A Homily – The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

First Reading – Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 14(15):2-5

Second Reading – James 1:17-18,21-22,27

Gospel Acclamation – John 6:63,68

Alternative Acclamation – James 1:18

The Gospel According to Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 ©     

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

 God, the creator of the universe, God does not distribute lands among the people, neither does God play favorites among the tribes and nations. Our laws, as we have them, including the laws we find in various religious texts, are not the laws of God, they are the laws of human beings.

 God is not the law giver, God is not a king or emperor, God is not a God of battles, anything predicated on such notions should be rejected.

 Know this.

 God dwells in the heart of every person, and where God is present, God is present fully. At the end of all things, all of God’s children will have returned to the divine. God forgets no-one and God loves us all, each and every one of us…even the worst of us, and while a just life is its own reward, both the just and the unjust are loved by God.

 Remember.

 The quest for primacy of place should never be the impetus for an expression of faith. Love is the law of God; therefore love God with all your strength, and all your heart, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

 This is the way.

 Serve God through the service you provide to your neighbors, your mother and father, your sisters and brothers, even the stranger among you...including your adversary.

 Love is the law.

 Consider what John has to say about Peter:

 He shares with us Peter’s thoughts, and he would have us believe that he follows Jesus because Jesus has the secret message that grants passage to its holder, to the path that leads to eternal life. John wants us to believe that this is the purpose of the gospel, acquiring the secret, and that if we acquire it and believe it---that Jesus is the “Holy One of God” we will hold the key and subsequently receive the gift of eternal life.

 John asks us to believe that God (the Father) parcels out access to Jesus (the Son), and the Spirit of truth, which leads to the reality of life everlasting, that God regulates who will and who will not be granted access, admitting some while refusing others.

 This scheme is false, it is emblematic of the con-artist’s faith, not a teacher of the way.

 This is the Gospel:

 God loves you and you are saved already. You are not saved for anything that you have done, you did not earn it; you are saved because God loves you and for no other reason.

 It is as simple as this.

 You are not saved on account of some choice you make, just as you did not choose to be born. You were born, and God loves you and you are saved because of this.

 The promise of salvation is not that you will be spared from suffering and torment in hell, or that when you are judged God will forgive you.

 God has already forgiven you, God accepted you from the moment you came into being, at that moment your status as a child of God was fixed, and your destiny certain. God has prepared you, and everyone for eternal life.

 Believe it!

 Let the goodness of the divine promise flow through you, start living this life as if it were true.

 This is the way.

 We are not called to believe in the idea that Jesus is this or that, the Holy One of God, we are called to act on the principles of his faith, to live lives of charity and service to each other.

 Consider the Gospel reading for today; it speaks to us of the challenges we face in our time, by telling us something of the challenges the Gospel writers faced in their own time. It speaks to us of a perennial problem in the Church, such as the hypocrisy of leadership.

 The hierarchy today; priests and pastors, bishops and cardinals, are often more concerned with outward expressions of piety, with measureable matters of ritual purity, with creeds and codes, canons and confessions, with the formulae of belief, rather than the living faith. This is a problem that has plagued the Church from its inception.

  Jesus cared about the living faith, he cared about the real lives of real people. Everything Jesus did in his ministry was subordinated to that…all the way to his arrest, torture, conviction and murder.

 We are called on to do the same, though not all of us are called to the same bitter end. Jesus calls us to share his perspective and approach the world with the same spirit of love.

 Remember!

 Each and every one of us is a child of God, and God is present in the heart of all of God’s children; in this way God is already present to God’s people. It may be the case that the rituals the Church has organized for purification (symbolic though they are), may have some social value. However, if they are used to teach people that without the ritual a person is unworthy of the presence of God, then these performances are merely false teachings and must be rejected by the people. 

 

First Reading – Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8

Observe these Laws and Customs, that You May Have Life

Moses said to the people: ‘Now, Israel, take notice of the laws and customs that I teach you today, and observe them, that you may have life and may enter and take possession of the land that the Lord the God of your fathers is giving you. You must add nothing to what I command you, and take nothing from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God just as I lay them down for you. Keep them, observe them, and they will demonstrate to the peoples your wisdom and understanding. When they come to know of all these laws they will exclaim, “No other people is as wise and prudent as this great nation.” And indeed, what great nation is there that has its gods so near as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call to him? And what great nation is there that has laws and customs to match this whole Law that I put before you today?’

 

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 14(15):2-5

Who is Worthy to Face the Lord?

Neither overcome by toil, nor to be overcome by death, this great man did not fear to die, nor was he unwilling to live.

Alleluia, alleluia!

Lord, who will live in your tent?

  Who will dwell on your holy mountain?

Whoever comes there without stain,

  acts rightly, speaks truth in his heart.

Whoever does not speak deceitfully,

  or do harm to his neighbour, or slander him.

Whoever despises the evil-doer,

  but reveres those who fear the Lord.

Whoever swears and keeps his word, come what may

 – lends his money without usury –

  takes no bribe to condemn the innocent.

Whoever lives like this

  will stand firm for ever.

Amen.

Alleluia!

 

Second Reading – James 1:17-18,21-22,27

Accept and Submit to the Word

It is all that is good, everything that is perfect, which is given us from above; it comes down from the Father of all light; with him there is no such thing as alteration, no shadow of a change. By his own choice he made us his children by the message of the truth so that we should be a sort of first-fruits of all that he had created.

  Accept and submit to the word which has been planted in you and can save your souls. But you must do what the word tells you, and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves.

  Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.

 

Gospel Acclamation – John 6:63,68

Alleluia, alleluia!

Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life; you have the message of eternal life.

Alleluia!

 

Alternative Acclamation – James 1:18

Alleluia, alleluia!

By his own choice the Father made us his children by the message of the truth, so that we should be a sort of first-fruits of all that he created.

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 ©

You Put Aside the Commandment of God, to Cling to Human Traditions

The Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered round Jesus, and they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with unclean hands, that is, without washing them. For the Pharisees, and the Jews in general, follow the tradition of the elders and never eat without washing their arms as far as the elbow; and on returning from the market place they never eat without first sprinkling themselves. There are also many other observances which have been handed down to them concerning the washing of cups and pots and bronze dishes. So these Pharisees and scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not respect the tradition of the elders but eat their food with unclean hands?’

 He answered, ‘It was of you hypocrites that Isaiah so rightly prophesied in this passage of scripture:

This people honours me only with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me. The worship they offer me is worthless, the doctrines they teach are only human regulations.

You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.’ He called the people to him again and said, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that goes into a man from outside can make him unclean; it is the things that come out of a man that make him unclean. For it is from within, from men’s hearts, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.’

 

A Homily – The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

 

Dajian Huineng – The Sixth Ancestor of Zen

 Huineng lived between the mid-seventh and early eighth century CE. He is the author of the Platform Sutra and the principle proponent of the doctrine of sudden enlightenment. He was a Chinese Buddhist of the Southern Chan school, which became known as Zen Buddhism when it moved across the water to Japan.

 According to his legend, Huineng was a lay person, it is said that upon reading the Diamond Sutra he attained a state of perfect enlightenment and was subsequently able to expostulate his understanding of the teachings of the Buddha to his teacher Hongren, the Fifth Ancestor of Zen.

 Huineng’s Platform Sutra recapitulates the major teachings of Chan Buddhism including the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra and the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana.

 He was considered to be an uneducated barbarian by his contemporaries. Regardless of the opinion that so many others had of him, it was on account of his extraordinary ability to see the broader context that held such disparate teachings together that Hongren chose him to lead his school over the monk who had been groomed to fulfil that role.

 Huineng taught "no-thought" and the purity of the “unattached mind" which comes and goes freely, functioning fluently without any hindrance.

 Be mindful!

 The principle of “no-thought” does not mean that a person is not thinking, but that in the state of “no-thought” the mind is attentive to its immediate experience, unentangled by the exigencies of the past or the expectations of the future.

 The state of ‘no-thought” is understood as a way of being, wherein the mind is open, non-conceptual or post linguistic, allowing the individual to experience reality directly.

 Huineng criticized the formal understanding of Buddhism which suggests that the individual must devote themselves to a life of quiet contemplation, likening the conventional practices and institutions of his day to the same social, religious and intellectual traps that Gautama Siddhartha, the Original Buddha sought to free people from when he taught them that they did not have to endure innumerable lifetimes and countless rebirths before they can be free from the wheel of life.

 His teaching on sudden enlightenment is a doctrine of liberation, he likened it to the five-fold-path as taught by the Buddha, both teachings aim at freeing a person from their in the immediacy of the present moment.The Buddha was a liberator and so was Huineng.

 He taught this:

 When alive, one keeps sitting without lying down. When dead, one lies without sitting up, observing that in both cases, the individual is a set of stinking bones!

 He asked the most important question: What has any of it to do with the great lesson of life?

 When I was given my first Koan to meditate on, my mentor offered me the old cliché:

 What is the sound of one hand clapping?

 In the spirit of Huineng I understood the Koan to be meaningless and replied:

 There is no sound.

 My mentor insisted that I answered too quickly, suggesting that I must meditate on the Koan further before returning a response.

 Of course he was wrong, I had simply told the truth, speaking from the immediacy of my experience, with the understanding that one hand does not clap, and there is nothing more that needs to be said about that.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, Angelic Doctor of the Church, Legate and Villain

With the possible exception of Saint Paul, whose epistles are the earliest Christian writings, Saint Augustine of Hippo is arguably the most influential Christian writer of all time.

Paul’s work delineated for the nascent Church its primary creeds and basic beliefs concerning who Jesus was and why his life…and death…should be meaningful to us. He framed the theological context within which the Gospels were written.

Paul did all of that, and yet it is possible that Augustine is even more influential, because Augustine’s interpretation of Paul has dominated Christian thought since the formation of the Imperial Church .

Augustine lived from the mid-fourth century to the mid-fifth century CE. He entered the Church just as Christianity was completing its transformation into the official religion of the Roman Empire, where it came to wield incredible power as the indispensable administrative apparatus of the state. Augustine’s extensive writing fixed that transformative process into the structure we recognize today as the Roman Catholic Church.

Augustine was midway through his career as a public servant before he converted to Christianity, at which point he entered the priesthood. He was a prolific writer, and due to his skill as a legate his career took off at incredible speed; it took only four years for him to be ordained a bishop.

Augustine’s mother was a Christian, but his father was a traditional Roman of North Africa and never converted. His father had wanted Augustine to have a regular career in the traditional Roman mode of life, and for the first part of his adult life he adhered to his father’s wishes, but at the beginning of the fifth century the entire empire was in a process of conversion and all of the good jobs in government were going to Christians. Augustine felt stymied in his career and so he converted. He surmised that apart from the Church he would only encounter dead ends. After becoming convinced that he would been given a good position in the Church he joined up, and his gambit paid off, they put him on the fast track to a Bishopric.

Though he worked tirelessly against heretical groups like the Manicheans (a movement which he had formerly belonged to), the Pelagians and the Donatists, and those writings constitute a large portion of his body of work, he also wrote voluminous commentaries on the scripture and the proper education of Christians, but he is most famous for his autobiography: The Confessions, and his magnum opus, The City of God.

Augustine penned the controversial doctrine of creation ex nihillo, as part of his seminal teaching on original sin. He also gave the its teaching on sacramental theology, arguing as a lawyer for the authority of the Church in all matters private and public.

His theology would dominate Christian thinking up until the scholastic period, but Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most influential of the scholastic theologians, leaned heavily on Augustine for nearly all of his views, which is to say that Augustine continued to exercise an indirect influence on the Church as the preeminent standard of orthodoxy, virtually all of Aquinas’ contemporaries did the same. They all know that to go against Augustine risked being labeled a heretic, having all of your work declared anathema and being burned at the stake.

The trick that the scholastic theologians employed was to find new ways to argue for Augustine’s conclusions and the cosmological schemes that supported them. To the extent that they deviated from Augustinianism they would run afoul of the hierarchy.

By the time of the protestant reformation, both Martin Luther and John Calvin believed that their work represented a realignment of the church with Augustine, and through them Augustine’s theology dominated protestant thinking and continues to do so in the 21^st century.

I have taken on Augustine as my principle opponent for my own work.

His doctrine of original sin, his doctrine of double predestination, his teaching that torture can be considered a form of charity if it brings someone to the point of conversion are anathema to the way of Jesus Christ, representing a stark contradistinction to the life and ministry of the Church’s founder as preserved by the gospels, as well as Paul’s own teaching which asserted a profound hope in the reconciliation of all people with God.    

Saint Augustine of Hippo has the title of Angelic Doctor of the Church, but he on truth he was a villain; he was brutal and cruel and a hypocrite of the highest order, his terrible pessimism regarding the human condition should be exposed and read in the light of the full body of his work which is vicious and inhumane..

A Homily – The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

First Reading – Joshua 24:1-2,15-18

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 33(34):2-3,16-23

Second Reading – Ephesians 5:21-32

Gospel Acclamation – John 6:63,68

The Gospel According to John 6:60-69 © 

 

(NJB)

 

Listen!

 In ancient times the Hebrew people, also known as the Habiru or the Apiru, the Iberu and the Amarru, were a polytheistic people. These people, who later became known as the Israelites, having been organized into thirteen tribes by the patriarch Jacob from a diverse group of merchants and pirates, exiles and runaway slaves, who centuries later became known as the Judeans, after the tribe of Judah which rose to preeminence among them and had Jerusalem for its capital, these people believed in the real presence of many deities. These people crafted an image of their own God, not as the law giver, but as the law itself, the universal law which binds all people, and they promoted the power of their God, as the greatest of all.

 The leadership of these people elevated these ideals, insisting that they could not be represented by totems, effigies, graven images, or images of any kind. Their God was a principle, their God was JUSTICE writ large and characterized by goodness, humility and mercy.

 And though this ideal was established, the people could not resist the lure of popular conviction that held sway throughout the ancient world and in all of the communities around them. They continued to believe in the minor deities of personified nature, in the divinity of kings and heroes, in their power to persuade the spirits of earth and water, air and fire, of their ancestors to act on their behalf, to influence their fortune, to give them a winning hand and to strike down their enemies.

 The sacred texts are replete with stories of the people, unwilling to walk away from these superstitions. The prophets, going all the way back to Moses, excoriated them for doing so, and lamented their failure in the end.  

 Christians developed a more nuanced understanding of the divine reality after Jesus, one in which the God of the Hebrew people merges with the God of the philosophers as understood by the Greeks and Romans.

 The popular conception of God among the ancient Hebrews (not the ideal manifestation of the divine as represented in the law), was a God of nomads, a God of shepherds, a God that did not have any understanding of borders or boundaries, a God that travelled with the people wherever the roamed, crossing rivers and mountains and seas. Their God was a God of aliens, exiles and fugitives, of wanderers living in foreign lands.

 When they were beset by the authorities in those places, powers and principalities, kings and queens, who threatened them with bondage, the God of the Hebrews became of God of war, rebellion and insurrection, their God became a God of power.

 Understand this:

 All of these images of God fall short of the ideals that had been set forth by the patriarchs, as well as the divine reality that Jesus preached.

 God, the creator of the universe, is a God beyond all knowing, eternal and infinite.

 God is not limited to the plains and the fields, to the mountains and seas; God is not bound by the movements of planets and stars, of galaxies and galactic clusters, God is the God of all reality, and everything in it

 According to Jesus, God is love, and love is the whole of the law that binds us. 

 Be mindful.

 If you intend to seek God, look into your heart; you will find God in loving, and in loving you will be blessed.

 Praise God through works of love. God has no name, therefore exalt God’s loving work in creation; you will find it in the love you receive and the love you share.

 Seek glory through works of service. Know that God is great because God cares.

 Listen to your neighbors, rescue them from fear, God’s light will shine on you, through faith, in hope and love.

 Know this.

 With God there is no shame. God does not respect station, rank, class or wealth. God loves everyone the same…sinner and saint.

 Remember.

 Do not look for God to save you from your troubles. We are all Job in a way. We are called to the same faith; trust in God and you will come to understand how transient our troubles are.

 All pain is temporary, but love lasts forever. There is no rescue in this world unless it comes from your neighbor, another human being, your friends and family…even the stranger may appear to you as a messenger of the divine…look for God there.

 Do not fear.

 Speak the truth.

 Avoid evil.

 Do good.

 God see all, hears all, knows all, even your innermost thoughts, secrets, desires, and motivations. God knows you as you know yourself.

 Keep your mind in the present; do not focus on the good things that may or may not come.

 God’s love is always with us, though we only feel it in the present moment, turn on your heel and you will find it.

 Listen to them that teach hope…ignore the fear-mongers; this is the way to peace.

 Consider the teaching of the apostle and know that Jesus knew nothing of the church, but he did love his people. Jesus gave himself up to prosecution, torture and death so that they would not be killed on account of his mission. This was a loving, and a holy action, and through it, Jesus pointed to the way he encouraged his followers to take.

 These were human activities, done in a human context.

 Know this.

 Jesus said nothing about the submission of women, in fact the Gospels preserve the following truths:

 The first Apostle was a woman, Jesus encountered her at the well and after his talk with her she converted her whole community into followers of the way.

 The only time Jesus is ever corrected, he is corrected by a woman of Syro-Phoenician descent, and Jesus initially refused to help because she was not “a member of his tribe.” She scolded Jesus him in the spirit of their shared faith, and when she did Jesus relented.

 Only his female followers stayed with him until the end of his life, bearing witness to his death on the cross, and it was a woman to whom the resurrected Christ first showed himself. It was she who brought the other disciples to the knowledge that he had risen.

 Remember this when you consider how authority in the church should be divided between men and women; remember that in his own time, it was the women among his followers who consistently led the way.

 Consider the Gospel reading for today, it gives us an example of just where the early church began to deviate from the teaching of Jesus, and the lived experience of the way he taught.

 In the final paragraph we are given the thoughts of saint Peter, who would have us believe that he follows Jesus because Jesus has the “secret” to eternal life, as if this were the purpose of the Gospel as if “believing” that Jesus is the “Holy One of God” (whatever that means), is the key to receiving the gift of eternal life.

 In the fourth paragraph we are asked to believe that God parcels out access to Jesus, to the truth, to the reality of life everlasting, allowing some to come to it while refusing others, according to some hidden plan.

 None of this scheme is true, it is the concoction of lawyers and pitch-men.

 Here is the Gospel:

 God loves you and you are saved. You are saved already. You are not saved for anything that you have done, you did not earn your salvation, you are saved by grace because God loves you.

The promise of salvation is not that you will be spared from suffering and torment in hell, or that when you are judged God will forgive you. God has already forgiven you; you are already saved.

God has prepared you, and everyone for eternal life.

 Believe it!

 Let the goodness of the promise flow through you now and start living this life, your only life, as if it were true.

 We are not called to believe in the idea that Jesus is this or that, the Holy One of God, we are called to act on the principles of his faith, to live lives of charity and humble service to each other, for this is the law and love is the whole of it.

First Reading – Joshua 24:1-2,15-18

We Will Serve the Lord, for He is Our God

Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem; then he called the elders, leaders, judges and scribes of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. Then Joshua said to all the people, ‘If you will not serve the Lord, choose today whom you wish to serve, whether the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living. As for me and my House, we will serve the Lord.’

  The people answered, ‘We have no intention of deserting the Lord and serving other gods! Was it not the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery, who worked those great wonders before our eyes and preserved us all along the way we travelled and among all the peoples through whom we journeyed? What is more, the Lord drove all those peoples out before us, as well as the Amorites who used to live in this country. We too will serve the Lord, for he is our God.’

 

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 33(34):2-3,16-23

The Lord, the Salvation of the Righteous

Those who seek the Lord lack no blessing.

Alleluia, alleluia!

I shall bless the Lord for ever:

  my mouth will proclaim his praise.

My soul will glory in the Lord:

  let the meek listen and rejoice.

Join me and proclaim the greatness of the Lord:

  together let us exalt his name.

I sought the Lord and he listened to me:

  he rescued me from all my fears.

Look to him and he will shine upon you,

  and you will not be put to shame.

This poor man called, and the Lord answered him

  and saved him from all his many troubles.

The angel of the Lord will build defences

  round those who fear the Lord:

  he will come to their rescue.

Taste and see that the Lord is kind:

  happy the man who hopes in him.

Revere the Lord, his saints:

  for those who fear him are never destitute.

The rich are hungry and in want,

  but for those who seek the Lord

  there is no lack of good things.

Let peace be all your quest and aim.

Come, children, listen to me:

  I shall teach you the fear of the Lord.

Who is the man who desires life,

  who wants to live long to enjoy good things?

Do not let your tongue speak evil:

  let your lips not utter deceit.

Avoid evil, do good:

  seek peace and follow it.

The eyes of the Lord are on the just

  and his ears hear their cries;

but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil:

  he wipes their memory from the earth.

The just cried out, and the Lord listened

  and freed them from all their many troubles.

The Lord is close to the broken-hearted:

  the crushed in spirit he will save.

Many are the troubles of the just,

  but the Lord will free them from all of them.

He will protect all their bones:

  not one will be broken.

Their own evil destroys sinners:

  those who hate the just will be punished.

The Lord will redeem the souls of his servants:

  those who put their hope in him will not be punished.

Amen.

Let peace be all your quest and aim.

Alleluia!

 

Second Reading – Ephesians 5:21-32

Christ Loves the Church, Because it is His Body

Give way to one another in obedience to Christ. Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the Church submits to Christ, so should wives to their husbands, in everything. Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. He made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless. In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it; and that is the way Christ treats the Church, because it is his body – and we are its living parts. For this reason, a man must leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one body. This mystery has many implications; but I am saying it applies to Christ and the Church.

 

Gospel Acclamation – John 6:63,68

Alleluia, alleluia!

Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life; you have the message of eternal life.

Alleluia!

 

The Gospel According to John 6:60-69 © 

Who shall we go to? You are the Holy One of God

After hearing his doctrine many of the followers of Jesus said, ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’

Jesus was aware that his followers were complaining about it and said, ‘Does this upset you? What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?

‘It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

‘But there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the outset those who did not believe, and who it was that would betray him. He went on, ‘This is why I told you that no one could come to me unless the Father allows him.’ After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him.

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.’

 

A Homily – The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)