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, 30 July 2023– Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52

If you were able to ask for and receive anything you wanted, what would you ask for? Have we ever thought this about our prayer: What do we most frequently ask of God in prayer?

This is what happens to King Solomon in today’s reading from 1 Kings. God invites Solomon “in a dream” to ask him for anything he desires: “Ask what I should give you,” God says to Solomon. Imagine if God offered any ruler, public leader, or politician today to give that person anything they desired. What would that leader ask of God?

Here Solomon recognizes the significance of the choice before him. It is far from the first or only time in the Bible when God communicates with somebody important in a dream—think of the two Josephs, one in the Old and one in the New Testament; Jacob’s Ladder vision and the dreams Daniel interprets in the Old Testament. And this is far from the first or only time in the Bible when somebody significant is overwhelmed, like “a little child” before this kind of encounter with God. I think of Jeremiah, who is “only a boy” when God calls him to be a prophet.

These two frequent biblical motifs occur together at the beginning of Solomon’s reign in 1 Kings: First, God speaks to Solomon in a dream. And, second, Solomon, “only a little child” who does “not know how to go out or come in” (a Hebrew expression for complete ignorance), is overwhelmed that God should invite him, “Ask what I should give you.”

What is not so frequent is God inviting somebody, even somebody important, to ask for anything that person desires. More often God tells us what it is acceptable or not to pray for. I think of Jesus’ introduction to the Our Father with, “This is how you are to pray.” Jesus says to his disciples in the Gospels, “Ask, and it will be given to you.” Yet not even Jesus’ prayers are always accepted. In the depths of his passion, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays, “If it be your will, let this cup pass from me.” Yet Jesus will suffer and die on the cross for us anyway.

All this shows how important and well-regarded Solomon is in God’s eyes. Solomon is already wise before he asks God for wisdom, “an understanding mind to govern [God’s] people” Israel. It is as if God has given Solomon his greatest desire, wisdom, before he asks for it. God anticipates Solomon’s desire for understanding, wisdom for good governance, and all Solomon has to do to please God is to meet God halfway, in one sense, on this: Ask God not for “long life or riches,” but the wisdom for which God knows ahead of time Solomon will ask.

Long before the “kingdom of heaven” was ever a reality or even a concept in Scripture, as it is in Jesus’ parables we hear from the Gospel of Matthew today, the kings of ancient Israel knew that God was the true ruler of Israel. Kings like Solomon and his predecessor David knew that they were stand-ins for God, anointed by God to rule according to God’s will for the good of the people of Israel on earth.

Of course, Israel’s kings were sometimes far from perfect in ruling according to God’s will for Israel. Solomon seems to have learned from some of David’s mistakes when God invites him to ask of God anything he wishes. Solomon acknowledges that Israel is “a great people, so numerous that they cannot be numbered or counted.” One of King David’s greatest sins was to have the people of Israel counted in a census. (Censuses are common in many if not most countries and not at all sinful; we should understand David’s action, and Solomon’s reference to it today in 1 Kings, as an attempt to usurp God. Remember that God had promised Abraham that his descendants could not be numbered, so to try to number them would be both futile and sinful in the biblical imagination). Solomon wisely avoids a repeat of this sin of his father.

Solomon desires above all “an understanding mind” to rule Israel. His desire for “an understanding mind” at God’s invitation is really a desire for what he needs to rule, to inherit, to share in the reign of God, the reign or the kingdom that originates in heaven. This is why this is so significant that Solomon should ask for “an understanding mind”—for wisdom toward good governance—over “a long life or riches” or the lives of his enemies. Those other things for which Solomon could have asked God would not have been bad (the lives of his enemies maybe excepted); God would not have been displeased had Solomon asked for them. But Solomon would have been just an ordinary king: He might have been rich, or he might have lived a long life (which he did anyway; he matched the forty-year reign of his father David, the symbolic length of reign of a good king in Israel), but for what?

Solomon desires the kingdom of heaven. And to reign with God, he needs “an understanding and discerning mind.” He needs wisdom, first and foremost.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus encourages us at length to desire God’s kingdom of heaven above all else, much as King Solomon did. Other Gospels and writings in our Bible highlight the kingdom of God (or kingdom of heaven), and include Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God in parables or metaphors: “The kingdom of God is like”… But in Matthew’s Gospel, in Jesus’ teachings, there is an especially intense focus on “the kingdom of heaven” and what it is like, to encourage us to want it above all else.

Today is the third Sunday in a row at Mass in which we have heard from the same part of Matthew’s Gospel—Matthew, chapter 13—which is a long string of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven. Over these last three Sundays (in case anybody is counting) we have heard seven of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven from Matthew’s Gospel: The sower, the weeds among the wheat, the mustard seed, the yeast or leaven and, in just today’s Gospel reading, the “treasure hidden in a field,” the “pearl of great value,” and the net with many fish.

I think Jesus wants us to go to heaven, really badly! The question for us is: How intensely do we want to go to heaven, to inherit the kingdom of heaven God promises us in and through Jesus Christ? Do we want heaven, the kingdom of heaven, as much as God wants to offer it to us? A few minutes ago, I asked: If we were able to ask for and receive anything we wanted, what would we ask for? Maybe my questions should have been: Who here wants to go to heaven? And what are we willing to give to inherit a share in God’s reign, the kingdom of heaven?

I will presume wildly that all of us want to go to heaven. After all, we pray for heaven during every Mass and many times outside of Mass, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come.” So I will presume that God’s promise of heaven appeals to us.

And God’s promise of the kingdom of heaven to us is a free gift. It was a free gift to King Solomon: God invited him to ask for whatever he wanted: “Ask what I should give you.” God is inviting us to do the same as Solomon, as Jesus’ first disciples: “Ask what I should give you.”

Yet what are we willing to give for a share in the kingdom of heaven, a share in God’s reign over the universe everything in it? If we are shown a field with a treasure buried in it, will we sell all we have and buy that field? If “a merchant of fine pearls” shows us the pearl of greatest value, will we sell all we have and buy that pearl? Will we go fishing in the sea in which Jesus is telling us that the fish are of excellent quality, with only a few exceptions? That is, will we go out into our world, to our neighbours, to our workplaces, to our places of leisure, to our streets and attract still other people to the reign of heaven Jesus promises us by our joy and acts of kindness? (Because, let us face it, at the best of times fishing is unpredictable and even a little frustrating. So is evangelization, proclaiming and living God’s word, God’s invitation to us toward heaven, in a way that attracts still more disciples). Will we resist the temptation to be gatekeepers of who is worthy or not of heaven? Will we allow God and God’s angels, as our Gospel says today, to do the sorting of the good fish from the bad—and simply concentrate on and enjoy the fishing?

Sisters and brothers, we are here in the great divine showroom of the kingdom of heaven. Over here we have a field with a priceless treasure on sale for a real bargain, considering its worth. Over there we have somebody selling a pearl of unmatched value from an amazing pearl collection. And a little further over there we have somebody selling a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip, all expenses included. In fact, God is offering us the entire showroom and everything in it: The field with its treasure, the pearl of great value, the great catch of fish. No riches we have now compare with the value of all that, of the kingdom of heaven. So let us make the big purchase. Any “understanding and discerning” mind would.

Homily for Sunday, 26 June 2022– Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; 1 Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62

Who would follow somebody so demanding as Jesus; who would dare be the disciple of somebody who asks for our focus to be exclusively on following him? This is the question one of my favourite columnists reflecting on the word of God on Sundays lately, Sr. Mary McGlone of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, outside of St. Louis, asks in her reflection this week for the National Catholic Reporter.

She asks the question this way: “Who in their right mind would take up with an unarmed, violence-avoiding preacher headed to the big city to face jealous, powerful foes who would stop at nothing to get rid of him”? Sr. McGlone proposes two images of people of our own time who boldly, resolutely, visibly chose non-violence in response to violence, war, evil. The first image Sr. McGlone proposes is the “tank man” of the Tiananmen Square protests of June 5, 1989, who stood unarmed before a line of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square in Beijing the day after the Chinese government had violently cleared the square of protesters. The second image she reflects on is of Ukrainians during the still-ongoing war there handing cell phones to Russian soldiers so they can call their mothers.

Who in their right mind would go, unarmed, to look death in the face: Before a line of tanks; before the guns of the invading enemy? But this is precisely how Jesus asks us to follow him. And these acts of non-violence have disarmed and will disarm, at least momentarily, a world still beset by violence and threats to the dignity of human life across its span, from conception to death.

Yet we hear from Luke’s Gospel today how the discipleship Jesus asks of us was difficult for his first disciples. Today’s Gospel begins as “the days [draw] near for [Jesus] to be taken up,” when he sets “his face to go to Jerusalem.” Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, where he will die, rise, and ascend to heaven, is the single longest continuous section of Luke. It takes up more than one-third of Luke’s Gospel.

The words Luke uses in this short introduction to today’s Gospel reading are rich in subtle but important details. The word in Luke’s Greek we hear translated as to be “taken up” is an unmistakeable reference to the cross of Jesus. This same Greek word can also mean ascension to heaven. So the connection of this one word to Elijah, of whom we hear today in our reading from 1 Kings calling Elisha to succeed him, is a little less intentional on Luke’s part than its connection to the crucifixion and death of Jesus, but it is still fairly obvious. Before he is taken up to heaven on a chariot of fire (in 2 Kings), Elijah chooses Elisha to succeed him (in 1 Kings). And before Jesus is “taken up” on a cross outside Jerusalem, he likewise chooses disciples who will succeed him.

But do Jesus’ disciples understand what Jesus will ask of them as he sets “his face to go to Jerusalem”? They are decidedly not prepared for what Jesus will ask of them as disciples. From this point our Gospel reading today can be broken into two main parts. The first part focuses on people who are already Jesus’ disciples, in particular James and John. The second part of today’s Gospel focuses on people who want to, or whom Jesus calls, to be his future disciples.

By this point in Luke’s Gospel, James and John have been following Jesus as his disciples for some time. But they are about to experience something new, a bit of a dark turn in their story; their relationship with Jesus. Jesus sets “his face to go to Jerusalem,” where he will be “taken up” to die a horrific death. Surely James, John, and Jesus’ other disciples knew the risk Jesus was taking by so decisively setting out for Jerusalem. As Sr. Mary McGlone says, Jesus, the “unarmed, violence-avoiding preacher,” was “headed to the big city to face jealous, powerful foes who would stop at nothing to get rid of him.”

Worse yet, Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem from Galilee had to pass through Samaria. And we know that the Samaritans, especially in Luke’s Gospel, are synonymous with “most hated enemies,” especially if one were a Jew in Jesus’ times. Going back to Old Testament times, the Samaritans had intermarried with the pagan Assyrians who invaded Israel. So devout Jews hated their half-pagan, half-Jewish neighbours of Samaria. And, to add insult to injury, as Jesus and his disciples pass through this enemy territory, they are (not surprisingly) denied hospitality by the Samaritans. James and John ask Jesus if he wants them “to command fire to come down from heaven and consume” the Samaritans. Jesus immediately rebukes his somewhat overzealous disciples. Jesus’ way, our way to salvation, will be the way of non-violence. It will be, paradoxically in his disciples’ eyes, the way of submitting to inhospitality, to violence, and ultimately to death on a cross outside Jerusalem. It will be a way that I would not be surprised if James, John, and Jesus’ other disciples to this point thought was completely senseless; if, in his disciples’ eyes, Jesus was out of his mind.

Yet the story continues after Jesus and his disciples pass through Samaria. Somebody on the road, a would-be disciple, calls out to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” At face value, this offer by a would-be disciple to follow Jesus wherever he goes seems like one he could not refuse, right? But Jesus’ reply to this first prospective disciple seems strange at first hearing: Jesus does not accept this disciple, but does not really refuse him, either. Jesus only reminds him of the single-minded focus following him demands. That focus cannot be on worldly comforts or even necessities. Discipleship of Jesus is total dependence on God for our needs, until death, with the hope of eternal life.

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”: This little, bizarre proverb reminds me of when I first became a Basilian; when I took first vows, and then final vows; when I was ordained. At each point in my Basilian journey, I have said to Jesus through my brother Basilians (sometimes in writing, as our Rule and Church law demand), “I will follow you wherever you go.” And, if I may say so, this is easier said than done. It is easier said than done when, sealed by the Spirit at confirmation, we say “Amen”; we choose for ourselves to be disciples of Jesus. Although I was too young to remember my own baptism, I am sure it was a case of eager discipleship, but easier-said-than-done in reality, when my parents and godparents—our parents and godparents—replied to the question from the priest or deacon, “Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking”: “Yes.” It is easier said than done when we promise, those of us who are married in the Church, “to be faithful… in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.” It is easier said than done when we say, “Amen,” when we receive communion.

“I will follow you wherever you go,” we say to Jesus at each of these points in our lives. Fairly often, I hear, even from family, relatives, and close friends: “You have given up so much to be a priest: Being married, raising a family, and so on.” And I usually respond, “Maybe, but I have gained so much more than I have given up.” And, besides this, I am far, in my own estimation, from depending totally on God even for necessities, let alone comforts. This again reminds me of Fr. Joe Trovato, whom I mentioned in my homily a week ago. Our parish at the time, St. Kateri in Rochester, would have delicious and filling fish and chips meals prepared by the Boy Scouts on Fridays during Lent. At table, Fr. Joe would invariably look at me, with his hint of a smile, and say gently, “You know, we are not suffering”! We really are not sacrificing anything, for Lent or otherwise.

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” Jesus says to the first prospective disciple on his way to Jerusalem. And he is not done yet. Jesus meets two other would-be disciples in our Gospel today. But instead of them asking to follow him, Jesus takes the initiative with the other two: “Follow me.” Each time, though, these two would-be disciples have other priorities: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father… Let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

These two disciples’ priorities are legitimate, we must admit. To bury one’s dead relatives was the supreme act of honour to another person. To greet one’s family when entering or leaving home was close behind burying the dead as a supreme act of honour and mercy in Jewish culture of Jesus’ time. These are still considered corporal works of mercy in our Church today. And it was what we hear in our reading today that Elijah allowed Elisha to do before he accepted to follow Elijah and succeed him. So it is strange to us that Jesus would refuse these would-be disciples’ requests to bury their dead or to bid farewell “to those at [their] home.”

What, then, does our Gospel today say about discipleship, following Jesus? Discipleship of Jesus, sisters and brothers, does not tolerate violence in word or action. Discipleship of Jesus includes everybody; excludes nobody, even (and maybe especially) our enemies, from God’s grace. Discipleship of Jesus demands single-minded focus: Dependence on God for our needs in this life, if we are to set our faces in the direction Jesus travels; toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, with the hope of eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 12 August 2018

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. 

How often are we asked to do or not to do something? Children and teenagers, maybe you have been asked occasionally to do or not to do something at home: Clean your room, make your bed, set the table, do the dishes, take out the garbage, do not argue with your brother, sister, or parents, and so on. Maybe you have been asked to go to bed, or to get out of bed on time. Anybody here who works: Maybe your supervisor or employer has asked tasks of you. If you are an employer, a supervisor, a parent, or anybody in a position of authority or responsibility for another, maybe you have asked others to do something, or not to do something, more or less frequently.

In our readings today, we hear several instances of people asking and being asked to do or not to do something. We hear of Elijah who, in 1 Kings, has fled “into the wilderness” to escape the murderous rage of Queen Jezebel of Israel. Elijah had just killed all the false prophets of the Baals, the false gods Jezebel was worshipping and encouraging the people of Israel of the time to worship. Elijah flees for his life, but soon begins to despair of his own life: “It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” (In no way do I wish to trivialize despair, or even what we might recognize nowadays as depression, or thoughts of or attempts at suicide. If anybody we know ever experiences despair or depression, or thinks or speaks about taking her or his own life, please reach out to this person. If anybody here has experienced or is living through depression or outright despair, please know the dignity of your life, and that I; our faith community; our Church is here to support you; to reach out to you.)

Amidst Elijah’s despair is when an “angel of the LORD” wakes him and asks him to do something, twice: “Get up and eat.” Might we empathize with Elijah: The last thing he probably wants to do is “get up and eat.” In fact, he wants to die. To his credit, though, Elijah does as the angel asks, gets up, and eats some cake and drinks some water. As one of my brother Basilians says whenever another of our priests eats cake or other sweets for breakfast, “Ah! The breakfast of champions”! And so, if I were to ask us to do anything (especially parents whose children might think tomorrow morning, “Father said at Mass last night that it was okay to eat cake for breakfast”!), it would be not to be upset with me. I did not give your children permission to eat cake for breakfast; the angel of the LORD in the Bible did, and only to Elijah because he was despairing for his life. I am sorry to anybody who is disappointed!

The letter to the Ephesians, as in the story of Elijah in 1 Kings, gives us instructions about what and what not to do as people of God: “Brothers and sisters, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God… Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” Our Psalm asks of us, “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” And today in John’s Gospel Jesus asks the people not to “complain amongst” themselves.

Our Scriptures include many instances of people asking others and being asked to do something: Get up. Eat cake for breakfast. Avoid “bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander… [and] malice.” “Do not complain among yourselves.” “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” But how often do we ask somebody or are we asked not to do something but to be or to behave in a particular way?

To ask or to be asked to be some way may be less common than ask or be asked to do something. Yet have we not still asked or been asked not to do something but to be or behave in a particular way: Be kind. Be careful. Be happy with what you have. Be humble. Be prayerful. Be on time. Be brave. Be hard-working…?

Nowhere in our reading today from 1 Kings does anybody ask anybody else to be some way. But we hear this kind of command today in the letter to the Ephesians: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

This kind of calling to be or to behave in a particular way is not present in our Gospel reading, either, at least not word-for-word. Jesus is more content to describe to the people who he is, not so much who the people are or should be. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Of course, Jesus’ use of emphatic “I am” statements, twenty-four times in John’s Gospel, as many times as in the rest of the New Testament combined, is a characteristic of John. It is John’s particular way of identifying Jesus as the same God who has been present in history all the way back to the first moments of creation; the same God who once identified himself to Moses as “I am who I am.”

But Jesus rarely calls us to be or behave in a particular way in John’s Gospel, at least at first hearing. Today we hear Jesus identify both himself as “the living bread that comes down from heaven” and the bread as something (or somebody, himself; his flesh?) he “will give for the life of the world.”

Here, I ask us to go back to the beginning of our Gospel reading today, and to connect the beginning of our reading from John to the end of what we hear today. Our Gospel reading today begins with the people grumbling because Jesus had said he was “the bread that came down from heaven.” It ends with Jesus saying that this bread, in fact his own flesh, is “the bread [he] will give for the life of the world.”

What if I were to suggest that the people were not complaining about Jesus’ identification of himself as God, or because they were put off by Jesus’ suggestion that they would eat his flesh? At least this is not yet what they were complaining about. This would become the heart of the people’s complaint only later, when Jesus would link the people’s salvation with eating his flesh and drinking his blood. This is a good time for a spoiler alert on next Sunday’s Gospel reading, but today the people’s complaint is for a much simpler reason.

Let me suggest that, today, the heart of the people’s complaint is not Jesus’ identification of himself as God or because he commands the people to eat his flesh, or because Jesus asks the people hearing him to do anything else.

This bread that Jesus offers, his own self whom we receive sacramentally in our Eucharist, is beyond anything “the manna in the wilderness” could ever have been. Jesus’ gift of himself is greater than any other earthly food, because it alone changes who we are. It alone promises us eternal life. When Jesus says to us today, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” behind these words Jesus is asking us to change. My sisters and brothers, Jesus is asking us, with the help and grace Jesus offers us in this celebration, to be more and more like him; more and more like God. Jesus is asking us to be, as he is— “I am” — “bread for the life of the world.” This is extraordinary!

And so we, like the people following Jesus in John’s Gospel, could easily complain among ourselves, because changing who we are is difficult. But, as St. Augustine says, when we receive the Eucharist, “we are what we receive.” And so how do we become more like Jesus; like God in our world? Our Eucharist compels us to go out and give “life [to] the world” by our works of justice, of mercy, and of kindness. Our Eucharist compels us to repent from our failures and sins. Our Eucharist compels us to defend all life and creation and its God-given dignity. Our Eucharist compels us to do all these things, but in so doing it compels us to change: To be, at our very heart, different than we have ever been; to be more like God, like Jesus; to be “what we receive”; to be, ever more, “bread… for the life of the world.”

Homily for Sunday, 13 August 2017

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

How deeply do our own experiences; our society and culture; our families, friends, and acquaintances; people we regard as leaders, in society and in our Church, influence our basic image of who God is? Of how many different images of God; popular understandings of God are we able to think?

Maybe thanks to the influence of Pope Francis, although God has been understood in these terms long before him, we may be developing an increasing awareness in our Church and broader world of God as merciful; a God who calls us to be merciful and kind to one another. My observation, though, is that this increased emphasis on a merciful God calling for a more merciful Church and world has not pleased everybody. How do we balance mercy with moral accountability? How do we respond to people who persist stubbornly in defiance of moral norms of Church or of societies; who persist in sin? Might an authoritarian God resonate better with some who are worried about too permissive an image of God, so that moral decay and, eventually, the whittling away of any sense of right and wrong, continue unchecked?

What other images of God, besides the merciful God, the permissive God, and the authoritarian God, vie for space in our minds and in our experience? Much like the authoritarian God is the angry, punishing God. There is the God of military might, or the God who blesses wealth (for some, this God of the so-called “prosperity Gospel” also curses people who are poor, sick, with disabilities, or otherwise disadvantaged). The God who sets the universe in motion and then leaves it, and us, to our own devices, is also alive and well in our world: The impersonal, distant, “blind watchmaker” God or, as I have heard this god called among my brother Basilians, “Yoyo” God, as in “You’re on your own”!

These are only a few predominant images of God, of the top of my head, that we might experience. None of these images of God are perfect, although some are better than others. Some have more of a basis in Scripture than others. Today we hear about the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings. Elijah hides in a cave on Mount Horeb. Why would Elijah want to hide himself in a cave on Mount Horeb? The reading we hear today from 1 Kings is right after Elijah has killed all the prophets of Ba’al, a false god in Israel worshipped by the queen, Jezebel. In a rage, Jezebel calls for Elijah to be killed and so, fearing for his life, Elijah flees to the cave on Horeb.

Who could fault Elijah, his life in danger for obeying God against the prophets of Ba’al, for believing himself to be a failure, “no better than [his] ancestors” in eliminating from Israel any worship of foreign gods? More importantly, who could fault Elijah for understanding God first and foremost as a God of might; an angry and violent God? After all, this kind of God had been Elijah’s experience: The God who, through Elijah, had responded to the idolatry of Jezebel and the people of Israel, and Jezebel’s murder of the prophets of the LORD, by having the prophets of Ba’al slain by the sword? This same God now seemed content to leave Elijah on his own on Horeb to die.

At this point, though, when Elijah is most stuck on his images of God as mighty and perhaps angry and violent, and then as distant and allowing Elijah to sink into despair, God calls Elijah out of the cave. The LORD says to Elijah that he “is about to pass by.” Will Elijah recognize the presence of the LORD when he passes by Mount Horeb? The first vision Elijah experiences that might be God is of a strong wind, “splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.” And, we hear, “after the wind” is “an earthquake” and then “a fire.” Do any of us wonder what Elijah may have been thinking as he was witnessing these visions? Might he have been thinking how closely the wind, the earthquake, and the fire resonated with his prior experience of God: Mighty, angry, violent, and even destructive; a God to be feared more than loved?

To Elijah’s credit, he is able to discern that none of these visions; none of these images— the wind, the earthquake, and the fire— are adequate images of God. Elijah’s and our God is “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire.” No, Elijah’s and our best and fullest experience of God is in “the sound of sheer silence.” It is as though, through the silence, God says to Elijah, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear the wrath and destruction of Jezebel. Do not fear me, as though I am an angry and violent God. I have chosen you as my prophet. Rise and wait for me at the entrance to the cave. I will be with you, in calm silence.”

Is this God who called Elijah from the cave on Horeb; is our God not the same God who has been with us from the first moments of creation? St. Paul pleads with his own people in his Letter to the Romans to recognize that the God who once appeared to Elijah in “the sound of sheer silence” is the same God who has been with us all along. This God, our God, gave to the people of Israel first “the adoption, the glory, the covenants… the Law, the worship, and the promises… the patriarchs” and finally “the Christ.” Our God is not to be feared but to be worshipped in love. Our God is “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire,” but in “the sound of sheer silence”; in the peace and unity we build in our Church, our communities, our households, and among nations. God is with us in his kindly sustenance of creation; in forgiveness of our sin and of our false images of God that we too often still promote to our world: The gods of fear, of anger, of escalating threats, of violence, of military “fire and fury”; or the impersonal “yoyo” god— “You’re on your own”!

Do we not, though, still in our day have difficulty with all these incomplete and inadequate images of God? Does our world not still, too often, fear God instead of loving God and, in loving God, learn to love one another and uphold one another’s basic dignity as creatures of God? Do too many people today (including ourselves perhaps; including me sometimes) not still doubt the loving kindness of our God by which we are ultimately saved?

To us as to Jesus’ disciples on the boat in Matthew’s Gospel who “cry out in fear” amid the storm; to us as to Peter who, thinking he is able to walk on water by himself before he becomes frightened by the wind and begins to sink; to us as St. Paul to the people who first heard him; to us as to Elijah hidden in despair on Mount Horeb, God extends a hand of kindness, encouragement, and peace, and calls out: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Firmly yet gently, God challenges our incomplete and inadequate images and understandings of who God is; our fear that prevents us from loving God and one another as we are called to do: “You of little faith, why did you doubt”?

Our God is in the calming of the storm at sea; in the calming of our fears; in the calming of the chaos and conflict of our world; in the calming of our false or at least incomplete images of God as either behind the chaos or distant from it. Our God “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire,” but in the silence; in the calm. May we not doubt. May we not fear, but may we worship and celebrate in love of God and of one another.