"UNCHURCH" HOMILIES

AT THE SUGGESTION OF A FRIEND

Thanks to a suggestion from my friend, Gary Marvin, when I said that I would probably not be writing homilies until the pandemic is over and the churches are reopened, he said that I should offer "something" to those who cannot get out. I have decided to offer this "something" to my readers - some printed weekly homilies.

 

Crater Lake in Oregon

Gary's idea of offering "something" to my readers who "can't go to church," reminded me of something I did during the summer of 1968. As a third-year seminarian at Saint Meinrad, I decided to work that summer in Crater Lake National Park in Oregon for the United Church of Christ as a "campground minister" in their ecumenical program for seminary students. It offered me an opportunity to preach three times each weekend. Since the services were ecumenical and held outdoors in the campgrounds, I called them "Unchurch Services." In a file, I still have a couple of those weekly "Unchurch Service" bulletins from 1968. 

SOME "UNCHURCH" HOMILIES DURING THE PANDEMIC

EXCERPTS FROM

I will now offer you something from last week (Third Week of Lent) and something for today. (Fourth Week of Lent) from a little book I wrote two years ago for Lent.

For this, and all my books, click on MY BOOKSTORE link on the right of the homepage of my blog. 

In that little book, I talk about Jesus going to the desert, the mountain, the well, the doctor and the grave as places where we can interact with Jesus during Lent and be taught by him.  I hope these short reflections help somebody.

You can access all of the Sunday reading each week at the USCCB website under "Daily Readings." Just click on the day you want. 

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT 

(last Sunday)

WE ARE INVITED TO THE WELL

Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst. 

John 4:14 

On the first Sunday of Lent, Jesus invited us to conversion of life by going to the desert. The desert is a place devoid of distractions, a place to gain insight. On the second Sunday of Lent, Jesus invited us to go up the mountain with him.  Mountains are places where you can go to gain perspective, to get the big picture. From a mountaintop you can see into the distance – where you’ve been and where you are headed. On the third Sunday of Lent, Jesus invites us to go to the well, a place one goes to quench one’s thirst.  

In many ways, people today are thirsty, restless and looking for meaning. The Prophet Haggai, about 520 years before Christ, described our culture quite well when he wrote, “You have sown much, but have brought in little; you have eaten, but have not been satisfied; you have drunk, but not been exhilarated; have clothed yourselves, but not been warmed; and you have earned wages for a bag with holes in it.” We “have it all” one hand and yet we are still not satisfied on the other. We are “cravers for more!” 

It has been suggested that our consumer culture has spawned a new climate of thirstiness and restlessness. The experts call it ‘churn,’ using the word to describe our short attention span and our ‘what’s next’ attitude. This restlessness is seen in a consuming lust for endless distractions and amusements. This restlessness is being fed, some believe, by the overstimulation and excessive exposure to violent movies, fast-paced videos, computers and cell-phones, loud hard-wired music and over-scheduling.  All these together exacerbate agitation, restlessness and hyperactivity.   

What the world seems to be craving right now is what Jesus called “rest for one’s soul.” He said on one occasion, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus offers “rest” to those who are “worn out” in their search for “meaning.”  

In this gospel, we meet a wonderful woman who is an example of all that!  Jesus meets this woman at a well. She is tired - tired to the bone. She is physically tired - tired of being thirsty and having to constantly draw water and carry it long distances. She lived a half mile away and the well was over 100 feet deep. She was emotionally tired - tired of trying to find satisfying relationships in her life. She had been “looking for love in all the wrong places,” as the country song goes. She had been married five times. She was tired of being discriminated against by others. Jews hated Samaritans like her and women in general were considered socially inferior. She was spiritually tired – tired of a burdensome religion that was not really satisfying. At the well, she meets Jesus and pours out her heart to him and he, in turn, gives her “living water” and “rest for her soul.” 

Fellow seekers, all of us are like this woman in some degree. We all have a void in our lives that we try to fill. Some of us strive frantically our whole lives to fill that void by gaining material things, gaining stature, gaining status, gaining fame, finding the perfect relationship and much more. The fact of the matter is we will never fill that void with “things or stuff” because that void was put there for a specific purpose. We have a built-in missing piece – given to us by God himself.  

What is the purpose of that void? What is that missing piece? It is the place where God belongs! Only God can fill that hole. Saint Augustine of Hippo described it best when he said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!” 

  

It’s as if we all running around with a hole in our souls that we are desperately trying to fill. The truth of the matter is that only God can fill it, and yet we try our best to fill it with unsatisfying distractions and amusements, objects and things. Lent is a time to stop by the “well” for “living waters” and find “rest” in God.     

The best meditation for this gospel could be Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven.” “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him…” 

I have always loved the words of Celie in the movie “The Color Purple.” Celie feels a hole in her life. She is more than a bit aggravated by the feeling of God’s absence in her life – what she refers to as God “just sitting up there glorifying in being deef.” She speaks for many people today when she says, “It ain’t easy trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there trying to do without him is a strain.”   Those who experience the strain of trying to “do without God” will no doubt feel a hole in their souls, a hunger and thirst that nothing seems to satisfy. Lent is time to re-connect with God after ‘trying to do without him.”  

  

Jesus has taken us to the desert, to the mountain and to the well so that he might lead us to conversion of life, a life that is full and satisfying.  

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

(today)

WE ARE INVITED TO THE DOCTOR 

If you were blind, that would not be a sin. But 

since you say you can see, when you are actually 

blind, you remain in your sin. 

JOHN 9:41 

So far, we have been to the desert, the mountain and the well. Next, Jesus invites us to admit that we are sick and invite us to go to the doctor for healing.  

Tyler Perry is a successful African-American playwright, actor and screenwriter. Perry attributes his success to what he calls “spiritual progress,” especially the “spiritual progress” that resulted in making peace with his own father.  One of his profound insights was around learning that “parents do what they know how.” He finally realized that he could not change his history with his father, but he could change the way he wanted to remember it! “My life changed,” he said, “once things changed in me!” 

I, too, had to learn how resentment can keep you stuck and how you can free yourself by going to the eye doctor and have them opened. The ability to see in a new way is like being let out of prison, having your chains cut, throwing off a heavy load. Like Tyler Perry, it was only when I chose to “see my past in a new way” that I was no longer a victim of it.  

We cannot do anything about our pasts, but we can choose whether we want to be victims of it. Once I began to understand that my Dad “did what he knew how,” I was able to move from anger to compassion. I thank God that I was able to bury all that resentment, even before I buried him! 

“Seeing in a new way” is exactly the conclusion Jesus came to in his search for clarity during his forty days in the desert.  Coming out of the desert, he began to preach “conversion.” “Metanoiete” means “change the way you see!” Change the way you look at things and heaven will open up to you.   Once things change in you, things around you will look very different.”  The devil tried to get Jesus to change things. Jesus resisted that temptation. Instead, Jesus called for an internal change within people, believing that if people would change inside, things outside them would also change. A new life begins with having your eyes opened!  

Today we have a wonderful story about a bunch of blind people: one who can’t see and others who won’t see. All of them need Jesus in order to be able to “see.” In this wonderful story, Jesus uses the occasion of healing physical blindness to tell us something about the healing of spiritual blindness. 

The man born blind, not only regains his physical sight, but step-by-step he begins to see Jesus in a new way. At first, he says he tells people he doesn’t know who this Jesus is who healed him. As the story unfolds, he calls Jesus a “prophet” and finally “Lord.”  

The Pharisees and his parents can see physically, but they are spiritually blind and refuse “to see in a new way.” The Pharisees are blinded by their own rigid religious structures. They can’t see the beauty of this great healing, a blind man getting his sight. All they can see is that this healing  took place on the Sabbath day and healing was illegal on the Sabbath day. The parents are blinded by their fear of being ostracized by neighbors, friends and organized religion if they admitted to this healing.  They conveniently choose not to know and not to see. “Ask him,” they say, “he is old enough to speak for himself.” Both Pharisees and parents are afraid of “seeing in a new way” because it would mean their cozy little routines would be disrupted. It was convenient for them not to see and so remain stuck in their chosen blindness.  

I am amazed when I talk to “stuck” people. I believe that most people who are stuck are basically people who are blinded by their inability to “see in a new way.” They whine and cry and wait to be rescued, but they cannot change their minds and look at their situations from a new angle. They can’t “let go” of their old way of thinking and seeing, and so remain stuck in their blindness. They are like the monkeys I read about several years ago. To catch these monkeys for the zoo, people would cut a hole in a tree, just small enough for a monkey to his hand into. Then they fill it with peanuts. When the monkey sticks his hand into the hole and grabs the peanuts, he cannot pull his hand back out. Instead of letting go of the peanuts, they howl and cry till someone comes and hauls them off to the zoo. All they had to do was to let go of the peanuts. People are a lot like that: they cannot let go of the way they see things and so remain trapped, whining and crying all the while.  

Some people simply cannot “let go” of the way they see things. They clutch at beliefs like: life ought to be fair, parents ought to be perfect, spouses should not let each other down, the church ought to be perfect, things ought to make sense and people ought to respect you, love you and meet your needs. And, of course, when life isn’t fair, when parents and churches aren’t perfect, when spouses let them down, when things don’t make sense and when people do not meet their needs, they fall apart and remain stuck in their belief that if they just don’t like it enough, it will go away. All they would have to do to free themselves is to “let go” of their old beliefs and “see things in a new way.”  

Jesus was right, “If you were physically blind, there is no sin in that, but when you choose to be blind, your sin remains, you keep your own suffering going.”  Tyler Perry is right, too, when he says, “My life changed once things changed in me.” 

What about you? What situations do you need to “look at” in a new way? What people do you need to “look at” in a new way? Is the way you have been “looking at” these situations and people still causing you pain? If so, ask God for healing! Ask God for a new set of eyes! Once things change in you, life will change for the better for you!  

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT 

(next Sunday's blog post)

WE ARE INVITED TO THE GRAVE