Homily for Sunday, 20 August 2023– Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67: 2-3, 5, 6, 8; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

I am not sure how many of us, if anybody here, attended the recent World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, or watched coverage of it on television. I ran a quick search of the official text of Pope Francis’ Address during the Welcome Ceremony to World Youth Day pilgrims on the first day of the event. In that speech, Pope Francis uses the word “everyone” (todos in Portuguese) eighteen times!

Clearly, I think, Pope Francis desires a Church that is inclusive of all kinds of people. During a key part of his speech at the World Youth Day Welcome Ceremony, each time Pope Francis repeated “everyone” (todos), he encouraged the young people present to chant back to him, “Todos, todos”:

“In the Church, there is room for everyone, everyone. In the Church, no one is left out or left over. There is room for everyone, just the way we are. Everyone. Jesus says this clearly. When he sends the apostles to invite people to the banquet a man had prepared, he tells them: ‘Go out and bring in everyone,’ young and old, healthy and infirm, righteous and sinners. Everyone, everyone, everyone! In the Church there is room for everyone. ‘Father, but I am a wretch; is there room for me’? There is room for everyone… That is the Church, the Mother of all. There is room for everyone. The Lord does not point a finger but opens his arms. It is odd: The Lord does not know how to do this [pointing] but that [opening his arms wide]. He embraces us all. He shows us Jesus on the cross, who opened his arms wide in order to be crucified and die for us.”

This was not the first or the only time during the World Youth Day events when Pope Francis pleaded for a Church open to all people. The day before his Welcome Ceremony speech, in a meeting with Portuguese bishops, priests, religious, and lay pastoral ministers, Pope Francis invited them: “Please, let us not convert the Church into a customs office,” which admits only the “just, good,” and “properly married ‘while leaving everyone else outside.’… No, the Church is… a place for righteous and sinners, good and bad, everyone, everyone, everyone (todos).”

On the flight back to Rome after World Youth Day, journalists were unpacking just how far the pope meant to go toward a Church that includes “everyone.” Pope Francis responded to a question about various people and groups often excluded from the Church and her sacraments by saying, “The Church is open to all, but then there are rules that regulate life inside the Church.”

I will admit I have some difficulty understanding what Pope Francis meant by this: “The Church is open to all,” but, once we are within the walls of the church, once we are baptized, we are subject to its rules that do indeed distinguish good and bad, those who adhere faithfully at least to the Church’s most important teachings (and which are these?) and those who do not, those who may or may not receive the Church’s sacraments. Which is it?

I do not say all this to criticize Pope Francis; far be it from me to do that! I say what I have to draw a parallel between Pope Francis’ claim that, on the one hand, the Church is fully open to all (todos) and, on the other hand, that it has rules to regulate the practice of the faith once we are inside, and a similar tension we hear in our readings today.

Pope Francis’ appeal to todos—all, everyone—in an all-inclusive Church is in the spirit of what we hear from the prophet Isaiah today. In this part of the Book of Isaiah, the prophet is preparing the people of Israel to return to their homeland from a long exile (about seventy years) in Babylon. Persia has conquered Babylon and decreed that the people of Israel should return home and rebuild their temple in Jerusalem that the Babylonians had destroyed. The problem is that, by the time of the Persian conquest of Babylon and the writing of this part of Isaiah, many people from Israel had become quite comfortable in Babylon. Many had forgotten their homeland, their faith, their worship of the one God of Israel. At the same time, Israel lay largely in ruins. The people the Babylonians had not deported from there to Babylon were mostly poor peasants.

Isaiah encourages the people of Israel in Babylon to return to their homeland and to rebuild especially the temple of Jerusalem. But the rebuilt temple, like our Church today, Isaiah says, should be a place where not only the people of Israel are welcome, but “all peoples” of all nations. But there is a catch to Isaiah’s inclusiveness! Foreigners will be welcome in the rebuilt temple, but only those “who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, [who] love the name of the LORD,” are willing “to be his servants… who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it, and [who] hold fast [God’s] covenant.”

It is unclear which “foreigners” Isaiah has in mind. It would make more sense if the “foreigners” in Isaiah were in fact people from Israel who had lived for some time in a foreign nation (Babylon) in exile. Otherwise, how many non-Israelites would want to worship in a rebuilt temple, what would become a rather exclusively Jewish place of worship? How many non-Israelites would willingly adhere to God’s covenant with Israel, an exclusive promise that Israel would be God’s people and God would be Israel’s God alone? Not many, I suspect.

Isaiah seems to say that all are welcome—todos, todos—as long as they play by our Israelite, Jewish rules. We Catholics have (and I think most if not all religious traditions do in some way) expressed this same kind of inclusiveness with strings attached as Isaiah does, or Pope Francis did on the flight from Lisbon back to Rome. How many of us here, for example, were Protestant Christians who became Catholics? Until at least Vatican II, sixty-plus years ago (and a small but significant number of Catholics still hold this view today), the dominant Catholic view was that non-Catholics were welcome to become Catholic. The reverse was strongly discouraged: Say, if a Catholic married a non-Catholic and worshipped in the non-Catholic spouse’s religious tradition. A person was welcome to “swim the Tiber” (be a non-Catholic who became Catholic) but not the Bosphorus (a Catholic who became Eastern Orthodox), the Forth (a Catholic becoming Presbyterian), the Rhine (becoming Lutheran), or the Thames (becoming Anglican). What theologians refer to as an “ecumenism of return,” a one-way street leading the faithful to Rome, was much more dominant in our Catholic Church than it is today.

Yet in Matthew’s Gospel today we hear about a foreigner, the Canaanite woman who pleads with Jesus to heal her daughter of possession by “a demon.” Jesus’ first move is to exclude her, twice: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel… It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Is Jesus’ tone with the Canaanite woman not quite insulting? After all the Canaanite woman could be forgiven for not being willing or even ready to follow the rules of the Jewish faith (to swim the Jordan, maybe?); all she wants is for Jesus to heal her daughter of a demon. She follows a more fundamental rule than the more exclusive demands of the Jewish Law or the law of any religion; the Canaanite woman is guided by the law of seeking the help of the most qualified, the holiest person she knows (Jesus) out of desperation.

And so the Canaanite woman persists with Jesus: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ tables.” If we cannot admire the Canaanite woman’s faith at this point, then surely we can admire her wit! She has enough faith—and follows the rules of what faith she has, as well as she can—to call Jesus “Lord” and to plead for his healing help. And Jesus eventually relents; he includes her, includes her daughter among those he heals: “Woman, great is your faith”!

Jesus tests the Canaanite woman; why he tests her like this is a mystery that defies the explanation of the best experts on the Bible and its Gospels. And she is up to his challenge. She recognizes that she has no claim to the faith, the covenant, the houses of worship of the Jewish people, the people of Israel. She acknowledges that she has less of a claim to the faith of Israel and Jesus’ attention than even the people of Israel with claim to Israel’s faith, covenant, house of worship and all, who would reject Jesus as the Messiah by St. Paul’s time. (This greatly distresses St. Paul, as we hear today in the Letter to the Romans. Yet St. Paul still commends Israel’s people who reject Jesus as their Messiah to God’s mercy, which is truly all-inclusive, more than any church or religious institution on Earth, I think we need to acknowledge).

And the Canaanite woman, an example of faith to us all, sisters and brothers, knows that she, too, is not beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Even “the crumbs that fall from [the] masters’ table” will be enough to nourish her, heal her daughter, draw her closer to God who is the merciful creator, sustainer, saviour of everyone—todos, todos.

Homily for Sunday, 13 August 2023– Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

I must say I feel badly for Elijah and Peter! Elijah in the First Book of Kings and Peter in Matthew’s Gospel from which we hear today cannot seem to act in such a way that fully pleases other people or, more importantly, pleases God.

By the time Elijah finds himself in a cave on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings, we find ourselves, in a way, dropped into the middle of the story of the reading we have just heard. Before Elijah ends up in the cave on Horeb, he confronts the king of Israel, Ahab, and his wife Jezebel, over their worship of false gods. If there is a way to combine a comedy and tragedy into a single scene, the part of 1 Kings just before Elijah hides in the cave on Mount Horeb may be it! God has sent a drought over Israel to punish Jezebel’s and Ahab’s idol worship.

After three years of drought in Israel, God orders Elijah to speak with Ahab to end the drought. On top of worshipping foreign gods—for which we could excuse Jezebel somewhat, because she was not from Israel—Jezebel spent the years of drought slaughtering the prophets of the LORD, the God of Israel. So Elijah organizes a great contest on Mount Carmel between the prophets of Jezebel’s gods, the Ba’als and Asherah, and himself, representing the true God of Israel. The four hundred fifty prophets of the Ba’als (pagan gods of storms and rain) and the four hundred fifty prophets of Asherah (a fertility goddess) will call on their gods to send down fire to consume a bull presented as a sacrifice. Elijah will do the same. Whichever side’s gods send down fire will decide which god(s) the people of Israel will worship.

This sounds like a great idea: Elijah, the prophet of the LORD, true God of Israel, allows himself to be outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one by the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah! Thankfully, God accepts Elijah’s sacrifice and sends fire over the altar Elijah builds to God, consuming the bull. The gods of the nine hundred prophets are shown not to exist, because they do not send fire on request to consume the bull sacrifice. Israel’s people (except for Jezebel and Ahab) are moved to worship the one true God of Israel, not the Ba’als or Asherah. For good measure, Elijah—spectacularly because, remember, he is outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one—has all the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah killed.

All this makes Jezebel and Ahab very angry at Elijah. Jezebel wants Elijah dead. At least, besides reporting Elijah to his wife Jezebel for so-called “murder” of her false prophets, Ahab only calls Elijah “disturber of Israel” for bringing Israel back to the worship of the one true God. But now Elijah sinks into despair. Jezebel’s army is after him, so he hides in a cave on Mount Horeb. Elijah (and who could fault him?) wants nothing of God’s fire that consumes bull sacrifices. He wants nothing of the sword with which he has slain nine hundred false prophets. Elijah just wants to die. This “disturber of Israel” is done disturbing the peace. But God is not done with Elijah yet.

Today’s reading from 1 Kings begins at this point. The LORD disturbs the peace, and the sleep, of the once-“disturber of Israel,” Elijah. God calls Elijah to “stand on the mountain” outside the cave, “for the LORD is about to pass by.”

Just then, “a great wind” begins, “so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks before the LORD.” We have had some pretty good storms this summer, but none quite that strong. Elijah seems to know right away that the LORD “is not in the wind,” that the wind and storms were said to be signs of the Ba’als, the false gods worshipped by Jezebel and Ahab. I imagine Elijah saying into the wind, “You do not scare me. Try again.” And so there is an earthquake, “but the LORD [is] not in the earthquake,” either. Elijah is too good at discerning when God is truly present, so the earthquake does not faze him. Neither does the fire. It is a little more surprising that Elijah is not duped into believing that God is present in the fire, since this is how God was present to him in consuming the bull sacrifice. But, no, “the LORD [is] not in the fire.”

“After the fire,” Elijah (rightly) discerns the presence of God in the “sound of sheer silence.” Elijah is, we have to admit, really good at knowing when God is present and responding to God’s presence. But the reading we hear from 1 Kings today leaves out two short lines (or the same line, twice) from this story in the Bible. In 1 Kings, before and after the sequence of the wind, earthquake, fire, and silence, God asks Elijah, “Why are you here”? Both times, Elijah answers God, in short: “I give up. The people of Israel are unconvinced by the spectacular pyrotechnics on Mount Carmel, the bull sacrifice now a heap of ash. They are still worshipping false gods. Jezebel and Ahab want to kill me for killing nine hundred of their false prophets. I will admit that was pretty spectacular, too, a bit gruesome, but… just… You know what, God? Just leave me alone and let me die.”

But neither time does God take Elijah’s “no” for an answer. The first time God asks Elijah why he is hiding on Mount Horeb, God tells Elijah to wait outside the cave for God “to pass by.” And, the second time, God tells Elijah to go toward Damascus and anoint Hazael as the king of that region (Aram). God tells Elijah to anoint Jehu as king of Israel, which means Ahab’s time as king is almost up; Jehu will be the one to order Jezebel’s servants to kill her. And God tells Elijah to anoint Elisha as his own successor as prophet of Israel.

It is as if God repeats to Elijah, “I will not let you give up! You are too good a prophet to end like this”! Elijah will become even greater than a prophet: A kingmaker and a prophet-maker. God takes who Elijah is and calls him to be something, somebody even greater.

Can we think of a time in our own lives when somebody has challenged us at the right time to be even better than we are, even better at something we are already good at? I can think of many instances in which this has happened to me. I think of my colleagues at St. Joseph’s College when they say, “You will be very good at teaching that course, at researching in that area of theology. Here is a challenge that will push you just beyond the limits you sometimes impose on yourself.” I think of my students, when they say, “We really enjoyed this activity, this assignment in class. But we only got to do it once or twice. We should do more of this, or you should do more of that the next time you teach this course.” Outside myself, I think of great minds, great athletes, great anything, who are great in part because a coach, an advisor, a friend, a student, God pushed them to be greater than they thought they could be in a critical moment.

This is true of Elijah, when God appears twice to him in the silence, the “still small voice” on Horeb and asks, “Why are you here, Elijah”? And it is true of Peter in his relationship with Jesus in our Gospel today.

Please allow me to say that I feel a lot of empathy toward Peter when I hear today’s Gospel reading. My retreat before professing final vows as a Basilian and being ordained a deacon ten years ago was in the Holy Land. I will always remember standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, feeling a slight increase in the wind, and seeing the surface of the water go from completely still to white-capped waves in minutes. So I can appreciate how this (so I understand) frequent weather phenomenon could have frightened Peter and Jesus’ other disciples that day. And then to have Jesus walk toward them on the stormy sea: I am not surprised at all that Peter and Jesus’ other disciples responded with the terror they did!

Still, as Peter does so often, he (almost) gets it right; he recognizes (as well as Elijah recognized God in the silence on Horeb) that it is Jesus walking toward him on the sea. And Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him “on the water.” That is, may I say, very bold of Peter. It is a display of faith from Peter maybe second only to when he identifies Jesus as “the Christ, Son of the living God.”

So why, at this moment, does Jesus call Peter, “You of little faith”? Is this not unfair of Jesus not to recognize the (in fact) great faith with which Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him on a stormy sea? Sure, Peter becomes scared right away after that and starts to sink. But maybe he was not a great swimmer. Surely there are worse things than not being able to swim well, right?

I think here, though, Jesus is doing with Peter something very similar to what God does with Elijah in 1 Kings. Jesus sees the great faith of which Peter is capable in word and action, in this and many other instances in our Gospels. But in any moment, Peter’s faith will always be littler than what it can be with some coaching. It is as if Jesus says to Peter (and, through Peter, to us), “It is not me, but you, who does not see in this ‘stormy’ moment how bold your faith actually is. Come to me on the water, so you see how great your faith can be. You, like the great prophet Elijah, have an uncanny ability to discern and reach out to God in the most challenging circumstances. Like Elijah, with my help and grace, you will become even better at reaching out to me, praying, walking on water, discerning my presence in the storms of life as in the sacred moments of ‘sheer silence.’”

Homily for Sunday, 6 August 2023– Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

Readings of the day: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 9; 2 Peter 1:16-19; Matthew 17:1-9

Over these last couple of weeks, one of the most popular and successful movies playing in theatres has been Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” I just saw this movie a few days ago. Its title character, the physicist and developer of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, understood the explosion of the Trinity test bomb, the “successful” goal of the Manhattan Project in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, as an apocalyptic moment.

In the popular sense of the term “apocalyptic,” Oppenheimer would live out his life after the Manhattan Project afraid and guilt-ridden that he had ushered in an era toward the destruction of the world. On this day in 1945, August 6, the first atomic bomb used in combat would be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. And then, three days later, August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb would be dropped on Nagasaki. The Cold War was soon in full swing: Nations stockpiled nuclear weapons, arguing unbelievably that their armaments assured mutual deterrence from ever having to use them.

In 1965, Oppenheimer reflected in an NBC interview (“The Decision to Drop the Bomb”) on the Trinity test explosion: “Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multiarmed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’”

In another sense of “apocalyptic,” closer to its literal sense of uncovering or unveiling, I think Oppenheimer quickly discovered that the development of nuclear weapons was revealing something about the human capacity for evil and destruction that he had wished would remain hidden. The effect of the Fall or “original sin” has brought us to this. Countries continue to stockpile nuclear arsenals. Mutual deterrence long ago ceased to be a viable, believable argument to build and stockpile such weapons. Short of nuclear warfare, conventional warfare and its weaponry have become more precise, more deliberate, more deadly. Just look at the destruction that continues to be wrought in Ukraine; smaller-scale events in a world war being fought “piecemeal,” as Pope Francis has said, like current events in Niger or Sudan! Sometimes it takes a (literally or figuratively) apocalyptic event like the Trinity test explosion or the use of nuclear weapons in warfare over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reveal the tremendous power of human technological progress: Its potential for good, yes, but also a disturbing potential for death and destruction.

Suffice it to say that one of my favourite styles of writing in the Bible—and one of the most recognizable—is apocalyptic. Apocalypses form entire books of the Bible, like the Book of Revelation but also Daniel from whom we hear today. Apocalyptic literature is woven into many other books of the Bible, like the Gospels. And, if we think about it, all the readings we hear today, on this Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, are in some way apocalyptic.

The Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ is an apocalyptic event. Matthew’s Gospel account of the Transfiguration immediately puts us in the presence of a complex event. A lot happens in this scene of the Lord’s Transfiguration, and all of it is apocalyptic in the sense of something or somebody being revealed, unveiled, uncovered.

Bible experts have rightly commented on how Jesus’ transfiguration reveals his divinity. A few have commented on how the Transfiguration reveals Jesus’ full humanity, his full identity and mission as a human being, the “Son of Man” (extending the imagery we hear from the Book of Daniel today) whose ultimate goal will be to die and rise from the dead for us. Still others say that the Transfiguration is the revelation of the whole Trinity at once, one God in three persons: The Father is present in the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; Listen to him”! The Son is present in the physical human person of Jesus. And the Holy Spirit is present in the “bright cloud” that overshadows Jesus, Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, and John.

The presence of Moses and Elijah alongside Jesus as he is transfigured reveals Jesus as the fulfillment of the Law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah), a point especially central in Matthew’s Gospel. Yet the Transfiguration also reveals a lot about who Jesus’ disciples (Peter, James, and John) are, who we are. We hear that, initially, the disciples understand very rightly that first, they are witnesses to an apocalyptic event, a full revelation of God’s glory in Jesus Christ and, second, as Peter says for himself and his fellow disciples to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

A little detail here distinguishes Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration from those of Mark and Luke: Matthew, unlike Mark or Luke, does not say at this point in the Transfiguration event that Peter does not know what he is saying or that the three disciples are afraid. Matthew says that Jesus’ disciples are afraid only after God has spoken from the cloud. But, for now, Peter, James, and John know perfectly well what they are saying and what is happening. Peter proposes to “make [three] dwellings… one for [Jesus], one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Matthew’s Greek word for “dwellings” here is skēnē, from which we get the English word “scene.” Maybe I am still too much in movie mode after having watched “Oppenheimer,” speaking of scenes, but I think Peter reminds us of a most essential approach to apocalyptic events like Jesus’ Transfiguration. Peter reminds us that, when God is revealing something of who God is and who we are (by definition, an apocalypse!), “it is good”—it is best—for us to remain on scene. For Peter, James, John, Jesus’ other apostles and disciples, the time will come when they will all flee from the scene of another apocalyptic event, the cross, to which Jesus’ Transfiguration points. Jesus’ disciples would all flee from God’s self-revelation through Jesus crucified of a God not aloof to the sin and suffering of the world, but who would willingly die for us to disempower that sin and suffering, transforming it into the greatest good possible for us.

Some time (days, weeks, years) after the Transfiguration and the cross of Jesus, Jesus’ disciples would return to the scene of these apocalyptic events. They would return to where God revealed God’s self in a specially complete and transforming way to us. Peter would be able to look back on Jesus’ Transfiguration through the lens of the cross and say, without a trace of the fear that had once overtaken him, James, and John on the Mount of the Transfiguration: “It was good that we were there. And it is still good that we are here now. We are on scene, here and now. We are as much witnesses to God’s “voice from heaven,” to God’s presence and “prophetic message” of our salvation now “more fully confirmed,” as those disciples who stood by Jesus as he was transfigured were. So, 2 Peter says to us: Good, now stay here, on scene, for a while. ‘Be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place.’”

In other words, God’s unveiling to us (an apocalypse!) of God’s presence and saving plan for us through the Transfiguration and the cross and resurrection of Jesus is ongoing. It is not a new unveiling, a new divine revelation, but it is continuous from those biblical events. It continues from Daniel’s visions of “one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven” who would conquer all the rulers and nations who had oppressed God’s chosen people, Israel, by the time Daniel was written. God’s ongoing unveiling to us of God’s promise of salvation continues from the visions of the Psalmist of the complete and final establishment of God’s reign over all creation, so that even great mountains would “melt like wax before the LORD.”

We have the gift of hindsight, sisters and brothers: We know that our Psalm’s vision foreshadows Daniel’s apocalypse of “one like a son of man,” which prefigures the Transfiguration of Jesus, which points to the cross of Jesus. And Jesus’ death on the cross gave way to his resurrection. We live in an ongoing apocalypse, God’s unveiling of a divine plan for our salvation that will be fully realized at the end of time.

Until then, we are free to be, as J. Robert Oppenheimer feared he had become by unleashing nuclear weaponry upon the world, destroyers “of worlds.” We are free to do violence to one another through everything from war to unkind, untrue words and actions toward one another. We are free to deny that sin and evil are still pervasive in our world. We are free to flee the scene of the ongoing apocalypse as we do, say, when we deny that climate change is an emergency and that we have a role and responsibility in contributing to or mitigating it.

Yet we are also free (and encouraged) to remain on scene, to build “dwellings” for God, the Law and the prophets. We are free to act with kindness toward one another. We are free to do what we can to consume less and protect the environment. We are free to be builders “of worlds,” co-creators of the reign of God for which we pray, “Thy kingdom come.” We are free, in all these ways, as God said from the cloud on the Mount of the Transfiguration, to “listen to him”: Listen to our Lord Jesus who reveals our salvation to us one apocalyptic moment at a time, who says, “Do not be afraid”; listen to our Lord Jesus who urges us to nurture and protect creation, who urges us not to do violence to one another. This is how we remain on scene, and how it remains good for us to be here.