Second Sunday in Easter B-Love and Mercy in the Mess.

“Moses said to YHWH, “But, never in my life have I been a man of eloquence,

either before or since you have spoken to your servant.” Ex 4:10

Second Sunday of Easter Year B: Love and Mercy in the Mess. 

As we approach the winter season 'down under', public health announcements on TV have asked that we wash our hands often to prevent us from getting winter colds and flu. Many catholic churches now have communion ministers use anti-bacterial liquid before distributing communion. Wouldn’t it be great if we could clean up the rest of our lives as easily? Why does life, relationships and sickness have to be so messy? I have watched many loved ones die in hospital with tubes and all sorts of medical devices and indignities brought on by a long illness. Maybe the messiness of our lives is not quite that bad right now, though it may have been at one time or another. Maybe our lives just have the usual daily stuff of: stress, rush, half-completed tasks, an overly-busy schedule, impatience and a short temper. We may have a difficult relationship with a adult child, a former friend or spouse. We wish we could break habits that we have struggled with for a long time or find the right medication for depression. How often have we wished that life could be as easy as using an anti-bacterial liquid that we could spray over our life and have the mess all cleaned up?
Our Jesus of suffering and the cross, gives us an image of the real non-anti-bacterial world. The real world of true love for Jesus was the mess of: blood, wounds, sweat, whip marks, crushed and pierced hands and feet. His story that we entered during Holy Week and was difficult to listen to because of the ugly mess portrayed by our human selfishness. On one level we are comforted by the reality that God has entered our human condition. Jesus was no stranger to pain, anxiety, failure and loneliness. He knew the betrayal of friends and the pain of shattered dreams. He bore visible and invisible wounds for us. Now that Jesus is resurrected, I for one do not want him to forget the pain and the messiness of our human condition. I don’t want an anti-bacterial, clean and sterilised cleaned-up Christ, as some paintings depict him after the resurrection. They make him look as if a divine, cosmetic surgeon has worked on him and gotten rid of the unsightly wounds of messy suffering. I do not want a Christ so far removed from this world’s experience, and the pain we cannot seen to do anything about. It is comforting to know that he is no stranger to the world's pain and that his wounds are a constant reminder and bond between him and us.
The wounds that Jesus showed to his disciples and especially Saint Thomas, remind us that he remembers what we go through and that he is with us when we have to carry our own crosses. St Thomas is invited by Jesus to touch his wounds. But in reality Jesus does the reverse. He reaches out to touch and heal our wounds and so give meaning to our pain. It is one thing to have been hurt and suffered pain - we all go through that. It is an incredible gift for us to have someone like Jesus who has lived and listened to our story to join us so as to assure us that no pain need be wasted, meaningless and without the possibility of giving new life to us. Pain, alienation and life’s failures can raise a lot of doubts in our minds; doubts about ourselves and about God. I am glad that St Thomas was there for us. He has gotten a bad reputation, but he voices what we sometimes are hesitant to say, “Where is Christ in all of my mess?” In today’s post-resurrection account (John 20:19-31)Jesus invites Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Today we invite the wounded Jesus to touch our wounds, the visible ones and those we keep covered up and keep hidden even from those who know us well.
Today the Acts (4:32-35) reading tells us, “with great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all.” We know where that “great power” came from because, at the beginning of Acts, the risen Jesus instructs his disciples to wait for the gift of the Spirit. “John baptised with water, but within a few days you will all be baptised with the Holy Spirit” (1:5). Then, as Jesus promised, on Pentecost, the Spirit came upon the assembled disciples (2:1ff). The Spirit gave those first Christians the power to witness. But the gift of the Spirit is not a gift like an extra hand or arm to help us out a bit. No, the Spirit came upon the disciples who had been wounded by their betrayals of Christ and then healed by him when he appeared to them after the resurrection. Certainly the memory of their failures remained, those wounds were still “visible” to them. What then gave them their ability to witness to the risen Christ Jesus? They had betrayed the Lord and his mission, but the risen Christ had shared with them his Spirit, and their scars and wounds were made new. Who would not want to proclaim the wonder of new creation healing, breathed upon us by the risen Christ? What love and mercy are in the mess!

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany year B- Br. Simeon

Andre-Rublev's Saviour

  Homily preached by Br. Simeon at Blaxland on Sunday 15^th February 2015: 

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY. YEAR B.

Gospel: Mark 1:40-45

A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

What comes to mind when you think of the word “clean”?

Clean house; clean up;

clean water; cleanliness is next to godliness; clean sweep; come clean; Mr. Clean; clean burning; clean oven; clean title; and so we can all think of many other examples of “clean”.

Well, today we’re talking about a different kind of clean. Today we’re talking about what it means to be clean inside and outside; clean not because we’ve rubbed and scrubbed but because God acting in Christ has chosen to make us so.

Our gospel lesson contains the short but powerful story of a leper coming to Jesus and making an unusual statement. The leper says to Jesus, “If you want to, you can make me clean.” Now what’s so unusual about this statement is that, for starters, it’s not really a request. The leper doesn’t “ask” Jesus to be “healed.” Instead, he announces what he believes — that, if Jesus chooses, Jesus can make him “clean.”

The cleansing of the leper is a climactic moment in Mark’s Gospel. By just touching the leper Jesus challenges one of the strictest proscriptions in Jewish society (today’s first reading provides the context for understanding the social and religious revulsion of lepers).

The leper is one of the heroic characters of Mark’s Gospel (along with such figures as the poor widow who gives her only penny to the temple and the blind Bartimaeus). The leper places his entire trust in Jesus. For him, there is no doubt: this Jesus is the Messiah of hope, the Lord of life. His request for healing is more than a cry for help -- it is a profession of faith: “You can make me clean.”

Jesus’ curing of the leper shocked those who witnessed it. Jesus did not drive the leper away, as would be the norm (the leper, according to the Mosaic Law, had no right to even address Jesus); instead, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. Jesus did not see an unclean leper but a human soul in desperate need.

Consider what Jesus does after healing the leper. He sends the cleansed leper to show himself to the priest “and offer for your cure what Moses prescribed.” This leper’s healing is a message for the Jewish establishment, represented by the priest: that the Messiah has come and is present among you.

We often reduce others to “lepers”—those we fear, those who don’t “fit” our image of sophistication and culture, those whose religion or race or class or culture threaten our own. We exile these lepers to the margins of society outside our gates; we reduce these lepers to simple stereotypes and demeaning labels; we reject these lepers as too “unclean” to be part of our lives and our world. The Christ who healed lepers comes to perform a much greater miracle – to heal us of our debilitating sense of self that fails to realise the sacred dignity of those we demean as “lepers.”

In today’s Gospel, the leper approaches Jesus with the words, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” The leper’s challenge is addressed to all of us, who seek to imitate Jesus. We possess the means and abilities to transform our lives and world — what is required are the desire, the will, the determination to do so: to heal the broken, to restore lepers to wholeness, to reconcile with those from whom we are estranged.

Jesus works his wonders not to solicit acclaim for himself but to awaken faith in God’s providence, to restore God’s vision of a world where humanity is united as brothers and sisters in the love of God. Jesus calls us who would be his disciples to let our own “miracles” of charity and mercy, of forgiveness and justice, be “proof” of our committed discipleship to the Gospel and our trust in the God who is the real worker of wonders in our midst.

Amen.

15th Sunday after Pentecost - Br Simeon

Andre-Rublev's Saviour

Homily preached at Winmalee by Br. Simeon Sunday 21^st September 2014:

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Gospel:  Matthew 20:1-16

The parable of the generous vineyard owner:  “Are you envious because I am generous?  Thus the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

May I speak in the Name of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Be honest. When you heard the reading of the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard just a few minutes ago, did your heart leap for joy? Were you thrilled when you heard that the workers who'd toiled and slaved all day long in the hot sun were going to get the same day's wages as those who'd worked only one hour? I think not!

The first part of the 20th chapter of Matthew records another story that Jesus told, this time about the wages paid to the workers in the vineyard. It clearly is about serving the Master, or working in the kingdom, but the twist here is that many of those who worked in the vineyard did not think that the wages were fairly paid.

The story follows logically the ideas of the last chapter concerning wealth and the kingdom of heaven, that is, following the Lord and the cost of that discipleship. The theme of the last being first and the first being last ended that chapter, and this one as well. God’s economy of grace is not the same as the natural order people expect.

The parable of the generous vineyard owner (which appears only in Matthew’s Gospel) is the first of several parables and exhortations challenging the Pharisees and scribes and those who criticised Jesus for preaching to tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus makes two points in this parable:

First, the parable speaks of the primacy of compassion and mercy in the kingdom of God.  The employer (God) responds to those who have worked all day that he has been just in paying them the agreed-upon wage; they have no grievance if he chooses to be generous to others.

God's goodness and mercy transcends the narrow and limited laws and logic of human justice; it is not the amount of service given but the attitude of love and generosity behind that service.

The parable also illustrates the universality of the new Church. The contracted workers, Israel, will be joined by the new “migrant workers,” the Gentiles, who will share equally in the joy of the kingdom of God.

Today’s Gospel strikes at our tendency to judge everything and everyone in terms of how it affects me.  How someone else benefits or is lifted up doesn’t matter — my hurt feelings trump their joy.  Christ calls us to embrace the vision of the generous vineyard owner: to rejoice in the good fortune of others and their being enabled to realise their dreams, instead of lamenting our own losses and slights.

We have our scales, time clocks and computer printouts to measure what is just and what is not; but God is generous, loving and forgiving with an extravagance that sometimes offends our sense of justice and fair play.

Christ calls us to look beyond labels like “tax collector” and “prostitute” and seek out and lift up the holiness and goodness that reside in every person who is, like each one of us, a child of God.  The parable of the generous vineyard owner invites us to embrace the vision of God that enables us to welcome everyone to the work of the harvest, to rejoice in God’s blessings to all, to help one another reap the bounty of God’s vineyard.

Amen.