27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16

Some of you might recall the Catholic custom of “First Fridays.”

These were days especially devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

when Catholics would go to special Masses 

or perform other devotions.

This was sometimes associated with promises

of particular spiritual benefits

for those who received communion at First Friday Masses

for nine consecutive months,

most specifically the gift of dying in a state of grace

with the Heart of Jesus as their refuge in their final moments.

Now this might seems just a bit too calculating: 

in exchange for about half an hour a month 

over nine consecutive months

I can get my ticket into heaven stamped.

Seems like a pretty good deal.

It might be easy for some of us to be scornful

of such a simplistic spirituality

and be glad that the Church has grown beyond such things.

But the Church has not abandoned the custom of First Fridays;

in fact, I went to a First Friday Mass just this past week

at Loyola University, where I work.

I think it is actually a good thing 

that the Church has continued this practice,

because our Catholic tradition 

of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

is rooted in a profound theological insight

into the nature of God’s love for us.

Because God has become a human being in Jesus Christ,

God not only loves us with perfect divine love,

the dispassionate love of God’s benevolence to all creatures,

but God also loves us with the love of Jesus’s human heart,

a heart that, like our hearts, knows pain and distress,

a heart that is pierced and broken when love is rejected,

a heart that, precisely in being pierced and broken,

has become a source of grace, a place of refuge,

for all the brokenhearted of the world.

This theology is rooted in what we read today

in the Letter to the Hebrews:

Jesus is the one who by the grace of God 

tastes death for everyone,

who has been made perfect through suffering.

A human heart made perfect through suffering –

made perfect in the knowledge 

of what each and every one of us suffers,

an intimate knowledge of the failures and betrayals 

of human love,

as well as love’s glories and triumphs.

And, the writer of Hebrews says,

he is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.

This is good to bear in mind 

as we reflect on our Gospel reading,

in which we hear Jesus’s stringent 

and challenging teaching

regarding marriage and divorce.

His words offer no escape clauses,

and I am not going to try to invent one for you.

Even if we put the teaching in historical context

and understand that in Jesus’s culture

the way in which men could cavalierly abandon their wives

was a genuine social justice concern,

Jesus’ teaching still does not seem to recognize

the pain that often accompanies the collapse of a marriage:

the shattered hopes and broken hearts and rejected loves.

Of course, Jesus’s point here is to underscore for his hearers

the challenge of being his disciple

and the promise that the original integrity of creation

will be restored through him.

But we should also remember that this challenge and this promise

are made by one whose own heart is broken on the cross

by the rejection of his love.

However we deal with the challenge 

of Jesus’s teaching on marriage,

we must remember that he too is one 

whose human heart is wounded,

and that from his wounded heart 

he offers salvation and hope.

On Friday, as Mass was ending, 

I reflected on the people who were there.

Many of them were elderly,

and they undoubtedly had long experience

of the joys and sorrows of human life:

promises kept and promises broke,

hopes fulfilled and hopes destroyed,

marriages that survived and marriages that didn’t.

What drew them there to that church on that day?

Was it simply the promise of the benefits gained

by attendance at nine consecutive First Fridays?

Or was it, rather, the chance to worship the God

who knows from within the joys and sorrows of the human heart

and whose love can sustain us through those sorrows and into joy?

Whenever I officiate at a wedding in this church,

before the service I light a candle 

at our altar of the Sacred Heart,

and I pray that the couple would know 

the love of Jesus in their marriage:

the love of a heart that is broken, yet forgives,

a heart that knows our failings but is always open to us,

a heart that is a place of refuge and of healing.

I pray that all of us would come to know 

the love that flows from that heart

and would share it in turn with all those whom we meet.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2: 1-5; Mark 7:31-37

Through my son Denis, the percussionist,

I have recently been introduced to the work

of the Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

She is a remarkable musician in a number of ways:

sustaining a career as a solo classical percussionist,

receiving over fifteen honorary doctorates,

winning a Grammy,

and being one of the featured performers

at the opening ceremonies of this past summer’s Olympics.

She also happens to be deaf.

Because she would much rather be known as a musician

than as a “deaf musician,”

she generally does not talk much about her deafness.

But when pressed she will say that while she is deaf,

in the sense that her ears do not work properly,

this does not mean that she cannot hear.

Hearing is simply being able to interpret vibrations,

to experience them as meaningful.

And while most of us do this most of the time 

with our ears,

we can also do it with other parts of the body,

as when we feel the rumble of a passing truck 

in our torsos

or see the reverberation of a guitar string or a drum head 

with our eyes.

If one does not have use of his or her ears,

then one must find other ways to connect 

to the vibrations that we call music,

which is what Evelyn Glennie has learned how to do.

Hearing, Glennie says, is in some ways 

just a specialized form of the sense of touch,

and what she has learned to do is to interpret pitch and tone

with the whole of her body,

building up in her brain what she calls a “sound picture”

by opening up her whole self and letting the music inhabit her

so that she can in turn let music flow out of her

through the medium of her instrument.

Evelyn Glennie shows us the power of human beings

to adapt to seeming limitations and to overcome obstacles

in pursuit of the things they love.

But she also shows us that hearing

is about far more than what we do with our ears.

In some ways, “hearing” is about our whole self

opening up to the reality around it.

This can help shed light on today’s Gospel reading.

This story involves much more than simply the healing

of one whose ears do not work properly.

The man’s deafness here is a symbol of spiritual deafness –

of the way in which we close ourselves off

to the vibrations produced by what God is doing in the world.

In the context of Mark’s Gospel,

the deafness of the man whom Jesus heals

is a symbol of the inability of the people of Jesus’s day,

of even his own disciples,

to recognize the presence of God’s messiah in their midst.

Their expectations of what God’s anointed would be like –

a powerful warrior and ruler like King David –

made them incapable of hearing God’s voice 

in Jesus, God’s Word.

In our second reading, from the letter of James,

we encounter another sort of spiritual deafness:

an inability to recognize 

in the poor person with shabby clothes

one whom God has chosen to be rich in faith

and heir of the kingdom that God promised 

to those who love him.

The people in Mark’s Gospel,

the Christians to whom James writes,

and even we ourselves,

depend perhaps too much 

on our normal way of perceiving things

and so are deaf 

to the presence and activity of God around us.

The example of Evelyn Glennie

learning to hear music with more than her ears

indicates to us that in order for us to overcome

our own spiritual deafness to the Word of God in all its forms

we need to open ourselves up to new ways of knowing,

new ways of sensing the presence of God.

When Jesus heals the deaf man, 

he touches his mouth and ears

and says, “Ephphatha – be opened!”

Today he says to us as well, “Be opened!”

We need to be opened by Christ,

so that we can hear with our whole self,

hear the voice of God that sounds all around us:

in the sometimes comforting 

and sometimes discomfiting words of Scripture,

in the cries of those who beg for food,

in the voices of those who cry out for justice,

in the words even of those who might disagree with us.

If Jesus touches our ears and opens our senses

our deafness can be overcome;

the music of God’s Word can inhabit us and transform us.

And as with the man in today’s Gospel,

the touch of Jesus opens not only our ears, 

but also our mouths,

so that the music of God’s Word that fills us

can also flow forth from us

to bring hope and comfort and challenge and good news

to all whom we encounter.

Ephphata – be opened!

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

“Get up and eat, 

else the journey will be too long for you!”

These are the words that God, 

sounding suspiciously like someone’s mother, 

speaks in our first reading,

when Elijah has grown discouraged 

on the journey he is making to Mt. Horeb, 

where he will encounter God.

He is being pursued by his nemesis King Ahab 

and it looks like his prophetic mission is a failure,

so he sits himself down beneath a broom tree 

and prays to die:

“This is enough, O Lord!”

But God will have none of it:

he sends an angel with bread and water 

and tells him,

after he lies down for a second time,

“Get up and eat, 

else the journey will be too long for you!”

God has plans for Elijah;

God has a journey for him to undertake,

and the miraculous food and drink that God offers him

is intended to sustain him on that journey.

Maybe you have never prayed to die,

or maybe you have,

but I suspect that almost everyone here

has at some point or other sat down and said,

“This is enough, O Lord!”

I am tired of having my efforts go unappreciated.

I am tired of work that is frustrating.

I am tired of trying to love people who do not love me back.

I am tired of taking one step forward and two steps back.

I am tired of this journey you have put me on

and I think I will just stop, sit down, and let life run its course.

We may not pray for death like Elijah did,

but we do sometimes feel like giving up on life – 

giving up on a life that is more than simply getting by,

more than simply marking time, 

giving up on our life having some larger meaning, 

some eternal meaning, 

some meaning in the eyes of God.

We give up on the idea of our life 

being a journey to Mt. Horeb

where we will meet God.

But God will have none of this.

I cannot, of course, speak for you,

but I know that when I say, 

“This is enough, O Lord!”

God never seems to reply,

“Yes, you’re right.

The journey is too long.

I’ve asked too much.”

Instead God says, 

“Get up and eat, 

else the journey will be too long for you!”

God seems to say this most often 

in the form of my wife or children or friends

not letting me mope around feeling sorry for myself.

God reminds me through their voices 

that there really is no choice,

if my life is to have ultimate meaning,

but to get up, as weary as I might feel,

and continue the journey

even though its final goal, 

union with the living God,

is something that lies infinitely beyond 

even my power to imagine.

“Get up and eat.”

What food can sustain us on such a journey?

What food can give us the strength to go forward

into the mystery of the living God?

Jesus says it quite plainly in todays Gospel:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven;

whoever eats this bread will live forever;

and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world."

One of the terms that early Christians
used for the Eucharist was viaticum,

which means “food for the journey,”

a term we still use for the final Eucharist given to the dying.

But in a sense every Eucharist is viaticum;

as a medieval hymn puts it,

     O food of travellers, angels’ bread,
     Manna with which the blest are fed,
     Draw near, and with your sweetness fill
     The hungry hearts that seek you still.

Every time we receive the Eucharist, it is food for our journey.

But it seems so small:
how could a bit of bread and sip of wine

fill the hunger of our hearts?

How could a small Sunday slice of time 

give us the food that would sustain us
on a journey to eternity?

This is the mystery:

the bread and wine that we bring to God’s table

is graciously accepted by God

and then graciously given back to us,

no longer bread and wine

but Christ’s flesh for the life of the world.

This is the mystery:
here at this altar,

week in and week out,

we come, weary travelers,
to whom God says, 

“Get up and eat,
else the journey will be too long for you!”

And strengthened
by the living bread of Jesus Christ

we continue on the journey,

glorifying the Lord by our lives.

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6

I don’t typically look to summer blockbusters or superheroes
for the starting point of a homily,
but in light of today’s readings
I could not help but think
of the new “reboot” of Spider-man
that debuted this past week.
The villain in the movie,
the one-armed mad scientist Dr. Curt Conners,
is driven to harness the regenerative power of reptiles –
you know, the way that lizards can regrow their tails –
not only so that he can regrow his own missing arm,
but so that he might create, as he puts it,
“a world without weakness.”

Well, as usually happens to mad scientists,
Dr. Connors’s ambitions involve him
in some serious technological overreach and
(spoiler alert!)
he ends up turning himself
into a giant reptilian monster
and terrorizing New York City
until Spider-man comes along
to save the day.

As I said, I don’t usually look for wisdom from movies,
particularly not from ones
in which the main character dresses in Spandex,
but in this case I think that,
in addition to some awesome 3-D special effects,
we have a genuine insight:
our desire to create a world without weakness,
no matter how well intentioned it may seem,
will in the end destroy our humanity,
because in this life
weakness is part of our human condition.

It was the rhetoric of ridding the world of weakness
that accompanied Hitler’s murderous campaign
to cleanse the world of so-called inferior races.
It is perhaps a desire for a world without weakness
that accounts for the fact that at least 70% of pregnancies
in which the fetus is diagnosed with Down Syndrome
are terminated.
It is the quest for what we might call
“a Church without weakness”
that leads some to desire a smaller, “purer” Church,
presumably one that is rid of all those
who might struggle with the teachings of the Church
on various matters of faith and morals.
And it is the desire for a self without weakness
that leads us either to deny our own frailty,
or to loath the frailty within ourselves
that we cannot deny.

Our second reading,
from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians,
is one of the New Testament’s profound reflections
on the grace of living in a world of weakness.
Paul says that God gave him
a “thorn in the flesh,
an angel [or ‘messenger’] of Satan” –
in order to remind him of his weakness.
This might refer to a physical disability
or perhaps to some sort of moral temptation
to which Paul was prone,
but, whatever the nature of this “thorn,”
when Paul prays three times to have it removed
God says in reply, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Power is made perfect in weakness.
St. Thomas Aquinas comments
that this is “a remarkable way of speaking,”
sort of like saying
“fire increases in water” (Super 2 Cor. cap. 12 lec. 3).
But this remarkable way of speaking
should be, for we who are Christians,
our native language,
because it allows us to speak eloquently of God’s grace.
If we boast of our weakness –
if we acknowledge our fragility –
then, Paul tells us,
the power of Christ will dwell in us.
The power of Christ is not a power
that makes a world without weakness
but rather a power that makes its dwelling
within our world of weakness,
a power that inhabits weakness,
in order to offer a way through weakness
into God’s embrace.
The cross shows us
the perfection of power in weakness in all its mystery,
for it is our faith as Christians
that through the cross of Jesus
God has poured out the power of grace,
a grace abundant to save an entire world of weakness.
And when we know our own weakness we are set free
to embrace the very power of God.

When we accept our own weakness
we are also set free to accept the weakness of others,
to give up our dream of the perfect spouse or child,
our dream of the perfect Church,
our dream of a world without weakness.
To know your own weakness is to have God’s Spirit
open your heart to others
in compassion and mercy.

What is your weakness?
What is the thorn in your flesh?
In a sense, it doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that we all live in a world of weakness.
What matters
is that God invites us today to know our weakness
so that we may know fully
the power of God’s grace at work in us.
We should not seek a world without weakness,
for when we are weak –
when we know our own helplessness
and our need for mercy –
it is then we are strong in mercy
through the power of God.

Trinity Sunday

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20

When we think about salvation – 

what it is that we mean when we say 

that we are saved through Christ – 

most people probably think in terms of the death of Jesus

and our sins being forgiven.

This is of course true – 

our sins have been forgiven through the death of Jesus – 

but the language of the Bible concerning salvation and

the images used to depict our rescue from the human condition

are much richer than that.

In our second reading, 

from the letter to the Romans, 

Paul uses adoption as an image for salvation.

He says that those who are led by the Spirit of God

are sons and daughters of God:

the Spirit of God he calls a “Spirit of adoption.”

In the ancient world the concept of family 

was wider than our modern notion of the nuclear family.

There were a number of ways 

one could be a part of a family:

families included not only parent and children, 

but also the servants or slaves 

who worked in the household.

In fact, in the Roman world, 

abandoned infants were more likely 

to be taken into families as slaves

than to be adopted as heirs.

So Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, 

wants to assure them 

that they have been brought into God’s family 

not to be slaves, but to be children and inheritors 

of eternal life in God’s kingdom.

We are not to serve God out of fear, as a slave would,

but out of a love that is a reflection 

of the loving generosity

that God has shown to us in our adoption.

Paul says that this Spirit of adoption makes us

“heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”

The Spirit of God, Paul says,  

makes us cry out to God 

using the same name that the Gospels tell us

Jesus himself used: “Abba, Father.”

What Jesus was by his very nature – 

the only begotten child of God 

and heir to God’s kingdom –

we have become 

through the grace of the Holy Spirit,

the Spirit of adoption.

This is what it means to be saved:

to be inheritors with Jesus of eternal life

through our adoption in the Holy Spirit.

I know that a number of people in our parish

know very directly what this says about God’s love.

Whether adoptive parents or adopted children,

they know how deep that bond of love can be,

how gracious and grace-filled this act of generosity is,

how expansive of the bounds of family,

reaching out beyond the bonds of nature

to create new bonds of grace.

Adoptive parents and adopted children

and even those parents who,

entrusting their children to someone else’s care, 

have surrendered their children for adoption,

know in a particular way 

how great is the power of God’s love. 

But why talk about this on Trinity Sunday?

Shouldn’t a Trinity Sunday homily be an attempt

to explain puzzling words in the Creed 

like “consubstantial”

or to find some lame analogy 

for the three persons and one nature of God,

or at least to talk about St. Patrick and shamrocks?

Why talk about adoption?

The doctrine of the Trinity 

is not advanced mathematics for Christians

in which we somehow make one and one and one 

add up to one.

The doctrine of the Trinity 

is the mystery of our gracious adoption 

by the Holy Spirit 

by which we become coheirs with Christ

of eternal life with the one 

whom we can now call “Abba, Father.”

The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that, 

just as children are adopted into the love 

that binds together the members of their adoptive family,

we have been adopted 

into the mystery of interpersonal love

by which the Father, Son and Spirit are one God.

This is why in our Gospel today 

Christ commands his disciples 

to “make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

To become a disciple of Jesus 

is to be adopted into God’s love

and our baptism in the name of the Trinity 

is our ritual of adoption.

So let us on this Trinity Sunday give thanks to God

for the Spirit of adoption that has been given to us,

the mystery of eternal love of which we are heirs.

Easter 5

Readings: Acts 9:26-31; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8

Maybe it is just a phenomenon of middle age,

but I sometimes find myself walking into a room

and having to stop and ask, “what was it that I come in here for?

What was it that I was going to do?”

More significantly, and this too might be a phenomenon of middle age,

I sometimes find myself stopping in the midst of my daily life,

in the middle of some part of my job or some family chore,

and asking myself, “why am I doing this?

What is the larger context that made this activity make sense?”
I think it's what they call a mid-life crisis.

But whatever our age, I suspect all of us have those moments

when we pause in the middle of our everyday tasks

and ask, “why am I doing this?”

I find this is no less true in the life of the Church.

It is possible to find ourselves pausing 

in the routine activities

associated with this thing we call “Church”

and asking “why am I doing this?

What was it that I come in here for?”

Maybe you are someone whose participation in the Church

is focused mainly on coming to Mass 

and trying to live a Christian life.

Or maybe you are one of those more “activist” parishioners,

who volunteers to help with all sort of parish activities.

Or maybe you are even what might be called 

a “professional” Catholic,

someone who works for the Church

or devotes most of your time to Church-related activities.

Whatever the nature and level 

of your connection to the Church,

I suspect all of us have those moments

when we pause and ask, 

“What was it that I came in here for?

What was it I was going to do?”

Whether your involvement is on the level

of being a “professional” Church person

or an “activist” parishioner

or even of simply coming to Mass

I think we can all lose sight of the larger reality

that helps us understand 

why we are doing what we are doing;

we can all lose the broader context

that makes this whole Church thing make sense.

And when this happens, we can become discouraged.

We focus on all the imperfections and disappointments

that go along with Church life.

If your contact with the Church is mainly coming to Mass

it might be changes in the translation of the liturgy 

that you stumble over

or silly and annoying homilies

or political stands taken by the Church 

that you disagree with.

If you are an “activist” parishioner

it might be a sense of being under-appreciated

or of frustration that there are not more people

who share your level of commitment.

If you are a “professional” Catholic

it might be anger at clueless or even bullying superiors

or what you perceive as the lack of response 

among those you serve.

Whether we are correct 

in our feelings about these things or not,

whether the things that irk us 

are truly irksome or not,

if we make them the focus of our attention,

without keeping in mind the larger context,

this is a recipe for discouragement 

and disappointment

that will end either in a perpetual state 

of low-level bitterness

or even an eventual abandonment 

of the Church entirely.

It is only if we keep in mind the larger context

of all the myriad activities 

that go into this thing called Church

that we will find the Church life-giving.

But what is this larger context?

Today’s gospel puts it very simply:

“I am the vine, you are the branches.

Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,

because without me you can do nothing.”

If we forget that the Church

is really about our unity in and with Jesus Christ

then we will be overwhelmed 

by the Church’s human imperfections,

which is really a matter of being overwhelmed 

by our own imperfections.

If we lose a sense of the Church

as the reality of our being joined together in Jesus Christ

through the sacraments and the scriptures 

and our love for one another,

then disappointment and disillusion are inevitable.

If we cannot see the Church first and foremost

as that which connects us to each other

and to the one without who we can do nothing,

then it is just one more sphere of petty politics.

So when we find ourselves asking 

concerning our life in the Church

“what was it that I come in here for?”

perhaps we need to step back and look for the reality

of the vine onto which we have been grafted as branches,

the vine that unites us to one another,

the vine without which we can do nothing,

the vine that is the risen and living Jesus Christ. 

Easter 2

Readings: Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

Thomas said he wouldn’t believe
until he saw the body.
And who can blame him;
it seems, after all,
a pretty incredible story.
Thomas said he wouldn’t believe
until he touched the body of Jesus
with his own hands,
saw its wounds,
put his fingers in the nail holes,
put his hand into the wound in his side.
Thomas said he wouldn’t believe
unless there were some way
in which he could experience for himself
the concrete presence of the risen Christ.

Thomas said he would not believe it,
and who can blame him?
Why should we believe something
without at least some evidence?
Why should we believe
not only that death could not defeat Jesus,
but that his very body itself was raised to life?
If his body still lives, show it to me.

In the Gospel today,
Jesus gives Thomas what he asks for:
“he said to Thomas,
‘Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.’”
And Thomas responds
with one of the boldest confessions
of faith in Jesus
in the entire New Testament:
“My Lord and my God!”

So much for Thomas;
he got what he asked for.
But what about us?
Jesus said, “Blessed are those
who have not seen and have believed.”
And yet, we still want to see;
we still want something tangible
to make this incredible claim more credible.
If Jesus is truly risen, then where is his body?

“The community of believers
was of one heart and mind,
and no one claimed
that any of his possessions was his own,
but they had everything in common. . . .
There was no needy person among them.”

Among the first disciples in the city of Jerusalem
the new life of the risen Jesus was palpable
in their love for each other,
in the concrete actions that showed that love,
in their unity of heart and mind.

If Jesus is truly risen, then where is his body?
At Corpus Christi parish in Baltimore Maryland
people give many hours of their time
planning liturgies,
toiling over budgets,
preparing music,
distributing food,
taking communion to the sick and shut in.

If Jesus is truly risen, then where is his body?
At Corpus Christi parish in Baltimore Maryland
people gather to pray
for themselves and for the world;
they sing their songs of praise
to the God of life;
they initiate children and adults
into Christ’s family;
they take, bless, break and share
Christ’s Eucharistic body and blood;
they mourn with each other in sorrow
and rejoice with each other in gladness.

I do not mention these things
in order to flatter you.
We all know that we,
both as individuals and as a community,
are far from perfect,
that we often fail to be a clear sign
of the dying and rising of Christ,
that we can be as petty or ill-tempered
or lazy or selfish as anyone else.
Sometimes it takes an act of faith
to believe that we are
what our name proclaims:
Corpus Christi, the body of Christ.
But our faith tells us that by God’s grace
we are that risen body,
that in our best moments
the Spirit of truth finds a way
to bear witness through us
to the truth that Jesus Christ is truly risen,
that his body lives.
And not only in us,
but in the many members of Christ’s body
throughout the world.

Like Thomas, the world will only believe
if it can see the risen Christ for itself.
St. Thomas Aquinas said,
“nothing shows the truth of the gospel better
than the love of those who believe”
(Super Io. cap. 17 lec. 5 no. 2241).
So let us seek to love one another,
let us open our hearts to the Spirit
who can make of us that risen body,
so that the world might see,
so that the world might believe,
that Christ is truly risen.

Easter Vigil

Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:2; Exodus 14:15-15:1; Isaiah 54:5-14; 55:1-11; Baruch 3:9-15, 32 -- 4:4; Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-22; Romans 6:3-11; Mark 16:1-7

Why are you here?

Could you not think of anything better to do 

on a Saturday night

than to come to church for two-and-a-half hours

and light candles and listen to huge chunks of Scripture

and bless water and remember you baptism

and celebrate the Eucharist late in the night?

Why would you do such a strange thing?

What have you come looking for?

Maybe you came because your life is going well

and you want celebrate the joy that you feel in you heart.

Maybe you came because you seek solace 

for the sorrow you carry 

and cannot seem to  put down.

Maybe you came because you always come,

because at some point you fell hopelessly in love

with the liturgy and lore of Christ’s Church,

and despite the ups and downs of your faith

you simply cannot imagine Easter without the Vigil.

Maybe you came because of all three.

I know that our parish as a community 

and we as individuals

have in the past year celebrated 

new births, new jobs, new homes, new friendships:

all of which we come to celebrate in the joy of this night.

I also know the some of us have suffered losses:

frustrations at work, financial troubles,

illnesses, anxiety, disappointments, deaths.

We bring these things too to this night.

For “this is the night,

when Christ broke the prison-bars of death 

and rose victorious from the underworld.”

This is the night 

in which the stone that sealed the tomb 

where hope was buried

is rolled away.

If you brought joy with you,

let this night increase your joy a thousand-fold.

If you brought sorrow,

let this night drown those sorrows

in the flood of new life 

that has burst forth from the tomb.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

But what about tomorrow?

What about the next day?

What about when Easter is over 

and we are back in the midst of our daily lives,

back in the midst of our everyday joys and sorrows? 

Notice that in Mark’s account of the resurrection

the women do not see the risen Jesus –

rather they see only the empty tomb 

and the stone rolled away,

a sign of hope.

Remember the message 

that the women who find the empty tomb

are given to carry back to the disciples:

“He is going before you to Galilee;

there you will see him as he told you.”

Galilee:

the obscure province 

where they first encountered Jesus;

the place of their daily lives 

as fishermen and tax collectors;

the place that they left 

to follow Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem

where the great drama of death and resurrection 

would be played out.

Back to Galilee,

back to daily life,

back to their everyday joys and sorrows.

This is the night, 

in which we have been given a sign of hope,

a tomb burst open.

But when you leave here tonight

you will return to your own Galilees,

your own daily lives,

your own joys and sorrows.

The message of this night is that, 

“there you will see him, as he told you.”

Why are you here?

Because this is the night:

the night of the great drama of death and resurrection,

the night when we are given a sign of hope

that we cannot live without.

But tomorrow, 

and the next day, 

and the day after that –

as you celebrate your daily joys

and struggle with your daily sorrows –

in that place of your daily life,

“there you will see him, as he has told you.”

On this night of nights

may God bless you 

as you go forth to Galilee

to meet the risen Jesus.