First reading: Genesis 1:26-28,31

Psalm: Ps 128:1-5
Epistle: 
Ephesians 6:1-9

Gospel: Luke 2:42-52

Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women,
knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord.

The gown:

Susan McCanna first wore it in 1894. This year, Liliana Grace Perella was the fortieth person to wear it. It is a lace Christening gown.

We could look on that gown as something old. We could admire the lace and the intricacy of it’s design. But it is more than what we see.

For nearly 120 years, this gown, passed from family member to family member, has connected generations. The gown is a window, a doorway into the life of a family. It is symbolic of a family relationship that spans generations, and the presence of God in that family. It is iconic.

What we see:

Pay close attention to St. Paul’s words. Give service to the Lord and not to men and women. Paul was speaking to Christians who were slaves.

Paul knew that slaves were obligated to serve their masters. They were bound to do as they were told. Whether it was service at table, cooking, cleaning, field work — it didn’t matter. He knew that slaves were programmed to serve and to please.

Serving a good or cruel master, light or heavy work, the slave knew that paying attention to their master’s needs, focusing on them, doing what they were told, was their duty.

Paul tells them to stop thinking that way, but rather to think that every act of service was to Jesus, to the Lord. He tells them that there is something more. They were to see their service as service to God. Paul is telling all Christians that they have to see a different reality. Life is more than than the obvious. Life is iconic.

Definitions:

When you hear the word icon, do you think of the little pictures on your computer desktop? Do you think of gloriously beautiful artwork in churches?

Those are definitions from the dictionary. Icon — a picture that represents something else. In church it may be Jesus, Mary, angels, saints, or the cross. On our computer, it may be the way we get to our word processor, to the Internet, to our email application.

Like the Christening gown, like Paul’s instruction to the slaves, the way we define icon is just a shadow of the true meaning. We need to get beyond the dictionary or computerese definition of icon. We need to see beyond what we see.

True meaning:

For the Church, an icon is not just a picture, it is reality.

The Church teaches that the praise and veneration we show an icon passes over to the holy thing or person it represents. The thing we see is not just seen, but is real. If we kiss an icon of Christ, we are kissing Christ, we show him our love. The icon is not mere wood and paint, something physical, it is a place of meeting.

It is actually offensive to worship the icon as something separate from what it is in reality. It is not a mere physical object. Thus, people should not collect icons as art or treat them in a way that is not holy.

If you have an icon in your house, it is the presence of the holy person or thing it portrays. Jesus, Mary, the saint, angel, cross, are alive and really there with you. If you enter an Orthodox Christian’s home, you will likely see an icon corner with one or more icons, candles lit, perhaps incense burning, and a bible or prayer book. They set aside a space in their house because the icon brings holiness to the house.

The real presence of the holy, the saint, the angels, of Mary, of Jesus we see portrayed in an icon is at once a window and a doorway to the holy thing portrayed. We meet the holy in that doorway and we enter into a relationship.

The icon is beyond the eyes, beyond the seen. It is our connectedness to God’s holiness, like the Christening gown, and Paul’s instructions on service, all are ways we meet and connect to God’s holiness.

Reality:

Our nature is iconic. We are in key relationships, and every aspect of our relationships must have the character of an icon.

Paul was asking Christians to see true reality. For the slaves of Paul’s time, their masters were icons of Christ. By serving them, they were seeing and serving Jesus. For the McCenna family, the Christening gown is a key icon defining their family relationship with Jesus.

We need to break out of our one-sided, definitional view of reality. We need to see clearly — the iconic nature of our lives in our relationship with God.

Whatever we do, whatever we see, we must first and foremost see ourselves as part of a real and present relationship with God. God is not apart and separate from us, on some different plane, in a far off heaven, but God right here, right now.

Family:

Paul often wrote about the body of Christ. Christ is alive in the holy communion of community. Jesus wants us to live in relationship.

Family is the key icon of relationship. If we see family as just a bunch of folks who share genetic traits, who might look somewhat the same, who may live in the same house — if we stop at what we see, we’ve missed the point. If we see family as just a definition, we’ve missed the point.

Family, people joined together, are the icon of God’s reality in the world. Family points to the way God lives.

Today:

Today our Holy Polish National Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Christian Family. Today we venerate the family as the icon of Christ.

How we relate to each other in family must be first and foremost grounded in the reality of what family is; its iconic nature.

The iconic nature McCenna family shows us that family is eternal, more than what we see in front of us. It is generations of family all interconnected. Whether living with us on earth or in the heavenly kingdom, we remain together, joined in love.

Our family relationships need to be seen for what they are. As icons of God’s love, we need to praise and venerate family. As icons of meeting God, we need to live holy lives as family. Our homes must be filled with holiness, and must be the doorway where young and old get to know Jesus. Our families must bring holiness to the world.

As family, we are more than a dictionary definition. As icons, we are the true presence and work of God in the world.

Our families are icons to the world. In the icon of family, friends, neighbors, and community we see, meet, and enter into a relationship with God. Family is the doorway, the window to the heavenly, the holy.

With love, respect, prayer, and worship we proclaim and venerate God as family. Husbands, wives, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins — all of us as family — all of us as an icon of God. Amen.

First reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm: Ps 85:9-14
Epistle: 1 John 4:17-21
Gospel: Luke 10:25-37

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

Stress:

I stressed myself out this week. Beyond all the weather related catastrophes around us we saw the tragedy of a father killing his two little girls. We recall the events that occurred on September 11th, ten years ago today. More than stress — sadness and perhaps despair. God’s presence seemingly unknown, unrecognizable among all this.

I was a few minutes late for work, I was driving in with my radio tuned to National Public Radio. I had just pulled into the parking lot at work and heard the news flash. My first through was of a small plane hitting the Word Trade Center. That thought was horrific enough. Then the events of the day unfolded in all their ugliness. I thought of my coworkers in the building next door to the World Trade Center. A month or two before I sat in their offices overlooking the loading docks at the Trade Center.

Renee and I ended up in church that evening. Adam was two years old, going on three. Victoria would be born in two months. Stunned and seeking solace. I needed to know that in the midst of evil, in the midst of seeming emptiness, I, my friends, coworkers, and family were not alone.

I needed to know that there is no place empty of God. I needed to know that even in the darkest and ugliest of places, God was there.

Irony:

My stress was compounded by the irony. Today, our Holy Church celebrates the Solemnity of Brotherly Love. Oddly, and ironically, the readings for the Ordinary Sunday follow a similar theme. It is Jesus’ instruction to love great enough to forgive.

Ironic, brotherly love and forgiveness. I get to speak on God’s desire for those things while we stand with these painful memories and react. Tears fall, we get choked up. Maybe we get angry. We mourn, we question. We ask, that age old and most powerful of questions, “God, where were you?”

We need to know, as I needed to know on that day, that God was there, that He is here.

Words:

We could read these readings a thousand times. From the Ordinary or from the Solemnity. Love, sacrifice, forgive, forgive over and over. High minded thoughts. Worthy and beautiful thoughts. The Good Samaritan – he was there in the firefighters and police who offered their lives, in the clergy who ministered, in those brave citizens who sacrificed so others might live. In the care givers, civil servants, and construction workers who tried to piece together what had been broken. All loving their neighbor.

God was there. In the midst of this. God was there because His word came alive in the hearts that gave of themselves. His call to act was heeded.

Reduced:

Looking back, and at the events of the past few weeks, we might allow ourselves to forget that God was there. It seems so dark, so dark that God has been blotted out.

In this dark place it seems that God’s words become no more than a droning sound. Just another series of platitudes discussed on CNN by some talking heads. Nice thoughts, but let’s get on with it. God disappears either because we will him away, or because we become complacent.

Others find it easy to fix God. They don’t hear His voice. Those words about forgiveness, fraternal correction, self sacrifice — that applies to family and friends only, let’s kill, kill, kill the enemy. Who is the enemy? Oh, them!

The further we get in our arms length relationships the less God’s words ring true, or apply to others.

In a world where God is reduced and seen as less present, where He is fixed to suit whims, where He is pushed into the corner and made not applicable to to those we do not know, it would seem that His presence is absent. Yet, God is present. God was there. God is here.

Picture:

Let’s picture ourselves in a big, crowded room. Tons of people, noisy too. Right up close to we have our family and friends. We can see them clearly. We can hear them. We can feel them near, and we feel safe. This is our corner of the room. Those further away, we know some of them. Community members, church folks, co-workers, we’ve seen them at a local fishing spot, on the golf course, at Hannaford. We kind of hear them. We can still see them pretty clearly.

Go further out. Those folks, on the other side of the room? Don’t know them. They are in the room, but they are truly the unknown. They look different, we can’t hear or understand them. They are far off, and to connect to them; we’ll never get there.

Suddenly, across the room, one of them keels over. Doesn’t look good. Nobody’s doing anything either. They are out there, alone, on the floor. They are surrounded by darkness, down on the floor. People are pressing in to fill the void.

Today’s question, the eternal question: “What is our heart urging us to do?” What is our heart calling us to do? What is God calling us to do?

How do we feel when we hear God’s call? It makes me a little nauseous. It does, because I know I am sinful. I know I hear the call to cross the room, but sometimes I don’t want to.

Small sins vs. the Call:

Only some will cross the room. Few will rush into a burning tower. Very few will crash through a cockpit door and fly a plane into the ground to save others. Few will grab the gun out of a crazed father’s hand.

So we need to reflect. What is our intuition? What does God call us to do?

Our failures begin with the smallest of sins. It starts with simple rejection; rejecting God’s call and presence. The call to brotherhood. It starts when we say no to our brothers and sisters. That’s where terror start. That’s where crazed killers start. That’s where every form of evil starts. It starts when we close our heart and our mind to God calling us to act, to His being present. It starts when we don’t think God is there, God is listening, God cares, and God is calling us to get up and go.

Big courage:

It takes big courage and hard work to see God in others, to get up and go. In the black smoke, in the cries, in that person across the room, down on the floor. It takes courage to see God there and to act.

This big courage is our heroism. When our hearts are pulled to love, to reach out, to care, to intervene, to spend an evening, to cry or laugh with our neighbor, with our brother or sister. This is big courage, to see past stereotypes and every negative thought. To see only God’s call to love, to forgive, to lend a hand, to be a martyr for love.

We must die every day. We must die to our wants and needs. We must die to saying no. We must reject that little voice that says, don’t bother, its too far, costs too much, is too hard; she or he are too much of a pain.

Yes, we will die to sin so that God’s presence can shine even in the darkest of times. We will die so that others may live. We will die to saying no and live for saying yes to love. We will stop letting God handle it and live in the big courage God has given us to go and do.

If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

Amen.