The title of my homily for this Easter Thursday is "Marcion"
I pulled together today's thoughts because of one sentence in today's gospel from Luke: "Then he [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the Scriptures."
In order to understand Christ, one needs to understand the
whole of Scriptures. That’s a theme that appears quite a bit during the Easter
season. That’s the theme I’d like to reflect upon a bit today. Or to put it
another way: private interpretation of scripture vs. public interpretation.
When Christ died the disciples of Jesus had the rug pulled
out from under them. In the days that followed, the Risen Christ appeared to
them in mystery. Slowly they began to piece together what he had been saying to
them while he was with them before his death and resurrection. Slowly they
began to see his story in the Old Testament story. And even more slowly they
and then the Church began to understand the New Testament. But only slowly.
Slowly we need to begin to see both his story and our story
in the Old and New Testaments. Slowly we need to study scripture - but also
tradition - Church history. We need to look at the whole picture - the big
picture. We need to be Catholic - not Partial.
MARCION
It’s always easier to see the spots on the other leopard’s
back than our own. So let’s start with a character in Early Christianity whose
name was Marcion.
He was born in Sinope, in Pontus,
on the Black Sea. His father was a bishop and
his family belonged to the upper crust. He made a fortune on his own as a ship
owner. Somewhere along the line he went off on his own thinking. The result was
excommunication in his local church. The person who did it: his father.
Whether that was the reason or for some other reason, he
went to Rome in
140. In July of 144 he was excommunicated again - this time by the Church in Rome.
Johanes Quasten [1900-1987], world famous Roman Catholic Theologian and expert on the Early Church, points out, “There was an important difference
between Marcion and the other Gnostics. While the other Gnostics founded only
schools, Marcion after his separation from the Church of Rome founded his own
Church. He established a hierarchy of bishops, priests and deacons. The
liturgical meetings were very similar to those of the Roman Church. For this
reason he gained more adherents than any other Gnostic. Ten years after his
excommunication, Justin reports that his church had spread, `over the whole of
mankind.’ Up to the middle of the fifth century there remained many Marcionite
communities in the Orient, especially in Syria. Some of them were still in
existence at the dawn of the Middle Ages.” (Cf p. 268, Vol. I Quasten)
Exactly what he taught is hard to say. Very little of what
he wrote remains. But what he said had a great impact, based on the number of
communities of Marcionites that sprung up and the amount of print he received
from so many other EarlyChurch writers.
For our purpose here I am using Marcion as an example of the
type of person who is narrow in his use of Scripture. He is a good example of
someone who selects scripture to back his own viewpoints and not the other way
around.
It happens all the time. Listen to people. If there is any
one area where people have lots of their own opinions and theories, it’s with
the Bible. They like what they like and they avoid what they don’t like. We’re
selective readers and listeners.
One of my private theories is that another cause of this
practice is that people have picked up their ideas from preachers through the
years who didn’t do enough homework. You’re looking at one right here. We
preachers get a lot of nonsense off. Laziness is one of the main causes. That’s
another one of my pet theories. It takes time to read up on the different
studies and research on different scripture passages. It’s much easier to
babble on from the pulpit: the Tower
of Babel.
The Catholic Church certainly has opened up a lot on the
Bible in the past 50 + years. And one of the good things that has happened in
the Catholic Church, is their 3 year, 2 year and 1 year cycle in the use of
Scripture. It forces us to read and hear most of the Bible in a 3 year cycle.
As we move ahead, hopefully, people will attend scripture courses and preachers
will do more homework and become more and more open to being stretched.
Marcion eliminated Matthew, Mark and John. Then he cut out a
lot of Luke. In Paul he razor bladed out the pastoral epistles of Paul as well
as Hebrews. He put the Letter to the Galatians first and changed the Epistle to
the Ephesians to the Epistles to the Laodiceans. He also eliminated the whole
OT. So becoming a priest in his church would be a lot faster. You would not
have to study a lot of that Scripture
stuff.
Marcion read the scriptures and saw 2 gods. Read the
scriptures and listen to the psalms when we say office and you can see where he
might be coming from.
First there is the good God who lives in the third heaven.
You find him in the New Testament - or better in what Marcion had saved of the
New Testament.
Then there is the just god who created the world and man.
This god is none other than the demiurge - who is well known in Gnostic sects.
This second god did not create the world out of nothingness, but formed it out
of the eternal matter, the seed of all evil. This god - this second god - is
the god of the Jews - the god of the Law and the Prophets. He has passions. He
gets angry. He is revengeful. He is the author of all evil - be it physical or
moral. He is the instigator of all wars. (cf. Quasten, Vol. 1, p. 270)
How’s that for selective editing? How’s that for selective
thinking?
THE NEED TO BE
CATHOLIC
What do you do with someone who thinks and preaches that
way? You throw the bum out. His father did it and the Church of Rome did.
The word Catholic means whole - KATA HOLOS.
So some obvious lessons for us can be found here.
1) The need to
know what we believe in - what scripture texts we favor and what ones we avoid.
2) The need to be
open to all the scriptures - to do our homework - to do our research - to study
and to read.
3) The need to be
open to the Church and its teachings. Marcion wasn’t. But the Church also needs
to be open to the research and study done by scripture people. In the past this
hasn’t been always so.
4) The need to be
open to our tradition - both in the Old and New Testament - to clarify and
collate what we have learned and go from there.
CONCLUSION
I think that’s about enough for now. Amen. Come Lord Jesus. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mosaic on top - Jesus Christ Pantocrator in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey.
The title of my homily is “The
Subject Was Bread.”
And I want to touch on two basic
points: the value of long walks and what we can learn from being broken.
WALK THE WALK - TALK THE TALK
My first point would be the value of
walking. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we discover a lot of stuff from a distance.
Sometimes we have to get away from
home to figure out what is happening
back home.
Sometimes we have to get away from
it all, to understand it all.
These two men in the gospel found
this out. It wasn’t till they walked the walk and talked the talk that they
discovered that Christ had risen from the dead.
I’ve heard that phrase, “Walk the
walk and talk the talk,” a few times in the past couple of years, but it has
not been till lately that I really heard it.
So let me use it a bit more this
morning.
So if we have a problem, don’t just
stand there, do something. Don’t just sit there or sleep there in upper rooms,
get out of bed. Get off our butt and go for a good walk. Hence the value of puzzles
- fishing - climbing - traveling - all un-upper room stuff. That’s just
standing there. So don’t just stand there, do something. We’ll have a chance of
putting it all together by getting away from it all.
Sometimes we have to get away from
it all, walking so far that what is near makes sense.
And when we walk the walk, we’ll
find ourselves talking the talk. And as we walk, if we monitor ourselves, we’ll find ourselves talking to ourselves.
Every night, when it is dark, it’s
smart to look back on our day and in prayer, hear Christ ask, “How was your
day?”
Some people can’t deal with silence.
Can you? Some people can’t drive in a car by themselves without turning on the
radio. Can you? They need music. Can you be quiet? They need talk. Can you be
silent? They can’t spend a free day by themselves. Can you? They need to turn
on the TV. Can you be reflective? And when they try prayer, they wonder why
they have so many distractions. Help.
So there is a value in taking long
walks. They can be like plane or bus trips home when someone dies. A person
does a lot of thinking in moments like that. Help.
And if you start being able to be
alone and do a lot of walking and talking to yourself, get a journal. You’ll
find yourself having a lot to jot down.
WEST END: WALKING ON THE WATER
When I was stationed at West End, I
noticed that a lot of people used to walk by the ocean - or around Tankanasee
Lake. So walking prayer helps talking prayer and listening prayer.
So my first suggestion is: Walk the
walk, talk the talk. Walk, talk, talk, walk. Walking prayer. Talking prayer.
Listening prayer. Try it, you’ll like it till it all makes sense.
When I look back on my life, I see also see the value of taking
trips with just one other person. Three’s a crowd.
Prayer can be a long trip with God.
EMMAUS STORY
At the heart of the Emmaus story is
this point that it wasn’t till these 2 men walked the walk away from Jerusalem that
they talked the talk that brought them back to Jerusalem.
How many times has it happened that
it wasn’t till the next day we see how stupid we were. It wasn’t till later
that we noticed that our assumptions and our expectations are all wrong.
Some commentators say that Jericho
is west, so these 2 were heading backwards into the dark - away from the dawn.
Then when they recognized Christ in the Jewish Bible stories as they talked,
and recognized him in the breaking of the bread, and in the story of their
lives, and on reflecting on it all, it all made sense. And obviously, they had
to run home to announce that they too experienced Christ - the Risen One.
So Emmaus can be now - on any road -
on any trip - at any Mass - at any meal - in any conversation.
THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES
I don’t remember the movie enough to
get the facts straight. But once there was a movie named, “The Subject Was Roses” [1968]. Patricia Neal plays the part of
Nettie Cleary. She’s married to John Cleary, played by Jack Albertson. The
marriage was dull and boring. Once when it hit the skids, Nettie took money from a coin collection. She then
packed and took a bus from Port Authority in N.Y. to Spring Lake, N. J. or
somewhere down there on the New Jersey Shore and spent a few days walking along
the beach and talking to herself about her marriage. What hit me was the need
to get away from it all to get back to it all.
I might have it all wrong, but the
key memory that brought her back was that her husband gave her roses once.
Later on she was to find out that the son Timothy - played by Martin Sheen - suggested it to the father. “Here give them to
her. It means a lot to a woman to receive roses.” The husband gave her the
roses, but it wasn’t his idea. They were given without heart, without
understanding.
THE SUBJECT WAS BREAD THAT WAS BROKEN
My second point is the learnings
that we can come up with - when we are broken.
Sometimes somebody has to die or
leave, before we find out how much that person means to us and how much this person
does for us.
The disciples experienced Christ in
the breaking of the bread. Jesus didn’t give us roses. He gave us bread and he
gives us wine - back to basics.
But the key word today is
“breaking”. Sometimes it’s only when we are broken, when the bottom has caved
in, when we have given up and walked away, when we are crushed, that we
understand the meaning of it all.
We have to break open the package to
get to the contents. We have to take off
the wrapping, to find out what’s inside the package. We have to break the
bread, we have to chew the bread, so as to get it into your systems.
So Jesus gives us “our daily bread”.
And we experience our daily “breaks”.
The subject was bread - bread that
was broken.
Broken brings some people back to
Mass - and they recognize him in
the breaking of the bread. We recognize Jesus in the breaking of the
flesh. We recognize Jesus in the breaking of a life. We recognize Jesus in the
breaking moments of our lives.
“Were not our hearts breaking inside
us as talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?”
CONCLUSION
So I’m preaching two basic themes
this morning:
1) Learn how to be by oneself.
Taking long walks by ourself is one of the best things we can do for ourself.
Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we’ll discover a lot of stuff that is
happening back home. Sometimes we have to get away from it all, to understand
it all.
2) Being broken - like bread -
reveals a lot of things. Sometimes somebody has to die or leave, before we’ll
find out how much that person meant to us and how much that person did for us.
April 19, 2017
GOD
Dammed-if-You-do,
dammed-if-You-don’t.
Do those words echo from
earth into the Trinity - each day?
Jack is praying for rain and Jill is
praying for sunshine today in Peoria.
God, take mom, she’s suffered enough.
God, leave mom, for another day, we pray.
And won’t we be surprised to meet in heaven so and so
The title of my homily is, “Our Religion Is Personal, Relational.”
It has a catechism. We have a Bible. We have rules and
regulations and all that, but the bottom line is this: our religion is all
about a personal relationship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy
Spirit.
Our religion is all about entering into communion - Holy
Communion - with Jesus who brings us into the Trinity.
So it’s not words. It’s the Word become flesh who lived
and walked amongst us.
It’s not prayers. It’s being with God - and God is often
quiet - silence - presence - keeping all the universe going and together with
all the more there is - especially with all we don’t even know about yet.
THE GOSPEL OF
JOHN
As we know there are 4 gospels. The first three, Matthew,
Mark and Luke, are filled with many of the teachings - sayings and parables of
Jesus.
The fourth gospel, John, is quite different than Matthew,
Mark and Luke.
The 4 gospels stress being in relationship with God, but I
see the gospel of John stressing having a relationship with Jesus more.
Let me simply run through the gospel of John - chapter by chapter - from the beginning - by mentioning
people - especially one to one moments Jesus had with different persons.
In the beginning was the word - and that word became flesh - and John the
Baptist witnessed to that person called Jesus. He was not Jesus. Jesus was Jesus. [1:19]
Like Andrew we approach Jesus and ask, “Where do you
stay. Who are you?” [1:40]
And Jesus says, ‘Come and see!” Like Peter, someone comes
to us and says, “I think I have found the messiah, the one we are all looking
for.
Like the couple who have run out of wine, Jesus can fill
us to overflowing. [2:1]
Like Nicodemus, we can come to Jesus in the night. [3:1]
Like the Samaritan Woman, Jesus can give us living water. [4:1]
Like the sick, Jesus can wash us clean and heal us. [5:1]
Like those without bread, Jesus can feed us when we’re
empty.[6:1]
Like the adulterous woman, Jesus can get those who want
to condemn us to put down their rocks.[8:1]
Like the blind man Jesus can give us sight. [9:1]
When we feel like sheep without a shepherd, Jesus can recognize us. [10:1]
When we die like Lazarus, Jesus will raise us from the
dead.[11:1]
Like those who are hungry and thirsty, Jesus can take away
our thirsts and hungers. [13:1]
When we realize like everyone we are condemned to die at
some point - when we have to make our way of the cross, Jesus did it before us. [18:1]
And after we die there is resurrection. Like Thomas and
Mary Magdalen, Jesus will let us touch him the Risen One.[20:1]
Like the apostles Jesus will feed us with the Bread of
Life.[21:1]
Those, in general, are the people and situations Jesus
found himself in.
In today’s gospel from John [20:11-18] Mary meets Jesus - the Risen Christ -
and she wants to cling to him - hold onto him - to be in communion with him. So
too us - but she has to let go - so as to
go tell the rest of us - that she has seen the Lord - who is going to the
Father - our Father and your Father.
ST. ALPHONSUS
St. Alphonsus said all this in his classic book: The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ.
Alphonsus at times floundered around in worry, dark
moods, scrupulosity, till he discovered
the whole secret of life, of sanctity, of happiness, is the practice of the
love of Jesus Christ.
How do we do that?
Answer: it’s the same answer as to how to get into Carnegie Hall:
Practice, practice, practice.
CONCLUSION
So here we are in church for morning mass - practicing,
practicing, practicing, being in communion with Jesus Christ.
We’re hugging, holding onto Jesus. We’re tying our
ligaments, realignments, our religion from which the word “ligaments” is
rooted, and we’re tightening ourselves to Christ, who brings us deeper into the
Trinity, who brings us deeper and deeper into the community called The Body of
Christ. Amen.
