Dear Friends, here is Pastor Dick Dahl’s homily from yesterday–enjoy! Pastor Kathy
P. S. See you next Saturday!

At the end of the War of 1812 over 2,000 British solders were killed in the battle of New Orleans with only 15 American casualties. This bloodbath took place because news that the Peace Treaty had been signed in Belgium two weeks earlier had not crossed the ocean yet. Today, however, thanks to satellites and modern communication we seem to know about every tragedy, both of natural and human origin, within hours, if not minutes of its occurrance.

So while we were still in shock from the horror of the slaughter of our Jewish brothers and sisters at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we heard this week of an even more deadly killing of teenagers at a dance hall in Thousand Oaks, California. Next came word that the neighboring town of Paradise had been incinerated by an out-of-control fire in which nine more people died. We also hear daily of some decision by our own President that shows no compassion or understanding for the suffering of people coming to our southern border, seeking refuge from unbelievable fear and suffering in their countries of origin.

With such awareness, sometimes one wants to turn off the news, close one’s ears, withdraw and hide somewhere. Yet when we come together here and gather to celebrate the Eucharistic meal, the Word of God speaks to our hearts, challenging us and enabling us to face the reality around us.

Today’s first reading takes place during a devastating draught that affected not only Israel but people in neighboring regions as well. To save Elijah the Lord sent him to a city in Sidon where he met a widow about to prepare a meager meal for herself and her son with the last bit of food she had. Elijah first asks her to bring him a small cupful of water. Then he asks for a crust of bread, and finally for her to make him a little cake. She was not a Jew and she responded to his request, “As the Lord, your God lives, I have nothing baked and only a handful of flour and a little oil left.” But when he entreats her in God’s name to fulfill his request anyway, she gives him all she has.

This story of response to the needs of a stranger, of responding to a God she did not even know, with all she had is an incredible example of generosity .

In the Gospel reading, Jesus observes another widow. He watches her literally putting a pittance, two coins, into the Treasury, but it was all she had. Again an astounding example of giving with all one’s being.

The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews focused on Jesus who gave all he was and had as his blood poured out in the new Covenant–in which we participate in this meal of bread and wine.

What does it mean, then, when the first and greatest commandment calls us to love God with our whole being?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), the brilliant French Jesuit priest, mystic, and paleontologist, had much to say about love. For Teilhard, “love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.” Divine love is the energy that brought the universe into being and binds it together. Human love is whatever energy we use to help divine love achieve its purpose. . . .

Religion, from the root religio, means to reconnect, to bind back together. We must all overcome the illusion of separateness. It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God,” as St. Paul states in his letter to the Colossians (3:3).

Christianity has put major emphasis on us loving God. But some speak of their overwhelming experience of how God loves us! In the 1890s the Englishman Francis Thompson wrote a poem called The Hound of Heaven. In it he describes God as a great hound ever seeking us, running to find and save us through the endless byways of our lives. God’s loving us comes through in most of the writing of mystics: God the initiator, God the doer, God the one who seduces us. It’s all about God’s initiative. The mystics invariably find ways to give that love back through forms of service and worship; but it’s never earning the love, it’s always returning the love.

To love God is to love what God loves. To love God means to love everything . . . no exceptions. In his book, The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, “Love [people] even in [their] sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

Of course, that can only be done with divine love flowing through us. In this way, we can love things and people in themselves, for themselves—not for what they do for us. That’s when we begin to love our family, friends, and neighbors apart from what they can do for us or how they make us look. We love them as living images of God in themselves, despite their finiteness.

Now that takes work: constant detachment from ourselves—our conditioning, preferences, and knee-jerk reactions. Franciscan Father Richard Rohr, from whose daily meditations most of this homily was formed, writes that we can only allow divine love to flow by way of contemplative consciousness, where we stop eliminating and choosing. This is the transformed mind that St. Paul wrote about in his letter to the Romans (12,2) that allows us to see God in everything and empowers our behavior to almost naturally change.

dear friends,

below find Pastor Dick’s homily from Sunday in my absence–sorry for the lateness, but we don’t always have internet in the mountain areas that we have been visiting. He has given us once again a wonderful piece! be well all–pastor kathy

The first reading today looks back over 3000 years. The Hebrew
people had been liberated from slavery in Egypt, entered at Sinai
into a Covenant with Yahweh, wandered for years through the
wilderness, and were now finally about to enter the land of
Canaan where they would begin their life as a people. Then they
heard proclaimed what would be the foundation of Israel and the
Jewish community down to this day:

(In Hebrew, “Shema Yisra’el”) “Hear, O Israel, The Lord is our
God, the Lord alone! Therefore you shall love the Lord your God
with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your
whole strength. Take to heart these words which I command you
today. Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when
you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and
when you get up.”

Then the reading from Mark’s Gospel moves us forward a
thousand years. In chapters 10 through 12 Jesus had been
questioned repeatedly: Pharisees asked him, “Is it lawful to a man
to divorce his wife?” A rich man asked him, “What must I do to
inherit eternal life?” Chief priests and scribes asked him by what
authority he had driven money changers and sellers from the
temple area. Herodians and Pharisees asked him, “Is it lawful to
pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Sadduccees who taught there
was no resurrection asked him whose wife a woman would be at
the resurrection after having been married to seven brothers?
Despite being peppered, as it were, by hostile questions from
various religious and civil leaders, a sincere question came from a
scribe, “Teacher, which is the first of all the commandments?” To
which Jesus answered with the words we heard earlier from
Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Jesus then
added from Leviticus, “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.’” Then he said, “There is no other
commandment greater than these.”

The scribe responded that to love God with one’s whole being and
one’s neighbor as oneself was worth more than all burnt offerings
and sacrifices. Jesus saw he had understood.

It seems so clear. Do we understand as well as that Jewish scribe
did? I think it sounds easier than it is. Yet Jesus repeatedly
showed us how. He always reached out to those who were
outsiders and different—lepers, Samaritans, a tax collector, a
Roman soldier, a prostitute, non Jews.

Who do you not love? Who do you hate? No one? Which political
leader? Which White Nationalist? How about members of ISIS?
Are there fellow citizens — neighbors — you can’t stand? Maybe
even members of your own family? Yet Jesus says to us, “There is
NO OTHER commandment greater than these, “Love God with
your whole being and your neighbor as yourself.” He did not list
any exceptions.

When people hold beliefs that I disagree with or even find
abhorrent, am I honestly able to love them? People who abuse
power and privilege and demean others, who even abuse others?
Yet, Jesus says to me, “There is NO OTHER commandment
greater than these, “Love God with your whole being and your
neighbor as yourself.”

Last Monday night in response to the slaughter of eleven Jewish
men and women and the wounding of others, many of us came
together with others from different religions or no religion at
Wesley United Methodist Church to mourn and give support.
One of the speakers was Mark Peterson, our mayor. He spoke
about the hostility toward the stranger that has stained this
community through the years. In the late 1800s when Frederick
Douglas, the former slave and courageous Abolitionist leader,
visited here, he was denied housing. The Ku Klux Klan was active
here in the 1920s. Immigrants such as Hmong families were
greeted with suspicion and hostility as recently as 40 years ago.
Mayor Peterson, however, cited the ways the Winona community
has changed. He praised the work of Project Fine and the fact that
a few years ago, Winona was the first city in Minnesota to declare
itself a “Welcoming Community” to all who come here.

None of us seek suffering for ourselves or our loved ones. Most of
us, I believe, don’t wish suffering on others. But it can be
challenging to love those who differ from us in ways that grate on
us. Yet experience has demonstrated over and over again that only
love brings about change. We can argue our position on politics,
religion or anything else until we are blue or red in the face. Only
when we establish an emotional connection, can a breakthrough
develop.

We are called to love…everyone. It is more important than
anything else we can do. No religious activity takes precedence
over loving God and other people. Mother Theresa said, “We
cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great
love.”

We need to ask Jesus to teach us, to help us to learn how to love as
he does. It can seem overwhelming, but in a recent meditation
Father Richard Rohr quoted the following from the Jewish
Talmud: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief:
Do just(ice) now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now.”
Fr. Rohr added, “Love protects us from nothing, even as it
unexplainably sustains us in all thing