Sexagesima 2024

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Today’s Gospel starts with a success story: “And when a great multitude had gathered, and they had come to [Jesus] from every city, He spoke by a parable….” A great multitude from every city! Jesus Christ Superstar. They throng to Him. They want to make Him king.

What should you do with a great multitude? Get their mobile numbers, text them updates, turn them into donors. A crowd draws a crowd. On to Jerusalem, and then perhaps, to Rome itself. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere….

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Septuagesima 2024

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This parable has long been called The Laborers in the Vineyard. But it would be better to call it The Parable of the Landowner. He is the key figure here, and as in so many of the sayings of Jesus, it borders on the absurd. No landowner would do what this one does, just like in the parable of the sower you have a farmer who just throws the seed wherever, not seeming to care where it goes. This landowner doesn’t follow any customary business practices….

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Transfiguration 2024

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Christianity rests entirely on certain objective persons and events. It they didn’t happen, then it’s not true.

A man named Jesus, born of a virgin, suffering under a Roman governor named Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, buried, rising again on the third day, all seen by hundreds of eye-witnesses: did that happen? That question matters. If it’s not true, then the opening of Ecclesiastes is the only truth: Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.

Today’s Epistle lesson addresses that fundamental question: “Is it true?”

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The Second Sunday after the Epiphany 2024

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The Bible begins and ends with a wedding: At the beginning, the marriage of our first parents; and at the end, the marriage of Christ and the Church, inaugurating the new creation.

In between these two weddings is the fall, and all the messed-up marriages, with rebellious children and false worship. The joy is gone; the wine seems to have run out, and what’s left isn’t sitting so well inside us.

The wine running out symbolizes the thorns creeping up from the ground, the betrayal of a friend, the death that comes to all in the end….

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First Sunday after the Epiphany 2024

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“Why have You done this?” Mary is not the first mother to say that. And it’s understandable. Her boy was missing. Three minutes would be horrible. Three days, that’s nearly unimaginable. When Mary and Joseph do find Him, I’d like to know exactly what her tone was like: “Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.” Quite appropriately, the NKJ capitalizes the pronouns for Jesus. It looks all respectful: “Son, why have You—the exalted One—done this to us?” I’m not sure it’s spoken so gently. She maybe says it more like you would. It sounds like she’s accusing Jesus of sin….

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The Epiphany of Our Lord 2024

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Tribulation is a gift. It doesn’t feel like it at the time. Nevertheless, tribulation is a gift. It is a gift because it prepares us for the Gospel.

The journey of the Magi (“wise men”) to the Christ shows this to us. The Magi don’t find Jesus where they are looking (Jerusalem). Instead they meet a fiendish and duplicitous Herod. Led by the Holy Spirit, the path to Christ went through anxiety and need….

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The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day 2023

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“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And He made man in His own image.

He fell. The image is marred.

Our beginnings are thus already headed toward endings. Some children don’t even make it out of the womb. Others are cut down too soon….

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Christmas Midnight 2023

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“When all was still, and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, O Lord, descended from the royal throne.” That’s the antiphon for Christmas Midnight. By itself, it’s serene, much like this service. There’s something joyously peaceful about assembling here when all through the town not many creatures are stirring, and celebrating the first liturgy of Christmas while everyone else is nestled all snug in their beds.

“When all was still, and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, O Lord, descended from the royal throne.” The context, however, is not so serene. It comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, and it describes the beginning of the tenth plague, bringing death to all the firstborn in the land of Egypt….

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Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols 2023

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The satire in Peter Gabriel’s song Big Time is often missed. From college basketball to professional wrestling, it’s bumper music for success. “I’m on my way, I’m making it, big time.” It’s the American dream: you can be anything you want to be; you can make it big.

There’s a religious dimension to the song that fits perfectly the modern obsession with bigger and better churches. “And I will pray to a big god as I kneel in the big church.” Then later, “And my heaven will be a big heaven, and I will walk through the front door.”

The way God works couldn’t be more different….

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