"Welcome in, Everybody," says Zoe, and welcome to you, too, Dearest Zoe.  Who is that  peeking around the edge?!

 

 

Readings:  

 Joshua 24, 1-2, 15-17, 18,  Far be it from us to forsake the Lord.  

Psalm 34,   Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.  (Wow, 3rd week in a row, terrific)

 Ephesians 5, 21-32,  Wives should be subordinate  to their husbands as to the Lord.   (Yipee, sounds good to me.  Make sure Rosemary is listening to this!)

John 6:60-69,  This saying is hard; who can accept it.

 

 

 

And Welcome to you, too, Dearest Tori.

 

Joshua:

Who is Joshua and what is this booklet about:  Joshua was Moses' assistant, his lieutenant when the the Israelites wandered in the desert.  The booklet is the story of the Israelite invasion of Canaan under Joshua's leadership. 

Author: somewhat amusingly, the fundamentalists say that Joshua wrote most of the booklet.  More scientific scholars say the work is a compilation of a number of sources. 

 

 

 

 

Our Magic Candle Lighter of The Week at work.

 

Date of composition: again fundamentalists state that the booklet was composed 1400-1370, i.e., while Joshua lived.  Scholars of a broader vision suggest that even if a Joshua existed the work was put together 800-700 BCE. 

The work combines a number of traditions about battles & destruction of cities to create a nationalistic narrative that justifies the Israelites' taking another peoples' land for their own.

 

 

 

 

 

So from where did we get this group of characters to bring up the bread and grape juice.

 

Ethical Question: genocide.  This is a bloody book.  Yahweh commands that the Israelites exterminate every breathing thing, including women & children & livestock.  

The battle of Jericho is characteristic.  For 6 days the Israelites marched around the city, blowing horns and menacing the people.  On day 7 they marched around 7 times and the walls came tumbling down, as in the spiritual.  Then every person except one woman & her family were slaughtered.  Lots of debate and rationalization over these events.

Our Selection: The last chapter of the booklet.  Joshua, who is dying, calls the people together at a place called Sechem and puts it to them.  Stick with Yahweh who has done all these things for you (which are mentioned in the text but are long & tedious) or choose another path of your own.

Sources: Good News Bible, Got Questions.org, Wikipedia

 

 

 

Play Station Number 1.  Sir Charlie, how come you are not here also?

 

 

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord

Sounds good to me, Folks.   However, when I bring this up to Rosemary, what do I get?  “Want to start sleeping in the back yard dog kennel tonight?  Even my mom was not impressed with this little statement of Paul.  Just ask my poor dad. 

And guess what: I married my mom.  So much for the joy of being a married priest. 

 

 

 

The Best Team.

 

 

Some years ago while I was waiting in a line to ride the roller coaster at 6 Flags I overheard a husband telling his wife to obey him because of this passage, he was the head of the house and the Bible says it.  I almost dropped my teeth. 

The family, mom, dad, and two young girls were trying to decide something.  Finally, even the wife says to the girls that they have to obey the man.  He is the head.

So, how do we handle this, especially when we are repelled by the idea.

 

 

 

 

The Best Music with Ben & David.

 

 

Perspective!   Traditionally there are three types of family relationships.  This is fairly simple.

1. Matriarchal: the woman/wife is the head of the family.  Culturally this has been established occasionally and in some places.
2. Patriarchal: the husband is the head.
3. .Equality: both are partners, husband and wife. 

 

 

 

 

Shall we dance?

 

 

 Paul's place:  guess which paradigm Paul comes from?  Paul lives in a culture which considered women & children little more than domestic animals.  In Tanzania I found the same paradigm among the ordinary people.  This paradigm has been followed more probably  because men are physically stronger and don’t hesitate to maintain control with physical violence.

Even though today Paul can sound wako & chauvanistic, what he says about husbands loving their wives as they love their own bodies, this was pretty radical.

 

 

 

 

Yes, I would love to dance.

 

Today: all three of the paradigms are valid.  Among most educated people, however, equality between husband & wife, men & women is the more healthy.    Besides, as we know, women just won’t let us guys get away with it. 

Certainly with education for both men and women, there is equality.  

So, again, beware of taking the Bible literally.   Like beating your kids.

 

 

 

 

The Terrible Ekes, Cindy, Marlene, Mabel, Billy, & especially Mabel.

 

What paradigm do you prefer???

 

Readings:

Isaiah 58, 7-10,   If you bestow your bread on the hungry, then light shall rise for you in the darkness.   

 Psalm 112,  The Just Person is a light in darkness to the upright.

 1 Corinthians 2, 1-5,   God chose the foolish of the world.

 Matthew 5, 13-16,    You are the light of the world.

 

 

 

Kristin and Everett say, "Welcome in, Everybody. "  And we say to you, Everett, "Welcome into our world."

 

Isaiah reminders, again—(I lied again, Folks.  I thought we were finished with Isaiah, my favorite, until next Advent.  Nope.  Not really sorry, though.  We have him again Feb. 26, last Sunday before Lent.)

 Author: This is Isaiah #3, the composer of chapters 56-66.  Isaiah #3 lives after the Israelites have returned to the ruined city of Jerusalem.  It is a very depressing experience after the exuberance of being allowed to depart from slavery in Babylon.  Like returning to your shattered home after a tornado, hurricane, or forest fire.

 

Hi, Leo, good to see you.

 

 Date:  Ca. 555 before Christ, the composition.  The Jewish people of Jerusalem are home again.

Subject:  A great day will come for you Jews.  You will be a bright light at dawn and your wound will be healed (of your defeat and slavery), if you take care of your neighbor, providing food, clothing, and shelter.  The corporal works of mercy.

 

 Welcome to our marvelous community, Michael Tuck.  It is so nice to have you and you are welcome any time Ray cannot make it.  Or even if he can.

 

Your Light must shine before Others

This is the fourth or fifth Sunday we have dealt with delightful readings that involve light, either receiving light or giving light.  Guess what.  I want to talk again about 3 people who are lights for me.

I have talked before about a guy whom I greatly admire, Jim Mahar, a professor of something like economics at St. Bonaventure University near Buffalo, NY.  This guy just continues to amaze and humble me. 

 

 

 

Hi, Harper.  Welcome to the Queen of Girl Scout Cookies.

 

I first met Jim through Bill Hammond.  He, I, and Bob McGrath,  all went down to Galveston to help with the clean up and repair of the city after the hurricane Ike in 2008.  It seems to me like yesterday and, yet, incredibly long ago.

There were 20-25 of us, mostly students probably on spring break.  We stayed in a very hospitable Protestant church.  The pastor himself was most friendly and accommodating.  The kids had bunk beds on the left & right of the church.  We old guys bedded down in a rectangular room with about 20 Baptist Men volunteers.  I could talk about those guys all day, they are so good.  The only problem that time: one guy in our dorm snored like a bear. 

 

 

Buddy, our Candle Man of The Week.  Thanks, Buddy.

 

These guys had an 18 wheeler trailer that they had rigged up with a number of showers.  The people in the church community fed us 3 meals a day. 

This was the first time I worked with Jim Maher.  I also went to Moore, OK, a suburb of OK City to help with a tornado that passed through.  And now just a week or so ago I get a facebook note from Jim, working with a bunch of St. Bonaventure kids in maybe the Bahamas.

 

 

Offertory, Cindy, Bill, and Marlene.

 

Jim is a bright light in my life.  In fact, his light is blinding.  I am exhausted just following him from one disaster to another.   He and some kids even came to help in Rowlett last year.  I did not get to help out, but Bill Hammond was there. 

Secondly, I have told you about another light of mine, Coach Frank Hart, mostly bed ridden in a home for elders.  I have been visiting Frank almost every Friday afternoon for some years. 

 

 Ready or not, here we go.

 

When I first started entering this house, I noticed the particular accent with which three black caretakers ladies spoke English.  I immediately recognized from where that accent comes, East Africa.  They were marvelous caretakers. 

So one afternoon, I took a minute to speak with one of the girls who bubbled over with personality.  I addressed her in Swahili, which I totally still remember.

 

 

Anybody know who these characters are??

 

Folks, I thought she was going to faint, drop her teeth, and go crazy.  She yelled to her 2 girl friends and we had a marvelous time.  They were from Kenya.  Very caring, very courageous girls.  Lights to me for their courage in making a better life for themselves and others, like Coach Frank. 

The third group: our kids.  They don’t have to do anything and I love them.  I am so delighted with their presence, which brings light to our celebrations.

 

 

The "Juliets," just us ladies into eating together."

 

I have always welcomed little kids at the Masses I celebrate, and for sure, at St. Marks.  I would normally invite them up around me during the Eucharistic prayer.  One time a little boy knocked over the standing candles and another time a little baby barfed on my shoulder while I was welcoming her for maybe the first time. 

 

 

Is this not a pretty tough group?!  Hi, Carol.  Love the hair.

 

Guess what, everybody was so timid and cowed they did not even stop me to let me know the baby had thrown up on my shoulder until after the Mass, when even I was beginning to wonder about where that smell was coming from.  These events both took place in the big church, not the 10:30 cafetorium.   That 10:30 crowd would have spoken up, probably laughing at me.

 

 

And another play station.

 

Again the questions:

Who gives you light?

To whom do you give light?

 

Readings:   Acts 4, 32-35, They had everything in common; Psalm 118, Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, his love is everlasting; 1 John 5, 1-6, Everyone who loves the Father loves the one begotten by him; John 20, 19-31, Jesus came and stood in their midst.

 

 

Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, Mike Carrell

In the Smithsonian Magazine that I was reading in my doctor’s office recently, there was a photograph entitled Tricycle and Memphis, 1970.  It was a color photograph presented in the first showing of color photography as an art medium at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1972.  It was a colorful picture of an old but sturdy tricycle with a blue seat with red rubber grips on a curved handlebar. It had some white spots of paint that had somehow been splattered on the seat, frame and wheels. 

I could tell that the camera had been held at a very low angle to indeed give the tricycle the look of elegance, like a chariot it encompassed almost the whole picture.  In the diminished background you could see a couple of one story flat roofed houses, one with a carport.  One art critic found it perfect, another perfectly awful. 

 

The critic who found it perfect understood the context within which it had been placed—the diminished background, the fading away of the old Memphis was the result of a blossoming Southern culture that had begun in the Memphis of 1970, with bold new music, art, and literature.  The paint splatter an indication that the blossoming was a work in progress.

Today we are told of the importance of signs within the gospels.  However, if we want to understand the signs, we too must understand them in the context of the gospel teachings in which we find them!

Some of you will remember being taught by question and answer.  First we were given the question, ‘What is a sacrament?’  Then we were given the answer to memorize: ‘A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.’    If one were to translate that word sign into Greek, the Greek word chosen would be the word used for sign in our reading today. 

Remember a couple of months ago when the leper came and knelt before Jesus saying, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean,’ There is a sign being given when Jesus says, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’  We can come to understand the sign because of the context of the teaching in which it was placed.  At the end of that teaching Jesus was proclaiming the good news to those who crowded around him. 

This good news, ‘In the Father’s plan of salvation the Messiah had come to us as the Lamb of God,’ fulfills what came before it in the teaching that stated that the Mosaic Law required the offering of an unblemished lamb for the leper’s sins.  So we know that these words of Christ has brought forgiveness to the man—the meaning of the sign.

I presented you a sign from the Luke gospel during a Christmas season homily. I told you that of the Christ child in a manger dressed in swaddling clothes was a sign of the Church.  The manger was a feeding trough; the child wrapped in the shroud of the linen strips was the Lamb of God from which were come to be fed the Word and the Bread of Life.    We come to understand this from the context of the teaching because the shepherds watching over the flock by night are the twelve watching over their lambs, that’s us, who desire for us to be fed with Christ’s words and the Loaves blessed and broken to become the bread blessed and broken for others. 

The Catholic catechism teaches that, ‘The Church draws its life from the Word and the Body of Christ, and so she becomes Christ’s body.’ 

 

Today’s gospel reading just happens to be an entire teaching from the initial ending of the John gospel.  To paraphrase, we are told the signs of the gospels were written so that we might believe that the Messiah has come to us as the Christ, the Lamb of God, to bring forgiveness to our sins and union with the Father through him. 

This is why, like Thomas, we are to place our hand into the pierced side of the body of Christ, because Christ’s body symbolizes the Church, the body of Christ alive in the world through the power of the Holy Spirit.  This wisdom must give specific meaning to the story within the context of this last teaching: ‘For as the Father has sent me, so I send you, in the peace that comes from being forgiven and with the power and authority of the Spirit breathed upon us to be the bread blessed and broken to the ends of the earth.

Over time, I will help you come to understand that all of the resurrection teachings of the Gospels are about the Church! 

Now, let me give you a brief insight as to why the inspired writers added another ending to the John gospel that consists of two additional teachings.  Both the Mark gospel and the Matthew gospel have a second teaching about the loaves and fishes.  The loaves, fishes and leftovers are signs, when understood correctly, that describe the mission Christ gives to his disciples, and us, to take the good news to the ends of the earth. The 5 loaves and the 7 loaves are the twelve disciples who have been called to become the Bread they eat.  We are the leftovers! From us are to come other leftovers!  

The gospel of Luke was not written with this second teaching because its writers wrote a whole book, called the Acts of the Apostles, to describe the mission to the ends of the earth; one of its teachings is about the 7.  Since the inspired writers of the John gospel placed an obvious ending to their gospel, they must have envisioned another book to complement Luke’s Acts of the Apostles.  Later, after a decision was made not to do this, two inspired teachings were added to the original John gospel—one a teaching about the 7. 

The first would present how all the stories of the four gospels were used in the mission to the ends of the earth.  Since Luke’s Acts continuously describe the persecution of the Apostle Paul, not one of the twelve, the last teaching in the John gospel was written to incorporate the persecution of the Apostle Peter.   Recall that I suggested to you to read the Sermon of the Mount from the Matthew gospel during Lent.  The beatitudes end with, “Blessed are you when you are persecuted for the sake of the Christ, ‘Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”

The context of each of our personal stories is not complete.  How will others remember us as leftovers blessed and broken for others? 

 

 

 

Readings: Isaiah 8, 23-9, 3; Psalm 27, The Lord is my Light and my Salvation; 1 Corinthians 1, 10-13; Matthew 4, 12-23

 Intro to Readings

 The gospel reading today should sound familiar when you hear it, as it is mostly a repeat of our first reading from Isaiah.  In today’s reading Jesus has just heard that John the Baptist has been jailed by Herod and so he decides to head over to Capernaum. 

 

The reading describes Capernaum as being in the region of Zebulum and Naphtali.  These places were named after two of the sons of Jacob, he of the ‘twelve tribes’ fame.  Galilee is a very familiar name to us as Jesus spent a whole lot of time there.  This area was the area invaded by the Assyrians in the eight century BC and all of the wealthy and educated people where carried away as slaves.  What was left were the peasants, and so we have this reference to the land left in darkness!

 

Nazareth was to the southern end of Galilee.  Galilee itself was a rather small and insignificant place compared with Jerusalem in Judea.  Capernaum was a fishing village on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  It was also close to the Via Maris, which you will hear referred to in the first reading as the seaward road.

 Because of this earlier exile, there was a much greater mix of gentiles in this area.  There was a certain amount of tension between the Jews who lived in Galilee and those in Jerusalem.  They were not considered quite as ‘pure’ due to their constant contact with the gentiles.

  

The really important part of the gospel reading is the last line, where we are given Jesus’ message “repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.

 Our second reading from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians shows what can so easily happen to any small community of believers.  The community is breaking into factions and forgetting its purpose.  

 

The Homily: instead of a formal homily today we have a baptism.  Catch the video:

  

 Picture 1:    Mass Begins  

Picture 2:    Special Welcome to Sienna, Brian, Payton, & Erin 

Picture 3:    The Baptism Party, Brian, Susanne, Payton, Erin, & Sienna

Picture 4:    The Baptism

   

 

 Readings:  Isaiah 5, 1-7; Psalm 80, The Vineyard of the Lord is the House of Israel; Philippians 4, 6-9; Matthew 21, 33-43 

 

Isaiah:

• The biggest of the big 3 prophets not only because of the book's volume, 66 chapters, but because of the beauty of some passages.   The book is my favorite.
• Time written: before the Babylonian Captivity (ca. 590) chapters 1-39 seem to have been composed by the prophet.  After the Captivity (ca. 540) at least two followers seem to have composed chapters 40-66.
• Today's selection: talks about a vineyard worker who labors carefully to bring forth good grapes, but gets only weeds.  What does he do with the vines?  This story matches up with Matthew's parable.

 

The Crazy Landowner 

Picture 1:    Sacrament of the Sick

Picture 2:    Shonda, Bethany, & Ray