There is a pattern in this gospel story, a movement you might say. And the pattern seems to go like this. First you follow Jesus, then you find abundant life. The point of following the shepherd, if you see yourself as one of the sheep, is that you might be led to pastures of abundant food. “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.” The movement is not that you first find some kind of abundant life ...
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Some 60 years ago, when the Second Vatican Council ended (1963-1965), the world’s bishops were looking for a metaphor to describe the Church. They settled on not calling the Church a divinely instituted hierarchy but instead a “pilgrim people of God.” What they were saying was: 1) the Church is made up of people, 2) the people are God’s people, and 3) these people were on a journey, a pilgrimage you might say. Until then we always thought life was ...
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In that Passion account we just heard, within just a few hours, Pontius Pilate asked Jesus 11 questions. Nobody in the entire Bible (Old Testament or New Testament) asks as many questions as he does. It becomes clear that Pilate really doesn’t want to know the answer to any of these questions. When Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, says that he came into this world to testify to the truth, Pilate asks him a question, ...
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That first reading from the Book of Exodus speaks about the central feast of our Jewish brothers and sisters down to this very day—the great feast of Passover. What I didn’t realize, until recently, is that the entire passage is a monologue spoke by God. It’s God speaking instructions about how to prepare the Passover meal and what to do with the lamb’s blood afterward. It ends with a command to do this ritual, that is, observe Passover as a ...
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I’m beginning to appreciate the importance of the gospel stories we’ve had over the last three Sundays. Like I mentioned last weekend, in the Early Church, a person could not be baptized unless they were familiar with the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well (two Sundays ago), the story of the Man Born Blind (last Sunday), and today’s story of the Raising of Lazarus from the Dead. With each story we get a little bit closer to the ...
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In the unsettling times we live in, I recognize the absolute need for prophetic voices to help me (us) see that creation is still good, that God is still in charge, and that God’s life-giving plan will ultimately be victorious. These prophets, however, don’t just fall from the sky like treats from a vending machine. Prophets are born out of painful calls of the suffering earth, its people, and from the persistent nudging from God. While I’ve known of prophets ...
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I ended the last article by describing how the prophet, one of the archetypes within each of us, is never satisfied with the status quo. Prophetic people feel disloyal to themselves and to their higher calling whenever they have to succumb to “the way things are” especially when “the way things are” are unjust and cause unnecessary suffering. They feel for the “little guy,” the “underdog” and are attentive to peoples’ grief before it becomes a statistic. The homeless one, ...
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Once again, the opening line of the gospel is very telling and points us beyond the story itself. It starts off by telling us that Jesus led Peter, James and John up a mountain to be by themselves. You’ll recall that this will be the same trio who, later on, will be with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion. Peter, James and John, who witness his glory on the mountain peak, will soon afterwards observe ...
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I have no real problem calling this gospel passage of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert by what Christians have called it for a very long time–“the temptations of Christ.” The devil, whatever you image that to be, is portrayed as the culprit, the one who enticed Jesus into sin then and the one who entices us into sin now. It’s much like the snake in the Genesis story we just heard. The snake is the antagonist who lured Adam ...
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Each of us will live these 40 days of Lent in the unique way that God has called us to. As long as we are drawn closer to God and each other by the end of it then one person’s journey during Lent will be just as valid and just as good as another person’s journey. If we hear and respond to the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth, then we can be sure the Kingdom ...
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