Keynotes for May 2007

May 6, 2007
Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts14:21-27
Revelation21:1-5a
John13:31-33a,34-35

In today's passage from Revelations John claims that he "saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away." Was it a vision of eternal life after death? Or was he expressing some insight about the impact that Jesus the god-man had upon the world he came to save? The latter interpretation assumes that the work of Jesus became an effective cause of mankind's development, for the remainder of the race's existence upon earth. Humans after Christ enjoy a greater opportunity for attaining perfection than did those before Christ. Abbreviated we might say, "Same Planet, Different Dispensation."

The dictionary defines "dispensation" as "a religious system or code of commands considered to have been divinely revealed or appointed." And that is exactly what Jesus ordained, for today we hear him tell us
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have
loved you, so you should also love one another.

A transfer of presence is taking place here. While his body, flesh and bone is about to disappear from their midst, his Real Presence becomes entrenched with ever greater force as his followers, having received the bread and wine, show love for one another. This, I think, is what John means by "the old order has passed away." Those who were alive before Jesus arrived on this earth would tell you, the love between humans then was nothing like the one that Jesus introduced. In the old order we hear everywhere the escapist longing:

One thing have I asked of you, Yahweh,
this I seek: to dwell in your house all the days of my life,
To behold your beauty and to contemplate on your Temple.
(Psalm27)

The seeker yearns for the one-on-one relationship with God, but pays little attention to the interactivity among humans that generates God's most fundamental element, ie, love. John's dream announces a shift to the alternative:

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"Behold God's dwelling is with the human race.
He will dwell with them and they will be his people. . .
When Jesus sent his Spirit to inflame the apostles, that is what clinched that new establishment.

We read of the conversions in those days spreading throughout Lystra, Iconium, Pidisia, Pamphylia, Perga and Attalia, and today we see Africa, Asia, Austrailia, Europe, North America and South America exposed to the gospel. Same planet, different dispensation. But the new dispensation is the one that is ongoing; it has not yet achieved full fruition, for you and I and all the living-still-to-come must bring about this transformation.The thought to consider is this: once we have attained for one another, and for all who touch our lives, that fullness of love he exhorted us to have, then it shall be perfectly clear what the One sitting on the throne meant when He said: "Behold, I make all things new." With every act of love for neighbor, the difference in dispensation becomes slightly more apparent.

May 13, 2007
Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts15:1-2,22-29
Revelation21:10-14,22-23
John14:23-29

Fragile is a burgeoning faith in its early stages. There are some who do not even believe they are invited. Others examine the prospect but lack the confidence to stay the course. Still others attempt to envision the goal but decide it is not worth the journey. For every variety of faith-deficient people God had prepared certain assurances. Today you and I have an opportunity to identify ourselves somewhere across the spectrum. This is the day God's assurances come home to us.

Peace of mind among the converts at Antioch has been disturbed by talk of the circumcision requirement. Some of the converts were Jews, for whom acceptance of the ritual was routine, but many others were Gentiles, for whom imposition of the rite made them question whether they could find the teachings of this Jesus acceptable. Hence the intense debates at Jerusalem, and the sending of a delegation to Antioch (Paul, Barnabas, Judas and Silas) with letters assuring the converts: "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond [certain] necessities." To the relief of these new followers, it was decided that circumcision would not be a pre-requisite. Delicate is a sprouting faith as it starts to take root.

Peace of mind and heart was Jesus' parting gift to his apostles. Promising them the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will teach them all things needful, Jesus says:

Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives
do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

How many times during their sojourn with Jesus did the apostles think they were being lead into something they felt inadequate to handle? How often did they witness other followers and fellow travelers drop out, or just fall by the wayside?

During those three years in his company surely there were mornings they woke up asking themselves, "Why me, Lord?" And now that he is about to send them to establish his church across the face of the earth, he also announces he is leaving them. And leaving it ALL to them. You and I must look at each other and recall tasks we lacked the confidence to tackle, yet tasks that by comparison to this one seem minor and insignificant. Perhaps Jesus is directing at you and me the very same heads-up: "I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe."At this point in my life I wonder if I am sufficiently reinforced for final perseverance? Will I stay loyal no matter what comes my way?

Peace of mind fills those who enter the new Jerusalem gleaming with the splendor of God. Engulfed in a vast throng of worshippers they feel nonetheless that they are alone privately with the Lamb, from whose throne all light emanates. In Revelations John depicts this culmination for us, in hopes of encouraging us to strive earnestly for admission to the grand reunion. Regardless of what we might imagine eternal life to be like, what makes the journey worthwhile is not so much the end-vision as it is this promise of Jesus:

Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love
him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.

The prize par excellence is our Lord's companionship. Here is assurance beyond all other, the one that steels us to our challenges. But access to that assurance has to be through human love, with all the agonies and ecstacies that it incites and teaches. A vulgarity about lovers says they are "joined at the hip." No less startling but in terms more elegant is the devotional verse that avows:

He is the vine, Oh blessed thought,
Grafted to His wounded side.
His strong love ever holds me fast
In Him I do abide.

Whether tender as a sprout or burly as an aged oak, our personal faith must continue to grow and develop and be tested. And our final state of perfection is assurred only through our constant attachment to Him. Once we pass from the grave into the embrace of that wondrous, ethereal, most rare sense of peace, only then will our faith have done its job.

May 20, 2007
Ascension of the Lord

Acts1:1-11
Ephesians1:17-23
Luke24:46-53

Who has the right to climb Yahweh's mountain?
Or stand in this holy place?
Those who are pure in act and in thought,
who do not worship idols
or make false promises.

The bodily ascension of Jesus into heaven was a fitting conclusion to his life on earth. As a triumphal return of the Son of God to the throne of his Father, it presented physical evidence to the eleven eyewitness apostles. It was also fitting because it announces the promise of a similar rapprochement for all the faithful in the ages to come. The concern of the writer of Psalm 24 seems to be: "How shall we mortals be made worthy of admission to the throne of our Maker?" The same question keeps haunting spiritual advisers today. Even though our human nature already has both the capability and the tendency to aspire and reach upward, we know that something more is required to make us fit for entering his eternal presence. The answer, of course, is that amazing grace which flowed from our Savior's sacrifice. A grace abounding through the hands of disciples, preachers, missionaries and ministers, a grace distributed by the sacraments, these are the channels of mercy that He placed at their disposal and ours. Like a clarion call to all glorified bodies rising from the dead (which no mortal eye has ever beheld), Jesus' ascension visibly heralded the onset of a wondrous interaction. His "mounting to his throne" became both spectacular preview and denoument to the invisible transformation of our lives by the drama of the Sacraments. In fulfillment of that once and only event of his return to heaven, God touches, heals and lifts our souls to a state of righteousness over and over through ordinary, outward signs in our daily lives.

Inconspicuous allusions to nearly all of the sacraments are laced within the texts of today's readings. At the core of the sacramental system is the Eucharist, "the radiating center." as Father Leonard Foley calls it (Believing in Jesus, 4th ed). The visible signs of this sacrament are bread and wine, ordinary food, edible and potable substances that by the consecrating words of the priest are made into Jesus very flesh and blood. This is what the writer of Hebrews refers to when he says

. . . since through the blood of Jesus
we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary
by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil,
that is, his flesh.

As the words transubstantiate everyday food, so now that living Body and Blood begins to work its conversion upon us. Father Foley describes it thus:

As we visibly converge on the altar, like spokes of wheel,
we "make" the visible Jesus today, his Body. Only he can
give us the power to love and forgive each other, and we do
that together at Eucharist, we discover he is in our midst.

The words of the sinner confessing, and the words of the priest absolving are the outward (audible) signs of Reconciliation. "Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession" writes the author of Hebrews. He is concerned that the overall effects of Jesus' most awesome, one-time sacrifice be neither misunderstood nor wasted.

While that sacrifice itself can never be repeated, its effects-- "to take away the sins of many"--can and must be applied down through the ages. With an echo of Psalm 24 he urges you and me to approach the altars of our churches, (and eventually the throne of our Lord) "with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience." Luke likewise alludes to the distribution effect of this sacrament when he anticipates "that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name."

Twice in these readings the apostles are promised a Confirmation by the Holy Spirit. In Acts Jesus is quoted as telling them "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you," and Luke in the gospel reiterates Jesus' specific instruction to "stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." There is no mention of anointing with oil--the outward sign of Confirmation.

But we may assume that the church in her wisdom adopted this attention-riveting sign for two most solemn moments in a human life: the teenagers coming of age in her faith, and the deathbed's person's journey back to his Maker. This latter we call the Last Anointing, and even though "it is appointed that men and women die once" (Hebrews), yet this sacrament may be administered each time death is imminent.

Acts makes Baptism, the first sacrament, conspicuous where it declares
". . . for John baptized with water but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."

These are among Jesus last promises before he ascended. Did he take each of the apostles to the river sometime during the course of his public life and formally induct them into the life of God? We do not know exactly when, or even by what sign. Tradition over time has made the pouring of water over one's head (and even submersion) the official sign. In Hebrews a mention of the ritual reappears in: "our bodies washed in pure water."

Of Holy Orders and Matrimony there is no overt mention in the readings. But we can take Jesus raising of his hands and blessing the apostles at Bethany as the sign of his ordaining them, a precedent clearly followed today by bishops as they impose hands upon their ordinandi. Matrimony is an exchange of vows. The outward signs (again, audible only, not visible) are the utterances of the words of mutual promises.

Which raises the most staggering question of all: is a sacrament conferred if the recipient does not know it is being administered or does not want to receive it?

Throughout today's readings the promises of Jesus are his most visible, most prominent, most eternal moments of binding himself to us. But where is the interaction? the reciprocity? The mutuality?

So our concern should be not how to position ourselves so that we are caught up in the rapture, (a feat beyond the power of all the world's elevators, helicopters and rocket ships), but how to be in readiness for that entrance into his presence. We are not to become preoccupied with the boarding of a vessel, so to speak. Nor should we worry about being "left behind." No mass ascension of human kind was ever promised. Thus, our calling is not to gape at the heavens, as did the men of Galilee when Jesus disappeared into the skies. Instead, to be "clothed with power from on high" our ordinary, everyday behavior must be both humble and receptive. We are the church whom the Bridegroom has taken for his spouse. We have to become interactive, giving promise for promise and deed for deed. We must accept and treasure and be responsive to the sacred effects of the seven ordinary signs. By these steps we shall climb Yahweh's holy mountain. With His aid made visible in these commonplace substances, words and gestures we, too, shall stand in His holy place.

May 27, 2007
Pentecost Sunday

Acts2:1-11
Romans8:8-17
John14:15-16,23b-26

In literature, tragedy is defined as a powerful protagonist going up against even weightier counterforces but determined to overcome them by sheer dint of skill, wit and will. A wrong choice along a certain course of action inevitably dooms him to his destined disaster. The audience, spotting the flaw in his character, anticipates his fall with the feeling of "If only he had been. . . ." " If only he had done. . ." then everything might have turned out OK, or at least his destruction could have been averted. The "If only. . ." phrase distills tragic pathos into its essence.

When the Advocate descended upon Jesus' disciples, (as he foretold in today's gospel), on that day the world began to experience God's long promised and now permanent Victory over human tragedy. When the new feast of Pentecost supplanted the Jewish spring festival of Shavout, then, at that time in salvation history, the weightier counterforces of the Holy Spirit took hold of man, the fated hero. They began to cause us humans to realize we are not overwhelmed by impossible odds. Yes, our makeup has many flaws, but we are also given abilities to understand the Spirit's wondrous ways and to choose his abundant gifts. We can make a thousand wrong choices along the course of our lives, but we are no longer doomed to damnation. Yes, we can still choose to damn ourselves, but only by some very deliberate act of impenitence, revolt or depair. The Holy Spirit infiltrated that first band of Christians and enabled them and us to see that we, the earth's inhabitants, are but a simple band of creatures who, despite our colossal arrogance, truancy and belligerence, are a mere pittance against God's grace. Before creation He deemed us worth salvaging and restoring, our worst offenses not withstanding. Life, instead of being a gloomy search of mysterious purposes with little meaning, a relentless probe among treacherous pitfalls (one of which will inevitably snatch us into eternal perdition), life now trips a merry caper. Life is a saunter through a garden of delights, even a joyous dance with the one God who loves us so much that He could never abandon us to the misery of our self-imposed adversities.

Very likely St.Paul was exposed to Greek drama, perhaps to the plays of Sophocles, Euripedes or Aristophanes. But watch him travel from country to country preaching to the new churches that the Lord can and will heal the plethora of faults that riddle human nature. Paul is not dejected by the Fall of mankind in Adam's sin, for he has comprehended how the Sacrifice of Jesus turned even that into a happy fault. His message to the Romans is one filled with elation:

you are not in the flesh, on the contrary you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you!

Yes, if only you will be baptized and invite this one, triune God to dwell in your hearts. You were never created for punishment or disaster. It will take every ounce of your free will to deliberately and personally repudiate the Lord's goodness, for that alonewill doom yourself to hell. Christ has spared you from eternal death, lifted you up, and gifted you with righteousness. Paul exclaims.

for you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a Spirit of adoption, through whom we cry, "Abba, Father!"

Tidings of such jubilation, once they begin to sink in, can cause a person to feel made over in the extreme. Now we no longer need to dread those pockets of ignorance and fear in our own minds. Why? Because Jesus was there assuring the apostles and assuring us today:

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father
will send in my name,
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.
It is the Holy Spirit who sears the loving and guiding words of Jesus into our hearts.

It is the Holy Spirit who lifts us permanently beyond every hollow defeat, beyond desolation and hopelessness, beyond the haunting futility of the ancient "if only. . ." He is the One who summons us to the "If only . . . "of His soaring companionship. No longer do we have to grope among black holes like some Oedipus or King Lear or Willy Lohman, or combat a congenital hamartia predestined to damn us despite our best efforts. Our risen Christ has transformed the old sin of Adam into the Exultet of the Easter vigil. His Spirit dispels the darkness from the soul of mankind. Today we are invited to join the ranks of flame tipped heads, and to spread abroad the Spirit's gift of Understanding, even though our ongoing world still struggles with the same polyglot that broke out at that first gathering, every where that a linguistic congress verges on psychobabble.

But wait! Amid the thundrous anthems of joy there is one more "If only. . ." Let us pause for a moment and ponder the caution in Paul's departing words:

we are children of God. . .
and joint heirs with Christ,
if only we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.