Easter 4

Readings: Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18

VIDEO

This has been a tough week 

for Catholics in Baltimore,
as the prospect begins to sink in 
that the Church in the city could go from 
sixty-one parishes 
to twenty-one.
It has been especially tough
for those parishes that, 
in the current Seek the City proposal,
are slated to be closed and merged
into other parishes.
But even in parishes that are likely 
to remain as worship sites
there is a pervasive sense 
of shock and grief and, yes, anger
at the idea of nearly two thirds 
of the parishes in the city closing.
Fallen human nature being what it is,
some may be gloating that their parish
has, as they see it, “survived” 
where others have not,
but that is generally not 
what I have heard from people.
The Catholic community in Baltimore 
is tightly knit:
we know each other’s parishes;
we have worshipped at them over the years
at Baptisms and Communions and Confirmations; 
we have admired the beauty
of their buildings and their people;
we are, as today’s Gospel puts it, 
one flock with one shepherd,
Jesus Christ himself, 
and so we bear each other’s sorrows
and share each other’s loss.

Many may feel that the Church
is abandoning the city,
like the bad shepherds of whom Jesus speaks: 
those who work merely for pay 
and have no concern for the sheep,
who see a wolf coming and run away,
leaving the sheep to be scattered.
Let me say that while this feeling
is understandable,
I don’t think that is what is going on.
Perhaps I have simply, as they say,
drunk the Koolaid,
but I do believe that, 
while I may agree or disagree 
with this or that 
specific recommendation,
the Seek the City process 
has been a good faith effort 
to address the needs of a shrinking flock
and laying the groundwork for the flock to grow.

But let’s not let the shepherds 
off the hook entirely.
I will not deny that we clergy
must bear our measure of blame
for the state of the Church in the city today,
and for people’s skepticism 
regarding anything we say about it.
Obviously, the abuse scandals 
have driven away members of the flock
and engendered cynicism 
among those who remain.
But also, and even more,
we clergy have all too often 
simply not risen to the task 
of forging new forms of ministry 
amid depopulation and disinvestment,
high crime rates and pervasive poverty;
we have ourselves succumbed 
to despair and inaction and cynicism
at the sight of emptying pews.
And, at the heart of it all,
we have sometimes 
simply not loved God enough
to lay down our lives for God’s flock.
And for all this I can do no more than, 
like Job, to repent in dust and ashes.

But while, as always, 
there is plenty of blame to go round,
and while we should be honest 
about our failures,
laying blame and wallowing in failure 
are not what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about.
It is about the stone rejected by the builders
that becomes the cornerstone of a new Temple
in which we worship God in Spirit and in truth.
It is about the love of God bestowed on us
even while we lay dead in our sins,
making us God’s children.
It is about the assurance 
that we have a good shepherd
who will never abandon us to the wolves,
a shepherd who lays down his life for us,
a shepherd who takes up that life again
so that we can be taken up with him
into the glory of eternal light.

People need to be allowed to feel 
the darkness of this moment;
they need to be allowed to grieve
and even to feel anger.
But if we are to be Christians,
darkness, grief, and anger
cannot be the final word.
In the midst of darkness,
we cannot forget the promise of light,
the light that streams 
from the risen body of Christ.
St. John writes in our second reading,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.”
We can and should look at demographic trends
and population patterns in the city,
measure pew space and count numbers,
think through what is possible 
and what is plausible,
but the fact is that we don’t know
what God’s plans are 
for the Church in Baltimore:
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
And it is hard to live without knowing.
But we do know we are God’s children now;
we know that we have a good shepherd;
we know that a stone rejected
has become the cornerstone;
we know that God brings life out of death
for we have met the risen one on the road
and felt our hearts—
weighed down with darkness, grief, and anger—
burn within us with the fire of his love.
We know that he is risen,
and we are risen with him,
and nothing can separate us from his love.
This is the faith that will carry us through
the difficult months ahead,
for this is the faith that will carry us
through death into eternal life.

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Preached at Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore.

So here we are,
embarking on these three
most holy of days.
As disciples of Jesus Christ
we gather with him once again,
just as his first disciples did 
on the night before 
he was handed over
to suffering and to death.
We gather with him once again
in an anxious hour of uncertainty.
We gather with him once again
to eat a meal like those in flight
into an unknown future.
We gather with him once again
in a moment when memory 
reaches back into the past
to retrieve hope 
in God’s power to save.

But what if memory is not enough?
Our human memory 
is prone to fading and forgetting,
and to nostalgia and confabulation,
and even when we remember well
we can never remember well enough
to stop the flow of time,
to make our lives secure from the future 
that bears down upon us.
For those first disciples,
the memory of God’s salvation
of their ancestors
could not forestall what was to come,
could not forestall betrayal and denial
and scattering and cross and tomb.
Our memory is not enough.

But thanks be to God 
that tonight is not about our memory
but about God’s memory,
not about how we remember Jesus
but about how Jesus remembers us.
It is true that in our Eucharist 
we remember God’s saving work
and the night of Jesus’ handing over.
But more than that,
we ask God to remember us:
to remember the Church throughout the world,
to remember us who gather in this place,
to remember those who have died,
those who once gathered with us 
but who have now passed beyond our sight:
Sr. Marge, Frank Callahan, Larry and Mary Alma Lears, 
Vince Gomes, Tom Ward, John and Mary Jane O’Brien,
Henry Tom, Frank Hodges, Kathy Hoskins, 
Shirley Allen, Irene Van Sant and Jim Curran,
and so many more.
Tonight, as in every Eucharist, 
Christ re-member us,
makes us his members once again:
he gathers us from our scatteredness 
and knits us once more into his body—
Corpus Christi.

“He loved his own in the world.” 
Because Jesus remembers each one of us, 
he holds us together in his heart,
and in that heart we find a refuge
from an anxious, unknown future.
He treasures us in his heart,
which like our hearts suffers human pain
but which also burns with the love of God,
burns with the primal love 
that called the cosmos out of nothingness,
burns with the eternal love
that knows no shadow of change.
We are his most beloved possession
and he will not let us go.

“He loved his own in the world 
and he loved them to the end.”
Though in that anxious, uncertain hour
his disciples did not know what was coming,
they must have sensed that the end was near.
But this is the Good News
of these three days:
the end is not the end 
if he loves us.
And he does love us.
The whole meaning 
of these most holy of days
that we are celebrating
is that the end is not the end.
Beyond the tomb there lies
the risen glory of the lamb once slain,
a glory that we cannot imagine,
and in our moments of deepest distress
can scarcely believe.
But believe we do.
We believe that beyond the end
we will find the fire of that love, 
human and divine,
that burns without end
within the heart of Jesus.
We believe that beyond the end 
there lies new life,
a new life we live already 
through the sacramental signs
that Jesus gives to us this night.
We believe that beyond the end
there lies the day of the Lord,
the day of resurrection,
the day whose sun knows no setting.

Jesus loved them to the end
and Jesus loved them through the end.
Held within the heart of Jesus,
he carried them with him 
through the end that would seem 
to have shattered their communion 
with him and with each other
to call them once again
into the adventure of discipleship,
the adventure of life with him, 
of life in him and with each other.

St. John wrote, “Beloved, 
we are God’s children now; 
what we shall be 
has not yet been revealed.”
We cannot see beyond the end.
But though we cannot see we can still believe,
and we do believe that because he loves us—
to the end and through the end—
the end is not the end,
but simply one more step
in the adventure of life 
with God and with each other.
And so we pray,
all good thieves together,
“Jesus, remember us
when you come into your kingdom.”

Lent 5 (Third Scrutiny)

Readings: Ezekiel 37:12-14; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45

VIDEO

With the story of the raising of Lazarus,
we find ourselves arrived 
in our Lenten pilgrimage
at the edge of the mystery.
We find ourselves confronted 
with a final sign
pointing us toward 
our destination and our destiny:
the incomprehensible love of God
poured out into the world
in the cross and resurrection of Jesus,
and the promise of sharing 
in God’s own deathless life.
We find ourselves at the place 
where the one who is 
resurrection and life
stands at the place of death 
and cries, “come out!”

This is the time, 
this is the place
where the promise of God 
heard in our first reading
resounds once again in our ears:
“O my people, I will open your graves 
and have you rise from them 
and bring you back to the land of Israel.”
I will open your graves—
graves of sin,
graves of sorrow,
graves of doubt—
and bring you back to the land of promise.
In calling us to holiness and joy and trust,
Christ calls us not to some unknown destination
but back to our true homeland.
For we are made for holiness and for joy, 
we are made for trust and for life with God,
yet we, like the prodigal son,
have wandered from the Father’s house
and found ourselves in a land of exile,
found ourselves in a tomb of our own fashioning.
But now we stand in a time and in a place
where Jesus can be heard calling to us:
“come out!”

We celebrate today the third and final scrutiny
with those who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil.
These catechumens,
along with the candidates for reception
into the full communion of the Catholic Church,
have been journeying for many months:
studying the scriptures and traditions of the Church,
and learning the discipline of prayer,
journeying with each other
and journeying with Jesus
to this place and this time.
They each have a unique story 
of their journey:
they are young and old,
men and women,
with various occupations and interests;
some are complete newcomers to Christianity,
some have been coming to Mass for years
(in one case, for decades).
But it is the one Spirit of the Father 
who raised Jesus from the dead 
that has called them
to this place and time.

Despite what the name might suggest,
the scrutinies do not involve any sort of quiz,
where we examine our catechumens 
to see if they have learned 
enough about Catholicism
to be worthy to join our ranks.
Let’s be honest:
how well would most of us do
if we had to take such a quiz?
In any case, this is not a matter
of knowing a bunch of information,
but of knowing themselves
and knowing Jesus.

The scrutinies are an invitation,
not just to the catechumens but to all of us,
to look deep into our hearts—
hearts that have been hardened by sin,
hearts that have become tombs in which
holiness and joy and trust lie buried.
They are an invitation to listen in the silence
for the voice of Jesus
piercing though the stony walls 
of our hardened hearts,
calling to us, “Come out!”

Our tombs may be deep 
and their walls may be thick,
built of stones of sin and sorrow and doubt,
but it is the one who is himself 
resurrection and life
who calls to us.
Listen.
He is calling:
Lazarus, come out!
Tom, come out!
Lamar, come out!
Madison, come out!
Jackson, come out!
Shawn, come out!
All you who are sinful, 
sorrowful, 
doubtful,
come out!

Today we are standing with them 
at the edge of the mystery:
the mystery of Christ’s passing over
from death to life,
the mystery of our passing over
from death to life.
And in that mystery,
the call to come out 
becomes a call to come in.
Come out from the place of exile,
come into your true homeland;
come out from a life of shadows,
come into the clear light of eternity;
come out from the tomb 
of your own hardened heart,
come into a life 
of holiness and joy and trust.
Enter the wedding feast 
of the Lamb once slain
and now gloriously reigning,
the banquet of abundant life
that has been prepared for you
from before the foundation of the world.
Come out.
Come in.
Feast.
Rejoice.

Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

VIDEO

Christianity is weird.
And if you take it seriously,
it will make you seriously weird as well.
This is the good news.

Of course, 
this might not sound like good news.
After all, most of us
(even here in Baltimore)
don’t want to be weird;
we just want to fit in and get along.
We never really outgrow 
that fear that lodges in us
around the time we enter Middle School—
the fear of being mocked as a weirdo:
not liking the right things,
not wearing the right clothes,
not listening to the right music.
Despite our culture’s strong emphasis
on individuality and authenticity,
at the end of the day 
we are remarkably conformist:
we tend to follow
paths that will win for us 
the approval and admiration 
of those around us. 

St. Paul tells us that
“Jews demand signs 
and Greeks look for wisdom.”
We all want signs that confirm 
that we are on the proper path
toward strength and security;
we all want wisdom that will enable us
to navigate the world as it is.
What we don’t want is a sign
that becomes an obstacle we stumble over
and which makes us change our path;
what we don’t want is a wisdom
that suggests that the world as it is
might not be the world 
that we should be striving for.
But this is the sign and this is the wisdom
that Jesus offers us,
because what he offers us is the cross:
“a stumbling block to Jews 
and foolishness to Gentiles”—
something so counter 
to the desires and expectations of the world
that to those who seek signs of power
it looks like weakness,
and to those who seek words of wisdom
it sounds like folly,
and to those of us who just want to fit in,
who want to like the right things,
and wear the right clothes 
and listen to the right music,
who just want to get along 
without being thought weird,
is seems like a recipe 
for an extremely unhappy life.

Of course, over the centuries 
we have found ways to tone down 
the weirdness of Christianity,
to cover over the cross,
to accommodate the Gospel 
to worldly understandings
of power and wisdom.
We have turned the law of God 
into common sense advice
that will ensure a healthy and happy life
and the smooth running of society,
rather than the commanding voice of the Lord
calling us to offer our entire selves 
as a living sacrifice to God.
We have turned Jesus into a teacher 
of sensible moral lessons,
or a savior who has suffered 
so that we won’t have to,
rather than the disruptive prophet
who interrupts religious business as usual
and offers his body, crucified and risen,
as the true temple that we must enter
if we wish to worship God in Spirit and in truth.
We have made Christianity into a force of stability
that guarantees happy marriages and strong nations
and all the other things that we consider normal desires.

But the Gospel is not so easily normalized.
The figure of Jesus 
discovered in the pages of Scripture,
the life of the Spirit manifested
in that collection of oddballs we call
the communion of saints,
the peculiar practices of the Church,
which week by week invites 
those who have died in Christ
to feast on his flesh and blood—
all of this makes it hard to deny 
just how weird Christianity is.

We might think of Lent 
as our annual invitation
to turn from the world’s power and wisdom
and rediscover and re-embrace 
the weirdness of the Gospel.
We begin by smearing ashes on our heads
and being told that we must die; 
and we conclude by lighting candles in the dark
as we spend hours listening to old stories
about a universe being built from nothing,
a son nearly sacrificed at God’s behest,
an army drowned by miraculous waters,
and a tomb found empty
and a dead body mysteriously missing.
And in between we strive 
by fasting, prayer, and works of charity
to wean ourselves away 
from the world’s normality
so that we might enter into that weird world
where weakness is strength
and foolishness is wisdom,
where the dead don’t stay dead
and faith, hope, and love abide.

Christianity is weird, 
and if you take it seriously
it will make you seriously weird as well.
It will make you love like Christ loved
by placing on your shoulders the cross,
the yoke that is easy and the burden that is light
because it is the weight of love 
pressing down upon us
even as it bears us upward to God.
It will make you weak and foolish
with the power and wisdom of God.
In these days of Lent,
may God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all.

Lent 1

Readings: Genesis 9:8-15; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

VIDEO

In celebrating the first Sunday of Lent
we hear each year the story 
of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.
The Gospel of Mark’s account, however,
which we have just heard,
seems quite brief and spare
in comparison with the versions
we find in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
It makes no mention of Jesus fasting,
or of the great hunger he felt at the end of forty days,
or of the dramatic threefold temptation by which
the devil seeks to exploit his hunger.
It may strike us as lacking something 
by comparison with the accounts 
found in the other gospels,
but I believe its stark simplicity
has at least two advantages.

First, its spareness is both
evocative and provocative.
Phrases like “tempted by Satan”
or “he was among the wild beasts”
or “the angels ministered to him”
describe little but suggest much,
and they provoke us to ponder 
what they might mean.
How was he tempted?
What were those wild beast?
What could it mean to be 
ministered to by angels?
These words provoke the imagination,
because they have so much space in them
that the imagination might fill.

And as our imaginations fill in the story,
drawing upon our own experience,
we become a part of it:
our story merges with Jesus’ story.
The temptations of Jesus become 
my temptations:
my compulsive and chaotic hungers,
my overweening pride and ambition,
my desire for admiration and control.
The wild beasts around Jesus become 
the challenges and perils that I face:
my inability to do the good that I know I should do,
my discouragement in the face of disappointed hopes,
my struggles with misunderstanding, conflict, and rejection.
The ministrations of the angels become
my experience of the many and varied ways
in which God’s fills me with his grace:
friends and family who continually
support me in my struggles,
strangers who speak to me 
just the right word at just the right moment,
the Church and her sacraments,
in which and through which
I have fellowship with Jesus himself.

The evocative and provocative simplicity
of Mark’s account of Jesus’ sojourn in the desert
suggests that what Lent invites us to do
is to join our stories to the story of Jesus;
to let the story of his journey 
from cross to resurrection
envelop our stories,
to let Jesus be the Ark in which we make
our forty-day journey,
so that our weakness might become strength,
our struggle might become victory,
our dying might become living.

Though Mark’s story of Jesus’ temptation
invites us to enter imaginatively into it,
and through it into the story 
of Jesus’s cross and resurrection,
it also has the advantage of reminding us
that we are not the heroes of the story.
God is.
The story’s silence 
on what Jesus does and says in the wilderness 
reminds us that what we do 
through our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving
is not really what Lent is about.
Lent is about what God does for us.
If Mark’s story included 
Jesus’ extraordinary feat 
of fasting for forty days,
or his oh-so-clever responses 
to the devil’s temptations,
then the invitation to enter into the story
might itself become a temptation:
the temptation to imagine that our fasting
and our responses to temptation
are what Lent is all about.
But Mark’s story of Jesus in the desert
focuses us instead on the action of God:
the way God shelters us and provides for us,
and through our Lenten discipline
makes us partakers
in the victory of Jesus,
who, as St. Peter says,
“suffered for sins once,
the righteous for the sake 
of the unrighteous,
that he might lead you to God.”

The early Christian theologian Irenaeus
wrote that God created human beings
not because he needed us 
to do something for him 
that he could not do for himself,
but because he wanted 
to bestow on us his blessings; 
he calls us to serve him
not because he needs our service
but because by becoming servants
of so glorious a master
we come to share in his glory.

The disciplines of Lent are not
something we offer to God
but rather something God offers to us.
They are a chance to turn our focus 
away from ourselves 
and toward God,
away from what we can to
and toward what God can do.

So let us enter with Christ 
into the Lenten wilderness;
let us confront temptation and peril
with him to protect us
and his angels to minister 
to us in our need.
Let us pray and fast and give alms,
confident that God, who is merciful,
will have mercy on us all.

Feast of Thomas Aquinas

Readings: Wisdom 7:7-10, 15-16; 1 Cor. 2:1-10a; Matt. 23:8-12

VIDEO

Preached at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, Baltimore

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle
wrote that “all people by nature desire to know.”
Aristotle thought that what it meant to be human
was to be the kind of animal whose greatest desire
was to answer the question “why?”
Why does fire make things hot
and ice make things cool? 
Why do crabs move the upper part of their claws
and not the lower part?
Why do we judge some actions 
to be worthy of praise
and others to be worthy of condemnation?
Because this constant asking of “why?” 
is built into our nature,
it appears in us
pretty much as soon as we learn to speak,
as any parent of a toddler can tell you.

St. Thomas, 
who referred to Aristotle
simply as the Philosopher, 
agreed with him on this,
as he did on many things.
He too thought that what makes us different 
from all the other animals in the world
is that we ask questions,
and we ask them because we want to know things,
and we want to know things because, ultimately,
we want to understand ourselves 
and our place in the world.
We human beings desire wisdom
because wisdom leads to happiness.

But Thomas did not need Aristotle 
to tell him this.
He already had King Solomon,
who in today’s first reading 
compares wisdom to a beautiful woman,
and says, “I preferred her to scepter and throne,
and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her…
I chose to have her rather than the light, 
because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.”
Both Solomon and Thomas recognized
that we humans will never understand 
ourselves and our place in our world,
until we know the whys 
and the wherefores of things,
and not just of this or that thing,
but of everything;
not just the why of heating and cooling
and the claws of crabs
and human praise,
but why there is anything at all—
why there is something 
rather than nothing.
And to know the why 
and the wherefore of everything
is to know God,
for he is our creator and, 
as Solomon tells us,
“both we and our words 
are in his hand.”

So Thomas Aquinas devoted his life to asking “why?”
and to teaching other people how to ask “why?”
until they arrived at the end of “why” 
and there found God.
He sought wisdom everywhere:
in ancient pagan philosophers 
like Aristotle,
in Jewish and Muslim thinkers 
like Maimonides and Avicenna,
in Christian theologians 
like Augustine and Gregory the Great,
but above all in the pages of Sacred Scripture,
where he found Jesus Christ,
the way and the truth and the life,
God’s wisdom in human flesh.
The story is told of a time 
near the end of Thomas’s life
when he was praying in front of a crucifix
and Christ spoke to him from the cross:
“You have written well of me, Thomas. 
What reward would you receive 
from me for your labor?”
Thomas responded to the image of the crucified:
Non nisi Te, Domine— “nothing but you, Lord.”

For all his great learning,
for all his scholarly accomplishments,
Thomas, like Paul in our second reading,
in the end “resolved to know nothing…
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
Nothing but you, Lord.
Nothing but you, 
not because I no longer desire 
to know the whys and wherefores of things,
not because I no longer yearn 
to understand myself 
and my place in the world,
not because I have fallen out of love
with the beautiful Lady Wisdom,
but because I am more deeply in love with her
than ever before,
and have come to see that God’s wisdom
is not the wisdom of the rulers of this age
but is a wisdom mysterious and hidden,
a wisdom wrapped within your cross, O Jesus,
a wisdom that seems like foolishness to the world
because it says that the greatest among us
must become the servant of all,
that “whoever exalts himself will be humbled; 
but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

All people by nature desire to know,
and what St. Thomas desired to know
was the wisdom of the cross.
All our knowing amounts to nothing
if we do not take for our teacher
Jesus Christ and him crucified;
for he is the why 
and the wherefore of everything.
St. Thomas says in one of his sermons
that whoever wishes 
to live a fully human life
must reject what Christ rejected on the cross
and embrace what he embraced: 
we must reject the false wisdom of the world
and embrace a wisdom 
that might look like foolishness, 
a wisdom that rejects pride and embraces humility,
a wisdom that rejects the desire to dominate and control
and embraces faith in the power of God.
For to embrace the wisdom of the cross
is to know the God who can sustain us
at the lowest points in our lives:
when it seems that hope is lost
and darkness has eclipsed the light.
To embrace the wisdom of the cross
is to know also the resurrection
and the power of God to save;
it is to know the light 
whose splendor never yields to sleep.

All people by nature desire to know.
As we seek to grasp 
the why and wherefore of all things,
let us learn from St. Thomas,
not because he knew 
how to draw subtle philosophical distinctions,
not because he knew the writings
of Aristotle and Avicenna and Augustine,
not even because of his superb knowledge 
of God’s revelation in Sacred Scripture;
let us learn from him 
because he knew the wisdom of the cross.
Let us learn from him how to say to Jesus,
Non nisi te, Domine—nothing but you, Lord.
Let us learn to live in the light
whose splendor never yields to sleep.