Month: November 2015

Bulletin – 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

/ kredig

Dear Friends,

We are called on once again this week to consider what we truly need in life and we might consider as my dear deceased mother-in-law, Margaret used to ask, “How much do I need and how much do I want?”  The prophet Elijah encourages us to, “not be afraid.” Come; join the All Are One community this week to ponder and pray over our needs and our wants.

Robert and I won’t be with you this week—we will be attending the Call to Action conference in Milwaukee.  For those who may not know CTA’s history—this was a gathering originally called in 1976 by the bishops to get the laity more involved in the Church. The bishops today have all but disavowed themselves from this group, because the laity truly took them at their word!

Dick Dahl will be with you this Sunday. Thanks Dick!

Peace and love,

Pastor Kathy

P.S. Just a couple weeks until our Thanksgiving pot-luck—sign up soon if you haven’t!

Readings:

  • 1 Kings 17: 10-16
  • Hebrews 9: 24-28
  • Mark 12: 38-44

 

 

Homily – 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

/ kredig

When you told your little child, “I love you,” and they asked, “How much?” most parents responded, “More than all the world.”

As life goes on, children can worry their parents, even hurt and disappoint them, but in most cases, the love of parents persists through it all. Children, in their turn, usually seek to return that love and make their parents proud of them.

However, as much as we desire to be loved without conditions, we are not accustomed to being loved this way. Perhaps because we usually have to earn the love of other people, we instinctively find it difficult to believe, to emotionally accept, that we are loved without conditions. 

I was really struck by the following simply-stated comment by Jennifer Herdt from her book Putting on Virtue, “God wants to give us a gift and we want to buy it.” 

The gift is unconditional love, acceptance without conditions. We have only to accept it, like that little child being reassured that she or he is loved more than all the world.  However the tendency is to feel we and others must earn it, merit it, and if we fall short, that we won’t have it. 

The fact is we cannot earn,merit, or become worthy of this gift on our own. We express this when we pray before Communion, “We are not worthy to receive you, but, by your word, we are healed.” We can then seek, as best we can, with grateful hearts, to please our Divine Parent. 

I recently read The Road to Character by David Brooks, a writer for the New York Times. In it, he described the lives of many well-known but imperfect people–from President Dwight David Eisenhower to St. Augustine and Dorothy Day. Brooks showed that despite their flaws and imperfections, they developed character in some significant way. Among them was George Eliot which was actually the pen name for English author Mary Anne Evans who wrote, “People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbor.” More often than not, the opportunity is often within the walls of our own home. 

Despite, what was to some, scandalous behavior on her part, George Eliot saw through pretense and identified the challenge we most commonly face–the persons within the walls of our own homes, in the offices and factories where we work, in the stores where we shop, on the roads we drive. 

We often don’t achieve loving others unconditionally, but when we do, we reflect the way we are loved by our Divine Parent.

 

Today’s Readings give us examples of extreme generosity: the widow who baked bread-cakes for Elijah even though it was all the flour she had left for herself and her son; another widow who put two small coins in the collection box  even though it was all she had. Sometimes it takes that kind of generosity to overlook a hurtful remark or to put up with annoying behavior.

Pope Frances has urged us to look not at numbers but at the faces of individual refugees fleeing war and terror.  In a totally different setting we are challenged to look at the faces in our immediate lives, persons needing to be understood and not judged, to be listened to and not yelled at.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews states that Christ appeared once and for all to remove sin through self-sacrifice.  Jesus gave all he had. He literally poured himself out fully for us with his love. 

Pope Francis called on all of us to create “islands of mercy” in our lives and our communities. Jesus is our model. May He live in our hearts and influence our actions.

I wonder…is it more difficult to love unconditionally or to accept being loved this way. What do you think?

Homily – All Saints Day

/ kredig

We can all think of momentous occasions that we might like to attend—events that invitations or tickets would be hard to come by, either because we are not “in the loop”—don’t know anyone influential or simply cannot afford the asking price.  Such events might be a presidential ball, an installation of a pope, a World Series, such as was going on this past week in Kansas City and New York.  In fact, when we arrived in Kansas City this past week, we teased our daughter about whether she had secured tickets for us to the opening game and we were informed that if there were even any to get, it was standing room only at $200.00 or more a ticket!

Today we celebrate the most momentous gathering we will ever be invited to—the gathering of the saints of heaven—where we will see God as God is. It will be more wonderful than any of the above events mentioned or any others that we might think  of.  What’s more, the invitation has been extended to all women, men, children—everyone from every nation, race, people and tongue—no exceptions!  What kind of ticket do we need to get in, we might ask? The reading from Revelation says that we must be marked with the seal of the servants of God—the seal we are told is the blood of the lamb. To our minds, I think this simply means that we are all included because our God’s love is all inclusive.

Nadia Bolz-Weber in, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People puts an unusual spin on this “gathering of the saints,” which I find, as she says, “something like Jesus would do.” She sees the Jesus of her belief as one lavishly extending blessing on all gathered on that mount not because of what they have done, but because of who they are!  She especially sees Jesus extending blessing to those who get forgotten—so her beatitudes sound something like the following:

  • Blessed are the agnostics
  • Blessed are they who doubt—who aren’t sure—who can still be surprised
  • Blessed are those who have nothing to offer
  • Blessed are the mothers who have miscarried
  • Blessed are they who don’t have the luxury of taking things for granted anymore
  • Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it all together for everyone else
  • Blessed are those who no one else notices
  • Blessed are the closeted
  • Blessed are those without documentation
  • Blessed are those without lobbyists
  • Blessed are those who make terrible business decisions for the sake of people

“You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you,” she says.  She truly sees our brother Jesus as one who includes all, sees all and loves all.

We are not only called to be people who include in this way, after the model of Jesus, but should know that we too, when we may feel that we have nothing to give, are blessed by our God who loves us lavishly as well.

The reading from Revelation today, in its entirety, may present a problem when we try to understand its meaning.  The book of Revelation is one huge symbol, so to take it literally, which of course, we should never do with Scripture, would be a mistake.  The number, 144,000—those who will apparently be saved, is a symbolic number.  It is  12 squared, multiplied by 1,000 and is meant to signify a number impossible to count for the writer of this book. In other words, the invitation is extended to all—God’s love and inclusion is limitless, just as Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount.

This gathering will take place before God, seeing God face to face and in the presence of Jesus who gave us, all of himself, so that we would know and experience the love of the Creator for each of us.  Quite powerful stuff, we might agree—better and grander than any ball, any sports event, any installation.

The terminology used in the psalm reading today about climbing the highest mountain to be near God comes out of near Eastern mythology—these people believed that the major god would have lived there. Scripture scholars tell us that the Israelite people then took over this belief and placed their one, true God there on the highest mountain, eventually placing the temple in Jerusalem on the highest hill calling it the holy mountain.

We also know that the Israelites came up with all kinds of codes for ritual purity to determine who was worthy, who was not—they basically were about physical wholeness and proximity to blood.  As a result, the lame, the sick (lepers), anyone bleeding (women mainly), children (imperfect adults—not fully formed), were considered unworthy.  To us; there would be a problem with this kind of thinking.  And the psalmist writing would have had all this in mind in the answer given about whom was worthy. Seems important then, with this kind of thinking afoot,  to exclude many considered unworthy, that Jesus had his work cut out for him in including all. Our brother Jesus, taught that being “worthy” has nothing to do with ritual purity—what is on the outside, but, what is on the inside.  Jesus’ stinging words elsewhere to the Pharisees about being “white-washed sepulchers—all whiteness without, but inside dead bones and all corruption,” comes to mind.

What our loving God wants of each of us, demonstrated so wonderfully by Jesus is a clean, pure heart.  Pastor Nadia, in her modern day beatitudes basically says the same—trying to do our best even when it seems we can do nothing right, or even have any energy to try, is still looked on with love by our God.   We are to be “beatitude” people—our disposition and response to people and our world must be one of concern for all, no matter how distasteful we might find someone initially.  We must remember that each person is the beloved of our God, ourselves included—each considered a saint—one chosen, in God’s eyes.  Our attitude toward the world must be, simply must be, one of respect and care with the mindset of protecting this beautiful gift for future generations.

Looking into the beatitudes closer; we see that their challenge to us is not about keeping laws, even good laws, because we all know how empty a practice that can be if there is no engagement of the heart and mind, but mere sheepish following, without question.  No, the challenge is to take these sentiments to heart—being cognizant of the abuse of power that can come with the accumulation of wealth, to be people who look with mercy upon all of God’s creatures, to be people who hunger and thirst for justice for all. We must remember that we are not just being asked to think that justice for all is a good thing, but to “hunger and thirst”—a real primal instinct, for this good. This is part of the real challenge that Pope Francis is making in Laudato Si—this change must come from within ourselves in a way that changes in fact, how we do things—how we live our lives.

We must be people of peace—we must abhor war and all the empty lies about the ultimate good of it.  We must strive for this seemingly, at times, unattainable good.  I was encouraged this week to stumble upon a discussion between men and women on Facebook talking about their heartfelt desire for our country that we would sometime, soon, realize that war and violence as solutions to living with others in this world are not the solutions that make us great.

The book of Revelation clearly tells us today that this type of action, this type of disposition for our fellow human beings is our coveted ticket to the great gathering of saints before our living God. And our brother Jesus goes a step further as Pastor Nadia teaches, to include all those who are forgotten, passed over, not seen by many of us in our seemingly best efforts to extend mercy. The First Letter of John names us all as children of God—we come from great stock!

So on this day of all saints, a good reflection for each of us might be to think about ourselves as saints, remembering Pastor Nadia’s instruction, “What makes us saints of God is not our ability to be saintly, but rather God’s ability to work through sinners,” which we all are! The church she has founded in Denver is entitled, “House for All Saints and Sinners.”  So, in other words, we must allow God to do that work in us—God will never force change upon us, only through our openness can it happen.

We all admire many saints of our Church–those who have been canonized and those who have not, some even unchurched who are doing good and beautiful work in this world. We can name them beatitude people—blessed ones among us, blessed and loved by our God. It is such as these, ourselves included that we celebrate today.  Tomorrow is an equally special day—All Souls—wherein we remember all those who have lived and loved and gone on to a new life, awaiting us one day.  We will have the opportunity to pray for all these loved ones throughout this month and to add names to our book of life that have died this past year.  Friends, let us pray today for them, and for ourselves that we might first know that we are loved and do our best to love in return, extending the mercy we have been so graciously given by our God in having this human experience to enjoy!

Bulletin – All Saints Day

/ kredig

Dear Friends,

This Sunday we remember that we are saints—all loved by God—this is our heritage. On Monday, we remember all the saints who have gone before us—those we name as family and friends.  Most of us have grown up thinking of saints as those canonized by the Church and while that is true, that isn’t the end of the story. As someone once said, “Saints aren’t so much those who do ‘saintly’ things as they are sinners who allow God to work through their lives.

Come; contemplate this and more with us this week.

Peace and love,

Pastor Kathy

Readings:

  • Revelation 7: 2-4, 9-14
  • 1 John 3: 1-3
  • Matthew 5: 1-12

 

***On Saturday, November 21st we will have our 4:30 P.M. Mass for the month.  Afterward, at 5:30 P.M. or so, we will have our annual Thanksgiving pot-luck.  Please let me know if you are coming and what you will bring. Looking forward to celebrating with you!***