Father Chris Looby

In 1998 I took a year off from the seminary and worked at St. Alexander's Church in Morrisonville where I am now pastor.   Drive through Peru, New York this time of year and you don't have to use much imagination to picture today's Gospel. The orchards are busy. The apples are ready. And many workers—some of whom have come a long way to be here—are putting in long days bringing in the harvest. So imagine this. You start picking apples at seven in the morning. You've been climbing ladders, carrying bags, working in the sun all day. Then at five o'clock, just before quitting time, another worker shows up. He works for an hour. And when payday comes, he gets exactly the same amount you do. I don't know about you, but I think I might have something to say about that! And so do the workers in Jesus' parable. "These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day's burden and the heat." It doesn't seem fair. B...

Albert Einstein is often credited for defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. We all know people who seem to do the same thing over and over again. Someone says something hurtful. We forgive them. Then they say something hurtful again.  We forgive them. Someone disappoints us. We give them another chance. And after a while we might think: “Are they insane? Why do they keep doing the same thing over and over again?” But the flip-side to that question is: If I keep forgiving them over and over again, am I insane too? In a way, Peter asks Jesus that very question in today’s Gospel. “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” You can almost hear what Peter is really asking: “Jesus, when have I done enough?” I forgave him once. I forgave him twice. I forgave him seven times. At some point you want to say, “That’s it! I can’t do this anymore! I’d have to be insane to forgive this guy ag...

  Last week I heard a fascinating interview on NPR about something that seems to be getting a lot more attention these days: family estrangement — parents and children, brothers and sisters, family members who simply no longer speak to one another. What struck me was that many of these people didn't want to lose their families. In fact, many desperately wanted those relationships to work. And that's when I heard a term I had never heard before: “the missing missing reasons.” It describes situations where someone says, “I have absolutely no idea why my son won't talk to me anymore,” or, “I don't know why my daughter cut me out of her life.” But sometimes there were reasons. There had been conversations. There had been phone calls. There had been emails or letters explaining the hurt. The reasons weren't really missing. They just weren't heard. And that's what makes today's Gospel so interesting. Jesus is talking about exactly this kind of situation: a ...