous, to call his people – all of his people – to justice, to peace, and to making that preferential option for the poor a reality.
In a homily at the Cathedral in San Salvador, Archbishop Romero said:
What made Oscar Romero different, a man who could build and plant rather than simply tear down and destroy? I think an important clue comes at the beginning of the passage I quoted. He begins by addressing all of these people as my “dear brothers and sisters, especially those who hate me.” And there it is. The radical love that names each of God's children as one's brother or sister is the prophetic dimension that moves beyond pulling down and destroying and begins the process of planting and building. When it is an enemy we see, committing grave sins and profaning God, we want to destroy them. When it is our brother or sister we see, committing grave sins and profaning God, we want to call them to conversion and lead them to a new way, a holy way, a way of planting and building.
For the monastic community, for our Associates, and perhaps others as well, who are called to live our lives according to, or inspired by, the Rule of Benedict, our call is, at least in part, to be a prophetic witness for Christ. Not everyone who is called to be a prophet is meant to be a wild-eyed, grasshopper eating rabble rouser. But as prophets nonetheless, the first piece of the prophetic witness, I believe, is to build and plant community. To see one another and all of God's children as our brothers and sisters. St. Benedict tells us in Chapter 72 of the Rule that monks:
But in our particular era, I think that the work of forming community is even more difficult than it has been in the past. We are up against a great deal within our culture that fights very hard against the idea of community, to say nothing of its realization. We are isolated one from another, adrift in a world that is so fast paced we find ourselves short of breath just contemplating it.
Add to this that via the Internet, television, and cell phones we are joined to other people and peoples with little knowledge of how they actually live, what is important to them, what they believe in. But there we are, in constant contact with all of God's children without really being connected to them. Most damaging of all is a political and economic system that glorifies individualism, greed, and a culture of violence and death at all stages of life.
As I think about these things, it seems to me that those of us who have a Benedictine vocation have a special call at this time in Salvation History, and that includes not only the monastic community, but our Associates as well. We must not forget that it was our forebears in this great Benedictine tradition that were the leaders of re-forming community in a desperately broken down Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. For 1,500 years we have been living the Good News in our prayer and in our work by creating community in our prayer and in our work. We are at a point in Salvation History in which it is not only Europe that cries out for our prophetic witness, it is the whole world.
Listen closely my brothers and sisters for the cry of the poor rises up from Newburgh and Port-au-Prince, from Kingston and San Salvador, from Hartford and New York and Toronto and Grahamstown and Manila and Islamabad longing for the love of a brother or sister. The pained voices of those trampled by unending war and violence in Baghdad, Kabul and Darfur are moaning for their brothers and sisters to lay down their arms. Forty-five million Americans are begging their brothers and sisters to end our greed and share the health care that we so often take for granted.
I believe we have a choice before us today. We can, as part of Christ's Body, take on his prophetic call by announcing the Good News to the poor, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed. Or, we can ignore the poor, the sick, the oppressed, pretending that they do not exist, which is tantamount to throwing them off the cliff. We can heed God's call to constant conversion and call our loved ones, fellow community members, fellow Americans, and the Church, to that same conversion. A conversion that allows us to build and plant the Kingdom of God with our brothers and sisters whom we love so deeply.
There is risk in this, of course. As prophets, we will make some people uncomfortable because we are so filled with feeling. Some people will want to throw us off the cliff because they are actually hearing God raging in our words. Some of us may be imprisoned or even killed because we love our brothers and sisters so deeply, even those who hate us.
But throughout Salvation History, our Lord has called people just like you and me to bring Good News to the poor, to proclaim release to all who are held captive, to give sight to the bind, and to free the oppressed by welcoming them all into our community. This is our call. A call to take up our cross and follow Jesus down a road that may not always be comfortable, and might even be dangerous. A call that requires a life dedicated to the two great Benedictine values of prayer and work. May the Lord continue to bless all of us in that prayer and work.
Amen.
Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
RCL Epiphany 4 C - Sunday 31 January 2010
Jeremiah 1:4-10
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
Our Prophetic Call
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our Gospel reading this morning is actually the second half of last week's Gospel. Last week, you'll recall Jesus was in the synagogue and chose for his reading a passage from Isaiah which read:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,The continuation of the Gospel this week says that the people in Nazareth's synagogue were quite thrilled to hear this and were very pleased with “Joseph's son.” They probably thought to themselves 'we sure could use a year of favor from the Lord,' and 'it sure would be nice for the blind to see and the captives to be set free.'
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim a year of the Lord's favor.
But as this week's reading goes on we hear these same people of Nazareth turn on Jesus and become outraged by him when he tells them that he knows they will reject his message due to their lack of faith, for no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.
But every time I read this passage, I find myself wondering about these towns people, the very ones who are “filled with rage.” What is it about a prophet that so upsets people? Certainly the prophets' message can be difficult to hear, but I have always suspected that there is more to it than that.
Once, many years ago, I found myself in the presence of a Prophet – a man specially called by God to announce the Good News to the poor and to proclaim peace throughout the land. The occasion was a retreat I was participating in that was led by the Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan, one of the leaders of the Catonsville Nine. The retreat was back in the early 1980's at the height of the brutal repression by extreme right-wing oligarchs and their paramilitary thugs, aided and abetted in their evil ways by the complicity of, first, Jimmy Carter, and then, Ronald Reagan.
Now I knew a great deal about Berrigan and was very excited about the retreat; I also knew that I agreed with at least 90% of what I had read in Berrigan's writings. Though I did not know him personally, you could say that I was one of the hometown crowd. So, not fifteen minutes into the retreat, I began to wonder to myself why I was feeling so uncomfortable. What he was saying was familiar territory for me and the words themselves were not shocking to me. It was something about Berrigan himself that was unsettling me and I simply could not figure out what that was.
And then, many years later, I read Abraham Heschel's book The Prophets and figured out why I had been so unsettled by Berrigan so many years before. In his book, Heschel writes that:
The prophet is the man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man's fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet's words.It wasn't that I was uncomfortable with Berrigan or even with what he was saying. In my gut I was uncomfortable because it was God I heard raging in Berrigan's words. This was no ordinary retreat session, the rather soft-spoken and eloquent Berrigan made me so uncomfortable because it was not really him condemning all that was happening in El Salvador and here in the United States, it was God condemning that profoundly sinful behavior. And being so near to the presence of God - raging in a prophet's words - is bound to make any ordinary person uncomfortable.
This brings to mind our first reading which is from the very beginning of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. At this point, having heard the call from God, Jeremiah is terrified because he was thinking to himself that “he is only a boy.” “But the Lord put out his hand and touched his mouth” and told Jeremiah:
Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.When we think of a prophet, probably what we are most likely to think about is the verse: “To pluck up and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow.” We can just envision the livid Jeremiah or the seemingly half-crazed John the Baptist railing against the powers that be and demanding their overthrow. But it's that last phrase that intrigues me: “to build and to plant.” Anger and outrage may be enough to pull down and to destroy, but if you are going to build and plant there has to be something more. In fact, there has to be love. For, as St. Paul says in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, “If I have prophetic powers...but do not have love, I am nothing.”
The prophet then, is called to love. In fact, the prophet is called to be a great lover. The modern day prophet I most admire is Archbishop Oscar Romero. Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador in the late 1970's, and was martyred on the Eve of the Feast of the Annunciation, March 24, 1980 as he celebrated the Eucharist. The murderers were the very people that Daniel Berrigan would be fuming about a few years later on my retreat.
Romero had been a somewhat ordinary priest that the political and church oligarchs conspired to convince the Vatican to raise up as Archbishop. He was conservative. He believed that the Church should not rock the boat. He was "one of them." But upon his elevation, a number of incidents, which is the polite word for murder and kidnappings, occurred that prompted him to speak out. In a very brief time, he became known as a man who would stop at nothing, no matter how dangerous, to call his people – all of his people – to justice, to peace, and to making that preferential option for the poor a reality.
In a homily at the Cathedral in San Salvador, Archbishop Romero said:
Dear brothers and sisters, especially those of you who hate me, you dear brothers and sisters who think I am preaching violence, who defame me and know it isn't true, you that have hands stained with murder, with torture, with atrocity, with injustice – be converted. I love you deeply. I am sorry for you because you go on the way to ruin.It's that short little sentence near the end that so moves me: “I love you deeply.” He was talking about men who were attempting to, and who eventually did, murder him. He was talking about men who committed grotesque atrocities. And still he could say “I love you deeply.” This was a man who could build and plant.
What made Oscar Romero different, a man who could build and plant rather than simply tear down and destroy? I think an important clue comes at the beginning of the passage I quoted. He begins by addressing all of these people as my “dear brothers and sisters, especially those who hate me.” And there it is. The radical love that names each of God's children as one's brother or sister is the prophetic dimension that moves beyond pulling down and destroying and begins the process of planting and building. When it is an enemy we see, committing grave sins and profaning God, we want to destroy them. When it is our brother or sister we see, committing grave sins and profaning God, we want to call them to conversion and lead them to a new way, a holy way, a way of planting and building.
For the monastic community, for our Associates, and perhaps others as well, who are called to live our lives according to, or inspired by, the Rule of Benedict, our call is, at least in part, to be a prophetic witness for Christ. Not everyone who is called to be a prophet is meant to be a wild-eyed, grasshopper eating rabble rouser. But as prophets nonetheless, the first piece of the prophetic witness, I believe, is to build and plant community. To see one another and all of God's children as our brothers and sisters. St. Benedict tells us in Chapter 72 of the Rule that monks:
...should each try to be the first to show respect to the other, supporting with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of body or behavior, and earnestly competing in obedience to one another. No one is to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead what he judges better for someone else. To their fellow monks they show the pure love of brothers...That is community. Brotherhood, sisterhood, is “pure love.” It is pure because it is selfless. It is living a life based on what is better for another. And that is completely counter-cultural. Fraternal love is radical love because it places the needs of others ahead of our own. And that is why throughout history, community has always been difficult to form. Those few verses I read are a real challenge to anyone attempting to live a Christian life. Seeing one another as brothers and sisters is the work of conversion, the work of our vows, the work of a lifetime.
But in our particular era, I think that the work of forming community is even more difficult than it has been in the past. We are up against a great deal within our culture that fights very hard against the idea of community, to say nothing of its realization. We are isolated one from another, adrift in a world that is so fast paced we find ourselves short of breath just contemplating it.
Add to this that via the Internet, television, and cell phones we are joined to other people and peoples with little knowledge of how they actually live, what is important to them, what they believe in. But there we are, in constant contact with all of God's children without really being connected to them. Most damaging of all is a political and economic system that glorifies individualism, greed, and a culture of violence and death at all stages of life.
As I think about these things, it seems to me that those of us who have a Benedictine vocation have a special call at this time in Salvation History, and that includes not only the monastic community, but our Associates as well. We must not forget that it was our forebears in this great Benedictine tradition that were the leaders of re-forming community in a desperately broken down Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. For 1,500 years we have been living the Good News in our prayer and in our work by creating community in our prayer and in our work. We are at a point in Salvation History in which it is not only Europe that cries out for our prophetic witness, it is the whole world.
Listen closely my brothers and sisters for the cry of the poor rises up from Newburgh and Port-au-Prince, from Kingston and San Salvador, from Hartford and New York and Toronto and Grahamstown and Manila and Islamabad longing for the love of a brother or sister. The pained voices of those trampled by unending war and violence in Baghdad, Kabul and Darfur are moaning for their brothers and sisters to lay down their arms. Forty-five million Americans are begging their brothers and sisters to end our greed and share the health care that we so often take for granted.
I believe we have a choice before us today. We can, as part of Christ's Body, take on his prophetic call by announcing the Good News to the poor, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed. Or, we can ignore the poor, the sick, the oppressed, pretending that they do not exist, which is tantamount to throwing them off the cliff. We can heed God's call to constant conversion and call our loved ones, fellow community members, fellow Americans, and the Church, to that same conversion. A conversion that allows us to build and plant the Kingdom of God with our brothers and sisters whom we love so deeply.
There is risk in this, of course. As prophets, we will make some people uncomfortable because we are so filled with feeling. Some people will want to throw us off the cliff because they are actually hearing God raging in our words. Some of us may be imprisoned or even killed because we love our brothers and sisters so deeply, even those who hate us.
But throughout Salvation History, our Lord has called people just like you and me to bring Good News to the poor, to proclaim release to all who are held captive, to give sight to the bind, and to free the oppressed by welcoming them all into our community. This is our call. A call to take up our cross and follow Jesus down a road that may not always be comfortable, and might even be dangerous. A call that requires a life dedicated to the two great Benedictine values of prayer and work. May the Lord continue to bless all of us in that prayer and work.
Amen.
Monday, January 25, 2010
RCL - Epiphany 3 C - 24 Jan 2010
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 3 C – Sunday 24 January 2010
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
The Lord Jesus emerges from the wilderness and is ready to begin his public ministry. He will declare the coming of the kingdom of God. He goes home - to Nazareth, to the synagogue he knew very well, to his family and friends. The community gathers to sing, to pray, to hear the stories and the promises. Perhaps most urgently of all they gather to remember the promise of Messiah who will save and liberate them, who will usher in the reign of God's presence of justice and peace. How they long for justice and peace, how they long for freedom and have longed for it for centuries. It was a normal Sabbath gathering, like hundreds of Sabbaths before, and, for all these Jews of Nazareth knew, like the hundreds of Sabbaths which will follow. An endless horizon of Sabbaths full of this remembering, this longing, this waiting spread out before them. So much in their world would make a hope for liberty folly. Tommorow will be like today: the poor will be poor, the rich will stay rich, the empire will own us, and Caesar will be lord – who or what could change that?
They don't yet know who it is who stands among them to read on this Sabbath, who arrives to utter the most earth-shattering one sentence sermon ever preached. Even the first word would have been incomprehensible. “Today...” They don't yet know that sight is coming from Mary and Joseph's son, that salvation for the world starts in Nazareth with them. They don't yet know that they are staring at the very One they most desire and most long for. The promise is really here. He proclaims his anointed and chosen status. Isaiah was right and today is the day. But even as he announces that the blind can see and the prisoners can walk free people in Nazareth continued to suffer. After Jesus declared that today was the day blindness was still as dark, prisons were still as confining, the Roman soldiers patrolling the streets of Nazareth carried swords that still reminded the people of their oppression. Those hanging on crosses for defying Caesar were still as dead – Caesar always wins.
Whatever fulfillment means it does not mean that justice and peace spring up instantly. Jesus does not fix everything. From the stories given to us in the Gospels Jesus will indeed leave the synagogue in Nazareth and go about preaching and healing. He will open a few blind eyes and liberate some in spiritual oppression, he will free captives and feed the poor and the Good News will begin to spread around the world. But this Good News will not, has not, been instant or easy or welcomed by everyone. Whatever fulfillment means, it is not finished yet.
After Jesus went up and the Holy Spirit came down the first Christians preserved and embodied Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom coming among us. They shared and taught the faith, cared for the orphan and widow, fed the hungry. And what did they get for their embrace of the Savior? Our faithful forebears were thrown out of the synagogues, persecuted, many tortured and killed, oppressed and deprived and tormented – not exactly what we would call Good News. And in the two millenia since this declaration of freedom was proclaimed how many around the world have remained blind and in prison, oppressed and mistreated? How many have died alone, unloved, and unmourned? How many children have been abused, how many have faced hopelessness, how many have spent their last moments trapped under a collapsed building, alone, afraid, in darkness and despair? To those for whom there is no rescue, in the realization that no one is coming to save them, what is the use of this Good News? In moments of honesty we look around the world and demand “If this is the world that God envisioned, if this is the Good News that Jesus preaches, it is either the biggest joke in the history of the world or it is a hard Good News and who can bear it.”
And yet Christ proclaims the promise fulfilled. And it is fulfilled. Despite the pain, the violence, the earthquakes, the disease - the promise of Isaiah is fulfilled because Messiah has come. The message of the kingdom is the ultimate Good News because it offers the gift that within and beyond the pain, within and beyond the violence, in the midst of rubble and destruction, though our bodies decay and die, Messiah is with us and we can have hope. Indeed the Good News that Jesus proclaims is to be free from injustice and oppression but it is also to be free when we are the victims of injustice and oppression. It is to see with our eyes but it is also to glimpse what no eye has seen. It is to know Christ in blessed times of health and plenty and contentment but also to know Christ in the inevitability of disease and distress and death that attends this temporal journey – fulfillment is real because we rest in the peace that no suffering, no oppression, no Caesar can touch our hope or steal our life. Our brief momentary afflictions are not the last word, our struggle is temporal, our liberation is secured.
But we don't just sit back and wait for heaven. Because God's reign is embodied in people, in us, the kingdom comes when we live its life and do its work and act as if it is already here today among us because it is. Our longing translated into acts of revolution usher in the kingdom among us. We become the Good News to one another. As Jesus leaves the synagogue in Nazareth, he is looking for us, or, more accurately, looking within us. He is listening for our hearts, for the longing and hope that reside deep within us. He is testing the sincerity of our love. Our desire for new life joins us to Jesus' proclaimation of “Today in your hearing...” and makes it real. We meet them as we journey into the story: desire lived in the heart of blind Bartimaeus, the bleeding woman, the lepers – it lived in the hearts of those who pleaded on behalf of others – the Roman official, the demoniac's father, the friends of the lame and dying and dead. Their physical healing was for their temporal existence but the spiritual life they received sustains them even now at this very moment as they look upon the face of the One who healed and saved them. These are they who lived Epiphany, who welcomed the Light, who faced the crisis of freedom with hope planted and grounded in Christ. These and countless others like them are our models for fulfilling the Good News in our own lives.
Still it is a hard Good News that we proclaim. We live with the violent, unjust and fractured state of our world – a world of promise yet still fallen and groaning for its salvation. Our hope is fulfilled but not yet complete. It is a hard Good News that we proclaim. Too hard, a foolish nonsense, to those who want a quick fix, an easy out, pleasure now. Even as Jesus loved and forgave and healed there were scoffers, enemies are present in the story as well - the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the Sadducees, the religious, the comfortable, the arrogantly powerful, the selfishly rich – unable to surrender control, unwilling to let go of a fleeting safety and comfort for eternal peace. Those who reject hope remind us that we are often tempted to do the same. . Jesus announces but does not impose, he proclaims but does not coerce. Our will is like a door that can open to liberation or close itself up in the prison of self-delusion. Our own struggles with arrogance, selfishness, judgment, apathy can humble us and confront us with the choice of life or death. The light of Good News attracts some and repels others and we are all on the hook and must respond. Jesus continues to fulfill today in our hearing, to announce, to invite, to preach the foolishness of sight and freedom, even and especially in a world so full of blindness and despair.
In his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, Cistertian monk Thomas Merton expressed the essence of Epiphany, the essence of our longing for what is already here, with these words:
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived.
Amen.
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 3 C – Sunday 24 January 2010
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
The Lord Jesus emerges from the wilderness and is ready to begin his public ministry. He will declare the coming of the kingdom of God. He goes home - to Nazareth, to the synagogue he knew very well, to his family and friends. The community gathers to sing, to pray, to hear the stories and the promises. Perhaps most urgently of all they gather to remember the promise of Messiah who will save and liberate them, who will usher in the reign of God's presence of justice and peace. How they long for justice and peace, how they long for freedom and have longed for it for centuries. It was a normal Sabbath gathering, like hundreds of Sabbaths before, and, for all these Jews of Nazareth knew, like the hundreds of Sabbaths which will follow. An endless horizon of Sabbaths full of this remembering, this longing, this waiting spread out before them. So much in their world would make a hope for liberty folly. Tommorow will be like today: the poor will be poor, the rich will stay rich, the empire will own us, and Caesar will be lord – who or what could change that?
They don't yet know who it is who stands among them to read on this Sabbath, who arrives to utter the most earth-shattering one sentence sermon ever preached. Even the first word would have been incomprehensible. “Today...” They don't yet know that sight is coming from Mary and Joseph's son, that salvation for the world starts in Nazareth with them. They don't yet know that they are staring at the very One they most desire and most long for. The promise is really here. He proclaims his anointed and chosen status. Isaiah was right and today is the day. But even as he announces that the blind can see and the prisoners can walk free people in Nazareth continued to suffer. After Jesus declared that today was the day blindness was still as dark, prisons were still as confining, the Roman soldiers patrolling the streets of Nazareth carried swords that still reminded the people of their oppression. Those hanging on crosses for defying Caesar were still as dead – Caesar always wins.
Whatever fulfillment means it does not mean that justice and peace spring up instantly. Jesus does not fix everything. From the stories given to us in the Gospels Jesus will indeed leave the synagogue in Nazareth and go about preaching and healing. He will open a few blind eyes and liberate some in spiritual oppression, he will free captives and feed the poor and the Good News will begin to spread around the world. But this Good News will not, has not, been instant or easy or welcomed by everyone. Whatever fulfillment means, it is not finished yet.
After Jesus went up and the Holy Spirit came down the first Christians preserved and embodied Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom coming among us. They shared and taught the faith, cared for the orphan and widow, fed the hungry. And what did they get for their embrace of the Savior? Our faithful forebears were thrown out of the synagogues, persecuted, many tortured and killed, oppressed and deprived and tormented – not exactly what we would call Good News. And in the two millenia since this declaration of freedom was proclaimed how many around the world have remained blind and in prison, oppressed and mistreated? How many have died alone, unloved, and unmourned? How many children have been abused, how many have faced hopelessness, how many have spent their last moments trapped under a collapsed building, alone, afraid, in darkness and despair? To those for whom there is no rescue, in the realization that no one is coming to save them, what is the use of this Good News? In moments of honesty we look around the world and demand “If this is the world that God envisioned, if this is the Good News that Jesus preaches, it is either the biggest joke in the history of the world or it is a hard Good News and who can bear it.”
And yet Christ proclaims the promise fulfilled. And it is fulfilled. Despite the pain, the violence, the earthquakes, the disease - the promise of Isaiah is fulfilled because Messiah has come. The message of the kingdom is the ultimate Good News because it offers the gift that within and beyond the pain, within and beyond the violence, in the midst of rubble and destruction, though our bodies decay and die, Messiah is with us and we can have hope. Indeed the Good News that Jesus proclaims is to be free from injustice and oppression but it is also to be free when we are the victims of injustice and oppression. It is to see with our eyes but it is also to glimpse what no eye has seen. It is to know Christ in blessed times of health and plenty and contentment but also to know Christ in the inevitability of disease and distress and death that attends this temporal journey – fulfillment is real because we rest in the peace that no suffering, no oppression, no Caesar can touch our hope or steal our life. Our brief momentary afflictions are not the last word, our struggle is temporal, our liberation is secured.
But we don't just sit back and wait for heaven. Because God's reign is embodied in people, in us, the kingdom comes when we live its life and do its work and act as if it is already here today among us because it is. Our longing translated into acts of revolution usher in the kingdom among us. We become the Good News to one another. As Jesus leaves the synagogue in Nazareth, he is looking for us, or, more accurately, looking within us. He is listening for our hearts, for the longing and hope that reside deep within us. He is testing the sincerity of our love. Our desire for new life joins us to Jesus' proclaimation of “Today in your hearing...” and makes it real. We meet them as we journey into the story: desire lived in the heart of blind Bartimaeus, the bleeding woman, the lepers – it lived in the hearts of those who pleaded on behalf of others – the Roman official, the demoniac's father, the friends of the lame and dying and dead. Their physical healing was for their temporal existence but the spiritual life they received sustains them even now at this very moment as they look upon the face of the One who healed and saved them. These are they who lived Epiphany, who welcomed the Light, who faced the crisis of freedom with hope planted and grounded in Christ. These and countless others like them are our models for fulfilling the Good News in our own lives.
Still it is a hard Good News that we proclaim. We live with the violent, unjust and fractured state of our world – a world of promise yet still fallen and groaning for its salvation. Our hope is fulfilled but not yet complete. It is a hard Good News that we proclaim. Too hard, a foolish nonsense, to those who want a quick fix, an easy out, pleasure now. Even as Jesus loved and forgave and healed there were scoffers, enemies are present in the story as well - the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the Sadducees, the religious, the comfortable, the arrogantly powerful, the selfishly rich – unable to surrender control, unwilling to let go of a fleeting safety and comfort for eternal peace. Those who reject hope remind us that we are often tempted to do the same. . Jesus announces but does not impose, he proclaims but does not coerce. Our will is like a door that can open to liberation or close itself up in the prison of self-delusion. Our own struggles with arrogance, selfishness, judgment, apathy can humble us and confront us with the choice of life or death. The light of Good News attracts some and repels others and we are all on the hook and must respond. Jesus continues to fulfill today in our hearing, to announce, to invite, to preach the foolishness of sight and freedom, even and especially in a world so full of blindness and despair.
In his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, Cistertian monk Thomas Merton expressed the essence of Epiphany, the essence of our longing for what is already here, with these words:
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived.
Amen.
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