Elizabeth questions Mary (Luke 1)

     “And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” This is Elizabeth’s question to Mary, in today’s Gospel, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1 verse 43.

     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

     Today’s Gospel reading is really a question and answer. The first section, which describes Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, sets up the question, “why has this happened to me?” And the second section is Mary’s reply, the long text we call the Magnificat. We can think of Elizabeth as speaking for us, when she says, “why has this happened to me?”  Often, perhaps, when we ask this question, addressed to God or to no one in particular, we are thinking of some unfortunate event that has occurred. We may be less inclined to ask this question about pleasant happenings, unexpected joys or successes. Perhaps we aren’t as thankful for happy outcomes as we could be, and so are less inclined to be surprised by them, less inclined to question them.

      Elizabeth has much to be surprised by, and much to question, even before she meets her relative Mary in today’s Gospel. Elizabeth’s question is a happy one, not a resentful or fearful one. As we know, she was unable to have children. Yet she conceived. At the same time, she is living with a husband who is unable to tell her what this birth will be about, since the angel Gabriel revealed the coming birth and at the same time caused Zechariah to be mute. Elizabeth never got a message directly from her husband, about the meaning of the birth.

     “Why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Elizabeth has understood that there is something very important about the two approaching births. The Gospel says that “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” This is a way of saying that Elizabeth perceives that there is something very important about the relationship between her and Mary, and between their children.  “Holy Spirit” is a way of referring to the depth of spiritual perception that Elizabeth has reached. This enables her to grasp something of what Gabriel had told her husband, even though her husband is not able to tell her himself. And that awareness gives special urgency to her question “why has this happened to me?”

     Elizabeth answers her own question when she says “the mother of my Lord comes to me.” In the very moment of questioning, Elizabeth realizes that that is why she is bearing a child; she is to bring the precursor, the forerunner of her Lord into the world, the better to prepare his way. The moment we are talking about here is more than a physical encounter between two women; it is a moment of spiritual realization. Elizabeth has been prepared for it by Zechariah’s indication, mute but not meaningless, that led Elizabeth to this moment. Zechariah’s behavior reminds me of what Zen teachers sometimes do: they lead a student to awareness by an action, a gesture, perhaps a sudden movement or a sound that snaps the student out of everyday unconsciousness and into a state of mind where he or she experiences a greater awareness, which we can call Holy Spirit. And Elizabeth responded in exactly the way a person coming to sudden insight sometimes does: she “exclaimed with a loud cry!” This is her moment of realization, of insight, and she sees herself, and Mary, and their soon-to-be-born children for who and what they are. In John the Baptist’s case, as Luke says in verse 17, “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” And in the case of Jesus, in verse 33, “of his kingdom there will be no end.”

     And Mary’s song follows Elizabeth’s exclamation. It’s an expansion on what has been said up to then, and a demonstration of Mary’s awareness, her insight into her true nature and her vocation. Her insight, remember, also begins with her questions to the angel Gabriel. He leads her quickly to realization of her relationship with God and an understanding of the true nature of her son. It is in questioning that she comes to this understanding, and she finds herself in a wide-open spiritual space. The angel had told her not to fear, and she did not. That fearlessness and her willingness to question, and then to trust, the angel, leads her to that joy which she can only hint at in her song of praise. She says “my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” “Rejoicing” is likely the least of it. Her deep awareness of the reality of God has overtaken her, which she expresses by listing God’s acts in history.

     Questioning is central to the spiritual life. It is in questioning that we open ourselves to possibility, to new things happening to us. When we question God, or an angel, or ourselves, we make it possible for God, or an angel, or our true nature, to answer. And the answer won’t always be in words. We remember what happened to Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah; he became mute. We may understand his muteness as a reminder that God sometimes communicates in silence. Zechariah's silence made Elizabeth’s understanding possible. When we question the angel, like Elizabeth and Mary did, we make it possible for a new thing to be born in us: a promise of fulfillment of God’s will for us, an understanding of what God is calling us to do, and what he’s making it possible for  us to do. And when we perceive the answer that God is giving us, let us say with Elizabeth, “there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken...by the Lord,” and with Mary, “let it be with me according to your word.”

     In nomine, etc..    

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John the Baptist (Luke 3)

     “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea…during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah…”. From the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 3, verses 1 and 2.

      In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

       Luke is determined to locate the story of John the Baptist, and the story of Jesus, firmly in history, in a place and time that can be described. The only name out of place, or out of time, is Lysanias, who ruled rather earlier, but the point remains the same: the events that Luke is about to relate happened to real people in a real place, at a time that we know something about. Luke is telling us that the contents of his Gospel are history, not fiction or speculation. Like a good historian, he provides references that can be verified. And we have an independent source for John the Baptist, in the historian Josephus, who wrote about him.

     John has one message: a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In this Advent season, when we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Incarnation, and we also look forward to the coming of Christ at the end of time, spiritual preparation is essential. In repentance, that is, in turning toward God and away from those things which obstruct our relationship with Him, we are following in the footsteps of the prophets and John the Baptist. Luke himself makes the connection between the Baptist and the prophets, when he quotes the prophet Isaiah. Again the emphasis is on a real historical connection, with the words of a prophet who had preached centuries before. Isaiah and John are not offering theological abstractions, but real actions, baptism, in the case of John, and the opportunity, in the case of Isaiah, to follow him on a straight path to God, free of obstacles.

     I admit that I find Isaiah’s words somewhat alarming. I don’t wish to sound flippant, but I do find his description of the altered landscape disconcerting: every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth. This sounds like strip mining, or freeway construction. So, we can’t be expected to take this geographical description literally, but we can grasp the main point: there is actually no obstacle between us and our destiny in God. There is no valley of despair so deep, no mountain of trouble so great, that they can actually prevent us from arriving at our destination. The pathway before us is clear; all we have to do is take the first step, and more steps will follow. Once we set out on the path, deep valleys and high mountains are not the obstacles that they appear to be. There is nothing to stop us. The first step that John the Baptist offers is the baptism of repentance. And repentance, as I said a moment ago, is basically a choice: to turn toward God. That is all.

     A few years ago, a young friend walked the Camino pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. At the beginning of his journey, he had to cross the Pyrenees, which he did, on foot. I don't know where he crossed the mountains, or what the conditions actually were, but he described the journey as “wet, muddy, and dangerous.” Perhaps some of us have experienced the spiritual life as “wet, muddy and dangerous,” but, like my young friend, we passed through the mountains and reached the lowlands, where the crooked and rough ways were made straight, as Isaiah the prophet, and John the Baptist, said after him, that they would be.

     “The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” Why the wilderness? The wilderness is that place where there are no distractions, no easy escapes from the mountains and valleys of our spiritual journeys, where the rough ways are not smooth. The wilderness, spiritual or geographical, is that place where we may more easily hear the voice of God. This is why people walk on pilgrimages through difficult landscapes, and locate monasteries, like St Catherine’s in the Sinai desert, in remote places. Geography and our passage through it are analogs of the spiritual life, which is always a journey, a journey from God and return to him.

     It is a journey where God is always present; remote, maybe, invisible maybe, silent maybe, but always present, at the beginning through to the end. We know this because Isaiah says, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” This is a promise, without qualification, no exceptions. That being true, John’s baptism of repentance is a way of accepting that reality; it puts us on the right path, the rough way made smooth, on the journey to God.

     Luke’s emphasis on the historical environment of John the Baptist and Isaiah the prophet, reminds us that we are on our journey to God in the world that we know, a world that is as real to us as the world was to Luke and John and Isaiah. There is no retreat from the world, from history, into some gaseous abstract spiritual realm where we can escape from the challenges of the journey, the deep valleys, the mountains, the rough places. They are where God journeys with us, and where he is waiting for us at the end of the road. It may be that one day someone will write, “In the twenty-first year of the third millennium, when Joe Biden was president in Washington, and Gavin Newsom was governor in Sacramento,” the word of God came to us, and we set foot on the way of the Lord, and we made his paths straight, so that all flesh could see in us the salvation of God.

     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

    

     

Christ the King (John 18)

     “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…but, as it is, my kingdom is not of this world.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Here we are, on the feast of Christ the King, in a church named for the king’s advent, that is, for his arrival, his appearance in the world. It is our feast of title, our celebration of the name we give to our community, as a sign of our allegiance to that kingship, and our commitment to his appearance in our world. We see the statue before our pulpit, of Jesus dressed as a king in western European medieval style, in a robe and crown, and carrying an orb. Even in our secular, democratic republic, the symbols of kingship still have meaning, have power; they are ancient, archetypal, and live in the collective memory of the human race. Kingship was the typical form of government for thousands of years, and only in the last two hundred and fifty years or so has it given way almost universally to new forms of social and political organization. The symbols live on, and still speak to us.  But in today's Gospel, Jesus transforms the concept of kingship, and presents an understanding of it for a world very different from the one in which kingship arose.

     Today’s feast is a new one. It was established in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, and originally was celebrated on the last Sunday in October, just before All Saints. The Pope instituted the feast to remind Christians that their allegiance was to their spiritual ruler in heaven, and not only to  earthly supremacy. Pius XI wanted to establish Christ as the moral center of Europe, to counteract the nationalism and class warfare and social disorder of the time. In our time, Pope Benedict XVI said that Christ's kingship is not based on "human power" but on loving and serving others. Now the feast is celebrated on the last Sunday of the church year, as a fitting conclusion to the Sundays after Pentecost, and as suitable preparation for the season of Advent, in which we remember the advent of Christ in the Incarnation, and look forward to his advent at the end of time. The celebration has been adopted by many churches in the West, including Episcopalians.

     Today’s Gospel displays Jesus’s refusal to be limited by conventional ideas, in this case, ideas about kingship. Pilate asks Jesus directly, “Are you the king of the Jews?” This is a real and important question, coming from a representative of the emperor, to Jesus, a person apparently from a royal line, the House of David --- in other words, potentially a claimant to a throne to which he may actually be entitled. If Jesus is such a claimant, he’s a threat to the Roman order and its puppet King Herod. From Pilate’s point of view, he has a right to a straight answer to this question. And does he get one? No, he doesn’t.

     “Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’” Or, as we would say, “Who put you up to this?” Jesus is not dodging the question in order to get away with anything, but to lead Pilate, and his hearers, and us, away from an ordinary way of thinking about kingship.

     The enthronement of the Ancient of Days in the Book of Daniel is a clear statement of what real, spiritual kingship is; the Ancient of Days gives it to “one like a son of man;” his kingship is over all peoples forever and will never be destroyed. This is the understanding that Jesus has, beyond ordinary human kingship. This is what Jesus is leading Pilate to, and like a true spiritual guide, he does it by questioning his questioner and by refusing to be pinned down to conventional thought.

     Pilate is exasperated by this and gets to the point. “Your own nation…handed you over…What have you done?” Again, no answer. Not evasion this time, but a return to the previous question: “My kingdom is not from this world.” After more dodge and weave, Jesus states his mission, what his kingdom actually is, and it has nothing to do with crowns and orbs and all the rest of it. “I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” That is Jesus’s kingdom: everyone who belongs to the truth.

     Oddly, today’s Gospel ends there. The compilers of the lectionary could have ended with the next line, the real ending of this section of the chapter, which is Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” That question leaves open the nature, even the content, of truth. We needn’t be disturbed because the question comes from Pilate. I like the open-endedness of it, its risky relativism. But I’ll stop there, before I drift off into some wild speculation about what Jesus and Pilate are talking about. It’s enough to say that the question is in the Gospel for a reason; it gives us permission to ask more questions.

      What, indeed, is the “truth” of a celebration of the kingship of Christ, in a world in which that kingdom is hard to perceive? What “truth” do we belong to? In our very secular society, the Church appears to be in retreat as its membership declines and increasing numbers of people are indifferent to the Gospel. Where is the kingdom of Christ?

     Durufle’s piece ‘Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est’ tells us where the kingdom is. ‘Where charity and love are, there is God.’ That is the short answer to the question, where is the kingdom? It is where love is. Pope Benedict reminded us that Christ’s kingship is found in loving service to others. The earthly symbols of kingship applied to Jesus are meant to lead us to awareness of the truth he, and we, belong to, which is love. It is a paradoxical kingship, which rules not from above, but from within, as Jesus says in Luke’s Gospel, “the kingdom of God is within you.” As long as love rules, Christ the King rules, in the Church and out of it.

     “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…but, as it is, my kingdom is not of this world.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

  

    

     

The Widow's Mite (Mark 12)

     “For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 12, verse 44.

     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

     Today’s Gospel reading includes two different stories: a denunciation of the scribes, and the story of the widow’s offering. At first hearing, it may seem that they are about two different subjects --- hypocritical scribes and a genuinely devout widow --- but in fact they are closely related. The story of the widow is better understood after the story of the denunciation of the scribes. It is not accidental that the widow story follows the scribe story. And both are better understood when we include readings not in today’s Gospel: the story of the cleansing of the Temple in chapter 11 of Mark’s Gospel, and the foretelling of the destruction of the Temple, in chapter 13, right after the end of today’s reading.

     Let’s look back at the cleansing of the Temple in chapter 11. The Evangelist writes, “[Jesus] entered the Temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the Temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers, and the seats of those who sold doves.” It is clear what is happening here. Jesus wants to clear the Temple of anyone and anything to do with economic transactions, which are out of place in a house of prayer, as far as Jesus is concerned. The Temple is to be a house of prayer for all the nations. There are to be no distinctions based on what people can buy or sell. The Temple is to be a house of prayer for all nations, and nothing else. The system is set up to make a profit from the sale of animals for the sacrifices, and even the poorest are exploited by the sale of doves, the cheapest offerings available. Jesus wants to put an end to this system. The Temple is a huge operation, and a very important one in the economy. Large numbers of farmers rely on it as a market for their animals, and the Temple priests and servants rely on it for their living. So we can appreciate just how radical Jesus is when he clears the Temple; he is attempting to bring an end to the exploitation and profiteering which support it, and which dominate the economy and society. Understandably, as the Evangelist says, “the chief priests and the scribes…kept looking for a way to kill him.” The people profiting from the Temple system will stop at nothing to keep it going. Many people in our world are equally ruthless in their defense of the current system.

     With this in mind, we return to today’s reading, and Jesus’s remarks about the scribes: “They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” The scribes, that is, people involved in the law, or finance, or religious institutions, or government, and so on, don’t come off well in today’s Gospel. Jesus’s radical critique and uncompromising attitude are unmistakable.

     I was asked in a gathering of new priests the other day, how I respond to Jesus as a person. I replied that almost all my preaching is about Jesus’s personal interactions and what they reveal about his teaching. It seems to me that the person Jesus is real and vivid in these exchanges in the Temple. He is clearly not on the side of the establishment, the side of the chief priests and the scribes. “They devour widows’ houses,” Jesus says. Our economic system today is not all that different in its treatment of the poor, widows and otherwise.

     With all this in mind, what are we to make of the widow’s offering (called the “widow’s mite” in the old translation)? The usual interpretation of this story commends the sacrificial piety of the poor widow, and holds it up as an example of ideal religious behavior. But is it really? Is that what Jesus is teaching here? Or, with his remark in mind about how the scribes devour widows’ houses, is he really saying something else? I think that he is, and I think that we need to pay attention to what he’s up to here.

     The priests and scribes are quite willing to take all that the widow has, her “mite”, to support the Temple system, which is to say, to support the system which exploits the piety of the poor. That is what Jesus is saying here, and he does not approve. To confirm this, let us hear the passage that immediately follows today’s reading, from chapter 13, verses 1 and 2. “As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’” That is what Jesus thinks of the Temple and its exploitation of the poor widow. He does not expect it to last, and in fact he is certain that it won’t. Since this teaching follows right after the story of the widow’s offering, it seems to me that its meaning is unmistakable. The Temple system exploits the poor, and Jesus wants to see the end of it.

     What can we take from these stories and teachings? We can acknowledge the truly radical character of Jesus’s teaching. He is unsparing in his critique of the Temple priesthood, the religious establishment, and the scribes, the people who work for the establishment and keep it going. The established order, according to Jesus, is exploitative, and the institutions that keep it going, symbolized by the Temple, must not last. In the 14^th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying that “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.” We may take “another not made with hands” to mean a new life in which the old order of human exploitation is gone.

     We, Jesus’s body in the world, can bring a similar critique to bear in our world. The message is clear: just as Jesus does in today’s Gospel, we must see our economy and society clearly, recognize exploitation for what it is, and take steps to change what needs to be changed. We must avoid clouding our vision with false piety. And we must avoid using our religious institutions to sanctify an unjust order. Our new temple must be “not made with hands” --- that is, it must not reproduce the exploitation and hypocrisy which Jesus sees so clearly in the Gospel.

     In nomine, etc..

  

    

     

      

Secret (Mark 9)

     “Whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Mark, the 9th chpter, the 37^th verse.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     In today’s reading, we have three distinct parts, presented in one narrative. The first reveals Jesus’s awareness of the danger he is in, the second reveals something about the kind of community he wants the disciples to create, and how they are to think about it. And the third part reveals more of the nature of Jesus’s community

     The Gospel begins, “They…passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples.” Scholars call this emphasis on secrecy in Mark the “Messianic Secret;” secrecy, privacy are constant themes in Mark’s Gospel. Yet publicity comes to Jesus, his teachings, miracles, exorcisms, and more, whether he tries to prevent it or not. The clue to understanding this secrecy is in the phrase, “for he was teaching his disciples.” There is a suggesstion that there is an inner and an outer teaching: The inner teaching is Jesus’s preparation of his disciples for the events of his Passion. Only after the resurrection can these events and their meaning be revealed to the wider community and the world. But the outer teaching, Jesus’s healings and miracles and parables and so on, are available to all from the beginning of his ministry.

     The teaching which Jesus wants to keep secret in the first part of today’s reading is: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed…and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” On the ordinary human level, of course, it’s no wonder Jesus wants to keep this secret. So as a practical matter, there is no need for Jesus to publicize this expectation.

     But the real reason for Jesus’s caution is deeper. He’s concerned about his disciples at this point. “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him,” says the Gospel. Jesus needs to prepare them for what is to come. There is no way to introduce the subject in an easy or understandable way,  and fear is a natural reaction to talk of being killed. This is why Jesus presents the teaching secretly; there is no other way to introduce the idea.

     “They…were afraid to ask him.” This a clue to realizing why the story about who is the greatest follows immediately. The disciples, unable to grasp what Jesus is telling them about the destiny of the Son of Man, instead talk about something that they can grasp, namely who is the most important among them. This is a human-sized problem, one which we all understand. Competition for recognition, status, importance, dominance, esteem in the eyes of others, is something we’re all familiar with, and we indulge in it all the time, whether we’re aware of it or not. There is even something of denial in their reaction. We all do this, when confronted with some unpleasant reality that we don’t want to face. Jesus, perceiving their reactions, asks them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” “But they were silent,” the Gospel says. But Jesus knows what they’ve been talking about anyway, so he responds to their silence.

     Notice what happens here. Up to now, we have heard that Jesus  has been teaching his disciples. But when he decides to talk about what is on their minds, “he sat down, called the Twelve.” Not “the disciples” but, the “Twelve.” We tend to use the words ‘disciples’ and ‘the Twelve’ as though they are equivalent or interchangeable, but in this story, I don’t think that they are. The Twelve are  Jesus’s inner circle, the leaders of a larger group of disciples, and it is important that Jesus make clear to the Twelve what the real nature of their leadership is, so that they can pass it on to the larger group of disciples. Of course he’s overheard their arguments, and, good spiritual guide that he is, he has insight into their condition, no matter how much or little they actually say to him. The argument about who is the greatest is a very human argument, a very understandable one, but it is a distraction from what Jesus has to say about the real nature of leadership and ministry.

     “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.” To any ordinary, average, normal, right-thinking person, this statement is a real mind-bender. Jesus assumes that some people want to be first. All the forms of ambition that we know, social, political, economic, and so on, are versions of wanting to be first. We all know that being first does not mean being last, and it  doesn’t mean being a servant. Jesus is turning our ordinary, average understanding of leadership, of status, of being first, upside down. He doesn’t want the leadership of his community, of the Twelve, of the disciples, and the community beyond, to be anything like the status-based systems of the world. Jesus doesn’t say much more about it than that; his teaching stands as a perpetual challenge to our usual way of thinking about leadership and competition for position. The emphasis is on service, not on “greatness,” on humility, not status.

     In the third part of today’s reading, Jesus “took a little child and put it among them…[and] said…whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me…[but] not me but the one who sent me.” This is another way of saying that “whoever wants to be first must be last.” A little child is insignificant, perhaps, not important or noticeable as an adult is. Perhaps we’ve all heard the old adage, from a bygone era, that “children should be seen and not heard.” When I was a child in the 40s and 50s, some of that attitude still lingered, so an awareness of being last was learned early. But it is that last, insignificant, little child that Jesus chooses to represent him, and Jesus insists that the “little child” be welcomed not only as Jesus, but as God himself.

     So we have a very new concept of leadership being presented to us. The leader is to be thought of as the least important person in the community, and at the same time he or she represents Jesus and God himself. Service, not dominance, is what that leadership is supposed to be. Humility, not status, is its defining feature. I’ve always thought it odd that Episcopalians and Anglicans call their parish minister “rector,” which means “ruler.” I would prefer “pastor” – “shepherd” – which is closer to the idea of leadership that Jesus is putting before us. Protestants and Roman Catholics  use “pastor” and perhaps we should follow their lead. But I won’t dwell on this point, when the parish is still in the search process for a new rector (!). This is something we can talk about in Convention, perhaps.

     In church life, there are many examples of loving, selfless service, of an eagerness to serve the community without any thought of status or importance. I think of the countless hours of work that people put it, to make parish life possible, and to minister to the very poor, and so on. It is obvious to me that we all in our different ways are striving to live the teaching that Jesus has put before us, of selfless leadership. I pray that we continue to strive to live according to this teaching, so that whoever welcomes us, sees in us not only Jesus, but the one who sent him.

     In the name of God, etc..

    

     

The Syrophoenician Woman and the Deaf Man (Mark 7)

     “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Mark, the 7^th chapter, verse 37.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

          Today’s Gospel comprises two different stories: the story of the Syrophoenician woman (which includes the story of her daughter), and the story of the deaf man. And there are many things going on within each story, which reveal more about the nature of Jesus and our relationship to him.

     Today’s reading begins, “From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.” This remark is rather odd. First, Jesus takes himself into Gentile territory. Then he doesn’t “want anyone to know he was there.” I’m not sure who the “anyone” is, but it can’t mean the people in the house, or his immediate followers. It suggests that Jesus has a network of supporters, probably clandestine, in Gentile territory, whose existence he wants to keep secret until he is ready to make his ministry publicly known. The mere fact that he is in “the region of Tyre” is a clear sign that Jesus is not limiting his ministry to Israel, and intends to take his teaching to the wider world. Although there is no hint of it in the text, I’m wondering whether Jesus is in physical danger in this story. His caution is perhaps a foreshadowing of danger to come. In any case, Jesus doesn’t want to be pushed into premature action in public, so his caution is understandable.

     But pushed he is. The Gospel says, “Yet he could not escape notice.” The Syrophoenician woman with the demon-possessed daughter, hears about him and finds him. And in their interaction we see the basic contradiction in Jesus’s Gentile ministry. When she requests Jesus to heal her daughter, he replies with a remark, not about healing, but about food! “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” We’re meant to understand the comparison the way the woman does: she, a Gentile, is one of the dogs under the table, unworthy apparently of being fed any other way, although I have to ask, in what household does a dog eat at the table and not under it or elsewhere on the floor? Why does Jesus compare Gentiles to dogs? If that’s what he thinks of Gentiles, what is he doing there?

     Jesus is triangulating, I think, to placate his followers who believe in their superiority to Gentiles (and to dogs too), and to reinforce this attitude, at least in public, in the presence of a Gentile woman. At the same time, he responds to the woman’s request, that he heal her daughter, as soon as it becomes clear that the woman is not intimidated by Jesus or by her supposed social inferiority, and has faith in Jesus’s ability to do what she asks of him. Jesus takes advantage of the situation to make it clear that faith is what matters, not a social or religious or any other kind of distinction. Jesus abolishes the Jew/Gentile distinction at the very moment when he appears to be reinforcing it. He is in Gentile territory because he is including Gentiles in his kingdom. And it is the Syrophoenician woman who recognizes Jesus for who he is, and makes it possible for him to use the opportunity to reveal his nature and his teaching.

     On his way back from Tyre, Jesus is presented with a man who is deaf and mute. “He took him aside, in private, away from the crowd,” the Gospel says. Again this emphasis on privacy, secrecy even, and this even in Jesus’s home ground, away from a more stressful situation in Gentile country. This privacy, secrecy, is part of Jesus’s message. Jesus keeps his healing action, in this case, private, because he doesn’t want it to be perceived as magic. A crowd watching him might suppose that his actions with his hands were powerful in themselves, that they were actions they could imitate and so get the same results. But what Jesus is responding to is faith, and that is what makes the miracle possible. It is interesting that it is the faith of the crowd, oddly enough, that makes this possible; nothing is said about the faith of the deaf man. In the previous story, Jesus’s removing the demon from the woman’s daughter, nothing is said about the daughter’s faith either. In other words, there is no suggestion that the daughter or the deaf man had to earn their healing by professing anything in particular, by affecting any particular religious attitude, or even by expressing gratitude. Jesus never asks them to.

     What Jesus does ask the deaf man and the crowd to do, is not to tell anyone about what he is doing. And do they respect this? No. “The more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it,” the Gospel says. I like to think that Jesus intended this; any teacher or parent has likely seen this effect many times, by mock-sternly telling their charges not to do something, they make sure that it gets done, when a positive suggestion might not have worked. Jesus is taking advantage of this contrary streak in human nature, to make sure that his message is heard far and wide.

     We need not be afraid to take the message to the Gentiles, that is, to people outside our religious or social circle, and beyond. The two stories we heard today, remind us that there is a real hunger in the world for signs of God’s power and healing love. The “faith” of the crowds in the Gospel may not be much more than a hunger for cures, which is entirely legitimate. But that hunger is the beginning of real faith. There is a lot of spiritual deafness in our world, and there is a lot of spiritual muteness too. There are people who yearn for something beyond themselves, which they don’t know how to express. We can help them find the words that they need; we can help them hear the teaching of Jesus. Even in our rampantly secular society, there is a need for people to hear of the saving work of God. And we are empowered to tell people about. May it be said of us, as the crowd said of Jesus, that we have “done everything well; we even make the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

In the name of God, etc..

Bread of Life (John 6)

     “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” From the Gospel according to John, chapter 6, verse 58.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     We are all familiar with bread, of course, homely, comforting, ordinary, nourishing bread, a part of meals and snacks, in kitchens and shops and restaurants, on lunch and dinner tables and so on and on. Bread is everywhere, and is so common we hardly think about it. When I was a boy, my grandmother, and my mother made bread, and they were good at it, a skill which I never mastered. I remember asking my grandmother once how she measured the ingredients. “Oh,” she said, “a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” These days I use a bread-making machine, which works wonderfully, but only when I measure things exactly according to the recipes. But however we make it, we call bread “the staff of life” and so it has been for thousands of years. And come to think of it, in this time of transition, parish-making is something like bread making: a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and no one has figured out exactly what the recipe should be. But the ordinariness of the process shouldn’t discourage us, since it is that very ordinariness that Our Lord uses to bring the divine presence to us.

     Into this environment of ordinariness, of daily bread that everyone knows and uses, comes Jesus with his extraordinary claim: “I am the bread of life!” What are his hearers, and we, to make of a claim like this? It is at least surprising, it is certainly confusing, and to some people, it is really outrageous. And, according to today’s reading, people react to the statement rather strongly. Jesus’s hearers react strongly to his very unusual statements, as we would if we heard anybody making such remarks. As the Gospel says, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’” Jesus, of course, is using bread as a symbol or image of divine life, connecting his hearers and us to something divine by using bread, something earthly and ordinary.

     “But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?’” In other words, by complaining among themselves, by giving themselves reasons not to pay attention to the message coming to them from outside their own inward-looking circle, by passing around their own opinions and ideas, the disciples are never going to hear anything unfamiliar, and are never going to hear the message from Jesus that will free them from their self-perpetuating complaints. They will not be able to see the “Son of Man ascending” if they don’t turn away from their own preoccupations, and allow Jesus to teach them.

     “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” We know about the manna in the desert, which God provided for the Hebrews during their travels in Sinai, on their way to the Promised Land. Manna is apparently a real, natural substance, made by insects, which exists even today in the deserts, and it is understandable that people would experience it as coming from God, as indeed the whole of Creation comes from God. We can think of it as a kind of bread, truly a “staff of life” to the Hebrews travelling through the desert. But it was not “the bread that comes down from heaven” that Jesus is talking about.

     The people listening to Jesus would know about the manna, and they would also know about the bread used in the Temple, the Bread of the Presence, called the ‘showbread’ in the old translation. It was a perpetual offering, on a golden altar dedicated to it, and always in the presence of God. It was changed once a week, and the bread being changed out was consumed by the priests. It was the only offering not burned in the Temple, but it was eaten by the priests once a week. We can think of it as a kind of communion, in which the priests took into themselves the holiness of the bread, made holy by its nearness to God in the Temple. Jesus knows about this, and identifies himself with the Bread of the Presence, and the Temple priesthood, as we know from the Letter to the Hebrews. Our liturgy of bread and wine clearly recalls this Temple liturgy. Jesus applies its meaning to himself, and makes it available to us, in making himself present to us, as God made himself present to the priests in the Temple.

     In the prayer the Our Father, we pray for “our daily bread.” This has an ordinary daily meaning of course, in which we ask God for what we need from day to day, bread and everything else. But there is a mysterious word in the original Greek version of the prayer, which no one has ever convincingly proved actually means “daily.” The word is ‘epiousios’ and is a very rare word, which, when we break it down, means something like ‘super-essential’ or ‘super-substantial.’ So when we pray for our daily bread, we are not praying merely for ordinary daily needs, but also for super-essential bread, the Bread of Heaven, the Bread of Life.

     Our Eucharist is a celebration of the Bread of Life, the Bread of Heaven. In it we make present the manna in the desert, the Bread of the Presence in the Temple, and Our Lord himself, the living bread that came down from heaven. We conclude, as Simon Peter does when he says to Jesus, that “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” If we, like the disciples, can let go of our worrying, we will experience what Simon Peter does, when he says that Jesus is the Holy One of God. Then we will “see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before.” Then the Bread of Life will be real to us, and we will know, as Jesus says, that “the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

    

    

      

Assumption (Luke 1)

     “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 1, verses 48 and 49.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Decades ago, in my parish in Toronto, a priest began his homily for this feast, by saying, “People who have problems with the Assumption of Mary make three false assumptions!” I don’t remember any more of the sermon than that; I don’t recall the “three false assumptions”, but, whatever they were, they didn’t detract from the splendor of the occasion, or from the veneration that the congregation accorded to Mary.

     The special place of Mary in Scripture and tradition is well-attested. And it’s her place in Scripture that I’m going to talk about tonight.

     Today’s Gospel, which is the psalm-like text we call the Magnificat, is placed between Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, and the birth of John the Baptist. It would make sense to include the visit to Elizabeth in today’s Gospel, because the Magnificat, in the text as we have it, is really a continuation of the conversation between Mary and Elizabeth. The Magnificat is a reply to, and an expansion of, the words of Elizabeth. And Elizabeth’s words continue the revelation in Luke’s Gospel of the role and meaning of Mary in the history of salvation, and Mary herself adds to that revelation.

     "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” says Elizabeth.  The blessedness of Mary is intimately connected to that of her son. The one cannot be separated from the other. Blessing, of course, is divine goodwill, or grace. We recall the greeting of the angel Gabriel to Mary, even earlier in the chapter, “Greetings, favored one!” or “Hail, full of grace,” as the old translation says. This is far more than a casual expression, a polite noise, which we may perceive as even more polite because an angel is condescending to address a human. “Favored one” or “full of grace” is a title, and meant to be understood as such. These words associate the blessedness, the grace-filled state of Mary with the many references to the blessings of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, beginning with material blessings of long life, family, crops, herds and wealth and including the later, deeper understanding of blessedness as wisdom, righteousness and peace. Wisdom, righteousness and peace in the Hebrew Scriptures are marks of the coming Messianic age. Blessedness means nearness to God and all that flows from that. When the angel addresses Mary as “favored” or “graced” he is associating her with all the blessings of God, past and future, especially with the blessings of the promised Messianic age. Elizabeth confirms this when she proclaims, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” This word “blessed” is not mere complimentary decoration around an encounter between two women, but is a theological statement about the nature of Mary and her child; the Evangelist is making it clear that Mary has a central, vital role in the history of salvation, a role as great as, or greater than, the roles of all the prophets and personalities in the Hebrew Scriptures before her. As Elizabeth says, “the Mother of my Lord comes to me.”

     Mary’s response to Elizabeth, today’s Gospel reading, has two parts. The first part, verses 46 through 49, records Mary’s reaction to the revelation she has received. The second part, the remainder of the Magnificat, is about God, the “Mighty One” as Mary calls him. She lists some of the Mighty One’s attributes, and summarizes some of his mighty acts in history, including his mighty act in preparing Mary for the birth of the Messiah, the Son of God.

     "My soul magnifies the Lord,” says Mary; other translations say, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” These are not mere words. Her “soul” proclaims the greatness of the Lord. In other words, in her inmost being, her soul, she perceives directly God in his greatness. This is a real experience, a spiritual and psychological event, in which she knows God directly; this knowing she calls “greatness”. The word “greatness” only begins to convey what this experience is like. The next verse does more to convey it: “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Imagine the flash of joy, of wonder and surprise, that she experiences in her awareness of her nearness to God. “Rejoicing” hints at the impact of this awareness. The history of the Church is full of people, men and women, young and old, who have had experiences like this. We know them as “mystics” or “contemplatives” and the lives of some of them have been recorded. And Mary is a model for them all.

     “For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” The literal meaning here is easy to understand: a high-status being has decided to confer a favor on a low-status person. (The Mighty One is nothing if not “high status”.). We are all familiar with this kind of behavior. Our society has many high-status individuals who do confer favors on the rest of society, financial and otherwise. We are all impressed by such acts, and are grateful for them, as we should be. But there is more going on in this verse than a mere status-based transaction. The “favor” after all, is nothing less than the spiritual good of the world, the salvation of the human race. It is Mary’s lowliness, that is, her utter lack of concern for worldly status, which has made it possible for the Mighty One to bring the Messiah into the world. The same soul which perceives the greatness of God, perceives the real nature of the salvation he is offering, and makes it possible for that salvation to come into the world. Her “lowliness” is her complete willingness to accept her calling, to make this salvation possible.

     “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” This Biblical injunction is as clear as it can be, and mainstream Christians have been calling Mary blessed ever since she first uttered these words. These words are a clear expression of Mary’s nature and role in the history of salvation. We call her blessed, because her acceptance of her vocation to bring the Messiah, the Son of God, into the world, helped make possible our blessedness, our ability to accept God’s gift of eternal life with him.

     "Assumption” comes from “assumpta” meaning “taken up.” The word and the idea have a long history, but I’m not going to get into a long, technical discussion about this word, and other words for the feast like Dormition and Falling Sleep and all the arguments about just what is meant here. All such discussions would lead us away from what is the main point of this celebration: the central, and pivotal, role of Mary in the history of salvation, and the veneration she deserves. Because Mary is blessed, so are we blessed, and Mary has helped make that blessedness possible.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

    

     

      

Bread of Heaven (John 6)

     “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel of John, chapter 6, verse 35.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     We are all familiar with bread, of course, homely, comforting, ordinary, nourishing bread, a part of meals and snacks, in kitchens and shops and restaurants, on lunch and dinner tables and on and on. Bread is everywhere, and is so common we hardly think about it. When I was a boy, my grandmother, and my mother made bread, and they were good at it, a skill which I never mastered. I remember asking my grandmother once how she measured the ingredients. “Oh,” she said, “a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” These days I use a bread-making machine, which works wonderfully, but only when I measure things exactly according to the recipes. But however we make it, we call bread “the staff of life” and so it has been for thousands of years.

     Into this environment of ordinariness, of daily bread that everyone knows and uses, comes Jesus with his extraordinary claim: “I am the bread of life!” What are his hearers, and we, to make of a claim like this? It is at least surprising, it is certainly confusing, and to some people, it is really outrageous. And, according to today’s reading, people react to the statement rather strongly. “Is not this Jesus…whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Perhaps you’ve noticed that in today’s reading, Jesus doesn’t actually say that he comes down from heaven; he says it in verse 38, which the compilers of our lectionary skipped over when they put together  this reading out of verse 35, and then went straight to verses 41 to 51. In any case, Jesus’s hearers react strongly to his very unusual statements, as we would if we heard anybody making such remarks. In fact, I remember an encounter with a young man I knew years ago. One evening in a café, he said, “I’ve just realized that I’m God!” I was at a loss for words, of course. It soon became clear that he was trying to describe a powerful experience, the kind of experience we call “mystical,” in which God is a perceived, known reality, more than a word or an idea. Jesus is speaking out of that kind of experience, and he describes his experience using bread as a symbol or image of it, connecting his hearers and us to something divine by using bread, something earthly and ordinary.

     “Do not complain among yourselves,” says Jesus. “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father.” In other words, by complaining among ourselves, by giving ourselves reasons not to pay attention to the message coming to us from outside our own inward-looking circle, by passing around our opinions and ideas, we are never going to hear anything unfamiliar, and we are never going to hear the message from Jesus that will free us from our self-perpetuating complaints. “Drawn by the Father” means that we release ourselves from the inward-looking circle, and allow ourselves to be “taught by God,” as Jesus says, quoting Isaiah. The Father is always drawing us toward Jesus. That is why God became incarnate in Jesus: to draw us to himself.

     “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” We know about the manna in the desert, which God provided for the Hebrews during their travels in Sinai, on their way to the Promised Land. Manna is apparently a real, natural substance, made by insects, which exists even today in the deserts, and it is understandable that people would experience it as coming from God, as indeed the whole of Creation comes from God. We can think of it as a kind of bread, truly a “staff of life” to the Hebrews travelling through the desert. But it was not “the bread that comes down from heaven” that Jesus is talking about.

     The people listening to Jesus would know about the manna, and they would also know about the bread used in the Temple, the Bread of the Presence, called the ‘showbread’ in the old translation. It was a perpetual offering, on a golden altar dedicated to it, and always in the presence of God. It was changed once a week, and the bread being changed out was consumed by the priests. It was the only offering not burned in the Temple, but it was eaten by the priests once a week. We can think of it as a kind of communion, in which the priests took into themselves the holiness of the bread, made holy by its nearness to God in the Temple. Jesus knows about this, and identifies himself with the bread and the Temple priesthood, as we know from the Letter to the Hebrews. Our liturgy of the bread and wine clearly recalls this Temple liturgy. Jesus applies its meaning to himself, and makes it available to us, in making himself present to us, as God made himself present to the priests in the Temple.

     In the prayer the Our Father, we pray for “our daily bread.” This has an ordinary daily meaning of course, in which we ask God for what we need from day to day, bread and everything else. But there is a mysterious word in the original Greek version of the prayer, which no one has ever convincingly proved actually means “daily.” The word is ‘epiousios’ and is a very rare word, which, when we break it down, means something like ‘super-essential’ or ‘super-substantial.’ So when we pray for our daily bread, we are not praying merely for ordinary daily needs, but also for super-essential bread, the Bread of Heaven, the Bread of Life.

     Our Eucharist is a celebration of the Bread of Life, the Bread of Heaven. In it we make present the manna in the desert, the Bread of the Presence in the Temple, and Our Lord himself, the living bread that came down from heaven. May we always, as it says in the Prayer Book, “feed on him in our hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

    

    

What the Apostles did and taught (Mark 6)

“The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6, verse 30.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Today’s Gospel reading has been put together from two sections, one from the middle of chapter 6, and the other from the end of chapter 6. These sections are separated by two of the great stories of the Gospel, Jesus’s Feeding of the Five Thousand, and his walking on water. The compilers of the lectionary clearly intend us to understand the two separate sections as a continuous narrative, interrupted, so to speak, by the miracle stories.  Combining the sections in this way prompts us to listen more closely to what the narrative actually says, more than we may if we hear them merely as preamble and conclusion to the miracle stories.

     “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.” These words don’t actually say what the apostles had “done and taught,” so we must look elsewhere in the Gospel, to find out what they had been doing and teaching. This text encouraged me to read through Mark’s Gospel, right up to the beginning of today’s reading, so that I could list what Jesus and the apostles did and taught.

     Earlier in chapter 6, Jesus “called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing…except a staff…so they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed…many who were sick and cured them.” They were teaching repentance, and they were casting out demons and curing the sick. They reported this work to Jesus. But there were other teachings too, which aren’t mentioned in this chapter, so we need to go back to the beginning of the Gospel to recall them.

     In chapter 1, the Gospel says “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying … “the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.” The good news was, and is, news of the coming of the kingdom, and Jesus and his disciples are signs of the kingdom, and were, are, in fact, the means by which the kingdom was, is, coming into the world. Other signs of the kingdom, the casting out of unclean spirits and the curing of the sick followed later. But not too much later. In fact, they followed almost immediately the calling of the Twelve. Jesus cast out an unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum, and cured many sick at Simon’s house, beginning with Simon’s mother-in-law. The healings and the casting out of spirits are all signs of the new teaching that Jesus brought, the nearness of God and his kingdom.

     So the new teaching of Jesus expanded from the opening proclamation of the kingdom and repentance and a call to believe the good news. It expanded to include healing the sick and the demon-possessed. But there was more to come, as Jesus and his followers revealed more of what the kingdom and repentance meant. The revelation didn’t stop with mere proclamation. It included, as we have heard, healing and demon-removal. It soon came to include the power to forgive sins, and the acting-out of radical freedom. God’s kingdom was not to be limited by religion and social convention, as Jesus and his followers would make clear.

     In chapter 2, the crowd brought a paralyzed man to Jesus, for a cure. What they got at the outset was something else. Instead of curing him, Jesus said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” This did not give the crowd what they wanted, and caused murmurings of “blasphemy.” So, to prove that he, and his apostles, could forgive sins, Jesus cured the paralytic. Notice what has happened here. Jesus subordinated a physical cure to a spiritual one. He extended forgiveness first. This reminds us of what Jesus’s primary mission was in Mark’s Gospel: proclaiming the good news of God. The cures and demon-removals, while valuable and important and necessary, were incomplete without understanding that they were signs of the kingdom and steps towards its fulfilment. They were not ends in themselves, although the people who sought them likely thought so.

     The kingdom didn’t stop even there, with the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins. There was still more. Jesus called Levi the tax-collector to join him, and even went to dinner at Levi’s house. In those days tax-collectors in the Roman Empire weren’t government employees, but rather contractors who agreed to collect a certain amount for the Empire, and whatever they were able to extract from people above that amount, belonged to them. It is easy to realize how abusive that system could be, and it was, so Jesus was compromising his reputation by taking Levi into his circle and accepting hospitality from him. The Gospel says that “tax collectors and sinners” were at dinner with Levi and Jesus, without telling us what the "sinners" were doing. Just being there was sin enough, probably. The point here is that Jesus was not restrained by religious taboos and social respectability. The scribes and Pharisees disapproved of this gathering, but Jesus was not held back by their disapproval, and he taught his disciples to ignore it. God’s kingdom is not about enforcing religious restrictions and social conventions, in the time of the story, and in our time as well. This expanded the disciples’ understanding of what the forgiveness of sins really meant. It had meaning beyond the physical and spiritual cure of one sick man. It had implications for the whole society, and its religion.

     Jesus was equally free in his attitude to the fasting regulations, and about work on the Sabbath. He turned the conventional expectations upside down, and ignored them when there was a strong spiritual reason to do so. Jesus compared his teaching of the kingdom to a wedding feast, in which fasting would be out of place. “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them,” he said. The disciples plucked corn on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, and so on. It is clear from all these examples, that Jesus progressively expanded on the meaning of the good news of God, the good news of the kingdom. The good news had nothing to do with reinforcing religious and social conventions, and everything to do with leading all who heard, and hear, the good news, to a new experience of freedom in God.

     How do we respond to the good news of the kingdom? Are we like the scribes and Pharisees, looking only for violations of traditional rules and regulations? Are we like the crowds following Jesus, hoping for something spectacular, a miracle, a wonder, a sign? Or are we like the apostles, learning from Jesus, eager to tell him all that we have done and taught, all that we have made of the teaching and practice that we have learned from him? Are we like them in their eagerness to bring the kingdom into the world? Are we ready to lead all whom we encounter into a new experience, an experience of freedom in God?

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.