Isaiah 8, 23 – 9, 3 + Psalm 27 + 1 Corinthians 1, 10-13, 7 + Matthew 4, 12-23

January 22, 2017 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

            The key to unlocking the message of this text and the discovery of what Jesus is doing and asking lies in that word “repent”, but there is a problem. That English word, “repent” lacks the strength or the power of what Jesus was asking for and expecting. The original word, metanoia carries with it a much greater force than “repent” which can be watered down to simply mean being sorry or correcting one’s ways. Jesus is not asking that. In fact, that almost trivializes his life and his message to think that he became flesh and died just to get us to be sorry for our sins and try to do better. He wants way more than that. He wants metanoia! Without it there can be no Kingdom of Heaven.

What he asks of those men in these verses today he still asks of us, and we need to pay attention to what happens to them, and then measure our response accordingly. When it says that they stopped what they were doing, put down everything, and walk away from what they were doing, it means just that; a complete alteration of what they did and who they were. They might have stayed where they were and hung out with Jesus part time. They might have even become friends with him, but that isn’t what happened for them, and it is not what must happen with us. Jesus was not their “friend”. He became their Lord, and with that choice they experienced metanoia.

What we have here is an invitation to a new kind of existence, a different reality.  Jesus called this the “Reign of God”. Matthew called it the “Kingdom of Heaven”. This is not a place. It is a way of being, a way of feeling, a way of looking at ourselves, at things and at other people. It is a way of life.  The only description we have of this is the very life and work of Jesus. Look at what he did: forgive, heal, reconcile, feed, comfort, and love. In other words, Jesus made things the way they ought to be. An encounter with Jesus was an encounter with the way God desired, willed, and created this life to be in the beginning. The people Jesus met in this way did more than repent. They were totally different because of him, and their lives were never the same.

So, this metanoia is not something you do. It is something accomplished or achieved by being open to it. When the Kingdom of God or the Reign of God is offered by God, there is a decision to be made. That is what we do. We decide to believe what is offered, and we accept Jesus Christ as the Lord, not as a friend, or some prophet, or some healing do-gooder. Jesus is Lord! That is a decision we make based upon what we have seen and heard. We have to decide to believe. This is what we are hearing about in this Gospel today. Those apostles achieved metanoia because when it was offered, they made the most important decision of their lives. They believed what Jesus offered, accepted him as Lord, and left behind everything that looked like a normal life.

This is the greatest obstacle to metanoia. The biggest adversary Jesus faced was not demons or the Romans or the Scribes and Pharisees. It was an attitude of helplessness submission to things the way they were and always had been. It was that nagging belief that nothing ever changes, that heaven might be different, but nothing on this earth will ever change. Sometimes that attitude gets dressed up to look like an odd kind of piety that counsels a virtue of patience and acceptance. That thinking is a greater threat to metanoia than any persecution. In walking away from their boats and their nets, those apostles opened themselves up to what Jesus offered.  Rather than catch food, they were ready to become food, to nourish the hungry by their lives. Rather than stay in one place with one family, they would receive a hundred times more, and why should we think that they left their wives and children behind. It doesn’t really say that. I like to think they brought them along sharing their decision and their vision of life with them.

Each of us must decide that our faith is more than just a nice idea or a theory not yet tried. We must decide that it is more than just a comfort when times are hard. The following of Christ is not a sideline; it is the only thing that makes sense of life which is why so many think so little of life itself. They have not followed the Lord.  The metanoia to which we are called transforms us into everything we could possibly be that is good and is holy. The metanoia to which we are called begins when we choose to be what God made us to be and live the way God made us to live, holy and righteous in His sight, generous and blameless, peacemakers, forgivers, healers, reconcilers, and people of love without hate, anger, jealousy, or selfishness. That is a whole new way of looking at ourselves and of standing before one another. It is the way into and the very definition of the Reign of God.

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time January 15, 2017 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

Isaiah 49, 3, 5-6 + Psalm 40 + 1 Corinthians 1, 1-3 + John 1, 29-34

In some ways, it can be said the whole of John’s Gospel is an answer to the question, “Who is this Jesus?” The answer comes with a series of signs that begins at a wedding in Cana and concludes at a funeral in Bethany. This is a critical and essential question for every believer. If someone asks, “Who do you believe in?” or “Who is this Jesus you trust and adore?” “Who is this one who has drawn you to this place today?” You need an answer, your answer, not something from a book or something you heard someone else say.

In the verses following today’s text, followers of John the Baptist are intrigued when they first meet Jesus. Jesus sees the question written on their faces, and he turns to them with a question of his own. “What are you looking for?” These are the very first words spoken by Jesus recorded in John’s Gospel. They are words addressed to you and me as well. “What are you looking for?” A famous philosopher (Kant) once wrote that there are three central questions in human existence: What can I believe?  What should I do? And what can I hope for? Jesus Christ knows that these questions are at the heart of anyone wondering whether to follow him. So, his response is: “Come and see.” “Come and listen.” When we do, we will discover what we can believe in, what we can do, what we should do, and what we can hope for.

Today, John’s Gospel gives us answers to two of the questions from the people who actually saw and followed Jesus. The first comes from John the Baptist himself. He points to Jesus and says: “There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” For those who heard him, there are clear echoes of the Passover. In fact, to make the point even more firmly, John has the death of Jesus occur a day earlier than Matthew, Mark, or Luke. John has Jesus death occur on the night of Passover when Jews would have been remembering their liberation from the slavery of Egypt. This celebrates not just liberation from slavery, but release from sin. So, to the question “Who are you?” comes the answer that Jesus is the Lamb of God who gives his life to bring freedom. To those who might ask Jesus himself comes his own answer, “Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends.”

Going even further, John tells us that if you come and see who Jesus is, there is more than a great hero. He is the Son of God. His love is God’s unconditional love, for you, for me, for every human person including sinners. The evangelist who wrote this Gospel tells us that he is writing that we might believe that Jesus is the Son of God so that we might have life in him.

With the season of Christmas now behind us, we move very deliberately toward that day when we shall once again recall the death of the Lamb of God whose birth among us we have just celebrated with such Joy. As we unfold the Message of Matthew’s Gospel next week and for the next six Sundays, we shall be challenged again to confirm what we believe by what we do so that what we do may express what it is we hope for. When that begins to happen within us, there will be no doubt about who we are, why we are here, who it is we believe in and trust, and where we are headed. As we come to see that personally in Jesus Christ we cannot help but be filled with Joy and with Hope. Life, not death is our ultimate destiny, and at this altar where the Lamb of God spills his blood for us, we have the first taste of the eternal banquet to which he leads.

Epiphany of the Lord January 8, 2017

Isaiah 60, 1-6 + Psalm 72 + Ephesians 3, 2-6 + Matthew 2, 1-12

Hidden in this story that is so familiar to us there is a complete summary of the mission of Christ. It is like a preview of things to come. Listen to the final verses of Matthew’s Gospel and you can see what Matthew is giving us here. “When they saw him, they worshiped….. Then Jesus approached and said to them. ‘All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The work of Christ extending salvation to all is previewed by the visit of these foreigners. His mission comes as a challenge to the Jews of his time, and there is resistance and resentment. Their privileged place and their chosen status with its exclusive claim on God confirmed by the Temple and its rites is all finished with the coming of Christ. The all-embracing love of God cannot be reserved or limited to just the Jews, and the journey of these foreigners and their introduction into the story of salvation is the first hint of what is to come: violent resistance. Herod’s murder of the innocents which Matthew records again previews the murder of the innocent Lamb of God. Yet, God’s plan will prevail in spite of that resistance as Joseph leads Christ to safety away from Herod only to return and continue the mission.

All through the Gospel, Jesus knows no boundaries or boarders. Off to Samaria and to Galilee he goes bestowing the healing signs of God’s love on anyone who comes: a Canaanite woman, the Gadarenes, the people of Gennesaret, even a Roman Centurion’s plea is graced with praise as Jesus says: “In no one of Israel have I found such faith.” Then in one final dramatic sign, the Temple veil is torn in two as the work of Jesus is completed. The apostle Paul picks up this mission as we hear it in the reading from Ephesians today: “The Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise of Christ through the Gospel.” What he is describing is God’s vision of the church in which there is no Gentile or Greek, Jew or Roman, man or woman. We are never more church than when we are close to God’s vision and plan. A church that is not inclusive, welcoming, and open armed is not the church established by Christ. Squabbles over language and customs, conversations that speak of “them” and “us” betray a failure to share the vision and the ministry Matthew inaugurates with this story. The real Epiphany of Christ is seen in a church that embraces the world and people who see one another as God sees.

The message of this Gospel comes as a challenge to this world today, and the teaching our church through this Gospel calls into question a kind of patriotism that is exceptionalism. Authentic patriotism is good and honorable because it affirms one’s identity and community; but excessive patriotism that becomes exceptionalism is divisive, and it is at the root of all wars. For one nation or culture to claim it is the best and is the only way drives a wedge between people, stifles understanding, and begins to deny rights and respect to the other. This Gospel proposes a new solidarity and community among God’s children today just as it did for the Jews at the time of Jesu

This solidarity, this community experience is essential to the plan of God. Again and again, when Christ revealed himself to the world, he rarely showed himself to just one person at a time. Think of Christmas night, when the news was announced to shepherds. It was to a group, another kind of community. And then, people from the east, a distant community, another group. This will happen repeatedly. It is the beginning of a pattern. At the Baptism of Jesus there will be a crowd of witnesses. When he preaches, he will speak to the multitudes. At the time of the first sign, the first miracle, it is at a public gathering, a wedding. When he reappears after his resurrection, it is to a roomful of believers. Even on the road to Emmaus, he presents himself not to one person, but to two. This is part of the great message of Christianity. We are meant to receive the good news together, to live it together, to celebrate it and share it with one another.

One simple fact remains which we affirm today. Christianity is not a solitary experience. Thomas Merton put it beautifully: “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another.” To this truth let the church say: Amen!

January 1, 2017 Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God

Numbers 6, 22-27 + Psalm 67 + Galatians 4, 4-7 + Luke 2, 16-21

St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

There is nothing more tiring to me than being around someone we would call a “know it all.” At the same time, I get very impatient around people who see the world in black and white, and need to have and to know the answer to every question. Their behavior gets positively neurotic if they don’t get answers. They either begin to think that there is something wrong with them, or they get fixated on something and can’t settle down and go on with life not knowing.

All of this is brought to my mind on this feast by the woman who is put before us. It might bother and upset some whose devotion and images of our Blessed Mother would suggest that she was somehow all-knowing in her openness to God’s plan; but I don’t think she was, and I think that the scriptures back me up. The fact that she wondered and pondered what all this meant is important for us. There is an old tradition that suggests that the information Luke has about the birth of Christ and about his mother came from Blessed Mother herself who may have told him what he reports. None the less, when Luke tells us that she “pondered” all these things in her heart, I think he is saying that she did not have it all figured out, and so went on with her life in spite of that fact. To me, this is one of the greatest lessons she teaches us. It is a great gift.

Having a crises of faith over something that happens when you do not know why or wonder if God is really with and for us is the point. She did not know what that angel’s message meant. She did not know what was going on with those Shepherds, and later she did not understand what Simeon was talking about that day they presented the child in the Temple. She just believed in the providence and love of God. She simply trusted that God’s will and God’s plan whatever it was would be best. She kept all these things in her heart Luke tells us. That does not mean she understood and knew what was going to happen next. For her it was a matter of believing that even through events she did not understand God was with her.

Thomas Aquinas said that reason cannot grasp the ways of God, and so if something does not seem reasonable, it does not mean that God is not involved. In fact, trying to impose reason upon God and God’s acts is really nothing more than a power-play since knowledge and understanding often goes with power and control. We do not have to know what God is doing or why things happen. Faith and trust in God allows us to move on and move forward in life with the assurance that even though I do not understand, God does.

This is the first thing we can learn from Mary, the Mother of God. There will be more, but the first lesson this mother teaches is a lesson on trust that springs from faith. Even though we may not understand, and even though we may not be able to explain things that happen, we remain faith-filled and humble before the mighty works of God.

The Greek word that is translated as “ponder” suggests a kind of interior conversation, a dialogue that seeks to comprehend and put pieces together. It seems to me that this is, for most of us, a life-long project during which we acknowledge that God’s ways are not our ways. Mary teaches us to believe as she did that God is in charge of all things, and lack of comprehension does not keep us from life, from faith, and most of all from hope. As we celebrate the mother today, so we also celebrate the Son nothing less than an opportunity to share in divine life which is a mystery that like Mary we must ponder in our hearts.

Nativity of the Lord December 15, 2016

Isaiah 9, 1-6 + Psalm 96 + Titus 2,11-14 + Luke 2, 1-14

St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

Christmas is a feast of the heart. It reveals to us the very and true heart of God. At the same time, it reveals what the human heart can become. It causes us to open our hearts and begin to live. What makes us human is not so much the ability to think as it is the ability to love.

If you take the time to think about it, and what better time to do that than this very hour, we are here because of love and a gift of love. It is the gift of God’s only son that we celebrate today. The importance and the value of this gift is the fact that there is and was only one Son. We did not get an extra or a spare. We did not get an imitation or a reproduction. We go the only one. This is the kind of gift that only a lover can give to a loved one. Yet there is even more to it than that. How this gift came to us matters as well.

God’s only Son could have come in power, but he didn’t. If he had come that way, we might have reason to be afraid or threatened. We would have reason to feel small or weak. God’s only Son could have come in wealth, but he didn’t. If he had come that way, it would have made us aware of our own poverty, and so we might have become envious which damages the human heart. As the story goes, he did not come in power and in wealth. He came in weakness and poverty. His weakness makes us aware of our own strength, and his poverty makes us aware of our riches.  His poverty awakens us compassionate bringing our hearts to life. It was the poverty of the Child Jesus that opened the treasures of the Magi, and the poverty of Jesus challenges us too with an opportunity to open our hearts.

I want to share with you a little story that gave me these thoughts. Frank O’Connor was an Irish writer. With that name he certainly wasn’t from Romania! His autobiography is called: “An Only Child.” In it he tells about a Christmas when Santa brought him a toy engine. It was the only gift he received. His mother took him to visit the sisters at the local convent Christmas afternoon, and he took his engine along to show the sisters. While there, one of the sisters took him to see the crib in the convent chapel. As he looked in he became upset that the Child Jesus was there without a single present, and he knew how the child Jesus felt, the sadness of having been forgotten. Turning to the nun, he asked why? The nun said to him: “His mother is too poor to buy presents.” At that, even though his own mother was so poor there was only one present for him, in a reckless act of generosity he climbed into the crib scene with his toy engine and placed it in the arms of the baby Jesus showing the baby how to wind it up because a baby would not be clever enough to know things like that.

It seems to me that Frank O’Connor’s story and his experience is both the story of God’s love and then our own. God has climbed into the crib with us, and God has shown us how to love, how to forgive, and how to make peace which we do seem clever enough to know on our own. He has shown us how to repair what has been broken by sin and restore us to our rightful place, Paradise. It is our story too because it tells what the human heart can really accomplish when it is brought to life – the fullness of life which me might call, grace.

So we have today a feast of the heart. The feast of God’s heart opened to give life where there is death and light where there is darkness; a feast of weakness and poverty. It is also then, the feast of the human heart made human by love and made divine by grace. It is a feast that awakens us to our riches and the power we have with them to give life and hope, light and joy to those who are forgotten and sad.

Isaiah 7, 10-14 + Psalm 24 + Romans 1, 1-7 + Matthew 1, 18-24

December 18, 2016 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

He was a dreamer, this man the church puts before us just days before we will gather to celebrate the birth of this child called, “Emmanuel.” A man of few words. In fact, he is a man of no words. The Gospel never records anything he said, but it is rich with the record of what he does. The Joseph that Matthew gives us is a just and righteous man in love. He is a man of faith strong enough to believe that God might do something he never imagined. In the Joseph of Matthew’s Gospel, we see a man who faced a dilemma when the demand of justice was at odds with mercy. Does he assert the justice of his rights and dismiss her, or does he show mercy and take Mary into his home?

The Jewish/Christian community for which Matthew prepares his Gospel would have made an immediate connection with an earlier Joseph, the son of Jacob, who saved his family from famine in Egypt because of dreams. Both of them would meet their God in dreams that revealed how to protect and how to save their families. In fulfilling the instructions of the angel, Joseph gives the child a name common for those days; a name that means, “God saves.” In doing so, Joseph claims this child as his own.

With nothing to say, Joseph has plenty to do. From the few verses of scripture devoted to him, we can glean some extraordinary wisdom from this fearless and courageous man. He was obedient because he listened. When the will of God was revealed he took off for Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous rampage. When the will of God was revealed again, he went back to a safer place in Galilee far from his first home settling in a place often ridiculed by others called “Nazareth”. No pride in this man. One thing mattered, his vocation to protect and provide.

The limited knowledge we have of him leaves us to see someone who is selfless whose only thought was protecting and providing for Mary and Jesus. His devotion to the life of his family comes before all else. This loving and faithful man leads by example. He teaches us the truth that we all know: “Actions speak louder than words”. He works to provide, and in so doing, he sanctifies labor and gives the work of human hands a dignity that can make work a path to holiness when it is work done for others.

In Joseph we find a real leader, but not the kind of leadership we often see today. He is just because he does the right thing. He is righteous because he is right with God. This man who leads his family is attentive to God, and the last we hear of him is a story of a faithful father leading his family to Jerusalem for prayer at the Temple, and then he is gone with nothing more said about him. But this is enough to lead us to Bethlehem next Sunday.

Joseph can lead us there when we become just and righteous, when we learn from him the kind of obedience that means listening to God’s word and will. He can lead us there when we practice the kind of selfless love that leaves us focused on this one he named, Jesus. He can lead us there when our actions are more powerful than our words, and when we work more for others than for ourselves. Once more Joseph will lead us to the Holy Place where the Word of God becomes the flesh of human life, where the one they called the “the carpenter’s son, born in a wooden tough, will begin to work with wood from which and with which he will save his people.

Isaiah 35, 1-6, 10 + Psalm 146 + James 5,7-10 + Matthew 11, 2-11

December 11, 2016 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and John sits in a prison from which he will not escape alive. You can almost sense the frustration or the maybe the doubt of John and his disciples who have come to Jesus with that question. In more simple terms, the question is not so much about the identity of Jesus as messiah, but more about what kind of messiah he really is. “Where is the fire?” is what they really want to know.

In Isaiah 34 there is described a saving God of vengeance and anger, of harsh judgement and destruction who wields a mighty sword dripping with blood withering figs and vines slaughtering oxen and bulls. Then in Isaiah 35 there is another description that suggests a God who comes to strengthen the feeble, make firm knees that are weak, open the eyes of the blind. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and people will come to this God singing with joy and gladness. Sorrow and mourning will flee.

The issue that is addressed at this critical moment is, “Which one is it going to be?” Which kind of God is to be revealed and how will his presence be known: by angry violence and harsh judgments or by a gentle healing touch drawing people in joy and in peace? In that conversation with John’s disciples, the matter is settled. It will not be vengeance and anger, fire and the sword. It will be mercy and peace. People will not flee in fear of God, but come running in joyful song. John would have had it one way. Jesus will have it another way, but these verses, clear as they are, do not seem to have settled the matter quite yet.

There are still some who do not quite seem to get what Jesus has come to reveal, who still do not understand or believe that this God promised in Isaiah 35 is the real God not the one some had hoped would come and destroy all the unfaithful. Today they are the ones who look at violence and tragedies and become angry demanding to know, “Where is your God?” or “Why doesn’t God do something about that?” Failing to understand that our God is the victim hanging on a cross, that our God is suffering too in, with, and through anyone who is hurt, in pain, and suffering. They are the ones who use religion to justify their intolerance, alienate those who are different and condemn anyone who does not agree with their opinions or their interpretation of facts. They want a God who is made in their image, hard of heart and quick to judge. Jesus will not have it so.

Jesus reveals a God who suffers, who is slow to anger and quick with mercy. Jesus reveals a God willing to wait for an ungrateful wayward son to come home without changing the locks or barring the door. Jesus reveals a God whose grace and love embraces a Samaritan woman, tax collectors, and responds with compassion to an enemy Roman centurion whose servant is at death’s door. This then is a God who forgives while being nailed to a cross, a God who stays on that cross to set us free pouring out his life that we might live.

With this God we can face every disappointment, tragedy, and test of our faith without fear, for we are not alone. “Blessed is the person who does not lose faith” says Jesus. Sometimes bewildered, numbed, and powerless by terrorism, war, and genocide we wonder where God is, and hear again, “Blessed is the person who does not lose faith.” Scandalized and hurt by the grave sins against children by people we have trusted; we hear again the words: “Blessed is the person who does not lose faith.” Parents have seen their children give up the practice of the faith in spite of having given them encouragement and good example. For them it is a great pain, and great sadness. They must hear again: “Blessed is the person who does not lose faith.”

Faith is a fragile thing. We must not be surprised when doubts arise within us. Even the greatest man born of a woman felt the same way and experience some doubt. God does understand this world and all that can happen within it. Yet, Blessed are we if we do not lose faith in Jesus, and twice blessed are we, if like Jesus, we can show forth that faith in love and in mercy.

Genesis 3, 9-15, 20 + Psalm 98 + Ephesians 1, 3-6, 11-12 + Luke 1, 26-38

 December 8, 2016 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

There are two women in tradition that were conceived without sin. Did you ever think of that? One’s name is “Eve” and the other’s name is “Mary.” This day invites us to think about the difference between the two of them and decide which one we shall be like.

Sometime back when I was pastor of a parish with a large school I dropped in to speak with one of the seventh grade classes, and we got around to talking about vocations. I asked one of the girls what she would do if God were asking her to be a sister in a religious order. She was very honest with me and said: “I would say, no.” Unfortunately, I did not find her response too unusual. Most young people at that age and up would probably say the same thing. Yet her response made me a little sad. So I asked another question: “Why not?” Her answer was just as honest. “I am afraid that I won’t like it.”

Now think about her answer. “I am afraid – that I – won’t like it.” The words “I” and “afraid” suggest that her happiness is dependent upon herself not upon God. There is this disturbing implication that she believed that her fulfillment in life was all about her and not up to God. Isn’t this exactly the problem with Eve? She thought that her fulfillment and happiness would be based upon what she and Adam did with no thought about God’s wish or will. The two of them could not have what they wanted, so they took it thinking that their fulfillment and their happiness rested upon themselves rather than upon what God wanted to provide them. That kind of thinking is challenged today by this feast and this other woman who shows us a different way. Dependent upon God, trusting in God, open to God’s will and God’s call in her life she was not afraid that she wouldn’t like it. Eve however ended up being very much afraid – so much so that she hid from God.

There is so much of Eve still in this world. There is still too much fear witnessed by that young girl’s response to my question. Too many people respond to opportunities that God’s providence provides by saying: “I am afraid that I can’t do it.” “I am afraid that I am not qualified.” “I am afraid that I don’t know how.” “I am afraid of failing.” There is something missing here, something that Mary found by grace, the belief that nothing is impossible with God. With that we see the difference between the two women. One tried to live on her own, doing her own thing. She ended up hiding in fear. The other woman lived full of grace, which means, full of God, and she became fearless giving courage and hope to anyone willing to look carefully at what God wants and asks of us.

Isaiah 11, 1-10 + Psalm 72 + Romans 15, 4-9 + Matthew 3, 1-12

 December 4, 2016 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

The world is full of promises from politicians to preachers. It is full of promise breakers and promise keepers too. One of the consequences of this reality is cynicism, and there are more than enough cynics to go around. Cynicism and Catholicism do not go well together. Our faith, resting on the kind of hope the readings today put before us, makes no room for the cynic. Cynicism is the enemy of hope. The cynic always refuses hope saying things like: “Things will never change.” “It’s no good.” “It has always been this way.” This kind of thinking comes easily requiring nothing from us, no trust, no effort, and always no love.

I think that one of the reasons John the Baptist was such a hit in his day attracting so much attention from common folks to those in power was that he stirred up hope. He took people to a place called “hope.” All of us spend a lot of our lives waiting and hoping for a lot of things. It is impossible to live when one is completely without hope which is what leads people to take their own lives, no hope. Hope is as important for our souls as bread is for the body. Hope is the mark of a true believer. It is a virtue that like any other virtue must be practiced and strengthened by action. For us who follow the way of Christ, hope never means just sitting back and waiting for things to happen. Believers make a difference in this life, and so we believe that our efforts are worthwhile. We work hard with the gifts we have in the confident hope that something will come of our efforts.

The great thinker, poet, and playwright, Vaclav Havel, stirred the dreams of the Czech people after the fall of communism. He once said, “I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have meaning.” He understood that Hope is not the same thing as optimism which is the expectation that things will get better no matter what. For us Hope is the trust that God will fulfil God’s promises in God’s way and in God’s time. People of hope live in the present moment with the knowledge and the trust that all is in God’s hands. This kind of trust is the consequence of hope for those who believe.

This world suffering from so many broken promises and disappointed by so many promise breakers longs for what this season offers, hope. Great leaders are people of hope. They do not need to know what the future will look like. They simply do what is right in the present trusting that God will care for the future. It is enough to know that there is a faithful God. We are about to celebrate God’s promise kept. That’s what Christmas is, the fulfillment of God’s promise to be with us, stay with us, and restore us to our innocence. What can bring light into the darkness of this world is new people which makes the call of John the Baptist so important, – repentance. It means changing our lives, because changed people will bring about a changed world.

St Paul speaks of that change so clearly today. He brings it down to simple reality. Treat each other in the same friendly way Christ has treated you. It’s easy to be critical and quick to judge, to be intolerant of the faults of others. If we did what Paul proposes, we would make the world, or at least the corner of it where we live a more hopeful place. It is our mission and our responsibility to keep hope alive and set an example. When all is said and done, this world can never fulfill our deepest hopes. Only God can do that. Meanwhile, we live in a place called “hope” that enables us to keep one foot in the world as it is, and the other in the world as it should be.

Isaiah 2, 1-5 + Psalm 122 + Romans 13, 11-14 + Matthew 24, 37-44

November 27, 2016 at St Peter and St William Churches in Naples, FL

Did you get that first line of this Gospel Proclamation today?  “As it was in the days of Noah” it read. Jesus presumes that everyone knows how it was in the days of Noah. Knowing that is essential to knowing what Jesus is talking about. What is described there is people eating and drinking marrying and being given in marriage. That seems like normal behavior. Yet what it also says is that the earth was corrupt and full of lawlessness. Again, not meaning to sound cynical, but nothing much has changed: normal stuff! What is absent in the days of Noah is any obvious attention to God. What is missing is a relationship with God that would make a difference in the way things are. What it says is that Noah found favor with God, and what Noah did that no one else would do was listen to God. He did what God asked. He did what made no sense to anyone. He built a big boat. He risked the ridicule of everyone to do what God asked of him. So, that’s the way it was in the days of Noah, people just going about their lives with no thought of nor any attention to God. Yet there was one person who was listening and obedient to God, and because of that obedience and willingness to take a risk, there was salvation. There is a connection here that I hope you put together between Noah and Jesus.

Notice how Jesus describes life at his time: two men were in the field; two women were grinding at the mill. They are doing the ordinary things of life. The difference between them is that one of them is awake. We could add two people were sitting in a church, one will be taken and the other will be left.  Which one will you will it be is the question Jesus would like us to consider. He urges us to stay awake, which means a lot more than not sleeping through this sermon. The two in the field or at the mill may not sleeping; but they may not really be awake – totally awake. This disposition, attitude, or wakefulness is a spiritual awakening. We have to be spiritually awake, alive, and alert, which means living in the awareness that God is among us or that God is with us, Emanuel! That ancient Hebrew word is a proclamation more than a wish. On the lips of believers, it proclaims that God has come.

Christ has died, Christ is risen, and what is the third acclamation? Christ will come again. “Again” is the word that gives this focus. He comes “again” because he has already come. For those who are awake, aware, and attentive, this is the guiding principal behind everything we do, every choice we make, and every way we respond to events and challenges of this life. Two men in the field: one is taken, the other left behind. Which one do you want to be? The one left behind is working that field because he thinks that’s all there is. The one taken has been doing that work for the praise of God in whose presence he lives. Two women at the mill: one is taken the other left behind. The one taken grinds that grain and makes that bread conscious at every moment that it’s all a gift from God, and all the effort of that work is a song or a prayer of gratitude because she is spiritually awake and never forgets why she has the grain to bring to that mill.

How shall it be for us who hear this Gospel and are urged to wake up, listen to God’s Word, and live with full attention in the conviction that Christ has died, that Christ is risen, and that Christ will come again? If you’re folding clothes out of the dryer, every fold is a litany of thanks that you have something extra to clean and fold. If you hit a ball into the rough, instead of what you might say, a smile breaks out because you are standing there with the time and the resources to play that game not because God has blessed you with riches, but because you have a little more time to think about what it’s all for. You sit in traffic and become impatient because someone else is slow ahead of you, and if you are spiritually awake, you might recognize that this little extra time is not being taken from you, but given to you so that you might wake up and look around. It is better to be the one taken while in grateful prayer and reflection than the one who is filling a barn with things they will never see, need, or use.

This day in the life of our faith and our church is ultimately about time. A sense of urgency comes from Isaiah. A timely reminder from Paul about the salvation we have already found in the light of Christ. All of this confirmed by Luke who urges us to live spiritually awake, alive, and prepared for not at any moment, but in every moment, God is with us.