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A Great Chasm

Posted on September 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

Now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed…. (The full readings for this morning can be found here.)

In the name of the Living God, who is creating us, redeeming us, and sustaining us.

Well, good morning, everybody. So, in today’s gospel we encounter a man who’s having trouble with the afterlife and is concerned for his family. Whenever I hear this story, I think about a family we knew back in West Texas, the Beauchamp brothers.

Now, they were not nice people. In fact, everybody in the whole county knew the Beauchamp brothers. In business they were crooked, mean and cold-blooded. Well, one day, the older brother, Howard Beauchamp, he up and died. The younger brother, Ronnie, wanted to make sure that Howard got the finest funeral there had ever been in the county. He went down to the funeral home and bought a fine cherrywood coffin with silver hardware. Then he went to go see the minister.

The little church there was not doing so well. In fact, it was kind of falling apart at the seams. The air conditioner was old and tired, and the roof struggled to keep out the rain. Well, Ronnie Beauchamp, he went to the minister, and he offered him the Devil’s own bargain. He said, “Pastor, I will give your church half a million dollars if you will preach my brother’s funeral and tell everyone he was a saint.” Well, this was a real conflict for the preacher, because the church really needed that money, but he couldn’t lie from the pulpit.

So, the day of the funeral came around, and the whole town was there as the minister began to preach the funeral sermon.  He said, “The man you see in this coffin was a vile and debauched individual.  He was a liar, a thief, a bully, a great sinner, and he broke his mama’s heart.  He destroyed the fortunes, careers, and lives of countless people in this county, some of whom are here today. This man did every dirty, rotten thing you can think of.”

“But, the preacher added, … compared to his brother, he was a saint.”

Now, before we go any further, I want to make a couple of things clear. The passage we are reading isn’t a theological guide about how to get to heaven or how to avoid hell. This passage is one of Jesus’ parables—a riddle or a fable. So, I don’t think the rich man went to Hades because he was rich. And I don’t think Lazarus went to heaven because he was poor. But I do want us to start thinking this morning about the various chasms we encounter: chasms that separate us from each other, the gulfs between us and God—the chasms we come upon, and the chasms we help create.

One of the first places we notice a gap, or a distance, is between the circumstances of these two men. We are told that every day, the rich man ate luxurious meals, and he wore fine linen and purple. On the other hand, we can imagine Lazarus in rags, and we’re told he’s covered in sores. He’s also starving, and dreams of eating even the crumbs or scraps from the rich man’s meals.

And although their lives were very different, they did not live far away from each other. In fact, Lazarus lived just outside the rich man’s gate. But we get the feeling the rich man never noticed Lazarus. In fact, I get the impression that the rich man had become quite adept at ignoring Lazarus at the gate, a kind of studied disregard, a well-rehearsed apathy. So, their lives on earth were very far apart; they were separated by a great economic and social chasm.

Then, when the two men die, we have one of those classic reversals of fortune that Luke loves. It’s already happened right from the outset of the story. You see, we know the name of the poor man in the story—his name is Lazarus, which means God’s help. We don’t, however, know the name of the other character; he’s just some rich guy. That’s not how things normally work. We remember the rich and the mighty, and too often the names of the poor and the hopeless are forgotten.

But when their earthly lives are over, the angels carry Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham. In other words, he has a place of peace and comfort and honor among the righteous dead. The rich man, however, finds himself being tormented in Hades. There’s a considerable distance, a chasm, between their circumstances. But even from the fiery pit, the rich man doesn’t seem to recognize his new situation yet. He’s still treating Lazarus like a slave. You see, the biggest lie the devil ever told us is that some lives are worth more than others, that some people are more important than others.

The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus with just a bit of water on his finger to ease the rich man’s suffering. Once again, here’s that Lucan reversal of fortune. Abraham tells the rich man: “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.”

The bigger problem, Abraham explains, is that vast chasm between Lazarus and the rich man. Now, maybe Jesus was trying to tell us that heaven is a long, long way away from hell, but I don’t think so. I think the distance between Lazarus and the rich man is simply the echo and amplification of the separation the rich man created while they were alive. In other words, to borrow an idea from Charles Dickens, they wear the chains they forged in life. Jesus reminds us that there is a deep and profound connection between how we live in this life and how we live in the next life.

So, what are we supposed to do with this passage? What am I supposed to do about the homeless man that I drove by on my way to church this morning? Am I supposed to give him a dollar? Buy him a meal? Pay for him to spend a night in a hotel room? If I do that, will Jesus let me into heaven?

I think the very last thing Jesus wanted to do in his parables was to give us easy answers to these questions. I think we were meant to struggle with this issue, to learn to listen to Moses and the prophets. I also think we have to find a way to close the tremendous gaps between ourselves and our brothers and sisters. We all know about the terrible gap of wealth inequality, and we saw the political distance widen in this country after Charlie Kirk was killed and both parties clawed at each other desperately for a spot on the moral high ground

My friends, as Doctor King warned us, “We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools.” We know about the chasm between God’s children. I think the biggest chasm I have to struggle with every day is the gap between the man I am and the man I want to be, the distance between the life I’m leading, and the life Jesus wants for me.
I think the first thing is that we notice how deeply, how profoundly, God cares for the poor. This morning, the Psalmist tells us happy are those:

Who give justice to those who are oppressed,
and food to those who hunger.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind;
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.

A friend of mine puts it a little differently. He likes to tell me that no one gets into heaven without a letter of recommendation from the poor.

Secondly, I think we have to find a way to bridge the gap between us and the broken-hearted of this world. We must find a way to reach across to those who are hungry, to those who live in hopelessness. And we’ve got to quit asking whether they deserve our help, our charity. Quite frankly, that is none of our business. God will figure that out.

I do believe charity is important, and yes, the rich man fails to tend to, or care about, the needs of Lazarus. But there was a sin that came before that, an earlier fault that made all the others possible. He didn’t even notice Lazarus. He didn’t notice the man at his gate. I don’t want to think about the number of times I’ve turned my glance away from the homeless and the poor. And the failure to notice them robs us of any chance we have to make a difference in their lives, to make a friend. So maybe we should begin by noticing them, and I mean this quite literally, for the love of God, notice them. Maybe if we go out of our way, just a little bit, we might learn to share our resources, and more importantly, to share our hearts. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2025

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The Scent of Scandal at Bethany

Posted on April 5, 2025 | 2 comments

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (The full readings for this morning can be found here.)



In the name of the living God who is creating, redeeming, and sustaining us.

Way back a very long time ago, back in the early twelfth century, I was a boy in Odessa, Texas. And I can tell you my very first memory. I was riding in a golf cart with my father, and I couldn’t have been older than three or four years old. And the sun was coming up, and I smelled the scent of freshly cut grass, and I thought I must have gone to heaven.

And I remember going to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, and the house was full of the most wonderful smells: ham, turkey, sweet potatoes, about 5 kinds of pie, and a pot of cowboy coffee on that old stove. Oh, I can still smell those thanksgivings.

Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “Smells are surer than sights or sounds to make your heartstrings crack.” And Hellen Keller once observed, “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” Neuropsychologists tell us that smell is one of the most powerful gateways into our memories, in part because those two parts of the brain are very close to each other. Think about your first new car, or favorite book or your first trip to the library as a child, and you will almost automatically be drawn to the way they smelled. I think this is true in part because our sense of smell is so closely tied with the act of breathing—we don’t just detect a scent, we take it into our lungs and our bodies through our breath, which is another way of saying we take it into our spirit.

So, this morning, the Church offers us this wonderful story of a dinner party. It takes place in Bethany, which is bordered by the Mount of Olives, and only about two miles from the city of Jerusalem. And Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem; in fact, it’s his last trip to that city. And nothing very good is going to happen there.

Now, this is sort of an odd dinner party, for a number of reasons. It takes place at the home of Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus—yes, that Lazarus. And just one chapter before this, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. And even Jesus, knowing all that he knew and was about to do, wept at that tomb. He wept over the death of his friend, and he wept over the grief he shared with his friend’s sisters. And when Jesus told them to roll away the stone, Martha voiced her concern: “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.” She was concerned about the stench of the grave, the odor of death and decay. But Jesus called Lazarus back from the grave and ordered them to unbind him from the strips of cloth in which he was entombed.

So, we have these two sisters at this dinner party, along with Lazarus (who was dead, but is alive) and Jesus (who is alive but will not be for much longer). And then, we have Judas. I’ll circle back around to him in a bit. And they are gathered at the table.

Then, one of the sisters (Mary) does something remarkable. She does something scandalous, something embarrassing, something shocking, something prodigal. (You may remember that story of the prodigal son from last week, another story of a reckless love that doesn’t care about dignity.) She takes a pound of perfume made from pure nard and anoints Jesus’ feet with it and then she wipes them with her hair. Let’s break this down a bit.

Nard was a very expensive perfume with a strong, distinctive aroma that clung to the skin. It is mentioned elsewhere in Scripture, in the Song of Solomon, which is also a sensuous and erotic and sometimes scandalous book of the bible. The value of the oil with which she anoints Jesus’ feet is approximately a year’s wages. So, this is a lavish, sensuous act of devotion. And women of that time, did not loosen their hair, let alone wash a man’s feet with it. But just as her brother Lazarus was unbound from his death shroud, Mary unbinds her hair and begins to wash Jesus’ feet. Washing someone’s feet—well, that was dirty work for the servants or slaves. In fact, women of that time did not touch a man at all unless they were married.

So, all the good, proper ladies over at the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem would have been clutching their pearls at this scene.

And then Judas asks a question, “Why didn’t she do some good with this money? Why not give it to the poor?” Now Judas is the consummate cynic, right? You know what a cynic is—a cynic is someone who knows what everything costs but doesn’t know what anything is worth. The stench of betrayal and stinginess and violence clings to him. And he cannot recognize the worth of this moment as this woman pours out her wealth, pours out her life and her dignity, upon this man Jesus. A love that reckless doesn’t care what love costs.

And Jesus tells Judas, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” And I don’t want you to think that Jesus was unconcerned with the plight of the poor. The gospels tell us, rather, that he was profoundly concerned with the poor. But this is a special moment, a moment of lavish, unselfish tenderness, and I’m sure it strengthened Jesus for those horrifying days that lay ahead. Judas, if we take him at his word, was more concerned with a return on the investment. Mary, on the other hand, wasn’t making an investment; she was giving a gift. Love, with no strings attached. Love may not always be the most practical response, but it is always the divine response.

Now, Mary had purchased this perfume for the time of Jesus’ death, but instead chooses to anoint Jesus now. In a profound sense, she chooses life over death. This woman was willing to risk shame and embarrassment and ridicule— all for a reckless love. That kind of love always leads to the cross. Always. And maybe sometimes, every now and then, we might remember that loving God sometimes means a reckless refusal to consider the cost of love, and we might focus on what it’s worth. And maybe we might remember that God, as Isaiah tells us, is about to do a new thing.

Now, in just a few days we will celebrate Maundy Thursday, the day when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. It’s the very next Chapter of John’s gospel, and again, it’s very intimate and embarrassing. But, when we get there, I want you to remember, it was this woman Mary who showed Jesus how to do that, who showed him what love looks like.

The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Breathe that in, breath in her tender, reckless devotion and breathe in the life of Jesus. And then, exhale love. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2025

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You Are the Man!

Posted on August 5, 2024 | 1 comment

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. (The full readings for today can be found here.)

In the name of the Living God, who is creating, redeeming, and sustaining us. Good morning, good morning. Now, some of y’all know that my family came from out in West Texas, and that’s where I grew up. And y’all might find this surprising, but I was not always the saintly person you know today. No, I was not always the shining angelic light you see here on Sunday mornings. My misbehavior wasn’t usually all that serious: maybe I was cruel to my brothers, or acted selfishly, or took something that didn’t belong to me. And every now and then, the fire trucks would have to come to our house, but that’s another story.

So, when I would fall short of my parents’ expectations, my father would pull me aside and look me in the eyes and tell me, “Son, that’s not the cowboy way.” And without fail, I would crater. I would dwindle away and shrink to about 2 inches tall because I knew I had failed to live the way my family had lived for generations. And come to think about it, my father was not unlike one of the Old Testament prophets, not unlike Nathan in today’s story. And when my father had these little chats with me . . . well, I knew I had been prophesied to.

So, our reading today continues the story we began last week. So, maybe we ought to review just a bit. Our story began when David was king over Israel, in the springtime as scripture tells us, “when kings go out to battle.” But David, he didn’t go out to battle, and we’re not told why, but David let others fight his battles for him. David looked down from his roof and saw a beautiful woman bathing herself, and he wanted her. Even knowing she is the wife of one of his commanders, who is off fighting his battles for him, he wanted to have her.

And David took her, and lay with her and she became pregnant. And then, and this is hard to imagine, it gets worse. First, he tried to cover up his affair by bringing Uriah home from the war. When that didn’t work, he arranged to have Uriah killed in battle. And that gets us up to where our reading begins this morning. After arranging for her husband’s death, David brings Bathsheba into his house, marries her, and she gives birth to his child.

I know this is a shocking story and we are all clutching our collective pearls. Within about a month, David has managed to break almost every one of the Ten Commandments. I mean, a political figure, a religious leader, involved in a sexual scandal and then trying to cover it up? Thank heavens we don’t have to deal with that sort of thing anymore.

 So, I want to stop there and do a bit of a theological reflection on this man, this king, David. We all remember the story of David killing the giant Goliath who had been mocking the armies of Israel. The very first words we hear out of David’s mouth in that story are: “What will you do for the man who kills this Philistine?” In other words, what exactly is in it for me? Then we have him engage in an affair with Bathsheba, and engage in all sorts of sordid behavior to try and cover it up, including what amounts to basically murder. Our Jewish brothers and sisters have a complicated theological term for this sort of person. They would tell us that David is acting like a schmuck, and they would be right.

So, our translation this morning tells us that the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. That translation sort of softens the original text;  this is not exactly what the original Hebrew says. In Hebrew, the text reads that the thing David had done was evil in the in eyes of the Lord. And so, the Lord sends the prophet Nathan to speak to David, to tell him that he’s been acting like a schmuck, to tell him “that’s not the cowboy way.”

So Nathan goes to David,  and Nathan tells him a little story: he tells him a parable about a poor man and a rich man who stole the poor man’s only lamb. And to his credit, David hasn’t completely lost his sense of right and wrong. David says, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.”  So, David can see the moral failure in the story; he just can’t manage to see it in the mirror.

This gets me to one of the first observations I want to make about sin. Sin can act like a kind of moral cataract, obscuring our ability to clearly see our own situation and the nature of our actions. Like King David, self-delusion is one of my superpowers. And because of the nature of sin and its ability to blur our vision, from time to time we all need a prophet Nathan to help us see ourselves more clearly.

And Nathan shows David some of the consequences of what he’s done. He says because you’ve taken the life of Uriah and taken his wife, the sword will never leave your house. And God tells him, I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house. God says, you did these things in secret but I will do them openly. And David comes to realize that he has sinned.

So, I think this story teaches us a few other things about the nature of sin. First, we think we can control it, but we can’t. The outcome of sin is unpredictable. Sin operates sort of like the science of forensics. When the bullet enters the body, it enters through a tiny hole, but as it travels through cartilage and bone it flattens and spreads and the exit wound is much larger and jagged.

Secondly, there are two people who haven’t done anything wrong in this story: Uriah and the child of David and Bathsheba’s union. Both of them will die. It would be nice if the only people who suffered because of sin were the guilty, but that’s not the way this world works. Sin has a gravitational pull and draws the innocent into it. Sin is unstable, and collateral damage is just part of its capricious nature.

Third, we hope that the harm done by our wrong will be comparable to the wrong done. Again, that’s magical thinking, an infantile hope. Because of sin’s unstable nature, the consequence of sin can sometimes be vastly disproportionate to the level of wrong done.

And the last observation I’ll make about sin comes from one of my favorite novels, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald wrote: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” The point is this: in order to great harm, we don’t actually have to intend some evil plan; great harm and great suffering can result from our simple carelessness.

The more we understand about the nature of sin, the more perilous this world can seem, as though we were walking through a moral minefield, with nowhere safe to step. But there is a place we can go. There is a balm in Gilead, and there is mercy, and it is plentiful. We can trust in the practice of confession and absolution. We can turn to the Nathans in our lives, perhaps our confessors, perhaps our spiritual directors, perhaps a priest or a close friend. We can find all those right here at St. Mark’s Episcolopolus Church. And in a few moments, we can come to this altar, to take a bit of Jesus into our lives, maybe lay down some of our burdens there. And in that sacrament of repentance and forgiveness and renewal, we can start over again. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2024

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The First Duty of Love

Posted on April 21, 2024 | 2 comments


“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” (The full readings for today can be found here.) In the name of the Living God, who is creating, redeeming, and sustaining us.

Well, good morning, everybody, good morning. You know, I’m not sure…no, I’m not sure at all. I’m not sure that I’m qualified to preach on this Good Shepherd Sunday. You see, my people were cattle people. They weren’t sheep people. And cattle people didn’t always get along with sheep people. By “not always,” I mean they never got along with each other.

And while there are a lot of differences between cattle and sheep, a couple of them come to mind. One of the biggest differences is that you can lead sheep, but you have to drive cattle. Unlike cattle, sheep will learn to follow. They build friendships and will stick up for one another. Like us, they are highly social animals, and when they are under stress or isolation, they become sad, and yes, even depressed. And they are very intelligent creatures; they recognize faces and voices. But like us, they will sometimes stray away from the herd, and need to be watched over.

In Jesus’ time, sheep were a mainstay of survival: they provided milk and cheese, and sometimes meat for the family and for sacrifices. They also provided wool for warm garments. But I think there’s something going on in John’s gospel than a discussion of first-century animal husbandry or livestock. I think this gospel reading is, at its core, about how we love, and how we are loved.

So, I think we should note a couple of things before we go on. And for this, I think we have to go all the way back to the beginning of John’s gospel, back to the very first time we meet this man called Jesus. You may remember that John was baptizing people in the river Jordan when he saw Jesus and shouted out: “Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Now, lambs had been used as sacrificial animals for a long time by the Jewish people and were particularly associated with the holy feast of Passover.

We hear this same image, this same symbolic language in the last passage of John’s gospel, where the resurrected Jesus and Peter sit by a charcoal fire after breakfast.  And Jesus makes clear to Peter that Peter’s assurance of love carries with it a tender and sometimes difficult office, an obligation to feed his sheep. So, I want to suggest if we find this image being used in the beginning of John’s gospel, at the end of his gospel, and this morning pretty much in the middle of the gospel, we can probably safely assume that John thought this was important.

But as we read this, we might be forgiven if we have a moment of confusion. Is Jesus the lamb or the shepherd? Why is Peter feeding the sheep? Are we the sheep, or is Jesus the lamb? Quite frankly, it seems a bit complicated, and a little bewildering.

I think at least part of the answer lies, perhaps a bit veiled, in Jesus’ statement: “I am the good shepherd.” It’s one of what’s called the “I am” sayings of Jesus: you know, “I am the Bread of Life”, “I am the Light of the World”, “I am the vine,” and “I am the Good Shepherd.” In doing so, Jesus is aligning himself with a very old understanding of who God is. You remember the story from the Book of Exodus, when Moses asks God his name and God replies, “I am who I am.” For John, there is no difference between God and Jesus, the Word, the Logos. And for John, there is no difference between listening to Jesus and listening to God.

Jesus distinguishes his role from that of a hired hand. And at least part of the distinction has to do with how they react when the wolves come. Whether you’re a cattle person or a sheep person, you know about wolves. Lord have mercy, I believe we all know about wolves. You can find them in any walk of life—in business, in politics, and on our television screens. Sometimes those wolves come disguised as ambition or greed, sometimes as addictions, sometimes as failure, and sometimes as desperation.

You might argue that the distinction between the Good Shepherd and the hired hand is about their level of commitment. Perhaps the hired hand acts out of self-interest, while the Good Shepherd isn’t afraid of the wolves and understands his responsibilities. But I think there’s something more there. I think the Good Shepherd doesn’t run away when the wolves come because he acts out of something much more profound. Love, and only love, hangs around when the wolves come. Love, and only love, is willing to stand its ground when the situation gets risky. Only that kind of love is willing to lay down its life for the beloved.

Now, here’s the good news. We are the beloved. And Jesus is telling us that he loves us like that, that God loves us like that. And that kind of love doesn’t even ask what it costs, because it knows what it’s worth.
Later in this same Chapter of John, Jesus tells us “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” I often wonder how well I’m listening for the voice of Jesus. When I get busy, when I get worried, or when I’m simply careless, it’s hard to hear.

You know, a very famous theologian named Paul Tillich said, “The first duty of love is to listen.” That’s worth repeating: “The first duty of love is to listen.” We have a lot of choices in this world as to which voices we’ll listen to. We can listen to the voices that tell us that our neighbors aren’t like us—voices that tell us that they’re not as smart as we are, or they’re freeloaders, or they’re dangerous. Or we can listen to the voices that tell us this world is full of risk and danger, that we might not have enough, or the voices that tell us that our lives will finally make sense if we just get that new car, that new outfit, that new iPhone, or earn enough to retire. We can listen to those voices that tell us that we’re not quite smart enough, not quite pretty enough, or not quite good enough.  

Or we can listen to the voice of the One who will never run away when the wolves come, the one who offers us forgiveness, the one who came to show us what an abundant life really looks like. We can listen to the One who laid down his life for us, who said he’d never leave us, who says he’s with us always, even to the end of time. That kind of voice, that kind of love, is hard to fathom; in fact, it’s one of life’s deepest mysteries.

We are sometimes told, “You are what you eat.” I think it’s equally true that we are what we listen to. The voices we hear can shape us in powerful ways. Genuine listening is an attitude of the heart, a vulnerability to the holy. If indeed the first duty of love is to listen, the choice we are compelled to make is which voice we are going to listen for. Maybe, just maybe, if we listen in love, we will hear the voice of the One who loves us limitlessly, who loves us fearlessly. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2024

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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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Lord, Save Me!

Posted on August 13, 2023 | 2 comments

But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Matt. 14:30 (The full text of the readings can be found here.)

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

As a boy in West Texas, I grew up as the oldest of four sons. Now, that was in the 60s, and back then, we went through a lot of uncertainty, a good deal of ambiguity. But there’s one thing we all knew with absolute mathematical precision; we knew it to a moral certainty. We knew it because every boy in West Texas knew it. We were sure that if a horny toad shot blood into your eyes, we knew that you would go blind.

So one morning, early in the morning, I woke up to find that my brothers had tied me to my bed. Like Gulliver, these Lilliputians had bound me where I lay, and I knew that nothing good could come of this. But my predicament got even worse when my brother Patrick, my no-good brother Patrick, took out a shoebox containing at least a dozen big fat horny toads. With glee in his eyes, he dumped them onto the bed where I was tied down and screaming like a banshee. Now, I’m not saying that my brothers were intentionally trying to blind me, but they were at least wildly indifferent to the possibility that I would end up sightless. So, I understand exactly how Joseph felt when his brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery in Egypt. And I was sorely tempted to preach on that today, but the Church has given us an even better story.

Oh my, what a story. So today, we hear the story of a man named Peter who is willing to leave his relative comfort and security because he hears the call of Jesus.

If you know anything about my spiritual life, you know that I love Peter. He is my favorite biblical blunderer—overenthusiastic, and terribly underprepared. He is full of bravado and bluster and he clumsily rushes in where angels fear to tread. I think he really wants to follow Jesus, but most of the time, he really doesn’t have a clue about what that might look like. You know, now that I think about it, he’s a lot like…me.

It’s important for us to look at this story in context. This passage follows the feeding of the 5,000 in a deserted place, in the wilderness. Now the writers of scripture use two ways to signal a time and place of trouble and anxiety and danger. They talk about the wilderness, and they talk about the sea. And in this Gospel passage, Jesus has just left the wilderness, and the disciples find themselves on a stormy sea. So, you know there’s going to be some trouble.

One of the consistent metaphors used throughout the Old and New Testaments is the image of the sea as representing trouble or difficulty. These waters represent the nothingness before creation, in the Hebrew the tobu wa-bohu. The sea was perceived as the vortex around which danger and chaos and evil spun. So, in today’s Gospel, we find Jesus calling the disciples, not away from the storm, but into it. In fact, Jesus sends the disciples into the boat while he dismisses the crowds and goes to pray. Jesus goes to the mountain, like Moses, to encounter the God of Abraham. Thus, while he retreats to the mountains, he compels the disciples to face the sea of chaos. Literally translated, they are being tormented by the waves. Jesus compels them to confront their own frailty, their own vulnerability.

This story reminds us of another story in Matthew’s Gospel, in the eighth chapter. If you’ll remember that passage, Jesus was sleeping through the storm while the disciples cried, “Save us, Lord, for we are perishing.” And if you’ll recall, that story ends with the disciples wondering what kind of man Jesus is, if even the wind and the water obey him.

So, in today’s reading, it’s worth noting that the disciples have been out in this storm, on the water, for a long time. They’re sent away before evening, and they don’t see Jesus again until early in the morning. So, like many of us, they’ve been struggling to stay afloat for a good while. It’s not really the storm that frightens them, but they are terrified when they see Jesus. I love the nonchalant way the Gospel writer reports, “he came walking toward them on the sea.” Matthew records it as matter-of-factly as if he were saying that Jesus scratched his head or sat down to eat a tomato sandwich.

The disciples, as is so often the case, fail to recognize Jesus. And maybe, just maybe, it’s their fear that keeps them from knowing Jesus, just like our fear sometimes keeps us from seeing Jesus when he’s right beside us.

While the disciples are initially afraid that they are seeing a ghost, Jesus reassures them it’s him. And our translation really doesn’t do justice to Jesus’ words of comfort. In fact, this is a bad translation; it’s a terrible translation. In the original Greek, Jesus’ announcement is more sparse, succinct, and significant. In the Greek, Jesus says “Ego eimi.”  That phrase, I Am, is the name of God, the name he gave Moses as he told him to confront Pharoah. And so, Jesus assures them: “I Am.” He takes them back all the way to the God of Abraham and Moses, reminding them of the presence of God even on this storm-rocked sea.

And so, Peter sort of invites himself to join Jesus on the water. He calls Jesus “Lord,” but I’m not sure he understands exactly what he’s saying. Jesus is Lord, Lord over the deep and troubled waters, Lord over the wind and waves, Lord over the storms and all the destructive powers that seek to overwhelm our lives.

This is why I love Peter: he is so eager and yet, not quite ready. And he joins our Lord on the water and for a moment….the laws of nature and gravity are suspended. I suspect that, for just a moment, the angels stopped their singing and all heaven held its breath. And then, Peter began to notice the strong winds around him and he began to sink. And, whatever else you can say about Peter, at least he has the presence of mind to know where to turn in trouble. He turns to Jesus. He cries out, “Lord, save me.”

And when Jesus returns to the boat with Peter the wind dies down and the disciples all acknowledge that Jesus, the Jesus who walks across the storm and calms all our troubled seas, is the Son of God. And I don’t think we should judge St. Peter too harshly, in fact, I don’t think we should judge him at all, because he embodies one of the fundamental principles of the Christian life: we are going to fail. We fall down five times, and through God’s grace, we get up six.

Changing our lives is hard. It was hard for Peter and it’s hard for us. If we want to live for Christ, live whole-hearted lives, it’s going to take some time, and we’re going to make mistakes. Living with courage and hope and taking chances means we’re going to fail sometimes, and we need to be prepared for that. And yet, God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who constantly reminds us “I Am”— is always stronger than the sum of all our fears and failures.

Following Jesus is no assurance of smooth sailing. Being disciples does not shield us from the hard knocks of life and death. In fact, the biblical witness would tell us something quite to the contrary: we are assured of the storm.

You see, like St. Peter, God wants more from us than lives of safety and stability. God’s dreams for the world are bigger than that. God has called us to be explorers on an adventure: seeking God in unlikely places and pointing out His presence when others cannot see it. God had wonderful dreams for Peter, and has wonderful dreams for us, too. And so, we join him in stepping out of the boat, sinking sometimes, but always proclaiming the presence of God in the storm. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2023

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In the Beginning Again (Homily for the Great Vigil)

Posted on April 9, 2023 | 1 comment

He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. (The full readings for today can be found here.)

            Good evening, my friends, good evening. And welcome to the Great Vigil of Easter.

Did you notice that opening line of that very first reading? It’s such a fabulous first line, a cardinal statement: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”

But we might well wonder, Why is the Church giving us that story this evening, as we celebrate the great vigil? What does this have to do with Easter—with the empty tomb? It’s almost as if the Church were trying to tell us something, as if the Church were offering a glimpse into the nature of God through the lens of these readings. I think the Church is trying to give us some insight into God’s professional life, God’s business. You see, I think God is in the business of creating life where there was no life before. And there’s only one reason for that sort of creative impulse, that need to form and shape something new. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, I want us to imagine the state of mind of the disciples, particularly these women, going to anoint Jesus’ body for his burial. Not only have they witnessed the brutal horror of Jesus’ death, not only have they lost their friend and teacher, but they’ve also seen a dream die. They had dreamed of a life with Jesus, of a life filled with God’s love; they had dreamed of a better world. So they went to the tomb to honor their friend, to honor their loss, to honor the dead.

But they didn’t find any death there, because our God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Our God, as we said earlier, is in the business of new life. Our God is in the business of calling light out of the darkness, of creating new life out of nothing more than His love.

We see that new life happening this evening, right before our eyes. God is on the loose again tonight at St. Christopher By the Sea, doing that God thing. God is about to make a new thing, another Genesis story, in the baptisms of Addison and Wayne. And, while we don’t know yet what paths they will walk down in their lives to come, we know who will always walk with them.

Looking back to the readings tonight, I’m pretty sure that the forces of empire were certain that the story of Jesus was over. In fact, they were certain he was not only dead, but buried. But God, like love, is never static; neither God nor love will be contained. And I want to suggest to you that something more than Jesus escaped from that grave—pure love rolled away the stone, unadulterated love walked out of that tomb, and love told those dear women that he would meet them again in Galilee.

Many of us have tried to keep God in a box. We try to create a spiritual ghetto—over here is where I keep my work life, and over here is where I keep my family stuff, and this box here is where I keep my religion. That box we try to keep God in, well, it’s nothing more than a grave, a tomb. And if today’s Gospel teaches us anything, it teaches us that God will not stay where we put Him. This is our hope; this is why we call ourselves Easter people, my friends. He is not dead; he is risen. Alleluia!

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2022



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What is Truth?(Good Friday)

Posted on April 7, 2023 | 1 comment

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (The full readings for this morning can be found here.)

In the name of the living God, who is creating, redeeming, and sustaining us.Good evening, good evening. It’s good to be back with you again.

 You know, sometimes, when I look at the readings for a given Sunday, my first thought as a preacher is “There’s just not much there to talk about.”  That is definitely not the case with the readings for tonight. Rather, this is like trying to get a drink from a firehose. So, I want to highlight just a few passages from this story of Jesus’ Passion. As we read the Gospel for today, we cannot help but wince as we recall Jesus’ words: “This is my body. This is my blood.”

 So, we talked yesterday about the wonderful observation of Jürgen Moltmann, who said that all of our thinking about God, especially our theology of hope, must be accomplished “within earshot of the dying Christ.” Well, tonight we can hear Christ all too clearly. In fact, we may want to plug our ears, but we mustn’t do that, or we’ll miss something very important.

Now, I love my friend John’s gospel. John is a poet, and everything is his Gospel is laden with layers of meaning. In this Gospel, there are no accidents, and there are no coincidences. So, we all remember the fabulous story of Moses on Mt. Horeb when he encounters the burning bush. God tells Moses to take off his sandals because he’s standing on holy ground and tells him that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When Moses asks him his name, God replies, “I am that I am.” We call this the Great I Am, and it implies that everything that has existence, everything that is, exists because of and through God.

Now, let’s see what this poet John does with that idea. When the soldiers and Pharisees come to the Garden of Gethsemane asking for Jesus, he replies, “I am he.” As Jesus hangs on the cross, dying, he says, “I am thirsty.” Now let’s look at how John treats Peter, Jesus’ close friend. You’ll recall that Peter had sworn, “Even though they all fall away, I will not leave you.” And Peter does follow Jesus—right up to the courtyard of the high priest. But when a woman asks Peter if he’s one of Jesus’ disciples he replies, “ I am not.” I am….not. Again, as he tries to warms himself, the crowd asks if Peter was a disciple of Jesus. Peter again says, “I am not.” Peter’s repudiation is actually a denial of his association with God.

I don’t want to judge Peter too harshly. There have certainly been times in my life when I walked away from God, even pushed God away. Sometimes, we all find our fears to be overpowering. This is especially true when confronted with the power of empire, especially an empire as brutal as the Roman empire. You may recall we talked on Maundy Thursday about Jesus and the great commandment: the notion that people would know we follow Jesus by our love.

But a love like that will stick out like a sore thumb in a place like the Roman Empire. Whether it’s Pharoah or Caesar or Vladimir Putin, empire only wants one thing: more—more bricks, more oil, more guns, more land. Empire concerns itself with expansion and self-preservation. Love is concerned, fiercely, with the other.

We see this distinction exposed in the discussion between Pilate and Jesus. Revealing his primary concern with empire, Pilate begins by asking Jesus if he is a king. Jesus doesn’t answer the question, or rather, answers the question with a question of his own. Pilate then asks “What have you done?” And Jesus doesn’t answer this question. Rather, he now goes back to the first question, and says that he is a king in another place. Jesus tells Pilate that he came into the world to testify to the truth. Now, Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” Later, Pilate asks, “Where are you from?” And Jesus doesn’t answer. In frustration, Pilate then demands, “”Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” Do you not know that I have the power to hang you up on a tree like a scarecrow?

Does it seem to you that these two men are having a failure to communicate? Although they may be speaking the same language, they don’t share a common vocabulary or a common point of reference. Pilate asks the question, “What is truth?” He doesn’t seem to know and I’m not sure he really cares. In reality, the Truth is standing right in front of him. The Truth is about to be beaten and crucified—because in a world dominated by empire, truth and love will stand out like a sore thumb. Empire doesn’t have any use for truth, but Pilate reveals his real concern. His concern, and his last question, is about power. That is the nature of empire.

Fear and violence are the principal tools, the fundamental weapons of empire. And the Cross was just such a tool. You know, it’s said that for the first century or so, the fish and not the cross, was the primary symbol of Christianity. And I think that’s because no one who had actually seen a crucifixion could bear to see the Cross used in that way, they could not yet imagine it as an avatar of faith. For them, the Cross marked only terror and brutality. Those forces can only be overcome through the strongest force known to humanity. Only love can overcome them.

We see that love demonstrated as Jesus hangs on the Cross, dying. He looks down upon his mother and the beloved disciple, the only ones who remained with him, or the only people who could bear to watch this horror show. And as he’s dying, he says to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” He tells his disciple, “Here is your mother.” It is a moment of unbelievable tenderness, a moment of redefining family as a community of love and loss, an expression of God’s concern for those left behind even in these final moments of agony.

So, what does this story mean for us as Christians in the 21st century, some two thousand years after these events? Well, among other things, I think it means that God intended to share in the entire human experience: pain, hunger, thirst, weddings, joy, glory, sorrow and loss, and even shame and death. God reached into the entire human experience, knew it firsthand, touched it, and made it sacred. It means that there is no part of our lives that God does not understand and will not share with us.

I want to suggest to you that it was not iron nails that fastened Jesus to the Cross. Rather, Jesus was held there by the love of God for all of humanity. In a real sense, the Cross is God’s statement to the world: do your very worst. You can beat me, mock me, scorn me, betray me, deny me, hang me on a tree like a scarecrow, and even kill me. Do your very worst, and I will still love you. And thus, the Cross was changed, transubstantiated, from an instrument of torture and shame into a symbol of hope and love. God’s love overcomes empire, terror, and death. And that’s got to be “good news.”Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2022

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The Unjust Judge

Posted on October 16, 2022 | 3 comments

In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, `Grant me justice against my opponent.’ Luke 18. (The full readings for this morning can be found here.)

In the name of the Living God, who is creating, redeeming, and sustaining us.  Well, good morning, good morning. It’s good to be with you again here at St. Michael’s. And many thanks to Brynn and all of you for your generous hospitality.

So, this morning in the lectionary, the Church offers us this story which is sometimes called the parable of the unjust judge. And this passage of the Gospel reminds me of one of my favorite stories about the religious life. Several years ago, there was a young woman who became a nun. And she made her vows and entered the convent. Now the rules of this particular Order required that she be cloistered and keep silence, although every ten years the sisters were allowed to say two words. So, for the first ten years, she was assigned to make the beds. And she changed the sheets, and washed them,  and made every bed throughout the monastery. And at the end of that ten years, she went to the Mother Superior and said, “Bed hard.” Well, the next ten years, she was assigned to the kitchen. And she peeled the potatoes and cooked the oatmeal and cleaned every pot in that monastery. And at the end of that ten years, she went to the Mother Superior and told her, “Kitchen hot.”

After ten long years she was next assigned to clean the bathrooms. And she washed every sink and bathtub and scrubbed every toilet they had. And at the end of that ten years, she went to the Mother Superior and said, “I quit.” And the elder nun looked at her and said, “Good. You haven’t done anything but nag me since you got here.” Contrary to that story, and today’s gospel, I don’t think prayer has much to do with nagging God.

And we may be a little confused by this parable, or by many of them. The Hebrew word for parable is mashal, which carries with it connotations of a story, or an allegory, or a riddle. And many of these parables may leave us scratching our heads, including the one this morning, but that’s their function. They’re kind of like a picture frame that is intentionally hung so that it’s not level, so that we’ll have to really think about and puzzle over what’s portrayed. These parables are meant to make us think, to examine, and to turn an idea over in our minds until we come to a deeper understanding of it. And the broader question that I think Luke wants us to look at is how do we think prayer operates, and what does faithful living look like in a fallen world?

So, let’s take a deeper look at this parable and see what it offers us. Jesus begins his story: “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” Oh, I’ve been to that city. And I’m pretty sure that I know that judge. I was a lawyer for a very long time, and on more than one occasion, I ran across that judge who did not fear God nor respect people. And without revealing too much about this judge, I can tell you that the county seat is Beaumont. Now, I should have known there was going to be a problem because in French the name Beaumont means “beautiful mountain.”  Have y’all ever been to Jefferson County? Well, it’s not beautiful, and there’s no mountain.

Seriously, if you’ve ever met someone like that—someone who doesn’t fear God and doesn’t respect people—you know how truly frightening a person that is. And I don’t think for a moment, Jesus is trying to tell us that God is like that. The God we worship loved and respected humanity, embraced all sorts of people, prayed regularly, and his blood watered the hill we call Golgotha. I want to circle back to the contrast between God and this unjust judge in just a moment, but first let’s look at one of the other characters in the story.

When we examine the widow in this parable, we remember the biblical direction about taking care of widows because in that world they were fragile and vulnerable. And yet this widow doesn’t seem vulnerable at all. She constantly goes to the unjust judge asking for justice against her opponent. Some translators tell us the better translation is “give me revenge.” And we might re-think our notion of her as fragile when we realize that the judge is actually being worn out by this woman.

So, is Jesus actually telling us that the real secret to a rich prayer life is becoming a bother to God, pestering the Almighty until He just gives in? Somehow, I don’t think that’s the point, especially since Jesus is on the receiving end of so many of our prayers. Now, there are some folks, and a few preachers, who will tell you that if you close your eyes real hard, and give money to the church, and believe just right, God will give you anything you ask for—as if the Almighty were some sort of a cross between a celestial ATM and a divine Santa Claus. We have a name for that sort of theology. We call it “heresy.”

I think Jesus is talking to us about two things. First, he’s telling us not to lose heart. And it’s so easy in this world to lose heart. There are unjust judges everywhere. Our political discourse has been reduced to the snarkiest common denominator. And in our prayer life, help never seems to come as quickly as we’d like, if it comes at all. And if we view prayer as a transaction, we might lose heart all the more quickly.  I don’t think our prayer life is like a Vegas slot machine, where if we just keeping putting in enough tokens, we’ll hit the jackpot.

            I do think, however, it’s like another bible story, one we didn’t hear today but I’ll bet you know it. I think our prayer life is a lot like the story of Jacob. And you’ll remember that Jacob was trying to come back home, knowing that his brother Esau was furious with him and he’s worried that his brother is coming to kill him. And that night a man comes to Jacob and wrestles with him. And the scripture is unclear about whether Jacob is wrestling with a man, or an angel, or with God himself. The two of them wrestle all night.  And although in the struggle Jacob’s hip is thrown out of joint, he tells his opponent, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Our prayer life is like holding onto God, struggling with God all night, even when we are injured in the struggle. It is a stubborn insistence on a blessing, oftentimes a blessing we do not yet understand. As Saint Paul says, we train ourselves to be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable. We will wrestle all night, holding on for that blessing. We will lift up our eyes to the hills, knowing that our help can only come from the Lord. And if we remain obstinate, if we stubbornly cling to God even when our strength is failing, the Son of Man will return to find that we are a faithful people. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2022

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Go, and Do Likewise

Posted on July 10, 2022 | 7 comments





Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” The full readings for this service can be found here.

In the name of our God, the One who creates, redeems and sustains us.

A long time ago, in medieval Europe, they used to have what they called mystery plays. These dramas were often accompanied by a procession or a parade, and would depict scenes or stories from the Bible, particularly from the Gospels. Now, I do something like that in my neighborhood. Anyone who knows me knows that I have two dogs, and they’re not very good dogs at all. In fact, they are terrible dogs. I take them for a long walk at least twice a day, but they are ill-behaved and are committed to that bad behavior. And every now and then, we run across an animal that’s been hit by a car or killed somehow—a squirrel or a cat or a bird.

And my dogs always insist that we stop. They insist that we investigate and consider these incidents very carefully. Now, I’m not sure that they want to bandage up the creature’s wounds, or to carry the poor animal to an innkeeper and pay for its lodging. But I’m always trying to get them to keep walking, to move along, because there’s nothing to see here. I don’t know if that makes me the priest or the Levite in the story, and I’m not sure I like where this analogy is going so let’s get back to the Gospel.

So, Luke begins this fabulous story with a lawyer, a lawyer who wants to test Jesus. And this lawyer asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” I want us to look at the assumption in this question. The assumption is that eternal life is somehow linked to something we do. And I think Jesus’ response will unsettle that assumption. Initially, Jesus answers with a question, and then he answers with a story. Neither directly answers this lawyer’s question, by which I mean Jesus’ response calls us into a discussion that goes beyond a simple answer. It calls us to walk with our rabbi, rather than simply solving a puzzle.

So, this lawyer asks Jesus to give him the secret to eternal life, and I love Jesus’ response. He asks him two very important questions: what is written in scripture; and what do you read there? In other words, Jesus asks him: (1) what is the text; and (2) how do you interpret it? Sometimes, I hear people say that they just want the plain meaning of scripture without any interpretation. We have a theological term for that idea: we call it “poppycock.” Every reading of Scripture requires our interpretation, requires that we bring our understanding filtered through our lives to the work. Our Bible is less like an encyclopedia and more like a chess partner against whom we struggle and sharpen our wits and moral sensibilities. Or, as Bishop Hibbs used to say, biblical fundamentalism is fundamentally unbiblical. Jesus recognizes that principle in his questions to the lawyer.

The lawyer has an answer at the ready; he knows his scriptures. He tells Jesus, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” The lawyer answers with a passage from Deuteronomy which is sometimes called the Shema, and a passage from Leviticus. Jesus replies, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” In other words, you already knew the answer. If you want to know what to do, do those things. And anybody would be happy with that answer. Anybody, that is, except a lawyer. So, now he wants to drill down, “But who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus answers this question with a story, a story about a man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Now, we know that Jericho is the place where God knocks down walls, and Jesus is going to knock a few down himself with this story. We may have lost a bit of the geography here: the story takes place on the long, downhill road between Jerusalem and Jericho, a road also known at the time as the “Bloody Pass” or “The Way of Blood.”  The road meanders and the topography provides the perfect environment for an ambush:  a paradise for bandits and robbers.

So, I don’t think Jesus’ audience would have been surprised at all about the man being beaten, robbed, and left for dead on that road.  Nor would Jesus’ audience have been particularly surprised to hear Jesus tell them that the priest and the Levite both passed the man by, in fact, they walked by “on the other side” of the road.  (The laws of ritual purification at the time might actually have recommended this practice to devout Jews.)  We aren’t surprised by Jesus’ casting the priests and Levites in the role of the villains:  both Jesus and John the Baptist had been doing that for a while.

However, the notion that the Samaritan showed the quality of mercy, the notion of the Samaritan as the hero of the story, would have astonished and befuddled Jesus’ first-century audience.  The Samaritans and the Jews had despised each other for hundreds of years at the time Jesus told this story.  The Samaritans had desecrated the Temple with human bones.  The Jews reciprocated.  According to the Mishna (the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism), “He that eats the bread of the Samaritans is like to one that eats the flesh of swine” (Mishna Shebiith 8:10). So, hearing about a “good Samaritan” would have bewildered Jesus’ audience.  It would be the equivalent of a modern parable about the “good Klansman” or a “good member of the Sinaloa cartel,” or the “good fascist.”

The parable reports that the Samaritan came near to the man and was “moved with pity.” The Greek word here implies being moved to compassion at the deepest part of who we are. Thus, most of us assume the good Samaritan in the parable is like Jesus, or God, who loves inclusively with a kind of promiscuous empathy for everyone. But suppose for a moment that it’s actually God in the ditch, and the question is what are we going to do about it? And while the question the lawyer originally asked was about what we have to do for eternal life, suppose the real issue isn’t so much about what we do as it is about the kind of people we’re going to be. Are we going to be the kind of people who notice the suffering in the world around us and are moved by it, or are we going to walk on the other side of the road? I’m wondering who I didn’t notice? Who did I walk to the other side to avoid? Lord, spit on our eyes so that we can see.

In just a little while, we’re going to come up to this altar, and the priest will put a bit of bread into our mouths. And the Church spent a lot of time, and energy, and struggle, trying to figure out how the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus. And I have to tell you, I’m not really that interested in that question. But I am profoundly interested in the question of how you and I become the body of Christ in the world, and I think this parable holds a good part of the key.

This world is so polarized today. We want to fight about guns, about abortion, about race, about money, and about who’s got the moral high ground. Like the Jews and the Samaritans, we have been carrying these grudges along for so very long. And it may turn out that we really are in for the fight of our lives. Suppose, just for a moment, that learning to love our neighbors, learning to care for God’s children recklessly, really is the fight for our lives. It’s a great irony: the fight of our lives is learning how to love. As Bishop Monterroso recently observed, there are thousands and thousands of ways for us love our neighbor. There is only one way to love God; and that’s to love our neighbor. Amen.

James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2022

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