FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 

Isaiah 66:10-14c | Galatians 6:14-18 | Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

Oh God, who in the abandonment of your Son have raised up a fallen world, fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin, you bestowed eternal gladness.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

As we take a journey with St. Luke and his memory, going through the evolution of what Christ has brought to the world in terms of their understanding of God and their religion and who they are and why they’re here and how they should work with these mysterious, wonderful images that keep flowing into our imagination from this new vision of religion that’s found in the New Testament — in all of that, it seems to me there is this exciting journey that we need to realize that this thing that happened in history between the Old and the New Testament happens in every single one of us.  We enter into the world in the world of the Old Testament in a sense.  It’s a world of clarity, a world of black and white, right and wrong, and what we see so clearly in it is an image that’s easy to grasp in a sense.  We have a God who created us, created a world for us, brought this beautiful world to us and put us in it, and what he wants more than anything else is for us to live here in a way that will engage us in a way of life that brings fullness and happiness.  That’s the relationship that we all start with, with God, and God’s desire to help us to live the life that we’re called to live starts again, I say, with clarity, black and white, right and wrong.  He gives us direction by telling us, number one, that we are loved by him.  We are his treasure.  He’s our — we are his favorite in a sense, and we have his favor.  And then he says very clearly, “I want you to keep this favor of me alive by you doing what I ask you to do.  So if you will do the things that I ask you to do, because you don’t know yet what to do, follow my rules and my regulations, I will bless you.  I will take care of you.  I will nurture you and help you to live a good life.  That is the theme of the Old Testament.

Look at the way the Old Testament shows the image of God in the followers of Judaism.  It was God enters into their life, and he comes into their life by saying, “I want to dwell with you.”  So he dwells in a place.  In Jerusalem ultimately is where he is destined to dwell, and he comes on a journey with them from slavery to freedom.  And he comes in the form of a tabernacle, a box covered with gold, and in that box is the image of God, in a sense, of the Old Testament.  There’s manna from the desert, meaning this God’s relationship with you is one where he nurtures you, and he nurtures you particularly with wisdom of who you are and who he is.  And so he gives you Ten Commandments, and those Ten Commandments are in that ark.  And they’re the wisdom of God, how to relate to God, how to relate to each other. There’s also a rod, rod of Aaron, which was always a symbol of authority.  So we have the authority of the law nurturing you.  That’s God’s presence in Jerusalem, and it’s in the temple.  And the temple is the place that is so precious and so wonderful, and this city is such a symbol for Jews even today.  It is the place of God’s promise being fulfilled, and that shifts from the Old Testament image of the temple and the laws that it was demanding people to follow to a New Testament image, which God then knew people were ready for something radically different.  And there comes the image of a God who reveals himself not as living in the temple, where only a few could touch — get near him and be in contact with him.  No, it moves from a temple, as we said last week, to a church, and the church is the place where God dwells, and it’s a person.  He dwells in the human being.  Jesus comes to reveal the dwelling place of God is no longer in the temple, and the temple will be destroyed, and its system will be destroyed, morphed into something different and more effective and more powerful.  And this image of God living in human beings has the same promise that God living in the temple did, that if you come to this place and dwell in this place, there will be abundance and fullness, and you’ll be comforted and find life and find peace.  That was the promise of Jerusalem.  Now it’s the promise of the church in a sense, and church is not the building but the person.

And so when we’re listening to Paul, as a bridge between the Old and New Testament, what he’s saying so clearly is he’s describing the time of the shift.  And there were people in the Old Testament who saw the value of the New Testament, and they believed in what was happening, but they wanted these new converts and not just go and become something separate from Judaism, but they wanted them to be also bound by the rules and laws.  One was circumcision, and they demanded that these new followers of this new image of who God is would be bound to the old ways that they were bound to.  And it was rejected.  You don’t need that old system in the new system.  What was the old system?  Doing what you were told, following rules and regulations and being punished or rewarded and being told that you were exclusively God’s personal favorites.  I have to laugh to myself, because what Paul is saying is all that really matters is that we’re a new creation, something radically different, but I go back to — I grew up in the ‘40s and the ‘50s, and that was before the Vatican Council.  And my image of my church was not much different than the way the Jews thought about the temple and about their relationship with God.  When I was growing up, I was taught that Catholics were the favorites of God, that if you weren’t a Catholic, you did not have a chance for redemption.  The Jews could not find salvation, nor could those outside the Catholic Church.  And to me, I didn’t believe, I wasn’t even taught that God dwelt inside of me.  I knew I could go to communion and receive him, but I didn’t realize that that was the celebration of the reality of God living inside of me.  I just knew it was something I had to be sure I was clean and fresh and go to confession so I didn’t have any sin in me, because I couldn’t allow God, who was so good, to come into a sinful, dirty body.  So I had to be cleansed, much like the cleansing rites of the Old Testament.  And then again, I believed that God was in that tabernacle, and there were rules and regulations to follow.  And it was Vatican Council that just sort of blew all of that apart, and then we enter into what the church really is.  It’s about God living inside of people and they being in a relationship with each other where this life force flows between them, and the more it flows between them, it creates growth, change, evolution, development, understanding, ability to deal with mysteries beyond our imagining.  And then comes this mysterious, magical transformation that can only be described as the fruitfulness of love where people are freed of demons, evil spirits, negative thoughts, self-loathing and are nourished, nourished with comfort and peace.  

So let’s look at the New Testament reading, because it’s a perfect image, what I think needs to be seen as a perfect image of how different the church is that Jesus came to reveal, which was the evolution of everything in the Old Testament.  Almost you can’t have the New Testament without the Old Testament.  I don't know how you can begin religion without it being very clear that God is good; sin is bad; when we sin, we offend God; we need to do better.  That’s the way normally we understand authority outside of us, and we have to go through that stage.  But let’s look carefully at the way Jesus sent out his disciples, in pairs, to the places he was going to visit, and they were bearing the name Christian.  They were bearing — well, they didn’t use the name then, but they were bearing this teaching of a new way of seeing God.  And what’s so interesting to me about this, it’s like a marketing tool.  But Jesus sends them out to places where, when then he goes there, they’ll say, “I met one of these followers of his, and that was really interesting, because when we were with them, I don't know, things got better.  I felt things were being healed, and negative spirits were leaving.”  That’s what they were called to do, and they came to do it in pairs, which means that they were representing the way the church now operates.  Christ Spirit, God Spirit, Holy Spirit in you, in me, flowing between you and another person, and then they went with that, witnessing of that dynamic between them into people’s homes.  And they had to go there in a way that made them dependent upon those that they would spend time with.  They didn’t have anything with them.  They didn’t have — not carrying anything.  There was no pamphlets.  There were no rules.  There were no regulations, no sign-up sheet, no schedule that they had to follow.  No, they’d just go as they are, two human beings loving and healing one another through the presence of Christ in each of them, and they were like lambs, loving lambs in the midst of places where there were wolves devouring each other, people devouring each other.  So they went with nothing but their very essence, no money, no luggage, no change of shoes, and when they greeted someone, they would say, “I want to come and bring you peace.  Are you open to peace?  Is there anyone here that understands peace?”  They’d say, “If a peaceful person lives here, you can go there.”  But if there’s no peace there, if it’s all conflict, you’re walking into an environment where they’re devouring each other.  The scripture last week was about biting each other and destroying each other.  No, don’t go there, because it won’t work.  But stay there in that house and eat and drink.  Isn’t that interesting?  When do you have the best conversations with people?  When do you sit and relax and drop a little bit of your guard and start telling stories and everything?  It’s when you’re drinking and eating.  And so they’re spending time in the lives of these people, and they’re witnessing something that is so beautiful.  And when you see two people that love each other and that are comfortable with each other’s faults and weaknesses, who are filled with forgiveness and love — and I don't know whether they had all of that, but they had part of that, because they weren’t yet redeemed.  They didn’t yet receive the Spirit, but they were able to witness what Jesus was all about.  And then it’s interesting.  They say, “Don’t move around a lot.  Stay.  This isn’t going to happen in one shared day of reflection with each other.  No, no.  Stay with them, but then while you’re there, watch what’s going to happen and know that you are witnessing a way of life that heals people from that which is a disease.”  And I love the word disease, because it means dis-ease, no comfort.  “Stay there and try to comfort them with ideas and witnessing a way of life that does remove so much of the tension and stress, the hatred and judgment and condemnation and exclusivity, all that creates.  And just tell them there’s something new coming, a kingdom of God.” 

Jerusalem in the Old Testament was the place where God was, and that was what you were called to, a place and a way of life that was built into that system of the temple, which was rules and regulations.  And the temple was the one place where you’d go to be freed of the judgment, and you had to pay for your sins.  That’s the old kingdom, but this new kingdom is radically different.  And it’s at hand.  It’s coming. It’s called the kingdom of God.  It’s in you, and when it’s in you, it flows between the people that he is in, and he awakens the divinity in another person.  And when the flow of life begins to happen, then there’s a radical change.  It’s called the kingdom of God.  How different the Old Testament from the New Testament, but how absolutely integrated they are, how one leads to the other.  I don't know  how you can have the second without the first.  You have to go through that process of knowing what it’s like to feel the burden of a law that demands you perform in a certain way in order to get God’s affection.  You have to live with the burden and the guilt that that creates to know how freeing the new kingdom is, where you’re welcoming a God who dwells in you with nothing but forgiveness, understanding, compassion, empathy.  And then when the world condemns you and judges you or when any force outside of you judges you and condemns you, the Holy Spirit is there, not as the nurturing mother but as this strong, feminine advocate, the Holy Spirit defending your case against those who would judge you and condemn you.  It’s a wonderful new kingdom that we have to make sure we’re not living in the old kingdom but in the new kingdom. 

Father, your longing, your deepest desire, your passion is for a relationship with us, and we weren’t ready for the fullness of it for a very long time.  But now we are, so open our imaginations.  Open our understanding, our capacity to hold mystery and, in a way, things that aren’t black and white anymore.  We’re so addicted to that, to something simpler.  Open our heart to the mystery of who you are and why you’re in us and what we can be with you.  Give us maturity, growth, evolving into all that you intend us to be, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.