240303 B Lt3 / Consumed in Zeal

Let’s explore the accounts of Jesus cleansing the temple in the Gospel of John and the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and how they relate to Jesus’ mission:

1. Purity and Holiness:

   • In John, the focus is on the purity and appropriateness of the temple for worship. Jesus’ actions demonstrate His zeal for maintaining the sacredness of the house of God.

   • While the Synoptic accounts also emphasize the temple’s sanctity, they additionally highlight the loss of Israel’s meaningful engagement with Gentiles. Jesus’ mission includes restoring true worship and inclusivity. It's not only important to point out the wrongdoing of the Temple merchants, but as it happens adjacent to the Temple precincts, it also scandalizes the Gentile observers around the Temple.

2. Prophetic Symbolism:

   • In John’s Account, the cryptic statement about destroying the temple and raising it in three days points to Jesus’ death and resurrection. His body becomes the new temple, emphasizing His role as the ultimate sacrifice and the source of eternal life.

   • The Synoptic Accounts emphasize the temple as a house of prayer for all nations. Jesus’ mission involves restoring true worship and inviting people of all backgrounds into God’s presence.

3. Challenging Religious Authorities:

   • John’s Account shows that in Jesus' cleansing the temple, He challenges the religious establishment and their practices. His actions symbolize a new order and a call to genuine worship.

   • Similarly, Jesus confronts the religious leaders in the Synoptic accounts who have turned the temple into a den of robbers. His mission involves exposing hypocrisy and pointing people back to God.

4. Setting the Tone for His Ministry:

   • John’s Account Places this event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and sets the tone for His mission. Here Jesus prioritizes true worship, righteousness, and the restoration of God’s presence among His people.

   • In the Synoptic Accounts, These events occur toward the end of Jesus’ public ministry, reinforcing His commitment to reforming religious practices and inviting people into a deeper relationship with God.

Both the Gospel of John and the synoptic Gospels depict Jesus’ mission as one of restoration, purification, and renewal. Whether through symbolic actions or direct confrontation, Jesus seeks to bring people closer to God and establish a new covenant.

Carrying forward this image of Jesus as the Temple raised up in three days and the notion of Jesus as the stumbling block today in 1^st Corinthians, Jesus, as the stumbling block, challenged people’s preconceived notions and expectations. His message of salvation through the cross was offensive to some.

• His statement about the temple being destroyed and raised up pointed to His death and resurrection, which would ultimately provide redemption for humanity.

Jesus is both the stumbling block for those who reject Him and the one who conquered death by rising from the grave. His sacrificial act on the cross and subsequent resurrection fulfilled God’s plan for salvation. 

And this falls to us, today, as people yearning for pure hearts, while still coming to terms with the preconceived notions about how Jesus presents himself to us and how we expect Jesus to function for us and with us in THIS World.

We are comfortable with the Jesus of the answers. We are less comfortable with the Jesus of the Questions:

Who do you say that I am?

What do you say that I am?

The Gospel tells us today that His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Psalm 69:9

If all the Earth is God's House – God's sacred place, is there a sense in our own time that we might, in some sense, be called to an ecological imperative?

Has there been a sense of disorder in God's Kingdom – God's holy place, where we have perverted our lands, sea, and air, as a fair, disposable game for the marketplace, where fair, prudent stewardship has been vacated?

In the context of stewardship, have we honored the Father and Mother that is our world, our families, and our relationships – those people and things meant to nourish us, now destroying us?

With the presence of our Bishop Gretchen next Sunday, we'll be invited to discern in communion with our entire Diocese a Vision of Christ alive in our midst, yearning to reach outward to all of Our Father's House, particularly in some places we might not be too comfortable to look.

Will we, like the psalmist, be consumed by a zeal for God's House? Can we reject the fear that might otherwise consume us?

C23: Were Not Ten Made Clean?

When I reflect on a lectionary passage, I want to shake your world. I want to knock one out of the park. In a way, I’m looking for trouble – inventing, as it were, problems that may not exist. Inconsequential nuances.

Today is no exemption. I find myself painted into a corner. Genuine edification flies out the door, and you’re stuck.

Jesus tells the grateful Samaritan that his faith has saved him. What does “saved” mean here.  Is it the same as being cured, because it appears all ten were indeed cured?

• Does it mean that the Samaritan has been released from the grasp sin had over him? Is this by virtue of the gratitude he expresses?
• Does the Samaritan leper discern something about Jesus, so that his return is not so much a matter of gratitude as a matter of worship.
• Are the other nine so shackled by sin, that being cured from leprosy doesn’t really afford them the awakening that only one of the lepers seem able to manifest?  Or are they just boring?

At first glance, it seems the Samaritan failed to show himself to the priests, as Jesus commanded, that the Father might be glorified.

But there was a greater purpose at hand. A purpose about which even Jesus himself may have been unaware. Jesus’ question may not have been one to merely highlight one man’s gratitude.

Rather, it may have been that Jesus needed to gauge the action of the Holy Spirit within the Samaritan leper against the others.

In the walk of Faith, discernment is very important for each of us, too. But in order for us to be sensitive to those special moments of God, we have to practice our discernment in our every-day world; we can’t sully or abdicate our daily decision making in favor of the pundits, religious or secular.

Further, we can’t expect that, like the Samaritan leper, people in our presence rarely know why they are before us, face-to-face, so we can’t expect them to fully understand their plight or their needs.

Sometimes we have to just get comfortable with each others’ presences, to look beyond what might seem to be a moment ripe for confrontation.

Most of the time we think our pithy insights are important, (or even accurate, for that matter.) We think the world may be indeed seem straining for our wisdom. Usually, however, their greatest need is fellowship.

An assurance they’re not alone, and that they stepped away from the crowd for the right reason. And most of all, that you and I will be there for them, even if we, too, are still working things out.

Ordinary Prophets / 2nd Sunday of Epiphany, Yr. C

One of the hardest images of the scripture to come to terms with is the Mary of the Gospel.

Because she has been the subject of Near Eastern iconography as the Theotokos, (or God Bearer,) and of countless artists of the Renaissance, we tend to think about Mary in rather static terms. Or we dismiss Mary altogether, because of the errors of the super-pious, who have distorted the Mary of the Gospels to almost deific proportions.

I believe it is appropriate to understand Mary and John the Baptist as Proto-Disciples -- Followers, yet in a sense, “Formers” or “IN-Formers” of the Mission of Jesus, through their own enlightenment by the Holy Spirit.
In just about every Christian tradition, too many preachers have added to this confusion by trivializing and caricaturing Mary (particularly in this passage) as the “pushy Jewish mother.” Quite the contrary, Mary, who by the way is never specifically named in the Gospel of John, confirms and affirms the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in ordinary and subtle ways.
You and I see this miracle at Cana as a quite astonishing event through the description of John. But we are so overcome by the phenomena, that we don’t realize how inconspicuous this miracle comes across in the text.
We are told in verse 9b that the steward did not know where (the wine) came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew).  I think we can also assume from the text that his disciples believed in him, in some part, with the knowledge of such signs as this. Everyone benefitted although many were unaware of God’s hand at play.
Perhaps the same can be said of God at work in our own day.  And perhaps those most oblivious or cynical about God at work in our day are his believers. Why? We tend to be cynical or oblivious, because we believers set criteria God must meet to be purposeful in a sinful and broken world. We expect the Christ, the Lord of History, to function within the constraints of what the Greeks called “Chronos,” or in linear time. John plays to our expectations, having Jesus say,
“My hour has not yet come.” (The hour, for John the Evangelist, is not the start of Jesus’ public ministry or miracles, but the time of his Passion, Death, and Rising.)
Mary, however, does not confront Jesus. That’s neither her purpose, nor, as a mother, her style. Mary, as Jesus, the Evangelist, and hopefully we, ourselves, are well aware that as Servants of God, we are to submit ourselves confidently to God’s “time,” or Kairos, in the Greek.
Mary becomes a catalyst for the Mission of Jesus IN time. Her only comment for the servants is that they should “Do whatever HE tells you.”  

In other words, the Hour, in a sense, will never come. It is His Mission which brings Jesus to His Hour, not just prophecy or portents.   

Jesus, his disciples, and you and I must seize the day, (or the HOUR, if you will.)

Jesus brings forth new wine, late along, the logic of which confounds the steward, very much like the parable of the vineyard owner who pays the last hires the same as the first, in the Gospel of Matthew (20:1-16.)

Many of us have likely known someone who has been an example of a quiet but far from benign example of the wisdom and the chutzpah of the Mother of Jesus. One of those persons for me has been a high school classmate of mine, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Frank Almade.

I was prompted to think of his gifts, when I received an email this week from my Alumni Association Secretary, soliciting nominees for the annual reunion dinner’s award for service to the Church.

Frank has always had a way of living, witnessing, and teaching about the life and the love of Christ which is ever new, not unlike the water drawn from the stone jars and presented to the wedding steward, yet ever the same, sometimes mistaken for ordinary, as the jars and the water was for the other servants.

Frank has taken on some of the most hopeless tasks within the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, leaving those involved empowered and renewed. He sometimes comes across  as a little awkward in some social situations, but that awkwardness is usually overlooked, because people easily see what motivates Frank’s heart.

Like it or not, we too are called to no less a task, that is to believe in the possibility of what we proclaim and to recognize that as servants of the Lord, we are called to an intimacy with him no less than that of his Mother. Like his Mother, we too are called to mentor others. We can spurn that part of our call -- we can muster a dismissive spirit that says we aren’t so called (and we certainly are not as holy), but in doing so we reject the purposes of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

1st Corinthians today speaks of the manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit are for the common good. You and I may not be comfortable with our call, but it’s NOT about our comfort. Yet ironically, we often become more comfortable with our call as we accept and use those very gifts.

Do whatever He tells you. What is our alternative? Let us grow in courage to take our simple, mundane resources and offer them to be transformed and made holy for what is needed, no less than our offering of bread and wine --

Of no value whatever to God, but transformed for us miraculously for whatever is needed for ourselves as the presence of Christ himself in these elements.

Boundaries or Horizons

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent,            
and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,            
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,            
and her salvation like a burning torch.     Is 62:1           

The way we are formed as Christians in America, we tend to emphasize the personal aspects of the Christ event. The meaning of Jesus “saving us” by his suffering and death on the cross is enhanced by the idea that Jesus did not suffer without love.

    Because Jesus suffered in love, then it is all the more important to realize that Jesus was not A savior or even THE savior. In our American understanding for the “Reason for the Season,”
we want to understand Jesus as being MY savior -- that he died for MY sins. Jesus is thought of in many evangelical circles as a “personal” Lord and Savior.

    After all, the logic goes, if sin is personal, then grace is personal. And after all, if there’s something wrong or not working in that dynamic, it has to be MY fault, because the love of Jesus is perfect.

In this same context, the favorite hymn of many of us is, “Amazing Grace.” While written by an Englishman, John Newton, in the mid-eighteenth century, it carries that sentiment of being personally saved, “a wretch, like me.”

Most of us have come to expect a lone piper playing, Amazing Grace, at the commendation of a fallen police or fire officer, yet Amazing Grace was probably never played on bagpipes before the Black Watch Regimental Pipes first recorded it in 1976.

Dare I say, FIFTY Years ago, when the liturgy in the Roman Church was incorporating what were hitherto thought of as Protestant hymns into the liturgy, the lyrics of some hymns were changed in the pew missalettes because of differing sensitivities and theologies, notions of political correctness, and in some cases perhaps, to avoid copyright violations.  Amazing Grace, while in the public domain, in that context, had a brief change in its second line from “that saved a wretch like me” to “that came and set US free.” 

But Amazing Grace had become one of America’s own hymns, and as such, was not to be tampered with any more than the pledge of Allegiance. The original words were quickly restored, but unfortunately, the notion it tried to convey was roundly missed -- a notion that tries to surface in today’s Hebrew scripture. God is not edified merely by saving individuals from the jaws of sin and death. God is edified when those individuals, once saved, see themselves as complete by becoming a community of faith -- as the body of Christ:

For Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,

until her vindication shines out like the dawn,

  and her salvation like a burning torch.     Is 62:1b

The Gospel of John today tries to illustrate this another way:

To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become (my emphasis) children of God....                Jn 1:12

For me, it seems, the miracle of this season is not merely the power of one life, the Babe in the manger, destined to be the Savior of the world, though that is by no means a small matter.

The miracle is the call that comes in Communion.

---

We tend to be intimidated by the semantics of the first chapter of the Gospel of John,

(e.g. What is the meaning of Logos, [the Word.]?  

Who or What is “the Light” that Darkness cannot overcome?

What is the World that knows him not? What am I in relation to that World?)

With our curiosity, pre-occupation, or for some, our obsession with these questions and others like these, we miss our vocational call to discern the power we have been given to become children of God.

Without true Eucharist (or Thanksgiving), without taking the full measure offered us as we share the blessing cup, we are just showing up at some arbitrary finish line in a race of our own limited imagination and counting heads.

(“I made it. You made it. She made it. He made it.”)  Who cares? For most of us here today, THAT’S NOT ENOUGH!! 

In Romans, Chapter 5, we read

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.    Rom 5:6-8

We share a great prize, but our children will never have that passed on to them, if they can’t understand why we struggle, (or whether we even want to struggle) with Life’s persistent questions) while other well-intentioned people seem quite satisfied with the mission of their own choosing -- not the Mission of God’s calling.

And finally from verse 14 in today’s Psalm 147:

He has strengthened the bars of your gates; *

    he has blessed your children within you. 

How are our children, either those of our upbringing or those we hold in stewardship in these parish walls being blessed by our strength and example?

Let our hearts be lifted up by these words from Ken Sehested for this New Year past

Benedicere

By Ken Sehested (adapted)

May your home always be too small

to hold all your friends.

May your heart remain ever supple,

Fearless in the face of threat,

Jubilant in the grip of grace.

May your hands remain open,

Caressing, never clinched,

Save to pound the doors

Of all who barter justice

To the highest bidder.

May your heroes be earthy

Dusty-shoed and rumpled,

Hallowed but unhaloed,

Guiding you through seasons of tremor and travail,

Apprenticed to the godly art of giggling

Amid haggard news

And portentous circumstance.

May your hankering

Be in rhythm with heaven’s

Whose covenant vows

A dusty intersection with your own:

When creation’s hope and history rhyme.

May Hosannas lilt from your lungs:

Creation is not done

Creation is not yet done.

All flesh,

I am told,

will behold

Will surely behold…

http://bit.ly/WRZ2mJ

 

Benedicere (“to bless, to praise”) is based on a prayer by Ken Sehested, author of “In the Land of the Living: Prayers Personal and Public.”

Concept: David Felten & Scott Greissel

Edit: Scott Greissel

Cameras: Gregg Brekke, Scott Greissel, Jeff Procter-Murphy & Edwin Serrano

Copyright (c) 2012 livingthequestions.com

Christ in the Contradictions (Proper 6B: 06/17/2012)

 One of the images used today by Jesus to describe the kingdom is the growth of a plant -- a progression from the seed to the plant, and ultimately to the grain, fruit, or vegetable the plant supports. 

  

Mk 4:26 ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ 

But in this imaging, it's hard to distinguish whether the image of the kingdom is captured in one or ALL of the images: the Sower/Harvester, the plant, and the sleeping and the rising.  

Is the Sower/Harvester Jesus? God Creator/Father? Are you and I the Sower/Harvester, in that we find ourselves as the hired hands called at different times to a harvest, 

MT 9:37 Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’  

We are told that whoever the harvester is, he doesn't know how it is that seed progresses from seed, to plant, and to yield. 

Is the grain faithful souls ready for God?  

  

I think that's hard to say  from what the parable tells us. One thing about grain is that beside the unknown marvel that brings about the head or the kernel is the relatively certain technology that requires  almost all grains to be transformed somehow before it is useful. (Even corn has to be at least boiled, steamed, or grilled before it can be consumed by humans.) 

And if you think about it, grain growth is terribly inefficient. Most of the plant that sustains growth is usually destroyed. 

Think about the Church. If the Church is part of the plant, part of the kingdom, what part is it? 

If the Church is the dwelling place of faithful souls, most would say the Church is the grain. 

Then what does that imply? What is the destiny of faithful souls in the kingdom if they are grain? Are they destined to be beaten, crushed, pulverized, made into a dough or a whiskey mash so that something useful can come of them?  

(You know, I'm just sayin'.) 

Jn 12:24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  

Does Paul in Second Corinthians speak only for the members of the church or for the church itself, when he says today, 

II Cor 5:6 So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 

Is the Church simply the grain and fruit that is gathered and both practically and mystically transformed? 

That is an important part of our image as a Eucharistic people. The bread is a symbol of grain gathered and made into something new as bread, as Christ brings us together to become One with Him as a new, nurturing, and life-giving Creation.  So too the wine, which in the Roman Missal, 3rd edition, it says,

   

Blessed are You, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink. 

Grain and fruit that is gathered and transformed. Wonderful image! 

But might it just be that at least as far as this pericope or vignette from today's Gospel from Mark is concerned, the Church may not be the "product" of the harvest but its sustenance.  The Church, rather, might be the stalk and the "head"  protecting the grain that gets the full brunt of the harvester's sickle and is left on the threshing floor. As with our own bodies, I believe we become comfortable with the creaturely form that is the Church, and that's when, sometimes, the tension becomes the greatest for the Church. 

We refer to the Church in our postcommunion prayer, Rite I, as 

very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. 

That image, then creates a paradox, that is very difficult for priests and other ministers to deal with. As ministers, we have a certain degree of responsibility to be good stewards of the people and assets with which we have been entrusted. Yet we find ourselves always needing to choose between the stewardship of the bricks and mortar that comprise our parishes, with the nagging admonition of Wm Temple, a mid-twentieth century Abp of Canterbury, who said 

The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members. 

 

But our tendency is to want to look good, so that by looking good, we may appear good and valuable to those around us, thus perpetuating our Church community as "members incorporate in the mystical body of (Jesus)"  by attracting new members. Evangelization is not about looking good. Evangelization is about proclaiming the good news to everyone, even, and perhaps especially when because of that good news we may not look good  to the world around us, which doesn't deal well with complicated stuff. 

The good news to be proclaimed is that God glories in contradictions. The good news to be proclaimed is that good things sometimes happen in dangerous  and courageous situations. 

It was bad enough that Samuel went out in the face of Saul to find a new king for the people of Israel. Samuel also had to contend with the prejudices of Jesse, who was convinced that God would work through the strongest, the smartest, and the bravest of his sons, and not through his youngest and most naïve. 

The good news for us is  that God wills to work in the face of our doubts and in spite of our "sure-knowledge." 

While study and discernment are vital to the life of the Church, study and discernment must not stand in the way of God's contradictions. 

Like the sower, who does not know precisely how seed sprouts and grows as it does,  there are ways and means God chooses to glorify himself and also build us up that defy explanation or logic. Only then will be able to fully discern the challenge of our time and stewardship -- that we can see the perils all around us, close our eyes, and walk by faith.