18C19.    Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23.   This first reading makes the statement: “All things are vanity!”  It later continues on to say: “For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?”  That seems to me to be saying that our human efforts fall short of achieving what we set out to do or of holding onto whatever we did achieve.  Psalm 90 says, “You turn man back to dust.”  In other words what growth there was over the years in our bodies, minds, and whatever else we were, is turned back to nothing but dust.  “All things are vanity!”  What we accomplish is a flash of light that disappears in the darkness.  What is done humanly, seemingly without God, is done in vain, useless.

Luke 12:13-21.  “Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, ’Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.’ He replied to him, ‘Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?’”   I understand Jesus’ reply to mean, “Here it is that I have come into this world to lead you to what is of value beyond this world.  You, however, insist on clinging to what is worldly and ignoring what is eternal.  The desire for worldly goods or greed are blinding to what is eternally good.  Filling up with the goods of this world will leave little or no room to have the life-giving presence of our God who makes us to be the good person we need to be to inherit eternal life.  Having goods is not the same as being good.  This world insists that having the goods of this world is all that matters. On the other hand, God insists that being good in his eyes is all that matters.  In the end all this world can give us is the rot or decay of the grave; in contrast God gives us the eternal and glorious life that flows from his love for us.

Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11.   “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”  Our baptism commits us to living a heavenly God-filled life while still living physically here on earth.  We have chosen to be infinitely more than just homo sapiens, just another animal of this world, born here to terminate in a grave here.  “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.  Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly.” “You have taken the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.”  That new self is still located in this world but now without this world as its life, only the life-giving presence of the Jesus for whom “Christ is all and in all.”

17C22.    Genesis 18:20-32.  Abraham walked toward Sodom with the divine guests for whom he had just served hospitality.  Then the Lord expressed to Abraham that “the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah (was) so great” that he had to see for himself.  “The Lord remained standing before Abraham.  Then Abraham drew nearer and said: ‘Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?’” For me what follows is a narrative analogous to a buyer wedeling down the price before a merchant in a Middle East bizarre.  The example that Abraham sets for us is that he, while always being respectful, was always persistent.

Luke 11:1-13.    Jesus himself was a person of prayer who in his humanity felt the need to live in relationship to the divine.     The prayer he taught his disciples is a prayer of relationship of a son to his father.  First, he shows an appreciation for the sacredness and divinity of his Father.  Secondly, he petitions that the reign of God come to fruition over a world that often chooses to be apart from God.  Thirdly, he asks for the infusion of God’s grace or life that enables us to live in the holy image and likeness of God.  Then he asks that we may live sharing in God’s sinless, holy nature as well as calling us to not to deny others to live in that same holiness by forgiving the ways in which others may have offended us.   Lastly, he admits to the fear that we may fall to the threat of this world’s challenge to our holiness.  Jesus’ call for us to be persistent, I believe, is a demand that prayer be an endless way of life by which we live out our faith daily.  We are to live in a never ending asking, knocking, and seeking because the Holy Spirit is the breathe of spiritual life without whom we become nothing more than just another animal of this earth.  Live in Our Father’s love or die spiritually.

Colossians 2:12-14.   We have all been sinners and so consequently “dead in transgressions.”  Paul writes, “He brought you (and us) to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.” Salvation comes from our Savior and not by our work but by our cooperation with his salvific activity.

 

17C19.   Genesis 18:20-32.   In the account of God’s dealing with Sodom and Gomorrah, God is pictured almost as a royal but human manager or overseer.  He is seen as one who needs to go down “to see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them,” as if God cannot see or know from heaven what is going on in the world. That same characterization of the Lord continues as Abraham bargains humbly but skillfully with his attempt to save the cities.  At the bazaar of the middle-east the opening asking price is not the final asking price but the beginning price at which to start the negotiations.  In our prayer life, is God someone we bargain or negotiate with or who already knows what his final answer will be no matter how much we want to bargain?  Personally I think that the Lord knows what he wants, no matter how much we try to make a deal BUT does not mind a negotiation process to get us to come to his terms.  In this episode I think that God wants us to realize he will do his most to save us, as he later did on the cross.

Luke 11:1-13.  Jesus himself was often going off to pray or communicate with his heavenly Father.  Seeing his example and that John had taught his followers to pray, one of his disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray.  First Jesus teaches them the ‘Our Father’; then the parable of the man who, having an unexpected guest, requested three loaves of bread from a friend to feed his guest.  At first the friend refused to get up from bed to give him the bread but then acquiesced because of his persistence.  Jesus’ point was that, if persistence will work with people who can be wicked, how much more it will work with our God, who only knows how to give what is good.  In fact, as Jesus said to Martha in last week’s Luke 10:42a, “There is need of only one thing,” that is, the Holy Spirit.  Our prayer should be persistent or patient with God, not because his patience will wear thin but because our patience is waiting on him for the good he will certainly give us in his good time.  To be people of faith means to live in God’s goodness.  “Give us each day our daily bread” is to live each day in the hand of God’s daily goodness. To treat God as the one who is truly and fully the God of our lives we must be daily totally dependent upon him.  Let us find that whatever goodness comes our way is from the hand of God.  Secular people will interpret the goodness that appears in our lives as only happenstance without any divine source.  When we pray: “Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,” we are obligating ourselves to be good to others as God is good to us.  On the phrase “do not subject us to the final test” I was only able to find that at the end times some Jews believed there would be a final great test.  I can only wonder that Jesus was saying that, if we put our lives into his hands, he would take us through the final test by his death on the cross to our resurrection with him.

Colossians 2:12-14.   Baptism by immersion and then our emergence from the water is symbolic of our joining ourselves to Christ’s death and resurrection.  We were dead because of our sins and limiting ourselves to just a life in the flesh.  He brought us to spiritual life along with him by forgiving our sins and obliterating the bonds of the Jewish Law, “nailing it to the cross.”  Real life is Christ living in us, sharing his life with us.

16C22.    Genesis 18:1-10.   “The Lord appeared to Abraham.”  “Abraham saw three men.” My understanding is that God appeared to Abraham as one of three men, the other two being angels.  In the Scriptures living angels never appear with wings.  Wings on angels are used in art to indicate that the figures are angels.  The strict code of the desert people was the obligation to offer hospitality to anyone who happened to wander in, in that barren hostile environment.  Abraham responds to the needs of his unexpected guests with extravagant generosity.   God is never to be outdone in generosity by giving Abraham the son he must have to continue his lineage.

Luke 10:38-42.  Martha, as did Abraham, offers generous hospitality.  She complains to Jesus that her sister Mary is not helping “to do the serving.”  Jesus responds that what Martha is doing is good but that what Mary is doing is even better.  Mary “sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.”  Mary chose to be the recipient of Jesus’ hospitality in offering himself in a spiritual way.  Jesus felt the need to feed God’s people with salvific food even more than Martha felt the need to feed Jesus with earthly food.

Colossians 1:24-28.  Jesus said that he must suffer greatly and be killed.  Then in Luke 9:23 he said, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  In other words Jesus called upon his followers to suffer as he did, which is to say that we would have to suffer as he suffered. In that sense Paul says that his suffering is “filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.”  Jesus said in John 16:33b, “In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”  Paul encourages everyone to live in the riches of the presence of Christ in us.  The life we have with Jesus within us enables to live with a profound joy despite the difficulties this world may bring us.  Jesus is the bread of life that feeds us with the life that is beyond this earthly life.

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16C19.   Genesis 18:1-10a.   Abraham understood that God held him responsible to be hospitable to the guests that he sent his way.  Abraham responded generously to the guests God sent to him. “One of them,” perhaps God himself promises that Sarah will have a son a year later when he will return.  Abraham gave much but God, far more.

Luke 10:38-42.   When Jesus arrived, Martha assumed that the traditional hospitality was the duty that she had to attend to immediately.  Jesus saw it differently.  On his arrival Jesus felt that it was his duty to bring divine life to anyone who wished to receive it.   Heaven had a greater responsibility to offer hospitality than earth because what heaven has to offer is far more important than what earth has to offer.  The Lord said to Martha in response to her concern that many things needed to be done: “There is need of only one thing.”  “Mary, who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak,” was seeking that one thing that was necessary: the love of God that enables us to be as loving as God is loving, by opening ourselves to have Christ live in us sharing his divine life with us.  In this Sunday’s second reading, Paul declares what Jesus had already made known to Mary, the mystery that was hidden for ages: “it is Christ in us, the hope for glory.”  In John 17:26, Jesus says, “I made known to them your name (that is, God himself) and I will make it known (continue to make God known), that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”  The only way to have God’s love in us is to have God himself in us.  Jesus said in John 15: 5b: “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” The fruit that we will bear is his love and the results of having his love within us.  Jesus is calling upon us to take on his presence within us and his never ending hospitality of his being our life source.   His hospitality is his pouring his life into us as the core of our lives.  Without him pouring his divine life or grace into us we become just another animal of this earth, spiritually dead.

Colossians 1:24-28.   “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” It is not natural but rather above the natural to rejoice in sufferings.  I have always thought of what is natural to the living beings of this world is to seek pleasure or good feelings and avoid pain and upset. Although this definition is quite simplistic I think it is helpful.  As long as we are in this world there must be some degree of suffering and pain. This world is not paradise. In John 14:27 Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”  Did Jesus have peace on the cross: humanly, no because his body was racked with horrific pain; spiritually, yes, because he was at one with the Father’s will.  We live in a world that was paradise but with the tree of good and evil: something good and something bad.  Until we are in heaven completely and totally separated from what is evil, there must be pain and troubles.

 

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15C22.     Deuteronomy 30:10-14.    Moses said to the people: “If you would only heed the voice of the Lord, your God, and keep his commandments and statutes,” then God’s blessings (vs. 9) will flow superabundantly on his people.  There is no mystery about what the Lord wants, “you have only to carry it out.”   The difficulty is often not knowing what God wants but doing it.

Luke 10:25-37.   A scholar or teacher of the Law or Torah addressed Jesus trying to put him down, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  The second part of the Torah is that you shall love, “your neighbor as yourself.”  It was generally understood that one’s neighbor was one’s countryman.  In the Old Testament there was the struggle against the common Jewish belief that one’s neighbor was one’s fellow Jew and all others were excluded.  In his parable, which we have always called ‘The Good Samaritan’, Jesus was telling his listeners that we are to love all others, and not just our neighbors, as the God who created them to be loved by him, and not just as we love ourselves.  God’s definition of the neighbor is, “the one who treated him with mercy,” or love.  “Jesus said to him (and to us), ‘Go and do likewise.’”

Colossians 1:15-20.   “Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God.”  Jesus said in John 14:7, “If you know me, then you will also know my Father.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  Then in John 14:9b Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”  “All things were created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  John 1:3ab: “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.”  “that in all things he himself might be preeminent.” “making peace by the blood of his cross.” In John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

 

 

 

 

15C19.   Deuteronomy 30:10-14.  Moses is encouraging the people to be faithful to the Law, especially the great commandment to love God with all one’s heart and soul.  To love God is to do what our hearts and mind already know is good and right.

Luke 10:25-37.  The scribe or scholar of the law responds to Jesus’ question, saying, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” In turn, Jesus responds, “Do this and you will live.”  Death comes from disobedience to God’s will; but life, from love of God and his will.  The scribe, who did not wish to appear shallow, since he had to move on so quickly with such an easy answer that did not show any depth of knowledge, continued by asking Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  Usually the term neighbor only included someone who was connected to one by blood, ethnic or religious lines and not the alien.  In the Old Testament this issue of welcoming the alien or foreigner was addressed because there were times when the Israelite himself was an alien.  The priest and the Levite passed the victim by because they would have become ritually impure according to the Law by coming into contact with wounded man’s blood.  Besides that it was an oxymoron, an impossible contradiction, for there to be a ‘good Samaritan’.  The Jews who worshipped in Jerusalem considered the Jews who worshipped in Samaria to be fake Jews who desecrated true Judaism by worshipping in Samaria and not Jerusalem.  Jesus was saying to the scribe that loving as God loves all of us is the love that God calls us to.  Then “Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”

Colossians 1:15-20.  The notes in ‘The New American Bible’ says concerning this reading: “As the poetic arrangement indicates, these lines were probably an early Christian hymn,” that declares the absolute centrality of Jesus to our faith.  As we love God with everything that we have, so too we must love Jesus totally.  In Jesus is the invisible God made visible.  At one and same time, he is created and so he is a creature, yet also at one and the same time, the creator.  “Through him to reconcile all things” he makes “peace by the blood of his cross” so to bring to God all that was aliened from God by sin.  He is preeminent, the head of the body, the church, drawing all to himself and then through him to God the Father.  All is made whole and holy as he leads his followers to be made new in him.  As the Old Testament reading said, “For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you.”  We only need to have Jesus as the measure of all things.  Jesus says in John 15:12, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”

14C22.    Isaiah 66:10-14c.     The Hebrews had recently returned to Jerusalem from captivity.  The caring nature of the Lord Yahweh is like a mother’s maternal breasts abundantly feeding her little ones who were totally dependent upon God, since they had nothing of their own.  The Lord promises, “Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river.”  “The Lord’s power shall be known to his servants.”

Luke 10:1-12, 17-20.  “The Lord appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit.”  Jesus was organizing a preparation for his visits so that the results of his visits would be maximized.  “Ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”  “I am sending you like lambs among wolves.”  Jesus is warning his preparation team that in their innocence that must be on guard against the devil.  They are not to go materially, but spiritually prepared.  The peace that they give requires that the residents are at peace with God and not with the devil, that is to say “a peaceful person lives there.”  Jesus tells them,“Eat and drink what is offered to you,” for you deserve to be supported materially in exchange for the spiritual goods you bring. Jesus is saying that they are agents of God.  In rejecting them, they are rejecting God and so merit the punishment of that rejection.  “Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”  Our joy must not be in power or gifts we have received but in our union with our Lord.

Galatians 6:14-18.  Paul writes, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  To be united to the crucified Savior means to be united to a Jesus who gives all in love so that we may be a people who are love as he is love.   We give ourselves over to a love and live in a love that we have received from Jesus.

14C19.   Isaiah 66:10-14c.  Isaiah was calling the Hebrew people to rejoice despite the fact that they were living in troubled times.  “For thus says the Lord: Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river.”  “Exult, exult with Jerusalem all you who were mourning over her!” “The Lord’s power shall be known to his servants.”

Psalm 66.  “Shout joyfully to God, all the earth.”  Say to God, “How tremendous are your deeds!” “Therefore let us rejoice in him.’”  “He rules by his might forever.”

Luke 10:1-12, 17-20.  Jesus sent out seventy-two disciples in pairs “to every town and place he intended to visit.” He told them to pray for more laborers for the harvest of souls because the laborers are few.  He warns them that they will face troubles, saying, “Behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.”  He sends them out without any physical resources, only spiritual resources to cure the sick and drive out demons.  When they enter a house, they are to “first say, ‘Peace to this household.’  If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment.”  In John 20:19, Jesus said to his disciples, “Peace be with you,” because they had the doors locked “for fear of the Jews.”  God is almighty wishing to use his might to care for us and protect us.  If we live without God, we have good reason to fear, to be without peace, since there are many who are stronger than we and may wish to prey upon us.  When the disciples wish the resident peace, they are calling upon them to be at one with God.  If a peaceful person lives there, is to say that that person has already been at one with God, even before the disciples came.  If the person who lives there is not at peace or one with God, they will be without the resources to defend or sustain themselves and so they will perish terribly.  The seventy-two rejoiced in the power that was at their disposal.  Jesus responds, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because you names are written in heaven.”  We must keep our priorities in the right order.  We must think as God thinks and not as human beings do.  However, only if live at peace or at one with God, can we accomplish that.

Galatians 6:14-18.  “Brother and sisters: May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  In Galatians 2:19b-20, Paul also wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”  Paul is saying that Jesus is now his life, no longer he himself but rather Paul’s dominion over himself  had died, been crucified, so that Jesus is his Lord and his life.  Paul was so united to Jesus in his crucifixion that Paul has been given the stigmata, i.e. the marks of nails in his hands and feet and the marks of the spear in his side. Exult because God is our savior.  His victory over sin and death is now our victory!  “Therefore let us rejoice in him!”

13C22.   1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21.   The Lord Yahweh orders the prophet Elijah to anoint Elisha as his successor.  Elijah throws his cloak over Elisha as a way of symbolizing that he is putting Elisha under his domain as an apprentice to him.  Owning so many oxen indicates that Elisha was quite wealthy and successful.  Nonetheless, Elisha definitively and drastically terminated his former livelihood and way of life to belong utterly to God’s will for him.

Luke 9:51-62.  This Sunday’s gospel reading presents a number of incidents from Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus acts in each incident with a firmness of purpose.  He calls people to follow him but they have to be properly motivated and willing to be fully committed.  The Samaritans rejected anyone who was willing to deal with the Jerusalem Jews whom they regarded as their enemies.  The first individual wanted to follow Jesus but had no idea that he would have to leave behind all the comforts of home.  The second wanted to go back to bury his father but Jesus knew that his family would demand that he stay with them to replace the father.  Yet a third wanted to say farewell to his family but Jesus knew that was where his heart was.  Following Jesus demands that one is willing to die to many of the emotions that have been for so long a part of who we were.

Galatians 5:1, 13-18.  “Brothers and sisters: For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”  Our bodily desires and the worldly emotions and ways of thinking and behaving of the people around us can control us.  The Holy Spirit breathes into us a spiritual life with its ways of thinking and feeling that are at complete odds with the ways of this world.  Psalm 16:11 speaks to the Holy Spirit saying for us: “You will show me the path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.”  Life in the Spirit demands some sacrifices but has far greater rewards.