Category Archives: Sunday Morning

Working on it

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What’s as tall as a small office building, snaps large vessels in half and inspires a small tribe of surfers to launch themselves into an unholy maelstrom? Giant waves. The bigger the better — or worse — depending on who’s talking; better for extreme surfers, worse for seafarers. Until very recently giant waves lived only as lore. There was the story of the Tlingit Indian woman who returned from berry picking to find her entire village disappeared. The polar explorer Ernest Shackleton once reported narrowly surviving “a mighty upheaval of the ocean,” the biggest wave he’d seen in 26 years of seafaring. But witnesses of a 100-foot wave at close range rarely lived to tell, and experts dismissed stories about these waves because they seemingly violated basic principles of ocean physics. Continue reading →

Two Powers and a Kingdom

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In today’s readings, the first reading from Ezekiel and the gospel from Mark, we have “winged creatures” or “birds of the sky” are able to rest and find shade in an unexpected place. The readings are at least thematically connected. Jesus’s focus in the Gospel is clear as he asks: “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God” – the kingdom being a topic Jesus has proclaimed since the beginning of the gospel: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15). But what is Ezekiel talking about? Continue reading →

Rebellion

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“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold” is a quote from the William Butler Yeats poem “The second coming.”

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

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A Masterclass in Faith

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Back in the day when I served in a slum parish on the edge of Nairobi. Over the course of several encounters I came to know a Mill Hill priest, Fr. John Kaiser. Fr. John was a missionary legend. Originally from Minnesota, he had a Paul Bunyan like quality to him – larger than life. By the time I met him he had been serving in Kenya for 30 plus years. One day he randomly showed up at the parish where I worked and asked me if I wanted to go with him on a trip “into the bush” to visit a group of semi-nomadic Maasai to whom he had been ministering for many years. By “into the bush” he meant the Transmara, the name for the Serengetti on the Kenyan side of the border. Instantly I imagined an exotic safari, an “Out of Africa” moment, … I mean, this was what it meant to be a missionary! Continue reading →

The difference it makes

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Almost every culture has looked into the world and concluded there is a higher power at work to create the wonder of nature, the change of seasons, storms, and everything we experience in this life. It is as St. Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans: “For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them” (1:19). Every culture has come to different conclusions and I have always wondered if there is a correlation between culture and the perception of God. I am sure there is an academic treatment of the topic that has studied the culture and its mythology. For example, is we were Vikings we’d have Odin (wisdom, knowledge, war, and more), Frig (Marriage, Family, and Motherhood), Thor (Odin’s son: thunder, storms and strength), Loki (trickster, and tempter, father of Hel), Hel (guardian of the underworld) and Freya (goddess of fate, love, beauty, gold, war and fertility). If they made up the pantheon of our deities, what should we the people be like? I suspect it makes a difference. Continue reading →

Walls and Pentecost

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With all the news this past week about the horrific conflict in Israel and Gaza, it is natural that part of the conversation at the friary dinner table has been about the conflict, Holy Land pilgrimages we have participated in, what we’ve seen, all adding to the discussions of the terrible tragedy that unfolds. Inevitably the conversation will mention the wall that separates the Holy Land in and around Jerusalem.  Jerusalem, The Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, the Holy Sepulcher on one side of the wall. Bethlehem, Bethany, and other places on the other. As one travels around the area outside of metropolitan Jerusalem, you see other walls – those of the Jewish Settlements. There are settlements in hardscrabble places of Israel. But there are more that kinda’ resemble Reston Town Center only with high walls and secure entrances.

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On the borderline

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When I was in seminary, our homiletics professor had lots of advice and pointers for the Sunday homily. The professor was pretty adamant about not explaining theology. And I mostly agree with his point – it can make a homily really dry and fill it with language that needs its own explanation. The professor’s final point was that your explanation was likely to cross the borderline of orthodoxy and give an inaccurate or heretical version of the underlying theology.  Best to just keep it simple and well clear of the border. Continue reading →

The Chosen

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Remember last Sunday’s gospel – “I am the vine, you are the branches… remain in me…bear good fruit.” Today’s gospel is part of the same conversation Jesus was having with his apostles – and if it wasn’t clear last week, today’s readings leaves no doubt: it’s about learning to love as we have never loved before. It that way we will remain in Christ, who will remain in us, and we will bear the desired good fruit. Here is a sampling of verses from today’s readings. Continue reading →

In the first light

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There is something poetic, mysterious, and magical in a vineyard before the harvest on an early morn with the dew on the vine and the first light of a just-rising sun glistening upon the fruit. But, if you are like me, you probably do not have any experience in the vineyards except perhaps as a visitor.

The vineyard does not just happen by itself. There is a complex dance between the vine, the branches and the vine grower. For example, did you know that a single grape vine can produce as much as 13 feet of new branch growth in one growing season. What happens if all that new growth remains un-pruned? It would not be unusual for that un-pruned vine to have as many as 300 fruit producing buds. While that might sound great, that’s way too many buds for the plant to support. You might have lots of produce, but it will be incredibly low quality, and good for nothing. It would probably just end up as fuel for the fire. You would have to remove as much as 75% of the buds and the associated vegetative growth so the plant can properly develop and ripen the fruit it produces. The goal is always good fruit.

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Leadership

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Note: still away from the parish, but here is another offering from the trove of homilies past.

After having graduated from the US Naval Academy – the first cauldron of forming leaders for the Navy and Marine Corp – and after finishing nuclear power training and submarine school, I reported as a bright shiny Ensign to my first submarine! I was ready to be a deep-diving, backing down full at crush depth, denizen of the deep – “Run Silent, Run Deep” and “Hunt for Red October” all rolled into one. Continue reading →