Sermon preached on Sunday, October 28, 2012 at St. Francis Church, Fair Oaks, CA
Spirit of the Living God fall Fresh On Me! Congregation Repeats!
Gospel Text: Mark 10: 46-52
I am really pleased that our two congregations have come
together this morning for one liturgy.
You are very different congregations too. I have enjoyed coming to know your different liturgical
practices and the gifts you each bring to worship. Both services are splendidly different. Occasionally I suggest that you might
venture from one service to the other to experience some of these differences
for yourself. To know St. Francis
Church as a whole you have to experience both. I am blessed to have done so.
One of the lovely aspects of the 11am service is the way
together as a community of faithful we talk about what we hear in the readings
of the day. A few weeks ago one of
our members talked about the way Jesus sometimes asks his disciples to do
impossible things. The reading of
that day was to sell all your things, give your money to the poor and follow
Jesus. This member had the insight
that Jesus knew that what he was asking was impossible. It was this member said a way of
teaching us that we must place our complete trust in God and in nothing
else.
I recalled this rich insight when I read today’s Gospel as I
started to prepare my sermon. The
Gospel story is different today.
Today instead of Jesus asking the impossible of us, the blind man asks
the impossible of Jesus.
Asking even begging for the impossible is a sign of
faith. Every day beggars around
the world ask for food, drink and shelter. Most of the time beggars hear the word “no” from us or we
just pass them by as we completely ignore them. Beggars know the way it feels to ask for the impossible from
others. Beggars who have gone
without food for several days have a passionate desire even lament sounding
desire to be fed. Some beggars are
so desperate they resort to stealing food. There is no way we are able to intellectualize such a
longing for food, water and shelter.
Bernie Glassman is an American Buddhist who wrote The Zen
Peacemaker’s Diary. Glassman leads urban retreats in NYC
and San Francisco to offer people a firsthand experience of what it feels like
to live on the streets. I have not done these retreats. In Reno for an entire year I served as
a part-time Street Priest working with the homeless. I met men and women who had never before been homeless. These women and men had lost their jobs
and had failed to save enough money to carry them through long periods of
unemployment.
The people I met had no safety nets like family in the
area. The people I met had deep
shame and often hid their faces from me.
As weeks passed you could see the way those new to homelessness would
change after a few months of living on the streets of Reno. These people became desperate and
learned to be street-wise beggars.
They learned to find ways to meet their needs. They learned to ask for the impossible with the hope that at
least one in a hundred people would give them something to eat or to
drink.
When I was a chaplain last year in Philadelphia at a Level 1
trauma center, on a daily basis I witnessed people who experienced such pain
that they literally cried out to be healed. Some cries will never leave me as they were so wrenching by
those who suffered in body and mind.
The desires were clear ones from those who yelled out in psych units and
those who were just coming into the ER after a horrific unexpected trauma.
Beggars and victims of severe trauma know their needs and
they yell their needs out to God as the beggar did so in today’s Gospel,
“Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.”
The beggars and victims of trauma I met were completely in touch with
their needs for healing. They knew
where they hurt and why. They
trusted in the healing power of Jesus.
During my years of Jesuit formation I heard my spiritual
director ask me, “Joseph, what is it you desire?” “What is it you desire from Jesus or Mary or God?” I have to tell you I came to hate that
question. I met weekly with my
spiritual director and weekly he would ask me, “Joseph, what do you
desire?” Honestly, I had no idea
what I desired! I thought a nice piece of filet mignon, but that was not what
my spiritual director was after! I was always relieved when our conversation
moved away from this initial question.
I had no idea even the meaning of the question.
In time I came face to face with my own lack of faith. I had no answer to my spiritual
director’s question about desire because I doubted that Jesus or God could do
anything for me to make any substantial change in my life. Why ask when you know you will get
nothing back? How different I was
from the beggar in today’s Gospel.
Do you know what you desire from God? Do you cry out to God in your prayer to be healed with the
urgency and depth of trust as beggars and trauma victims?
By living an examined life we are able to develop the
beggar’s trust in God. To live the examined life means that we come to know
ourselves, as we are, particularly where we are most vulnerable. We come to know and accept that we are
powerless without the Eucharist the Word and the healing power of Christ.
Living the examined life is hard work! As a priest and as a
spiritual director, people in AA and Al Anon have reported to me that they have
had a much greater experience of living the examined life at their 12 step
meetings than they have ever found in their local church communities. Many people who have been to 12 Step
meetings never go back to church because they have crossed an important line.
The line they have crossed is to choose to live rather than to actively choose
death.
The twelve steps are one means to live an examined
life. The first step leads to the
other eleven. We admit that we are
powerless. The beggar today in his
crying out admitted that he was powerless. As the beggar reached out to Jesus
he practiced the second step to trust in a higher power than himself. The beggar made a choice to turn over
his life to Jesus following the third step. For those of you who have done Cursillo you know what
I am talking about too.
I think the other steps are worth our hearing.
Make a fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admit to God, to ourselves and another human being the exact
nature of our wrongs.
Desire God to remove all those defects of our character.
Ask God to remove our shortcomings.
Make a list of all persons we have harmed and make amends to
each.
Make direct amends, unless doing so causes greater harm.
Continue to take a daily inventory and when we are wrong
promptly admit it.
Improve through prayer our conscious contact with God.
Having had a spiritual awakening through these steps, we
practice these principles in all of our affairs.
There is much for us to learn from the beggar in today’s
Gospel.
There is also much for St. Francis Church to learn about the
way to live an examined life as a congregation from the 12 steps.
People in recovery often stop going to church. Churches live an uneasy relationship
with AA groups. Congregations
often don’t understand why AA members don’t come back for church. One common reason I have heard is that
after one has experienced the depth of relationship, trust and deep sharing in
AA churches, churches feel comparatively shallow.
You and I share in the ministry of fellowship that retains
newcomers as members, like this woman I spoke to last week. Through Christian
fellowship we don’t just hang out together. To have a vital fellowship ministry we frequently meet to
share our redemptive stories with each other. As a priest I have the privilege
to hear redemptive stories all the time.
It is not enough to tell your priest. You need to tell your redemptive
stories to each other. Why? People
yearn to hear and be fed by our redemptive stories. If we the people of St. Francis Church aspire to be like the
beggar in today’s Gospel we need to share our redemptive stories of when God
healed us. We also need to pray for those who cry, “Jesus help me” and seek to
be redeemed. We all need to
constantly admit our powerlessness before God and like the beggar place our
trust fully in the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.
God Bless you!
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