Homily for Sunday, 21 July 2024– Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23:1-3, 3-4, 5, 6; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34

One theme is clear through all of the readings we hear today: That of shepherding. What (or who) is a shepherd; what defines a shepherd? What does God (or what does Jesus, in our Gospel) expect insofar as the conduct of a shepherd? How is God a shepherd; how does Jesus model for us how a shepherd is supposed to act?

In the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, all the shepherds, without exception, have been bad. And so God and God’s prophet, Jeremiah, scold them angrily: “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD”! But, still, who are the shepherds who have drawn God’s and the prophet’s anger? Who are “flock of [God’s] pasture” according to Jeremiah?

In the Ancient Near East at the time of the prophet Jeremiah, in the territory we would call the Middle East today (so not only Israel), the kings and tribal rulers of many nations were compared to shepherds. So it would seem that Jeremiah, whose prophecy mostly targeted the kings of Judah, the part of Israel that included Jerusalem, compared the kings of Judah to bad shepherds.

What were the kings of Judah doing wrong? Jeremiah wastes no time in laying out the charge against them: The kings of Judah, several of them, one after another, have misled and scattered “the flock of [God’s] pasture.” This is a serious accusation! I am not sure how well we are acquainted with sheep and shepherds, sisters and brothers. I have not seen many sheep around here; there is not much room for sheep to pasture in a city like Rochester, so say the least. But sheep need two almost competing things to survive and thrive: Sheep need a large amount of land to graze, to pasture. And they need somebody, a shepherd, to tend to them, to limit the (however large) area in which they are allowed to pasture, so that they do not become lost, injured, or prey to a predator.

From my limited understanding about sheep, it is actually quite difficult for a shepherd to scatter, to “mislead” sheep. Sheep will tend to stay near a shepherd for protection. It takes intent for a shepherd to scatter, to drive away, to do violence to sheep, to put them in dangerous situations so that they will flee the shepherd against their instinct. Sheep—figuratively, the “flock of [God’s] pasture,” the people of Judah—are vulnerable creatures. God’s flock in Jeremiah is the vast majority of the people of Judah of the time who were poor peasants, who may have earned enough wages from their work to subsist from one day to the next. The “flock” depended on the kings and other wealthy elites of Judah—the small minority of the people of Judah—to give them just wages for their labor; not to abuse their labor, take land away from the poor or do violence toward them.

So, this is why I say that, for Jeremiah to charge the shepherds, the kings of Judah, with misleading and scattering God’s flock is a serious accusation. Jeremiah charges Judah’s kings with intentionally endangering, doing violence and injustice toward the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, the poorest of the people of Judah, and enriching themselves greedily in the process. In Jeremiah’s time, the prosperity gap between the few wealthy and the many poor was great and becoming greater.

I do not like that my mind drifts in this instant toward a great little French phrase with some “bite” to it, but that is where my mind is going: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. (“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”) I feel compelled to ask: Is our society (or is the society of my home country, Canada, for that matter) any better than the one the prophet Jeremiah rebukes for its injustices toward the many poor and vulnerable, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few?

I think this is an important question to ask ourselves, especially as we approach an election in this country, just a few short months from now. I want to be clear on a couple of points: First, it is not my place to endorse or denounce any specific candidate or party for public office, especially in the very midst of an election race as this country finds itself. You will not hear such an endorsement or condemnation of a party or candidate from me, with the power of the pulpit behind my words. I know (and I am sure many of us have heard) priests and other religious authorities endorse or denounce candidates or parties. I consider this to be an example of the kind of intentional scattering, misleading of the flock; an abuse of shepherding power that prophets like Jeremiah condemned.

Second, though, I think it is appropriate—and in line with the social teaching of our Church—to appeal to all of us (strongly) to vote, when it is time to vote, for the candidates who will best protect not our self-interested accumulation of wealth if we have it, but the basic dignity and rights of the most vulnerable, the least of our sisters and brothers. I want to be clear again: It is not wrong to be materially wealthy. Our Church defends the right to private property. Yet property, wealth, prosperity must serve the more fundamental rights of those who have the least. These must serve what our Church calls “the common good.” So, it is not wrong to be rich, but it is profoundly wrong when a few accumulate vast wealth while anybody—especially in a country as rich as these United States of America—lacks the means to obtain the basic necessities of life: Food, shelter, medical care, education…

Our Church says that “the common good” should govern how we vote. It should govern those who serve our nations in public office: Not material wealth or money first; not self first; not America first (or, in my case, Canada first) or any particular nation’s interests first; not military might first, but the most vulnerable, the least of our sisters and brothers, first. So I ask each and all of us: In good conscience, formed by prayer and through our Catholic faith, please consider how well the “shepherds” for whom you are inclined to vote, those who serve in public office, serve the least of our sisters and brothers first; serve “the common good” first. No candidate and no party will do this perfectly—far from it—but there will always be perhaps good choices, better choices, and best choices on the ballot. We have a beautiful thing called a democracy, something that the poor of the prophet Jeremiah’s time and still many people in many nations around the world today do not have. Please do not take this for granted; please vote.

Please exercise your good conscience in doing so, because the alternative to our free and wise exercise of conscience in this way is the triumph of evil. It is the triumph of injustice, self-interest at the expense of the poor, sin, vast wealth and power in the hands of few. And it is already bad enough, as the prophet Jeremiah shows us today, when bad shepherds are allowed to abuse their power, to mislead and scatter the sheep, God’s people, unchecked.

But there is something still more insidious than when “bad shepherding,” ignorance of the fundamental rights of the most vulnerable, the poor, is allowed to continue unopposed. Today Jeremiah includes an interesting play-on-words: He speaks of tending to, or caring for, the basic needs of the poor. Through Jeremiah, God accuses the kings of Judah, the bad shepherds: “You have not cared for” my sheep; tended to them. But God says, “I will take care to punish your evil deeds.” I will attend to, in other words, the condemnation of the bad shepherds’ inattention to the poor, the LORD says through Jeremiah.

And, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus shows us what attending to justice, to the needs and rights of the vulnerable, looks like. Our Gospel reading today begins with Jesus’ apostles reporting to Jesus (I imagine with some pride, justifiably so) “all they had done and taught.” Yet Jesus says to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” Rest—for the greatest of apostles, prophets, ministers of our Church to the most newly-baptized member of the faithful—is essential. None of us can, or should be expected to, labor without rest, lest our work, including our service, our ministry in God’s name should become a kind of idol, a replacement for God.

Jesus balances his disciples’ need for rest, their vulnerability to idolizing activity, with our need for attentiveness, our need to attend to the poorest, those who most need his presence, his teaching; those who are “like sheep without a shepherd.” This is a difficult balance for us to keep; I know this all too well! This past week, I was on retreat with priests of my order. It was a much-needed time to “come away… and rest a while.” If we are good servants of the Lord, good Christians, God will constantly give us opportunities to attend preferentially to the least of our sisters and brothers. But God also calls us to attend to balancing our work (service, ministry) with rest.

We not only want to avoid becoming bad shepherds or being governed by bad shepherds, uncritically, unwisely, or selfishly choosing bad shepherds to govern us or, worse yet, not choosing (voting) at all. But our Lord also invites us to “come away… and rest a while.” The Lord is “moved with pity” for those for whom work, wealth, might, nation, partisan ideology, violence, and self-interest have become idols.

And he invites us to attune our ear, our spirit, our conscience so that we can better attend to the voice of justice, the voice of the common good, the voice of the most vulnerable to injustice and exploitation. That voice is the voice of Christ our Lord and God, the Good Shepherd.

Homily for Sunday, 7 January 2018– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

What is the Epiphany, the feast we celebrate today? Growing up, the Epiphany always had the feel of the end of something. Practically, the Epiphany marked the end of the Christmas season. (In the Church, officially, Christmastime ends with the Baptism of the Lord, which we celebrate tomorrow). The Epiphany was the “best before date” of the Christmas tree. Decorations were taken down and put into storage for another year. Family and friends who had visited over Christmastime had gone home; back to work or school; back to their regular, everyday lives. The seemingly endless supply of turkey sandwiches made from Christmas and New Year leftovers had finally dwindled. Christmas carols would no longer be sung or played after the Epiphany. And, on the Epiphany, our three wise men figurines would at long last complete their exhausting journey across the living room to the Nativity scene… Of course, we might imagine, the real journey of the wise men, of which we hear in today’s Gospel and of which our Nativity scene figurines remind us, was truly exhausting, even if they did travel with joy to meet our Saviour!

Even in the Church, the Epiphany has the feel of an ending; a destination. In fact this, I would say, is the purpose of every Mass; every time we gather to worship in this place, not only the Epiphany. Like the wise men in Matthew’s Gospel, we bring gifts. We bring ourselves here to adore the Christ, our Lord; “to pay him homage.” And yet what if I were to say that, while the Epiphany, like every time we gather here to worship, is a kind of destination, it is also a beginning?

After all, what is an “epiphany”? “Epiphany” is originally a Greek word that means “showing forth” or “making known.” And so who is made known on the Epiphany? Of course, God is made known; Jesus Christ, God made human, is made known on his Epiphany.

Our readings today are clear that this celebration of the Epiphany is God’s Epiphany; God’s being “made known” to and in our world. St. Paul uses the language of making known word for word in his letter to the Ephesians from which we hear today. The message St. Paul proclaims, that of his “commission of” and ongoing encounter with “God’s grace,” is a message centered on an ongoing epiphany over time. Through St. Paul’s letters, our Gospels, our Bible— Old and New Testaments— God’s Epiphany has been made timeless. And God continues to be made known to us today.

God’s Epiphany, God’s making himself known to our world, began from the moment God breathed his spirit over the deep and said, “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” God’s Epiphany continued through the Law of Moses and the prophets, the “revelation” to which St. Paul refers in his letter to the Ephesians. God has been made known to us in full as Jesus Christ, God’s Epiphany in human form. And God’s Epiphany, this process of eternity being made known to us in and over time, will be completed at the end of time when Jesus Christ returns in glory.

Is it not remarkable, though, that in all this process of epiphany, God does not make himself known as an obviously powerful ruler? In fact the only earthly ruler involved in this Epiphany event as Matthew presents it is the weak and fearful Herod. No, among the first people to experience this high point of God’s Epiphany, the birth of our Messiah, Jesus Christ, are magi from the East, probably astrologers, who looked to the stars for signs of the divine. They are outsiders; non-Jews from another land. They do not even belong to Jesus’ own people.

Yet God includes these magi among the first to witness his greatest Epiphany, the Lord and Saviour of the universe God created and blessed, the stars to which the magi looked. God meets these magi where they are. And from there God guides the magi to the Messiah by a star, the best way these magi knew to encounter God.

God guides the magi from the truth they know, the presence of God in the created universe, already a kind of epiphany or God’s “making known,” to a still greater Truth. The God of almost fourteen billion majestic light years (and counting) of visible universe now makes himself known to magi as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem!

God encounters these “wise men from the East,” searchers for God in the stars, and guides them by a star to where God is made known to the world as a human infant in a manger. God guides these magi from truth to Truth; from epiphany to Epiphany. The magi arrive with their “gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” to adore the newborn Messiah. Matthew says that “when they saw that the star had stopped, the magi were overwhelmed with joy.” In their great joy, “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod”— because true joy never denies the sin of the world that Herod represents, nor will the sin of the world ever extinguish our joy in God made known to us— the magi return “to their own country.”

It is at this point, where Matthew’s Gospel leaves off today, when the work of the magi is only beginning. Back in “their own country,” we might imagine, the magi will be entrusted with proclaiming the Epiphany, God of the heavens made known as a human infant in a manger, to their own people. And the same is true of us. Our work of Christmas; our work of being God’s Epiphany, of making God known in our world, begins ever-anew, here and now.

We are, in a sense, the magi of our time, whom God is leading from truth to Truth, to make God known in our world, to bring with us the gift of our presence; our worship; our joy; our works of justice and peace to pay homage to our Messiah. After this Eucharistic celebration, we will return to our homes. In the Church, we will return to Ordinary Time; to keeping time until Christ returns in glory. Our friends and extended family members may have returned to their homes, too. Decorations have been stored for another year. Christmas trees have been taken down. But we, like the magi, are not at the end but at the beginning of a journey, on the cusp of an epiphany, because we are God’s Epiphany to our world today.

How is this so? Howard Thurman, an African American theologian and civil rights leader in the United States in the 1960s, wrote a poem entitled, “When the Song of the Angels is Stilled” to remind us of how we are to make God known to our world by our striving for social justice. Our work for justice only begins with our Christmas and Epiphany celebrations, Thurman once said, “When the song of angels is stilled.”

A few days ago, a Sister of St. Joseph who taught a course on Catholic Social Teaching I took in seminary in Toronto shared an adaptation of Thurman’s poem, written by Michael Dougherty, co-chair of the Social Justice Committee at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Whitehorse. (Dougherty’s reflection is in the next-to-most-recent edition of the Prairie Messenger, for anybody who wants to find it and pray over it.) Dougherty writes:

When the carols have been stilled,

when the star-topped tree is taken down,

when family and friends are gone home,

when we are back to our schedules,

the work of Christmas begins:

To welcome the refugee,

to heal a broken planet,

to feed the hungry,

to build bridges of trust, not walls of fear,

to share our gifts,

to seek justice and peace for all people,

to bring his light to the world.

My sisters and brothers, these are ways in which we might be like the magi to our time; to our world. Our “work of Christmas”; our work of bringing God’s Epiphany to our “own country”; to our world, making the light of Christ, our God, known in our world and in our time, now begins.