Sunday, December 25, 2011

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18
Today is a celebration of good news, but is the news that you celebrate truth or fantasy? Why must we categorize and label that which cannot be labeled? Why must we revere our Brother as something he was not? Do you really think he came to be exalted? Is he someone above us to whom we are pleading for a rope, or someone below who is pushing us ever higher? Is he truly the only son of our Parent, or the only one with the courage to claim our full birthright? Is he truly the only one to have ever seen our Creator, or just one truly willing to look and see? What good news will you celebrate today?

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:26-38
Do not get hung up on the virgin birth, either defending or refuting it. It is an interesting piece of revelation, but it is not essential. Did it really happen this way? I do not know, nor do I really care. God could certainly have done so if it was his wish, but it is not necessary for Jesus to have been her true son. Kinship is about love, not blood or DNA. Our Parent does not need to mate to produce genuine offspring. But that does not mean that this revelation is false or untrue. Learn what there is to learn from it: about God's desire for intimacy with us and our desire to serve our Creator. Just do not wast time trying to prove or disprove it. That's just missing the point.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 61:1-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-28
I say to you that the days of revelation are not over. You may think that the whole story has already been delivered, once and for all time. But I say that our Parent is a God of wonderful surprises. How can we know everything, when Love is limitless? This Christmas, prepare not for a rerun of our favorite truths, but for a new episode in the ultimate dramedy that is life.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Luke 1:26-38
Today we celebrate the triumph of logic games over common sense. The "immaculate conception" is not an idea grounded in reality, but a product of the human need to classify and describe every minute detail of the divine as if it were an animal being dissected. Even reading the simplified version of how this "dogma" came to be will boggle the mind. How could so many bright and wise minds actually believe this stuff? Perhaps because of the very problem that this theory was meant to address: original sin. The easiest way to understand the story of Adam & Eve is that it is a tribal memory of the moment when human beings first crossed the threshold of consciousness. It is an attempt to make sense of that historical event when we went from being just another animal to becoming something far more extraordinary. Unfortunately, our evolutionary leap also gifted us with an insatiable appetite for solving mysteries, even if that means over-analyzing and embellishing in order to eliminate ambiguity. And so we get our feast today. It's not enough to believe that our Creator might choose to be one of us. We need to create a flow chart describing the precise procedures that were undertaken to give birth to God Jr. And we wonder why people have such a hard time embracing the Mystery of Faith.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8
"Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God." What will bring you comfort today? All I have to offer is this: Life is wonderful. If you truly stop to look, there is a beauty and majesty to every moment of life, even the ugly ones, that is a testament to the glory and love of our creator. This is a hard and messy way to look at life, but no one ever said that truth is supposed to be easy. The easy road is to see life as brutal and sinful, and long for a paradise of our own imagination. It's the idea that our world is a mistake or a test, but if we just believe the right things, a new one will be created as a reward. These are the fantasies of children, not the wisdom of the Spirit. She comes to open our eyes to the universe we already have, not to entice us with dreams of someplace else. Will you let her comfort you?