Friends, if I were to pick one word today to highlight the readings for this 15^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, it would be, “compassion.”  All three readings speak to this virtue and when we think about following in our brother Jesus’ footsteps, it seems that we couldn’t really choose a better way to go then, “to walk compassionately through our world.” 

   Now, that having been said, I want to underscore that this isn’t something that will necessarily, of itself, make things better, at least, right away.  The more we come to understand the Scriptures, Old and New, we see how our God has worked and continually works through our lives and those of others, to make them good. 

   Each of us, as the spiritual creatures that we are, here, having a human experience, as someone once wisely said, come into existence already hard-wired to love.  Of course, as we all know, living and exercising our free wills sometimes get in the way of making the most compassionate and loving response. 

   So, as we think about the struggles each of us faces in this life, trying to balance our call to “walk compassionately through this world,” while exercising our free wills to sometimes choose what we think is best for ourselves without perhaps, doing what might be good for others too; let’s look to today’s Scriptures for some guidance. 

   In the first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people, in other words, that they are indeed, “hard-wired to love,” by saying that “the Word of God is [already] in your mouth and in your heart.”  He encourages them by saying, [all you really need to do is] “return to the Most High with all your heart and soul.”

   I think the distinction that is being made in this first reading is significant and one that we shouldn’t miss!  What Moses is really talking about is “how,” we choose to live in our world.  He is basically contrasting what I will call, “head versus heart living.”  If we respond to our world, our God, and to others through our hearts, basically, instead of our heads, primarily, we will have a much better chance of acting with compassion to what life brings. 

   Unfortunately, too many in this world respond to life and its people through their heads—rules and regulations and get stuck there.  Rules and regulations are about, “black and white” answers—this or that, right or wrong. 

   If I had followed my call to priesthood through my head alone, I wouldn’t be here today, nor would any of you!  The hierarchical church sees the ordination of women as impossible! This is significant, I think, as on June 29^th of this year, Roman Catholic Women Priests celebrated 20 years since the Danube 7 said, “Yes” to being the first women to be ordained!  The hierarchy see “imaging” Jesus, the man, at our altars, which ultimately, in their minds, excludes women, instead of “imaging” Christ, who includes us all.  The fact that each of us came into this world, hard-wired to love, allows us to widen our thinking, directing it through our hearts so as to do the most loving thing in every situation.  “Heads,” guided by laws alone, may not be able to see women as priests, but “hearts,” guided by love and the message of Jesus, certainly can!  But make no mistake, the most loving thing can and will cause division at times, but it will always, ultimately bring peace too, for those who can break out of the box of the simple, “right and wrong.” 

   Paul, in his letter to the Colossians today gives us a glimpse of this wider thinking—he says, “Christ is the image of the unseen God” [and] “all things were created through and in Christ.”  Somehow, friends, even though our “heads” can’t quite encompass or completely understand, our “hearts” can know that through Jesus’ living, loving, dying, and rising, he became the Christ, who includes and loves us all in a non-hierarchical way.  And if we too can more often live our lives through our hearts, the compassion that our world so badly needs, now, may become more obvious. 

   Our final reading today comes from the gospel of Luke—a story well known to us all—that of the “Good Samaritan.” So, we might ask, why, a Samaritan who is, “good?”

   Samaritans, in the minds of the Jewish people were a group to shun, much like through the history of humankind, the majority, or the powerful, find someone to blame for what may not be “right” in life: blacks, native Americans, women, LGBTQs+. It is always easier to blame others than it is to look squarely at a problem and find our fault there too. 

   Actually, Samaritans were of the Jewish faith, but were those who had grown lax in that faith and intermarried during the time of the Exile, when some Jews were taken, and some left behind.  So, until the time of Jesus, Samaritans became the “ones” to look down on.  We see the wisdom then of our brother Jesus in forming a story depicting a loving act being done for someone that both a priest and a Levite refused to help—by someone who they both shunned in their daily lives. 

   So friends, that is why I said earlier that Moses was really lifting up the importance of “how” we live our daily lives. It doesn’t, in the end, matter who we are, or where we come from—but really, “how” we live our lives.  Jesus too knew this –you will recall it being said of him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

   I think some very current examples of this truth are the mis-guided, “locked in the box,” decisions coming out of the highest court in our land in recent weeks.  It seems to me that the recent Supreme Court decisions regarding climate change, Roe v. Wade, and guns were black and white—head responses to issues that needed compassionate heart answers to very difficult questions. 

   The right-to-life may start in the womb, but it certainly doesn’t stop there!  Any high court ruling regarding nonviable human substance outside the womb that doesn’t include the life of the woman is simply a sham.  Now of course, we all know that this isn’t “simple”—not by a long shot. 

   Laws granting rights to companies to misuse and abuse our planet through what they emit into the atmosphere, without regard to global warming, a condition detrimental to all life, is once again, a sham. 

   And finally, laws “respecting” the rights of individuals to own guns and use them without consideration for the harm done daily in this, our beloved country to people of every age, sex and nationality is, as well, a sham.  We have trusted those with legal power and understanding to work for justice for all—to hold a delicate balance between right and good and that which is wrong, irresponsible, and evil and I fear they have squandered our trust for political gain!

   Our brother Jesus wisely taught us in the story of the “good Samaritan” to always see a bigger picture than at first meets the eye. He tells us that we don’t or shouldn’t judge actions on the merit of nationality—where someone comes from, their gender, their rank; but more so on the “heart”—what does the heart produce? 

   So friends, no easy answers to these very big questions of our day—except to keep doing our part—each of us!  If you are in a box that doesn’t allow a new way to look for solutions, break that box open where the light of day will show you the way to your heart where the answers based on love reside! Amen? Amen!

Dear Friends, it is wonderful to be back after our vacation–we missed you all! It was good to have a group that was able to meet yesterday and this is hoping to see many more of you as time passes. As you know, it is good to get away and always good to get back as well. Peace and love to all–Pastor Kathy.

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   Last week I offered some ideas to get our minds and hearts around the concept of the Trinity—One God in Three Persons.  I suggested that a better way to understand our God who gives prodigally to us is through the heart.  In understanding the theology of Corpus Christi, which is, The Body of Christ; I would suggest that again we try to leave logical thinking and reasoning behind and enter this mystery too through our hearts.

   I have used a story about my Dad, in the past, to help us make sense of this mystery of physical presence and I’d like to repeat that here today as a good model for us. My Dad died in 1986, 36 years ago in August. For the last year and a half of his life, he lived at Lake Winona Manor on the first floor in Room 105.  In those days, it was called the C &R Unit—the C & R stood for Convalescence and Rehabilitation.  It’s curious when I think about it now—he was not convalescing, nor was he being physically rehabilitated; he was dying the slow death of people with emphysema and congestive heart disease.

   Even though he couldn’t get physically better, the rehabilitation that I saw going on for him was in a spiritual way.  For the first time in his life, he was given the opportunity of time—time to reflect on what was really important in life and I believe he grew closer to God, to Jesus, his brother, during that time.  He also made it his mission to know who his “neighbors” were in the Unit and to be as kind as he was able, to them.

   For all intents and purposes, Room 105 became my Dad’s home for the last year and a half of his life—this was where I went to spend time with him, to reflect on all that life had been for us and our family.  After he died, in the first weeks of grieving his loss; I had the strange sense that if I wanted to see him; I could go to Room 105 and find him.  Intellectually I knew this was wrong, but on the heart level, it seemed right.

   In relationship to this feast, it strikes me that Jesus, in giving us the Eucharist, may have been on the same wavelength—using it as a way to remain close once he was no longer physically present.  The bread and wine don’t look like Jesus, but it is Jesus, just the same, in our need to have him close—still a part of our lives.  Just like room 105 had become the place where I could find my Dad, the Eucharist is the place where we can find Jesus in a tangible way and be comforted and strengthened by that presence. 

   We might ask in this line of thinking if the Eucharist has purpose other than comfort.  I believe that Jesus always meant for the Bread of the Altar to be a starting place—the place to receive our strength and then move on into our world, pick up the pieces of life and carry on with all that he taught us—to share all that he gave us with the world of people that we meet each and every day.

   In my preparation for this homily some 6 years ago now, as I was reading and praying over the Gospel, it came to me what a gift Jesus gave to the people gathered and he started from something so small, a few loaves and fishes. It struck me that if we each took seriously our mission and call to be his followers, what great things we could do in this world, starting from our own small places, our “loaves and fishes.”

   Jesus no doubt intended that we would see and feel his presence within the community here gathered, because if we don’t or can’t see and feel him here, then we can never truly know his presence in the bread and wine either.  In fact, Karl Rahner has said that the presence of Christ in the community gathered precedes the possibility of the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements.  It would seem, we can’t have one without the other! 

   In addition, Edward Schillebeeckx stresses the importance of seeing Christ’s presence as ultimately not toward the bread and wine, but toward the community.  He goes on, “If participants want to understand the Eucharist as sacrament, they should understand themselves first as the Body of Christ.” In this sense, as a wise person once said, and a paraphrase, the Eucharist is really not a static word, a noun, but an action word, a verb, and not to see it this way misses the main point of what the Eucharist is all about. 

   I always used to struggle with this homily each year because of those who receive it and wanting to be true to what many of us learned in our growing years concerning transubstantiation, yet wanting too to stretch us a bit past that notion of worshipping Jesus’ gift of his life in the elements of the altar to moving us out into the community and seeing, truly seeing his body and blood in the faces and life experiences of all we meet each and every day.  My fear with the older theology of transubstantiation is that it has the tendency to plant us in front of the tabernacle, the altar, instead of the community.

   Indeed, the Eucharist was always meant to be a starting place, not an ending place.  This is why we say at the conclusion of our liturgies, “Let our service begin or continue!”  And just like with Room 105 and my dad’s physical presence, at some point, I needed to re-engage in life, to come to terms with my loss, to carry all that my Dad meant to me into my life going forward—he would continue to live on now through my life and my siblings’ lives—through our families—every time we remembered him and chose to live out what he taught us.  When I perform funeral liturgies, I always remind the grieving families that they honor their loved one most when they carry on in their own lives what their loved ones taught them about right living.

   For Jesus’ followers, all of us, it is all about fulfilling his mission.  Jesus has called all his followers to be his presence in their communities—for us specifically, to see his presence in the greater family of our world—to do all that we can to see that Jesus continues to have a body, eyes and ears, mind, and heart in our world.  And we will continue to need the comfort of the Eucharist, the strength of the bread and wine blessed, the unity of the community where Jesus truly becomes present by our collective words and gives us the strength then to take him into the wider community.

   In our first reading from Genesis, the old is tied to the new—Melchizedek, an ancient king and priest, in offering bread and wine prefigures Jesus’ offering of his body and blood, his life in its entirety to God for us so that we might know how to do the same.

   In the Gospel from Luke, Jesus takes the opportunity of a very large group of physically hungry people to teach his apostles and disciples a greater truth—that he will always be with us to care for all of our needs—to show us primarily that we are loved and that no matter what befalls us, our God will be near.  The feeding of the 5,000 exemplifies the prodigality of our God’s love for us—our God is wasteful with love.  We read, “They all ate until they were full; and when the leftovers were gathered, there were twelve baskets full.” Again, we marvel that he began with five loaves and two fish! 

   Jesus is always teaching us a greater truth—I have come into this world to live your life, to share my life with you—the very life of God!  I have come to show that you can begin with seemingly little and do great and wonderful things for my people—for my body.  Each of us makes up Christ’s body—we are his flesh and blood for our world. When we partake in the Eucharistic bread; we are transformed into Eucharistic bread for that same world, Diane Bergant, Scripture scholar says.  When we partake of the Eucharistic wine; we become the lifeblood of Jesus, following his example in service, in sacrifice, for our sisters and brothers.  We give Jesus the greatest honor and glory, along with the Creator and the Spirit, not in our worship of the bread and wine on the table as an end in itself, but in giving honor, respect, mercy, love, working for justice for the “bread and wine, body and blood of Jesus” in our world.  We honor and praise what the words of consecration do—making Jesus fully present in the form of bread and wine, signaling the next step for us—of taking his flesh and blood into our world through our bodies which become with our reception, Eucharistic bodies.  With that in mind, I no longer struggle with the meaning of this Sunday. 

   And of course, this becoming, “bread for our world,” doesn’t happen by magic—we must make a conscious effort to live our lives in such a way as to continue his life of love and service in our world.  We see the “wasteful” giving of love to the 5,000—we are expected too, not to just give when convenient or give what is left-over, but to give in abundance, “wastefully” –generously. 

   It only makes sense rejoicing over the goodness of our God in Jesus if it compels us to give likewise.  We may not physically be able to meet every need—but we can be a listener, a supporter, a friend to all.  If we can’t help, perhaps we know of someone who can—maybe we can right a wrong by making others aware—writing a letter, standing up for the truth when we hear the lies that incriminate our sisters and brothers. 

   The feast of Corpus Christi holds great significance for each of us if we allow its deeper message to arise to the light of day. Each time we say the words here, celebrating that Jesus is fully present within our community; we recall the covenant that our prodigal God made with the People of God from all time—a covenant made perfect in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ—our brother and friend.  We, as his body and blood now, for our world, must move into that world and let our service begin! Amen? Amen!

Friends, as we have seen throughout the Easter readings, the apostles are trying to come to terms with all that it means to truly follow their friend and brother, Jesus of Nazareth.  He, in his time here, had shown them so much: wonderful teachings of God’s love for them that truly, “broke open their hearts.”  They could hardly do anything but follow him!  The miracles—beyond words really, were such that they could proclaim him, the Messiah!

   Yet, throughout this Easter Season, we see their “starts and stops,” so to speak, in truly following him.  Some teach and preach and likewise, perform miracles in his name—yet they keep checking themselves, going back—from time to time to their previous occupations—fishing mainly.  Should they fish for those in the lake or those on land—the people, as did Jesus? 

   The readings this weekend show the uncertainty too at times, of these first followers in being able to see the bigger picture that Jesus was always presenting to them through parables and such and apply it to their spiritual lives. 

   The 1^st reading from Acts today is a very good example of this:  Some zealous folk (the rules people) from Jerusalem seem to be upsetting Paul’s new converts so that Paul and Barnabas travel to Jerusalem to seek out a “meeting of minds” with the powers-that-be there, Peter and all. 

   Those who were stirring things up were advocating that the rules of Moses be rigidly followed—circumcision and all. Apparently, this group hadn’t heard Jesus’ message that he was, “doing something new!”

    Even the compromise that is reached seems lacking in generating Jesus’ simple, yet profound message.  As you will recall, the message Paul was sent away with was that converts, “abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from illicit sexual union.” Now, I don’t know about you, but this would have left me, “wanting.” 

   I would have thought Peter and the others who spent three years with Jesus would have lifted up the words spoken so well in John’s gospel for this weekend and in the continuing chapters: “That they love one another as Jesus/God loves them,” and this knowledge would, “give them peace” so as to not, “let [their] hearts be troubled.”  All the other rules and regulations are superfluous.

   The reading from Revelation today also seems to be stuck in surface thoughts—temples and such.  John says of it, “I saw no temple” … “for God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple.”

   In fairness though to the apostles in Jerusalem, it may have been that they hadn’t yet received the power and strength of the Spirit to, “go deeper,” sifting “the chaff from the grain,” so to speak.  As I often say, this, “being Christian, is not easy!”

   Additionally, if any of us were Jesus’ first disciples, we may have been prone to the same narrow kind of thinking.  One thing that can be said in general though, with how people view their world and whose messages they are open to hearing, has much to do with where they find themselves in any given society.  The poor, the sick, women and children—those basically with no power, no voice, and no importance would have been much more open to Jesus’ message of love, than would those who had all or most of what was needed in life to live reasonably well.  Those on the fringes were the ones that Jesus was continually advocating for.  We have to remember that this is why he was crucified –his message was nothing if not, subversive to the “powers” in his time and place. 

   So friends, where does that leave each of us on May 21, 2022?  A few things come to mind: (1) We can’t fix everything that needs fixing!  Now, that may sound strange after what I said above, but it is just, the plain truth.  Having just begun my 72^nd year, I know this to be true. (: (2) But, (and remember the most important thing always comes after the “but”) as someone significant once said, and I paraphrase, “That doesn’t however,  give us permission to do nothing!”  (3) The other thing that I will lift up today for our reflection is the importance of us at least trying to be consistent in what we say is important and necessary in our world.  A few current examples:

• If our goal in life is to “protect life,” or be “pro-life,” then we must protect ALL life, not just that which is in the womb—at the least, as laws are crafted, the women carrying these new lives-to-be should and must be part of the equation.  Also, adequate food, clothing and shelter should be provided for these new lives once they are here—to do less, is to be totally dishonest! Justice for all people, of every shade, means that, the conversation that dark-skinned parents have with their sons—everyday, “to watch themselves,” lest they are stopped by the police, will become a thing of the past!  And we could go on.
• Our country, by way of politics and the Congress in part, seems to be caught in a web of populism that uplifts the images of mean, self-centered dictator-types who promise much and do little to better life for all in our country.  And in order to be in the good graces of those in power in this nasty web, others will emasculate themselves rather than lose whatever power they have.  The original ideas upon which this country was founded—that of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are apparently, only for some. 

• Within our churches and I will point my finger basically at our Catholic church, even though the other denominations are culpable too.  The equality that our brother Jesus brought to our world and demonstrated so well in his own life must be uplifted by those in power, charged with walking in his memory.  To our brother Francis I would humbly say, “Live up to Jesus’ memory now, opening up leadership roles, including ordination of women called and tested by the Spirit to serve.

   As I said earlier friends, none of us can do it all—fix every problem, but let it not be said of any of us, that we didn’t do what we could.  When you see or hear a wrong, speak up, write a letter or postcard, make a call, and tell those with the power that now is the time to act!  Amen? Amen!