Homily for July 26, 2009

It's a shame that instead of reading the whole Gospel we get just little bits and pieces Sunday after Sunday Sometimes we lose the continuity of the story. We're going to lose it anyway, because in our lectionary we shifted from Mark’s Gospel to John’s Gospel today. We will read from Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel for the next several Sundays.
Remember tat last Sunday in Mark's Gospel Jesus got out of the boat and saw a great crowd coming toward him. His heart was moved with pity because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he taught them at great length.
Now, in Mark's Gospel, what happens is that the disciples come to Jesus and they say, "Send them all home. They've got to eat."
Jesus says, "No, you give them something to eat."
And they say, "What? Where are we going to find food for all these people?"
But the church, in its selection in the lectionary, shifts to John's Gospel, and we'll be reading from that for the next four weeks. So we have John's version of the story. You notice the difference in John's version. Jesus says to Philip, "Where are we going to get food for all these people?" John says he was doing that to test him.
I want to locate this story in the bigger picture of the whole Bible. At the end of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people, "God will raise up another prophet like me."
At the end of the Gospel today the people say, "This is undoubtedly the prophet who is to come." So that's the big picture throughout Scripture: When will God send another prophet like Moses? And who will it be? The Gospels present Jesus as that prophet who will follow Moses and who will be greater than Moses.
In the coming weeks we will see Jesus compared with Moses and what Jesus does compared with what Moses did. We will see Jesus say that he is the real meaning of what Moses did. What did Moses do for the people in the desert? I need help here. What did he do? Well, he led them, and he fed them. With what did he feed them? The manna or bread from heaven. So in the Gospels for the coming weeks, the people will say to Jesus, "Moses gave us bread from heaven."
Jesus will say, "No, it wasn't Moses, it was my Father." And Jesus will say, "I am the bread that came from heaven."
In the the teaching of the Rabbis, the bread that God fed the people came to be understood as the law and the wisdom of the law. Jesus will present himself as the new wisdom of God. So the law is now a person whom we follow. That's the big picture of the claim that the Gospel is making, and we'll unfold that in the weeks to come.
Today I want to focus on something that's both in the first reading and in the Gospel. In each case there's the instruction to feed a large number of people. The reaction of those who are told to feed the people is, “We can't do it. We don't have enough. Are you crazy? Do you expect us to feed this whole crowd with seven loaves and two fish?" In both readings there's that reaction.
And in the readings that we've had in our weekday masses over the past several months, I'm struck by a very common theme. When God calls people, do you know what they always say? "Who am I to do that?"
Do you know what God answers? "I will be with you, so go ahead."
In both readings today, the people are overwhelmed at the magnitude of the need and the scarcity of the resources. What happens? They take what they have, they make it available to God, and what results? Abundance. How much abundance? Twelve baskets full. Is 12 an important number?
By the way, one biblical scholar I know says that numbers are very important in the Bible, but they have no relationship to counting. But there are 12 tribes of Israel, 12 Apostles, and it shows abundance.
Where I would link the readings with our life is in this question of being overwhelmed. How many of you have ever felt, when called upon to do something, "Who am I to do this?" Right? "Do you know who I am? Do you know how unworthy I am? Do you know what a sinner I am? Do you know how little I know? You don't know what you're talking about. Who am I to do this?"
What will God answer? Can you repeat it for me? "I will be with you."
How many of us have ever felt that what we have is insignificant in relationship to the need that is there? What does God do? "Have the people recline. I will take what you have, I will give thanks, and I will give it to the people, and a miracle will happen."
I'm not going to get into trying to explain what really happened. I've read all sorts of explanations ranging from speculation to how it could happen that Jesus would physically multiply the bread to other explanations that say they all had bread with them anyway and, when they saw him sharing his, they brought out theirs. All I really know is that whatever happened, the people saw the hand of God at work in it, so much so that they said, "This is undoubtedly the prophet who is to come into the world."
I just want to leave you with those reflections, but most important, leave you God's answer to all of the questions you might ask. Keep in mind God's answer is, "I will be with you." And God's answer is that what we have will be enough if we make it available to God and God’s purpose.

Homily for July 19, 2009

In the past three weeks we've been talking about the prophets and their message, especially their message of concern for the poor. I want to put today's readings in the big picture of another theme very important to the prophets.
The prophets condemned leaders who fed themselves rather than the people, who looked after their own needs rather than the needs of the people, who divided the people rather than united them, who scattered them and left them like sheep without a shepherd.
Does that have contemporary relevance? I'm not going to go into specifics on that, but I think that idea of leaders who feed themselves rather than the people and who divide rather than unite strikes a chord in all of us, whatever our views are on the issues. We struggle with that many times and in many ways.
So what is God's response to leaders who feed themselves rather than the people? He rejects them. Then he says, "I myself will shepherd the people, and I myself will feed them." Does he have a plan to do that? What do you think? Are those empty words, or does God have a plan? He has a plan, right? What was his plan?
Give us the Church. Hold that thought for a moment. It's true. I'm not going to deny it, but hold the thought.
God's plan was to send Jesus. Jesus gathered a new people around himself, and he sent them out to preach and to heal. So the reason I ask you to hold "He gave us the Church is this. Let me ask a show of hands. When Mary Pat said, “the Church," how many of you thought the institution? How many didn't? Good.
I know you [Mary Pat] weren't thinking the institution. So what were you thinking when you said, "the Church."
Well, he gave us the sacrament of the Eucharist to feed us.
He gave us the Eucharist to feed us. That’s true. To feed us and to make us the Body of Christ on earth. I guess the answer I want to move toward is, when she said he gave us the church, that's all of you. So what is God's plan to feed those who are like sheep without a shepherd? You are. We are part of that people called to do that. So, hold that thought. That's the big picture. We are called to be part of that people.
Now, in the little picture, I want to get to the Gospel today. The Apostles came back. They talked about what they did and what they said, and Jesus said, "Come away and rest a while." Why do you think he did that? I might be setting you up here, so be careful. Yes?
[INAUDIBLE RESPONSE] For balance. You can't just give and give and give. You've got to refresh yourself, and that's certainly true.
I read one commentary on this, and it's the only one that pointed this out, but I was struck by it. I think maybe when he got them apart by themselves, maybe he wasn't saying to them, "Oh, you've really worked hard, and because you've worked so hard you deserve a rest." But I think maybe he wanted to take them apart so that he could teach them something. Maybe what he wanted to teach them was the question, "What do you think God was doing when you were out there preaching and anointing the sick with oil?"
What the commentator that I liked pointed out is, they came back and they said, "Look what we did, and look what we said."
And Jesus said, "Come away a little bit, and let's rest." Have you ever been there? "Look what we did?" I mean, we do that all the time. I think in church gatherings we do that all the time. We want to say, "Look what we did. Look at our ministries. Look at our activities."
Maybe Jesus would say, "Let's come aside and rest a while. What was God doing while you were doing all that?" So maybe he was trying to back them off a little bit so they wouldn't ruin it. It's a possibility, isn't it, because whose work is it anyway? It's God's work, and we are called to participate in it.
This might sound a little corny, but I'm going to do it anyway. Maureen and I went to a two day workshop on the catechumenate, and a thing they kept doing was saying, "God is busy all the time, all the time God is busy." Will you play along with me a little while and do that?
God is busy, all the time. All the time, God is busy. That might be a little corny, but in my bulletin letter I talk about the planning we're doing at the parish level, where, a couple weeks ago we came together and we looked at what the neighborhood wants for itself; we looked at what we identified as our gifts and resources and asked where do they intersect. Maybe there's a deeper question. What is God doing in our neighborhood? God is busy all the time; all the time, God is busy. What is God doing?
Somebody asked me last week when I had spent a day listening to people all day, "How do you listen to people's problems all day and not get tired and burnt out?"
Well, what I noticed is that if I listen to people and I'm thinking, "What am I going to say? What am I going to do? What am I going to give them," I'm really exhausted at the end of the day. But if I remember that there are three of us there and I begin asking, "What is God trying to do in the life of this person," and if I can listen to that, then it's not draining. It can be very energizing.
Last week’s newspaper had many stories about what the Department of Corrections wants to do with the facility of the Women's Prison and the reaction of people in our neighborhood to it. On my computer there's a long train of emails from different neighborhood groups. I have ambivalent feelings about all those emails, and I've had conversations with many in our parish who are involved with different neighborhood groups.
Sometimes the discussion of neighborhood groups can get very narrow and focused on what impact is this going to have on us and on our property values, and I don't mean to dismiss that, but there's a bigger question, too, and maybe it's very important for us to be involved and to be really involved so that we can be part of that discussion and ask the bigger question: What is in the interest of the women at that facility? What is in the best interest of this big picture of community corrections? What is God seeking to do in the lives of all the people involved?
By the way, I'm always very suspicious of anybody, myself included, who says, "I know what God is wanting to do," because I think that's a communal thing that only comes about as we listen and challenge and talk to one another.
In the big picture of the readings, just keep that in mind. God is tired of leaders who feed themselves, and God wants to feed the people, but all of you are part of that plan.
And keep in mind the discussion isn't about us, what are we going to do and what are we going to say. But the discussion is about God. What is God doing and what does God want to do, and what is our part in that?
And can you be a little corny with me once more.
God is busy, all the time. All the time, God is busy.
Amen.

Homily for July 12, 2009

Last Sunday I talked about the call of the prophet Ezekiel and the message of the prophets in general. Today's first reading features the prophet Amos, and I want to continue that theme by sharing with you a little bit about Amos and what he taught.
Amos was not a professional preacher and he was not a professional prophet. He was a shepherd and a dresser of trees, and God called him. He lived in the south; he lived in Judah. God called him to go to the north and prophesy. The theme of his preaching was that he condemned the rich for trampling on the poor and the needy. The conservatives of our day would accuse him of stirring up class warfare. He preached that the upper classes were benefiting themselves at the expense of the poor and the needy, and that because of that, God would abandon and take his blessing away from the nation, and they would all fall into ruin.
There are two streams of thinking about poverty in the Bible. One comes from the Wisdom literature and the book of Proverbs, and that's what most of us are familiar with. That would stress that people are poor because they don't work hard enough or were lazy or drunkards or because they had bad luck.
The understanding of poverty that comes from the prophets is that God made a covenant with the people and we are all part of God's people. If some people are rich and others are poor, it's because the rich stole from the poor what was rightly theirs, because God intended it for everybody. Now that's harsh, isn't it? But that's the teaching of the prophets, that those who are excessively wealthy got to be that way by stealing from the poor.
I want to read some of what Amos said. I deleted some passages. There was a passage, a beautiful passage, where he talked about the wives of the rich and the wealthy and referred to them in very plainspoken language, but somebody said to me, "There are enough passages in the Bible degrading to women, so don't read that." So I deferred. Even though I love that passage, I'm not going to read it today. If you want to find out what it was, read the book of Amos.
Here are some words of Amos. "For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, they who trampled the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and pushed the afflicted away." And he goes on, "They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks truth. Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them the levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you will not live in them. You have planted vineyards, but you will not drink from their vine. For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins, you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and push aside the needy in the gate."
Then he says, "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies." Imagine God saying, "I hate your liturgies."
"Even though you offer me burnt offerings, I will not accept them." And choir, listen to this. "Take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream."
By the way, is that last phrase familiar to you? Somebody made it very famous. Who was it? Martin Luther King. "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream."
Well, it was after Amos was preaching like that, that the first reading is found. The priest Amaziah says, "Get out of here, you visionary. Go earn your living by prophesying in Judah. But don't do it here because this is where the king lives."
And Amos said, "I'm not a prophet, and I don't belong to a company of prophets. I'm a farmer, a shepherd, a dresser of sycamore trees. And God has sent me to give this message."
He goes on to say, "Hear this, you that trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land saying, 'When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great and practice deceit with false balances'"  (in other words, crooked scales) "'buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.' The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob, 'I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it?'"
Well, what do you think? Is that message relevant for today? What? It sounds very contemporary. Can you imagine Amos going to Washington? Can you imagine him going to the state legislature? Can you imagine him coming into our church and saying, "Do you think I like your liturgy? Do you think I love your music? Let justice roll and let righteousness flow like a living stream."
I don't want to explain those words to you, but I think they ought to bother us, and I think they ought to give us cause to reflect on what's happening in our country and in our world. What would the prophets say if they were here today?
I hope you notice that in the lectionary we use the second reading goes its own course, and the Gospel goes its course. We're reading the Gospel of Mark. The first reading is always picked because, well, whatever committee picked the readings, they thought it fit with the Gospel.
So the Gospel  Jesus gives weird instructions, doesn't he? You can have a walking staff and you can wear sandals. You can't take any food with you, you can't take a bag. I think this is what he meant: You can't take a collection basket to put down at your feet while you're preaching, and you can't have any money with you. I'm struck by the fact that religious teaching often gives us injunctions or instructions. It doesn't explain them, doesn't say why, it doesn't even say how. It just says do it.
Well, if you went out to preach and you didn't have any money, and you can't take up a collection, and you can't have any food with you, and you can't have any credit cards in your pocket, and you just did that, what would it do to you in the way you preached? You'd feel extremely humble? Vulnerable? You would go with an entirely different attitude, wouldn't you, than if you had a lot of resources? You'd be a pilgrim.
And by the way, when he says, "At whatever house you enter, stay there," in one of the other Gospels he says don't go looking around for a better place to stay, or don't go looking for better food to eat, but stay wherever you are and eat what they give you.
I was in the county jail Friday, and a Muslim who was leading a pilgrimage to Mecca was there, and we were conversing. He was talking to the chaplain and said, "How hard it is to take Americans on pilgrimages, because when the food is set before them, they say, "I don't like it. And I say to them, 'You need to eat that.'"
[Inaudible response] It makes you part of the community that you're with.
I want to close with this. I once met a Captain in the Navy, a Navy chaplain, who said once a priest asked him, "Would you be my spiritual director?"
And he said, "Okay, but I tell people to do crazy things."
And he said, "Well, what do you want me to do?"
And this priest was in a busy city parish, and he said, "Every day stand out in front of church from 11:30 to 1:00 and from 4:30 to 6:00. Don't do anything, just stand there."
So he did it for six months, and then he died. And two thousand people came to his funeral. Imagine what began to happen as he just stood there every day for an hour and a half. Religious life is crazy like that.
Jesus gave the Apostles some crazy instructions. Many but call our attention to the poor, to the needy, to those who are trampled underfoot by our culture or our economy or our political or economic system. I think the prophets are very relevant today. What would they say?

Homily for July 5, 2009

Today’s first reading describes the call of the prophet Ezekiel. I want to set it in its historical time frame. It's in Babylon, modern day Iraq. The people have been driven into exile. All of their cherished beliefs and securities have been dashed to the ground. Their temple has been destroyed. They are trying to figure out, "What do you make of all this? Is God faithful or not? And where is God in all this?"
So Ezekiel comes on the scene, and at the risk of oversimplifying, he tells them two things. God is faithful. God will make a new covenant with you. God will restore you. Ezekiel is the one who has the famous vision of the valley of the dry bones, the dry bones that come together and get flesh and blood and sinew and live again. Ezekiel has the image of God giving you a new heart and a new covenant.
But he also says, "It's your own fault. You were warned that this was going to happen, and you didn't listen. There were prophets sent to you, and you ignored them."
God says to Ezekiel, "I'm sending you to a stiff necked, rebellious people, obstinate in spirit and hard of heart. Whether they listen or not, speak my words, and they will know that a prophet has been among them.
In the Gospel, we hear those famous words: A prophet is not without honor except --  where?  In his hometown, his own family, and his own house.
As I read about these, I thought of our economic times today, the crisis that we experience in our society, and increasingly I read things that say this started 30 years ago, and we should have seen it. The signs were all there. I wonder, who were the prophets 30 years ago whom we should have listened to?
I'm not going to name them. I have my opinion about who they are, but that's my opinion, and if you want to ask me after Mass I'll tell you who they were, or at least who I think they were. But you might have a different vision of who they were, and I don't want to degenerate into an argument about that.
The question I want to ask you is, among the many voices you hear, how do you know which ones are prophetic and which ones aren't? My goal is not to answer the question for you, but to encourage you to ask it for yourself and come up with your own answers. I'll suggest some answers that I think come from the Bible.
I had a history professor at the Catholic University of America who one day said something in class that I've never forgotten. It probably was a throwaway comment on his part, but it made a lasting impression on me.
This is what he said. He said, "Jesus was rejected, and the prophets were rejected, and when you are ordained and get out there in ministry, there will be moments when you feel rejected. And you will be tempted to think it's because you're like Jesus and the prophets. Don't think that at all. Just ask what dumb, stupid thing you did." Then he went on to say, "But never be afraid to speak the truth for fear of rejection."
Well, over my years in ministry  and I'm sure all of you have, too  I've met people who thought they were prophets who were just plain ineffective and did dumb things. And I've met people who were rejected who really were prophets. Can you think of some in your own memory, an example of both, people who thought they were prophets but were just really behaving in unenlightened ways? Mind you, I'm not going to say anybody is enlightened or

unenlightened, but there are enlightened behaviors. I've also met people who were genuine prophets.
If we read the Bible, what criteria might we find? Criteria number one, the genuine prophets were always concerned about the poor. The impact of whatever was being done on the poor was uppermost in their mind. If you took the Bible and, with a knife, cut out every reference to injustice or lack of compassion for the poor, and every condemnation of government and leaders and people for being insensitive to the poor, if you cut out every reference to that, what do you think you'd have?
[inaudible response] Right, you'd have very unconnected pieces of paper that would look like a paper cutout doll. You wouldn't have much at all. Correspondingly, by the way, there are passages in the Bible that are very clear in their teaching about sexual matters, but if you cut them out, what would you have left? You wouldn't even miss them, because they are very few in number. I don't want to start an argument there, but I just want to say that the difference between biblical concern, genuine biblical concern, and the concern of some religious leaders is day and night. The prophets are always concerned about the poor.
And the prophets condemn empty religion. They condemn the religion that is correct according to all of the forms, but empty of compassion and empty of spirit.
Thirdly the prophets always call us to repentance, to a change of heart, and to look at our own life. The prophets never promise false security or prosperity. They never promise prosperity without sacrifice and fidelity.
By the way, I listen to satellite radio in my car a lot, and my favorite satellite station is The Decade of the 40s. That's when I grew up. On that satellite radio you will often hear the news of that day from one of the years in the 40s. I haven't heard it today. Yesterday was the news broadcast from July 4, 1942. One of the things I'm struck by as I listen to news reports from the forties is that our leaders asked us to sacrifice.
I remember as a child going to the grocery store on east New York Street by Jefferson and New York with the little red stamps that were --  anybody know what they were?-- meat stamps, food stamps. Meat was rationed, gasoline was rationed, and we were asked to make sacrifices.
Do you know how they financed the war? Bonds. They sold war bonds. They didn't just print more money. They sold war bonds and asked us to sacrifice. I think the true prophets will always ask us to sacrifice.
And now a comment on Jesus going to his hometown. What was behind their rejection of him? According to their custom, Jesus was acting in a shameful way. He was the son of a carpenter. He was supposed to be a carpenter, and he was supposed to stay home and take care of his mother, and he wasn't doing that. Instead he was running off doing mighty deeds in other towns. So they said, "Where did he get all this? Isn't this the carpenter?"
Let me ask you, how many of you have ever felt put into a box? What's it feel like to be put into a box?



You have no control of a situation. You're completely void of any creativity whatsoever, and you become very hapless and corporate like, maybe become a corporate soldier in work, for instance.
Okay. So you become very uncreative, you have no control.
When you've been put into a box, how many of you have ever been put into a box that you think doesn't fit, that takes away the mystery of who you are? "Oh, yeah, I know who you are. I know your personality type." People today are big into personality type tests. "I know what you are. You're this on that scale and you're that on this scale, and so I know who you are." And it never fits.
"I know who you are, you're a liberal," or "You're a conservative," and there are people who, if something is said by a liberal will find it very hard to believe it. I'm not one of those. There are other people who will find it very hard to believe something said by a conservative. I probably am closer to one of those, but neither is close to the truth. The prophetic voice might always come from somebody who refuses to fit into the box that you put them into.
These are just some reflections I have on how you would go about answering the question, "Who are the prophetic voices among us, and what would they call us to? What direction would their voice lead us into?" I just encourage you to ask the question for yourself. What criteria would you use to judge whether a voice really comes from God or whether it comes from somewhere else? And how would you justify that voice and that judgment from the whole history of our biblical and our faith tradition?