Some good points about pointing

St. John the Baptist by Titian: it was not unusual for the Baptist to be imaged pointing away from himself to Christ.

Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 49:3, 5-6
1 Corinthians 1:1-3
John 1:29-34

Do you remember being taught: It’s not nice to point!
I wonder if children are still taught that lesson in manners.
But right here in the gospel
we find John the Baptist in a serious breach of good manners:
John saw Jesus coming toward him and said,
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”

You can just see John’s finger pointing towards Jesus!

The question of whether or not it’s polite to point,
and in particular to point to Jesus, is very much alive today.
It’s interesting that the words polite and political
derive from the same root
and it’s interesting to watch politicians pointing impolitely to Jesus
in hopes of winning voters to their side.
(John, of course, points to Jesus not to advance his own cause
but to direct all attention to the One who came before him.)

How about us?
Do we find ways to point to Christ in our daily lives?
Maybe not so much.
Pointing to Jesus to others is not politically correct
but even those who don’t worry about being politically correct
may feel uncomfortable pointing to Jesus in public,
fearing that doing so might draw too much attention to themselves.

But there are ways we point to others that are acceptable.

Most parents enjoy bragging about their children’s accomplishments:
how well they’re doing in school, in sports,
with their particular talents…
But I wonder how many parents would feel free to point out
to someone at work:
Ya know, my kid served Mass on Sunday morning
and I was so proud to see my child helping at the altar.
That’s much different than telling someone,
I was at the field on Saturday and my kid played a great game!
In one case, we acknowledge we went to a game;
in the other we ‘fess up that we went to church – and enjoyed it!

Most of us would feel free to mention a good concert we went to
or a great CD we just bought,
but how many of us would feel free to point out to someone at work,
Wow! This song we sang at church on the weekend was so beautiful.
I couldn’t get the tune out of my head all day!

Many of us would easily to recommend to others
a good book we read or an article we came across in a magazine
but how man of us would feel free to point out to others
(now, I’m going to make a bit of stretch here!)
“At Mass this weekend the homily was awesome.
For a minute I thought the priest was speaking right to me.

I’m not suggesting that any of us stand on a street corner, preaching.
I’m just wondering how many of us are open
to even broaching the possibility of sharing something -anything-
of our spiritual lives with others…?”

A recent Google survey reported that in the year 2007
the most Googled Who is…? question was, Who is God?

Who would have guessed that?

More people than we may suspect are wondering about God
and beginning a conversation about things spiritual
might be a really good thing to begin.

Why are we so reluctant, even afraid, of sharing with others,
pointing out to them, some of the realities
most dear to our hearts and lives?

Every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist,
we hear the words,
This is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Happy are those who are called to his supper.

Are we happy enough to let even one person this week know
that we were here?
that we have a spiritual life which brings us some measure of peace?

It’s true: It’s not nice to point…
unless we point to Jesus, the Lamb of God,
and how he touches our hearts and lives.

-ConcordPastor

Preach it, Preacher!

Last week my parish offered four opportunities to attend a Faith Festival, a parish-wide, intergenerational opportunity for community and catechesis, including a light meal, prayer and faith formation in age-appropriate groups.

Our January Faith Festival carried this title: Am I a Catholic? What do I need to believe? We chose this topic because it encompasses two of the questions I am most frequently asked in the course of my ministry.

I was the presenter for the adult and high school student contingent. Over the course of the week I gave my presentation to a combined audience of about 275.

Something happens to a presentation as you offer it four times over the course of a week. Some penciled editing is done and some redaction occurs even as you are presenting (to be penciled in later!).

The greater command the speaker has of the material, the freer the speaker is to add and subtract from the prepared text, especially in relationship to the audience listening and its response (verbal/body language).

Repetition, of course, can also be deadly. If the speaker is tired of the material, the audience will tire of listening to it. But if the material continues to engage even the speaker, it has potential for new life each time its offered. That was my experience this past week. Although I had confidence in my material before presenting it the first time, by the end of the week I found myself significantly more personally engaged by it, even though the fourth offering was on a Sunday night after the morning's liturgical schedule and an afternoon of other pastoral work.

I was pleased, too, that by Festival IV my presentation was tighter, not more unwieldy, and thus allowing for greater interaction with my audience after my talk.

Some of this dynamic also applies to preaching a homily on the weekend, albeit in a tighter time frame. No matter how long I work on preparing a homily, I don't really know it's strengths and weaknesses until I have preached it in the liturgical setting. Our weekend Mass schedule includes an anticipated Mass on Saturday evening and three Masses on Sunday morning. I generally preach at 3 or 4 of these celebrations.

Preaching at the 5:00 on Saturday has something of the "out of town tryout" about it - even though it plays in the heart of the home "town." It's in the preaching that preacher discovers what further work the homily needs.

My 5:00 preaching often shows me that my homily began in the wrong place! That's right. I often realize after preaching once that my opening material is either unnecessary or that it delays my getting to where I want my work to take me and God's people. Saturday night and the cut-and-paste feature of word processing make for a better beginning on Sunday morning.

After preaching a text once I also often realize that I have unnecessarily repeated words/phrases/concepts/sentences. Almost always my Sunday preaching ends up being a shorter homily because of my Saturday night redactions. If a deacon preaches on Saturday night my homiletic processing doesn't begin until the 7:30 a.m. liturgy. Between Masses I find a corner in the sacristy for editorial work but there's no keyboard or printer there so it's done by hand: scratching out and writing in.

The final redaction occurs when I prepare my text for publishing here on my blog or on the parish website. I will often see that phrasing that worked in an oral presentation doesn't do as well in print and so a final sweep of the text takes place before I click on "Publish Post."

As was my experience with my Faith Festival talk last week, preaching the same homily three or four times in a 19 hour window allows the presentation to steep, like a pot of tea. Feedback from parishioners over the weekend (observed attention or inattention during the homily and comments as folks pass by at the church doors) either builds the preacher's confidence or indicates the need for more work.

Perhaps most of all, repeated preaching of the same text affords me a comfortability with it that yields a better delivery and presentation. I know that pauses, inflection, emphases, tone of voice and a better "shaped" delivery become more effective over the course of the weekend's preaching.

As you can tell from the above, I almost always preach from a text and I write that text in sense lines which I believe enhances delivery and frees me for better eye-contact with the assembly. That's why my homilies appear in that form on my blog and on the parish website.

I've noticed over the past year or so that my homilies are getting shorter. My ambo text used to be generally 5-6 pages, double spaced, 16 point print. They are now generally just over 3 and sometimes up to 4 pages. I'm pleased with what's happening although it was not a change I had set out to make. My memory is that some less lengthy homilies seemed, to me, to be more effective and I slowly but surely found myself writing that way.

And, as you might guess, no one has complained that my homilies are too short!

Thanks for reading - I've found it helpful to think these things through and organize my thoughts.

Below: Now here's my dream! Monitors scrolling the text of my homily right at the ambo, with a computer in the sacristy where I could do some editing between Masses on a Sunday morning! How will I present this request to the Parish Finance Council?

Homily for September 2

Homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – C
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29
Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a
Luke 14:1-7, 14

This gospel passage is just in time for me
because I’m going to a wedding reception this afternoon
and now I know just how to behave when I get there!

But I’m surprised that in the gospel account
we don’t find a scribe or Pharisee jumping up and saying,
“But, Master! What about place cards?”

Place cards!

At most banquets and wedding receptions,
you find a place card at the entrance to the banquet room
and the place card tells you where to sit and,
in a subtle way, tells you just where you stand
among the host’s honored and best friends.

But the message of Jesus here is not about saving anyone
from an embarrassing moment,
it’s about something else…

Jesus’ admonition that when throwing a party ourselves
we should invite the “poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind”
is horribly not politically correct in our own culture
and a sure sign that in the culture of Jesus’ day
these were the groups of people regularly were excluded
from social gatherings, on account of their poverty of challenges.
But here, again, the message of Jesus is not about
having a quota of physically challenged people to dinner,
it’s about something else…

Remember when Jesus instructed the rich young man
to sell everything he had, give the money to the poor and follow him?
That message was not about an inventory of personal possessions,
it was about something else…
Many of the hard sayings of Jesus in the gospel lead us to wonder
how much does he want? what do we have to do?
how much must we give? does he really mean what he says?

And if it all leads to discussions about
where to sit, whom to invite and what do I need to give away,
we may have missed the whole thing --
because it’s about something else…

Thursday night we celebrated a Mass to close our Vacation Bible School:
a wonderful celebration with the children, their families
and other parishioners.
At the beginning of my homily
I asked the kids to tell me about the necklaces they were all wearing
and I asked one little girl, Julia, to loan me hers for a few minutes
while I was preaching.
In response to my questions the children told me
they had made the necklaces during the week,
that each one had 10 beads, one for each of the 10 commandments,
and that in the middle of the 10 beads was a Cross
to remind us that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the law.

I remarked about how beautiful the necklaces were
and when I handed Julia’s back to her, she said,
“If you like, you can keep it, Fr. Fleming.”

Now, THAT’S what it’s all about!
It’s about having the kind of heart that spontaneously offers
and gives away what it has - for the joy of others.

Jesus isn’t checking place cards:
he’s looking for a heart that thinks of others before its own needs.
Jesus isn’t looking for a quota of a minority group:
he’s looking for a heart that always has room for one more.
Jesus isn’t taking stock of our belongings:
he’s looking for a heart always ready to share
even what it prizes the most.

It’s not about where you sit, or whom you invite or what you possess.
It’s about growing a heart that gives up its own place, opens its door,
and gives itself away out of love, for the need and joy of another.

It’s about a heart that gives away the treasured necklace she made
at Vacation Bible School.

As beautiful as this necklace is, it’s all the more precious to me
because it came not only from Julia’s hand but also from her heart.

Here, at this table,
Jesus gives up his place for you and me;
he invites us to his supper although he knows we are not worthy;
and he gives from his heart all that was humanly his,
his Body and his Blood, in the Eucharist.

May the sacrament we receive from the Lord’s altar
nourish a spirit of loving sacrifice in us
and give us hearts to love as Jesus loved us.

ConcordPastor

Sunday Homily

Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10
Hebrews 12:1-4
Luke 12:49-53

More often than not Jesus is the consummate man of peace,
but sometimes, like today, he puts on a hard hat,
picks up a sledge hammer
- and comes out swinging!

Believe me:
it’s much easier to preach the Prince of Peace
than to homilize the hard hat Jesus.

So, what’s all this talk about division?

We need to remember that, in Jesus’ time,
attachment to one’s immediate and extended family
was a matter of life and death:
your existence (shelter, food, support)
depended on your family connections
and without them you had no standing in society.

(That’s why, in the scriptures,
the plight of widows and orphans gets so much attention.)

To be separated from family
was to jeopardize all of your relationships and your life itself.
But that’s just what Jesus invited his listeners to do.
When he beckoned, “Come follow me!”
he was asking people to leave their own family and to join his.
And he warned them that if they did this,
they would inevitably suffer separation from those who did not.

I think we’d like to believe that we’re beyond all that,
and the need for such dire warnings.

Maybe… maybe not…

Perhaps, after 2,000 years, all we’ve really achieved
is a mutually agreed upon mutual silence about faith:
a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” regarding religion
that keeps social bonds from being disturbed
by differences in belief and practice.

On the other hand, there are at least some religions
that are regularly subject to criticism and to some degree, ostracism.

Take Christianity.

There are some who are comfortable being identified as Christian -
as long as that identification also dissociates them
from particular forms or branches of Christianity.
"I’m a Christian - but –
not like the ones you see on TV"
or,
"not like the right-wingers,"
or,
"not like the politicians who are Christian-in-name-only,"
or,
"not like…"
well, the list can go on and on.

And then there’s,
"Well, I’m a Catholic – but –
let me tell you all the things about Catholicism I disagree with…"
I hear this all the time:
Catholics who define their faith
in terms of their disagreements with it.
Many of you have been asked by family members and friends,
"Why are you still Catholic?
Why do you still go to church?
How can you still believe in all that stuff?"
And, sometimes, as much as you wanted to answer,
you found it difficult to respond.

Such questions seldom divide families or friends
but they can draw an uncomfortable line of separation
between the inquirers, who go away shaking their heads,
and the Catholics, who may not know what to say.

Perhaps some of us suffer from a religious inferiority complex.
We have been embarrassed by blatant hypocrisy,
the scandal of sexual abuse,
and incompetent leadership
and often confused by Church teachings that run absolutely counter
to what our culture holds up as good.

Judging from the media
you would think that the whole mission of the Catholic Church
was centered on sexual and biological morality –
and that, of course, is not true.
As important, as difficult and as controversial as such issues are,
what the Catholic Church is truly centered on
(as is the whole of Christianity)
is the person of Jesus Christ, the life he offers us
and the fire of faith he invites us to share.

People ask me questions, too:
“Why do you remain a Catholic priest?
Do you believe in all that stuff.”
My answer is that I’m a Christian precisely because
I believe in “all that stuff” in the gospel of Jesus.
And I’m a Catholic because I believe that this Church has,
for 2,000 years, struggled to preach and live Christ’s gospel.
And I freely acknowledge that this struggle
has known sad, sinful and tragically regrettable times
as well as times of wisdom, truth and grace.

But most of all, I am a Catholic Christian
because of what we are doing here, this morning,
in word and sacrament.
I am blessed to be part of a community of believers
which traces its beginnings
to a supper, one night in an upper room, in Jerusalem
where Jesus, a faithful Jew, took bread and wine for Passover,
and broke, blessed and shared it with his friends
and asked them and now us to do the same in memory of him.

That’s the heart of it all for me
and at the heart of that meal
is the loving sacrifice of the heart of Jesus.

May the faith which has gathered us together at this table
open itself widely and warmly to welcome many more to join us.

May that faith be like a fire in our hearts:
a flame ignited by Christ and fueled by his Spirit.

And in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, may we
“persevere in running the race that lies before us
while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus,
the leader and perfecter of faith.”

-ConcordPastor

So: why are YOU still a Catholic? why do YOU go to Mass? do YOU still believe in "all that stuff?"

The Preacher's Task

Just as I break the bread of the Eucharist each Sunday, so is it my task to break open the bread of the Word. It was St. Augustine who said that the liturgy feeds us from two tables: the table of the Word and the table of the Sacrament.

In breaking open the Word it's my task to nourish our assembly with both comfort and challenge. It has been said that the scriptures are intended to "comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." Like all easy divisions of the world into two halves, that saying is incomplete even as it makes a point worth pondering.

In this week's scriptures, Jeremiah (the prophet, not the bullfrog) gets into trouble for afflicting the comfortable. I'd like to tell you that by comparison the Jesus in this Sunday's gospel brings comfort to the afflicted, but this week Jesus has a hard hat on and he comes out swinging a sledgehammer!

This is one of those week's when the preacher's job isn't easy. I don't own a hard hat and I've got very little experience with heavy tools. Pray for me and for all who break open the Word this week that we'll be both faithful to our task and nourishing of our people.

Changes in West Concord

On July 8, I was at West Concord Union Church for the 10:00 Service at which Pastor John Hudson preached and led the people of WCUC in prayer for the last time before moving on to become pastor of Pilgrim Church in Sherborn, Massachusetts. I was grateful that this coincided with the weekend when we had a visiting missionary priest at Holy Family, freeing me to worship with a church community who were so much a part of my first 10 years in Concord.

John's sermon on his last Sunday was, as usual, well-crafted and challenging. All faith communities face challenges of one kind or another and John was direct in calling the people of WCUC to face theirs and to continue to become the church the Lord calls them to be. I was grateful to have a moment in the service as a visiting pastor to voice a prayer for John and for the people he served so well in West Concord.

Only days later I would be reading the most recent document from Rome which deals with the question, "Who is the Church of Jesus Christ?" The Vatican's answer is very defined and, unfortunately, its effort to lift up important truths may have been obscured by a vocabulary easily read as denigrating of other Christian faith communities. What I know from my experience two Sundays ago is simpler and more easily simply put: the people of West Concord Union Church are the body of Christ, gathered for prayer and worship and committed to proclaiming and living the message and justice of the gospel. In their sanctuary that morning the Spirit of God was alive and well and filling the hearts of believers who had gathered to bid farewell to a man they loved, a man who had served them so very well. My prayer goes with John as he moves to Sherborn and to the people of WCUC as they begin the process of searching for a new pastor.