Author: kredig

Homily – 5th Sunday of Lent

/ kredig

My friends, as we continue our Lenten journey toward Easter and new life in Jesus; we are called, as in the first Sunday of Lent, to reflect upon death.  Ironically, this past week, I found myself reflecting upon death for very personal reasons.

Within the course of our trip to China, which, in and of itself, was wonderful on many fronts; I experienced a return of the sciatica pain from last fall along with a new pain that doctors have told me is tendonitis or bursitis, or both.  This new pain has felt like someone socked me really hard in the muscle below my right shoulder blade and it further presents itself as a stinging pain, when it isn’t otherwise simply being very sore. So that, added to the sciatica pain that shows itself, radiating up and down my entire left leg, makes it very hard to concentrate on anything else, when it is, shall we say, “alive and well.”

As a result; I found myself at times, this past week, wondering literally, if I could live with such pain. Of course these aren’t rational thoughts but the irrationality of the pain speaking.  I have talked with some of you who have felt the same in your own times of pain and suffering. And again, this has nothing to do with right or wrong, sin or virtue, faith or unbelief—it is purely the human condition of being in physical pain. Further, it brought me personally, to a new understanding of what those with chronic, debilitating physical pain go through.

Add to that the pain of loneliness that one feels in the dead of night when sleep envelops the household and you agonize about awaking someone to join in your pain when they can’t really do much to take it away. Somewhere within that experience though, you decide to express your emotional vulnerability simply because the pain of doing so is less than that of being alone in the physical pain of the moment.

I found that the image of Jesus in the garden was a meaningful one for me. And too, I have reflected on what this experience was supposed to teach me in 2017 during the holy season of Lent.  And please know that I share these thoughts not to gain your empathy, only to put into perspective these Scriptures that ask us to consider death and what brings life.

The Church asks each of us believers to consider some form of penance during these 40 days of Lent and I have always thought that the most meaningful fast or penance is the one that “breaks open my heart” –in effect, grows me as a person, into a more ardent follower of my brother Jesus.

To reach out then in the dark, in my loneliness and pain to the only other human  present, was for me, to know the love of God at that moment.  He held my hand until the pain subsided.

The gospel story this week is one showing the great humanity of our brother Jesus—love causes the lover to want to take the pain of the beloved—sometimes that is possible, sometimes it is not. But we are always called upon to, do what we can, to “untie and set free” those who are bound by pain, suffering, injustice, whatever it might be.

We are struck, I think, by Jesus’ expression of emotion at the death of his friend—and looking at this, we can never again say that our God is distant from us, or that God doesn’t care. Seeing Jesus’ expression here makes me know with confidence that God will be sad with me when I am sad and will likewise, rejoice with me in my happiness.

As we near the end of our Lenten journey, it might be good to ponder what it is that “breaks our hearts open,” helps us to see more clearly, hear messages that include, rather than divide, untie those who are bound. The Scriptures this week ask us to consider death and life—what brings death and what brings life—may we always choose life. Peace, my friends.

Bulletin – 5th Sunday of Lent

/ kredig

Dear Friends,

Mass on Sunday, April 2, 2017, at 10:00 A.M.

This week we continue our journey to Easter.  The prophet, Ezekiel reminds us that the very breath of God is within us–Paul, in his letter to the Romans expounds on this idea that it is the “Spirit of God dwelling in us that brings us to life.”  And then in John’s beautiful account of the rising of Lazarus; we receive the hope that our brother Jesus always  has for us–“I am the resurrection and the life–those who believe in me, even if they die…will never [ultimately] die!” Come; ponder these mysteries with us this week.

Peace and love,

Pastor Kathy

Readings: 

  • Ezekiel 37: 12-14
  • Romans 8: 8-11
  • John 11: 1-45

 

Sharing–3rd Sunday of Lent Homily

/ kredig

Hello Friends,

Here again is another homily from Pastor Dick Dahl in my absence–enjoy! 

The Gospel according to John was written decades after Paul’s letters to the Christian churches and after the three Synoptic Gospels by Matthew, Mark and Luke. The Holy Spirit over time led the first Christian community to have a deeper understanding of the mystery of Jesus the Christ. This is reflected in the Gospel according to John. It’s purpose is to be less a history than an understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ actions. They are presented in episodes that serve as signs which draw us into the mystery of God among us.

All three of today’s readings focus on water as a sign of life. In practical terms life originated in the oceans and seas. Living organisms need water to live. We would die sooner from a lack of water than we would from a lack of food. The Israelites in the Sinai desert feared they would die unless Yahweh provided water to quench their thirst. The Native Americans and their supporters at Standing Rock know that water is life.

Today’s Gospel story, however,  is a sign that reveals more than our practical need for water, as crucial as this is now and as it will likely become even more so in the near future.

It was noon, the sun was hot. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water from the well. This man, a Jew no less, speaks to her. He asks her for a drink of water. Her people were considered inferior by most Jews. No matter. Her religious beliefs were considered heretical. No matter. Her personal life—five husbands—left something to be desired. No matter. Jesus did not argue with her about religion. He did not show disrespect for her as a woman, He did not condemn her for living with a man who was not her husband. He spoke to her about “living water.”

Actually, this is where I think John’s Gospel is speaking to us. She probably had no idea what “living water” was, and we may not have much greater understanding ourselves.

When John and his followers put this Gospel into written form, they were conveying the deeper meaning that the Spirit had led them to see and understand in this event.  What is meant by the gift Jesus called “living water”?

Today it’s as if we are at the well and Jesus is saying to us what he said to the Samaritan woman. If you recognized the gift and who it is who is speaking with you, you would ask him. “The water I will give you will become a fountain within you, springing up to provide eternal life.”

John’s Gospel reflects the awareness St. Paul shared years before to the Romans, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” It’s the intimate and immanent presence of the Trinity—the love of the Father for the Son immersing us though the Spirit, the Spirit poured out in our hearts.

What does this mean for you and me? First, it is our growing personal awareness through faith that we are swept up in the evolving creative love and presence of our Triune God. But beyond an individual aspect to this gift of “living water,” there is a social one as well. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus  said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.“ In our own limited but real way, the Trinitarian presence calls us to become aware of and work to change systems that oppress and trap people in demeaning and dehumanizing conditions. We find some of those oppressive systems even in the Church…in the community of believers…perhaps even in ourselves. Jesus always went where the pain was. Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus showed his concern about it now and about its healing now. He always paid attention. So must we.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is the “living water” that heals, that strengthens, that enlightens, that makes us aware.

Religious belief and science are both ways of looking at reality, of striving to better recognize what is true and and to have a greater understanding of it.

Ironically, the more humans know, they often realize how much they don’t know. For example astronomical physicists who study the universe, the cosmos, realize that about 68% of it is made up of “dark energy” which no one understands. Another 27 % is made up of “dark matter” again which no one understands. That leaves only five percent or less of the cosmos that is visible to us. Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity proclaimed a dynamic universe. Even when an atom is reduced to absolute zero on the Kelvin scale, it still vibrates.

I find it striking that science is discovering a dynamic imprint in all creation, a vibrancy so like the dynamic and evolving creativity of the Trinitarian force. So, the gift of “living water” that gushes up like a fountain extends our vision of Trinitarian activity beyond individuals and society, and connects us even to the farthest reaches of the universe, the rest of reality, visible and invisible.

The way science painstakingly discovers more and more about the mysteries of the universe in time and in space makes even more awe-inspiring the Christ mystery—namely that “even before the beginning of the world,” the love of God has been given to us, waiting to be poured as living water into us. The Israelites in the desert asked, “Is our God in our midst or not?” Sometimes we may be tempted to ask the same. Let us not harden our hearts, but in gratitude be aware of the Spirit, the “living water” in us that connects us to each other and to the entire universe. Let us pay attention to each other and everyone we meet, as Jesus did to the Samaritan woman.

 

Sharing-2nd Sunday of Lent Homily

/ kredig

Hello Friends,

I am sharing a homily by Pastor Dick Dahl in my recent absence–he has given us a great message here–I will use it as a Lenten reflection for this week–enjoy! 

When I last spoke with you in November, I shared many thoughts from the Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr, who is Director of the Center for Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am continuing to share much of his thinking in this homily.

The dictionary describes the word “God” as a noun, but it should be as a verb.  Father Richard Rohr writes, “We’ve been worshipping an image of God that is not the God of Jesus. Today’s Gospel reveals the God of Jesus  when from a cloud the Father says of the man Jesus, “This is my Son, my beloved.”

A few hours before his imprisonment and death, Jesus promised that he and the Father would send the Spirit to us—to guide when we are confused, to console when we  are in darkness, to strengthen when we are overwhelmed, to make us one with the Father and Him. The essence of God is a triune relationship.

The Spirit draws us into the dynamic, ever-creating love of the Father and the Son. This intimate and immanent indwelling envelops us and, moreover, it pervades the entire universe. The Spirit reveals that all of creation reflects the relational nature of God. It makes perfect sense that the universe contain the relation-al imprint of the relational love of the Trinity that created it.

Scientists and contemplatives alike are confirming that the fundamental nature of reality is relational, from inner quantum reality to the furthest galaxies of the cosmos. The Trinitarian revelation starts with the nature of loving as the very nature of being!

People are hungry for connection. Two thirds of Millenials who say they identify with no religion nevertheless say they believe in God or some ultimate Source. They are forming new centers of social community in their attempt to meet that need. We need relationship with God and one another.

Like Abraham and his wife Sarah in the first reading from Genesis today, we also are called to take part in the journey which is our life. We have left the familiarity of our childhood into the present. We face an unknown future.

But what we know, by the indwelling Spirit, is that whatever our present circumstances, we are part of the Trinity’s forcefield, the divine dance, the relationship with Father, Son and Spirit that embraces us in relationship with each other and with the entire universe.

Father Rohr says that God’s mystery rests in mutuality.  A Trinitarian person lives in the mutual relationship that God is—the relationship that God has gratuitously drawn us into. The Trinity is a participative mystery.

Relationships are what Jesus spoke of by word and act. “Whenever you fed, gave water, clothing and comfort to the least of my brethren,” he said, “you gave it to me.” He called those who were despised by others—the tax collector, the prostitute, the leper, the Samaritan—to have a meal with him, to touch him, to experience his love, his respect, his understanding and acceptance.

The relational essence of our God draws us to look at our relationships, or lack of them, with the people caught in the web of our lives. As most of you know, I have a close relationship with people in the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship. Many of them present themselves as former Catholics and former Christians. I struggled in my relationship with one man in the group who despite, or perhaps because of, his Catholic education from elementary school through four years at a Jesuit university, repeatedly expresses his distain for organized religion. However, another member of the group who sees himself as agnostic, has been an instrument of the Holy Spirit for me by his pointing out to me the principle that has guided his life through fifty years as a social worker: Relationships are more important than what people say they believe. By valuing the friendship with the person I had had problems with, regardless of his beliefs, our relationship has persevered and grown.

I found the same to be true with a cousin of mine whose political beliefs offended me deeply and alienated me. Fortunately my agnostic friend’s words and the message of his life has helped me to value and nurture the relationship with my cousin over the beliefs that he expressed.  Words are important, but love is more important.

The Triune God is why we must not revert to clannish tribalism or nationalism. We have a divinely given relationship with every person in the world—no matter how they may seem to differ from us. We must not let differences frighten us nor allow us to see them as “other.” We are called to discover and celebrate the more important ways we are alike.

The Spirit draws us by the overwhelming love of the Father and the Son. Each time we inhale life-giving air, we can think of inhaling the loving embrace of our Trinitarian God. Each time we exhale, we can respond to that gift with our own grateful love.

Let this prayer by Father Rohr resonate in you:

God for us, we call you Father.

God alongside us, we call you Jesus.

God within us, we call you Holy Spirit.

You are the eternal mystery that enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things, Even us and even me.

Every name falls short of your goodness and greatness.

We can only see you in what is.

We ask for such perfect seeing—

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Amen. So be it.

 

Homily – 4th Sunday of Lent

/ kredig

Friends, our scripture readings this week call us to walk in the light. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians calls the people of Ephesus, “children of the light.”  Paul was accustomed to seeing his converts as spiritual children, believing that they and he had a long way to go to be true followers of Jesus, the Christ.  But, when we think about the task before us, “to walk in the light,” having chosen to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, we realize that this is not a task for children, but for folks grown-up in their faith.  Now, that having been said, it is clear in reflecting on today’s readings that it is not the strong and competent, the physically flawless of this world that God calls into service, but the weak and vulnerable, by this world’s standards.

As I have been recovering from our trip to and from China the past few days–getting nights and days turned around again; I took the opportunity to watch a DVD that I had recently purchased on the life of Mother Teresa.  She was a woman of small stature, presumably not to be taken seriously. At 18 she entered a convent in Yugoslavia that was considered “safe” for women as a career choice and for 20 years she worked in ministry teaching girls of the well-to-do behind convent walls. On a trip outside the walls, she became aware of a different reality in India, of the people on the streets who had lost everything, who literally were dying on the streets and became compelled through the call of her brother Jesus, to do something about it.

A woman of small stature, taking on what most considered an impossible task, especially for a woman, but who knew in her heart that the desire, the call, came from God and that God would be all the strength she needed.

Samuel the prophet, in today’s 1st reading goes to Jesse as commanded by God to choose the first in a dynasty of kings to rule and guide the People of God.  Jesse brought the perfect number of sons—seven, before Samuel for his choice and even though the people of Jesse’s time saw completion in that number seven, God’s choice was not among them.  Even Samuel, God’s prophet had eyed the strongest, most capable-looking one in the bunch, but he was not God’s choice.  We see that once again, God turns things upside down.  David, the youngest, and seemingly most unfit for the role, by age and experience, is God’s choice.  God, we see, doesn’t judge by what is on the outside, but by what is on the inside. God looks into the heart.  It was so with Mother Teresa when she was accused of doing all that she did to gain acclaim—she said, “I am the pencil in God’s hands—it is God who does the writing.

In our gospel selection today we are given quite a treatise on how God chooses, and what ultimately each of us is called to, when we choose God back, in Jesus—when we choose to follow in his footsteps.

All the people in this story aside from Jesus and the blind one are walking in some form of darkness.  They witness, especially those who regularly frequent the temple, a person that they know and recognize as someone, blind from birth, being given sight.  What happens to this blind one through many symbolic gestures on Jesus’ part is nothing short of miraculous.  Yet, these people, even the apostles for a time, until Jesus sets them straight, skip over the miracle and look for a dark response for why the person was blind in the first place. It must be sin, if not the blind person’s, then that of the parents. The Pharisees take the darkness to new levels of blackness in believing everyone is steeped in sin, thus making it impossible to see the miracle wrought in their midst through a loving God in the messianic person of Jesus.  Why is it so much easier to believe in evil than in good?

In Mother Teresa’s case this was true as she asked to work in the streets of Calcutta—what was she after was what people wondered. She had to have the Church’s hierarchical permission and they too didn’t believe she had been called by God for such a task, until they witnessed her work in the streets and the difference she was making and of course, the followers who came to her asking to do what she was doing.

The blind one who was now recreated with physical sight is the model for all of us to follow. The light that has come into this person through physical eyes has been extended to include the mind and the heart.  Sometimes being weak and vulnerable is the very door through which God can enter as the Spirit did through the once blind person.

Jesus sends this sightless one to a pool, Siloam, which is a word meaning, “one who is sent.”  The blind person goes, out of the need to see, and returns with the makings of whole-person-sight—in body, mind and spirit.

Even for this blind one, complete sight doesn’t happen immediately, so there is hope for us too, friends.  This person who now walks with physical sight spills out the joy that can’t be contained, “I was blind and now I can see!”  This simple, yet profound fact is not enough for the Pharisees to praise God because of the claim that the “miracle” came about through the man, Jesus.  Because their vision is corrupted by power and greed, their hearts and minds are locked to the mystery that the blind one knew through a lifetime of walking in physical darkness.  He/she, could only worship the God obvious in Jesus’ eyes, when in answer to his question, “Do you believe in the Chosen One, the One who is now speaking to you?” the answer came, “Yes, I believe!”

Friends, if ever we are to hear the voice of God, it will be through our hearts first—not through our heads.  God is not something we can figure out—God is about the heart—about lovingkindness, justice, mercy, truth, generosity toward ourselves and others, compassion for a world that our God is so in love with.  Mother Teresa had a profound and wonderful response to one of her dissenters who asked her why she wasn’t angry with him for not believing in her.  Mother Teresa responded that she couldn’t be angry with someone whom God loved.

It is this kind of feeling that will allow each of us to walk in faith, choosing to follow Jesus who first chose us—doing the sometimes hard things that this faith will demand of us, like it did to the blind one whose eyes and heart were opened. When people, such as the Pharisees live and move out of power and greed, the penalty for being inspired by a different drummer apart from the status quo is generally swift and painful.  Because the blind one—now seeing, will not let go of the miracle experienced and of who brought it about, she/he is put out of the synagogue.  Today, we excommunicate and there is no discussion, no desire to understand.

Mother Teresa was given an ultimatum—either stay within the convent walls or leave.  She really had no choice because her God was calling and she had to follow.  Out of this, the Missionaries of Charity was founded with her serving as superior for nearly 50 years.  Toward the end of her life, she said to a colleague and friend, “Never be afraid to be a contradiction in this world.”

Jesus told the people of his time that he is the light of the world.  Let us pray that those who claim to lead our Church might more consistently let this light illuminate their hearts and minds—show them the way to truly follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

Each of us friends is called to walk in that same light—a task not always easy, but one that will give us great peace because we will know in our  hearts that it is the right thing to do, standing up for justice for each person. Moving from our hearts is always the right action and we will never do it alone—Jesus will be with us!  May God bless us all as we struggle on.