FIVE TALENTS

PRAYER MOMENT

Saturday 31 August 2013

FIVE TALENTS

Reading. You have shown you can be faithful in small things, I will trust you with greater.” (Matt 25:14-30)

Reflection. Seamus Haeney, the Irish poet, died yesterday at the same age as I am now. He was an immensely talented artist who wrote a shelf of books and was acclaimed worldwide. For a moment a feeling of envy came over me! But I was able to brush it aside and remember that each of us is given his or her unique talents (gifts) and the challenge is to know them and use them to the full. Today’s reading is the story of the talents and how the one who received less got exactly the same words of congratulations as the one who received more. The beauty of life is where everyone uses what they have to their best ability, straining like an athlete to run their course.

Prayer. Lord, teach me to know, and the thank you for, the gifts you have given me. And help me to use them together with others so that your reign may be seen everywhere on earth as it is in heaven. Amen 

FIVE ALERT GIRLS

PRAYER MOMENT

Friday 30 August 2013

FIVE ALERT GIRLS

Pause. Recall that you are in the presence of God. .

Reading. “Lord, Lord, open the door for us.” He replied, “I tell you solemnly, I do not know you.” (Matt 25:1-13)

Reflection. This is the story of the five foolish and five wise bridesmaids. Traditionally it got filed away as a parable to do with the end of time or the end of our lives: “Be ready when the Lord comes.” But it also has a wider lesson for us reaching into every moment of our day. I had a visitor recently and it struck me how alert she was to everyone she met and every situation. She seemed tirelessly adaptable and poured out a stream of questions. No doubt that level of attentiveness is hard to sustain when you are in your own country among your own people but it is still an image of the alertness we are called to. Another word for it, becoming popular by the day, is consciousness: being aware of everything around me in the present moment and not spending my time regretting the past or dreaming about the future.

Prayer. Lord Jesus, help me to be alert to the people and events of my day. Help me to notice! Life is not a matter of years but of moments. Teach me to be deeply conscious of what is happening around me and within me. Amen.

HE LIKED TO LISTEN

PRAYER MOMENT

Thursday 29 August 2013

HE LIKED TO LISTEN

Pause. You are in the presence of God. Be still.

Reading. “When Herod heard John the Baptist speak, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.” (Mark 6:17-29)

Reflection. Herod was a raw politician who knew what he wanted and was used to getting his way, even if it extended to his brother’s wife, Herodias. John spoke out against this and found himself arrested. Herodias wanted him got rid of him but Herod dithered. He liked listening to John. He was attracted by the man and his message. But in the end he could not bring himself to act on the good feelings he had about John. He allowed himself to be pushed by his wife into the killing of an innocent man. It is so obvious in the story who comes out of it with integrity. There is something of that dithering in us. We know what is the right thing to do, as Paul says in Romans Ch. 7, but we find it hard to bring ourselves to do it.      

Prayer. Lord Jesus, as we celebrate this day of John the Baptist, give us the wisdom to see what we ought to do and the courage to do it. Amen.

DEAD MEN’S BONES

PRAYER MOMENT

Wednesday 28 August 2013

DEAD MEN’S BONES

Pause. Be still.

Reading. “You are like the whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones.” (Matt 23:27-32)

Reflection. Jesus is really angry, and it is all due to the obstinacy and hypocrisy of the religious leaders. They live by appearances and show on the outside but within they are hollow and rotten. His final throwaway line is, “you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets! Very well the, finish off the work that your fathers began.” It is a cry of deep anger, but it is also a challenge; do what you have to do but you will find that it leads nowhere. God will overcome all this evil and build a new people. The capacity for people to renew themselves in every age, to rise up from frustration and humiliation, is ever present. The earth itself – and, we are now told, the universe – renews itself constantly. Evil cannot win. It can only harass.    

Prayer. Lord, I want to be awake to the evil in myself and in the world. Give me a passion to fight against it. But also teach me to believe deeply that evil cannot triumph. You have overcome it and given us hope that all will be well in the end. Amen

LIKE A MOTHER

PRAYER MOMENT

Tuesday 27 August 2013

LIKE A MOTHER

Pause. Be still in God’s presence

Reading. “Like a mother feeding and looking after her children, we felt so devoted and protective towards you, and had come to love you so much…” (I Thess 2:1-8)

Reflection. This is probably the earliest of the New Testament writings and Paul is expressing his love and concern for the church in Thessalonica. Today is the feast of St Monica who felt this same concern and love for her son, Augustine. It is a moment to think of the many mothers and fathers you wait lovingly while their teenage or young adult children work through sometimes horrendous challenges thrown at them by the modern world. Young people can feel a sense of hopelessness and frustration and they can look for compensations for their pain in alcohol and drugs. It is hard for parents to watch especially as they, the parents , cannot force a change. They have to wait and accompany their son or daughter with tenderness, as Monica did.

Prayer. Lord, teach me to be compassionate with my children when they are in difficulty and with all parents who accompany their sons and daughters with patience and love. I believe that you walk with us in our pain as you did with the two on their way to Emmaus. Amen

BLIND GUIDES

PRAYER MOMENT

Monday 26 August 2013

BLIND GUIDES

Pause. Be still in the presence of God

Reading. “You shut up the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces, neither going in yourselves now allowing others to go in who want to.” (Matt 23:13-22)

Reflection. These devastating words of Jesus are addressed to the Jewish religious leaders. No wonder they were after him to disconcert him and even “do away with him.” His complaint against them was that they blocked his message not only for themselves but – because they had such a control on the people, a control based on fear – for others as well. His words point us in the direction of the role of being a leader in any situation - family, school, office or nation. A leader, or shepherd to use the image of John chap. 10, has the wonderful opportunity of opening doors for others and leading them into “fresh pastures,” but he or she also has the possibility of blocking the way for others and simply concentrating on controlling them by fear.

Prayer. Teach me, Lord, to enable others to discover you are in all the ways of life. Let me always be willing to do what I can to open doors for them to find their way.. Amen

Sunday 25 August 2013

You’re late

Trains run on time in Italy and last year I had the experience of catching a train with only seconds to go before the doors closed. An hour of tension and frustration had preceded this final triumph as we lost our way and later got held up in traffic. My ticket was for that train only and if I had missed it heaven knows what palaver I would have had to endure.

From our schooldays on many of us, I suppose, have heard those dreaded words, “you’re late!” They announce we are cut off from what we expected and unforeseen and sometimes unpleasant consequences follow. Mutemwa, a settlement near Mutoko originally for people suffering from leprosy and – while still that - now also a  community that welcomes other chronically ill or destitute people, literally means “a place cut off.”

There are many ways in which we can be excluded and though our world is a more tolerant one than that of our forebears the experience is still very real. Migrants driven from their homes by persecution or poverty often find they are not wanted in the countries they try to reach for security and a better life. The host nation closes its doors and they find themselves on the outside in frightening conditions.

What if this experience of exclusion was to reach beyond the grave and we find we are not known or wanted on “the other side?” How would we feel then? Jesus seems to point to this when he warns his hearers in the parable of the master locking his door (Luke 13:22-30). The people knocking hear the words, “you’re late. I do not know you or where you come from.” They plead, “don’t you know me? You walked in our streets and ate in our house.”

It is a frightening story about presumption. In the first instance it is about those in Israel who thought, “we are God’s people. He is on our side no matter what we do.” No, they had to show the “works of God” (John 6:29) which was “to believe in the one whom he has sent.” Otherwise they would be excluded.

But it goes further: the message is also addressed to anyone who presumes that God is on their side and no matter how they live their life they will never be excluded. Well, I hope they are right but the words on the gospel give little support of this view. On the contrary they suggest that we cut ourselves off, we shut ourselves out, by the bad choices we make. “Then there will be weeping and grinding of teeth when you find yourselves outside. And others will come from east and west, from north and south, and take their places in the feast in the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is “making his way to Jerusalem”, the city of the climax of his mission. The whole passage is charged with promise and threat. It mirrors our own time and experience.

25 August 2013          Sunday 21 C

Isaiah 66:18-21           Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13           Luke 13:22-30