Category Archive

Sunday of the Fulfillment • Dan 7:9–10,13–14 • Rev 1:4b–8 • John 18:33–37 • Nov 21, 2021 “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” This is where Pilate famously asks, “What is truth?” Jesus, for his part, has essentially been asking, “What is authority? What is a king?” The two represent contrasting views of authority, as integrity or domination. Pilate’s questions about kingship, or authority, focus on Jesus’ power relationships to other people: Are there people under your command? What are you accused of? Will your people defend you? To secure his own position, Pilate needs to …

ALL SAINTS AND ALL SOULS November 7, 2021 Isaiah 25:6-9 Revelation 21:1-6a John 11:32-44 Unbind him, and let him go. As I pondered today’s readings over the last several weeks, this imperative from the lips of Jesus that closes today’s gospel text has kept coming back to me.  It has stuck in my mind.  You might say that I feel bound by it.  Or you might say that I feel bound to reflect on it.  Let’s just say it’s been a sticky business.  To make it even stickier, my friend, Bill Beers, reminded me this last week that the word …

October 31, 2021 Deut. 6:1-9; Heb. 9:11-14; Mark 12: 28-34 “You Can Love Because You Are Loved” This morning I’m going to do something that I resolved never to do.  I’m going to deliver a canned sermon – or at least a partially canned sermon. The reason for doing so has to do with this morning’s second reading.  As I wrestled with the complex, problematic content of the Letter to the Hebrews, I had a sense of déjà vu:  I felt that I had wrestled with this text before, in a previous sermon. Sure enough, when I searched the can …

Homily October 24, 2021, Ordinary 30B (Mark 10:46-52) Preached at the Sunday Assembly of Holy Wisdom Monastery, Middleton, WI on Stewardship Sunday Thomas Merton once wrote: “It has never been either practical or useful to leave all things and follow Christ. And yet it is spiritually prudent.” This week I have been wondering if this wasn’t precisely the situation the blind beggar Bartimaeus found himself in that day in Jericho when Jesus called him out on the road. But more on that a bit later. The Bartimaeus story is the last example of Jesus’ healing ministry recorded in Mark, so …

Homily preached at Holy Wisdom Monastery’s Sunday Assembly – October 10, 2021 Back in the dark ages when I went to seminary, I was taught that the Psalms were not for preaching, but rather that they were to be understood as liturgical responses to the weekly lection from the Hebrew Bible. Yet I can’t help but feel that a key verse from Psalm 90 pretty much sums up the whole range of matters that we explore in all of today’s readings: “Let us count our days,” the psalmist wrote, “that we may gain a wise heart.” To quote the shepherd …

HOLY WISDOM MONASTERY 26 SEPTEMBER 2021 Hills and mountains have a special place in Scripture.  Moses received the law on Mt Sinai.  Jesus taught on a hill in the gospel. The transfiguration occurred on a mountain. Mountains and hills, luminal spaces, are crossroads of creation and creator.  Sacred places, tangible meeting places of humanity and divinity.  Each time I have come to Holy Wisdom Monastery and turn onto Highway M, I first see flat lands.  Eventually I see trees rising on hills and then on a hill a bold building towers to the sky.  I have my first glimpses of …

Homily for Sep 19, 2021 Today’s gospel is strikingly similar to last Sunday’s.  The setting is the time after a series of stunning events-feedings of impossible numbers, healings, walking on water and for Peter, James and John, witnessing the brilliance of the transfiguration. The disciples are, to say the least, VERY impressed. They begin to understand that this Jesus is not just some rustic preacher proclaiming a message of repentance. They are beginning to suspect…even believe that they have fallen in with the long-awaited messiah, the savior of the Jewish nation prophesied by Scriptures. And they begin to “discuss” among …

Holy Wisdom Monastery 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time September 5, 2021 Wisdom 10: 15-18, 20-21; 11: 1-5; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7: 24-37 “Listen … and attend with the ear of your heart.” ~ Benedict of Nursia, Prologue to the Rule of Benedict The wisdom literature that is the sixth century Rule of Benedict deals with “answers to the great questions of the human condition,” as our favorite modern-day Benedictine, Joan Chittister tell us.  Listening with the ear of our heart is about listening even when we would rather not hear; it challenges us to “hear in the tongue of …

Hearing and Doing (Deut. 4: 1-2,6-9; James 1: 17-27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23) 29 Aug 2021 As I intimated in my introductory comments, the readings today can be a homilist’s worst nightmare. Not only are they really different, they  also seem to contradict each other.   Did you notice? The author of Deuteronomy tells us: You’ve got to follow tradition! “give heed to these statutes and ordinances…neither add to or subtract from them…observe them diligently…don’t let them slip from your mind…make them known to your children and your children’s children.” But Jesus in Mark’s Gospel makes clear that Tradition is …

John 6: 24-35 Homily by Colleen D. Hartung Bread and its importance to the wellbeing of human communities is a dominant image in today’s readings.  In an iconic episode from Exodus, Yahweh “rains [lifesaving] bread from heaven for the [hungry] Israelites.”  In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the crowd who pursued him after they had eaten “their fill of loaves” when he feed the 5000, “I am the bread of life.” The actions of the people in these stories underscore the significand of bread to human life.  In fact, there is no food more universal or more essential than …