When I was a young man I began to look around for a Church that was more vibrant, more active. Though I was very happy with the Christianity I had been shown in the Baptist church, there was something missing. (click the link to read more)

When I was a young man I began to look around for a Church that was more vibrant, more active.  Though I was very happy with the Christianity I had been shown in the Baptist church, there was something missing.  I didn’t understand the Methodist Church and its symbols.  I didn’t even know the Catholic Church in town was an actual ‘church.’   For that matter I didn’t know anything about theology, Christology, or that there had been 2000 years of writings outside of the Sacred Scriptures that I had never been exposed to.   What I did know is that there was a girl that I fancied who went to one of the churches where they shouted Amen and did some strange things.  I ended up settling there in a Holiness/Pentecostal environment for a few years.

My first experience there was one that I will never forget.   As the service began the preacher was loud and animated.   People began to shout Amen often and emphatically.  Hands would have in the air.   Sentences were often punctuated with “That’s right” or “Preach it, brother.”   It was exciting but also confusing at times.   Then something strange happened.   The woman behind me began to scream.  The blood-curdling scream of someone in pain, as if an assault was occurring the pew behind me.    I turned around the first time it happened.   She had a glassy look to her face as if she were in some other place and not even aware that we existed.   I didn’t know what to do.  This was not something I had ever seen or even heard of.

The next time it happened I turned stood up and turned around and asked her if she was O.K.   One of the Church elders put his hand on my shoulder and said “She’s fine boy.  She is just falling out in the spirit.”   It shook me to the core.   It wasn’t something I was comfortable with at all.  I accepted it though.   When I asked about it later someone pointed to Pentecost and speaking tongues.   They explained to me that “in order to be saved” we all had to do it at some point.   I fell in line.  I began to shout Amen.   I watched as others spoke tongues.   I even gave testimony to God in my life and eventually joined that little Church in the mountains and had my name added to their membership roster. For years I stood up in the congregation waving my hands, shouting out praises, and to be honest, enjoyed myself quite a bit.

Then one day I felt a tugging of my heart.   I had begun to study Scripture in earnest.  What I was finding in there didn’t line up with what was going on in the Church.  When I asked questions I was told to avoid those questions and just listen to the Elders.  I had joined a Bible study at the Church and some of the things being taught there not only didn’t jive with what I had been reading on my own, but they were in many ways prejudiced and racist.  A few weeks later I told God when you tell me to raise my hands I will, when you tell me to shout I will, when you tell me to speak tongues I will… but until then I won’t do it.  I realized all along I hadn’t been doing it because God had told me to, I was doing it because someone else had said that’s what I had to do to be “saved.”

In the first reading today we see the primary example of ‘speaking in tongues.”  It’s not something disorganized and disruptive.   It’s not people shouting over each other to see who can pray the longest or the loudest.   It’s also not something every person must do.   Instead, it’s a beautiful display of God’s desire to know each and every one of us, regardless of our ethnic backgrounds.   Every person present there heard in their own native tongue.   God was no longer hidden behind the language of the Hebrews or the learned, but instead was speaking to each person exactly as they best could understand him.   As a man who has been trying for years to become fluent in a second language, I understand not only the practicality of this but the necessity.    I understand many things in Spanish, even some things in Latin.   The truth be told though, when it’s in English it’s much more likely that I will gain a full insight into what I am reading.  I don’t miss the nuances of the language or the ‘slang.’   Rather, I get the entirety of the message.

God loved us so much that He gave a gift to those men and women at Pentecost that they could speak directly to all the cultures present.   Those cultures represented the entire world.  At Vatican II the Church wanted to emphasize this.  For many hundreds of years, the Mass had been in Latin, the language of the Church.   Providently, now it would be in the vernacular, the language of the local culture.  That meant that people would be able to better understand what was going on.   It’s much easier to participate in a Mass when you know what is being said, how it’s being said, and why.  There is still something Holy about a Latin Mass.  It’s somber, beautiful and uplifting.   In English, though I don’t miss the subtleties.  I don’t miss the phrasings or the verbiage.   I know what’s going on.

That’s what all the readings today point to.   The gift of the Holy Spirit.  God loved us so much that He sent His own Spirit to reside in us.  He made us humans into Temples for His Presence.  Do I still believe it’s possible to speak in tongues?  Very much so.   Do I still raise my hands when God tells me to? You better believe it.  Though I do know one Priest who asked me not to because it distracted him and he couldn’t think.  I appreciate that honesty.  Sometimes in Adoration, though I get lost in the moment, swept away in the current of God’s love and mercy, that I can’t help myself and those hands float up into the air to praise God on their own accord.  I am very charismatic and pentecostal in my beliefs to this day.   There is room for that in the Catholic Church, the original Pentecostals.  

What I realize though is that none of our gifts are just for our benefits.  Each of us is given a set of particular skills and specific ways of doing things that only we are capable of doing in our way.  Sure every one of us can take on a role if needed that is outside of our comfort zone… but no two of us will ever think the exact same way, or perform things in a precise manner that another would.   Some of us are good with numbers, others with our hands, some with our brains and still others with our bodies.  There is room for all.  God will speak to each of us in the language we understand best.   By that, I don’t just mean the vernacular, but the language of our hearts.  Love.   He is love itself, and on the very base level of who we are created to be, we respond to Love fully and completely.

One of the most important things about the readings today is found in the Gospel.  For years as a Pentecostal Protestant, I would have told you that my sins were between me and God.  Why would I need to go to a man to forgive them?  Yet, in the reading from John’s gospel, Jesus very words say something different.   He breathes on the disciples long before the moment of Pentecost, the first ordination of men to perform the role of Jesus the Priest in the world.  At this moment Jesus breathed directly on His disciples and said: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven and whose sins you retain are retained.”   That’s what Confession is all about.   It’s going to that same line of Priests thousands of years later and saying, “I trust in Jesus words when He said that you could forgive my sins and I reach out to Him in mercy through His Holy Church and ask for that forgiveness.”   It’s a channel of grace, instituted in a Sacrament that is so much more than a symbol.  It’s an encounter with Christ and the Holy Spirit, and encounter with the infinite that our human minds cannot understand, so God gives it to us in simple terms that we can fathom.   He gives it to us through each other, in the only language, our hearts can understand... Love and mercy itself.

His servant and yours,

Brian Mullins

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. - Psalm 19:14

A reading for the Feast of Pentecost: June 4th, 2017

Visions of Sugar Plums Dancing in My Head

We have a tendency as people to draw in on ourselves, to leave the outside world to wallow in it's own miseries while we protect our own.  One of the churches I went to growing up had that sort of notion built into their theology of what they felt a Christian should do.  One year the Pastor decided he was going to take his family to see the Smithsonian and visit the capital.  He came back preaching a message of Hellfire and brimstone, declaring the world lost. He had apparently gotten out of his car to see two men holding hands walking down the street, quickly packed his kids up and drove back to our small coal town.  From that day on he never left the area as far as I know.

That is part of the problem with us as a people, not just a church.  We become very closed minded.  Our comfort zones take over and we begin to close out anything that begins to draw us out.  That leads to those thoughts that make us start to quantify what it means to be one of 'us'.   "We eat meat.  Drink beer.  Speak English. Carry Guns. If you don't like it get out." says one seemingly popular meme on Facebook.  For centuries the popular idea of church was to draw in on ourselves.   The Catholics had their own little village around the Parish, the Protestants theirs around their church, etc.   The kids didn't play together.  The parents didn't talk unless it was work related and they were forced to.  All stemming from prejudice, from hate, from injustice.

The vision we have recorded in Isaiah as the author begins to close out this magnificent volume of poetry, prose, and theological insight is a world in which none of these things exist.  A world in which their is no pain, no sorrow, no death, no more crying and distress.   I heard many a preacher expound on this end of time place in which the lame would run on legs that work, the deaf would hear, the blind see, and all sorrows be relegated to a past that we no longer even remember.  What a vision that is, what a dream, what a thing to come.....

The thing is, it's not just a place to come.  What Isaiah is describing is the Kingdom of God.  What Isaiah is describing is what Jesus was proclaiming when he opened that scroll and declared that scripture was fulfilled in their hearing.  What does that Kingdom look like?  One of the confirmation students asked a question about it, something along the lines of "How are we not going to be bored in heaven?"  They had seen the artwork, heard the descriptions, and for them.. it sounded boring... eating the same meal every day.. talking to the same people.. never on their phones, never watching TV... they couldn't understand it.  I told them one of my favorite parables (forgive me if you've already heard it.)

Back in ancient times the stable was directly under the house.  A man had two cows that he kept for milk in his basement.  They had never seen the outside.  They couldn't remember anything other than now.. other than the basement, the water and the hay.  One night the farmer who owned the house through a grand party.  They had live music, dancing, food and fun.  People joined around the tables having a great time.  Laughing, giggling, sharing, drinking, and laughing again.  It went way into the night.  After many hours of all of these strange sounds, scents, and goings on.. one cow looked at the other and said, "What is going on up there?"  The other replied, "I don't know.. but that must be some really good hay!"  They could only describe it from their own experience.. they had a small glimpse of what was to come.. a minute experience of what would happen if they went up to that party... but they described it in the only way they know how.. from their experience.

That is what Heaven is like.  We can't tell you exactly what it is going to be like, but we can describe it as best as we can with words.. even that will be inadequate.   A feast, a party.. communion... those are all good starts.  So I asked our students to talk about things they liked to do.. how does that make you feel?   We came up with a list of adjectives to describe those things and categorized them into two columns: good and bad.

Good	Bad
Happy	Sad
Comfort	Pain
Light	Darkness
Peace	Fear
Tranquil	Anxious

God is good.  To be with God means to be good.  To be away with him means to experience bad.  All of those things in the good column... that's what being in Heaven is like.  You know those moments when you're out watching the sunrise and you just get lost in the moment?  For that moment you aren't worried about the bills, or the decisions your kids are making, or that rattling in the front end of your car... your content.. you just are.. comfortable.. peaceful.. tranquil.. For some it's that sunrise, for others it's catching that big fish, or listening to their wife sleep peacefully at night.  It might be that first kiss, or the last one.  Dinner with a friend or a night in at home... it looks different for each of us.  What we do know though, is that God is involved in those moments... all good things come from him.  

That's what Isaiah is trying to describe to us.  We have to avoid that notion though that we should bottle up in a room and wait.  Too many Christians are only waiting for the Kingdom to arrive at the end of time.  They are hiding in the room fearful of the world, that it might taint them.. that they might be infected by the sin of others...   Jesus came though to bust us out of our rooms.. to send us to the proclaim the message to the ends of the earth.  The disciples themselves gathered with Mary the mother of God and locked themselves in a room for prayer.   The Holy Spirit descended on them in a dramatic and miraculous way and the doors were thrown up!  They marched out in the town square declaring the kerygma to the all who would hear, and hear they did!  That's our challenge as authentic, intentional disciples. Not to try and hide in our church, but to get out into the world and bring about change... challenging the morals, measures of judgement, values, philosophies, metaphysics, epistemology of the people to become more adherent to those of God. (Evangelii Nuntiandi §17-24)

We don't have to wait till the end of time to experience that.  I think that's part of the frustration of Jesus in the Gospel as he talks about how everyone demands a sign.. everyone wants more from him than the message.. they don't want to do it themselves, they just want Jesus to take care of it.   He just came from the Samaritans.. the 'other'... the 'they'... guess what?  They didn't need a sign.  They didn't need a miracle.   They just came out on the witness of a woman, a woman who was of ill repute... and they came to believe in Christ.  He didn't move a mountain.. he didn't change the world first for them.. they became disciples out of their love for the Scriptures, the message proclaimed, and for Christ himself.  Are we like them? Or like those in his own home town who wanted to throw him off the cliff?  Do we truly believe what we are given?  Are we going out into the world proclaiming and changing the world to be more like the Kingdom of God?  Or telling God to do it himself?  Church is not behind a closed door.  It's not just on Sunday, or just when you are at daily Mass... we are the Church and it's our job to bring God's presence into the world, into our policies, into our politics, into our judicial judgements, into the very fabric of who we are, to all ends of the earth. 

Sure, God could and will at the end of time, do it himself... but he's offered you something far more greater and noble.. the opportunity to create with him.. the opportunity to be a witness to truth, justice, and joy.  Are you doing that?  That's what Lent is about.. it's about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, the refugee, the immigrant, the widow, the orphan.. it's reaching out to those on the margins, those hurt by the Church, those hurt by their own actions, in the streets and the hedgerows and saying, "God loves you."   It's not just sitting in the room to receive the message yourself, but taking that message out with you to the ones who aren't there.. bringing them closer to Christ.  Remember it's not just enough to feed them, clothe them, shelter them... without at some point bringing Jesus to them... It's not going to be easy.. Jesus himself was rejected in his home town.. and many only came out to see him perform, like some street magician...  but He has sent us a Holy Spirit.. someone to help us, guide us, and give us the strength and courage to bring this message to others.  Through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving let us grow closer to Christ.. so that we can bring Him, His message, His Kingdom... to the very world itself.. that we might experience those good things.. those things which Isaiah spoke about in some way here and now, and that not only us.. but everyone else might see those things.. and say.. I want that too! 

How appropriate that we also talked about Baptism in the early church.  How that catechumens fasted for three days, then spent the entire night in prayer separated from the rest of the Church. They were bathed and put on pure white robes.  Then as the sun rose in the east, the church doors would burst open and here would come these newly cleaned, pristinely dressed, new Christians through the door into the Church where the others had waited all night.. to receive Jesus for the first time.. Think of that imagery for a moment.. you've been waiting all night in anticipation.. you're in the dark.. and the doors burst open, and in through the arch comes the bright rays of a newly risen sun... and in the midst of that glorious vision you see these beautiful people glowing in their freshness.   That's supposed to be you!  Is that what people see when you come into the world?  Happiness?  Joy?  Freshness?  Goodness?  Are you wearing your baptismal robe like a sign of beauty and peace?  Or are you hiding it under the grime of the world.  

His servant and yours, 

Brian 

"He must increase, I must decrease."