Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 22, 2015: Saved through water...

Saved through water…

What do you do when faced with chaos?

In our first reading from Genesis this first Sunday of Lent, the waters of the flood – the epitome of chaos – have just receded.  Recall that God had sent the flood as a way of destroying manifestations of evil in Creation; afterwards, God puts his bow in the clouds, an arc of color (arco iris) that guarantees that God will never seek to destroy the earth again.  Chaos has been vanquished; the arc is a sign of new life.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is also confronted with chaos, albeit of a very dry kind:  subsequent to his baptism, he is driven by the Spirit into the desert – another locus of chaos.  Yet, in this case, when confronted by Satan, Jesus is sustained by angels who minister to his needs.  And Jesus emerges victorious:  having faced the evil temptations of self-centeredness, he ready to proclaim the gospel of God. 

Just as the ark carried Noah and his family through the storms and the chaos to safety, so we are carried by the Lord through the waters, through death in baptism, so that we can rise to safety, to new life.  Our chaos is sin; our way through that chaos lies in following God’s paths, God’s ways of love and truth (Psalm 25).  It is baptism, the First Letter of Peter tells us, that saves us now, bringing us to life in the Spirit. If we open our hearts to God every time we renew our baptismal vows, we too can conquer that chaos; if we allow God to lead us, we can conquer fear and death and be one with Christ, victorious.  It is a worthy aspiration for our Lenten journey!

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle.net

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 15, 2015: Be made clean...

Be made clean…

We encounter the compassion of Christ in our brokenness.

This Sunday’s Gospel reading from Mark shows us Jesus moved with pity (the Greek term is splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι)), suffering deeply with his fellow man, so much so that Jesus risks his own connection with the community simply by stretching out his hand in order to heal a man afflicted with leprosy.  In so doing, Jesus restores the leper’s connection with the world through healing restoration of body and soul:  Make me clean, the man asks, and Jesus responds, I will do it.  Be made clean.  In the past, as in our story from Leviticus, lepers were clearly instructed to warn the community of their presence, crying out, Unclean! Unclean!   But Jesus, the Good News himself, brings those who have been cast out back into community, moving them past the pain of ostracism, past the barriers and burdens, to the extraordinary restoration of connection in all its forms.  Blessed is he whose fault is taken away, Psalm 32 tells us, for he will be filled with the joy of salvation.

To encounter the compassion of Christ is to experience more than physical healing; it is to go deep within to heal our brokenness, so that we might see beyond the pain and be transformed, so that we might leave the hurt behind and spread the report abroad, as the former leper does, sharing the Good News of Christ with the world, open to all, that they may be saved.  St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that we must work at being community for the glory of God, allowing Christ to be present as we are gift to one another, in every way.  That presence is felt in our own compassion for others, as we become Christ for one another, working to heal the brokenness among us, that all might be the one Body of Christ, restored to community, restored to connection.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 8, 2015: I am filled with restlessness...

I am filled with restlessness...

What weighs you down?

Often, it’s a problem of vision:  our ability to perceive things clearly is restricted by the burdens we bear, the difficulties we face.  And yet, God’s grace surrounds us.  Job had been prosperous, faithful, in right relationship with God.  And then terrible calamities start to occur:  he loses his house, his children, his livestock, his health.  Through it all, however, Job remains faithful, trusting in God, though he does experience moments of despair like the one we hear this week.  Through a series of powerful images, we feel Job’s pain:  he believes his life is like the wind; he can’t control, guide, or see it.  And so he is filled with restlessness until the dawn.  Sometimes it’s hard to see the bigger picture, the truth beyond the tangible…  And yet the Lord is there to see us through, as Job will shortly learn.

In Mark's Gospel, when Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, he is removing her, too, from the grip of all that weighs her down; he lifts her so that she can be whole again.  Indeed, in his healing ministry, Jesus releases many from whatever holds them back, yet often they still don’t see clearly.  They are now free to serve, free from constraint, free from what stood in the way of their experience of the fullness of God’s love.  Paul has experienced similar healing at Jesus’ hands, and thus he too is free to serve – it’s not a question of whether or not he will proclaim the Good News, but how he will do so.  And so he shares the vision of the healing Christ with the Corinthians – he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds (Psalm 147) – hoping they, too, will come to praise the Lord, to sing praise to our God.

Every day has its share of difficulty; every day also has its share of grace.  Through all that we experience day-to-day, God does not abandon us. It’s up to us to expand our vision, so that we may see more clearly all that God is doing.  Our life is not truly like the wind; it’s so much more substantial than that, for we have the assurance of infinite love, an infinite love that heals and sustains… if only we open our eyes to see it.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 1, 2015: All that I command him...

All that I command him...

Who is in control here?

When, in our reading from Deuteronomy this Sunday, God tells Moses he will send prophets to communicate his will to the people, the answer to this question is quite clear:  God is the author of the Word and the authority behind it:  he shall tell them all that I command him.  And woe to the man who does not listen, and to prophet who tries to usurp the authority of the Almighty:  I myself will make him answer for it, God says.

In our Gospel text from Mark, Jesus – the Son of God – naturally speaks with the authority of his Father.  When he rebukes the unclean spirit who tries to drain his power by naming him (aloud!) the Holy One of God, Jesus’s authority is evident in all he does; the people exclaim:  What is this?  A new teaching with authority.  Like the unclean spirit, we sometimes challenge the authority of God over our lives; we struggle with our own demons:  our fears, our efforts to assert control, to assert ourselves over others and over our own life.  But the Lord calls us to surrender that control to God, to leave power where it belongs, so that if we have any authority at all, it is because God is at work in us.

Paul similarly asks the Corinthians to allow God to rule their lives, to remain singleminded about who is in control, exhorting them to adherence to the Lord without distraction.  In marriage or in the celibate life, God is there with you all along, in love – and we are to remain focused on the Lord, our endpoint, no matter what track our life has taken.  Psalm 95 suggests we do just this, first, through songs of praise and adoration:  to acclaim the rock of our salvation, to bow down in worship and kneel before him is to focus on the source of power in our midst before all else.  And most importantly, we must listen, we must hear his voice, because, whether we’ve recognized it or not, God is always the one in control, always the author (and authority) of all that we are, and all that we do.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 25, 2015: Come after me...

Repent and believe in the Gospel...

There is nothing ordinary about responding to the call of Christ.

Our readings this Sunday all remind us that the process of conversion cannot be a one-time deal, but must instead be an ongoing, radical experience:  God calls us to turn to God daily!  Take the people of Ninevah, for instance.  Jonah is sent to call them to repentance and conversion:  Forty days more and Ninevah shall be destroyed, he tells them, and the people respond by turning from their evil way.  Their change of heart is practically immediate, their acceptance of the call to conversion radical in its focus.  Even Jonah is shocked (and even displeased!) by their sudden change of heart.  But God is abounding in kindness, and even Jonah must come to accept the radical conversion of a people he believed to be too evil to love God.

The fishermen Jesus meets in Mark’s Gospel are not evil men, yet they, too, are called by Jesus to radical conversion:  Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men, he tells them.  In an instant, their lives are redefined, as they leave their boats and follow Jesus, abandoning their livelihood and even their families to follow a man whose fundamental message is clear:  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe in the Gospel.  After Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul likewise calls the Corinthians to radical conversion:  time is running out, he tells them, so they must live life differently than before, because of the Gospel, the Good News Jesus came to proclaim.  Like the Corinthians, we are called to live as though we embraced the fullness of all God has give us, daily, to live for the love God has revealed, focused on the fullness of life that is the promise, daily.  It is the way or path celebrated in Psalm 25:  Your ways, O Lord, make known to me, Teach me your paths… To be guided in God’s truth is to live life humbly, giving constant praise to God for all that God grants us daily:  compassion, love, kindness, and goodness.

The Lord calls us to daily, radical conversion.  

What keeps us from responding now, profoundly, fully, entirely?

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 11, 2015: The springs of salvation...

The springs of salvation...

At last, water everywhere!

On this Sunday’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, it is perhaps not surprising that our readings are filled with water imagery:  water is richly symbolic in Biblical tradition, beginning with Genesis.  Potentially chaotic, water is also life-giving, and thus, in the Book of Isaiah, as a part of the eschatological banquet, the gift of water is one way God meets the needs of the people:  All you are thirsty, come to the water!  But is it just a question of quenching physical thirst?  Or do we thirst for more, thirst for relationship, thirst for God?  To participate in God’s final banquet, we need to do just that:  we must thirst for relationship so much that that relationship changes how we perceive ourselves, such that we define ourselves first in relation to God.  And the rain and snow that come down and water the earth – a powerful metaphor for God’s Word – is another form of God’s love, also sent to quench our thirst; it, too, is life-giving, the springs of salvation from which we will draw water joyfully, as in this week’s canticle from Isaiah.

Why, then, does Jesus come to be baptized?  He is, after all, already in relationship with God. But as the first letter of John reminds us, Jesus came through water and blood, moving through baptism to death. The waters of John the Baptist’s baptism are significant, then, because through them Jesus participates in relationship not just with God, but with humankind.  Through baptism, Jesus enters into the fullness of our reality, embracing humanity entirely, becoming one with all of humanity so that he might work for the salvation of all by taking our sins to the cross, dying and then rising.

Our own baptism is a sacramental participation in that relationship, our own dying and rising, and from it flows our relationship not only with God, but with each other.  The first letter of John reminds us that God’s love is made present through the community that results from obedient relationship with God:  we know that we love the children of God when we obey God and keep his commandments.  Likewise, baptism unites us as a people joined by covenant to God, so that we, like Jesus, might embrace our identity in Christ, becoming conduits of God’s liquid love for the world.

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle.net