May 19, 2013
The Spirit Gives Freedom As Well As Responsibility
Thoughts on the Gospels -Joe
The Feast of Pentecost
John 14:15-16, 23-26

Not long ago I was in a conversation with several long-time Catholic friends. The topic, as is not unusual these days, was authority: what is it, who has it, who doesn’t and how it should be used. The mood was intense.

Someone put a coda on the discussion saying, “I’m sick and tired of people living in big houses wearing little red hats telling me how I should relate to God. They know nothing about our lives and they aren’t interested in learning about them. They don’t ask for our experience and they don’t listen when we try to tell them our experience. Yet they have the nerve to tell us how we stand with God. I relate to God in the way that makes sense to me and I’ve lost all interest in what they or anyone else has to say about it.” There were nods of agreement all around.

I’ve listened to similar sentiments over the years and know that large numbers of Catholics are sympathetic to the views they express. The feeble dialogue between authority and the larger community has created a crisis of credibility and relevance. The I’m no longer concerned with what leadership says approach to authority in our Church has grown common among folks who otherwise care deeply about The Faith.

Authority has historically played such a central role in the Catholic Church that its waning has resulted not merely in a turning away from the powers-that-be but, for many, from the community itself. If I’m at odds with the power structure, I’m at odds with the Church is the assumption of many if not most Catholics. It’s a painful and unnecessary assumption.

The gospel for Pentecost, the day we celebrate the Church’s birth, quotes Jesus promising to send the Holy Spirit to the disciples: not just to The Twelve, not just to the apostles but to the disciples, all the followers of Jesus. The Spirit that guided Jesus came not just to the teachers or the symbolic “pillars” of the Church but to all Jesus’ followers.

To jump ship from the “Bark of Peter,” as barnacled and weed encumbered as it may be, over differences with leadership is to cede a power over one’s conscience to authority that even the bishops, on their best days at least, wouldn’t claim.

Christians always search for God’s within the community. But that’s a far cry from accepting the idea that without a bishop’s imprimatur we’ve nothing to say about God in our lives. As frustrating as She must find it, The Holy Spirit is at work within us all. Hang in there; don’t panic.

May 12, 2013
Faith: Its Freedom and Its Consequences
Thoughts on the Gospels -Joe
7th Sunday of Easter
John 17:20-26

Jesus once said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” For us who are trying to follow Jesus’ way, that statement holds a crucial piece of information. Jesus had a specific goal. He wasn’t interested in garnering public accolades. He was trying to change his world and he oriented everything towards that end. He did all he could to instill the same intense focus in his disciples.

In reaction to present and past religious and political systems that have attempted to deny us freedom of conscience and intellectual adulthood it’s common to hear folks adamantly assert that everyone has a right to his or her opinion. Everyone’s opinion is valid for that person, they say, and it merits acceptance by others.

I don’t know anyone who accepts that logic when it’s applied to their brake mechanic’s opinions. The only validity in that case is the one that results in the owner’s car stopping when she pushes the pedal. If such stopping doesn’t occur, there’s going to be a rather pointed confrontation about the offending opinion’s stupidity not to mention the stupidity of the mechanic holding it.

That folks can hold all religious opinions valid seems rooted in the radically privatized understanding of religion that’s popular among us. It’s a common opinion that as long as one is comfortable with one’s own opinion about Jesus, that’s all that matters. Jesus did not share that view.

Jesus believed that his teaching and lifestyle affected everyone. In his mind what folks believed had real consequences. Some beliefs moved the world closer to God’s promise; others hindered such progress. Hence his statement; If you think that simply praising me makes you part of the solution, you are mistaken. It doesn’t.

Our respect for one another must be absolute and reverence for each other’s religious beliefs is crucial to that respect. Such respect, however, doesn’t imply apathy to the search for truth as best we can discover it. We can’t allow an understandable fear of religious intolerance to result in privatized faith. That decision empties Jesus’ life of all meaning.

May 5, 2013
Searching For Jesus? Look For His Spirit
Thoughts on the Gospels -Joe
6th Sunday of Easter
John 14:23-29

In this week’s gospel Jesus says that those who have come to love him will keep his word. His comment may sound backwards, but it isn’t. As a rule, we pay closer attention to folks we find attractive.

Christians have been telling one another, and anyone else who would listen, to love Jesus for over two millennia. It begs the question, what does it mean to love someone we’ve never met? There are several ways to answer the question.

Loving Jesus can mean that knowing how deeply he valued and cared for everyone and what a forgiving person he was, we find him very attractive. We can imagine him so intensely that we begin to have an emotional response to the character of Jesus. In Christian circles this knowing and responding to the story, or gospel, of Jesus is seen as a gift of God’s Spirit. Given that understanding, we’ve actually come to love the person of Jesus in the presence of his Spirit.

There is another way of thinking about our relationship with Jesus. His Spirit, the presence of God that guided him throughout his life guides everyone today who continues to live his way. When someone touches us with forgiveness, caring, acceptance, generosity and true respect, we are touched by God’s Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit. When we find ourselves responding with love to a community or person who treats us as Jesus treated people and is therefore guided by the Spirit of Jesus, we can well say that we love Jesus.

Everyday life is filled with the Spirit of Jesus. When we are touched by it and encouraged by it, respond to it and then carry it to others we not only love Jesus, we become Jesus. We extend Jesus’ life through time and space. Paul taught that and the gospels taught that. No need to look for trumpets and angels; simply loving Jesus we become Jesus and we move the world a bit closer to its real future.

April 28, 2013
God Is There For The World – Always
Thoughts on the Gospels -Joe
5th Sunday of Easter
John 13:31-33, 34-35

It strains the imagination to think that anyone acquainted with the process would ever think of crucifixion as glorifying. It was an execution designed to terrorize a population into submission. It was prolonged, public, excruciating, suffocation. When Rome crucified someone, they wanted everyone to get and remember a stark message: don’t defy the Empire. When the gospel narrator portrayed Jesus speaking of his coming death in heroic terms, he was speaking not of the execution itself but of the astounding commitment to his people that he was about to demonstrate by not running from his immanent death. And beneath that demonstration was the deeper point summed up in Jesus’ statement, “When you see me, you see the Father.”

That a Creator would have such love for a creature makes no sense. It’s inexplicable. It stretches the imagination to the breaking point. But that’s the revelation. That’s what Jesus’ life was all about. That’s Christianity’s core message.

We get the idea at times that we’re to convince folks that God is a trinity of three persons or that the Mass really makes Jesus present in communion or that the Bible is God’s word. As important as those ideas are, they’re wrapping paper for the faith.

What people need to know is that the source of the universe knows and loves them and will never abandon them. We have been told that. It is our job to tell the world; not with bluster or cajoling, not with velvet words or clever ads but by being there for them. Being there in the good times and when things are tough, when folks aren’t appreciative and, especially, when everyone else grabs their stuff and lights out for the hills. That’s when folks will know that we have something true to say, when they see that we ourselves are true – to them.

“Nearing his final revelation of God’s love Jesus told his followers, To be part of God’s future world, you must be there for people in the world as it is. You can’t run away. You have to stand with them. Then they’ll understand.”

April 21, 2013
An Open Armed: An Opened Armed People
Thoughts on the Gospels – Joe
4th Sunday of Easter
John 10:27-30

It makes no sense for us, as members of a faith community, to ask others to do what we don’t model ourselves. As the tough army sergeant in movies used to say, “I never ask my men to do what I don’t do.” It’s a matter of credibility: God’s and ours.

When our Church (that’s us) asks folks to behave this or that way, we’re claiming to speak God’s mind not just a useful philosophical insight that we’ve discovered.

God wouldn’t suggest that we do something that’s impossible. But that’s exactly the impression we give folks when we ask them to do what we don’t do ourselves.

It’s the core assertion of our faith is that God accepts everyone, forgives everyone and is faithful to everyone. We offer that message to everyone who will listen. We say that realizing this truth about our Creator gives humans a security beyond anything else that life offers.

If we say that God is accepting and faithful to all people no matter what their weaknesses and failures while we accept and are faithful to only those we find personally compatible, we don’t merely make ourselves less believable, we make God less believable.

When we become Christian we embrace the responsibility to welcome everyone. We take on that responsibility because we claim that God welcomes all people.

Be what you believe. That’s the challenge to everyone who would live the Christian life.

No one will steal God’s beloved creatures from God’s hands. That was Jesus’ claim about his Father’s dependability. That has to be our promise as well. Whether I find you enjoyable or obnoxious, sympathetic or offensive, nothing will make me turn my back on you.

What we claim of God we model for our world. It’s what we do; it’s who we are.