Palm Sunday’s readings carry the sorrows and the weight of the world. The false accusations, denials, the betrayals, the injustice of it all, and the beatings Jesus faced are all heartbreaking.

Today’s Eucharist begins with great joy -- with palm branches in hand, we sing victorious hymns to commemorate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Like the crowds, we too welcome and rejoice in his reign.

Similar to the disciples, we are also excited and filled with wonderful expectations. However, as we listen to the passion of Jesus Christ, we feel the mood of the crowds as well as that of the disciples swiftly changing. The crowds are fickle, cheering for Jesus one day and shouting “crucify him” the next day. Even many of his closest friends and followers sheepishly deny their knowledge of him and association with him and abandon him out of fear for their own safety.

Jesus, on the other hand, is resolved to faithfully carry out his mission: the proclamation of the advent of the Reign of God and of God’s lavish love and forgiveness poured out for each one of us, and for the earth itself…“for God so loved the world”.

Through the suffering and death of Jesus we have been saved -- forgiven our sins and our guilt put as far from us “as the East is from the West”! We may wonder at times if God really loves us…and just how much. Today we are  reminded how much: as Christ spread his arms wide upon the cross…this is how much we are loved by God!

How do I live out my identity as the “beloved of God”? How can I share this message of God’s love and forgiveness with others? To whom am I being called to open wide my arms to embrace them in the midst of their need? Who are being crucified today…those being tortured by the illicit war waging on the people of the Middle East, the people of Ukraine, the Palestinians, Ethiopians and Eritreans, the people of Sudan and Afghanistan, the millions of refugees. People crucified
because of the color of their skin. People crucified for their immigration status, for who they love, what language they speak, for what part of the world or country they were born in, or for their age. Crucified for their gender, for their intellectual or physical abilities?

As I enter this Holy Week, whose burdens will I help to shoulder to the foot of cross and meditate upon and hold in prayer as I walk with Jesus on his journey to the cross. And as I meditate upon the gift of love and forgiveness which he has so lavishly poured upon me, how can I share it with those most in need of hearing how deeply and passionately they are loved by God, just as they are? And in that sharing, allow the love of God to transform me and my life ever more closely to what God is calling me to in my life.

Holy week blessings,
Fr. Tim

And Jesus wept…..

In today’s Gospel we are given a beautiful vista into both the humanity and divinity of Jesus. Imagine Jesus weeping at the loss of his good friend…his humanness bursts forth from the pages of the Gospel as he cries out in sorrow, and tears roll down his cheeks…“God wept” for the love of Lazarus!

Even knowing that he could…and would…raise Lazarus! The emotion is raw…fully human… fully divine… at the same time. So what is the message? I think it says that none of us can escape the experiences of the loss, pain and suffering at the death of a loved one…Jesus knows how we feel.

The message of today’s Gospel is that God loves us! Our God personally knows the depth of our pain, our suffering and loss and wants us to understand that death is not the end! And that God is with us in the midst our suffering; we are not alone. Jesus stands with us in our moments of loss and suffering, as surely as he stood with Martha and Mary in their moment of pain and suffering at the death of Lazarus.

Death is a moment of transformation, a movement of our soul entering into eternal life with God, that we have been promised by Jesus Christ.

God wants us to know that death is not final…it is not our master…it is not our end. Today’s Gospel tells us, once and for all, that God is the God of life…and not even death can overpower God’s love for us! St Paul asks… “oh death, where is your sting…now?” St. Paul  can ask this, knowing the answer, through his faith in Jesus Christ.

It is in and through the amazing nature of the incarnation of our God that we are saved…through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we are given eternal life.

Death has no hold over us…we are promised eternal life. Even though our bodies wear out, are invaded by disease or struck down in violence …that is not the end for us. We live on! We pass into a new life…life in the fullness of the presence of God.

We will be reunited with all of our loved ones…all of those who have gone before us!

Today’s Gospel shows us that Jesus has the power over life and death…and life wins! We live! Even when it appears to the non-believer that we have lost, that we have died and ceased to exist! Because of God’s lavish love for each one of us, just as we are, we will not perish…we will live! So in the midst of Lent… as we reflect on our own dying to self…we are reminded that nothing, not even death can separate us from the love of God.

As Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he told the people to untie the funeral bindings and in doing so set him free. What do I need to ask Jesus to be unbound from in my life?
​
Fr. Tim

Today’s Gospel tells the story of a woman who goes to a well for a jug of water and has a life altering encounter with Jesus and is promised a special kind of water with properties far beyond her wildest imaginings.

In the socio-religious context of today’s Gospel story, according to the cultural mores and religious laws, this woman is perhaps the last person to whom “living water” should be given. At least that is what we are supposed to think. After all, she is a woman who, in a male-preferred society, is undeserving of any special privileges. Furthermore, she is a Samaritan, a member of the group that observant Jews considered fallen away from the true religion of Israel, and therefore apostates, and no longer people of the covenant.

On top of that, she is a woman of questionable virtue, even within her own community.

Many scholars believe that is the reason she came all alone to the well, and in the heat of the day, to draw water, rather than in the company of the other women, in the cool of the morning. Because of this, many scholars surmise that she may well have been an outsider in her own village.

In the first reading along with the Israelites, we are told that God will quench our thirst. In the Gospel we discover that Jesus is the source of “living water.” Thus, we may conclude that God’s promise to quench our thirst, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It is interesting to note that in all of this, there is no talk of our meriting this life-giving water. The Israelites were undeserving, the Samaritan woman was undeserving, and we too, in our human sinfulness, are undeserving. This life-giving water is not earned or deserved but freely given by the grace and mercy of God.

It is from God’s lavish love that this water flows and our thirst is slaked. What matters is whether we recognize that we are thirsty and know to seek Jesus Christ to have our thirst quenched through him.

I think it is very important to note that this woman at the center of today’s Gospel encounter could easily, particularly through the lens of misogyny, be written off as a sinful person. But that would completely miss the point and the trajectory of her encounter with Jesus. A hugely significant point of the story is not just that she is sinful but that she is a Samaritan woman! And Jesus is a Jewish man and he should know better than to have anything to do with her! So we have a man approaching a woman in an area where they are alone and they are unrelated to each other -- this is very problematic according to 1st Century Middle Eastern social codes of appropriate and acceptable behavior between women and men. Jesus should know better, but he has a plan and his plan is to offer her salvation, regardless of her “outsider religious status,” regardless of her sin. Jesus is the Living Mercy of God.

The trajectory of this encounter that is so important, is that Jesus manifests that God’s plan of salvation is not just for the House of Israel, it is for all people. It is even open to Samaritans, and this reality, while it may be lost on most Christians today, it was surely not lost on the early hearers of this Gospel encounter.

How does this Gospel’s message of the universal mercy of God for all people regardless of their social, political or religious status, inform my review of the political agenda and policies of this administration in Washington D.C., being carried out throughout the nation and around the world?

And what is my response? Will I continue to write to and call members of Congress (both Republican and Democrat) expressing my outrage, shared by Pope Leo and the US Bishop’s Conference, at the brutal and inhumane treatment of immigrants, refugees and people of color by ICE and other Government officials? Because every letter, every call, every protest, every act of resisting unchristian and immoral policies that dehumanize, marginalize and harm human beings, is an
informed statement of Gospel values, and a de facto act of living out our discipleship of Jesus Christ.

May the peace and light of the Risen Christ be upon you all!

Fr. Tim