Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 4, 2020: Then the God of peace will be with you...

Then the God of peace will be with you…

What does it take to maintain relationship with God?

  The people of Judah had a great deal of difficulty maintaining a strong and faithful relationship with God.  The prophet Isaiah likens this relationship to that of a vineyard owner with his vineyard.  The vineyard owner does all he can so that the vineyard will prosper:  he spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines… God has also taken care of God’s people, sending blessings upon them.  But when times are good, Isaiah says, the people of Judah, God’s cherished plant, are incapable of keeping covenant with God, yielding only injustice and poor judgment -- wild grapes, in Isaiah’s terms.  Psalm 80 echoes this story, and goes on to ask God to restore God’s people, giving them back the prosperity they once enjoyed.  Protect what your right hand has planted, the psalmist says, then we will no more withdraw from you.  Even here, however, fidelity is promised only if God fulfills the psalmist’s request.

  Jesus accuses the chief priests and elders of the people of similar malfeasance in Matthew’s Gospel in his recounting of the parable of the tenants.  Likening the priests and elders to the tenants who fail to give the produce they owe to the landowner’s servants and even go so far as to kill the landowner’s son, Jesus illustrates how the Jewish leadership has failed to help the people to produce good fruit.  Rather than recognizing the need to cultivate relationship with God through love instead of laws, the priests and elders reject God’s son, promoting their own vision of God’s Kingdom rather than the vision Jesus has come to bring.  If the Kingdom of God is to produce good fruit, Jesus suggests, concerted effort – and radical transformation – will be necessary.  Paul tells the Philippians that such effort involves prayer, petition and thanksgiving – all of which direct us to God.  It is through opening ourselves to God, making an effort at relationship, and then trusting in that relationship, that we can rest assured that the God of peace will be with us.  Prayer, petition and thanksgiving all point to whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and gracious:  all that is excellent comes from persistent attention to the only relationship that truly sustains, our relationship with the God who brought us into existence.

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

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, December 23, 2018: Blessed are you who believed...

Blessed are you who believed…

Do you have hope?

  It’s hard to be patient.  It’s hard to wait for God to fulfill God’s promises.  When, in the Book of Micah, God promises the people that from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, the people have to be patient, have to accept that God works in God’s own time, have to remain obedient to God’s will even as they struggle.  But the promise is worth waiting for, because God assures the people that the messiah shall be peace.  And with peace comes justice, harmony, and wholeness, so that God’s victory shall reach to the ends of the earth. Psalm 80 further assures the people that the son of man sent by God will rule through mercy, saving the people who turn to God and are obedient to him. 

  For Christians, the promises made in Micah and the Psalms are fulfilled in the person of Jesus, whose Incarnation is met with the consummate example of the obedient servant, Mary herself, in Luke's Gospel.  Mary approaches Jesus’ coming birth with absolute faith and is obedient from the moment the angel announces the Incarnation to her.  Later, at the moment of the Visitation, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb proclaims the one who is to come with a definitive leap in the womb of faith; the future John the Baptist will also be obedient to God’s will, believing in the power of God’s work in him and proclaiming the Incarnation, the coming of the Lord.  The ultimate example of the obedient servant is Jesus, of course, who, the Book of Hebrews tells us, came to do God’s will.  The offering of his body, of all that makes him human in the Incarnation, is an offering for the sins of humankind; Jesus will die for the sins of all, obedient, that he might achieve the salvation of all.

  Like the people of Israel, like Mary, John, and Jesus, we are called to believe that the power of God is at work in us – and that all God has promised will be fulfilled.  In short, the Incarnation calls us to hope.  But how do we maintain hope in today’s society?  How do we maintain hope in face of human sin?  We know that Jesus came to take sin away through his obedience to God’s will, an obedience born of absolute love.  And that love, the love he created us with and the love that caused him to send Jesus in the Incarnation, is same love he calls us to.  It is that love that calls us to hope – to hope for the peace, and justice, that is Christ.

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

Image source:  www.wordle.net

Sunday Gospel Reflection, December 3, 2017: Wait for the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ...

 Wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ… 

Are you living this moment for Christ? 

   Late in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the exiled people of Israel have at last come to realize that they have failed in their covenant with God, and beg the Lord to return for the sake of his servants. They are in a posture of waiting, not waiting out their circumstances, but rather waiting in expectation, waiting for God’s salvation to come.  They recognize that God’s is the only power that can come to their aid:  no eye has ever seen any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him, they cry. In Psalm 80, the psalmist similarly calls upon God to save us, and protect what your right hand has planted. Knowing they themselves are the work of God’s hands, the people must trust and call upon God’s name, waiting, confident that if only God turns God’s face to them – a moment of revelation – they will be saved.

   In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus likewise exhorts his disciples to be watchful and alert!  He speaks not, however, of simply waiting for some moment in the future, but of living this moment, being alive, fully alive to Christ alive in them, now.  May the Lord not come suddenly and find you sleeping; stay awake, he tells them, be about what you are supposed to be about, do what is needed, but be ever ready for Christ to step into your lives at every given moment. The disciples are to live, as Paul later tells the Corinthians, in a state of expectation as they wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

   Grounded in chronos time, we are called during this Advent season to tune ourselves, our very beings, to kairos time, living in eager expectation of Christ’s ongoing revelation in our lives, a revelation that comes to us, new, every time.  So be watchful, this Advent season, and live your life, fully alive in this moment, for Christ!

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

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 8, 2017: Give us new life, and we will call upon your name...

 Give us new life, and we will call upon your name… 

But are we listening for an answer? 

   In the Book of Isaiah, the prophet takes the people of Israel to task for their infidelity to God, who has planted the choicest vines in his vineyard, hoping to celebrate the good fruit his vines – the people themselves – would produce.  He cares for his vineyard in every possible way, but what it yielded was wild grapes, a radical (and unwelcome) shift in how the hearts of the people are directed, which is to say, according to their own desire for control, away from the Lord rather than toward him.  They clearly are not listening.  Echoing this passage from Isaiah, Psalm 80 begs the Lord to take care of this vine and protect what God’s right hand has planted, promising that the people will no more withdraw from God, will turn back to God rather than dwell in the wasteland they themselves have created.

   The chief priests and elders of the people in Jesus’ time would have been entirely aware of this lesson from Isaiah as Jesus confronts them, in Matthew’s Gospel, with a parable about – what else? – a landowner who planted a vineyard.  Here, it is the tenants of the vineyard who are indicted for turning from God; Jesus also predicts that they will seize the son, throw him out of the vineyard, and kill him.  The chief priests and elders have rejected the one God has sent; they have read their scripture, but do they understand Jesus’ message?  Do they realize that he is giving them the opportunity to turn around, to turn back?  Are they listening?

   Paul’s Letter to the Philippians suggests one path back to God:  by prayer and petition.  It is through prayer that we open ourselves to God, rather than remaining anxious, closing down, turning away from the Lord.  When we open to God, allowing God to work in our lives, we are filled with all that is true and honorable and just, all that is pure and lovely and gracious.  We are called to this conscious act, called to turn to God always with our needs, through prayer and petition, and, of course, to listen, that we might know, not bloodshed but the very peace of God.

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

Sunday Gospel Reflection, December 20, 2015: Blessed are you who believed...

Blessed are you who believed…

How will you be transformed by the coming of the Lord?

After their exile in Babylon, the people longed for restoration, for a messiah, for one who is to be ruler in Israel. The prophet Micah shares with them the promise of salvation: there is one who is to give birth to a savior, he tells the people, and he shall be peace, a gift that will transform them.  In Luke's Gospel, Elizabeth likewise recognizes the coming of the Messiah as her child leaps in her womb at the arrival of her pregnant cousin Mary.  Elizabeth is transformed by the Holy Spirit working in her; she is redefined by her encounter with her Savior. 

Our readings this weekend challenge us, not to figure out who the Messiah is so much as who we will be once the Messiah has come.  Give us new life, the psalmist prays in Psalm 80:  it is a prayer for transformation.  The Incarnation redefines us as human beings; Christmas redefines who we are, to this day.  Why?  Because we are still being transformed by the power of God's love in us -- most obviously at Eucharist, which is our participation in Jesus's body, in its death, rising, and transformation.  We are that Body, the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, and the more deeply we enter into that reality, the more we ourselves are transformed.  More still:  by our participation in the Body of Christ, the world itself is transformed.  The authors of the Didache prayed, and so may we be:  broken to feed the many.  We are brought together in the Body of Christ to become food, spiritual food, for the world.   In this sense, Incarnation is not complete; it is being continued in us, through us, as we are transformed daily by the coming of the Lord, in Eucharist, in our hearts, in our very wombs.

How will you be transformed by the coming of the Lord?

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

Image source:  Wordle

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 30, 2014: Be watchful! Be alert!

Be watchful! Be alert!
How has the Lord come into your life lately?

Advent is upon us, and the word itself reminds us of the season’s focus:  Jesus’ coming into the world, from the Latin, ad-venire, to come to.  Humankind has long held the hope of God coming into our lives.  From the time of the prophet Isaiah, the people of Israel longed for a powerful manifestation of the divine presence in their midst, especially at moments when they felt abandoned by God, lost without his constant care:  O that you would rend the heavens and come down… Return for the sake of your servants.  Psalm 80 bears a similar message:  Come to save us… Protect what your right hand has planted.  Yet the psalm’s refrain reminds us that the people realize they must turn back to God -- who has never left them -- as well:  Lord, make us turn to you, let us see your face and we shall be saved.  Humankind has always longed for God, longed to experience his presence in our midst...

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us that, just as the people of Israel waited for a Messiah before his birth, so his followers will have to patiently await his return in the second coming:  Be watchful!  Be alert!  You do not know when the time will come… Like gatekeepers, we must be attentive, ever ready to the possibility of Jesus’ appearance in our midst, ever ready to experience the powerful grace that is the divine presence among us.  The Corinthians, for all their issues, have known this presence:  though they too wait for the Lord’s second coming, having received the grace of God, they are in Christ and have been enriched by his dwelling within them, blessed with the spiritual gifts of discourse and knowledge. May we be so lucky!

Jesus surprises us with his presence -- grace -- at the most unexpected times of need, of course, but he is also there in the simple tasks and gestures of everyday life.  We see Jesus in Creation and in each other.  Most importantly, we find the Lord in Eucharist, when we take him into our bodies, and into our hearts.  May we remain ever watchful, then, and aware of the myriad ways we can witness Jesus’ coming, not only at Christmas, but today and every day… 

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Sunday Gospel Reflection, October 5, 2014: Think about these things...

Think about these things...

By the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, Jesus had died, risen, and ascended, so Matthew’s community is fully aware that the son referred to in Jesus’ parable to the chief priests and elders this week prefigures Jesus himself, sent by the Father and killed by the tenants working in his vineyard.  In the gospel, the Pharisees are all too ready to kill God’s Son; they have turned their vision away from God and look only to their own comfort and gain.  Yet even here, Jesus is not condemning anyone:  he is simply inviting the people – and the chief priests and elders in particular – to rethink what they are doing, urging them to try to be true to God’s love for them, open to the grace God would like to bestow upon them.  But the Pharisees have set up walls that keep them from seeing God’s plan, barriers that block out all vision of Jesus himself, and so the kingdom of heaven will be taken away from them, and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

You would think that, if nothing else, the elders would understand Jesus’s quote from the Scriptures:  The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone (Psalm 118).  They are the erudite teachers and leaders; they should know that The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel (Psalm 80), and that, in spite of all God did for his vineyard in Isaiah’s time – he spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines – the vineyard would be destroyed because of the infidelity of the people of Israel.  But their vision is too cloudy to see even the texts through which they were educated.

Post-Resurrection, Paul’s message to the Philippians echoes that of Jesus to the chief priests and elders:  do not close yourselves to God behind walls of anxiety; rather, open yourselves daily to God’s ongoing care and grace, welcoming the peace of God and acknowledging all the good God’s love effects in your life.  Every deed, every word, every thought we enjoy must be rooted first and foremost in God’s excellence rather than in human understanding:  contemplate whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious.  Keep God always in your vision, and the kingdom of God, in your hands, will produce much fruit….

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