Month: April 2020

Happy Easter! Blessed Easter!

This message has been stirring within me for a few days now. I’ve wanted to share it. To those who read it and are personally involved I hope it brings you comfort and joy filled hope and a deeper faith…it did for me.

I’ve been wondering what the experience of the death on the cross, of their friend and leader really did to the apostles and disciples? And moreover, what was the incredible emotional impact that the women at the empty tomb experienced? Or the emotions or thoughts of the apostles after hearing their story?

I sort of had this experience in reverse.

When I was ten years old, I was sitting at my desk in 4-B. At OLCS grade school, an announcement came over the loud speaker. It announced the death of a student, one of my classmates, my best friend Joey. At first, I remember feeling instant shock, then I exploded in tears. I remember the teacher telling me to go out into the hall, as the other students just stared at me. Then I heard Joey’s sister scream and cry!

It seemed like all hell had broken loose in my brain and body. Then, another announcement came over the loud speaker. The previous announcement was a mistake. It was not Joey who died. He was not dead. He was alive. But lingering within me was a reality that I had not grasped before. Joey was alive, but he was going to die. I had not realized that. I had never been told that. Never understood that. I don’t know what date that announcement miscue was made, but Joey did die soon thereafter. It was a very hollow experience and sad experience. It changed me.

On Good Friday, the first followers of Jesus had a similar experience. Although he told them he would suffer and die; He told them about the cross; He told them about betrayal and suffering and his rising from the dead; and like Aten year old boy, they didn’t get it. They didn’t realize or want their friend to die. Moreover, they had no clue what resurrection really was. But they knew what death was. They knew what death meant. Death had taken their friend. That announcement was made loud and clear from a Roman cross.

Through the shock of tears and sadness another message comes. He is not dead. He is alive. He is risen. The apostles heard that good news from the women who went to anoint a body that was not there. He is risen. He is alive. A new reality was about to dawn on them.

It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I could bring myself to visit Joey’s grave. His mother was kind enough to go with me. I had no idea what my reaction would be. As we stood there, Joey’s mom said to me, “I come here every once in a while, not as often as I use to. This place is just a touchstone. I come here because, as a mother, this is the last place I put him. But I know he is not here.”  Yes. He was not here. While it was a special moment, it was not as emotional as I thought it might be.

A few days later was Easter Sunday. I came to the cemetery early in the morning. It was so early, I had to climb the fence. The gate was locked! I made my way to joe’s grave with a single rose. As I approached his marker, I could feel the tears coming. I was wondering where they were coming from. Placing the rose at his grave I burst into uncontrollable tears. I must have cried for a good two minutes. Suddenly those tears became laughter!! I was laughing! Not at my silliness, but at a new understanding—a true new reality — I knew that Joey was not here. He was not dead. He was alive. Alive in Christ.

Donna, Joey’s mom, was just like Mother Mary. I am sure she took disciples to the empty tomb to assure them that her San was not there. He is risen. He is alive…indeed He is the resurrection and the life.

For the first time in my life, I truly knew what the apostles and disciples must have felt like on that first Easter! Their tears had turned to joy. The emptiness of their hearts was replaced by the full revelation of an empty tomb. I knew and felt the reality that MY REDEEMER LIVES! I knew what my faith had always assured me. Christ has died. Christ is risen and Christ will come again.

What did they expect? He said he would die. He said he would be rejected. He said he would be abandoned… but he also said he would rise. He also said we would rise with him.

This is what we can expect.

Happy and blessed Easter!

“What day is it?” It’s hump day. [enter camel stage right]

Just what is hump day? It is the day on which we breathe a little easier knowing that Friday and the weekend is just a few days away. Hump day is a hope filled shout that we are almost there.  At the same time, we realize that right now there is work yet to be done. While we still have to wait for the weekend, and to say “thank God it’s Friday,” we put our heads down to the task at hand.

Is there a hump day in Holy Week? Of course, there is. In Holy Week, this Wednesday is for both doing and waiting. As Lent moves to the Sacred three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter, with its great vigil, we still journey toward it on Holy hump day.  Spiritually, we are almost there…we are almost home.

My thoughts take me to a time when I was in college and in the seminary. It was my junior year.  There was a lot going on at the time.  I was earnestly praying for clarity and direction.  I was crying out to God. I was petitioning and asking God to just show me the way…give me a sign…give me something…throw me a bone!   That is all I asked and I would follow.

One night I went to the chapel to pray and to be honest, was not in any mood to be there.  I tried to quiet myself in God’s presence…nothing.  I then reached for my Bible.  It fell out of my hands and hit the floor.  (I couldn’t even do that right!)  As I reached down to retrieve it, the sacred scriptures were open to the Book of the Psalms.  Specifically, Psalm 40 caught my eye.  As I read it, I felt like it had been written just for me.

I waited, I waited for the Lord;
   who stooped to me and heard my cry.
 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
   out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
    and gave me a firm place to stand.

The 18-verse psalm ends with this encouragement:

But may all who seek you
    rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who long for your saving help always say,
    “The Lord is great!”

But as for me, I am poor and needy;
    may the Lord think of me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
    you are my God, do not delay.

The answer to my prayer was not necessarily the one I was seeking, but the one I needed.  I needed to trust. TRUST.  Trust in the love of God…  Trust that he knows me.   Trust that he hears me. Trust that he has and will again, STOOP TO HEAR MY CRY. 

So, we wait. So, we put our head down and plow forward with trust in Him.

What day is it?  It’s HOLY HUMP DAY!!!!

I’ve always been a lover of history. It was always one of my favorite subjects in school. Mr. Eisert was one my favorite history teachers. He was the first instructor to invite students to think critically about things. For that, I am forever grateful.

As an adult I’ve been really Interested in with some would call “curious history” or the stuff they didn’t teach you in school. Like the “Spanish Flu”, the pandemic of the last century (Jan 1918 – Dec 1920.). I Never heard about it I was in school. I actually stumbled upon it literally. I found out about it for the first time when I went to visit my father’s grave. A few rows over from his plot, there is a memorial list all of this lost to the pandemic and a common grave for the poor who succumbed to the disease. I remember standing there looking at all the names etched on this large headstone. To be honest for me it just became a curious fact, an interesting thing just to look up and dig into.

Today, not yet a century since the official end of the forgotten great pandemic, we find ourselves in our own. This is now our history. In an encouraging message that Queen Elizabeth II recently broadcast to the people of her United Kingdom, she spoke great words of hope. Let me paraphrase. She said that her hope was that as people look back at our generation, they would see the courage which was our response in the face of adversity. They will see that we triumphed. A queen who has ruled longer than any other, and is no stranger to challenge, change and adversity, is calling us to hope. There will be an end. And what shall we as individuals and as a community look like? She is calling her people — all of us to a noble standard. Thank you, your majesty! You’ve certainly earned the title.

This is our current “history” as it were… but this week, this Holy Week, the emphasis for us believers is to His Story. A truth of ultimate hope.  It is the truth; it is not fiction. It’s not a fantasy. It’s not a myth. It’s not a nice human explanation for all the bad things that happened to us. It’s the truth. Jesus is the Historic Face of the Invisible God.  His life and passion and death cannot be erased.  It’s a fact. It really happened. It’s as scientific and verifiable as the daily briefings we get on this virus—more so! This week we celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ son of God and son of man Who by his cross and resurrection destroyed death and restored life… Eternal life.

We are called annually in our Lenten journey and now specifically in the midst of what we don’t know, to focus upon that which we do! We have a savior. We have a messiah. We have Good News. We have been delivered from bondage to sin and idols to embrace freedom in Him. In Jesus our brother we are not only reconciled to the eternal Father we are made His sons and daughters through adoption! Jesus bore the weight of our sins on the cross. What was born was our eternal relationship to the Holy Trinity itself.

In the power of the Holy Spirit we are united in grace, fellowship and love. Our mission here is to proclaim that message by our lives—in our words our deeds or generosity our care our compassionate and loving proclaiming of the truth.

We are all in this together.

Reflect on this: Romans 5: 1 – 11

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access [by faith] to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.

Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.

But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath. Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.Not only that, but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Yes. Good news! We are all in this together!

What a great line.  I hope you recognize it.  It has become a famously misquoted quote from the Bogart classic, Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  This was the reply of the “bandito” to Humphry Bogart’s question, ‘If you are police, show us your badges?”  The gold-toothed bandito replies, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges!  We don’t need no badges!  I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”

It is Palm Sunday.  The palm is such a powerful symbol of our Faith.  Deeper than that, it is a symbol (sacramental) of the One in whom of faith rests.  The palm is a sign of Christ.  It reminds us of both triumph and seeming tragedy…Acclamation and Betrayal…but most especially it reminds us of the Procession of Jesus to Jerusalem for one purpose.  Not for a crown given by a crowd, but to embrace a cross to redeem them…and you and me. But for most, there will be not Palms this Sunday…fear of spreading an invisible virus has halted some distribution.

In Matthew’s Gospel narrative of the Passion of the Lord, there is a line that I believe can give us spiritual perspective, thoughtful reflection and comfort as we enter this holiest of weeks in our Christian calendar. 

“They stripped off his clothes…” Mt. 27:28

These last four week of Lent have been “stolen” from us, in a way, by this global pandemic.  Our churches closed, our Eucharist from afar, our community at a distance.  All of the “things” for which we have become accustomed have been stripped away.  Perhaps this is one of the gifts of the Covid-19.  I truly think it is.  As Christ was stripped, humbled, humiliated, and ultimately abandoned and crucified, so we are stripped bare of the familiar.

Think back to Ash Wednesday.  What was your spiritual intention for this Holy Season?  Still on the same course? If you are anything like me, you have been set in an unexpected direction. But here we are now, on Palm Sunday…and for some of us…we will not even have Palms.  Just as Jesus was stripped, we are stripped.  We are laid bare of all the things we sometimes cling to, that we may be freed to truly cling to Christ…and Him Crucified!  We have been stripped bare so we can embrace our spiritual heritage. 

Our faith rooted in the Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of our Savior Jesus Christ has been an experience of spiritual “stripping.”  The Jewish Believers of the new way, were not only stripped of their place in local synagogues and the Temple itself, they were persecuted.  Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles, while the greatest of evangelists, could not shed his past as a persecutor of the church itself!

This is our spiritual heritage.  It has been stripped and laid bare for twenty centuries now, internally and externally.  How have we been stripped in the past?

• Paul fought Peter over ritual
• Roman emperors used games and genocides
• Politics created a convenient marriage between the Church and Empire
• Church embraced power over faithful practice
• Leo excommunicated Luther and Luther walked away
• At times we chose armies over angels
• Iconoclasts broke windows and burned crosses and statues
• Enlightenment tried to put revelation of a book shelf
• Stripped bare …  it is our spiritual heritage
• Iconoclasts broke windows and statues…
• Totalitarianism has tried to extinguish the Church’s light
• Secularism has tried to push Faith to the margins as fantasy
• And most recently, we as a faith community have experience broken trust by our leaders who hid secrets and sins of some clergy…protecting their place over the safety of its members.

All things stripped bare.

But I dare say, this could be our greatest Lent, Holy Week and Easter ever!! If being stripped, we embrace the cross like Jesus, walk the road toward Golgatha and by grace, allow ourselves to be crucifed with him, we know we shall rise with Him!

This is our spiritual heritage. This is our spiritual journey. Despite our sin and our infidelity…despite forces that rage against us, the Church, when stripped bare has proclaimed from its core, the depth of its FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST, Son of the FATHER.  In Him and in the power of the Holy Spirit, God has kept his promise made to Peter.  “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  Mt. 16:18

You may have noticed in the last few years, that fasting has made a come back. Not particularly religious fasting, but dietary fasting or “intermittent” fasting. I guess it works! Go figure.

I’ve never been very good at fasting. I grew up in the generation of Catholic lite. Well my mother’s generation knew what it was like to fast and abstain on every Friday of the year and then really dig in during the 40 days of lent. My generation well, we were Vatican II babies. Whatever…

With this global pandemic has come A daily adjustment to our personal and communal landscape. It is definitely not business as usual is it ? I don’t know about you but I’ve noticed that I get a little more irritated a little more quickly. My language has gotten a little more coarse. My distractions have become more intense and in general I have to be more conscious about things — often really stupid things. That’s not all bad — just different.

Fridays in Lent have always been known as days for fasting, penitence, And prayer. As we’re coming toward the end of Lent, I’d like to suggest that all of us fast in a new way during this novel time.

So Let’s fast in a new way. Let’s fast from selfishness and become more giving. Let’s fast from pessimism and be hopeful. Let’s fast from worries to embrace trust, Let’s fast from too many words, and become silent listeners. Let’s fast from judgment to become more understanding. Let’s fast from anger to become more peaceful. Let’s fast from things and become more focused on persons. Let’s fast from being who we think we are supposed to be to become more like Christ for each other.

We’ve been called to do new things as we’ve adjusted to life with this virus, we are truly truly called each and every day to a brand new relationship with Jesus Christ and one another. Believe it.

Perhaps this kind of fasting just might, by his grace, infect the whole world with his love.