GOD - EVERYWHERE

Quote of the Day - May 8,  2010


"I didn't know what she was saying when she moved her lips in a Baptist church or a Catholic cathedral or, less often, in a synagogue, but it was obvious that God could be found anywhere."


Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, 1969

THE SACRED

Quote of the Day - May 7, 2010


"'One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education,' said Feodor Dosteoevski. I believe that, and I hope that many Earthling children will respond to the first human footprint on the moon as a sacred thing. We need sacred things."


Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 1974

STORIES:
TELL ME YOUR STORY

Quote for the Day  - May 6, 2010


"All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by ... religion, whatever else it has done, had provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need."


Harvey Cox, The Seduction of the Spirit, 1973

DEFINITION OF RELIGION

Quote for the Day -  May 5, 2010


"If I were personally to define religion I would say that is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance."


Attributed to Theodore Dreiser [1871-1945]

BEING IN
THE KINGDOM OF GOD

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 5th Tuesday after Easter is, “Being in the Kingdom of God.”

I was debating whether to use the words "being in" or "entering into" the Kingdom of God.

Whenever I do a baptism, there is a space in the ceremony where the priest or deacon reads a Gospel text. In the book there are 12 options at least, but I always pick the same gospel every time: Mark 10: 13 -16. It’s the scene where Jesus becomes indignant with his disciples for trying to push people away who have brought their children to Jesus to have him touch them.

I picked that text originally because we were taught it was an early baptismal text that establishes that the early church baptized babies. After using it about 10 times, I began to realize the great message in the text when Jesus says, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

I like to say to parents and those at a baptism that a child gets us out of ourselves and into the mysterious world of childhood again. A baby cries in the night and a husband says to his wife, “I’ll take care of the baby. You’re tired after a long, long day being a mother.” Selfish self- centered people can change when they have to change babies and schedules and their whole life – to raise a child – to be family.

I like to say to parents and those at a baptism that a child gives us glimpses of the mysterious world of imagination – that "Kids say the Darndest Things" – as Art Linkletter used to put it – that if someone takes the time to hear a kid explain his or her crayoned drawing – the adult goes, “Wow!” And a great smile comes on one’s face. Sometimes parents and grandparents need an audience to describe what their kid or grandkid said or did.

It could lead us to have God show us what God makes – spiders and squirrels and skunks and shrimp – trees and stars – a drop of sweat or a pinch of salt. And we go “Wow!” to God’s masterpieces.

When we get out of our state and into a child’s state – we can get into God’s state. We can leave the kingdom of me and entered the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of we.

SUFFERINGS

Well, last night when I read today’s first reading I began thinking about all this. Paul and Barnabas are giving us another way to enter into the kingdom of God – besides learning from children. It’s suffering.

Paul and Barnabas, as our text for today puts it, say, “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Ba Boom! There’s a second threshold and entrance into the Kingdom of God: suffering.
I prefer the being a child – but Paul and Barnabas are talking to us.

It’s the way of the cross. It’s the seed dying, otherwise it’s just a seed, but if it’s buried, planted in the earth and dissolves to self, then surprise new life rises through the soil.

It triggered the memory of the old saying, “Suffering enters the human heart to create there places that never existed before.”

It triggered for me what I hear the Liberation Theologians of South America, Africa, the Philippines, India, and much of Asia, say for years now: with the poor we can discover the riches of God. Discover them. Be with them. Don’t put them down. If the term “liberation theology” is one of your buttons, then check out Mother Teresa. She was saying all this but even louder. The poor can be our best teachers – and bring us to Jesus. And more, it’s what Jesus is saying over and over again – when he talks about the Kingdom of God – those who were getting it – and those who weren’t – those who have fit through the eye of the needle – and discovered the riches of the kingdom.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “Being in the Kingdom of God.” I talked about two keys to the Kingdom: being a child and suffering.

RELIGION

Quote of the Day - May 4,  2010


"Religion to me has always been the wound not the bandage."


Dennis Potter (1935-1994)

THE TIMES 
THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

Quote of the Day - May 3, 2010 - A song ....


THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin
’Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’


Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

Picture: Bob Dylan singing with Joan Baez during the Civil Rights "March on Washington" August 28, 1963 - photo found on a Bob Dylan site.

Song Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music

Now compare Bob Dylan's song with yesterday's second reading from the Book of Revelation 21: 1-5a - which I place below.


SECOND READING – REVELATION 21: 1-5A

Then I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth.
The former heaven and the former earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more.

I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race.
He will dwell with them and they will be his people
and God himself will always be with them as their God.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes,
and there shall be no more death
or mourning, wailing or pain,
for the old order has passed away.”

The One who sat on the throne said,
“Behold, I make all things new.”