Who's a Church?

This weekend in our parish bulletin, I brought up the recent Vatican publication and urged parishioners to take a look at our website for more info. There's a lot of commentary around.

Since I'm slow to get around to this subject, I know that there has already been a lot written about the recent letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church." Our neighboring parish, Blessed Sacrament, has published on its website a handy analysis of the article. One of the best sites that I've seen (no doubt there are many others) is from the Washington Post, in a section called On Faith, with nineteen different commentators chiming in about the statement, and a section afterwards allowing the reader to add comments.

I actually haven't heard many of my parishioners talking about the statement, but I'm sure there are opinions out there. I suspect that the comment I heard this morning from one of our very active and involved older women might characterize the feelings of many (and I paraphrase): "It's really bad; he's hurting the Church. Our previous pope was so good about building bridges to other faiths, but he's building walls."

Finding the Balance

This weekend's gospel hit me right between the eyes. Confession time: I usually work a 55-60 hour work week. I like to work. I love the satisfaction of getting things done, of scratching off items on that "to do" list. But it's more than that, too. Sometimes it's the feeling of seeing a picture emerge out of a lot of pieces, and sometimes it's a feeling of knowing you've been in the right place at a good time.

But it's not without its down side. I do HATE the sense of "feeling behind," of having made commitments and not living up to what I've set out to do. And I don't like projecting to others that "I'm busy" -- especially if that means that people are reluctant to approach me with something that really is more important than what I'm busy about.

But this homily is also about St. Bridget, and it's about our culture.


Ordinary Time, 16th Sunday (C) July 22, 2007

Have you ever heard of “belly talk”? It’s a practice among parents-to-be of talking to their unborn child, and it’s not just idle chatter. In fact it’s not just talking, but playing classical music, and other sounds. Not only that, there’s whole system that you can buy called Babyplus -- go ahead and google that word, Babyplus, and it’ll come right up – it even includes a 16-week course for the child. I guess the whole idea is to help the child get a head start in its development, sort of “maximizing” the baby’s time in the womb. Whether you buy the belly-talk idea or not, I think the belly-talk movement reveals a sense at large in our culture that life is so busy that it doesn’t hurt to get a bit of a head start.

It seems that all of us have some periods where the demands upon us are minimal, but most of us also have lots of times when we have more to do than we can possibly accomplish in the time available. Some of this comes from the normal course of life, but much of it is imposed upon us by forces we cannot control. In many of our jobs today, for example, the number of employees has been reduced, but the same amount or even a higher volume of work is expected. And if we are among the remaining employees and are particularly good at something or have a good track record for getting things done, our employer may dump even more things on us. We might even do it to ourselves.

And you know, it’s not just work. If you are a parent of school-age children, you can run yourself ragged chauffeuring them to their activities and attending their events, and there are a lot more of those activities than when I was young.

Modern life is BUSY. And after a while, that takes a toll on us. We might start to feel pressed down, wrung out, overwrought, and upset. Of course, it’s not just a phenomenon of our day, but all those labor-saving devices that we have developed over the last 50 years or so have mostly made it so that we could work faster and pack more things in, and so that new speed, that new multi-tasking, becomes the new norm, and even the expectation that we have of ourselves.

Our gospel reading, however, gives us a different perspective. Jesus is in the home of those two sisters, Martha and Mary. And Martha, wanting to be a good hostess, is going all out with “many tasks” to make the visit special for Jesus. Are there enough towels? Is the food just right? Is the kitchen getting cleaned up quickly? And so on. But the scripture says she was “distracted” by these tasks – the Greek word literally means “dragged around,” which is a good description of how busyness can make us feel.

Now Mary, as we know, instead recognizes the opportunity that Jesus’ visit brought to their home, and she sits at Jesus’ feet, listening to what he had to say.

And so Martha, in her drive to be a good hostess, actually fails at it, because she ends up snapping at her guest, “Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?” And she also shoots a good jab off toward her sister at the same time.

Jesus replies that what Mary is doing is “the better part.” That’s an answer that doesn’t condemn Martha’s work, but simply tells her that she has gotten her priorities wrong. There is a time to be busy and doing and there is a time to be still and listening.

In fact, if you read this story of Martha and Mary in the larger context, you will see that it comes right after Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, which we heard last week. And in that story, the point for the listener is that we should go and do just as the Samaritan had done. But here in the Martha and Mary incident, the point is to be still and listen. In other words, there is a proper time for both.

So where’s the balance in our own life? Marnie Russell, our parish director for Faith Formation, shared this little exercise with me this week. Think of your normal week, which has 168 hours. Now figure that you take out 8 hours each day for sleeping, that’s 56 total hours, and leaves us with 112. I can just hear some of you saying “Eight hours of sleep a day, who gets that?” OK, so what’s the balance in what’s left? How much is work, and how much is down time? How much of that down time is spent just in what we’d call “vegging out,” whether that’s in front of the TV, reading the newspaper, playing on the computer, or something like that? And of all the down time that we have, however little it is, how much do we spend being still and listening?

You know, I think that St. Bridget is a really great community to be a part of. And I am really grateful to you for all that you have meant to me and given to my life over these last 24 years. And this is a really generous parish, not just financially, but in terms of the many people willing to pitch in and make this community what it is. Thank you for that. And I do feel that our liturgies here provide us with good opportunities for us to be still and listen to God speak to our hearts. But I also see how busy your lives are, and what I see in so many of us is that there is often too little time – time for us to just sit and listen at the foot of the Lord.

Take this scripture into your hearts this week. When you’re feeling busy or stressed, maybe feeling like you need some help, visualize Martha running around the kitchen. If and when you finally get free and you want to just “veg out,” visualize Mary sitting at the foot of Jesus. And then… let yourself go there. The Lord really has something to say to you. Sit down with Mary, maybe on the other side of Jesus’ feet. Just listen. If you need a little something extra to help you listen, pick up the bible, or some other spiritual reading. The Lord visits your home, your life – set aside the time for being with him, for listening to him speak directly to your heart.

Find the balance.

Deacon Denny Duffell

Whole-Hearted Disciples

Wow, I knew it had been a long time since I posted on my blog, but didn't know it had been a whole month. On July 1st I officially became Pastoral Coordinator for the parish -- which means something like pastor, but not quite. It means that there is no priest pastor, but that I am responsible for the day-to-day running of the parish. And St. Bridget is a pretty active parish, which means that when things really get cooking around here, my life will be full.

But not during the summer; the summer is much more quiet in a parish. So I've had some time to do what I've needed to do -- such as move my office, work with people on changing job descriptions, and attend to a lot of "transitioning" kinds of things. I did manage to get a long weekend with my sister, and will get away again next week, so I'm not complaining by any stretch of the imagination.

Attached here is the homily that I wrote on the weekend of July 1st -- Fr. Gary Morelli's first weekend with us. It touches on a theme that I feel strongly about -- discipleship. One of my big themes is being wholehearted (hence the title above).

Clarence Jordan's re-writings of scripture are enjoyable, and often pack a punch. He obviously lived what he believed, founding the koinonia community, which continues to this day.

Overall, the homily fits within a larger theme for me, which I'm developing this year with the parish -- Stewardship. Others have been in that mode too, with more to come. I'll say more on this later.

Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Good evening. As I was preparing for this weekend’s homily, I came across a little story told of Clarence Jordan, who was a fiery Baptist preacher who died in 1969. Now you may never have heard of Clarence, but he was a well-known Bible scholar and author who influenced me in my early 20’s, a very formative age. He wrote this book, among others, called the Cotton Patch Version of the Gospel, which is a very challenging translation of Matthew and John into a southern Baptist dialect. The story goes that one day he asked his brother Robert, “Do you follow Jesus?” Now Robert knew that Clarence took his Christianity very seriously, and so he responded, “Up to a point.” Clarence asked him whether that “point” could be the cross. His brother replied, “I follow him TO the cross, but not ON the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.” So Clarence gave his brother a scathing look, and said, “Then I don’t believe that you are a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, not a disciple.”

I think that most of us can identify with brother Robert; I think most of us do consider ourselves disciples of Jesus, at least we want to be. However I think that most of us are not aiming to get ourselves crucified. So I think that if Clarence Jordan were here right now, he’d want to know just how much each of us is willing to invest ourselves in the mission of Jesus.

Today’s gospel is very much in tune with that question. First of all, the passage begins with an announcement: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.” The words “taken up” remind us that we’re beginning the road to that ultimate end, of Jesus being taken up on the cross, of Jesus being taken up into heaven. And the words “set his face” is a Hebrew phrase that prepares us for opposition and hostility. This is the turning point of Luke’s gospel – from here on out, Jesus is on the journey, a journey that ends with the cross. From now on, Jesus spends a lot of extra time instructing his disciples about what it takes to be a disciple. That’s why today’s passage gives us some examples of those who didn’t make the grade.

Now let’s meet this passage head on. I think it uses examples of would-be disciples that we don’t quite understand, and so we shrug them off. The first is the fellow that says “I will follow you wherever you go,” which sounds just like the kind of unconditional acceptance that Jesus might be looking for. But Jesus wants to be honest with him – “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” We never find out exactly how that fellow turns out, but obviously Jesus is telling him – and everyone who heard them – that this road they were traveling wasn’t going to be easy, and that there was no place on this journey Jesus could call "home.”

The next is harder – it’s the fellow who asked Jesus if he could go and bury his father. Well that seems like a pretty reasonable request to our understanding of those words. But this was certainly not a request to attend his father’s funeral. If that man’s father would have just died, that fellow would not even have been in the crowd listening to Jesus. To “bury one’s father” in this context meant to fulfill his obligations to his father under Jewish law, to take care of the father until he died, which might take months, or even years. So the request is really to finish taking care of all his duties to his father before he would follow Jesus. Clearly, that’s not the same as merely attending a funeral.

Finally, the last fellow asks Jesus if he might first go say farewell to those at home. But that request would be pretty harmless if it were just a case of saying goodbye. But it’s not that simple; so what we might understand is that there are unmentioned family matters that this man wants to take care of. Maybe it’s a contract drawn up to protect his family rights, just in case this venture with Jesus doesn’t work out. And we might notice that Jesus doesn’t say no – if it’s only a goodbye we’re talking about, maybe he did make a quick run home, we don’t know. Jesus just says “Keep your hand to the plough.” You might have regrets. You might want to look back. But stay focused on the Kingdom.

Are we beginning to feel a little uneasy now? These examples aren’t so easy to shrug off. Here are three would-be disciples who might not be very different from us. Don’t we all have commitments that we’ve made already? How open are we to the voice of the Master, when he says “Come now; follow me”??

So the point Jesus is making here is this: “Folks, the train is getting ready to leave the station. You gotta get on it now! We’ll have difficulties, for sure. But come on, don’t worry, don’t look back, come on now, follow me.”

There’s urgency in this gospel. Jesus is asking for serious, life-changing commitments. Jesus wants us to put our lives on the line with him. This will change our lives!

You know, most of the time in our life, I believe that we think we’ve got all the time in the world -- someday. But we don’t. For a good portion of our lives, it seems there’s a frantic pace to everything that goes on around us; so much so that we feel that we’re doing pretty well if we just hang on, and maintain. And so we often labor under the illusion that we will eventually have all the time we need to do what’s most important – once we’re finished this project or that job. Or maybe when the kids get older and on their own. Or maybe, when I can finally retire. So we put off those more important things, thinking “I’ll have time later.”

But a fact of life, however old we are, is that we might not have all the time in the world to do what we’re being called to do, to be who we’re asked to be, whether that’s being an involved parent, or a loving spouse, or being a whole-hearted disciple of Jesus. For me, Jesus’ words today are not a rejection of family. They’re a rejection of excuses. That’s why Jesus’ words sound so urgent. If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart!

Today, Jesus asks us once more, almost as if it’s for the first time, “Follow me! I love you, I want you, I need you to be with me on this journey.” He tells us up front that there will be sacrifices along the way, there might be rejection, and there might be a cross. But he says, “Don’t make excuses, don’t run away. Come along, put your hand to the plough with me and don’t look back.”

What do we want to be … a disciple of Jesus, or merely an admirer?

Deacon Denny, July 1st, 2007