The Church of Saint Matthew - Saint Paul’s West Side

03.20.2021 Homily

 
Today, we begin the final weeks of preparation before the Easter Feast. In reading this gospel passage, it's not uncommon that the first couple of sentences become, if you will, throwaway sentences, because we wait until we get the actual words of Jesus, and that's what sticks in our minds. The passage starts by saying that there were some Greeks who came to worship at the Passover, and they wanted to see Jesus. This request is more than an act of star-crazed Gentiles looking to get a glimpse of Jesus. It is really a desire to know who Jesus really is.
Jesus answers their desire in quick fashion, and He points out, "You want to see me, what it is like to be me? The seed must die in order to produce fruit." By following Jesus, we must experience daily the dying, know that we will get it wrong and we will take two steps forward and then move backwards and false assumptions will be exposed and the false self will die. And then the lens through which we see ourselves and through which we see humanity and which we see God will change, allowing us to see in a new way.
Years ago, Miami Dolphin coach Don Shula took his family, his wife and his five children, on vacation to Maine. One rainy afternoon, they went to the town's only movie theater, and when they walked in there, there were only six people in the entire theater. But to a person, those people stood and they applauded and they cheered.
Don smiled at them and he waved and he bowed. And then the family sat down. A man ran up and shook his hand, and Don said, "How did you recognize me?" And the man said, "I don't know who you are. All I know is that before your family walked into the theater, the manager said that unless at least five more people showed up we won't have a movie today." In other words, to use the gospel image, a grain of wheat needed to die. Don needed to face some reality in his life. Not everybody in the world knows who he is.
And some things go on that have nothing to do with him. That's a message that many of us, all of us could wrestle with. What part needs to die? The part that feeds the ego, the part that believes that I stand at the center of the universe. I would never say that, but I act that way. The part that blocks me from seeing my real self.
Now this requires us to let go of our past mistakes. We have to allow the grain of wheat to die. There must be a piece of us that is willing to undergo a daily death and resurrection. In the first reading, God promises that He will always be our God, no matter how much we screw up. God does forget our sins, and God does promise us a new beginning, again and again and again. The gift that God gives is the new beginning. You see, humility isn't thinking little of myself. It's thinking not at all of myself. It's understanding that the world around me is a world that I must embrace truly and in which I must live just as I am.

03.20.2021 Gospel John Chapter 12

Some Greeks had come to worship at the Passover Feast, and they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and they said to him, "Sir, we would like to see Jesus." Philip went and told Andrew, and then Andrew and Philip went together and told Jesus. Jesus said to them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life is going to lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever serves me must follow me, for where I am there will my servant be, and the Father will honor all those who serve me."
 

03.13.2021 Homily

03-13-2021 Gospel John Chapter 3

 
Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the son of man be lifted up so that those who believe in him may have eternal life. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. So that those who believe in him would not perish, but would have life eternal. God did not send his son into the world in order to condemn the world. But the world might believe through him. And those who do not believe are already condemned for not believing in the only son of God."
Now, the verdict is this, light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. One who does evil things does not come to the light or fear that those deeds might be exposed. The one who does righteous things who lives in the truth, he comes to the light so that all may see that his deeds are done in God.
 

03.06.2021 Homily

To set the stage a little bit for today's gospel reading, the public ministry of Jesus as recorded in St. John's gospel begins with Jesus and His relationship, His connection with John, the baptizer and His baptism in the Jordan. And then immediately after that, Jesus is choosing His disciples. Andrew first, and then Peter, James and John. Then Philip, and then Nathaniel. When He has this small group of a half a dozen followers, He goes to Cana and attends a wedding there and participates as a guest.
And it's while He's at the wedding that He does His first miracle that He changes water into wine. And immediately after that, He goes to Jerusalem for the Passover. He makes the trip up to Jerusalem as every pious Jew would to celebrate this very important holiday, this feast. It's the first time Jesus has appeared in John's gospel in a large public setting. Jews from throughout the entire world are there. It is expected that you will come to Passover and you will come to Jerusalem. And because people have come from all over the known world, they need to make some decisions when they arise as to how they're going to participate.
Number one, they're going to have to purchase a sacrifice. They have to make a sacrifice as part of the Passover feast, and so they have to purchase an animal. They have to purchase a sheep, or a goat, or some animal to be used in the sacrifice. And number two, they have to change their money. We've all gone to places where we've had to change money, but it's not as you and I need to do it, it's because of religious purification. They need to pay a temple tax and they cannot use a foreign coin to do that. So these tourists are really under obligation to make some decisions about how they're going to enter into this feast.
And this is where the rub comes. Those pilgrims, those tourist pilgrims are being taken advantage of. The merchants and the money changers are extorting them. Money-hungry merchants and power brokers of the economy are doing a number on those people, they're taking advantage of them. They're overcharging them. And Jesus comes upon and this is what enrages Him. It's not that they're purchasing sacrifices, it's not that they're changing the money, it's that they're being cheated in the process. And so Jesus makes a whip to throw out of the temple, all of those who are doing the extortion.
In the second century, there's a church writer who says in describing this scene of Jerusalem. He says, "It's really the work of the Holy Spirit." He says, "The whip is the image of the power and the energy of the Holy Spirit." It is the holiness of God that disrupts the order of the world, an order that is established for the benefit of the wealthy and the benefit of the powerful. Jesus stands against the process by which a few are enriched and the many are impoverished. All of this is done, all of this extortion takes place because it has to do with the temple and it has to do with worship. And that's the excuse that is used or the cover that is used that allows these people to steal.
And so they confront Jesus, and they confront Him about the temple. "How can you justify what you have?" They say to Him. "How can you stand against the temple? How can you stand against sacrifice? How can you stand against the worship of God?" Jesus tells them that the temple, the sacrifice, the temple, which is the representation is the place of the presence of God in the world. That's the temple and the sacrifice are passing away. He says He is the presence of God in the world.
In a few chapters later on in St. John's gospel, Jesus and the Samaritan woman have a conversation, and Jesus says to her, "The days are coming when you will worship the Father, neither on this mountain, as the Samaritans do, nor in Jerusalem as the Jews do. You will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for God is Spirit and God is truth." Through out St. John's gospel, Jesus teaches that He is the presence of the Father. He says later in the gospel, "No one comes to the Father, except through me."
In John's gospel, the disciple is the one who sees the entire universe and all that happens in it in a Christ centered way. The disciples are called to see through the eyes of God, to see the universe as centered in the mystery of Christ. The mystery of Jesus, suffering, dying, rising, ascending, and sending forth the Spirit. That's the very heart of what it is in John's gospel to be a disciple, to have those eyes that see reality, and see reality only as Jesus standing in the midst of it. Not that Jesus has is causing all of that, but Jesus is present in all of that. Jesus has made all of that a concern of God.
Before the most recent changes in the liturgical language, for 40 years, there was an incredibly beautiful statement that we prayed week, after week, after week that announced the central truth, we proclaim the mystery of faith. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. That's a statement that's an act of faith that acknowledges the centrality of Christ in all of reality.
Now, a Christ-centered world or a Christ-centered universe, an awareness of that is not easy to hold on to. There is nothing in our secular society that encourages that. And sometimes I lose grasp of seeing a Christ-centered world. Sometimes I see what's around me in doubt the fact that God has anything to do with it. And when that happens, what I hope I can do is I can hope if I can't hang on to a Christ-centered world, maybe I can hang on to a Christ-haunted world and understanding of the world in which Christ may not be at the center, but He's lurking around the edge of all that I am and all that I do. That He is not separate from me. That image of Christ-centered and Christ-haunted really comes from a short story that Flannery O'Connor wrote, the story is called The River. And in it she says, "I think it's safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

03.06.2021 Gospel John Chapter 2

Since the Passover was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple area, He found those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as money changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area with sheep and oxen as well. He spilled the coins of the money changers, He overturned their tables, and to those who sold the doves, He said, "Take those out of here. Stop making my Father's house a marketplace."
His disciples recalled the words of scripture, "Zeal for yourself, zeal for your house will consume me." At this, the authorities said to Him, "By what sign do you show us for doing these things?" And Jesus said to them, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." They said, "This temple has been under construction for 46 years and you will raise it up in three days?" Now, He was speaking about the temple of His body. And when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this and they came to believe the scriptures and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Now, while Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover, many began to believe in Him when they saw the signs He was doing. Yet Jesus would not trust Himself to them because He knew them all and He did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He understood human nature well.

02.27.2021 Homily

With this episode in St. Mark's gospel known as The Transfiguration, we arrive exactly at the midpoint of the gospel. It is the second scene in the gospel in which Jesus is affirmed as the Son of God. The first is at the time of baptism in the Jordan when he comes out, out of the water and the Spirit descends upon him, and there's a voice from the cloud saying, "This is my Beloved Son." Then the third time of the gospel that happens is at the very end as Jesus dies. It is the Roman centurion and it falls from his lips, "Truly, this man was the Son of God." These are the three pillars around upon which the Gospel of Mark rests. The first affirmation at the very beginning in the Jordan, the second affirmation at the very end on Calvary, and the midpoint that we have today in the Feast of the Transfiguration.
Now, just before Jesus leads these three disciples up the hill is when he told them for the first time that he would suffer and he would die. They argued with him. They dug their heels in. They didn't understand it. They wouldn't accept it. It was immediately after that instance in the Gospel of Mark that Jesus leads them to the top of the mountain. There, the disciples are blinded by the light that radiates from Jesus, a light that permeates His entire being through His mind and through His heart, through His soul. Even affects His clothing. Clothing is the outward expression of who a person is. A person's identity sometimes becomes known to others by the clothing that person wears. The Greeks believe that the category of clothing, they called it habitus, was one of the 10 marks that would be used to describe anything that lived.
The storyteller tells us that there's a Divine Source to this radiance. What the disciples are doing is they are witnessing the presence of God, mediated through Jesus Christ. Discipleship had proved to be very difficult for Peter and James and John. They were very uncertain as to what all of this meant. So everything that occurs on the mountain top is really for their benefit. It's really to help them move along in their understanding.
Then two great figures from the history of Israel appeared speaking to Jesus. They're speaking to Him. Jesus does not bring them there to consult with him. Those two figures are also disciples, Moses and Elijah. All of this is well beyond the disciples' comfort level. What they exhibit is the classical human experience of when one is in the presence of the Divine. They are overwhelmed on one hand, and they are fascinated on the other. This event both pulls them close in and pushes them away. Peter and the other two are ... they're fearful and they're fascinated. Jesus has them on the high mountain and now a cloud comes over, descends upon them, and the presence of God overshadows them. At that point, they are as close as it is possible for a human being to be in the presence of God.
Now, all of this has happened as an encouragement to those disciples. So we've got to remember where they came from before they went up the mountain. Remember, there they argued and they wouldn't accept and they kicked, and they screamed, and they dug their heels in. They didn't hear what Jesus was saying. All of this is taking place in order to encourage them to listen, not to balk, not to argue, not to dig their heels in, just to listen, listen with their heart and then everything dissolves. Everything disappears. There's no more bright light. There's no more Moses and Elijah. Here's just plain old ordinary Jesus. The door had been opened and now it's closed.
You see, the Transfiguration is really about the closeness of God rather than God being remote. It reminds us that there is a thinness, there's a veil, there's a very thin membrane between the Divine and the human. And on this mountain, they were privileged to move beyond that membrane, beyond that thinness. That thinness that separates the divine from the human is really disclosed in the sacraments of the church. You see, sometimes we become so used to that mystery of the divine and the human coming together that we lose the sense of push and pull, that sense of a fear on one hand and fascination on the other.
This happens in people's lives. This happens in your life and mine in some ways. You read the stories of the great heroes of faith of our country: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Elizabeth Ann Seton. All of these people were not believers at the beginning, and then because of a variety of things, mostly because of the seeking in their heart, the restlessness in their heart, they struck out at all kinds of ways to find the answer, and all three of them found it in the Eucharist.
Dorothy Day would leave the speakeasy at 3:00 in the morning and would toggle back to her apartment, and she'd pass the Church of St. Ignatius and she'd step in. She'd sit in the back pew, and she stayed there for hours, just watching people come and go, and then the early mass would begin. She just sat there. Just sat there. Thomas Merton on leaving Columbia University after living a very confused life, also was drawn to the Eucharist, was drawn to the local church, found himself just being there. Elizabeth Ann Seton. She was in Italy with her husband and he died and she stayed for a while and she was introduced to the church. Her neighbors took her to mass, and then she started going daily just to sit there, just to be there. For all three of them and so many more, what happened is there was a day that arrived in which that thin film between the Divine and the human parted. The door was open and they saw not with their eyes, they saw with their heart the truth of who Jesus is, and that changed their lives. That was transformative in their lives.
 
When people create an icon, they're not regarded as painters, not like the regular painter that we think who draws a picture. You don't paint an icon, you write an icon, and it is a spiritual experience. It is an experience of prayer and meditation, and what you're attempting to do in the writing and what you're allowing the Spirit of God to help you do is you want to see in the image of the human, Jesus, the reflection of His divinity coming through. So from the very beginning, when an icon writer begins his or her career, the first thing they're asked to do is to reproduce a scene of the Transfiguration, a scene that will communicate the beauty of the Divine in the midst of the ordinariness of the human.
So the journey of each and every one of us, the journey of every Christian, is really a journey from one mountain to another, the mountain of the Transfiguration and the mountain of Calvary. In the mountain of the Transfiguration, you and I are invited to see not with our eyes, with our heart, to see the Divinity, to see God present, to see the glory of Jesus. Then we're drawn to the Hill of Calvary, the Mountain of Calvary, and, there, we're to see the suffering, the brokenness, the dying of this tragic human being. Then the Spirit asks us to open our arms and to hold all of that together. All of that is one person. All of that is Jesus Christ. All of that is what is present every time we gather at the altar of the Eucharist.

02.27.2021 Gospel Mark Chapter 9

Jesus took Peter and James and John. He led them up a high mountain by themselves and, there, He was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white. Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they stood talking with Jesus. Peter then spoke up and said, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." Peter hardly knew what he was saying. He was terrified. And then a cloud came casting a shadow over them, and from the cloud came a voice saying, "This is my Beloved Son. Listen to Him." And then, suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone, just Jesus alone. And as they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had been raised from the dead. And so they kept muttering to themselves, "What does raised from the dead really mean?"

02.20.2021 Homily

 
I need to make a disclaimer before I begin that the ideas that I'm going to be offering to you were ideas that were offered to me by a Benedictine Sister, Laureen Virnig from St. Joseph, Minnesota. So I want to give her credit for or blame for whatever there is.
St. Mark is the Ernest Hemingway of the gospels. He writes in simple, short sentences. He also went to the Joe Friday of Dragnet school. His writing is sparse and as Sergeant Friday would say, it's the facts. Just the facts. Short though, his gospel is Mark wastes no words. And in a very few words offers the reader a powerful proclamation of the kingdom of God and of the identity of Jesus. In today's gospel, Jesus comes to the region of Galilee and there he is baptized by John in the Jordan River and coming up out of the water, the spirit descends upon him and a voice is heard from heaven saying, "You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you."
And then that same spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. Now, that's an important word. He didn't invite Jesus, he didn't encourage Jesus. He drove him into the wilderness. The word implies the overwhelming need Jesus had to go into solitude to figure out what he was to do and to do that before dealing with the religious and the other leaders of his time. Mark tells us that once Jesus was in the wilderness, he was tested by Satan. He was with the wild beasts. He didn't run away from them. He was with them. And God's messengers, the angels, they supported him.
The wilderness is a place of solitude, a place of introspection, a place for making decisions. When one goes into the wilderness, one goes to face the demons, wrong jealousy, anger, lust, all that that holds me and holds me tight. And one goes to face the wild beasts, the spirit of violence, the revenge, the hatred that sees within me. Those images, those pictures, those pieces of art that describe Jesus in the desert, very often have this dark, shadowy figure with horns depicting Satan, but that's not what the scriptures tell us. The power of evil is found in the wild beast and in the demons, the wild beasts within me and the demons within me. The scripture says Satan is always standing at the door, always ready for an opportunity to enter.
In the wilderness, I'm called upon to name the demons and to name the beasts. This is where I learned some uncomfortable truths about myself. The wilderness is a place where God's word challenges me to look at who I am and to whom I belong. I meet the beast and I face the demons and I allow them to reveal what is trapped within inside me. If I stay in the wilderness long enough, if I stay and do not run away, I will reach the deep place where the unshakeable and undeniable truth awaits. One has to be in the wilderness for a protracted period of time because this process does not happen in the twinkling of an eye. It is a process and it's worked out day after day after day.
Jesus' time in the desert and the wilderness was not an hour's worth or a day's worth or a week's worth, but 40 days that he was in the desert with the beasts and the demons. And what I come to learn if I stay there long enough, if I don't run away, if I'm willing to allow the demons and the beast to speak, what I come away with is the truth. The truth that I am loved and the truth that I am embraced and held by God just as I am. Jesus, he emerges from the wilderness and he takes his disciples with him so that they might witness the transfiguration. That they might see into the very soul of Jesus, the Son of God. And once these two events take place, once the event of the wilderness and the event of the transfiguration take place, Jesus knows clearly what he must do and who he truly is.
The wilderness is the place where each person faces the beasts and demons within and out of which emerges a person rooted in one's humanity and in one's destiny. Coming from the wilderness, one witnesses the truth spoken by Henry James. All people are once born... Some fortunate people are twice born. Emerging from the wilderness is one's second birth.
 
 
 

02.20.2021 Gospel Mark Chapter 1

The spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained there in the desert for 40 days tempted by Satan. He was among the wild beasts and the angels came and ministered to him. Now, after John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. "This is the time of fulfillment," he said. "The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel."