Homily for January 27, 2008. Third Sunday of the Year

In Matthew's Gospel today there's an implied answer to a question: How do you become a follower of Christ? If you had a large group of people and asked that question, you would hear a variety of answers. Sometimes people describe becoming a follower as the end of a long search. They're searching for something and finally they come across it. Sometimes it's the result of a struggle with an addiction, or a traumatic experience in their life. They will frequently tell a story of alienation from the religion of their upbringing and a search through other traditions. Sometimes the end of their journey will be to return to the religion of their upbringing. Other times it won’t. And some people just can't remember a time when they didn't have faith, and they would say they've been here all along.
One of the most popular forms of religious writing today is the memoir. How many of you have read do you know what I mean by the memoir? People who write the story of their journey and their search for faith how many of you have read one of those? [response from the congregation: I’m writing one!] What? You're writing one? Okay. How many of you think you could write one?
One of the difficulties of reading memoirs is that they are all about me. They tend to make becoming a follower of Christ all about me and my search; me and my questions; me and all of the things that I have gone through. And I think the literature out there is full of stories that are very self absorbed and all about me.
Matthew, in the Gospel today, has a very simple answer to how you become a follower of Christ: You hear the word. And the word grabs you, and you can't let go of it. Or it won't let go of you, and you follow, and you follow, not knowing where you're going. You take the first step, and you don't have the map in front of you. But you follow.
Peter and Andrew, James and John I think they were quite content. I mean, I'm imagining this. I don't know what their history was before Jesus walked by. But I'm imagining them as quite content in what they're doing. They're not looking for anything. They're perfectly happy to be fishermen, and their life is complete. And all of a sudden this man walks by, and he says, "Follow me."
What questions would come to your mind? If someone walked by and said, "Follow me,” what questions might you ask? “Who are you? Why should I follow you? What are the risks involved? Where are we going? How much does it cost? What's in it for me?”
Very good questions, aren't they? Does he answer them? Just imagine he says, "Follow me," and they have no idea where he's going, they don't even know who he is.
Well, I'd like to think maybe they had some prior association. Maybe they heard the testimony of John. Maybe, but we don't know. Later on they will ask, "What's in it for me?" Later on they will argue about who will sit at his right hand and left hand when he comes into his Kingdom. Later on many of them will walk away, and Peter will say, "We're staying with you, because we have nowhere else to go."
Later on Jesus will ask, "Who do people say that I am?" And they will answer. And then he will say, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter will answer for him. But for right now, they're grabbed by the word, and they follow.
I was talking with somebody recently who quoted Martin Luther King as saying you don't have to see the top of the staircase to take the first step. You don't have to see the end of the journey to take the first step. The person applied it to his own hesitance to take some steps he new he had to take without a guarantee of the outcome. But some sense of what was the right thing to do was grabbing him. It had hold of him and wouldn’t let go of him.
I just invite you today to be in touch with that something of faith within you, whatever it might be, that grabs you and won't let go of you. Whatever says, "Follow me." And reflect on your response.
You know, I think so often we think of faith as having all the answers, or we think of faith as a feeling of certitude that we have, or we think of faith as moments of clarity. I invite you today just to think of faith as taking that first step without knowing where it's going to lead you, without asking, "What's in it for me," without even asking, "Who are you?" But let your heart be freed to follow that faith that grabs hold of you.

Homily for January 20, 2008 Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

I want to have a little fun with the images in the Gospel today. I've always wondered, how were they a sign that revealed Christ's glory? I mean, so he made water into wine. Big deal! Is that an occasion to believe in him? I think how you frame things makes all the difference in the world. So, I want to invite you today to maybe let this Gospel frame your experience of God and to let that experience of God frame your whole experience of life.

Imagine that you're at a wedding. Con-temporize it: You're at a wedding, and they run out of beer, and suddenly an abundance of the best beer you've ever tasted appears. What does it say to you about God and about life?

“You're important enough to get the best.”
“God provides in all things.”
“Weddings are important celebrations, and you can let
 your guard down and celebrate.”

Okay. (Comment: I am struck by how these responses “moralize” the story rather than enter into it. Instead of just opening up to the surprise, joy and unexpectedness in the story, they made it a moral lesson. How hard it is for us to enter the experience without moralizing! To experience the real meaning, perhaps we just need to experience the moment in its full human dimension.)

By the way, this Gospel reminded me of a joke—not a joke; it has a point—about a church in Italy where a couple was having a wedding, and all the wedding reception halls were booked. So they asked the pastor if they could have the reception in church. And he said, "Okay, but no drinking and no dancing."

Well, he came back and they were drinking and dancing, and he was furious and about to shut it down when somebody said, "Wait a minute. Jesus was at the wedding feast at Cana, and they were drinking and dancing."

He said, "Yes, but the Blessed Sacrament wasn't there."

Okay. Any other things that that might say to you?

“In some areas you may have to run out before you can
 get replenished.”

I want to shift to St. Bridget of Ireland. In her life story, there is a story—I don't know if this really happened or not—but there's a story that she had a magical keg of beer that never ran empty, and she kept ten parishes supplied in beer for a year.

Wow! She once described heaven as a gigantic lake of beer from which we could all drink. What does that say to you?

Well, you know, biblically, weddings are always an image of God and God's presence. The wedding is always a symbol of God's closeness to us, of God dwelling in our midst. The wedding is a symbol of God's faithfulness, and rich feasts with abundant wine are always a symbol of the new age that God is going to bring in.

So, if you remember nothing else—well, let me ask you, what is your image of God from which you operate most of the time? I won't ask you to answer. I've met many people who have an image of God as very stern, very judging, very punishing.

Let this Scripture shape your image of God. When you think of God, think of a wedding feast with an abundance of rich wine and choice food, and an abundance of celebration and dancing. Does that make sense? That's what God is like. And that's the revelation of God's presence.

If you were thoroughly seeped in those Scriptures, then you would see in the sudden appearance at the end of a wedding the best wine you ever tasted. When you thought it had all run out, you would see the presence of God and be moved to wonder. So let that image shape your image of God.

By the way, that's true not only in Jewish poetry and Christian imagery. The Sufi poets’ (who are Muslim) image of God is the tavern, and the tavern is where God dwells. Their image of sanctity is drunkenness, being drunk on the wine of the beloved. And it's just, that image of celebration runs throughout our image of God.

What if that image shaped your experience of life and it became the frame through which you looked at life? I just want to suggest that, if you did, then you might grow in a sensitivity to the signs around us that lead us to celebrate, and our hearts might be more open to symbols of joy and celebration in our life. That's what God calls us to.

Sometimes I think the frame through which we interpret life is very narrow and constricts our experience. Sometimes it broadens us. Let's just pray as we celebrate that our experience of life and of God be broad, and pray that when we think of God, we think of a rich celebration with an abundance of food and wine. Or, if St.Bridget makes you happier, think of her image of God and of heaven.

Homily for January 13, 2008 The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

I mentioned at the beginning of Mass that the Christmas decorations are still up. I know I've done elements of this homily before, but I'm trusting that you won't really remember.
Why is it that the Christmas decorations are still up? Twelve days of Christmas? Okay, that's a good answer. I wonder where that came from, though.
A piece of Catholic trivia the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, do you know that's a coded message from the catechism? The twelve lords represent the twelve apostles. It was in the days of England when the church was outlawed, and this was a secret code to unveil the catechism. Anyway, I can't remember all the details.
Christmas in our commercial world is all about buying and selling and giving gifts. If that's what it's all about, then on Christmas you have a flurry of activity, you open the gifts, and you get rid of the wrappings, and it's over, right? Everything goes back to normal the day after Christmas. I listened and looked for Christmas music the day after Christmas, and the satellite radio station I was listening to, that had Christmas music, was off the air already.
In the church, Christmas is about revelation, the revelation of God's salvation and God's Son. Revelation is rich and deep. It doesn't just happen once. It happens over and over again, in a multitude of different ways.
So in the early church, the three primary celebrations of the revelation of God's Son were the Epiphany, which we had last week, the baptism of the Lord, which we celebrate today, and the wedding feast at Cana. And that will be the Gospel next Sunday. December 25 came on the scene late.
It's about this revelation of God's Son, and the revelation isn't over. It goes on and on, and it continues in our midst today. I want to just try to more deeply implant some images for you that are in the readings today.
There's the image of God's beloved Son. It's in the reading from Isaiah: This is my servant, whom I have chosen and whom I uphold. It's echoed in the Gospels, the voice that says, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."
What is the mission of the servant? Can you remember from the readings? One word summarizes it: Justice. Here is my servant whom I have chosen to bring justice to the earth. That's elaborated on in the end of the reading, when it says he will bring the ministry of justice, he will give sight to the blind, release those who are in dungeons and in prisons, and bring light to those who are overwhelmed by darkness. A very clear statement: The ministry of the servant is to bring justice to the earth, to set things right.
How will he go about doing that? This is one of the great mysteries in the Scripture. It's described in Isaiah. How will he do that? It's by a series of negatives: Not crying out, not shouting in the streets. He will be so gentle that he will not even crush a bruised reed; he will not even break a piece of grass that is already bent; he will not even quench a smoldering wick.
So how does God send his servant to do justice? He doesn't give him a kingdom; he doesn't give him an army; he doesn't send him to war with all the evil people. But he sends him into the world to suffer.
Who is that servant? In Isaiah it's often the people of Israel, is that servant of God. In the Gospels, that is applied to Jesus as the servant of God. Maybe in our history it would be applied to all of us. We are God's sons and daughters whom God has called for the mission of justice in the world.
Where do you find that ongoing revelation? Do you find it in palaces? Do you find it in marble halls with terrazzo floors, rich surroundings? It comes from the margins. You find it coming up out of the mud, among the people who have gone to John the Baptist.
By the way, why did they go to John the Baptist? They wanted change. They wanted things to be different, and so they wanted to break with the old ways of doing things.
By the way, people in those days believed that the heavens had been closed for hundreds of years and there was no revelation. So coming up out of the dirt and the grime and the dust of the mud of people who wanted change, the heavens are opened, the Spirit of God is seen descending, and the voice says,"This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
What happens immediately after this in the Gospel? I'm getting ahead of myself. In the story, as it unfolds, do you know what happens immediately following this? The Spirit drives him into the desert, into the wilderness, and he is tempted. That will be the Gospel February 10, the first Sunday of Lent. We'll have some others in between.
So where do you find this servant of God who will bring justice? You find him on the margins, among the marginalized people. You find him among the poor, the homeless, the oppressed, the imprisoned. You find him among those who want things to be different.
He goes about his mission, not with power and strength and might. He goes about it not with armies. He goes about it by not crying out, not making his voice heard, not even breaking a bruised reed. As the Gospel unfolds, that servant takes upon himself the suffering of the world, and by implication that's what we're called to do. That's who we're called to be, and that's who we're called to be among.

Homily for January 6, 2008 Feast of Epiphany

Today is the original celebration of the birth of Jesus, and in much of the world, it is the big feast. In the eastern part of Christianity, December 25 is not celebrated at all; January 6 is the big day. And next Sunday, the Baptism of the Lord, is a big day. The readings surrounding the birth of Jesus are the story of the Magi, the story of the baptism of the Lord, and the story of the wedding feast at Cana. Luke's story of the manger -- that came in later than all the others.

Commentators on this feast have always seen in the three Magi -- I say three, but remember the Gospel doesn't say there were three -- the mystery of Jesus being revealed to the Gentiles. I was taught growing up that the three magi represented us, and in the second reading today, Paul says, "…the mystery hidden from all generations, but finally revealed." Do you remember what that mystery was? The Jews and the Gentiles are coheirs and are partners in the Gospel again, that theme of universality. I want to build on that today.

As I was reflecting on the readings, I was reminded of a retreat I made years ago with a writer, Richard Foster, a Quaker writer, who has written a lot about religious disciplines and religious formation. This was an ecumenical retreat, and at the beginning of this retreat, what he did was ask us to meet in small groups of four and make sure that we were with somebody from a different denomination. Then he asked us to say to each denomination in the group what we valued about that denomination.

I want to invite you to do that today. Imagine that we are gathered together  Catholics, Baptists, Methodist, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Pentecostals. Now, what can we Catholics learn from the Baptists? Their love of Scripture; their insistence on a personal relationship with Jesus; a good sense of community in their churches.

(The following comments were part of a dialogue with different members offering their answer.)

What can we learn from the Methodists? They're good singers; dedication to missionary work; they had their origins in the social gospel, too; very good in including and educating on the handicapped.

What can we learn from the Pentecostals? Praise and worship; following the Spirit.

What can we learn from the Episcopalians? They still have tradition; how to build a large endowment; tolerance; diversity; they allow women in the priesthood. I'm not going to comment; I don't want to get in trouble.

What can they learn from us? What can all those other groups learn from us? Dedication to helping people; a consistent ethic of life; we do schools well, education; tradition; ritual. We also work for social justice; tolerance; love; overseas missions.

Let me expand it a little. What can we learn from the Jews? Patience; perseverance; suffering; tremendous love for the poor; and a very rich understanding of God's law and of our obligations; our roots; a deep appreciation of the value of family and community; storytelling; by the way, also diversity. I went to a thing by Rabbi Sandy Sasso a couple months ago, and she said in the rabbinic tradition you can have two stories that have two totally different interpretations, and they're both true. They value the stories.

Yes? A care for the mourners; scholarship. They are a people of the book.

What can we learn from the Muslims? Tremendous love for the poor, they feed the poor; love and appreciation of poetry. They have a very rich mystical tradition, by the way, a very strong, extreme integration of faith and daily life; love of their Scripture; the power of daily prayer; and extreme dedication to God's will.

What can we learn from the Buddhists? A deep spirituality; a connectedness; humility; a love for the poor. By the way, western psychology separates psychology and spirituality. In Buddhism they're the same. There's an integration of the two. An appreciation of what happiness means in life; strong sense of non attachment; freedom; living in the present moment; a willingness to live with paradox and mystery; value for the elderly and their ancestors.

By the way, in asking all of these questions, I want to make a statement. I consider myself 100 percent Catholic and totally loyal to Catholic teaching. It's from that perspective that I love learning from other traditions, not from a spirit that says we're all the same, but from an appreciation that my being thoroughly formed as a Catholic has given me a place to stand from which I can value and appreciate other beliefs and other traditions.

And I think there is, in God's word, a universalism that calls us beyond the divisions that we humans create. And then as I reflect on all of that, my (this "dream" is taken from Richard Foster's comments in an article in the Spring 2007 edition of Conversations.) "my" dream in this new year for Christian formation would be that those who follow Jesus are known throughout the world for their ability to live well, to love their spouses and their families well, to raise their children well, to be good students, to be good stewards of the earth, to be lovers of tradition, to know how to live, to know how to die, and to know be how to be filled with hope, that above all we would be known as people who know how to live well with everything that that encompasses.

Homily for December 30, 2007 Feast of the Holy Family

As I said in the beginning, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family each year on this first Sunday after Christmas. So I spent the last few days reading over sermons from different sources about the Holy Family, statements of Popes about the Feast of the Holy Family and different religious writings about the family. I didn't like any of them.
So I woke up this morning, and my prayer was, "Oh, God, please don't let me say something stupid, or something inane, or something incredibly pious that will show how little I know about the topic." That said, I want to risk a few reflections on the readings today.
First, the Gospel. What family would we compare the Holy Family to? I have to confess ignorance here. I don't watch television, so I don't know how the family is portrayed on television today. Can anybody help me out? What are family models on TV?
They're comedies, or broken up families, or families with lots of turmoil. Okay, that's different than when I was growing up and the “Leave It to Beaver” family, or the “Father Knows Best” family were the models. They were all intact families, full of wisdom and happiness.
We know very little from the Gospel about the psychological life of the Holy Family or about their inner life. We don't know what struggles they faced. But, as I thought of families in the world that I might compare the Holy Family to, I thought of the millions of refugee families and immigrant families. I thought the Holy Family would be much better compared to those refugee or to immigrant families, because that's what they were, and that's how they're portrayed in the Gospel. They were a family on the run from political oppression. They were a family on the margins. They were a family whose origins were marked with the scandal of an apparent unwed pregnancy.
I thought if we want to understand them, perhaps we need to enter into that experience of being a refugee or an immigrant. To some extent, isn't that true of all of our families? We are buffeted about by social and economic forces that can make us feel like refugees and immigrants in the world in which we live. What do the readings offer us by way of wisdom?
It eems to me that in the first two readings, there is a long list of virtues. I'm going to recall the ones that I remember and invite you to chime in.
I heard this list: humility, meekness, compassion, kindness, bearing with one another’s weakness and shortcomings, forgiveness, obedience, honor, respect and Love. Over all these, put on love. Any others?
It seemed to me, in reflecting on the biblical view of family, there are certain virtues, certain attitudes that make for a happy life, and bind us together. There's the hint that we need to discover those virtues in our life. There's the hint that the happy family is the one who can live by those virtues. There's a hint that somehow God is at work in all of this, and that we need to be obedient to God's purposes in our life. Would you buy into that? And that somehow there's a call to celebrate that and to be very intentional about our pursuit of that way of life.
I know I've spoken in generalities. When we get to specifics, people will argue about them, and that's good and that's healthy. When we get the specifics and who models those and who doesn't model those, there can be a wide variety of opinions.
But I think what unites us all is the recognition that there are certain virtues in life that we can only discover. We don't create them for ourselves. They're there to be discovered and to be embodied in the way we live.
And I know I've used this before on the Feast of the Holy Family, and I want to use it again. I want to invite you into some reflection on your own. Think of the people with whom you live, and ask yourself these questions: Who are these people with whom I live? Why has God made them? Why did God make me? Does God love them? Does God love me? Why has God brought us together?