People Who Go Back And Forth

Our gospel today (John 7, 1-2,10,25-30) recalls Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles, a popular autumn feast drawing crowds of visitors to the city. News of his teaching and the wonders he worked in Galilee had already reached the center of Judaism. John describes the reaction of the Jewish leaders: “the Jews were trying to kill him.” Along with them, his coming also draws the attention of “the inhabitants of the city.”

Who are they?

“The inhabitants of the city” are not the leaders who later put him to death. They’re the ordinary public who watch the leaders, who know what’s happening in the city, who follow trends and pass gossip. They watch Jesus with curiosity as he enters the temple area and teaches.

“Do our leaders now believe he’s the Messiah?” “How can he be, because he’s from Galilee and no one will know where the Messiah is from?” They’re people who go back and forth, the undecided who wait to see who wins before taking sides. Like Pilate, they would rather wash their hands of blame, but they’re involved just the same.

Jesus does not absolve them from responsibility. In John’s gospel, though immediate blame for rejecting him and putting him to death falls on the Jewish leaders, the “inhabitants of Jerusalem” are also responsible for their blindness to the Word in their midst.

In the larger perspective, then, aren’t we all “inhabitants of Jerusalem” who bear responsibility for not recognizing Jesus and putting him to death? Our Christian tradition sees the sins of us all responsible for the Passion of Jesus.

Zechariah in the Temple

It was “in the days of King Herod” that the Angel Gabriel came to the priest Zechariah who had been chosen to bring incense into the sanctuary of the temple in Jerusalem to honor the Lord God. The angel speaks to him next to the altar of incense where we would expect an angel to be. “Your prayer has been heard,” the angel says to the old priest. “Your wife will bear you a son.”

Surely, though, the old priest no longer prayed that prayer. Their childbearing years were long over. The promise of new life was long gone. They would pass on with hopes unfulfilled.

But the angel speaks of a child “great in the eyes of the Lord” who is to be called John. He will more than fulfill their hopes, turning “many of the children of Israel to their God.”

Yet, the old priest persists in doubt and the angel punishes him with silence. He cannot speak. Only after the child is born will he speak again, as he announces to those at his birth that “his name is John.” You lose your voice when you lose hope in God’s promises.

When John is born, Zechariah will sing a song of praise.

Readings here.  Homily here.

The Road Through the Wilderness

I’m preaching a mission at the Catholic chapel at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware this week.

Sometimes the best view you can get of the world in which you live is from above. Here’s a picture taken from a plane in the 1930s or so of the road up to Jerusalem from Jericho and the Jordan Valley. I add another from the ground of the road outside Jericho from more recent times.

 

Both pictures tell us the road to Jerusalem is a climbing, winding road. It wasn’t easy to take when prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist knew it. Of course, today it’s easily managed by car or bus. But in those days you walked and you didn’t always know what to expect when you went through deserts and mountains and some fertile areas where there was water and crops were grown.

Isaiah and John the Baptist knew this road very well and they used it to explain our way to God. First, it’s an image that says life will never be easy.  On that road you are going to get hungry, tired, even wonder whether you will make it or not. Unexpected things can happen: you may get robbed like the man did in the parable of the Good Samaritan. That happened on the road up from Jericho to Jerusalem, you may remember. You might be blind, like the two blind men from Jericho who couldn’t find their way.

But if you want to get to Jerusalem and enter the house of God, you have to take that road. Jesus took it when he went up to the Holy City.

The message of Isaiah and John the Baptist, so beautifully expressed in our first reading for today (Isaiah 35,1-10), is that God will bring us there.

Hanukkah and Christmas

Hanukkah, an eight day Jewish celebration, which can occur in late November to late December, and Christmas, the Christian celebration on December 25^th, are celebrated close together in time, but are they connected beyond that?

The quick answer usually given is no, but think about it a little. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes IV in 167 BC.

After conquering Judea, the Syrian leader plundered the temple, ended Jewish services and erected an altar to Zeus in it. Leading a Jewish revolt, Judas Maccabeus reconquered the city, cleansed the temple and initiated an eight day celebration in memory of the event. Eight lights lit successively call people to God’s holy place.

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ approximately 167 years later.

Both of these feasts are about the Presence of God. For the Jews God was in the temple as Creator and their Savior through time. For Christians God reveals his presence in Jesus Christ, who proclaimed himself God’s Son, “the light of the world” as he celebrated the Jewish feasts in the temple. (John 7-10)

All the gospels report that Jesus cleansed the temple  and spoke of himself replacing it. Luke’s gospel  begins in the temple with the promise to Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist and ends as the Child Jesus enters his “Father’s house.” (Luke 1-2)

Far from being separate, Hanukkah and Christmas are connected in their celebration of God’s presence. Hanukkah reminds us of the temple, the place of God’s provisional presence. The Christmas mystery reminds us of the abiding presence of God with us in Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, the Light that never fails, who gives life to all nations.

Praying with Mary and Ann

A few years ago I visited Jerusalem and the ancient ruins of the temple that once stood in the time of Jesus. Jewish women were fervently praying with their daughters before the temple’s western wall. Ann and her daughter Mary prayed here too in this holy place long ago.

Tradition says that Ann and Joachim were closely connected to the temple of Jerusalem and may have lived near it or in a town close by. The picture above is a model of the temple from the time of Jesus at the Israel Museum. The Pool of Bethesda where the present church of St. Ann stands is to the right of the temple.

The temple was the temple of God, who dwelt on this holy mountain, the Prophet Isaiah said; all the peoples of the earth would stream toward it when the Messiah appeared. It was the center for prayer. Feasts were celebrated here through the year recalling God’s graciousness to his people. God’s ways were remembered here.

Jesus’ disciples were awe–struck by the majestic building as they looked at it from the Mount of Olives. They would see it as we see it in the picture above.  Responding, Jesus spoke of himself as replacing it through the mysteries of his life, death and resurrection.

You met God here. The Jewish women fervently praying with their children before the ruins of the temple’s western wall were the successors of Ann and her daughter Mary who prayed here centuries ago.

How did they pray? They prayed the Jewish psalms. They prayed from the Jewish scriptures, remembering what they learned from them. God created the world and it was good. Evil also is at work in the world. There’s anger and violence in the world. Cain slew his brother Abel. There’s pride and jealousy and injustice in the world. Their own people became slaves in Egypt.

But God saves. God raises up the lowly; God works in unexpected ways. He raises up men and women, the poorest of them, to do great things. For God’s kingdom is to come, when God’s power and glory will be revealed to all peoples and all creation. Mary’s great prayer, the Magnificat, summarizes that belief in the God.  She surely shared that prayer with her mother Ann.

“Nothing is impossible for God,” the angel said to her announcing the coming of Jesus. Mary believed that message.

We ask the grace to believe and to pray as these two women did. We ask for their daring, their realism, their great vision.

Maintenance and Mission

We had three readings from the Book of Kings this week at Mass.  A hard book to read because, though it’s a history of the kings who succeed King David, it’s not history as we know it.  For one thing, it’s clearly biased towards the kings of Judea and antagonistic to the kings of Israel, the northern kingdom.

Besides, kings are judged by their loyalty to God, by how they listen to the prophets and how they promote Jewish worship, particularly temple worship. It’s not building programs and political success that count; it’s listening to prophets like Elijah, Elisha and Isaiah.

If they don’t do this, kings are given low marks, and God sends the Assyrians, the Babylonians and other Middle Eastern powers to subjugate his people because of their evil ways.

We hear about two good kings Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week Hezekiah and Josiah. ( 2 Kings  17-23) Yet, today’s reading offers a caution about Josiah who restores the down-trodden temple in Jerusalem but forgets something very important.  Absorbed with temple building, he seems to forget its mission.

Someone finds a copy of a book (probably parts of the Book of Deuteronomy) in the ruins of the temple and the king calls the people to come together to listen to God’s word. Before all else, the word of God points out what to do.

Today we still try to balance questions of maintenance and mission, in civil society, in the church and in our personal lives.

It’s not a matter of figuring things out by reason or going by what is or what was. The Book of Kings tells us to listen to God’s word, our living guide to the future.

Jewish Feasts as Signs

Jesus came again to Jerusalem for another feast, the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple, John’s Gospel read in as today’s Lenten reading says. It’s the Hanukkah feast celebrated sometime in late November to late December, recalling the rededication of the temple after its profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century BC.

In John’s Gospel the Jewish feasts are signs revealing who Jesus is; they inspire his words and the miracles he does. In fact, he replaces them.

On the Sabbath, (chapter 5) he heals the paralyzed man at the pool at Bethsaida. The Son will not rest from giving life as the Father never rests from giving life.

On the Passover (chapter 6), he is the true Bread from heaven, the manna that feeds multitudes.

On the Feast of Tabernacles (chapters 7–9) he calls himself the light of the world and living water.

On the Feast of the Dedication, (chapter 10,31-42) he reveals himself as the true temple, the One who dwells among us and makes God’s glory known. Once more, Jesus proclaims in today’s Gospel his relationship to the Father, “the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Yet, once more hostile listeners do not see the signs and accuse him of blasphemy, trying to stone him or have him arrested. But Jesus evades them and goes back across the Jordan to the place where John baptized and “many there began to believe in him.” He will return to Jerusalem to raise Lazarus from the dead. (chapter11)

So many signs are given to us. We have the scriptures, the sacraments, the witness of the saints. How tragic not to follow them to the Word made flesh! Follow the feasts and let them speak to us.

St. Joseph: March 19

“Each year Jesus’ parents went up to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, and when he was twelve years old they went up according to festival custom.” Luke 2,41

At twelve, Jesus enters a new stage in life – his “Bar Mitzvah.” He took on the responsibilities of the law, which later he said was: “Love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart…Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Growing up, Joseph and Mary led him to know God and his neighbor in nature, in the scriptures and in ordinary human life at Nazareth. Their hand is evident in his later teaching; they influenced him. Now he entered a new stage in his life; “each year” the attraction to the temple increased, until he “had” to go up to Jerusalem. His destiny was there.

The young Jesus was absorbed in the life of the temple, Luke indicates. Here he questioned the rabbis in its courts, but more importantly here he experienced in a unique way the Presence of God. “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house.”

What did Joseph and Mary make of this as they anxiously searched for the Son they raised as their own? Certainly it raised questions, but did they too grow in love of his Father’s house when they found him? Did he deepen their thirst for the living God who dwelt there?

Hanukkah and Christmas

Today I wrote a reflection for our province website entitled “Hanukkah and Christmas.” The Jewish and Christian celebrations coincide closely this year.

Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes IV in 167 BC. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ approximately 167 years later.

Both of these feasts are about the Presence of God. For the Jews God was present in the temple in a special way. For Christians God is present in Jesus Christ, who spoke of himself as the temple of God in this world. His presence remains and cannot be destroyed.

Many days, I look out my window at a great church across the street here in Union City  that my community had to let go of some years ago. As with many holy places nowadays,  we couldn’t keep it going financially.

It seems to me the ancient mysteries of Hanukkah and Christmas constantly repeat themselves over time. Buildings, places, however sacred, rise and fall. Jesus Christ does not rise and fall. The Christmas mystery reminds us of his abiding Presence. He is God with us, Emmanuel, and he always gives us life.

Still, we mourn when buildings go.

Jesus in the Temple, 2

It’s important to remember that Jesus, as well as being a humble native of Nazareth, was also was a regular worshipper in the temple at Jerusalem and was nourished by the great ideas and vision that radiated from this holy place.

Indeed, the Second Temple was admired throughout the world of his time. Whatever the Jews thought of Herod the Great, the unpredictable ruler of Judea, most would be proud of the magnificent temple he built. It was one of the world’s wonders.

Yet, when some spoke to Jesus about its beauty, how adorned it was with gifts, he replied “As for these things you see,  the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Luke 21,6)

The temple was not just a cause for national pride for the Jews; it nourished their spirituality. God, who was honored here, was no household god with limited power, or a national god concerned with one people. The Divine Presence honored here was the Lord of heaven and earth, the God of the nations.

That belief was expressed in the psalms that Jesus and his disciples would have prayed. Two psalms we pray in the Liturgy of Hours Wednesday and Thursday of this week (week 1) are prayers from the temple and its worship:

Psalm 47

All you peoples, clap your hands; shout to God with joyful cries.

For the LORD, the Most High, inspires awe, the great king overall the earth,

Who made people subject to us, brought nations under our feet,

Who chose a land for our heritage, the glory of Jacob, the beloved.

God mounts the throne amid shouts of joy; the LORD, amid trumpet blasts.

Sing praise to God, sing praise; sing praise to our king, sing praise.

God is king over all the earth; sing hymns of praise.

God rules over the nations; God sits upon his holy throne.

The princes of the peoples assemble with the people of the God of Abraham. For the rulers of the earth belong to God, who is enthroned on high.

Psalm 48

Great is the LORD and highly praised in the city of our God:

The holy mountain, fairest of heights,

the joy of all the earth,

Mount Zion, the heights of Zaphon,

the city of the great king.

God is its citadel, renowned as a stronghold.

See! The kings assembled, together they invaded.

When they looked they were astounded; terrified, they were put to flight!

Trembling seized them there, anguish, like a woman’s labor,

As when the east wind wrecks the ships of Tarshish!

What we had heard we now see in the city of the LORD of hosts,

In the city of our God, founded to last forever.

O God, within your temple we ponder your steadfast love.

Like your name, O God, your praise reaches the ends of the earth.

Your right hand is fully victorious.

Mount Zion is glad!

The cities of Judah rejoice because of your saving deeds!

Go about Zion, walk all around it,

note the number of its towers.

Consider the ramparts, examine its citadels,

that you may tell future generations:

“Yes, so mighty is God, our God who leads us always!”

The temple proclaimed God who rules over creation and the nations, but as Jesus reminded his disciples a place can pass away but the God proclaimed there does not pass away. In fact, Jesus spoke of himself as the new temple, who replaces this building and who cannot be destroyed,

Isaiah offered a similar message, which we also read today (Thursday morning, week 1)

“Thus says the LORD: The heavens are my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me; what is to be my resting place?

My hand made all these things when all of them came to be, says the LORD. This is the one whom I approve: the lowly and afflicted man who trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66,1-2)

After the destruction of Jerusalem, Jews who had been banished from the city by the Romans were allowed at set times to stand on the Mount of Olives and mourn for the temple and their great city. Christians also would go there to remember that cherished institutions and human  endeavors can pass away, but Jesus Christ does not pass away.

I was with the people in the picture above, who looked out  from the Mount of Olives to the temple mount and Jerusalem across the Kidron Valley. Good place to put things in perspective these days.