First Sunday of Lent: The A-Pen

I'm back! After two weeks of not being able to log into my Google account, someone smarter than me showed me what I was doing wrong. Below are drafts for the next two Sundays (1st Lent and 2nd Lent). Let me know how to improve them! I welcome all comments. Please send them to me at jms48@fuse.net. Thanks for you help. Fr. Jim Schmitmeyer

The A-Pen
(First Sunday of Lent)

If you go into any book store
and ask for a devotional book to read during Lent,
I’d bet you five-to-one that book will bring up the subject
of “the desert” somewhere within the first twenty pages.

Desert sand is to Lent
what snow drifts are to Christmas.

Desert scorpions are to Lent
what ghosts and goblins are to Holloween.

If Easter means Easter lilies,
Lent is the time for cactus and thorns.

And that’s fine.
After all, one reason we have 40 days of Lent
is because Jesus spent 40 days fasting in a desert.

The only problem I have with the desert
is that most of us have never lived in one
and therefore we don’t know how hard of work it is
to get by in a desert.

My hunch is that, for most of us,
we hear “desert” we think “boring.”

We hear “desert” we think
“there’s nothing going on here,
there’s nothing to do.”

People who live in monasteries
and folks who have time on their hands to spend in prayer
also have the time to write books about Lent
and these kinds of folks love to talk about deserts.

Now, most of us can appreciate desert-talk.
Sometimes we’ll ever talk about being in a bad spot
or being in a funk
and we’ll refer to it as “being in a desert.”

But if being in a desert means just sitting around in a funk
for forty days, then I think another image for Lent
might be more helpful.


Now, the image I’m going to propose
is going to strike you as another odd idea
from a pastor who’d rather train horses
than read devotional books about Lent.

Actually, if truth be told,
the idea for this homily
comes from the pages of the current issue
of Western Horseman Magazine.

There was this article, you see, about triangle pens.
When I train horses, I use a round pen.
I never heard of a triangle pen.

Let me explain how it works.

Gates are set up in the shape of an isosceles triangle.
At the point of top of the triangle is a swing gate
to let the cattle out.
At the base of the triangle are two small holding pens
to keep the cattle in.
The space in the middle is left open
for one steer, one horse and one rider.

The A-pen is an excellent way to observe the levels of intensity
between a good cow horse and a break-away steer.

You let a steer out into that pen,
all that steer wants to do is get back
to those other cows in the holding pens.

They’re like us.
They know there’s safety in numbers.
The same we all tend to follow the crowd
and do what’s popular
go with the flow
and not buck the system.

We get very nervous when God pulls us out of the pen
and starts working us one-on-one.

But that’s why the A-pen is such a good image
of what goes in the course of Lent.

You see, sometimes the horse and rider
work the cow near the base of the pen
where space is wide
and other cow-friends are close in sight.

This is low-level intensity
and there will days in this Lent
when God will work us in a leisurely way.

[There’ll be that conversation at work
that challenges us to be more charitable in our speech.
There’s bee that day we’re tempted to break our fast
and when we persevere, the pressure eases
and our character is strengthen and our soul is enlarged.]

Other days of Lent, however, will find us getting…pushed.
Pushed like a steer to the tight part of the pen.
And, like a steer, we dodge then feint left then feint right
and do everything we can to break away from that horse.
Or, in other words, to get God out of our face.

[We don’t want to visit the sick,
we’d rather watch a movie.
We don’t feel like making amends,
we’d rather hold a grudge.
We don’t feel like talking to the wife,
we’d rather work on the car.
We don’t feel like reading the Gospel,
we’d rather watch FOX or CNN.
We don’t feel like praying a rosary,
we’d rather pay a sitter and get out of the house.]

The goal of Lent is to let God push us
to the tight part of the pen
and there, under intense pressure,
learn to respond like steer responds
to the power and movement of the horse.

Lent isn’t some desert where there’s nothing to do,
it’s an A-pen designed for our training.

It’s where we learn to respond to God
and start to take our moves from him.


____________


Trail Markers
(Second Sunday of Lent)

In the part of Ohio that I come from,
deer hunters are as common as pickup trucks.
The hunters I know don’t read the Bible much,
but they’re good at reading trails.

Most trails are easy to follow:
tracks laid down on a hillside,
the bent blades of grass in meadows.
These trails are easy to spot
and they traveled by does and fawns
as they hurry from one protective stand of trees to another.

But these aren’t the trails traveled by the bucks.
They travel alone and are exceptionally wary.
They seldom move out of dense cover.
They might travel a well-established route,
but only occasionally.
Sometimes, they seem to lay down trails that lead nowhere.

Hunters call these trails “teasers.”
They lead nowhere but confusion.

These trails exist not only in the woods
but everywhere:
in the Bible
at work
at home
in society at large.

A “teaser trail” leads you to confusion and despair.
Have you been on a trail like this?

A trail that ends with God hunters like us scratching our heads saying,
“Where are you, God?”
“Why me, Lord?”
“Sweet Jesus, don’t ask this of my family!”

In today’s gospel passage we find Peter, James and John
on a hike up Mt. Tabor
with Jesus at their side.

For once, it was no teaser trail they were tracking.
Suddenly a flash of light blinded their eyes.
The apostles were stunned terrified.

Yet the vision…
that strange vision they saw…and the Voice they heard
managed to clear the air
and dispel their doubts.
For just a moment they encountered
—and knew they had encountered—
the presence of God falling about them
like sunlight on a summer day.

And when the incident it was over,
they looked around,
and all they saw was Jesus.

Why did this occur?
For what purpose did this take place?

It’s a natural question to ask because, as we know,
those hikers would soon descend the mountain
and find their way back to the trailhead.

Normal conversation would resume,
soon worries about the future would shove aside
the memory of the dazzling Light,
that splendid moment when everything was good
and life made sense.

Come Good Friday,
they would need this memory.
In the days of confusion that followed Jesus’ horrific crucifixion,
the experience on Mt. Tabor
would mark their way out of the fog.

Mt. Tabor remained in their memory.
The purpose of that hike came clear:

The trail that is true takes us to the Son.
The trail that is true reveals the face of God.

All other trails are teasers.

Are you good at following the trail?
Are you skilled at reading the signs?


On Mt. Tabor,
God’s presence shown a blaze of dazzling light.

[Did you catch the spark of light in the water of eternal life
poured across your daughter’s head on the day of her baptism?]

On Mt. Tabor,
God’s voice boomed out:
“This is my Son. My chosen one. Listen to him.”

[When the addiction ended,
when depression lifted,
when justice won,
did you hear the Voice
that broke the darkness
say to you:
“You are mine, my chosen one!”]

This is the trail we’ve set upon.
This is the trail marked out for us.

Any other is but a teaser.

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Boxed In

Send your suggestions on how to improve this homily
to jms48@fuse.net. Thanks!

Some people live in a tight little box.

So tight that even God has trouble
prying pry open the lid
and squeezing inside.

What’s it like to live inside a tight little box?

Some days, it nice and cozy inside a box because,
when you live inside a box,
nobody tells you what to do.

It’s your box, after all,
you created it and you live in it.

That means you decide what you believe,
you decide what’s right and what’s wrong
and you decide…everything.

A lot of people like living inside like that.
Some people paper the walls inside their boxes
with money.
Others like power and spend their days playing games…
games where they always win and competitors always lose.
Still others just want the rest of the world to leave them alone
so they enjoy whatever they like to enjoy
and never feel guilty about it.

As I said, it’s nice living inside a tight little box
because you decide what’s right and what’s wrong.

And if you decide to let God peek inside your tight, little box
you make sure that it’s on your terms.

If God steps inside, God better first wipe his feet
and not jump on the furniture
because, in order to fit inside a tight little box,
God has to shrink down in size and significance
to something equivalent to a cocker spaniel.

What sort of tight little box
was Peter living in the day that Jesus
stepped on the deck of his little boat and said,
“Put out deep, Pete,
we’re going to bring in a haul.”

Like most of us, Peter had constructed a tightly organized world
in a conscious or unconscious way
to keep at bay
the disruptive opportunity for unexpected,
unpredictable
and unwelcome
events,
strangers,
relatives,
remarks
and reprisals
from interfering unduly
with his dull and work-driven life.

Nevertheless, the man that stepped foot on the deck of Peter’s boat
was the Son of God,
not a cocker spaniel.

(pause)

* * *

Peter’s world would never be the same.
The tight little box of a predictable life
eking out a living
fishing the sea
was blown to smithereens.

He’d never seen so much fish before.
But seeing all that fish somehow made him realize
that he wasn’t meant to live his life
for a mountain of fish.

Rather, he had other mountains to climb
and climb them he would.

This was only the start.

Soon he’d climb Mt. Tabor
and there see the glory of heaven descend on Jesus
with all the brightness of the sun
on that day we now refer to as the Day of Transfiguration.

But another mountain stood on the horizon.
The mountain called Calvary.
A mountain which, at the time,
Peter was too afraid to climb
but later, he would muster the courage to climb a Calvary of his own
when he gave up his life out of love and obedience to Christ.

But none of this would have happened
and none of those mountains would have been scaled
if Peter hadn’t first stepped across the cardboard wall
of his tight little box of a life
and jumped off the deck of his fishing boat.

Before he jumped, he hit his knees.

There was no other way to do it:

Overwhelmed at what happened;
overwhelmed by the authority of the man who stood before him,
Peter’s world of weather reports
and weekly inventories
and cutting checks for payday
fell apart?

How did this happen?

He looked up
and recognized the power of God when he saw it.
That’s how it happened.

Overwhelmed at the strength
of the man who stood before him,
Peter’s weakness churned like a seasick stomach
and up came all the shady deals he ever made,
the low expectations he held for himself
the shoddy treatment he dished out
all the petty self-centeredness
stuffed inside the tight little box of his life
spilled out and he was scared
and he fell on the floor of that boat
because he had nothing left to stand.

How did this come about?

It came about because Peter saw the power of God
and recognized it for what it was.

When was the last time God pried open the lid
on the tight little box of your life?

Did it involve putting your livelihood on the line?
(It usually does!)

Did it require leaving your sorry regrets behind?
(They’re too heavy for one person to carry,
and you know it.)


Did it include a hike to a new place,
a place you’d never been before?
(That’s why we call following Christ “a call.”)

* * *

“On your feet, Peter.
You and me…we got some mountains to climb.”