WHERE THERE'S DEATH, THERE'S MORE

John's Gospel offers us another profoundly human story this Sunday. Where was Jesus when Lazarus suddenly died? Where is comfort when tragedy strikes, when a big hole is left in a small loving family? How to deal with a tragedy like Alzheimer's, or when a spouse walks away, or when terminal cancer strikes a young mother, or when a son or daughter takes their own life? At such times, the armor of self-reliance and self-sufficiency seems to crumble and fall away.

Distress, separation, loss, grief, loneliness, disappointment...and eventually new life and freedom, are some of the very human elements on display in this Sunday's story of Jesus and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. They are familiar to all of us. We identify easily with this Gospel. Read it this week in John 11.

The family of Martha, Mary and Lazarus was close-knit, and Jesus was part and parcel of it. The sisters waited almost a week before Jesus showed up. Their heartbreak was heightened by the fact that they had sent him a message to come quickly, even while Lazarus was still alive. Jesus disappointed them royally.  He knew their tragedy and their heartbreak. There are many ways to break a heart, and one of them is not being there when someone you know is in deep crisis.

"Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died," sounds almost like an angry accusation. And when Lazarus died, they were left without their main man to lean on. It's not easy to walk into a tragic situation, knowing you're the one person they expect to hold it all together. Jesus didn't become defensive and offer an excuse. In times of huge personal loss, people ache for someone to lean on, someone to hold them and comfort them.

In the aftermath of a loved one's death, the music within us stops. "One day I shall dig my fingers into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want more than all the world, your return," wrote Irish poet, Mary Jean Irions, as she captured how much she wanted her loved one back again. Deep down, we know it's never the right time for her or him to go.

We, like Martha and Mary - and the poet - throw our hands up to the sky in times of loss and sorest grief. All our longings and yearnings and restlessness - all our big life questions - are ultimately God-directed. I've seen too many tragedies in people's lives not to know that loss and disappointment are part of something larger that eventually cracks open and offers new life and hope.

Death leads to more....

PASTOR EMERITUS

IT TAKES TIME TO SEE

John's Gospel shows Jesus calling his first disciples to "Come, and you will see." They had just asked him where he lived and he was inviting them into his personal life - John 1: 38-39.  Basic to any kind of human life is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting.... When Jesus invited them to come and see, he was inviting all of us to come and see, including the blind man in the beautiful story we have this Sunday.

It takes time to be able to see, to make sense of what's going on within and around us. One of the main points of the Gospel story is that although this man who had been blind since birth has received physical sight, he still could not "see." Although he now for the first time can recognize color and movement and people's faces, he still cannot recognize who it is that healed him or how this healing makes salvation sense. After much questioning by his neighbors, the Pharisees and the crowd, the man who had been blind begins to understand. When Jesus finally stands before him, his eyes are fully opened. And he SEES. A resurrection story?

I once knew a priest who struggled with the demons of alcoholism for about forty years. Spending much time in and out of AA, detox centers and half-way houses, he was blind to a deep-toned character defect that triggered his drinking. I used to wonder why he couldn't sense what others were able to see. Eventually his eyes were opened, sobriety took hold and he became a changed man. He recognized as for the first time God's loving mercy and care of him, rejoicing in the splendor of the lilies of the field and in the beauty of those around him. He was healed, happy, whole and at peace when death finally came to him out of the blue. It takes time to be able to see.

"Come, and you will see." Jesus saw what was really there - beauty in the helpless, the sick and disfigured. He saw goodness in the adulteress, innocence in those who scourged and crucified him, forgiveness in the thief on the cross. Pope Francis, Jesus' very public follower, sees wholeness where others see only brokenness. Where others judge and condemn, Francis takes the road less traveled, the more difficult path; he shows mercy. Those immortal words of the Lord to Samuel in Sunday's first reading are as true today as they were then: "Man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart." The man in the Gospel looked at what was temporal - his neighbors, the Pharisees, the Jews - and then, after all that, saw what nobody else saw: the eternal face of God.

The famous spiritual writer of the 20th century, Thomas Merton, standing one day on a street corner in Louisville, opened his eyes and saw the god-like beauty of the downtown multitudes. "I suddenly saw the sacred beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes....If only we could see each other that way all the time" - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.  Matthew has Jesus say in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the clean of heart for they will see God" - meaning hearts that are undivided, agenda-less, will have the sixth sense of spiritual insight. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye," wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery in The Little Prince, as if the eye sees only the surface level of reality.

The journey to spiritual insight takes time, sometimes a long time, as it did for Jesus' first disciples.

PASTOR EMERITUS

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

I spotted this little girl on the beach, about four years old and with a large green bow in her hair. She was making a small simple sand castle, throwing sand at it with gurgles of delight. Totally oblivious of the warm Sunday afternoon crowds around her, this child was totally engrossed and already living in her fantasy castle. Her absorption seemed to swallow up all the noises of the seaside around her.

The image of this little kid kept coming and going in my imagination as I read over the story in this Sunday's Gospel. It's about a village woman who came to draw water from Jacob's Well to quench her noonday thirst. While there, she began to experience an altogether deeper thirst and the need to have it assuaged. Our need for water is obvious, but not so easily recognized is our need for meaning, for vision and purpose in life. Where is the elixir of life, the water that brings unalloyed happiness and fulfillment? The happy babbling and gurgling of that little girl keeps playing in my mind's ear.

 The ancient Greeks had a telling word for the noonday hour. It signified resting, placidity, peace and contentment - a wrap that absorbs all that pounds at our senses and burns us to the ground. To hear what life is trying to tell us, we need to neutralize for a while the din and clamor around us. Jesus and the woman were in the right spot. As he talked, she began to see a light greater than that of the midday sun, and feel a thirst that the cool waters of the well would never slake. It was like as if Jesus were rotating a diamond before her gaze, allowing her to recognize the many levels of her thirst. 

The child on the beach that day was, unknown to herself, exercising a centering power we all have but seldom develop. Josef Pieper is a name unknown to many today. He wrote one of the most important books of the 20th century, "Leisure: The Basis of Culture." It was required reading in our philosophy course. In it, he said that faith/religion can be born only in leisure, a leisure that allows time for imagination and God. For the sand castle child on the beach, time was standing still. She was immersed in the leisurely elixir of life. Did something similar happen between Jesus and the woman at the well? Do we need to recover some of that leisure?

Cloistered Religious live a life of silence. While most are not called to that, all of us can try and tune into what has been called the "silence of life." What's that silence about? I think it generates a real strength behind human strength. It helps overcome fear and weakness of spirit, and the power of stillness can help restore nerves and physical strength. The 13th century Dominican friar, Meister Eckhard, once suggested that nothing so much resembles the language of God as does the silence of life. That observation calls for some silence...and maybe another visit to the beach. Was that little four-year-old somehow, unknown to herself, in touch with the living water of life?

PASTOR EMERITUS

FATHER POPULARITY

"Father so and so is very popular with everybody," is something I frequently hear from people about their priests. It may refer to a priest's charm and charisma, his preaching and counseling abilities, his gifts as a father to the community, his preaching, someone to whom people instinctively turn in good times and in bad..... People have all sorts of expectations of their pastors. Some want him to be devoted to the school and the youth, others expect him to be a gifted liturgical leader, or one who spends his time visiting the sick and homebound, or someone who is the life and soul of every parish gathering, or simply someone who is a replica of Bing Crosby in "The Bells of St. Mary's."

Pope Francis describes the church as a "field hospital after battle," full of people who have been injured and wounded by life, by the institution itself, and even by its clerics. In that context, the priest is a physician or a nurse practitioner, someone "with the ability to heal wounds and warm the hearts of the faithful." In practice, when the rubber hits the road, that's the context out of which the church's ministry of leading people to Jesus Christ is accomplished. As your physician is supposed to help you make much-needed lifestyle transitions, your priest is supposed to lead you to a closer personal relationship with God. Good priests, like good doctors, treat the whole person, communicating information clearly and patiently accompanying the wounded on their healing journey.

The pastor of a parish community is called to be both father and mother. "At times we have to be like the father of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open so that when the son returns, he can readily pass through it" - Joy of the Gospel 46. Francis even compares the priest's manner of preaching to that of a mother speaking to her child - Joy of theGospel, 139. The priest listens to the concerns of his people and learns from them, much like parents listen to and learn from their children. From this experience, he learns to speak and to bring the mercy of God to their very human joys and sorrows. That's why Francis wants senior church leaders to have been well experienced as pastors before going up the ranks.

Parents today sometimes have to contend with the detonating hormones of their teen and even pre-teen children, when these kids decide it's time to replace the authority of their parents with their own authority. Priests sometimes have parishioners who come to tell them they're joining a nearby evangelical church because it's smaller and more intimate than their parish church. With this kind of experience, pastors can understand the pain of parents who are contending with their children who want out of going to church, and even out of living at home. 

I've never been entirely happy with the laity being designated as sheep. But that's implied in referring to pastors as shepherds. I've no problem at all with the scriptural image of shepherd and sheep. Unfortunately, though, when it's applied to the church, it conveys a subtle message that believers are "little people whose faith needs to be protected against the powers of intellectuals!" - Pope Benedict in a sermon justifying the penalties imposed upon Fr. Hans Kung in 1979.

Parents give life; they nurture and protect it. And this principle of bringing people to life is at the basis of ordained ministry. Priests and deacons has little to do with doling out discipline, or deciding who or who should not be receiving Holy Communion. The heart and soul of a their ministry is about bringing people to new life, inspiring and energizing their relationship with Christ and with others. It's important that people see this as the core lest they fall in love with their own idea as to what kind of person their pastor should be.

PASTOR EMERITUS

A CUP OF TEA

"I am not a church-going man, myself, but I know what's what," said the person next to me on the plane recently when he heard I was a priest. "Soooo," I asked, "what's what?" This middle aged businessman launched into his reasons for dropping belief in the God and religion of his youth, referencing Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and the late Christopher Hitchens, authors of the "science-explains-it-all" bible. When the flight attendant offered tea I asked if the water had boiled first. "Let me check, Sir," she said with a look of mild incomprehension. We Irish-born won't drink "hot tea" unless the water has boiled. She didn't return!

Many people assume that science and religion are mutually exclusive; that if science can explain the universe then there's really no Creator. I'm no scientist but I remember the advice of a philosophy teacher more than half a century ago. He was saying the next big thing would be huge advances in every branch of science, and that we should keep an eye on it because it would bring religious doubt in its wake. And it did. He didn't mean that science was agnostic, which it isn't, but that it would lead people to ask searching questions about religious belief, the Bible, and many Christian practices. Such inquiry is good, but many were unprepared, side-swiped and dropped their faith. 

A recent visit to Ireland reminded me of how agnostic the culture has become there in recent times. It was not so when I was growing up. People I've known for a very long time told me they no longer believe. Big writers and poets, like Maeve Binchy and Seamus Heaney, had abandoned their Christian beliefs long before death caught up with them. Irish

newspaper columnists and broadcasters make no secret of their agnosticism - and cynicism - regarding anything religious. A similar attitude is spreading fast here in America. "Once I've got a scientific explanation of something, that's all I need," opined my airplane companion.

Hmmm. There's a simple scientific answer to the question, "Why is the kettle boiling?" It has to do with heat energy, water molecules, bubbles and steam. At the same time there's another answer - one that goes, "Because I want a cup of tea." One answer is about the science, the other is about the purpose. If I'm going to understand why that kettle is boiling, I need to know both. Keeping an eye on what scientists have been saying, I have the impression that younger scientists today are becoming interested in questions about God, of purpose and why we are here. That's a bit of healthy news.

I don't believe the Bible is interested in how the universe began. Scripture not any kind of proto-science, pseudo science or myth masquerading as science. It's interest lies elsewhere: Who are we? Why are we here? How shall we live? These are questions science can never fully answer but which are the business of religion. To ignore them would be to reduce humankind to the status of a robot. Jonathan Sachs, former Chief Rabbi of Britain, once made a useful distinction: "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean."  Now that tastes like a well-made cup of tea!

 PASTOR EMERITUS

WAVES, WORDS AND WONDER

 I love my daily hike of four or five miles. It's not so much a hike as a "power walk" along the seashore at daybreak. The wind and the roar of the ocean, giant rollers thundering all the way from Japan and exploding on the beach below, shorebirds crying for breakfast, and health-minded little dogs taking their owners for some exercise - these are my walking buddies of the morning. Further out, ships come and go, taking advantage of the morning tide. And there's the chug-chug sound of fishing boats making their way into San Francisco Bay after a night's dredging their treasure from the deeps, and taking it for unloading at Tarantino's, Scoma's and the other storied seafood havens along the waterfront of Fisherman's Wharf. Meantime my elderly limbs and joints loosen up and waken and warm the heart as new thoughts for the day take shape.

We're headed into the season of Lent again, the season that took shape during the early Christian centuries. St. Benedict remarked fifteen hundred years ago that the culture and feel of Christianity is akin to that of Lent. These past few Sundays, Matthew's Gospel focused on the "righteousness" preached by Jesus, as distinct from the righteousness of Old Testament Israel. "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" - Matt 5, 17. Christian righteousness is about living with an undivided heart out of a personal relationship with Jesus, interpreting life in the light of Christ and living in the light. If that's the heart of the Gospel, it's also what's at the heart of Lent.

Living in personal relationship with Jesus Christ allows the believer to recognize His face in people, especially the poor and hungry. Nobody can recognize and appreciate a clever move in football without first knowing football. For the same reason, the face of Christ will not be recognized in our neighbor unless we know personally who Jesus Christ is.

In Ash Wednesday's Gospel, we find Jesus offering the three elements of Israel's Old Testament religion: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Jesus calls his followers to do these things but from a new perspective. It's a spirituality that's driven by almsgiving, the need to reach out and respond to Christ suffering in the needy. The vision is sustained by prayer, and almsgiving comes from fasting - the believer sharing his/her own surplus out of a sense of sobriety.

Jesus called his disciples to "follow" him. New Testament scholar and philologist, Gerhardt Lohfink, sees "following" Christ as first and foremost being in personal relationship with him. Jewish rabbinical students attached themselves to a Rabbi in order to study the Torah, not to have a personal relationship with the Rabbi. Likewise, Muslim and Buddhist gurus taught their respective philosophies and theologies to their disciples. For them, discipleship was not about having a relationship with the guru. Christianity is distinguished not so much by a teaching as by a relationship.

Gazing at the ocean, with the remnants of last night's news still fresh, my mind wanders towards the words and language of the liturgy I will use at Mass. I wonder about their metaphorical, poetic and scriptural dimensions, and muse on how their meaning has been missed by so many. Sometimes, when fog drifts across the morning waters of the Bay and there's freshness in the air, I pray that in this new breaking day more of my fellow Christians might come to understand better about God and love, life and humanity.

PASTOR EMERITUS