A Real Conversation with Jesus

We’ve all had the experience of meeting someone who remembers us, but we don’t remember them.  At least, I know that I have.  As a priest you are continually meeting new people... constantly.  It takes a bit getting used to.  Even if you met them for one minute two years ago, they’ll say, “Remember me?”  Ummm...no.  At least that’s what you want to say, but out of some uncomfortable congeniality, you do the next best thing--you lie.  You say something like this, “O sure, its good to see you again.”  I’ve learned that saying ‘good to see you’ is a relatively neutral response that allows you to avoid implicating yourself for not remembering that person.  But we all do it.  We entertain conversations awkwardly with someone and it reaches the point where we can’t possibly admit that we don’t know them.  Suddenly trapped, we look for a polite escape out of the conversation that really isn’t a conversation in its purest form.  

Unfortunately for many of us, this may actually be where we are with the Lord Jesus Christ.  We entertain a conversation with him, but our eyes are furiously looking for an exit; a way out.  We are uncomfortable with Him--the One who knows us intimately.  We, however, don’t really remember Him, we don’t know Him, we don’t truly love Him.  Knowing who Christ is makes all the difference.  Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter got it right...for once, he gets it right.  “The Christ of God.”  Peter knows who he is talking to!  He has not yet forgotten and denied the One who had accepted him.  Do we know who we are talking with?  Are we entertaining a conversation with Jesus or are we truly entering into a dialogue with Him--the Son of God.

Jesus accepted Peter’s profession of faith, which acknowledged him to be the Messiah, by announcing the imminent Passion of the Son of Man.  He unveiled the authentic content of his messianic kingship both in the transcendent identity of the Son of Man “who came down from heaven,” and in his redemptive mission as the suffering Servant: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Hence the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross.  (CCC 440)

I must reiterate this point--the fact that you are here serving Christ as summer staff, the fact that I’m a priest and serving Christ in Holy Orders is not a guarantee of truly knowing who it is that we are talking to!  We must admit to ourselves that the abiding love with which Jesus extends to us through his passion, death and resurrection is a reality we can very easy disassociate ourselves with through sin.  It can be precarious.  There can be a blindness within our own souls that is inhibiting us from knowing Jesus Christ.  What are these roadblocks that disguise the identity of Christ within our lives?  We’ve domesticated Jesus, we’ve defined who is according to our own musings and we’ve excused ourselves from suffering.

In Father Robert Barron’s series, The Catholicism Project, he begins the ten part DVD with the question of who Jesus is.  This is the premise of everything for us in faith.  Who in fact is this person of Jesus Christ?  Jesus in Hebrew means, “God Saves.”  Christ is the Greek derivative of the Hebrew, Messiah which means, “anointed.”  This means that Jesus is the one consecrated by God to fulfill the mission of salvation; to save humanity from their sins.  He is the priest, the prophet and the king fulfilling all of what the Israelites we patiently expecting.  How he went about it was drastically different, however.  He is lifted high on the cross suffering the death of a criminal to atone for our sins.  Barron goes on to articulate that when someone met Jesus, they were amazed and afraid.  There is something arresting about Jesus’ presence.  It commands not just a respect, but an awe and majesty that dices through our complacent and apathetic hearts.  To know Christ is to be in awe of his majesty and glory.  It is to be amazed and afraid of his presence that makes us uncomfortable and shocks us out of our stupor.  Meeting Jesus and knowing him is not entertaining a conversation at a reception of cordial and superficial conversation.  If silence and solitude are intimidating to us it is because we want to keep this challenging conversation of Christ at bay.  We want to remain an arm length apart.  We are uncomfortable with the love of Him coming too close to our woundedness.  But as Isaiah says, “It is by his wounds that we are healed.”  

After leaving the solitude of prayer, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”  The disciples then go on to say a litany of who He isn’t!  They reply, “John the Baptist, Elijah, an ancient prophet that has arisen.”  Interesting that they begin defining Jesus by what he is not.  Appropriate as well because that is the Catholic approach to knowing God.  Defining what He is not!  And boy have we had enough of this!  Jesus is not a guru.  Jesus is not a self-help book.  Jesus is not a tacky youtube song, a quaint friend of mine!  Jesus is not an 8lb 6oz baby Jesus.  Jesus is not just a prophet among other prophets.  He isn’t in the categories of what the History channel would like to relegate him to.  He isn’t a pocket sized Jesus who we from to be into who we think he should be to fit our lifestyles.

The via negativa is the systematic theology of the Church that attempts to describe God by negation.  St. Thomas Aquinas used this approach to help us better understand God by knowing what he is not.  It makes all the difference for us as Catholics because it helps us not fall into the trap of making God into something that fits our mold and our perceptions.  The Gospel reading first helps us understand what God is not.  Then Peter in an epiphany of faith exclaims, “You are the Christ of God!”  You are the anointed one sent by God to save us from our sinfulness.  We must be careful not to project ourselves into our conception of who God is.  He is otherly other, not confined to our opinions, but an objective truth.  He is the one and the only one to save humanity from our sinful and inerrant ways.  There is no other who can make this truth claim.  Jesus is the son of God who suffered, died and rose for the salvation of man.  

Right after the truth claim of Peter, Jesus rebuked them.  Immediately after the claim of Christ’s Messianic mission by Peter, Jesus points toward the meaning of His presence in our lives.  He says, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  He goes on, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  This is where we get tripped up all the time in identify Jesus in our daily lives.  As soon as the implication of being a follower of Christ becomes too real, we shy away.  We bolt, we run, we hid.  We say, “NO WAY!”  Saint Paul says, “You are all children of God in Jesus Christ.  For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”  Do we really understand what St. Paul is saying?  He is telling us that identification of Christ, a real relationship with him, an authentic on-going conversation with Him means a participation within the life of Him.  This means that what Jesus says will happen to Him will happen to us.  Me no like this.  “If you wish to save your life, you will lose it, but if you lose it, you will save it.”  Get lost!  Subsume your life into his!  Hold fast to the conversation of Christ even if it implicates you into this suffering servants melody of salvation.  Embrace it, do not run from it.  This is the only way we can truly get to know the Jesus who is personal.

The Lord says to the inhabitants of Saint Josephs and Jerusalem, “I will pour out a spirit of grace and petition and they shall look on him whom they have pierced.”  Realizing that our lives are parched, lifeless and without water we can make the decision to allow our souls to cling fast to you, Jesus.  With exaltant lips my mouth shall praise you.  I will get to you know you these next days of silence and solitude.  I will enter into your pentecost.  I am amazed and afraid of you, Jesus because I know who you truly are.  I know that you are not what I make you out to be sometimes.  I will not run from the cross, but embrace it as you did.  I will remember what you did for me and continue to do for me; that your love is so powerful that it put to death my sin and gave me life in you.  Amen.

Sunday Homily 11th Week Ordinary Time--To See or not to See

“Do you see this woman?”  I love that line from Jesus!  Of course I see her!  She’s right in front of me!  You would be a fool to think I can’t see her!  Do you think that I’m blind?  Give me a break, Jesus.  Don’t mistake me as being a dunce, I’m Father Quinn, I’m a pharisee.  You see I have all the answers and am in right standing with God!  Jesus’ question posed to Simon is a question posed to us, “Do you see this woman, this man, this friend, this family member, this staff member, this expeditioner before you?”  I mean do you really see them?  Chances are we are not because we can’t see ourselves in light of Christ’s love for us.  Our ability to see others as they really are most often comes down to our own inability to see ourselves as God’s precious adopted sons and daughters.  What you see is not what you always get.  We compare and contrast one another to a standard we personally see ourselves fall short of.  I know that I do this this all the time.  For the past three weeks, we have been very busy being pharisees, passing our internal judgments upon one another.  We have sized one another up in that internal gauge of criteria only known to our own human hearts.  We’ve determined what we like and what we don’t like about one another with a clipboard heart checking off what we will accept and not accept.  We've concluded by comparison that one is more deserving than another and given them our attention.  “Do you see this woman?”

It’s like a collective old western pistol duel of grand proportions.  There’s Clint Eastwood and McClintock sizing one another up as they stand as opposing forces ready to destroy one another’s reputation, dignity and in the end their very lives.  On this deserted dirt  main street , others are hiding behind tainted windows of self-doubt and fear waiting for it to be over.  Squinting with a grimace and hand on the trigger we stand shoulder to shoulder facing one another ready to fire the first shots with our tongues of slander ready for the first kill.  Why?  Because we are disgusted with ourselves.  We are unhappy with what we see in our own lives.  We are submerged in self-hate.  This picture of competing duelers is non-other than our fiery reaction to any transgression upon our autonomy and freedom.  It is the duel between the faction of the pharisees and Jesus.  We’re in defense mood, standing and bracing ourselves ready and our trigger finger is itching to put one another down.  “Do you see this woman?”

On Wednesday of last week, while we were doing lectio, someone mentioned the ease at which it is to exclude ourselves from the pharisees stance in today’s Gospel reading.  Spot on!  We are the pharisee with our pride of place compensating for our lack of deep heart understanding of God’s love for us.  The pharisee was, by the way, the one who made the invitation to Jesus.  He was, by the way, offering his house to Jesus.  He was, by the way, even putting his reputation at stake by entertaining a blasphemer and rabble-rouser friends.  Jesus this man who claims to be the Son of God was with a son of the law and its rigid adhesion to the disbelief of God’s unconditional love.  Meanwhile there the humble site of the woman who no one sees let alone no one understands.  By all appearances, the pharisee seems to being doing it all right.  So too have we the appearance of doing all things right but we are deficient and lacking.

By appearance we may be polished and have an inviting appearance, but inside our disposition of heart is far from true Christian hospitality.  We are immobilized from service because we haven’t allowed the service of Christ enter our hearts.  It reminds us of  Jesus’ words in Matthew 23  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.  Our bodies may be doing what we are supposed to be doing by sheer force of a perfunctory obligation, but our minds and hearts are someplace entirely different.  And Jesus said, “Do you see this woman?  Do you really see her for who she is?  Do we truly see one another as the gift we are to one another?  

The question of really seeing one another is what the psalmist is driving at when he sings:  They have mouths but do not speak; they have eyes but do not see; They have ears but do not hear; nor is there breath in their mouths. (135)  Christians, we must take note of one another around us and stop being passing ships in the fog or dueling guns ready to mow one another down.  We must invest in one another truly by learning our stories and sharing our stories.  We are so often scared to become vulnerable because we know that if we do out there in the cruel world of judgement we will be whittled down and reduced to tears.  However, those tears are the remorse of our sin need to wipe the feet of our Lord.  To truly see someone for who they are is to know the possibility of what they can become.  All of us, ever single one of us has tremendous possibilities and potential to do the remarkable for and through the Lord Jesus Christ.  And the most insignificant outcast and rejected one is the magnanimous soul that sways the sadducitical mentality of judging.

Yesterday, I pray, was a day we began to see one another as Christ as all here FOR Christ and to see one another through the periscope of Christ.  The pharisee did not see CHRIST, but a curiosity.  Christ was an enigma to him, a question mark of love rather than an exclamation point of love.  Christ did not make sense to him as Christ doesn't make sense us because the love of Christ is so dramatically different than anything we've encountered.  Christ challenges our perceptions and pre-conceived notions.  The excessive adulation of Christ in the Gospel reading is the overcoming humility of the one who is in touch with her sinfulness.  She is not concerned with the appearance of the way things seem to be as she is dialed into the way things really are!  The first step in being a Christian is knowing that we are sinners!  Do we really know our sin!?  The blind cannot lead the blind!  

Our souls ability to accept another is our ability to accept our unacceptability before God first and foremost.  Today’s office of readying says, “She prayed with faith and obtained what she sought.  Scripture makes this clear in the words; She was speaking in her heart; her lips were moving but her voice could not be heard; and the Lord heard her prayer.  When we pray, our words should be calm, modest and disciplined.  It is characteristic of the vulgar to shout and make noise, not those who are modest.  On the contrary, they should employ a quiet tone in their prayer.”  This woman was beyond shame and she crossed the city to overcome horrendous back-biting  to exalt the one who exalted her beyond the shame of sin.  

Our sizing up of one another is nothing less than our comfortableness  before the Lord.  Like the pharisee, we’ll put on the good show, but we fail to see the reign of Christ’s love within our souls.  

David says in our first reading, “I have sinned against the Lord.”  This is the spiritual step the Lord simply asks of us.  Mea Culpa.  Mea culpa.  Mea culpa.  As our response is today, “Lord, forgive the wrong that I have done.”  Before we go our twisted way of sizing up one another, we need to size up to Christ and learn our insignificance before the love that defines our very being.  We are sinners, he is the Savior.  We are pitiable, he is perfect.  We are a mess, he is the Messiah.  Let us not nullify the grace of God by determining our own laws of engagement.  Let us reconcile ourselves to God and one another.  Remember what we see is not always what we get.  Let us bring the ointment of healing.  Let us stand behind him rather than charging ahead of him.  Let us be at his feet rather than pretend to be somewhere we’re not.  Let us weep instead of weaseling away from God’s abundant outpouring of love upon us.  Let us wipe these feet of our Savior and kiss the place of the future wounds that healed us of our sin.  “Do you see this woman?”  Yes Lord, we see her because we are beginning to see interiorly that she is us--poor sinners in need of mercy.

Homily--Young Man I tell you Arise! The Center Line Between Life & Death

The only thing dividing us and on-coming traffic on a two-lane highway is a usually a yellow line. Our trust in others to remain where they are on the road is actually remarkable if we think about it.  Other drivers are precariously close to us and a couple feet can mean life and death.  The only thing between stopping a bus and rolling through a stop light off an interstate highway is a quarter inch breakpad on the front driver’s side rotor!  Direction moving in an opposite direction at a high velocity when not channeled properly can have a damaging effect.  Just ask Nathaniel Binversie who unfortunately was injured water skiing yesterday.  However, if we are traveling parallel with one another like a group of bikers, runners or hikers, moving together in tandem with a common goal there can be a forceful change for the good.  The gospel reading for today is saturated with verbs for direction.  Journeyed, drew, carried out, moved with pity, stepped forward, halted, arise, seized, arisen and visited.  These dynamics of direction play an important role in St. Luke’s gospel accounts of Jesus’ healings.  The ultimate healing is the reversal of the direction of death to life.  Jesus brings the son of a widow, the only son of his mother to life and declares, “Young man, I tell you arise!”

Young people, I tell you arise!  We have been steadily declining in the direction of what I like to term, “relational entropy.”  Like the young man, we have fallen away from concord with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.  We have steadily began to break down in our ability to sustain relationships with others without the ability to make a commitment to anything worthy of remaining faithful to.  Entropy is a scientific phenomenon described as lack of order and a gradual decline.  You see, we have fallen to discord and disorder by allowing ourselves the false freedom of retracting and retreating from human relationships.  Unbeknownst to ourselves, we have allowed a culture that cherishes death to become death within us.  We are the young man in the large crowd in the city of Nain lying at the city gate dead.  Jesus is moved with pity as his directional thrust reverses the breakdown of human relationships.  Jesus Christ restores us to a healthy sense of life.

A couple of you mentioned after immediately stepping off the bus last night how Father Peter spoke of really trying to get to know one another.  Asking questions about one another.  One of the most beautiful parts of of being entrusted with the authority of Christ as His priest is the ability to move the momentum of life’s movements to death to that of life.  One of the most frustrating is knowing so many stories of all of you out there, but no one taking the time to ask each other about one another!  You would be surprised at what you learn about the lives of one another.  There is a treasury of beautiful sanctity within this sanctuary.  Our own egos and self-engrossment have deadened us to the gifts of one another.  Like Jesus, as participators in the drama of humanity’s condition of original sin, the priest walks with Jesus and journeys into a city of nain, or a community of Saint John and draws near, steps forward and raises the dead to new life.  These visitations of clarity within the clarion call of the Word’s piercing effectiveness is a participation within the Trinity.  Father Peter humbly said afterward that he was just a mercenary bus driver for CYE, but his insightful perception of this community’s relational entropy or breakdown was diagnosed quit quickly and he said something, “Young man, I tell you arise!”  And many of you noticed a shift in direction on the way home...and you noticed the bus was now breaking too!

I imagine Simeon’s prophecy of Jesus explosive power to reverse the direction of death proclaiming to Mary and Joseph and those present in the temple some thirty years earlier.  His gift of prophesy of Jesus’ future priestly ministry is perhaps a forgotten gift of the Spirit in this day and age, but his words may have been as such:

“You are a herald of this mighty storm of grace.  The word of the Lord will come upon you as fire.  The graces of heaven shall increase upon you beyond your ability to fathom, heaven's Kingdom will arise in you to a point that speech will give way to fire, and words will give way to incarnation. Thy Kingdom come thy will be done!”  And Jesus said, “Young man I tell you arise!”  Sons and daughters of God, stop your downward descent into the netherworld of deaths frozen abyss of darkness.  Allow the fire of God’s love to envelope you and disband the crowds of doubt.  

Elijah was moving into a different town--Zarephath and was with another widow.  A widow is one who has tasted the impact of death to a considerable degree.  One whom she had given to herself is now dead and gone.  Now in Nain, her son dead and gone.  The pain of loss in the wake of death for a widow is an archetype of the crumbled devastation of our soul’s condition of death and separation.  It is the directional dysfunction of this perverse and crooked generation failing to see the one way sign as we avoid the oncoming traffic of God’s kingdom among us.  Elijah, as prefigurement, carries the widow’s son to the upper room where he was staying and pleads to the Lord God, “Let the life breath return to the body of this child.”  The life breath returned in the upper room again some centuries later for the followers of Jesus and now some centuries later, here, in this sanctuary --this upper nornthern room.  God’s direction of life points in a linear time-line shooting through the ages and expanses of time in the Eucharist, but we remain as fish swimming against the streams of living water.  The woman replied to Elijah, “The word of the Lord comes truly from your mouth.”  And Jesus says, “Young man I tell you arise!”  Now the word enfleshed shatters death’s trap of destruction through the living presence of the WORD incarnate.  The Word has traveled to Nain through Calvary, into the cave and up into heaven!  It has moved  from Illinois, Florida, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, Louisiana, California and Puerto Rico to this place, Saint Joseph’s Formation Center in Baileys Harbor, Door County WI!  It is enfleshed and alive!

Even Saint Paul’s direction was pointed out of himself and into others, beckoning those in darkness to the same life-breath we claim today.  Saint Paul preaches a Gospel not of human origin.  Participator in the life of Christ, Saint Paul had been set apart through grace.  Jesus revealed His love through Paul as He plumbed the depths of his deadened soul.  Paul, knocked off his horse (or so they say) reversing his direction from persecuted death of innocence to praising the victory of life over death and darkness.  He even decided to really move in the direction away from the in-house dysfunction of Judaism into the territory of the Gentiles in Arabia and Damascus.  We, unfortunately, remain within the confines and restrictions or our own houses of Israel with back-biting, competition and breaking down one another.  This community will have to turn a corner to establish the reign of God if it is to last for three months.  Stop thinking of yourselves so much!  Move away from this direction of sin and death.  We are dead at the gate!  We lie helpless in the arms of distress with the crowds of disbelief.  Jesus says,

“I tell you young man arise!”

When a priest distributes holy communion, he steps forward from the altar of life into the fray of humanity’s discord and you move toward the bread of life and divinity meets humanity in a rare exchange of paradoxical disunity.  This antithetical direction of spirit is none other than a re-enactment of Jesus encounter with the dead young man in the city of Nain.  Two opposing forces clashing.  Life and death.  Joy and sadness.  Healing and pain.  Light and dark.  Replicated here in this place, we move in varying directions but so very often we allow the center-line of life to get the better of us.  Thomas Merton has a beautiful prayer on a young man’s direction and it seems to be written for young adults.  Let’s bow our heads to pray it.  Let’s change direction as a community and begin working together knowing we are all in the same boat or bus.

“O Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going,

I do not see the road ahead of me,

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

And that fact that I think

I am following Your will

Does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe

That the desire to please You

Does in fact please You.

And I hope I have that desire

In all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything

Apart from that desire to please You.

And I know that if I do this

You will lead me by the right road,

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust You always

Though I may seem to be lost

And in the shadow of death.

I will not fear,

For You are ever with me,

And You will never leave me

To make my journey alone.

Feast of Corpus Christi Homily

It is very easy to be put off by someone who says to us, “Just go and do it yourself.”  We can immediately have our precious pride damaged when told to make something happen ourselves.  A culture of entitlement that we live in these days works contrary to a pioneer’s rugged individualism.  Our reactions can very:  “Who are you to tell me to make it happen myself?  Isn’t it your job to get it done?  Why should I be the one expected to complete this project?  Hold on...wait a minute...that’s not my responsibility.  You didn’t even tell me how to do it!  Jesus says, “Give them food yourselves.”  Jesus is basically telling us to go do it ourselves and our reaction is one of distrust, remorseful pride and disbelief.  As Christians, however, Jesus gives us implicit instructions in today’s Gospel to trust in His love for us.  He calls us to calm down and sit down, to form our own small groups, and pick up the fragments of our life to become whole again.  This tutorial of allowing God’s love to penetrate our wounded souls is intertwined in the feeding of the five thousand.

Four years ago in Sturgeon Bay at our the annual clergy Congress our bishop allowed me to share for close to three hours what CYE is all about.  He then asked, “Who’s running it?”  I told him that I was sorta moonlighting the ministry in between obligations in the parish.  He said, “Well that’s not going to work forever, I want you to run it.  You’re released from the parish now go make it happen.”  My jaw hit the floor because I was not expecting this from a bishop, but we are talking about a special bishop here.  Ordained by JP II as one of twelve bishops to implement the New Evangelization, head of the USCCB committee on evangelization and a powerful man of prayer.  In Sturgeon Bay, my home town, where on the west side I was called to priesthood by Sister Helen in fifth grade, now as a priest on the east side twenty five years later, a call within a call to serve the youth.  But with the added emphasis, “Go do it yourself!”

In the meantime, I have learned something vitally important that I hope all of us learn within the context of ministry.  That is, it isn’t so much about what we do than it is about who we are.  We are beloved daughters and sons of God, created in His image and likeness all with a particular mission to manifest in our own lives.  Jesus asks his disciples to do something and do it themselves, but underlying the ridiculously impossible request is an invitation to trust God’s providential and abundant love for themselves as they go about doing the work of feeding the five thousand.  As is turns out, the impossibility of the situation isn’t so much the five thousand hungry folks, the shortage of food or the even the chaos of the crowd, but the challenge to allow ourselves to trust God’s intimate love for us.  If we allow that to happen then good things begin to happen in our lives and the lives around us.  

Pope Francis recently remarked, “The one thing that is asked of you is that you let yourself be loved.”  So many times we get wrapped up in the wrong thing.  We think the impossible task is doing this and that on our own power and prowess.  But Jesus is asking us another question guised in his command, “Do it yourself!”  He is asking us, “Are you willing to allow yourself to be loved by me.  To trust in me completely and participate in my divine power?”  For at the end of our days of toil and drudgery the most impossible of all tasks is to look into the beaten, bleak, famished face of Jesus in his precious body and blood and realize for the first time that He allowed-that-to-happen-to-him-for-me.  

Interestingly, as daunting as the trusting in His love may be, he gives us some baby-steps to allow that to unfold in our lives.  Remember, the one thing He asks of us is that we let ourselves be loved...the rest is automatic.  He wants us to sit down and calm down, form a small group and pick up the fragments.

How convenient of our Lord to give us Cliff notes for our test to trust, some remedial instructions in implement the impossible.  After the disciples get the unbelief out of their system by instructing Jesus and dictating to Him how it is the five thousand are to be feed, Jesus instructs them patiently, lovingly and calmly.

First, He says, “Have a seat.”  Standing always implies some tension, some work.  Standing is the first intimidating and nerve racking moments of an introduction to someone for the first time.  There is an officialness to it, a formality if you will.  Jesus has them sit down.  Get comfortable he is saying.  Don’t get your undies in a bundie.  Take a load off your feet; your weary and restless soul!  Be at rest, recline on the grass.  Be at peace.  Jesus knows that the impossible possibility of the possible can only happen after we are put at ease.  Love can not interact with us if we are tense and bound up in formalities.  Today on feast of Corpus Christi, are we at ease?  Is our soul at rest?  Or are we jumbled up in the formality of putting on fronts not allowing Jesus to come close to us or anyone else for that matter?  The Gospel does not record it but imagine Jesus walking through the crowd putting these fifty groups forming at ease.  “He Johoabime how’ya doin’?  Great job yesterday at the temple.  Really enjoyed that sacrifice of yours.”  Laughing a bit, making fun of someone who just sat in donkey poop or chuckling at these random people coming together awkwardly sitting indian style silently staring at one another as their stomachs growl.  

Jesus then proceeds to break the five thousand down.  He says, “Put them in groups of fifty.”  How did that happen?  Did they number off?  Divide by birthdays or the color of their cloaks?  Who knows, but Jesus wants to accomplish the impossible by being accountable.  He asks the disciples, he asks us to remain in the intimacy of local communities of friends in fellowship.  He knows that we need small groups to remain steadfast in trusting His love because it compels us to trust others.  The ultimate F.A.T group: Faithful, Available, Teachable small group.  But how often do we resist being “found” out in a small group setting?  How often we see it as an insurrection against our personal autonomy rather than an invitation to allow others to walk into our loneliness and brokenness.  It may seem impossible, but Jesus’ instructions give us practical direction in trusting in his love, allowing the impossible to be made possible through us.

Lastly, after the meal is all done, Jesus says, “Pick up the remaining fragments of food,” of which twelve wicker baskets are left over.  This may be the most revealing instruction of Jesus to help us in allowing ourselves to be loved.  Fragmented lives of distraction and whimsical pursuits of pleasure take us away from love.  We bloat ourselves with self-aggrandizement and become lost to our true selves as beloved children.  In is in fact, a compensation for not allowing ourselves be loved by Him.  We become lost and alone, fragmented islands of remorse and pity.