No bodily impairment keeps us from Kingdom Joy, but sin does – Mark 9:38-48

 Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's.

There’s really no good transition from plucking eyes out to anything else, so I’m not even going to try. I’m just going to start talking about St. Lucy’s day, and that’ll get us back to eyes soon enough. I don’t know if any of you have ever been to a St. Lucy’s day celebration. It’s December 13^th, and a traditional day in many parts of Europe to take a little break from the Advent focus on waiting and celebrate. Lucy’s name is derived from the Latin word for light, so in parts of France it’s a day to let off fireworks. In parts of Scandinavia, it’s an occasion for parades in which young women wear headdresses containing lit candles. As the winter darkness draws in, these things can be wonderful reminders of how the light Christ is scatters all that’s dark. But, there’s an aspect of St. Lucy I haven’t discussed. She was an early martyr, under Decian, and legend has it that as part of the torture they subjected her to prior to her execution, her eyes were gouged out. Iconography of her often features her holding those eyes on a platter. There’s something somewhat macabre or spooky about that, but it’s a thoroughly Christian kind of spooky: As much as Roman Imperial Power tried to degrade her, she lives in Christ; as much as they tried to snuff out the light of her eyes, she inspires festivals of light among so many people; her risen life as a saint with Christ, welcomed by him into the kingdom, is full of light and joy, so full that she doesn’t need her eyes back in her sockets to know heavenly joy.

 

Jesus embraces us – Mark 9:30-37; James 3:16-4:3

 Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's / Chapel of Mary.

There’s a puzzle that British newspapers like to publish called ‘spot the ball.’  They’ll take a photo of a moment in a soccer match, use computer wizardry to render the ball invisible and invite readers to reconstruct where it must be.  It sometimes takes some thought, but it’s an eminently doable puzzle, because all the action really is revolving around the ball; everyone on the pitch treats it as the most important object in the world and focuses their attention on it.  It’s the same when someone really important, really valued, is walking somewhere.  They’re surrounded, in the center, all conversations and interactions are focused around the great one in their midst.

 

The love of Christ urges us on – Mark 8:27-35

 Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's.

Mr. Rogers used to say that whenever some disaster strikes and we feel scared or dejected or hopeless, the place to look is to look for the people who are helping, and its in them that our hope can be reawakened. Recent extreme weather events, close to home and further away, have provided yet another opportunity to do that. One story that really moved me came out of Tennessee when they were hit by flooding in late August. I read of Jeff Burkhead who went out in his boat to travel round deeply flooded streets to try to rescue people, and I read of Hope Dretska, a nurse who was perfectly safe herself, but flagged Jeff down and asked to come along in his boat to be able to provide care to anyone he rescued, and I read of people they were able to get to safety. Now I don’t know Jeff or Hope, I’ll probably never meet them, but I’m guessing they didn’t go out because they like danger. No, they went out because they had a love for their neighbor that was greater than their perfectly rational fear of danger.

 

Jesus heals our hearing and speaking – Mark 7:31-37.

 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Peter's, Provincetown.

I was talking to a friend of mine this week who also teaches college students, and she told me about an exercise she regularly does. She has them read a certain historical set of letters from the period she teaches, and the students just have to do a short write-up of what was remarkable, or different from their culture, in them. One of the topics in these letters is a lively back and forth between the different writers about whether or not it’s OK to go to gladiator games. In previous years, she told me, they would often comment on the fact that there were real gladiator games to go to. This year, though, a surprising number of students commented instead on the fact that the letter-writers could disagree deeply and sharply about something really important and weighty and still be civil to one another, and even remain friends.