“For a perishable body presses down on the soul, and a clay house weighs down the restless mind,” the Wisdom writer tells us today.  This is probably a good place to start with these readings, full of challenge and hard sayings because I think it says well our very human response sometimes with what life brings.  We, as human followers of our brother, Jesus, often face being his followers with a willingness to do the right thing, but our very humanness weighs us down, gets in the way of doing what we could, would, if not for our humanity; at least, this is what we tell ourselves.

This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a friend who is working on becoming a Cojourner with the Rochester Franciscans and I am mentoring her process.  We were talking about mysticism and the ability of saints like Francis, Clare, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, to rise above their physical, “clay houses and restless minds,” and commune in a special way with our loving God, expressing our desire to do more of that, and realizing that we are far from this level of “communion.”

The author, Susan Pitchford, of the book we are studying and reflecting upon, Following Francis: The Franciscan Way for Everyone says that if we desire to commune with God in this way, we should simply ask God, as God desires this same communion with us.
   It is for this reason that we have built the two minutes of quiet into our liturgies after communion—to give us time that we don’t always take for ourselves in our busy days, to simply “be” with our God who wants to “be” with us.

As my fledgling Cojourner-to-be, friend said, “It gets easier the more that I do it.”  This is true of course of anything that we really want to do.

This kind of practice, communing with God in quiet times during our days prepares us with assurance, strength and will to do some of the hard things that we are called on to do by the memory of our brother, Jesus.  Because, after all, that is our mission as his followers, to more fully and clearly, over our lifetimes, reflect his actions in our lives.

The gospel from Luke today has some hard sayings.  And once again, as always, with Jesus’ words, we have to take the broad view.  We might question his insistence that we turn our backs on our families, mother, father, brothers and sisters, but that would be taking the narrow view.

Jesus is not asking us to literally turn our backs on loved ones, but to prepare us for the fact that in following him; his path, his actions; we may in fact have to “go against” family members.

I think of this with regard to my birth family and my ordination to priesthood—certainly not all of them have supported this; but for me, this is one of those issues where the call of God is what I must follow.

Others of us, in these times of deep divide in our country over many issues, have to go to our hearts, use our heads too, and decide which way to go—“What would Jesus do?” is an operative question here.  And basically, we must ask as he always did, “Is love being served here?” and then proceed.

This reminds me of a wonderful action that our grandson, Elliot’s kindergarten class is about for which I applaud his teachers.  Evidently, if I got the explanation right, the class has a bucket that they can place cotton balls in for each action they do in response to the question, “Is this taking from my bucket (sharing) or from some other’s bucket (not sharing)? And wonderfully, this past week, he reported that his class had 40 cotton balls in their bucket, so they would be enjoying a treat at week’s end for all the good they had done.

This is a wonderful practice for these young children to be about as it prepares them for a life wherein they will more regularly reflect on their actions, asking, in effect, is love being served in what I am about to do?  And even if the question comes after the action—reflecting upon “taking from another’s bucket,” to fill my needs; this is a good thing to help them be more attentive to being their best selves.

We see much the same situation in the reading from Philemon today.  Paul is writing from prison, yet his tone is all about love.  This in itself is a good reflection for us—whether we find ourselves in good times or bad, love is always the center from which we should move.

A little back story on Philemon is probably helpful in understanding what Paul is sharing.  Philemon is a slave-holder, an accepted practice at the time.  He is also a baptized follower of Paul and ultimately, Jesus.  Onesimus, the slave in question, although unnamed has gone to Paul in prison and Paul has taken up his cause with Philemon.  Appealing to his best self and the fact that he and Onesimus share baptism; Paul appeals to Philemon to see that the action of slave-holding is really against his new life in Jesus.

Paul says that the decision is Philemon’s and that Paul won’t force him one way or another. He will only help him to see the right way, with the understanding that, it won’t always be easy to follow our brother, Jesus.

Paul, in his ministry was always about helping others to see that following Jesus makes each one of us equal—we are brothers and sisters in Christ.  We recall Paul saying elsewhere—“There is neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—all are one!

And finally, today’s readings remind us that our time is short and that “now,” as Sister Joan Chittister says, in her new book, is the time to do the right thing—if not you, me, who else will do it?!  Our world is so in need of people who will follow our brother, Jesus, realizing that in doing so; we give up forever who we can love.  But we must remember that we will not be alone in this action—Jesus’ Spirit will always be there, the Wisdom writer tells us today, so for just today, let us be confident that love is always the best response to what life brings.  Amen? Amen!

My friends, I found myself this week thinking about the beauty of our precious earth, amid the burning of the Amazon and the heating of our oceans, this place we all call home, the only place in this grand universe that any of us or anyone that we have ever known has lived and died upon.  If we go out as far as technology can take us and look back at our earth, it appears as a very small, blue dot!  Yet, all the relationships we have ever known of for ourselves and all others happened here, and will continue to, for hopefully, a very long time.  As one reflects on this, it is a very humbling thing.

Sirach, in the first reading today, calls us to this kind of humility and to a sense of care for so great a gift.  The writer says, “Be gentle in carrying out your business/the greater you are, the more you should behave humbly.” In conclusion, this writer speaks of the great power and potential that lies within “charitable giving,” or giving from the heart.

With regard to the beauty of the earth and preserving that, I always enjoy September and the coming of the fall time of the year—I have fondly—over the years called it, “jeans and sweatshirt weather.” I personally wouldn’t need to have it ever be much warmer than 75 degrees with a gentle breeze at my back.  Of course, the farmers need warmer weather to make their crops grow, so that has to be part of the heat cycle for me as well. And when summer is past; I can have my favorite temps for a month or so.

In conjunction with this, I have always enjoyed the variety of weather that this part of the world provides us and I would never want to do anything to disrupt that cycle of variety that we enjoy here.

The second reading today to the Hebrews continues in this vein of “right living,” we might say, in laying out the true relationship that each of us should strive after with our God, others and the planet.  This writer says that our God is not one that we should consider as “untouchable,” but one who is “the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” one who is surrounded by “myriads of angels,” gathering for a feast.  To me, this God sounds very relational, and most concerned about “right living,” for all of creation.

The writer to the Hebrews is also speaking about a “just” God for all women and men, one who will judge us all, and the goodness of this God, who we know, is so perfectly shown in our brother, Jesus.

And finally, the idea of moving humbly in our world is once again shown so well through the words of Jesus in Luke today, “They who exalt themselves will be humbled.”

So, my friends, “humility” seems to be the operative word today as we reflect on who we are as individuals and of how we should responsibly engage our world, its people, and really, all of creation.  The days when we can deny, if we ever did, that our beautiful, blue planet is heating up, are over.  Regardless of political preference, this issue has grown beyond that and become a matter that all humans must consider!

I have mentioned in the past, the work of Brian McLaren in The Great Spiritual Migration and he has spoken well about how our thinking and ultimately, our action in our world must change at a very deep level—internally, culturally, politically and spiritually.

He tracks the “God” that has been a part of most of our lives in this country—denominationally, whether it be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or other religious groups.  He lists these “Gods” on a scale from 1.0—5.0.

The version of God, 1.0 is the one who was supposed to solve all our problems and people who believe in this God are angry when he hasn’t made their lives that of “a warm blanket or a dry diaper”—in other words, this is an infantile God.

The God, 2.0 is one who is gracious, wants all of us to be nice and get along.  This God is all that some people can handle, McLaren says.

God, 3.0 is for all those who are most comfortable living by the rules and would like to impose those rules on everyone else.

God, 4.0 is a “God of love” and if you believe in this version, you may want to convert everyone else to this God, having them, along with yourself, migrate from selfishness to other-centeredness, from self-interest to the common good, from me to we.

   This God sounds quite good, wouldn’t you say? The thing is, McLaren says, this God is still an exclusive God who shows favor to us, but not to them.  No matter the denomination, this God leads to affection, fidelity and forgiveness in family, community and nation—but only for people from our religion, ethnicity or tribe.

McLaren continues—so while God 4.0 moves us in a good direction from “me, myself and mine” (personal selfishness) to “we and our,” (social maturity), “this same God is still the violent God whose genocide card we keep in our back pocket if we are threatened, or if they have something we desire.  The word we, it turns out, can be pretty dangerous, because it can “otherize” and dehumanize those who aren’t like us.

Those of us Catholic women who have followed their calls to ordained ministry see this “God” displayed in Church officials and those who want to remain in good standing with them.

And finally McLaren offers this hope if we can accept it: “We need God 5.0 to emerge, a God of the inclusive we, the God not just of us, but of all of us.  Only a bigger, nondualistic God can unite us and them in an inclusive identity that is not limited to a tribe or nation, but extends to all of humanity, and not just all humanity, but to all living things, and not just to all living things, but to all the planetary ecosystems in which we share…we need to move to a grown-up God,” in other words.

So my friends, if we would choose God 5.0 to follow, then the days when we can stick our heads in the sand, refusing to do our part—whether that be speaking our truth within a group of friends, writing or calling our Congress people, leading our congregations to truth—with love, whatever it might be, are over.

Everything within these Sunday readings then, push us in the direction of truly knowing ourselves, coming to terms with how wonderfully each of us is made, with how much potential each of us has for good in our world, if we don’t set that aside for the comfortable way out.  What is called for, it seems to me is BALANCE—knowing our potential, yet standing humbly before our God, realizing that we need this “grown-up God” to stand beside us, to show us the way, to be all that we can be—all that our world and its people need.   Amen? Amen!

My friends, today we are challenged to see a very big picture—to look through the lens that our loving God uses when viewing the peoples of the world—the People of God.  And just “who,” we might ask is this People of God?  If one reads the history of the Israelite people and of the covenant made between them and God, we would assume that they, the Israelite people, are the People of God.  Enter the prophets; today especially, Isaiah.

Isaiah warns (as prophets do) to not be so smug—that the God who loves and cares for them also loves and cares for all of humankind.  It would appear that many in leadership of our country are not aware of this!  Where did we ever get such terminology as “the one true church?” Isaiah’s God will gather people from north and south, east and west and all will be welcome.  It is this desire, this action of his Abba God that Jesus prays for the night before his death in John 17—this desire, this action is what we as a church community are named for, that “they all may be one,” that all would be welcome. And not only that all would be welcomed, the prophet says, but that all will rank equally with the Israelites who have felt they are a shoe-in for all of God’s promises, because they are “the People of God.”

This is where the tone in the gospel that seems so harsh, as we read it, comes from. Jesus is basically fulfilling Isaiah’s prophetic words—just because God has made a covenant does not mean that people have a free ride.

How did our Church—to the present day, ever come to the place of having some be a step above any other;  some with titles and positions of power that they claim for themselves—Monsignor, Your Excellency, Very Reverend Father? What is it that allows some of us in God’s family to claim that, “we are called” by nature of how we happened to have been born and others are not for that same reason? Certainly reading Isaiah’s prophetic words today, one could not come to such a conclusion.

Jesus was very clear—painfully clear in fact, in letting the Israelites know that this will not be the case—they will not have a free ride.  Each one worthy of the eternal banquet must do their part in this life to invite, welcome, and be open to all and that includes us!  So, what does this truly mean? Does it mean that I will invite, welcome and be open to all who see things my way? I don’t think so!  These Scriptures should certainly call present-day Israelites to task with regard to their Palestinian neighbors, especially those of the prophet, Isaiah!

Our challenge throughout our earthly journey is to attempt to see the manifestation of God in each person we meet.  This is the central point in a series of articles in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) recently on “real presence” in Eucharist—it only matters on the altar if we can first see the “real presence” in each other!  Seeing Jesus in each other is easy to do when we are all of like mind and belief—but when people think and act very differently from us, then the message of our prime manifestation of God, as Christians, Jesus, our brother, becomes more difficult.

A present day national conflict is that of the crisis of guns in our country.  We see the rights of gun owners pitted against the rights of others to simply, live.  When 100 lose their lives daily to guns in this country, no matter the cause; we can with certitude say that access to guns is over-the-top.  And the ignorant rhetoric of the National Rifle Association and anyone who repeats it, that this is a “mental health issue,” is simply burying their head in the sand, at the cost of so many innocent lives.

And even if it were true, which it isn’t, that the proliferation of gun deaths in this country is “a mental health issue,” wouldn’t we want to protect our population when these same mentally ill people go looking for a gun by making it extremely difficult for them to get their hands on one?

Jesus’ words of today, it would seem, come into play here describing Abba God’s reaction, “I do not know you!”  We are required my friends, to be honest, to be responsible, to be reasonable, to consider the needs of others, not just our own—this is what we will be judged on one day, not who we know, nor how much we have accumulated of this world’s goods, but by our actions in making this world as good as it can be for all of us.

Getting back to the bigger picture then, human and theological thought have evolved far enough now for us to realize that our God is universal—there is one God for all of us, different and wonderful people on this earth.  And if that is the case, we must all accept the fact that this God of us all became present through time in Jesus, in Buddha, in Muhammad, in the Great Spirit and in ways we may not yet be aware of. All these manifestations show us a different face of God that none of us is able to fully understand in this life.  And why would we expect it to be any other way?

Jesus told us when he graced the earth—“Your ways are not God’s ways.”  Translation: God can appear to humans in any way that God chooses.  In addition, God is able to love more, show more mercy, more understanding, and deal out more justice that any of us could ever imagine.  It would seem that all this God asks of us is that we try to live out, as best we can, these qualities that for us Christians, Jesus demonstrated so well. And if we do, we won’t need to waste energy on whose god is the best!

Amid the differences, in ideologies, in thought processes, as in our current gun crisis in this country; we must strive to see that the manifestations of God in other major belief systems ask the same of their followers as Jesus asks of us.  Thomas Merton, before he died too young, had done a great deal of work comparing the words and teachings of Buddha and Jesus—finding many similarities.  Reading the words of the Great Chiefs of our Native American peoples also shows similar likenesses.  So, why do we try and say, “We are right, you are wrong” when all have a piece of the truth? Why do we say, “Men are called, women are not?” Why is our thinking so narrow, so small, when our God is so broad, so big, so loving, so inclusive?  Where we can challenge others respectfully is on their actions—claiming Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed, the Great Spirit, does not allow having a closed mind to the truth of gun violence in this country, or any other issue that affects us all.

The greater, broader message of today’s readings is that of how God sees the “People of God.”  We are all included and that should change how we look at each other, especially when we disagree on any issue.  It seems whenever we can put a face and an experience on the “pain,” the misunderstanding, the different way of thinking, the different lifestyle, the different belief system—the “something” or “someone” that we feel we can’t live with—can’t accept—we are then opened up, by the grace of God , to a bigger world—allowed to look , just a bit, through the lens that our God looks through and see the multi-colored grandness of all humanity and all of creation, really—the many different faces of God as reflected in all of God’s people and our beautiful world.

The Winona Community, for the 16^th year welcomes our Native American sisters and brothers here this weekend as we remember our not-so-good past and promise anew to know, to try and understand and to learn how to share this beautiful piece of land.  And forgiveness is also part of this process, on both sides.

Every attempt we make my friends to know God more through each and every one we meet only draws us closer to that day when we will truly see God’s face in its entirety. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that our God is coming to gather the nations of every language. The psalmist cries out that we should share God’s love with the whole world. The writer to the Hebrews says that suffering will be part of this journey and that we should strive to make the path of our journey straight. And finally, Luke’s gospel concludes with the reminder that none of us are better than the rest of us, so it would behoove us to welcome all, be open to all, and see each one as necessary to show us the total face of God.

And perhaps as our image of God grows larger, as seen through the eyes of many and countless, different people on this earth, our vision of what God is calling us to for the good of our world can grow too! Amen?  Amen!