Homily Pentecost Sunday (Jesus Had His Own Recipe for Success)
Pentecost Sunday (Jesus Had His Own Recipe for Success)
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore, he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord.” When Jesus Christ began his ministry, according to the Gospel of Luke, he went to Nazareth where he was born. He went to the synagogue. He unrolled the scroll of scripture. He read these words from the Prophet Isaiah.
Jesus proclaimed that his ministry would be all about following the Spirit of God. Jesus was very deliberate saying that. And it was that way of living that set him apart from normal men.
What usually determines how we operate in the world? Most of the time, we are driven by a desire to fit in. We try to approach life in a conventional way. What are our motivations when we make plans for our life? Our goal in life is to be happy. We might say our object in life is to be successful. What does that mean?
What that means when we are young, is that we go to school. We get good grades. We try to go to a prestigious college or trade school which will hopefully ensure that we get a good job. If we obtain a good job with and important company then we will try to climb the corporate ladder. To get ahead, we will have to look like everyone else. We will have to watch what we say. We can’t usually say what we are really thinking. Our dream, as we work, is probably to make enough money to buy the things that we think everyone needs whether that is new car or whether it is the high-end smart phone. We want to own a nice house in a safe neighborhood. At the end of our life we want to retire in security. If a person lives with that pattern in their life, then we might say that they were a success. We could also say that it is a very dull way to live.
Jesus Christ did not live in predictable ways. When Jesus had a paralytic brought to him in the second chapter of the Gospel of Mark, as he preached in the synagogue, he wasn’t held back by the medical fact that the man couldn’t walk. Nor did he care that it was the Sabbath and religious custom said you don’t heal on the Sabbath. No, he said, “Stand, pick up your mat and walk.” The man did. Time after time, when Jesus was confronted with people suffering sicknesses, he wouldn’t hesitate, but he would move to alleviate the pain. Jesus wouldn’t let the storms of life sink his mission. No, he audaciously told the waters of the sea to be calm. The waters obeyed. When he was thrown out of the synagogue because his preaching was too radical, he didn’t let that stop him. He went into the streets to preach. When he looked out over a vast throng on the mountainside that was hungry, he didn’t tell them he couldn’t feed them. On the contrary, he multiplied the loaves and the fishes. Jesus fed them all. Jesus never approached life in a logical fashion. Jesus moved with the Spirit in new directions. The Spirit isn’t conventional. The Spirit breaks the predictable patterns of our human existence. When we move with the Spirit it is enlivening and life giving and daring!
During the last few months, we have been stopped in our tracks. In March it seemed like things were unfolding normally. We were coming to the end of winter. We were beginning the second half of Lent. We were looking forward too all the celebrations of Spring. But then we were knocked off balance by the COVID 19 pandemic. Our normal way of life has been upended. An illness has surprised us. A storm has blown up. Economic chaos has erupted all around us. Death has stalked us all. We hear things like, “we now live in the new normal.” We long to return to the way things were. But is that where the Spirit wants us live? Does the Spirit of God want us to live in this sadness we ask? We should also ask, does the Spirit always lead us back to the status quo? Is there ever a status quo in life?
As we pray together on this Pentecost Sunday, locked out of our church because of an invisible virus. We are doing things differently. But Jesus is just as much here as inside our church. Jesus preached wherever he could to whomever he could. Our challenge in the days and months and years ahead will be to trust in the Spirit and move with it. “Jesus came into the upper room and he said, ‘Peace be with you’……he breathed on them and said ‘receive the Holy Spirit’.” Jesus breathes his Spirit on us today. Our task is to discern where that spirit is leading our parish, to expect the unexpected, to move forward with trust. We attempt to live as our founder Jesus Christ lived. We long to travel where the Spirit leads.
Reflection Questions:
1. Have I led a successful life? How would I define what that means?
2. Jesus did not operate as most humans do. What are qualities that you admire about our Lord?
Dear Parishioners,
Whenever I write these notes, I try to think a week ahead. It has been very tough to do that lately. Almost every day there is new information about how we are going to operate parishes in the days ahead. As I write to you today, we will be working toward opening up our church again. My hope would be that we can open as soon as we can, and our parish staff is working toward that end. But it is not as easy as throwing open the doors.
We will need to follow certain protocols. We will need to limit the number of people in church. We will need to have physical distance between worshippers (This will mean that we will have to limit the numbers of people that can attend Mass at one time). We will have to sterilize bathrooms after every use. The list of dos and don’ts is pages long. We probably will be delayed in having public worship on weekdays because starting June 8 the stained-glass window people will be back to do the last installation of windows. We will continue to have live streamed Mass and communion in the parking lot on weekdays until this important work is complete.
I would ask you, once again, to follow my homily notes each day. I will keep you up to date as things move forward. Sorry that things can’t be more definitive, but this is beyond my control.
May Our Lady and the Angels and Saints watch over you today,
Fr. Mark
P.S. I would like to thank the crew who put up the short fence about the parking lot at the corner of 15th Street and 16th Avenue. Alex McGehee provided helpers, as did Tony Hodge. Don Lewis, Dave Coene, Jesus Vargas and Dick Curry also donated their time. All these parishioners were instrumental in getting this done. Thank them when you see them. We hope to be able to seed the lot soon.