6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26

VIDEO

Jesus says a lot of things

in this brief series of blessings and woes.
Some of them are surprising:
the poor possess the kingdom of God;
the hungry will be filled;
the weeping will laugh;
those hated, excluded, and insulted
will receive a great reward.
Some of them are disturbing:
woe to the rich,
whose reward is earthly, not heavenly;
woe to the full,
who will find themselves hungry;
woe to the laughing,
who will find themselves weeping; 
woe to those who are spoken well of,
because this is the sign of a false prophet.

In these few words, Jesus says a lot:
a lot of things that surprise and disturb us,
a lot of things that seem unlikely
in terms of how we think the world works,
and a lot of things that call 
our own lives into question.
Am I one of the poor, the hungry,
the weeping, and the hated,
or am I among the rich and satiated,
the laughing and admired?
How must my life change
in light of all this that Jesus says?

Jesus says a lot of things 
in these few words,
but something he doesn’t say is, 
“I don’t really mean all of this.”
He doesn’t say,
“This doesn’t apply to you.”
He doesn’t say,
“Feel free to ignore this 
if it doesn’t fit in 
with your plans or worldview.”
These blessing and woes 
are given to us by Jesus
to tell us how the world is
when seen from God’s perspective,
and to direct us how to live
in the world as God sees it.

Maybe the reason 
that we try to convince ourselves
that Jesus didn’t mean what he said,
or that it doesn’t apply to us,
or that it is optional
is that we don’t yet see the world
the way that God sees it.
We see a world in which the poor 
are simply losers in the game of life,
the hungry haven’t worked hard enough,
the weeping need to get themselves together,
and the reviled and rejected need to learn 
how to go along to get along in the real world.
Jesus’ words seem to ask us to become
everything that our world tells us to avoid 
and that it blames people for being;
his words ask us to lament being 
everything that our world tells us to desire
and that it praises people for attaining.

But we are often like the ones 
of whom the prophet Jeremiah speaks,
who trust in human beings,
and seek their strength in flesh.
And we are this way
because we don’t see the possibilities
that Jesus has unleashed in the world
through his life and his death
and, above all, his resurrection.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians,
“If Christ has not been raised, 
your faith is vain.”
The blessing and woes 
that Jesus lays before us
only make sense in a world 
in which the dead do not stay dead.
To see the world 
through Jesus’s resurrection—
to see the world with Easter eyes—
is to see a world in which 
the rejected are raised.
It is to see a world in which 
the poor and the hungry and the weeping
have hope in God for food and consolation,
for the kingdom is now 
already appearing among us.
The resurrection of Jesus 
is like an underground stream
that has burst through 
to the surface of the earth
to sweep away the old world
of riches and luxuries,
of shallow joys and hollow praise,
to water the dry land of our hearts,
carving new channels of grace.

St. Paul writes,
“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are the most pitiable people of all.”
Commenting on Paul’s words,
the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote,
“Belief in the resurrection is a high-stakes game 
in which the player has bet the bank 
and, if there is no resurrection, loses.” 
If we listen to the words of Jesus
about those who are 
poor and hungry,
weeping and despised,
and he turns out to be 
just one more good man
who has gone down 
into death’s darkness,
then the world is right to pity 
our foolishness and weakness.
But if “Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,”
then our foolishness is wisdom
and our weakness is power.

So in the end, it comes down to this:
do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive?
Do you hear in his blessings and woes
not a voice from the distant past
that echoes faintly down the ages 
in the memory of his followers,
but the living voice of the one
who is calling you from death to life?
Do you hear the voice of one
calling you forth from the tomb
of riches and self-satisfaction,
of shallow joy and empty glory?
Do you hear his voice this day
ringing in your ears 
as it rang in the ears of his disciples,
calling you to follow him 
on a journey whose destination 
you cannot see,
but which faith tells you 
ends in the mystery 
of God’s eternal love?

Hear the Good News:
Jesus is alive
and he is calling you to follow him:
from death to life,
from woe to blessing.
Let us pray for the grace
to answer that call,
and that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

In today’s Gospel Jesus is teaching 
the crowds by lake Gennesaret,
but the only words of his that are recorded
are those addressed to Simon Peter,
which are in each case
prefaced with a command:
“Put out into deep water”
and “Do not be afraid.”
These two commands 
pretty much sum up the Gospel.

“Put out into deep water.”

Put out into the deep water 
of seeing the universe 
and your existence in it 
as a sheer gift given out of love
by the all-powerful God,
before whom the angels worship, 
crying “Holy, holy, holy…”

Put out into the deep water 
of looking within your own heart 
and seeing there the crack 
that runs through everything,
the broken self that sin has made,
the self that, confronted by the all-holy God
can only say, like Simon,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am sinful,”
can only say, like Isaiah,
“Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am one with unclean lips.”

Put out into the deep water
of believing that though you have toiled 
through long hours of darkness
it just might be worth 
lowering your nets one more time,
giving the depths one more chance,
because this Jesus who commands you
just might be the one
who can heal that crack in everything;
this Jesus just might be the one
who can fill your empty nets
with food that endures to eternal life,
food that strains your nets
and swamps your boats;
this Jesus just might be the one
who is a window in our world 
through which streams a glory
that will shake the doorframes 
of our temples.

“Do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid 
that your broken self is beyond repair,
that your unclean lips are beyond cleansing,
that your frail humanity with be swept away 
in the deep waters of God’s glory.

Do not be afraid
to say, “Lord I am not worthy,”
to lay before the Lord 
ugly truths about yourself:
how constricted sin has made your heart,
how your lips have been contaminated
by words of spite and discouragement,
criticism and gossip.
For God is a consuming fire 
whose angel comes bearing 
the glowing ember of God’s love,
to cleanse you and make you worthy:
“by the grace of God, 
I am what I am.”

Do not be afraid
to let him fill your nets to the point of breaking,
to let his glory flood the temple of your heart
until it feels as if it might be torn apart,
for this glory is the love of Christ, 
the very force that brought the universe to birth,
the grace of God that will dilate your heart 
so that it might take in more light. 

Do not be afraid
to answer his call,
to say, “Here I am; send me,”
to leave behind everything to follow him.
For Christ died for your sins
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he was buried for you
in the deep waters of death,
and on the third day 
he was raised to life,
trampling down death by death
and bestowing life on you, 
who were held in death’s grasp.
And he appeared 
to Simon Peter and the apostles,
just as he had come to them 
by the waters of Gennesaret,
calling them again to follow him 
and to feed his sheep.
He appeared to Paul as well,
persecutor of the church
and least of the apostles,
calling him to let God’s grace 
toil within him
as he preached God’s word.
And he has appeared even to us, 
as to those born out of time:
appeared in his word 
and in his sacraments,
in the hungry and the thirsty,
the stranger and the naked,
the sick and the imprisoned.
And he says to us 
what he said to Isaiah,
what he said to Simon,
what he said to Paul:
follow me in faith not fear;
follow me into deep waters.

This is the gospel that we have received 
and in which we also stand:
“Put out into deep water.”
“Do not be afraid.”
Let us receive the good news,
and, having received it,
let us believe it;
and, having believed it,
let us hand it on to others
so that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading: Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-11

VIDEO

I didn’t much like being engaged.
Don’t get me wrong:
I was thrilled at the prospect
of Maureen becoming my wife.
And it wasn’t even that I disliked having to make 
all the preparations necessary for the wedding
(particularly since I skipped off to Germany
for the last couple of months before the event,
leaving Maureen, as usual,  
to do the final heavy lifting).
What I disliked 
was that we had decided to marry
and the hour of our wedding had been set—
an hour that I was awaiting
with equal parts anticipation and anxiety—
and yet nothing that I could do
would speed up its arrival.
If anything, my anticipation and anxiety 
seemed to make time pass more slowly.

I imagine that couple 
whose wedding took place
at Cana of Galilee many years ago
felt the same way:
they too awaited that hour
with anticipation and anxiety,
making their plans 
and gathering their goods
(apparently not enough, 
at least when it came to the wine),
and yet unable to do the one thing
that they would most like to do:
speed the arrival of that hour
and so be freed 
of their anxious anticipation.

But they were not the only ones 
awaiting an hour.
Jesus too speaks of “my hour,”
which “has not yet come.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks 
again and again of his appointed hour: 
the hour when the Father glorifies the Son
so that the Son may glorify the Father (17:1);
the hour for him “to depart from this world 
and go to the Father” (13:1);
the hour of his dying and rising.
Like someone anxiously awaiting his wedding day,
it seems that Jesus too must suffer the passage of time,
must be subjected to time’s slow passage 
as he waits for the appointed hour.
In Luke’s Gospel (12:49-50) Jesus says,
“I have come to set the earth on fire, 
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, 
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”
Events are in motion;
Jesus is moving toward his hour;
but only at the pace that time will allow.

But is he not the eternal Word of the Father,
without whom nothing was made?
Is he not the one who, 
in the beginning, 
created time itself?
We pray in one of our eucharistic Prefaces,
“you laid the foundations of the world
and have arranged the changing 
of times and seasons.”
In his creating Word, God has decreed
the unfolding of our lives 
over the course of time:
this is a condition of being a creature
subject to God’s providence.
But surely the Word, who contains 
every instant of time enfolded within himself,
does not need to wait for time to unfold,
does not need to wait for his hour to arrive. 

He does not need to, but he chooses to.
This is the mystery we have just celebrated
in the joyful Christmas season,
but which we continue to celebrate
in the slowly unfolding 
of the ordinary time of our lives. 
The God who arranges 
the changing of times and season
wills to become subject 
to the times he has arranged;
the timeless Word of God 
joins us in our waiting 
for what time will bring,
joins us in our journey to our hour.

God in Christ inhabits time.
But Jesus inhabits time differently from us.
For us, the slow journey to our hour
can become a time of frustration,
as anticipation lapses into anguished anxiety.
Time masters us and makes us its slave 
as we try to master it and control its flow.
But Jesus is not enslaved by time,
because he embraces this journey
to his hour that is to come
as the mission that has been 
given to him by his Father.
For this reason, 
even in the midst 
of anguish and anxiety, 
his journey to the hour 
when he will be glorified 
in cross and resurrection
becomes itself the time
for God’s glory to manifest itself.
The glory of the hour he awaits
seeps into the passage of time itself
and transforms it.
His hour has not yet come,
but in the signs and wonders that he works 
we begin to catch the light of eternal glory.

Jesus inhabits time differently from us,
and he invites us to let 
the shining forth of his glory
transform the way 
that we inhabit time
into something like the way
that he inhabits time.

As St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians,

“God has called us through the Gospel

to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Christ invites us to embrace 

in the ordinary unfolding of our lives
the mission that we have been given in him,
the mission that is unique to each one of us,
according to the gifts 
that the one Spirit has given to us.
To embrace our lives as divine mission
is to be freed from time’s slavery,
to be freed from anxious anticipation
of what might come,
and to enjoy even now 
some share in that glory
that we call life eternal.

This freedom is offered to us 
freely in Christ;
let us pray that we will have the grace
to receive the gift of his glory,
so that our time might be redeemed
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.

Baptism of the Lord

Preached at the Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore Maryland.

Readings: Isaiah  40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

St. Paul writes, “Beloved,
the grace of God has appeared…”
There is a certain kind 
of confusion concerning grace 
that we Christians can fall into,
a tendency to think of the appearing of grace
as a kind of supplemental help from God
popping up unexpectedly in our lives,
allowing us to overcome particular challenges.
We can think of grace sort of like 
a power-up in a video game:
something you come across 
that bolsters your powers 
so you can get past an obstacle,
like the Super Mushroom 

in Mario Brothers.

We might think that we get 
an initial cache of these power-ups
when we get baptized, 
and for us serious players—
for those who want to be able 
to complete the tasks and challenges
necessary to win the game—
it is important to find 
more power-ups along the way.
So we go to Confession 
and we receive the Eucharist,
or we get anointed when sick 
or, if we want to make 
our own power-ups
to share them with others,
maybe even get ordained.

I wouldn’t say that God 
never gives us power-ups—
in fact, the Church even has 
a Latin term for them: gratiae gratis data.
But these are gifts God gives us
for the benefit of the Church as a whole,
not as a means for us to complete the game ourselves.
The problem with the power-up view of grace
is that it can leave Jesus out of the picture
and make us masters of our own destinies:
life is our task to accomplish, 
our race to run, 
our quest to complete.
We are the players who will win the game,
if only we are clever enough to make use
of the Super Mushrooms 
that the game designer has left 
lying around for us.

We have confused notions about grace
because grace is confusing,
and it is confusing to us
because it is something far stranger
than any scheme that we human beings 
could ever imagine.
“The kindness and generous love 
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds 
we had done
but because of his mercy.”
What has appeared is not a Super Mushroom
but kindness and love and mercy
in the form of a person: Jesus Christ.
It has appeared

not because we have discovered
the sacramental power-ups 
that God has built into the game,
but because he who is

kindness and love and mercy
has come searching for us in our lostness
to tell us that our exile is ended
and our guilt has been expiated.
We are confused about grace

because God’s grace 
is something so strange
that we can scarcely fit it 
into how we think the world works,
because we have a hard time imagining
that love could be so freely given.

This great feast of the Baptism of Jesus
offers us occasion to ponder
the strangeness of grace.
John appears, Luke tells us,
“proclaiming a baptism of repentance 
for the forgiveness of sins.”
But why then should Jesus,
the sinless Son of God,
undergo a baptism of repentance?
What is he doing when he enters
the waters of the river Jordan?

Water itself is a powerful symbol.
It represents life and purity,
making things grow 
and cleansing from stain,
promising life and renewal. 
In the book of Exodus, 
God brings forth
life-giving water from the rock;
in John’s Gospel, Jesus says 
that he will give water 
to those who believe, 
which will become in them 
a spring gushing up to eternal life;
and in the book of Revelation
the water of life, bright as crystal, 
flows from the throne 
of God and of the Lamb.

Water is promise, but it is also peril.
This past fall we saw vividly
the perilous power of water
as hurricane Helene swept away
life and livelihood in western North Carolina.
In the creation story, 
God must muscle the waters into obedience, 
containing them within the oceans of the earth
and beyond the dome of the sky;
in the story of Noah and the great flood,
those same waters are unleashed
to purify the earth, but also to destroy it;
and in the Gospels Jesus rebukes the sea
that threatens to swamp the boat of his disciples.

When Jesus enters the waters of the Jordan
he enters into the promise and peril of human life;
he comes searching for us in our joys and our hopes,
in our fears and our anxieties,
he plunges into the waters of our humanity
not to plant a power-up for us to find,
to leave behind some grace that will help us
to navigate the game once he has gone,
but to make of us disciples and friends
who join him on his quest of promise and peril, 
the quest to manifest ever more 
the kindness and generous love of God.

This is why Will and Claire have brought Judah
to the waters of baptism on this morning.
We see all that we hope and all that we fear
perhaps most clearly when we look at our children,
so full of promise and so subject to peril;
and we bring our children for baptism
so that Jesus can meet them in the waters
of promise and peril 
and take them to himself,
so that they might be his own,
they might join him on his quest,
they might become heirs in him 
of hope eternal.

Grace can be confusing 
if we think of it as something we get
rather than someone we meet:
Grace is not a power-up but a person.
In the waters of baptism we meet Jesus
who has come to seek us there
so that we might enter into friendship with him,
not because we are kind or loving or merciful,
but because he is.
He offers himself to us without cost,
for which of us could pay the price 
of so great a gift?

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes 
take the water of life as a gift.”
And may God, 
who is kind and loving and merciful,
have mercy on us all. 

Epiphany

Preached at the inaugural evening Mass at Corpus Christi Church as it begins a new life as an Oratory of the Basilica of the Assumption.

Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

The story of Christmas is a tale of mystery:
the mystery of the birth of Christ
for us and for our salvation.

In a typical mystery tale, 
the mystery is wrapped up and solved 
once the story has been told.
But the tale of mystery 
that is the Christmas story
is a story still being told and retold, 
and the mystery only grows deeper
with each telling of the story.
Each time our minds run through
the events of the Christmas story—
the annunciation, the visitation, the birth, 
the proclamation of peace to the shepherds,
and the journey of the Magi—
each time our lips repeat the words of this tale,
we discover new mysteries hidden there.
And this is because its mystery
is a theological mystery:
the mystery of the infinite and eternal
force of love that we call God,
a tale of mystery that only ends
in the fulness of God’s reign,
when God will be all in all. 

One facet of the mystery 
that is the story of Christmas
is that it is a story 
not just about the birth of Jesus,
but also about our birth in him,
our birth into his body through grace.
Pope Leo the Great, back in the 5th century,
said, “In adoring the birth of our Savior, 
we find we are celebrating 
the commencement of our own life, 
for the birth of Christ 
is the source of life for Christian folk, 
and the birthday of the Head 
is the birthday of the body”
(Serm. 6 In Nat.).

The birthday of the Head
is the birthday of the body.
These words for me land 
with a particular force
as we are inaugurating a new phase
of life and ministry in this place
dedicated to the Body of Christ, 
Corpus Christi.
Just as the newborn Jesus was,
as the prophet Micah puts it,
one “whose origin is from of old”
so too we are seeking here a new life 
that is somehow something that is not new;
what we are seeking is the life of the Spirit 
that has been lived out in this building
for one-hundred and thirty-four years;
the life of the Spirit that has been lived out 
by Catholic Christians for over two millennia;
the life of the Spirit that came to birth in Bethlehem.
For the birthday of the Head
is the birthday of the body.
The body of Christ took form in Mary’s womb
through the working of the Holy Spirit.
and the body of Christ takes form ever anew
in new times and new places
through the work of that same Spirit.
The story of Christmas 
is the tale of the mystery of Jesus, 
but it is also the tale 
of the mystery that we are,
the story still unfolding 
that will not reach “the end”
until all of Christ’s members 
are gathered into God’s reign.

Today our scriptures focus our attention
on the Magi who come from afar,
bringing their gifts to the newborn Christ.
They come from afar 
not just in terms of where they live,
but in terms of who they are.
For they are Gentiles,
those who live outside of God’s covenant,
who seemingly have not been part 
of that mystery tale of God’s steadfast love
shown to Abraham and his descendants. 
But now, suddenly, here they are,
right in the middle of the story;
as Paul writes to the Ephesians:
“in Christ Jesus you who once were far off 
have become near by the blood of Christ.”
And they come bringing unexpected gifts,
gifts that the Holy Family probably would not
have put on their birth registry—
gold and frankincense and myrrh—
but which, I am sure, 
Mary and Joseph 
gracefully received with thanks.
And the Magi leave having received in turn
an even greater, more mysterious gift:
the epiphany in time and space
of the eternal God.

But the birthday of the Head
is also the birthday of the body,
and the unexpected arrival 
of the gift-bearing Magi
in the midst of the story of Jesus
is a plot-twist that has happened 
again and again 
in the story of Christ’s body.
Who could have foreseen the gifts
that the early Jewish followers of Jesus 
would receive from the Gentiles 
who became inheritors with them
of the covenant story, 
“members of the same body,
and copartners in the promise 
in Christ Jesus through the gospel”?
Who could have foreseen the gifts
of philosophy, literature, art, and music
that Christ’s body has received 
down through the centuries
from the various cultures in which 
it has become incarnate?
And even today, who can foresee the gifts
that the body of Christ receives
from every person emerging newborn 
from the watery womb of baptism,
who becomes part of the mystery tale
that the Holy Spirit is spinning?

At this moment in the history of this place
it is hard not to think of those 
who may be coming from afar—
as far as 409 Cathedral St. or MICA 
or some other exotic land 
we cannot now imagine—
bearing unexpected gifts
that might not be 
what some of us would have asked for,
but which we are bidden 
gracefully to receive with thanks.
It is hard not to wonder 
what they will receive in turn,
as the epiphany of God
happens in this place.
Part of what it means
for the birthday of the Head
to be the birthday of the body,
for the story of our common life
to be grafted onto the story of Jesus,
is that we are now living a mystery tale 
that can only be solved by living through it,
and it can only be lived through
if we have faith that God’s Spirit is with us.

Of course, this is true not simply 
of this particular place 
at this particular moment;
this is true of the whole of our lives.
None of us knows 
any of what the future holds,
except that we can trust 
that what God said
to the ancient Israelites
God says also to us:
“you shall be radiant at what you see,
your heart shall throb and overflow,
for the riches of the sea 
shall be emptied out before you,
the wealth of nations 
shall be brought to you.”
The mystery is unfolding before us;
let us step forward into it 
in faith, hope, and charity,
and pray that God, who is merciful,
will have mercy on us all.