Looking for Joy
4th Sun Lent 3-11-18
2 Chronicles 36:14-16; 19-23 Ps: 137:1- 6; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21
I struggled for days with this ….I wrote at least 3 different homilies…all of which ended in the recycle bin. Be glad! Then I had an altogether brilliant idea.
Actually, it wasn’t the idea that was so brilliant. It was the color of these vestments that was brilliant. Whew! Rose with a glow! What is the point of this rose? This happens twice a year, once during Advent and once during Lent. It is the half way mark in those liturgical seasons. It is when the mood lightens at little. It is Joy breaking through the somber tone of the waiting in Advent, breaking through the examination of our lives and our faith in Lent. But why joy?? The “why” of the joy never sticks in my brain quite as well as “the what”.
So we look for joy in the readings. The first reading is about how the people of Judah lost their faith and ended up captives in Babylon. Nothing so joyful there (but they do finally return home). The Psalm is a lament, a song of loss and regret, grieving for the city of Jerusalem, which has been destroyed. No joy there.
Ah, but we have the 2nd reading, from St. Paul, who was writing the Good News of the Resurrection to people in the city of Ephesus. They were hearing this for the first time! Perhaps, just perhaps, we could put ourselves in that frame of mind, and see if we can find the joy there that seems to elude us.
So, what does Paul say? First thing is that God is rich in mercy. Mercy, as we talked about 2 weeks ago, is when God does not give us what we deserve. We sin, we fail, we do what we know we shouldn’t do, we don’t do what we know we should do, and still God is not ready to pounce on us with punishment. Why not? Because, Paul writes, God has “great love” for us. Everyone benefits from that great love. Being loved is what the human spirit needs more than any material thing. In fact, God loves us – greatly – even as we are in the middle of the worse moment of our lives, when we are behaving really badly.
Paul says that at that moment, when we had our backs turned on God, God saved us. God rescued us from ourselves and raised us up and seated us in the heavens with Christ Jesus, so very much more than we might dare to expect or even hope for. Paul calls this “grace”. Grace is when God gives us what we do not deserve. God’s plan is to show us the immeasurable riches of grace.
Now, that is amazing…and pretty joyful the more you think about it. I know of no one who finds a child or employee or student who are behaving at their very worst, knowingly being disobedient or disrespectful, and then takes them off to a place filled with joy and showers them with love. The joy-filled riches of grace are beyond counting, but they are not locked up in a bank, and never tarnish or lose their value.
If fact, God is ready to give us what no human really deserves, and that is to be with God for ever, face to face in real, pure love and joy. Paul makes it clear; we are saved by grace from punishment. We cannot earn enough bonus points on our credit cards to get a trip to eternity with God. Paul says it two different ways to make sure we get it: first, “By grace you have been saved through faith,” and second, “It is the gift of God; it is not from our actions or behavior, therefore no one may boast” (no one is better than the others).
Faith without good deeds, of course, is dead, as James wrote in his short letter (read it sometime). Faith is only real and alive in our lives when we are doing the good things that we were created to do. Paul wrote that God created us for the good works that already are waiting for us to do; we should find meaning and discover our very lives in doing good things. Grace seems to bring about this desire to act out in love.
People want joy, but they look in all the wrong places. Paul tells us the right place to look. We find joy when we believe God. Some people confuse joy with happiness or good circumstances. But, joy is a gift from God, and not dependent on where you live or beauty or strength or even good health. Joy is the result of accepting the “great love” of God. We wrap God’s love around us, we feel it, we deeply breath it in, we cling to it when we have nothing else.
Our Gospel reading backs Paul up. It also says that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn or punish us, but that we might be saved through him; and whoever lives in God’s love and joy comes to the light that their good works may be clearly seen as done through God.
So we continue on toward Easter. Ahead is the difficult half of Lent – facing the cruelty and selfishness that sometimes enters the human soul. We have to admit how low our price is for betrayal, how quickly we let fear overcome us, how we use others for a small moment of gain. But joy is an act of rebellion against the darkness, and so, for today, we focus on the joy of the triumph of the cross, and the power of love to overcome even death.
The Long and Short of Mark 1
6th Sunday Ordinary time, 2-11-18
Lev 13:1-2, 44-46; Ps: 32:1-2, 5, 11; 1 Cor 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45
This is the last Sunday before the start of Lent. For the last three weeks, we have had sequential readings from the Gospel of Mark. In fact, we have read nearly all of Chapter 1. Mark has given us a great deal of information about Jesus, the purpose and style of his mission, his unique authority to teach and heal, and his intensity and power. Today, I want to recap these readings, because I believe they are an excellent entry into Lent as well as a very solid base for expanding the ministry of Holy Trinity.
The first 14 verses of Mark tell us about the baptism of Jesus and his time of temptation in the desert. Jesus’ first words recorded by Mark are, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” You will remember that when the ashes are placed on your forehead on Ash Wednesday, one or both of these things are said, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” or “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” (Now we know where that came from.) The second one is not as familiar, maybe because it seems a little vague; we may not be sure what is being asked of us.
If someone calls you and says, “I have good news – our baby boy was born this morning,” you understand that not only is the message good news, but the baby himself is good news. The Jews had waited about 1,000 years for the arrival of the Messiah. Now, Mark tells us, the Messiah, Jesus, is teaching and healing and present with his people. Not only do we find the announcement good, but Jesus’ message is good news, as is his very self. “Gos” means good and “Spel” means story, or news. Jesus, and all he says and does, is the gospel. We are to repent and shed our sin along with shedding the attitude of waiting.
Jesus acts this out by calling Simon, Andrew, James and John from their fishing nets, and “immediately” they leave their boats and go with him. For them to do that was very counter-cultural, even disrespectful of their family, and, frankly, just plan weird, even for us. When is that last time you put down your pen on your desk and walked away from your job? Can you imagine the power in Jesus’ command to, “Come with me”? Have you ever felt anything like that? Has God ever put that kind of message in your heart? What would you do to enliven and built up Holy Trinity if that happened to you?
And then, Jesus, along with his followers, went to the synagogue. Jesus teaches there, “as one having authority”…and not just as a scribe, or scholar. He commands an unclean spirit to leave a man, and it does. Everyone is astonished and amazed. Interesting, isn’t it – the unclean spirits know and obey Jesus in an instant, and we, well, often not so much. Is it because we haven’t grasped what he asks us to do? Or do we not know him well enough?
Jesus is then on his way to Simon/Peter’s house the same day. He restores Peter’s mother in-law to health; not only health, but a position of dignity and even fame. As a widow in declining health, she is a burden on the family and is fearful for the future. Jesus (immediately) “helpers her up”, says Mark. What an understatement!
She is able to be a hostess who exceeds the high bar of Mediterranean hospitality. The house becomes the site of all kinds of healings, and her own healing will be known as long as the Bible is read. Her life had been changed, forever different. Do you doubt that Jesus could change Holy Trinity into a thriving place of worship and impact the community?
Next, Jesus touches a leper and says, “Be made clean.” This story is full of implications. First, the story came to us in Greek, and Greek uses verbs in ways that we don’t. In this case, “Be made clean” means, “Someone else will make you clean.” In other words, God is doing the healing. Jesus is not claiming this power as his own, just as he does not offer to heal the widow, but helps her move away from the sick bed. It is a great portrayal of Jesus as the obedient and humble son acting as the conduit of God’s power. We can be the conduit of God’s power, which is often found in humble prayer, worship, and obedience.
Second, just as “a cold” can mean many possible illnesses, a “leper” in that day could have many different skin conditions. But they all had one thing in common: the person had ugly sores on their body. Any type of physical disfiguration was suspect then, and made the person “ritually unclean”. No animal with any physical imperfections could be used for sacrifice in the temple. Likewise, no person with sores could worship in the temple. To add insult to injury, the cause of illness was presumed to be sin. The person was blamed for their own illness, and they were viewed as moral pollution in the community.
Because it was seen as a “sin” issue, the Priest banished lepers and declared them healed. The isolation and blame could be worse than the sores. This leper somehow knows and believes in Jesus. Jesus, evidently, was a cafeteria Jew, because he followed the Jewish law in Leviticus and sent the leper to the priest; but he touched the leper in pity, thereby breaking another law as he restored the man to wholeness. Jesus put himself at risk of being mobbed by suffering people in hopes of healing. He told the leper to be silent, not wanting a reputation as a miracle man/ wonder worker. Remember, he came to urge repentance and belief. He knew his goal. What is our goal, here in this parish?
So, to be like Jesus, we must be short on presumption and long on pity. We must be dependent on God’s power and know it. We must use God’s eyes to see past the sores on skin and see the sores of the heart. We must focus on our goal and honor the directives of God, not culture. With prayerful discernment we must be prepared to act for the glory of God when we are called. Old presumptions may require repentance, and belief may need to be strengthened. Our path forward as a church may bring us change, but we can trust it will be “Good News”.
Homily December 3, 2017, the First Sunday of Advent
Today we start the new Liturgical Year, but we start it by going to the end part of Mark’s gospel to the prophecies of persecution and the times of tribulation and the destruction of the Temple. One thing standing out is the word in our liturgy today is the word and idea of “waiting.” Waiting for the Master who has gone away and will return at any time in the near or far future. Waiting for him to come at any time, any hour and to be 
prepared to open and let him in.
The first reading from Isaiah is from a time Israel had returned home to devastation and the ruins of their Temple. Very definitely there were gaps in their trust and faithfulness to God , gaps that they had to fill in to once again become his faithful people. The situation and state of the world seemed so hopeless for them, that giving trust and hope was difficult. God, however, responded to them giving them a
“YET” in the promise of a coming of a savior. The when and where was unknown, but the “YET” was his only son Jesus who came to the world and to the Jewish people during a later time of occupation and subservience to Rome. The gospel today is from Jesus’ last days and after his account of the coming persecution and destruction of Jerusalem. It follows that as he tells them of the Master leaving and returning at an undetermined time. Ironically or unfortunately, almost every century has experienced the signs persecution and disorder and being cut 
off from God. Christianity has never been perfect, as mankind has never managed to fully and completely to be faithful. Our saving grace is that same “YET” we are reminded will come again to all who await God’s call. His call to wait, to be awake, to weather the times and persecutions to greet him when he comes, is still there. The season of Advent is here to remind us to watch and wait as we celebrate once again Christ’s coming as an infant in Bethlehem.
Homily June 25, 2017- the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s gospel is about death and peace. Fear is the opposite of peace and Jesus is telling us that we should not be afraid of anything unless it can kill our soul. We know that if we believe in Christ and walk with him, we have life already and it will continue on even after death. With that life we should have peace and have confidence in God. Yet, I ask you as we live in this world, when everything is well and we are at peace, does it not seem that there is some kind of uneasiness or doubt that something could go wrong. In many ways this is true because we are still in a world and time that sin and evil are still around and we can be effected by it. However, God knows and watches and our faith
ultimately prevails as long as we keep faith and weather any storm or hardship on the way. Jesus pointed out that the common sparrow or pigeon simply lighting on the earth is known by God. How much more is he not aware of his human creatures? So that Jesus is saying is that death is not to be feared for it is not an end in itself if we are truly men of faith and at peace, the true peace that knows God embraces us and awaits us as we finish our earthly journey. No matter what 
we face, it is a step or a moment to a final peace and union with God. All of us have seen loved ones go before us, and it is difficult to know why and understand. But let us all remember we are God’s creatures and we live in his time and in his kingdom. Certainly, we have questions and concerns at times, but his peace, his way is fully ours if we surrender ourselves and realize all our doubts and questions will be satisfied when we are fully embraced into his love at the end of our time.
Homily Feast of the Ascension May 28, 2017
We are all part of an age unaccustomed to waiting. We get instant news from the far ends of the earth and can even view it on television. Even a soldier today in Afghanistan can actually call home on the phone or even make a video call. This is far different from families at home in past wars waiting for the mail person with that letter with “free” written instead of a stamp from a loved one in a war zone. Today we get impatient in lines we meet everywhere, always being in a hurry to be someplace. Today our readings are Jesus’ farewell to his disciples and the return to his Father. Remember the Ascension is the very last part of the Easter event of Christ’s Passion, Death, Resurrection and 
return(Ascension) to His Father. They know they are to go out to the world and preach, but they have many questions and much unbounded enthusiasm. But, what does Jesus tell them? He tells them they must wait for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who will teach them and inform them of their mission and how to carry it out. It is the Spirit who is the Father’s gift to us that enables Christ’s church to continue, to keep alive his Word and work through the centuries. Yet, in all their enthusiasm, Jesus said wait, don’t do anything until the Spirit comes.
For us, I think there is a lesson to consider in what Jesus said in telling them to wait for the Spirit. Often times in our lives, things arise whether a crisis or some other situation 
or event that we need to pray over and consider. As Jesus told his disciples to wait a few days for his Spirit, it would certainly be good if we allowed time for prayer and the Spirit to help with our decision. The Spirit has been given to the Church and also to each of us to help and enable us to discern and continue to follow Christ in every time and century. The Spirit guides and helps the Church as it marches through the centuries, assisting as humanity itself grows in knowledge and advances hopefully to the age Christ has prepared for his followers. So, we need to live our life in the church with his Spirit, waiting for his return and our own ascension to the Father.
Homily for November 13, 2016 the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today, Malachi and Luke talk of coming days, death, the end of the temple, wars, insurrections, even the end of nations and the fighting of nations. The earth itself will suffer quakes, plagues, and famines. Look back in history and all these things have occurred in the past centuries and in every lifetime and generation. Rejection and persecution of believers has occurred throughout history, even at the time of Christ’s birth if we recall the innocent children slaughtered by Herod. Christ himself suffered rejection and persecution and even experienced betrayal and felt abandoned.
Christ said these were signs of the times, and yes they are. They are signs in all times of the fallen nature of humanity. What age or country or century has eliminated these times and signs from the world? What victory has ever given peace to the world? Was there ever a time that a true Christian was immune from ridicule, rejection, whether from family, friends, or a state or country. Has sin been removed from the world?
Keep in mind that each day is new, but the last was an end. Each moment is an end time where someone will not face another. Each of us faces an end time whether it be days or years. The signs are there for us to see. Christ says these things are bound to happen not just at the end of all times but in every time. 
God is a God of Love, certainly not a human being, and so we must realize he is not subject to anger and other emotions. Sin and evil come from the freedom his creatures receive and abuse. God loves and forgives and embraces all who ultimately reach out to him. Punishment or being cut off from God is what we do by the choices and things that we do.
The sign of our times at the moment are not far from Malachi and Luke today. As Christians we are called to witness Christ’s message of love, forgiveness, healing and the life of Jesus Christ. We have all put on Christ, now is the time to step up and be the light of the world. Jesus said: “Follow Me.”
Counter Cultural Calm and Comfort-All Souls
- All Soul’s Day – Isaiah 25: 6-9, Ps 27: 1-9,13-14, Romans 5:5-11, John 6: 37-40
Tuesday afternoon, I sat with a bedridden elderly woman. I was just beginning to introduce myself to some residents at a nursing home. I had no information about this woman other than a staff person suggesting she might enjoy a visit. So I asked, “How’s it going for you?”
Her eyes began to form tears. “Oh, my husband, he’s here, he has dementia, Alzheimer’s. He sits in a wheel chair and he just talks nonsense…he was never that way before.” She made no mention of it, but it was clear she had her own health issues too.
We talked for a few minutes about the strain of watching a beloved spouse’s health deteriorate. I asked her: would she like to have me read to her out the Bible. “Yes”, she nodded. So I opened to Psalm 103, and read of the goodness of God, about God’s love and faithfulness, compassion and mercy. She grew visibly calmer as I read. “Oh, thank you,” she breathed. The Bible I had with me was donated by the Gideon’s, and I left it with her. Those free Gideon Bibles have a well-deserved reputation for helping people who are overwhelmed by life.
It’s very easy, and entirely normal, to forget God’s love when crisis strikes. But in every section of the Bible, we can find reminders of the tender love God has for us, all of us. Today one of our reading is from Isaiah, a Hebrew prophet who lived some 800 years before Christ. It speaks of the Lord ending death and grief and tears on the earth, and offers assurance that the Lord will save us. Then the Psalmist writes, “The Lord is my light and my salvation……..wait for the Lord with courage.”
Years later, St. Paul declared with great certainty that we will not be disappointed by our hopes in God. Wearied by the sound bites of politicians, we need to be reminded of this! Paul says, “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us…we are justified and saved through him…” Paul adds, “We also boast of God.” Now, if you have read much of St. Paul, you know when Paul says you can boast of something, he means it’s rock solid, without a doubt.
But if you might have any remaining doubt about hoping in God, our Gospel will dispel it. John quotes Jesus saying, “…Everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.”
All Soul’s Day is about remembering those who have gone before us; those we miss, those we will mourn for the rest of our lives. But this day calms us, and draws us back from the pain of loss to the comfort of God’s love. It is almost counter-cultural to remember that God didn’t make us disposable. We are eternal beings. It is absolutely counter-cultural to say that we are eternal beings, but we still don’t know very much at all about eternity. And it is probably close to anti-cultural to say that we don’t need to know more about eternity than we already know. What do we know? We know Eternity is real, prepared and waiting for you and me and those we love, and it will be beyond anything experienced in this life.
So, today we rejoice in life. We light candles to remind us of eternal life; their light breaks through the darkness of doubt. We delight in the memory of those who have been born into eternity, even as we remain here for a time, and we continue to share the love of God.
Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year A 2013-14
Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year A 2013-14
[Bishop Ron’s past homilies for Year A have been collected in the the book “Teaching the Church Year”, available in ebook format on amazon.com]
Advent is a time of waiting. I thought about this as I waited at the doctor’s office this week for an appointment, and I thought about it again as I waited at the longest traffic light in the world to get on the Dulles Toll Road. I thought about it as I waited for my students to come to me for class. I thought about it as I waited for the rain to stop so I could get to more raking, and as I wait for the last tree leaves to fall from the tree over the house that refuses to give them up. Waiting is really part of our lives and we spend a lot of time doing it. Often, in our culture, which is so busy and rushed, it leads to anger, to road rage, to general anxiety. That isn’t what the waiting in Advent is about, though.
St. Paul’s antidote to waiting which he mentions a number of times in our second reading today is “patience”. He recognizes that we might have to suffer while we wait, but he says that the virtue of patience will be what gets us through it. St. Paul was speaking about the second coming of the Lord in this reading, and stressing that we have hope that Christ is coming, so we need to develop patience. Certainly this is good advice for all us whether it is patience in waiting for the Lord or waiting for a traffic light. The result is the same: we trust that what we wait for will come in time, and we must use our waiting time productively by caring for our neighbors.
St. Paul tells us to look to the Prophets for examples of those who became role models of suffering and patience. The Prophets all had hope that things would get better and it was their job, their destiny to point out the way to others by giving them hope. Consider our reading from Isaiah today. The prophet uses the most optimistic and beautiful language to describe what will happen if we have patience in the Lord. “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom…rejoice with joy and singing… they shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.” Oftentimes we think of prophets as predictors of gloom because they chastise the people for what they are doing wrong and point out their faults. But very often these corrective measures lead to beautiful imagery and stunning visions of a triumphant God and the people of God. And that vision particularly includes people who are most suffering in the present time – the poor, the blind, the mute, the prisoner, the lame. In today’s we reading we end with such a beautiful vision of hope:
“Then the eyes of the blind will be opened,
And the ears of the deaf unstopped;
Then the lame shall leap like deer,
And the tongues of the mute sing for joy…
They shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Is 35:10)
This hope is re-iterated in today’s Psalm, Psalm 146 which also deals with the outcasts – the poor, the blind, the lame, the widow, the prisoner and the orphan. Does this perhaps give us a key to how we should be conducting ourselves in Advent, the time of waiting.Should we be devoting our attention to those less fortunate than ourselves as a way of preparing for the joy of Christmas. It would seem to be the direction of the prophets, the psalmist and Paul!
Our Gospel today is a continuation of stories about John the Baptist, though it jumps eight chapters from last Sunday. And guess what it is about? John, now imprisoned, asks a question of Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” (Matt:11:3) Again it is a question of waiting and whether we need to have even more patience.
Jesus’ answer draws on the Prophets and the Psalmists we heard today. Basically, he says, you don’t have to wait any longer – the blind are receiving sight, the lame are walking, the lepers are healed, the deaf are hearing, the dead are being raised and the poor are getting good news. In other words, you don’t have to wait any longer, the time is here now. Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies and all the beautiful prophetic images are happening right now.
Two thousand years later, we know that. We know that Christ was the fulfillment of the prophets and that he brought us all salvation and opened up the possibility of heaven to us, to all of us. And yet we still wait. Karl Rahner said in one of his homilies that we are an Advent people, that we live in the future. But we are able to have patience because we know, we believe, that we have been saved. We know what our end will be. We wait for the return of Christ so that the kingdom will come and be the only kingdom, and that all divisions will cease. We should have an even greater hope because we know that the initial work has been done. We are saved. But we await an even greater extension of the kingdom and the complete fulfillment of the justice issues that began with prophetic preaching and continue to this day.
We need to recognize today that although we have all been ransomed, there is still quite a lot of injustice and evil in the world, even though we can see signs of the kingdom in the action of others and hopefully ourselves. But we want the complete fulfillment. We want Christ to come again. And all this we are reminded of when we celebrate the first coming, and we prepare patiently for the remembrance of that event of the Incarnation. And again, how can we best be patient and prepare for that coming? By finding ways to get out of ourselves and give ourselves to others; to do charitable works; to find ways to help another in need; to comfort those who have little or are alone. It is only in this way that you will have a spiritual Christmas. Put as much time into this as you put in selecting Christmas gifts for others, and I promise you, you will truly feel the peace and joy of Christmas. Let the rose vestments I wear today, remind you of the virtues of patience and charity which together lead to the joy which comes at the end of the Advent season.
And this is the Good News that we need to practice and spread every day of the Advent season.
Bishop Ron Stephens
Auxiliary Bishop of Holy Trinity Diocese
Of the Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (CACINA)
Pastor of St. Andrew’s Parish in Warrenton, VA
CACINA 
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