My friends, all the readings for this weekend are mostly quite positive in speaking about our relationship with our loving God, especially in the person of our human brother, Jesus, who became the Christ.  Paul tells us in the second reading to the Corinthians that “we walk by faith, and not by sight,” and we realize how true this is, especially in the statement that I made above about, “Jesus becoming the Christ!”  We do truly take this on faith that indeed our God is big enough to be “meaningful” to all, in all—as the Christ!  Now, if our Church hierarchy could be more inclusive in how they look at who God may indeed be!

   The images given us in each reading are about “growth” and what happens, or can happen when a power (God)—Someone, or something is alive and well in our lives.  Ezekiel speaks about this force as the Cedars of Lebanon, as does the psalmist in the selection from #92 today.  Cedars were large, massive, and strong trees in their time, akin to “God” in their lives—able to protect and care for them. 

   Mark’s gospel speaks of the mustard seed which is said to be the “smallest of seeds,” yet grows into the “biggest of shrubs,” and even the “birds of the air nest there.” 

   Now, we probably can all agree that these reading selections for today should not just be taken on a merely surface level, because then what we have is simply some nice stories about how trees grow. No, God and God’s prophets have more in mind for us. 

   Ezekiel’s first reading can be taken as a great comfort in our attempts to follow Paul’s command that, “we walk by faith.”  The prophet Ezekiel tells us that “the tall trees, God stunts, while the low trees, God makes grow.”  Perhaps a statement on how our God will always lift up the “lowly” first! And the psalmist suggests, seemingly in agreement with Ezekiel that “the just will flourish like the palm tree.”  The psalmist continues, “Our God is just, my Rock…[who protects].

   So again, so much here in these readings about “who God is for us, how this God will be present to us, and with us, how God wants us to live, and how this same God will protect us.  I would encourage a re-reading of Ezekiel’s reading this next week if we are needing comfort in “walking by faith,” when we don’t have full “sight.” 

   I am sure each of us can look back at times that required us to “walk in faith,” when we weren’t sure of the outcome, and perhaps we would say that God’s Spirit was with us, giving us the strength to move ahead when we couldn’t yet see the outcome—times when we made life choices, for education, marriage, having children, purchasing a home, and so on. Each of you, along with me, “walked in faith,” in starting and participating in this parish—one that the hierarchy of our Church often called, “playacting.” For me, I have always looked at what we do here by its “fruits,” and as long as I see us growing spiritually and doing the good that God calls each of us to, we will continue. 

   In Mark’s gospel for this weekend, the mention of that “smallest of seeds,” the mustard seed, is such a wonderful way to think of something “small” –the invitation from our loving God, to do something capable of becoming life-giving in so many ways, such as our beloved AAO experiment here in Winona. 

   This past week, I had the opportunity to travel back, as it were, in my memories to a time as a young, married woman with small children, when I was part of a rural parish—Immaculate Conception—Wilson, the parish where Robert and I married each other over 50 years ago now, and had our children baptized.  The passage of time with the deaths of many over the years, changing spiritualities, the clergy abuse crisis, and other matters, caused the numbers attending to dwindle, to the point that the powers-that-be determined that it was no longer a viable parish, and with the shortage of male priests, could no longer be kept open.

   The church was officially closed two years ago and has been used since as an oratory, for funerals mainly, but weddings too.  The meeting this past week was to determine what, practically speaking, needs to be done with the church building going forward. 

   I was saddened to realize that the over-riding decision seems to be that the building will be taken down—demolished possibly within the next year.  I don’t say this with any animosity per se toward those wanting/needing this end, as I haven’t been an active member there for many years, but only in a general way toward our Church that doesn’t seem to be more creative, in its many church closures, of its “temples” housing so many wonderful, memorable, and poignant spiritual memories of a community, than to simply, tear them down.  Where are the pastors, leaders, filled with “mustard seeds” who might see such situations as “closed buildings” and envision “greater shrubs” of new life? –offering perhaps spaces to house the homeless, or as fixer-uppers for just the right family. 

   It is at times like this that beyond, “walking-in-faith,” that I also need to have “hope” that our “better angels” perhaps can break through in our world.  We need such a Church as well as a State, where actions such as our United States Supreme Court voted on Friday—to appeal the ban on bump stocks for semi-automatic weapons making them ever more deadly, would be looked at more through a lens of common sense, and goodness, than mere law.  Let us pray friends this week for more life-giving actions, as well as write letters demanding better of these “interpreters” of the law.  And finally my friends, in these times that try our faith so much, let us hold onto hope for each other, me for you, you for me, and keep on planting the “small seeds” that we know can and will grow!  Amen? Amen!

My friends, as I said in the bulletin, we are back to Ordinary Time, which our Church names as such because it represents an in-between time that is not about the major times of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter, but as we know, if we are trying to “walk in Jesus’ footsteps,” it is not, “ordinary” at all! This time brings challenge with every week! 

   We only need look to this Sunday’s Scriptures to realize the truth of this.  The first reading from Genesis lets us know that it is very much the human condition, when something goes wrong, to look for blame in someone other than ourselves.  Looking within ourselves is always a challenge—what part of this is mine is a question that we need to routinely ask. 

   “Fear” is another human condition or reaction that we often experience when “wrong-doing,” or “something out of the ordinary” takes place, and we are at the center of the apparent conflict.  We see our brother Jesus, who we confess to follow, in calling ourselves “Christians,” facing this dilemma today.  The locals are saying that he is probably “possessed” in curing people, so his brothers and sisters and mother go to rescue him. 

   His family, along with the locals are challenged to see that Jesus’ words often are pointing to a “bigger picture” than what the words say.  Of course, he is not denying his physical family, his mother and his siblings, who in many ways are partially responsible for the man he has become in his relationship with them. No, Jesus is teaching a larger truth; “those of you who are willing to challenge yourselves, becoming the best that you are capable of, for yourselves and for others, become to me, in a special way, my sisters, my brothers, and my mother!”

  Unfortunately, for many humans, we don’t want to “stand out,” or “be different,” because punishment, physical, or worse, at times, emotional or spiritual punishment may be a consequence of our brave, different, or lone action.  Again, unfortunately, our Church hierarchy uses “fear” in the face of actions that they don’t understand, or more so, haven’t sanctioned.  I would suggest that “fear” plays a part in the present push with the Eucharistic pilgrimages which are attempting to move our beloved Church backward instead of forward. 

   This year, as we remember our beginnings 16 years ago, I recall being personally threatened (fear) with the loss of episcopal endorsement to serve as a Catholic-certified chaplain, a needed piece, by the way, for a lay person to be certified with the National Association of Catholic Chaplains, and eventually with excommunication from the Church that I have been faithful to for my entire life, if I didn’t recant my ordination as a priest.  And all of you, simply by attending Mass here are supposed to consider yourselves, excommunicated too—these words came from retired Pope Benedict XVI.  In choosing not to “recant,” me and you are saying to the powers-that-be that in the end, we choose, “love” over “fear.”  Fear keeps us from doing what love calls us to do. 

   Our brother Jesus, in today’s gospel asks an obvious question of the “powers” in his time:  “Why do you assume that when someone comes in strength and goodness, that it has to be about the devil?” One of the “fears” of the original bishop who asked me to recant, was that I would “be confusing the faithful.”  There was never the thought, as with our brother Jesus, that I, along with him, might be doing anything good. 

   So my friends, with you as well, when you question whether you can, or should speak, or act in a certain way that is against the status quo, you must always, as Jesus has told us, “check the fruits,”  –always look at how “love” is being served,” because, in the end, it can’t just be about the law! Our present-day bishop, Robert Barron won’t sit down and talk with us because we won’t recant, and it is hard for me to see this as anything but law over love.  Why, as with Jesus today, does our “holy presence,” which again, I humbly suggest that we are in this community, that has served many over the past 16 years need to be looked at negatively, rather than positively? 

   The psalmist today gives us hope in this prayer: “I trust in you O’God… and my soul waits for you more than sentinels wait for the dawn.  For with you is kindness and plenteous redemption.”  St. Paul, a tentmaker by personal trade, gives us a wonderful image today as we strive to follow our brother Jesus, the Christ, “when our earthly tent is folded up,” “may thanksgiving overflow” within us [because of the] “grace that is reaching more and more people—to the glory of God,” due to the strength and goodness that we allowed to happen in our lives through love.  Amen? Amen!