Jesus offers everything for our love – Heb 7:23-28; Mark 12:23-282

 Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St. Ann's parish.

So, I’m not trying to make excuses, but I think this is a really hard gospel passage to preach on. I was discussing this with a friend earlier this week and he asked me, “what’s it about?” I replied, “it’s Jesus telling us to love each other and love God.” “Well, that sounds like good advice,” he said. And I have to disagree. I don’t think it’s good advice. “Use lemon juice to erase yellow highlighter in a book,” or “dryer lint makes a great fire starter”: those are examples of good pieces of advice (you’re welcome by the way if you didn’t know that); simple instructions designed to solve a problem by adding a new piece of knowledge to your collection. “Love each other and God” isn’t like that. I think it would be a wonderful outcome; if all of us left this place more ready to actually love each other, the rest of humanity, and God more whole-heartedly (and, we should add, whole-bodiedly, whole-mindedly, whole-spiritedly), that would be probably the best of all possible outcome. But I don’t think simply being told to love more is going to get us there.

 

Christ leads us home together – Heb 4:14-16

 Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; Immaculate Conception and Chapel of Mary.

Journey and homecoming are two themes that fascinate us. Some of the oldest stories we know, like Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, involve journeys and going home. More recently, we have The Wizard of Oz, so such classics as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, or even Spiderman: Homecoming. Maybe journeys fascinate us so much because that’s how God is saving us.

 

God fills us to overflowing – Mark 10:17-27, Heb 4:12-13

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

You’ve all probably heard that familiar adage that a pessimist says a glass is half-empty and an optimist says that it’s half-full.  Well, as Christians, we’re not called to be pessimists or optimists. We’re called to be something much more exciting; we’re called to be people of hope. A person of hope doesn’t deal in these half measures: hope pays attention to the reality of the water and the reality of the space, and hope proclaims that the glass can be filled.  Christian hope in particular is the assurance that God can fill us up, that through the blood of Christ out poured, we can be filled to overflowing with holiness and love. God longs to fill us up. God is acting to do just that. That’s what Jesus means when he says that “All things are possible with God.”

 

Jesus brings us back to God’s creative love – Mark 10:2-12, Gen 2:18-24

 Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B; St Ann's and Chapel of Mary.

“Go back to the beginning… how did this all start?”  When something that was meant to be wonderful starts to taste bitter, that can be just the question to ask.  What was it that so exited me and led me to take this job, to begin this course of study, to play on this team, … to marry this person?  How can I bring that initial fervor to life again, in the more mature way that’s needed to deal with our more seasoned problems?