Sermon for March 17th

• Sermon Outline:

• Today is St. Patrick's day. You know he wasn't Irish right? :)
• • Amazing story: kidnapped and sold into slavery as a teen; six years in slavery when he escaped. Got back safe and sound, and felt called to go back, to take the Gospel. Went out of love, was hunted, persecuted, trial after trial and he kept going. Where did he find the inner strength to go on? That is what I want to explore for a few minutes with you this morning.
• For some reason it was this question that came to me again and again as I meditated on the Gospel passage for this morning.
• Jesus and the story that Holy Week tells
• The place of this story
• • Six days before the passover, three days before Palm Sunday. This is the reading that gets us ready for next week: Palm Sunday
  • Mary: love the detail: the fragrance filling the room
  • Judas Iscariot 12:6 is interesting, probably because 12:5 actually does make sense. It was a tremendous amount of money. Clearly ad hominum.
• But then Jesus says a surprising thing on the surface: "You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
• ____________________________
• Odd about the passage is that on one reading it can be used to ignore the poor.
• The irony is that this is a quote from Deut. 15:11 "Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, "Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.""
• That is pretty clear as a command. It is an OT injunction, and Jesus seems clear that we are to follow it. In fact, it seems to be assumed that this would be a mark of Jesus' followers.
• But why does he indicate to serve him first, and then later the poor. Shouldn't it be the opposite?
• To my mind this is 
• My thoughts: what does it mean to serve the poor, or anyone for that matter. Service to others seems to be what Jesus was describing.
• We can do it because we are commanded to, because we have to. But I don't think that is what God was imagining. 
• I think he was imagining that the impetus comes from being part of a community that is marked by compassion, naturally.
• Ministry out of duty has a coldness and hardness about it.
• Service from the heart just has something of a beautiful quality about it. This is one of the reasons I think the new pope has a lot of people being interested, even amongst us who are not catholic. Church of the poor.
• But even if you minister out of compassion and love, the love gets stretched.
• Jesus was right; there always seem to be more poor, there is no end to the suffering of the world, and no matter how much we do it seems to always be overwhelming. I remember working with someone with addictions: patience and compassion would be stretched as he wasted opportunity after opportunity. Fight with tiredness and anger.
• But this is any ministry, social work, parish ministry, 
• The question is if we are in this for the long haul, where do we find our strength?
• It is Jesus. That is the reason for the order. 
• Importance of the Sabbath
• Have to have time before God for several reason: to pray and intercede, to scrape off spiritual junk, to renew. There is an energy and power in coming before Jesus.
• The secret to the spiritual life is simple. Show up everyday. 
• Story of the restaurant selling soup. New management watered it down. Profits for a while, but ultimately killed the golden goose. They lost their customer base. : you will be tempted to shortchange what works. Don't
• Metaphor for avoiding shortchanging the spiritual life.
• End with Chariots of Fire speech