Gospel, Homily and Coffee

The past three weeks our second reading as been a progression through St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It started off with that beautiful poem speaking of God’s plan of salvation in Jesus Christ, of our destiny to be united with God and thereby with all. Unity and community is the common theme through these three weeks:  because as we know Salvation is a team effort. How can “I” experience salvation, when the “you” still suffers? How can “We” as church experience salvation, when the “they” still hurt? God’s very nature is community, God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; a unity of three persons, bound in mutual, indwelling, dynamic love. We are creatures of this love, created in God’s own image:  community is part of our make-up, our own nature. Church means community. I loved this saying I heard many years ago:  We go to church. Yet, “Church” is not a noun, but a verb.  We go to continue our community. We come to the building, to build our community up.

To repeat a familiar refrain, Jesus came so that we may have life in the full. Jesus came so that we may be one, as God is one. This is salvation:  Life in the full is life in communion with others. To be able to live in eternity with all, we need to be able to live with others in this reality. There was once these small groups of people, not particularly large at first, maybe 30-50 people. They were from various walks of life; rich and poor, of mixed ethnicities.  They existed in the big cities. The larger community considered them strange because they did not act like the rest of the people. They were kind to each other and supported each other, although they were of different classes.   The men even treated their wives with more respect  They were model citizens in most regards. They were joyful people as well. This ended up attracting more people to this group from different walks of life. So the community began to grow. Finally, the civil authorities grew sus

A good poem is not necessarily about the rhymes, but how we listen to it, and it gets inside and changes our reality. A good poem on the surface appears one way, but when we go deeper, beyond the surface words, we are challenged as to think differently, become more aware; and even to act differently. Our liturgy actually contains lots of poetry; theological language using imagery and constructs, phrasing, to get our defenses down, so that the Spirit can mess with us.   Makes mass all the more enticing, eh?  Try actually listening, or reading to the prayers. Our second reading today also is a poem, probably was a song sung by the early Christians. On the surface, beautiful theology!   It is a great summary of our Christian faith. We are created to be with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We all know this, right? God intended us to be part of the divine family, this is the Will of God. This is the Good News! We do not have to earn it, buy it, or merit it.

Part of Growing up is the realization that we can never go home again. We eventually leave our childhood homes, our families, We go off to college, the military, or to live a more independent life, and when we come back to visit, it is never the same. Change happens.  We evolve and grow, or at least we are meant to. Salvation means to grow.   God wants us to grow and evolve.   Freedom means to mature and allow ourselves to be changed. And if we won’t, then we become stagnant. Jesus confronts this in the gospel. He has come home, he is not the same person that left. And his neighbors cannot deal with it. They have remained frozen.  They have an image of Jesus, that never grew nor could accept him changing. Jesus will not remain captive to their ideas of him. These people, his neighbors and probably family, will be left behind. Left behind with little faith. Salvation is a journey.   We must allow ourselves to grow and allow others to grow.  Thi