Homily for June 22, 2008 12th Sunday of the Year

This homily cost me $200. Now, if I got your attention, I'll explain how that came about.
In the Gospel today there are many levels of motivation to be good, or to withstand evil, or to speak to power. The first is in the phrase, "There's nothing hidden that will not be revealed, nor anything secret that will not be made known." If you read the newspapers with any regularity, you will find recounts of many people who have fallen from grace and power, because things that they thought were hidden were brought to light. I don't think I need to give you any examples. You all know what I mean.
I was listening to a song on a CD the other day that said, "Don't push 'send,’” and it was about the many mishaps that happen when we push the send button on our emails without thinking. That's one level of motivation to do good, probably not enough, because if that by itself were motivation, the newspapers wouldn't have too much to report.
A second level of motivation is fear: "Don't be afraid of the one who can kill you. Be afraid of the one who can destroy your soul."  I'll tell you what to really be afraid of. That doesn't motivate us too much, either, because we can all say that the final reckoning is far off.
Another level of motivation is, "Whoever acknowledges me I will acknowledge, and whoever denies me I will deny." All of us would like to be acknowledged by the Lord as part of it.
The motivation I want to explore is in that phrase, "Are not two sparrows sold for next to nothing? Yet, not a single one falls without my Father's knowledge."
In the newspaper today there's a very good article on the near east side. It talks about the complex that will be built at Tech. It talks about the abandoned houses. Think of our neighborhood for a while. There isn't a single abandoned house that God doesn't care about. There isn't a single homeless person walking our street whom God doesn't care about. There isn't a single stray animal that God doesn't care about.
You read in the newspaper of the millions of people suffering from hunger, poverty, all of people in our state and elsewhere suffering from flood damage, from earthquakes. Every single one of them is important to God. "And as for you, every hair on your head"  now for some of you, it's easier than for others "every single hair on your head is known to God." Every single victim of abuse is important to God.
Now, why did that cost me $200? After I finished reflecting and praying this morning, I was going through the mail I had discarded yesterday, and in it was an appeal letter from Catholic Relief Services. Well, I've already given to them three times this year. You know how it is. You give once and you keep getting letters again and again.
So the letter was headed for the waste basket, but I always shred any mail that has anything that can personally identify me on it. So I opened the letter, because it was too thick to put through the shredder all at once. I opened it so I could put it through my mail shredder piece by piece, and there was a picture of a hungry child that said, "Your contribution can help this child."
Had I not spent all that time preparing this homily, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. It would have gone through the shredder. But I suddenly thought, "Every single hungry child is important, and there isn't a single appeal that is without God's knowledge." So I sat down and wrote a check for $200. That's the box that they had checked for me already, based on previous levels of giving. That's how this homily came to cost me $200.
Now, mind you, I wasn't planning on talking about giving today, but it's a segue into that. I'm not talking about giving to the church, now. I went, a couple weeks ago, to a breakfast with the president of an international Jewish organization. I was very impressed with what I heard. One, they came into being because they said it's important for Jewish people to give to causes that are not Jewish. So they wanted to give to causes with a broad range of interest, just as I think it's important for Catholics to be concerned about things that aren't Catholic and to be interested in a broader range of things.
Second, they give only to things where the request is coming from the grassroots, and they have somebody to partner with at the grassroots level.
The third learning is what I wanted to stress. Somebody asked her, "Well, how do you answer people who say they can't give to you because there are all these local needs?" I liked her answer.
She said, "If somebody says to me, 'There are all these local needs that I'm giving to, and they are exhausting my giving capacity,’ I say, 'God bless you. Keep on doing what you're doing.' And I don't ask them to change." Then she said, "But you know and I know that a lot of people will say that and they're not really giving to anything. It's just an excuse not to give." Do you know what I mean?
By the way, I went to a seminar several months ago about giving, and it was written by a researcher who wrote a book. He did research on which groups of people give the most and the results surprised him. So he wrote a book called Who Really Cares. Would you want to guess what the single most reliable indicator of charitable giving to all causes, secular and religious, is? How often you go to church. Among church people, the Evangelicals and conservatives are far more generous than Catholics. So the most generous group of people in the country is religious conservatives.
(Another important variable is that people give less to hierachical churches than to congregational churches. We’re about as hierarchical as they come.)
Do you know the least generous group of people in the country? The opposite of that: Liberals who don't go to church. This man found that interesting, and so he wrote a book, Who Really Cares.
Well, anyway, as I thought of all of that, I thought we are all bombarded with so many appeals to our generosity and our charity. There are so many needs that surround us, there are so many demands on our time. You can't possibly respond to all of them. I can't help every homeless person in the city, but I can help the one in front of me who's asking me for help. I can't help everybody, but I can help those who ask.
So I just want to invite your reflection on all the needs that surround you. Are you among the ones who use the impossibility of responding to all of them as an excuse for not doing anything? Or could you say, "Yes, I am responding, and I'm responding to the best of my ability"? If you are, God bless you. I don't feel any need or desire to change your priorities.
If you aren't, maybe think of that Gospel message: Every single need, every single person in need is important to God, so much so that he's counted every hair on their head.

Homily for June 8, 2008, 10th Sunday of the Year

(The Gospel is Matthew’s story of Jesus calling the tax collector, Matthew, and tax collectors and sinners joining Jesus at table This was a scandal to the pharisees.)
Sometimes I begin my homilies by saying, "I don't like this Gospel," but this one I really like, and I want to start  with where it begins. "Jesus passed on from there." Well, passed on from where?
In the passages that are in between last Sunday's Gospel and today's Gospel, Jesus has finished the Sermon on the Mount; he healed a leper; he healed the servant of the centurion, a beautiful story from which we have the words we say before communion, "Lord, I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof"; he heals many sick people; he crosses the sea in a storm and calms the storm; he drives out demons; and there's the beautiful story where he's in a house and they bring a paralyzed man on a mat, and he says, "Your sins are forgiven."
We miss some beautiful stories between last Sunday and today. Today we have the image of Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. First I want to ask what we don't know about this story. What we don't know is what they talked about at table. We don't know what the tax collectors and sinners said when they came to Jesus. We don't know what he said to them. We can guess, but it would only be reading our own prejudices into the story. We just don't know what they talked about.
We don't know what happens afterwards. We don't know if those tax collectors and sinners straightened up and flew right and whether they continued to be tax collectors and sinners. We can only guess, according to the way we would like to read the story.
What do we know? Well, they were really sinners. The Gospel doesn't sugarcoat it. It doesn't say, "Well they really were not that bad." What we do know is that somehow they felt comfortable coming to Jesus, that they felt welcome. We know that Jesus felt at home in their company. We know that when Jesus was challenged about that, he said, "Hey, being with people like this is what I'm all about."
Well, what can we make of that? Ever since I've been at Holy Cross, I've had the sense - and I think we all have it - that this Gospel should somehow be special to us, that in some way, we do try to live it out very literally. By way of explaining that, I'll share a story.
Shortly after I came to Holy Cross, I was at a meeting downtown at the chancery, and I mentioned to somebody that Mass never starts on time at Holy Cross. And this person, who was in a position of power, said, "That would drive me crazy."
And I looked at this person, and I said, "Well, you're not exactly the kind of person we invite to Holy Cross."
Well, who would be comfortable here, and who wouldn't? If you want the beauty of a traditional church preserved, I think you'll feel very comfortable here. If you want Mass to start on time, you won't. If you want organ music and traditional hymns, you won't feel comfortable here. If you long for the beauty of the Latin Mass, you won't feel at home here.
If you want to be ecclesiastically correct, you won't feel too comfortable here. If you can't stand quirkiness, you won't feel at home here. If you want things to be quiet so you can pray before Mass, you won't feel comfortable here.
But what we hope - and I think very intentionally hope - is that if you don't feel good enough to go to church, you'll feel welcome here. If you don't feel comfortable in some high church settings, we hope that you'll feel at home here. If you have issues with some things about our Church, we hope you'll feel at home here.
In a sense, I think we could say if you identify yourself as somehow being among the tax collectors and sinners, you'll feel at home here. And I think, over the years, we've tried to be somewhat intentional about living our life that way. There's a lot of ambiguity about that, there's some tension about that, but I think I can say that we have tried to embrace that call and try to continue living it out.
And in that sense, I hope not in a proud, not in a "see how good we are" way, but in a very humble way, I hope we can embrace today's Gospel as our own Gospel and feel good about that Gospel. I hope, also, we can hear its challenge asking us how we can do that better, how can we do that more intentionally, and how can we do that in a way that we grow and build on it?
And now, as part of that welcoming, we're going to turn to the back and continue with the baptisms.

Homily for June 1, 2008 9th Sunday of Ordinary Time

I think the Gospel today raises a very practical question for all of us, and its images are very real if you look at the world around us. We had a small tornado in our town Friday night, small but very destructive. If you lived on the east side in a certain apartment complex, you would be homeless. We have images of earthquakes in China and the great destruction there, of cyclones in Myanmar, tornadoes throughout our country.
And so the question I think the Gospel raises for us is, how do I make my life stormproof? I don't know of any prayer or any magic that will guarantee that you won't have storms in your life, that you won't have earthquakes, that you won't have huge upheavals from time to time. But how do you make yourself storm proof? How do you build your life on rock so that it will withstand whatever storm comes along?
Well, Jesus gives us a hint in the Gospel: If you hear his words and act on them, you will be like the person who built their house on rock. I think the hint  and I'm going to use the experience many people have in recovery from different things and the wisdom of 12step programs to explain some of this. There's a prayer in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that goes with the third step. And it says, "God, I offer myself to you to build with me and to do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those whom I would serve, of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life."
The wisdom of many recovery programs is that if we build our life on self-will, what we have is self-will run riot, and our house will utterly collapse. If we build our house on the knowledge and the desire and the hope to do God's will, then our house is built on rock. And it's true, by the way, of every spiritual tradition, that it's all about surrendering to God's will and building our life on what we perceive to be God's will for us.
Last Sunday I was at Mass at the women's prison and the chaplain wasn't there, so one of the guards had to come and open the chapel for me. And they were counting the inmates, and it takes a long time to count everybody and make sure they're still there. The guard and I were talking, and I found it quite enjoyable, because often I don't have a chance to talk to the guard when I go to the prison.
This was a young man, and he was telling me that he likes to get up at 5:00 in the morning and sit in his garage, and look at the alley and listen to the birds sing, and sometimes he writes. And he realizes that everybody is obedient to something. And he said to me  and this is the message he tries to bring to the women here "You're all going to obey something or somebody or some rule, and what is it you want to obey?"
Isn't that true in our life? We all obey something. It could be the popular culture, it could be the expectations of family and friends or that we think other people have on us, it could our own desires, but all of us are obedient to something. I think the Gospel hints to us as to what that should be, not only for our personal lives, but for our life together as a church.
John and Melba and I went to a workshop on Friday about megachurches  you know, the big churches with 12,000 people  and what can we learn from them, and how did they get to be that way. And I found the answer very interesting. The guy putting on the workshop said -- who's a sociologist of religion -- if people come to him and say, "We want to make our church grow," he says, "Go away. I have nothing to offer," because no church ever grew because it wanted to grow.
The question to begin with is who is God calling you to serve? And what is God calling you to do? Very simple. And if you know the answer to that, then other things unfold. And of course, sometimes we have to be very deliberate and very intentional about that and not leave it to chance, not say, "If it happens, it happens," but say, "What do we need to do to make it happen?"
You know all of us pray, don't we? I'll make a confession. Sometimes when I pray, I realize I've already decided what I want, and I'm asking God to help me bring it about, and I'm asking God to make me firm in my resolve, and I'm asking God to strengthen my steps. Sometimes when I pray, I'm asking God to do my will. Do you know what I mean? In fact, the other day I made a list of things that I never pray about. There are things that we don't pray about, because we're maybe not so sure that we want to hear what we might hear if we pray about those things. Do you know what I mean?
Well, just let me conclude today by asking you, what are you building your house on, and if you had to review your life, if you had to look at all of your concerns, all of the things that occupy your time and attention, and answer truthfully from the evidence that is before you, what are you building your life on? And what is your rock? And just ask yourself that question, and be with whatever answer comes.

Homily for May 25, 2008 Feast of Corpus Christi

Sometimes when we name things, we pick a part of it and name the whole for the part. Is there a technical word for that? I know there is, but I can't think of it. Did somebody know?
For example, Palm Sunday. What part of that celebration is that named for? The palms, right? The palms are only there as a stage prop for the procession. It's really Passion Sunday.
We call what we come to today "Mass." What part of our celebration is it named for? Did you hear Mike's answer? The dismissal. The word "Mass" comes from the old Latin that the priest used to dismiss people with. He said, "Ite, missa est," "Go, it is sent forth." And the response was, "Deo gratias," "Thanks be to God." The word "missa" is part of the Latin verb meaning "to send." Is there any significance to that? As a church we have a mission, so the sending sends us back into the world to our community.
Think for a moment: we don't call it the "offering," we don't call it the "consecration," we don't call it the "communion," we call it the "being sent." So in a way, if you say, "I'm going to Mass tomorrow," what are you saying? “I'm going to be sent; I'm coming to be sent."
There's a rhythm and a cycle that's involved in that. We come from our lives. When we come, what do we bring with us? We bring our own body, right? We bring all of its connectedness to the world; we bring the work that we've been doing all week; we bring the life that we've been living.
When we bring forth the bread and the wine, what do we bring? The prayer that I say over them at the offertory, we bring "the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands." We bring the dirt out of which the bread came.
Somebody once joked that there are two acts of faith required when you come to communion: The first, and the easy one to believe, that it's the Body of Christ; the harder one to believe, that it's bread, because that little flat thing doesn't look like bread and it doesn't taste like bread.
There's a prayer that we say: Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become the bread of life.
Once when I was at a grade school Mass, I wanted to explain that prayer to the children. So I said, "Where does bread come from?"
"From the store."
Well, okay. "What do you make bread out of?"
And after a long time, somebody said, "Flour."
And I said, "Where does flour come from?"
"From the store."
So then I said, "Well, okay. What do you make flour out of, and where does flour come from?"
And after a long time, they said, "Wheat."
And I said, "Ah. Where does wheat come from?"
"From the store."
You see how important it can be to claim our connection with the earth in order to understand the prayers that we say. When we bring them forth, we're bringing forth all that they mean.
In the earliest days of the church, people brought all sorts of other things forward, too, and they laid them there. They brought money to be given to the poor, and maybe they brought chickens or pigs or food. But, you see, they brought their whole life.
And as they bring these things forward, they are changed. They become something else. They become the living presence of Jesus in our midst. They become his body offered for our food, and his blood offered for our drink. They become his promise of life. And we receive them, and then we're sent. We're sent back into our life.
At our planning retreat several weeks ago, one person said, "Do you know, I come to church in order to do my job better during the week." Can you relate to that? I come to church, not so much to find something new, but to rediscover what I'm already doing. That, by the way, becomes my overwhelming sense of people who are here Sunday after Sunday; people who are here, not every Sunday, but some Sundays.
As I stand at the altar and look at many of you, I realize how very busy you are, how many things you have to do already, how many things you are involved in. And often what I want to affirm is, those things that you're already doing are ministry. Those things that you're already doing are the work of the Church. So I often feel very little inclination to want to lay anything else on you to do when you come here, but maybe to pray that the time that you spend here sends you back to what you're already going to be doing with renewed energy and with renewed life and renewed consciousness.
Vatican II said that the liturgy is the summit and the source of the Christian life. It's like the mountain to which we come, but also the source from which we go.
Anyway, that's my thought and reflection today on the Feast of Corpus Christi. Can you relate to that, this rhythm in our life? As we pray today, think of all that you bring with you to church as you watch the bread and the wine be brought forward. Think of the earth that is being brought forward. Think of all of your own life that is being brought forward and ask that it be transformed into the living presence of Jesus, to feed you and to nourish you, not for your own sake, but to feed you and nourish you so that you can be sent forth.
What are we saying now? What do I say at the end of Mass? "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord and each other." And do you still say, "Thanks be to God"? I think so. When you break it out all by itself, it can get hard to realize. But anyway, think of that as we worship today. The name for what we do comes from the dismissal, in which we are sent forth into the world.