Homily for Sunday, 21 March 2021– Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

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

What would we think if I said, “The days are surely coming”; that some event or great news we have been looking forward to, maybe for a long time, was imminent? What if God were to say this to us, or somebody we think of as a prophet—like Jeremiah was to ancient Israel, but in our own time—or a person otherwise in a position of authority were to announce to us, “The days are surely coming”?

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD” through his prophet Jeremiah and to us anew today! I wonder, though, how the people who heard Jeremiah in their time announce this to them felt at first. Would they have been especially excited or joyful? Would they have wondered what this “new covenant” God was announcing through Jeremiah meant? Would they have felt guilty for their sins as a people since, as we hear from Jeremiah, the very reason God was proclaiming a “new covenant” with Israel was that Israel had broken the first covenant with God? Israel, God’s people, had been unfaithful to God, in a way similar to when there is infidelity between spouses in a marriage. But would the people of Israel, when they heard Jeremiah’s promise of “a new covenant” between them and God, been all the more resolved not to remain paralyzed by their guilt, but to repent?

Maybe many of them would have thought Jeremiah to be too dramatic and simply ignored him or become irritated by him (after all, Jeremiah is known among the Old Testament prophets to have been especially dramatic, fiery, even angry in his speech). Many may have been moved by Jeremiah’s tireless passion to listen to his announcement of this “new covenant” between them and God. More than likely, ancient Israel’s initial responses to Jeremiah’s announcement of “the days… surely coming” were a bit of “all of the above.”

“The days are surely coming”! How do we continue to hear and discern this message in our time? For about a year now, since the first COVID-19 control measures started, I have been praying Evening Prayer over Zoom every day with a group of relatives and friends from different places where I have ministered as a priest. Within the last few weeks, people in our prayer group have announced and been receiving doses of the vaccines against COVID-19. And, this past week, [one of our Basilian confrères in our house], whom many of us may know from his time at St. Joseph’s College, was so excited that he was finally able to book an appointment to receive a vaccine.

I was and am so happy for him! I could not help think of God’s first words to the people of Israel through Jeremiah in today’s reading: “The days are surely coming”! The days are surely coming when this pandemic will be in the past; a memory. The days are surely coming when we will be able to gather safely in our chapels at St. Joseph’s College for Mass. The days are surely coming when COVID-related restrictions on in-person attendance at Masses will be relaxed and then be no more; when we will be able to celebrate Eucharist and other sacraments freely, without anxiety about becoming sick, and as the health and nourishment of our souls, minds, and bodies requires.

These “days are surely coming”; this gives me great hope, and I cannot wait to welcome all of us, St. Joseph’s College’s worshipping community; faculty; students; staff colleagues, back to in-person worship; classes; prayer and work at our College as soon as we are able. “The days are surely coming” and, may I say, the days are already upon us (and not only because we have weathered a pandemic) when we have acquired an acute sense of Christ-like service to and prayer for anybody in need; anybody who is especially poor or disadvantaged, or simply anybody who longs (as we do) to gather together in one worship space to pray; hear God’s Word; sing; take, bless, break, and eat the bread that becomes Christ’s body, given for us and for our salvation, together. I am deeply grateful and joyful, sisters and brothers, whenever I look upon our community of faith here at St. Joseph’s College, whether (for now) in little insets in a Zoom window or (in not too long, we pray) in our College chapels, halls, offices, and classrooms.

“The days are surely coming” or, as Jesus says in John’s Gospel today, “The hour has come.” Now, when Jesus says in our Gospel, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” is this not a rather ominous reference to “the death he was to die”? Once again (Fr. Jim spoke a bit about this last Sunday), John’s Gospel today repeats Jesus’ connection between his being raised on the cross and the bronze serpent in Moses’ time being raised on a pole to heal the people of poisonous snakebites.

The crowd of Greeks who approach the Apostle Philip at the beginning of our Gospel today simply “wish to see Jesus.” I imagine this crowd is a lot like us: We, too, simply and nobly, “wish to see Jesus.” My prayer for us, sisters and brothers, is that our simple and noble “wish to see Jesus,” to worship and receive Jesus in the Eucharist, be granted very soon; that this “hour has come”; that at least those “days are surely coming” for us. Yet the crowds’ “wish to see Jesus” in John’s Gospel is met not with immediate consolation but with Jesus’ unsettling, even morbid at first hearing, reference to his approaching death on a cross.

And Jesus says that, for us to be in any way like him—like whom we are called to be through our baptism—means that we, too, will have a share in his passion and death. We, too, will be like the “grain of wheat [that] falls into the earth and dies.” If not, we will “remain just a single grain” but, to the extent we share in Jesus’ passion and death, we, like the grain of wheat that dies, will spring from the earth and “bear much fruit.”

My sisters and brothers in Christ, I feel impelled to think, with Christian hope, that we have been through a “grain of wheat” experience for a long while now. And, as the Lord knows, certainly better than me, many if not all of us have been through maybe several “grain of wheat” experiences in our lives: Maybe we have been ill, or a loved one or friend has experienced illness. Maybe we have loved ones who have died. Maybe we have served among the poor or those who lack basic necessities, or been in those situations ourselves. May any of us who have ever suffered know the Lord’s solidarity with you in your suffering. Today, we hear from the Letter to the Hebrews, the same reading we will hear again on Good Friday, of Jesus who “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.”

These same “prayers and supplications… loud cries and tears” Jesus now offers for all who suffer in any way; for all who, simply and nobly, “wish to see Jesus”; for all who long to be able to gather and worship in one space again soon, to take, bless, break, and eat the bread that becomes for us the Body of Christ, together in person again; for all of us who have experienced and continue to experience in mind, body, or spirit, what Jesus meant when he referred to the “grain of wheat” that must fall “into the earth” and die, in order to bear “much fruit” and “keep it for eternal life.”

With Jesus’ solidarity with us in times of suffering; privation; isolation, we are and will be the grains of wheat that spring from the earth and give it and one another life and joy. Already we sense the signs that those “days are surely coming.” In and through Christ’s passion and death, which we know by faith will end in the joy of resurrection, for us as once for Jesus, our “hour has come,” for our good and God’s glory forever.

Homily for Sunday, 14 February 2021– Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Leviticus 13:1-2, 45-46; Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 11; 1 Corinthians 10:32-11:1; Mark 1:40-45

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

Is the exchange between the “man with leprosy” and Jesus in Mark’s Gospel today not remarkable?

“If you choose, you can make me clean,” the man with leprosy pleads with Jesus. “I do choose. Be made clean,” Jesus says to the man.

Our reading today from the Book of Leviticus gives us the context in Jewish Law of the conversation between the man with leprosy and Jesus in today’s Gospel. The religious law about leprosy and all kinds of skin diseases is outlined in great detail in Leviticus. If anybody had a disease like leprosy, not only did they have to contend with the disfigurement brought on by these diseases and the lack of knowledge and effective treatments for them but, Leviticus says, they were to tear their clothes, “let the hair of their head be dishevelled… cover their upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’” A person with one of these diseases was to isolate him or herself from other people and “live alone with their dwelling outside the camp.”

Now, before we judge the laws in Leviticus that required people with leprosy and similar skin diseases to isolate themselves from other people too harshly, might we place ourselves in the context of the people of Israel of the time? A disease like leprosy, especially when it was seen to be contagious, would have caused fear among the people. The spread of disease could be difficult to control, especially in a nomadic people like Leviticus describes. The most ancient people of Israel tended to live in tents in small groups or camps that moved often. More permanent settlements, as in cities or towns, tended to be small. And without effective medicines and doctors as we know them today, the religious elites—the priests—were the most educated people in these ancient societies. The people turned to them for the best advice not only on religious matters but for practical knowledge, too, like treating disease.

Still, can we not put ourselves in the place of a person in ancient Israel who was affected by one of these diseases, who had to isolate from society, even from loved ones, and “live alone… outside the camp”? For about a year now, we have been in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic. Many people, maybe many of us, know somebody who has had to self-isolate, either because she or he was sick, or was in contact with somebody who was sick, or returned from international travel. Governments and media (rightly, I think) report the latest numbers of people infected with COVID, numbers of deaths, rates of transmission and positive tests, and so on. But do we find maybe that the mental health toll of this pandemic goes more unnoticed than the rates of physical illness? Even if this is necessary for disease control, people are isolated; restricted from seeing family and loved ones. Others suffer and die alone. Like no other disease in memory for most or all of us, COVID has caused widespread fear and anxiety. And we have the science and medical expertise and treatments that the people of ancient Israel did not.

With this in mind, let us return to the conversation between Jesus and the man with leprosy in today’s Gospel: “If you choose”… “I do choose. Be made clean.” When we hear Jesus’ healing of this man with leprosy, or other actions of Jesus that challenge rules or taboos, how many of us think that this is awfully bold of Jesus to do so? I think we are right to think this; Jesus is bold, in this and other instances, to challenge rules or taboos or, more precisely, to orient us toward the heart of any good law or social or moral practice, which is to uphold human dignity and a common good.

But may I say that the man with leprosy in today’s Gospel is just as bold in challenging the established rules or taboos as Jesus is in the encounter between them in today’s Gospel? This man is bold enough to kneel before Jesus and ask him, before Jesus says a word, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Did this man know Jesus before this encounter, or did he know of Jesus’ reputation as a great preacher and healer? Was he simply desperate to be healed and reintegrated into the community? It is hard to say. Would the man not have known that, by approaching Jesus for healing, he himself was acting against the Jewish Law, the Law of Leviticus, which demanded he be isolated?

And the man with leprosy surely knew that Jesus owed him nothing; Jesus was as bound by the Law to keep distance from people with diseases like leprosy as the man with leprosy was. Yet the man asks Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Would the man with leprosy have been just as surprised as anybody—as we may be to hear these words in our Gospel reading—to hear Jesus reply the way he did: “I do choose. Be made clean”?

The man’s bold but unassuming request of Jesus, “If you choose” can only be met by Jesus’ just-as-bold response, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Jesus does not pause and count the cost of his choice to heal the man with leprosy. In fact, Mark’s Gospel says, “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.” My sisters and brothers, “moved with pity” is a rough translation of the Greek, which means something closer to (literally) “moved to his very depths.” The same Greek verb would be used to refer to the state of one’s gut when eating food that didn’t agree with us!

How many of us have heard of, or ever had, a “gut feeling,” as in, “I just knew in my gut that this was the right thing to do.” How often have we heard of people hailed as heroes for saving somebody’s life or acting in a situation dangerous to themselves, who say something like, “I was just trusting my gut. I’m no hero”?

By touching the man with leprosy, Jesus may have realized that he risked entering the same state of the man he touched to heal: He, too, could have been considered “unclean” and been shunned from the community. Yet what begins with Jesus’ “gut feeling” ends with a conscious choice: “I do choose. Be made clean.” Something in the letter of the Law is less important than this man’s health; this man’s dignity as a child of God; this man’s belonging to a social and faith community; this man’s wholeness.

But if we follow Jesus through our Gospels, this move from “gut feeling” to conscious choice for another’s good is a typical pattern of action for Jesus. His healing of the man with leprosy is only one instance of this greater pattern. Have we ever noticed, when we pray the Eucharistic Prayer we will pray in a few moments that, when we commemorate Jesus’ Passion, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, we remember what Jesus did to save us as a willing action of God: “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.”

The former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, in his book on the Mass called “Why Go to Church? The Drama of the Eucharist,” reflects on how Jesus willed to save us: Jesus “willed to reconcile us to” God by taking the place of the man with leprosy; taking our place; taking the place of everybody who has ever had to make their dwelling “outside the camp,” as Leviticus puts it. In fact, Jesus went so far, in his willingness to save us, that he would choose to die for us, says Fr. Radcliffe, “outside the camp”; outside the city walls of Jerusalem, on Golgotha, on a cross. And we remember this as the very reason for this Eucharistic celebration, every time we celebrate Mass.

Who, then, are the people to whom this willing act for our salvation by our Lord is calling to us to reach out? Who are the ostracized; the isolated; those “outside the camp”; the serious sinners; those outside the good graces of the Church, for whatever reason, in fact or because they simply feel unwelcome; the sick, physically but also mentally and spiritually, of our time and our experience? Have we ever had a “gut feeling”; been “moved with pity”? If this has been or will ever be our experience, to what extent have we or will we allow our “gut feeling” of what is right become bold action, putting ourselves at risk of being sent “outside the camp” ourselves? To what extent are we willing to echo those first words of Jesus to the man with leprosy: I do choose?