No, this item is not about the wars in the Middle East or anywhere else. It's about a way to see today's feast of the Annunciation. The incident of the angel coming to tell Mary that she is to have a baby amounts to a declaration of war by God against the dark powers that hold his creation captive. We tend to miss this way of seeing the Annunciation because we get all hung up on the mysterious phenomenon of a heavenly messenger telling a young Jewish girl that she will have a child, and remain a virgin in the process. We get distracted by the virginity thing.
The reading at Mass from Isaiah about the evil King Ahaz offers a clue. Ahaz was a bad egg, a cruel father who was into sacrificing his kids to pagan deities, desecrating the Jerusalem Temple and plundering the wealth of his people for personal gain. He died young and had a shameful burial. Ahaz represented everything that had gone wrong with God's creation. Today's excerpt from Isaiah shows God having had it with Ahaz. Isaiah announces that a new sheriff is coming to town: 'A virgin shall be with child....'
This is a declaration of war against the Ahazes of the world, the latter-day Caesars and the Herods of the earth, against the powers that assemble against God's plan for human flourishing, that turn humanity into slaves, and declare themselves to be the criteria of right and wrong. The child announced to Mary would oppose all this from the moment of his conception all the way to the Cross.
'Why this tumult among the nations...?' asks Psalm 2 in today's Divine Office - better known from Handel's Messiah as, 'Why do the nations so furiously rage together?' The Caesars of the world tremble because they've blown their chances to accomplish what God had in mind for people; 'that they might have life and have it to the full,' as Jesus puts it in John 10:10.
If we are awake and alert to the nonsense that makes our world tick we will not be surprised at all the stuff that darkens our lives and dashes our hopes for something better. Today's reminder of the Annunciation is a kind of prophetic invitation to us to discern where true and authentic hope lies.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Monday, March 26, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
PRAYING FROM WHO WE ARE
'I am troubled now,' says Jesus in this Sunday's gospel. The commentators say Jesus was not referring to some passing annoyance, like a teacher might have with a fifth grader who is not paying attention in class. They say the Greek word refers, rather, to inward turmoil, to being deeply unsettled. It's authentic prayer and resembles many of the prayers we find in the psalms.
'Pray out of who you are, not out of who you are not,' was the spiritual advice given by Abbot John Chapman almost a century ago to someone who asked him about prayer. St. John of Damascus, an early Christian writer, once described prayer as 'the raising of the mind and heart to God.' He was talking about raising everything inside us to God, not just the holy stuff, beautiful words and sublime thoughts.
People ususaly think of prayer in terms of the profound Lord's Prayer and the familiar Hail Mary, and confine themselves to the kinds of sentiments found there. Those sentiments are scriptural and to be highly recommended. The Lord's Prayer is a kind of summation of all prayer, the headlines but without the small print. We need to put in the small print. The problem with much of our praying is that we stick only to the headlines or we use prayers by others people that were written for outer situations.
Do we ever tell God how bored we are at prayer, how ticked off we are by somebody, how much we'd like 'a pox on both your houses'? We should, if that's how we're feeling. It's a good way to deal with the waywardness inside our hearts, a condition many good people would rather not own up to. I think the first rule of prayer is to be searingly honest about where we are at, and tell it all out to God. This calls for brutal self knowledge and self acceptance.
I don't believe God is impressed by our holiness any more than by our honesty. When somebody was last year diagnosed with Alzheimer's she sat down and wrote a letter to God. She poured out to God her fears, frustration, anger and disappointment with everybody and everything. Then, recognizing the giftedness of everything she had and everything she was, she spoke her gratitude. It was a long prayer, rooted in reality. Her perspective was realistic. It was the prayer of someone who had her two feet on the ground. A humble prayer. It reminded me to Jesus' prayer in this Sunday's gospel.
'I am troubled now.' Jesus spoke to his Father about the struggle that was going on in his heart, toying with the temptation to say, 'Father, save me from this hour.' He didn't succumb to that temptation. Instead, he glimpsed the victory that his defeat on the cross would win. His imminent passion and death would be the doing - and the undoing - of the 'ruler of this world.'
The 'ruler' he spoke of was the principle that holds 'this world' together, the principle that was sending him to the cross. A world turned in on itself and away from God had become the principle, the criterion and measure of what's good and what's evil, what's right and what's wrong, what's true and what's not true. The ruler of that world is still with us, but mortally wounded.
We need in prayer to acknowledge our personal brush with the ungodliness that so often invades and occupies our lives and our values. None of us is immune from it. The gospel we'll hear on Sunday should remind us that prayer, however, raw, close to the bone or even despairing, will lead us to the victory and peace of the Risen Christ.
PASTOR EMERITUS
'Pray out of who you are, not out of who you are not,' was the spiritual advice given by Abbot John Chapman almost a century ago to someone who asked him about prayer. St. John of Damascus, an early Christian writer, once described prayer as 'the raising of the mind and heart to God.' He was talking about raising everything inside us to God, not just the holy stuff, beautiful words and sublime thoughts.
People ususaly think of prayer in terms of the profound Lord's Prayer and the familiar Hail Mary, and confine themselves to the kinds of sentiments found there. Those sentiments are scriptural and to be highly recommended. The Lord's Prayer is a kind of summation of all prayer, the headlines but without the small print. We need to put in the small print. The problem with much of our praying is that we stick only to the headlines or we use prayers by others people that were written for outer situations.
Do we ever tell God how bored we are at prayer, how ticked off we are by somebody, how much we'd like 'a pox on both your houses'? We should, if that's how we're feeling. It's a good way to deal with the waywardness inside our hearts, a condition many good people would rather not own up to. I think the first rule of prayer is to be searingly honest about where we are at, and tell it all out to God. This calls for brutal self knowledge and self acceptance.
I don't believe God is impressed by our holiness any more than by our honesty. When somebody was last year diagnosed with Alzheimer's she sat down and wrote a letter to God. She poured out to God her fears, frustration, anger and disappointment with everybody and everything. Then, recognizing the giftedness of everything she had and everything she was, she spoke her gratitude. It was a long prayer, rooted in reality. Her perspective was realistic. It was the prayer of someone who had her two feet on the ground. A humble prayer. It reminded me to Jesus' prayer in this Sunday's gospel.
'I am troubled now.' Jesus spoke to his Father about the struggle that was going on in his heart, toying with the temptation to say, 'Father, save me from this hour.' He didn't succumb to that temptation. Instead, he glimpsed the victory that his defeat on the cross would win. His imminent passion and death would be the doing - and the undoing - of the 'ruler of this world.'
The 'ruler' he spoke of was the principle that holds 'this world' together, the principle that was sending him to the cross. A world turned in on itself and away from God had become the principle, the criterion and measure of what's good and what's evil, what's right and what's wrong, what's true and what's not true. The ruler of that world is still with us, but mortally wounded.
We need in prayer to acknowledge our personal brush with the ungodliness that so often invades and occupies our lives and our values. None of us is immune from it. The gospel we'll hear on Sunday should remind us that prayer, however, raw, close to the bone or even despairing, will lead us to the victory and peace of the Risen Christ.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
BITTEN BY SERPENTS
Ours is a puzzling religion for many. There's a big sense of hopelessness abroad today. We live in a time of anxiety. Peddlers of fear abound. Politicians running for office offer little idealism and a ton of anxiety. Is that why the percentage of those who vote in elections is low? It's unhealthy to live our lives out of fear, to make choices for negative reasons. Unfortunately, that's what we are often forced to do for survival.
Like the serpent lifted up in the desert or Christ lifted up on the cross, Christianity is meant to be a sign of hope. Last Sunday we had the spectacle of Jesus being offended by the buyers and sellers in the Jerusalem temple area. The temple religion had become a marketplace religion where oxen, sheep and doves were being offered in exchange for God's favor. This 'quid pro quo' mentality was both cause and effect of fear and anxiety about God and life. The religion of 'my Father's house' was/is, on the contrary, a one-way religion and not one of bargaining and exchange. As Paul says in this Sunday's second reading, 'By grace you have been saved, not by works...'
We hear Jesus this Sunday reminding a big shot Pharisee, Nicodemus, about Moses lifting up the serpent in the desert so anyone who looked at it would be healed of snake-bite. Snakes are fearful. Snake-bite can be deadly. The Israelites who had been bitten in the desert long ago were cured by looking at the bronze serpent raised up on a stick by Moses.
We need to identify and face our fears in order to be liberated from them. Some fears come from inside us, others from outside. Embezzlers, spouse cheaters and international spies live with the fear inside them of being found out. People in twelve-step programs say we are as sick as our secrets and lies. People who have had a brush with cancer struggle with the fear arising from the experience of their own vulnerability. People today worry about losing their jobs, benefits, homes, savings - and even their health from worry about these things. We are all bitten by our limitations, our protective dissimulation, our mortality.
Jesus, like Moses' bronze serpent, was lifted up on the cross for all the world to see and find life. Divine life enters into human life at the very point where people experience their vulnerability and fears. We die many 'deaths,' experience many deadly fears as we go through life. We survive by acknowledging them and learning to look at life in a new and different way. In one way death brings a loss of life. In another form - the crucifixion of the Son of Man - death brings fullness of life.
We are all very vulnerable, targets of life's death-dealing forces. Healthy today; level-four cancer tomorrow. We are sustained by an ultimate Mystery, a Something or Somebody that we do not control or completely understand. When we slow down to reflect on this we are led to realize that this 'Mystery' is a self-giving dynamism that drives everything - 'the Love which moves the sun and the stars,' as Dante famously said.
'For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.....Whoever believes in Him will not be condemned....' God sent Jesus into our humanity so human perishing would turn into life that does not end. Our fears are meant to be transformed into hope; death into eternal life. This happens through faith, through our trusting the Mystery of God in Christ and its power to sustain and renew creation. Otherwise we disconnect ourselves from the source of life and face 'condemnation.'
'People preferred darkness to light,' continued Jesus. To live in darkness, self-condemnation, is easier than we think. We don't know it as darkness. It's often just business as usual. We go about our lives making decisions, getting and spending, pursuing our well-being in an unthinking way. We forget that 'the unexamined life is not worth living,' as Socrates said long ago. Only with the arrival of the light does the secret nature of our thoughts and deeds become evident.
If we allow ourselves to be found out, exposed by the light of Christ - which can start to happen when someone's secret life is exposed by the media - freedom, light and salvation can be ours. The stories in John's Gospel of the Samaritan woman at the well (chapter 4) and the woman caught on adultery (chapter 8) are classic instances of light painfully casting out darkness. Today, as in the days of Moses in the desert, the cure for snake-bite can be as painful as the bite itself.
The whole conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus in chapter 3 of John's Gospel deserves to be read slowly and thoughtfully. I've been at it for years and have touched only the surface.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Like the serpent lifted up in the desert or Christ lifted up on the cross, Christianity is meant to be a sign of hope. Last Sunday we had the spectacle of Jesus being offended by the buyers and sellers in the Jerusalem temple area. The temple religion had become a marketplace religion where oxen, sheep and doves were being offered in exchange for God's favor. This 'quid pro quo' mentality was both cause and effect of fear and anxiety about God and life. The religion of 'my Father's house' was/is, on the contrary, a one-way religion and not one of bargaining and exchange. As Paul says in this Sunday's second reading, 'By grace you have been saved, not by works...'
We hear Jesus this Sunday reminding a big shot Pharisee, Nicodemus, about Moses lifting up the serpent in the desert so anyone who looked at it would be healed of snake-bite. Snakes are fearful. Snake-bite can be deadly. The Israelites who had been bitten in the desert long ago were cured by looking at the bronze serpent raised up on a stick by Moses.
We need to identify and face our fears in order to be liberated from them. Some fears come from inside us, others from outside. Embezzlers, spouse cheaters and international spies live with the fear inside them of being found out. People in twelve-step programs say we are as sick as our secrets and lies. People who have had a brush with cancer struggle with the fear arising from the experience of their own vulnerability. People today worry about losing their jobs, benefits, homes, savings - and even their health from worry about these things. We are all bitten by our limitations, our protective dissimulation, our mortality.
Jesus, like Moses' bronze serpent, was lifted up on the cross for all the world to see and find life. Divine life enters into human life at the very point where people experience their vulnerability and fears. We die many 'deaths,' experience many deadly fears as we go through life. We survive by acknowledging them and learning to look at life in a new and different way. In one way death brings a loss of life. In another form - the crucifixion of the Son of Man - death brings fullness of life.
We are all very vulnerable, targets of life's death-dealing forces. Healthy today; level-four cancer tomorrow. We are sustained by an ultimate Mystery, a Something or Somebody that we do not control or completely understand. When we slow down to reflect on this we are led to realize that this 'Mystery' is a self-giving dynamism that drives everything - 'the Love which moves the sun and the stars,' as Dante famously said.
'For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.....Whoever believes in Him will not be condemned....' God sent Jesus into our humanity so human perishing would turn into life that does not end. Our fears are meant to be transformed into hope; death into eternal life. This happens through faith, through our trusting the Mystery of God in Christ and its power to sustain and renew creation. Otherwise we disconnect ourselves from the source of life and face 'condemnation.'
'People preferred darkness to light,' continued Jesus. To live in darkness, self-condemnation, is easier than we think. We don't know it as darkness. It's often just business as usual. We go about our lives making decisions, getting and spending, pursuing our well-being in an unthinking way. We forget that 'the unexamined life is not worth living,' as Socrates said long ago. Only with the arrival of the light does the secret nature of our thoughts and deeds become evident.
If we allow ourselves to be found out, exposed by the light of Christ - which can start to happen when someone's secret life is exposed by the media - freedom, light and salvation can be ours. The stories in John's Gospel of the Samaritan woman at the well (chapter 4) and the woman caught on adultery (chapter 8) are classic instances of light painfully casting out darkness. Today, as in the days of Moses in the desert, the cure for snake-bite can be as painful as the bite itself.
The whole conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus in chapter 3 of John's Gospel deserves to be read slowly and thoughtfully. I've been at it for years and have touched only the surface.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Thursday, March 1, 2012
CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN
The last time I visited the holy land, Palestine/Israel, we took one of those cream colored Mercedes Benz cabs to the top of the mountain where the Transfiguration is said to have taken place. Even before we got to the top, the experience was a heady one as the driver kept the pedal to the board! The Franciscans have the church of the Transfiguration at the summit, a lovely place. I remember looking down toward Nazareth in the distance and thinking about the laborious haul it must have been for Jesus and his companions, especially if the day was hot.
Traveling through Europe you cannot help but notice the many churches and shrines located on hilltops. They can be seen from miles around. Even the holy mountain of Ireland, Croagh Patrick in Co. Mayo, can be seen from several miles away in all directions. People have a feeling of sacredness about mountain tops. St. Benedict built his monastery in the sixth century high up on Monte Cassino in Italy. The Carthusian monks of France live in a monastery high up in the Alps, and Greek Orthodox monks live on the slopes of Mt Athos high above the Aegean Sea.
A profound sense of awe comes over you when you reach the top of Mt. Tamalpais or Mt. Hamilton in the San Francisco Bay Area and look down on the cities by the bay. Knowing you can't get this downtown, you feel like taking out a million dollar bottle of wine.... and praising the Lord! The sense of the sacred is more acute and direct up high than it is standing on a street corner, even in fabled San Francisco. You can feel a little like the disciples on the mountain of the Transfiguration when Peter said, 'Rabbi, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three tents....' It is good to savor the sense of transcendence you experience on a mountaintop. It puts you in touch with your humanity. You feel like bottling the moment and taking it home. Cameras don't really do it justice.
This Sunday's gospel describes a mountaintop experience, an experience o overwhelming awe both for Jesus and his disciples. St. Mark does not give us even a hint as to why they went up there, but something very strange happened while they were on the peak. An unearthly, otherworldly metamorphosis came over Jesus. He seemed God-like to the three apostles. They wanted to stay there as if they had finally come home, like their ancestors returning home to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon centuries earlier.
The 'Repent and believe' of Lent is about us being called to celebrate this season so that our inward spirit is transformed, and we are on the road to becoming the person God created us to be and continually calls us to be. To use the mountain metaphor from the gospel, we might say that during Lent we are invited to a 'higher place,' to experience a sense of personal transformation by encountering Christ, the Sacred One, in a deeper manner.
The experience may not be as heady as mine was that day in the speedy cab but maybe, come Easter, we will notice that we have changed and a 'terrible beauty' is being born.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Traveling through Europe you cannot help but notice the many churches and shrines located on hilltops. They can be seen from miles around. Even the holy mountain of Ireland, Croagh Patrick in Co. Mayo, can be seen from several miles away in all directions. People have a feeling of sacredness about mountain tops. St. Benedict built his monastery in the sixth century high up on Monte Cassino in Italy. The Carthusian monks of France live in a monastery high up in the Alps, and Greek Orthodox monks live on the slopes of Mt Athos high above the Aegean Sea.
A profound sense of awe comes over you when you reach the top of Mt. Tamalpais or Mt. Hamilton in the San Francisco Bay Area and look down on the cities by the bay. Knowing you can't get this downtown, you feel like taking out a million dollar bottle of wine.... and praising the Lord! The sense of the sacred is more acute and direct up high than it is standing on a street corner, even in fabled San Francisco. You can feel a little like the disciples on the mountain of the Transfiguration when Peter said, 'Rabbi, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three tents....' It is good to savor the sense of transcendence you experience on a mountaintop. It puts you in touch with your humanity. You feel like bottling the moment and taking it home. Cameras don't really do it justice.
This Sunday's gospel describes a mountaintop experience, an experience o overwhelming awe both for Jesus and his disciples. St. Mark does not give us even a hint as to why they went up there, but something very strange happened while they were on the peak. An unearthly, otherworldly metamorphosis came over Jesus. He seemed God-like to the three apostles. They wanted to stay there as if they had finally come home, like their ancestors returning home to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon centuries earlier.
The 'Repent and believe' of Lent is about us being called to celebrate this season so that our inward spirit is transformed, and we are on the road to becoming the person God created us to be and continually calls us to be. To use the mountain metaphor from the gospel, we might say that during Lent we are invited to a 'higher place,' to experience a sense of personal transformation by encountering Christ, the Sacred One, in a deeper manner.
The experience may not be as heady as mine was that day in the speedy cab but maybe, come Easter, we will notice that we have changed and a 'terrible beauty' is being born.
PASTOR EMERITUS
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