Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:15-20

If you were a medical student you would probably have heard of this ethical problem. Imagine that you are in a supermarket and you notice that the person in front of you in the checkout line has an ugly black spot on his neck. You know enough to suspect this is a melanoma, but you aren't sure. The person is a total stranger. What should you do?

If you say, “I think you have a melanoma on your neck and you should get it checked out,” are you acting as a physician, and if you are, do you now have a doctor patient relationship with this person? Do you have to document that you made a potential diagnosis and recommendation? If you don't document, you could be in trouble. If you do, you are admitting that you practiced medicine. And if you are wrong about your diagnosis, you could end up being sued for causing mental anguish. On the other hand, if you say nothing there may be no legal consequences but what if the person goes on to die of something that might have been prevented? What would you do?

When you listen to the gospel today, Jesus is telling his apostles that there is no question in his mind as to what you do when you see that your brother is heading down the wrong path. You interfere. You first try to reason with him, one on one. If that works, wonderful. If not, then you get help. And if those you asked to help can't bring about a solution to the problem, you involve the whole community. And if that fails, Jesus is saying, kick him out, don't have anything more to do with him. Treat him like a tax collector or a gentile. Isn't that what he is saying?

But probably not. Because the whole thrust of Jesus' extended commandment is to do everything possible to bring the offender back into the community. He expects us to go out of our way to do this. And if nothing works, we are indeed to treat our brother as a tax collector or a gentile – just as Jesus did with Matthew, or Zaccheus; just as Jesus did with the Caananite woman or the Roman Centurion – never cutting the bond between us, always offering a loving response, even when it seems as though there isn't a chance for reconciliation.

When I was growing up in Montana we had a lot of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, who lived in my home town. My grandfather was a Mormon, although he stopped going to church or participating in the faith when he married my Catholic grandmother. The Mormons have beliefs which we Catholics would find strange, and probably vice-versa. But they do have a strong sense of being a community. If you are a Mormon woman you and the other women in the parish get together every now and then to stock the church's basement with food and clothing. The purpose is to always be ready to help someone who has fallen on hard times. And if you are a Mormon man, you might be part of a delegation whose job it is to find out why someone didn't show up for the Sunday services. If the person is in trouble you arrange help; if the person is losing faith, you try to help them find it again. There aren't many Mormons around here, but when I was practicing medicine I cared for a patient who was active in the local church. He was being hospitalized because of complications of treatment, and every couple of days the delegation from the church would show up to ask him what he needed, how he was doing, and then they would pray over him. The Mormons take community seriously.

We Catholics, not so much. We can be at the same weekend Mass every week and sit in the same spot in the church. We can exchange the sign of peace with the lady behind us, year after year. And then one day we notice she isn't there anymore, and we don't know her name, and we briefly wonder what happened, and that's about it.

Joan and I recently took three grandsons on a trip to Colorado. Our grandchildren like to have us take them on trips, but they know one of the conditions is that they go to church with us – every day, if we can find a daily mass. But we went to one church for the Sunday mass and observed a wonderful custom. At the beginning of the Mass after reading the announcements the lector asked us to turn to someone we didn't know and ask them to pray during the mass for something we wanted from the Lord. If you and I are praying for the same thing, Isn't Jesus there with us? Doesn't Jesus guarantee an answer to our prayers? That's what he promises in today's gospel. This church, which had six weekend services, three priests and four deacons, and a full house for at least the Mass we went to, also had a sign as you left the church: It said, “You are now entering mission territory”.

Catholicism is not just about my relationship with God, about the wonderful sacraments we have, about the great intellectual tradition that has been handed down for two thousand years. It's not just about the schools and universities and hospitals and charities it runs. Jesus reminds us today that each soul is worth extending ourselves to the fullest; it is a very important part of our faith to look after each other, not just in a traditional sense of extending charity, but also in terms of keeping each other in the community.

There's a story about a man who stopped going to church. His pastor went to visit. They were sitting around a dying fire. The pastor asked why he wasn't going to church. He answered that he could worship God by himself, he didn't need the church. The minister said nothing, but moved the dying coals closer together until a flame shot up.

I think one of the big problems we have in our church is that we don't make a personal effort to bring our fellow Catholics back to the sacraments. If we did, think of what our parish would be like.

Twenty second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Mathew 16:21-27

When I was much younger one of my doctor friends left his wife to take up with a younger woman. He told me that he felt bad about it, but as he explained to his wife, God wanted him to be happy, and he was much happier with his new girl friend than he had been with his wife. I guess a real question we could ask ourselves is, “Does God want us to be happy?” You might say, “not at the expense of the happiness of other people” or some other qualifier, but I think we all sort of believe that God is happy when we are happy.

But Today Jesus tells us that if we want to save our lives we have to lose them, if we want to follow him, we have to take up our cross; and even poor old Peter who said in effect, “God forbid that anything would happen to you that would make you unhappy,” was sharply rebuked and called Satan. Last week Jesus called him the rock upon which he would build his church. Today he calls him a stumbling block which is a better translation than the word “obstacle”.

I met a lady the other day who just had a major operation to deal with an abdominal cancer. She is not going to be cured; the disease is too far gone. With luck, she'll have a few months and they won't all be comfortable. And she said, understandably, “Why me?” She is in her early fifties, her children are off on their own, and she was looking forward to a few years of doing things she wanted to do, traveling a little, maybe going back to school. And she told me she prays, prays for a miracle, prays that this nightmare will just be a bad dream.

And none of us will escape, we will all have that day when the unthinkable happens, when we will face something devastating. And we will ask, “Why me? Doesn't God want me to be happy?”

Maybe today's gospel is God's answer to this question.

Some of you are aware of Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who is a prolific author of books about the spiritual life. I don't agree with everything he says, but he does make the interesting point that we human beings spend much of our lives defining ourselves. This not only involves who we think we are, but who we think we are not. As we get older that image becomes more fleshed out, and more firm; and when anything comes along that challenges the image we have of ourselves, we have to rebuild the image based on the new information, or we have to ignore the new information and cling to the image. Both take a lot of work, and that is what we mean by suffering. And one of the consquences of creating this image is that this is were we locate happiness as well. Happiness is when something seems to confirm what we believe about ourselves.

But if you are like me, and you are, you probably know by now that getting something you really want makes you happy for a very short time, and then you want something else. I have a basement full of power tools and a kitchen full of gadgets, most of which I once believed would add to my total amount of happiness.

Saint Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God” He also recognized in his search for God that God was not to be found in external things, in the pleasures of the world, in the occupations of the mind – while he was searching without, he says, God was within,

Richard Rohr and probably Saint Augustine would agree that if we really want to find happiness, if we really want to avoid suffering, we have to recognize that the self which we try to make happy and try to keep from suffering is not real, it is only something we built up, and one of the tasks of growing is to recognize this and accept it. And when we do this, we begin to recognize that God, the God in whom I can finally rest, has been there all along.

Jesus tells his disciples that he has to go – he has to leave Galilee, where he has been treated like a rock star, where he has huge crowds following him and hanging on his every word. He has to go to Jerusalem. And he has to suffer. Because even Jesus, Son of God though he is, is human, and like all human beings, in order to meet God he has to undergo the pain that comes when he confronts the fact that the image he has of himself is not the real him. I don't think that's heresy, because the gospels tell us that Jesus was tempted, and temptation means nothing if you aren't attracted by that which is tempting you. I think that is why the harsh words to Peter – because that might have been a real temptation, and Jesus sees it as such. Jesus goes on to tell his disiciples that he has to be killed. And perhaps for most of us that will the point where we finally let go of that image of ourselves we have so carefully built up through the years of our lives. Certainly there is a kind of pain in elderly people who still see themselves as they used to be, but no one else does.

But Jesus has one last prediction – that he will rise again. And when Jesus rises again, he shows his oneness with God, which for you and I and Jesus requires letting go of ourselves and letting God raise us up.

So Jesus tells us today that if we spend our energies looking for happiness and avoiding pain, it won 't really work; we have to lose our lives in order to save them. And if we want to follow Jesus into resurrection, we have to carry our crosses through suffering and death.

So God does want us to be happy, but he wants real happiness for us, which can only come about when we have Him. And our hearts may be restless until they rest in God, but we know that God's heart is restless until he gets what he wants, which is to become one with you and I. Nothing else matters, because as Jesus tells us, what can anyone give in exchange for his soul?

Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 16:1-20

When I was growing up in Montana, like every other sixteen year old I wanted a drivers license, I wanted to pilot my own car. I drove around with my mother or father, and thought I was getting pretty competent. One day I wheedled my mother into giving me the car keys to drive by myself. I did not yet have my license. So I jumped in the family car and drove off, picked up my best friend, and went downtown to cruise the drag, as we put it. I didn't have a problem until I started home and decided to show off my parking skills. I did a fair amount of damage to our car and a little less to the one I was trying to park behind. I came home ashamed and afraid, vowing never to drive again. My mother took me out into the car and made me drive around for a while with her. Although they grounded me for a while, they did not, to their credit, stop trying to teach me to drive.

We often look at this Gospel story and see Peter's declaration of faith. And logically, we then turn to each other and say, “Who do you say that Jesus is?” And most of us agree with Peter and feel pretty good about ourselves because we recognize that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And having learned our lesson, we go back to doing what we always do.

But there are two declarations of faith here. Peter declares his faith, yes. And that's important. But then Jesus gives Peter a nickname, which could translate “Rocky” as well as Peter. And he says, “You are Rocky, and upon this rock I will build my Church” Usually when we think of people named Rocky we think of prize fighters or truck drivers or other down to earth, loyal, get things done kind of people. Maybe Jesus was joking around calling Peter “Rocky”. He had his good qualities, of course; but he had some bad ones as well. He seemed to have trouble grasping what Jesus was all about – remember when Jesus in exasperation said, “Get behind me, Satan!”. When he was shown Jesus' glory on the mountain, he figured he could capture that glory in a tent. When he was given the opportunity to walk on water, his faith wavered. And of course, he denied Jesus during his passion. And even after the Resurrection, having seen Jesus, having witnessed this pivotal moment in history, having been given the power to forgive sins, after a few days went by, he decided to go back to his old trade and told his fellow disciples, “I am going fishing”. Peter was like you and I, he blew hot one day and blew cold the next. Sometimes he really burned with love of God and other times he was looking out for number one.

And that is where Jesus' act of faith comes in. He brings the good news to us; he shows us how to bring about the Kingdom of God for which he planted the seeds. He gives us all the grace we need and sends the Holy Spirit into us. “You are Donald,” he says, “and upon this Rock I will build my church.” You are Julia, you are Joe, you are Jerry, you are Jane – and upon this Rock I will build my church. That is a real act of faith, that Jesus puts the building of his Church, the formation of his kingdom, on me, on you, on everyone of us.

It's interesting to follow Peter after the Resurrection. We can find his story in the Acts of the Apostles, in some of Paul's letters, and in his own epistles. He still hasn't gotten it. God goes to great lengths to show Peter that to build a Church you can't do it all by yourself – Peter and the disciples delegate some of their duties to deacons. God shows Peter that his invitation is open to everyone – the dream about the blanket with all kinds of living creatures on it, and Peter hears “Take and eat this”. And Peter, being invited to eat pork and bacon and lobster by God himself, replies, “Never, Lord! I will never eat anything unclean!” And Peter, persuaded by Paul, decides that you don't have to be circumcised to be a Christian. And even towards the end of his life, Peter is still feeling around, still dealing with conflict – I love the statement in the second epistle of Peter, when he says “our brother Paul … writes this way in all his letters … which contain things which are hard to understand … “ I can't disagree with Peter.

So it's obvious from Scripture that Peter fails over and over again. But I think the real lesson is that Peter keeps trying. He grows in humility. He starts out thinking he's got it, and blows hot and blows cold. He learns to listen to others. He recognizes that there are others who seem to know more than he does, who may be more successful in evangelization that he was, and he simply rejoices that God uses them as well. Peter spends his whole life making mistakes, learning from them, and getting up and going on. And because he keeps falling and getting up, he does do what God wanted him to – he does build the Church, a little here, a little there.

My mother and father had faith in me after I damaged the family car. They insisted I continue to learn to drive; they understood that progress involves making mistakes and leaning from them. They recognized that my heart was in the right place, and that I had learned something in that first auto accident I had.

And Jesus is like that. He knows we are human, he knows we are sinners, he knows we are going to fall, sometimes because we are selfish, sometimes because we are lazy, sometimes because we just don't understand. All he asks is that we look at ourselves and let him show us what we've done wrong and what we can do next time to do it right.

Peter never reached the point where he felt that he had all the answers, where he thought there was no more room for improvement. But he always remembered that Jesus had said, “You are Rocky, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Let us remember that he is still speaking to us with the same words, still making an act of faith that we will finish what he began.

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 15:21-28

There is a good book out there, the recently released book called, “What is the Bible?” by Rob Bell, the former pastor of Mars Hill Church. It's very easy to read, and although he says a few things we Catholics could not agree with, it is worth reading and kind of fun as well.

One of the things he keeps emphasizing is that the Bible was written by human beings, not by God. And human beings were writing in the context of their times, and to a specific audience, and they thought the way people thought in those days. Inspired by God, of course. Free from theological error, of course. But never intended to be a recipe for salvation, a guidebook to get you to heaven. I leave it to you to read it and see what you think.

But it got me thinking about this Sunday's gospel. Many interpreters use this story along with a few others to remind us that God wants everyone to be saved, he wants everyone to be admitted to the heavenly banquet. There are others who say that this story shows how human Jesus was, because here is a point where he learned that gentiles could have saving faith as well as Jews. And then there are always those who are shocked at Jesus' words about children and dogs, and go to great lengths to show that Jesus really was using a word that meant “Puppy” and he knew the woman would come back with a witty reply and all would be well.

But remember, Matthew is writing to Jewish converts to Christianity – people who at that time probably continued to honor many Jewish laws and customs, people who weren't quite at the stage where they saw Christianity as a new religion, people who still were distrustful of Gentiles. And that's why Matthew in his gospel constantly shows Jesus as the new Moses who gives a new law; the new Elijah who gives a new critique of society. And in the gospel passage just before this one, Jesus disciples had been castigated by the Pharisees for eating without washing their hands, and Jesus had pointed out that it wasn't what you put into your body that defiled you, it was what was in your heart. And that's when he meets the Caananite woman.

Now Caananites were people who lived among the Jews who were descended from the original inhabitants of that part of the world. They were kind of like Native Americans – tolerated but not integrated. The Samaritans were bitter enemies because they practiced a perverse form of Judaism – but the Caananites were mostly ignored. And that's what is so shocking about this episode. She cries out, over and over again. It just wasn't done. She had no right. If she were to sit by the road and beg, okay. If she were to sell the produce of her garden in the marketplace, fine. But to yell out and call attention to herself was shocking.

Now remember, it is Matthew writing to Jewish Christians who still keep Jewish laws, who still practice dietary and purity rules. And that meant ignoring or shunning those who weren't like them. And this woman has all the marks of impurity. She is a Caananite, she is a woman, and she is unclean by definition. And she dares to call out.

So at first Jesus acts just as Matthew's audience would – he ignores her. As she keeps up the noise, Jesus continues to act in that manner, telling her he was sent to the Jews, not to anyone else. So far, so good, that's exactly how a good Jew should behave. Of course the next step, if she persisted, would be to call the authorities, or resort to violence to get this woman away from the good people.

And that's when things change. Because after the little dialogue about children and dogs, Jesus proclaims her great faith, and grants the miracle she requested.

So why did Matthew put this story in his gospel?

I think a clue may be in the words Jesus speaks: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

I think we Christians see break between the “Old Testament” and the New. God tried really hard with the Jews, but after failing over and over again, he gave up on them and turned to the gentiles. That's us. But that makes God a failure. The reality is that if you really read the Bible, you see a pattern. God begins with Abraham, and over the course of generations, the descendants of Abraham learn more and more about this God that is totally unlike any God humans have conceived of. He is a God that wants to be in relationship with his people. He wants to form them and bring them along and make them into something special – a people who are not only in a loving relationship with Him, but who are there to show the rest of mankind that there is another way to live, that there is a way to break the cycle of war and poverty and all the terrible things human beings do to each other. God formed his people to be the leaven in the world. He didn't form them to take them to himself and leave the rest of the world to fend for itself.

And Jesus was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. The Israelites referred to themselves as lost sheep because ten tribes had been lost in the various raids and subjugations that had happened, and the remaining Israelites had lost the land that God had given to them. But these were the people that God had been forming, and God continues to form them in the person of Jesus – the last lesson he teaches them. The first two generations of Christians were mostly Jews, and these are the people to whom Matthew is writing. And they haven't forgotten all their Jewish ideas – that they should stand apart from the world, that they should work on their own personal and communal holiness; and with that stance they start to feel like they are special. And Matthew tells about Jesus, who shows in this encounter that great faith can be found even among pagans, and God loves them as well; and that maybe Matthew's Christians need to imitate their Savior.

And we are still at work showing the world that there is another way to live, a way God has been teaching his people for generations. And we are the remnant, we are the ones who are supposed to be a beacon to the gentiles. We are part of God's ongoing plan. It's a great responsibility, and a great privilege. And so we too need to listen to the Caananite woman who calls out to us.

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 14:22-43

I'm sure most of you remember a few years ago when there were bracelets and charms and bumper stickers that said “WWJD” – what would Jesus do? I never thought this was a great idea for me. I have never been able to tell what Jesus would do in a particular situation, even after studying the gospels. I do know that he would do the right thing and if it was a choice between a good thing and a better thing, he could tell which was better. I often can't. But I would have a bumper sticker that said WWPD – what would Peter do. I identify with Peter. I've stuck my foot in my mouth, I've made promises I didn't keep, I've sometimes not been there for people I care about – and there are times when I thought I knew what Jesus would do and after I did it, I discovered it wasn't at all the right thing to have done.

One author in referring to the miracle we've heard about today, complained that of all the miracles recorded in the Gospels, this was the one miracle that seemed to have no point. Jesus has been curing the sick, driving out demons, and even feeding a hungry crowd. These miracles had a point; they showed that Jesus had the power of God; they caused a bad thing to become good, an emptiness to be filled up, a broken human life to be made whole. If you, like these disciples, had been following Jesus around you would be pretty convinced that he could work miracles. So when he was walking on water, was he just showing off? Did the disciples need another reminder that he was special? In fact, in this particular miracle, their first reaction was to cower in fear – they thought he was a ghost. Was that Jesus' intention? The bottom line is that I don't think anyone knows exactly why Jesus did this.

So we turn again to Peter. We know what Peter would do, because he did it. He figured that if Jesus could walk on water, then it followed that he should be able to do so. And he called out to the Lord, expecting a miracle. The words in the reading say that Peter said, “If it is you, Lord...” but most authorities agree that it should have been translated, “Since it is you, Lord...” Peter wasn't testing Jesus; he was convinced, and he believed that Jesus could work miracles.

I wonder what the other apostles felt. There they were, frantically trying to keep the boat from sinking, bailing water out with their bare hands, perhaps. And Peter decides to leave them to be with Jesus. And it makes you wonder, perhaps, whether that is a danger for the most devout of us – we feel more comfortable when we are alone with the Lord, when maybe we should be back in the boat helping bail. It's a problem in many parishes. We have people who are indifferent to the parish community, sometimes because they are just plain indifferent, and other times because they feel as though they can advance faster in their spiritual lives if they leave the concerns of the community behind.

In any event, at Jesus's invitation, Peter does step out of the boat; he does find himself walking on water. And he notices that the waves are tossing and the wind is blowing and he begins to sink like a stone. I think Peter is showing us ourselves. There are times when everything is going well, when I feel as though I'm walking with God by my side, when I have a sense that all is right with the world. And there are other times when I feel abandoned by God, and I look around in despair at our politicians, our enemies building bombs and planning our destruction; climate change --- you name it, it isn't hard to notice the tossing waves and the blowing wind.

And maybe it's even a reflection of the average day in the life of a Christian. We get up in the morning and look forward to accomplishing a lot with the time God has given us this particular day. And then we go to bed at night, our check-list unfinished, new tasks waiting for us in the morning, and our energy depleted. And maybe it's a mirror of our life; I get to talk to a lot of people who are at the end of their time on earth. There are many who say with sincerity, “I've had a wonderful life”. But when you get to know them, it seems as though their assessment of their life is more related to whether they are optimists or pessimists. Nobody gets through life without a few big regrets, a few moments they wish they could do over.

Peter undoubtedly was having one of those moments. Why didn't he stay in the boat? What if the Lord couldn't save him? What if Jesus was upset with him and intended to teach him a lesson? But he cries out, “Lord, save me!” And sometimes that's all we can do – when we look at the world, when we look at our day which didn't turn out the way we had hoped; when we look at our life and notice those moments when we really blew it. All we can do is cry out, “Lord, save me.”

There is a story about a marine who was supposed to be the bravest soldier there was. He was asked by his commanding officer if he would jump out of a plane to help out a group of soldiers who were pinned down by enemy fire. The marine thought a few minutes and said, I'll do it under two conditions – that the ground I land on will be soft, and that the plane will not fly higher than 100 feet when I jump. The commander said that he would be dropping in a jungle clearing, so the ground would be soft, but he couldn't ask a pilot to fly that low – and besides, if the marine were to jump from only a hundred feet, his parachute wouldn't open. The marine replied, “You didn't say I'd have a parachute!”

We are always like Peter. We keep forgetting we have a parachute, we have the promise of Jesus that he will be with us. We wait until we are at the end of our rope before calling out “Lord, save me.” But you and I can at least be like Peter, and know that when we call out, Jesus is there holding out his hand to grasp our own.

Feast of the Transfiguration

Matthew 14:13-21

Over the past few years as my wife and I get older, we been taking our grandchildren on trips in manageable groups of course, since we have nineteen of them. We do this partly to get to know them better, and I guess we hope that after we are gone they might remember us now and then and say a little prayer. And this summer is no exception. I'm very glad our seminarian is here to take over some of my routine duties so that I can do this. A few years ago Joan and I were in Colorado and we climbed the Bear Lake trail in Rocky Mountain national park. As we climbed higher and higher, we passed three small mountain lakes, each one different from the previous. At the very top of the trail, we looked out over another lake. It was situated in what seemed to be a giant bowl with jagged edges. The end of the trail was the only place you could stand and touch the lake; the rest of it was surrounded by sheer cliffs. And we sat there in wonder for about a half-hour, not wanting to leave this spot which seemed so close to God. We hope to bring some grandchildren back to the spot in a couple of weeks. But it probably won't be the same. Mountaintop experiences are few and far between.

One of the things that probably all human beings have in common is the idea that God is “up there”. The Confucian religion refers to God as “heaven”. In addition to a sacred river, the Hindus look upon the great mountains of the Himalayas as dwelling places for some of the many ways God shows himself to humans. And of course Japan is famous for Mount Fuji, sacred to Buddhism and the Shinto religion. The most sacred building in Islam is the Kaaba in Mecca which is said to be made up of stones taken from mountains sacred to Judaism and Christianity.

And Jews and Christians have mountain traditions as well. Moses got the commandments on a mountain; Elijah heard God's voice on a mountain. And Jesus himself gave his sermon about the beatitudes on a mountain. And as we recall the transfiguration, we are again looking at a mountain which pilgrims visit even today, Mount Tabor.

What do we make of this? Jesus and the three apostles who were closest to him climb the

mountain, and it was a pretty strenuous climb, probably taking several hours. And they were doing it in sandals. When they reach the top, they undergo an experience unlike anything they've ever had. If they ever had any doubts about Jesus' place in things, there he was, talking with the founder of their religion and it's greatest prophet. In the Gospel of Luke, it says they were talking about the suffering that was ahead of him, that would occur in Jerusalem.

And at that point, Peter wants to put up three tents, or three booths depending on which version you read. The point, of course, is that Peter wants to capture the moment and like human beings everywhere, he wants to build a monument, or maybe an enclosure to contain these three figures.

So there is another human tendency. We like to put the sacred in a place. That's why we have churches, and in the olden days, we used to have an altar rail separating the laity from the clergy. They still do that in some of the Eastern rites and Orthodox churches.

And at that point, we have a voice from the heavens – the very last time God the Father will speak to human beings directly. And the Father affirms that Jesus is doing exactly what the Father wants him to do, but perhaps more to our benefit, we are told to listen to him. From now on the Son will be the one who speaks to us with the voice of God.

So that is the mountain top experience. No wonder the disciples were lying flat on their faces and very much afraid. They knew that you couldn't see God and live, and yet, they must have realized based upon their shared experience, that Jesus was God.

Then Jesus touches them gently and and they look up and there he is, like he's been for the last three years, an ordinary looking man. And they go down the mountain, and are told to tell no one of their vision until Jesus is raised from the dead.

But look at what happened. The apostles went up the mountain to encounter God. Why else go up? And indeed they do encounter God, but realize that God has been with them all the time and continues to be with them. Peter tries to build a sacred space, and Jesus eventually tells them that the way to remember him is not by building churches or monuments but instead by doing what he did at the last supper – sharing a meal with each other in which he joins us by becoming our food and drink.

We human beings may need mountain top experiences to help us with our faith. There are a few moments in my life when I've had those experiences, and they sustain me. And whenever I think about the transfiguration – and I do at least once a week when I say the so called luminous mysteries of the rosary – I pray that God will strengthen my faith. Will I ever have the faith of those apostles? I long for another mind-blowing experience that tells me without question that I am on the right track, that I am beloved, that God is pleased with me.

But the apostles came down from the mountain. Life is lived in the valleys. And maybe that is the message of the transfiguration – that we don't have to go up the mountain, we don't have to build monuments, we don't have to look for God, because God will always find us and touch us and tell us not to be afraid.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 13:44-42

Does this gospel confuse you? Or do you just nod your head and agree with what Jesus is saying? It seems as though the people who were listening had no problem. Jesus said, “Do you understand?” and they answered, yes. And then Jesus makes the most confusing statement of all: “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings forth from his storeroom both the new and the old.”

So lets start with that scribe. When we hear about scribes in the gospels, we kind of rank them with Pharisees, not very good people. But actually the role of the scribe was very important. They had three duties: first, to learn the law. That meant memorization and studying what other authorities had said about it. This tradition continues among Jews, who have an enormous collection of literature commenting on every word of what we call the Old Testament. The second duty was to teach the law. Scribes were expected to have disciples, and were to diligently hand on what they knew. And the third was to “make a fence” around the law, which was to dictate how the law was to be obeyed. That's why many Jews use separate dishes for dairy products and meat. There is a statement in Leviticus that you are not to boil a kid in it's mother's milk.

So Jesus is in a sense affirming the duty of someone learned in the law to continue handing on what he or she has learned. It is an admonition to us, especially those of us who are parents and grandparents. Joan and I take trips with our grandchildren and they all know that they are going to have fun spending our money, but also that they will accompany us to daily mass and recite the rosary with us every day we are away. Even knowing that, though, they still seem to want to go with us.

We Christians believe the Bible is God's word. We also have a lot of commentary on the Bible, but it is different in that we read the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ. He after all is the Word, the Last Word God speaks to us. And because we read the bible through Jesus Christ, we see that there is a trajectory, beginning with the very beginning of time, and culminating in God breaking in to the world he created, so that we can become one with him.

So that's the old. That's the part that every Christian can access; and even though there are thousands of Christian denominations, most of us Christians agree on most of what we believe.

But then there is the new. And Jesus has just finished giving us several images of the kingdom of God. It's like seed scattered around; it's like a mustard seed, or yeast, it's like wheat and weeds growing together, and today, it's like a treasure in a field and a pearl of great price and a net that catches fish indiscriminately, which will be sorted out later into good and bad.

And maybe that's what the new is all about. The parables of the kingdom of heaven do hang together. The sewer who throws the seed everywhere, even onto places it won't grow; the tiny mustard seed that holds within itself the becoming of a large bush; the bit of yeast that causes a very large amount of bread to rise; and the guarantee that, even though weeds try to choke it off, the kingdom will triumph in the end. And today, perhaps, it comes closer to home.

Jesus speaks about a guy who finds a treasure in a field, and a merchant who finds a pearl of great price. And they both sell all they have to get them. They are single-minded in their pursuit; they both, in a way, have defined their lives by the treasure they have been seeking.

We all have a self-image. We carry around a mental picture of who we are. It's not very accurate. We can tell it isn't because when someone treats us in a way that contrasts with our self-image, we feel hurt, disrespected, or at least uneasy. I once suggested to a young scientist I worked with that he should focus on one or two projects rather than the many he was pursuing. I know I injured his self image because he didn't talk to me for about a week.

But if we really want to know who we are, we need to simply look at what we do with our time and money. Because that shows us what we really love. If I think I'm a great parent but I use my spare time to get away from the kids, maybe I should rethink my self image. If I think I am generous but never contribute time or money to a worthy cause, I may be wrong about myself. But Jesus is saying in these two parables that if you single-mindedly pursue the kingdom of heaven, you can't go wrong. And he said it more plainly elsewhere, when he said, “First seek the kingdom of heaven and all else will be given to you.” The man in the field and the pearl merchant were willing to give up everything for what they saw as worth even more than all they had. And on an earthly level, they both knew that once they possessed the treasure, they could have everything they had before and much more.

So Jesus is telling us that a scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven can bring out the old, but also the new – and the new is that we are passionate about the kingdom of heaven; that we align our love, defined by our time and treasure, with the pursuit of the kingdom. The old is what we know; the new is what we do about it. The kingdom of heaven is like a teenager who mows the lawn for his elderly neighbor. The kingdom of heaven is like a bunch of parishioners who work together to feed shut-ins and people who are bereaved. The kingdom of heaven is like the couple who uses their surplus wealth to promote catholic education. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who spends his spare time letting desperate women know that there are alternatives to abortion. You get the idea.

And those fish. They were all swimming around minding their own business; did they have any idea of whether they were good or bad? Probably in some fishy way they all thought that they were good fish. But the ones who made the cut were the ones who in the end met the fisherman's idea of what a fish was for. None of those fish knew what the fisherman wanted. You and I do.