Gospel Archives - Deacon Chris Anderson

Ordinary Time

First Week in Ordinary Time – Mark 1:14-20

We are each given a mission, we are each given a task, and none is more important than any other.

I like it when Ordinary Time starts again. When we put away the Christmas things and the days slowly get longer and I go back to teaching and back into my routine. I like going back to my nets: sitting and mending them and then going out onto the water to fish and make a living. This is what I do, what we do.

I wonder about the fisherman Jesus didn’t call that day. Maybe they were paying attention and maybe they were ready to follow him. Maybe they heard the message, too, or felt the transforming power of this person as he went walking by, but they weren’t chosen to be disciples in that way. They were chosen to remain fishermen, to mend their nets and live their lives.

We are each given a mission, we are each given a task, and none is more important than any other. The fishermen who stayed behind were not less holy than Simon and Andrew and James and John. We know from the rest of the gospel how bumbling and uncertain and erratic those men could be, just as we can be bumbling and uncertain ourselves. We know how when we’re fishing or at night when we come home we have moments of joy and insight, and opportunities to act with kindness and justice, or not.

The fishermen who remained behind, if they were living their lives fully and honestly, and praying, and paying attention, they were following Jesus, too. We all have our nets, and we can get entangled in them or we can lower them for the catch and we can feed others.

We all have our nets, and we can get entangled in them or we can lower them for the catch and we can feed others.

Today, Lord, as we go about our work, as we go about our lives, may we do your will and follow where you lead and may we believe we are doing your will and we are following you, even in the most ordinary of our tasks, even in the most ordinary work we do. For you are with us always. You are always calling us: deeper and deeper into the ordinary mystery of things.

January 11, 2016

Homily

Constant Contact

Advent Weekday – Isaiah 48:17-19; Psalm 1; Matthew 11:16-19

When I read the Gospel today I can’t help thinking again about the internet and about social media, especially this time of year, about all the childish voices of the marketplace and all the advertising and all the constant contact. I think of the way the media is obsessed with celebrities, with who is a glutton and drunkard, who is possessed by a demon. Everyone is trying to get us to dance to their flute, and we even try to get Jesus to dance for us, asking him to measure up to our childish images of who God is and then condemning him when he doesn’t.

And it’s not just on the internet but inside us. There are all these childish voices clamoring in our own minds and hearts, we have our own internal internet, and it never stops blowing us around, like the chaff which the wind drives away. Because we are not grounded in our true selves, in the wisdom that comes from God and only from God, we have no focus and no peace.

My question for today is how we can be like the just man in the psalm, like the tree planted near running water. How we can slow down. Stay in one place. Wait.

December 11, 2015