They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.
Mr. Potato Head was one of my favorite toys as a child. For those who may not know, Mr. Potato Head was a lump of brown plastic about the size of your fist. It came with all kinds of attachable accessories, noses, eyes, ears, eyebrows, mouths, mustaches made of felt, hats and bodies. The fun was in putting it all together, of assembling faces and personalities for Mr. Potato Head by combining and re-combining the various components. Now he can be a cowboy, now a construction worker, now a business man, a doctor. You could even buy complimentary parts and create a Mrs. Potato Head. And of course, part of the fun was combining parts that didn’t go together, a cowboy hat with a Mrs. Potato Head mouth. There were also offspring of the Potato family, a boy named Spud and a girl named Sister Yam all of whom came with accessories that included a car, a boat trailer, a kitchen set, a stroller, and pets called Spud-ettes. Later characters included Oscar the Orange and Pete the Pepper as well as Mr. Carrot Head and Mr. Onion Head.
Another supposed feature of Mr. Potato Head was that you could use the various parts on a real potato. My mother was constantly encouraging me to try this, but I have to say that the real potato just didn’t cut it for me. Unlike the brown plastic potato, a real potato wasn’t designed to take the components. The faces looked irregular, the noses didn’t quite fit. And of course, there were little warts and scars on a real potato that gave Mr. Potato Head too realistic a look, too rugged, too ragged.
Lest you think that my regression to childhood memory is indicative of the onset of senility, it seems to me that the problem presented in today’s Gospel is a kind of Potato Head problem.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.
I don’t really feel sorry for Jesus in the Gospel today so much as I feel sorry for the folks at Nazareth. He must have known what the reaction of those hometown folks would be. Whereas they must have thought that they were going to town that day for a festive homecoming, a grand celebration, Mary’s fried chicken, everybody hugging and kissing, the sermon in the local synagogue
Hometown boy makes good. Miracles follow his every step. Cheering crowds. Perhaps? Perhaps even something more. The newspapers were there, the cameras were there, the reporters.
But it was not to be.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.
Why?
It was a Potato Head problem.
The folks at Nazareth looked upon Jesus like a Mr Potato Head, something to be crafted and re-crafted in their image. Jesus might be a hero, he might be a prophet, he might even be (shhhh) the Messiah, but he was going to be that on their terms. They wanted to determine what eyes he was to have, what ears, what hat he was to wear and they are disappointed when Jesus sets the terms of their play at something of higher pitch. He was a real potato.
For 30 years He was just Jesus
He was just the carpenter and the son of a carpenter
He was just the boy of Mary and Joseph
Just a hometown boy
Just a hardworking man
Just and good and upright man
Just a plain fellow
Just a craftsman
Just a simple man
Just an uncomplicated man
Just a man of prayer
Just a man who kept to himself
Just the guy from Nazareth
Just Jesus
And they liked that
Now the stakes have been raised and Jesus is taking control
Now the chosen people may have to mix with the rest
Now the law and the prophets may take a back seat to a new law
And what is that Law
The Law of Love
Patience and kindness and humility and self control are the new rules of the game and the Potato Head of their creation is somehow no longer adequate. And so …
They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.
Of course what was true of them is true of us
We like to create god in our image, giving him the features we find pleasing or amusing, changing eyes and ears and noses when necessary and worshiping him in plastic form. We like Deus Potatatus because we can control him, manipulate him and when we are tired of him, throw him in a box.
But fortunately Jesus reveals the God who is the real potato and the face of that God looks radically different from what we create.
The eyes of God in the mournful eyes of loss and pain
The ears of God in our hearing the cry of the wretched and outcast
The mouth of God in speaking words of comfort in a time of trial
The arms of God in reaching out to quiet a restless spirit
The heart of God in every beating heart, even the most vulnerable, the youngest
The mind of God in the wisdom of gnarled hands and twisted feet
The God of warts and scars, of not quite fitting, of Truth.
The real potato was too much for the men and women of Nazareth.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,and led him to the brow of the hillon which their town had been built,to hurl him down headlong.
And what of us?
Can we accept the God who comes to us on his own terms, the God with warts and unexpected crevices, the God who does not play our game, but calls us to a new game?
Love is patient, love is kind.It is not jealous, it is not pompous,It is not inflated, it is not rude,it does not seek its own interests,it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,it does not rejoice over wrongdoingbut rejoices with the truth.It bears all things, believes all things,hopes all things, endures all things.
And of course, in the long run, the plasticized Potato headed deity cannot satisfy and the most important thing about a real potato is that you can eat it
Happy are those who are called to his supper.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?
Last evening we had the prividlidge of opening our formation term by welcoming our alumnus, Bishop David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay. He delivered a talk at our First Annual Bishops' Dinner.
This is the homily I preached at Mass
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Did you go to the march for life?
Did you see the sea of humanity, surging ever forward.
The vigilant and the belligerent
The committed and the indifferent
This one is selling buttons and this one wearing dozens of them
They carry signs and banners, wave flags and hands at one another like old friends
Applaud the speeches and turn a deaf ear
Teens for Life
Old people for life
Jews for life
Feminists for life
Cheerleaders for life
Orthodox priests and Benedictine monks
Bishops and abbots
Nuns striped in every hue
Those who have made up their own reality
They wander in and out of museums staring at the big elephant and searching for the bathroom
They calm crying infants
Change diapers
Feed from nature or
Shove hotdogs into children’s faces
Make promises for future rewards if the little one can focus on protest now
They wear crazy hats and colorful scarves
And they march, they move toward the goal of recognition
Recognition that there is life beating just beneath the surface of the frozen mud
Life yearning for a warm twinkle of acknowledgement under the frigid and unflinching gaze of so-called choice
Life, simple and stunning, stirring, striving but yet unable to sing that song of rights and freedom
So they march these thousands these hundred thousands in all their color and character
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Have you read the news?
A woman in Haiti stares into the flames of a burning car filled with the bodies of people who will never be buried, never known, never mourned for who they were.
A man stands on the side of a rushing river watching his not-much-of-a-house disappear in the engulfing tide the rising waters.
A young mother hipping a baby watches as the dark blue sedan stops in front of her mobile home and two uniformed soldiers step out. She looks momentarily at the photograph of a handsome soldier on the kitchen table and she knows she will never see that face again.
A teenage boy sits by the side of a train track in Alabama knowing two things: exactly when the freight train comes through every afternoon and that he cannot stand the bullying he has endured for too many years too many more.
An African man looks at his dying family and wonders which will go first and what he can do to save them, which is nothing.
A Southern Indiana mother holds the emaciated hand of her meth-addled daughter as she detoxes in a free clinic.
A woman in Los Angeles sits staring out the window at 2 in the morning, wondering where her son is, if he is.
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Have you been to saint Meinrad?
This one is angry at the world and mostly at himself
This one is narcissistic and his personal shame is almost unbearable
This one is a saint, a quiet saint
This one is a petty con-artist who has only fooled himself
This one is a favored son and always will be
This one is humble and faithful in the privacy of his room
This one is passive, allowing others to guide his every step
This one is aggressive, allowing no one to walk with him
This one has lost something, a breviary, a rosary, his laundry
This one is a great orator, a mighty preacher
This one sings like a nightingale
This one sings like a steam engine
This one is bitter over the fact that God has asked him to do something next to impossible
This one is an SOB who makes life miserable for those all around him
This one is an OSB who makes life miserable for all those around him
This one is a solid man of prayer
This one is a loving brother to every one
This one is just, well, one
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Now look around and what do you see? Men and women striving to serve God in many ways. Men and women, young and not-so-you who thrill to the prospect of growing in the love and knowledge of God for the sake of forging bonds with each other greater than the bonds nature can forge. As we gather for this new formation term, we gather as a community of faith, and as a family for that is what we are. A family with all its implications of authentic edification and even more authentic irritation. We come here for the hard work of building the body of Christ. It is messy and takes in the wonderful and the troubling, the ridiculous and the sublime, the focused and the quixotic, the familiar and the strange (some stranger than others).
This is the body of Christ, the family of God, wild and tame, free and fettered, awful and awesome, wakeful and sleepy, beautiful and homely (yet beautiful), bright and perhaps a bit dim but trying to burn brightly, the sane and those who are living al vida loca, the fine tuned and the all over the place, the articulate and the frenetic.
Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?
Brothers and sisters we are because we are the body of Christ, and we are a family for good or ill (which is also good). And it requires of us something significant.
It requires us to treat one another and all of those around us and all of the un-named individuals we encounter on marches and in the news with respect, affording them the dignity they possess. It requires us to love each one with an unfeigned love, to guard our tongues and our attitudes. To find the global in the local, the purposeful in the random, the genius in the generic, the cosmic in the mundane.
Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?
All are the body of Christ, all are One in Him who is our head. Here at Saint Meinrad, we seek to put those ideals into action. Is it possible? With Christ all things are possible, with God all things are possible.
Stir into flamethe gift of God that you have receivedFor God did not give us a spirit of cowardicebut rather of power and love and self-control.So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord,
Brothers and sisters, that is our hope:
Give testimony to the Lord through the sacrifices you make to your brothers here
Give testimony to the Lord in your diligent attention to your work and prayer
Give testimony to the Lord by overcoming the snares of the world and its allurements
Give testimony to the Lord by daring to be counter cultural and loving one another, being compassionate, hospitable, healing
Give testimony to the Lord by putting aside the false realities of selfishness and egotism
Give testimony to the Lord by being who you are, the body of Christ Jesus, the body that was broken for us, the body that was tortured for us, the body that is still broken and tortured as long as one brother is broken, one sister tormented by despair, one innocent life lost to abortion, one wise elder forgotten before his time, one prisoner on death row, one homeless man, one battered wife, one hungry child.
Do not fear my brothers and sisters to give testimony to the Lord for the one who raised Jesus from the dead gives that same Jesus to us each day in the base appearance of bread and wine. He leads us to this festival of transformation to demonstrate his transmogritive powers in all. Even in the wild and weird, even in our hearts.
Brothers and sisters, come to the altar and look upon his broken body, his blood poured out for the life of the world and know the answer to Jesus question:
Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?
This is the homily I preached at Mass
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Did you go to the march for life?
Did you see the sea of humanity, surging ever forward.
The vigilant and the belligerent
The committed and the indifferent
This one is selling buttons and this one wearing dozens of them
They carry signs and banners, wave flags and hands at one another like old friends
Applaud the speeches and turn a deaf ear
Teens for Life
Old people for life
Jews for life
Feminists for life
Cheerleaders for life
Orthodox priests and Benedictine monks
Bishops and abbots
Nuns striped in every hue
Those who have made up their own reality
They wander in and out of museums staring at the big elephant and searching for the bathroom
They calm crying infants
Change diapers
Feed from nature or
Shove hotdogs into children’s faces
Make promises for future rewards if the little one can focus on protest now
They wear crazy hats and colorful scarves
And they march, they move toward the goal of recognition
Recognition that there is life beating just beneath the surface of the frozen mud
Life yearning for a warm twinkle of acknowledgement under the frigid and unflinching gaze of so-called choice
Life, simple and stunning, stirring, striving but yet unable to sing that song of rights and freedom
So they march these thousands these hundred thousands in all their color and character
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Have you read the news?
A woman in Haiti stares into the flames of a burning car filled with the bodies of people who will never be buried, never known, never mourned for who they were.
A man stands on the side of a rushing river watching his not-much-of-a-house disappear in the engulfing tide the rising waters.
A young mother hipping a baby watches as the dark blue sedan stops in front of her mobile home and two uniformed soldiers step out. She looks momentarily at the photograph of a handsome soldier on the kitchen table and she knows she will never see that face again.
A teenage boy sits by the side of a train track in Alabama knowing two things: exactly when the freight train comes through every afternoon and that he cannot stand the bullying he has endured for too many years too many more.
An African man looks at his dying family and wonders which will go first and what he can do to save them, which is nothing.
A Southern Indiana mother holds the emaciated hand of her meth-addled daughter as she detoxes in a free clinic.
A woman in Los Angeles sits staring out the window at 2 in the morning, wondering where her son is, if he is.
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Have you been to saint Meinrad?
This one is angry at the world and mostly at himself
This one is narcissistic and his personal shame is almost unbearable
This one is a saint, a quiet saint
This one is a petty con-artist who has only fooled himself
This one is a favored son and always will be
This one is humble and faithful in the privacy of his room
This one is passive, allowing others to guide his every step
This one is aggressive, allowing no one to walk with him
This one has lost something, a breviary, a rosary, his laundry
This one is a great orator, a mighty preacher
This one sings like a nightingale
This one sings like a steam engine
This one is bitter over the fact that God has asked him to do something next to impossible
This one is an SOB who makes life miserable for those all around him
This one is an OSB who makes life miserable for all those around him
This one is a solid man of prayer
This one is a loving brother to every one
This one is just, well, one
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers and sisters?
Now look around and what do you see? Men and women striving to serve God in many ways. Men and women, young and not-so-you who thrill to the prospect of growing in the love and knowledge of God for the sake of forging bonds with each other greater than the bonds nature can forge. As we gather for this new formation term, we gather as a community of faith, and as a family for that is what we are. A family with all its implications of authentic edification and even more authentic irritation. We come here for the hard work of building the body of Christ. It is messy and takes in the wonderful and the troubling, the ridiculous and the sublime, the focused and the quixotic, the familiar and the strange (some stranger than others).
This is the body of Christ, the family of God, wild and tame, free and fettered, awful and awesome, wakeful and sleepy, beautiful and homely (yet beautiful), bright and perhaps a bit dim but trying to burn brightly, the sane and those who are living al vida loca, the fine tuned and the all over the place, the articulate and the frenetic.
Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?
Brothers and sisters we are because we are the body of Christ, and we are a family for good or ill (which is also good). And it requires of us something significant.
It requires us to treat one another and all of those around us and all of the un-named individuals we encounter on marches and in the news with respect, affording them the dignity they possess. It requires us to love each one with an unfeigned love, to guard our tongues and our attitudes. To find the global in the local, the purposeful in the random, the genius in the generic, the cosmic in the mundane.
Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?
All are the body of Christ, all are One in Him who is our head. Here at Saint Meinrad, we seek to put those ideals into action. Is it possible? With Christ all things are possible, with God all things are possible.
Stir into flamethe gift of God that you have receivedFor God did not give us a spirit of cowardicebut rather of power and love and self-control.So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord,
Brothers and sisters, that is our hope:
Give testimony to the Lord through the sacrifices you make to your brothers here
Give testimony to the Lord in your diligent attention to your work and prayer
Give testimony to the Lord by overcoming the snares of the world and its allurements
Give testimony to the Lord by daring to be counter cultural and loving one another, being compassionate, hospitable, healing
Give testimony to the Lord by putting aside the false realities of selfishness and egotism
Give testimony to the Lord by being who you are, the body of Christ Jesus, the body that was broken for us, the body that was tortured for us, the body that is still broken and tortured as long as one brother is broken, one sister tormented by despair, one innocent life lost to abortion, one wise elder forgotten before his time, one prisoner on death row, one homeless man, one battered wife, one hungry child.
Do not fear my brothers and sisters to give testimony to the Lord for the one who raised Jesus from the dead gives that same Jesus to us each day in the base appearance of bread and wine. He leads us to this festival of transformation to demonstrate his transmogritive powers in all. Even in the wild and weird, even in our hearts.
Brothers and sisters, come to the altar and look upon his broken body, his blood poured out for the life of the world and know the answer to Jesus question:
Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?
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