Homily for Sunday, 30 November 2014

1st Sunday in Advent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b, 64:2-7; Psalm 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

Anticipate and focus. How are these actions so important, especially to our celebration of Advent?

Two old family memories I have of sports remind me of the value of anticipation and of focus. My first memory is of playing softball as a boy. My father coached our softball team for a few years. He has given me many wise points of advice over the years as a father and as a coach… But one of his most memorable points on the softball diamond was this: Anticipate where the ball is going to be, and go there; get under where the ball is going to catch it. Meanwhile, focus; pay attention to where the ball is now. This advice works well, I have found, with most sports.

My second memory is of my brother Eric playing soccer in his early teens. Eric is ten years younger than me, and much more naturally athletic than I am.  When I would watch Eric play soccer, I would marvel at the seeming effortlessness with which he thought several steps ahead of the play: Where is the ball going? Where are my teammates? How can I get open to give or receive a pass? Where is the clearest path to the goal?  Yet even in his anticipation of the play, Eric would not lose his focus on where the action was at the present time. Eric consistently applied Dad’s words on the soccer pitch: Anticipate where the play is going; focus on where it is now.

Anticipate and focus. These skills of an athlete are also helpful skills to develop in our spiritual lives. These are skills for us to hone especially in this time of Advent that we begin today. Instead of a ball or puck on a playing surface, might we ask ourselves the same questions as a skilled athlete, but of God and of God’s Kingdom? We might ask ourselves: What are the signs of the coming to fullness of God’s Kingdom? Where is God leading me in my life? What am I looking forward to in the upcoming celebration of Christmas and, perhaps a longer time away, at the end of time; in the “life of the world to come” as we pray in our Creed? But at the same time we might ask: Where is God present in my life now? What is God asking of me now?

Is God asking me; asking us to continue our acts and words of kindness; of faithfulness; of generosity; of charity; of peace; of justice? Or is God asking me; asking us especially during this Advent season to examine our conscience; to ask forgiveness for when we have been wrong; to repair relationships; to pray more; to limit activities and habits that distract from God; to worship more attentively; to repent? If we are honest with ourselves, we will probably answer that God is asking us to do all of the above. God invites us to anticipate; to go to where God and God’s Kingdom will be; will reach its fullness, and also to focus on where God is in our lives here and now.

Anticipate and focus, our Gospel reading in particular invites us. Jesus says “to his disciples” in Mark’s Gospel, “Be watchful! Be alert... Watch, therefore… I say to all, ‘Watch!’” Jesus speaks to us with urgency: God is transforming our world; bringing God’s Kingdom to fullness, and yet God’s Kingdom is with us here now.

God’s Kingdom is like the home of “a man traveling abroad,” Jesus says. This man, the master of the house, places us, “his servants in charge, each with his own work.” Anticipate the Master’s return, Jesus says, while we focus on the work given to each of us now: Bring Jesus; his Gospel of “Thy Kingdom come,” God’s Kingdom already here, to our families; to our workplaces; to the streets; to the rich and comfortable; to the poor, the lost, and the broken.

“Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we will pray in the words Jesus taught us in just a few moments.

Anticipate and focus. The message of our first reading from Isaiah is similar to that of our Gospel reading today and to that of our Lord’s Prayer. Isaiah speaks to a people in danger of forgetting God; forgetting the key message: Anticipate and focus. In Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel were beginning to return home after seventy years in exile in Babylon. The problem was that most of the people of Israel decided to stay in Babylon among a people who had treated them fairly well but did not believe in the same God as they did. Only a few returned to rebuild Israel. Understandably, most of the people exiled from Israel asked, “Why return to Israel? Why return to a place where I was not born, although maybe my ancestors were from there? Why return to a nation in need of rebuilding; a nation whose cultural and religious center, the Temple of Jerusalem, had long been destroyed?”

The prophet Isaiah draws the people of Israel back not only to their homeland, but to God. Anticipate and focus, Isaiah says. Where is God leading us? Go out to encounter God where God is going, Isaiah says to the people, while he prays to God: “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you… No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him.” At the same time, Isaiah asks, “Where is God among us now? What is God asking of us now”? “Would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways… O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay and you the potter. We are all the work of your hands,” Isaiah prays in magnificent poetry.

Anticipate where God and God’s Kingdom will be; focus on where God is now. This is also the central message of Paul’s prayerful and thankful greeting of the Corinthians in our second reading. Paul’s emphasis is on God with us here and now. He reminds the Christians of Corinth that they have all the tools; all the riches of God’s grace to discern where God is in their lives at the present and where God and God’s Kingdom is leading them. So do we. “You are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,” St. Paul says to the Corinthians. God “will keep you firm to the end… By [God] you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Anticipate and focus, St. Paul reminds the Corinthians of his time and reminds us. Anticipate and focus, the prophet Isaiah says to the people of Israel and to us. Anticipate and focus, Jesus says to his disciples. Like a good athlete who goes ahead to where the play is going without forgetting where the play is occurring now, our readings today invite us to await and to encounter God where God is going; where God’s Kingdom is reaching its fullness. At the same time, we are invited to encounter God where God is, here and now.

This is our twofold invitation; our calling for Advent, beginning anew today; the invitation of our readings; the invitation to us in the prayer that Jesus taught us. “Thy Kingdom come.” Anticipate where God is going to be; anticipate the signs of God’s kingdom. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Focus on where God is in our lives and what God asks of us to bring forth God’s Kingdom here and now. Anticipate and focus.

Homily for Saturday, 29 November 2014– Ferial

Saturday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 22:1-7; Psalm 95:1-2, 3-5, 6-7ab (R: see Revelation 22:20c); Luke 21:34-36

“Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!” This Aramaic then English response to our Psalm is not actually from the Psalms. It is the next-to-last verse of the Book of Revelation, following what we have heard today, also from Revelation, in our first reading. Clearly these are words of anticipation of the Lord’s return in glory. Would this response, “Marana tha, Come, Lord Jesus,” not fit best with our season of Advent, which we begin this evening?

Why do we have this anticipation of Advent? Why this prayer, “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus”? It is a very ancient Christian prayer, going back to the earliest Church. It is a prayer for the end times; for Jesus to return in glory. It was originally a plea to Jesus in a time of crisis and persecution of the first Christians. How might we make this our prayer; how might “Marana tha! Come Lord Jesus” become more real to us in our social context, as Christians in 2014?

Would this prayer become more real to us if we were to think of it not only as calling to mind the end times; Jesus’ return in glory (which it does), but also as drawing us back to our beginning; to creation; to our re-creation as daughters and sons of Christ in baptism?

The Book of Revelation, for all its strange imagery, is all about God’s act and our cooperation in this act of re-creation. It is no accident that John’s last vision in Revelation, the river flowing in all directions from the tree of life, “serving as medicine for the nations,” recalls the paradise of the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The river and the tree of life in Revelation are a reversal of sin; of the Fall of Adam and Eve and the confusion of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. They are images of restoration; of re-creation.

When in our lives have we experienced restoration; re-creation; total freedom from the Fall (or, as many call it, Original Sin)? We experience this act of restoration; re-creation; total freedom from sin not first as an end, but as a beginning, in our baptism. We experience this again and again in the other sacraments, especially in our Eucharist, in reconciliation (a kind of “second baptism”), and in the anointing of the sick. We experience this continually as “medicine for” individual souls; “medicine for the nations.” Our lives as Christians are a continual experience of restoration; re-creation; freedom from sin. From our baptism to our death and entry into eternal life; from beginning to end, our lives are a continual experience of “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!”

Our Scriptures, too, are our continual experience of God among us, from creation to re-creation; from the river and the tree of life in Eden to the river and the tree of life in John’s vision in Revelation; from “in the beginning,” the words in Genesis that introduce God’s creation of the universe, to a new beginning that we anticipate in Jesus’ return in glory. “Marana tha! Come, Lord Jesus!”

Homily for Friday, 28 November 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 20:1-4, 11-21:2; Psalm 84:3, 4, 5-6a, 8a; Luke 21:29-33

What are and will be the signs of God’s Kingdom reaching its fullness? What will last beyond these so-called “end times”? These are two of perhaps many questions to which our readings today give rise.

What are and will be the signs of God’s kingdom reaching its fullness; of God’s final judgment? The Book of Revelation gives us terrifying images of the final judgment: The imprisonment, short release, and then final defeat of Satan; those who have given their lives for Christ reigning with Christ “for a thousand years” (for eternity, in the symbolic language of Revelation); “the sea” and “Death and Hades” giving up their dead for judgment; the book of life and the pool of fire…

Our Gospel reading from Luke presents us with much more gentle and peaceful images of the end times than does Revelation. Jesus compares the blossoming of the fig tree, the beginning of summer, to the coming to fullness of God’s Kingdom. More importantly, Jesus says, the signs of God’s Kingdom are discernible in the present: “When you see these things happening, know that the Kingdom of God is near.” Our Psalm response we have prayed today is even more to the point: “Here God lives among his people.”

What are and will be the signs of God’s Kingdom reaching its fullness? What are the signs of God’s Kingdom here and now; signs of God already living among us, “his people”? God’s Kingdom is most present to us in the peace of our prayer. It is in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments of the Church. God’s kingdom is present in the gentle coo of a child; grandchild; great-grandchild; in our time with parents; grandparents; great-grandparents. God’s kingdom has been present in our recent celebration of Thanksgiving. God’s kingdom is present in nature; in our winter landscape. God’s kingdom is present in our help to a person in need; in someone helping us in our need; in a kind or encouraging word we have spoken or heard. Perhaps we are to be signs of God’s Kingdom, already present and yet coming to fullness among ourselves, here and now.

What are and will be the signs of God’s Kingdom? “Here God lives among his people.” What will last beyond the “end times”? Jesus says in our Gospel reading, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” In Revelation John sees “a new heaven and a new earth… the holy city, a new Jerusalem” descending “out of heaven.”

What will the decisive coming to fullness of God’s kingdom look like? Will it be like the terrifying images of Revelation, or the gentle signs of which Jesus speaks in our Gospel? Nobody knows for sure. But we know that “here God lives among his people.” We know that Jesus’ “words will not pass away.” We are entrusted with being Christ-like in our words and actions among one another. We are to be signs of God’s kingdom coming into its fullness, here and now; signs, words, presence, and actions that “will not pass away.”

Homily for Wednesday, 26 November 2014– Ferial

Wednesday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 15:1-4; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 7-8, 9; Luke 21:12-19

Who among us has seen a good action movie, one in which the hero emerges in a final scene from the destruction and chaos with maybe a few scratches?

The cynical side of me says when I see this kind of scene, “This is unrealistic. That explosion would have killed our hero. In no way would our hero have survived that”!

Now imagine ourselves in one of these scenes, only we are not in an action movie. What we are experiencing is real. If we can place ourselves in this kind of action scene as the heroes who emerge unscathed from the final chaos, we have some understanding of the strange readings we hear today from Revelation and the Gospel of Luke.

Our readings today are from what is called apocalyptic literature in the Bible; writings that were meant to inspire people to remain faithful to God in times of trial; crisis; hostility. The message the same now as when Revelation and Luke’s Gospel were written: Remain faithful to God and God will have the last word. The eternal God will deliver and save us from earthly trials and crises that, as terrible as they can be, are temporary. God will have the last word; the final judgment. Remain faithful, and we will emerge unscathed, as though we were standing on “a sea of glass mingled with fire,” the action heroes looking defiantly on the chaos we have just overcome; that God has led us to overcome.

Of course the crisis we face may not be as spectacular as the “sea of glass mingled with fire” or even the brutal Roman occupation the people faced when the New Testament books were written. Our crises are more subtle today, but are nevertheless present. In our own culture, our own nation, we face affronts to the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. We face affronts to justice and human rights: The right to a living wage for workers; the right not to live in abject poverty; the rights of immigrants and refugees; rights that, when broken or ignored, contribute to situations like what is unfolding now in Ferguson, Missouri. Some of us face crises within our own families: Gossip, ridicule for holding fast to our faith even from those we love most; family division and breakdown of the kind Jesus speaks in our Gospel reading. But then Jesus ends our Gospel reading with this: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

Our message is still the same today as in the spectacular apocalyptic images of our readings: Remain faithful to God. Work for what is right and just, even if we are ridiculed or ignored. God will have the final word; the last judgment.

We near the end of our Church year, with Advent beginning this weekend. This end of our Church year is a reminder of the end times; of God’s final judgement that is real, not only a scene in an action movie. And yet we are the heroes of these end times. Like a good action hero, if we remain faithful we will emerge from the chaos unscathed; saved; with God in eternal life.