Sunday, April 28, 2013

Fifth Sunday of Easter

"This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." The Christian life is that simple, and that impossible. Ask yourself, do we love the people of Dhaka as much as we love the people of Boston? We want to say yes, but the truth looms inconveniently before us. Would we allow anyone in Boston to suffer the fate of Dhaka's garment workers, just so that we could have cheap clothing? And they are only a handful of our billions upon billions of brothers and sisters! We cannot love them all. So we divine loopholes in the commandment to limit those we must love. But then inconvenient truth looms once more. Do we really think Jesus meant for us to love only some of those billions upon billions of siblings? But then what kind of God demands the impossible from their disciples? One who knows that love is in the effort, not the success.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Fourth Sunday of Easter

We are God's. There is an intimacy to this truth that is beyond the bonds of family or lovers. We are entwined as one, but one what? What analogy can possibly due this relationship justice? But we are curious little monkeys, so we bang away at our descriptions, drawing some in while repelling others, filling our world with chaos and noise. We have drowned out God's voice and dulled their touch. We refuse to share his love, her grace, then scream to the heavens in agony when the predictable pain and misery ensue. We beat those who fail or hurt us, forgetting that we are entwined to them as well. And the best of us repeatedly try to fix the unfixable, while swatting the hand of the wise child who is tugging at our sleeve and furiously pointing at the simple, obvious, but somehow inconvenient, good news … We are God's, and nothing can take us away from them.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Third Sunday of Easter

"Feed my sheep." But what shall we be fed? I say to you that the works of human hands and minds can never provide the nourishment that we need. This is not the truth we want, but it is the Truth that Easter reveals. So let us continue to obey our ideologies, follow our gurus, and generally live life on our own terms, but let us also not act surprised when we continue to find ourselves starving.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Second Sunday of Easter

Why are we so obsessed with "signs and wonders" of all sorts? What does any of it tell us, let alone prove? Does Jesus' appearances, or the apostles' healings, or our technology, or a pope's gestures somehow alter the nature of Love? What more do we need to see other than the creation that already surrounds us? Can we not hear the chorus of voices, human and not, singing the story of our Parent? Wake up! "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."