4th Week of Easter (W): Acts 12.24-13.5 and John 12.44-50How perfectly fitting then that paired with this concluding lesson on the nature of the Word is that scene in Acts where Barnabus and Saul are selected and ordained as apostles. Just as the Father sends his Son, Jesus the Christ, so the Son sends his disciples into the world as apostles, and those apostles, obedient to the Word of the Spirit, pick out two among them to become “Ones Sent Out”—apostles. The message here is crystal clear: the end of Jesus’ public ministry is the beginning of the Church’s apostolic push into the world. The fire of the campaign—the energy, the fuel for the “work to which [God has] called them”—is not drawn from public spectacle, staged theatrics. The apostles are driven out to preach and teach the Word by the Word, by the divine authority that commanded Jesus himself to “say and speak” what needed to be said and spoken.
Notice the lead up to Jesus’ concluding revelation. “Whoever believes in me…whoever sees me…I came into the world…everyone who believes in me…anyone who hears my words…whoever rejects me…does not accept my words…the words I spoke…I did not speak on my own…the Father who sent me commanded me…I know…what I say, I say as the Father told me.” Can we safely deny that Jesus the Christ himself is The Apostolic Message? Not and do so with any integrity. Had Jesus continued in his public ministry, as the principle preacher of the Word Made Flesh, we might come to conclude that there is something or someone else more important than the Messiah—our focus drawn beyond the Word Made Flesh to some distant subject, some faraway time and place for our salvation.
John the Baptist trumpets the coming of the Christ. The Christ arrives in the person of Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus the Nazarene preaches and teaches the Good News of the Father’s mercy contained and delivered in the Word Made Flesh. There is nothing “beyond” this message. No where for us to go but to him, nothing to do but do as he did. And so, we are thrown out there, “sent forth by the Holy Spirit” to proclaim with the words of our mouth and the work of our hands that Jesus is the Christ! The wait is over: there is no other. Those who reject him, reject the Father. Those who accept him, hear the merciful Word; they come to him for life eternal and receive his healing gift. Jesus says, “I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness. . .So, what I say, I say as the Father told me.”
4th Week of Easter (M): Acts 11.1-8 and John 10.11-18One of the most striking features of John’s gospel is Jesus’ dogged repetition of what I have come to think of as his “Just As” teaching. In one form or another, Jesus repeats for us the phrase “just as the Father loves me and I love the Father, I love mine and mine love me.” We can replace “love” here with “know” or “sent”—“just as the Father knows me/sent me”—and we still get a clear picture of the correlation between our relation with Christ and Christ’s relation with the Father. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the father knows me and I know the Father…” Just as, just so: how does the Father know his Son? And given that answer: how does the Son know us?
Luke reports in Acts that Peter is confronted by “circumcised believers” who chastise him for eating with the Gentiles. Peter defends himself by telling them how he was given a vision of the “four-legged animals of the earth” and heard a voice telling him that these animals were now clean to eat. He reports that over his objections to this revelation, a voice said to him: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.” This vision, though obviously about the kosher laws, has a much broader application. Peter is called to a household recently visited by an angel. The angel promised that if the members of the household summon Peter, the words he speaks to them will save them all. The Holy Spirit came upon Peter and he has another revelation: God’s flock has expanded beyond the Jews. Those with Peter conclude: “God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.” Peter must have heard ringing in his head the words from the previous vision: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”
We are lead back to the original questions: how does the Father know his Son? And given that answer: how does the Son know us? We know that the Father knows His Son because the Son himself tells us that he, the Son, and the Father are one. When we see the Son, we see the Father. Two persons: Father and Son; one nature: divine. The Son knows us through the Holy Spirit, who is one with the Father and the Son. Also, a person; also divine. But how do we know this trinity of divine persons, this One God? We look at our Shepherd, the Christ. Just as the Son knows his Father because they are one, so we know the Christ and the Father “in the Spirit.” We are not divine, of course, but we are made clean, made holy by the Christ and his sacrifice for us. The fifth Easter preface says it plainly: Christ is the priest, the altar, and the lamb of sacrifice. Our Shepherd became a sheep and died for us so that we might know the Father just as he knows the Father.
Peter heard the voice from heaven says, “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane” and thus the Way is open for all of the Father’s two-legged creatures—Jew and Gentile—to come to Him perfectly clean. And we must hear this clearly so as to avoid appointing blame where it does not belong: Jesus says, “…I will lay down my life for the sheep…This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.” When our Lord took up his life again on Easter morning, he took us with him; and now, we are His sheep saved from the slaughter, fiercely loved by Love Himself; just as He loves His Son, just so are we too loved.
4th Sunday of Easter: Acts 2.14, 36-41; 1 Peter 2.20-25; John 10.1-10On the ideal ranch in an ideal world, the ideal shepherd leads his ideal sheep and ideally they follow him. For some, this is the ideal model for the ideal Church. Shepherds lead. Sheep follow. On the real ranch, however, real shepherds do not so much lead their real sheep as they stand behind them and drive them forward using fierce little dogs and a real big stick. Sheep, being enormously stupid and easily controlled, respond well to the shepherd’s staff and even better to the sharp teeth and quick barks of the fierce little dog. For some, this is the ideal model for the ideal Church: stupid sheep driven forward by a shepherd, his staff, and a fiercely obedient little dog. Fortunately, for us, our Lord has something else in mind when he uses the Shepherd/Sheep Gate metaphor to teach the Pharisees about who and what he is for them. We do not follow Jesus b/c we are stupid and easily controlled. Nor do we follow Jesus because he has the use of a heavy staff and a fierce little dog. We follow because we hear and recognize his voice as he calls us by name to join his flock. We also hear the “voice of strangers” calling us away from the flock, but we do not follow them because we not recognize the voices of these robbers and thieves. How do you know that it is the voice of the Shepherd you are hearing, inviting you to enter through the sheep gate?
Peter and the Eleven are preaching Christ in
The apostle Peter, in his letter to the exiled elect of the Church, writes, “[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” The Jewish leaders heard Peter speak the Word in his words and thousand joined the Way. These thousand, now, later, spread across the known world, continue to hear the Word, the truth of their salvation in the one time sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and hearing again the truth spoken and reading the Word written, they abide with Christ the Shepherd. How do these exiled followers of the Way abide with Christ despite their suffering? Peter writes, “…to this [suffering] you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps.” Hear his voice. Recognize his Word. Follow the Shepherd and Guardian of your soul. And by his wounds you are healed.
But how do you know that it is the voice of the Shepherd you are hearing, inviting you to enter through the sheep gate? Jesus says to the Pharisees, “…I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved…A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” You know you are hearing the voice of the Shepherd when you hear one message, the message Peter declared to the Jewish leaders: Jesus is the Lord and the Christ, the gift of sacrifice for us, the one we crucified with our sins, the one, the Only One, who suffered and died for us. Peter supplemented this simple, straightforward truth “with many other arguments,” but the force, the power, the fire of his first exhortation—Jesus is the Christ!—cut them to the heart.
The single most dangerous predator for sheep is the wolf. The wolf skulks around the edges of the flock, looking for an opportunity to strike, waiting patiently for just one lost sheep to kill and carry off for supper. The shepherd and his co-workers recognize a wolf immediately and work hard to drive it away. For the rest of us, Christ’s all-too-human sheep, we sometimes fail to recognize the stink of the wolf, fail to see his shabby fur and hungry eyes, thinking instead perhaps that this oddly colored sheep, this strangely hungry lamb, is one of us. If we listen, we might hear the sheep-shaped wolf whisper to us that the Shepherd is really just a man, just like one of us, frail and fallible, subject to temptation and sin. We might hear the sheep-shaped wolf say that our home with the Shepherd is really somewhere over there, over the hill, next to the more attractive, greener pasture. We might hear the wolf tells us that our flock is dull, hind-bound, exclusive, too structured and too authoritarian, too rigidly dogmatic for free-thinking sheep like ourselves. Or that we are indeed just sheep, stupid followers, easily controlled. The wolf will tempt us to see the Shepherd and his flock as unable and unwilling to meet our need for liberty and personal development. And as we listen, the wolf will lick his hungry lips and wait.
All extended metaphors aside. . .we all know that there are many voices out there competing for our attention, jockeying for our money, our time, our talent. We know that there are those inside and outside the Church who would love to see us boldly “stand up to” the teachings of the Body of Christ, challenge the truth of the faith, and walk away believing that we do not belong among the elect. But as the Body of Christ, his pilgrim people and servant-sheep, we cannot ask for a more explicit, more direct revelation than the one we have in this morning’s/evening’s gospel: “Jesus said again…I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved…” As vowed and baptized priests and prophets of the Gospel, we hear and recognize the truth of Peter’s words: Jesus is the Christ! There is no other way, no other Shepherd, no other gate.
As intelligent men and women, faithful Christians we give a hearing to the philosophers, the scientists, the novelists and poets; we listen to our political and financial leaders; we respect Caesar in his empire and strive to obey his laws. But our hearts are cut by the Word, not by argument or laboratory experimentation; not by a good novel or poem; not by a stump speech or Wall Street report; nor do we allow Caesar to sit on the throne of our souls and rule us out of his need for authority and power. We belong to Christ—body, soul, heart and mind. We will not follow a stranger. We will not recognize as Christ any other Shepherd, any other Gate. So, how do you know that it is the voice of the Shepherd you are hearing, inviting you to enter the through sheep gate? Is the voice saying to you, “Jesus is the Christ”? Yes? Then listen. If the voice is saying anything else, anything but: start bleating for your life, and wait for the Shepherd and his faithful flock to come find you! Listen and remember: “I am the gate…A thief comes to steal and destroy and slaughter; I come so that [you] might have life and have it more abundantly.”
3rd Week of Easter (F): Acts 9.1-20 and John 6.52-59Standing before the confused crowds of Jews and disciples, Jesus makes an astonishing claim. Maybe the wind blew his words away, or perhaps the crowd swallowed the essential point, but most heard him say something like: “…I will raise him on the last day.” During this sermon, he teaches this particular heresy multiple times. If you had heard just this bit, just this last part about how he will raise someone on the last day, you might find yourself among those who heard Jesus say during the Sermon of the Mount: “Blessed are the cheese makers.” And then you might find yourself having to explain why cheese makers will be raised on the last day, and then defending the broader notion that Jesus obviously meant that all of those in the cheese-making industry would be raised, or something else equally ridiculous and confusing. And just to toss another wrench into the works, let’s add the barely heard but nonetheless frightening phrase, “…unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man…” Did we hear that correctly? What bits did the wind blow away? Who’s this man that we are supposed to eat…? And why will eating his flesh and drinking his blood result in the raising up of some guy on the last day?
The strangeness of Jesus’ sermon on the Bread of Life might have been caused—partially—by the bad acoustics in the synagogue or crowd-noise drowning him out or maybe even some translation problems. No doubt the primary difficulty had to do with the what most hearing him preach would say is his blasphemy against God. Here we are two-thousand years later, after centuries of solid Church teaching on the nature of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and we hear this gospel preached, and we think to ourselves: “Yea, of course, bread and wine become the Body and the Blood. Jesus is the Bread of Life. OK? Now what?” What we have missed is the raw, stinging smack in the face that Jesus delivers to those listening to him in the synagogue. Already infamous for his claims to be the Son of God, Jesus is compounding his blasphemy by claiming to be—flesh and blood—not only the only son of the Father, and not only the Father himself, but also—in his person—he is claiming to be, personally, meat and blood, the one whom they must eat in order to live. Can we blame them for quarreling? For believing that they have misheard or misunderstood? Is it unreasonable that we should think that we have had a Monty Python moment and simply got the phrasing, the words wrong?
Once the full text of Jesus’ homily was released on the web, everyone could see that, yes indeed, Jesus says, “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink.” There it is in black and white. No way to mishear a written text. But what does it mean? Is Jesus speaking symbolically? Metaphorically? Is he just being cryptic again? Is this some sort of test? Jesus means what he says. He is with us.
The key to this difficult teaching, I think, is found in the phrase “remains in me and I in him.” Think about “remaining.” Think about abiding, staying put, bearing under, and even more interesting, don’t we sometimes use the verb “to stomach” as a way of describing how we might endure? “I will just have to stomach it.” To remain with is to stand beside, linger with and live near; it is the opposite of abandoning, leaving, disposing of, deserting. Jesus is telling us that if we eat his Flesh and drink his Blood he will abide, remain, linger with, endure with us. If we stomach him now—literally—, he will not vomit us out on the last day; he will stand by us because as a part of us he can do no less. He says plainly enough: “…I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life…because of me.”
Don’t mishear this. Don’t let the dead desert winds of the world blow his words away from you. Don’t flee in confusion to the easily swallowed notion that Jesus is preaching metaphorically or symbolically. He is with us. He remains with us. Not as divine residue or a godly leftover; he abides, Flesh and Blood for our eternal lives.
3rd Week of Easter (R)Acts 8.26-40 and John 6.44-5This very simple, nearly universally proclaimed truth of the faith is regularly challenged by a sub-disciple of systematic theology called “theology of religion.” The central, operating claim of the theology of religion goes something like this (very roughly put): there is One Divine Being that individuals, groups of individuals, religions, cultures, ethnic groups, etc. all encounter through various “lenses” of culture, language, etc. and then these folks shape their experience into a religious revelation. So, when a Buddhist encounters the One, he sees the Buddha. When a Christian encounters the One, she sees Jesus. When a Hindu encounters the One, he sees a billion-billion deities in a billion-billion shapes and colors. The upshot of this argument is that there is no one right way to believe, no one right way to describe God; no religion is closer to God nor does any religion have any special hold on sacred scriptures: one mountain, many paths. The Buddha, Jesus, and
It is fairly easy to see how the mere description of a plurality of religions in the world has become a prescription for mandatory plurality—“there are many religions in the world” quickly becomes “all of these religions are right.” Keep in mind here the core mistake of religious pluralism as it is practiced in the academy and in the Church: religious pluralism turns a description of natural religious diversity into a prescription for enforced, artificial religious diversity. Is this what Christ is calling us to in John’s gospel?
No, it isn’t. We have in Acts the model of Christian evangelization. The eunuch is reading scripture. Along the road out of
In the face of every attempt to spread our Lord thinly across cultures, we must respond (with the psalmist): “Bless our God, you peoples, loudly sound his praise! He has given life to our souls…!” One faith, one baptism, one Lord.
Full-text of Pope Benedict's "Message to the American People":
3rd Week of Easter (M): Acts 6.8-15 and John6.22-29It would make a fascinating study to look closely at the way those who follow Jesus around in crowds often utterly fail to understand what he is saying and doing. Once again, Jesus finds himself performing a miracle in order to teach and then being very disappointed when no bulbs go bright. Jesus uses this failure to instruct. When the recently fed crowd find him in
What does Jesus know about those in the crowd that they probably don’t know about themselves? Looking at the answer he gives to the question about why the crowds follow him, we can say that Jesus understands human motivation with a great deal of clarity and depth. Not surprising given who he is, but perhaps a little frustrating given that he often doesn’t connect with his students or the crowd with his odd-ball parables and cryptic sayings. We know that we must have ears to hear and eyes to see.
How does Jesus answer the question about why the crowds follow him around? Ignoring the question actually put to him—“when did you get here?”—Jesus says, “…you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” In other words, you aren’t here because you believe I am who I say I am, but because I’ve proven that I can fill your bellies. What’s interesting here is that Jesus doesn’t seem at all put off by this rather pedestrian motivation for stalking him across the sea. He moves blithely on to attempt again to teach them the truth of why he multiplied the fishes and loaves for them. He says, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life…” I can see most in the crowd nodding their heads at first. . .and then getting this look on their face something like, “Uh?” And it might have been the last little bit of that sentence that confuses them: “. . .[the food of eternal life] which the Son of Man will give you.” Again, “Uh?” To their credit they overcome their initial confusion and manage to ask a sensible question: “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
We don’t want to be too hard on our Lord so early in the morning, but can we really say that we know what to do with his answer: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one He sent.” OK. Do they understand this answer? No. Tomorrow we will hear them ask for a sign so that they might believe! Here’s a suggestion: how about, oh I don’t know, maybe Jesus could fed five thousand grown men with five loaves of bread and two fish!? Seems like a good start to me. That they are still clamoring for signs is a sure sign that they are willing not to believe in the face of one mighty work after another.
So, what’s going on here? Jesus is teaching but his students aren’t getting it. The students are listening but Jesus seems to be teaching them cryptic gibberish. Like most of us, probably most of the time, those in the crowd are looking for physical proof, “scientific evidence” that Jesus is the Son of Man sent by the Father. They want to understand before they believe. Most of Jesus’ post-resurrection teaching falls on the tired and frightened ears of the disciples. But here he is still with the crowds and yet they cannot see, cannot hear. Much like those in the Synagogue of Freemen who hear Stephen witnessing to them, “they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.” And we are left again with the question: why not?
Why not? Jesus is appealing to their hearts of flesh, that is, the Law of desire for God gifted to us all at our creation. They are listening with their hearts of stone, that is, hearts trained in the Law of Moses. What they must do, what we must do, is crack that stone and fling open the gates that guard the beauty of God revealed through us. Until they can do this, until we can do this, Jesus will always speak cryptic gibberish, utter nonsense. So, to quote my father when there’s work to be done: “Come on, boys! Let’s get crackin’!”
3rd Sunday of Easter: Acts 2.14, 22-23; 1 Peter 1.17-21; Luke 24.13-35Our Lord is risen! We know that both the cross and the tomb are empty. The witness of his resurrection spreads from his gravesite like a bomb-blast—fast, hot, loud, and wild. And for a while his people wait for the coming of the Spirit. He appears in the locked room to his friends and breathes his spirit on them, charging them by sending them out just as his Father sent him out. His peace settles on them like fire. Everything but the Good News is burned away. Acting like the spirit-possessed students that they are, the disciples run wild through the countryside, spreading the Good News. And they find themselves standing before judges, kings, priests, standing in front of both gospel-hungry crowds and angry crowds. This is where they are: in their world, the sighted and hearing among the deaf and the blind. What road are you on this morning/evening? What road do you travel? And why?
These are Easter questions. We need these answers because the answers are our roadmap. We watch and listen as Peter and the Eleven stand before their fellow Jews and remind them of who Jesus is: “Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God. . .[a man commended to you] with mighty deed, wonders, and signs, [deeds, wonders, and signs] which God worked through him in your midst. . .This man […] you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death because it was impossible for him to be held by [death].” We read Peter’s letter, “. . .conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct […] not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ […].” And so, you must know: What road are you on this morning/evening? What road do you travel?
Do you really need to be told about the dangerous paths available to you? Is there anyone here who hasn’t stepped off the Way and found himself/herself in a briar patch, a mud hole, or a heading toward a cliff? When we strike out with Christ to give witness to his gospel we are immediately tempted with a whole host of alternative roads, attractive shortcuts and by-ways. Some are more subtle than others, some are obvious frauds, others are weak imitations, off-brand knock-offs—cheap but glamorous. Dressed up in contemporary fashion, they are all as old as the Tree in the garden, as old as the serpent himself. Like silver and gold they are perishable, mortal, temporary. . .and deadly. There is one path to God, one road to abounding joy, one Way, one Truth, one Life. Jesus Christ. And him alone.
On the road into Emmaus, two of Jesus’ disciples lament the death of their Master and wonder when he will return. They tell the stranger who has joined them that they were hoping that “[Jesus] would be the one to redeem
What does it mean to travel the road with Christ? At its most basic, we are obliged by the vows of baptism to take up the apostolic charge to teach and preach the gospel in season and out. To live for others as Christ died for us. Our road does not lead to personal enlightenment, earth-consciousness, cosmic assimilation, or the fulfillment of “felt-needs.” Our road is not paved with dollars or gold; haute-couture fashion or academic novelty; intellectual prowess or religious athleticism. Along the way, we are not to exit at those stops that tempt us with political utopias, spiritualist oasises, or philosophical escapes. Our road is not a virtual paradise of motherboards, WiFi connections, or cell-phone towers. We are a pilgrim people in route, on parade, in procession with one another to our perfection in Christ. Anything or anyone that/who tells us or tempts us to believe that the road is a lonely, solitary way; or that the road we travel is straight and downhill all the way; or that we travel for our health, wealth, or the building up of community; these, all of these voices, we must shut out, and listen carefully to the Lord: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer. . .?”
A hard question. And one we might take to heart and refuse to answer because the answer frightens us. Of course, it is terrible to think that Jesus had to die for us. That one man was sacrificed for our sins. But this is a truth we have to face head on, a truth that millions have died to affirm. Putting aside all strained traveling metaphors, let’s say what we mean to say plainly: Peter and the Eleven before the Sanhedrin, Cleopas and the other disciple on the road to Emmaus, Peter again in his letter, and Simon and those gathered with him, proclaim one truth, one Easter answer for all our questions of faith: God, our Father, commended to us the man, Jesus of Nazareth, with mighty deeds, works, and signs, so that we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit, our eternal lives in him. Our response, the way we walk the Way of Faith, is best expressed in our psalm: “Lord, you will show me the path to life, abounding joy in your presence forever!” There is no other Way, no other Truth, no other Life but the way and truth and the life of Jesus Christ.
Let me ask you again those Easter questions: Where you we going? What you are doing? And why?
