Saturday, November 06, 2004
Lk. 16:9-15
this scripture is a continuation of yesterday within that section that is seen as an imposition of the early church and their theology rather than Jesus. but again there is a grain of truth in there.
"you cannot serve God and Money." I saw the movie "Motorcycle Diaries" yesterday. It is about the motorcycle road trip of Che Guevera which changed his life. this spoiled rich kid was faced with the unjustice and he saw where money was destructive to the vast majority of people, because the money breeds greed. i am payee for one kid who when i give him his allowance spends it in hours and then like a heorine addict craves more, just craves more money. whatever we give our allegiance to determines who we are.
last night was simply distressful. sepho, shows up high on speed, just is all over the place, picks up a shirt and takes with him, and then wonders why i want let him up here any more. speed simply destroys a persons sense of honesty, respect. once again it is who we give our allegiance to. i leave for new mexico tuesday, and will probably just go to a motel the next couple of days near the airport. i am frankly on low burn with people right now. just simply want to be away from them, and just be me. sometimes i feel like everyone is grabbing at me, wanting something, give me give me, and i am drained, just drained. but that is what the gospel meant when Jesus "felt the power drained from him." people are needy, and draw from one,and that is why he would go away and why i go away alone. Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!
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Friday, November 05, 2004
Luke 16:1-8:
Thursday like most thursdays, did meal, and outreach. it was cold, and people huddle together in the doorways with damp blankets, the party goers passing them by as if they did not exist, saw one drunk urinating on a person in doorway, just one more example of how we demean people, and how there is so much insensitivity towards people.
the scripture for today is a part of a section that most scholars do not attribute to Jesus, but regardless if it is a add in by the early church there is a grain of truth here.
I have a friend who has said that in all the years he has lived in the City this ministry has been the most successful on polk largely because i can combine my faith with dionysis. in otherwords what he is saying is that i am able to integrate my faith in the real world of this culture. i think in this scripture what is being said is for us to survive, to witness in the world, that we have to be wise to the methods of the world and in some matter coopt them. to not be afraid of getting our hands dirty, but to acknowlege our own darkness and shadow and simply enter into it knowing that and not being contaminaed by it. for me that is what being streetwise is about--being able to live within this world, and yet not of it, but being as comfortable in this world as i am in the world of the middle class or wealthy. wise counsel! Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!
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Wednesday, November 03, 2004
November 4 rainy
Lk. 15:1-10—Thursdays gospel
I have always preferred to seek out the one out of the 99—the one that gets lost. My guess is it is because for the most part I have been that one—I follow a different drum, and when I stray I stray out there in the canyon with the briars. I understand what it means to be alone, not understood, judged. And so my heart goes out to j, 31, who has for years talked of trying to get his life together, but never seems to even make the first step, s,22, whose anger just explodes over nothing and keeps him out of every program in town. My heart gravitates to them, and so I go down into the briar patch to be with them, to try to get them out, and I get a lot of scratches and bruises as a result. That is what Jesus does for us, he seeks us out in our canyons and briar patches and brings us home. Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!
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Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Gospel
Lk 14:25-33 (Wednesday’s Gospel)
Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,
and he turned and addressed them,
"If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Otherwise, after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.'
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?
But if not, while he is still far away,
he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way,
everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple."
Today I have shut phone off, done laundry and worked on my presentation for New Mexico. But today has been stressful. I cannot walk outside the door without someone wanting something; my messages are angry because I am not available. Discovered I am very short on money for month, and not sure where it is coming from. And the demands of people seem to increase, and the needs.
And then I look at this scripture and I reflect back to my struggle with this call all of my life, and especially ten years ago when I decided to come here. This call to “take up the cross’. .and “give up everything,” is continually at the heart of may discernment and my journey. A friend once said: “Be careful, one day you will not be able to go back.” (ie to my middle class life) And she was right, as time so are my best money making years, but for me the call of Jesus means to give up the life that our society sees as “cool”, and “appropriate”, that of job, family—to live out on the margins the way I feel called to live out the gospel life. God knows how difficult it is, how lonely at times, and how it is never really to fit in with my colleagues and peers (but than to see myself driving a bmw in marin seems sick so. .),but ultimately for me there is only one way to follow Jesus and that is to give him my all, and to lean upon him in trust. If I would drop dead now I can honestly say that my life has been more than fulfilling and that I have lived out my dreams, what more can a guy want , well . .Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!
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THE FAMILY TABLE
Isa. 25:6, 7-9, I Cor. 15:20-28; Lk. 14:15-24
INTRODUCTION
There is a café near my house where I will often take one of the street people I work with for lunch or dinner. The manager is always nervous, always asking me not to bring “them” in, but I just simply sit down and we order. To her this person is a “homeless drug addict,” to me just my friend.
THE JOY OF HEAVEN
Jesus used the banquet metaphor to symbolize the joy of heaven. That joy, already anticipated, is not some kind of solitary satisfaction, but shared with countless others. The significance of sharing a meal is that it makes us brothers and sisters, it makes us family. For Jesus eating became a symbol of everything we know about God and ourselves.
In today’s reading Jesus uses this metaphor once again. On this day of commemoration of the dead we are brother and sister to all the dead. We are seated around the table of God our loving Father, and Mother.
We are not a perfect ;house of sweet children, we are a bedraggled family, “the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” But there is love: more of it, perhaps, than if we were all able to meet our own expectations. Food is a symbol of love. Love is invisible, and so it needs a visible channel. The child first experiences its mother as a source of food, and through food the source of love. Your mother has given you her very self to drink; you have life from her body, even after birth. Love flows through food.
Those who went before us were not perfect, but how heartless it would be to demand that your brother or sister should be perfect. Something perfect would stand apart, but the dead are bound to us with love, around the noisy table of the Body of Jesus.
CONCLUSION
Today we remember most particularly those brothers and sisters of ours who have died of drug related causes. They call out to us to cry to fight for a compassionate approach to drug use. They cry out to us to fight for treatment by the authorities that is fair and not demonizing. They cry out to us for compassion.
And today as we come to this Table, to dine with them, we take God’s food, food that empowers us, the living, to move forward in the fight for compassion and justice. Amen.
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Monday, November 01, 2004
Matt. 5:1-12
November 1 “All Saints”
It was wild outside last night, people let go of their madness on Halloween. Homophobes throw eggs at people from cars because they can hide behind their masks. We had few people at our Celtic Day of Dead, inspite of 300.00 in advertising and all my faxes etc. my theory is that it was Halloween, and advocating for a compassionate drug policy is not something that catches people’s interest, but it was a witness in front of the seat of power, and that is what matters.
Today is “All Saints”, one of my favorite days of the year. As I write this I am sitting in civic center plaza, with people all around—the homeless, kids playing football, tourists, and this day is for them, for me, for all of us who will live our lives and die going unnamed in the years to come. This day celebrates the billions of nameless saints who have lived since the time of Jesus. They are not lesser than the “known” saints, just less known.”Those whose law is within themselves walk in hiddenness. .” wrote an ancient Chinese proverb. The Christ nature is our law within. “The poor in spirit, the meek, all who have lived by the Beatitudes—express it in different ways, and in God;s eyes are remembered and cared for. Deo Gatis! Thanks be to God!
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