Reflections By The Bay

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

PLEASE EXPLAIN
THE DUMB MOVES

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Tuesday in Holy Week is, “Please Explain Why the Dumb Moves?”

We all ask that question in various ways in the pages of our life story - especially when we or those connected to us make a dumb move.

How many times have we heard, “After all I did for you, you did this to me. Why? Why? Why?”

Or someone says, “Why did my kid get mixed up with drugs - after we put her in Catholic School - worked hard to make our family work? Why? Why? Why? And then this happens.”

We miss seeing the good stuff - and the bad stuff dumbs us and wipes us out.

Alcohol …. Affairs…. Stealing …. Splits and not talking to each other in family …. We humans can do a lot of stupid things with our lives.

The person who is being dumb keeps saying, “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”

The person who is watching or seeing the dumb moves is saying, “Why? Why? Why?”

IN OTHER WORDS: WHY DO WE SELF DESTRUCT?

We self-destruct. Why? Motive? Why the shootings? Why the craziness?

We scratch our heads. We bite our nails. We nervously bite tiny bits of uplifted skin on our lips - especially when we’re nervous and the cold outside is biting. Does anybody here ever do that?

EXPLANATIONS

Lots of people have tried to figure out why we do what we do - especially self-destruct.

Genesis - the first book in the Bible - says right there in its first pages - the following explanation on how life works: We’re given paradise - but it’s never enough. We want more. Evil is pictured as a snake that crawls along the garden floor of our soul and hisses whispers into our souls.

The snake knows us and whispers: “Want more power? Want more control? Want to be like God?”

Then the sneaky snake says, “Eat the forbidden fruit and you’ll be just like God.”

Adam and Eve - the male and female in us and in every person - takes the fatal bite - and bites into evil and we fall.

Then we turn the page and there’s a brother killing his brother.

Many of those people marching on Saturday are asking why? Why did that guy start shooting - and killing in Florida, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Las Vegas, Charleston - and bombing in Austin and on and on and on?

Freud came up with the human having an ego, a super-ego and then the sometimes irritable id. Freud and Jung and Adler and many others talk about various other theories to explain why ids kill kids.

Some of us are old enough to remember the radio drama called, “The Shadow.” Remember the opening question: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of us? The Shadow knows.”

Shakespeare and Hawthorne, Melville and mystery novels, all ask about the why of evil.

NCIS opens with the NCIS team kibitzing and then Gibbs says, “Get your gear! There’s been a murder.”

We’ve all heard variations of the Cherokee story about two wolves. It’s a parable. One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “my son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good. It is joy, peace love, hope serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson though about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “the one that you feed.”

Read enough literature and life and we find out we all have evil within.

Charles Baudelaire wrote, “There are in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards Satan.” in Mon Coeur Mis a Nu [1887] XIX.

CONCLUSION: THIS WEEK

The title of my homily for today is, “Please Explain Why the Dumb Moves?”

This is the question of this week: Holy Week.

One day we say and shout, “Hosanna” with and for Christ and each other - and then a few days later we’re screaming, “Crucify him.

As we heard in today’s gospel - at the Last Supper - Satan is around - and Satan entered into Judas at a meal - and Jesus told Peter, be careful - the same thing can happen to you.

_______________________________________________________________

Painting on Top:
The Last Supper
Simon Bening (c. 1525-30)

March 27, 2018

Thought for today:

“Art upsets; science reassures.”

Georges Braque [1882-1963]

Painting, "Vanitas"

by Georges Braque [1939]

March 27, 2018

I LAUGHED

When I tried to find

what’s inside a rock -

inside its middle.

When I thought

I’d never make

a mistake.

When I thought

I understood what

you meant.

When I thought I knew

God and then I rose

from the dead.

Monday, March 26, 2018

THE HOUSE WAS FILLED

WITH THE FRAGRANCE

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “The House Was Filled With the Fragrance.”

Today’s gospel from John has the wonderful words and easy to remember scene, “Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.”

That’s John 12: 3. I wonder if a Bible publisher ever thought of putting one of those perfume packs you find in magazines into a Bible right here at this text.

If you don’t have a favorite Bible text - and if you want to be an evangelist - there’s one text to put out there - after you put it in here [Point to our brain.]

So if someone asks you, “Do you have a favorite Bible text, say, “John 12:3.”

It’s not my favorite, but it’s up there. Mine is Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens and in this way you’ll fulfill the Law of Christ.”

Another translation: “Help one another to carry these heavy loads, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

Do that and your fragrance will linger like perfume. Come to think of it, in this homily I'm connecting Galatians 6:2 with John 12:3.

ELEVATOR RIDES

We’ve all gotten into an elevator. It’s empty - but soon we get the scent of a powerful perfume.

We wonder who just got off this elevator on another floor.

We think: it’s much sweeter than getting into a car filled with cigarette smell.

I once preached a parish mission in Pottstown, Pennsylvania - home of Mrs. Smith’s Pies.

What a town with a beautiful smell!

We made our novitiate in Ilchester, Maryland. Down below us on the Patapsco River was a box factory. It was owned by the Bartgis Brothers. At times it had a horrible smell and the river would be different colors - some sometimes quite ugly.

What would it be like to grow up next to a beer factory, a perfume factory or sardine canning plant?

THE PERFUME CALLED JESUS

I’ve preached on this text from John and this first reading from Isaiah - many times.

I remember calling one sermon, “The Perfume Called Jesus.”

The good person, the servant, that Isaiah spoke about in today's first reading from Isaiah 42: 1-7 - is put here on Monday of Holy Week - because Jesus did what this Suffering Servant in Isaiah talked about what God does. God grasps our hand. God forms us. God is a light for us. God opens our eyes. God frees us from confinement and the dungeon and the darkness.

Picturing all that, we'll be saying: wow God smells good. God is a powerful perfume.

The gospel for today is saying that’s Jesus. If we do what Christ did - we become perfume for the elevators of the world. We lift each other up.

The opposite has a horrible smell: to be like Judas - the thief - the phony baloney type person.

When Judas saw Mary anointing the feet of Jesus he said, “What a waste of money. Why couldn’t this money she spent on the perfume be given to the poor?"

John adds, “He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions.

TWO CONCLUSIONS

Enough .... Perfume is an obvious experience.

Two conclusions:

First, this Good Friday - when you venerate the cross - if you have the opportunity, kiss Jesus’ feet, or the bottom of the cross and pray, “Jesus, rub some of your fragrance off on me, so I can do the same for others.”

Secondly, a blessing: "May your home and your memory, your life and your story, have the fragrance of many wonderful people who have been in your life."

I remember a lady telling me, “I still have the fragrance of my husband on some of his t-shirts - in a plastic bag - and he’s been gone 4 years now.