Sunday Homily 5-29-11, 6th Easter

Readings: Genesis 14, 18-20; Psalm 110; 1 Corinthians 11, 23-26; Luke 9, 11-17.

The Miracle of Sharing

Years ago when I lived in Tanzania, East Africa, I suddenly one evening had to take the overnight train from the capital, Dar es Salaam (Harbor of Peace, on the Indian Ocean) to our Jesuit house near Kilimanjaro. Since I was late in getting a reservation, I had to simply pile into one of the 3rd class cars with lots of people, their kids, their luggage, and even chickens. I planned to sit up all night on my suitcase or on the floor. 

Suddenly about 1:00 in the morning the train stopped in the middle of a scrub nowhere and we were eventually told the train had broken down. We sat on that track until about 5:00 the next afternoon.  I even tried to sleep on the rocks of the train bed. Trouble was, thinking I would be home in the early morning, I had no food &, more importantly,  no water. This was just stupidity on my part. I had been around too long to neglect this. Breakdowns were common on train and buses. And there was nothing to buy anywhere.

The Tanzanians all seemed to have come prepared and I would have been given at least a drink by various people, because I could speak with them. They had little stores of food and drink tucked into the folds of their robes or in baskets. But, I did not want to drink their water. It was possibly not purified. Of course all the time I am thinking the train will start any moment.

Late in the morning I noticed an young white couple in the forward part of the train.  We got talking and they shared with me their water.They were Germans and later I was going to climb Kilimajaro with them on one of my 5 trips.

Later that afternoon I was really able to help them out because the guy, a real big guy in the German army, took a picture of a baby lying near us under a shade tree. Someone saw him, told the mother on the train, who told the husband, who told the whole train. They circled him and us and wanted to take him to the police, wherever that might have been. 

Instead I was able to get everyone to sit down and talk. Finally the family agreed to let the German cut off the piece of film. Naturally he just clipped the lead and gave it to them.

I talk about this because I often think about this event when I hear the story about Jesus passing around the bread & fish.  I propose an alternative miracle to the more obvious. I base it on my experience with people who would not likely go out for the day without taking provisions. There were no McDonald’s.  Moreover, normally the people would hide their food and hoard it. Who knows when they might need it? 

What Jesus does it take the 5 loaves & fishes and share them with the nearest people. Picture the scene.The first person gets the food, takes a little, feels guilty because he or she has more hidden away, then pulls out of a hiding place a bit of bread, and passes it on. The process continues all over the huge crowd and at the end there is food left over.

The miracle is sharing. 

I also read recently that strict observance Jews would have been among the crowd and they did not believe in eating with unclean people.  Morever, they would eat only ritually cleaned food.  According to the story, everyone ate.

When I was on that dead train I would have been helped by the Africans. They respect white folks, especially when they speak the language, and many were probably Catholics.  Fortunately, I did not need their generosity because the Germans had purified water (this was before the bottled water fad). They had no trouble sharing and I still remember how good their water tasted. 

How are you being challenged to share more?

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Readings:

Jeremiah  20, 7-9,  You duped me, Lord, and I let myself be duped.

 Psalm 63,   My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord, my God.

Romans, 12, 1-2,  Do not conform youself to this age.

Matthew 16, 21-27,  Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

Mr. Payton sez, "Hi, Everybody," along with his dad, Derrick.

Jeremiah observations–

What:  I think Jeremiah is my second favorite O.T. prophet, behind Isaiah, mostly because he makes whining and complaining into an art form.  I need to take lessons from him.  Not that he did not have enough to complain about.   Jeremiah is one of the Big 3 with Isaiah and Ezekiel.  He is called the ‘broken hearted prophet.’  Here is why.

Time:  Jeremiah lived and prophesied in Jerusalem around 600 before Christ.  Why is this important?  It is some 50 years before the Babylonian Captivity.  Jeremiah had a heart rending life predicting punishment of death and destruction for the Hebrews for their sinful, selfish ways.  Jeremiah predicted disaster, and disaster came in the person of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon-Bagdad.

Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke as a visual aid to his message.  He may have been ultimately killed by the Hebrews.

Today:  Jeremiah is in top form.

            Sienna says, "Hi, Folks, Welcome in."

Deny Yourself, Take up Your Cross, and Follow Me

I want to talk this morning, folks, about the line in Matthew, Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.  I confess right off, I hate this line.  Can you imagine a loving God creating people to deny themselves and take up a life of suffering? 

Matthew’s line can be very tricky.  It can be approached healthily or in a rather sick way.  I can witness to the latter in my own life.  I have already described how as a young Jesuit I was expected to do penance and deny myself in various ways, like the practice of using little whips to scourge our backs and little chains with points to wear around our thighs.  This was supposed to bring me closer to God.

Brooklyn, too, says, "Come on in Everybody, it's fun."

I can laugh at this now, but I am humbled at how easily I can be snookered.  When I read this line and others like it in the Bible and remember my experiences, I now see the presence of an ancient philosophy that still influences a lot of religious activity today.  The philosophy: dualism. 

The idea is simple.  Reality comes in pairs, hot & cold, dark & light, order & chaos, and, in particular for this discussion, body & soul or flesh & spirit.  So far so good. 

Tristan says it checks out okay here.

The trouble enters with a judgment about the flesh & spirit.  Specifically, flesh is bad, spirit is good, superior.  Consequently, so that my spirit may reach an elevated plane of purity & perfection, and ultimately closer union with God, I attempt to subdue my flesh by disregarding the body's needs, ultimately aiming to live without it.  Do not give in to pleasure.  How about that!

A couple of facts.  Dualism is identified as far back as 1000 years B.C. and came out of Zoroastrianism, a religion that worshiped one god and believed in an afterlife.  Did it come from Egypt as so much did at that time?  No, from Persia, the area we call Iran today.  Zoroastrianism was widespread until Muhammad arrived on the scene around 650 and established Islam.  Through the ages lots of people picked up on dualism, for example, Plato, Augustine, Descartes, and the early Christians, like Matthew.

However, there is a healthy approach to the line.  A story to exemplify the healthy.

Buddy in red today.

Way back when I was living at Jesuit and working as a psychotherapist, a single, divorced mother came with her son, Michael, one day and basically said, “help!”  She had a really active boy about 3^rd grade.  He and his neighbor buddy, a black kid, used to race around our neighborhood and the high school on their bikes.  Great kids.

The years passed and I got to know the Michael really well.  One afternoon when Michael was in 7^th grade at St. Monica, we were watering trees with the white truck and old red water trailer.  I don’t remember who was driving us along the medians, but at one point I can remember to this day, he said to me that if he did not make the entrance exam at Jesuit, his life was no good.  

Is red the color today? Who knows. Ask Victoria and Zoe.

I did not say anything at the moment.  But later I told him that thinking was baloney.  I said Jesuit did not want kids who said their lives were no good.  If he made it, Jesuit would be a better place.  If he did not, another school would be a better place because they had a tremendous gift in their school. 

He did not get in. 

So Michael went to Bishop Dunne.  He played sports, worked hard to make good grades, and kept in contact with a neat guy who was the admissions director at Jesuit.

He got in as a sophomore.  He did excellently.

Our Great Leo checking out the scene.

Next Michael wanted to go to A&M and join the corps.  He did not get in.  He does not test well.  So he went to Tech and joined the Air Force ROTC.  After 4 years there he invited me to the ceremony where he was to get his lieutenant bars.  

The ceremony was in a big auditorium.  Michael was the last.  On the stage with him were his mom and his girl friend, Lydia.  At one point in his personal ceremony Michael turns to the whole auditorium, asks their patience for a moment, turns back to Lydia, drops on a knee, and asks her to marry him. 

Talk about blowing the roof off of the auditorium.  Everybody went crazy.  She said yes. 

Emma working her magic spells.

Now, Michael has long finished his flight training, part of which took place right up at the scene of the Hotter N’ Hell, Wichita Falls.  He has been stationed all over the world, like Aviano, Italy, where we got the name of our dog, Aviana, after a visit there.   He has a little boy, a beautiful wife in Lydia, and a platinum career as a jet pilot.  

Michael has denied himself a lot of quite legitimate pleasures to achieve some healthy goals.  Even now he continues to keep himself in good physical and intellectual shape.  

So, how do you deny yourself and take up a cross?   

Offertory, John & Connie, Denni & Tom.

Readings: Isaiah 49, 1-6; Psalm 139 (good); Acts of the Apostles 13 22-26; Luke 1, 57-66.

Isaiah: One of the 3 great Old Testament prophets, he lived about 700 years before Christ.  Actually the book itself has about 3 authors. The section we read this morning emphasizes the call Isaiah received from Yahweh to be a prophet. It ties in with John the Baptist, today’s feast. 

How to Get There

Last week when we confirmed Erica & Susie we talked about six qualities of the person who is becoming more mature and more whole. The qualities were curiosity, hope, gratitude, love, zest, and humor. 

This morning I would like to focus on the road to these qualities. How do I get there? I have five suggestions plus one. The first five I picked up somewhere, liked them, and wrote them down. 

The five plus one suggestions are: no hatred, no worry, give more, expect less, live simply, and accept.

With hatred I would distinguish between the feeling of hating a person and the state of being a person of hatred.  It is normal to hate. It is a feeling. To deny it if I feel it is more dangerous.  Because of guilt I may try to stuff the feeling. Then watch it become a state. If I hate, process it and then for me it has helped to forget.  Note that underneath hatred is probably anger & hurt.  That was where I was when I got kicked out of East Africa. After talking about it with trustworthy people, I had to just forget. And it worked.

Worry often involves the game of "What if?"  What if my child gets hurt?  What if I fall down? The opposite can be used as the antidote: "What if not?" Worry does not mean that I do not care or take care. Worry involves fret over a future I have at most limited control over. 

What is the hardest thing for me to give more of? Money, things, time, my attention?  That is where the path to greater peace lies. It may even involve giving care to myself, what I call self nurturing. I occasionally see people fearful of nurturing themselves because they consider it selfishness. 

Expecting less can really get tough when I focus on people. When my expectation of a person’s behavior is up here and they behave down there, I get mad & hurt. My dad always used to get upset on Saturday nights when he & my mom were going out. Mom was always late & dad’s expectation of being on time was up there where mom did not go.

Living simply takes work these days. When I lived in Tanzania, it was pretty easy to live a simple life style. In Dallas there is so much stuff. Wardrobes can go out of sight.  Cars, houses, things.  They weigh us down.

Finally, I add acceptance. Acceptance involves not only things & events, it involves me, accepting myself. It comes up constantly in daily life. 

Using these six little rules for happiness, we can become more peaceful and more whole people. One may be more challenging than the others. 

Which challenges you more?

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Readings: Acts of the Apostles 2, 42-47; Psalm 118; 1 Peter 1, 3-9; John 20, 19-31

Intro to the Readings – 2^nd Sunday of Easter

 Our first reading today is from Acts of the Apostles.  Remember this is part 2 of Luke’s story of Jesus and the Early Church, part one being his Gospel.  In Acts, Luke picks up the story right after the Resurrection.  He repeats the short piece about the Ascension, but the main body of Acts deals with the spread of the Good News to the Gentile World.  Our reading today is early in the story and is a kind of interlude about the early Christian church in Jerusalem. 

 
The few verses in today’s reading give us what I will call an idyllic view of that community.  And interestingly Luke, writing to a Greek audience uses a word in today’s reading, which only appears here in the Bible, but is commonly used in Greek literature to describe a kind of Utopian society.  I mention this because we could easily feel discouraged when we listen to what that early community was like and then reflect on our own community here today in 2011.  But for Luke’s original readers, this community is the one described by Plato, Ovid and other Greeks as the ideal community where all possessions are shared. 

 There is one other item worth noting in the reading and that is the four actions of this early community, the teaching of the apostles, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers.  These are a great summary too of what Jesus did in his life.

 The second reading today is from the First Letter of Peter.  It was written to the churches in what is today Turkey and Syria.  The communities are having a tough time due to their faith, although they are not being persecuted yet.  Peter’s letter offers them great encouragement.  He probably wrote it around the year 64 from Rome. 

Second Sunday of Easter 2011 – Homily

Today, after we pray the our Father and a few other short prayers I will turn to you and say “ the peace of the Lord be with you all” but what is that ‘peace’?  I think we have a clue from the gospel just read.  To get a better understanding we need to look closely at what is happening in John’s gospel. 

Our reading today comes from the second half of Chapter 20.  Chapter 20 begins with the words “it was very early in the morning on the first day of the week, and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb.”  By the way, chapter 19 ends with Jesus being laid in the tomb.  So we know we are on Easter Sunday morning.  What John’s Gospel proceeds to do is show that faith in the resurrection comes slowly.  Jesus’ disciples were not expecting it.  So when Mary finds the tomb empty her immediate conclusion is someone has taken the body.  Peter and another disciple, the ‘beloved’ disciple show up after Mary told them what she had discovered, and we are told they saw the garments, and that the ‘beloved disciple’ saw and believed, nothing about Peter believing yet. 

 And then we have today’s reading.  It is the same day, but evening.  They are all in a locked room, afraid of the Jews.  So I have to wonder, how big an impact had this early ‘faith’ of the beloved disciple had on the group.  By the way, Mary did see a gardener whom she recognizes when he calls her by name, but I suspect her story was put down to the rantings of a grieving woman??  So Jesus appears in the room, and twice says “peace be with you”.  What is this peace?  He immediately breathes on them, and remember an earlier breathing – in the book of Genesis, when God breathes on the clay and forms man, we now have God again breathing and forming new men!  People filled with the Holy Spirit.  In human terms I feel that this “peace be with you” had the same effect as when a child wakes up in the night crying and a parent wraps them in their arms and says “its OK, I’m here with you”.  The child feels safe. 

 
The resurrection, belief in the resurrection, makes us different people.  Yes it is the leap of faith, not a solid provable fact, but that faith gives us a hope, and a security that nothing can really harm us.  It is what gave the apostles the courage to go out and face that group of hostile Jews.  It is what brings us here this morning. 

 Remember in the first reading today from Acts, that little early idylic community which Luke described, we are not that different.  We come together to break bread, to pray, to learn the teaching of Jesus, and we do share our possessions.  This morning we will be giving anther $2,000 to the CCAC and also some money to the Plano Homes, and those are just two small examples of sharing our possessions.

 So today at our mass, when I say “the peace of the Lord be with you all” reflect for a moment before we offer each other the sign of that peace, do you feel like the child, wrapped and safe?

Picture 1:     Penny receiving a check from Bobby for Plano Community Homes

Picture 2:    Offertory with brother & sister, Bobby & Marlene

Picture 3:    Leo with Jackie

Picture 4:   Wendy's parents

Picture 5:   Gilberto preparing for the 5 Boro Bike tour with 2 of Rosemary's Nephew's kids, Emma & William 

Readings:    

Jeremiah  31, 7-9,   Shout with joy.

Psalm 126,   The Lord has done great things for us, we are filled with joy.

Hebrews 5, 1-6,   Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God.

Mark 10, 46-52,  Bartimaeus, a blind man, sat by the road begging. 

Emma

Jeremiah observations:

Who:  one of the Big 3 Prophets, 52 chapters, the “broken hearted prophet,” because he hated being so unpopular and having to condemn so much. 

Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe seems to be who put down the prophet’s message.   Jeremiah probably died in Egypt.

When: put together before & during the B.C., Babylonian Captivity, say 575 before Christ  (reminder, Babylon is near present day Bagdad, Iraq).

Remember, too,  that time before Christ is counting downward or backwards.

Welcome, Leo

Interesting Side Note: (another reminder) can you guess when the Genesis story of creation in 7 days was composed?  Biblical research reveals that the creation story was put together during the Captivity, this same time, i.e. ca. 575.

Why?  The priests & prophets (e.g., Ezekiel) of the Jews in captivity determined that the people would not be assimilated into the local gene pool as their cousins in the northern kingdom had done when made to live with the Assyrians.  They decided they would establish customs & religious practices that would make the Jews so different they would not intermarry.  Three special laws were established: 1.  male circumcision; 2. dietary laws and laws about not touching menstruating women; and 3. the Sabbath.

The priests put together the 7 day creation story to suggest that Yahweh approved of their Sabbath law.  They had Yahweh rest on the 7th day to bolster their demand that all Jews take a day off every 7 days.  Before the Babylonian Captivity there was no legislated Sabbath and no myth of Yahweh creating the world in 7 days with the 7th being a day of rest.  So, now you know when the story was created & by whom, the priests, and why, to keep the Jews united vs the Babylonians.  It worked, even down to today.

Offertory, Mike and Judy, Mary and Bill

Subject: the usual prophet message—condemn, pay, peace.

Today: Beautiful message of peace and consolation.  It is coming.

Sources: Bishop John Shelby Spong, The sins of Scripture; Wikipedia

Leo and Cole

 She Danced through Life

Rosemary & I had the privilege and the honor Thursday to attend the funeral of another noble woman & friend, like Joan, Colleen Romero. 

I calculate that Rosemary & I have known Colleen and her husband for ten years.  We certainly knew them for a couple of years before we got married in 05/05/05.   You will never guess how we met them.  Dancing.

Zoe receiving her birthday cupcake of the week, 4 years old today, Sunday

 Somewhere along the line, a group of us noticed that Plano Parks provided a whole variety of adult classes, among them dancing.  So Rosemary & I, Gilberto & Bernadette, Beth & Rob , and some others, we all decided, “Let’s go learn to dance.”  And so we met Colleen and Fred.

Sophia

They were our teachers.  They were elegant, charming, and fun.  I danced with Colleen a number of times.  I would ask Fred how I was learning some special dance.  He would laugh.  Then Colleen would guide me to a point where I got it.

Delgado corner with Buddy, Leo, and Torri

 This is the first thing I see when I remember Colleen.  She danced through life, charming, elegant, smiling, and having fun.  She and Fred were even running dance classes at St. Gabriel parish for adults who had Parkinson’s or coordination problems. 

Nikki and Cameron with Sophia with their birthday cupcakes of the week, 12 years old.

A  second aspect to Colleen I saw recently.  It was a few weeks back when I got a notice that Colleen was not doing well and was in the hospital.   We had not seen her and Fred for months, maybe a year.  She had been struggling with various joint problems for some time, but this was supposed to be serious.

Jessica home from Boston

So, I called her straight up.  She answered.  She sounded groggy and stressed.  In fact, she was experiencing nausea.  So I made it quick, saying I loved her and sent her all my support.  She said this may be her time and that she was okay about it.

A few more days go by and I get another note saying that the word is this really is it.  This time we get in the car and go visit her at Medical City Plano. 

I walk in and find her looking and sounding great.  However, she says this is truly her time, that she wants no special treatment, and that she is totally ready.  She was in that acceptance stage we talk about in stages of dying, the stage of peace.  

Cathy just before receiving blessing for her foot operation

Colleen was not like Mark’s Bartimaeus today.  She was not blind.  She could see.  She danced her way through life and when her time approached, she accepted it. 

Like I asked with Joan, how have you been blessed by people like Colleen?