Sunday, May 22, 2016

God brings us to share the glory of love – John 16:12-15, Prov 8:22-31, Rom 5:1-15 (Trinity)

Trinity Sunday, Year C -- Notre Dame (Basilica of the Sacred Heart)

Before I entered seminary, I was a math teacher, which makes me wonder if that’s why they asked me to preach here on Trinity Sunday.  But, no amount of mathematical trickery can magically make ‘sense’ of the 3-in-1, because the Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved, but someone to adore.  We’re not here to ‘make sense’ of the Trinity, because sense is fundamentally the wrong thing to try to make out of Love.  Love is the thing to make out of Love: wonder, love, awe, praise and adoration.  When we confess God as Trinity, we are confessing the simple, delightful, death-dying truth that God is Love, and to do so grateful to theologians who have loved this God, drawn close to this God in prayer, and given us words to help us approach the awesome mystery.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Jesus dwells with us ever more openly – John 14:23-29, Rev 21:10-14, 22-23

Easter, Year C, Week 6; FWSB TV Mass for the homebound and incarcerated.

I used to be really jealous of the people who had known Jesus during his earthly ministry; the zeroth generation of disciples, if you like.  The fact that they got to walk and talk with Jesus, to converse, to eat, to hunger… to interact with him in the same way as we interact when presented with any other regular living human.  But, as time has gone on, I’ve become more and more appreciative of living in this time, the time of the first, second, third… whatever number generation we’re on of being disciples, the time of the church.