Readings: Here
When we heard the brief passage from the Book of Jonah today, if we didn’t know the story, we’d think Jonah had simply gone to do God’s bidding, and then had amazing results, with a whole city immediately turning their lives around, even before he’d finished preaching. But it’s important to remember that far from going to do God’s bidding immediately, Jonah was repelled by what God asked him to do. He ran away. He tried to get as far away from God’s will as he could. He wanted nothing to do with it. We know the story – he ran away, was thrown overboard at sea, swallowed by a big fish, had to be saved by God and only then did he reluctantly do what God asked him to do. He did it poorly, giving perhaps the worst sermon ever preached. But God blessed his preaching; the people repented and changed their ways.
Was Jonah pleased? No. He was angry. He complained to God, saying: “This is why I at first fled to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, loath to punish.” Then he went off to pout, and wished he were dead, he was so angry. He was furious that God was merciful to his enemies; furious that God would extend mercy to the least deserving people on the face of this earth. He would have rejoiced to see them all destroyed. He wanted them all destroyed.
Jonah stands for all of those who have a narrow and vindictive mind. Sadly, when this book was written this attitude was very common in Israel amongst the Jews, especially after they returned from Exile. At the time of Christ this attitude continued and many people were intolerant. They had been abused and oppressed by their enemies. They were fiercely nationalistic and xenophobic. They didn’t like foreigners, and limited God’s mercy to themselves. It was absolutely abhorrent to them that God would be merciful or look kindly on their enemies. The Book of Jonah was written as a parable of mercy, and it prepared the way for the good news; the good news that redemption is meant for all, Jew and Gentile alike.
This brings us to our Gospel. There is a sense of urgency at the heart of Mark’s Gospel as he jumps right into the story of Jesus. Jesus began his ministry immediately after the arrest of John the Baptist. He started in Galilee where there were many foreigners, including their Roman conquerors, and where foreign traders moved across the land. He preached a simple message: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.”
The time is fulfilled, he said. Everything foretold by the prophets, everything you’ve been waiting for is beginning now. God is near. The time is now. The Kingdom of God is at hand – God’s imperial rule is beginning now. The present form of this world is ending now. Another kingdom besides Rome is dawning now. We can well imagine how a conquered people would hear these words. They were the words of revolution.
Many people down through the ages have mistaken Jesus use of the phrase “kingdom of God” as a reference for heaven, but Jesus was not referring to heaven, he was referring to life in this world. He was talking about the direct rule of God over this world, and promising that the coming of God’s kingdom would change everything.
Repent and believe the good news, he said. Jesus was calling for a radical change of mind and heart. He was calling for people to turn away from the ways of the world to the ways of God. Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God can become a reality right here in a world just like this one. We are to believe that we can shape our lives according to God’s ways even while living in the social and political structures of this world. We do not have to conform to those around us. And as we will learn in all the Gospels, the good news encompasses everyone, including our enemies, and is for the whole world.
In this first chapter of Mark Jesus immediately invited others to join him in his work. And the disciples impulsively dropped everything and joined him. There was an immediate and enthusiastic acceptance of the invitation to follow him. Who knows what they thought they were doing. They must have seen some common cause in what he was preaching. Maybe they were feeling rebellious toward Rome. As Mark will reveal in later chapters, they never do seem to understand what Jesus is doing, but they keep following him. There was something compelling about Jesus; there was also this sense of urgency. The time was short. God was near.
Each day we are invited to join the mission of Christ. Will we run away, like Jonah, or drop everything and follow, like the first disciples? You see, the time is short. God is near. The kingdom of God is at hand.
Readings for the Second Sunday — Here.
Two phrases stand out for me in our Gospel today: “What are you looking for?” and “Come and see.” People are looking for something; people are yearning for something, especially today when there is so much to fear; when the way things are seems so unfair that people are taking to the streets to protest; when people are exhausted by never-ending wars and threats of more wars. We are living in a time when people believe there is a growing injustice and we hear accusations that the powerful are abusing their power.
The passage we heard in the first reading takes place in a time of great injustice and abuse of power. Even the priests were corrupt, and put their own desires above the needs of the people. To understand the passage it is helpful to read what comes before it – the story of Hannah. She was another one of those barren women that are so popular in the stories of Israel. She bargained with God for a child, saying she would give the child back to God. What strikes me in this story is the hymn that is attributed to Hannah. It reminds me of the Magnificat of Mary. It says: “(God) raises the needy from the dust; from the ash heap he lifts up the poor, to seat them with the nobles…”
Now, when God called Samuel, Samuel was just a servant boy. Samuel was the boy who was given back to God as a servant to the priest Eli. Scripture even says that he didn’t know God – he was not a person of faith. He certainly had no idea that God would speak to someone like him, a child and a servant. God called him four times before Samuel finally listened. We need to notice that we can be in direct contact with God and not know it. The voice of God can be anywhere and come in any way. It is all too easy to miss God’s call, and often when we do hear it we continue to doubt… is this really God I hear?
Eli helped Samuel open himself up to God and listen. However, it took the priest three times before he recognized that God would speak to someone like Samuel. You see, Eli was not hearing from God, and he was the priest. Eli finally helped the boy only because of Samuel’s persistence. Eli was old and corrupt, doing nothing to stop the abusive behavior of his priestly sons. But even though corrupt, he understood the faith tradition of Israel and so was still able to help Samuel hear God. He was also priest enough to accept God’s judgment when it came. Through Samuel, who became God’s prophet, God revealed again that God’s concern is for the poor and the powerless, and God’s judgment falls on those who abuse their power.
Now, back to the Gospel. When two of John the Baptists disciples went running after Jesus, he turned and asked them: “What are you looking for?” They were not able to put into words what they were looking for, but we know that when Andrew told his brother about Jesus he said, “We have found the Messiah.” People were living in oppressive times, times of injustice and abuse of power. These men that went running after Jesus had real life concerns as a conquered people. They like many others around them were yearning for something that would make life better. Andrew believed he’d found the answer in Jesus. He went with Jesus when invited to “Come and see,” and then he extended that same invitation to his brother – “come and see.”
“Come and see” is the invitation that we at Emmaus ECC can extend to others around us. We have found Jesus, the Christ, and now it is our turn to invite others. If we truly believe that Christ is the answer for those who are seeking justice, peace, love, and hope; who are seeking the God who will raise them up; who are seeking a God who is concerned for justice and is on the side of the oppressed, then we will reach out and invite others to “come and see.”
Today is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was a preacher, a pastor and a civil rights activist. But what I find most remarkable about the man is that he was able to demonstrate so well the relationship between listening to God in prayer, and action. He regularly took what he called a “Day of Silence” to pray, to plan and to listen. He listened to the One who loves our world, and then took what he heard seriously. He needed God to speak first, and then he would find the inner resources he needed to act. When exhausted and ready to quit Dr. King would find the grace to get back up and keep going. Dr. King found through Christ the God who is on the side of the poor, the oppressed, the least ones in our midst, and listened, and then joined God in the work of justice.
Readings: Christmas During the Day
Today we read from the Gospel of John as our reading for Christmas. We are not used to thinking of the Gospel of John as having a Christmas story because his is a very different story from the stories we are used to hearing at Christmas. In fact, usually we like to mix the two nativity stories from Matthew and Luke together and come up with one Christmas Pageant of a story. In the Gospel of Luke we like the story about Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem, the birth in a stable and the stories of angels and shepherds, but we also like the story of the three wise men, or astrologers, from Matthew’s Gospel. The two different stories become one story in our minds, especially as pictured in our many nativity scenes.
But if we think of the Christmas story as the story of the coming of Christ into our world, we realize that the Gospel we heard today is also a Christmas story. John begins his story long before the beginning of time. Just like the Book of Genesis he begins with the phrase: “In the beginning….” We can’t help but think of the creation stories when we hear this phrase.
John lets us know that this Christ we celebrate did not come to exist at a particular time in our history, but that Christ – the Wisdom, the Word of God – existed with God from all eternity. As I’ve said before, quoting the Franciscans, “Christ was the first idea in the mind of God.” God through Christ has been intimately involved with creation from its beginning.
John’s Gospel gives us the eternal back-story of Christ. As we come to recognize the mystery of the Incarnation – God taking on a fully human life through Jesus — we recognize that Jesus is the fullness of God’s revelation to human beings. Through the ministry, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God communicates directly with us and no longer through intermediaries. Jesus is fully human but shows us what God is like, and at the same time shows us how we are to be fully human as God intends us to be.
Jesus, the Christ, is, was and will be the light that comes into the world to enlighten everyone. He is God who penetrates our world and becomes part of us, taking on all our humanness. He is the Word of God become flesh. He enters the darkness of the world, going to the darkest places to be with us, and brings hope for change.
The doctrine that God became flesh, fully human, is one of the essential doctrines of Christianity. It is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions. We Catholics take the Incarnation seriously and it spills over into everything. We take our own embodiment seriously because of the Incarnation. We recognize that God is revealed in the ordinariness of human life, and so our rituals, liturgies and sacraments have an earthy quality to them.
And so we love our Nativity Scenes. We like to look at them, touch them and use them to tell the story. We insist on having animals as part of the scene, because we realize that all of creation rejoices in the presence of God. But each Nativity Scene reminds us of something else — that God comes to us in such unexpected ways. Jesus was born as an outsider. He was born outside the city, beyond the notice of anyone of importance. Most of his life was spent in quiet anonymity. Think of that – God lived among us for years and years and we didn’t know it. Then, in his ministry he was drawn to other outsiders, especially to those who were rejected by society and seen as less deserving, less worthy than others. It is in his plain humanity that God shines through. In the way he lived, in what he said, in how he died, and in the way he returned to us in love and forgiveness, even after humanity did the most egregious thing it could do – killing him — we learn what God is like. God is on the side of the little ones, full of compassion and ready to forgive.
Many celebrate Christmas, even when they don’t really believe in Christ any more than they believe in Santa Claus, and so I like to watch Christmas movies. These movies often reveal much about our common human hunger for joy, peace, caring, generosity, forgiveness, kindness, love, reconciliation, and conversion of heart. Naysayers may dominate our conversations most of the year, but at Christmas there is a renewed hope and a belief in the possibility for a new and better life for us all. When we who are Christians embrace our life in Christ we let loose “the power to become the children of God.” In that power we begin to overcome the darkness and heal the world, helping to fill the hunger of human hearts.
Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent: Here.
This is the last Sunday before Christmas, and today we lit the 4th candle, the candle of love, because we are drawing closer to the heart of the Incarnation Mystery. As Paul writes to the Romans, there is a mystery, a secret hidden from the beginning of time. And Christ came in the flesh to whisper this secret to all who have their ears and hearts open. Christ whispers still, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ may be whispering to you today.
It is not that God suddenly came up with a new plan. As the Franciscans like to say, “Christ was the first idea in the mind of God.” God planned all along to be intimately involved with Creation. God planned all along that we would share in this work.
Did you notice that the angel didn’t come to Mary with a request, or an invitation? No, the angel came with an announcement. “You will,” he says… “You will conceive and bear a son.” Does this mean that Mary had no choice? No, Mary could have resisted this life that the angel held out to her. She could have said “No, I will do no such thing. This is not the life I had planned for myself.” But Mary said “yes” to an unexpected and dangerous change in her life. She decided to go along with God, embraced God’s plan and only wondered – “How can this be?”
God has no qualms about interrupting peoples’ lives and expecting them to join in whatever it is that God is doing. God plans to do wonderful things and God plans at the same time that we will be part of the work. Like Mary we face moments in our lives when we can say “yes” to God. Sadly, we can also say “no.” If we say “no” often enough, it may be that God will stop bothering us, and we will miss out on everything.
The mystery hidden from the beginning is that God comes into our world, lives with us and expects us to share in bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. We are expected to be working with God to bring about the harmonious coexistence of all peoples – free of war, free from fear, poverty, hatred and intolerance. We are expected to work with God to restore to all of Creation the goodness of its being. God works patiently and has been working from the beginning to do something of amazing and awesome beauty, and God has all the time in the universe to accomplish this work. We have a brief moment to be part of it all.
There was never a time when God was not present with us. Christ came to reveal this secret, to show us what God is like, what God is doing, and then to say – follow me and we will change the world. Everything depends on God; everything begins with God, but God chooses to work with us, with humanity. If I were God I think I’d rather not work with people, who keep messing things up, but that is not God’s way. Instead God risks everything — risks the plan of Creation; risks the dream of God’s kingdom on earth — by choosing us to be part of the venture.
We, just like Mary, are favored by God, and God comes to us in expectation that we will say “yes.” Take a moment right now to consider if there is one small place where you could be making a difference, or one small thing you could do, where God may want to be at work between now and Christmas. Take a couple of minutes right now to reflect on just one small thing.
ADVENT REFLECTION
“I am favored by God. Indeed, God wants to do great things through me. One of these things may be:
Because the God of Mary and Jesus is still active, I believe God is still at work in the world, even through me. Therefore, though I do not always understand how or why God is at work, I can still answer: “Here am I, a servant of God. Let it be with me according to your word.”
Go to: Readings for the Second Sunday of Advent
Mark doesn’t begin his Gospel with a manger scene in Bethlehem. He begins rather abruptly in the wilderness of the Judean countryside where John the Baptist is preaching. John’s task was to prepare the way for God. He wanted to remove the barriers that prevented people from receiving God. John must have been an excellent preacher for people flocked to see and hear him. He helped people recognize their sins, and repent. Then he baptized them with a baptism of repentance. After baptizing them with water he proclaimed that another was coming who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit.
We, those of us who are baptized into Christ, are called to be like John the Baptist. We are called to “prepare the way for God”. We are to fill in the valleys, bring down the mountains and hills, and smooth the rough roads. We are to do our best to remove obstacles that prevent people from receiving Christ with joy. Those in the valley of despair – the marginalized, the grieving, the lost, the imprisoned, and the poor – yearn for a hand to reach out and pull them to their feet. Those on the mountain top, who set themselves apart from others and end up opposing the dreams and hopes of others just so they can stay in power, need to be persuaded to come down from their high places and have concern for people. Despair and sin are barriers that prevent people from receiving God into their lives.
People yearn and hope for a better world. I think one of the things that attracted so many people to Obama when he was campaigning was that he spoke so often of hope. But hope deferred makes the heart sick, and many now feel discouraged with how things are going in our country. They expected things to get better sooner. In our second reading people felt discouraged and confused because they expected the quick return of Christ, to instantly make this world into the kingdom of God, but he didn’t come. The author of the letter wrote to them to renew their hope, bring them encouragement and give them a new vision for the future. What John knew is that repentance is the beginning of new hope.
Life is brief and each moment is precious. We don’t know which moment will hold divine possibilities for change. These moments come like a “thief in the night” and we need to be ready for them. We are expected to be on watch for opportunities to advance the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. We believe that Christ gives us a baptism in the Holy Spirit, and God’s Spirit within us means we are no longer powerless to change ourselves, or to change the world.
We are no longer onlookers, sitting back and waiting to see if God will show up to do something. We are participants – we, now, the Body of Christ incarnate – we are the way God shows up to do something. In the midst of human suffering, Christ continues to speak and act through us. And so we speak tenderly to people, and comfort those who are suffering, and at the same time challenge and confront the comfortable. To speak tenderly is to speak with compassion, not condemnation. To comfort someone is to lend them our strength so they can stand with us. To challenge the comfortable is to speak truth to power, and to persuade and cajole the comfortable to care about other people. This means we try to persuade those who are comfortable to sacrifice some of their comfort. Whether they know it or not, God expects them to give up some of their privilege, power and wealth for the sake of others. We are to repent of the sin of supporting or siding with the wealthy and ignoring the needs of the poor.
Mark’s Gospel is the story of the beginning of a movement. Mark grounds this movement in the prophetic history of Israel. Movements are rarely welcomed when they begin, especially if they push for social change. John and Jesus started a very unwelcome movement, and they were both killed. Those in power wanted to stop that movement. It frightened the powerful to see people flocking after these men who challenged the system that kept them powerful. This movement of God’s is a movement that can get you into trouble if you no longer cooperate with the systems and practices of the world that keep some in power, while others suffer.
We live within an unjust world and our hope is that through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will replace it from the inside out. We are God’s insurgents. We are called to Occupy the World for God. We wait and we work for “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” The coming anew of God occurs every moment, so be ready. This Advent we have a new chance to receive Christ. We are at the beginning and not prisoners of our past. This is a new year with no mistakes in it.
On Sunday, December 18th, we will have a communal reconciliation service prior to mass at Emmaus ECC in Olympia WA. We will have the opportunity to repent and to being anew to live as God would have us live.
You just must listen to Sister Joan Chittester on YouTube. The talk is a bit over an hour, but worth it.
Go Here.
Readings for this homily: Here.
The Gospel today means a lot to me. I remember the first time I understood it. My husband and I once lived on acreage where we raised our own food. Across the street was a pasture with cows. Each day Jack Poteet and his dog would come to tend the cows. Jack also kept an eye on us. He would notice when we had problems, and come right over to help. But Jack was not a Church going guy, and didn’t mind telling you that he had no use for Church or God.
Now back then I believed you had to be a Christian, and you had to be baptized to go to heaven. So when Jack suddenly died of a heart attack I was distraught. I found myself walking in a circle in my living room crying and saying, “O God, O God, O God…” over and over. But in my distress the words from this Gospel flowed into my mind. “Whatever you did for the least, you did for me. Come, you who are blessed.” And I knew that was Jack. I knew God was welcoming Jack. I’ve never forgotten that moment.
A few years later my husband seriously injured his back. Our only heat source was wood heat, and I was no good at chopping it. All our Church friends knew our situation and said they would pray for us, but it was Jeff Smith, the self-proclaimed atheist who saw our need, dropped everything and spent a whole day chopping and stacking wood. These two unbelievers were acting as God acts, and are blessed.
In this parable the kingdom of God is compared to an action, the act of separating. Again we face this paradox in our relationship with God. On the one hand God loves and welcomes all, and on the other hand God expects us to respond to that love, by loving.
What stands out is that the goats weren’t being sinners in ways that we usually think of sinning, as in stealing, lying, murdering or adultery. Instead they don’t do anything when they see the suffering and the need of others. They are like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan. They walk by the wounded, suffering man and do nothing to help him. In fact, they may not even see him, and if they do see him, they don’t feel pity or compassion for him. They just go on with their lives, forgetting all about him. They are absorbed in self.
The other thing to notice is that neither the sheep nor the goats recognize Christ. In other words, the sheep are not caring for others because they know this is what God wants. They are not acting in self-interest, trying to please God. They do caring things because their hearts are hearts of flesh, not stone. They are simply seeing, caring and acting with compassion because that’s who they are at heart. The sequence of seeing, having compassion, and acting is common in all the Gospels. It is the way of Christ, and so they please God.
Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. However, whenever people tried to make Jesus a king he ran away and hid from them. He rejected the idea completely. He said he came to serve and became in fact a servant who washed feet. He called his disciples his friends. What mattered to him then, and what matters now is that we love others as he has loved us.
In a world with very few kings, and knowing how much Jesus rejected the whole king idea perhaps we could think of another way to express what we are celebrating today. Perhaps we could think of Christ as our leader, our mentor, our teacher, our guru. After all he is the one who shows us the way. The point is that through Christ, God’s vision for the whole earth is breaking through and overcoming the opposition, and taking root. Light is overcoming darkness. There is a constant war between God’s vision for the earth, and other visions. Either we are on the side of God, bringing God’s vision to life, or we are not. In my experience, however, I get things all mixed up and sometimes I’m walking with God, but other times I slip and go the way of the world around me.
Sadly, just a short time after Jesus told this parable to his disciples they abandoned him. They acted like he was a stranger they didn’t know, left him alone in prison, hungry, thirsty, suffering and naked. He died feeling alone and abandoned. They failed on all points of this parable. However, the good news is that instead of calling on God to smite them with eternal punishment, Christ called on God to forgive. When the resurrected Christ returned he came in love and brought them the gift of the Holy Spirit. This surprising, unexpected, unearned and forgiving love enveloped them, filled them up and changed them forever. Their hearts were changed and soon they would go out, like Christ, to change the world.
Go here for the Readings.
The first reading reminds us that Wisdom doesn’t hide and make herself difficult to find, but is readily found by those who seek her. As I prepared my reflection for today I prayed for wisdom. You see, I need wisdom for this homily because the readings leading up to Advent are so eschatological. In other words, they have to do with the end times and anything to do with the end times is challenging. As we near the end of the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 24 the disciples ask: “Tell us, when will all this occur? What will be the sign of your coming and the end of the world?” What follows is a series of sayings and parables about the end times.
The early Christians believed that the time was short and Paul, writing before any of the Gospel writers, believed this too. The early Christians of Thessalonica, as we heard in the second reading, were really confused and grieving because they thought the Second Coming of Christ was so imminent that Christ would return before any one of them died. But people did die, and so their faith was shaken. They didn’t know what to think. Paul wrote back to help them understand, and to renew their faith.
By the time the Gospel of Matthew was written in about 85 AD, more years had passed and many had died, and Jesus had not returned. Not only that, but the temple had been destroyed and Christians had been tossed out of Jewish Synagogues. It is in this new reality that the Gospel writer shares this series of parables and sayings about the end times. I suggest you read all of chapters 24 and 25 together. Each parable and saying is a different facet of the answer to the disciples’ question. In other words, they interpret each other.
The parable we hear today is about being prepared. We have ten young girls who are waiting to do their part in a wedding celebration. Their task is to light the way. If you were to look at them they all look ready. They all have their lamps. But when the time comes for them to do what they’ve been given to do, only half of them are ready. The other half discovers that it is not enough to look like you are ready, you have to be ready. As we hear in other places in the Gospel, it’s not enough to cry out “Lord, Lord” and then not to do what God gives you to do.
There is a paradox in our relationship with God. On the one hand all are welcome and God loves each one of us just as we are, but on the other hand, God loves us too much to let us stay that way. All are invited, but there is a narrow way and few choose it. Five of the young girls knew they needed a good supply of oil for their lamps, but five other girls were unconcerned about that oil. After all they didn’t need it right now. We don’t see the difference in the girls until the oil is needed. So, what is this oil, and what puts oil in our lamp? We are called to be a light to the world. What does that mean?
God sent Jesus to show us what it means to be a light to the world. Jesus shows us God’s love. The oil in our lamp is love. Our response to the love of God is to love God back again, and to love others in the same way that God loves us. We bring light into our world through loving and compassionate actions. Our love, our oil is set on fire by the Spirit of God within us, and so we are able to be light for the world.
The problem is that sometimes we can go for days and not really need the oil, but then suddenly we need it and there isn’t time to replenish it if we don’t have it. The loving action is needed now, not later. No one knows when they will need to act, when they will need to take a stand for justice, to show they care, or to respond somehow to a crisis.
We also need to stay prepared for the long haul. You need to stay ready for your lifetime. We need to stay alert and ready for the urgent call of God. But will we even recognize the urgent calls of the kingdom? Will we recognize the coming of Christ? Will we recognize Christ coming in the hungry, the naked, the stranger, the sick and those in prison? Will we have oil in our lamps so we can respond? Or will we miss opportunities?
You can’t borrow your oil from someone else. You have to find it for yourself. You need to figure out what fills you up. As for the end times, what I have discovered is that eternity is now. It is all now. The last things are those things that last. God is with us now, and we are Christ for the world. The kingdom of God is now, even as we wait for its fulfillment. It is all now. You can forget about predictions you hear of a dramatic end.
Readings: here.
Jesus once said he came to fulfill the law. It turns out that the fulfillment of 613 commandments contained in the Torah is love. In other words, as Jesus said, the whole law and the prophets depend on two love commandments.
Every Jew is required to recite the Shema twice a day. This is a declaration of faith and a reminder of their Covenant with God. Here is the Shema:
“Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One. Blessed be the name of his glorious Majesty forever and ever. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your means. And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart. Teach them diligently to your children, and talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. Bind them for a sign upon your head and for frontlets between your eyes. Write them upon your doorposts of your house and upon your gates.”
In Judaism the people’s relationship with God is described as an eternal marriage. And they teach that true love between spouses involves giving and sacrifice by both parties. This marriage arrangement is the basis for the Law of Love in their Covenant relationship with God. While Jesus will take this law of love further, telling us to love as he has loved us, the way of God begins here. In other words we look to God for our wants, our needs, and to help us with our worries, going to God with all our petitions, and then we must remember to also think about what we might do to please God in return. Jesus doesn’t reduce the importance of laws and prophets, but he changes how we see them.
We might ask, how can anyone be commanded to love? Awwww… but we are not just talking about warm, fuzzy feelings toward another; even warm feelings of gratitude toward God. We’re not talking about affection. We’re not talking about a response of attraction toward another person. Love is a mysterious mingling of feelings and commitment. Love is setting our hearts on someone. The main element of love is setting our hearts. Loving God is setting our hearts on God, making a commitment to God, and is something we can freely choose to do. Feelings come and go, but commitment is stubborn and unwavering.
My husband and I had a long standing joke that we could never get a divorce because we were both too stubborn. Sometimes love calls for stubbornness; it calls for hanging in there with another even when our feelings are not so warm and fuzzy. When we decide to set our hearts on God and begin to do things that reflect that decision, our feelings can come and go, as with other relationships. Sometimes we may feel the ecstasy of God’s love, and sometimes we may not even feel God’s presence at all. Faith gives us the stubbornness to hang in there no matter our feelings.
It turns out that the way we love God is by loving God’s Creation, especially in our actions toward other people. We are called to love one another, not just the people we feel close to or that we like, but all God’s children. Jesus showed us the way of love by crossing all the cultural boundaries of his day. He reached out beyond his family, his nation, his religion; he reached out beyond all the places that called for loyalty. He has given us the pattern of love to follow.
Rabbi Hillel, who lived before Christ, was a very wise man and a scholar and is one of the most famous rabbis in Judaism. He said this: “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole law. The rest is commentary.” The first reading shows us the way the Torah commandments spelled out what it means to love our neighbor. We are not to molest or abuse immigrants, even illegal immigrants. We are to do nothing that causes anyone to cry out to God in distress. If we lend money we are not to charge interest. If we take something from someone as a pledge for a debt, we are to give it right back again.
God is compassionate and wants us, who are created in God’s image, to be compassionate, too. We are to be compassionate to all of Creation, not because we feel like it or have so-called bleeding hearts, but because this is what is required of us — if we say we love God.
Reflection
Now let’s take a little time to reflect together.
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Where your treasure is, there is your heart. What fills your heart? What is your first priority? What gets most of your attention? What do you think about most often?
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The deepest part of us is our soul. It is the very essence of our being. It is difficult to know or see. What is at the deepest core of your being? When you look inside, is God there? Is the Holy Spirit at home with you? Or does something else fill up your core?
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Mind is our rational, logical self; the way we think. It is our value system. It is the way we measure things in life. Have you put on the mind of Christ? Are you seeing things with the eyes of God, or with the eyes of the world around us? Is your value system the value system of the Kingdom of God?
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Seattle WA, Peter Sartain, sent a letter to parishes in Olympia and Lacey, claiming that only faith communities in union with the Pope can properly call themselves “Catholic.” He mentions our Emmaus Ecumenical Catholic Community by name so we believe it is important to clarify who we are. I’d like to share the letter we sent to the editor of The Olympian:
We make no claim to being Roman Catholic. Rather, we are a parish in the international Ecumenical Catholic Communion. We share theological and liturgical tradition with them as part of a wider or “universal” Catholic Church. We consider our clergy successors of the apostles, as do the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Old Catholic Church, and others.
We follow the Old Catholic tradition of refusing to accept the infallibility of the Pope as proclaimed in 1870 by the First Vatican Council. We honor the Pope as the first among bishops, but not as having final authority in matters of faith and morals. Because of this decision all Ecumenical Catholics participate in selecting our bishops and in making decisions for our Communion.
We are an inclusive, welcoming, equalitarian faith community. We welcome anyone to worship with us, particularly those who have left the Roman Catholic Church and are seeking a spiritual home.
A Statement from our presiding Bishop:
Although the Roman Church can be properly called a Catholic Church it is one among many. Historically, there have been many Christian churches that have identified themselves as “Catholic” for nearly two millennia that are not in union with Rome. The various Eastern Orthodox Christians, the Coptic Christians of Egypt, the Syriac and Armenian Christians of the East, as well as the Old Catholics to name but a few. The original use of the term “catholic” by ancient churches meant that a so designated faith community was trinitarian, apostolic, creedal, and sacramental. It would be more precise to say that “only those faith communities that are in union with the Roman Pope can properly be called “Roman Catholic.” Catholic is too general a term to be applied to only one church exclusively especially since many Christians use that term in reference to themselves. Therefore, it is incumbent upon all church leaders who use the term catholic in their name to employ a modifier such as Roman, Syrian, Old, or Ecumenical to avoid confusion among the faithful.
Bishop Peter Elder Hickman
