July 6, 2014:
Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Also the weekend to celebrate
Independence Day
Zechariah 9:9-10: Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he … and he shall proclaim peace to the nations.
Psalm 145: I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
Romans 8:9, 11-13: You are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Matthew 11:25-30: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Stake my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.”
July is the month of the Most Precious Blood
Scripture Notes from the Sourcebook:
THE FIRST READING: “The prophet’s words are addressed to a post-exilic Jerusalem. The announcement of the coming of the longed-for Davidic king signaled a new era in her history and the re-establishment of the nation. Note that its boundaries will extend to the ends of the earth! It will be a time of peace not only for Jerusalem but for all nations. Both Matthew and Mark cite this text in their account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. It I s no doubt the reference to the meekness of the coming king that is the basis for its choice as a complement to today’s Gospel account.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 145: This hymn of heartfelt praise and thanksgiving to God our King extols the glory of God’s kingdom and the power of his reign. Pay special attention to the second stanza: it is God’s self-revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai (see Exodus 34:6-7). It is the experience of God’s fidelity that gives rise to praise and thanksgiving.
SECOND READING: The word “spirit” occurs six times in the space of three verses! All of Romans 8 is a powerful testimony to the work of God’s Spirit, bringing us to a new realm of life. We are no longer of the flesh, that is, closed to the action of God’s Sprit, and we should not live our daily lives as if we were. We have God’s Spirit, bringing eternal life to our own spirits as well as to our bodies!
THE GOSPEL: Jesus gives praise to his Father for all that he has made known to those who are receptive to his teaching. Does Jesus see himself among the merest children? Meek and humble? It is these who are receptive to God’s teaching. It is these who are blessed (see Matthew 5:5). In the second part of today’s Gospel, Jesus invites all who are burdened to come and exchange the yokes they are carrying for his yoke, Yes, his will be much lighter, for they will not carry it alone. Yoked to Jesus, they will find peace and rest.
PASTORAL REFLECTION: What made you happiest as a child? As you remember, and possibly enact those childhood moments, bring God into them. Today’s account of the Gospel also seems to call for a game of hide and seek with a child. In the lightness of God, hide your burdens in God’s hands and seek his grace when you are found. --2014 Sourcebook for Sundays, Seasons & Weekends
The French mystic, Madame Guyon (1648-1717), wrote, “Through being given rule and method how to love God, people have in great measure been estranged from God. How unnecessary is it to teach an art of loving! The language of love, though natural to the lover, is nonsense and barbarism to one who does not love. The best way to learn the love of God is to love God. The ignorant and simple, because they proceed with more heart and greater simplicity, often become better at it. The Spirit of God needs none of our arrangements and methods; when it pleases him, he turns shepherds into prophets: and, so far from excluding any from the Temple of Prayer, he throws wide the gates, that all may enter; while Wisdom cries aloud in the streets, ‘You that are simple turn in here’ (Proverbs 9:4).”
I asked an 8-year old American in Iceland how long it took her to learn Icelandic (she was the best in the family at it). She replied, “A day or two days, or a week.” In other words she didn’t think about it at all; she just played with her Icelandic friends. Children learn spontaneously; but adults proceed “by rule and method.” We need handbooks for everything because we have lost the capacity for direct experience.
While an adult stands back to analyse something, a child just becomes one with it. We have so venerated the analytical mind that the other faculties are scarcely taken into account at all. I have known people who were intellectually gifted but incapable of looking after themselves or anyone else. Far from seeing this as an embarrassment, we make it almost a badge of honour: we may laugh at him, yet we secretly revere the absent-minded professor. But as Chesterton said, “A madman is not someone who has lost his mind; he is someone who has lost everything except his mind.”
Neglect of the other faculties costs us dearly. If we neglected the mind to the same degree that we neglect the other faculties, we would be called barbarians. But we tolerate, even cultivate, a barbarism of feeling and will. Look at the depravity that is held up before us in some sections of the entertainment industry. Is it not barbarism?
If we neglect feeling and will, we will never learn to love; we will learn only a caricature of love: greed. To love is to respect, to care about. In its deepest meaning it is to become one with (while the word ‘analysis’ means just about the opposite: to take apart). There seems to be a serious imbalance built into our educational systems: we destroy something that children are born with (or perhaps they would soon begin to lose it anyway), and we give them what it takes to fit well into a mad society, leaving many of them as damaged as the society itself.
It was when the towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum had rejected Jesus that he exclaimed, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Perhaps there were many intelligent people in those towns, and he was sick of arguing with them. Their intelligence left no mark on the history of the world: of Chorazin and Bethsaida there is no trace left; Capernaum is only a couple of ruins. But the extraordinary love that Jesus embodied will never be forgotten.
--- Donagh O’Shea for the Dominicans of Ireland, Today’s Good News
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I Tire So Beneath This Ancient Load (Sonnet 81 by Petrarch)
I tire so beneath this ancient load
of sin and bitter use: I pray
I will not falter on the way
and fall into the hands of my foe.
True, once a great friend eased it so
in his ineffable courtesy;
but then he hastened off so quickly
that soon I had no friend to behold.
Even so, his voice rings from above:
“O you who labor, here is the way;
Come to me, if the way stands clear.”
What grace, what love, O what fate
will grant me wings as of a dove,
that I might rest and fly from here?
-- Francesco Petrarca, Italian, 1303-1374, translated by Jack Roberts
A Reflection on Today’s Gospel
The words from Matthew proclaim Jesus’ praise for the Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Sharing the praise encompasses an invitation of the Son wishing to reveal the Father. An invite to look beyond burdens, not a forcible decree, to come to Jesus. He doesn’t show favoritism or hierarchical priorities, since the invitation is open to all laboring and burdened by the yoke of the law inflicting demanding religiosity instead of spiritual reality. The invitation is not a DIY (Do It Yourself) project to try and figure out the details, for taking the yoke is a rest from the treadmill of seeking but never finding, success without purpose, financial security without contentment, to learn from the Master to be meek and humble of heart.
What would your personal faith be like if you were meek? What would your community be like if meekness permeated society? What would the world be like if meekness eclipsed dominance and greed? Meek rooted in the Psalm’s’ expression of the Lord that is gracious, merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The same three questions would take on an ever more profound dimension layered with a humble heart. For one’s personal life would not seek only for “me”, community and world perspectives would not exist as islands of autonomy or hands of power grasping for socio-economic control. Hands not pushing away the world to isolate or gasping power are hands open to service and minds freed from strategizing on self-fulfillment and preservation to be guided by the Holy Spirit to put to death deeds drafted by the learnedness and wisdom of our human nature. The seeming triviality of the sin we render against ourselves or inflict against the human family settles the yoke more burdensome on our shoulders. It takes us away from the Messiah prophesized as one that would banish the warrior’s bow and proclaim peace to the nations and the ends of the earth, as He came to give us life. He offers the words, “Come to me,” each time we look inward instead of towards Him, each time we seek to work towards peace in the world, but it looks too complicated, each times we praise the gods of the world, instead of our God and King. Learning from Jesus with an indwelling of the Spirit, we find rest not stress by living meekly, with a humble heart, leading us to live Gospel peace.
Only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly, and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, for those who try to resist it. But for those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy, and the burden is light.
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
THE YOKE OF JESUS: [The] yoke was the common symbol for the Law of Moses, especially for the details of the law and the minute, ever-expanding demands of the legalism of the Pharisees. … The yoke of the Pharisees, their demands that you have to do this and this and this exactly right in order to matter to God, in order to be a decent person, in order to be loved or counted significant – that yoke Jesus rejects, even though it was the yoke of the wise and intelligent.
That yoke, the yoke of seeking God by keeping the rules, by doing what somebody or anybody or everybody else says is the thing to do, by trying to get it right all the time and so living constantly in fear of getting it wrong, that yoke leads those who wear it to “labor and be heavy laden.” It leads to living in what Paul just called “this body of death.” It leads to a religion and a life of fearful obedience to a multitude of petty dictates where the spirit is deadened, and where some measure of success is more likely to lead you into self-righteousness than into the heart of God.
To say to your child, or a friend, or your spouse, or anyone, really, “I will only love you if you do right,” is to ensure a sick and twisted relationship. It hurts everybody involved. To teach that God says this is not only terrible theology, it can also be devastating. …
To go scurrying about with the notion that if we could only figure out the right thing to do – the right way to act, the right words to say, the right way to do the rituals – then we would be all right, is to skate on the edge of magic, as if we could conjure up God’s acceptance. It will only ensure frustration and exhaustion. God’s presence with us and God’s love for us are never the results of our actions. He is in charge; we are not.
In response to all of this, Jesus says, “Come to me.”
Not to a new law, not to a new teaching, not to a secret interpretation or a hidden loophole, not to a book, not to a list; but “to me.” Come to Jesus himself. …
One more thing: In many translations, Jesus calls his yoke “easy.” Now, that’s an unfortunate English word; it makes it sound like everything’s a snap, that very little effort or energy is required to do it. And as anyone who has tried to live the life of Jesus knows, that’s just not true. The New English Bible’s translation is better: It reads, “My yoke is good to bear.” The point is not that this yoke, the Lord’s call to relationship, makes no difference or asks nothing of us – quite the contrary. The point is that it fits, it’s the right size, so it works – it leads to God, and it brings with it wholeness and a peace that can be found nowhere else. …We are called to this new yoke, not to a law, or to a set of rules, but to a person and a community built around that person. And in this the religious quest – the greatest journey of human existence – can find its richest fulfillment, and its deepest satisfaction.
Jesus said, “Come to me if you seek God, if you seek life, I will give you rest.”
— The Rev. James Liggett, http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com
CONCERNING INDEPENDENCE DAY: Imagine flying over the United States in a small private plane at twilight (on July 4). You could watch fireworks going off beneath you in all directions, as every town celebrates the birthday of the nation. They celebrate because, on this day in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was announced publically.
The Declaration was basically a list of the reasons why the 13 colonies had broken ties with their mother country, Great Britain. It was written by a committee headed by Thomas Jefferson. It stated that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. By the time the Declaration was produced, the Revolutionary War had already been going on for some months. It would take either years for the colonists to win the independence they so greatly prized.
Traditional celebrations for Independence Day include torchlight parades, bell ringing, picnics, family reunions, band concerts, and, of course, fireworks. It’s a time for fun and a time for reflection, too. People give thanks today for a beautiful country and for a system of government that is admired all over the world. Even in the United States, the poor and some minority citizens are often robbed of their basic rights. Frederick Douglass (February 20), the great anti-slavery writer, was once asked to give a speech on the Fourth of July. Pointing out that many African Americans were still held as slaves, he told those who had asked him to speak, “The blessings for which you on this day rejoice are not held in common.
Our bright celebrations this day are done the hope that one day all will be free, that one day the earth itself will shine with liberty. – Mary Ellen Hynes, from A Companion to the Calendar
What other liberty is there worth having if we have not freedom and peace in our own minds? – Henry David Thoreau
"So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
Reflection for July 6, 2014: Cherry Days & the Fourth of July
Over 20 years ago, I came to Paonia from Cripple Creek, an old mining town on the backside of Pikes Peak, over on the Front Range. This was back in the era known to historians as B.L.G.R.P. (Before Legalized Gambling Ruined the Place) but Cripple Creek was most definitely a tourist town. Our lives pretty much revolved around the pale hordes who came gasping and staggering up the mountains every summer, and we had no intention of letting anyone leave before he or she had purchased more souvenir T-shirts than any one person could wear in a lifetime. We loved our tourists, but they also drove us crazy, and by the end of summer we almost hated them. How many times, after all, can you tell people where the restroom is, or answer the question: “What on earth do you do up here all winter long?” without starting to feel just a wee bit murderous inside?
In Cripple Creek, everybody hustled in the summer; even if you had a good job somewhere else – I worked at the library, for example – you also waited tables or led gold mine tours or fried hamburgers or peddled knickknacks or did something of the sort. Not that I didn’t also find the time to go hiking and backpacking, or stay out until the wee hours dancing and carousing with my cronies. But all summer long we buzzed around after our tourists like human mosquitoes. (Of course, I was a lot younger in those days and hadn’t figured out that a person needs to sleep every now and then. It was, as historians say, in the B.B.I. days: Before Back Injury. Not to mention B. M.A.: Before Middle Age.)
When I first moved here, I had several part-time jobs, including one at the Paonia Peddler. It sold everything from cute little souvenirs to bicycles and furniture, and it certainly caught the eyes of every tourist who wandered into town. So that first summer, when Bill Mann began to tell me about Cherry Days and the Fourth of July, I sighed and thought: Oh well, sounds like Cripple Creek’s Donkey Derby Days: Lots of hassle and extra hours, but at least I’ll make a few bucks. I was still going on tourist-town standards, you see: I figured you always worked harder because it was a holiday. So I asked Bill, “What time do you want me to come in Wednesday?” or whatever day it was. He said, “Well, Wednesday is July 4, you see – it’s Cherry Days,” and I replied, “Yes, I know. So do you want me to come in a few hours early, or stay open really late the evening before?” Bill looked at me as if I were crazy, and said, very slowly and patiently, “No. Don’t you see: July 4 is Cherry Days, and Cherry Days is our big holiday. And pretty much everything shuts down so we can all watch the parade and go to the park and hang out with our families.” I must have looked flabbergasted. “You mean you have all these people in town and you’re not using the occasion to squeeze every single nickel you can from their pockets?” Bill was a pretty ambitious young businessman in those days, but he still said something like, “You don’t get it. It’s a holiday. We celebrate. We relax. We have fun.” He went on to explain that of course he was hoping to make a few extra dollars; the downtown is always extra lively the day before the Fourth, with sidewalk sales and special events and such. But come the day itself, the doors of his business would be shut. It was, after all, a holiday. In the old-fashioned sense of the word. Paonia believed in celebrating Independence Day – not just milking it for all it was worth.
You don’t need me to tell you that we’re living in challenging times; I don’t know too many people who are rolling in the dough or dancing up and down the mountainsides as happy-hearted and nimble as goats in the springtime. People struggle, they get sick, occasionally they hurt each other or themselves. There are little wars blazing around the world, growing and spreading like wildfires, some of them, like Iraq, unfortunately, were seeded and stirred up by us; we face tremendous environmental problems; we can’t figure out what to do about immigration; our political system is increasingly bitter and dysfunctional. And yet every year, Independence Day in Paonia reminds me why I believe in America. Every year it renews my love for my community and my country. I don’t always love, or respect, my government, or at least certain people and parts of it – as a citizen, and as a Christian, for example, I am appalled that politicians and pundits continue to justify the sin of torture, and I remain bemused that corporations are now considered persons, only with more rights than other persons, apparently. Yet my strong political views have nothing to do with the deep, abiding love I feel for America. I am very tired with people who claim to be patriots, yet threaten to secede from the U.S. every time they don’t get their own way. This is America, a nation and a community, after all; none of us gets our own way all the time, nobody gets it all; we continue to be a WE, not just an us – we are, or should be, We the People, not just Me the People.
Of course, we don’t always agree with each other. But in just a few months, we’ll be bumping into each other at the polls, and despite our many deep disagreements (and in a community this size, you pretty much know most people’s political leanings), we’ll still say hello before we vote for the candidates we support. Out in the parking lot, our bumperstickers may silently rage at each other, but the actual human beings will shake hands and smile and make small talk, even joke. And we’ll do our voting peacefully, no matter how passionate we are. There will be no riots; there will be no soldiers in tanks threatening citizens on our streets. Those who lose will be disappointed, maybe angry, but we’re unlikely to stage a coup or start shooting each other over how we voted. (At least I hope not.)
Yesterday, at the parade, I was deeply moved when I noticed the sort of ripple that was spreading slowly along the sidewalk of the town – the movement of people getting to their feet, to stand up in respect as the flag passed by. I happened to be standing next to a woman whose political views were very different from mine, and yet we both looked at the flag with the same strong feeling, knowing in our hearts that it doesn’t belong to either of us; it belongs to ALL of us. And the two of us had a delightful time just standing and chatting, watching the parade.
Our country has come a long way, and it’s not unpatriotic to be honest about how far we still have to go. This weekend, as we celebrate our Independence, we celebrate together – Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives, Christians and atheists, Jews and Muslims, white and black and Latino and Native American and what have you. There is plenty of room for all of us in this country; but more than that, there is also a need for us all, for our many different voices, our many different view-points. We balance each other out; we blend our various voices into one noisy and gorgeous American choir, and together we make America really rock. This is, indeed, something worth celebrating -- something worth working hard for: Creating a country that is truly worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. In Jesus’ name.– Diane Sylvain