Richard Bollman, S.J.

15^th SUNDAY, B, 2009: SCRIPTURE

AMOS 7:7-15; EPHESIANS 1:1-14; MARK 6:7-13

Now for the next Sundays in July in August

we hear from the Letter to the Ephesians,

very positive in its message to the community there,

how they’ve been called and blessed by God from the very beginning.

Because they know Christ they are not separated from one another,

and they can trust the Holy Spirit in their lives. Confidence and power,

that’s the message of the letter, in beautiful language.

Much of it, especially the first part you hear today,

seems to have been drawn from liturgical hymns and prayers.

The Old Testament and the Gospel

concern this powerful experience of being sent or missioned by God,

and by Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, sent to be a voice for God’s ways,

and sent as a healing power among people.

AMOS, the prophet’s voice that we hear,

was the first of the great prophets from whom we have a record

of what he said and what were his concerns.

Isaiah was just an infant in Amos’s time; Jeremiah not yet born.

He was a man who saw the injustices of his society

and who spoke for the poor, even as he threatened the established order.

That’s why, as you see in the passage today,

the priests of his time wanted him to leave town,

as if he were just too frightening to listen to,

or some kind of superior being who should not talk out.

Amos insists he is not mystical seer, just an ordinary man

whom God has called to pay attention and say what he sees.

This personal calling is reiterated in the ministry of Jesus:

According to Mark, those early ones that Jesus sent

"went out and preached that people should repent.

And they cast out many demons,

and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them."

That's what happened to them! That’s what they did.

These are powerful yet ordinary people.

You want to have them around, and yet you don't, maybe.

Something has gotten into them! This sense of knowing God’s mind.

HOMILY: 15^th Sunday B, 2009 "Laying on Hands"

I not sure of the connection between Old Testament prophets,

and this journey of the Christian missionaries for the sake of healing,

except they were all called forward by name.

And the share a desire to help people change and live more in harmony with God.

Their methods are very different.

So I want to focus on the new testament healing ministry,

this procedure of laying on hands. That kind of direct healing ministry.

Here’s something I found out about it lately.

Almost a year ago you may remember I went in for a short surgery,

one of those arthroscopic procedures to mend my right knee.

Now that wasn’t a laying on of hands: they just went right in there

following this little camera and cleaned and cut things away that weren’t needed,

and stitched me up, one or two stitches was all.

I had a little therapy exercise to do each morning, not hard, a little boring.

And I slacked off now and then.

So it wasn’t until March that I came to see I needed help

if things were going to return to normal flexibility.

So I went to this physical therapist I know who indeed does lay on hands.

I had worked with him before.

And it never fails: what I expect is that he will heal me.

But he doesn’t. He lays on hands in order to get a feel for what’s going on.

He wants to educate me to the inside story of my joints,

and shows me ways to work with my body, to gradually restore movement,

how flexibility comes gradually if you collaborate with your own joints.

For awhile I resist: "what’s the point of stretching my calf muscle

if the problem is my knee?"

"Well, Father, . . . ." he says. He calls me "Father,"

as it were to prompt me to grow up. Something like that.

He might as well say, "Father, you need to repent. Repent and have faith."

I look around the room at the therapy center, lots of people doing their routines,

learning their moves, becoming acquainted with how the body works,

and turning their own minds toward the work, to bring things to natural life.

Repentance, the turning, the realignment.

It works. But you wish it were easier, more quick, more miraculous.

Then you come to see you are in the midst of a miracle

every time you move and pay full attention to your inner life.

Like your leg or shoulder. Or your heart and soul. Repentance, out of trust,

having faith.

I’ve witnessed the same thing happening to men or women on a retreat,

when they begin to consciously pray about their lives

and trust the movement of God within their desires and feelings.

It takes time, and practice, and is never easy.

I remember listening to a young Indian man, a Jesuit theology student

that I was privileged to meet once when I worked abroad,

how his own struggle to trust God got all messed up

when he looked around his Jesuit house and saw

everybody, especially the older men, having computers.

"We are to work with the poor," he said. "What is this?"

Indeed, what was this anger?

Under that pain was his own long life of rejection

that he himself was from the poorest of the tribes,

and he didn’t know whether he had come to religion just to escape.

"Oh," I said to him. "What a privileged moment this is for you,

how God is coming close to this open place in your heart,

where you have suffered and where you want to be true."

And he stopped cold in his story: we had come to know one another a bit:

he stopped and looked at me and began to weep.

No one had ever suggested to him that God would care for his heart, his soul.

We used to speak, as retreat guides, of the need to gently keep ones finger

on the painful spot. That’s where the opening to grace starts to burn a little.

I wish it were easier. I back off from it myself.

I remember when a friend of mine first got sober,

Oh God, I thought, he has been such an entertaining friend over a drink.

But his job was at stake and his mere physical safety was at stake,

He was a clinical psychologist, in danger of arriving at the office stoned,

losing his job and his license.

So he dropped his hash pipe and martini in one move and went to an AA meeting. He said at first it was frightening, the people there,

but then he just got a lot of life and courage from them,

and the demon began to leave.

What got into him?

Like the sheep rancher Amos, God got hold of him, called him away from his usual work, opened his eyes, helped him to look and see what's going on,

and to tell God's truth about it.

He’s certainly a stronger healer now, even gives talks

on spirituality and psychological healing.

I remember a woman sick with cancer who made just this one movement of heart,

that she’d not just expect some healing to come down upon her from on high.

That’s what she had to give up, that desperation.

But she’d begin to live the life she actually had left to her,

as if because it was short it became so much more powerfully blessed.

What got into her?

Something beyond fear was waiting to claim her.

As Paul says, "God determined out of love

to adopt us through Jesus Christ . . . .

Before the world’s foundation!

Blessed us with every blessing of the spirit."

Whatever we want to achieve,

and I ask you this: where are you wanting to solve, resolve, or claim life?

whether a greener planet, or reformed economy,

more just neighborhoods, closeness to God, it all asks of us

that we find out how things are working, where the pain is located,

and to look for that companion believer

who can point to the inner places where the joints are out of whack

so we can come to repent and believe something new is possible.

Where is God getting hold of you? It’s very difficult,

always a little threatening, I put it off too,

but it’s where we need to be.

There’s help available if you want it. Doors are open to you.