This year I have heard more people talk about Jesus’ death than I can ever remember, even people I previously couldn’t imagine giving much thought to Jesus at all. This familiar story of his trial and death still touches people so deeply, because more than any other part of Jesus’ life, we know the world works just this way. Random events, political jockeying, all seemingly preventable, all unreasonable, but no one can stop it. What happened to Jesus could happen to anyone. So many words to explain why this story moves us. And yet I heard one set of words that seemed wrong to me. I read in a local…
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Before this, everything was clear. God was God. People knew where to look to find God. It was a world of stark contrasts. The way you knew God was on your side was that you prospered in life, lived long and healthy, were free from oppression, got what you deserved. Your enemy, on the other hand, was vanquished. When this happened, it was a sign that God was present. When it didn’t, it was a sign that God’s favor had been withdrawn from you, until a time when it might suit God to relent — or perhaps, it just meant that God for some reason no longer cared. Think of…
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We could be forgiven if we come here today completely confused about what kind of a God we really have. Who would have expected, one year ago, that we would now be looking back on a year of wars that are called holy, a year of suicide bombings and murder in the name of religion, a year when our church itself has proven, if it needed proving, that it is not the holder of all truth and good judgment. So much suffering. So little reason for it. No clear way to end it. So many people thinking God is on their side. We think that God must have turned away,…
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We know this story so well, that it has a life of its own, event follows event with a sense of inevitability, we know what’s coming next at every point. Over time, it seems to us that it couldn’t have been any other way. But Jesus’s death was the most avoidable death imaginable. At every turning point in this story, there’s an opportunity for Jesus to escape his crucifixion. He could have avoided Jerusalem entirely. He could have snuck through one of the legal loopholes that Pilate seemed, at some level, to want to offer him. He could have laid low for a year or two until things settled down.…
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I’m sure the last thing might think you want right now, after nine long scripture readings, would be yet more salvation history laid out for you. But we should be honest, and say that deep down, there’s a part of the story we do still want to hear. Jesus’ resurrection comes nearly at the end of the scriptures we have, but now here we are two thousand years later, in a very different world, and the missing reading we want to hear now is, what will happen to us, what’s the end of the story? We know the resurrection is the end of our story, too, but frankly, our imaginations…
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You have probably heard the story about the man who decided he wanted a parrot, so he went and found one on the internet, drove off and brought him home. But it turned out to be a horrible parrot, it was dirty, pecked its cage to pieces, destroyed furniture in the apartment, and worst of all, yes, it could talk, but all it said were the most horrible profanities, and when the owner had company over, it was even worse, shrieking the most awful things you’ve ever heard. And one night after an episode like that, the man grabbed the parrot off its perch, opened the freezer, shoved the parrot…
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You would have to excuse the rich man who just walked away from Jesus in today’s gospel if the lesson that he really took away from this encounter was not “Sell what you have and follow me” but “If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.” The young man is asking what he has to do to gain eternal life, and he is told to do something that goes far beyond anything he expected. I think the way we would probably phrase it today cuts even closer to the bone: Not, what must we do to have eternal life, but, does God love us and accept us the way we…
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“This is a great mystery,” Paul says in the second reading, “a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the Church.” The mystery, of course, is what he could possibly mean trying to draw a parallel between marriage and the relationship God has with us, members of the church. The first thing that has to be said is that if it is true, as our tradition claims, that the church is the bride of Christ, there must have been any number of late nights over the past 2,000 years when Jesus asked himself if he married the wrong woman. It’s not just that we fight and pick…
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I don’t have to commute into New York every single day, but I do it often enough that my heart goes out to those of you who do. I take an early train in several days a week, and maybe you’re among those who have encountered what I did recently. Usually people waiting for these early trains around 6:20 are extremely quiet. Maybe it’s because they enjoy listening to the morning birdsong. No, I doubt that’s it. Maybe they’re just in deep mental preparation for the ruthless grab for territory that starts once the train decides it’s going to stop and open the doors. But recently this scene of quiet…
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Perhaps because it’s an election year, but after reading this gospel I found myself remembering the presidential race twelve years ago, and one of the indelible images from the failed campaign of Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. As part of his image-building effort, his handlers at one point convinced him to be photographed standing up in an army tank as it zipped around in exercises. Now Governor Dukakis was not a tall man, and he was wearing a little round helmet, with his arms glued to his sides, and he wound up looking not like a president, not like a tank commander, but like the old cartoon character Atom Ant. Along…