Reflecting on Philemon 9, 10, 12-17

How are you at the art of gentle persuasion?  Do you need some help getting a child to eat her broccoli, or an elderly parent to give up his car keys?  Read Paul’s letter to Philemon, found towards the end of the New Testament.  In just 445 words, Paul gives a tutorial on how to gently but firmly get someone to do the right thing.

Philemon owned the home where the earliest Christians of Colossus (in modern-day Turkey) gathered.  He was certainly a faithful follower of Jesus, and yet he appears to have owned a slave, a young man named Onesimus. As far back as St. John Chrysostom (347-407), this letter has been used to either justify or vilify slavery because Paul is coaxing a slave-owner into taking back his slave as a free man.

Onesimus has left Philemon’s household and has become a companion to Paul during his imprisonment, probably in Ephesus in the mid-‘50s.  Onesimus has become a devout Christian, so beloved of Paul that he calls him “my own heart”.  Paul has a deep love for both slave-owner and slave because they have both been “co-workers” with him in proclaiming the gospel.

Paul’s authority over those early churches stands in the background of this warm letter.  He could command Philemon to take Onesimus back and not exact the accepted punishment for runaway slaves (cutting off a leg).  But he wants the authority of Christ to override his own.  He is persuading Philemon to do that hardest of all things: to allow Christ to change his behavior, even when his culture encourages him to do the opposite.

That’s the great challenge for us today.

Are you currently working on coaxing someone to change a behavior?

Reflecting on Psalm 68: 4-5, 6-7, 10-11

St. Marianne and the Sisters of St. Francis with their patients

Come with me for a moment.  I want to take you down the highest sea-cliff in the world.  We can either hike down, or take a mule-ride, or take a short and beautiful plane trip down into Kalaupapa Peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Ah.  You’ve heard of it, yes?  This is the dreadful place where the unfortunate Hawaiians who had contracted Hansen’s disease (leprosy) were exiled from the 1840s until the invention of a cure in the late 1960s.  And this, of course, is the only single site in the U.S. where two saints (Saint Damien and Saint Marianne) have resided.

I cannot sing the refrain of this weekend’s responsorial psalm without thinking of them and the loving care they brought to those who would never see their families again:

God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor.

Father Damien, a Belgian missionary priest, offered up his life to live and die with those who were exiled, to be the presence of God that the psalmist exalts today, to be the father of orphans and the defender of widows, and to give a home to the forsaken.

Mother Marianne Cope and other Franciscan sisters of her community from Syracuse, NY soon followed.  They established a safe home for the girls and women.  They built a school and a hospital, where they introduced the sanitary measures that ended the spread of the disease on Molokai.  And those sisters are still there, 125 years later, tending to the needs of the thirteen remaining patients who have chosen not to return to public life.

St. Damien and St. Marianne, mahalo. Thank you.

Have you found a way to make a home for the poor?

Reflecting on Isaiah 66: 18-31

When Isaiah promised that all the nations would stream to Jerusalem because of their encounter with the God of Israel, he envisioned a great pilgrimage of joyous new believers coming to the Holy City because that was where God dwelt.

I recently met a family who reminded me that where there is Love, there God dwells.  Several years ago the Stallings family from Frisco, Colorado discerned that they were being called to bring Christ’s love to the poorest of Uruguay.

Thus began The Fields of the Fatherless (see Proverbs 23:10 for the beautiful scripture text which inspired their work), a farm expressly for the delight and healing of children orphaned because of the increasingly fragile family ties in this most secular country in South America.

Funded through the good will of a small group of friends, the Stallings bought a beautiful working farm in a rural area in Uruguay.  Then they started inviting orphans―and there are many there because of restricted adoption rules, legalized prostitution, and a huge decline in couples marrying and staying together.

The children come for escape from the tensions and loneliness of orphanage living, and oh, how they find it there.  They swim in the big swimming pool.  They ride the horses and pet the baby goats.  They get one million hugs from Cathy and Gary and their two wonderful teenagers Abi and Josh (who adapted and learned the language even faster than their parents).

I love to travel to Israel to touch the places where Christ lived.  But my spirit soars when I hear stories of joyful believers who are taking Him to the loneliest corners of the human heart.

Where do you see Jesus alive today?

Reflecting on Jeremiah 38: 4-6, 8-10

Marc Chagall, Jeremiah in the Pit, 1957

I used to listen to the radio all day, every day, when I was a teenager.  It was so easy then. The dial never moved, and we could listen to the great music of the sixties late into the night.  Thanks to all the great advances in technology I haven’t been able to figure out how to get a station on my car radio in decades.  I keep pushing buttons, but all I get is that infuriating static.

The prophets, on the other hand, have figured out the radio frequencies so brilliantly that they can actually find God’s voice on the dial, and they know just where to place themselves so that the signal is loud and clear.  Jeremiah, way back in the sixth century B.C., was getting God’s voice in stereo, and the message was unmistakeable:  tell the king of Jerusalem to surrender to the Babylonians, for it is God’s will.

What an inconvenient truth this was. They hated him for it, and beat him, threw him in prison, and tossed him down into a muddy cistern to die of starvation at the peak of the famine brought about by the Babylonian siege of the city that he had prophesied for so long.  He’d been right, of course.  Those who speak for God always are.

We all want to be on the right side of history.  We’d love to be the one about whom people say, “If only we had listened.”  Or maybe we’re the ones who need to listen.  I have a feeling that the words of the prophets are starting to come in loud and clear.  Turn your radio on.

Have you ever suffered persecution for telling the truth?

Reflecting on Luke 12: 32-48

There is so much that is hidden in nature.  Take bees, for instance.  All through the luscious summer months they secretly pollinate our gardens and fields.  I hardly ever notice them, but without their quiet work the world would end.

Even more grace-giving for me than the ingenuity of nature are those moments of astonishment when the hidden works of love and charity of the people around me are exposed.  I had one of those jaw-dropping moments last week.

My friend Rita teaches theology and scripture at Mullen High School in Denver.  I’ve known her for fifteen years.  It was not until yesterday that I realized that three nights of every week she shops and then cooks a hot meal for eighty elderly people downtown who are without permanent housing.  She and her husband John then haul all the food from their house, sometimes stopping at Qdoba for their generous donation of rice.  Finally, they carry all the food in, set it up with the volunteers—those hidden angels all around us who do the work of the kingdom consistently, year after year, without anyone knowing–and warmly greet and serve each grateful guest.

Rita, I asked, where does the money come from for all the groceries it takes to feed these eighty people three times a week? Oh, she said, it comes from my paycheck from Mullen.

And she has quietly done this for fifteen years.

I have a feeling Rita will be in charge of all her Master’s property someday.  Oh, wait.  Since those who are poor are at the center of God’s heart, she already is.

In what hidden ways are you bringing light and grace to the world?

Reflecting on Luke 12: 13-21

So, the summer project—which is the same project I’ve had for the twenty-five years we’ve lived in our house—is to finally organize the thousands of pictures and letters I’ve saved through the years.  After an agonizing month I finally transferred all my stuff from the garage, to the porch, and now, yes, to the living room.

We can’t eat at the table because it’s covered with my grade-school report cards.  Ugh.  Why on earth have they traveled with me all these years?  And why, I wonder, is the picture of the family of the unnamed hired help at my grandfather’s dairy sitting where the dinner plate should be?

Sentimentality, said Kafka, is giving something more attention than God gives it. I cringe when I imagine the nameless mother in that ancient picture somehow walking into our living room today and seeing the picture of her family one hundred years ago and saying, “Are you kidding me?  THIS picture is more important to you than your present life?  Even I didn’t keep that picture, and I actually know who those people are.”

What if this very night my life were demanded of me?  I know without a doubt that stuff would be shoveled into the recycle bin in a heartbeat.  The table would be cleared, and set with my beautiful china (which brings me such joy in my real life), and all my family and friends would gather around it.  We would sing, and laugh, and pray, and eat!  And I would die in peace, finally rid of the stuff that was keeping from being rich in the ways that matter to God.

What “treasures” do you store that are keeping you from real happiness?

I ran across this wonderful insight about prayer in this month’s Give us This Day, the daily devotional published by Liturgical Press.  In the reflection posted for this weekend, Sister Miriam Pollard remarks that prayer is letting God in, so we can let ourselves be the prayer we already are.

I love that.  It makes me wonder what kind of prayer I am, or you are.  The prayer we are isn’t something we invent through discipline and fasting.  It’s our particular prayer DNA, the unique tapestry of our individual connection with the Divine.  It’s the information a stranger gets about us without either of us being aware of it—that unnamable grace that goes out from people that makes us feel safe in God’s love .

Thomas Merton once said, “There is no way of telling people they are walking around shining like the sun.”  I understand that now. There is no way of describing to people the prayer that they are, the prayer that they bring us to when we are in their presence.

Many years ago I met with a grieving widow as we planned her husband’s funeral.  We chose the hymns and the readings, and eventually I asked her if there was anyone in the parish whom she would like to ask to be the Eucharistic Minister at the Mass.  Her answer was illuminating.

“Do you know the woman who comes in the side door every Sunday, helping her husband in the wheelchair?  Could you ask her if she would serve at my husband’s funeral?  I don’t know her name.”

Who needs names when we can identify each other by the prayer we are?

How would people describe the kind of prayer you are?

Reflecting on Genesis 18” 1-10a, Luke 10: 38-42

This is funny.  Here come three visitors out of the blue, showing up in the desert, and Abraham begs them to come into his tent for “a little food”.  Then he sets Sarah to work kneading enough dough to fill a large bakery.  I wonder how long it took the servants to kill the steer (surely enough meat to feed the entire population of Beersheba for several years), cook it up and serve it.  I hope the three “strangers” weren’t too hungry when they arrived.

The point of such extravagant Bedouin hospitality is to feed and comfort the traveler in the desert, for the day may come when we too may find ourselves in the wilderness and may need the support of strangers.  Bottom line: the most important honor one can show a guest is to slave away in the kitchen in order to provide food.

So here is Jesus, eighteen hundred years later, in the home of Martha and Mary.  They must have been special friends of Jesus.  In other stories featuring them they also have a brother, Lazarus, whom John’s gospel tells us was raised from the dead.  But in Luke’s story today it is their home alone, and Jesus has come to spend time with them.

They both must love him and want to honor him.  Martha expresses this by preparing the roasted garlic hummus in the kitchen.  Mary sits at his feet.  And guess what: in the discipleship of equals that is the kingdom of God, she chooses the better part.  Once again, Jesus is obsessed with one thing: making sure the proclamation of the kingdom is heard by all.

Are you sometimes too “anxious about many things”?

Reflecting on Luke 10: 25-37

The astonishing thing about scripture is that it keeps smacking us in the face.  Every year I notice hidden gems in stories that have been hiding in plain sight my entire life.  The iconic parable of the Good Samaritan is a good example.

Recall that at the beginning of the story a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  We know that he is well versed in the Law because he then quotes sections of both Deuteronomy (6:5) and Leviticus (19:18).  These crucial sections of the Law require that we love God with all our strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves.  But, asks the lawyer, who is my neighbor? At the time of Jesus some groups began suggesting that kindness should be extended not only to those who were in covenant with God (the Jews) but to those outside the covenant as well.  So when the  young man asks Jesus to weigh in on this important social justice issues, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.

But here’s where we get one of those great surprise endings that Jesus loves.  All these years I’ve been thinking that Jesus is telling the scholar of the Law that even the poor guy who gets assaulted and robbed should be considered his neighbor.  The loathsome Samaritan, well outside the accepted gene pool, understands that and helps the victim with heartwarming kindness.

Am I the only one who thought the neighbor in the story is the robbery victim, and the Samaritan is the one who acknowledges that and helps him?  How have I never realized that the neighbor is the Samaritan himself?  Jesus asks the lawyer which of the passers-by was the neighbor to the robber’s victim.  If we are the love our neighbor as ourselves, it appears that Jesus wants us to love the Samaritan (the neighbor in the story,) as we love ourselves. The one who acts with compassion is to be loved as much as we love ourselves.

Our neighbors, then, are the members of Project Hopeful, who adopt orphans from Ethiopia suffering from HIV.  Our neighbors are also those who move to Ethiopia in order to care for children whose mothers must work outside the home all day, but who desperately want to keep their children with them.

Our neighbor is four-year-old Hannah Turner, who, in 2004, gave her pink socks to a homeless man whose feet looked cold.  Today, Hannah’s Socks provides clothing and shelter to hundreds of needy people in Toledo every winter.

Who’s my neighbor? In this story it’s not the victim.  It’s the one who works for justice for the victim.  And that makes it, indeed, a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Have you ever encountered an unexpected “neighbor”?

Reflecting on Luke 10: 1-9

It’s been a beautiful summer holiday in Colorado.  Sometimes it takes two or three days to just wind down enough to notice you’re on vacation. We’ve spent every possible moment up in the mountains, or swimming at the neighborhood pool, or biking through any of Colorado’s refreshing bike paths.

America the Beautiful was written here.  I look to the west and see the purple mountain majesties that have brought me to prayer every morning of my life.

It’s hard to live in a constant state of gratitude and awe.  My sister is the best you’ve ever seen.  We’ll be driving along the San Diego harbor―she lives in that spectacular city――and she’ll stop the car to make sure we are all thanking God for the water, and the ships, and the seagulls.  And it turns out we are.

This land is our land, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. How blessed we are.  How grateful we are.

Our back yard, blessedly taken over by Farmyard, CSA. several years ago, is already bursting with onions.  The tomatoes will be ready for spaghetti sauce in about five weeks.  I may have to escape sometime in September if the three rows of zucchini get organized enough to break down our back door.

I notice that the volunteers who garden the twenty yards that produce the food that feeds over one hundred people a week are growing older, slower, a bit more tired.  The harvest is astonishing, overwhelming, more than enough to feed the world.  The laborers are few.  I guess it’s time for me to go pull some weeds.

I hope everyone had a blessed Independence Day.

How did you celebrating the holiday?