God loves us into loveliness – Matt 22:34-40, 1 Thes 1:5c-10, Exod 22:20-26

30th Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross - St. Stanislaus.

My father was a wandering Aramean.  Well, he wasn’t; my father was from Cumbria and the only wandering I remember him doing was purposeful moderate hiking.  But, if we were celebrating Passover, it wouldn’t matter if your father was from LaPorte or La Paz; we would each make that claim, that “my father was a wandering Aramean,” and we’d make it because Deuteronomy tells us to.  As the Jewish people recall each year the saving wonders God worked for His people in freeing them from slavery in Egypt, they don’t let that event stay soberly and tamely in the past, they claim for themselves, “my father was a wandering Aramean.”  In much the same way, today in this Church we’re invited to hear the Word of God say to us, personally “you were aliens in Egypt.  Remember.”  That’s not a word that we can let sit in the past, not a word we can hear directed solely to that one generation millennia ago, wandering in the desert, freed from slavery, approaching the promised land, receiving the Law as they went; that’s a word for us.  That’s the Word of the Lord for us.  That’s a word that takes on life in this assembly.  That’s a word in which we encounter Christ.  We were aliens in Egypt.  We were slaves.  Remember.

God makes us gift – Matt 22:15-21, 1 Thes 1:3-5

29th Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross parish.

When I was a child, I collected coins.  Growing up in England in the pre-Euro zone days, it was pretty easy to travel around Europe collecting different coins from different countries and, when my dad would travel for business, he’d bring back coins from more far-flung places.  I was fascinated at first by the different sizes, shapes and colors, by the different ways value was shown, and finally by the different values projected by the coins in a deeper sense: how did each nation make a statement about who they were by how they decorated their coins?  Now, I soon came to realize that coin-designers did not tend to be especially imbued with the virtue of national humility, but none that I can remember made as bold a claim as that coin the Pharisees produced from their own purse at Jesus’ request.

Preaching Pause

After having not had a Sunday off preaching for quite a while, I now have two in a row.  Last weekend, we used the video for the Annual Bishop's Appeal in place of the homily and next weekend we have a visitor from Holy Cross's Vocations Office doing a "Vocations Appeal."  Just wanted to let people know I haven't disappeared, and regular service will resume in two weeks' time!