October 20, 2019. Is. 43:15-44:5; 1 Cor. 15:20-26; Lk. 4:31-39

As preached by Brother Marc

Holy Wisdom Church


What is the one thing you want to change for yourself?

People in his hometown of Nazareth are amazed at Christ when he announces change but doesn’t cure anyone. He says, “I am bringing not a cure-all but something entirely new. Awake to a new day. This new day will be different and unfamiliar.” They get frustrated and shrug it off. You’re just the guy from down the road, they say to Jesus. This kind of cynic seems to prefer its own old platter of familiar stale food.

In another town in today’s gospel people do hear the echo of authority and ring of truth in the words of Jesus. The devilish spirit in the possessed man there becomes alarmed. Jesus is able to release the man from its destructive influence.

The old rules and taboos Jesus dispels throughout the gospels is not the Old Law of Moses given by God but the frozen human heart scarred by old mistakes and hurts and misunderstandings. Our old unchanging and unredeemed programming from 55-65-75 or 85 years of life are manipulations and dead ends humans have met since Biblical times. These ills and errors of human evolution still possess us and imperil the earth.

This is a deadly miasma that prowls the world, seeps into cells, and invades every homeland. No border will protect our bodies and hearts, because it has seeped into our spirits and stolen our souls. The old darkness has hypnotized us at the shopping malls. Whole walls of RoundUp weed-killer confront us at the big-box stores.

This is an evil, parasitic smog feeding off our energy as if in a horror film. It exerts a devilish control and chaos under the guise of order. It prevents us and our societies from flourishing, growing, creating again, seeking peace, healing and the comfort of good creative work and play.

This possessive feeling and spirit doesn’t want to move, change, get better for real, take the steps and do the work alongside the spirit and example of Jesus.

Can Jesus heal our lame constricted visions, blind grasping for comfort, destitute hearts and opinions, ears deafened by ear buds with canned music. We humans are imprisoned in cells of individualism and certainty, unchangeable as pillars of salt and having it our way.

The ancient poetry we just heard in the Isaiah reading is instead timelessly uplifting.

I will knock down prison bars,

You will cross great waters.

The wild beasts will honor me,

Wild dogs and ostriches

Who find water in the deserts

For my people to drink.

A modern version says to us, “The deserts spring water, the rivers run clear, the soil grows fertile with tilth and clods and earthworms instead of dust and sand and beetles,” as recent documentaries show it.

This poetry mirrors the ecology of our hearts and our relationships. It announces a new ecology of wholeness, growth, nourishment, blossoming, fruitfulness, and seeds of future health.

We may hear this and say like the people of Nazareth probably did, “Oh that is an old dream and naïve.” So our opinions are two-faced. we believe in change for the better but we know things just get worse and worse.

Even while suffering we keep to the evil we know, as preferable to the evil we don’t know. I choose what I feel, even when feeling badly, over what I need. Resist, procrastinate, put off, wait, make a promise: all this equals the influence of the bad spirit.

Jesus is still setting free the future. God’s hope and goodness help us see hopeful events and good memories as signs of great expectations and not fearfulness or discouragement.

What is the one thing you want to change for yourself? If you do not and cannot know and do that, you cannot and will not change anything else in the world. In fact, according to recent studies, things may turn into the opposite of what you intended.

Are we looking to be set free from destructive tendencies and powers we thought beyond change? I make all things new, he says: I restore to better than original blueprints or dna. At first the new is unrecognizable. To be truly new is not just to rejuvenate. Ic’s spirit overcomes every other authority and power including demonic control, confusion and lethargy.

Jesus and Isaiah’s words want to enter our hearts today and open up our thoughts and release our energies. We are not alone but we have to enlist in God’s program. We need to take the first step of what can become a life pilgrimage of daily walks and daily right eating, of daily meditation and pauses and even daily smiles.

At the end of the gospel we heard some good news: Jesus wakes Peter’s mother-in-law from her sickness, and she gets up, and like we might call a deaconess freely serves the holy gathering. How did he do that?

The love of Jesus finally changed her as it had changed Peter.

Talents 10 13 19 Sir 15:11-20, 1Cor 14:6-20, Mt 25:14-30

As preached by Sister Cecelia
Holy Wisdom Church

In this morning’s gospel, much attention is paid to the fellow who did nothing but try to preserve the worth of the one talent given to him. He can be compared to the Pharisees and Sadducees who were the preservers of the law. According to their understanding the law could not be changed one jot or tittle. Any change, any development, any alteration, anything new was to them anathema. That attitude was a paralysis of religious truth. The desire to keep things exactly as they are is not commendable.  God finds no use for a shut mind. Consider how difficult for the Israelites to accept that Jesus message was for the Gentiles as well as for the chosen people. All could receive or choose the repentance that leads to life. God finds no use for a shut mind. Peter and the rest of the disciples were shown that they could eat of the animals they had considered unclean.

 The man who is punished in this parable is the person who did not try. He had not lost the talent but did nothing with it. His shut mind prevented him from trying. A lot of studies have been done and are still ongoing on how to preserve our brains from dementia. Aside from trauma due to accidents or diseases, one thing is clear. If we don’t use the different parts of our brain it atrophies just as our muscles will if we don’t keep moving.  Our brains need to be activated by use. Our brains are one talent we have all received.

Another inference from this parable is that we do not all receive the same gifts. However many we do receive though, we need to use them for the good of others as well as for ourselves.  Speaking in tongues is a gift of God, not to be ignored. This gift is mainly for the benefit of the one speaking in tongues unless that person also has the ability to pass it on to others. None of our gifts make us better or superior to others. They are gifts and we have not done anything to warrant them. They are rather a challenge to progress farther.  The servants were not told to sit back and take life easy. It seems the reward of work well done is to be given greater tasks and responsibilities in the work of the master.

In the reading from Sirach this morning, we are told that when God created humankind he gave us the power of free choice.  If we choose, we can act faithfully in carrying out what we perceive as God’s will for us. We choose between fire and water, between life and death.  Understanding what changes need to be made and what needs to be accepted as is, is a challenge to our intelligence. What kind of things need to be changed?  It takes effort to think about it.

The ancient world in general revered hospitality. The Israelites because of their own sojourn in a foreign land and wandering in the desert were called upon to show compassion and hospitality to strangers and to protect them from harm. The account of Abraham serving the three men who appear at the oaks of Mamre show us unrushed hospitality and the giving of what Abraham had to give.  We know Abraham was rewarded with the promise of a child. While we do for others without hope of a reward, we also know that Jesus has said what we do for others we are doing for Jesus himself. Those include those in need-the hungry, the thirsty and the stranger as well as our friends, family and foe alike.

Hospitality is only one area of choices we make in our own sojourn in life. There are many others. Jane Goodell is supposed to have said:  “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.”

Whatever talent we have been given, little or great, let it be for the service of our God.

 Christ is in our midst!

234e

Sermon 169: Tb 4:5-11; 16-20; 1Cor 1:26-31; Mt 11:25-30 “St Francis” Holy Poverty

As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church

 

When I was a student in Tunisia, for most of the time the President of the country was in France for health reasons. But on the occasion of his return to Tunisia, no effort was spared to assemble a large crowd to greet him in Bizerte, the northern coastal town where he would arrive back in his homeland. Schools were closed and extra busses were added to the usual schedule to make the trip north. I happened to get a ticket on one of those busses, only to discover when the bus arrived to pick us up that more tickets were sold than spaces on the bus, including standing room! I did get on but many people were hanging on the outside of the bus as it took off. Not far out of town the driver stopped and cleared off all the people who were hanging on the outside of the bus. No room inside for them.

Today we celebrate the feast of St Francis of Assisi. Francis is well known and loved because of his love for animals and indeed all creation. The great number of animal blessings that mark his feast day around the world, including right here, are witness to this outpouring of love for him. But his teachings go beyond that and sometimes it easy to forget one of the greatest lessons of his life. He was born into a wealthy family and lived as a playboy in his youth until he had a dramatic religious experience. After that experience, he rejected his former lifestyle and even his family in order to walk the path of what he called Holy Poverty. Our usual concept of poverty did indeed apply to Francis. It was about material things. But it was also more than that.

Francis wasn’t calling on his followers to be poor for the sake of poverty but rather to detach themselves from what binds them so that they could be open to God and to doing God’s will. He said: “Holy poverty puts to shame all greed, avarice, and all the anxieties of this life.”[1] All the anxieties of life. The gospel tells us that if we live in fear, we have no faith. [Lk 8:25] If we are overwhelmed by the cares of life, then when do we have time for God? How can we hear God’s voice, if we the daily cares of life totally consume us?

It is easy to think of this as foolishness. Yet, Christ tells us that it is the childlike who are truly open to believe. [Mt 11:25] Why? because they have not yet let the burdens of this world control them. St Paul reminds the Corinthians that God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise. The wise he had in mind might very well have been the Pharisees, and yet, we all might feel a little pharisaical from time to time. We know the rules of life, we know how to live, we have it all figured out, until we don’t!

St Matthew recounts Christ’s teaching about letting go when he is encouraging his listeners to take on his yoke, that is his teachings, to find rest and release from life’s burdens. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” [Mt 1:30] So, he is calling on us to make room for God in our lives. Of course, God is everywhere and, in all things, but do we really notice this? And even if we think we notice it, do we experience it? In those times of quiet meditation, we may notice how much the cares of our life continue to burden our hearts and minds. Our lives may be as crowded with cares as that Tunisian bus was with people. No room for God. Indeed, like that bus driver we may even be throwing God off the bus!

Rather than letting the world take over our lives we might do well to follow the advice Tobit gave his son Tobiah: “Through all your days, my son, keep the Lord in mind, and suppress every desire to sin or to break his commandments.” [Tb 4:5] And the fruit of that way of living is captured well by St Francis:



“Where there is charity and wisdom,

there is neither fear nor ignorance.

Where there is patience and humility,

there is neither anger nor loss of composure.

Where there is poverty borne with joy,

there is neither grasping nor hoarding.

Where there is quiet and meditation,

there is neither worry nor dissipation.

Where there is the fear of the Lord to guard the gateway,

there the Enemy can get no hold for an entry.

Where there is mercy and discernment,

there is neither luxury nor a hardened heart.” [2]



Holy Father Francis, pray to God for us!








[1] Daily Readings with St Francis of Assisi, Templegate Publishers, 1988, p. 37.


[2] Ibid., p. 38.