Have you ever felt like you did not fit in?
Sometimes it can be very subtle, this feeling of not fitting in.
You have a job, you have your friends, you have your family,
but somehow, it seems like don’t quite belong.
It has to do with the way people treat you.
There are people we live with, work with, even play with,
and yet there is something not quite right.
No matter how much we would like to be respected and loved,
no matter what we try to do to get these people to like us,
it never quite works out right.
Not fitting in can be a subtle thing…
or it can be quite dramatic.
Maybe there is something about us that sets us apart from the people
around us in a more profound and painful way.
Maybe we are not the same age of the people around us.
Maybe we are not as wealthy or healthy as the people around us.
Maybe we are not as athletic, or beautiful, or stylish as the people around us.
Sometimes there is something that sets us apart in a dramatic way that is painful and obvious.
Think about a bunch of kids on the playground picking teams for a game of touch football.
And lets say that there is one kid who really loves football,
but try as he might, he just can’t throw or catch, or run the ball as well as the other kids.
So, as they are picking teams, all of the kids get picked first,
and then this one kid is left alone, standing there all by himself.
And then the two captains do a quick count of the players, and they say,
“Oh, sorry, we already have equal teams, you can’t play with us.”
And then both teams run off to play ball, and leave the one kid standing on the sidelines.
Do you ever feel like this kid?
Left out?
Don’t fit in?
Matthew the tax collector certainly felt this way.
In the time of Jesus, some of the people of Israel, chose to work for the Roman Empire as tax collectors.
If you know anything about the ancient world, you know that this was a brutal business, collecting taxes.
Basically, you worked on commission. the more taxes you collected, the bigger your paycheck.
So, if you were a Hebrew tax collector, you might have made good money, but you were definitely an outcast in your community.
Matthew the tax collector did not quite fit in to his community,
and when you don’t quite fit in, it is painful, deeply painful.
Sometimes, it is so painful that it can drive us to do extreme things.
Do you remember the horrible tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado?
The kids that did all of that evil did not fit in.
They did not fit in among their peers, and they did not fit in to the society.
So they made a terrible decision to respond to that deep pain and frustration with hateful violence.
When we are deeply wounded by others who judge us and exclude us,
we may never go out and commit criminal acts,
but when the pain of not fitting in deep it is frighteningly easy to respond with evil.
A spouse who no longer fits in a marriage can walk away.
A young person who no longer fits in at school may act out in destructive ways.
A faithful Christian person who no longer fits in to the community may just give up in bitter sadness.
But sadly, none of these choices bring us any true healing.
It is only Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who brings true healing into our lives,
for it is Christ who reaches out to us when we do not fit in.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ sees Matthew sitting in his tax collectors office.
And Matthew did no fit in.
His community saw him as sinful and unworthy and marginalized him.
But Jesus says, “Come follow me.”
And today, to each one of us who does not quite fit in,
to each one of us who is marginalized and left out,
Christ says to us, “Follow me.”
So, Matthew the tax collector follows Christ, and later that day when Jesus has dinner with Matthew and his friends,
all of the Pharisees start to talk among themselves saying,
“Why does that Jesus associate with tax collectors and sinners?”
Why does Jesus associate with all of those people who don’t fit in?
And hearing them Jesus says, “Those who are healthy do not need a doctor,
but those who are sick.”
And this is the reason that God sent his son in to this world,
to give hope to those who are suffering and in need of God’s mercy,
to offer us forgiveness and reconcile us to God the father.
Christ did not come into this world to choose the best and the brightest and the holiest,
rather he comes into this world to show God’s mercy to those who are weak,
to those who are sinful and
to those who don’t fit in.
Look at the people that Jesus chose to be his apostles.
He chose Peter who would deny Jesus three times.
He chose Paul who as a persecutor of the Church,
and he chose Matthew who was a tax collector.
And having experienced God’s mercy, each of these men turned away from their sin, and followed Jesus.
Now, it is really important to remember that Jesus did not choose these disciples because they were saints.
No, he chose them, he showed mercy upon them, and they followed Him, and because of that they BECAME saints.
Jesus went into the house of Matthew the tax collector and shared a meal with him to show God’s mercy on those who did not fit in.
And today we experience the very same thing at this meal,
this Mystical Supper at which our Lord offers us his broken body and spilled blood.
Imagine that there was a coach who did something totally radical.
Instead of recruiting all of the best and most powerful players for his team,
he went from field to field, gym to gym, playground to playground and he recruited all of the kids who were left out,
all of the kids who did not fit in.
And together they trained, and studied and worked out,
and in time all of those kids got into better shape, and developed their skills, and got faster and quicker.
But what was really remarkable about this team is that it grew so quickly.
In a few short years it became massive, with hundreds even thousands of kids all coming together to work together and inspire one another.
Because everywhere they went, members of this great team would look for the lonely, the outcast, and the one who does not fit in,
always inviting new people to join in their work.
Does this sound familiar?
It should, because this is the Church.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Today Christ comes to us, who in our own way feel like we don’t quite fit in.
And Christ says to us, “You DO fit in.
For you are mine.
Come follow me.”
Brothers and sisters, in Christ we DO fit in.
We belong to Him, as brothers and sisters, members of one another, in the mystical Body of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who gave his life for us,
so that we may know God’s mercy and live.
Amen.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Homily on 1Cor 1:10-18
Have you ever been poisoned?
Maybe when you were a kid, you accidentally drank something or ate something poisonous.
When I was in college I worked for a paving contractor,
and once we were paving a remote stretch of road way out in the mountains.
It was a blistering hot day and before lunchtime I had drank all of the water out of my cooler,
and I was dying of thirst.
There was a little cabin just off the road from where we were working and nobody lived there.
So, in desperation I went over to see if I could find a garden hose, or a faucet, or something that would let me get some water.
At the corner of the cabin, there was a faucet, and I quickly filled up my big thermos.
As I was walking back, I hefted up the thermos and took a few deep gulps of the water,
but as the water was going down, I knew something was wrong.
I stopped dead in my tracks coughing and gagging.
The water system in the house had recently been shock treated with chlorine,
and the water that I was drinking had about a hundred times more chlorine in it than the water in a public swimming pool.
Usually, when you are poisoned you know immediately that something is wrong,
most poisons taste awful.
They burn your mouth and make you gag.
But the real danger is from the poisons that don’t taste that bad.
I have a friend who loves soft shell crabs,
they are his favorite food in the whole world.
Once he went to a nice restaurant and ordered their soft shell crabs,
and he munched down this big plate of summer delicacy.
But all that night, and the entire next morning he was sicker than he had ever been in his entire life.
It was the worst food poisoning that he had ever known.
Sometimes when we are poisoned, we don’t realize it is happening until it is too late.
Today, St. Paul warns us of this kind of poisoning.
He says, “I hear that there is quarreling among you and that the community is divided.”
Fighting and division.
How easy it can happen.
If you are under the age of eighteen and you have a brother or sister, do you ever fight or argue with them?
If you are over the age of eighteen and you are married or dating,
do you ever quarrel or argue with your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend?
If you are single do you ever quarrel or argue with your neighbors, or colleagues?
If you are a parent, do you ever argue with your children?
Is there fighting and division within our families, and communities, and even within our Church?
Certainly there is, and it is a deadly poison because like food poisoning, we hardly notice that we are being poisoned.
When there is trouble or you find yourself in discomfort, the natural reaction is to identify the source of the discomfort, and then get away.
This approach works fine for mosquitoes, or the roasting midday sun, or a cold draft.
“Oh, wow, that feels awful. I’m getting out of here.”
But what do we do when another person makes us feel uncomfortable?
How easy is it to say, “You are the source of my discomfort, so I’m getting out of here.”
Or, we may simply choose to drive the annoying person away from us.
When we do this, when we point the finger at another person, and say,
“You are the source of my problems, you are why I feel bad, and you have to go.”
it may feel great at the moment.
And communities and cultures have done this kind of thing for ages.
The Puritan communities that settled Connecticut were masters of pointing the finger.
If you misbehaved, you could be banished from the community.
Or, if there was a drought and the crops failed, or if there was an epidemic and people got sick and died,
there might be a witch hunt.
The people would band together and place the blame for their misfortunes on the person in the community who didn’t quite fit in.
Maybe it was the old widow who lived on the outskirts of town, the one who is not like us,
“It is her fault, it is the fault of the witch.”
And if things go too far, the mob might very well burn someone alive.
Fighting and division can poison families, marriages, communities, parishes and entire churches.
And if things go too far, people can be in danger of spiritual death.
Have you ever been poisoned?
Satan and his devils want nothing more than for us to be divided from one another,
because when we are fighting and divided from one another,
when we isolated from one another,
then we are isolated from Christ.
And without Christ, we are lost.
Someone once said that the only thing that you can do all by yourself is to go to hell.
And the more that we isolate ourselves from each other in this life,
the more that we are poisoned by hatred, and anger, and judgment,
the more that our lives become a living hell.
So when you have been poisoned what do you do?
You find a doctor who can give you an antidote.
And if you are already too ill to get to a doctor yourself, then you pray that a doctor can come to you and save you.
And this is exactly what Christ does for us.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the perfect physician,
the physician of souls,
comes to us and offers us the perfect antidote,
his Precious Body and his Spilled Blood,
the Holy Mysteries.
Once a dear friend of mine was suffering from an overdose of narcotics,
and it was dreadful.
She could barely maintain consciousness,
and it was hard for her to breathe.
The life was slowly draining out of her.
But once the doctors realized what was going on, they gave her an antidote called narcan,
and miraculously, within seconds, she regained consciousness, and was able to breathe.
Antidotes can work like that.
Now a regular chemical antidote administered by a regular doctor,
cures us whether we understand how it works or not.
The Doctor gives us the proper dosage and we get better.
But Christ’s Body and Blood don’t work this way.
It is not magic, and it is not chemistry,
it is love.
God’s love is the perfect and only antidote for the poison of fighting and division.
Because the love of God is the love of forgiveness.
God loves us more than anyone could possibly imagine,
but God is not ignorant.
God’s love is not like “first date love” where you are head over heels on fire for someone before you know about their bad habits and character flaws.
God knows all of our character flaws, and all of our dirty secrets.
He knows our sins better than we do…and yet, knowing all of our failings he loves us just the same.
This is why the Mysteries of Holy Communion are so holy,
because the Body and Blood of Christ is the Word of God saying,
“I know what you have done. I know that you have hurt me.
I am painfully aware of the horror of betrayal, and mockery, and abandonment.
I am perfectly aware of the nails in my hands and my feet, and the pain of the crucifixion.”
And in the middle of all that pain and suffering, God says to us,
“I love you. Even if you hate me, I love you.”
This it the word of the Cross that St. Paul offers us today.
It is the word that sustained the martyrs, like St. Lawrence of Rome who was burned alive,
but who responded in love to those who tortured him.
So, we’ve all been poisoned, and what do we do now?
Take a minute to picture in your mind the person who you like the least, the person who has hurt you the most,
the person who you cannot stand.
And in your mind make this little confession to that person:
“Christ loves me, so I love you.”
During the week, make that part of your prayer life.
It takes less than a minute, but it allows the antidote of God’s love to course through our veins,
and cure us of the poison of sin.
And as we are cured of our illness, each one of us will begin to radiate more and more fully,
the love of God, perfectly expressed in the broken body and spilled blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It is the antidote for the poison of argument and division.
It cures us of our sins, heals our wounds, binds us to one another in the perfect bond of love.
For in Christ there is no strife, no argument, no division,
but only perfect love and everlasting life.
Amen.
Maybe when you were a kid, you accidentally drank something or ate something poisonous.
When I was in college I worked for a paving contractor,
and once we were paving a remote stretch of road way out in the mountains.
It was a blistering hot day and before lunchtime I had drank all of the water out of my cooler,
and I was dying of thirst.
There was a little cabin just off the road from where we were working and nobody lived there.
So, in desperation I went over to see if I could find a garden hose, or a faucet, or something that would let me get some water.
At the corner of the cabin, there was a faucet, and I quickly filled up my big thermos.
As I was walking back, I hefted up the thermos and took a few deep gulps of the water,
but as the water was going down, I knew something was wrong.
I stopped dead in my tracks coughing and gagging.
The water system in the house had recently been shock treated with chlorine,
and the water that I was drinking had about a hundred times more chlorine in it than the water in a public swimming pool.
Usually, when you are poisoned you know immediately that something is wrong,
most poisons taste awful.
They burn your mouth and make you gag.
But the real danger is from the poisons that don’t taste that bad.
I have a friend who loves soft shell crabs,
they are his favorite food in the whole world.
Once he went to a nice restaurant and ordered their soft shell crabs,
and he munched down this big plate of summer delicacy.
But all that night, and the entire next morning he was sicker than he had ever been in his entire life.
It was the worst food poisoning that he had ever known.
Sometimes when we are poisoned, we don’t realize it is happening until it is too late.
Today, St. Paul warns us of this kind of poisoning.
He says, “I hear that there is quarreling among you and that the community is divided.”
Fighting and division.
How easy it can happen.
If you are under the age of eighteen and you have a brother or sister, do you ever fight or argue with them?
If you are over the age of eighteen and you are married or dating,
do you ever quarrel or argue with your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend?
If you are single do you ever quarrel or argue with your neighbors, or colleagues?
If you are a parent, do you ever argue with your children?
Is there fighting and division within our families, and communities, and even within our Church?
Certainly there is, and it is a deadly poison because like food poisoning, we hardly notice that we are being poisoned.
When there is trouble or you find yourself in discomfort, the natural reaction is to identify the source of the discomfort, and then get away.
This approach works fine for mosquitoes, or the roasting midday sun, or a cold draft.
“Oh, wow, that feels awful. I’m getting out of here.”
But what do we do when another person makes us feel uncomfortable?
How easy is it to say, “You are the source of my discomfort, so I’m getting out of here.”
Or, we may simply choose to drive the annoying person away from us.
When we do this, when we point the finger at another person, and say,
“You are the source of my problems, you are why I feel bad, and you have to go.”
it may feel great at the moment.
And communities and cultures have done this kind of thing for ages.
The Puritan communities that settled Connecticut were masters of pointing the finger.
If you misbehaved, you could be banished from the community.
Or, if there was a drought and the crops failed, or if there was an epidemic and people got sick and died,
there might be a witch hunt.
The people would band together and place the blame for their misfortunes on the person in the community who didn’t quite fit in.
Maybe it was the old widow who lived on the outskirts of town, the one who is not like us,
“It is her fault, it is the fault of the witch.”
And if things go too far, the mob might very well burn someone alive.
Fighting and division can poison families, marriages, communities, parishes and entire churches.
And if things go too far, people can be in danger of spiritual death.
Have you ever been poisoned?
Satan and his devils want nothing more than for us to be divided from one another,
because when we are fighting and divided from one another,
when we isolated from one another,
then we are isolated from Christ.
And without Christ, we are lost.
Someone once said that the only thing that you can do all by yourself is to go to hell.
And the more that we isolate ourselves from each other in this life,
the more that we are poisoned by hatred, and anger, and judgment,
the more that our lives become a living hell.
So when you have been poisoned what do you do?
You find a doctor who can give you an antidote.
And if you are already too ill to get to a doctor yourself, then you pray that a doctor can come to you and save you.
And this is exactly what Christ does for us.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the perfect physician,
the physician of souls,
comes to us and offers us the perfect antidote,
his Precious Body and his Spilled Blood,
the Holy Mysteries.
Once a dear friend of mine was suffering from an overdose of narcotics,
and it was dreadful.
She could barely maintain consciousness,
and it was hard for her to breathe.
The life was slowly draining out of her.
But once the doctors realized what was going on, they gave her an antidote called narcan,
and miraculously, within seconds, she regained consciousness, and was able to breathe.
Antidotes can work like that.
Now a regular chemical antidote administered by a regular doctor,
cures us whether we understand how it works or not.
The Doctor gives us the proper dosage and we get better.
But Christ’s Body and Blood don’t work this way.
It is not magic, and it is not chemistry,
it is love.
God’s love is the perfect and only antidote for the poison of fighting and division.
Because the love of God is the love of forgiveness.
God loves us more than anyone could possibly imagine,
but God is not ignorant.
God’s love is not like “first date love” where you are head over heels on fire for someone before you know about their bad habits and character flaws.
God knows all of our character flaws, and all of our dirty secrets.
He knows our sins better than we do…and yet, knowing all of our failings he loves us just the same.
This is why the Mysteries of Holy Communion are so holy,
because the Body and Blood of Christ is the Word of God saying,
“I know what you have done. I know that you have hurt me.
I am painfully aware of the horror of betrayal, and mockery, and abandonment.
I am perfectly aware of the nails in my hands and my feet, and the pain of the crucifixion.”
And in the middle of all that pain and suffering, God says to us,
“I love you. Even if you hate me, I love you.”
This it the word of the Cross that St. Paul offers us today.
It is the word that sustained the martyrs, like St. Lawrence of Rome who was burned alive,
but who responded in love to those who tortured him.
So, we’ve all been poisoned, and what do we do now?
Take a minute to picture in your mind the person who you like the least, the person who has hurt you the most,
the person who you cannot stand.
And in your mind make this little confession to that person:
“Christ loves me, so I love you.”
During the week, make that part of your prayer life.
It takes less than a minute, but it allows the antidote of God’s love to course through our veins,
and cure us of the poison of sin.
And as we are cured of our illness, each one of us will begin to radiate more and more fully,
the love of God, perfectly expressed in the broken body and spilled blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It is the antidote for the poison of argument and division.
It cures us of our sins, heals our wounds, binds us to one another in the perfect bond of love.
For in Christ there is no strife, no argument, no division,
but only perfect love and everlasting life.
Amen.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Homily on Luke 5:1-11
Once there was a kid who wanted a new bike.
He really wanted a new bike!
He wanted this bike so much that it was the first thing he thought about in the morning,
and all through the day, as he was at school, he kept thinking about the new bicycle he wanted so much.
And of course, when he got home and rode around on his old clunker bike that was falling apart,
he really thought about how much he wanted a new bicycle.
Have you ever really, really wanted something?
St. Peter wanted something.
He wanted a savior.
He wanted the Messiah that God had promised to send when he spoke to the prophets.
He wanted to be rescued from the pain and suffering and misery in his life.
Because God’s people were suffering under the iron fisted rule of the Roman Empire.
So, just imagine the tremendous joy that St. Peter experienced when Jesus comes to him on the shore of that lake!
Realizing that he is standing face to face with the Messiah, the one he had been hoping for, Peter and his companions leave everything behind,
their nets, boats, and everything, it is all left behind so that they can follow Jesus.
But what happened to Peter after that amazing moment on the shore of the lake?
He follows Jesus, he witnesses Jesus’ great miracles,
he listens to Jesus’ teaching and preaching.
And there must have been great joy in those experiences.
But during this time, something else is going on.
The Jewish authorities begin to conspire against Jesus.
The powers that be are not happy with the revolutionary message that Jesus preaches.
And as we know, even one of Jesus’ closest friends,
Judas, decides to hand Jesus over to those who seek to kill him.
And in the end even Peter denies Christ,
the same Peter who was so filled with joy and faith in the Messiah that he left everything to follow him.
When Jesus has been arrested and is about to be handed over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified,
Peter is there, because he wants to know what is going to happen.
But then people come up to Peter and ask him, “Are you one of Jesus’ friends?”
And Peter says, “I don’t know him.”
Someone else asks, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?”
Peter says, “No, I’m not his disciple.”
Then someone else says, “Wait minute, I’m sure of it, you are definitely one of Jesus’ disciples, you are a Galilean.”
And Peter says, “I’m sorry I don’t know what you are talking about.”
And at that moment the rooster crows,
And Jesus looks at Peter, and Peter realizes what he has done.
And Peter goes away from Jesus and weeps bitterly.
What happened to this man whose faith and joy were once so intense that he left everything to follow Christ?
What happened to the chief of the apostles?
How did such faith, such joy, such rock solid confidence crumble so quickly?
How can such a thing happen to Peter?
More importantly, how can such a thing happen to us?
We may not have left our jobs and sacrificed everything to follow Christ,
but the mere fact that we are here in this church right now is evidence that we have made some kind of sacrifice.
At the very least we all gave up the opportunity to sleep in this morning,
or have coffee and donuts while we read the paper,
or sit on the couch and watch Sponge Bob.
All of us have given up something in our own way to follow Christ,
not just this morning, but over the course of our Christian life.
But does it ever seem like your faith not what it once was?
In this world, it is rare that our faith is tested in a bold and dramatic fashion.
In the United States, we are never told that we must
deny Christ or face execution.
Unlike Peter who feared for his life when he denied Jesus,
our faith can just slowly drain away, and leave us flat.
Have you ever had a tire with a slow leak?
There’s no dramatic blowout, but over time the air slowly leaks out.
And then, one morning you get in your car to go somewhere really important,
some meeting or event that you really have to be on time for,
when all of a sudden you realize that your tire is completely flat.
And then you are stuck.
This is exactly how it is with our faith.
We may not even notice that our faith is draining away,
but then one day we face a serious crisis,
or we are put in a situation that requires strong moral character
only to discover that our faith has drained away and we have been left stranded.
And maybe in our own way, Just like Peter, we also weep bitterly in our faithlessness, and in our failure.
But just because it looks like our story has come to an end, does not mean that it is the end of the story.
Yes, Peter denied Jesus and our Lord was crucified and buried,
but this was not the end of the story.
Peter may have abandoned Christ but Christ did not abandon Peter.
At the end of St. John’s Gospel, we hear another story about Peter in his fishing boat.
Again, Jesus comes to Peter, but this time Christ has risen from the dead.
Jesus tells Peter and his friends to let down their nets, and once again they make a great catch,
and Peter suddenly realizes that it truly is Jesus speaking to him,
and he jumps out of the boat and swims to shore.
And Jesus says to Peter, “Do you love me?”
Peter says, “Yes, lord, you know that I love you.”
and then Jesus asks him again, “Peter do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
But Jesus asks him yet again, “Do you love me?”
And now Peter starts to feel bad, because Jesus keeps asking him this question,
and he replies, “Lord you know all things, you know that I love you.”
So what is Jesus trying to do here with Peter?
Why does he keep asking Peter if he loves him?
Jesus is giving Peter an opportunity to repent,
to turn back from the way of denial and faithlessness,
and travel on the road of faith and love.
Peter abandoned Christ, but Christ did not abandon Peter.
You and I may have abandoned Christ, but Christ does not abandon us.
No matter what we do, no matter how we might fail, no matter how deep a hole we dig for ourselves,
Christ is always there, asking us, “Do you love me?”
Giving us a way out of our faithlessness and sin.
So this week, when you are at work, or sitting at your desk in school, or driving your kids to a soccer practice, or washing dishes or paying bills,
wherever you are, remember how Christ came to Peter on the lake.
Jesus did not sit in the temple and wait for people to come to him,
he went out and met people where they lived.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ reveals himself to Peter on the shore of a lake in a fishing boat.
Christ does not make people come to Him, He comes to us!
And when He comes to us, it is always a joyful surprise.
Remember that kid who wanted the bicycle?
Well, it was Christmas and he was really hoping that he would get the new bike for Christmas.
But, he really hadn’t been very good, and he knew that his parents didn’t have a lot of money.
So, Christmas morning came, and the whole family opened up all the presents under the tree, and it was a happy time, but there was no bicycle.
And the boy was a little sad.
But then, after all of the wrapping paper had been cleaned up, his parents said,
“What is this envelope in the branches of the tree?”
The boy pulled it out, opened it up, and there was a note that said, “Go look out on the deck.”
Do you know what was out there?
Yep, it was the bike that he had dreamed about.
Christ is waiting to surprise us,
not with a bicycle,
but with the same gift that He gave St. Peter’s on the shore of that lake.
Christ is waiting to surprise us with His love, and the gift of new life.
And today Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ gives us an opportunity to express our love for him once again.
Because when we confess our love for Christ, he fills our hearts with joy.
Today he asks us, “Do you love me?”
And we are free to cry out, “Yes Lord, I love you.”
He really wanted a new bike!
He wanted this bike so much that it was the first thing he thought about in the morning,
and all through the day, as he was at school, he kept thinking about the new bicycle he wanted so much.
And of course, when he got home and rode around on his old clunker bike that was falling apart,
he really thought about how much he wanted a new bicycle.
Have you ever really, really wanted something?
St. Peter wanted something.
He wanted a savior.
He wanted the Messiah that God had promised to send when he spoke to the prophets.
He wanted to be rescued from the pain and suffering and misery in his life.
Because God’s people were suffering under the iron fisted rule of the Roman Empire.
So, just imagine the tremendous joy that St. Peter experienced when Jesus comes to him on the shore of that lake!
Realizing that he is standing face to face with the Messiah, the one he had been hoping for, Peter and his companions leave everything behind,
their nets, boats, and everything, it is all left behind so that they can follow Jesus.
But what happened to Peter after that amazing moment on the shore of the lake?
He follows Jesus, he witnesses Jesus’ great miracles,
he listens to Jesus’ teaching and preaching.
And there must have been great joy in those experiences.
But during this time, something else is going on.
The Jewish authorities begin to conspire against Jesus.
The powers that be are not happy with the revolutionary message that Jesus preaches.
And as we know, even one of Jesus’ closest friends,
Judas, decides to hand Jesus over to those who seek to kill him.
And in the end even Peter denies Christ,
the same Peter who was so filled with joy and faith in the Messiah that he left everything to follow him.
When Jesus has been arrested and is about to be handed over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified,
Peter is there, because he wants to know what is going to happen.
But then people come up to Peter and ask him, “Are you one of Jesus’ friends?”
And Peter says, “I don’t know him.”
Someone else asks, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?”
Peter says, “No, I’m not his disciple.”
Then someone else says, “Wait minute, I’m sure of it, you are definitely one of Jesus’ disciples, you are a Galilean.”
And Peter says, “I’m sorry I don’t know what you are talking about.”
And at that moment the rooster crows,
And Jesus looks at Peter, and Peter realizes what he has done.
And Peter goes away from Jesus and weeps bitterly.
What happened to this man whose faith and joy were once so intense that he left everything to follow Christ?
What happened to the chief of the apostles?
How did such faith, such joy, such rock solid confidence crumble so quickly?
How can such a thing happen to Peter?
More importantly, how can such a thing happen to us?
We may not have left our jobs and sacrificed everything to follow Christ,
but the mere fact that we are here in this church right now is evidence that we have made some kind of sacrifice.
At the very least we all gave up the opportunity to sleep in this morning,
or have coffee and donuts while we read the paper,
or sit on the couch and watch Sponge Bob.
All of us have given up something in our own way to follow Christ,
not just this morning, but over the course of our Christian life.
But does it ever seem like your faith not what it once was?
In this world, it is rare that our faith is tested in a bold and dramatic fashion.
In the United States, we are never told that we must
deny Christ or face execution.
Unlike Peter who feared for his life when he denied Jesus,
our faith can just slowly drain away, and leave us flat.
Have you ever had a tire with a slow leak?
There’s no dramatic blowout, but over time the air slowly leaks out.
And then, one morning you get in your car to go somewhere really important,
some meeting or event that you really have to be on time for,
when all of a sudden you realize that your tire is completely flat.
And then you are stuck.
This is exactly how it is with our faith.
We may not even notice that our faith is draining away,
but then one day we face a serious crisis,
or we are put in a situation that requires strong moral character
only to discover that our faith has drained away and we have been left stranded.
And maybe in our own way, Just like Peter, we also weep bitterly in our faithlessness, and in our failure.
But just because it looks like our story has come to an end, does not mean that it is the end of the story.
Yes, Peter denied Jesus and our Lord was crucified and buried,
but this was not the end of the story.
Peter may have abandoned Christ but Christ did not abandon Peter.
At the end of St. John’s Gospel, we hear another story about Peter in his fishing boat.
Again, Jesus comes to Peter, but this time Christ has risen from the dead.
Jesus tells Peter and his friends to let down their nets, and once again they make a great catch,
and Peter suddenly realizes that it truly is Jesus speaking to him,
and he jumps out of the boat and swims to shore.
And Jesus says to Peter, “Do you love me?”
Peter says, “Yes, lord, you know that I love you.”
and then Jesus asks him again, “Peter do you love me?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
But Jesus asks him yet again, “Do you love me?”
And now Peter starts to feel bad, because Jesus keeps asking him this question,
and he replies, “Lord you know all things, you know that I love you.”
So what is Jesus trying to do here with Peter?
Why does he keep asking Peter if he loves him?
Jesus is giving Peter an opportunity to repent,
to turn back from the way of denial and faithlessness,
and travel on the road of faith and love.
Peter abandoned Christ, but Christ did not abandon Peter.
You and I may have abandoned Christ, but Christ does not abandon us.
No matter what we do, no matter how we might fail, no matter how deep a hole we dig for ourselves,
Christ is always there, asking us, “Do you love me?”
Giving us a way out of our faithlessness and sin.
So this week, when you are at work, or sitting at your desk in school, or driving your kids to a soccer practice, or washing dishes or paying bills,
wherever you are, remember how Christ came to Peter on the lake.
Jesus did not sit in the temple and wait for people to come to him,
he went out and met people where they lived.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ reveals himself to Peter on the shore of a lake in a fishing boat.
Christ does not make people come to Him, He comes to us!
And when He comes to us, it is always a joyful surprise.
Remember that kid who wanted the bicycle?
Well, it was Christmas and he was really hoping that he would get the new bike for Christmas.
But, he really hadn’t been very good, and he knew that his parents didn’t have a lot of money.
So, Christmas morning came, and the whole family opened up all the presents under the tree, and it was a happy time, but there was no bicycle.
And the boy was a little sad.
But then, after all of the wrapping paper had been cleaned up, his parents said,
“What is this envelope in the branches of the tree?”
The boy pulled it out, opened it up, and there was a note that said, “Go look out on the deck.”
Do you know what was out there?
Yep, it was the bike that he had dreamed about.
Christ is waiting to surprise us,
not with a bicycle,
but with the same gift that He gave St. Peter’s on the shore of that lake.
Christ is waiting to surprise us with His love, and the gift of new life.
And today Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ gives us an opportunity to express our love for him once again.
Because when we confess our love for Christ, he fills our hearts with joy.
Today he asks us, “Do you love me?”
And we are free to cry out, “Yes Lord, I love you.”
Why a blog on preaching?
When I finished my M.Div. in 1996, I had a passionate desire to learn more about preaching. Homiletics was part of the M.Div. curriculum at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, but at that time it was not highly developed, and I finished with the feeling that so much more needed to be said about preaching the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
During my years in seminary, the homiletics program seemed to reflect the unfortunate sentiment that great preachers are born, not trained. However, my thought at the time was that if even the most tone-deaf seminarian can be trained up to basic competence in liturgical chant shouldn't there also be a way to methodically teach preaching? And, while fully acknowledging the importance of liturgical chant in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, can't we say that good preaching is AT LEAST as important to the life of the Church as liturgical chant? My answer was a resounding YES. So, I actively sought out a doctoral program where I could do advanced studies in homiletics. I happened to find just such a program at Drew University, and I began my doctoral work in 1998.
The strength of the program at Drew, was that I studied homiletics from within the Liturgical Studies discipline. My adviser, Charles Rice, had made a powerful argument for approaching homiletics from a liturgical perspective in his book, The Embodied Word. In my dissertation I examined the "liturgy of the word/liturgy of the eucharist" dichotomy from the perspective of an Eastern Orthodox Christian. My dissertation advisor, John Behr suggested the title of the dissertation, Encountering the Word, and thus the title of this blog.
Since completing my Ph.D. significant advances have been made in the curriculum at St. Vladimir's Seminary, for which I am immensely grateful. Yet, more can always be done. My objective, in creating this blog, is to have a place to post thoughts, ideas, homilies and reflections on the preaching life. Specifically, I would like to help further the discussion about preaching in the Orthodox Church, both from the perspective of those who preach, and perhaps even more importantly, from the perspective of those who listen. On a more general note, I hope that this blog is an opportunity for anyone who is passionate about preaching to participate in a discussion on how it is manifested in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the end, however, the most important thing is our encounter with the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
During my years in seminary, the homiletics program seemed to reflect the unfortunate sentiment that great preachers are born, not trained. However, my thought at the time was that if even the most tone-deaf seminarian can be trained up to basic competence in liturgical chant shouldn't there also be a way to methodically teach preaching? And, while fully acknowledging the importance of liturgical chant in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, can't we say that good preaching is AT LEAST as important to the life of the Church as liturgical chant? My answer was a resounding YES. So, I actively sought out a doctoral program where I could do advanced studies in homiletics. I happened to find just such a program at Drew University, and I began my doctoral work in 1998.
The strength of the program at Drew, was that I studied homiletics from within the Liturgical Studies discipline. My adviser, Charles Rice, had made a powerful argument for approaching homiletics from a liturgical perspective in his book, The Embodied Word. In my dissertation I examined the "liturgy of the word/liturgy of the eucharist" dichotomy from the perspective of an Eastern Orthodox Christian. My dissertation advisor, John Behr suggested the title of the dissertation, Encountering the Word, and thus the title of this blog.
Since completing my Ph.D. significant advances have been made in the curriculum at St. Vladimir's Seminary, for which I am immensely grateful. Yet, more can always be done. My objective, in creating this blog, is to have a place to post thoughts, ideas, homilies and reflections on the preaching life. Specifically, I would like to help further the discussion about preaching in the Orthodox Church, both from the perspective of those who preach, and perhaps even more importantly, from the perspective of those who listen. On a more general note, I hope that this blog is an opportunity for anyone who is passionate about preaching to participate in a discussion on how it is manifested in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the end, however, the most important thing is our encounter with the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
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