Homily for December 21, 2008

Homily December 21, 2008
Fourth Sunday of Advent

I think I'm right in this. I didn't check the other two years, but I think we always have this Gospel on the fourth Sunday of Advent. The church gives us the image of Mary and the Annunciation. Down through the years I've read and heard many sermons about Mary and the Annunciation. Most of them I don't like. I read one the other day from St. Bernard, a medieval abbot, and his sermon was, "For God's sake, hurry up and say yes, Mary. Don't you know the whole world is waiting? Don't you know how much depends on this? Hurry up. Say yes."
Most sermons I've heard emphasize Mary being submissive. Do you know what I mean? How many of you have heard that approach? I think that does damage. We've somehow extended that and said -- please don't throw a shoe at me -- because Mary was submissive, women should be submissive. Have you heard that line before? Well, that's why I don't like that approach. It’s done much harm.
Have ever thought of the courage of Mary in saying yes? She looked that angel right in the eye, and she said, "How is this going to happen?"
What did the angel answer? "The Holy Spirit will come upon you." What else did he say? "All things are possible with God." When Mary heard that did she say yes.
Just on a personal note, I love reading poetry, and every night before I go to bed I read poetry. You can't speed read it, and so you can read a poem or two at most and then mull on it while you go to sleep. Just today I ran across a poet I never heard of, and I'm sure I'll be buying some of her books and reading them before I go to bed. The poet is Denise Levertov. She died in 1997. Her mother was Welsh. Her father was a Russian Hasidic Jew who converted to Anglicanism and became an Anglican parson.
Denise Levertov was a very strong political figure, very left wing, a very strong feminist, who was very much part of the courageous resistance to the bombing of London in World War II. She ended up in this country teaching at Brandeis University and at Stanford, and she converted to Catholicism before her death. This was her poem on the annunciation, which I found quite meaningful.

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; and always the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage.
The engendering Spirit did not come without consent.
God waited.
She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.

And then she talks about annunciations in our lives. And maybe, think about your lifetime.

Aren't there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives?
Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them with sullen pride, uncomprehending.
More often these moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

What is she saying, but the annunciations coming into our life, and sometimes people undertake their lives with sullenness and bitterness, and they grit their teeth and bear it. Do you know people like that? Sometimes we're afraid, and we turn away. She says that when that happens, a gate closes. I want to question that, and maybe at the end I'll propose another alternative. But then she speaks of Mary, called to a destiny that she accepted with wide-eyed courage, knowing full well what she was getting into. And she said yes.

So I think of that in our time. We live in difficult times, don't we, economically, politically, and dangerous times in our world. To say yes to what God wants could require courage. I think Mary could be an example, both for men and for women, not an example of meek obedience and humility, but courage, with eyes wide open that say yes to what God wants.
I mentioned how in the poem she says when we turn away in weakness or fear, the door closes. I read another interpretation today from the storyteller John Shea that I like better. He says when that happens, do you know what God does? He sends another angel. Maybe he'll just keep sending angels until finally we have the courage not to turn away, but to say yes. We can’t count on it. That’s why it is important to say yes as soon as possible. But maybe God will send other angels.
And anyway, let's pray as we worship today, that we might have the courage to say yes in our life to whatever it is that we feel God calls us to.

Homily for December 14, 2008

When I listen to the advent readings, they are such wonderful ideals: a highway being built through the desert, mountains being brought low, valleys filled in, crooked ways made straight; being sent to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, to set prisoners free. Do you know what I mean? Such wonderful, sweeping, idealistic things that I have trouble connecting them to my life.
At the end of the first reading, God said, "I will make justice and praise spring up from the earth," and I'm sitting there in that chair looking at our cracked walls (By the way, we've made it worse so we can make them better.), I'm looking at those walls and I'm looking at all of us, and I say, so this is justice and praise springing up from the earth?
There was a song  and I forget who sang it, maybe some of you will remember it  in the 70s, "Is That All There Is?" Do you remember the song? I can't sing, but it went something like, "Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing." Remember that song? Well, when I look at what's around me, I wonder, could all of these wonderful words possibly boil down to what we are doing?
This afternoon at 5:30, I'll go to the Women's Prison for Mass. I'll walk across that cold, long yard, go into the chapel, and there will be about 10 women with me. We'll read this reading about proclaiming liberty to captives and release to prisoners, and I will be asking myself, "What possible meaning can that have here? How is what we're doing fulfilling that reading?"
As we read the Gospels, I think the question in the Gospels is, could all of these hopes and dreams  be fulfilled in us. Remember the verse in the song, O Little Town of Bethlehem, "The hopes and dreams of all the years are met in you tonight?" Can that really be true?
In my letter in the bulletin, I mention a friend of mine who is a college dean, and he said he was studying the Scripture and thought every page of Scripture is about the graciousness and the mercy and the kindness of God. And he said, “here I am all day working with rules and policies and student behavior. Where is the graciousness in all of this?"
At the end of the reading today, John says, "There is one among you whom you do not know." It reminded me of a story of an abbot of a monastery walking in the woods, depressed about how badly things were going in the life of his community.
And he met an old wise man who said, "Be of good cheer. The Messiah is among you."
And he went back to the monastery, and he got it all wrong, and he said, "Brothers, I’ve got good news. One of us is the Messiah."
And they looked. Who could it be? Could it be Glenn? Could it be John? Could it be Jay? Who could it be? And they began looking at each other and treating each other with reverence and with mystery, and the life of their monastery changed.
Well, I guess what I ended up with in my reflection on the readings for today is the word of Paul in the second reading, where he said, "Our God, who has promised all these things, is faithful and true." Not "Are all these things true?" But "Our God who promised them is true." And therefore he tells us, "Rejoice in God. Be thankful in all things." And mind the words: not "be thankful for all things." "Be thankful in all things." Can you feel the difference in the meaning of that?
I can be thankful, no matter what's happening, not for what's happening  there are a lot of things I think are awful  but, I think, be thankful in all things. And I can nurture everything that is good and hold onto everything that is good, however small it seems, in that faith that God who promised it is faithful and true.
And by the way, I was reading some stuff about the way words evolve. I found a reflection on the word, “true.” When people get married, they used to say, "I pledge you my troth," didn't they? I pledge you my truth. The real meaning of the word true is not, "Is something out there objectively verifiable," but "Am I true?" Are we true to each other? Is our God true to us? And are we true to our God?
Let's pray as we go on today that we might be true.

Homily for December 7, 2008

The Gospel I read today is the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. We'll read it throughout the coming year. I want to say just a brief word about it.
In the opening line, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” Mark tells you right up front who Jesus is. As the story unfolds, everybody in the story is clueless about who he is. You, the reader, know who he is. Mark says up front, "This is the good news of the Son of God," and the only one that gets it is the one at the end, the centurion who crucifies him and says, "Truly, this was the Son of God."
As the story unfolds, every idea you have about good news, every idea you have about what it means to be the Messiah, and every idea you have about the Son of God, is going to be completely turned upside down. That will come.
You know what this is, don't you? The Bible. Now, some people think it's a weapon, something you beat people over the head with it when they disagree with you. For some people it's a prayer book. For some it's the story of God's dwelling with people.
How many of us really know what's in the Bible? I hear fundamentalist Christians saying, "I believe in the Bible, and, therefore, I'm against..." I won't mention what they're against. You all know the hot button issues, right?
Well, do you know, some of those hot button issues are mentioned only six or seven times in the whole Bible, and if you cut out the passages referring to those hot button issues, you'd have to read a long time before you even missed them and before you even noticed that they were gone.
Have you ever heard anybody say, "I believe in the Bible, so I'm opposed to high interest rates?” Have you ever heard that? You ever heard anybody say, "I believe in the Bible, so I'm opposed to predatory lending?" You ever heard anybody say, "I believe in the Bible, so I'm opposed to tax breaks for the wealthy?" Do you ever hear anybody say, "I believe in the Bible and I want to support our troops, so I'm appalled at the homelessness and the drug abuse and the mental illness among our veterans who return from war /" You ever heard anybody say that?
Well, you know, if you went through the Bible and cut out the passages talking about the way we should treat the poor, if you cut out the passages about economic justice, if you cut out the passages about how you treat aliens and immigrants, if you cut out those passages, you wouldn't have anything left. You wouldn't have anything but just little strips of paper with big spaces in between, because that's what the Bible talks about.
In the first reading today, we have -- by the way, I feel comfortable saying all this because the election is over, and I can't be accused of favoring anybody -- Isaiah the prophet saying "Give comfort to my people." Those are the first lines of Handel's Messiah. How many of you are familiar with that?
Do you know where that was first performed? At a benefit for the poor in Dublin. Its second performance was at a foundling home, a home for orphaned children in London. It begins with an absolute sense of despair. That's the prophetic message in the Bible. Despair over the mess we have made of things when we abandon God.
By the way, God never abandons us. We abandon God. God never punishes us by way of doing mean things to us or bad things to us. God just lets us abandon him and stew in the mess we have made, by our own sinfulness and our own selfishness and our own greed and our own lack of consideration for each other.
So the prophets tell us, "Things are bad because you have abandoned God. But be of good cheer, because God has not abandoned you. God says to his heavenly court, 'Comfort, give comfort to my people. Prepare a highway through the desert. Every mountain will be brought low, and every valley will be filled in, and your heart will see the salvation of our God.'”
But, as I asked at the beginning of Mass, how do we prepare the way of the Lord? In Isaiah it says a highway will be built through the desert. Well, do we build the highway, and then God will come? Or do we prepare our hearts to receive God, and God builds the highway? What do you think?
I'll just leave that as a question. In the Scriptures the way we prepare the way of God is to acknowledge our sinfulness, to acknowledge that we have abandoned God, and to turn back to God.
I may be treading on thin ice here. I don't have a clue whether all these bailouts are good or bad. I'm not smart enough, I don't know enough economics. Time will tell. But what bothers me  and I think it bothers other people  is that I don't see any signs of repentance. Do you? I mean, I see people saying, "We've got this mess and you need to fix it for us." But I don't see anybody saying, "We have created this mess by our own greed, by our own lack of self regulation, by our own lack of restraint."
Do you see anybody saying that? Do you see anybody repenting of the way we've handled our economy, or the way we've handled the environment, or the way we've treated the poor, or the homeless? I just wonder, is there any hope for any program without repentance and without the willingness to acknowledge that maybe we are in the messes we are because we have abandoned God and God's way of living? Just a thought. Maybe it applies, as well, in our own life.
I was reflecting this morning. I know a lot of people who struggle with addictions to various things, and as they fail and relapse, the deepest ones, when they repent, repent not because they relapsed.  Relapses happen. They repent because they relied on themselves rather than on God. They repent because they relied on their own strength, their own wisdom, their own way of doing things rather than trusting God.
Maybe as we prepare for Christmas, maybe we can hear that call to repent in whatever way it is important to us. I'm not going to take anybody else's inventory, and I'm not going to share mine with you. But we all need to ask ourselves  as does the opening prayer at Mass today, “Remove the things that hinder us from receiving Christ with joy.” And what is it in your life, what is it in our collective life, that would hinder us from receiving Christ with joy?

Homily for November 30, 2008

Homily November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent, Cycle B
How many of you have read or are familiar with the series on the rapture, the Left Behind series? Well, imagine being in Mark's audience. You know, Mark and Paul and Peter and the early Christians, expected to be raptured real soon. They expected that the end of the world would come within their lifetime. And as time went on, they were getting pretty discouraged.
I heard one Scripture scholar describe it this way: Some of them were beginning to say, "This isn't the gig we signed up for. I mean, hey, we thought we'd all be raptured by now, and all of the rest of them would be left behind, and that the Lord would have come, and it ain't happened yet. And not only hasn't it happened yet, but we're getting kicked out of the synagogue, we're getting persecuted, we're losing our tax exempt status, we're losing our exemption from the draft, we're losing our social standing, and this isn't the way we thought it would be."
So what would you say to them? Watch. You don't know when the time will come. Be alert.
Well, time went on, thousands of years passed by, and other theories developed, millennial theories, and, well, if you read very much, I think I've lived through the end of the world three or four times already. I mean, people predict when it will happen. They get very invested in trying to read the signs of the times. You know what I mean, right? You've all read that. And when it doesn't happen, they're not even phased. They just reinterpret and change the prediction. I'm convinced that the truest part of the Gospel is where Jesus says, "You don't know, and you can't know, so don't waste a lot of time trying to figure it out."
I think as I look at the Gospel, it's clear that they expected the end of the world to come real soon, and they were wrong. So does that mean their advice doesn't have any relevance for us, or can we still listen to what they're saying? Well, I thought of this this morning, and I thought, how many times do we see it happen, or how many hundreds of thousands of people today will leave home and never come back? How many loved ones will take comfort and consolation in the thought that their last words were words of love and understanding and forgiveness? How many of them will spend years of guilt because their last words were words of bitterness or misunderstanding? Do you know what I mean? We've all encountered that in our life. We don't know when the time will come. So how do we live? As if it could come at any time.
I remember reading once in one of the spiritual classics, The Imitation of Christ. It's a series of meditations that you can read every day. One of them is about a man who was troubled and perplexed and full of anxiety, and he kept asking himself, "If only I knew whether I would persevere to the end."
And a voice came to him and said, "What would you do if you knew the answer to that question? Do today what you would do then." He began to do that. And the anxiety left him. That story comes to my mind.
Another story is one the nuns taught me in grade school. A saint  I don't know which one  but a saint was playing cards with his friends. Now I know some people might think saints wouldn't play cards, but this particular saint was playing cards with his friends. And somebody said, "What would you do if you found out you were going to die tonight?"
They all began to answer. One person would run out and make amends to everybody he had offended. The other person said, "I'd run to church and go to confession." And the other person said something else. Do you know what the saint said?
"Finish your hand. I'd sit here and play cards."
What would you do if you knew you were going to die today? Good question, isn't it? And I think the answer in The Imitation of Christ is good. Do today what you would do if you knew the answer to that question, and live your life that way. What would you do if you knew the world was going to end tomorrow and Jesus was going to come back and judge everything? Do today what you would do then. What would you do if you knew you were really forgiven all of your sins? Do today what you would do then. What would you do if you knew that God really loved you? Do today what you would do then.
Help me out a bit. Can you think of some other questions? What would you do if you knew? How would you treat people if you knew? I thought of that today as I drove here. How would I do Mass today if I knew this was the last time I would ever do it with you? Well, do what you would do if you knew that.
How would your priorities fit if you knew that the Gospel was really true?
How would you spend time with your family if you knew you would never see them again?
What would you do if you knew the world were entirely at peace? Give thanks.
What would you do if each person you came into contact with, you knew that was the last contact they would have with anybody on earth?
How would we treat each other if we knew that each word had lasting significance for our life?
What would you do about all the things you're fearful about if you knew tonight was the end?
Do you see the wisdom in the answer of The Imitation of Christ? Do today what you would do then. And do you see the wisdom in the Gospel that, by the way, is in every spiritual tradition? Watch, be alert. Watch not only your actions, watch the thoughts that arise within you. Watch the feelings that come up. Watch your distractions.
What you would you do if you knew you didn't have enough money to pay your bills? I'd see a good lawyer.
(inaudible response)
Good point. The saint could say,"I'd keep playing cards" because probably he or she has already gone to confession, already made amends, already put his or her priorities in order, already done all the things that the rest of us should do. So he or she is free to sit there and keep playing cards.
What would you not do if you knew?
Well, anyway, I just hope it's helped make the Gospel a little more real. Watch, be alert, pay attention to yourself today. Pay attention to everything going on around you today, and let's pay attention to each other as if each person here is God's special guest today.

Homily for November 23, 2008

Homily for November 16, 2008

Homily November 16, 2008
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Before I read this parable, I want to ask you to forget any explanation of it you ever heard. Don't think about it, don't analyze it. Pay attention to your feelings and who you feel sorry for and who you like and who you don't like in the story. Okay?

[The Gospel was recited. It was the parable of the Talents.]

I asked you at the beginning to put aside any explanation you have ever heard of this parable, because when I was in grade school, the explanation my teachers gave me was, "Well, God gave us all different talents, and it doesn't matter how many talents you have. What matters is that you use them all to the best of your ability, and God will reward you."
Well, that's a nice thought, and I don't disagree with it, but that's not the meaning of the parable. Parables, by the way, are provocative stories. They don't have any single meaning. They're meant to provoke you and to stimulate your thinking, and they defy being reduced to a single explanation. And they've had many explanations down through the years.
As I read this, I thought of our current economic crisis. You'd be better off if you'd have buried your money in the ground than invested it, right? So the meaning of this parable might well change. The master might say, "Well done, clever servant. Thank you for not investing my money or putting it in an unsafe bank!" So there could be many meanings.
Matthew, as the scribe who passes on the Christian tradition, isn't really that interested in being logical or coherent or consistent. He's not a linear thinker. He's just laying out the tradition, and he's more interested in provocative stories. So let me ask you, who did your sympathies go towards in this story?
The third one. How many of you really felt sorry for the third one? As a piece of information: In the day of Jesus, burying money in the ground was a very acceptable practice.
Who did you not like in the story? The master. Is the master meant to be God? What do you think? Do you think Matthew intended us to think God is like the master? Yeah? No? Okay, [A young boy said that God was not the master in the story,] Thank you. We'll hold that. What about the two who went off and made all the money?
I remember Fr. Monk Molloy, who was president of Notre Dame, saying that he thought the greatest challenge of a Catholic university was to teach its students that they could not be good Christians and expect to get rich quick. Doesn't the parable tend to encourage that kind of behavior?
And if you get inside the story, there are conflicting views of the master. What do you think the first two servants would say about working for that master? What do you think they'd say? Life's pretty good, he's really a good boss. He encourages me to take risks, he rewards me lavishly when I take a risk. I really like working here.
What would the third say? He really is  well, I won't use the words  he really is a hard man, and you don't want to work for him.
So who's right? He doesn't disagree with that characterization, but the first two certainly wouldn't agree with it, would they? They'd say, "That's not our experience." Or maybe they'd say, "Maybe he really is a hard master, and we really lucked out." Do you see the tension and the conflict in the story? And you can't resolve it from within the story.
And then to make it more complicated, he doesn't tell them what to do when he goes away, does he? He doesn't give them any instructions at all. He leaves them to figure it out on their own. This story fits in a whole series of stories toward the end of Matthew's Gospel. Next Sunday will be a story we're all familiar with that we like, about what it means to be a faithful servant. And they don't really give an answer, they just throw out the possibilities.
If you were to step outside the story and ask, "Where is God in this story," what would you answer? He's observing. Okay. Where else might he be? On vacation with the master. By the way, in our theology we've certainly had those views of God, haven't we? God is the observer, God is on vacation.
How many of you can find some remnant within yourself of God being the master who's going to settle accounts with you, and if you haven't produced... That's in our tradition too, isn't it?
This story reminds me of so many in the Bible. It's about fear. And the one servant did nothing wrong but is being punished for not acting. But I think that so many stories are to put fear so that you do toe the line.
Certainly we have used stories that way, haven't we, to put the fear of God in you, to control you, and to make you toe the line? By the way, when you mentioned fear, one Scripture scholar has a book on the parables, and he analyzes parables according to the Greek story division of comedy and tragedy. And he says some parables are comedies and some are tragedies. In tragic stories the tragic character has a fatal flaw.
If you looked at this as a tragedy, what is the fatal flaw? Pride. Okay. Neal said it could symbolize with the televangelist thing, send in your money and you'll get more back.
Well, the guy that wrote this book on comedy and tragedy said that the fatal flaw in the third servant was fear, that he chose to define himself as a victim, and he became a victim. Certainly that can happen. However we define ourselves in relation to God and the spiritual world tends to be self fulfilling, doesn't it?
And then finally, I want to suggest an off the wall thing about where God might be. What if  I have no proof of this, it's just a surmise  what if we really are intended to identify with the third servant? And what if we are invited to see ourselves outside with the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, and that's where God will be, coming to console us in the wailing and gnashing of teeth? I would maybe think in our world today, in our harsh systems that we have, there are many people who have tried to play it safe. There are many people who have done everything they know how to do and have done their best, who find themselves outside with the wailing and grinding of teeth. And maybe that's where God will be.
God is not the master  that's not in our Jewish or Christian tradition  but God will come to us. One Scripture scholar I know says it very well: If God really does break into our world, where will you find him? On the margins, not in the center. But you will always find God out there in the boundaries.
Anyway, for whatever it's worth. And if you go home with more questions than answers, good. Continue to be provoked by the story and think that parables are not nice stories, and they're not intended to leave you feeling good.