Contagious Love

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

1 Corinthians 13:4-13

When I was growing up my Dad spent a lot of time

Away from home…traveling for work

so letter writing was his way of staying connected

He was, and still is, an avid letter writer

And not only does he have beautiful penmanship

he pays careful attention to his choice of words

and the flow of his thoughts

I treasure those letters

And from time to time

I pull them out of my nightstand drawer

to revisit them

When I left home for college,

The tone of his letters became more serious

He wasn’t ready to give up his role as teacher and mentor

And the letters continued

And though he was totally in the dark about the particulars of my life he nevertheless seemed to have a sixth sense about

When a teachable moment existed hundreds of miles away!

The Letter to the Corinthians…

Is…well…a letter…

There was a community on the other end of the conversation

Paul didn’t sit at the writing desk to compose

The most beautiful ode to love ever written

There was an occasion

And like my Dad, Paul had something to say to them,

Something he really believed

They needed to hear…just then

There was an occasion...

there existed a teachable moment…

an opportunity arose to drive something home.

The occasion?

The Corinthians weren’t being

the kind of lovers

Paul knew they could be.

If we listen to the words of Paul

With weddings and love poetry on our minds

Then, all we’ll remember is the

“Love is this…and love is that” part

And…we’ll miss what Paul really wanted

The Corinthians…

and now us to hear

So…also

my Dad’s letters…

They seemed, at first read,

to be sort of “ode’s to Cindy”

He would tell me how strong and capable and blessed I was…

I would glow in the praise…

But it didn’t take long for the challenge to kick in…

He was subtle about it…

but what he really wanted me to hear was

SO…girl…hope you’re not wasting all that…

hope you’re not settling for just OK…

And that is what Paul is doing

Don’t be OK with

Noisiness

And moodiness

And selfishness,

And pomposity,

And hypocrisy

“you can do better than that…

I’ve taught you better than that”

So it is beautiful…love…

Love really is all those things

Kind, patient, enduring

But the reality is that we are

WAY too familiar with all that can get in the way

And Paul gives us a letter

To pull out of the drawer from time to time

As a reminder

That within us

Resides 100% pure potential

To exhibit this

Believing

Hoping

Enduring

God-Like Love

And that is a perfect message

Not only for for young couples

on the occasion of their wedding

But for all of us who have been called by baptism

To imagine ourselves in a love relationship with God

God-like love

The kind manifested in the life, death,

and resurrection of Christ

Is a love that embraces a kind of dying

A dying to my own…

convenience, my own wants/needs/concerns

And so Paul reminds us

that God-like love is work

It grows in the giving and receiving heart

where there is no keeping score

It unfolds…becoming more and more fully

Kind

Patient

Hope-filled

Enduring

…

God-Like

And that love...is CONTAGIOUS!

Bathsheba + David + Psalm 51

The beautiful, bathing Bathsheba, a lustful King David, and Psalm 51! 

Victim or Survivor?  Today, anyway, I prefer to see Bathsheba as a tough-minded and capable leader.  

(For more read “Her Story” here.)

David’s story continues with an emphasis on his wickedness and sin.  His lust.  His violence.  His murdering heart.

And then the lectionary gives us Psalm 51! 

And the focus all changes. 

I forget about Bathsheba…in particular. 

And I forget about David...in particular. 

And I remember my own life…my desires and short-comings and straight-up sin.

My offences truly I know them

And my sins are always before me.

But they aren’t always before me

I don’t really even know…most of the time.

In fact I think that my particular misdeeds…can be a convenient smokescreen.

A quote I wrote on my laundry room wall:

The older I get

The more contrite I feel

And the less I am able

To link that contrition

With any particular misdeed.*

Why is that so?

Why more now than ever?

God doesn’t need our sacrifices

But a contrite heart…a humbled contrite spirit

Somehow it is this contrition

That I, more and more, can’t link to any misdeed

Somehow it has a role to play in God’s new creation

Out of nothing…out of less than nothing…out of sin even

God makes all things new

So Maybe this contrition and sadness

Is the ingredient that helps me know my offenses

My contrition is a confession

that in my comfortable life

All my choices are somehow connected

to the flourishing or the diminishment of the human family…

and all of creation even. 

They are connected…they play a part…

They aren’t the whole story…

the weight of the whole world is not mine to bare

But just enough of it is

Just enough…so that this time…

God might find fertile ground in me for a piece of the new creation

That’s what God can do…

God waits for my contrition

“finally…her offences…she knows them”

And in that moment of recognition…and sadness…and weeping

God creates me all over again

Transforms me into someone new

Not just restoring but recreating me

And then,

I can join the psalmist

In the joy of salvation

An exuberant joy that invites me home to your side

Thanks be to God!

*from an audio lecture by Gil Bailie...Can't remember which one...I don't make footnotes when I write on my wall!

Knowing & Communion

Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Doctor

I wonder sometimes what the “Angelic Doctor” would be able to teach us today with the discoveries of an ever-expanding universe, of string theory, of quarks and nano-everything.  Where does logic and precision fit-in to the bewilderingly beautiful and terrifyingly complex cosmos?  I am awed by both the logic and precision and the utter mystery! 

I was reading this morning for my History and Preaching class and came upon a sermon of Meister Eckhart (1320).  He, too had spent years in more traditional intellectual pursuits at university in Paris and Cologne.  But later in his life all these efforts to “know” or even imagine God gave way to the mysticism of “unknowing.”

This progression appears to mirror that of Thomas fifty years earlier (sans excommunication;) when on the 6^th of December 1273, Thomas had a mystical experience that caused him to proclaim, “all my writing is as straw compared to the vision of God’s glory.”  And he wrote no more.

The knowing is a good and holy pursuit.  A necessary one that flows from human curiosity and wonder at our own mystery.  But it is the comparison with divine encounter that relativizes and gives perspective.

KNOWING.  YES!

COMMUNION.  YES, YES, YES!!!

There is something for me in all this...

From the Dominican Life web page:

We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we do not share. They've both labored in the search for Truth and both have helped us in finding it.

-Thomas Aquinas

Shout Out to Lois and Eunice

Tuesday of Week 3 in Ordinary Time (*a day late;)

2 Timothy 1:1-8

Paul is filled with thankfulness and longing and remembering.  He ponders the whence of all the important passings-on.  And he testifies to the great mystery of the what and how and who of faith.  And surprise!  It is peoples’ lives and love…their testimony in the flesh that does this job of passing-on.  The Incarnation…on and on.

And I always weep a little in utter awe at how this faith ended up in me.  
How many Loises?

How many Eunices?

It started with the announcement of a bright Mary Magdalene fresh from the tomb…to a frightened roomful of bewildered disciples.  And somehow it’s life keeps moving.  Through the strangest of times it hangs on.  And through both the worthiest and most unworthy of people it continues.  

And here I am.  Both comforted and challenged to fit my life into this great passing-on.

Paul’s prayer for Timothy and for me is to stir into flame that received gift of faith.  Make yourself most contagious.  Use everything…your whole life…to participate in this passing-on.  God will be with you.

Over and Over

The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle

Acts 9:1-22

The first thing that comes to my mind every year when this feast rolls around is the quip from my friend and teacher Fr. Tom Richstatter, OFM.  My paraphrasing:  Pentecostals leap into faith...Catholics tend to crawl!

For St. Paul it wasn't so much a leap but a crash.  And the same for John Newton, former slave trader, and composer of Amazing Grace.   Perhaps the conviction that it took to persecute as Paul did or to justify one's livelihood as John did, took drama to reorient.  The result is not a deadening but a new and life-giving mission into which one's heated convictions might be poured.

But crawling isn't so bad.  My bet is that most of us crawl.  Here's where Marriage helps me understand my own Baptism.   Marriage is certainly a crawling enterprise.  My husband and I were married on October 12, 1985.  But my "I do" is pretty much a daily thing.  There have been periods of one step forward and two steps back.  And times of two steps forward and one step back.  But on average there is progression in the right direction!  Don't Baptism and Marriage and Eucharist unfold in us?  Eucharist as food...a great visual.  It is taken in and broken down and made into nourishment that can spread to do its healing work.  It is the fuel for my unfolding Baptism.  

What I know is that I am more deeply married today than in 1985.  

And what I hope is that my Baptism is becoming ever more deeply rooted in my person.

And what I believe is that celebrating Eucharist with a community of faith is part of "the crawl."

Conversion.  Over and over again!  Bring it on...but not all at once. Please.


See Fr. Tom's page here for thoughtful prodding on faith and conversion.

Like this quote from Matt Emerson:
Faith takes time. Conversion is a multidimensional, life-altering evolution in worldview that implicates knowledge, experience, other people, self-reflection, humility, mystery and grace. And that is just the start. For most, conversion occurs in stages and depends upon the presence of certain conditions, certain habits of mind and heart, which enable a person to accept, and to live out, a transformed, divinized life. 
-"Preambles for Faith" America, May 13, 2013, p. 15.

Heavy Stares

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Nehemiah 8:2-4a,5-6,8-10

Ezra Read plainly…interpreting it so that all could understand

Psalm 19

Your words, Lord, are Spirit and Life

1 Corinthans 12:12-30

Body Talk;)

Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

And the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him

The Nehemiah reading sets up the Gospel beautifully today.  Ezra preaches and the people understand, they respond, they are changed…all of them, the men, women, and children old enough to understand.

In the Gospel, Jesus makes a public debut.  The details are sparse.  But there is a heaviness in the text.

He unrolled the scroll and found the text where it is written.  It is quiet.  It takes a few minutes for Jesus to locate exactly the text he’s looking for.  He runs his fingers across that treasured scroll.  With each passing moment the anticipation magnifies.  He reads.  And he sits.  Doesn’t the text make it seem like his task was done?  It wasn’t until all those eyes were upon him that he felt the need to comment.  And the comment was brief but heavy.  Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.

I sense tension.  His first debut and there is tension.  A few verses prior there is a litany of oohs and ahhhs regarding Jesus.  And a few verses later the townsfolk are trying to hurl him off a cliff!

This is the beginning.  And in the beginning is rejection…in his hometown from his own people.  For Luke this is essential.  Why?  Is the experience of rejection somehow necessary?  Does it give a person an authenticity to be among and to speak on behalf of those on the margins…authentically?

I don’t know how this fits in my life of discipleship.

But I think it is supposed to…somehow…

Not sure I want to dig any deeper…