Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

We human beings are very good at noticing differences.

We notice when someone’s way of talking is different,

or the kind of food they eat,

or their skin tone or hair texture,

or the shape of their nose or eyes.

And we divide the world up 

according to these differences,

creating a sense of “us” and “them,”

of insiders and outsiders, 

of the ordinary and the exotic.

People respond to these differences

in different ways.

Some see differences as superficial things 

that are best ignored 

and not spoken of in polite company—

potential sources of conflict to be overcome

by pretending that we really are all the same.

Others see differences as things so threatening

that those who are different 

must be controlled or excluded or eliminated,

by circling our wagons and locking our doors.

Still others see differences as generating 

a diversity so deep and identities so fixed

that we cannot possibly imagine the experience 

of those possessing a different identity,

much less form a single human family.

We human beings are good at noticing differences,

but we often don’t do difference well.

We either seek to ignore it or eliminate it,

or we make it so absolute 

that there is no possibility 

for unity across our differences.

But the Holy Spirit does difference differently.

The story of Pentecost depicts a large crowd 

gathered in Jerusalem from various lands—

all Jews, to be sure,

but still people of different languages and customs:

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and so forth.

But as the Spirit-filled apostles begin to speak to them,

proclaiming the Good News of the risen Christ,

each of them hears the words in his or her own language.

The story of Pentecost is sometimes seen 

against the backdrop of the story 

of the Tower of Babel,

in which humanity’s attempt 

to make a name for itself

by building a tower to the heavens

is thwarted by God’s confusion of their speech,

giving rise to different human languages

and furthering the divisions that sin creates.

But Pentecost is no mere reversal of Babel.

It is not the elimination 

of the diversity of human language,

but rather it is the giving of a Spirit 

that makes understanding possible

even in the face of difference,

a Spirit that accommodates itself to difference

even as it unites those whom difference might divide.

The Holy Spirit does difference differently.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tells us 

that the Spirit not only accommodates difference,

but creates difference through the giving of diverse gifts.

Some are given wisdom, others knowledge,

others gifts of healing, still others prophecy, 

and yet others discernment.

The one Spirit does not make us all the same,

but rather makes us each unique,

for we each receive the gifts of the Spirit in our own way

and manifest the gift of the Spirit in our own way.

And yet, Paul tells us,

while there are different kinds of spiritual gifts, 

it is the same Spirit who gives them;

while there are different forms of service, 

it is the same Lord who is being served;

while there are different works being worked,

it is the same God who is at work in us,

giving us a diversity of gifts 

that are to be used for the benefit of the whole:

“As a body is one though it has many parts,

and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,

so also Christ.”

The community called together by the Spirit 

into the one body of Christ

not by the erasure of difference,

but by the Spirit’s graceful guidance.

The Holy Spirit does difference differently.

And as we come to see how these differences flow forth

from the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God,

we can begin to see other differences—

differences of race and ethnicity,

differences of culture and experience— 

as being likewise rooted in God’s wise providence.

St. Thomas Aquinas says that God 

could have created a world of sameness,

a world with only one kind of thing in it.

He notes that such a world 

might have had less conflict in it,

since difference can indeed be a source of conflict—

a world with only lions or only lambs 

is a lot less bloody

than one with both lions and lambs.

But a world without variety and difference

is also an impoverished world:

would you really want a world 

without either lions or lambs?

According to St. Thomas,

a world that encompasses difference 

better reflects the infinite goodness 

and perfection of God.

And a church that encompasses difference—

the differing gifts of the Spirit

as well as the providential differences 

of ethnicity, culture, race, and experience—

better reflects the reality of Christ,

of whose body we are members.

The Spirit does difference differently,

neither seeing it as a threat,

nor ignoring its reality,

nor letting it eclipse our common identity

as those who have been given to drink 

of the one Spirit.

Through the power of the Spirit

the risen Jesus steps through our locked doors

and speaks to us the word he spoke

to the disciples in the upper room:

Peace.

In the midst of a world 

in which difference 

often generates conflict

or is seen as a threat,

he gives us through the Spirit 

the gift of his peace,

calling us to embody that peace:

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

May God’s Spirit accompany us as we go forth,

so that we may be for the world 

the peace he has spoken to us,

and may God have mercy on us all. 

Easter 6

Readings: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

You can learn some amazing things on the internet,
particularly if you frequent the fever swamps
of Twitter or Reddit or, God forbid, 
the comments section of the New York Times.
For example, I have learned that there are certain people
that you are allowed to hate, 
though who those people are depends on your tribe.
In certain circles, you are allowed to hate those 
who like the music of the St. Louis Jesuits,
or those who like the old Latin Mass.
You are allowed to hate 
those who say you have a moral obligation
to get vaccinated against Covid-19,
or those who are hesitant about getting vaccinated.
You are allowed to hate 
those who hold the Church’s traditional view on human sexuality,
or those who are gay or lesbian or transgender,
those who say that black lives matter,
or those who say that all lives matter,
those who believe that President Biden won a free and fair election,
or those who believe that the last election was stolen.

I have also learned that the relative anonymity of the internet
helps you to reduce people to positions,
and in so doing strip them 
of the complexity and richness and paradox
that accompanies every human life.
I have learned that you can call such people 
scum or fascists or homophobes 
or libtards or feminazis or just-plain-old-Nazis
or really anything you like,
because, well, they are wrong.
And I have learned that if you show any respect
to those who are wrong,
if you suggest that they might not 
be reducible to their mistaken opinion,
or if you suggest that something 
other than hatred and mockery might be called for
in persuading them to change their views,
then you are aiding and abetting them 
in their wrongness,
and you are just as bad as they are.

Yes, you can learn some amazing things on the internet,
where anonymity enables contempt,
and the contempt that we learn there spills over
into our daily lives and our personal interactions,
poisons our politics and contaminates our culture.

But you can also learn some amazing things 
in the Holy Scriptures.
You can learn that Jesus commands us 
to love one another as he has loved us.
You can learn that whoever is without love 
does not know God, for God is love.
You can learn that we are all called
to become friends of God
and therefore friends of each other,
even to the point of laying down our lives.
You can learn that God’s Holy Spirit
transforms enemies into friends,
that God shows no partiality,
that even a hated Gentile like Cornelius,
who is not only a Roman 
but part of an occupying army,
can receive God’s favor 
and become a new creation.

Please do not misunderstand me.
Right and wrong do exist.
People do hold views and take actions
that are not simply mistaken, but sinful.
We do have a moral obligation to point out untruths,
to offer fraternal correction to the erring,
to spring to the defense 
of the oppressed and defenseless,
even to denounce error and sin 
in ways that might occasion offense.
But we also have a moral obligation—
indeed, a command from Jesus Christ himself—
to do all this in such a way
that we speak the truth in love,
to speak of those with whom we disagree
as if they were someone’s beloved child or sibling.
Because that is what they are:
they are beloved children of God
and, at least potentially, 
our brother or sister in Christ.

Over the past few decades,
as our world has become more secularized,
it has become common to hear people talk about 
how the Church must become more “counter-cultural”:
how even in the face of worldly rejection and ridicule
Christians are called to hold fast to the Gospel 
and resist the negative trends
that are present in modern, secular culture. 
And we can all think of ways in which Catholic beliefs and values 
go against the current of a variety of cultural trends:
in advocating for the dignity of human life 
from conception to natural death,
in holding to the permanence and sanctity of marriage,
in teaching that private ownership is not an absolute value
but is directed to the common good and flourishing of all,
in criticizing nationalist and racist ideologies
that divide the human family.

More and more it seems to me, however,
that the most countercultural teaching of the Gospel,
is Jesus’ command, “love one another.”
This is the Gospel teaching that,
if put into practice, 
will engender rejection and ridicule,
that will even get you called an enemy of humanity,
a collaborator with evil and a corruptor of morality.
It is also the Gospel teaching that,
if not put into practice,
will make the countercultural stance of the Church
into just one more form of tribal rivalry.

Believe me, I know from experience 
how hard this teaching is;
I am in no way free of the dark impulse
to try to dismiss and destroy
those with whom I disagree.
Yet for us who claim the name of Christian
this is the true line in the sand 
that must not be crossed;
this is the non-negotiable truth.
As the poet W. H. Auden put it:
“We must love one another or die.”
For whoever is without love—
the love that is God’s Spirit poured into our hearts,
the love that breaches the barriers of human enmity, 
the love that lays down its life—
does not know God, for God is love.
So let us pray that the God who loves us
would give us a share in his love, 
and may God have mercy on us all. 

Easter 4

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

Today’s readings unequivocally proclaim
that our salvation comes through Jesus Christ
and through him alone.
Jesus says in today’s Gospel, 
“I am the good shepherd,
and I know mine and mine know me,
just as the Father knows me and I know the Father;
and I will lay down my life for the sheep.”
To drive home the message as starkly as possible,
Peter declares in the book of Acts:
“There is no salvation through anyone else,
nor is there any other name under heaven
given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

These words, 
so absolute and imperious in their claim,
might sit uneasily with us.
Perhaps they sit uneasily with us
because of what they seem to say about other people,
because they seem to restrict salvation to those
who are visible members of Christ’s flock, the Church.
But the Church herself 
does not understand these words in that way.
The Second Vatican Council teaches that 
God can lead people outside the Church to saving faith 
“through ways that are known to himself” (Ad gentes 7)—
ways that are not known to us.
As Jesus says in our Gospel, 
“I have other sheep 
that do not belong to this fold.
These also I must lead, 
and they will hear my voice.”
 
I think it is actually more likely
that these words sit uneasily with us
not because of what they say about other people
but because of what they say about us.
They sit uneasily with us because they say
that no achievement of ours,
no affiliation of ours,
no ideology of ours,
no relationship of ours,
but only our relationship with Jesus Christ
that can rescue our lives 
from ultimate meaninglessness.
Salvation means knowing Jesus 
and being known by him.
Salvation means the love of his Father 
making us children of God.
Salvation means being built into 
a living temple of the Spirit,
of which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.
Salvation is not a prize 
for having a correct opinion about God;
it is a transformation wrought by the Holy Spirit 
in the depths of our being.
Salvation is not a reward 
given to us for being good, moral people;
it is a free gift from God 
given to us through the goodness of Jesus,
which makes trivial all our claims to goodness.
Salvation is not our souls someday going 
to live in heaven after we die;
it is Christ living in our souls right now, 
at this very moment,
transforming us into God’s children.
 
The reason why 
“there is no salvation through anyone else”
is not because God has arbitrarily decided 
to restrict salvation to those 
who have a relationship with Jesus Christ,
but because salvation simply is 
being in relationship with Jesus Christ.
The name of Jesus is inextricably woven 
into the meaning of salvation
as Christians understand that term.

But all of this 
makes us profoundly uncomfortable.
Yes, sure, Jesus is important,
but other things are important too.
I may be a Christian, but I am other things as well.
I have my achievements and my affiliations,
my loves and my loyalties.
Certainly the prudent thing, 
when it comes to the ultimate meaning of our existence,
is not to put all our eggs in one basket 
but to seek balance in our lives.
But what could possibly balance out the love of God 
that has been poured into our hearts through Christ?
Who or what could compete in importance
with the one who has the power 
both to lay down his life, 
and to take it up again—
and in taking it up again
to take my life with it
into the mystery of God’s life,
making me a child of God.
What could possibly be placed on the scale
that would balance the eternal weight of glory?
Before this, all prudent calculations must fall away.
 
And along with them must fall away as well 
my achievements and my affiliations,
my loves and my loyalties
that I seek to balance against my relationship with Jesus.
And this is so that Christ’s desire might be fulfilled:
that “there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
For our achievements and affiliations
and loves and loyalties,
when we invest them with a weight that could rival
the eternal weight of glory,
turn into the identities and ideologies
that divide the human race 
that Christ has come to gather together.
Whether it is conflict
over politics or nationality
or race or gender
or economic justice 
or the sanctity of life,
we only can begin to understand 
these differences and divisions
when we see in the faces 
on the opposite side of the divide
those who, like us, are called 
into relationship with Jesus,
when we see them as those 
for whom Christ the good shepherd 
has laid down his life,
no less than he has for us.

For in the end, 
we are not saved by identities or ideologies
but by a person who has loved us: Jesus Christ.
“There is no salvation through anyone else,
nor is there any other name under heaven
given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”
May Christ our shepherd gather us all into his one flock,
and may God have mercy on us all. 

Easter 2

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

The risen Jesus seems to show a marked preference
for sinners and skeptics.
At least, as we see in today’s Gospel reading, 
it is to such as these that he in his mercy
entrusts the tasks of forgiveness and faith.

First, the sinners.
It is perhaps understandable that the fickle crowd
who had hailed Jesus upon his arrival in Jerusalem
would quickly turn against him and called for his crucifixion.
The disciples of Jesus, however, had been with him for a long time:
they had heard his teachings and seen his miracles;
they had made the journey with him from Galilee to Jerusalem;
he had called each by name 
and given them the joyful task of witnessing to God’s rein.
But by abandoning him in his moment of greatest need,
they committed the sin for which the poet Dante 
reserved the deepest circle of Hell: 
they had betrayed their benefactor.
And in the aftermath of their betrayal 
they now cower in hiding, behind locked doors,
And yet it is to these cowardly sinners that Jesus 
comes and speaks the words “Peace be with you”
and to whom he entrusts
the power of the judgment and forgiveness of sins:
“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Then, the skeptic.
Thomas the doubter
was perhaps by nature one of those people
who suspects that if something seems
too good to be true
then it probably is false.
 He was one who would not believe the testimony 
of even his closest companions,
who would not believe unless he was given 
concrete—literally tangible—proof.
And yet it is to this skeptical doubter
that Christ appears and bids him to believe
and gives to him the grace to utter 
the New Testament’s boldest confession 
of faith in Jesus Christ,
the words that state most plainly 
the mystery present in the person of Jesus:
“My Lord and my God!”

Sinners and skeptics.
They may seem like odd choices
to become vessels of forgiveness and faith.
But in the upside-down world 
inaugurated by Christ’s resurrection
this is precisely what they become.
And it is in fact only fitting once we grasp 
the revolutionary mercy of God
revealed in Jesus’ resurrection.

Who better than this frightened band of betrayers
to be entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation?
Who but a sinner knows how deeply we suffer from sin,
and how desperately we need forgiveness?
Who but one who knows from within
the evasions and self-deceptions we employ
to excuse our sins
would know how to apply, 
with both mercy and rigor,
the just judgment of God upon the sinner?
Who but one who has committed the worst betrayal,
and yet still hears from Jesus the words “Peace be with you,”
would know how deep into the hell of sin God’s mercy can reach?

And who better than Thomas the skeptic
to be entrusted with the confession 
“my Lord and my God”?
Who but one whose restless mind 
will not rest content with simple answers
could receive the grace to press beyond 
the joyful moment of encounter with the risen Jesus 
to see what is unseeable,
and to speak something as mysterious and hidden
as the presence of the invisible God 
in the human flesh of Jesus?
Who but one who has doubted 
knows the time it can take to come to faith,
so as to bear with patience the doubts of others?
Who but one who in their doubt keeps seeking Jesus
can know that even amidst our doubts
the seeds of faith planted by grace can still live?

We hear in the First Letter of John,
“the victory that conquers the world is our faith.”
This statement might sound to our ears
like a triumphalist affirmation
that faith allows us to trample underfoot
the enemies of God, 
that faith is a weapon in the arsenal
of those who are strong and destined for success.
It is a phrase that might bring to our mind’s eye 
images Christians striding confidently 
through the halls of power
and passing judgement upon all 
who succumb to sin and skepticism.
 
But what if faith’s conquest of the world
looks not like the successful
going from strength to strength,
but like the sinful and the skeptical
grasped by the crucified and risen God?
What if it looks not like those 
who wield God’s word as a weapon,
but like people being reborn 
through the blood and water pouring forth 
from the pierced side of the crucified Christ?
What if it is mercy’s conquest won through suffering?
What if it is Easter?

According to the logic of Easter 

it makes sense
that the victory of forgiveness and faith
would be made manifest 
in the sinful and the skeptical.
And this is the great hope Easter offers us.
For all of us are, let’s be honest,
sinful and skeptical—at least some of the time.
All of us know ourselves to have abandoned Christ—
at least some of the time.
All of us know ourselves to have doubted Christ—
at least some of the time.
So Easter is for us.
Easter is the great feast of God’s mercy,
the great feast of forgiveness and faith,
spread before us sinners and skeptics.
Easter is the invitation, 
“come and eat, for all is prepared.”
And blessed are we who are called 
to the supper of the Lamb. 

Easter Octave: Wednesday

Readings: Acts 3:1-10; Luke 24:13-35

When Peter heals the man crippled from birth,
St. Luke tells us, “He leaped up, stood, 
and walked around,
and went into the temple with them,
walking and jumping and praising God.”
I think he is doing more than simply
giving his newly-healed legs a test-drive, 
taking them for a spin,
to see what they could do.
I think that his heart is so full of joy at being healed
that he simply cannot contain himself,
so he stands and walks and leaps and jumps.
He leaps in praise of God;
he jumps in joy for having received
a gift more precious that silver or gold,
for in a very real sense he has been given a new life.
And those who see him 
are “filled with amazement and astonishment
at what had happened to him.”

What about those two disciples fleeing Jerusalem,
who encountered a stranger on the road,
only to discover, as he broke bread for them,
that it was in fact the risen Jesus?
We are told that they “set out at once
and returned to Jerusalem.”
Do you think they walked at a leisurely pace?
Isn’t it more likely that they ran?
Isn’t it even possible 
that they leaped and jumped as they ran,
so filled were they with joy
that the one who was dead now lived,
that the one whom they had abandoned 
had not abandoned them,
that the hungers of their burning hearts
could continue to be fed by fellowship with Jesus?
And those who saw them returning to Jerusalem,
where their master had just been killed,
from which they had just fled,
were they too 
“filled with amazement and astonishment”
at what had happened to them?

And what of us?

We may think of ourselves as dignified people
who are not prone to leaping and jumping
and other forms of enthusiastic religion.
We’re Catholics, after all,
with our orderly liturgy 
and our relatively restrained demeanor.
But perhaps as we encounter Christ 
in broken bread this day,
just as the disciples did in the village of Emmaus,
we should at least let our hearts leap and jump
at the good news that Jesus lives,
that he is with us to heal us and feed us
and to give us new lives.
Let us pray that, having received today the risen Christ,
we should go out into our daily lives transformed,
to live in such a way that those whom we meet
will, like those who saw the man healed by Peter,
be filled with amazement and astonishment
at what has happened to us.
And may God have mercy on us all.

Lent 5

Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

As some of you might know,
in my life outside of the Cathedral
I am a professor of theology at Loyola University.
And what I do as a professor of theology
is not simply to make students learn 
the content of Christian faith and practice—
doctrines, history, rituals, moral teachings—
but also to help them think through the Christian faith,
to show them how reason can illuminate
the doctrines, history, rituals, 
and moral teachings of Christianity.
I try to get them to see how 
the extraordinary claims of the Christian faith
can be understood in a way that fits 
with our ordinary way of reasoning about the world,
so that the faith is not seen as something
that you need to kill your intellect
in order to embrace.

And I think this is a pretty worthwhile endeavor.
One of the glories of the Catholic approach to faith
is our insistence that faith and reason 
are not opposed to one another,
and that we number among our saints
not only those who devoted themselves to prayer
or to serving the bodily needs of their neighbor
but also those who devoted themselves
to the life of the mind, 
scholar-saints like Augustine, or Thomas Aquinas,
or the philosopher and Carmelite nun Edith Stein,
better known as St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross.
These saints show us that thinking and holiness
are not opposed to each other,
that indeed thinking rigorously about the faith
can be its own sort of path to holiness.
These scholar-saints show us the value 
of applying the same mind that we use 
to grasp a mathematical proof
or the laws of physical motion
or the psychology of human behavior
to the mysteries of the Christian faith.
They show us that the power of thought
that we use to think about mundane realities,
can, by God’s grace, help us to better grasp
supernatural truths.

But, at the end of the day, all our efforts 
to understand the heart of Christianity
can only take us up to the edge of faith,
so that we peer over into an abyss 
that human reason cannot fathom.
All our efforts at explanation
run up against the reality that 
in Jesus—in his words and actions—
we are confronted with the very mystery of God,
a mystery that cannot be “solved,”
cannot be explained,
but must be embraced by the light of faith,
a light so dazzling that it looks like darkness
to our ordinary ways of thinking.

In our Gospel today we hear stated 
with absolute clarity and precision
the mystery that lies at the heart of our faith:
“unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, 
it remains just a grain of wheat; 
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”
As the hour of Jesus approaches,
the hour in which he will be
lifted up from the earth 
on the wood of the cross
so as to draw all people to himself,
he reveals to his followers the mystery:
our life can bear no fruit
except through death;
the life that seeks 
to preserve itself at all cost
remains a sterile, fruitless life.
And from this fundamental mystery
of life gained through death
further paradoxes pour forth:
if you love your life you will lose it,
but if you hate your life you will find it;
the world’s condemnation of Jesus 
is God’s judgment passed on the world;
the shame of the cross is the glory of Christ.
These are words that scandalize our reason
and over which our attempts at explanation stumble;
these are words that dazzle and blind our minds
but through the grace of faith enflame our hearts.

Let me be clear: 

I am not saying that we should not apply our minds
in order to understand our faith as much as possible.
Stupidity is not a virtue,
and we should work as diligently 
to understand the doctrines, history, rituals, 
and moral teachings of the Church
as we do to understand 
the natural world or human behavior.
After all, God gave us our minds
and expects us to use them 
to ponder God’s mysteries.
But, as all of the great scholar-saints
of the Catholic tradition knew, 
our understanding can only take us 
to the edge of mystery
and it is love that must peer over that edge
into the depths of God.
The mystery of life through death 
of which Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel
applies in a certain way 
to the life of the mind as well.
We may not have to kill our intellects
in order to be believers,
but when we have exhausted our minds 
in pursuit of God,
we must then plant them in the soil of love
so that, dying, they can bear fruit.

As we prepare to celebrate 
the great mysteries of our faith
in the coming days of Holy Week and Easter,
as we prepare to ponder Christ’s passing over
from death to life,
let us pay heed to the words 
of another great scholar-saint, St. Bonaventure,
who bids us, once we have spent our minds
in seeking understanding: 
“Let us then die and pass over into darkness; 
let us impose silence on cares, desires, and images; 
let us pass over with the crucified Christ 
from this world to the Father.”
And may God have mercy on us all.

 

Lent 3

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

“Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
I think we Catholics today can congratulate ourselves
on having avoided this.
Well, apart from bingo and raffles 
and bake sales and holiday craft fairs
and sales of fairly-traded coffee and chocolate
and also Lenten fish fries.
But apart from those, we’re doing really well.
And even those things are relatively harmless,
and may even serve salutary purposes
of raising money for good causes 
and of building a sense of community.

But Jesus is, I think, criticizing 
something more than mere commerce.
He is offended by something more
than money changing hands in a sacred place.
Throughout his ministry,
both in his words and in his actions,
Jesus teaches that our relationship with God
should not be thought of as a transaction
in which I give something to God—
some slice of my time and attention,
some thing that I give up as a sacrifice, 
some number of good deeds—
in order to receive some benefit,
whether this be a crude expectation
of prosperity and material gain
or, perhaps more likely, 
the more sophisticated desire
for peace of mind and spiritual consolation.
This is the idea that I can give God 
some determinate amount of my love,
or at least of my obedience,
in order to receive some specific reward.

The entire life of Jesus is an assault on this idea.
In embodying for us the God who is love,
the God with whom we can strike no bargain
but to whom we can give nothing less than everything,
and from whom we can only receive with gratitude,
Jesus seeks to drive from the temple of our hearts
the idea that our relationship with God
is an exchange or transaction,
lashing this idea with the cords 
of God’s mercy and love,
offered to us free of charge.

Jesus does this just so that we 
can come to know God truly,
to grasp what it means 
to love and be loved by God.
We generally don’t approach as transactions
the relationships that matter to us most.
I don’t offer my wife a kiss
just so she will mow the lawn;
I don’t take out the garbage
just so she will do the laundry;
or, at least, if I do, 
I feel slightly ashamed of myself.
Because love is not a matter 
of calculating costs and benefits.
Love is a matter of giving everything 
when you have nothing to gain in return,
of receiving everything
when you have nothing of your own to give.
In love’s economy 
we are all both generous donors 
and humble beggars. 

And this is true above all with God.
Jesus teaches us through his life
that God’s love cannot be purchased,
that God’s laws are not 
the price sticker on divine favor,
that our obedience is not the currency 
with which we purchase prosperity 
or inner peace 
or even our salvation. 
Jesus teaches us this 
with agonizing clarity
in his death on the cross,
when he gives himself totally 
into his Father’s loving hands
to win for us the precious gift of eternal life.
The shocking message of the Gospel
is that the love that is God 
is most fully shown forth
in the pain and shame 
of Christ crucified,
which St. Paul tells us is
“a stumbling block to Jews 
and foolishness to Gentiles.”

As anyone who has ever fallen in love can tell you, 
love can make you look weak and foolish
in the eyes of the world.
It can make you look weak and foolish
because it pulls you out of the economy
of reasonable exchanges,
of calculating costs and benefits,
of giving in order to get.
Spouses, parents, or anyone blessed
with a true and lasting friendship
all know the weakness of being overwhelmed by love,
the foolishness of not caring whether what you give
is balanced out by what you get.

And Jesus tells us that this is what God is.
Think of the deepest 
and most enduring love you have known.
Think of the sacrifices 
you have made for that love.
Think of the unrepayable gifts 
you have gained from that love.
Think of the ways that love 
has broken open your heart.
God is all of that and more.
On the cross God embraces 
weakness and foolishness
because that is simply what love does.
And in that embrace God reveals 
the power and wisdom of love,
for, as St. Paul says,
“the foolishness of God 
is wiser than human wisdom, 
and the weakness of God 
is stronger than human strength.”

Our souls are God’s temple;
our hearts are God’s house.
Let us not make them marketplaces
in which we seek to transact the business
of bargaining with God for our salvation.
Let us rather let Jesus cleanse them.
Let us allow ourselves to be weak and foolish
for the sake of crucified love.
Let us make our hearts into homes 
within which we welcome
the power and wisdom of God.
And may God have mercy on us all.

 

Lent 1

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

For some reason, when my children were babies,
they were given numerous pictures of Noah’s Ark.
Maybe you have seen the sort I mean:
a smiling Noah, along with pairs of cuddly animals,
and, of course, a rainbow in the sky,
everything rendered in bright, happy colors.
Just the thing to hang up in a nursery.
Until, that is, you stop to recall
that the story of Noah’s Ark is the terrifying tale
of the near-complete destruction of the entire human race
on account of how their exceedingly wicked ways
had angered God and stirred him with righteous indignation.
And while I think reminders of the wrath of God
might be useful when dealing with teenagers,
I am not convinced that they make 
appropriate decorations for a baby’s room.

But while the story of Noah can’t be reduced 
to a happy tale about a boat trip 
with a bunch of cute animals,
it is also not simply a story of divine wrath.
It is above all a promise of divine patience.
For at the end of the tale 
God promises to never again destroy the earth,
and the bow that is hung in the sky
is not simply a colorful decoration
but a weapon of war that has been retired from use.
After the flood, this disarmed God makes a covenant 
with the whole of creation:
a promise to endure the evil we people do
until we can be wooed back into relationship with God.
This does not mean that divine wrath 
disappears from the story of God’s people,
but it does mean that that wrath is always enclosed
in God’s ultimate desire that all people be saved
and come to knowledge of the truth.

This disarmed God promises to be patient with us,
and the rainbow that emerges 
as sunlight pierces the clouds
is a sign of that divine patience.
Of course, the supreme sign of God’s patience with us—
God’s desire to woo us back into relationship with him—
is not a rainbow, as spectacular as those may be,
but Jesus Christ, God present with us.
Indeed, in one of his sermons, 
St. Thomas Aquinas sees the rainbow itself
as a sign that points us to Christ:
just as the rainbow is light 
refracted through water droplets,
so Jesus is the light of the divine nature 
refracted through human nature,
humanity and divinity bound together in one person,
the love that is God made visible in a human being,
establishing an unbreakable bond of peace (Ecce rex tuus, pars 2).
Jesus is the definitive sign of God’s patience
with unrighteous humanity.
For God in Christ does not inflict suffering on sinners,
but takes the suffering of sin upon himself;
as St. Peter writes in today’s Epistle:
“Christ suffered for sins once, 
the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, 
that he might lead you to God.”
In Christ crucified, 
the disarmed God has taken human flesh:
God’s patience is displayed before our eyes
in a sign more compelling than any rainbow.

And yet, today, Christ the patience of God
announces to us with shocking urgency: 
“This is the time of fulfillment.”
Christ the patience of God
warns us that the time is short:
“The kingdom of God is at hand.”
Christ the patience of God
implores us not to wait:
“Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
He announces, warns, and implores us
not because God’s patience is running short,
but because God’s love desires so urgently
that we return to God,
that we live the fullness of life
that God desires for us,
the fullness of life that we call God’s kingdom.
Fresh from his forty days of testing in the desert,
Jesus knows the dangers that beset our souls.
He has confronted the powers 
arrayed against God’s kingdom.
He has looked into the face of temptation
and he knows the urgency with which our enemy
seeks our destruction.
So he calls to us with urgent patience:
repent, 

believe,
let me lead you to God.

God has given us this season of Lent:
so that we too might learn
how to be urgently patient.
We begin these forty days
by receiving ashes on our heads
as a sign of our mortality,
a reminder of the fragility of our lives,
a call to turn back to the Lord
and receive the life he offers.
God has given us this season 
to remind us of our weakness,
of the shortness of our time on earth,
and of the urgent need to prepare our hearts
so that we might receive the living God.
But God has also given us this season
to remind us that the eternal God
acts according to his own schedule,
and that we must patiently allow 
God’s gracious mercy to work within us
and within those around us,
not when and how we think it should,
but in God’s own time, as God wills.

So let this be a season of patient urgency,
a season in which we seek to embrace
the peace God offers us,
the peace of the disarmed God 
who has hung up his bow in the sky,
the disarmed God 
who has hung for our sake on the cross,
the disarmed God 
who calls to us and woos us
to turn back to him and live with him eternally.
Let us pray that we might let God’s grace 
accomplish this work within us
when and how God wills it,
and may God have mercy on us all.

5th Week of Ordinary Time

Readings: Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Corinthians  9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39

VIDEO

I feel like pretty much every time 
I step up to the ambo to preach these days

I end up saying the same thing: 
“Wow, things sure are tough.”
I may be accused of belaboring the obvious,
but I don’t think I can be accused 
of saying something that is untrue.
In my nearly sixty years I cannot recall a time 
so marked by collective loss:
loss of life-sustaining relationships,
loss of simple daily activities that brought joy,
loss of a certain carefree confidence 
that the future will probably be okay,
that problems will find solutions,
that fairness and justice will prevail,
that divisions will be healed.
I know that people around the world
suffer death and disease, 
discrimination and deprivation,
on a daily basis and on a scale far surpassing
anything I have personally experienced,
but even my own small miseries 
cause today’s reading from the book of Job
to find an echo in my heart:
“I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.”
At this point, 
it’s been just about eleven months of misery:
eleven months of disrupted lives,
eleven months of disrupted work and school,
eleven months of disrupted plans and relationships.
Even if we have not ourselves gotten sick
or suffered through the sickness of a loved one,
or been estranged from family or friends
by the divisions that beset our world,
these months of misery have affected all of us.
They have washed out the colors of life’s fabric,
rendered the world a grayer place,
a less joyful place.
And we may be tempted to say with Job,
“My days…come to an end without hope….
I shall not see happiness again.”

But then there is Jesus.
Even as I am tempted to focus once again
on the past months of misery,
there is Jesus in our Gospel for today, 
in the midst of sickness,
in the midst of spiritual and psychological distress,
healing illnesses, rebuking the powers of evil,
bringing solace and consolation to the brokenhearted,
shedding light in a world grown gray with sorrow.
There is Jesus reaching out to grasp 
the hand of Simon’s mother-in-law, 
pulling her free from her joyless world of pain
and pulling her into his world, 
the world of God’s reign, 
where sickness is healed
and the forces of darkness are put to flight.
There is Jesus raising her not simply from her sickbed
but from a life that had grown narrow with suffering,
and drawing her into a new life 
that is as broad and bright as God’s merciful love,
a life in which she is free to rise again
to serve the cause of God’s reign.

There is Jesus, whose human life 
is nothing but this divine mission 
to heal and enlighten:
“For this purpose have I come.”
There is Jesus who comes as the light of God 
in the midst of darkness,
as the joy of God
in the midst of sorrow
as the life of God 
in the midst of death.
There is Jesus who comes to live this mission
even to the point of cross and tomb,
filling the darkness of death with light
and breathing forth his Spirit of life upon his friends.
As the 5th-century bishop Peter Chrysologus wrote,
“Where the Lord of life has entered, 
there is no room for death” (sermon 18).

There is Jesus amidst the people of Galilee.
But what of us here, today,
in the midst of months of misery,
who feel in our hearts
the echo of Job’s words: 
“My days…come to an end without hope….
I shall not see happiness again”?
Does he come for us as well?
Faith in the resurrection of Jesus
and in the sending of his Spirit
is faith that for us, 
no less than for those people in Galilee,
Jesus comes as light and joy and life.
For us, no less than for them,
Jesus grasps our hand to pull us up,
to pull us into the world of God’s reign.
He grasps us through words of encouragement
spoken to us through the Scriptures;
he grasps us through his grace 
made present to us through the sacraments; 
he grasps us through the bonds of love and unity
that his Spirit forges among the members
of his body the Church.
In these, and in countless other ways,
the living Christ, made present through the Spirit,
grasps the hand of each one of us to give us hope,
to restore for each one of us 
the color of a world grown gray,
and he says to each one us, 
“for this purpose I came:
I came for you.”

And what do we say back to him?
How to we respond to so great a love?
We can respond with the words of the psalmist:
“Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.”
We can respond with our lives, 
rising up, like Simon’s mother-in-law, 
to serve the cause of God’s reign.
The one who comes for each one of us 
now frees us to be his light and joy 
and life for the world.

Let us pray that, through God’s grace, 
those who have endured months of misery
and have been allotted troubled nights—
whose days end without hope
and who fear they shall not see happiness again—
may hear from us a word of divine consolation,
may feel in the touch of our hand the grasp of Jesus,
many see in our lives a reflection of the Spirit’s flame.
And may the God who comes for us 
have mercy on us all.

3rd Week of Ordinary Time

Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

“Time is running out…
The world in its present form is passing away…”
Paul tells us in our second reading today,
so we should set aside worldly concerns.
And in our Gospel Jesus arrives proclaiming, 
“This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
Already the old world is crumbling
and the new world is being born.

But two thousand years later,
with the world seemingly still firmly in place,
what can such words mean for us?
Was Paul simply wrong about the timing of things
or was Jesus merely mistaken 
about the nearness of the Kingdom?
Can we safely ignore Paul’s advice 
about how to live in a world that is passing away?
Can we put off responding to Jesus’ call 
to repent and believe in the Gospel?

I don’t think so.

For Paul is surely correct: time is running out.
Indeed, that is all time ever does.
Time’s arrow ultimately moves in only one direction,
and the world as we know it 
is simply one long process of passing away.
Both for us as individuals and for the world as a whole
the end is, if not exactly in sight, 
at least predictable with some certainty.
You and I will one day die,
and the cosmos as we know it will one day end.
Everything that we seek to hold onto
decays and slips through our fingers.
Our loves and our labors,
our tears and our laughter,
all are passing.
We know this on some level,
which is why we expend 
so much energy trying to deny it.
We engage in fruitless attempts
to hold on to what is passing
and to exert control over 
what is in fact beyond our control.
And these attempts are often purchased
at the expense of others.
We are willing to deceive and destroy
in order to maintain the illusion
that we have mastery over our own destinies
and can change the direction of time’s arrow.

But we do not have to think that way.
Indeed, when Jesus says 
“repent and believe in the Gospel”
he issues a call to think differently
about our lives and our world.
To repent means literally “to think again,”
to change one’s mind,
to rethink and reevaluate 
and to see the world in a new way
so as to live in the world in a new way.
Time’s arrow need not point us toward death
and the ultimate dissolution of all that we love;
for those who believe in the good news Jesus brings,
it can point us toward the victory of life over death,
toward a new birth from above.
It can point us to a life that is more
than the endless clawing after control
of a world that is passing away.
This is the life to which Jesus calls
Simon and Andrew and James and John
in today’s Gospel,
when they abandon control of their own destinies
by placing their lives in the hands of Jesus.
This is the life to which Jesus calls us.

But what does all this look like concretely?
Let me offer an example.
Recently the Chinese embassy in the U.S.,
seeking to manage the bad public relations resulting
from the Chinese government’s repression of the Uygurs,
the Muslim minority in northwestern China,
tweeted out this message: 
“Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, 
the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated 
and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, 
making them no longer baby-making machines. 
They are more confident and independent.”
What the embassy clothes in the appealing language
of emancipation, equality, and health
are in fact practices of forced sterilization and abortion
carried out as part of a program of genocide 
against a religious and ethnic minority. 

This is obviously something horrific.
But what is particularly striking
is the claim that Uygur women
are in this process gaining control over their lives,
a seductive claim that is used 
to try and sell this genocidal program,
not simply to us Americans,
who are heavily invested to our own autonomy,
but to the Uygur women themselves,
who are forced into re-education camps
where they are told that the abortion of their children
is in fact making them masters of their own destinies.
If this reeducation works,
the government will no longer have to resort
to the crude methods of forcing Uygur women 
to abort their pregnancies.
If it works, Uygur women will confidently choose 
to do so themselves,
in the name of emancipation, equality, and health.
In other words, they will have become just like us.

But what if this sort of control is an illusion?
What if we cannot kill our way 
to emancipation from fear,
the fear that we will not be able to hold onto
the future that steadily slips through our fingers?
What if the only hope 
in a world that is passing away
is to place our futures in the hands of Jesus?
Can we change our ways of thinking,
repent and think anew,
so that true emancipation is found
not in autonomy but in community,
not in self-assertion but in mutual service,
not in violence against the weak
but in welcoming the stranger?

I think one reason why the issue of abortion
remains so intractable in our own nation—
along with issues of poverty and immigration, 
the death penalty and racism—
is that all of us cling too tightly
to this world that is passing away
and to the illusion of control.
Indeed, we are willing to sustain that illusion
at the expense of others.
If we can just eliminate 
one more unwanted pregnancy,
one more hardened criminal,
one more undocumented alien…
well, then time’s arrow might change direction, 

the world might stop passing away
and be as we would like it to be.

We need to hear together the call of Jesus to repent.
For the words of Jesus remain true:
the kingdom of God is at hand.
It is just on the other side 
of a different way of thinking,
which can lead 

to a different way of living.
May the God of grace
grant us a spirit of repentance
and have mercy on us all.