Tag Archives: Disciple

The Border Crisis

Posted on August 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly Matt. 15:28. The full readings for today can be found here.

In the name of the Living God: by whom we are being created, redeemed and sustained.

          You know, I have met a lot of priests. Many of them are my friends. And to be honest with you, I’m really not sure why. Because they treat me so bad. They really do. When it’s time for the Good Samaritan, or the little baby Jesus in the manger, my phone is silent—as silent as a midnight graveyard. But when the lectionary rolls around to Jesus calling a woman with a sick child a dog, all my friends have a conflict: “Brother James, could you come preach for me this Sunday?”  And all the sudden my phone is ringing like the bells of Notre Dame.

          I want to talk about that, but I want to put this story in a bit of context. You know, I love borders. I have spent most of my life near the border, and spent 25 years living right on the border with Mexico. And one of the things I love the most is the intersection of two cultures, the way culture is porous, even when a border may not be. When you live near a border, you come to realize just how fluid and flexible borders can be.

We see it in our meals: I learned very early on that enchiladas and huevos rancheros and carne asada just made life better. We see it in our families, as blended families soften our hard hearts, and all a sudden that’s not just some immigrant, that’s my grandchild, or my uncle, my tio. And we see it in our language: words and phrases cross cultural boundaries with absolute sovereignty, with no constraints. So, in Mexico, if you need to leave your car to go shopping, you’ll look for el parquing, or for breakfast you might have a cereal called los confleis, and the device you use for with your computer is el maus. And it travels in both directions: Our words corral, ranch, stampede all came from Spanish. We have states called Arizona and Florida, and even the name of your own town, Blanco comes from the Spanish. Borders and the confluence of cultures are fascinating.

My favorite border story comes from Mother Teresa, who was crossing one day into Israel. The border guards there asked her if she was carrying any weapons, and she replied, “Oh yes. I have my rosary and I have my prayer books.”

So, this morning, we find Jesus crossing from Jewish territory into the area of Tyre and Sidon, into Gentile country, into the land of the Canaanites. You remember the Canaanites; they were the people in the Old Testament who continually worshipped idols and were always in fights with the people of Israel. They really didn’t get along with the Jewish people, in fact, Jews would routinely refer to these Gentile pagans as “dogs.” It was a commonly used slur for the Canaanites, but it seems shocking when we hear that slur being used by Jesus. We might ask ourselves, “Was Jesus just having a very bad day?” Maybe we begin to get a sense that something more is going on here when we look at Jesus’ family tree and find three Canaanite women there: Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. As I said, the border changes things.

We learn just how elastic things are on the border when this woman cries out: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” So, here’s a gentile woman, who calls Jesus “Lord” and the “Son of David.” She may be a pagan, but she’s speaking a pretty solidly Jewish language. In this borderland, this woman doesn’t seem to fit any of the fixed markers of a pagan or a Gentile.

Jesus seems to ignore her, then tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In other words, I’m not here for you; you’re outside my borders. But then, the story begins to shift, and there’s an interesting shift in the plot. This woman, this Canaanite woman, kneels before Jesus and begs, “Lord, help me.” And things begin to change. They enter into a conversation.  It’s worth noting that Matthew says this woman knelt before Jesus.  

Jesus tells her that it wouldn’t be fair to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs. And it’s shocking, and it’s uncomfortable to hear Jesus say that. But maybe we should remember a couple of things here. First, remember from Matthew’s gospel the parable about the workers who showed up early in the morning getting paid the same as those who showed up late in the afternoon? I don’t think Jesus gave a hoot about what’s fair; I think he was fiercely indifferent to our ideas of fairness. I think Jesus knew God’s mercy was lavish, that there was enough of it for everyone. And I think this woman knew it, too. And as for the slur about calling this woman a dog, well, as we observed earlier, Jesus had a little “dog” blood in him, too.

And look at this woman’s response, in the context of how desperate she is for Jesus to help her daughter. She doesn’t get her feelings hurt, she doesn’t lose her nerve or her persistence. She tells Jesus even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table. In other words, there’s enough for everyone to eat—to quote that old hymn, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.” In God’s economy, supplies of grace and blessings are not limited. God’s love and mercy cross every border we try to establish, skirt around all our barricades, and break down every wall. Now, here’s the tricky part: none of that was news to Jesus.

So, I want to pause that story and go back to the first part of our gospel today. Jesus is talking about the Jewish dietary laws, which are sometimes called the Purity Codes. And there were lots of these regulations, governing who you couldn’t spend your time with (like tax collectors), who you could and couldn’t touch (like lepers), and what you could eat and what you couldn’t eat. And all these rules operated as a kind of a border, a border between what was holy and the things and people that were not. And Jesus rejects this notion, he challenges this border.

Jesus tells us, it’s not what you put into your mouth, it’s what comes out of it that’s the problem. The problem isn’t what you eat; the problem is the slander and gossip and envy in your heart. So, your borders were all wrong. Holiness has a lot more to do with what’s in your heart than with what you eat. That’s the real border.

So, now we return to this woman, begging for Jesus to help her, to heal her child. And I think Jesus looked into her heart and knew that whatever border separated them, he was going to cross it. He tells her that she has great faith, and here I don’t think faith has anything to do with some intellectual proposition that she’s going to accept. I think it has to do with who she trusts. She is willing to give up her dignity, her pride, and her self-respect because she trusts that Jesus can help her daughter. And Jesus, having looked into her heart, is willing to cross the borders that separate them. He assures her that her prayers have been heard and answered.

So, I think it’s worth asking ourselves, “What are the borders that I have that separate me from God?” A lot of us have created a spiritual ghetto, isolated God and Jesus to an hour on Sunday morning. Jesus, you can have a bit of time while I’m in church, but I don’t want you coming with me to work, or when I’m arguing with my family, and I don’t want you getting into my politics, and I sure don’t want to see you on the golf course.

There’s a fellow named Russell Moore, who used to be a top official with the Southern Baptist Convention and is now the editor of Christianity Today. And he and several other pastors talked about preaching on turning the other cheek and preaching the Sermon on the Mount. And they were accosted by their congregation for preaching on “liberal talking points.” And when these pastors would reply “I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ” their congregations would answer “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” Moore concludes that our church today is in a crisis, a crisis in which the teachings of Jesus Christ are considered subversive. I think that happens because some of us have created a border between Jesus and our politics.

And I think Moore may be right: we are in a crisis. But here’s the good news: if we trust Jesus, if we let him into our lives and take him seriously, he will knock down every false border we’ve created until there’s nothing left standing between us and God. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2023

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Seeing with Eyes of Blessing

Posted on January 29, 2023 | 2 comments

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain . . . .Then he began to speak, and taught them. Matt. 5:1. (The full text for this morning’s readings can be found here.)

In the name of the Living God, who is making all things new. Good morning, good morning. I want to thank Father Holloway for asking me back again and thank you all once more for your generous hospitality.

You know, there’s an idea floating around in Christianity today, and it’s been around for a while. This notion still has a lot of adherents today, and you can hear many of them on television. But this doctrine is well summed up in a story that Oral Roberts used to tell. It goes back to a time in 1947 when Roberts was going through a time of crisis in his life and ministry.

Well, around this time, through a friend who owned a Buick dealership, Roberts was able to acquire a brand-new shiny Buick automobile. According to Roberts, the “new car became a symbol to me of what a man can do if he would believe God.” His first book on this topic was entitled “God’s Formula for Success and Prosperity.” Like I said, that notion is still running around today. And that idea, which suggests that God’s love for us can be measured by our financial well-being, is sometimes called the Prosperity Gospel.

And there’s a theological term for it. We call it poppycock. We call it gibberish; we call it balderdash. If you have any doubts about it, all you need to do is study today’s gospel—because that’s not what Jesus is saying. Not at all.

Now, this story appears very early in Matthew’s gospel. Jesus is baptized, he calls his disciples and then begins teaching and healing and the crowds start following him. And this story describes Jesus’ very first sermon, the first teaching that Matthew records. And Matthew wants to place Jesus in a historical context and a spiritual context. Like Moses, Jesus ascends to the mountain. Matthew wants to point his readers—us—to the notion that Jesus is the new Moses.

Rather than a tablet of laws, however, Jesus offers us a set of descriptions or signposts that point the way to the kingdom of heaven. Rather than a set of rules, he describes the surprising people that God treasures, and along the way shows us what a life with God would look like. They describe a divine reality we already live in, but can’t always see.

When we look at the world, any fool can see that meek don’t look very blessed. They didn’t inherit the earth then, and they’re still not inheriting it. And the merciful, they don’t seem to get much mercy. I’ve known way too many who mourn and they are still looking for their comfort. I’ve seen too many peacemakers laughed at, scorned and called unpatriotic. And those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, well, they’re still hungry and they’re still thirsty.

If we’re really honest as we look at the world today, we’d say something like blessed are the well-to-do, for they can send their kids to good schools. And blessed are the really attractive people in this world, because their road is going to be a lot easier. Or, too often, blessed are those without much of a conscience, because they will find a way to get it done even when it’s built on deception or hurting good people. If we’re honest, we have to admit that the world Jesus describes is not really the world we’ve made for ourselves.

But it can be. In one sense, I think these beatitudes are a daring protest against the world around us. Jesus is announcing: this is not how God meant for us to live. This is not how things have to be. God sees this world very differently than most people do. And if we want to share in this kingdom-vision, we can begin by reexamining our values and the people who are down on their luck. Because in God’s story, in God’s story, we find some very surprising heroes.

These beatitudes teach us that the people that God calls holy, the people that God cherishes, are those who are vulnerable. Not the spiritual whizkids, but the poor in spirit. This world admires those who are strong, follows those who are influential, and marvels at blustery braggarts. But those are not the people that God embraces.  

We can hear echoes of other parts of the gospel here. When Mary finds out she’s pregnant, she announces that God is going to scatter the proud and lift up the lowly. He will send the rich away empty and fill the bellies of the poor. He will pull the mighty from their seats and raise up the meek. Or maybe we hear the echo of Jesus saying that the first will be last and the last will be first. Or maybe we hear the resonance of Jesus telling us that the stone that the builder has rejected has become the cornerstone. All of us have experienced, at one time or another, that sort of rejection. We have all, at some time, been broken.

If we look at the people Jesus is talking about, the people this world rejects and calls losers, we find one common trait. They are vulnerable. The beatitudes teach us that the people God calls holy are broken people. And maybe that’s where we’ll find an insight into God’s mercy: it evades the appearance of perfection and reaches into the broken parts of the world to mend it. And maybe, just maybe, if we drink from the deep well of grace, we’ll learn to be like children, who show their scars like medals they’ve won.

I think that Jesus offered us these beatitudes, these blessings, to show us the world that God sees, to show us a vision that is too often clouded by the cataracts of sin and self-assurance.  The gospel text today begins with the idea that Jesus “saw” the crowds. There’s a world of difference between looking and seeing. I think Jesus turned his penetrating gaze right into the broken hearts and souls of those very ordinary people who were listening to him.

So maybe that’s the challenge of today’s gospel. Maybe we are called to look upon the broken people—the vulnerable people in this world—and see them as a blessing. Maybe this passage calls out to us to bless them, and be blessed by them. I think Jesus’ vision of the kingdom calls us to see the world through the lens of mercy, through the eyes of those with pure hearts, from the perspective of those who’ve experienced a terrible loss.

These blessings are a protest against the world-as-it-is, and a call for us to reshape our lives as a people who have experienced the gift of failure. Jesus teaches us that our full humanity lies along the road of loss and the messiness of want and longing. Our deep hope, as opposed to a superficial optimism, lies in learning to live with compassion.

Sometimes I look at God’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, and I think it is the light of the world. And sometimes, I look at it, and I think it’s the Island of Broken Toys. And on my best days, on my very best days, I can look at it and see that it is both. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2022

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The Homecoming

Posted on March 27, 2022 | 12 comments

The full readings for this morning can be found here:

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

In the name of the Living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Good morning. How’s your Lent going?  It’s the fourth Sunday of Lent, so we’re about knee deep in it. And you know, somewhere between the global pandemic, the Russian Invasion, and events in this parish, I think it’s about the lentiest Lent I’ve ever lented. But here we are, and this morning, the Church has offered us this magnificent story. We call this story the prodigal son. That word “prodigal” makes me wonder. It means extravagant, lavish, or sometimes wasteful spending and I promise you we’ll come back to that next week.

It’s one of my favorite stories, a story about how we should treat terrible sinners—you know, people like you and like me. So Jesus tells us this story that captures the essence of not only this season of repentance, but also of the heart of Christianity.

And he begins, “There was a man who had two sons.” Now, I think Jesus’ audience, when they heard this introduction, would have immediately thought, “Uh oh. There’s going to be trouble.” Because these people knew their Scripture, and they would have immediately thought of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Essau, and perhaps of Joseph and his brothers.

You see, I had several brothers, and I understand what kind of trouble younger brothers can be. But in this story, the younger son goes to his father and says: “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” Now, we may miss the import of this request. In that world, at that time, that was in essence the younger son saying, “I wish you were dead” or at least, “You’re taking too long to die.” But the father complies and gives his younger son his inheritance early. So, the younger boy gathers all he has and goes off to a foreign country.

Oh, I know about that foreign country. I’ve spent time there. You see, there was a time in my life when, if you had asked me, I would have told you that I spent all my money on fine clothes, fast cars, good wine, and pretty women. The rest of it, I wasted. These are years when my father referred to me as Count No-Account. So, I’ve been in that foreign country where the younger brother went. And the boy spends everything he has on dissolute living and then trouble comes: a famine strikes the land. You see, there’s one thing about that foreign country: it’s a lot of fun—until it isn’t anymore.

And we know how far this younger son has fallen, because here’s this good Jewish boy in a gentile country feeding the pigs. Feeding the pigs! I mean, that’s no place for a good Jewish kid. And Luke tells us he would gladly have eaten the pig food, but “no one gave him anything.” “No one gave him anything.” That’s the way the world is sometimes, when you’re down on your luck. And it’s hard to find a way out.

But then, Luke tells us, something remarkable happens. The younger brother has what you might call an epiphany, or a moment of grace, or maybe he’s just desperate. But look at what Luke says: “when he came to himself.” Now, that phrase implies more than just a change of mind, it implies that for a while he had been lost to himself, he had wandered away, he had forgotten who he was. And while we may not have run off with daddy’s money, most of us have forgotten who we are at some point. And he decides to go home, even if that means being treated like one of his father’s hired hands.

And now the story gets really good. Luke tells us, “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” That may be my favorite line in all of Scripture. Do you know why the father saw him from a long way off? Because he was looking for him. I suspect he’d been looking for him to come home ever since the boy left. And I take great comfort in that, in the idea of a God who is always anxious for us to come back home. Maybe I find that notion reassuring because…well, I’ve been a long way off myself.

The younger son tells his father, “I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” He confronted his failures, and he recognized that the heavy cost of them. He recognized they might cost him his place in the family, just as our own failures carry a cost. We might add a pause here in the story, as the father weighs his response to the younger son’s words. But the father, in a moment of lavish generosity and forgiveness, tells the servants: Dress this boy up in something fancy and let’s have a party, “let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”

And in a real sense, the younger son was dead to his father. He was gone; he was lost. Look at the father’s response: there’s no price to be paid for re-entry into the family; there’s no penance to be done. The father is full of nothing other than joy at his son’s return. Now, we call this parable the prodigal son, and remember that word prodigal means lavish or extravagant. But, I think we could just as easily call it “prodigal father,” because his response of love and forgiveness is just as extravagant as was his son’s spending.

And the family begins to celebrate the boy’s return—well, not everybody in the family joins in the party, the pachanga. The elder son, the good son, who never did a thing to take advantage of his father, can’t even bear to come into the house. Some of us may identify with that older son: he’s responsible; he does what’s expected of him; and he’s very good at keeping score. In fact, he is shacked and bound by his rage.

The older son tells his father: “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” And in the world he lives in, he’s right. He lives in a world of the zero-sum game, where anytime someone gets ahead, you’re falling behind. We call that an economy of scarcity. He cannot even bring himself to recognize his brother. Look at what he says: not my brother has come back, but this son of yours came back.

The problem isn’t that he has a sense of right and wrong. The problem is that he is a prisoner of it, chained to his sense of injustice. He can’t even go into the house. That’s a hard way to live. He reminds me of something we used to say about my family. We said that we suffered from a genetic case of Irish Alzheimer’s—that’s where you forget everything except the grudges.

Let’s contrast his response to that of the father, who tells him: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” Contrast the older son, who says “this son of yours” with the father, who says “this brother of yours.” The father had to celebrate because the joy and forgiveness overflowed from him. The elder son lives in an economy of scarcity; the father lives in something much closer to what we call the economy of grace, or God’s economy. In the economy of grace, love and forgiveness are the currency, the coin of the realm. And that’s the world, the economy, in which the father has chosen to live.

Now, here’s the brilliance of this story, the genius of this tale: we don’t know the end of the story. We don’t know if the older brother accepted his father’s invitation to join in the celebration. We don’t even know if he ever came into the party, into the house. We don’t know if the younger brother really did change his ways, or if he fell back into his old lifestyle. And I think Jesus meant for that story to remain unfinished, because we get to write that ending every single day in our own lives. We can choose to live like the younger brother, the older brother, or the father. We get to write the ending of this wonderful story in the way we live. It’s your story. Make it a good one.            

Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2022

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Let Me See

Posted on October 24, 2021 | 5 comments

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When Did You Get to Know Me?

Posted on January 14, 2018 | 9 comments

NathanielThe full readings for today can be found here:

Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” John 1:43-51.

When did you get to know me?

In the name of the living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Several years ago, I travelled to Toronto with my Dominican brothers and sisters for Chapter, our annual gathering. While we were there, I was lucky enough to spend some time at L’Ache, the community founded by Henri Nowen, the great pastoral theologian.
L’Arche is a home for people who face profound mental challenges. While I was there, I met a man named Tom. Tom had Down’s syndrome, but that wasn’t the most important fact about him. You see, Tom was deeply concerned with, one might even argue obsessed with, superheroes. I mean, all of them: Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Ironman, even the Green Lantern.

As I had the chance to talk more with him, I got to see some of his artwork. He showed me one piece that was a little confusing. It portrayed a bearded man wearing what appeared to be a Superman outfit, with his arm around someone who was obviously Tom. I asked him if the other man was Jesus, and he told me that it was. Now, Jesus (or SuperJesus) had his other arm dangling out into space. I asked Tom why Jesus’ arm was just hanging there, and he said, “That’s for you.”

I was gobsmacked. Here was this man, with supposed mental deficits, who had completely grasped a profound theological concept that I had been struggling to live into for years. I asked Tom if there was anything he needed us to pray for, and Tom told me, “I want to be a superhero.” I told him, “Tom, I think you already are, but I’ll pray anyway.”

God is like that. God is sneaky. The divine will jump up and grab you from behind when you weren’t expecting it.

So, in today’s Gospel, we have a wonderful story, a story of calling and wonder and awe. It’s the story of one of my favorite cynics, Nathaniel. But we’ll get to that in just a moment. It’s worth setting the stage.

In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the day after Jesus is baptized, two of John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus where he is staying, or where he abides. He answers them, “Come and see.” That day, Jesus calls Andrew and his brother Simon Peter.

Our reading today takes place the next day, as Jesus is returning from Bethany to Galilee. John tells us that Jesus “found” Phillip. Now, John is a fine poet, and he doesn’t use words lightly. While he regularly contrasts light and darkness, he also contrasts the notion of who is lost and who is found. And if you want an interesting spiritual exercise, try putting your own name in that sentence: Jesus found Nancy, or David, or Rilda or Brad, or James, and said, “Follow me.” Listen for Jesus calling your own name, saying “Follow me.”

Now, Phillip goes to his friend Nathaniel, and tells him about Jesus, describing Jesus in fairly glowing terms. He describes Jesus as fulfilling all the hopes of Israel, the man who Moses and the prophets wrote about: Jesus son of Joseph, of Nazareth. That’s a complex description, and we’ll try and unpack it a bit, but there’s something else worth noting. Phillip says “we found Jesus,” although the text says Jesus “found” Phillip. So I suspect that if Phillip did the finding, it was only in following Jesus that he found Him. And perhaps that’s true of us as well: if we want to find Jesus, we have to follow Him.

In response to Phillip’s assessment of Jesus, Nathaniel asks a poignant question: Can anything good come out of Nazareth? The question may reveal Nathaniel’s understanding of the biblical prophecies: the Messiah wasn’t supposed to come from Nazareth. Or his response may reveal a general disdain for that area. Nazareth was a poor, unimportant, hillside village, and it was no place special. We might as well ask whether anything good can come out of Haiti, or El Salvador, or the poverty-stricken countries of Africa. But I think Nathaniel’s question betrays something more troublesome. I think it’s a question born of cynicism, born of waiting for the Mashiach, the Messiah, waiting for God to make things right. I think that kind of cynicism is usually born out of many disappointments, out of hope that has been smothered, out of the rough tragedy of disappointment. Perhaps it’s a disappointment arising because the word of the Lord was rare in those days, too.

But Phillip answers his friend Nathaniel, echoing Jesus’ response the day before when John’s disciples asked Jesus where he was staying. Phillip tells him: “Come and see.” They are warm words, words of welcome and invitation. And as Nathaniel approaches Jesus, Jesus announces: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” There’s a bit of wordplay going on here. You see, before Israel was the name of a country, it was the name of a man, the name of one of Isaac’s two son’s. But Israel wasn’t the name he was born with; that name was given to him after he wrested with God at Peniel. His name at birth was Jacob, which means the deceiver, the usurper.

Now, in case you doubt that Jesus was directly referring to the story of Jacob and Israel, he returns to the story of Jacob at the end of this Gospel passage. When Jesus tells Nathaniel that he will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, he’s alluding to the story of Jacob’s ladder. Jacob arose from his dream knowing that he was standing “at the gate of heaven,” the intersection of heaven and earth.

But in today’s Gospel, Nathaniel comes to recognize a new point where heaven and earth intersect: the person of Jesus. Jesus recognizes Nathaniel: tells him he saw him under the fig tree before Phillip called him. And then Nathaniel recognizes Jesus. He says, “Rabbi, you are the son of God and the King of Israel.” This is Nathaniel’s discovery, his epiphany, his confession. And he reveals himself as a true Israelite, one for whom God’s promises were intended.

Like Samuel in the Old Testament reading, Nathaniel didn’t recognize the divine initially. But God knew Samuel, just as Jesus knew Nathaniel. As the Psalmist says, God created their inmost parts; knit them together in their mother’s womb. And ultimately, they both came to recognize the call of the divine upon their lives.

I’m wondering if we can hear the God calling our names in the dark, calling us from under the fig tree. Because I believe each of us are called to be living icons in which God’s presence in the world is revealed. Regardless of what we do for a living, that’s our vocation. Regardless of how well we know God, God has searched us out and knows us. God “traces our journeys and our resting places.”

Sometimes, when the word of the Lord seems very rare, God sneaks up on us and asks us to share in God’s dreams for the world. God calls to us and says, “Come and see,” or “Follow me.” We may hear God calling to us in a sick friend, a neighbor who’s just lost a child, or a homeless person who’s down on their luck. Like I said, the Almighty is sneaky that way. And God can use many voices: dreams, visions, or a man with Down’s syndrome in a superman tee shirt. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2018

 

 

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Teach Us to Pray

Posted on July 24, 2016 | 8 comments

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The full readings for today can be found here:

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray….”

In the name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Good morning, good morning. It’s good to be back with you at St. Paul’s.

You know, there’s an old family legend among my kinfolk about my great-grandfather, an Irishman who lived in Boston. One day, he had an appointment with the Bishop, and he was frantically running late. Well, he couldn’t find a parking spot, and so he lifted his eyes to heaven and spoke: “Lord, you know I need to speak with the good bishop. If you will find me a parking space, I promise that I will go to Mass every day for the rest of the year.”

Well, miraculously, the clouds parted on this dreary day, and bathed in a beam of glowing sunlight a parking space opened up right in front of the cathedral and my great-grandfather looked up to the heavens and said, “Never mind, Lord. I found it myself.”

So, today’s Gospel reading centers around prayer, and prayer for many of us is a bewildering thing. Sometimes, our prayer tumbles out so easily, as the need pours out of us and into God. Sometimes we stutter and stammer, lost in a wilderness of inarticulate mumbles. And sometimes, our prayers are nothing more than groans and silence. Sometimes, I think my best prayers are the simplest: I tell God “Help!” Or I simply say “Thank you.” And sometimes, there just aren’t any words for what I want to say. I just want to be, to abide in presence of the God who said I Am.

I know a lot more about what prayer is not than what it is. I don’t think God is some sort of sacramental concierge or holy genie who will give us three wishes. I don’t think prayer has much to do with making all our dreams come true, at least not in the way many people understand it. I suspect there’s not a one of you who’s not had a prayer go unheeded, and worried that it might have gone unheard.

And yet, the Gospel tells us, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” What are we to make of this?

Well, I think we get a hint of that in the way Jesus teaches the disciples to pray. I think this whole reading is teaching us something about the idea of the Kingdom of God. It’s worth noting that when the disciples ask Jesus how they should pray, the first thing he tells them to pray for is the Kingdom of God. Now, maybe that’s just something he thought they needed because they were an oppressed people suffering under Roman occupation who were living a subsistence existence.

I mean, for people like that, the Kingdom of God looks pretty good.  But what about people like us? One of the bishops in the Anglican Communion, a bishop from Africa, once observed: “In America, you don’t need God. You have air conditioning.” And it’s true. In this country, we idolize those who stand on their own two feet, who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  We idolize the “self-made man.” And I use that word deliberately. We idolize them. We have made an idol of them.

I don’t like to go to God asking for things. It makes me feel like a beggar. And then, sometimes I think, that’s exactly why I need to pray. You see, everything I have comes from God, and I need the humility of prayer to recognize that. Because I was born on third base, and mostly I strut around like I just hit a triple. I am prone to the delusion of my adequacy, my self-reliance. I need prayer to teach me about my dependency on God for all good things. I need prayer to teach me that I am a beggar.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with praying for the things we want or need, and I don’t think there’s anything too silly to take to God in prayer. I think all of our prayers, no matter how trivial or crude, involve what Evelyn Underhill called a “brush with Pentecost.” We who are fallen, we refugees from Paradise, have a chance to speak, anytime we want, with the Holy Trinity and to call Them into our lives. And it helps me to realize that while Jesus taught us to ask God for our daily bread, He also taught that He is the bread of life. And I think that whatever I pray for, in the final analysis, I end up with Jesus.

Many of us turn to God only when our lives seem out of control, when we are confronted by the violence of this world in places like Orlando, or Dallas, or Baton Rouge, or Munich, or Istanbul, or Kabul. Because then, everything seems out of control, at least beyond our control. So, maybe we do have a hint of what it felt like in first century Palestine, when the whole world seemed to have gone crazy.

Jesus told his disciples several things about prayer. The first of these is the story of the “friend at midnight” who comes knocking very late to borrow three loaves of bread. There are few things more troublesome than having a friend or being a friend. It doesn’t always happen when it’s convenient, and our friends rarely need us only when it’s convenient. I think Jesus is also telling us, and this is very good news, that it’s never too late to ask for God’s help. Prayer is an awkward thing. It is not always polite, nor can we put our prayers into some manageable cabinet or corner of our lives. Jesus counsels that we should turn to God when our hearts ache and we are in need.

Jesus then suggests we look at our relationship with God as we would look at a parent and a child. When our children ask for something, we don’t give them snakes or scorpions. Jesus reminds us, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” It is the Holy Spirit that compels us to pray for the coming of the Kingdom, for a time of justice and mercy and for a time of peace. And once we have prayed for it, we can join with the Spirit in working for it in a world where these things are needed desperately. Even when God does not bring us the things we ask for, God comes and brings along the Trinity, and that is enough.

You see, I don’t think that when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray that they were asking for a set of specific words to say, or an incantation to be sure that God was listening. And I don’t think that’s what Jesus really gave them. I think they were wanting to know how to get their hearts in the right place, so that they could have the kind of profound relationship Jesus had with the Father. I think they wanted to know how to imitate their rabbi, so that their whole lives would become extended acts of prayer.

There’s a wonderful story about Michael Ramsey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the giants of the Anglican Church. Someone once asked Ramsey how long he prayed each day. Ramsey answered, “About five minutes. But it usually takes me about an hour to get there.” We have to be willing to take the time to allow our relationship with the living God to develop, to take the time to allow the noise of the world to die down. Only then, can we listen for the voice of the One God to emerge and to become the first voice we listen to in a world where it’s so rarely heard. Only then, can we join in bringing about the Kingdom which is to come. Only then, can our whole lives become a kind of prayer, a living icon of Christ in the world. Lord, teach us to pray.

Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P.
© 2016

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