16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Genesis 18:1-10a; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

In the Christian tradition,

today’s Gospel has usually been understood

in terms of two different sorts of Christian callings –

the calling to the life of active service, represented by Martha,

and the calling to the life of contemplative prayer, represented by Mary –

and the relative superiority of the life of contemplation to the life of action.

But if we read this story from Luke’s gospel in light of our first reading,

which is the story from Genesis

about Abraham’s reception of three mysterious angelic figures

who bring him unexpected tidings

of the impending birth of Isaac, his son,

then the story of Mary and Martha can also be read

as a story about hospitality.

In particular, it is a story about our hospitality

and the hospitality of God.

In our parish of Corpus Christi

we tend to think of ourselves as a pretty hospitable bunch,

welcoming all sorts and conditions of people into our community

and seeking to live together the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ,

good news that inspires us to reach out to the stranger.

Indeed, the annual event of Artscape allows us to show our hospitality

by offering our church building as a venue for performances,

as well as offering the building itself

as one of the significant works of art in the city of Baltimore,

a space that speaks through the medium of art

of the fundamental mysteries of our Catholic Christian faith.

And, in the past few weeks,

we have had the additional opportunity to flex our hospitality muscles

in welcoming Fr. Marty as our new pastor.

It is precisely these sorts of occasions

that invite us to reflect on what it means to be hospitable.

In the ancient world, receiving hospitality was necessary for survival

when one found oneself a stranger in a strange land

and hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts had not yet been invented.

The first reading notes that Abraham sees the three visitors,

“when the day was growing hot”

and that he offers them shade and water, as well as food to eat.

In a harsh physical environment, receiving and offering hospitality

can be a matter of life and death.

In this case, the three visitors

are messengers or angels sent from God,

so it is not so important that they receive hospitality

as it is that Abraham offers it to them.

Indeed, throughout the Old Testament God tells the Israelites

that they are to show hospitality to strangers

because God has shown hospitality to them,

taking them in when they were wandering strangers without a homeland.

Part of what it means truly to receive God’s hospitality,

is to show hospitality to others.

In the Gospel, Martha reacts to the arrival of Jesus

in a way not unlike Abraham

reacting to the arrival of his three guests:

she runs around, getting things ready,

becoming in the process, as Jesus notes,

“anxious and worried about many things.”

Indeed, she gets herself in such a state

that she asks Jesus, her houseguest,

to take her side in an argument with her sister:

“Lord, do you not care that my sister

has left me by myself to do the serving?

Tell her to help me.”

Think about this for a second:

someone comes to your house

and you try to drawn him into a domestic dispute.

This is hospitality?

It sounds more like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

It would be as if we asked our newly-arrived pastor

to take a side in some long-standing feud among parishioners,

and I know none of us would ever do something like that.

Martha may think she is the one being hospitable,

but in fact she has tried to put Jesus, her guest,

in a very uncomfortable position.

Moreover, she is so busy doing things for Jesus

that she cannot take the time to be with Jesus, her guest,

except to pop in to complain about her sister.

We might be inclined to forgive Martha these breaches of hospitality

since she, like many of us, is burdened with much serving.

Also, she is, after all, only doing what she thinks is expected of her

as a woman in the household.

Indeed, she probably presumed that, as a woman,

all that she could offer a religious teacher like Jesus

was her anxious, worried activity.

What she cannot imagine –

but which somehow Mary can imagine –

is that Jesus wants her to be with him,

in the position of a disciple,

sitting at his feet

and learning from him the mysteries of God’s kingdom.

Mary chooses the better part

because she chooses to be with Jesus;

she gives her guest the one thing that he really wants:

herself as his disciple.

True hospitality, Jesus seems to be saying,

is not so much a doing-for as it is a being-with.

In our everyday acts of hospitality,

all of our anxious and worried activity –

cooking food, making beds, cleaning bathrooms –

must at some point come to a stop

so that we can finally do the one thing

at which all our activity aims:

being with our guest;

giving ourselves to him or her by opening ourselves

and truly listening to what our guest has to say.

And when the one whom we are welcoming is God,

it is even more the case

that the only thing we really have to give

is our attentive presence.

We cannot really do-for God;

but we can certainly be-with God.

It is as if we show God hospitality

by accepting the hospitality God offers us.

That, after all, is all that God really desires.

And in the hospitality that we as Christians show to others –

whether through opening our church at Artscape,

or welcoming couples who wish to get married here,

or inviting people who want to explore the Catholic faith

to consider the RCIA process,

or even celebrating the arrival of a new pastor –

what we are really doing is inviting them to join us

in accepting God’s hospitality,

to join us in being-with God by being-with each other.

For it is in giving and receiving such hospitality

that we truly are corpus Christi: the body of Christ.

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Samuel 12:7-10, 13; Galatians 2:16, 19-21; Luke 7:36-50

The biologist Richard Dawkins, in his best-seller, The God Delusion,

writes of what he calls

“the unhealthy preoccupation of early Christian theologians with sin.”

He continues,

“They could have devoted their pages and their sermons

to extolling the sky splashed with stars,

or mountains and green forests, seas and dawn choruses.

These are occasionally mentioned,

but the Christian focus is overwhelmingly

on sin sin sin sin sin sin sin.

What a nasty little preoccupation to have dominating your life”

(The God Delusion p. 252).

To some, it might seem that our readings today

would bear out his charge:

we hear first of David who,

once he is caught out by Nathan and threatened by God,

repents of the sin of having Uriah killed;

then we hear Paul speak of our unrighteousness

and our need to be “justified” before God;

finally, we hear the story of this sinful woman,

whom Jesus compares to a debtor,

before he forgives her sins and sends her on her way.

So is sin the “nasty little preoccupation”

that dominates the minds of Christians?

Do we take some masochistic delight

in pondering and proclaiming our own wretchedness,

or, perhaps more plausibly, the wretchedness of others?

And does our “nasty little preoccupation” with sin

stunt our sense of the beauty and wonder of the natural world?

Some who do not share Professor Dawkins’s atheism

might still agree with him

that we’ve really had too much of this sin business

and that we ought to focus more on the goodness of God,

on God’s blessings,

and not so much on sin,

which simply leaves us paralyzed with guilt –

Catholic guilt, which apparently is the most virulent variety.

One might think that if we focus on our sinfulness,

we will miss the beauty of what God gives us;

we will fail to see the blessing of, in Dawkins’s lovely phrases,

“the sky splashed with stars,

or mountains and green forests,

seas and dawn choruses.”

The more we are preoccupied with sin,

the less we will perceive God’s goodness.

Well, Jesus seems to be of a different opinion,

at least in today’s Gospel reading.

While dining at the house of Simon the Pharisee,

a woman – apparently a well-known sinner in town –

interrupts the proceedings

by washing Jesus’ feet with her tears,

drying them with her hair,

and anointing them with an expensive ointment.

The reaction to this of Simon –

who sees only the woman’s sins

and her temerity in touching Jesus –

prompts Jesus to speak of the great love that has moved her

to such seemingly outrageous actions –

crashing a dinner party

and daring to touch a prophet with her sinner’s tears.

He implies that her love’s greatness is directly proportional

to the burden of sin that had been lifted from her,

the debt that is to be forgiven her:

“her many sins have been forgiven

because she has shown great love.

But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”

It is only because she knows how great her sins are

that she can have this great love awakened in her.

Her “nasty little preoccupation” with her sins

has opened before her vistas of divine love

vaster than the sky splashed with stars

and more beautiful than the dawn choruses.

How do we find this great love;

how can we have it awakened within us?

Where can we go to hear Jesus say to us what he said to her:

“Your sins are forgiven. . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace”?

In the Catholic tradition one of the privileged places

where we encounter Christ’s forgiveness

is the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

It is no secret that this is a sacrament that, in the past few decades,

many Catholics have come to practice only infrequently, if at all.

Recent data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate

at Georgetown University

shows that among those Americans who identify as Catholic,

only about a quarter goes to confession on even a yearly basis.

For about a ten-year period of my life,

I was among the three-quarters majority who never go:

held back by embarrassment, inertia, inconvenience,

and who knows how many other reasons.

I won’t speculate about other people’s reasons for avoiding the sacrament,

but I know that for myself

that the longer I stayed away from the sacrament

the harder it became to contemplate going,

as I imagined the priest saying,

“It’s been how many years since your last confession?”

I suppose I feared I would encounter someone who,

in terms of our Gospel,

was more like Simon the Pharisee and less like Jesus.

When, somehow moved by God’s grace,

I finally did return to the sacrament –

walking around a field in France,

confessing to a Benedictine monk

who was the only native English speaker in his monastery –

I was shocked to find that he was not shocked

by my long absence from the sacrament.

In fact, he didn’t seem much shocked by anything I said.

I discovered that all my reasons for not going to confession

were in fact excuses,

and that what had been dominating my life

was not my “nasty little preoccupation” with sin,

but my studious attempts to avoid thinking about sin –

or maybe I should say, “sin sin sin sin sin sin sin” –

in any personal way.

For Jesus, being aware of our sins –

indeed, confessing them,

weeping over them,

getting to our knees before the God whose love we have offended

and asking for mercy –

is not a “nasty little preoccupation,”

but a prelude to the great love

that can only be experienced in forgiveness.

It is not neurosis to know that we are sinners,

but rather a realistic assessment of our situation:

we have sinned in our thoughts and in our words,

in what we have done and in what we have failed to do.

To deny this is the true neurosis;

it is to lock ourselves into a world of illusion,

and to make ourselves

blind to the infinite vistas of God’s goodness

and deaf to the song of divine mercy.

For we cannot know how good God is

until we see that, despite our sins,

Jesus does not shrink from our touch.

We cannot love God with all our heart, mind and strength

until we know how great a debt has been forgiven us,

until we hear Christ say,

“Your sins are forgiven. . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Easter 5

Readings: Acts 41:21-23; Revelation 21:1-5a; John 13:31-33a; 34-35

As many of you know,

the pastoral council’s survey of the parish last year

revealed that 65% of those responding

have been in the parish for fewer than ten years,

and 51% had been in the parish for fewer than five years.

(I should note that, having been in the parish twelve years,

this makes me one of the “old timers” –

something I’m not too happy about.)

And if you have been paying attention

to those who tend to stand in the back of the church

you might have noticed that in the past six months

we have had something of a baby boom.

And when you add this to the seven children

we welcomed to Christ’s altar

at last week’s first communion celebration,

one has something of a sense of what John felt in the book of Revelation

when he heard the voice form the heavenly throne say,

“Behold, I make all things new.”

He must have felt a sense of exhilaration

at the new vistas opening up before him:

the new Jerusalem descending from heaven,

the city where God will dwell with the human race,

where “there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain,

for the old order has passed away.”

At the same time, John must have felt a sense of apprehension

at the prospect of all things being made new –

the prospect of the transformation of all that is familiar

into something new and different.

How, we might ask, will we find our way

if God makes all things new,

if the old order passes away entirely?

These thoughts occur to me at this particular moment

because on Thursday we buried Ruby Strawberry,

eighty-nine years old,

a long-time and faithful parishioner

who attended the 4:00 Mass,

and because in a few minutes we will baptize

two of our newest parishioners, Theo and Mary.

Somehow, at least in my mind, these two events

keep intersecting with each other.

It is tempting at such a moment

to think of an old order of things passing away

and a new order of things beginning,

to think of the passing the torch from one generation to another

as part of the ceaseless cycle of birth and death.

But I think there is something far more mysterious going on here.

It is not that Theo and Mary are arriving just as Ruby is leaving.

This might be true in terms of the natural cycles of birth and death,

but it is not true when we take into account the mystery of God’s grace.

For our faith is that Ruby hasn’t really left us;

reborn in Christ, she is not part of the old order that has passed away,

but rather is a citizen of the new and heavenly Jerusalem

where she dwells with God.

She is not gone;

she has simply moved more deeply

into the mystery of Christ’s body,

the same body of Christ into which

Theo and Mary will soon be baptized.

By our human reckoning Ruby might belong to one generation

and Theo and Mary to another,

but in Christ’s body they share a common birth into eternal life,

and are “fellow citizens with the saints

and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19).

Somehow, in the mystery of the Church,

Mary and Theo will be Ruby’s friends;

they will pray for her

when our book of memory is presented each November,

and I am confident that she will pray for them

in the mysterious eternity of the Church triumphant.

This is what it means to be the Church:

to believe that we are united by God’s grace in Christ’s body.

And this is why Christ commands his disciples in today’s Gospel

to love one another with the same love with which he has loved them.

This is the love that can united us across barriers of time and distance,

and even across the barrier of death.

It is important always to keep this love that Christ commands

before our eyes

as we live our life together as a community of faith.

Given human nature, we can be tempted either to cling to the past,

to the ways that we have always done things,

or to become so enamored of the new that we dismiss our heritage

as merely part of the old order that has passed away.

Both temptations must be resisted

if we are to fulfill Christ’s command of love.

The one who says, “Behold, I make all things new”

constantly calls us into a future that requires us to change,

to think in new ways,

to venture outside the boundaries with which we are comfortable.

The large influx of new parishioners in the past decade

is a wonderful sign of life

but is also a challenge to those of us who have been around a while:

a challenge to think in new ways and to ask new questions,

to listen to new voices and consider new possibilities.

At the same time, we have a body of accumulated wisdom:

the wisdom of our long-time parishioners

and the wisdom of the tradition of the Church,

and this too must be listened to

if we are to be faithful to who we are.

What will make all of this possible is love:

the love with which Christ loves us

and with which he commands us to love each other.

Like Mary and Theo and Ruby,

we meet on the common ground of the love of Christ,

trusting that Christ crucified and risen is in our midst,

and that God’s spirit is here to guide us.

Our treasured past,

our challenging present,

and our unknown future

are all united in the God whom St. Augustine called

the “beauty so ancient and so new.”

So let us love one another:

old timers and newcomers,

children and adults,

progressive and traditional.

Let us love one another with the same love

with which Christ has loved us.

We owe it to Mary and Theo.

We owe it to Ruby Strawberry.

We owe it to ourselves.

Easter 4

Readings: Acts 13:14, 43-52; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30

Today’s reading from John’s Gospel

is an echo of Jesus’ longer discourse in that Gospel

about himself as the good shepherd

who lays down his life for his sheep.

Taking up this image, Jesus says

“My sheep hear my voice;

I know them, and they follow me.”

Some scholars argue that the image Jesus is using here

reflects the custom in the ancient near east

of the members of a village

keeping their sheep in a common pen at night;

when morning comes

and it is time for the shepherd to take his sheep

out of the pen to pasture

he would call them with a distinctive cry

and they would separate themselves

from the other sheep and follow him.

A pretty neat trick, if you ask me.

I can’t even get my dog to come when I call.

In John’s Gospel Jesus uses this image

to indicate how those who are members of his flock

will recognize his call and follow him,

separating themselves from those who do not recognize his call.

It is an image shaped both the concrete situation

in which John’s Gospel was written –

a situation of conflict between the Church,

the synagogue,

and pagan culture –

as well as the perennial call of Christians

to live in a manner that distinguishes them

from the culture and values of the world around them.

Thinking about our own vocation

to hear the voice of Christ and to follow him,

we might interpret this passage as a call

to separate ourselves from a world

that seems in many ways hostile to the Christian faith,

and, in particular, to the Catholic Church.

As we watch the Church and her leaders

pilloried in the press on an almost daily basis

over the scandal of sexual abuse by the clergy

and the cover up of that abuse by Church leaders,

some have suggested that this experience is showing us

that the secular world is out to get the Church

and that now is the time to circle the wagons,

pull up the draw bridge,

batten down the hatches,

leave the common sheepfold

and follow Jesus our shepherd to some place

where we can be free from these attacks.

Let me say that I think it would be a mistake

to take such a lesson from today’s Gospel.

 

My reason for thinking it is a mistake

is not because I think that there are no people in our world

who are anxious to use the current scandals as an occasion

to settle long-standing grudges with the Catholic Church.

I think some – though probably a minority –

of the current critics of the Church fall into this category.

As the ancient proverb says,

“When you want to beat a dog, any stick will do,”

and in this case the stick is the misdeeds of Catholic clergy.

Nor do I think it is a mistake

because I think that Christians should in no sense

seek to distinguish themselves from the world around them

and its culture and values.

Rather, I think it is a mistake

because Christians should be distinguished

not by their withdrawal from the world into a sheltered enclave

but by the way in which they live in the midst of the world.

Our way of living as those who follow Christ the shepherd

should not be one in which we flee our critics

into the safe haven of self-congratulation or self-pity,

but rather should be a life

of fearless self-scrutiny and on-going conversion.

What should distinguish us from the world

is our ability to hear the truth about ourselves,

no matter who speaks it,

and to repent and reform when needed.

The Christian calling involves

hearing the voice of the shepherd

even in the voices of those who would criticize the Church,

and to follow the shepherd into the new life that is promised

to those who let the blood of the lamb wash away their sins.

In the image from the book of Revelation

of the lamb who is our shepherd,

we see that following the call of Christ

is not a fleeing of the world to a place of invulnerability

but precisely our willingness

to let ourselves be wounded as he was

so that he might heal us.

And we are able to face the truth about ourselves,

to let the truth wound us.

because we believe the promise of Christ:

“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.

No one can take them out of my hand.”

The recognition of painful truth about ourselves

is the path to resurrection.

Some criticism is unfair and uninformed;

some is even malicious.

But the distinguishing mark of Christians –

both as individuals and as a community –

is not to flee from criticism to some imagined place of safety,

but our willingness to listen for the voice of our shepherd

even in the words of our critics.

Because our willingness to hear

uncomfortable truths about ourselves

grows from our faith

that no one can take us out of God’s hands.

If we are following the voice of the shepherd,

we have nothing to fear from the truth,

no matter who may be speaking it.

Easter Sunday

Readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

“Seeing is believing.”

It is a phrase by which we express credulity:

“I didn’t think that Tide could get out stubborn stains,

but I saw an advertisement on TV that convinced me.”

It is also a phrase by which we express incredulity:

“Well, Congress may have passed healthcare reform,

but I’ll believe that it works when my insurance premiums go down.”

“Aunt Martha claims that UFOs land in Druid Hill Park every July 4th,

but I’ve never see it for myself.”

“You say that you are going to change,

but talk to me when you’ve been six-months sober.”

“Seeing is believing.”

We also sometimes apply this principle

when it comes to religious faith.

Students in my classes at Loyola

will often venture the opinion

that faith was easier for people in the time of Jesus

because God worked a lot more miracles back then,

and that if they could have seen a miracle –

Jesus healing someone

or walking on the water

or feeding the multitude –

then they could believe because, after all,

seeing is believing.

But the Gospels repeatedly make the point that,

at least when it comes to Jesus,

seeing is not believing,

at least not necessarily.

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus will work a miracle –

sometimes a quite spectacular miracle –

and some of those who see it believe,

but many of those who see it do not.

Indeed, in our journey through Holy Week

we have heard how the disciples,

those who had been with Jesus since Galilee

and who had seen his mighty works,

all abandon him in the end,

because though they had seen,

they had not believed.

Even in the face of the mightiest work of all,

Jesus’ resurrection,

seeing is not always believing.

John’s account of the resurrection tells us

that at the empty tomb

the beloved disciple “saw and believed,”

but this was not the case for everyone there in that garden.

Mary Magdalen, who finds the stone rolled away from the tomb

and who summons Peter and the beloved disciple,

tells them “They have taken the Lord from the tomb

and we don’t know where they put him.”

She doesn’t specify who “they” are,

but presumably she thinks that someone has stolen Jesus’ body.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the empty tomb is not believing.

Once the disciples return home, Mary stays at the tomb, weeping.

She peers into the tomb and sees two angels in white

who ask her why she weeps,

and the responds again that “they” have taken her Lord away.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the angels is not believing.

Then she turns and sees Jesus,

but she thinks that he must be the gardener

and she asks him if perhaps he is the one

who has taken away Jesus’ body.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the risen Jesus himself is not believing.

 

She must have turned away from him in disappointment,

because John tells us that when he speaks her name

she turns back to him.

She turns back because now, suddenly, she recognizes him,

and she says to him “rabbouni” – “my teacher.”

There is nothing there to see that was not there before,

but now Mary believes.

She believes because the risen Jesus calls her by name.

Gregory the Great wrote that it is as if Jesus were saying to her,

“Recognize him who recognizes you” (Homily 25).

Mary believes not because of what she sees

but because she stands before the one

who knows her to the very depths of her heart

and who reveals himself to her there.

The resurrection is surely something that happens to Jesus:

the one who was killed on Good Friday

is the one who lives on Easter morning;

his tomb is empty and his body is raised.

But it is also something that happens to his followers.

The resurrection involves not simply a change in Jesus,

but a change in those who, like Mary Magdalene,

will become witnesses to his resurrection.

Paul tells us in the letter to the Colossians

that we have died with Christ,

so that our life is hidden with Christ in God,

and that we have been raised with Christ,

so that we ought to seek that which is above.

Seeing is only believing if the one who sees is transformed.

Were we to stand at the empty tomb,

were we to see angels

and the risen Christ himself,

we would not, could not, believe

until the risen one calls us by our name,

summoning our belief

in the good news of the resurrection.

Jesus is truly risen,

but to know this we must be risen with him;

along with him we too must rise from death:

the death of sin and sorrow,

the death of doubt and disappointment.

To truly recognize the resurrected Lord

we must experience

not simply his rising from death,

but also our own.

Otherwise, the story of the resurrection

is just another tale

about something that supposedly happened

a long time ago

in a land far, far away.

During Lent we have focused on a phrase

from the letter to the Ephesians:

“Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened.”

We have prayed in this season of Lent

that God would help us to see

with the eyes of the heart,

that our vision might be transformed.

And now as Lent blossoms forth into Easter

we continue that prayer.

We don’t simply want to see,

but we want to see with the eyes of faith,

the eyes with which Mary Magdalene

was able to see the risen Jesus.

We want the faith that will allow us

to recognize him who recognizes us,

to know him as a living presence

in this community of faith:

in the words of scripture,

in the sacraments,

and in one another.

We want the faith that enlightens the eyes of our hearts.

Because seeing is not believing;

rather, it is believing that allows us to see.

Easter Vigil

Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:2; Exodus 14:15-15:1; Isaiah 54:5-15; 55:1-11; Baruch 3:9-15, 32-4:4; Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-28; Romans 6:3-11; Luke24:1-12

“Evening came, and morning followed. . .”

This phrase, along with the refrain “God saw how good it was,”

punctuates the story of creation

found in the opening chapter of the book of Genesis.

And throughout the history of God’s saving work,

by which God seeks to restore and perfect that creation,

we see evening and morning

punctuating the lives of God’s people.

In the book of Exodus, evening comes

as the Israelites camp at the edge of the Red Sea

with the Egyptian armies bearing down upon them,

intent upon their enslavement and destruction.

But God parts the sea for them and they pass over to safety

and as morning comes God closes the sea back,

destroying the Egyptians.

Evening came, and morning followed.

In the book of the prophet Isaiah,

after the long night of exile in Babylon,

the light of God’s love dawns upon the Israelites

as they return to their homeland,

and they are invited: “come to the water. . .

come, receive grain and eat. . . drink wine and milk.”

The night’s long fast is ended as the people of Israel

return to their promised land and its abundant fare.

Evening came, and morning followed.

The word of God comes to Ezekiel,

so that he might speak to God’s people,

to tell them that though they have defiled themselves

with deeds of darkness,

God will cleanse them,

and place within them a new heart and a new spirit,

hearts of living flesh in place of their stony hearts.

The night of God’s wrath

gives way to the light of forgiveness.

Evening came, and morning followed.

Dawn follows sunset,

morning follows evening,

down through history

until we come to that morning when,

“at daybreak on the first day of the week

the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus

took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.”

Day is breaking after what must have seemed to those women

to be one of the longest and darkest nights of their lives.

This is a morning that brings with it no joy, no hope,

but only the sorrowful but necessary task

of preparing the dead body

of the one in whom they had placed all their hopes.

For them, what lies dead in the tomb

is not simply the teacher from Nazareth

but hope itself.

Though the sun may crest the horizon,

and its light fall upon the world,

for these women it seems

that an evening has come

that no morning will follow;

they are dwelling in a darkness of despair

that the sun cannot dispel.

But evening and morning,

darkness and light,

despair and hope:

these are in the hands of God.

As the prophet Baruch reminds us,

God is the one “who dismisses the light, and it departs;

calls it, and it obeys trembling.”

On Easter morning,

at the mouth of an empty tomb,

the women learn what our Exultet proclaims,

that Jesus Christ is “the Morning Star which never sets. . .

that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,

and shed his peaceful light on all humankind.”

The women learn that Christ is risen from the tomb,

and their hope is risen with him.

Evening came, and morning followed,

and the hope that was resurrected with Christ on Easter morning

is a light that will never set.

As Paul says, “Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;

death no longer has power over him.”

And we know that this is true

because this history of salvation is our history as well.

The death and resurrection of Christ

is one that we mystically share in baptism.

“If we have died with Christ,

we believe that we shall also live with him.”

This is the mystery into which Laura will be baptized,

the mystery of Christ’s saving death and resurrection.

This is the mystery that Dan will reaffirm

in his reception into the Church.

Of course, as all of us who are baptized know –

and as Laura no doubt suspects –

after our rebirth in Christ

evening still comes

and morning still follows.

Even for those who have died and been raised with Christ in baptism

there is the daily dying and rising,

an evening and morning,

that remains the fabric of the Christian life.

Yet in the resurrection of Christ God has given us,

like those women at the tomb at daybreak,

a rebirth of hope.

And so we live, with the alternation of

evening and morning,

woe and wellbeing,

sorrow and joy,

but always knowing that Christ’s victory over death

has changed the world forever,

so that even in the darkest night

the light is still with us,

even if we can only see it

with the eyes of faith, hope and love.

“At daybreak on the first day of the week. . .” –

on the first day,

the day on which God said “let there be light” –

God speaks again:

let the morning of light and life

follow the evening of darkness and death.

Evening has come and morning has followed,

and it is the first day once again:

the victory of light over darkness;

the victory of life over death.

Christ has risen!

Death is defeated!

Let there be light!

Palm Sunday (C)

Readings: Luke 19:28-40

Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

So, who killed Jesus?

Who is responsible for his death?

Of course we believe that the death of Jesus

is somehow part of God’s plan for human salvation,

but we might still ask about the human actors in this drama.

This has been a question of particularly intense interest

among Christian theologians and others

since the 1950s when,

in the wake of the slaughter of millions of Jews by the Nazis,

Christians began to reassess the long-held view

that the Jewish people as a whole

were collectively responsible for Jesus’ death

and therefore, as a people, cursed by God.

For Catholics, this process of reassessment eventually led in 1965

to the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate,

which declared that the Jewish people did not share

collective or hereditary guilt for Jesus’ death

and that “the Jews should not be presented

as rejected or accursed by God.”

Which then leaves us with the question:

if not the Jews, then who?

Where can we lay the blame?

Whom can we hold responsible?

Today’s passion Gospel from Luke

seems to be of limited help here,

since the story it tells is one

in which responsibility is passed around like a hot potato.

The leaders of the Jewish people

would like Jesus out of the picture because he is a blasphemer

and because he has just enough of a following

that his disciples might cause serious trouble

that would bring down the wrath of the Romans on the whole city.

But they don’t want to alienate the crowds

who had greeted Jesus upon his entry into Jerusalem,

so they would like the Roman governor, Pilate,

to take care of the problem.

Pilate does not see Jesus as much of a threat,

and he waffles and vacillates and hems and haws,

not because he wants to acquit an innocent man,

but because he wants someone else to make the decision for him.

So he sends him to Herod,

the ruler of Jesus’ home province of Galilee.

Herod is initially curious, but eventually disappointed

when Jesus won’t perform tricks for him,

so he sends him back to Pilate.

Finally, Pilate, strengthened by Herod’s contempt for Jesus

and incited by the crowd

and the advice of the religious leaders of the people,

agrees to have Jesus executed.

So who is responsible?

Whom can we blame?

There seems to be plenty of blame to go around,

and lots of plausible candidates to hang it on.

But it is unsettling not to have a clear scapegoat to blame,

someone whom I can clearly identify as evil,

the sort of monster who would do the kind of things

I would never do.

It was so much clearer when it was “them” – the Jews –

who were responsible.

It is unsettling not to have a scapegoat,

because it leaves me open to asking myself

if perhaps I might not be all that different

from those who passed Jesus around like a hot potato.

Perhaps I too, like the Jewish leaders,

want those who disturb my peace simply to go away.

Perhaps I too, like Pilate,

am unwilling to act on what I know is true and good.

Perhaps I too, like Herod,

want only the sort of savior who will perform tricks at my behest.

Those responsible for the death of Jesus were not monsters

who did something that I would never do;

they were ordinary people who did what I do on a daily basis.

Their sins are my sins.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world:

enlighten the eyes of our hearts and have mercy on us.

Lent 4

Readings: Joshua 5:9a, 10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 151-3, 11-32

I had a homily that I prepared and delivered
yesterday at the 4:00 Mass
that was, if I do say so myself,
spiritually rich and theologically astute (as usual).
But between then and now something happened.
When meeting last night with our RCIA candidates, Laura and Dan,
Laura asked about the latest wave of reports coming out of Europe
of cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy,
and the perhaps worse crime of covering such things up by bishops.
So we talked and, as usual, I had no particularly good answers.
I had no good answer to the question of why one would want
to become part of a Church that would allow such things.
I had no good answer to the question of how one reconciles
the joyous and life-giving aspects of the Church
with what can only be called
the dark and demonic power of evil
that seems to infect the Church
and not to be going away any time very soon.
It is beginning to feel like a nightmare
from which I cannot wake up,
and I find myself having to face the ugly truth
that this is no bad dream, but reality.

And the reality is that the Church has, like the prodigal son,
wandered into the distant land of sin and alienation from God.
As someone who studies the history of the Church and Theology,
I am well aware that in every age
we, the Church, have fallen short of God’s will for us,
and there have, believe it or not, been eras
when the leadership of the Church
was even more corrupt, more venal, more scandalous
than it is today.
I am also well aware that matters are complex,
and the media often doesn’t get things quite right
when it comes to the Church,
wanting a sensational story
rather than the complex and messy truth.
But such historical perspective
and such awareness of complexity
are little comfort when one reads yet again,
not simply of priests and deacons and religious
who have used their status to abuse the vulnerable,
but also of bishops and other leaders
who conspire to hide these crimes.

This is not a bad dream from which we can awaken,
but a horrible reality that must be changed.
Indeed, the dream seems to be
our illusion that everything is alright.
So we ask ourselves,
what hope is there for change?
What hope can we find that the Church will,
like the prodigal son,
come to her senses and realize
that she has been longing for the food of swine
and say, “I shall get up and go to my father
and I shall say to him,
‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I no longer deserve to be called your son.’”?
Every time I think the Church has learned this lesson,
every time I think we have turned the corner,
I find myself back in the distant land,
feeding the swine, far from God.

We seem unable to come to our senses,
unable to recognize the truth of our situation,
unable to wake from our illusion
that the problems have been fixed.

In all this I can only cling to the promise of Christ
that the gates of hell
shall not prevail against the Church –
despite the best efforts of her leaders.
I cling to the belief that the Church is the body of Christ
and that we are joined to Christ our head
and that his graces can still flow into this body
despite our sins and failings.
I keep returning to one of the more enigmatic statements
by Paul in our second reading today:
“for our sake [God] made him to be sin who did not know sin,
so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

The entire context of the parable of the prodigal son in Luke’s gospel
is a controversy with the scribes and Pharisees
over Jesus’ willingness to share a table with sinners,
his unwillingness to dissociate himself from those
who live their lives alienated from God’s covenant.
Jesus’ solidarity with sinners means that no land is so distant
that the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself
is not there with us.
Jesus has joined himself to humanity,
becoming like us in all things but sin.
But though he himself remains faithful to God and does not sin,
he still, as it were, knows our sin from the inside.
Indeed, he not only knows our sin, he suffers it.
In his cross, he knows both the anguish of the sinner
and of the sinner’s victim.
He knows the evasions of the abuser,
the crooked ways of the human heart,
and the pain of the abused child.

I have no adequate answers to the hard questions of Laura and Dan,
no ready reply when asked how the Church – indeed, how God –
can allow such things.
But I do know that Jesus Christ has made the journey
into the distant land of sin,
not just to share the misery of our alienation from God,
but to be light in that land of darkness,
to reveal our sin and to awaken us from our illusions,
so that we may come to ourselves
and say “I will get up and go to my Father.”
In the distant land of alienation from God,
the land of hunger and death,
he is the one who arises to return to his Father
and in his returning he can bring us back with him.

During Lent we have been focusing
on Paul’s exhortation in the letter to the Ephesians:
“Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened.”
I pray this even more fervently today:
O God, enlighten the eyes of my heart
so that I may understand myself and you;
enlighten the eyes of your Church’s heart,
so that we might arise with Christ this Easter
and return to your embrace. Amen.

Lent 1

Readings: Deut. 26:4-10; Rom. 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

In our first reading, from the book of Deuteronomy,

we hear Moses giving instructions to the Israelites

on how to celebrate the offering of their first fruits at harvest time.

Given that today is the (long-delayed) beginning

of the Archbishop’s annual appeal,

the temptation to focus this homily

on the incredible generosity of the Israelites in their giving,

and to try to draw some contemporary parallel,

is almost overwhelming.

But, strengthened by our Lord’s example in today’s Gospel reading,

I will resist that temptation

and simply say, “Let those who have ears to hear. . .”

Instead, I would draw your attention

to the narrative that is ritually recited

prior to the offering of the gifts.

It is as if he Israelites must remind themselves of who they are

before they bring the fruit of their life and labor before the Lord.

“My father was a wandering Aramean

who went down to Egypt with a small household

and lived there as an alien.

But there he became a nation great,

strong, and numerous.”

The Israelites – God’s covenant people – are to recall

how they left the land God had given them

and lived as aliens in Egypt, and prospered for a while.

“When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us,

imposing hard labor upon us,

we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,

and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.”

The Israelites are to recall

how they came to be oppressed by the Egyptians,

and how, though they had forgotten God,

God did not forget them.

“He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand

and outstretched arm,

with terrifying power, with signs and wonders;

and bringing us into this country,

he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.”

The Israelites are to recall how God

saved them from their oppression

and brought them to the land

that has produced the fruit that they now offer to God.

It is only then,

when they have remembered who they are, and whose they are,

that they can freely offer back to God

the gifts that God has first given to them.

Why this ritual recitation?

Why tell over again the story

that they all probably know pretty well any way?

Well, it is easy to forget who you are.

The Israelites were constantly tempted to think

that they were the people of other gods

rather than the People of the one true God,

who had saved them from oppression.

And for us, too, it is easy to forget who we are.

Not, of course, that we forget our names;

but with all the clamor of the world and its allurements,

we can forget the deepest truth about ourselves –

that we are God’s people and disciples of God Son –

and begin to think that we are something else:

maybe a wonder-worker who can, and must, solve everyone’s problems

by turning stones into bread;

maybe a power-broker who can, and must, break a few eggs

to get done what needs to be done;

maybe even a minor celebrity who can, and must, bask

in the admiration of others.

In our Gospel today we hear how Jesus resisted the temptation

to think of himself in these ways

because he remembered who he truly was:

the Messiah who must give himself over

to the way of cross and resurrection.

And we can resist these same temptations

if we remember who we are.

This is one way to think about what Lent means.

Lent is a time to remember

that we are God’s people and disciples of God’s son.

It is a time in while, by our disciplines

of prayer and fasting and alms-giving,

we let God teach us once again who we are and whose we are.

In the RCIA, Lent is known as

“The Period of Purification and Enlightenment.”

During this time our catechumen, Laura,

and our candidate for full communion, Dan,

will undertake the final period of their preparation

for reception of the Easter sacraments.

It is, as the Rite of Christian Initiation says,

a time intended “to enlighten . . . [their] minds and hearts . . .

with a deeper knowledge of Christ the Savior” (RCIA §139).

For it is in coming to know Christ more deeply

that they will come to know who they really are.

For they will know that it was for them that Christ gave himself over

to the way of cross and resurrection.

For us, too, Lent is a time of purification and enlightenment.

Perhaps we are used to thinking of it as a time of purification,

when we try to wean ourselves away from bad habits

by giving stuff up.

But it is also, and even more so, a time of enlightenment,

a time in which we seek to let God’s light shine in our hearts,

by removing from our lives those things that cast the shadows

that keep us from seeing the deepest, truest,

and most real thing about ourselves:

the fact that God has called us to be God’s people

and disciples of God’s Son.

During Lent, whether praying at Mass or praying in private,

ask God to give you the light you need

to know yourself as you really are,

as God knows you to be.

So as we pray during this period of enlightenment

for those who are preparing

to receive the Easter sacraments,

we pray also for ourselves,

that God will enlighten the eyes of our hearts.

Lent is a time to turn away from the false images of ourselves

that we are tempted to take as true –

those images that would seem to make us greater than we are,

and those images that would seem to make us less than we are –

so that we can see ourselves as we truly are:

those wandering souls whom God has heard

and rescued from the oppression of sin

and brought into a land flowing with milk and honey.

Then, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened,

remembering who we are and whose we are,

we can offer back to God the gift of our life and labor

that God so generously gives to us each day.

The Baptism of the Lord

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

“Are you saved?”

Have you ever had anyone ask you that?

It is a question that tends to make Catholics nervous.

Many years ago, when I was young and foolish,

I spent a summer in Alaska working at a seafood processing plant.

If that in itself is not sufficient evidence that I was young and foolish,

I should add that, at the end of my summer in Alaska,

I decided that I would hitchhike home to South Carolina.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time

(did I mention that I was young and foolish?).

And in many ways, it was very educational.

One of the things I learned

is that when traveling across a vast space, like the Canadian plains.

you can easily lose any sense of forward progress,

especially when it is your fifth consecutive hour

standing on the side of the highway with your thumb out.

I also learned that one group of people who habitually pick up hitchhikers

are Christians who are on the lookout for potential converts.

I met several of these folks on this particular journey,

but one who stands out in my mind was a Baptist minister

who picked me up somewhere outside of Medicine Hat, Alberta,

and took me all the way to Regina, Saskatchewan.

This was a journey of several hours

in which our conversation consisted pretty much of a single topic:

was I saved?

He would ask, and I would reply,

“Well, I don’t really know. I’d like to think I am trying.”

He would in turn reply, “If you were saved, you would know it,

because you would believe in Jesus as your personal Lord and savior.”

To which I would say,

“Well, I believe in God and Jesus, but I still don’t know if I will be saved.

A lot could happen between now and when I die.”

And he would respond, “If you’re saved, you know it.”

And so forth and so on,

from Medicine Hat through Swift Current and Moose Jaw, on to Regina –

a conversation going nowhere at great length.

So, are you saved?

This might seem to be a simple case

of a classic difference between Catholics and Protestants:

Protestants believe that they are saved by grace through faith,

once and for all in a decisive moment,

while Catholics believe you need to do something in addition to having faith,

something we call “good works,”

and that until your good works are totaled up at the end of your life

you can’t really be sure of your salvation.

But if this were really what we believe,

then why would we be reading in our second reading today

that “the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared,

not because of any righteous deed we had done but because of his mercy”?

In fact, it has always been the teaching of the Catholic Church

that our salvation depends totally upon God’s grace:

we are saved simply through the generous love of God

and not through any righteous deed – any good work – that we might do.

So why are we so nervous about the question “are you saved?”

Why can’t we rest easy with simply answering “yes”?

I would like to think that our Catholic anxiety

over this question of salvation

grows out of an at least implicit awareness

that the real question with regard to salvation

is not “what should I do?” but “who should I be?”

The question is not whether I should perform

some sort of inward, mental action called “having faith,”

or some other sort of outward, physical action called “performing a good work,”

that God will reward by saving me.

The question is rather one about who it is that I am in the eyes of God.

The question is whether the kindness and generous love of God

is transforming me into someone

who can live fully in God’s presence,

and thus share in the eternal life that is God.

Our faith is that the answer to this question is “yes”;

we believe that God’s grace is transforming us

into what Paul calls “heirs in hope of eternal life.”

But note that we are heirs “in hope” –

our certainty is the certainty of hope,

which is quite different

from the kind of certainty we might have in science or mathematics.

We have a keen awareness of ourselves as works-in-progress,

people on a journey,

and whatever assurance we have of salvation

is found in our faith

that God’s grace is sufficient to bring that work to completion,

to guide our journey to its destination.

Paul singles out baptism as a key moment

in our becoming heirs in hope of eternal life.

In Jesus’ own baptism, recounted in our Gospel today,

the Holy Spirit descends on him

and a voice speaks from heaven,

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Likewise for us, baptism is what Paul calls “the bath of rebirth”

in which we are reborn with a new identity

as God’s sons and daughters,

an identity that we do not fashion for ourselves,

but that is bestowed on us by God,

through the Spirit of renewal that, as Paul puts it,

“is richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior.”

But the grace that God gives through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit

takes time – a lifetime – to work itself into our bones.

Our new identity typically takes shape slowly within us:

it is a journey far longer

than the journey from Medicine Hat, Alberta, to Regina, Saskatchewan.

The very way in which the Church celebrates the sacraments of initiation

recognizes this.

In the case of children,

the identity given in baptism must be nurtured and developed

through the other sacraments,

not just until adulthood, but over the course of a lifetime.

For those who are baptized as adults,

their new identity is not just nurtured after baptism

but must also be prepared for prior to baptism.

This is the point of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults or RCIA:

to assist adults who desire baptism or the other sacraments of initiation

in preparing themselves to live the new identity God will give them.

Paul puts this rather dramatically

in terms of God “training us to reject Godless ways and worldly desires.”

We might put it, somewhat less dramatically,

in terms of those who ask for baptism

seeking to live a life of greater spiritual depth,

a life more deeply rooted in God’s love and mercy,

given to us in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit,

a new life that may well involve unlearning an old way of life.

In the Rites of Christian Initiation we the Church

assist them with our prayers and our love

as they undertake the arduous task

of learning to live lives of faith, hope and love.

For all of us, the task of living the identity given to us through grace in baptism

is one that is on-going.

We should ask God each day in prayer

to make us more faithful, more hopeful, and more loving.

Sometimes, it is true, we can see little in the way of forward progress,

not unlike hitchhiking across the Canadian plains,

yet in our faith we trust that God has already given us

the grace to finish the journey,

the grace that is gradually transforming us into those

who can live fully in God’s eternal presence.

“Are you saved?”

Let us answer with the confidence of the early Christian poet who wrote:

"I trusted, consequently I was at rest;

because trustful is the one in whom I trusted.

And immortal life embraced me, and kissed me.

And from that life is the Spirit which is within me.

And it cannot die because it is life" (Odes of Solomon 28:1-3, 7-8).