Saturday, February 15, 2025

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time


Jesus says a lot of things
in this brief series of blessings and woes.
Some of them are surprising:
the poor possess the kingdom of God;
the hungry will be filled;
the weeping will laugh;
those hated, excluded, and insulted
will receive a great reward.
Some of them are disturbing:
woe to the rich,
whose reward is earthly, not heavenly;
woe to the full,
who will find themselves hungry;
woe to the laughing,
who will find themselves weeping; 
woe to those who are spoken well of,
because this is the sign of a false prophet.

In these few words, Jesus says a lot:
a lot of things that surprise and disturb us,
a lot of things that seem unlikely
in terms of how we think the world works,
and a lot of things that call 
our own lives into question.
Am I one of the poor, the hungry,
the weeping, and the hated,
or am I among the rich and satiated,
the laughing and admired?
How must my life change
in light of all this that Jesus says?

Jesus says a lot of things 
in these few words,
but something he doesn’t say is, 
“I don’t really mean all of this.”
He doesn’t say,
“This doesn’t apply to you.”
He doesn’t say,
“Feel free to ignore this 
if it doesn’t fit in 
with your plans or worldview.”
These blessing and woes 
are given to us by Jesus
to tell us how the world is
when seen from God’s perspective,
and to direct us how to live
in the world as God sees it.

Maybe the reason 
that we try to convince ourselves
that Jesus didn’t mean what he said,
or that it doesn’t apply to us,
or that it is optional
is that we don’t yet see the world
the way that God sees it.
We see a world in which the poor 
are simply losers in the game of life,
the hungry haven’t worked hard enough,
the weeping need to get themselves together,
and the reviled and rejected need to learn 
how to go along to get along in the real world.
Jesus’ words seem to ask us to become
everything that our world tells us to avoid 
and that it blames people for being;
his words ask us to lament being 
everything that our world tells us to desire
and that it praises people for attaining.

But we are often like the ones 
of whom the prophet Jeremiah speaks,
who trust in human beings,
and seek their strength in flesh.
And we are this way
because we don’t see the possibilities
that Jesus has unleashed in the world
through his life and his death
and, above all, his resurrection.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians,
“If Christ has not been raised, 
your faith is vain.”
The blessing and woes 
that Jesus lays before us
only make sense in a world 
in which the dead do not stay dead.
To see the world 
through Jesus’s resurrection—
to see the world with Easter eyes—
is to see a world in which 
the rejected are raised.
It is to see a world in which 
the poor and the hungry and the weeping
have hope in God for food and consolation,
for the kingdom is now 
already appearing among us.
The resurrection of Jesus 
is like an underground stream
that has burst through 
to the surface of the earth
to sweep away the old world
of riches and luxuries,
of shallow joys and hollow praise,
to water the dry land of our hearts,
carving new channels of grace.

St. Paul writes,
“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are the most pitiable people of all.”
Commenting on Paul’s words,
the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote,
“Belief in the resurrection is a high-stakes game 
in which the player has bet the bank 
and, if there is no resurrection, loses.” 
If we listen to the words of Jesus
about those who are 
poor and hungry,
weeping and despised,
and he turns out to be 
just one more good man
who has gone down 
into death’s darkness,
then the world is right to pity 
our foolishness and weakness.
But if “Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,”
then our foolishness is wisdom
and our weakness is power.

So in the end, it comes down to this:
do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive?
Do you hear in his blessings and woes
not a voice from the distant past
that echoes faintly down the ages 
in the memory of his followers,
but the living voice of the one
who is calling you from death to life?
Do you hear the voice of one
calling you forth from the tomb
of riches and self-satisfaction,
of shallow joy and empty glory?
Do you hear his voice this day
ringing in your ears 
as it rang in the ears of his disciples,
calling you to follow him 
on a journey whose destination 
you cannot see,
but which faith tells you 
ends in the mystery 
of God’s eternal love?

Hear the Good News:
Jesus is alive
and he is calling you to follow him:
from death to life,
from woe to blessing.
Let us pray for the grace
to answer that call,
and that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

Saturday, February 8, 2025

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time


In today’s Gospel Jesus is teaching 
the crowds by lake Gennesaret,
but the only words of his that are recorded
are those addressed to Simon Peter,
which are in each case
prefaced with a command:
“Put out into deep water”
and “Do not be afraid.”
These two commands 
pretty much sum up the Gospel.

“Put out into deep water.”

Put out into the deep water 
of seeing the universe 
and your existence in it 
as a sheer gift given out of love
by the all-powerful God,
before whom the angels worship, 
crying “Holy, holy, holy…”

Put out into the deep water 
of looking within your own heart 
and seeing there the crack 
that runs through everything,
the broken self that sin has made,
the self that, confronted by the all-holy God
can only say, like Simon,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am sinful,”
can only say, like Isaiah,
“Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am one with unclean lips.”

Put out into the deep water
of believing that though you have toiled 
through long hours of darkness
it just might be worth 
lowering your nets one more time,
giving the depths one more chance,
because this Jesus who commands you
just might be the one
who can heal that crack in everything;
this Jesus just might be the one
who can fill your empty nets
with food that endures to eternal life,
food that strains your nets
and swamps your boats;
this Jesus just might be the one
who is a window in our world 
through which streams a glory
that will shake the doorframes 
of our temples.

“Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid 
that your broken self is beyond repair,
that your unclean lips are beyond cleansing,
that your frail humanity with be swept away 
in the deep waters of God’s glory.

Do not be afraid
to say, “Lord I am not worthy,”
to lay before the Lord 
ugly truths about yourself:
how constricted sin has made your heart,
how your lips have been contaminated
by words of spite and discouragement,
criticism and gossip.
For God is a consuming fire 
whose angel comes bearing 
the glowing ember of God’s love,
to cleanse you and make you worthy:
“by the grace of God, 
I am what I am.”

Do not be afraid
to let him fill your nets to the point of breaking,
to let his glory flood the temple of your heart
until it feels as if it might be torn apart,
for this glory is the love of Christ, 
the very force that brought the universe to birth,
the grace of God that will dilate your heart 
so that it might take in more light. 

Do not be afraid
to answer his call,
to say, “Here I am; send me,”
to leave behind everything to follow him.
For Christ died for your sins
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he was buried for you
in the deep waters of death,
and on the third day 
he was raised to life,
trampling down death by death
and bestowing life on you, 
who were held in death’s grasp.
And he appeared 
to Simon Peter and the apostles,
just as he had come to them 
by the waters of Gennesaret,
calling them again to follow him 
and to feed his sheep.
He appeared to Paul as well,
persecutor of the church
and least of the apostles,
calling him to let God’s grace 
toil within him
as he preached God’s word.
And he has appeared even to us, 
as to those born out of time:
appeared in his word 
and in his sacraments,
in the hungry and the thirsty,
the stranger and the naked,
the sick and the imprisoned.
And he says to us 
what he said to Isaiah,
what he said to Simon,
what he said to Paul:
follow me in faith not fear;
follow me into deep waters.

This is the gospel that we have received 
and in which we also stand:
“Put out into deep water.”
“Do not be afraid.”
Let us receive the good news,
and, having received it,
let us believe it;
and, having believed it,
let us hand it on to others
so that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.