September 15 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Isaiah 50: 4-9 + Psalm 116 + James 2: 14-18 + Mark 8: 27-35

Mark has no pity when it comes to Peter, and I have always thought that the tradition suggesting that Peter is Mark’s primary source might well be true. Peter never seems to sugar-coat anything, and he has no trouble sharing his struggles with understanding, loyalty, and faith. He gets it wrong today as he often does. He has the right word, but the wrong definition. He says: “Christ,” but he has no idea what that means. It is much the same for all of us. We may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah and Savior, but we may be even more confused than Peter about what that actually means.

So, Mark sets this up at Caesarea Philippi. It was a circus of worship places and temples with altars set up to every concept of divinity from the gods of the Greeks to the god-head Caesar.  In that setting, Jesus asks the Twelve that question about what people are saying and what they have to say about his identity. Up to this point of Mark’s Gospel Jesus has been reluctant to have people believe in him because of miracles, and for the first time in this Gospel he speaks about dark things ahead, rejection, suffering, death and resurrection. These are all things the Twelve are unable to grasp.

Peter speaks up for everyone confessing his faith in Jesus as the Messiah using the word: Christos. In his mind this is the Messiah of victory and salvation. But when Jesus begins to speak of a Messiah who will suffer rejection and death, Peter objects. His objection is not hard to understand because we often do the same thing.

Everyone prefers a popular, happy, Jesus who heals and comforts. Peter wants to write a job description for Jesus, and we do too. Jesus gets fashioned according to a prosperity gospel that turns him into the dispenser of a comfortable, trouble-free life of prosperity, easy to like.

Jesus get fashioned according to a psychotherapeutic gospel who makes us feel good with kind of “I’m OK and You’re OK” so let’s just skip along avoiding challenges that might suggest I need help.

No matter, we cannot make Jesus be what we want and do what we want. We cannot have the kind of Savior who is going to pop up and fix everything that bothers us. That is, what I like to call, a new kind of idolatry. That is a false God of my own creation. The practice of fashioning a god that does what we want goes on all the time. I once read that John Calvin claimed that man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

There is stern warning in this Gospel ordering disciples away from that kind of thinking because they will not understand what it means to confess Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, until they have stood beneath the cross. The temptation to look for someone of power; one who claims the earth, rules it with strength, and will drive off anything that frightens or hurts us is great and dangerous. It is always easier to believe in a distant God of power than in the Suffering Servant of Isaiah who cries out in pain on the crosses of the world and suffers in humanity. It’s easy to believe in Jesus when we feel good. It’s not so easy when he does not stop our hurt. 

The life of a disciple has both joy and sorrow. A life of joy with no sorrow becomes like the earth with only sunshine and no rain; a barren desert. Both suffering and joy, are always part of life for a real disciple.

September 8 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Isaiah 35: 4-7 + Psalm 146 + James 2: 1-5 + Mark 7: 31-37

The route Marks provides at the beginning of these verses would suggest that he knew nothing of that geography or that there was something wrong with his GPS. It would be like going to Baltimore via Seattle and Houston. For Mark, travel details are just a way of moving the story along. What matters is the destination. Jesus is out of his own neighborhood. He has gone to the other side of the tracks, so to speak. He is not now in friendly territory among his own kind. His compassion and healing presence are in no way limited to a select or privileged few. The inclusiveness of the Kingdom cannot be ignored or dismissed. 

The early church Mark writes for originally was struggling with the challenge of including people who were different, who spoke other languages, had other customs and different color skin. What Mark reveals here is just as important for us as it was for them, and we may not dismiss the Word of God and still claim our faith in Jesus who so easily ignores all borders and boundaries. He does not see them.

For those who first witnessed this event and for those who heard of it from them, their excitement is not hard to understand. As promised in the book of Isaiah, the Messiah’s arrival would be marked by the blind receiving their sight and the deaf being able to hear. What Jesus is doing fulfills this promise in a way that no one can miss. It’s no wonder people can’t stop proclaiming what he has done.

The whole point of these verses though is not the disability of that man, but the identity of Jesus as the Christ who heals and redeems bringing a new creation of mercy and wholeness. As the story goes on, more details reveal the human tenderness and compassion that leads Jesus to take this man away from the crowd. There is a suggestion of personal intimacy as Jesus he touches him, and by taking him away from the crowd Jesus saves him from embarrassment and the stares of onlookers. There is here a wonderful suggestion of respect for someone often avoided and ignored. Then with that, Mark describes a very real human emotion when he tells us that Jesus sighed. There is here a solidarity with human suffering that leads Jesus to sigh with distress and sadness. 

All of these details clarify the identity of Jesus Christ as God’s presence, giving us every reason to believe that God knows no limits or borders, and that God still looks with distress upon any of us who suffer and with compassion on anyone who has been pushed to the sidelines for whatever reason. That personal relationship nurtured in the privacy of one’s trust in Jesus will save, restore, and open our ears to the Good News we find in the Gospel and open our mouths to proclaim God’s love and mercy.

September 1, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle and Saint Agnes Churches in Naples, FL

Deuteronomy 2: 1-4, 6-8 + Psalm 15 + James 1, 17-18, 21-22, 27 + Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Well, that wasn’t much fun listening that list of our sins was it? It wasn’t any fun reading either! After almost 55 years of hearing confessions, I can tell you that this list just about covers it all. My guess is that those Pharisees were sorry they ever brought up the whole matter of the law. Being publicly called hypocrites and having the teaching of one of your own prophets thrown in your face didn’t exactly open the door to a polite conversation. So, Jesus turns to the crowd, that’s us, and asks us to “hear and understand.”

Jesus attacked the thinking of those Pharisees for two reasons. First, they believed that if they would just carry out correct external practices they were a good person no matter what their hearts and thoughts were like. Second, their definition of religion depended upon rules that were mostly made by people rather than God. This kind of thinking leads to believing that keeping the law will guarantee salvation. And so, this episode could lead us back to that old question, “What must I do to be saved?”

Christ did not come to do away with the laws and commandments of religion. Those old rules the Pharisees are disturbed about kept people healthy. Washing was and still is, a good thing. What Jesus is saying is that keeping the rules is just not enough. He gave us the Beatitudes. He said, “Be humble. Be just. Be charitable. Be merciful. Be gentle. Be forgiving. Be respectful.” 

In spite of what Jesus teaches, Phariseeism isn’t dead. It is alive and well in government and in every bureaucracy where people put red tape before the needy. They say they are only doing what they have to do, and are never uncomfortable when doing their duty hurts another. As a current example, some on the Arizona border with Mexico are accusing Catholic Charities there of breaking the law by feeding hungry people who cross the border.  It’s the same thing still going on. It works in religion too. Some who call themselves religious often claim to be keeping tradition while they confuse human tradition with God’s commands. This Gospel warns against the tendency to equate human precepts with God’s will.

This Gospel speaks not to Pharisees or Scribes, but to all of us disciples with a warning about anything that pollutes the human heart and destroys human relationships. We have to examine all the ways we behave, looking into our own hearts. All these sins we just heard of are external offenses against others, and they are first conceived in the heart.

When the word of God has taken root in us, everything becomes a religious practice. This word can come to us through the teachings of our faith, through the example of good people around us. However it comes, when it does take hold of us our inner eye is opened, our heart is softened, and we turn instinctively to God like a flower turns to the sun. When this happens to us, God’s law becomes sacred, religious practice is cherished, and we are filled with the power that saves. 

August 25, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Joshua 24: 1-2 15-17, 18 + Psalm 34 + Ephesians 5: 21-32 + John 6: 63-68

Now comes the final piece of John’s sixth chapter, and a crisis of faith is unavoidable and unmistakable. Some find this a hard saying, difficult to accept. It is not clear what they find difficult; eating flesh, bread from heaven, or that Jesus says he came down from heaven. It is most likely that he came down from heaven since Jesus seems to address that directly by asking what if they were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before. He seems to say: “If you have difficulty accepting my claim to have come down from heaven, how much more difficult will it be for you when I return there.” Of course, that will be by way of the cross.

God is being revealed here. This is a God that has come down from heaven, taken human flesh, given that flesh through death on a cross for the sake of giving those who believe a share in divine life which is eternal life. That’s what is at stake here. The only way to grasp this is through the Holy Spirit. That is where the faith to accept this comes from.

In that Capernaum synagogue, Jesus is addressing the fundamental longing of every human heart, eternal life. We do not want to die. We want life. He is teaching us how to quiet that longing and how live forever. Eat this bread that is my flesh, and abide in me. Just as food and water are essential for physical life, so his flesh and blood are essential for eternal life. Without his flesh and blood for food, we shall not live.

When they start to murmur among themselves, they have ended the conversation with the one who can lead them to truth. Broken then is the very relationship necessary for them to “abide” in Jesus. It must not be so for us. When we do not understand, murmuring among ourselves will only lead us away from the one who has come to dwell with us. We must stay in the relationship unafraid of what we do not understand and willing to live by faith, listening and exploring the Word of God while relying on the Holy Spirit to reveal to us what God’s will for us may be.

There is only one reason for John’s Gospel, and that is to confirm who Jesus is. Communion with Jesus is really a participation in the intimate communion that exists between the Father and the Son. While Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, John explains what the Eucharist does for those who believe and come to eat his flesh and drink his blood that has been poured out for us.

August 18, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Proverbs 9: 1-6 + Psalm 34 + Ephesians 5: 15-20 + John 6: 51-58

After a while with this Gospel, you might begin to get the idea that this quarrelsome group chasing Jesus around are really more interested in having an argument rather than a conversation. A conversation might lead them to some answers. But no, they want to know how. Any of us with even a little faith know that understanding how God works is the final test of our ability to live with ambiguity and mystery. People who cannot live without knowing the how and the why God words are not long in a relationship with God.

Jesus knows that the language he is using with them is going to offend and upset them. It’s a challenge to let go and rethink what they thought they knew about God. Only then can God do something new, and that’s exactly what’s happening here – something new. Even some of his disciples push back. Next weekend we will hear their grumbling. This whole chapter is about believing without knowing how.

There is a shift in this sixth chapter with these verses. Now John introduces the Eucharist. His description of the Last Supper has more to do with washing feet than bread and wine. So, it is here in these verses that John gives us the institution of the Eucharist. No longer are we told that eternal life comes from believing in Jesus. Now we are told that feeding on his flesh and drinking is blood is what gives us eternal life. John’s use of the word “flesh” is very important. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all use the word “body” when they record the Last Supper words of Jesus. What is important to know is that there is no word for “Body” in the language of Jesus. “Flesh” is what he meant and said.

When he speaks of this Bread that came down from heaven, there is almost an echo of the Incarnation again and the entrance of the Word into the world as “the Word became flesh.” This is the same flesh given to us as the living bread that came down from heaven.

When that quarrelsome group objects to eating flesh and drinking blood, Jesus never backs down. He never explains it away. He means what he says, and he waits for the believer to accept. With that said, Jesus move on to speak of what happens to the one who will eat and drink. They will abide in him, because belief in him is impossible without a close, personal relationship with the Son of Man who is in heaven. This “abiding” proposes an almost unheard-of intimacy – a kind of living another person’s life and it is his life, divine life that is without end.

At the beginning of this section it is about believing without knowing how. Now, it is about believing without seeing. The Body of Christ is his flesh. It is his flesh given for the life of the world. His Blood poured out takes us through the whole mystery from that moment when the word was made flesh in the womb of a young virgin in Nazareth until his death and his blood is poured out. For this reason, it is the Body of Christ – the anointed risen one we receive. Abiding in him then is an invitation to enter into all of his life with its joy and sorrow, its laughter and pain, and ultimately even to enter into his death through our own suffering and death. If we stay with him through it all. If we believe and abide, we will rise from everything, even death itself. If you can believe without seeing when someone says “The Body of Christ” and placed the Bread of Life, his very flesh, into your hands, then say Amen

August 15, 2024 at St Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab + Psalm 45 + 1 Corinthians 15:20-27 + Luke 1:39-56

I do not think that the church nor our society has ever been quite ready for Mary of Nazareth and all that she implies for the rest of us human beings. We easily and too often imagine her as the pinnacle of beauty and holiness with crowns and halos hanging over her. I blame that on artists who are failure as theologians. We hardly ever depict her with a skin tone that is anything but white forgetting that she was what we might call today, an Arab or a Palestinian. She was a Jewish woman who did not look like us.

Luke tells us more than anyone about Mary, but it primarily from the infancy stories. At the Annunciation, Mary spoke in the name of all humanity and gave her “yes” to God’s desire to dwell among us. After that, she got down the day-in and day-out business of preparing for what would happen. She sought out Elizabeth, and elder whose experience came closest to her own. When Luke tells that us about that visit, he has Mary singing a song of praise based upon Hebrew scriptures that is a preview of what her son will preach. If the words of that song are taken out of the context of the liturgy or the New Testament, they subversive and on the edge of being communistic in the unwelcome sense of that word.

This woman has no pretensions. She does not see herself as any kind of Queen. She calls herself a slave. Her song is not about her, but is a proclamation of faith, a kind of Creed that praises God in the simplest terms. The song of the mother of God is Luke’s gift to us. Mary’s song urges us to recognize God’s activity in the everydayness of our world. She points to where we can find God working among us and warns us about the possibilities of losing our way. Her Creed leads us to seek God in times and places where the lowly are cherished and the hungry filled.

As we celebrate her Assumption in body and soul, Mary’s canticle tells us where we will find our own salvation. It is where ever the lowly are cherished and the hungry filled. She proclaims that we will find our salvation accepting and sharing God’s own mercy. The more we are able to do that, the more we will sing with her, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” This feast invites us to make her song our own, because we have become God’s lowly servants and begun to realize God’s favor to us. The meaning this feast then, is simply that ordinary people like you and me are created with the capacity to share divine life, and that is what the Church is teaching through this proclamation.

August 11, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

First Kings 19: 4-8 + Psalm 34 + Ephesians 4: 30 – 5: 2 + John 6: 41-51

From the very first verses of John’s Gospel we get the point, the theme, the purpose that flows like a river through the whole of his Gospel. It is the Incarnation, that coming down of the Son of God to give us a share in God’s life. That is what John proclaims over and over again with different signs and stories. It is all about abundant and eternal life. How do we get that? From the Son of God who comes down from heaven.

To understand the message of this sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, it is absolutely necessary to know how people ate at the time Jesus was among us. It was quite different from how we eat with forks and spoons to get the food to our mouth. For us, bread may be served, but it is like a side dish or a dinner roll. Folks on a diet often do without it. For Jesus and the people of his time, there were no utensils. They ate with their hands, and bread was used to bring the food from the dish to the mouth. It was dipped or was used like a scoop. We can catch on to that from the description of the last supper when Jesus speaks about the one who will dip into the bowl with him. Bread was not an extra. It was how someone accessed the food that was put in front of them. No bread, no food. Bread was how they got they main course.

It is easy for us to get confused about the “main course” these days. Everything about our culture would suggest that the “main course” of life is power, comfort, and wealth. These things seduce us into thinking that the main course is defined by those material things. That is not what Jesus has taught us. Over and over he teaches us that the main course is a life of abundance for all eternity. Remember the sign that started this sixth chapter – the feeding of thousands with a lot left over. It is a sign of abundance, and the people did not have to do a thing to get it. They just had to be there and listen to him. My friends, we receive life because we are here to listen again, and that life is, so to speak, the main course. We receive that life from the bread. The bread is Jesus Christ. That is how we get to the main course. In his conversation with those people gathered around, he reminded them that the bread their ancestors ate was temporary. They died. It did not give them life. Jesus comes with something better. “I am the Bread of Life” he says to them. “Whoever eats this bread will life forever.” This eternal life, abundant life, is offered to each of us who believe. It all comes to us through the Incarnation – through the One who came down like the bread which came down from heaven. The bread of Jesus Christ brings us to that abundant and eternal life, and that is all we need. It’s time to enjoy the feast.

August 4, 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Exodus 16, 2-4, 12-15 + Psalm 78 + Ephesians 4: 17, 20-24 + John 6: 24-35

The crowd has failed to understand the sign they were given earlier on the other side of the lake. Their faith is just not up to it. They fail to understand that the serving of that food, blessed, broken, and shared meant something more than just relieving their immediate and physical hunger. The dialogue in this Gospel tries to lead them to clarification and some understanding. 

They are in need, and they know that. They have a vague inkling of what that need is, but they don’t know the source that might fulfill that need. They are running all over the place, back and forth around and across that lake. They need to see their dreams and hopes fulfilled. They are hungry and they want to be fed, to be satisfied. With the little faith they have, they think a powerful, messiah/king is what they need to satisfy their longing. In some ways, they want the old days when with Moses they were fed every day. Yet, they were forgetting how in those old days the infidelity of their ancestors led to one disaster after another. Failing to remember, they thought Moses produced that food in the desert. So, Jesus reminds them that God sent that food. It came down from heaven, says Jesus.

With that said John’s theology kicks in and our ears ought to perk up remembering what came down from heaven, or perhaps, who came down from heaven. Suddenly, this is not so much about food, or for that matter about need. This is about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ – this is about his identity, and he makes that clear in the final verses of today’s Gospel when he declares who he is. Jesus knows what the true bread from heaven is. It is not the manna in the desert or the multiplied food from the day before.

We proclaim this Gospel to and in a world that is running all over the place frantic to satisfy its needs and its dreams, angry sometimes when it does not work or we just can’t seem to find it or keep it. For that matter, some of us may, from time to time, forget what we learn here and start thinking that someone or something is going to give us what we need or what we want out of life.

Just look at us. Most of us have all the bread we can eat and even more than we should, and we are still hungry and deep down still feel unsatisfied. Many end up chasing after this and that all through their lives because that need is always there no matter how much we eat, where we live, or work, or how much we have. It is never enough because the source of what we need has been right here all the time, and our faith is just not up it. It came down from heaven.

God gives us in Jesus Christ the bread that lasts forever. To think or to want more is evidence of weak faith and, like the crowd in this Gospel, a failure to understand the sign we are given.  That sign is not some “thing.” It is someone. It is the great treasure of the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.  It is the only reason for the Incarnation, for Jesus to leave the glory of heaven, stand among us and lead us home. This is the wonderful and mysterious way that God reaches out to gather in all of us searching and longing, hungry and homeless.

My friends, knowing what you want out of life is half the battle, if you want the right things. Here it is. We don’t have to go anywhere else or need anyone else.

July 28, 2024 at St Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

2 Kings 4: 42-44 + Psalm 145 + Ephesians 4: 1-6 + John 6: 1-15

Every time we pick up any of the four Gospels, we must remember that the Gospels are Theology. They are not history. So, this weekend we begin a series of readings from the Sixth Chapter of John’s Gospel, and we will stay with it until September. For six weeks we are being called to dig deep into John’s theology on the Bread of Life. And so, it begins with a story about food and an incident reported in all four Gospels. In fact, it is so important that Mark and Matthew write about this twice.

John’s Gospel has no miracles. He never uses the word. His Gospel is arranged around a series of signs each of which responds to a human need. Miracle stories are provided as acts that show the of power of Jesus, a power that establishes the kingdom of God against Satan’s power. This action we have today is not about power. It is a sign given to teach us something about Jesus and about the community or the church he is forming through his ministry.

There is concern here about a human need, hunger. There is a sense of hospitality as he has them sit down in the grass, not in the dirt or on the rocks, but in a soft, cool, and comfortable place. The memory of a Shepherd who leads his flock to green pastures is called to mind as well as the memory of Israel being fed in the desert. It all points to the future and the hospitality of the Kingdom to come suggesting that God will treat us as honored guests at the banquet of eternal life.

In John’s Gospel, it is Jesus who raises the question about how the people are to be fed not the disciples. There is no doubt in his mind that they must be fed. The concern is where it will come from. With that, a little mini-hero of the story emerges, a small boy with no name. He has what is needed. It may not look like much, but in the hands of Jesus Christ it becomes way more than enough. With that the theology unfolds both by word and by deed. The words are unmistakable: he takes, he gives thanks, breaks, and distributes. It is a eucharistic message, a eucharistic sign, and in John’s Gospel, it is Jesus who feeds. He does not have someone else do it. Jesus Christ is the one who feeds us, and as the Gospel continues, he will soon declare himself to be the food, “I Am the Bread of Life.”

We should go home today with some thought about that little boy because that detail draws us into this mystery. Like him, what we have to offer may not ever seem like much and hardly enough in the face of this world’s needs. On the human side of things, it is impossible. On the divine side of things, there is no limit to what God can do with what we have. In fact, it is really beyond our imagination.

There is hunger in this world, and God still wants to satisfy human needs. There is hostility everywhere that spoils hospitality as though the Kingdom of God were for the privileged. The theology of this Gospel says otherwise. The hungry and the homeless will be treated with respect and welcomed with a kind of hospitality we should expect in the Kingdom of God. Those who have followed Jesus gather up the fragments left over for one reason, to continue the work of Jesus as a sign that the Kingdom of God has come and we are welcome to live in it if we take up the work of Jesus seeing and responding to people’s needs with gentle, sincere, loving hospitality in our church in our country, and in our hearts. This is when we shall know the Kingdom of God is at hand. John wants us to know that, and he gives us the signs.

July 21, 2024 at Saint William Catholic Church in Naples, FL

Jeremiah 23: 1-6 + Psalm 23 + Ephesians 2: 13-18 + Mark 6: 30-34

I read recently that a leader is a person “who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” This Gospel today could invite us to give some prayerful thoughts about leadership using Mark’s description of Jesus as the model. We could well use Mark’s Jesus as the norm for choosing whose leadership we want to follow when it comes to politics or even entertainment for that matter. When I think about it in the context of this Gospel, I begin to believe that our choice of leaders usually says more about us than about them. It ends up being a matter of what we want or need, so we tend to follow someone who will provide that.

The idea of a leader varies from time to time and place to place. The two-fisted gun-slinging defender of the wronged worked in the old west. A man or woman who makes quick decisions with good command of subordinates works in the business world. A military leader can get others to follow them through all kinds of danger.  Today’s Gospel will delight anyone who thinks popularity is the mark of a leader as those people go chasing around all over the place after Jesus.

Whatever model of leadership it is, to be effective, there must followers, and that’s when the real truth about us gets revealed. The leaders we follow these days reveals just who and what we are. Wanting a life of wealth and celebrity finds us falling in line behind those who can make that promise. Needing affirmation, reassurance, and self-respect leads us to follow someone who will constantly be patting us on the head saying all the nice things we need to hear whether they are true or not. Most of the time, Jesus could look over us and sadly observe that way too often we are sheep without a shepherd.

In Christ Jesus, we have a leader who can lead us but not to wealth and deeper into consumerism if that’s what you want, but to more priceless treasures like compassion, mercy, and reconciliation. The only leader who can take us to pastures of peace and deeper into the life for which we were made is the Word Made Flesh – a God who stays with us, seeks us when we are lost, and puts us in touch with the very reason for which we are on this earth. Christ Jesus is the one who knows the way to the Father, has gone the way, and has shown us the way.