GOD ALWAYS HAS A BIGGER TABLE

                     

When was the last time you came to a restaurant that was full and the only table that they could offer was to share the other end of a large table where there was already another seated couple? You did not have the option of going somewhere else for lunch so you accepted.

 

One time the gentleman at the other end of the table cringed when we sat down. He was more than a little uncomfortable that there were strangers at the other end of the table. In another instance, the couple started making introductions and welcoming us into their city. 

 

What a wonderful image to think about how our God actually works. We are invited to sit at the table with God, but God always keeps enlarging the table. More and more different people are invited to sit down with God and with us!

 

Always think of God’s table like the table of your grandmother. It did not matter how many people dropped by, she could always have them seated and could whip up a meal in a half hour. You probably remember when the kids were moved to a smaller table from the playroom. Another uncle and aunt had dropped by and Grandma could always find room. Squeeze a little bit more!

 

Here you are sitting at God’s table and he invites the two young men who live down the block from you, but they are heavy into the drugs. You never felt comfortable with then on earth. What are you supposed to do in heaven?

 

Then God shuffles the table and invites so many refugees and their children. All these displaced people are told to sit down. They may have had no territory to call home but here God makes space for all of them. 

 

The table is getting a little crowded!

 

As they table is being filled up, how are you feeling?

 

This image shows us that God is a welcoming God. We humans may be very narrow in whom we consider to be acceptable but the heart and the embrace of God always grows larger. 

 

Too many ‘born’ Christians have so much difficulty with the largeness of God. They only want to work with the people they feel are acceptable. Too often they have a strong desire for moral purity in whom they consider worthwhile.

 

Whether or not anyone pays attention to what God is doing, you can be assured that God will upset our way of judging and evaluating human beings. God’s ways are not to make human beings feel warm and secure. God’s ways are meant to stretch the human heart to love all people, especially those different from ourselves, with the same love that God has for them. God will always upset our apple cart!

 

Today would be a good time for you to imagine what it will be like when God brings you to sit at the table. Who will be seated around you?

 

 

 

 

POPE FRANCIS LAUNCHES US

                

 

A leader, in whatever human grouping you have, always sets the tone. Now, tone is not something that you can define easily in words, but you sure can feel it. You take on a new job and within the first few hours you can sense that there is tension in this business operation. Most often, the leadership can be too demanding and non-communicative and leaves the employees adrift. You may not be able to write down the tension on a piece of paper but your body indicates that you had better tread softly while you are on the job.

 

Now, Pope Francis, is setting the Church and all of Christianity on a course of renewal. There are many people who are very upset that he does not come down hard and strong, clear on what is right and wrong. They are very vocal and shrill in their lamentations. 

 

Pope Francis is pushing the Church to be a church of mercy and healing. He wants us to have dirt on our shoes because we have been out on the streets ministering to the poor and the marginalized. To use a very Biblical image, he wants all the people involved in leadership to “smell like the sheep!”

 

He is challenging the Church not to only have the truth, but to be the truth! 

 

This means that in our actions and service to the people we are actually doing and making real the very mercy of Jesus Christ. He has never down played the importance of speaking the truth, but he challenges us to make it real in our day to day lives.  This means that everyone who identifies with the Church is meant to make the love and mercy of Jesus Christ real in their dealings with their fellow employees, their own family members and the new comers to our country. 

 

We are being challenged to move from a Church with a strong institutional presence to the community of faith that is at the service of the poor and the marginalized of this world. A Church of service will look different from the dominant church building with a clear mandate to practice Christian virtues in the society. A church of service seeks to be a ‘field hospital’ in a wounded society.

 

In Canada, we are soon to be welcoming many, many Ukraine refugees. The challenge is right in front of us. How will we be of assistance to these people trying to rebuild their lives after being so brutally tossed forth from the security of their own ( Ukraine ) society? 

 

Every day (but it is not fodder for the media) we are confronted by more and more families who are suffering because one of their members has overdosed on bad street drugs. How do we walk with and support these families who have suffered such a senseless loss?

 

We will not live long enough to see the full effects of the renewal that Pope Francis has launched but he is pointing Christianity in the right direction. How well will be respond to the challenge?

 

GOD WILL BRING GOOD THINGS OUT OF THIS

 

 

Happy Easter!

 

During the past two months we have lived through unbelievable suffering with the invasion and destruction of the Ukraine. Where is there any hope in this so evil of seasons? Where do we turn when such wanton destruction has been foisted on an innocent country?

 

At the core of our belief in the resurrection is the conviction that God will triumph over evil. Death and sin does not have the last word in human life. The resurrection means that life will triumph over death.

 

This is why the celebration of Easter is so powerful. We must bring our sufferings, our disappointments and human evil to the cross of Jesus. There must be a real joining of our tears and pain to the very cross of Jesus. When some of our great spiritual teachers instructed us to take our sufferings and nail them to the cross of Jesus, they were giving some very sound teachings. We must join our sufferings to the very sufferings of God. In the heart of Jesus there was not only his own suffering but he also embraced all the sufferings of humanity. He brought your sins and sufferings with him, with the instrument of the cross, to the very heart of the Father. His sacrifice also included all your tears and frustrations, all your sins and your tears.

 

The resurrection is the triumph of life over death, good over evil, light over darkness. The resurrection of Jesus means that evil and death will never have the last word.

 

Now, take this to the invasion by Russian troops of the Ukraine. Out of this unbelievable evil has come forth unbelievable goodness and generousity from countless number of Canadians. Count the number of fellow Canadians who have reached out to refugees; people they have no connection to on a personal level. Look at how the world has opened its heart (and wallets) to the people fleeing for safety! 

 

Put your finger on the pulse of your own heart. Look how you have responded to the plight of these four million refugees. Look how you are concerned about the well-being of the people who live right around you. Your compassion for the refugees and those close to you arise from the same Holy Spirit working within you. Feel the love of God breathing in your lungs as you go out to visit your ancient aunt who in her dementia does not know any of her family. Just your presence and the warmth of your hands on her hands is a sharing of the deep love of God active in this world.

 

This very black season at the beginning of 2022 is not a crushing blow to life. The resurrection (our Easter attitude) challenges us to live in hope. Look for the many ways that the Holy Spirit is bringing good out of this great evil. 

 

May Easter be a time for hope and life to sprout forth from your own soul. May you have hope amidst the black clouds of 2022.

 

 

EASTER IS THE CENTER OF OUR FAITH

 

Whenever Christian people take a good look at the Scriptures they gain a new insight into how we must live our life and how we must pray. The New Testament clearly centers the story on the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is the great event of our salvation.

 

Now, Western Christianity has placed so much emphasis on the suffering and death of Jesus. Just walk into any church building and what do you see? The dying Jesus on the cross and the fourteen stations of the cross on the outer walls. The reason that the Way of the Cross has declined as a personal devotion is due to its incompleteness. The traditional way of the Cross does not convey the full event of salvation. There was no resurrection station.

 

We must always think of our salvation and revelation as the two sides of our hand. You cannot have just one side to have a hand. Not only do both sides fit together but it is only with both sides that you can have a hand.

 

Jesus endured the terrible violence of his own execution as a despised and rejected person on the cross. There was an actual burial. But the event of the resurrection is the breaking through and sharing of the very Son of God. Resurrection is not just Jesus coming back to life but the giving of the very Spirit of Jesus to the disciples.

 

Not only is the resurrection the triumph of God (good) over evil, but it is now time for the disciples (the people of the Church) to be the living continuation of the life, the heart and the mission of Jesus Christ. 

 

We are living in a Church that is trying to recapture the spirit of the New Testament. We want to return Easter to a festival of three days. We once again tell the story of the death and resurrection so that the meaning and purpose of this revelation can deepen in the life of every believer. 

 

The risen Jesus must happen in the life of each disciple. Each person in our Church community is meant to be filled with and energized by the spirit and the life of Jesus. The very event of the resurrection must be recreated in the life of the believer. 

 

We must be filled with the spirit of Jesus in our prayer. As Jesus listened to and was in harmony with the Father, so we too, in our daily prayer seek such unity with the Father. 

 

The risen Jesus is meant to be lived out of our healing ministry towards the world. It will be through our healing hands that the broken and the infirm of this world are lifted up. 

 

Today we are working toward giving Easter its rightful energy. In this way we are making present the great Christian value that the way we pray is the way that we live our daily faith. Our life is one of sacrifice and service (the cross) and a life of sharing the great mercy of the Son of God (the resurrection).