The Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time September 24, 2017

Isaiah 55, 6-9 + Psalm 145 + Philippians 1, 20-24, 27 + Matthew 20, 1-16

St Joseph Church in Norman, Ok

There is a line in this dialogue that ought to leave us stunned in wonder, and it is not the wonder of admiration. Stunned by shame would be more like it. As a people who easily get impatient in the line of a check-out stand or waiting for someone to make right turn with their foot on the break, the culture and society we have created easily leads us to think that out time is worth more than others, that people “in the way” need to get out of our way, and with that, pride looms up and makes angry, impatient, and ugly people out of the best of us.

There is a line in this dialogue that we ought to take home today and ponder its meaning for a long time. Studied with the mind and heart of faith, it speaks to and challenges much of the behavior and thinking that has deeply disturbed the fabric of our society in our life-time. It is a challenge to the individualism that has pushed us apart. It is a challenge to a racism that at its roots suggests that one race or country of birth is superior to another. It calls into question attitudes of superiority that begin to reveal and unmask someone far from God.

The complaint of those who were paid last reveals a kind of superiority and exceptionalism deeply rooted in envy making them angry, impatient, and ugly people no one would want to be around. “You have made them equal to us!” they grumble. “You have made them equal to us.” Listen to those words and think about what an affront this is to God, the Creator, the Father, the Provider, the Protector, the Owner of this Vineyard.

In this kind of self-centered thinking, the envy they have is really directed toward the vineyard’s owner. Their self-centered, puffed up, opinion of themselves makes them unable to be good and be generous. This fault in their character and their lives is revealed by their grumbling and bitterness. Instead of gratitude for being paid exactly what they were promised, they are angry because by the generosity of the owner others received the same wage. Not more, mind you, but just the same, what was agreed upon.

Their arrogant attack on the latecomers is more than economic. It is the revelation of envy. In the Greek use of that word, there comes that expression of looking at someone with “an evil eye”, a vision that is distorted and darkens one’s perception. Their complaint and envious grumbling provokes a strong rebuke. “Go home” says the owner. “Get away from me” is the message – way away.

“You have made them equal to us” is the center of this parable. Seven words for a serious look and examination of our deepest attitudes and expectations. These words are the best test to discover the power and the sickness of envy in our lives. We can see easily what this envious attitude has done to communities of people everywhere in the dysfunction and collapse of civility, respect, and justice. When we step before the owner of the vineyard we certainly would not like him to say, “Go home.”

The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time September 17, 2017

Sirach 27, 30-28,7 + Psalm 103 + Romans 14, 7-9 + Matthew 18, 21-35

St. Peter and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

We have all heard this this instruction of Jesus many times over the years, and the challenge of forgiveness remains with us always. I have given and you have heard as many homilies on this text as there years of its repetition in the cycle of our readings. But, as I sat with it a few weeks ago, a verse emerged that I had passed over. It’s that part about those fellow servants who, as the Gospel says, “saw what had happened, were badly shaken, and went to their master to report the whole incident.” I would like to suggest that perhaps God’s Word is giving us more than an instruction on forgiveness here.

The story hangs on the role of those fellow servants who were badly shaken. If they had kept quiet and minded their own business perhaps expecting to get the same favorable treatment for themselves, there would be nothing here to admire. What’s happening here happens all the time. Way too often beneficiaries of kindness or generosity fail to follow the example of those who have been generous to them. They get and they keep. They feel as though it is theirs, they earned it, and they are going to keep it all. What makes this story important and formative for faithful people is those fellow servants. Some would call them names, especially those who have some behavior to defend. In our younger days we called them, “snitches” or “tattletales.” Now we call them “whistle blowers”, or “impractical dreamers”, and their reward for courage is not always so good.

However, I call them “advocates”, and the world and the society in which we proclaim this gospel could use a few more of them, because their courage uncovers and calls into question all kinds of injustice and bad behavior that is incompatible with the world we would like to live in. I think, in many ways, this Gospel is encouraging us to work for and create the kind of world we all want, the kind of world that God dreamed of at the moment of creation. It is a world of generous forgiveness, but more than that. It is also a world of justice; a justice that can only be achieved when people like these fellow workers do not just shrug off or look away in the face of all kinds of injustice. Advocates like these take a stand without concern about what someone else may think or what names they may be called.

There is a ministry of “bringing to attention” the injustice suffered by others. These advocates speak for others. They are people who make real the truth of our communion, the bond we share together in this life. They understand that what happens to one of us happens to us all. Advocates speak up and sometimes act up to right things that are wrong. We have an example of that in this Gospel. We have a challenge put before us. Disciples of Jesus are more than ministers of forgiveness, they are also ministers of justice. I’ve always found it interesting that in other countries and in their languages, the title used for lawyer or attorneys is “Advocate”. Isn’t it interesting how that title sifts the focus from the law to the person.  It will be a really good day, and move us closer to the Reign of God when we are badly shaken by anything that deprives another of justice.

Commemoration of 9/11 at St Peter the Apostle Church, Naples, FL

September 11, 2017

Colossians 1, 24-2,3 + Psalm 62 + Luke 6, 6-11

          These are the readings being proclaimed throughout the world in churches that share the Common Lectionary on Monday of the 23^rd week of the year. That is today. In 2001, these readings were proclaimed on September 10, the day before the attack, and I can’t help but wonder how many us may have been prepared by these words of scripture for what was to come the next morning.

Paul writes words of encouragement that we still need to hear in the face of every tragedy and disaster. Speaking about a suffering and struggling community he says: “I wish their hearts to be strengthened and themselves to be closely united in love.” At the center of the readings from the Bible that day and still today are those verses from Psalm 5 we have just heard reminding us that God takes no delight in wickedness with the promise that all who take refuge in God will be glad and exalt forever.

When we pick the 6^th chapter of Luke’s Gospel trouble is brewing between Jesus and those Scribes and Pharisees who seem always on the lookout for some way to stop and silence this man of peace who values people more than rules. A question is raised in the heat of this confrontation about whether it is right to preserve life or destroy it.

This question raised by Jesus must still be asked every day in every age. What draws us together today, and what troubles our memories, is that far too many people who share this earth with us have decided for one ideological reason or another that is it is better to destroy life, and the evidence of that is not just confined to a September day in 2001. In London, Barcelona, Nice, Paris, Ft Lauderdale, and countless other places, this madness reveals itself leaving us with a choice just like the one Jesus faced in that synagogue. You see, the Scribes and Pharisees would have left that man to suffer. Jesus would not. Which of the two is the better way: to preserve or to destroy?

A physical image emerges from this Gospel that should last longer than our memories of burning buildings. Stories of courage and selflessness that are part of the memory are expressed in that simple image Luke puts before us: …..an outstretched hand. “Stretch out your hand” says Jesus. “Stretch out your hand.” And, that is exactly what men and women like you first responders did and still do every time someone else choses to destroy. The promise of this day is that we will continue to stretch out our hands.

Remembering brings an event from the past into the present. We are about to do that at this altar. We will bring the broken body of Jesus Christ from the past into the present so that in remembering and sharing we may also share in his resurrection in the future. Today we remember 9/11 not to dwell on the past but to look to the future and remember what that day taught us; that an outstretched hand is the promise of life and a future. A clenched angry fist only offers us pain, sadness, and destruction. There is still a choice to be made.  Brothers and Sisters, obey the Word of the Lord, and stretch out your hand.

The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time September 10, 2017

Ezekiel 33, 7-9 + Psalm 95 + Romans 13, 8-10 + Matthew 18, 15-20

St Peter the Apostle & St William Churches in Naples, FL

In listening to and understanding these verses, it is absolutely necessary to know that the verses immediately before these instructions in Chapter 18 tell the story of the lost sheep with that heartfelt description of the shepherd who goes looking. That story begins with these words: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones.” With that introduction, Jesus goes on to tell about the man with 100 sheep who leaves 99 to find 1 that has wandered off, and then describe what joy there is when he returns with the lost one.

The instructions given to the church through Matthew’s Gospel for correcting and healing offences provide a very responsible method for governance, and an excellent model for one’s personal life. We all know how not to deal with someone who has offended us. Instead of simply and honestly admitting to the person that they have hurt us giving them a chance to make amends, we withdraw, pout, avoid contact, and then in a kind of second stage, we tell others how we’ve been offended to justify our feelings and maybe gain some pity. Meanwhile nothing happens. In fact, with that method, nothing ever happens that’s good, healing, and healthy. Most of the time if we paid attention to this Biblical wisdom, the first step would be all we need to do. When it comes, however, to community life and community issues, the wisdom and common sense of this method is something worth a try. It ends up with the honest recognition that sometimes having tried every step of the method, there is nothing to do but give up. Only then is that brokenness acceptable. Yet, there is something important to notice at the very end of these instructions. The offender is to be treated like a Gentile or a tax collector. That instruction is the heart of the matter and the point of this Gospel. It does not say they are to be punished, run off, or treated like an enemy. Remember, it was the Gentiles and Tax Collectors Jesus came include in the Reign of God. They are to be treated as someone who has simply not yet received the message of the kingdom. Not yet – get the point! They never will if they are treated harshly or with meanness. There is an openness to the future implied here.

In sitting with these verses, it becomes possible after a while to shift the focus off the method being proposed and onto the person whose decisions, behavior, convictions, or maybe their belief has led to their departure or this rupture of communion with God and Body of Christ we have become as a Church. Leaving the practice of the faith is not like quitting boy scouts, a school club, the Rotary, or a Country Club. Leaving the Church is breaking the unity we have with Christ. That unity is there because of our oneness. When someone steps out of that unity, something breaks; and often it is the heart of parents who watch their children abandon this source of grace, hope, and its promise of life.

It is painful to bring that experience into the light of the gospel in a parish like ours where so many feel that brokenness and sadness because one or more of your children are not one with us in prayer feasting on the Bread of Life at the table of the Lord. The Word of God speaks to us all today about that experience and reminds us with these instructions on how we are to respond, and perhaps how we ought to feel. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones” is says. This Gospel ends today urging us to pray together about this after reminding us how we should treat those who have left us. It is not over for them the Gospel says, because the Shepherd will find them and bring them home. Comforted and encouraged by this assurance, we might just as well begin the rejoicing even as we pray for those we miss.

The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time September 3, 2017

Jeremiah 20, 7-9 + Psalm 63 + Romans 12, 1-2 + Matthew 16, 21-27

at St. Peter and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

I am, and no matter where I live, I will always be an Oklahoma priest. Twenty days from today something will happen in Oklahoma City that has only happened once before in the United States. The ceremony of Beatification will take place in my home town. It will be the first time a person born in America will be declared a martyr in the process of being canonized a Saint. There are other American born Saints, but none of them died as a martyr for the faith. The holiness of their lives was witnessed by their service. In the case of this priest, his service and presence among the poorest of the poor in Guatemala brought the ultimate witness of his murder. I knew Stanly Rother. He was one of our men. He went down to the mission we had in Santiago the year I was ordained, 1968. In 1981, he was killed by those who opposed the work he did because of his faith and the power of his love.

I will be going back home for that ceremony in a couple of weeks, so it is in my mind these days, and never more so than during the time I spent with this Gospel and those readings from Isaiah and Paul. As Isaiah, whined and complained to God trying to get out of what God asked of him, I think of Stan and of myself. I want you to do the same. Think of Father Rother and then think of yourselves. When he was informed that he was on the “Death List” everyone urged him to get out and go home. Other priests, people in the parish, his parents, our Bishop were relieved when he did. But, as Holy Week approached during those months in Oklahoma, he was uneasy and very anxious feeling that he had abandoned the people there who were also being killed with nowhere to go. He told our Bishop, “The Shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.” With that, he returned to Santiago. Within months, a group of soldiers broke into the rectory in the night and killed him.

If a farm boy from Okarche, Oklahoma can understand and accept what God asks of him, so can we. His holiness did not come from some divinely inspired insight in the Will of God. It came from simply knowing and trusting that where he was corresponded to where God wanted him to be because he never did anything remarkable in an ambitious way to get there. He simply lived every day open to the will and the call of Christ Jesus. Some will call this “surrender.” It doesn’t need a name. It’s just the path to holiness.

The losing of one’s life does not mean martyrdom. Stan lost his long before he went to that mission in Guatemala. At some point in his earlier life, he discovered that living for God was better than living for one’s self. That’s what it means to die to one’s self. It does not mean you stop breathing, it just means you breath for some other reason that what you can get out of it.

The problem St Peter had with Jesus at this point of formation for the disciples was that he kept trying to take the easy way and avoid all risk. Jesus would have none of that for Peter, and I don’t think Jesus will put up with that from us either. Trying to take control is what Peter was up to, and we do that all the time. It will not work. It will not lead us anywhere except to misery, resentment, depression, and sad frustration. That is a large part of what ails our culture and our society. Too many ambitious, self-centered people want to take control and enjoy the easy life; no matter what the consequence are for someone else. They want to plan their lives without a thought about what God wants for that life God created and brought into being. Thinking as God thinks is what this Gospel proposes. Asking what God might want, and putting that before what I want is the only way. In other words, we may not want to be sick or be old, but maybe God wants us to be sick or old for some divine reason. We may not want to be out of work, but maybe God has a plan for that.

Now, when we proclaim Paul’s words in this assembly, it is God who speaks. You affirmed that yourselves when you said: “Thanks be to God” after the reader said: “The Word of the Lord.” So, God says to us today: “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

It is not easy to accept ourselves as we are when this world urges us to take more, to buy more, to use and keep more of everything. But, my friends, we don’t take the easy way. When some voices these days cry out for the supremacy of one person over another, we remember that we cannot be conformed to this age. If you are getting older and everything aches and nothing works right when you want it to, lose your life and discern what is the will of God. Unless you’ve made some bad selfish choices, you are probably right where God wants you. If you’re not as good looking as you want to be and can’t quite keep up with people who seem to always get a break in life, it’s time to discern what is the will of God. Most likely, the will of God is for us to be who we are and where we are able and willing to find joy in the discovery that we might be actually sharing in God’s dream for peace. When we reach that wisdom, our own sins will be a lot less of a problem and we will be free to turn our attention toward the consequences of the greater sin of poverty and injustice. It’s not likely that there will be some ceremony to recognize our lives as there will be later this month for Stan; but it is likely that we too will have become Blessed and Holy eventually taking our place among all the saints.

The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time August 27, 2017

Isaiah 22, 19-23 + Psalm 138 + Romans 11, 33-36 + Matthew 16, 13-20

St. Peter and St William Churches, Naples, FL

Many of you may identify with this memory I still have. I recall very clearly the day my retirement arrived. I reached into my pocket and handed over the keys to the church of St Mark in Norman, Oklahoma. I remember handing them to the deacon not knowing what to say except, “Thank you.” The only key left in my pocket was my car key, and believe me, I used it immediately. When I eventually wound up here at St Peter and Father “G” gave me some keys, I was very reluctant to accept them. Something about those little pieces of metal carries a sense of duty and obligation far more than the privilege of having them. While “keys” may capture the imagination of artists who give us images of this Gospel passage, they are not the focus, and for that matter, neither is Peter. Jesus is. It is the place that tells us this fact.

This town called “Caesarea Philippi” is not really called that through its history. It is actually called: “Panion.” Civic leaders at that particular time renamed it after the two “top-dogs” of those days: The Roman Emperor and the local kinglet of Galilee, Philip the Tetrarch. It was a way of getting favors and possibly some money out of the rulers. It would be like calling Naples: “Trump-Scot”! The very name suggests ambition, power, and prestige. Built on top of a huge rock cliff it was an ancient sacred place set aside for the god, “Pan”. The name “pan” suggests everything. It is also worth thinking too about the fact that springs came out of that cliff, and they were the beginnings of the Jordan River. Having this incident take place there at the bottom of that big rock with the waters flowing out to form the Jordan says almost as much as the words. Picture it in your mind. Imagine it.

There is a confrontation going on here, and Peter is being asked to make a choice, a choice between Jesus and all this worldly power symbolized by Caesarea Philippi and any other god that might be tempting or alluring. We proclaim this Gospel today because Peter is not the only person who must make this choice. If Peter was the only one upon whom this church was being built, it would have died with him. Anyone who claims Jesus as their Messiah and the Son of the Living God becomes part of that rock upon which this church is built. It is built upon the faith of all the Apostles, the ancient Fathers of the Church who succeeded them, the martyrs of every age, the quiet little people who have passed on their faith to countless generations. People like Francis from Assisi, Ignatius, Elizabeth Seeton, countless missionaries, Mother Theresa, the men and women who brought the faith to this continent, and you and me. The church is still being built upon the rock of our faith. It’s not just about Peter. This Gospel and these powerful words of Jesus today are spoken to you and me. We have the keys. We have the power to bind and loose. With that power, we can set people free, restore what is broken, and bring the peace of forgiveness.

It’s only possible however after we make the choice that Peter is asked to make. Pan is not confined to that ancient shrine. Pan is still around this world in all manner of disguises with all sorts of names: Ambition, Power, Supremacy, Privilege, Wealth, Sex are just a few of the names that can describe this pagan god that still tempts and teases us. Jesus suggests that the time of the rock of Pan is over, and we must proclaim that today.

I always find it consoling that Jesus chose Peter from among the twelve for this moment. From this impulsive, unschooled, self-preserving fisherman, God raises up the rafters of a church that will see twenty centuries and more. It is not because Peter is great, but because God is. That is what this is about: what God can do with us. Not much can be built on flesh, as frail and uncertain as human beings are. But through the Holy Spirit, which gives the church its breath, the reign of God keeps on coming on earth as it is in heaven.

The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time August 20, 2017

Isaiah 56, 1, 6-7 + Psalm 67 + Romans 11, 13-15, 29-32 + Matthew 15, 21-28

St Peter and St William Parishes in Naples, FL

This episode when taken in a shallow way could make us uncomfortable with a Jesus who is not compassionate toward this Gentile woman. At first, he ignores her, then he reacts in a way that seems harsh and insensitive. Some scholars suggest that this image of Jesus was made up by conservative Jewish Christians opposed to Gentile converts. So, to give their attitude of exceptionalism credibility, they made up these verses because they thought they were chosen and special. Another set of scholars believe that what is being proposed is a version of our old saying: “Charity begins at home”. A third group suggests that it is what it is; the historical Jesus is just the man of his days with a chauvinistic attitude toward women and all non-Jews. He is being corrected by this bold woman who convinces him that women and Gentiles are also to have share in God’s bounty. In the end, it probably doesn’t make any difference which of these ideas or any combination of them is close to the truth, because it seems to me that before we figure that out we ought to wonder what Jesus was doing there in that Gentile territory to begin with.

He has insisted that he has come to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is known that there was a large population of Jews found north of the Galilean territory in Tyre and Sidon. Remembering that Matthew is writing this Gospel for a church that is primarily Jewish-Christians, he may well be challenging or correcting an attitude among them that is reflected in the words of Jesus. It is likely that some remnants of their old way of separation and self-importance were at work disturbing the community excluding those who were different. We may never know which of those three proposals is right, but we do know that the attitude of exceptionalism and privilege he is addressing to that early church is not a thing of the past. It is alive and well among us still.

Events in the last week have unsettled us all with the realization that the message of Jesus Christ and his inclusive vision of the loving Reign of God has not taken root in the hearts of too many across this nation. The conversion of heart, conformity to Christ and obedience to God’s will has obviously not been accepted in many lives. What is being corrected by this episode of the Gospel is an attitude of exceptionalism that is incompatible with companions of Jesus Christ. There is no “them” in our live. There is no “them” in the Kingdom of God. If we think there is, it may well end up being us. If we have conformed ourselves to Christ, there is no race, no religion, no ethnic group, and no nation more favored by God than another. No one has an exclusive claim on God’s favor and the healing, loving, blessed work of Jesus Christ. To claim some superiority or some privilege position is a complete rejection of the Gospel that reveals to us the will of God. Angry and hateful blaming of others who are not like for any evil is a way of escaping responsibility for our own sin.

We live with conflicting opposites all the time. The message of Jesus Christ offers a way to bring two distinct realties together in a central, healing, and harmonious meeting place. We are called to live in the tensions of this world regardless of the cost and asked to love as God loves. It is not our task to get everyone on the same page, to create some uniform and consistent way of thinking. It is, however, our call to be open to God’s surprises, to be a source of healing, and to challenge by our action and speech ways of thinking and attitudes that are evil. Disciples of Jesus Christ will take risks. Their thoughts and actions must catch people’s attention and cause them to think. It means we forget about what people may think of us or stop being concerned about looking silly or radical. The Gospel is radical. It is inclusive. It is powerful, and it is alive. The primary task of disciples and of our Church is learning how to discern and cooperate with God’s life-giving, loving, and all unifying plan of salvation.

Those who march in the darkness with their torches are like those who came to the Garden of Olives in the night to silence the voice of Jesus. Our presence here gives witness that the truth of God’s love will not be silenced even by the death of Jesus Christ. Real life comes after death. Light comes after darkness. Love comes after the hatred. Peace comes after violence all because we believe and hold as true that in God’s eyes we are all the same, gifted with a place in the Kingdom, worthy of respect, and never forgetting our brothers and sisters who live in fear because of the hatred of others are God’s children too.

The Assumption of the Virgin Mary – August 15, 2017

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

St Peter and St William Parishes in Naples, FL

This is a feast of Hope for those of us who would reach deeply into the meaning of the Assumption and draw from the Virgin we honor today one of the lessons she teaches us. One of the ancient symbols of hope for artists is the anchor; that saving instrument of ships tossed around by the wind and waves on a stormy sea. When sailors throw the anchor and it grabs the solid sea floor it promises safety to the endangered crew.

This contrast of images between the stable sea floor and the wind and waves above is a creative way of exploring the hope that we are invited to celebrate and enjoy today. As fragile human beings, we are always being tossed about and threatened by the events of this life from politics to economics, from personal emotional turmoil to international threats across the globe. One look at what we know of the Virgin Mary’s life would quickly lead us to recognize the strength of her hope. While often she is cast a woman of great humility, I’ve always believed that her hope was her greatest virtue. What else would sustain her through the experience of her son’s horrible death, and lead her to remain steadfast among those he had formed and prepared for his resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit?

Hope is the answer. Hope, a way of living in a state of expectation about the future while remaining in the present realizing that the present and the future are really one. Like the Virgin, we are creatures of the future already living in the Reign of God right here today. Our whole being is directed toward what is to come. We carry the future in our hearts because of our Faith, and that Faith calling us to gather on a weekday in mid-August inspires that Hope which is expressed in the Charity with which we live together. Three virtues we call, “Theological”: Faith, Hope, and Charity are Godly, revealing something of the Divine Life within us. Call it Grace!

People of Hope are people of Faith and they are a bit different from optimists. The optimist looks at this world only from below with no eye to the future because for worldly people the ultimate end in this world is death. There is no escaping it. It’s a dust to dust kind of existence. The optimist is always fighting against the inevitable pessimism that a life without God offers. So, the optimist comes along believing that this world can be made perfect here and now, and they alone can do it. There have been a lot of these kind of people in human history.  Karl Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao were all optimists believing that humans could make things perfect here below. When you think that way, you will do anything and go to any extreme to make it so. They did. They were men without hope. They had no thought, no dream, no desire for a future that crossed into the Divine. In the end, optimists are dangerous people who believe that science, money, psychology, and power can make all things well. Believers see this as naïve at best.

This is not to say that we ignore this world and its injustice and inequality. What it does say is that people of Faith know that it takes Hope to make a difference because hope brings God and the wisdom of Jesus Christ into the effort. Think about the people of hope who believed and had a vision shaped by Faith achieving real reform: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, John Paul II, Thomas Merton, the Little Flower, and countless other courageous people of faith whose lives were marked by great pain, tragedies, and sadness, yet with a vision of God’s Reign, with courage from the Holy Spirit, they lived with purpose, with joy, and with great peace.

The Virgin we honor by our prayer today is the great Lady of Hope who without a word spoken teaches us about what we can expect for our future not just here, but in the days to come: a place at the right hand of God.

The Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time August 13, 2017

1 Kings 19, 9-13 + Psalm 85 + Romans 9, 1-5 + Matthew 14, 22-33

St Peter and St William Parishes in Naples, FL

Last week we were told by a voice to “Listen”. In the transfiguration as told by Matthew, it is not enough for those apostles to “see” Jesus, they must also “listen.” In these verses today, Matthew reinforces that demand if you follow the details carefully. Notice that when they see Jesus, they are terrified. When they hear his voice, they calm down. They need to hear his voice. Then, as if we might not get the point, Matthew says it again with Peter. Until he hears the voice that commands him to get out of the boat, he stays where he is. Only when Jesus gives the order does he step out to do something he thought he could never do. He fulfills his vocation. Then, at the moment he acknowledges another power, the wind, there is trouble. He has a divided heart, or a divided faith. Two powers are there for him to choose between, and until he makes the right choice, the saving choice, he’s sunk, so to speak.

When Peter does make his choice affirming that Jesus is his Lord, when he reaches out to grasp the hand that is offered, he too walks on water. With that, we see that doing something that seems impossible is not a sign of divinity, (because Peter does it too) but rather a sign that Peter is empowered to do what Jesus does. The apostles are being empowered with their faith to do what Jesus does. Just a few verses earlier, we saw that happening when the multitude were fed. The apostles did what they thought impossible because Jesus told them to it. When Jesus walks on that troubled water toward a boat in distress, Matthew reveals not just what Jesus is, but why Jesus is. This miracle story is about the function of Jesus, not his nature.

So today, God speaks to us about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, a disciple caught between faith and doubt. Today God puts before us this man, Peter who, like all of us is torn between two powers, this world and the Kingdom of Heaven. Today God puts before us this man who takes a risk, but then looks around or looks back and gets into trouble. There can be no looking back for us, my friends. We learn from Matthew to live with uncertainties yet with the knowledge and faith that when we respond to the command and call of the Lord, an outstretched hand is there to pull us along.

I have always found it fascinating and empowering to know that in John’s Gospel, the word “Faith” is always a verb. It is never a “noun.” Remember that. Faith is not about something we have or possess. Faith is an activity, or a way of doing things. It is like a song that disappears when we stop singing. Sometimes I remind myself of that truth with a wonderful old hymn we sometimes sing here. “My life goes on in endless song above earth’s lamentations. I hear the real though far off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear its music ringing, it sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing? While though the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth, it liveth, and though the darkness round me close, songs in the night it giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I’m clinging. Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Transfiguration August 6, 2017

Isaiah 55, 1-3 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8, 35, 37-39 + Matthew 14, 13-21

St Joseph Parish, Norman, OK

It would be a mistake causing us to miss the point to think that what Matthew is giving us in these verses is a manifestation of the divinity of Christ. The experience of those apostles on that high mountain was an experience of Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus is presented as a transformed human, not as a human transformed into God. The description of this event is totally passive. Jesus says nothing and does nothing. If this was a revelation of Jesus as God, Jesus would have said something or done something godly. As it is, there is another voice speaking about him. If Jesus were being presented as God, the apostles would have been totally terrified. Instead, Peter starts talking to Jesus as he would in perfectly normal circumstances. His idea of building some booths for them suggests that he is in the presence of heavenly human beings. What we might need to remember here is that both Elijah and Moses according to Jewish tradition were carried into heaven before suffering human death. By associating Jesus with them, a connection is being made to the resurrection.

This event in Matthew’s Gospel follows the first prediction by Jesus regarding his passion and death. Peter and his companions want nothing to do with that. Matthew’s plan here is to correct that reaction by taking them to this high mountain where a voice speaking from the cloud affirms what Peter has declared him to be, the Messiah. The voice declares that God is well pleased with the obedience of Jesus in accepting his suffering role which further challenges the objection of Peter and his companions to the predicted suffering and death. How can they oppose what pleases God is the challenge? At the Baptism of Jesus in chapter three, a similar event takes place, but this time the voice adds the command: “Listen to him.”

The conflict between what Peter, James, and John see and what they had just heard from Jesus about his suffering and death comes to the surface as the voice says: “Listen.” In a sense, what the voice says is: “Do not think that what you see can happen without what you have heard.” The suffering and death, the obedience of Jesus to the will of the Father is what lifts Jesus up to this glory. Human life is transfigured to this glory by obedience to the Father, by service, suffering, and death. Matthew acknowledges the conflict or this lingering refusal to accept the suffering and death by placing these same three apostles in the garden with Jesus on the night of betrayal. It is Peter, James and John who are invited to witness the surrender and obedience of Jesus, and in one last act of denial, they sleep. Only after the death and resurrection of Jesus will they come out of their denial, and so he instructs them to keep quiet about what they had seen until then.

The favor of God comes not just from a violent death, but from obedience to the Father’s will whatever it may be. Our only hope of being transfigured into what God has called us to be is by obedience, which as word in English comes from a Latin word that means “give ear to” or “Listen.” On a high mountain, God reveals through Matthew what we are called to become and how we shall finally pass into or be transfigured into what God first intended before we stopped listening and became disobedient. Our transfiguration will happen when we begin again to listen to the words Jesus has spoken among us: words of forgiveness, words of mercy, words of healing, words of peace. Probably when we begin to embrace these words and live by them, we shall also experience some suffering, betrayal, and in some cases, even death because of them. None the less, when we do listen and ascend that final high mountain of life, we will hear the words: “This is my beloved with whom I am well pleased” spoken over us, and then we shall shine like the sun.