Palm Sunday 2007
05/04/07 22:48
Palm Sunday, Year C (April 1, 2007)A friend sent me the following e-mail:
The donkey awakened, his mind still savoring the afterglow of the most exciting day of his life. Never before had he felt such a rush of pleasure and pride. He walked into town and found a group of people by the well. "I'll show myself to them," he thought. But they didn't notice him. They went on drawing their water and paid him no mind. "Throw your garments down," he said crossly. "Don't you know who I am?" They just looked at him in amazement. Someone slapped him across the tail and ordered him to move. "Miserable heathens!" he muttered to himself. "I'll just go to the market where the good people are. They will remember me." But the same thing happened. No one paid any attention to the donkey as he strutted down the main street in front of the market place. "The palm branches! Where are the palm branches!" he shouted. "Yesterday, you threw palm branches!" Hurt and confused, the donkey returned home to his mother. "Foolish child," she said gently. "Don't you realize that without Him, you are just an ordinary donkey? Without him you are just an ass!"
Today, Palm Sunday, we begin Holy Week, and we remember the great love that Jesus had for us by dying on the cross to save us from sin and death. Without him, we are nothing. But with him, we are everything.
Use this week wisely. Let it wake you up spiritually. Don’t just go through the motions. Don’t just be like the donkey. It’s not about us. It’s not about me. It’s about God, and about what He has done for us, on the cross, dying for our sins.
On the screen is a question: Are you here? I don’t mean physically – but are you here spiritually? Is the fire of Jesus burning inside of you? Or are you just going through the motions? Too many Christians are just lukewarm, spiritually – God’s frozen chosen – instead of being fully awake spiritually and aware of all that the Lord has done for us.
A funny story is told of a black Baptist preacher, exhorting his congregation. “This church is walking for the Lord,” he cried, and the people responded, “Amen! Preach it, pastor! We are walking for the Lord!” The pastor continued: “This church, we’re running for the Lord.” And the people screamed in ecstasy, “Preach it, pastor! We are running for the Lord.” He continued, “People of God, the Lord wants us flying for him!” The people cried out, “Let us fly!” Then the preacher cried out in a loud voice, “To fly, this church is going to need more money!” – and the people cried out in one united voice, “Pastor, let’s go back to walking again!”
God wants us to be red hot and on fire for him, not just walking, but flying. In the Book of Revelation, an angel visits the church of Laodicea and pronounces a fearful judgment: "I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You're not cold, you're not hot—far better to be either cold or hot! You're stale. You're stagnant. You make me want to vomit. (Revelation 3:15-16, Message Bible)
Holy Week, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter – these are meant to wake us up, spiritually, so that we are on fire for God, not cold or lukewarm. The Lord is right here with us, if only we have the eyes to see.
This Palm Sunday, three simple words from our gospel:
• Faith. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46, NAB). Jesus’ simple faith in his Father. Some of us are struggling – a sickness, trouble with our kids, a marriage falling apart, problems at work, an addiction. Can we trust and have faith that the Lord wants to help us and heal us? Are we willing to take the necessary steps in our lives so that our faith burns and comes alive, and is not just superficial and going through the motions?
• Hope: "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done." – Luke 22:42 (NAB) We trust and hope that no matter what the obstacle that we face, the mountain or wall that we must overcome, somehow God holds us in His hands, and all will be well with us and the world. We are obedient, trusting that God is leading us, even when we feel like we are blind and cannot find the way back home.
• Love. The real essence of this Holy Week. Luke is the gospel of love and compassion. He heals the ear of the Roman soldier, cut off by Jesus’ impetuous disciples. He forgives the repentant thief. He asks his Father in heaven, “Forgive them, they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:32, TEV) John’s gospel tells us, in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, NLT) Are we imitating Jesus – his compassion, his loving gaze on those who are in pain and are hurting, his forgiveness and love even of his enemies?
Don’t compartmentalize your life. Don’t just leave God for one hour a week on Sundays, or for special occasions like Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday and Easter and Christmas. Live your life on fire for the Lord in each and every moment, and with each and every breath, and don’t forget what he has done for you.
Last week, I listened to a talk on CD by a Jesuit priest. He entitled the talk, “Monday to Sunday,” and observed that most people reverse the order, “Sunday to Monday.” He said most people talk about Sunday as a spiritual gas station, where we get our spiritual fill up to carry us through the week and through until next Sunday. But in his view, Monday to Sunday is at least as important – if not more so – than Sunday to Monday. By these, he means that we find God not just here at church, and not just at Mass on Sunday morning, but also in the workplace, and at school and at home, when caught in traffic, when eating dinner with our family, when going shopping, when cutting the grass or washing the dishes. All of these ordinary things are really sacred moments when we experience God’s presence with us, in simple and mundane ways, but God blesses and sanctifies the ordinary moments of our lives. Those Mondays (and Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays) are the sacred experiences of the Lord working in our lives, each and every day, and we bring those experiences of the Lord with us to the Lord’s table at Mass on Sunday. They are our holy offering to God.
What is coming up this week?
• Today – Palm Sunday – our parish picnic at Lake Cahuilla County Park. Come join us! Have some fun! Hang out with your spiritual family.
• Holy Thursday – we remember the Last Supper and Jesus’ gift of himself – this is my Body, this is my Blood. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and told us to do likewise, to serve our sisters and brothers. On Holy Thursday, maybe you and your family might want to join us for our annual Jewish seder meal, followed by our Holy Thursday Mass.
• Good Friday – we remember Jesus dying on the cross out of his love for us. Are we, too, willing to give our very lives in service to others?
• Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday night, and Easter Sunday. Lights, candles, action!. He is risen! He is risen indeed! Watch this video (show full immersion baptisms from last Easter vigil}. Why do we baptize like this on Easter? Baptism reminds us of new life – of drowning to our old self and rising to new life in Jesus, with the Lord cleansing us of our sins and our hurts and our failings from the past, and re-clothing us as his very brothers and sisters. The Lord tells us in the Book of Revelation, “Behold! I make all things new!”
Don’t get stuck in a rut. Don’t be a lukewarm Christian. Don’t be just a “dumb donkey.” Enter into this Holy Week fully, and allow the Lord to change you from the inside out, so that His fire might burn brightly in your heart and in your soul! God bless!
Palm Sunday 2004
31/03/07 20:22
Palm Sunday 2004A story is told of a little boy who got sick on Palm Sunday morning and was unable to attend Mass. When the rest of the family returned home from church, waving palms, the sick boy asked, “What are those?” His mom, dad, brothers and sisters explained that the palms were used to welcome Jesus as he came into town. The sick little boy cried, “Darn. That’s no fair. The one time I miss church, Jesus decides to show up!”
Friends, I have good news: Jesus is here, and he has shown up, and he is with us all the time. That’s what we celebrate as Christians, and especially each week when we gather for Mass.
Today, as we hear the reading of the Passion of Jesus, and as we prepare to begin our solemn celebration of Holy Week, I am not going to speak many words, because the real homily today is contained in the reading itself.
I simply want to look at three words.
The first word is “love.” I want us to pause and think about the great love of Jesus for us – a love so great that he willingly suffered and died on the cross for us. If anyone saw the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” which came out this Lent, then you will understand the depth of Jesus’ love for us as you watch the blood, the excruciating pain, to beating and whipping and suffering that he endured for our sake.
This year, we are journeying through the gospel of Luke in our Sunday readings – and Luke’s version of the Passion of Jesus, which we hear today, is particularly clear about the bottomless depth of Jesus’ love for us. This is the only gospel where the compassionate Jesus heals the ear of the soldier which has been cut off in the Garden of Gethsemani by one of Jesus’ disciples. This is the only gospel where Jesus looks out with compassion on the crowd that has nailed him to the cross and says, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is the gospel where Jesus forgives the repentant sinner. This is the gospel where Jesus shows special concern for the poor, the weak and the marginalized in his society.
The second word is Faith. Faithfulness, fidelity, marked Jesus’ journey to Calvary. He did not want to go to the cross, and in fact, prayed to his Father, “If it is your will, take this cup from me.” But he remained faithful to his Father, even in the darkness of confusion and doubt and not fully understanding. He never lost confidence that his heavenly Father knew what he was doing, and that all would turn out for the best, in the end.
The third and final word is obedience. Jesus remained obedient to his Father’s call for his life, and thus fulfilled the purpose for which he had been sent into the world.
We are called to imitate Jesus’ love and faithfulness and obedience. It’s not always easy, and we sometimes stray and fall away, which is why the church gives us this gift of Lent and this gift of Holy Week every year – to help us refocus and to recollect. Our Palm Sunday celebration reminds us how easy it is to be two-faced, as were the people in our first gospel reading today – one day, they are waving palms and crying, “Hosanna! Hail to the King!” – but then a week later, they are crying, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
In the coming week of Holy Week, and in the weeks beyond, here are a few concrete ways to re-commit and re-connect with Jesus, and to imitate him in those three words, those three virtues: Love, faith, obedience.
1. Attend some of the beautiful Holy Week and Easter services and nurture your soul. Thursday – Holy Thursday -- we remember Jesus’ last supper. Friday – Good Friday -- we remember Jesus’ death on the cross. Saturday night at 8 p.m., the Vigil Mass, we light the Easter candle for the new year and march into the church with lit candles to dispel the darkness of Jesus’ suffering and death with the light of his resurrection and new life. This is when we baptize all our adults, teens and older children. On Sunday, we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead and we celebrate in baptism the new spiritual life of Jesus in the lives of many of our parish’s children.
2. Invite someone to church with you next Sunday. Often the only reason many people don’t go to church on Sunday is that nobody ever bothers to invite and welcome them.
3. Follow through with the commitments we urge all members of our church to make:
a. Pray daily.
b. Attend Mass weekly.
c. Grow spiritually – through our mini-retreats, youth groups, our small faith communities.
d. Serve joyfully.
e. Give generously.
Palm Sunday, 2005
31/03/07 20:21
Palm Sunday – March 20, 2005Hot or Cold?
A story is told of a little boy, 5 years old, who didn’t go to Mass one Sunday because he was sick. When the rest of the family came home, however, they were waving palm branches, so the little boy asked about what had happened at church that morning. An older sister replied, “People waved palm branches when Jesus came marching in!” At that, the little boy cried out, “It figures! On the one Sunday when I don’t go to church, Jesus decides to show up!”
The story is humorous, but there is a fallacy in it. Jesus is present at Mass, every time we gather for the Eucharist. As we begin Holy Week today, we need to remind ourselves that this is not just about an event that occurred 2,000 years ago – some relic from the past. Jesus is still present with us today, here and now and waiting for with outstretched arms, waiting for us to draw closer to him.
The real issue is not: Is Jesus here? The real question is: Are we present? Are we ready to recognize Jesus in our midst?
I brought with me today two items – both containing caffeine. [Show cup of coffee and Coke or Pepsi]. What is the difference between these two items? Right – one is hot, the other cold.
On your sheet today, it says, “Hot or Cold?” That’s the question I want us to ask of ourselves as we begin Holy Week today. Are we hot or cold, spiritually? That’s what we see on this feast day – a people who are on fire for Jesus one moment, screaming, “Hosanna!” – but cold for Jesus a few days later, screaming, “Crucify him!” Lots of Catholics are like that, too!
Today’s real homily is in our readings today – especially the reading of the Passion and death of Jesus. Just let the story sink in for a moment. And to help us, we are going to watch a short two-minute video presentation of Palm Sunday. [Show video clip from movie, “Jesus”]
Holy Week offers us a profound opportunity to simply slow down and meditate about the great gift of God’s love for us – a love so tremendous that the Father send his only Son into the world to save us from our sins, and that Son, Jesus, offered his life on the cross because of his unlimited love for us.
On your handout are five simple ways – five opportunities – to make the most out of this Holy Week,. Spiritually. They are:
1. Opportunity 1: Participate in today’s Parish Picnic at Lake Coahuilla – a chance to just hang out with your spiritual family.
2. Opportunity 3: Read the Passion story in Matthew’s gospel together as a family.
3. Opportunity 3: Watch Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ” – tomorrow, 6 p.m.
4. Opportunity 4: Attend Holy Week liturgies this week – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter.
5. Opportunity 5: Bring someone with you to Easter Mass next weekend.
As we begin this Holy Week, let us ask ourselves: Is Jesus really alive in my life? Am I hot or cold, spiritually?
I heard a funny story of a preacher who once really got the congregation riled up. He was preaching up a storm and yelled, “This church really needs to get itself a walkin’” and the people responded in a loud voice, “Let’s start a walkin’.” The preacher then screamed, “This church really needs to get itself a runnin’” and the people screamed, “Let’s start a runnin’.” Then the preacher screamed, “God wants this church to fly!” and all the people yelled out in unison, “Let’s start a flyin’.” Then the preacher yelled out, “For this church to fly, we’re gonna need some money!” – and there was a pause, then the people all started yelling, “Let’s go back to walkin’.”
A true story is told of a man in Georgia who, in the 1960s, during the civil rights movement in the south, founded a church ministry to bring healing a reconciliation between the different races. One day, he ran into some legal difficulties, so he asked his brother for help. His brother was a lawyer and an aspiring politician. But the brother refused to help, saying it would ruin his political aspirations and his career. The ministry leader reminded his brother than when they were younger, they had gone to church and give their lives to the Lord and promised to follow him always. But the lawyer brother responded, “I promised to follow Jesus up to the cross, but not get on the cross and get crucified!” The first brother lashed out, “You’re not a real disciple and follower of Jesus! You’re just an admirer!” Unfortunately, there are lots of admirers of Jesus, but not enough true disciples and followers!
To be a true Christian, we need to follow Jesus to the cross and to die to our old selves, so that God can raise us to new life, just as He raised Jesus. On your handout, let’s read together some of the ways we die, and some of the ways that we rise:
• I die when: I am conscious of lifelong limitations in myself; when I am tired, overworked, out of sorts, not feeling well; when I am discouraged by lack of success or of support; when I let fear and anxiety and worry rule in my life; when I succumb over and over again to temptations and bad habits; when I become surly, ungrateful, dispirited, negative in my attitude toward myself or others.
• I rise when: I experience friendship and support from family and friends; when my talents and gifts are recognized and used; when I share and show love and kindness, courtesy and understanding to others; when I show compassion to someone who is hurting; when I am at peace with myself, full of God’s deep and abiding sense of joy and presence; when I am faithful to my commitments to God and to others; when Murphy’s Law fails and things go right!
A joke is told of a little boy who was doing horribly in school, especially in math -- so his parents put him into a Catholic school. His grades improved almost instantly. The parents asked the boy what had happened and he replied, “In that school, they are serious! They have a guy in every single classroom, hanging dead on a big plus sign, and I don’t want to be like him!”
The cross is not supposed to scare us! The cross is the sign of God’s limitless love for us – how Jesus stretched out his arms in love on the cross to save us! It is an invitation for us to respond back with love for God and for others! Let’s read the verse on your handout: Through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be obvious in our dying bodies. -- 2 Cor. 4:10-11 (NLT)
Turn to the back of your handouts – one final point this morning, from the story of the donkey. Notice that in the gospel that began our celebration today of Palm Sunday, someone offered a donkey so that Jesus could ride on it. We all have a donkey we can offer to Jesus – something we can give back!
A true story is told of an inner city church in New York that ministered the children in the gang infested housing projects. Once a Puerto Rican woman became involved in the church and was led to Christ. After her conversion, she asked the pastor the church, "I want to do something to help with the church's ministry." He asked her what her talents were and she could think of nothing---she couldn't even speak English---but she did love children. So he put her on one of the church's buses that went into neighborhoods and transported kids to church. Every week she performed her duties. She would find the worst-looking kid on the bus, put him on her lap and whisper over and over the only words she had learned in English: "I love you. Jesus loves you." After several months, she became attached to one little boy in particular. The boy didn't speak. He came to Sunday School every week with his sister and sat on the woman's lap, but he never made a sound. Each week she would tell him all the way to Sunday School and all the way home, "I love you and Jesus loves you." One day, to her amazement, the little boy turned around and stammered, "I---I---I love you too!" Then he put his arms around her and gave her a big hug. That was 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon. At 6:30 that night he was found dead. His own mother had beaten him to death and thrown his body in the trash. "I love you and Jesus loves you." Those were some of the last words this little boy heard in his short life---from the lips of a Puerto Rican woman who could barely speak English. This woman gave her one talent to God and because of that a little boy who never heard the word "love" in his own home, experienced and responded to the love of Christ. What can you give? What is your "colt", your donkey? You and I each have something in our lives, which, if given back to God, could, like the colt, move Jesus and His message further down the road.
Let’s conclude by reading together the final verse on your handout: God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith. As a result, I can really know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I can learn what it means to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that, somehow, I can experience the resurrection from the dead! – Philippians 3:9-11
This year, as we enter into Holy Week, are we people of real faith – disciples of Jesus or just mere admirers? Are we hot or are we called? Are we screaming “Hosanna!,” or are we screaming, “Crucify him!” ?
5th Sunday of Lent, Year C (2004)
24/03/07 22:18
Lent 5-C 2004Look on the TV. What do you see? Right, clips from the evening news.
Is the news usually good or bad? Right. Bad. But today, on this fifth Sunday of Lent, we gather together here in this church NOT to hear bad news, but to hear GOOD NEWS. So fasten your seatbelts and get ready for some Good News from the Lord today.
On your sheet, it says, “Advice for Experiencing Something New in Your Life.” God wants to do something new in our lives. Something better. Something good. Something truly stupendous and marvelous. But first, we need to get rid of some of the old.
In our gospel today, there is a lot of old baggage – what I would call bad news, just like there is a lot of bad news in our world and on the evening news. It would be easy today to talk about some of the different bad news themes in our gospel and that still affect us today. For example:
• We could talk about adultery, sexual unfaithfulness. It’s a big problem in our gospel today. And it’s a big problem in our world today.
• We could talk about capital punishment. In our gospel, the Jewish leaders want to stone this woman to death for having committed adultery. In our society today, there are many people on death row. Is capital punishment allowed? In recent years, our church and its leaders, including the Pope, have spoken out against capital punishment, saying that there is no real need for it in modern society because life imprisonment is sufficient. The church leaders say that the only motive for capital punishment today is revenge – and for Christians, revenge can never be a justifiable motive.
• We could talk about discrimination, especially against women. Where is the man in this story? After all, it takes two to commit adultery. Where is the man? Is there a double standard here? Is there still a double standard in our world today?
Finally, our gospel today talks about forgiveness and second chances – and so, finally, we arrive at some good news. And that, I believe, is really what our gospel is all about today.
Let me illustrate with a $20 bill. Anyone here like to have this crisp, new $20 bill? Of course your would! Now let we crumple it up in my hand, so that it is no longer crisp and new. Now, does anyone still want this $20 bill? Now let me stomp on it and spit on it. Anyone still want it? It’s now ugly and not at all new looking, so why do you still want it? Because it still is valuable and can be used to buy things?
Think about our lives as that $20 bill. We’ve all had our ups and downs, made our mistakes, been crumpled up by the trials of life. We may look a bit like that beaten down $20 bill. But we are still valuable, especially in the sight of God, who loves us, no matter what. And that’s the good news of this gospel of forgiveness and of second chances.
Look on your handout. In our first reading, Isaiah tells us not to think on things of the past, but to focus on the future, because God wants to do something new in our lives. What is that something new that you want God to do in your life? Think about that for a moment – and offer it up to God.
Second, Isaiah tells us that we are to proclaimers of God’s good news. We’re not to keep it to ourselves or to horde it. We are to share. What is the proclamation of my life? Is my life speaking in crystal clear tones the good news of Jesus? Or is my life a contradiction and a scandal?
In the book of Revelation, Jesus tells us that he does not want lukewarm Christians. He tells us that he would rather that we be cold spiritually than lukewarm. But of course, the best is if we are red hot for God. If we are just lukewarm, he says he will spit us out, vomit us out from his mouth. Those are strong words.
I heard a funny story last week of a woman who got caught in traffic behind this slow poke driver. When the traffic light turned green, he just sat there, unmoving. She was behind him, angry as could be. But the light turned red and he still had not moved. So she started screaming and yelling, and honking her horn. You can imagine the ruckus. Eventually, a policeman came and stopped her. She was fuming mad by now and said to the officer, “I’m not the guilty party! It’s that moron in front of me who won’t drive or move his car!” The policeman then explained, “You’re bumper sticker says, ‘I love Jesus,’ so I figured that by the way you were behaving, you must’ve stolen this car from its real Christian owner, because now Christian would act like you are acting.” We get into ruts, all of us, don’t we?
So how can we become red-hot spiritually so that we can experience the newness of life that God wants to give to us? On your sheet are three action steps:
1. We should focus on the future, not the past. Leave the past behind. We can’t change it anyway. It is so sad when people get stuck in the rut of the past – unable to overcome a past hurt or to forgive someone who has offended them, or to bury an anger or a bitterness. They are enslaved in the past. (Read Isaiah 43:18-19; Philippians 3:12-14; and John 8:11 – all focusing on the future, not the past)
2. Second, we should trust in the promises and the help of God. Isaiah says God will open up a river in the dry desert.
3. Third, we must learn to imitate Jesus and forgive others, just as God has forgiven us. Notice on your handout the artist rendition of the woman caught in adultery (by Russian artist Lucas Cranach the Younger), and how Jesus is affectionately and gently holding the hand of the woman caught in adultery.
Forgiveness is not always easy. But that is the good news from the gospel – just as a pencil eraser wipes away and erases our mistakes, Jesus wipes away our past mistakes with his love and forgiveness.
I remember a story of a nun who went to the bishop and said she had experienced a vision from Jesus. The sly bishop told the nun, “Go back, and if Jesus appears to you again, ask him, ‘What is the greatest sin that the bishop ever committed?’ Only I know the answer to that question, unless Jesus really reveals it to you.” A few days later, the nun reappeared and again told the bishop that she had experienced a vision of Jesus. The bishop asked, “Did you do as I said and ask Jesus about my greatest sin?” “O yes,” replied the nun. The bishop then asked, “What did Jesus tell you?” and the nun gently replied, “He told me that he doesn’t remember anymore.”
On your sheet are some important points about forgiveness:
First, God’s forgiveness is instant, it is free and it is without limit.
Second, we are called to imitate God because (1) God has forgiven us; (2) when we refuse to forgive, our lives will be miserable; and (3) I will need God’s forgiveness in the future, so I should be merciful now so that God will be merciful to me in the future when I need his mercy.
Third, real true forgiveness is a decision, not a feeling or an emotion. Forgiveness does not depend on the other person nor on how they respond, or even if they respond. And real forgiveness does not mean that we have to return to an abusive or unhealthy situation or that we have to be a doormat for someone else’s bad behavior.
Now that we know what forgiveness is, and what it isn’t – on your sheets is a blank space, and I want you to fill it out, at least in your mind, if not physically: Who do I need to forgive?
Finally on your sheet are a few simple action steps to help us experience God’s newness in our lives:
1. Decide to follow Jesus Christ, not the false path of this world.
2. Confess.
3. Commit your life to Jesus Christ.
4. Expect God to help you.
5. Follow Jesus, not the crowd.
6. Get involved actively in spiritual things – this will help strengthen you so that you do not fall prey to the temptations of the world again.
7. Leave the old life behind,
Final question on your sheet: What must you leave behind? What must you do to experience God’s newness in your life?
At the bottom of your handout is a drawing. Some people are trapped in a deep hole of their past hurts and pains. Others are lukewarm, on the plain, not doing anything terribly bad in their lives, but also, not doing anything profoundly good. And finally, some people are climbing the mountain and seeking after something new.
Which part of that drawing is you? If we want to experience God’s newness of life, we need to move beyond getting stuck in the hole of the past, and we need to move beyond contentment with mediocrity and being lukewarm spiritually.
God wants to help us climb the mountain so that we can experience the heights of his great love for his, and his great plan for our lives.
4th Sunday of Lent, Year C (2007)
18/03/07 13:40
Homily – 4th Sunday of Lent, Year C (March 18, 2007)
Lost and Found
An 85-year-old man was sitting on a park bench, weeping uncontrollably. A passerby offered some help: “I don’t mean to intrude, but is there anything I can do for you? Why are you crying? Are you having problems at home?” Between sobs, the man replied, “No, everything is fine at home. I have a big house, two cars, a swimming pool, a wonderful wife who is a bit younger than me, beautiful, a fabulous cook, and treats me like a king.” “Then, what’s the problem?” asked the passerby. The older man replied, “I can’t remember where I live!”
That gentleman is not the only one who was lost. All of us get lost from time to time, spiritually if not physically. And that’s what our gospel today is all about: Lost and found.
Anyone here ever gotten lost? Maybe when you were little – at the mall, or when you wandered away from your parents at the fair or at the park? Or maybe you lost something important – your car keys, your cell phone, your purse or wallet. Anyone here ever lost a child? Remember that movie, “Home Alone”? I once lost my car at the parking lot of the mall, and had to ask security to drive me around, trying to find it. I thought it had been stolen. Really, what had happened was that I had parked the car at sunset, but before it got dark, and when I went out to find the car, the fluorescent lights in the parking lot had come on and made the car look like a different color under the lights. Did I ever feel stupid!
Let’s read what Saint Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23, NIV) Spiritually, all of us are lost, in one way or another, whether we admit it or not. In fact, if we say that we are not lost, that’s just proof that we are lost – so lost, in fact, that we don’t even realize that we are lost!
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest and famous Catholic spiritual writer, spent many years working among handicapped people in Canada in a house for the disabled, called the L’Arche Community, and he once said: “We are all handicapped. Some are more visibly handicapped than others.” I believe Nouwen hit the nail right smack on the head – all of us are essentially in the same boat, but some of us just show it more!
We can be lost individually – wandering far from God, lost in the world of addictions or materialism or hedonistic pleasure. And, maybe less noticeably, but perhaps more profoundly, we can become lost and adrift as a nation, as a culture, as a society. Some would say today that we, as a nation, are in danger of losing our moral compass, falling into a false mentality that “ends justify the means,” losing all respect for the sacredness of life through war and violence, abortion and assisted suicide, our embrace of the death penalty and the use of torture – all signs of a society in moral decline, lost and in danger of losing its soul.
But today, our gospel focuses our attention NOT on our “lost-ness,” but on being found.
There’s a new movie out, “Amazing Grace.” You have probably heard the song: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” It was written in 1779 by a guy named John Newton, who was a slave trader. He literally traveled to Africa where he kidnapped people, forced them onto boats and transported them as slaves to the New World. Most died before they ever reached America. And then, one day, Mr. Newton met Jesus Christ, and the change in him was profound. At first, he felt completely like nothing more than a dirty rag, his life a moral swamp and wasteland. But then, he discovered God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness – and he was cleansed, healed, renewed. The movie is mostly about how one of his disciples, a politician in England named William Wilburforce, fought valiantly in the English Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.
Lost and, then, found. Jesus tells us a story, a parable. It is meant to help us find our way back home when we become lost. It is the story of the prodigal son. The problem with the story is that we have heard it so much, it tends to go stale, in one ear and out the other. The challenge is to hear it afresh, as if for the very first time.
It is a story of comparison and contrast. First, the context: Jesus is in a dispute with the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day. Let’s read the beginning of the story together: “Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such despicable people – even eating with them!” (Luke 15:1-2, NLT)
Now, compare and contrast. The Pharisees think Jesus is the bad guy, cavorting with sinners and the unseemly. They are the good guys, the righteous ones, the holy and spiritual folk. But who, really, is doing God’s will? You see, from the get go, this gospel invites us to look at ourselves and ask: Who are we more like? Jesus or the Pharisees? There are people in churches today who think the church should be a temple for saints, not a hospital for sinners. But our gospel tells us, “All have sinned,” and all of us need a rescuer, a savior who will reach out to find us when we are lost.
The second comparison and contrast: The younger son and the older son. Most of us can relate to the younger son – the one who was rebellious, took all his dad’s money and squandered it. Anyone here a parent of a teenager? You know that most teens (not all!) tend to be a bit rebellious when it comes to their parents. They are like the younger son, the prodigal son, in our gospel story today.
Just for laughs, here is one of the Zit’s cartoons from last week. Jeremy here is the prodigal son. Can you relate? Or watch this short clip from a movie called “The Egg-Plant Lady,” about a prodigal daughter. Does this ring home with anyone? And teens, don’t despair – your parents were just like this when they were your age!
But the younger son grows up and discovers something important. Read with me the reflection on the screen: “Money can buy you a bed, but it can’t buy you sleep. It can buy you books but not brains. It can buy you food but not an appetite. It can buy a house but not a home. It can buy medicine but not health. It can buy all kinds of amusements, but it can’t buy happiness. Money can buy a fine dog, but only love will make the dog wag its tail.” The younger son learned this lesson and came home, repentant and ready to change.
The older son is the one who fascinates me. A story is told of a child at catechism class, learning for the first time about this story of the Prodigal Son. The teacher asks the children, “Who was really sad when his younger brother returned home?” One little child raised her hand and shouted, “The fatted calf!” True! But so, also, the older brother – filled with jealousy and resentment toward his brother. He even tells the dad – “This son of yours!” – not, “My brother” – “has squandered all your wealth, and now, you give him a party, you kill the fatted calf for him, but nothing for me!”
He is like the Pharisees. He goes through the motions, does everything his father asks, is faithful and responsible – but inside, he seethes with resentment against his younger brother. He is motivated by duty, not love. He does all the right things, but for all the wrong reasons. His heart is small and cold – not like the large heart of love of his father.
Mother Teresa says, “If we judge people, we have no time to love them.”
The church is filled with people like that. My first parish was in an inner city neighborhood. Years before, it had been populated by Polish and Hungarian immigrants, but now, the neighborhood was mostly black and Hispanic. Across the street from the church lived a little old lady, Polish or Hungarian. She prayed the rosary and went to Mass every day, and was convinced she was the holiest woman in the world. But she hated the blacks and Hispanics who were moving into her neighborhood. And she was always quick to judge and point fingers at everyone, including the priests. No one was beyond her scorn or her ability to judge and criticize. One time, I visited in her house and she had a giant picture of John F. Kennedy on her wall. JFK was her hero – for he was, after all, the first Catholic president of the U.S. But then she said to me, “I can’t stand that Martin Luther King fellow. He’s just a big trouble maker. And he was unfaithful to his wife!” I pointed out that Kennedy also had been unfaithful to his wife, and she said, very self-righteously and indignantly, “But that’s different! He was Catholic!” How easily we can become like the older brother – bitter, resentful, judgmental, doing our duty and going through the motions, but without love.
I read last week of a devout Catholic who complained to her pastor: “There is one thing I don’t like about the gospels – it’s those 11th hour people who get into heaven at the last second, but don’t follow God until the very end.” It seems so unfair, doesn’t it? And that’s how the older brother felt – he had done everything right, and his younger brother had done everything wrong, but at the end, at the 11th hour, the younger son gets the big party. Jesus invites us to overlook this seeming sense of unfairness, and simply rejoice at the gratuitous goodness of God.
Our third and final comparison is between the exploiters and the loving Father. We often overlook the exploiters, but they are the ones who took advantage of the younger son when he was down and out, just to back a quick buck. They didn’t really care about him or try to help him. And our world is filled with people who exploit others. They may go to church on Sunday, but from Monday through Friday, they take advantage of others and don’t put their faith into action. Maybe that’s why there are so many problems and conflicts in the world: blacks against whites, Jews versus Arabs, Sunnis versus Shiites, Catholics versus Protestants, immigrants versus non-immigrants – and the list goes on and on! Oscar Wilde once said: “Always forgive your enemies – it will drive them crazy!” Right answer, but wrong motive!
Compare and contrast this with the Father, the one who loves unconditionally and forgives and welcomes back. This is not necessarily a good way for parents to raise their kids! How many parents would give their teenage son the keys to the car, all the money in the family bank account, and say, “Go, run off to Vegas, spend all the money at the casinos and on wild parties, live it up!” Sounds sort of irresponsible, doesn’t it? I heard a story of a deacon who was telling the story of the Prodigal Son, and as he was acting out the story, he raised his arms wide, pretending to be the father, and he said, “The younger son returned, and the Father started to speak and said in a loud voice…” – but at that moment, the deacon’s son, sitting next to him, blurted out spontaneously, “You’re grounded!” That’s how we would react. But the story is not about human parenting – it’s about God, who loves us with no strings attached.
Alternative: Dear Abby letter: “My 19-year-old son got into trouble with the law, drinking and stealing. He’s in jail, and it serves him right. Every day he calls up his daddy and puts in his order. It’s always two cartoons of cigarettes a week. Yesterday he asked for Tang breakfast drink, a big bag of chocolate chip cookies, a quart of milk, two Big Macs and a large order of fries. His daddy takes him whatever he asks for, and I keep fighting him about it. I say he put himself in jail, let him live on what they feed him there. Am I wrong to feel the way I do, Abby? Please send me your advice. – Fed-up mamma.
So now, let’s apply this story to our own lives. This is “the rest of the story,” so to speak, quoting Paul Harvey – Finding the way home, part 2. And here, we are invited to see ourselves as God sees us, and to see others as God sees them.
Activity with $20 bill: Anyone like to have this $20 bill? What if I crumple it, spit on it, stomp on it with my foot? It’s still valuable, right? Same with us. Even when we fall away from God through sin, God still sees us as valuable.
Optional alternative: Anyone know how much a person is worth, chemically? Your body has enough iron for one nail, enough sugar for a small bowl of sugar, enough phosphorous for about 2,200 matches, enough fat for maybe seven bars of soap – altogether, worth about $3.50. Not much, right! But your body also produces exotic chemicals that cannot easily be produced in a lab, that are valued at more than $6 million! God sees our real value!
Let’s read together these three parts of today’s second reading, from Paul’s 2nd Letter to the Corinthians:
• “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” God is making us new!
• “And all this is from God.” Amazing grace. Not through our own efforts. We don’t save ourselves. God saves us and finds us when we are lost.
• “So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us.” (1 Corinthians 5:17-20, NAB) Sometimes we read this passage as a call to live lives that reflect Jesus Christ to others, and of course, we should do that. But as I read this, I thought: Governments don’t just pick anyone to be their ambassadors. They pick people whom they trust will represent them wisely and faithfully. And that’s how God things of us! We are so highly esteemed by the Lord that he has made us his representatives, his ambassadors, his elite foreign service.
It’s not about doing – not about how many Masses we attend, how many prayers we recite, how many duties we complete in the service of the Lord. In the final analysis, it’s about being – letting God change us at the heart level, letting God find us and rescue us from being lost. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”
One quick aside: This is a true story, just told to me yesterday. One of our families is going through a tragedy here in the parish and needs our prayers. Maybe you heard about the fatal car accident on Highway 86, three people killed by a drunk driver on Thursday night. One of those killed was a mother from our parish, with four kids. She was on her way home from work when the drunk driver hit her car. Her youngest son is in the RCIA program and will get baptized in a few weeks at Easter. Her sister was married here yesterday, and it was a wedding mixed with joy and sadness. I was talking with the family yesterday, and one of them told me that another son had been killed in a car accident maybe 10 years ago. And he told me this story. He was getting ready to visit the family, and this was before the car accident, and he felt prompted in his spirit to take with him a Bible. He didn’t know why he felt that prompting, but he put the Bible in his car anyway. After visiting the family, and as he was about to leave, the young man who later would be killed in the car accident asked him if he knew anything about the Bible. He said yes, pulled out the Bible and the two of them started to read it together. The young man started crying and explained: “Yesterday, I prayed for God to show me if he was real. I asked God to send someone the next day to me who could read and explain the Bible. And then you came, and I knew that God was real.” A few weeks later, the young man was killed in a car accident – but we can celebrate that he gave his life to Jesus and is with the Lord! And all because one person listened to the promptings of the spirit, took his Bible with him, and was willing to serve as an ambassador for the Lord.
Let’s finish, with two quick stories. The first happened to me when I worked in Phoenix. A young man came to me and confessed that he had messed up his life through drugs and gangs. He had fallen into a deep depression and attempted suicide. He shot himself in the bathroom of his parent’s house, but his dad heard the gunshots and he was not killed. This young man told me, “My dad came into the bathroom, so me bleeding from the gunshot wound, and do you know what he did? He kicked me and said, ‘You’re a disgrace to this family!’ ”
Second story. Similar situation. Young man ran away from home, got involved in drugs, gangs, life on the streets. After a while, he wrote home, begging forgiveness. He didn’t know if his family would accept him back. He had burned all his bridges. In his letter, he wrote to his parents: “If you will accept me back, tie a yellow ribbon on the tree in the front of the house, and I’ll pass by, and if I see the ribbon, I know you will take me back. And if there is no ribbon, I will understand – I know I’ve messed up – and I will just keep on going and won’t bother you anymore.” He drove by his house. Do you know what he found? No yellow ribbon – rather, hundreds of yellow ribbons, tied to all the trees in the font yard of his parent’s house.
That’s the comparison, that’s the contrast. Are we like the loving Father or the exploiters? Are we like Jesus or the Pharisees? Are we repentant like the younger son, or still stuck with anger and resentment like the older son?
As you listen to this closing song, close your eyes, mediate, and think as you go home today: How can you show love to someone else, like the father in the story showed love to his two sons? Hug your kids. Kids, hug your parents. Spouses, love and treasure one another. We’ve all been lost, but now we’ve been found!
[Play “Amazing Love” by the Newsboys]
4th Sunday of Lent, Year C (2004)
17/03/07 22:08
Homily – Lent 4-C (March 21, 2004)Today, we are going to talk about parables. In the New Testament, Jesus was always telling parables – short, pithy stories that help us to see a truth from a new perspective, usually with a surprising and unexpected twist or turn.
On your handout today, it says, “Seeing Through God’s Eyes.” Jesus told parables to help us see reality from God’s vantage point and perspective. Today, we are going to look at three ways that parables help us to see differently – how they help us to see God in new ways; how they help us to see ourselves in new ways; and how they help us to see others in new ways.
Specifically, we are going to look at one of the most famous of all the parables of Jesus – the parable of the prodigal son. How many of us have heard this parable before? Now that can be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that we are familiar with the story. But the curse is that we can become too familiar with the story, to the point that we dismiss it – we develop an “I’ve heard that, seen that,” attitude and think that we no need to really listen closely to the story again – and it just goes in one ear and out the other. So today, we’re going to try to look at the story from a fresh perspective.
Let’s start at the beginning of the story. We usually skip too quickly over this part, but it provides the context, the background that we need. It’s on your handout. Let’s read it together: “The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So TO THEM he addressed this parable…” (Luke 15:1-3)
Notice: The parable is addressed primarily to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, and because they were pointing fingers in judgment at Jesus for hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. These Pharisees and religious leaders thought they were better than other people, holier and closer to God, and so that sat in judgment and with an attitude of smug self-righteousness. So Jesus wants to help them see with new eyes – to help them see with the eyes of God, not with the eyes of their own smug spiritual blindness and arrogance.
A heard a funny story last week of a priest, a rabbi and a Protestant minister who went fishing together on their day off. As they sat in the boat, wiling away the time, the Catholic priest confessed that he sometimes liked to secretly sip a bit of the communion wine. And the Jewish rabbi confided that he sometimes felt tempted to take a little bit of the synagogue collection for himself. But the Protestant minister remained quiet, so the other two cajoled him to share a bit about his weakness and sin. “Well,” he began, “this is really difficult for me to share with you or with anyone, but I’m an incurable gossip – and I can’t wait to get back to town to tell everyone about the two of you!” The point of this joke is that none of us is perfect – not priests, nor rabbis or Protestant ministers, nor the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. All of us have our blemishes and defects. But the parable tells us that God still loves us, in spite of our blemishes and defects.
Let’s look at the parable itself. Most of us are quite familiar with the basic contours of the story – how a father’s younger son asks for the inheritance, then squanders it and comes back begging for forgiveness and just to be treated as one of his father’s hired hands; how the father, instead, welcomes his son back and kills the fatted calf and throws a huge banquet; how the older son, who has been faithful and obedient through all the years, learns of the party and throws a temper tantrum – “dad, how can you throw a party for this worthless, no good brother of mine, when you never so much as offered to throw any kind of party for me and my friends?”
Imagine the setting. It would be almost like a teenager today coming to his Father and saying, “I’m 15; I’m old enough to be out on my own; empty the bank account and give me my share of the family savings, sell the car and give me my share of the proceeds.” Most of us would say, “You’re crazy! You haven’t even finished high school. You don’t have a job. You can’t even drive. You barely know how to shave. You’re not mature enough yet to be out on your own!” But not this father in this parable – he gives the son all the money and the keys to the car and lets him go and waste it all!
That’s why some people say this parable is really misnamed. Instead of calling it the parable of the prodigal son, maybe we should entitle it, “The Parable of the Foolish Father.”
Let me illustrate with a skit. I’ve invited two of our kids to come forward – two brothers, one older and one younger. Now let’s ask this younger son: Do you have a good amount of toys at home? Suppose you lost your temper one day. Do you ever get mad and lose your temper? Suppose you are so furious and so angry and mad that in a fit of rage, you smash and destroy all your toys. Now you have to face your dad. That’s not easy, is it? What is he going to say and do? I remember when I was a little kid, I would always wrestle and play with my brothers, and once, I threw my brother right through the living room wall. We begged our mom to call the repairman that moment so that it could be fixed before my dad got home from work – but of course, that was impossible! Boy, was my dad angry at us! So imagine – you’ve smashed all your toys in anger, and your dad comes home. But he turns to the older brother and says, “Son, your younger brother got mad and smashed all his toys, so I want you to give him all your toys as a way to replace them.” How would you feel? That’s not fair! That’s not right! He doesn’t deserve my toys. He’s the one who smashed them, not me!
That example helps us understand the craziness of this parable to Jesus’ first-century listeners. The father was crazy to throw a party for this wayward and no-good son!
Or maybe we should call this the “Parable of the Two Bad Children” – because both sons are really disobedient and rebellious against their father, in their own distinct ways. One is openly rebellious, but the other is smug and self-righteous.
Or maybe we should call this the “Parable of Loving the Unlovable,” because the Father loved his two children, even when they acted in ways that were unlovable. Do you know that there may be people in the world or even in our orbit of influence who seem unlovable. Maybe they’ve committed a horrendous crime. Yet God still loves them – and loves us – no matter what.
Maybe we should call this the parable of the lost and found, because that’s really what the story is about. Anyone here ever lost anything? It can be a really horrible feeling. Maybe you lost your keys, or your wedding ring, or $20. Or you lost your cat or dog. Or you lost one of your children at the store. Or maybe you yourself got lost as a child when you wandered away from your parents. Many years ago, when I was still living in Indiana, I lost my car. I went to the Mall, and when I came out, the car was gone. Now over the years, I’ve lost my car in a parking lot for a short time, maybe 3 or 4 or 5 minutes. That causes a small panic, but nothing too severe. This time, however, I spend 45 minutes looking for my car, to no avail. Finally, I called the mall security to report that my car had been stolen. Once again, we drove around the parking lot, looking for the missing car Do you know what happened? I had gotten to the Mall at about 5 p.m., right before sunset. But I had left the Mall at about 7 p.m., after it had turned dark. In the night, the florescent street lamps in the mall parking lot actually caused my car to seem like it had changed colors!
Imagine a parent who loves their child, but that child continues to make wrong choices and to mess up his or her life. The parents do everything they can in an attempt to rescue their child, but to no avail. Eventually, the child ends up in all kinds of trouble – in jail, or dead in a car accident – and the grief-stricken parent cries and cries, but can do nothing. That’s sort of how this father is in our parable – his younger son is bent on destruction, and there’s not much the father can do, except to watch and pray and trust that somehow, it will all turn out for the best in the end.
So how does this parable help us to see through God’s eyes?
First, it helps us to see God in a new way. We see God in the father in this parable – a father who loves unconditionally, with no strings attached, who is always at the ready to forgive, who weeps when we go astray but rejoices when we are found, who throws a party for us – a banquet – and kills the fatted calf on our behalf. This is a God whose love for us is infinite and without end. And notice how this image of God in the parable is so different from the God that many of us grew up with – the God who was always a cosmic kill-joy and wanted to make our life hard or devoid of joy; or a God who is waiting to pounce on us with wrath and punishment at every small mistake that we make; or a God who is always watching us and keeping score of how we are doing, or a God who is far away and unconcerned about us, a God in the distance who really doesn’t get to close to us humans on a regular basis. This parable helps us see God in a completely new way.
The parable also helps us to see ourselves. We’re not perfect. Sometimes we are rebellious and we reject or run away from God, like the younger son. Sometimes – maybe more often than we would like to admit -- we are pompous, self-righteous, almost haughty and arrogant like the older son – we follow the rules, we do what is expected, we pat ourselves on the back and convince ourselves that we are not sinners, we don’t need God because we already are following God. But most of all, in this parable, we are loved and forgiven, because the father loves and forgives both his children. “All that I have is yours!” he tells us.
I have with me today a crisp, clean, new $20 bill. Would anyone here like it? Now let me crumple it up a bit. Now that it is not so pretty, is there anyone that would still like this $20 bill? Now let me really work a number on this $20 bill – I’m going to throw it on the ground, stomp on it, scrunch it into the ground. It’s really mangled and ugly now. Does anyone still want this $20 bill?
Now I must confess, I am not going to give anyone this $20 bill. (I need it for the next Mass.) But we are like this $20 bill in God’s sight. Sometimes we’re mangled and weighed down by imperfection and sin. We’re not always clean like a crisp, new $20 bill. But in God’s eyes, we still have value, and it doesn’t matter how far we’ve strayed from God or messed up our lives. We have a God who always welcomes us back, and who always gives us new chances and opportunities.
Listen to this song – a contemporary Christian song by the Newsboys, entitled “You Are My King (Amazing Love).”
I’m forgiven because you were forsaken. I’m accepted, you were condemned.
I’m alive and well, your Spirit is within me, because you died and rose again.
Amazing love, how can it be
That you, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true,
It’s my joy to honor you,
In all I do, to honor you.
You are my King, Jesus, you are my king. You are my king.
Now to the last question on your sheet: How does this parable help us to see others with the eyes of God, to see others in a new way? Would you all point a finger at someone near you…. That’s what the Pharisees were doing, judging and pointing fingers at Jesus and others. But notice: If you have one finger pointing at someone else, how many are pointing back at you?
God does not want us to judge others. He wants us to love one another, to forgive one another. On your sheet, it asks, “Are you lovable toward others?” That’s where the Pharisees failed, and where Jesus tried to give them new insight, new vision. Our second reading from today, from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, puts it this way – and let’s read this verse together: “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” – 1 Corinthians 5:17 Do you believe – really believe, and the very deepest core of your being – that God has made you lovable, that God has left his indelible imprint upon you, that God has transformed you into a new creation?
And if we believe that, then we also start to see others in a new light – as brothers and sisters, as children of the loving Creator – and we become loving toward others. Paul says that we become “ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us.”
Parables help us to see through God’s eyes – to see God, ourselves and others with ever greater clarity. And when we truly start to see through God’s eyes, nothing else in our lives can ever again be the same.
2nd Sunday of Lent, Year C (2007)
05/03/07 10:10
Homily2nd Sunday of Lent, Year C
March 4, 2007
(Children’s Mass)
Radical Faith: Super Heroes for Jesus!
Today, we’re going to talk about radical faith. Watch with me the following video clip, and see if you can tell me what movie this is, and what is happening. (Show 1 minute clip from original Spiderman movie where a spider bites the young man, then he metamorphoses into Spiderman)
What movie? Right! Spiderman. And what is happening? He is changing, after a spider bites him, from a normal person into a super hero, Spiderman.
God wants to change us, too – but not into Spiderman! God wants us to catch the faith bug, to become radically changed and transformed by Jesus so that we start a completely new and rejuvenated life that is like nothing we’ve lived before. Radical faith is about allowing God to change and transform us, so that we can start to see and hear God more clearly; we can start to see the world in a different way; we can be moved and changed so that we start to put our faith into action in radically new and creative ways in the world.
What do you see in this image? (show image of a face and an Eskimo). How many see a face? How many see an Eskimo? How many see both? (Help children see both images)
What do you see in this image? (show image of an old woman and a young woman). How many see an old woman? How many see a young woman? How many see both? (Help children see both images)
We can look at the same picture and see two different things. Life is like that, too. Some people live their life just for themselves – thinking only about having fun, about what they want in life for themselves, being selfish or self centered. God is not really a part of their lives. But other people choose to live a radical faith by letting God change them, give them a new vision and a new way of looking at things, and a new way of living. They love God with all their heart, soul, mind and being, and they try to imitate Jesus by loving other people.
What kind of life do you want? A changed life, a life of radical faith, loving and following God? Or just a regular, hum drum, ordinary life of going through the motions, but God is really not a central or key part of your life?
Repeat after me this word: TRANSFIGURATION. That’s what our gospel story is about today. This is the story of the TRANSFIGURATION. And that just means that Jesus was Transfigured, or Transformed, or Changed, as the disciples watched. Here’s a picture of the Transfiguration. This was painted by the famous artist Raphael many centuries ago – it shows Jesus being changed, or Transfigured, while the disciples watch on. But notice, here at the bottom, is a sick child. All the people are looking up, hoping God will work a miracle and heal the boy. But Raphael’s point is that we, as Christians, need to look in both directions – up to God, asking God to always be with us and to help us; but down to people who are in need, so that we can reach out and love others, and help them.
Let’s read the story together. It has two parts: The transformation, or Transfiguration, of Jesus; but then, the transformation of the disciples, too.
First part: “Jesus took Peter, James and John to a mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothing became dazzling white.” (Luke 9:34-35) Anybody know what was happening here? Jesus’ heavenly Father in heaven was showing the disciples that Jesus was the Savior of the World, the Messiah, and God’s special Son!
Second part: “A cloud came over the disciples and terror gripped them as it covered them. Then a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen One. Listen to him.’ The next day, they came down the mountain.” (Luke 9:37) Notice, at first they were afraid. And we sometimes can be afraid. It’s especially hard to follow God and to do the right thing if other people are making fun of us or trying to talk us into doing something that we know is bad or wrong. But the voice of God says to us that we need to listen to Jesus and do what he says. And notice, too, that after hearing the voice and after experiencing this change, the disciples went down the mountain – they went back into the world to take the message of Jesus to others.
How are we changed? How do we experience a life of radical faith? Put God first. That’s the beginning, first step.
Use illustration from last week, if you have not already used this illustration with the
children. Invite a few kids forward to help. Here is the illustration:
Have a large jar half filled with rice. The rice represents the routine activities of our life that keep us busy – eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning, watching TV, going to work, shopping, studying, etc. Have a bunch of golf balls off to the side. These represent the things of God: Praying, reading the Bible, attending Mass, helping the poor, serving in a ministry, participating in a small faith community, attending a retreat, etc. The balls are bigger than the grains of rice, to show that the things of God are really the most important things of all. But most people fill their lives with the mundane necessities of life – the rice of sleep, eating, cooking, etc. – and then add God when there is extra space and time in our busy lives to crowd God in. Result: all the balls, the blessings God has for us, won’t fit because the other things – the rice – keep blocking the way. But: What happens when we make God the priority and focus first on the things of the Lord in our lives? Fill the jar first with the golf balls – this time, they all fit. Then add the rice. It all fits, too.
Our second reading today is even more specific in helping us to follow Jesus and to live a life of radical faith. Let’s read it together, piece by piece (Philippians 3:17-21):
• “Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, heading for this same goal.” (show picture of a runner crossing finish line) Paul says to imitate him and other Christians. Imitate and follow good people, not bad people, because you want to finish the race and be a winner, not a loser. God helps all of us to be winners, if we listen to him and do what he says.
• “There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times…. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s cross.” (Show image of a lamp and have a lamp with a two- or three-way lamp in it. Invite a child to turn the lamp on) Is this lamp any good if it is not plugged in? Of course not! We need our lives to be plugged into God and to God’s electricity. Now watch. First, the lamp is dark. Some people follow easy street. They completely turn away from God. Their lives are completely dark. But now, notice, the lamp can be turned on to medium power or to high power. Some people follow God a little bit – they go to church occasionally, they do what God says sometimes, but not all the time. Their life is only halfway connected to God. But now, with the lamp on full power – that’s radical faith, that’s what God wants, that our lives are shining full bright.
• “Easy street is a dead end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites. But there’s far more to life for us.” I heard a Lenten joke. Anyone here give up anything for Lent? Candy, soda pop, video games? This priest was walking down the street and a robber with a gun held him up. The priest was so nervous, with the gun pointed at his head, so the robber offered him a cigarette to calm his nerves. Now, children, it is never good to smoke, of course, but the priest was so nervous and so afraid, that he took the cigarette anyway, just to calm his nerves. But then he asked the thief, “Do you want to smoke, too?” And do you know what the thief said? He said, “No, I can’t, because I gave up smoking for Lent.” That’s an example of the light only burning half brightly. The thief had given up smoking for Lent, but he really wasn’t following God wholeheartedly, because he was still out there, robbing and hurting people. God wants our light burning full bright.
• (Show picture of a passport) “We’re citizens of high heaven. We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthly bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He’ll make us beautiful and whole.”
Look at the TV screen. What do you? Someone lifting weights! God wants us to be strong, with a radical faith. What else do you see on this screen? These are some of the ways we stay strong. First, read the Bible. How many here have a children’s Bible? Do you read it? And what is this girl doing? Right – praying. How many here pray each and every day? Praying is just talking to God! And what is this picture showing? Church, Mass. Do we go to church every single week? Because this is one of the main ways that God feeds us and keeps us strong. And this final picture, what does it show? Right, serving others! Are we kind and loving to other people?
I want to give you two gifts today. The first is a map. You can give this to your parents, too, as a gift to them. It talks about the map that helps us follow God in our lives. It’s in English and Spanish, because some of your parents like Spanish more than English, but today, let’s read it together in English:
DIRECTIONS TO OUR FATHER’S HOUSE
Make a right turn onto Believeth Boulevard.
Keep straight and go through the green light, which is Jesus Christ.
There, you must turn onto the Bridge of Faith, which is over troubled water.
When you get off the bridge, make a right turn and keep straight.
You are on the King’s Highway – Heaven-bound.
Keep going for three miles – one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit.
Then exit onto Grace Boulevard.
Make a right turn on Gospel Lane.
Keep straight, then make a right on Prayer Road.
Do not yield to the traffic on Temptation Avenue.
Also, avoid Sin Street, because it is a dead end.
Pass up Envy Drive and Hate Avenue.
Also, pass Hypocrisy Street, Gossip Lane and Backbiting Boulevard.
However, you have to go down Long-Suffering Lane, Persecution Boulevard and Trials and Tribulations Avenue.
But that’s all right, because VICTORY Street is straight ahead.
SEND THESE DIRECTIONS TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
SO THEY WILL NOT GET LOST.
Life is God’s gift to you. They way you live it is your gift to God.
LAS DIRECCIONES A LA CASA DEL PADRE
Mano derecho en la Calle Creer.
Mantenga derecho y atraviese el semáforo verde, que es Jesucristo.
Allí, entra al Puente de la Fe, que pasa arriba del Río de Problemas.
Cuándo salga del puente, mano derecho. Siga adelante.
Ya está en la Carretera del Rey, con destino del Cielo.
Derecho para tres millas – uno para el Padre, uno para el Hijo, y uno para el Espíritu Santo. Salga en la Calle de Gracia. Mano derecho en la Calle de los Evangelios.
Derecho en el Camino de la Oración.
No rinda al tráfico en la Avenida de la Tentación.
Tampoco en la Calle del Pecado, porque es un callejón sin salida.
Tampoco toma la Calle de la Envidia, la Avenida del Odio, la Calle de la Hipocresía,
la Avenida de Chismes y Mentiras, y la Calle de Falsedades y Asaltos.
Sin embargo, tiene que manejar en la Calle de los Sufrimientos,
la Calle de la Persecución y la Avenida de Aflicciones.
Pero eso es bueno, porque la Calle de la VICTORIA está directamente adelante.
ENVIA ESTAS DIRECCIONES A SUS AMIGOS Y A LA FAMILIA,
PARA QUE ELLOS NO ANDAN PERDIDOS.
La vida es un regalo de Dios. La manera en que vivimos es nuestro regalo a Dios.
My second gift to you is a piece of candy, which you can take home with you after we finish our Mass today. (Show miniature candies – Snickers, Milky Way, Twix, etc.) What do these pieces of candy have in common? Right, they all are chocolate. But what is different about them? The inside!
All of us are, basically, the same on the inside – but different on the inside. God loves us. We are all “sweet” to God. But it’s really what is on the inside that makes all the difference – is God inside of us, leading us in our lives? Or are we not following God on the inside?
One final video, and one final image.
(Show video clip – less than one minute from first “Superman” movie as Lois Lane falls from skyscraper and Clark Kent changes into Superman and flies up to save her) Just as Clark Kent changes into Superman in this video, God can change us – on the inside – into super heroes for Jesus Christ.
Last image: The face of Christ. (Show icon “In His Image” by artist William Zdinak) But notice that in this image, or icon, the face of Jesus is made up of the faces of lots of people. We make up the face of Jesus in the world!
Do we want to let Jesus change us into Super Heroes for Jesus? Do we want our lives to be bright lights for God? Do we want to say “yes” to God and live lives of radical faith? Let’s sing together this last song:
I SAY YES, MY LORD/ DIGO SI, SEÑOR
To the God who cannot die, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
To the God who hears my cry, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
To the God of the oppressed, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
To the God of all justice, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
I say Yes, My Lord,
In all the good times, through all the bad times.
I say Yes, My Lord,
To every word you speak.
Soy serviente del Señor, Digo si, Señor (repite)
Y trabajo en los campos, Digo si, Señor (repite)
Soy prisionero de sus guerras, Digo si, Señor (repite)
Como politico, inderrotable. Digo si, Señor (repite)
Digo si, Señor,
En tiempos malos, en tiempos Buenos.
Digo si, Señor,
A todo lo que hablas.
For the dream I have today, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
To be a healer of all pain, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
And to come to love my enemies, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
For your peace in all the world, I say Yes, My Lord (repeat)
2nd Sunday of Lent, Year C (2004)
03/03/07 21:13
Lent 2-C (2004)Anyone here know what this is? [Bring out a mirror] Right! It’s a mirror. How many here like to use a mirror in the morning? If I hold this mirror up to your face, what do you see? Right! Your face!
Today, we’re going to talk about faces. In fact, as sort of a preliminary Lenten meditation, I’ve prepared a prayerful musical and slide show meditation on faces. Let’s watch. [Show slide show of faces on TV. End the show on the slide of the face of Jesus, composed of a collage of many human faces]
God really loves variety, doesn’t he? Look at all those faces – they come in all shapes and sizes and colors – and all were made by our awesome Creator God. Now I want to show you something important – so I’ve invited a few of our families to come up here in front. [Have one or two or three different families stand in front of the altar, facing the congregation]
I want you to look into the faces of these families. Look at the faces of the children, and at the faces of their parents. Do you notice any resemblances? Exactly! Our faces look like those of our parents! We resemble our brothers and sisters! When I was growing up, I have a younger brother who looks a lot like me – not exactly, of course, because we’re not twins – but from a distance, people would always confuse us.
Now here’s the spiritual point I want to make today. Just as our physical appearance mimics the appearance of our parents and others in our families, our faces spiritually are meant to reflect the face of our spiritual Father, God in heaven.
That’s an awesome insight. Everyone, repeat after me: “My face reflects the face of God.” … Now turn to a person next to you and say to them, “In your face, I see the face of God.”
Wouldn’t the world be a lot different if we started to see the image of God in ourselves and in every single person we meet, everyday, everywhere? We were made to reflect the face of God in our world.
Look on the TV screen. Whose face is up there? Right! Jesus! And if you notice, the artist has composed the face of Jesus by making a collage of many different human faces. That artist understood that we are meant to be the face of God in the world.
But there is just one problem, and to illustrate, I have another slide. This also is on your handouts. [Show the faces that are optical illusions – the face that also is an Eskimo, and the face of the old-and-young woman] Now I love optical illusions, so I’ve included a couple here. What do you see? In this first picture, how many see a human face? How many see an Eskimo? It’s both! And in this second picture, how many see the face of an old woman? How many see the face of a young woman? Again, it’s both! They are optical illusions!
The point is that we too sometimes have two faces. Sometimes we reflect the face of God, but sometimes we reflect the false values of the world and the face of sin and weakness. That’s why we have this season of Lent. Lent is like the mirror – it helps us look more closely at ourselves so that we can decide if we need to comb or brush our hair, if we need to put on some makeup, if we need to get a spiritual face lift so that our faces will better reflect the face of God. Lent is about change, about spiritual conversion and transformation. And in a sense, that’s what our gospel talks about today, also – we hear about Jesus’ transformation, his transfiguration on top the mountain.
On this second Sunday of Lent, God wants to work a transformation in each of us. God wants to help us become the very best we can be. God wants our faces to reflect his face, his love and his glory in our world.
Now look at your handouts. We’re going to quickly look at each of our readings, because each reading reflects something about the face of God and the face that God wants us to have. We can’t imitate God’s face if we first don’t try to discover what the face of God looks like. Our readings today help us in that endeavor.
Every Sunday, our first reading comes from the Old Testament of the Bible. Today’s first reading is from the very first book of the Bible, from the Book of Genesis. In the Old Testament, we hear the story of the people of Israel, and how they experienced the face of God the Father, God whose Hebrew name is Yahweh. But Yahweh is a spirit, and it is a bit hard for us to see the face of a spirit, so Yahweh God decided to reveal his face to us in human form, by sending his Son Jesus into the world – Emmanuel, God-with-Us. And so in the New Testament of the Bible, in the Gospels, we are shown the face of God through the face of his Son, Jesus Christ. And then, every Sunday, in our Mass, we have a second reading from one of the epistles of the New Testament, from one of the letters of Paul or another of the first century apostles and followers of Jesus. These epistles show us the life of the early church. They show us the face of God as it was reflected in the life of the church, the Christian community. Today, let’s look briefly at each of those faces.
First, the face of Yahweh, God the Father, in our first reading, from the book of Genesis. On your handouts, I’ve written a key word: COVENANT. This single powerful word helps us see the face of Yahweh God. Let me explain.
In this reading today, Yahweh God enters into a covenant with Abram. He promises to make Abram’s descendents more numerous than the stars in the heavens. Now who are those descendents of Abram today? Us! So the covenant that God makes is not just with Abram, but also with us.
Covenants may not be easy for us to understand today, but they were serious business in the Old Testament. Today, we live in a society that doesn’t much like commitment and covenants. Maybe that’s why the divorce rate is so high, and why so many young people choose just to live together, without the glue of permanent commitment in marriage.
I read last week of a man who lived in this area – in Redlands, in San Bernardino, in Blithe – by the name of Glynne Scotty Wolf. He had been married 29 times – the Guinness World Record! His final wife had also been married many times over, also – 23 times altogether. His shortest marriage lasted just 19 days. Her shortest marriage lasted just 36 hours! Each of their longest marriage lasted 7 years. He die alone and poor, divorced and separated from his final wife. None of his former wives wanted to pay for the cost of his funeral! God did not create us to be alone. God created us to be in covenant and in relationship with himself and with others.
But look at the next line in our reading: “When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram.” -- Genesis 15:17-18 In the days of Abram, when a covenant was made, both parties sacrificed an animal and cut it into two pieces. They each then walked between the two halves of the animal and said, “If I am unfaithful to this covenant, may the same happen to me as has happened to this animal.” But if you read carefully from this passage in the book of Genesis, you notice that only God, in the form of a flaming torch, walked between the two halves of the animal, but not Abram. In other words – and this is where we see the face of God, God’s great love and passion for us – God seals the covenant all by himself and says to Abram, “I will be faithful to this covenant, even if you are unfaithful, even if you do not keep your side of the bargain, because I love you unconditionally, and without reservation, and with no strings attached.” That’s the face of our God – the face of unlimited love and forgiveness, not the face of an angry or vengeful god waiting eagerly to rain down lightning bolts of judgment or destruction when we sin or are unfaithful.
The face of Jesus shows us this same face of love of God the Father, because, as the Bible tells us, Jesus is the face of our invisible God. Anyone here see the latest Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion of the Christ”? On the screen is an image from that film – the bloodied, beaten face of Jesus. Jesus shows us the depths of God’s love for us through his torture and suffering on the cross. God so loved us that he did not even spare his only Son, but allowed Jesus to suffer and die in the most horrible way possible in order to rescue and save us from sin and death.
In our gospel today, on this feast of the Transfiguration, Jesus knew he was headed toward Jerusalem and toward the cross. No doubt he was filled with fear and anxiety. He needed strength. So he climbed this mountain to find strength and encouragement and fortitude from his heavenly Father. And the gospel says that Jesus’ face was transfigured, was transformed: “Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.” – Luke 9:28-29
We too need mountaintop experiences to help refresh us for the valleys and difficulties in life. That’s why we take our kids on retreats to Pathfinder Ranch and to Big Bear, so they can experience a moment of spiritual renewal.
There are three specific things Jesus did to help himself reflect the face of his Father. We too can learn from those three things:
First, he prayed. We too need to create space in our busy lives to slow down, to climb a mountain, to get away from the distractions of life so that we can experience spiritual renewal. We need prayer breaks in our lives.
Second, he was with his best friends, Peter, James and John. God never intended us to be alone. He doesn’t want us to become spiritual lone-rangers or spiritual orphans. So he has given us a family, the church – spiritual friends and companions to walk with us in life.
Third, Jesus was joined on the mountaintop by Moses and Elijah. These are the Old Testament symbolic figures for the Law and the Prophets – the Bible. God’s Word also is meant to strengthen, encourage, accompany and guide us on our spiritual journey in life.
There are also two important things that the apostles Peter, James and John did to better mirror the face of God in their lives.
First, they actively chose to believe and to show a positive attitude, even though they were tired and exhausted. In the gospel, it says, “Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep but… Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good that we are here.’ “ – Luke 9:32-33 Even when we are struggling, when we are tired and weighed down by obstacles and frustrations, can we say, like Peter, “It is good to be here”? Another word for this positive attitude is hope. Jesus himself shows utter hope and trust in his Father as he decides to climb down from the mountain after the Transfiguration and to head to Jerusalem, where he knew that the cross awaited him. The easy thing would have been to run away, or to go in the other direction, or to bury his head in the sand and go nowhere and do nothing.
A lot of people today are asleep, spiritually. I heard a joke last week about a robber in Parish, out on the street holding up innocent passers-by. He robbed a priest, but soon saw the priest’s black outfit and Roman collar, and so began to apologize profusely. Meanwhile, the nervous priest had pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and offered a cigarette to the would-be thief. But the thief replied, “No, Father, thanks, but I gave up smoking for Lent.” Lent is not just a set of do’s and don’ts or things we give up but that don’t really change us in a profound and deep level. Lent is the mirror that reminds us we are to show forth the face of God, and sometimes that requires real and hard changes in our lives.
Secondly, the apostles listened. The voice of the Father came from the sky and said, "This is my chosen Son; listen to him." – Luke 9:35 Perhaps today, more than at any other time in human history, we need to listen attentively to the voice of God, and not let the noise and distractions of modern society drown out God’s voice.
Finally, now that we have seen the face of God the Father, and now that we have seen the face of Jesus, God’s only Son, we turn to the second reading, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where we see see God’s plan for our own faces. Paul says, “Our citizenship is in heaven… Therefore, stand firm in the Lord.” – Philippians 3:20, 4:1
About a year ago, I visited the new cathedral in Los Angeles. On the walls are tapestries depicted the saints. But the artist, instead of painting the faces of each saint as they probably looked in history, went out onto the streets of Los Angeles and painted faces of ordinary, everyday people. They are the real saints. We are the real saints. Our citizenship is in heaven. God has made us into His family.
So stand firm. Look carefully into the mirror, spiritually. Remember the promise, the covenant that God has made with us – a covenant that cannot be broken. Remember the love of God, demonstrated concretely in His Son, Jesus, who suffered and died for us on the cross. Remember the tools God has given us to help us on our journey: the power of prayer, the power of spiritual friends and companions, the power of God’s Word in the Bible. And remember the example of the apostles: to embrace and choose hope, and to listen attentively to the voice of God in our lives.
We are God’s children, God’s precious family. Our faces were made to reflect the face of our heavenly Father. We just need the spiritual eyes to see God’s face reflected in ourselves and in the faces of our brothers and sisters everywhere.
I want to conclude with a story from the Old Testament, from the book of Second Kings. The prophet Elisha is being attacked on all sides by a tremendous army, and his servant is frightened and despondent. But Elisha asks God to open the eyes of his servant. And when the servant receives this gift of new spiritual eyesight, he sees the multitude of angels – God’s soldiers – surrounding and protecting Elisha.
Jesus needed new insight as he climbed the mountain but looked ahead to the cross, and the Father showed him the angels that were surrounding him and protecting him. When we face difficulties and obstacles in life, we also need new spiritual eyesight to see that God is with us, that God loves us, that God wants to give us strength to hope and persevere and strength to live as his family, and to show his face to the world.
Once again, please repeat after me: “My face reflects the face of God.” And once again, turn to a person next to you and say to them, “In your face, I see the face of God.”
Now, go forth, standing firm, believing that this is really true, and living in a way that glorifies the God whose image we bear.
1st Sunday of Lent, Year C (2007)
25/02/07 22:48
Homily – 1st Sunday of Lent, Year CFebruary 25, 2007
Led By The Spirit
An old country preacher had a teenage son, and it was getting time the boy should give some thought to choosing a profession. Like many young men, the boy didn’t really know what he wanted to do, and he didn’t seem too concerned about it. One day, while the boy was away at school, his father decided to try an experiment. He went into the boy’s room and placed on his study table three objects: a Bible, a silver dollar and a bottle of whiskey. “I’ll just hide behind the door,” the old preacher said to himself, “and when he comes home from school this afternoon, I’ll see which object he picks up. If it’s the Bible, he’s going to be a preacher like me, and what a blessing that would be! If he picks up the silver dollar, he’s going to be a businessman, and that would be OK, too. But if picks up the bottle, he’s going to be a no good drunkard, and Lord, what a shame that would be!” The father waited anxiously, and soon heard his son come home. The boy tossed his books on the bed, then spotted the objects on the table. He walked over to inspect them. Finally, he picked up the Bible and placed it under his arm. He picked up the silver dollar and dropped it into his pocket. He uncorked the bottle and took a big drink. “Lord have mercy,” the father whispered, “he’s gonna be a Congressman!”
Sorry if there are any politicians here! This is just a joke, of course. But the story makes an important point – we all face temptations in life, and we all must make important choices. What is going to guide our lives? God, the Bible? Money, the things of this world? Booze, the vices of our society?
Our gospel today tells the story of Jesus facing temptation during his 40 days in the desert. Let’s all read together the first line of that gospel: “Filled with the holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil.” (Luke 4:1-2, NAB) Did you notice? Jesus was filled with the Spirit and was led by the Spirit. In fact, throughout his life, Jesus was always tuning in to his heavenly Father, trying to do the will of His dad, tuned in to what the Father wanted of him.
And the Lord wants our lives to be led by the Spirit, too! Today, we are going to talk about how to lead Spirit-driven lives that are full of God’s power and that are pleasing to the Lord.
Let me begin by asking if anyone noticed anything different, strange, out of place as you entered church this morning? [Before start of Mass, put out brooms, buckets, mops, a trash bag, etc., prominently in front of the ambo or altar, so people will notice]. Right! Did anyone think that I was growing senile in my old age and forget to clean the church and to put away the brooms and mops? But: No! You see, we are starting the season of Lent – and the word “Lent” literally means “spring time,” and when I was growing up, spring time was always a time for “spring cleaning.” Anyone else every do that? You men, if you did not raise your hands, but your wives did, give the women a big applause, because they really do a lot of work, keeping the house clean!
In Indiana, when I was small, my mom and dad would always dedicate one Saturday each spring to cleaning the house intensely, top to bottom, floor to ceiling. Take down the windows, wash them off with the hose, scrub and polish and wash every nook and cranny of the house. We were thorough, that one day a year. Lent is a time for spiritual “spring cleaning” – getting rid of the cobwebs and the accumulated junk that blocks our path to God, so that we can get back on the right track, spiritually, with our lives. We all need spiritual renewal and a spiritual recharge – spring cleaning, so to speak – so that we can be at our best as we strive to serve the Lord.
Our gospel tells us that the Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert. Why there? It’s because the desert is a place of quiet and solitude, a place where we can leave behind the distractions and worries of our daily life and simply rest in the presence of God. It is place where we can pray and listen. Lent is meant to give us that same kind of “spiritual retreat” in the desert, where we can renew and refresh ourselves in the Lord, where we can leave behind our worries and anxieties. For Jesus, it was this retreat experience in the desert that catapulted him into his public ministry, that energized him so that he could live a Spirit-filled life, attuned to the will of his Father. The desert also is a place of danger, sometimes – snakes, scorpions, thirst, relentless heat. Here, Jesus squared off with the enemy, Satan, and with the devil’s temptations. For us, too, Lent can be a time of struggle, of wrestling with the worries and anxieties in life, the hardships and struggles. But the Spirit is with us, leading us and guiding us, because God wants us to experience victory over the struggles and temptations.
By now, you know that my favorite cartoon is “Zits.” Last week, the Jeremy, the teenager, was talking on his cell phone, when he says to his mom, “Did you hear that? My ring tone is the same song that’s on the radio. This has been one of my life goals, and now it’s happened! I feel strangely at peace with the universe.” His mom just rolls her eyes in dismay and says, “I feel strangely troubled by your goals.”
Many people in this world do not live Spirit-filled and Spirit-led lives. Their priorities are all messed up. Their god is money, possessions, fame, power, or maybe a favorite football team, or going to the fair, or a hobby, or sleeping, or the tone on their cell phone. But following God does not make their Top Ten list! Last Wednesday, the church was full – Ash Wednesday. Everyone came! But where are most of them today. Back to life as usual, because the Spirit is not guiding and leading their lives.
Lent is a time for spring cleaning, to help us re-orient our priorities and to get our lives back on track. The prophet Joel, in the Old Testament, which is from the first reading this past Ash Wednesday, tells us: “Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.” (Joel 12:14, NAB)
I want to illustrate this Spirit-filled life, and several members of the parish have volunteered to help me with this. [invite volunteers forward]. Here is the illustration:
Illustration: Have a large jar half filled with rice. The rice represents the routine activities of our life that keep us busy – eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning, watching TV, going to work, shopping, studying, etc. Have a bunch of golf balls off to the side. These represent the things of God: Praying, reading the Bible, attending Mass, helping the poor, serving in a ministry, participating in a small faith community, attending a retreat, etc. The balls are bigger than the grains of rice, to show that the things of God are really the most important things of all. But most people fill their lives with the mundane necessities of life – the rice of sleep, eating, cooking, etc. – and then add God when there is extra space and time in our busy lives to crowd God in. Result: all the balls, the blessings God has for us, won’t fit because the other things – the rice – keep blocking the way. But: What happens when we make God the priority and focus first on the things of the Lord in our lives? Fill the jar first with the golf balls – this time, they all fit. Then add the rice. It all fits, too.
God will fill our lives with many blessings – for our God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness – but we need to reorient our priorities. When we put God first, all of the other parts of our life will start to fall into proper place.
Secondly, with the help of the Spirit leading our lives, God helps us overcome temptations and obstacles in our lives. Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians: “You can trust that God will not let you be put to the test beyond your strength, but with any trial will also provide a way out by enabling you to put up with it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13, New Jerusalem Bible). It’s that trust in God to help us resist temptation that lies behind the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven, … lead us not into temptation.” (Luke 11:4)
None of us can escape trials, testings, temptations, difficulties, struggles in life. It is part of the human condition, from the very beginning of time. It is part of what it means to be human. Nor is it bad to experience temptation – Jesus did! It’s only bad when we yield and fall to temptation, when we sin. Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, once said, “Nobody can prevent birds from flying around your head, but you don’t have to let them build a nest there.”
Temptation is common to all of us. In our gospel today, the last line tells us that “the devil left just until a more opportune time.” Temptation would return. For Jesus, it was in the Garden of Gethsemani, just before his death on the cross: “Father, please take this cup away from me. But thy will, not mine, be done.”
(Use any of these funny temptation stories, as you see fit)
• Child in store, staring for 10 minutes at a toy. Owner comes over, says to boy, “What are you doing, trying to steal from me?” But the boy answers with all sincerity, “No, sir! I am trying my hardest not to steal from you!”
• Boy, trying to save money to buy a bicycle: “Lord, please help me to save my money this week. And please, don’t send any ice cream trucks down my street this week!”
• Priest, in Lent, exhorted his congregation to throw all its whisky, beer, cigarettes and other booze into the river. At the offertory, the choir sang, “Let’s all go down to the river.”
• Two brothers, both real bandits. One died. The other went to the priest, offered him $10,000 if he would say at the funeral Mass that his brother was a saint. The priest knew it was a lie, but took the money anyway. Temptation. At homily: “This young man who just died was a real thief and scoundrel. But in comparison to his brother, seated right here in front, he was a real saint.”
• Man, gave up donuts for Lent, arrived to the office one day in Lent, loaded down with donuts. “It was a sign from God,” he explained. “Everyday, I drive past the donut shop, but it is always crowded and very hard to find a parking spot. But today, after driving around that block where the donut shop is located, after circling the block 15 times, lo and behold, God opened up a parking spot for me, so I just obeyed God’s miracle.”
• Man, late for a job interview, could not find a parking spot. Finally, he parked illegally but left a note for the policeman: “Sorry. Late for a job interview. Please forgive. ‘Forgive us our trespasses.’ The policeman wrote a note back: ‘I could lose my job if I don’t ticket you as I should. Lead us not into temptation.”
The point, however, is that God wants to help us resist and overcome temptation. But this requires that we do spiritual spring cleaning and allow the spirit of God to lead and guide us, and to take control of our lives. The reason God wants to free us from falling prey to sin and temptation is because sin disfigures us, scars us, hurts us, makes us less than what God really wants for us. I’ve always remembered this true story about Leonardo Da Vinci, who was painting his famous “The Last Supper.” He needed a model to pose as he painted the face of Jesus, so he went out onto the streets and found a very handsome young man, Pietro Bandinelli,” to play the part of Jesus. Years later, when Da Vinci was near to finishing the painting, he needed to paint the face of Judas Iscariot – so again, he went out onto the streets, searching for a model. He found a man, scarred and ugly, beaten up by living a life of drunkenness and sin. living on the streets. Da Vinci asked the man his name, and he replied, “Don’t you remember. I’m Pietro Bandinelli, who modeled for you for Jesus a few years ago.” Sin disfigures us.
So let’s get practical. How do we overcome temptation and not fall into sin? If we look at the three temptations in our gospel today, each has a spiritual antidote, rooted in the three spiritual disciples of Lent – prayer, fasting, almsgiving.
The first temptation: Temptation of the flesh. Jesus is hungry. “Turn these stones into bread.” But the antidote is this: First, run! If drinking is a temptation to you, don’t go near a bar. If your struggle is with gambling, avoid the casinos. Teens, when hormones are working on overdrive, don’t be at home with your boyfriend or girlfriend when nobody else is around, or of course, you’re likely to fall into sin. Don’t go to unsupervised parties where there are drugs and booze – you are asking for trouble! Second, attend to your interior, spiritual life, because when you are kept busy by attending to the work of God, you have less time and energy to allow bad temptations to really cause you to stumble. And so, the spiritual discipline at Lent to help overcome the temptations of the flesh, is this: Pray. Grow closer to God. Attend to your spiritual life.
The second temptation: Greed. “You can have all these kingdoms and riches.” The antidote: Give, be generous, and be grateful. A generous and grateful heart dispels greed. I remember years ago a story in the newspaper about a family torn because of the death of their 24-year-old son to AIDS. For a long while, they were angry at God and the world. But then, they decided to not let anger and bitterness and the devil eat away at their joy. So they decided to be generous. They adopted a little child, abandoned by his mother, because she was a drug addict. The boy also had been born with AIDS, but had overcome the disease, largely through the love that he had received from this family. And they, in turn, because of their generosity, received healing for their loss and hurt. The Lenten spiritual discipline that helps us overcome greed is fasting. Fasting teaches us to simply our life, to be more grateful, to share what we have with others, to become less attached to material possessions that can enslave us.
The third temptation: Pride. “If you are God’s Son, prove it. Throw yourself down from this tower.” Most of us are filled with pride, if we are really honest. We like being in control, instead of letting God be in control. I read a funny anecdote last week of a psychologist, interviewing a new patient for the first time. He said to the patient, “I don’t really know your history, so explain it to me, and start from the very beginning.” The patient responded eagerly: “In the beginning, I created the heavens and the earth…” Now, there’s real ego and pride for you!
Here, the antidote is to serve. Serving and helping others gets our attention off of ourselves. We learn to trust in God, not in our own strengths and abilities. And that’s also the third spiritual discipline of Lent: Almsgiving. When we are generous in helping and serving those who are in need, our focus and attention shifts away from ego and pride, away from ourselves.
On your handout are seven very simple, concrete ways to win over temptation:
1. Don’t be afraid to ask God for help. Yell out to the Lord. Send God a spiritual SOS. If you don’t ask, how can you expect to receive?
2. Feed and strengthen your faith. Many of us Catholics are really weak and wimpy in this. We don’t pray enough or read our Bible, which is the sword of God to help us be strong. We come to Mass once a week and think that is enough. How many here eat only one meal a day? Obviously, none of us. We couldn’t survive, much less be strong. And the same applies spiritually – exercise your spiritual muscles and eat a regular spiritual diet. Don’t just come running to God when there is a crisis in your life. How? Pray, read the Bible, study with other Christians in a small faith community, attend a retreat or class, read about God. There are lots of ways to strengthen your faith and feed your faith on a daily and regular basis.
3. Get rid of excuses. Lots of people blame others for their sin. “The devil made me do it.” “My wife’s nagging drove me to drink.” “My husband is so overbearing that, of course, I was driven to have an affair.” On and on, one excuse and pretext after another.
4. Change focus. If you stare enough at a piece of chocolate, you are going to want to eat it. Don’t focus on the temptation. Instead, switch channels and start focusing on other, more positive things – and the original temptation will diminish and, eventually, flee.
5. Run away from situations of temptation. We’ve already talked about this one. Don’t go the bar if you have a drinking problem.
6. Confide in someone else. Now, this doesn’t mean talk to the whole world about your struggles and difficulties. Not everyone is honest, trustworthy, kind. But two are stronger than one, so it always helps to have another person in your life, another strong Christian, whom you can confide in and who will help you. That’s one of the reasons our Sacrament of Reconciliation and of Confession, going to a priest, is such a powerful and healing experience for so many people.
7. Finally, resist the devil and don’t get discouraged. God is more powerful than Satan. But Satan loves to tear apart your confidence, make you feel ugly and unworthy and incapable of resisting temptation and sin. But it’s a lie. God is more powerful than the devil, and with the Spirit in us and guiding us, we will overcome. Martin Luther even used to mock the devil and say, “Satan, I pass gas (fart) on you!” I’m not sure I recommend going that far, but on the other hand, why should we let Satan win in the discouragement war? Fight back by poking fun at the enemy!
The most important reminder of all is from our second reading today, where Saint Paul tells us: "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart… No one who believes in the Lord will be put to shame… Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:8, 11, 13, NAB)
Remember: Call on the Lord and you will be heard. First: Let God be in control of your life; second, let Jesus be at the center of your heart; and third, don’t allow mistakes or sins or hurts from the past enslave you – for God loves you and wants you to experience his healing, his strength, his freedom, his new life. God will give you a new heart, a heart transplant, if you let him. He will change stony and cold and injured hearts into hearts of love and compassion for others.
Lent -- a time to go into the desert to be renewed; a time to re-orient our priorities, to make God Number 1; a time for spiritual spring cleaning; a time to let the Spirit lead and guide us into fullness of new life.
1st Sunday of Lent, Year C (2004)
24/02/07 22:54
HomilyFirst Sunday of Lent, Year C (2004)
SPRING CLEAN-UP
[Before Mass, create a mess in the sanctuary of the church – trash, mops, buckets, brooms, etc.]
Did anyone here notice, when you came into church this morning, that there was something amiss? It looks like a hurricane swept through here! Nobody seems to have done their job yesterday of cleaning up the sanctuary! How many feel that the church looked like a mess this morning?
Now don’t panic. This was just a little stunt. Look on your handouts, where it says, “Time for Spring Cleaning.” How many here do spring cleaning at your house? Last week, I did my own spring cleaning and came up with this idea because today is the First Sunday of Lent, and I wanted to help us understand what this season of Lent is really all about.
The word “Lent” comes from old English and means “spring.” Lent is really a time to do some spiritual spring cleaning in our lives, to get rid of some of the spiritual cobwebs that have accumulated in our lives over the past year. The forty days reflect the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert, fasting and – as we heard in today’s gospel – enduring the devil’s temptation. It also mirrors the 40 years that the people of Israel wandered in the desert under the leadership of Moses, after escaping from slavery in Egypt.
On your sheet, it says, “All of us are flawed… but God wants to redeem (save) all of us.” That really is the good news about Lent. Even though we make mistakes, we are imperfect, we sin, we need spring cleaning in our lives, God loves us and wants to redeem or save us. Our second reading today, from Paul’s letter to the Romans, contains one of the most profound statements of this good news in all of scripture. Let’s read it together: “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, enriching all who call upon him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” -- Romans 10:12-13, New American Bible (NAB)
You see, in the time of Jesus, different groups were claiming to be the “in” group with the key to salvation, and they considered everyone else to be in the “out” group. But Jesus taught that all of us are the same – we’re all brothers and sisters, and there are no distinctions between Jews and Greeks or between anyone else. God doesn’t have an “in” group or an “out” group. Even though we are all flawed and imperfect, God still loves us each and every one of us and wants to save us all.
Did anyone see the new Mel Gibson movie this past week, or at least, did you hear about it? “The Passion of the Christ.” Mel Gibson took a lot of flack for that movie. He was accused especially of being anti-Semitic. But in an interview on TV that he had with Dianne Sawyer, he said something very insightful. He said, “I’m not anti-Semitic or anti-anyone. The Jews didn’t kill Jesus. We all killed Jesus.” He then held up his hands and said, “These hands helped kill Jesus.” That’s Paul’s message in Romans, too – there are no Jews or Greeks, we’re all the same, we’re all flawed sinners, but we have a God who loves us and wants to redeem and save each of us. But we all need spiritual spring cleaning.
Our gospel today talks about temptation. That’s one area where we especially need to focus our spring cleaning efforts. So as we begin, let’s look at three quick preliminary points:
1) TEMPTATION IS ONGOING AND COMMON TO EVERYONE. When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time. – Luke 4:13 (NAB) Notice that last phrase, “for a time.” That means that the devil was planning to come back. Temptation is never ending. It always comes back.
2) TEMPTATION IS NOT A SIN; BUT YIELDING TO TEMPTATION IS A SIN. Let’s read the next verse from our gospel today: ”Jesus … was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil. – Luke 4:1-2 Notice that the word “Jesus” is underlined. That’s to show that Jesus himself underwent temptation, and Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. If Jesus underwent temptation, temptation cannot be a sin. The sin is when we yield to temptation.
3) TEMPTATION CAN BE OVERCOME. Mark Twain, the famous 19th century American storyteller, wrote jokingly, “I can resist anything but temptation.” But of course, he was wrong. We can resist temptation, all of us. God wants us to overcome temptation. That’s why we pray to God, “Our Father, who art in heaven Lead us not into temptation”—Matthew 6:13 We are asking God to help us overcome temptation.
So how do we do that? The first step is AWARENESS – realizing that there are many kinds of temptation, some more subtle than others. And because we are all wired differently as human beings, some kinds of temptation will have a stronger effect on some of us and lesser effect on others of us. Maybe for us a really tough temptation is smoking, or watching TV, or overeating. Or maybe it’s booze, or gambling, or a foul mouth, or gossip, or cynicism, or bitterness or anger, or sex or the internet. The list of possible temptations is virtually endless!
I remember a little boy who was saving his pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters to buy a shiny new bike. Every night he would pray, “Dear Lord, help me save up enough money for that new bicycle. And please, Lord, don’t send the ice cream truck down my street today.” That little boy understood the danger of temptation. Maybe you’ve heard the cute saying, “Forbidden fruit has resulted in many a jam.”
Our gospel today says that Jesus faced three types of temptation. The first was physical temptation. He was hungry and the devil urged him to change stones into bread. Anyone here ever faced a physical temptation? We have here a clip from the movie, “The Mask,” with Jim Carey. You guys, especially, pay attention and tell me if this is physical temptation:
[Show clip at 3:00 minutes into movie of beautiful woman entering bank, Jim Carey feeling tempted]
There are all kinds of physical temptations – a beautiful woman, a handsome guy, sex, food, booze. I remember a guy who loved donuts, but was overweight and went on a diet. Every day, on his way to work, he would pass a donut shop, but he was able to resist not stopping. After about six weeks of successfully dieting, however, he prayed to God, “Dear Lord, if I drive by that donut shop today and there is an empty parking spot in front of it, I know that will be a sign from you that I can stop, just this once, and get some donuts.” He got to work, carrying an armload of donuts, and his co-workers asked, “Aren’t you on a diet?” But he explained, “I told God that I would stop at the donut shop if there was an empty parking spot out in front, and sure enough, after driving around the block for about 10 times, there finally was an empty parking spot in front of the donut shop!”
What’s the solution to physical temptation? One word: RUN. Flee from it. Spouses, don’t place yourselves in situations that might tempt you to be unfaithful to your husband or wife. Teenagers, don’t go to parties that would place you a compromised situation, and don’t go to places with a date where you might be tempted to engage in inappropriate sexual behavior that you later might regret. Those of you who like donuts, don’t go near the donut shop!
The second temptation in our gospel today is the temptation of greed. The devil offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. “All this will be yours,” the devil tells him. And we too can become greedy, wanting this and wanting that. What’s the solution to the temptation of greed? Being thankful for what you already have, instead of always wanting more, more, more. And giving – being generous, becoming less attached to material things.
The third temptation in today’s gospel is the temptation of ego. Pride. The devil tells Jesus, “Prove that you’re a man! Jump from this tower!” We face that kind of temptation all the time, too. We want to impress someone. We yield to peer pressure. We follow the crowd, even when we know it is wrong, so that we can fit in. The solution to pride and ego is to serve –to help someone who is worse off than us. This teaches us humility.
On the back side of your handouts are three modern temptations that parallel the three temptations in our gospel today.
First: We live in a society that lusts for instant gratification and pleasure. We’re the McDonald’s fast food generation and, while you’re at it, super-size it! We’re impatient, always in a hurry, hate waiting. A lot of physical temptation is like that. We lack self-control. We want everything now, and it doesn’t matter how we get it.
Second, we often are tempted to ignore and neglect the inner life. We’re always on the run – go, go, go. Who has time to pray or read the Bible? And this is like the greed temptation – like is like a never-ending treadmill, because we are never satisfied and we always want more.
Finally, in modern times, we seek self-sufficiency; we want to be in control of our lives, not God; and we want to manipulate and play God, instead of letting God control and lead us. I heard a funny story of a psychiatrist who told his patient, “I don’t remember exactly why you are here to see me, so just start from the beginning.” So the patient replied, “In the beginning, I created the heavens and the earth….” The patient thought he was God! Maybe we’re not quite as overt about it as that mental patient, but all of us like to play God in some ways, rather than allowing God to control us and to control our lives.
So Step 1 in overcoming temptation is awareness – recognizing that there are many kinds of temptation out there. Step 2 is to get rid of excuses. Don’t play the blame game. We so often live in a world where everyone plays victim, but nobody ever expresses remorse for being at fault. Maybe some of you remember the comedian Flip Wilson from way back in the 1970s. In one of his skits, he played a minister from the Church of What’s Happening Now, and whenever he did something wrong, he would say, “The devil made me do it!” But we need to accept responsibility for our own actions, including sometimes, the consequences of those actions. And we need to stop playing with fire, because we know that eventually, fire will burn us.
Last week, I read an interesting native American parable: Many years ago, Indian youths would go away in solitude to prepare for manhood. One such youth hiked into a beautiful valley, green with trees, bright with flowers. There he fasted. But on the third day, as he looked up at the surrounding mountains, he noticed one tall rugged peak, capped with dazzling snow. I will test myself against that mountain, he thought. He put on his buffalo-hide shirt, threw his blanket over his shoulders and set off to climb the peak. When he reached the top he stood on the rim of the world. He could see forever, and his heart swelled with pride. Then he heard a rustle at his feet, and looking down, he saw a snake. Before he could move, the snake spoke. "I am about to die," said the snake. "It is too cold for me up here and I am freezing. There is no food and I am starving. Put me under your shirt and take me down to the valley." "No," said the youth. "I am forewarned. I know your kind. You are a rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you will bite, and your bite will kill me."
"Not so," said the snake. "I will treat you differently. If you do this for me, you will be special. I will not harm you." The youth resisted awhile, but this was a very persuasive snake with beautiful markings. At last the youth tucked it under his shirt and carried it down to the valley. There he laid it gently on the grass, when suddenly, the snake coiled, rattled, and leapt, biting him on the leg. "But you promised..." cried the youth. As the snake slithered away he turned and said, "You knew what I was when you picked me up."
The third and final step is what I call the five “R’s” and we’ll go through them very quickly:
1. REFUSE to be intimidated… DON’T GET ALARMED, FRUSTRATED, DISCOURAGED. To often, we are not initially successful in combating a temptation, so we get frightened, alarmed, frustrated and discouraged. We may even give up and feel that we are incapable of overcoming a certain temptation. Instead of giving up, fight back and refuse to be intimated by Satan.
2. REQUEST God’s help… Send out a spiritual SOS, an emergency cry for help from God.
3. REFOCUS your attention. Change channels. Don’t keep dwelling on what tempts you. If donuts are your downfall, don’t keep thinking about donuts, and especially, don’t drive by the donut shop!
4. REVEAL your struggles to a friend… CONFESS. We can’t go it alone! That’s why God gave us a family, the
church. Now I’m not saying, “Tell the whole world about your temptation.” But I am saying that it is important to be able to trust and confide in someone, not just yourself!
5. RESIST the tempter, not the temptation… Notice that Jesus never denied the temptation, denied that he was hungry. He was starving! He hadn’t eaten for 40 days and 40 nights! But he rebuked the tempter, Satan. In the epistle of James, it says, “GIVE IN TO GOD and RESIST THE DEVIL” -- James 4:7 – Notice the two-step process – let God have control in your life, and second, resist the tempter. You see, temptation will always be there, and being tempted is not a sin. So don’t focus on the temptation. Focus instead on God, and focus on rejecting the power of Satan in your life.
On your handout are three traditional Lenten practices that can help us do spiritual spring cleaning and overcome temptation.
The first is prayer. Use this Lent to pray more, read the Bible more, go to church more, attend a retreat or get involved in a small faith group or a youth group – grow spiritually this Lent, so that we are not neglecting the inner life.
The second is fasting. This helps us overcome the temptation of lusting for instant gratification. It helps us overcome the sinister materialism of our society. It can be a fast from food, or a fast from something else, like not watching TV or not playing Nintendo. It can be a positive fast – giving money to a favorite charitable cause, to help someone in need. As I was thinking about fasting last week, I thought of some of the teenagers on the high school wrestling team. They fast all the time, to maintain their weight class – and it requires great effort and self discipline. But they don’t complain, because they have their goal firmly in mind. Shouldn’t we be at least as enthusiastic about fasting for God as we would be for fasting for a wrestling trophy?
The third Lenten spiritual discipline is almsgiving. Become more thankful and more generous – give more to others. It can be giving of money, or giving of your time and talent. Almsgiving helps us overcome the modern temptation of selfishness and self-sufficiency and thinking that we are God.
The world is full of darkness. Just read the newspaper – the stories of the Osama bin Laden’s and Sadaam Hussein’s and Fidel Castro’s of the world. The world is fascinated with power and popularity and fame and riches – just turn on the TV and watch the stories about the Donald Trump’s and the Janet Jackson’s and the Jason Timberlake’s of the world. But the world needs children of the light, people who are willing to REALLY and TRULLY follow Jesus Christ in their lives.
On your sheets are three last statements. First, Good News once again from our second reading, from Paul’s Letter to the Romans: "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart… -- for, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. – Romans 10:8-9 (New American Bible)
You see, we have a God who is near us – whose word is in our very hearts and lives and mouths – close to us to help us undergo spring cleaning, to lead us to salvation. We need to believe. We need to speak out.
The second statement, from the epistle of James: Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. – James 1:22 (New American Bible)
And third, a poem from Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. -- Poet Robert Frost
Lent is a time for spring cleaning. It is a choice – to choose the road of God, not the road of temptation and the devil. And if we choose wisely, if we choose the road less traveled – that will make all the difference in our lives.
One last story and one last activity. The story: A man on his deathbed in the hospital. His guardian angel asks him, “Are you ready?” and the man replies, “Sure, I’ve done lots of important things in my life. I’m ready.” But at that moment, another angel appeared, standing at the pearly gates of heaven and said, “He can’t come in. His hands are dirty!” The guardian angel sadly admitted it was true but explained, “He was a very successful man, and it is true that sometimes he had to dabble in some dirty dealings.” The angel at the gate continued, “Also, his boots are muddy.” And the guardian angel replied, “He did sometimes take some short cuts in life.” The angel at the gate continued, “And his clothes are torn and bloody.” The guardian angel explained, “He often fought with his brother.” At that, the man himself replied, “I’m an only child. I don’t even have a brother.” The angel at the gate said, “See, he doesn’t even realize that he has many spiritual brothers and sisters.” The guardian angel then said to the man, “The doctors say you are going to live. Take advantage of your second chance.”
Lent is our second chance to do spiritual spring cleaning. Don’t waste the opportunity.
The last thing we are going to do today is clean up this mess. I want to invite the children and any of the adults to come up and let’s quickly clean up – let’s do some spring cleaning here in the church.
[Invite people to come up and help clean]
There’s an important point in this last activity, too. Lent is not just a me-and-God sort of thing. We are all called to do the work of God together. That’s why God gave us a spiritual family, brothers and sisters in Christ, the church. When we all work together, the job goes a lot easier!
So this Lent, let’s all pull together, let’s all do our part to grow spiritually, to do our spiritual spring cleaning. In our working together to overcome temptation, our God will be glorified!