The Post-Game

No homily this week. Instead, Msgr. Tom and I talk about what happens when a parish serves dinner to whoever shows up.

Sunday’s gospel is a king who throws a feast and watches the invited guests go back to work, so he sends his servants to the streets to bring in anyone they can find.

Next week Saint Helen hosts a two-night Parish Mission with Array of Hope, and the Tuesday after that, Discovering Christ starts, seven weeks of dinner, a talk, and conversation that over 1,600 people here have already been through. We get into what a parish mission is for, the cardboard boards people write their reasons on, and who each of us is inviting this year.

Parish Mission: October 19 and 20, 7:00pm. Discovering Christ: Tuesdays starting October 27. sainthelen.org/discover.

The parish garden put out 2,000 pounds of vegetables two years running. This summer it got blight, heat, and too much rain, and 15 people kept working it anyway. It came in at 1,250. Msgr. Tom thinks that’s the whole gospel this week.

The parable is the tenants who won’t hand over the harvest, and the hard line is the last thing Jesus says: the kingdom will be taken away from you and given to people who produce. We talk about who Lisa is, what he says to people who want the church to stay out of it, whether a faith-filled life really always produces fruit, whether a parish can lose the kingdom with the lights still on, and what the hard work is for Saint Helen this year.

Final week of Hard Liners. Homily plus conversation, all in one episode.

We're back from a break... and it's a little different this week. No homily audio this week, so Msgr. Tom has to give it to me again. Off his notes, in the office, with no pulpit.

The gospel is the workers in the vineyard, and his first note on it is: it just doesn’t seem fair. He walks through five ways scholars have tried to make it fair, throws them all out, and reads it as Jesus telling the disciples something they didn’t want to hear. You’re last. Your job is getting everyone else in. We get into which of those five he’d have preached with more time, whether he’s ever wanted to be done, and what word actually went in the blank in his notes.

Week one of a new message series he’s calling Hard Liners. Conversation only this week, back to normal next week.

For three straight weeks Jesus has been telling His apostles how hard this is. Take up your cross. Lose your life. Fear no one. And then this week, out of nowhere, He says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

So which is it? Is following Jesus hard or is it easy? Msgr. Tom's answer is one word, and it's not the one you'd expect. Yes. Both. He gives three reasons the burden turns light, and ties the whole thing to a July 4th weekend and a nation that's still doing hard, unfinished, worthwhile work 250 years in.

In the conversation, we get into a season when the work stopped feeling heavy for Msgr. Tom and what changed, why we resist the "both and" and want faith to be all struggle or all comfort, the rare glimpses where you actually see your work change someone's life, and which of his three reasons to reach for first when everything feels heavy.

Homily plus conversation, all in one episode.

There's one question Msgr. Tom says we should never ask. Not as a disciple, not as a Christian, honestly not even as a person. And it's a question every single one of us asks all the time. What's in it for me?

He walks through a woman in the Book of Kings who builds a prophet a room on her roof, a cup of cold water that was far more work than it sounds, and the reward the gospel keeps promising even while telling us not to chase it.

In the conversation, we get into whether Msgr. Tom still catches himself asking what's in it for me, why Jesus reaches for the smallest possible example instead of a grand one, how "don't do it for the reward" squares with a gospel full of rewards, and where the line is between being other-centered and being a doormat.

Homily plus conversation, all in one episode.

Fear no one. Do not be afraid. Jesus says it three times in this week's gospel, and Msgr. Tom is honest right away, easier said than done.

He throws out some real numbers on how common fear and anxiety actually are, admits he's a worrier himself, and then makes a turn that surprised me. Even Jeremiah, even Paul, even Jesus in the garden, they were probably afraid too. So the question isn't whether you feel fear. It's what you do with it.

In the conversation, we get into what Msgr. Tom finds himself worrying about these days, why "do not be afraid" is a command and not just comfort, whether he was nervous saying out loud that Jesus was afraid, and the one fear that's stopping you from being who you're meant to be.

Homily plus conversation, all in one episode.

This week is about feeling helpless. The kind of helplessness where you look back at a hard stretch of your life and genuinely don't know how you got through it.

Msgr. Tom names a few of his own hard moments, and then he makes a turn I didn't expect. He points out that God didn't only come to His people's rescue, He was always their rescue, the whole time, even when they couldn't feel it. And he lands on an idea I can't shake, that Jesus's whole plan for saving the world is the helpless helping the helpless. Ordinary people. Us.

In the conversation, Msgr. Tom and I get into a couple of hard seasons he's never talked about on the show, why that word "always" matters so much to him, and how you're supposed to be the rescue for somebody else when you can barely keep your own head above water.

Homily plus conversation, all in one episode.

Happy Corpus Christi. This week we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ, and Msgr. Tom keeps it simple with two English words: God provides.

He walks through the manna in the desert, the bread that came down from heaven, and the moment Jesus told a room full of first-century Jews to eat his flesh and drink his blood. A lot of them were horrified. A lot of them walked away. And Jesus didn't soften it. He doubled down.

In the conversation, Msgr. Tom and I get into a moment in his own life where he looks back and sees God providing, what he'd say to someone who receives Communion every Sunday but isn't sure they believe it's really Him, and what those last four words of the homily actually ask of us. God provides, and so must we.

Homily plus conversation, all in one episode.

This episode begins with a Greek word you've probably never heard and a dance floor you didn't expect to find in church.

Trinity Sunday, and Msgr. Tom introduces perichoresis, an ancient Eastern idea of the Trinity as a divine dance, three persons circling in love, and the circle is open. He walks through how God keeps coming to us throughout scripture, what Paul says our "dance moves" should look like, and then admits he can't dance. And maybe that's why he's a priest.

In the conversation, we get into where he first came across the idea of the Trinity as a dance, what he meant by that joke about not being a good dancer (there's something real underneath it), and which of Paul's dance moves he'd tell someone to start with this week.

Homily + conversation, all in one episode.

Eight weeks. One question. Are you ready to go?

On Pentecost Sunday, Msgr. Tom flips the script. We're not just ready. We've already gone. Every step in holiness, every work for justice, every prayer whispered, that's the Spirit at work. And the Church's birthday isn't just about what happened that first Pentecost. It's about the life it's lived since.

Also, Msgr. Tom compares the Holy Spirit to the Force. Long before Star Wars, the Church was saying "may the Force be with you." Yes, he said that from the pulpit on Pentecost.

In the conversation, we get into when the "we've already gone" flip happened in his prep, what the Spirit actually looks like on a regular Wednesday, and where The Post-Game goes from here now that the Easter arc is complete.

Homily + conversation, all in one episode.