God shows His love in our relationships – Eph 5:21-32

21st Sunday in OT, Year B; Holy Infant parish.

I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to ask for a show of hands on this one. How many of you had today’s second reading at your wedding? In my experience, about 25% of couples choose it (the majority go for “love is patient, love is kind” from 1 Corinthians for their 2^nd reading, but this one from Eph 5 definitely comes in second in popularity; when I had to plan a fake wedding for our liturgical celebration class in seminary, I picked “God is love” from 1 John… if you’re planning a wedding, maybe think about it). You’ve probably noticed that I don’t normally preach on the reading from Paul at Sunday Mass (I most often preach on the Gospel, sometimes on the Old Testament reading; I preach Paul a lot more at daily Mass), but this reading is one of the rare readings that I think you have to preach on if it’s proclaimed, because this language of submission is just kind of, if I’m being honest, uncomfortable. It discomforted me when I began praying with these readings a week ago to prepare myself to preach, and I think I owe it to you wrestle with that out loud for a while and not just leave it hanging. But before I get to that language, I want to look at this reading more broadly.

Announcements at Mass in the wake of the PA grand jury report

I didn't preach this weekend, but included the below at the start and end of the Mass I presided at.

God feeds us heaven for our hard walk on earth – 1 Kings 19:4-8

19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; Holy Infant parish.

I think we can tell from our first reading that Elijah was distressed, at his wits end. And I want to back up and give you some “previously on 1 Kings…” context for why he felt that way, but first I want to dwell a little with that distress. After he sits down, the first thing we heard about him was that “he prayed to die.” Taking the Hebrew a little more literally, the text says, “He asked to his own soul to die.” It’s not clear to me that he’s exactly praying yet at that point, though it could be “he asked for dying for his soul.” But I’m not sure he’s yet praying to God. He seems to be looking inward at that point, and it may not even be a fully verbalized thought, but a deep inward resignation, when he looks to his soul, his life, and wishes for only death. But, then he speaks. רב! Literally, he cries out, “Much!” We understand: “too much.” “Enough!” That verbalization seems to be enough though, to make him turn to God. “Now, God, take my life, because I (emphatic ‘I’) am no better than my fathers.” That last bit probably means, “No better than the prophets who came before, who couldn’t get Israel to return to covenant living either.” When he speaks these feelings of desperation he’s feeling, that turns him to prayer, that turns him to God, and it certainly doesn’t solve any of his problems, but somehow he gains enough peace to sleep, and that’s the first gift. And there will go on to be more gifts, because when God looks at Elijah’s soul he doesn’t will death, He sees a life worth living, he wills abundant life, just as he does for each of us. And somehow Elijah’s willingness to be brutally honest with God in prayer is the start of opening himself up to more gift.

God heals through our dependency – Mark 6:7-13, Eph 1:3-10

Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; Holy Infant

A week and a half ago, I was in the great city of La Porte, IN, celebrating the Fourth of July (and we’ll put aside for now the strange incongruity of someone who’s a British citizen and American permanent resident celebrating that particular holiday… they were burgers and fireworks, it was great). But, more seriously, going back and re-reading the Declaration of Independence, I was struck again by how it concludes with a commitment to Dependence: Reliance on Divine Providence (depending on God), a mutual pledge to one another of our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor – a confession that to be a nation, we need to depend on one another. And, providentially, while we celebrating the independence of one nation a week and a half ago, this Sunday the Gospel gives us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the dependence of the whole Church.

God reaches out in the mundane – Mark 6:1-6a, Ezek 2:2-5

Fourteenth week of OT, Year B; St. Adalbert's.

Jesus was amazed.  Jesus didn’t get amazed all that much, at least not in the scriptural texts we have, and when he did, it was generally being pleasantly amazed at someone’s faith. But here, he’s amazed and the emotions that go along with that might be saddened, mournful, lost, dismayed.  He’d come home, to the place he was most familiar with, the place he might expected comfort, even might look forward to an enthusiastic welcome; but he finds a lack of faith, a dishonor that amazes him, shocks him. And in that shock lie three gifts to us: comfort, good news, and an invitation or challenge.

Leaky Jesus (Mark 5:21-43)

Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B.

I didn't preach this weekend (enjoyed hearing Mark DeMott preach mission appeal instead), but this gospel is a really important one for me, so I wanted to share some thoughts here. Four years ago today, I was admitted to our infirmary because my lungs were slowly filling up with gastric fluid (and, yes, that's about as bad as it sounds). I'm fine now, but if I don't manage certain things carefully, or if I'm just unlucky, it could easily happen again. The next semester, I took a class on medicine, magic and miracles in the New Testament with Candida Moss who shared her interpretation of this week's Sunday gospel, Mark 5:21-43, which is usually termed "the woman with the flow of blood," but she titles "the man with the flow of power." Having only recently discovered how my body is pathologically leaky, it was very powerful to (re-)discover that Jesus' body is leaky too. He gives up control, so that healing can leak out of him. "Leaky Jesus" isn't normally one of the invocations in the litany of the Sacred Heart, but I figure he's OK with me calling him that.

God forms us through weakness for powerful speech – Luke 1 Extracts

Birth of St. John the Baptist; St. Casimir's.

[Vigil and Mass of Day present two different extracts from the story of Zechariah. At each Mass I preached through the whole story, narrating it afresh for the portions we hadn’t heard. So, what was preached differed more substantially than usual than what is reproduced below. In the introduction to the Mass, I explained that we’re celebrating the birth of JBap today, why this feast is always 6 months before Christmas (/3 months after the Annunciation), why it is celebrated even on a Sunday.]

What we just heard from Luke’s gospel was really just an extract from what Luke tells us about how the birth of John the Baptist came about, and to get a sense of what God might be saying to us through this, we really need the whole story.