God brings us into His divine Life – Deut 4:32-40, Rom 8:14-17, Matt 28:16-20

Trinity Sunday, Year B (baptisms during Mass) -- Holy Cross parish

“The Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below.”  That’s what Moses has to say to his people.  They’ve been rescued by God from slavery in Egypt, they’ve encountered him and received the Law on the mountain, they’ve wandered the wilderness led by him, and now they stop on the plains before crossing the water into the Promised Land, and listen to Moses, who proclaims to them: “The Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below.”  And he proclaims it, because it matters.  I think we’re probably on board with God being God in heaven; it’s God on earth we might be disquieted by.  The idea that God, while totally incomparable to any finite, fallible, created thing, enters into our world, acts, concerns Himself intimately with each one of us, with our greatest triumphs, with the most mundane pieces of daily life, and with our sin, our hunger, our weakness and our need… it’s almost too much to bear.  God loved Israel so much he wanted to make them His own, and he loves us the same.  That changes everything, and that’s not always comfortable.  He offers us a mutual binding: he’ll commit to us, and He longs for us to commit to Him.  He’ll lead us, to the Promised Land; that’s an invitation for us: to follow.

God pulls us up by the flame of the Spirit – Acts 2:1-11

Pentecost; Holy Cross Parish.

Fire.  It fascinates us.  It captures our gaze and delights us.  How often do we gaze up in wonder at the stars; those gigantic balls of fire that seem so small to us?  Or did you, like me, feel extra joy these past few days when the sun finally came out?  Or have you ever spent time around a camp fire, or in front of a fire place, fascinated by the flickering?  Fire warms us, it lights up our world, it cooks our food, it fascinates us and attracts our gaze.

God’s love-accepted emboldens us –Mark 16:15-20, Acts 1:1-11

Ascension Sunday, Year B: Holy Cross parish.

I think that the Ascension is the hardest feast of the Church year to preach on.  Not Trinity Sunday, not Good Friday, not a funeral: the Ascension.  And I say that, because it’s the only feast on which the primary action of God, in Christ, that we celebrate seems to be his moving away from us.  We’re on earth, and he ascends: to heaven.  And that’s not the primary movement given to us to proclaim at any other time: the Christian story is consistently one of God reaching out to us, God coming to visit and redeem his people, of us turning away, but of God’s grace eventually conquering our stubbornness and repentance moving us to accept the glorious eternal embrace offered.  Except today: when the movement is of Christ ascending.

God tends to our fruitfulness – John 10:11-18

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B; St. Thomas More, Knebworth, UK.

Having been away from England for quite some time now, and only sporadically returning, there are things I forget and have to re-remember every time I come over.  One is quite how much it rains.  The other is more pleasant, and actually a consequence of the first: quite how green it is.  Especially after having just survived a long Indiana winter when it was first white and then various shades of grey and brown, it’s very refreshing to return to so much lush, living natural greenness.