Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:1-6

When I first became a deacon I went back to Montana for a summer vacation. While I was visiting my relatives who live around the little town of Belt, they had talked with the local pastor about having a Mass of thanksgiving where I would assist and also preach. I think my mother engineered the whole thing. So the day came and I walked out with the priest in an alb too small for me, and as the mass progressed it was obvious that he had not celebrated with a deacon ever, so we kept stumbling over each other. When I gave my sermon, my uncles sat there with their arms crossed, looking hostile and upset that they were missing a whole morning working on their farms, and my two aunts were making whispered comments to each other. When it was all over we went to a local restaurant where we sat around a large table and had breakfast. The conversation was mostly about the weather and crop prices – nothing about what we had just experienced. So I kind of identified with Jesus in today's gospel. It says “They took offense” at him. The Greek word is Skandalon, or stumbling block – He was a stumbling block to them. After all they had watched him grow up; that had seen him play in the streets. He probably ran errands for some of them. They remember a fairly ordinary kid who was learning the carpentry trade. And here he was, preaching with authority, quoting scripture, rumors of miracles in his wake. And he didn't seem to be able to work many miracles here, at least for anyone who was watching. They always thought old Levi was healthier than he looked, so when he got up and walked around, no surprise.

The villagers of Nazareth were scandalized by Jesus. They prejudged him based upon their familiarity with him. And because of this they turned their backs, they didn't listen; and if we were to read further, they eventually decided to throw him off of a cliff. After all, he was blaspheming. And because of their prejudging, they did not recognize that God was moving among them.

There are a lot of stumbling blocks that keep us from experiencing God in our midst. Perhaps the first and foremost is the doctrine that Jesus is at once God and Man, that God walked around not just in a human body, but as a real flesh and blood human being. Not a disguise, a reality. We don't have much trouble with God being the creator of the universe, or the source of the Moral law. What is a stumbling block is the idea that God is a human being and that means that every human being looks like God. Another stumbling block is the teaching that we are to love our enemies. Biblical love is not just an abstract good feeling towards someone. I can do that. Biblical love means we do something because of our love. How do you and I love our enemies? Jesus told us that if we were forced to walk a mile with him we should walk two. He told us that before we approach the altar, we are to seek reconciliation. And I could go on. Christianity is full of stumbling blocks,

I don't know how many times someone has said “I wish God would just tell me what to do!” Had Jesus appeared in Nazareth like he did at the transfiguration, clothed in light, so obviously God that his apostles fell on their faces, you can bet the Nazareans would. have hung on every word of His teaching. But God is not going to speak to us like that. Nevertheless, he does speak to us, all the time. Our problem is always that we don't hear him because of stumbling blocks.

He speaks to us through other people. Do you know that in every Mass he has something to say to you? Matthew Kelly suggests that we keep a mass journal, and at the end of Mass we write down one thing that struck a cord – just one thing – and make it the subject of our prayer and mediation that week. And you may believe a little bit that he speaks to you through a figure of authority – the pope, the bishop, the pastor – but he might also be speaking to you through one of your children or a neighbor who has nothing good to say about anybody. You have to listen.

He speaks to us in nature. Take a walk on a beautiful day and see how God speaks to you through beauty. Be sensitive to what is going on. Saint Francis learned this lesson; he would stop and listen to the birds, he would marvel at the sun and the moon; he even referred to death, natural death, as his sister. My heart is always gladdened when I see a beautiful flower, or a hummingbird. For some reason they always seem to lift my thoughts to God.

He speaks to us through scripture. You know this as well as I do. Do you do anything about it? We deacons like other clergy are obligated to read some bible every day. And even there, the very word of God that is passing from the page to our minds is sometimes skimmed over because our minds are busy with other things. If God speaks through the scriptures, it would seem logical that we would find time to sit for a few minutes, at least, with the scriptures every day. But I suspect most of us don't.

And finally, God speaks to us through the poor. Jesus himself said, “What you do for the least of my brothers you do for me.” If we truly want to meet Jesus we need to actually meet the poor – and I mean by that not just people who are deprived of material goods, but people who are deprived of the things we take for granted. Much of my own ministry involves people who are extremely old and have lost physical and or mental capacity. They are poor, but if we believe Jesus, this is where we can encounter him, where we can learn from him.

Stumbling blocks. The terrible thing is that if Jesus is among us, and he is, we are not recognizing it because of stumbling blocks. And it would be terrible if we got all the way through our lives and never recognized that he has been with us, speaking to us all the time.

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 5:21 - 43

Is this just another story about how Jesus can heal people? Or is there something more going on here. It's peculiar, in a way, because as you can see in your missalette, we could just tell the story of the little girl and leave out that thing in the middle about the woman with the bleeding problem. Are these really two stories or is it one. Mark means for his audience to consider the two events together. Unfortunately, we can't ask Mark what he was talking about, but there have been many people who saw something more profound here.

Father Ronald Rolheiser has perhaps one of the most unusual ideas. He says the two women in this situation have one thing in common: they cannot bear children, they cannot become pregnant. A woman who is having a constant hemorrhage would be unapproachable. Even today, Orthodox Jews are not supposed to engage in marital relations if there is any bleeding going on. And the little girl, whose age is specified as twelve, is one year short of the traditional age when she can become engaged. So neither can become pregnant, neither can give life. And Jesus restores both to this possibility. Maybe the lesson here is that if we want to be spiritually fertile we have to be touched by Jesus; only through a relationship with him can be bring others to him.

But I just mention that because I think it's interesting. Another way to look at the story is this. It is all about Jesus' ongoing ministry; it is about fear and faith. It is, in fact, all about God, since Jesus told us that if you see Him, you have seen the father.

Jarius, the first character, is an important man. Given his position in town, he would not naturally be a follower of Jesus; in fact as we see elsewhere, officials in the Jewish religion didn't have much use for Jesus. But Jarius' daughter is dying and he puts himself out; it says he “fell at his feet” – got down on his knees – and begged Jesus to save his daughter. He must have feared the reaction of his fellow pharisees and scribes and the proper members of his synagogue, but he overcame that fear and had faith. And Jesus responds with a ministry of presence – he goes off with him.

The second character is the woman. Mark in a few short words shows us how desperate she is. The hemorrhage makes her an outcast; she is unclean, and what she touches is unclean. If she sits on a chair, you can't use the chair; if she lies on a bed, same thing. It was kind of like being a leper. And she's done everything she can to get rid of her affliction, to the point of having nothing left. Not only is she unclean, she is broke and probably friendless. So when she reaches out to touch Jesus' garment, she is doing something unlawful; she is making him unclean. You could get stoned for that. But she overcomes her fear, and has faith, and Jesus responds with a ministry of promise. She feels that she has been healed, and Jesus tells her that it is her faith that healed her and accepts her back into society by calling her “daughter”. And if we were to read the Greek, it says something like “Go in peace and be cured permanently”. Jesus promises that she won't be troubled by this again.

The third character is the little girl. She doesn't have a speaking part. But if she's like twelve year old girls I've known, and I've known many, she probably spoke a great deal. And she didn't understand what was happening – what child would? But as she felt the life going out of her she must have felt fear, fear of the unknown – and it was up to her parents to have the faith. After they have been told she has died, and that they should not bother the teacher, Jesus tells them not to fear, but to have faith. And the parents continue with Jesus to the little girl's bedside; they overcome their fear, they have faith. And Jesus responds with a ministry of power. He takes the little girl by the hand – he's already unclean, after all, so he might as well touch a dead body – and Mark quotes Jesus here, using the actual Aramaic words that Jesus spoke “Talitha kum”. And she rises. Mark uses the same word he will use when he describes Jesus rising, something his readers would not have missed. And the only other time Jesus' actual words are quoted are when Mark describes Jesus passion and he calls out in aramaic, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani”.

Now it would be nice if Jesus were walking among us in the flesh, healing the terrible things that happen to people, the things that no one deserves. How I wish he would heal the people I see slipping away into Alzheimer's disease; how I used to pray that he would cure this patient with cancer, that one with leukemia. And if Jesus were walking among us, no child would be cut off from life, never having an opportunity to live his potential.

Mark's readers were just like you and I in essential respects. They were Christians living in a pagan society, and so are we. They got in trouble for opposing the spirit of the times, and so do we when we oppose abortion or physician assisted suicide, or try to defend traditional marriage, or nowadays, want some orderly way to deal with refugees from other countries while protecting what we value about our country. There are many ways you can get in trouble just like Mark's readers. All those possibilities make us fear, and fear can lead to inaction. But Jesus shows us that he is with us, he holds out the promise that in the end things will turn out right; and that he has the power to bring about the kingdom of God, where things will be on earth as they are in heaven.

And that should make us lose our fear and strengthen our faith and desire to be partners in making a new world where God;'s will is done.

Eleventh Sunday in Ordiinary Time, cycle B

Mark 4:26 --34

When I was growing up I had several uncles who were farmers. Most of the time they planted wheat. In the fall they would plant “winter wheat”, a hardy variety that actually came to maturity in the spring; and then they would plant “summer wheat” a fast-growing variety that could be harvested in the fall. Although they had chickens and pigs and an occasional cow, they really relied on the wheat crops to make most of their income. This was “dry land” farming. Some areas, close to rivers and streams, could be irrigated with diverted water, but my uncles pretty much depended on rain. And that meant that there were years where the summer crop did not come through – from drought, sometimes, and hail other times. The winter wheat was more reliable, but wasn't enough by itself. So I witnessed the kind of anxiety Jesus was talking about, especially as the season progressed. My uncles would walk the fields, looking at the growth, trying to see promising signs; and when the wheat was almost ready to harvest, they would look to the skies, knowing that rain could delay and hail could ruin the harvest. Being a dryland farmer was very exciting. But a day would come most years when they would get the crop in and clean up the equipment and rest for a while.

Jesus tells us about the kingdom of heaven with two parables. One is the parable of the anxious farmer, and the other, the parable of the mustard seed. And we are invited, I guess, to see ourselves in these little stories.

In the story of the anxious farmer, Is that you and I? Is Jesus telling us to sew good seed and count on God to bring it to fruition? The farmer, after all, knows not how the seed would sprout and grow. Perhaps that is a good lesson. But maybe we are the farmer who recognizes when the crop is ready to harvest, and we devote our energies to harvesting. I like that image a bit better. Because all around us, as Jesus told us in another parable, “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few”. In our modern times we are too diffident; we have been given the Church, the scriptures, teachers like Pope Francis – and all of us because of what we have been given can recognize when the Holy Spirit is moving among those around us. Jesus told his disciples that they would be fishers of men, that they should go into all the world teaching and baptizing. And all of us have been given the opportunity to be men and women of mission, people who should be anxiously looking for signs that the harvest is ready, and then gently and with love, helping our friends to become closer to the Lord, to deepen their relationship with the Lord. We are not expected to make the kingdom come; that's God's work, that's the soil, that's the part where we don't understand what is happening. But we are supposed to be there at the harvest, we are supposed to be the harvesters.

And the story of the mustard seed. Mark puts these two stories together, and there are similarities. Just as the farmer doesn't know how seeds grow, we don't know how a mustard seed gets to be a big plant with birds nests in it. But Jesus says we can learn something about the kingdom from contemplating a mustard seed. I think the key words here are “Once it is sewn”. The mustard seed is full of potential, it just needs the opportunity, the right circumstances. And maybe that's our lesson as well. The kingdom, after all, is where everyone is given the opportunity to become the best version of themselves that they can, as Matthew Kelly is always preaching. But we all know that becoming the best version of oneself requires three things: first, you have to have an idea of what that looks like. If in my case I thought the best version of myself should be a racing jockey, I'm probably not being realistic. We have to look at what we have been given by God and how we can grow those talents and virtues. Second, we need to have the desire to make ourselves over, with God's help, to be this best version. And third, we need the means. If I am in the business of sewing mustard seeds, and we all are, because we are a community, how are we encouraging each other to be the best versions of themselves? I think especially of our young people, the future of the church. I think of young parents, who have it in their power to become domestic churches, bringing up their children to be faithful Catholic Christians, but who more often than not have very little involvement in the Church – and we all know that children who grow up in these kinds of homes are probably not going to have anything to do with the Church when they become adults. I don't know why, but God, who promises that if the mustard seed is sewn, he will do the rest, has decided to let his people do the sewing, and we aren't doing it very well. So this is a good Sunday to ask those questions. Is the way I live my life showing my neighbors, my family, my friends, what it is like to be faithful? Am I praying for those I love that they will catch fire and find in themselves the desire to become the best version of themselves they can be? And what am I doing materially to help people realize their true potential? Am I working with some ministry that directs its energies along these lines? Am I supporting such efforts with part of my charitable giving? How am I sewing mustard seeds?

That's what Christianity is about, after all.

Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 3:20 – 35

What is the sin against the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven? In other words, is there a limit to God's mercy? That's what Jesus seems to be saying, after all.

I think the readings for this weekend help us to determine that. In Jesus' time, whether you were a Sadducee or a Pharisee or a tax collector, you had grown up hearing the stories of your people-- the story of the escape from Egypt; the feats of Moses and Joshua and King David; the sayings of the prophets. That was the equivalent of grade school; you learned what made you part of the nation of Israel. Those stories sustained you whether you were in exile, or whether you were living far from your native land, or whether you were living in Palestine under Roman rule. God was on your side, that's what the stories said. Someday God would return to His people. And there were many ways you would be able to tell – one of the first predictions was in the Book of Genesis – you just heard that reading. God curses the serpent, and promises that “her offspring...” will crush his head, and he will strike at his heel. In other words, and this isn't the only place we find the promise – the promised one will have power over demons. And the whole of Palestine has witnessed Jesus driving out demons. In In fact the demons themselves testified that Jesus was the promised one – if you read the part of Mark just before this part, you would see that. So what could be more clear?

But those who knew the law best, the teachers, the Pharisees, could not accept this; they called Jesus evil, they said, “He uses the power of the devil to cast out devils”. Jesus of course showed them what a ridiculous idea this was. But there was another group who did not believe. The Pharisees who knew the law best, did not believe; but Jesus' relatives, who knew Jesus best, did not believe either. They said, “He is mad!” I am excepting Mary of course. I suspect she came along to make sure that the mob made up of Jesus relatives did not cause him harm, because forcibly bringing him home with the intention of locking him up in what passed for the local psychiatric ward could very well end up badly, given the crowds that were following him avidly.

And that is the sin against the Holy Spirit. You see, the Holy Spirit offers to guide each of us. But to be guided requires humility; it requires at the very least, the acknowledgment that you need to be guided. And that's a very hard lesson for us to learn. After all, we spend much of our lives trying to increase our ability to control everything. Two year olds act up because they are trying to assert that they are persons distinct from their mothers. Teenagers rebel against their parents because they are forming their own value systems, which are almost always not quite the value systems of their parents. People who are starting out in their careers set goals for themselves and try to achieve these; and they are almost always things that give them more control over their lives. The Pharisees were not bad people; but if they admitted that Jesus drove out demons by the power of God, their whole world would be turned upside down. And if Jesus' relatives, probably also not bad people, were to admit that Jesus who had abruptly left his job in their home town and was wandering around Galilee causing trouble was sane, they would also have to admit that God had been in their midst all those years – and that would have turned their world upside down.

That's what the Holy Spirit does – He turns your world upside down. And if you have the humility to recognize that you need this to happen in your life, he will. Having your world turned upside down is basically what is meant by repentance. Jesus is saying that if you don't see the need to change yourself, if you don't see that you are a sinner and the only way you can do something about it is to allow the Holy Spirit to change you, then there is nothing anyone can do for you; that's the unforgivable sin.

Pope Francis in his recent exhortation, said that there are two heresies troubling modern Christians. One is gnosticism; that's when I think I can control my life and my eternal destiny by knowing the right stuff. It isn't just knowing of course; it's being certain that I am right and then living accordingly. The other heresy is pelagianism. Here I believe that if my behavior is good enough, my life will go well and my eternal destiny is assured. And the Pharisees and the relatives of Jesus are guilty of both of these.

Jesus tells us how we can be sure we are on the right track, how we can know that we are being lead by the Holy Spirit. We are his brothers and sisters and even closer – his mother – if we hear the word of God and keep it. God's word isn't hard to find. It is expressed in scripture, in Sacrament, in our brother and sister Christians (because he said where two or three are gathered together in his name, He would be there). If we look to God's word for direction in leading our lives, in dealing with other people, in drawing closer to God, and then if we deliberately follow those insights,those leadings, we will be putting ourselves under the direction of the Holy Spirit. If we are not doing those things, can there be any hope for us?

Corpus Christi, 2018

Mark 14:12 – 16, 22 – 26

When I was growing up, I had two grandmothers. One was Scotch-Irish, and the other was very German, the daughter of immigrants. They didn't like each other much. But what they had in common was that whenever I visited one of them, I got fed. My German grandmother was a very good baker, and she would put out cinnamon rolls and pie. My Scotch-Irish grandmother wasn't much of a cook, but she could make custard, so that is what she served me. Now either of them could have just opened a pack of cookies and I would probably have eaten that – I was, after all, a growing boy. But what they served me had to pass through their hands – they had to put a little of themselves into it.

I do a lot of cooking myself, and when I'm feeding someone, I like that feeling myself. I tell my wife that's why I don't take her out to supper more often; it seems so impersonal to just order from a menu. She of course thinks that I'm just cheap. But I think most people recognize that preparing food for someone they love with their own hands is kind of special. We put something of ourselves into what we serve.

Jesus spent his public years teaching and working miracles. He did on a couple of occasions prepare food for people – remember the miracles in which he fed large numbers of people with very small amounts of food? But other than blessing the food he didn't do much preparation; he rather multiplied the food.

And so, after he had taught all he could by word and example, he came to the Last Supper, which we've just heard about. And this time he fed his disciples with himself – he put himself into what he served, more so by far than my grandmothers did. And I think that's a good way to understand the Eucharist.

It is God reaching down to us, feeding us with what he has lovingly prepared, feeding us not a symbol, but the very being of His Son. It is an act of Love on his part, giving us, as he did on the cross, his entire self. It is an embrace of a lover, a kiss given by a parent to a child. It cannot be more intimate, and it tells us that God loves our bodies as much as he loves our souls.

Have you ever thought about what a visitor from outer space would think if he watched our Sunday Liturgy? He would of course conclude that most of us must come here to receive the little white wafer; in fact, some of us don't even begin to pay attention to what is going on until we come forward for communion. And after receiving the wafer, some of us leave before the mass is even finished; Our visitor would definitely conclude that receiving that bit of bread was the whole point of the Liturgy. And he would notice that only a small fraction of us partake of the cup. He would conclude that this isn't nearly as important as the wafer, even though Jesus has told his followers to eat his body, the consecrated host, and drink his blood – the consecrated wine. Our visitor could be forgiven because he probably doesn't know that we receive the whole of Christ in either form. But by our actions we perhaps downplay the covenant significance of the Eucharist. God feeds us individually with heavenly bread, and feeds us communally, brings us once again into the covenant, with the heavenly wine, which we share from the same cup.

Many years ago when I was first ordained I gave a sermon on the Eucharist in which I stated that it was a symbol. Someone wrote a letter to the bishop accusing me of heresy, even though I had mentioned in the same sermon that the bread and wine became the body and blood of Christ. But even though that is the case, it is a symbol, nonetheless. When we receive the Eucharist, God is symbolizing his fatherly love for us, but we are symbolizing our desire to become more like His Son. Since the Resurrected Christ is one, when we receive his body and blood we are declaring, in a sense, that we want to be part of each other. We are all eating and drinking the same thing.

The host that we consume is made of greatly refined wheat, but what Jesus used was probably something like a soft taco or pita bread. It was necessary to eat the other things on the table. You didn't have utensils, so you tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in the food, or picked up a piece of food with it. Jesus means for us to see that the Eucharist is like that – it's what we have to have to be open to all the blessings God wants for us. The wine, on the other hand, would have been the best the apostles could have gotten. It was, after all, Passover, and the wine was part of a celebration. Jesus means the Eucharist to point toward that celebration in heaven, the great banquet to which we are all invited.

But symbols, even sacred symbols, do not really mean much unless they move us into some sort of action. We can be daily communicants, but if we are not trying to live out the meaning of the Eucharist, we won't get the sacramental graces.

On this feast of Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, let us remember that God loves us so much that he puts his whole self into the food he prepares for us. Let us pray that we respond to this love with our whole selves.

Trinity Sunday 2018

Matthew 28:16 – 20

I have a cousin who says that she is spiritual but not religious. I don't know quite what that means. I do suspect that she, like many other people today, find that they cannot believe in the God they imagine religion proclaims, but nevertheless intuit that there is something more than the material world. The word “spiritual” means that I believe there is something beyond what I can touch, feel, hear, see, or smell. The word “religious” seems to imply that there is a set of doctrines and practices that characterize those who adhere to the religion.

And there are many people today who fall into this category: spiritual but not religious. But being this way is a dead end. If there is something beyond the material world, so what? Does it have anything to do with how I live? Does it pertain to life after death? Does it impact on how I treat other people? Does is give me a direction in which to shape my own life? People who are spiritual but not religious have to start from scratch. They are missing out on all the great thinkers of the past who have traveled the same road.

One of the things many “spiritual but not religious” people have problems with is the concept of God. And I don't blame them. All of us have a picture in our minds of God – usually an old man with a long white beard. He may be a loving father or a vindictive punishing sort. Some of us call him the “Old Testament” God and we imagine this is the God of the Jews. But that simply means that we don't know the Old Testament very well, because that's where Jesus got his ideas about God.

Or we may see Jesus as God, and that's fine. After all, that's kind of an essential part of Christianity. Very few people who claim to follow Christ would deny that He is God. After all, rising from the dead is a pretty convincing demonstration if the miracles don't do it for you. But if Jesus is God why does he keep referring to God as His Father? Are Jesus and the Father different?

And in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, especially those of Saint Paul, It's pretty obvious that the early Christians experienced the presence of a person who helped them pray, who gave them courage, who was there when they preached; and they identified this presence with God, because Jesus had made it clear that he would send another advocate, that he would give his disciples the Holy Spirit who would be his spirit, the spirit who would live in the heart of the Church. And in the Hebrew scriptures, God breathes his spirit into creation, into the prophets, into Moses and the leaders of the people during the Exodus. Somehow the Spirit is God.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity. We can't explain this concept. If we try to explain the Trinity, we soon come to the paradox, the Spaghetti Monster in the sky. Once we explain the Trinity, we lost sight of God and set up an idol.

The Trinity is to be contemplated, not explained. It is to be looked upon, not analyzed. Like a great work of art that is never exhausted, that's kind of like the Trinity.

If a Muslim says that God is One, we Christians agree. If a Hindu says that God is in some way many, we Christians agree. God is one and God is a community.

If our Pentecostal brothers and sisters tell us that God moves among His people working signs and wonders, we have no problem with that, that's after all the promise of the Holy Spirit. If our Orthodox friends point out the complete otherness of God, the holiness which is unapproachable, we agree. And if our brother Christians tell us that God became a human being, we have no problem; in fact, we tell them that God became bread and wine, so that we could actually feed on him, because he cares so much for us that he wants to give our bodies and our souls his own person. He wants us the be like him, in fact he wants us to become him.

Don't try to analyze the Trinity. Don't be taken in by that book, “The Shack” which describes the three persons. But don't be taken in by Thomas Aquinas, either, whose formulation of the Trinity can't help but put images in our minds that make us think of God as three beings. The thing to remember is that whatever you say about God is probably mostly wrong. We who are creatures limited by time and space cannot fathom the source of all that is, the one for whom there is no time or space. Our minds just aren't equipped. All we can do is stand in wonder.

And that's enough. It's enough for us to pick out little things from the Trinity to apply to our own lives. The Trinity runs on love, and so should we. To the extent that we love, we share in the most powerful force there is. The Trinity is endlessly fruitful; and so should we be. Love, after all, is just a word unless it bears fruit, unless it changes something for the better. The Trinity makes the Universe out of Love, we can at least help each other to draw closer to Love. The Trinity tells us that true power lies in emptying oneself out. The characteristic common to the three persons is complete self-giving. That is what Jesus showed us about God on the Cross. The Trinity tells us that when persons come together to accomplish something they desire, there is more power than when someone tries to do something alone. And each person of the Trinity desires exactly what the others desire; they are of one mind. And we see how powerful were the apostles when they began the church. The Acts of the Apostles talks about the early Christians being of one mind, sharing all things.

So my cousin, who is spiritual but not religious, probably does not believe in a personal God. But we don't either; we believe in a three-personal God, a God who to our poor human minds is a God of utter simplicity and at the same time a God of contradictions and complexity. In short, a God who cannot be described in words. And now and then when we are well rested and up to the task, we should stand in awe of the Trinity and ask our God to reveal a little bit more of himself to us, not to satisfy our curiosity, but to show us something to imitate – because we are made in the image and likeness of the Trinity.

Pentecost 2018

John 14: 15-16, 23b-26

I've known a lot of permanent deacons. Most of us have one thing in common. There was a time when we heard a little nagging voice telling us to look into being a deacon, and we ignored it – sometimes for a very long time, before finally giving in. I first thought about it when I took care of a man whose son was one of the first deacons ordained in our diocese. I was busy with my medical career and pushed the idea down into my subconscious. It kept popping up. Several years went by and my life became busier. I had six kids and was running a department at Baystate Medical Center. I also was seeing a full load of patients, and trying to expand our department's efforts into Greenfield and Ware. In this, perhaps the busiest part of my life so far, I finally gave in to the pressure. The Holy Spirit was pushing me in a direction I didn't want to go. If you want a nice quiet life, don't listen to the Holy Spirit!

So it's that one day of every year that we turn our attention to the Holy Spirit. And we will be happy next Sunday when we can get back to God as Trinity, and then Jesus as our food and drink, and then march through the year contemplating the life of Jesus. We can handle that. But the Holy Spirit is kind of scary. It seems that if we let him get too close, he does things to us; he makes us go where we don't want to go. I don't think Jesus wanted to be driven into the desert at the beginning of his ministry – but that's exactly what the Holy Spirit did. . I'm not sure the Blessed Mother wanted to be an unwed mother in a small town where people were always looking for someone to talk about, but the Holy Spirit didn't ask. The angel said, “He will overshadow you”. We see a lot of examples in the Acts of the Apostles when the Holy Spirit pushed the followers of Jesus around, making them defy the leaders of the Jews, making them disrupt the peace all over the empire. They knew that if they followed the promptings of the Spirit, it might end up badly. And that is still true – if you let the Spirit in, he will probably make you go where you do not want to.

Look at our readings. If you were a frightened apostle in a locked room, and Jesus appeared in the room, you would probably be quaking in your boots. But after he comforts you, he promises to send the Holy Spirit – or as we used to call him in the olden days when I was a kid, the Holy Ghost. Somehow that isn't as reassuring as it should have been. “You're going to send us a ghost to keep us company, Lord?” And in the reading from Acts, here the apostles have been spinning their wheels wondering what they are supposed to do now? And again they are gathered in a room, when fire and wind appear, and seemingly push them into action, out into the crowds, to the very temple at the center of Israel, where they begin to preach, where foreign languages are coming out of their mouths, where most astonishingly, people are listening.

So when we really think about the Holy Spirit, one of the things he brings besides grateful coolness from the heat, as the Sequence says, is the shaking up of lives. And if you are like me, you don't want that. You want things to be predictable, you want to do God's will, of course, but on your terms; and if you hear the Spirit pushing you to do something new, something outrageous, something totally out of character, if you are like me, you say, “I need a sign, Holy Spirit! After all, maybe you are just a hallucination, maybe you are just wishful thinking.”

And sadly, if I am reasonably satisfied with the way things are, even if they aren't perfect, the unpredictability of the Spirit is if anything an annoyance. Maybe if I don't bother God, he won't bother me. Maybe if I go to church and say my prayers and stay out of serious sin, he will leave me alone and let me get on with life. If tongues of fire appeared over your heads, I'd probably call the fire department.

But sometimes I am nagged by the knowledge that things aren't the way they should be, not in my life, not in the life of my family, not in society at large; and I see that there is something, some little thing that I could do to push things in the right direction. Someone is nagging me. And that's when I wish I could remember that those apostles, who hadn't been able to get their act together out of fear, out of a desire to avoid change – remember how Peter told his brother apostles after the Resurrection, after his joy at seeing Jesus return from the dead, – Peter said, “I am going fishing”. Not only were they pushed into action, but in that very moment they were assured that God was with them. And Saint Paul, after a lifetime of being pushed around by the same Spirit, was able to say, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Can there be any more joyful thought?

And here we sit, in our church, waiting—for God knows what. And the question is: Are we satisfied with the way things are? In our lives, in our world, in our church? If so, the Holy Spirit is very likely to leave us alone. We can safely read these lessons and say a few kind words about the Holy Spirit and be safe for another year.

But if we are aching and yearning for something more, if we look upon our lives and upon our world and upon our church with a combination of fear and hope, fearing that things won’t get better and hoping in our heart of hearts that they will, then we had best watch out. It is entirely likely that the Holy Spirit will soon burst upon us, leading us somewhere we did not know we wanted to go.