May 31, 2020 Day of Pentecost

John 20:19-23  (The Message)

19 Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you." 20 Then he showed them his hands and side. 21 Jesus repeated his greeting: "Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you." 22 Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. "Receive the Holy Spirit," he said. 23 "If you forgive someone's sins, they're gone for good. If you don't forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”


“Love implies forgiveness.  It is hard for us to realize, but actually the only requirement the loving Father places on us, once we come to know Him...is that we forgive as we have been forgiven.”  “The Other Side of Silence”, Morton Kelsey, p. 68

Forgiveness is a gift of God’s spirit.  It is central to ALL that Jesus said and did.
It is central to what the Church is ALL about.  It is a powerful, renewing, uplifting, hope filling, smile producing, releasing gift which in no way is meant to control or dominate the lives of others.  It is meant to set one free to really live, with new choices and chances, and renewed vigor.  We are to work at being forgiving until forgiveness works!

The goal of not forgiving is not to not be forgiving.  The goal of not forgiving is to help the process get to the placed where we can forgive.  For that is what love always wants to do, and must be ready to do.  For we have been forgiven much!







"Love implies forgiveness.”
Morton Kelsey








Prayer thoughts for the week.
Lord help me to:
forgive when I don’t want to but need to.                              
accept forgiveness as vital to a happy life.  (I do blow it a lot.)
love, but not forgive when it becomes more enabling.
work at being forgiven and forgiving until it works.
never give up on forgiveness.

May 24, 2020 Easter 7

John 17: 1-11  (The Message)

1-5 Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
Father, it’s time.
Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
I glorified you on earth
By completing down to the last detail
What you assigned me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me with your very own splendor,
The very splendor I had in your presence
Before there was a world.
6-8
I spelled out your character in detail
To the men and women you gave me.
They were yours in the first place;
Then you gave them to me,
And they have now done what you said.
They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything you gave me is firsthand from you,
For the message you gave me, I gave them;
And they took it, and were convinced
That I came from you.
They believed that you sent me.

Jesus Christ came to make God ‘knowable’; so we might know the one true God.
No one is prevented from knowing God by God.  God does not predestine anyone to blindness and disbelief.  We don’t discover God with our minds alone.  The mystery is too great!  We discover God by trusting the one God sent, Jesus Christ.  And following Him to see what we can see, and find what we can find.   (Isn’t this the way love is too?)

Knowing begins with trust.
Then knowing becomes a matter of obeying, acting on this trust.
When we do we discover how true it really is.
To seek to know is to trust; to trust is to act, to act is to discover - now we know!
To follow Jesus is a journey of discovery.  It is learning who God is.





“And to those who obey Him,
whether they be wise or simple,
He will reveal Himself in the toils,
the conflicts, the sufferings
( and we can add the joys)
which they shall pass through in His fellowship,
and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn
in their own experience Who He is.”
Albert Schweitzer,
“The Search For The Historical Jesus”







Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to trust, act, and discover how real you are.”

May 17, 2020, Easter 6

John 14:15-21  (The Message)

15 "If you love me, show it by doing what I've told you. 16 I will talk to the Father, and he'll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. 17 This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can't take him in because it doesn't have eyes to see him, doesn't know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you! 18 "I will not leave you orphaned. I'm coming back. 19 In just a little while the world will no longer see me, but you're going to see me because I am alive and you're about to come alive. 20 At that moment you will know absolutely that I'm in my Father, and you're in me, and I'm in you. 21 "The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that's who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him."

“Love is, as much as it is anything, a struggle together that is always seeded with new possibilities and challenges...even in old age.”    Eugene Kennedy

Jesus is talking about such a struggle in our text for today.
He is not talking about a comfortable system for getting into heaven.
He is talking about the struggle inherent in loving one’s neighbor as one’s self!
(This is how we love him!)

Jesus can be very demanding.  To know of his amazing grace is also to learn of his demanding love.  For once we are loved and know it, we have to love so others know it.

This is no extra curricular activity we are called to do. This is the heart of it all.  
We have been loved with a great love!  We are to love with a great love!

Prayer thought for the week:  “ Lord, help me to remember that nothing is too small for love.”





 

May 10, 2020 Easter 5

John 14:1-7  (The Promise)

1 "Don't let this throw you. You trust God, don't you? Trust me. 2 There is plenty of room for you in my Father's home. If that weren't so, would I have told you that I'm on my way to get a room ready for you? 3 And if I'm on my way to get your room ready, I'll come back and get you so you can live where I live. 4 And you already know the road I'm taking." 5 Thomas said, "Master, we have no idea where you're going. How do you expect us to know the road?" 6 Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me.

Even with words we have heard many times, we must listen for what we have never heard before.  And with words we know,  we must listen for the unknown  

The words of John 14, which we often use to make an exclusive defense for Christianity, were spoken in a powerfully intimate moment.  They are not meant to be used as a smug statement of egotistical arrogance, but an expression of the extent of God’s love.

We are not called to save people; that is God’s task.  We are called to love people, as God has loved us. This is the greater work we are to do - trust in and live out the way of love over hate, the truth of forgiveness over condemnation, and the life of faith which dares keep compassion at the center of life.

"Perhaps Christianity has more to do with being redemptively human than being superhumanly spiritual.  It involves the conversion, not from human being to spiritual hero, but from inhuman to human.  God will be known in and through our humanity."  William E. Peatman, National Catholic Reporter

"Perhaps Christianity has more to do
with being redemptively human
than being superhumanly spiritual.”

 William E. Peatman










Prayer thought for the week:   “Lord, help me remember that to be spiritual is to be really human in acts of kindness and compassion.  Even wearing masks!”

May 3, 2020 Easter 4

John 10:10

"I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly."     Jesus

Thornton Wilder in his play “Our Town” has Emily, the young bride who had died in childbirth, ask, in a return to live over one day with her family, ask:  “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”  The answer given is, “No, the Saints and poets maybe, they do some.”

It is so easy to live for yesterday or tomorrow and miss today.
It is so easy to live for self alone and forget the joy of companionship.
We must realize that life is a spiritual journey and it’s abundance is to be discovered on the way.  It is discovered as it is shared with others and as we open ourselves to new possibilities.

There is a lot of wisdom for living life today and therein discovering the abundant life in the words of Dr. Diana L. Hayes (first African American woman to earn a Pontifical Doctorate in Theology):

“This is our calling as Christian faithful: to recognize the Christ in everyone. And to reach out a hand of hope, to speak a word of love, to sing a song of happiness, to share a tear of joy or pain, to speak a word of praise, to murmur a prayer, to stand together against those forces that would divide us, isolate us, and block our flow toward home.”






“This is our calling…
to reach out a hand of hope,
to speak a word of love,
to sing a song of happiness.
to share a tear of joy or pain…
to stand together against those
forces that would divide us…”

Dr. Diana L. Hayes










Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to discover the abundant life as I recognize You in everyone.    And to be abundantly open to standing together will all you created and love.”