2 Micah 7, 1-2 9-14 + Psalm 17 + 2 Thessalonians 2, 16-3, 5 + Luke 20, 27-38

November 6, 2016 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

In my personal reflection on this Gospel text, I find it interesting that Matthew, Mark, and Luke report this same incident, which means that they were all being asked this question and were dealing with a response. What is most curious is that in all of my 49 years as priest I can’t remember any time when anyone asked me about this. I suspect it is simply because most people in our day and age do not even give much thought to the future, to what comes after death, and what it all means. For them life is too hectic, too demanding, and all too immediate for thinking about that future. This is especially so for people younger than most of us. They just can’t seem to be bothered about it.  On my own part, I also recognize that I never gave it a lot of thought for a long time until really good friends, parents, and family members began to go ahead of me. The thought that I would “see them again” was a little comforting, but it gets a little too abstract when you get serious about the fact that there is no body and therefore no eyes with which to “see”. “How’s that going to work?” I would ask myself. When I got a little more serious about this, someone suggested that it’s not a matter of “seeing” but of “knowing”, at which point it became far too philosophical, and I put it off to think about another day. I never did buy into that idea of joining the choirs of angels and singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” for all eternity. The lyrics seemed a little monotonous, and sometimes the melody a little lame. If that’s the future for me, I should be standing over there practicing (pointing toward the choir) and not over here.

What the Sadducees reveal by their question is that they were thinking of the next life as merely a continuation of this present life. That was their problem to which Jesus responds in these verses. He never says what it will be like in the next life. He simply says that it will be different. What he does say is that our relationship with God will continue, and that death will not change that in the least. In fact, if you work with that idea long enough, you might come to the conclusion that the relationship with God will then be even better because there will be no distractions or competition for our time and attention.

With that revelation from this Gospel, we are face to face with a reminder that the time will come when there is nothing left but our relationship with God. Therefore, if there has not been one here, nothing will carry over. This Gospel, when taken beyond the superficial, which is what the Sadducees can’t seem to do, proposes that this life is the time for discovering, building, and nurturing our relationship with God, because all other relationships are going to be found in God when this is all over. The time we spend here and now at work with our careers, at becoming a success in terms of fame and finance, at our games and our pleasures will count for nothing in the next life because it is going to be very different. If that’s all we do is chase after those things, we are going to have a problem in the next life. Those things will not be there. The message that the Gospel leaves with us provides some ideas about what this life is for, and what ought to really matter for those who know and believe that there is another life to come. What Matthew, Mark, and Luke all suggest is that what will not be different in the next life is our relationship with God; and so these are the days and the times to build up that relationship for that is all that will carry us over. Nothing here will mean nothing then and there for eternity, and that would certainly be “hell.”

There is also a way of understanding the Gospel message that insists that the future is already present, and so we are called to live lives already transformed: lives that really do make the relationship with God the first and only one through which and in which all other things have their meaning and value. So, here we are still in this life, but already called by faith to live transformed lives. We can daydream, put it off because we’re too busy, in too big a hurry, and just be silly about it like the Sadducees, or we can embrace the transformation to which we are called and make the Covenant relationship with God we renew at this sacred table what matters most of all.

November 2, 2016 Outdoor Mass at the Parish Columbarium

Wisdom 3, 1-6, 9 + Psalm 27 + Revelation 21, 1-5, 6-7 + Luke 7, 11-17

Feed the Hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Bury the dead. Shelter the traveler. Comfort the sick. Free the imprisoned. These are the Corporal Words of Mercy that describe God’s people. Six of these works come from the parable of the last judgement in Matthew 25. Where there is a description of how God’s mercy will be given to those who have been merciful. “When did I see you”, goes each of the verses. However, this work of mercy stands alone which is perhaps why it is given a day of its own in our yearly celebration of feasts and grace. There is no such thing as “All Sick Day” or “All Hungry Day”, or “All Travelers Day”, but there is “All Souls Day”.

The times in which we live are wildly inconsistent when it comes to the human body. On the one hand we are fitness-conscious and a great deal of money and energy is spent on being in shape and looking good, healthy, and young. But then, at death, for too many the body becomes an inconvenience and at worst an embarrassment to be disposed of quickly and discretely. We seem to be confused about what this is, this body in which we live with joy and with faith discovering who we are as God’s children. To this confusion, the Church speaks with divine wisdom and hope.

This work of mercy is not simply about the customs we have for burial of human bodies and the respect we have for human remains. It is about a respect for life, all life. It is about how we respond to those who are grieving with compassion and understanding as well as how we embrace our own grief and yet cling the hope for life everlasting which we profess in our Creed. This day we acknowledge that grief is part of living and sharing in the life of Christ whose grief over Jerusalem and whose grief at the grave of his friend Lazarus tell us something about a God who knows grief: a God who grieves over sinful and unfaithful children of his own making and who grieves the death of his own son. This is a day that draws us close to that God.

Grief is only possible for those who love, and it bears witness to that love gratefully. The memories we have for those who have gone before us reveal the power of love that defeats the power of death. The final act of kindness extended to Jesus Christ was a decent burial that provides for us a model of respect and kindness for one another.

The Gospel we proclaim today stirs hope in us not just for those we have buried, lovingly remembered, and grieved, but hope for ourselves who will follow those who have gone before us. For them and for ourselves we proclaim today a risen Christ who has said and will say again: “I bid you, rise.”

Revelation 7, 2-4, 9-14 + Psalm 24 + 1 John 3, 1-3 + Matthew 5, 1-12

November 1, 2016 at St Peter Catholic Church in Naples, FL

For the power of this Gospel to inspire and move us deeper into the mystery of Christ, these Beatitudes must be understood as an exclamation of what is, not some not pious hope of what shall be. They are not glowing prophecies of some future bliss or some future world postponed. The beatitudes are a proclamation of what it is to know Jesus as Lord. They proclaim the conditions in which people of the Covenant live.

The best way to look at these Beatitudes is to see them as a revelation of what God is really like revealed in the life of Christ Jesus. If we are made in God’s image, then these Beatitudes are about what we have been created to be, which is what “Blessed” really means. It describes those who are most God-like.  Luke begins his narrative of the mission of Jesus with this sermon. It is an outline of what we shall hear and come discover is the very life of Christ as the Gospel begins to unfold. He is the one who is poor and persecuted with no place to lay his head, chased from his own synagogue, hunted and haunted by Scribes and Pharisees. He is the suffering servant alone among human kind meek and pure of heart. He above all others hungered and thirsted for his Father’s holiness from an encounter at a well in Samaria to that moment on the cross when he cried out “I thirst.” He alone touched the depths of both the human and divine sorrow standing over unrepentant Jerusalem and at the grave of his friend, Lazarus. He alone showed perfect mercy to those who were ungrateful and even to his friend, Peter.

Those whose memory we celebrate today shared his Spirit having heard and accepted his words. They were transformed slowly and painfully into a community we call “Saints”. They were “Beatified” or “Blessed”. They became so in this life by conforming their lives to Christ Jesus. They did not have to die to become Blessed. They found God exactly where God wanted to be found and be known, in Jesus Christ. These Beatitudes tell us where to find God; not outside of ourselves, but within. These Beatitudes announce that God is to be found when we give up seeking happiness in things and the stuff of this world and become totally dependent upon God. This is what it is to become Christ like or “Blessed.” We are merciful, hungry and thirsty, single hearted, and peaceful.

These Beatitudes announce that the Kingdom of God is at hand for anyone who chooses to conform their lives to Christ Jesus. It is a choice we make day by day. It is choice and a chance to be glad and be joyful. For Blessed are we who hear the Word of God and keep it in our hearts for then we will be living in the reign of God. We will see God, know mercy, be consoled, always remember that they we children of God.

Wisdom 11, 22-12, 2 + Psalm 145 + 2 Thessalonians 1, 11-2, 2 + Luke 19, 1-10

October 30, 2016

The first reading today draws our attention away from the visit of Jesus at the home of Zacchaeus to consider the constant searching of God for those who are lost. That shift of focus might be a good thing. Like the previous two weeks, this episode has many details that can lead us in many directions none of which are necessarily wrong. In fact, Luke’s purpose in placing this episode in his narrative might well have more to do with wealth and the use of it than what our Church proposes by setting the reading from Wisdom ahead of it. Luke has a lot to say about wealth and riches in many places within his Gospel.

The very name of this man can begin to raise a question about what is going on here. The simple easy reading of the story would leave us to suppose that this is about Zacchaeus being saved and being converted by the response and the visit of Jesus. But his name means “Clean” or “Pure.” If “Clean and Pure” is what this man is, then perhaps the focus of the story is not really or entirely about him. While Zacchaeus may have been looking for Jesus, maybe Jesus was not really looking only for Zacchaeus that day.

The problem for Zacchaeus is not that he is short, or that he is a tax collector. If you can tolerate one more Greek word reference, the word Luke uses for “short” is not only used as a measurement. It can also be translated as “least” especially when used in the superlative which is exactly the way Luke uses the word. So more than something about his stature, Luke is telling us something about what other people think of him. He is the “least”, the lowest, the “least respected”, or simply judged so by others. He is marginalized, shunned, scorned, and avoided by those others who by judging him pump up their own ego and self-respect. When you begin to understand these details, there is suddenly a parallel here with the Gospel of last Sunday and those two men praying in the temple.

If Zacchaeus is the “pure” or “clean” one, it is not Zacchaeus that Jesus has really come to save. In fact, the behavior of Zacchaeus would give us reason to think that he really was a good man doing far more with what he had than was ever required. As Luke tells this part of the story, this “giving” by Zacchaeus is in the present tense. He is already doing that. It is not something he promises to do in the future because Jesus came. The focus then shifts to those who have judged him, pushed him outside their social circle, and not welcomed him. Many in that crowd have done the same thing to Jesus, judged, condemned, scorned, and tried again and again to trap him and discredit his works and his words. Jesus and Zacchaeus have a lot in common. 

On his part, Zacchaeus has desired to see Jesus and he made the first effort to establish the relationship and make contact with Jesus being then rewarded with this divine guest. The crowd on the other hand stand back and murmur critically not about Zacchaeus, but about Jesus leaving us to see that it is the crowd who need to be “found” or “saved”. It is the crowd who need to see Jesus. In fact, then, it is any crowd or any people, who judge, alienate, criticize, scorn, and despise another child of God. So this Sunday, the tables get turned on us, so to speak. Things are not always what they seem to be, but either way, the Son of Man has come to search out and save what is lost. Zacchaeus was not the lost one. That murmuring crowd with their scornful attitude and quick judgements are the lost. Let us make certain that we are not among them with our judgements and scorn so that we might rejoice to discover that the Lord has come to stay with us.

Sirach 35, 12-14, 16-18 + Psalm 34 + 2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18 + Luke 18, 9-1

October 23, 2016

It is the same today as last week in that it is easy to think that this parable is simply about prayer and draw some pious conclusions and then go right on to the next one episode. The complexity of last week’s parable does not allow this, and in contrast, the simplicity of this parable following immediately does not allow this approach either. One look at the posture and position of these two in the Temple, and one ear to the words of their prayer should lead to wonder what is going on here because in some ways neither prayer can be judged as a good prayer or a bad prayer. We do not know anything about these two. On the way to the temple the Pharisee may have dropped off some food at the home of someone hungry, and he may well have paid someone’s rent that day before. The Tax Collector may well have cheated his way into that job, and that morning he may also have caused someone to be evicted because he raised their tax leaving them unable to pay their rent. This cannot be dismissed as a simple matter of right and wrong or good prayers and bad prayers.

There is an attitude problem being revealed here, an attitude that is inappropriate for anyone who wants to come face to face and commune with God which is exactly what prayer is all about. There is a word here that should spark our attention and make us very uneasy. The word is: contempt. If you will excuse one more excursion into Greek, this is the same Greek word used to describe how soldiers of Herod treated Jesus. What the word really means is that the human dignity of the other person is denied before God. A illustration that some might think is off the point would be to say that this is the way (contempt) some think about and treat an unborn human being. The dignity of that unborn person is being denied. That is what is going on in this parable. To put it briefly and bluntly, where there is contempt of any kind in a human heart, there is no possible prayer, and consequently no justifying or saving relationship with God.

What is being explored here is a kind of humility before God that leads to the recognition that every human being has dignity before God and therefore deserves respect. The consequence of this means that scorn and contempt for any person with whom we disagree is not possible in someone who wants to pray and be in communion with God. It is based on a kind of humility rooted in respect for others, all others: no exceptions, no exclusions. Our Holy Father, Francis is quoted in September as having said: “Dialogue is born when I am capable of recognizing others as a gift of God and accept they have some to tell me.”

The times and the culture in which we live is too often an age of contempt. There is a lot of contempt around us and sometimes within. The discourse between too many reveals this contempt dramatically. So, there is no dialogue and no one listens to anything, a fact or an opinion, because so many are convinced that they are righteous and that their opinions and positions about everything are the only way things can be. They hold anyone who disagrees or sees anything differently in contempt and they are treated with scorn.

What this Gospel episode allows us to consider is how we are all tempted to consider ourselves righteous or more righteous than someone else. There is always hope however because this is something curable for those willing to confront any shred of contempt in their hearts. It means we look at everyone else as a person like ourselves: sinners calling upon God for mercy with a desire to be healed. What justified the man in the back of the temple was not so much his prayer or his pew, but the truth that he wanted to find righteousness from God not from his own ideas, his own actions, or for that matter, from his own prayer.

(No audio available with this homily because it was not actually delivered during the Sunday Liturgy)

Exodus 18, 8-13 + Psalm 121 + 2 Timothy 3, 14, 4, 2 + Luke 18, 1-8

October 16, 2016 at St Peter the Apostle Naples, FL

There is a lot of stuff going on with this parable! It is almost a challenge to stay on point, and dig for what is being revealed. Take for instance that Judge, who for Jesus almost seems to be the focus. He is a Judge. Justice is his business, yet this judge is a failure because he does not make certain that justice is served for everyone. This is a serious charge against him. It is his responsibility to see that there is justice for all, especially the most vulnerable. This man is a problem. Then there is the widow. She is out of her place. As a widow she is a member of one of the most oppressed classes in Israelite society. It would seem that she is not only widowed but also alone in the world, for the custom of that time and culture was for men to appear before a judge to plead her cause. In contrast to a Judge who does nothing, she is really something!

Since we do not know what her complaint is because there are no details, the complaint itself is not the purpose of the parable. What we have here one injustice coming into conflict with an obstacle or a system that is supposed to provide it. We are not told how long the conflict went on, but it was long enough to wear down the obstacle to justice. Forget about judges and widows with this parable. Jesus is talking about justice and how it is to be achieved.

This Judge, the obstacle to justice does not fear God, says Jesus. Those who do fear God, who keep God’s commandments loving God and neighbor do not allow or maintain a system or a culture of injustice. So first of all the parable prompts us to some reflection on whether or not we are the cause of any injustice. Notice however that the judge has not actually caused nor is he accused of inflicting justice. In other words, this is not about something he has done. On the contrary, it is about what he has not done and simply allowed it to continue by his passive behavior and his dismissal of this injustice until it is right in his face. In other words, until people might start talking about him.

The widow on the other hand is a victim of injustice, and she might just as well represent those who work for justice. Jesus speaks to this as well. He speaks a word of encouragement saying; “Do not sit around thinking that this is just the way it is. Stand up, speak up, and don’t quit. Especially do not let any obstacle get in the way.” Justice, which is one of the hallmarks of the Kingdom of God that Jesus has come to proclaim, is essential; and until it achieved for all, there is no Kingdom of God.

As he winds up this parable, Jesus shifts the focus to faith. Justice and Faith go together. That’s the problem for the judge. He has no faith. When Jesus asks that penetrating and sobering question, he is not asking whether or not he will find devotion, piety, candles and incense. He is asking if he will find justice, and for this we must pray without ceasing, without discouragement.

Prayer is no substitute for action however. It is like a beam thrown from a flashlight before us into the darkness. It helps us to go forward, it encourages us act. Prayer is not an escape from life but a journey into the heart of life. We learn to stand on our own feet before God and the world, and to accept full responsibility for our lives. The main and final purpose of prayer as we see it in the prayerful life of Jesus is to foster our relationship with God. This is the most important thing of all. This is the anchor of our spiritual lives which is not an extra life, but the life of our real selves. This kind of prayer is not asking things of God, but receiving what God wants to give and of shaping us into the people God has made his own, holy, and redeemed. Prayer is its own reward. It enriches us. It enables us to live not only more spiritually, but more deeply, more fully, more justly and therefore more authentically like children of God.

Habakkuk 1, 2-3, 2, 2-4 + Psalm 95 + 1 Timothy 1, 6-8, 13-14 + Luke 17, 5-10

October 2, 2016 Aboard the MS Veendam

Faith is not a thing that we pack up and carry around with us. It is not something that we can measure out in a glass or weigh on a scale. Faith is a relationship with God, and I believe that this is what the disciples are asking for as this episode of Luke’s Gospel unfolds. They have been on the way to Jerusalem with Jesus for some time. They have seen what he does and listened to what he says. What they are beginning to discover is that this man has an extra ordinary relationship with his father, and they want one too. Because it is a relationship, it is not a matter of how much, but of how deep, how lasting, how real, and how personal it is. In other words, it is about quality, not about quantity.

In response to the disciples then, Jesus uses a relationship as an example: the relationship between a servant and a master. It was a relationship that they would have easily understood, because there were plenty of masters and servants around. Now the cultural age in which this Gospel is formed was dominated by the notion of “merit”. Everything was earned, and when you did something you had a right to expect something in return. That was how it worked between masters and servants. Servants did their work and masters protected them. The servants had a right to expect that. This was all based upon an idea at the time that suggested that if you kept the Law (God’s commandments) then God owed you salvation. Jesus comes along and rejects this whole idea. God does not owe us anything. In doing so, Jesus emphasizes the sheer goodness of God, and in the light of that, there is nothing left to do except acknowledge that after all is said and done, we are only servants.

In his relationship with the Father, Jesus realized his total dependence upon the love God had for him. His response to that love was his unfailing obedience to the will of his father. It came out of love, not from some idea that if he did what God wanted, he would have some claim on God’s love. That love was already there. It was not the result of what Jesus did.  It was the result of who he was and who God was. This is the faith for which we must pray; the kind of faith that springs out of mutual love.

To God’s graciousness we owe everything beginning with the first breath we take. We recognize ourselves as “useless servants,” deserving nothing by our own account. Faith is always a choice we make choosing to be grateful servants who never forget how blessed we have been to see ourselves and others as brother and sister “servants” at the table of the Father. The only adequate response we can make to God’s unfathomable and immeasurable goodness is to live lives of joyful gratitude and humble service. Let that be the spirit with which we live and celebrate this week aboard this ship together.

Amos 6, 1-7 + Psalm 146 + 1 Timothy 6, 11-16 + Luke 16, 19-31

September 25, 2016 St Peter Church in Naples, FL

Images of hell are found all through the scriptures, and they often have to do with fire and heat. If this is to be taken literally, we’re in trouble here in southwest Florida. It’s been hot the past several weeks! This may not be the “Paradise” that the Chamber of Commerce would like to portray. When Jesus speaks of hell, he often refers to a ravine outside of Jerusalem City that had been used by an earlier religious sect that sacrificed human life. Because of that, the Jewish people would not go near the place, and it became the city dump a wasteland outside of Jerusalem that was a smoldering, stinking place everyone avoided. The physical features are important: it was outside the city, it was always burning, and no one wanted to go there.

With that image in mind there comes this episode of Luke’s Gospel. What emerges with great importance here is this “chasm”, this separation that exists between that rich man and everyone else. It is a chasm that was there before he died. He just didn’t notice it. He did not notice a lot of things before it was too late. That poor man was right there at his front door. There is no way in the world he did not know Lazarus was there. He would have had to step over him or walk around him to go in and go out. But maybe he was so walled up already in his life that he never went out. The fact of the matter is; this rich man had simply learned to look the other way, and with Jesus, that’s a problem.  Urban life for all of us these days makes it really easy to do that. It is now very easy with our freeways and turnpikes to speed past neighborhoods where Lazarus still lives and never notice anything we don’t want to see. But those people are still there, and the result is the same.

As it was then and so it is still now, Lazarus and everyone like him remains invisible especially when we look the other way. It fascinates me the way Luke reports the parable. Notice that the rich man still does not see Lazarus. What he really sees is what Lazarus has! The rich man is not connected to what binds us together as human beings. He lives in privilege and power, and he begs Abraham, not Lazarus because he assumes that Abraham is a powerful influential figure like he is. He wants to order Lazarus around like one of his servants, because he thinks he’s still so privileged. All that did is deepen the chasm between himself and others. Then he tries to extend his sense of class and hereditary privilege by pleading for his brothers. This guy is clueless! What he needs is a change of vocabulary that would reveal a change of heart. Instead of saying “me” he needs to say “we”. He needs to demonstrate that he gets exactly what it is that Jesus is about with his ministry among us.  Clan, class, and privilege are gone in the Kingdom of God. Among those who are citizens of that Kingdom, there is only a concept of “ours” that includes everyone the Creator refers to as “mine.” God is the only one who can every say, “mine.” When that happens, death will appear as a promise instead of a threat, and we will not be content until that promise comes true in the age Paul writes of in his letter to Timothy.

That rich man like too many still today has locked himself into his own little world. While it might be fine for a little while, it does not take long to realize that there is a chasm that cannot be bridged, and it is very lonely on the other side. We must take careful note that this man is not condemned because of his wealth. It has nothing to do with where he finds himself. He is condemned because he did nothing with his wealth except wall himself up and look the other way. What Jesus condemns is using wealth to separate ourselves from others rather than enrich others. There is a responsibility that comes with wealth. We must put people before possessions and relationships before belongings. The hunger that drives us is not for material things but for a loving, personal relationship with the God who created us, and nothing else will do.

Amos 8, 4-7 + Psalm 113 + 1 Timothy 2, 1-8 + Luke 16, 1-13

September 18, 2016 St Peter Church in Naples, FL

 This parable is so complicated and complex that skipping over it becomes a great temptation, or at least skipping the first part and diving right into the second part. It is easy and perhaps lazy to just think this is about making a choice between spiritual things and physical things or between God and Money. It might be helpful by the way to know that the word translated here as money is not spot on when it comes to what Luke means in the original text. Luke is not referring to cash. The most accurate translation would say “Mammon” which means much more than money. It means anything of value. It could mean property as in livestock or crops or a home.

 To get in touch with what Jesus is praising and with what he encourages here, we must stay with the first part of the parable. This is not simply about priorities in life or about comparative values or about how to win friends. It is not the dishonesty of this manager that gets the attention of Jesus, because some think that this may actually be a real situation that everyone knew about. What Jesus admires here and proposes as appropriate behavior for disciples is this man’s decisiveness and his quick decision to do something about his situation when he realizes that it will not last forever. There is no praise here for dishonesty or cheating. This parable is about taking action without delay when someone realizes that there will come an accounting, a time to settle up with the “rich man.”

 Anyone who goes through this life thinking that there will not come a time for accounting and a time to stand before the “rich man” is a fool. The man in this parable is not foolish. For you and me, there will come a time to account for how we have managed what God has given us, not just money, but everything including this earth itself. As Pope Francis has reminded us again and again, how we treat this earth, its water, its air, its soil will be a matter for an accounting just as much as how we use all the other resources with which we have been charged and entrusted. It will not be wise to go for long fooling ourselves into thinking that God or “the rich man”, as this parable calls him, is not coming. “Give an account of your service” says this parable. “It’s going to come to an end.” There is the message, and this crooked manager shows us that a decisive action and a change in the way things are is called for. So Jesus suggests that we become clever and make some decisions quickly and wisely. This is what is praised in this parable: an awareness that an accounting is coming, and the need to change and do something about it.

 In a very subtle way, the cleverness of this “manager” goes far beyond just making friends for himself. The consequence of his decision is much more than being liked by those whose debts he adjusted. Those people, especially in that culture and time would have known that such generosity was not his alone to grant. What he really ends up doing is making the “rich man” look really good and really generous, because those people would have thought that this is what the rich man wanted the manager to do. That is clever, and making God look good or look like a generous God is very smart.

 So we proclaim today a Gospel that announces an accounting to come. We proclaim a Gospel that proposes a quick change from the way things have been in terms our management style, and some decisive action now on our part, for we are the managers here entrusted with quite a lot, entrusted the poor as well. What we do for them and what we do with them revealing a generous and loving God to them will gain us more in the eyes of that “rich man” than we might ever imagine.

Exodus 32, 7-14 + Psalm 51 + 1 Timothy 1, 12-17 + Luke 15, 1-32

September 11, 2016 on board MS Amsterdam

When I got on this ship last month, there was a lady quite distraught over the fact that she had lost her cell phone between the hotel and the ship. With my phone and that of another passenger, we made some calls to the hotel and to the shuttle company to no avail. Later when her luggage was delivered to the room, the phone was found in her luggage, and she was a happy lady. Then at the first of this week, I received an email from a passenger who had been on the ship the week before asking if I could check the lost and found on board to see if something left in her stateroom had been turned in. It was, and in Sitka I mailed the item back to her. In both cases there was great relief and a lot of joy.

The experience told to us in this Gospel is very real to everyone of us who lose things and find them again. Luke sets up this chapter of his Gospel in an ever more intense way. Sheep, coin, son is the progression as he leads us deeper into what he wants to reveal about God and to what he expects from disciples of Jesus Christ. What is constant in each of these parables is the emotion or the response of Joy. What he reveals about the nature of God is consistent in each parable: a patient and consistent seeking of what is lost. This is a God who, by our judgement, seems ridiculous. Leaving 99 at risk while searching for 1 is silly. Tearing up the house and burning more oil than the coin is worth makes no sense, but that’s the point. Waiting, watching, running outside with a ring and robe and then throwing an extravagant party for a kid who has treated you like you were dead makes you think that this dad has already spoiled this kid enough and ought to make him pay for his behavior. But then, that’s not the God Jesus has come to reveal. This is a God of Joy who is actually crazy with love for us. If you’ve ever been crazy in love with someone, you know very well that you don’t act predictably and are likely to do some wild and wonderful things.

Joy, in the end, is what these parables reveal about God, and Joy is what Jesus has come to bring and to proclaim. Joy must be the first and obvious sign of disciple of Jesus. To make the point, Luke gives us that other son who is anything but joyful. His problem is that he thinks he deserves everything, and the saddest thing we see about him is that he is without love. He does not love his brother, and is even without love for his father. We should notice that he never once speaks to his father respectfully nor lovingly. He refers to his father as “you” without a hint of respect or love. His resentment, his anger, and his jealousy make it impossible for him to enter into the joy and share the love the father has for them both.

Now in the morning we will all shortly head for home, and I hope that most of us will be welcomed there by people who love us, and in that love we shall again experience a kind of Joy that reveals something about our faith. I have begun to believe that Joy, like faith is something we must choose. Few of us have had any great or profound religious experience or been face to face with God. We have simply had to choose to believe or not believe. We all know people who have simply chosen not to believe. It is much the same with Joy. In the face of tragedy, sin, our own brokenness and the sadness we experience from time to time we have every opportunity and sometimes every reason to be angry, resentful, and jealous. We can choose to stay that way, or we can choose be joyful recognizing and choosing to share in a kind of Joy that is divine.

Fifteen years ago on this date something happened because of people who were resentful, angry, and jealous of us. Hate overwhelmed them and led them to choose violence and death rather than peace and life. Today we look back and we look ahead. Today we proclaim a Gospel of Joy because we believe in a a God of Mercy, renewing our faith through this Eucharist making sure that we shall not stand outside when the party has already begun. We choose Joy. We choose life. We choose peace. We choose Jesus Christ.