17th Week of Ordinary Time--Saturday (St. Ignatius Loyola)

Readings: Leviticus 25:1, 8-17; Matthew 14:1-12

What has always struck me 
about the story of the death of John the Baptist
is just how tawdry the whole thing is.
This man of God is killed 
because Herod’s step-daughter,
who is also apparently his niece, 
performs a dance that so delights 
the guests as his birthday party
(I’ll leave it to your imagination 
as to why it might have been delightful)
that Herod engages in what medieval romances
called a “rash boon”:
you promise to grant whatever someone asks,
having no idea of what that might be.
So this girl, manipulated by her mother,
whose feelings have been hurt by John,
brings about John’s death.
It’s got everything that is wrong with our world in it:
deception and violence, power and pettiness.
It shows us how the world all too often works
when it is in the hands of the powerful,
as it always seems to be.

But our first reading gives us a different vision
of how the world might work.
The year of jubilee pushes the rest button
on a world that has been divided up 
according to the principle that the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer.
It is a reminder that the world is God’s gift 
to the whole human race,
not just to the rich and powerful.
It is a reminder to not deal unfairly
but to stand in reverent fear of your God.
This vision of the jubilee year,
the year of forgiveness and freedom, 
is something that the Church enacts in her Eucharist,
which is not a feast, like that held at the house of Herod,
to which only the rich and powerful are invited.
It is the wedding feast of the lamb
to which no amount of money,
no degree of power can gain admittance,
but only the words, “Lord I am not worthy.”
It is the feast in which we celebrate
the liberty found in humbling ourselves before God,
in acknowledging that we are all beggars.

St. Ignatius Loyola,
whom we commemorate today,
devoted his life to helping souls
by guiding them to true liberty.
His entire spirituality was directed toward the jubilee
in which true freedom is given to us through Christ
so that we might choose to fight under his banner
in the cause of God’s kingdom.
St. Ignatius celebrated the Eucharist daily 
with tears of gratitude,
because he knew it was the feast of true freedom
in which we give to God from God’s own gifts to us,
and receive back from God 
the flesh and blood of God himself.
So let us today make St. Ignatius’s prayer our own:
“Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, 
my memory, my understanding, my whole will, 
all that I have and all that I possess. 
You gave it all to me, Lord; 
I give it all back to you. 
Do with it as you will, according to your good pleasure. 
Give me your love and your grace; 
for with this I have all that I need.”

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Kings 4:42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6:1-15

A few weeks ago, 
my wife and I were driving 
through the hills around Harper’s Ferry,
listening to National Public Radio,
as college professors tend to do.
They were reporting on the on-going conflict
between Ethiopia and Eritrea,
which has been raging for eight months
and has led to severe and widespread famine.

As our car made its way 
along the winding road,
the radio station kept fading out,
lost in a wave of static,
and another radio station kept fading in.
This was one of those evangelical religious stations
that college professors tend not to listen to.
The signal was buried in static,
and hard to make out,
but after a minute or so
I realized that this station was discussing 
the story of Jesus’ feeding of the multitude,
the story that we have just heard in today’s Gospel reading.
As we wove our ways through the hills,
the two stories wove their way around each other:
at one moment reports of war and famine 
in a distant part of the world,
in the next moment the ancient tale
of Jesus feeding the hungry multitude,
stories bouncing back and forth 
in a dialogue between conflict and communion,
between hunger and plenty.

What gets said in such a dialogue?
What does the story of Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes
have to say to a world of war and famine?
Certainly it speaks a word of rebuke 
to the story of the world’s sin,
the story of the way that the world all too often operates.
It presents a striking contrast to the violence and hunger
that is found not only in distant foreign lands
but right here in our own city,
where most years we average close to a murder a day,
and one in four residents lives in a “food desert,”
without ready access to places to purchase healthy food.
And to such physical violence and hunger we must add
the spiritual violence of various forms 
of factionalism and discrimination and racism—
the refusal to see the image of God 
present in those who are different—
and the spiritual hunger of those who are fed a steady diet
of empty aspirations for fame or wealth or physical sensation
all the while starving for the bread of life
that only God can give
and only faith can receive.

Everything about the feeding of the multitudes
stands as a rebuke to these realities that afflict our world.
The story of the feeding of the multitudes
is the story of human beings caught up
in the goodness of God
and receiving abundantly from that goodness.
It is a story that interrupts 
the world’s story of hunger and violence,
a story that pierces through 
the static of sin,
the static of the world’s business as usual,
and says to us that something else is possible,
that something else is even now making itself present
through the power of God taken flesh in Jesus Christ.

And yet, so often 
we can only dimly perceive this new reality;
it hovers at the edge of our awareness 
like ghostly voices on the airwaves,
obscured by the world’s static
and only discernible if we play close attention.
And even when we see it,
we often misperceive it.
The gospel-writer John concludes this story 
of divine abundance made present in Jesus 
with the statement:
“Since Jesus knew that they were going to come 
and carry him off to make him king,
he withdrew again to the mountain alone.”
The multitude saw 
the power of Jesus to satisfy hungers,
but could not see that this was a power
different from that of earthly kings.
As Jesus will later say to Pontius Pilate,
“My kingdom does not belong to this world,”
and when the multitude in Jerusalem hears this
they will say, “Crucify him…
We have no king but Caesar.”

The power of God to defeat the world’s violence,
to feed the world’s hunger,
takes flesh in the one who is rejected and crucified.
And God wills this to be so 
because God knows how we are drawn to worldly power.
We believe that violence will end
once we have a ruler who can crush our enemies.
We believe that our hungers will cease
once we have a leader 
who can get the economy humming along.
But Jesus has no armies, no police force, 
no Federal Reserve, no Internal Revenue Service;
he has only five barley loaves and two fish
and the power of crucified love.
But for those with ears to hear,
ears that can discern it through the static of the world,
this is the true story of peace and abundance.

This is what it means to live the life of faith.
It is to see in the sharing of gifts 
in our Eucharistic celebration
the abundant banquet that God offers us 
in Jesus’ body and blood.
It is to see in our small efforts to feed the hungry 
in our Loaves and Fishes ministry
a sign of God’s abundance breaking through
the static of the world’s violence and hunger.
These actions might seem like small things—
as small as five barley loaves and two fish—
but if Christ takes them into his hands
to offer them to the Father,
they can become the seeds of God’s kingdom sown in us.

The story of that kingdom is being told in countless way,
interrupting the story of the world’s sin.
Listen for it.
Don’t let the world’s static obscure it.
And may God have mercy on us all.

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Amos 7:12-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13

The opening of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians,
which we have heard today in our second reading, 
is a magnificent act of praise and thanksgiving to God
for the grace he has shown in calling Christians
into his plan for the world’s salvation,
a plan that is in some mysterious way
older than creation itself,
a plan that is carried out through the blood of Christ
and the grace that he has lavished upon us,
a plan in which the entire universe to shown
to find its purpose and meaning 
in Christ and his redemptive work.
It is an amazing vision 
of the cosmic significance of Jesus Christ
and of our place within the eternal plan of God,
we who have been created and redeemed 
to show forth God’s glory.

On this day, in this glorious cathedral,
that might not seem like so implausible an idea.
Here a vast multitude can gather—
people from all walks of life,
from the humble to the great,
the simple to the wise—
in beauty of sight and sound 
that gives some sense 
of the cosmic sweep
of the drama of salvation
and the riches of God’s grace 
lavished upon us in Christ.

But the church in Ephesus to whom Paul wrote
was not a vast multitude.
It was at most a few dozen people. 
They did not gather in a magnificent structure
but probably in the home
of whomever had the most space.
Their worship, 
while no doubt both solemn and joyful, 
would, by comparison with ours,
have seemed simple and unadorned:
reading scriptures, 
praying for the needs of the world, 
and, in the broken bread and the shared cup of blessing, 
celebrating the Lord’s death until he comes.
And those few dozen who gathered 
were not a particularly impressive bunch:
as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 
“Not many of you were wise by human standards, 
not many were powerful, 
not many were of noble birth” (1 Cor. 1:26).
What is so striking throughout Paul’s letters
is how he sees the vast scope and glory of God’s work
in such small and inauspicious gatherings.
Their small numbers 
and humble surroundings
and unadorned worship
do not prevent him from seeing,
through the eyes of faith,
that those whom God has called in Christ
are at the center of a drama
that concerns every single creature
in every corner of the universe.

To non-Christians in the first century,
if there were any who noticed 
a movement as tiny and marginal as Christianity,
Paul’s words would have seemed insane.
After all, it was pagan Rome that had an empire
spanning the known world;
it was pagan Rome that had impressive temples
and elaborate religious rituals and festivals;
it was pagan Rome that had an obvious claim
to be the chief actor in a drama of cosmic scope:
its armies triumphant,
its rulers made into gods.
Paul’s belief in the cosmic glory of Christ
would have seemed clearly delusional.

Jesus, sending out his disciples two-by-two,
without food or sack or money in their belts
or even a second tunic,
probably also seemed delusional.
He does not allow those he sends to preach
to take even the most rudimentary necessities 
for their journey
or the task of preaching God’s reign.
Yet Jesus sends them anyway,
equipping them with
a share in his own authority
over the cosmic forces
that have rebelled against God,
to heal the sick and cast out demons.
He sends them to show forth 
in their words and actions
the reign of God breaking into our world.
For may it was no doubt unsurprising 
that one who was so foolish
would have ended up on a Roman cross.
The cross, Paul tells us, 
is scandal and foolishness
to those without the eyes of faith,
but for those called and chosen by God
from the foundation of the world
it is redemption and forgiveness.

And what of us?
What do we see?
Do we who sit in this glorious cathedral
see with the eyes of faith the glory of the gospel? 
It is a great gift of God that we have inherited
a grand space and beautiful liturgies
that can speak to us of the cosmic drama 
of which grace has made us partakers.
But while such beauty can aid us in the life of faith,
we must never forget the true beauty that is found 
only in redemption through the blood of Jesus,
beauty that the eyes of faith can discern
even in the horror of the cross.
If we, like St. Paul, truly see with the eyes of faith
then we will know that, 
even should the Church be stripped
of all outward manifestations of grandeur,
she still exists for the praise of his glory, 
for she is still filled
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.
For those with the eyes of faith,
the gospel was glorious 
before there were magnificent cathedrals
and it will remain glorious 
should the time of cathedrals pass away.

So let us pray that in all circumstances—
in plenty and in poverty,
in triumph and in tragedy,
in a multitude and in a little flock—
we might see at work in us
what Paul saw at work 
in the humble church at Ephesus:
the power of Christ crucified and risen
transforming the very fabric of the cosmos
through the work of the Spirit,
in accord with God’s eternal plan.
May we remain faithful to our calling
and may God have mercy on us all.