Homily for Sunday, 27 August 2023– Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 22:19-23, 6-7; Psalm 138: 1-2, 2-3, 6, 8; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

Two images stick in my mind when I hear today’s readings from Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew: One of keys and the other, of clothing.

The image of keys is the more obvious one of these two; it is explicitly included in Isaiah and in Matthew. In Isaiah, the chief steward of the royal house of King Hezekiah—like Hezekiah’s Prime Minister—is Shebna. And Isaiah condemns Shebna for many wrongful actions, abuses of his power. Today’s reading from Isaiah skips over a few lines that lay out the prophet’s charge against Shebna: He has tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade King Hezekiah to ally with Egypt in a revolt against Assyria (historically, the Assyrians had invaded Israel and Judah and made Hezekiah their puppet king, some years before Babylon would invade the same territory). And Shebna had built monuments to himself, including his tomb, in high places where his self-importance would be most visible.

So Isaiah says that Shebna will be “pulled down from [his] post” and his role at the right hand of the king—the robe, sash, and keys—be given to “Eliakim, son of Hilkiah.” Isaiah uses the images of a peg and of keys. The peg is the symbol of stability: Eliakim would bring stability and prosperity to the reign of Hezekiah and his successors in the royal line of King David. But the keys are a symbol of power. And, as I think we all know, power can be used for good or not-so-good purposes.

Isaiah’s handing over of Shebna’s keys to Eliakim is a bit ironic, considering what we know happened to Hezekiah and the House of David after him. Hezekiah would refuse Shebna’s advice that he ally with Egypt against Assyria, but he would ally with Assyria and essentially become a puppet king of the Assyrians. And his successors would fare even worse in trying to play one power among Israel’s neighbours off against the others and failing to trust in Israel’s God alone for Israel’s peace, stability, and prosperity.

But then the Gospel of Matthew presents us with the same image of keys as the prophet Isaiah does to speak of Eliakim’s rise within the royal court of Hezekiah. In Matthew, it is Jesus’ apostle Peter who receives the keys: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says to him.

For Jesus to give the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” to Peter, of all people, is as curious (if not more) than when God, through Isaiah, gives the keys to the kingdom of David and his successors to Eliakim in place of Shebna. Not long before this point in Matthew’s Gospel, if we remember from last Sunday’s Gospel reading, Peter asks Jesus to be able to walk toward him on the stormy sea. But then he becomes afraid and sinks. Jesus calls Peter out, “You of little faith, why did you doubt”?

Today Peter repeats the cycle of bold statement—bold profession of faith—by God’s grace, followed by being surprised, unnerved we might say, by his own boldness, and then retreat from it, afraid of what such a profession of faith means for him. We do not hear the retreat, the fearful reservation part of the episode to which our Gospel introduces us today. We only hear Peter get the answer right, as he so often does and which is why Jesus entrusts him with so much; why Jesus gives Peter the “power of the keys.” Peter says what every other disciple of Jesus knows is true—what we all know by faith to be true but, people of little faith that we are, hesitate to say it: Jesus is a herald of the kingdom of heaven like John the Baptist, a prophet like Elijah, Jeremiah, or “one of the [other] prophets.” But he is more than they are. Peter says quite rightly: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

But even at this point, we have a clear sense that, for Peter or for any of us as Jesus’ disciples, first this is not the end of the story or the destination of our process of discipleship. And, second, like Peter, none of us can make this astounding profession of faith without God’s grace. Jesus says just that to Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

In a few moments, sisters and brothers, we will pray the Creed. But do we ever pause, after we have prayed the Creed, and hear Jesus say to us, “Blessed are you… For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”? I invite us to try this at this Mass: Pause briefly after the Creed, before we offer our Prayer of the Faithful, and hear, imagine Jesus blessing us just as he blessed Peter after his profession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Because we know that this is not the end of the story, for Peter or for us. Almost as soon as Peter professes his faith in “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” if we continue to follow Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up the Mount of the Transfiguration. There, the three apostles see a vision and then hear Jesus predict that he will die and rise for us. Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, are men, women, and children “of little faith.” Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, may be able to make an astounding profession of faith, as long as it is on our terms. The very next thing Peter says to Jesus after, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” after the end of today’s Gospel reading, is, “God forbid it, Lord” that you should die like this! “God forbid it” that I should profess my faith in a Christ, a God who will suffer for me, for my sin, for every time I am afraid of the bold words that, by God’s grace, escape from my mouth, and I retreat from them. “God forbid it, Lord,” that I will go so far as denying even knowing you, yet you will restore me to grace, remind me of why you gave me the keys and the power to bind and loose on earth what is bound and loosed in heaven!

“God forbid it, Lord”—But the Lord does just that, through each of us. Not long after Peter’s profession of faith, the gift of the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and then Jesus’ Transfiguration, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus gives the same power to bind and loose, the same gift of participating with God in the restoration to grace, the salvation of the whole world, to all of us, sisters and brothers!

And this is where I want to go back to the beginning of what I have said here today, to my image of the keys but then also of clothing. Specifically, who here has ever bought clothing for an infant or maybe a teenager—those times in our lives when we grow physically (and in other ways) the fastest? When we buy clothing for somebody who is growing quickly, it is wise to buy clothing a few sizes too big for that person, so that they will grow into it.

This is what God, through Isaiah, does for Eliakim in the Book of Isaiah from which we hear today. This is what Jesus does for Peter in our Gospel reading today. This is what Paul speaks of to the Romans, as if he is unwrapping a gift of divine clothing that is too big for him or the Roman Christian community in the present moment: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways”! Actually, Paul is saying to us, to the Romans, that the clothing God has just bought for us will never fit us quite right (Sorry!). It will always be a bit (or a lot) big on us, this clothing of God’s grace that saves us. But then some baggy clothing is quite fashionable these days, right?

In the time of Isaiah—and Matthew picks up on this image when Jesus gives Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven”—keys were not so much the pocket-sized ones with which we unlock doors. For a king or royal official like Eliakim, the keys that they would receive would be part of their royal clothing: Large, decorative, and slung over the shoulder. So the robe, the sash, and the key given to Eliakim in Isaiah are not really two separate images or analogies—that of keys and that of clothing—but the same one.

God gives Eliakim the robe, the sash, and the keys that are too big for him in that moment. Jesus gives Peter a gift that, despite his astounding profession of faith, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is too big for him in that moment. Peter will have to grow into those clothes and those keys. He will have to experience his frailty, his own “little faith,” most poignantly as Jesus dies on the cross and Peter denies ever knowing him.

We, too, dear Church, will have to continue to grow into the same clothing and the same keys that, for the moment, are just a little (or a lot) too big for our “little faith.” Still, though our “little faith” helped by none other than God’s grace, God enables us to profess with the astounding boldness of Peter the creed that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Homily for Sunday, 5 March 2023– Second Sunday in Lent

Readings of the day: Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22; 2 Timothy 1:8b-10; Matthew 17:1-9

When we think about our identity—what reveals to the world around us who we are—where do we start? We might start with our names, the identity we were given when we were born. I was born Warren Roger. Roger recalls the French heritage on my mother’s side. It was my great-grandfather’s name, and I also have an uncle (my mom’s brother) whose name is Roger. Warren is Old Germanic, related to caring for animals. I do not think my parents—unless they have a special ability to see into the future that I do not know about—could have predicted how much I love animals when they named me at birth. But I think my name is fitting.

At baptism, we (if we are baptized as adults or older children) or our parents (if we are baptized as infants) give our name to the Church. We take on a new identity, a new name of baptized Christian. How many of us took another name, often a saint’s name, when we were confirmed? At confirmation, once again, our identity changes. We become a new being, sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today in the Book of Genesis, we hear about Abram. God tells Abram to set out from his homeland, Ur (in what is now Iraq near the Persian Gulf), to an unknown, unnamed place. All God tells Abram is that the place to which he will relocate will be a place of blessing: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

At this point, Abram is seventy-five years old. He would have to wait until he was eighty-five to have his first son, Ishmael, with Hagar. Abram was ninety-nine years old when God gave him a new name, Abraham. And, finally, when Abraham was one hundred years old, God followed through on his promise to give Abraham a son, Isaac, with his wife Sarah. The process of Abraham’s change of identity, from Abram to Abraham to the father in faith of many nations, takes time in the Book of Genesis. But already we hear the first movements of God giving Abram that new identity. Not only will the land where Abraham will settle be blessed, or Sarah and Abraham together be blessed with a child in their old age, but Abram will bless the land and its people where he settles. God has already given Abram a new name, a new identity, even before he leaves Ur: “You will be a blessing.”

The process for Jesus and for us, Jesus’ disciples, toward taking on a new identity before God is much shorter than it was for Abram. Jesus’ public ministry through the founding of the Church at Pentecost lasted maybe a few years; Abraham moved to a new home at seventy-five, waited over eighty years for a new name, and one hundred years for a child with Sarah.

Today from the Gospel of Matthew we hear the account of Jesus’ transfiguration. Of all the Gospels, Matthew is the most focused on questions of identity: Who is Jesus? Who were Jesus’ ancestors? Who are we, Jesus’ disciples, the Church? Matthew begins his Gospel with a spectacular genealogy of Jesus, a list of forty-two generations of names, before identifying “Jesus, who is called the Messiah,” as the son “of Joseph, the husband of Mary.”

In the order of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ transfiguration happens right between two other important “identity” sections in Matthew. Just before Jesus’ transfiguration, Jesus takes his disciples to the far northern reaches of Israel at Caesarea Philippi. There, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am”? Among all the different identities the people were associating with Jesus—“Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets”—Jesus’ apostle Simon Peter is the only one to identify Jesus correctly: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” And Simon receives a new identity in the process of correctly identifying Jesus as the Messiah: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”

Just after Jesus is transfigured, it seems that Jesus’ disciples are very confused, not only about Jesus’ identity and mission but their own. When they are barely down the mountain of the transfiguration, Jesus’ disciples question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”? Jesus places a child among them, saying that the only way to go to heaven, never mind be identified as “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” is to be as humble and dependent on God as the child is on those who care for it. And then Peter, who had almost aced the identity of Jesus as the Messiah before the transfiguration (I have a lot of empathy for Peter for his trouble grappling with the need for Jesus to suffer and die), stumbles on the question of forgiveness.

Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive him”? By this point, Jesus has already turned this issue about how many times to forgive a sinner into a question about the identity of the whole faith community, the whole Church, all of us. Jesus has told the parable of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to seek the one lost sheep and bring it back to the fold. And then Jesus gives us our new identity and mission. It is the same identity and mission Jesus had given only to Peter at first, when Peter identified Jesus as the Messiah. Now that identity and mission belongs to all of us, sisters and brothers. Jesus repeats his identification and commissioning of Peter to all of his disciples: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven… For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

In other words, we now all share in the identity and mission of Jesus himself: An identity and mission of forgiveness and mercy, not only “seven times” (in Peter’s figure of speech), “but seventy-seven times.” We now share without limit, infinitely, in Jesus’ identity and mission of forgiveness and mercy. At this moment we become “other Christs” who are anointed and sent out to “take away the sins of the world” and lead one another to God, to eternal life.

And, in between these two “identity vignettes” in Matthew’s Gospel—exchanges between Jesus and his disciples that are all about who Jesus is as the Messiah, who Peter and Jesus’ other disciples are, and who we are—Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James, and John to be transfigured. Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, so correctly identified by Peter, does not change in his transfiguration. Jesus’ identity is only revealed in a way to us that is almost overwhelming. Jesus’ transfiguration reveals him to us more fully than before as the fulfilment of the Law and the prophets (remember how Jesus identifies himself in this way earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount).

Yet the transfiguration not only reveals Jesus’ identity to us more fully than ever before. And the transfiguration reveals to us our own identity—who we are through, with, and in Christ—more fully than ever before, so fully that we cannot help in the moment but be overwhelmed.

When the voice from the cloud says of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” this voice, the voice of God, also says this of us. Sisters and brothers, we are transfigured in this very moment. God looks down on us and says, “These are my beloved sons. These are my beloved daughters. This is my beloved Church.”

God reveals to us a new name, a new identity, a new mission. Abram becomes Abraham. Peter reveals Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus reveals us, identifies and commissions us, as the community that will bind and loose, that will seek the lost sheep in infinite forgiveness and mercy. From the cloud God reveals Jesus once again as “my beloved Son.” In the same moment God identifies, commissions, transfigures us as his beloved daughters and sons. In this Eucharistic celebration God sends the Holy Spirit upon us to solidify our identity and commissioning as “one body, one spirit in Christ.”

But from the moment of the transfiguration we still have one more major step so that God might reveal to us fully Jesus’ identity and mission, and ours. That last step we call, we experience as the Paschal Mystery: The events of the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven of Jesus Christ. This is why, after Jesus’ transfiguration in our Gospel today, Matthew says that the disciples are “overcome with fear.” Now, fear is not a feeling that we like to experience, I do not think. But our experience of suffering, our experience of death, an end to this earthly life, is necessary for us if who we are is anything like who Jesus is. By his passion and death, Jesus has transformed (we could say transfigured) the last event in our human experience that needs to be transformed and transfigured: Death itself.

In the time we have left this Lent, between now and Easter, we will continue to have God reveal our fullest identity to us. God does so one step, one event at a time, sharing with us in Christ our human sufferings but also joys: Between the mount of the transfiguration and the mount of Calvary, between Calvary and heaven, where Jesus has ascended and awaits us. There, in heaven, awaits our fullest vision of Jesus—the Messiah, the Son of the living God—and our fullest vision of who we are: Beloved daughters, beloved sons, beloved Church; beloved, redeemed, and saved disciples of the Son of the living God.

Homily for Sunday, 18 April 2021– Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

Readings of the day: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; Psalm 4:2, 4, 7-8, 9; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48

“Peace be with you,” alleluia!

How many of us have noticed that today, for the second Sunday Gospel reading in a row, Jesus’ first words to his disciples when he stands among them after he rises from the dead are, “Peace be with you”? Jesus’ greeting has become very familiar to us. And I imagine that Jesus’ greeting to his first disciples quickly became very familiar to them, too, after his resurrection. After all, both Luke’s and John’s Gospels, from which we have heard this Sunday and last, feature the risen Jesus greeting his disciples in this way. In fact, in John’s Gospel (think back to last Sunday), the risen Jesus greets his disciples not only once but three times—first to his disciples, except for Thomas, on the evening of the day he rose; a second time immediately after that, when Jesus also breathes the Holy Spirit on his disciples; and then a third time with Thomas present: “Peace be with you.”

Luke has Jesus greet his disciples only once, in Emmaus, “Peace be with you.” But it is effective. I imagine that, at this point, although Luke says that Jesus’ disciples were still “startled and terrified,” they began to think, “This is bizarre, even terrifying, but we have heard this greeting sometime, someplace before.”

And we hear from Luke today the second major part of the Easter story that, in Luke, begins with Jesus among only two of his disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. By the beginning of today’s Gospel, these two disciples have already met up with and “told the eleven [apostles] and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

My sisters and brothers in the risen Christ, Jesus is still making himself known by this same simple action; this same simple greeting as he did those first times to his first disciples: He “had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” He made himself known to them by greeting them, “Peace be with you.”

There is a reason why, since Vatican II, the sign of peace has been included as part of what we call the Communion Rite at Mass, which extends from the Our Father until we receive communion. To greet one another in the risen Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you,” is essential in order to recognize Jesus “in the breaking of the bread.” When we greet one another at Mass, “Peace be with you,” we recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church. We need to recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church, before we are able to recognize and worship him as really and truly present in the Eucharistic bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.

“Peace be with you” and “the breaking of the bread” are inseparable. But is the sign of peace, where it has been in the Order of Mass for over fifty years now, not still a bit startling? Most if not all of us have, I suppose, gotten used to the sign of peace where it is now in the Mass. Certainly it is not terrifying as Jesus’ disciples found it when Jesus greeted them, “Peace be with you,” that first time in Emmaus. And maybe we have gotten used to our “text of peace” during our Masses streamed over Zoom for the last year or so, even if it still commands our attention in (I still find) a bit of a jarring way when we exchange peace through Zoom’s chat function: Make sure we exchange a sign of peace with panelists and participants, and so on…

During Vatican II, where the sign of peace was to be placed within the Mass, and whether everybody in the assembly or only clergy during a Solemn Mass (as had been before Vatican II) would exchange peace ritually, were hotly-debated among the bishops at the Council. The English former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, tells one of my favourite stories about the sign of peace when it was inserted back into the Mass just after the Our Father after Vatican II. Two French Dominicans Fr. Radcliffe visited at that time, Frs. Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu, both important figures at Vatican II, had very different approaches to the sign of peace although both lived in the same house in Paris. Congar’s sign of peace “was a grave and formal gesture, whereas Chenu affectionately punched and hugged… and pulled one’s hair”!

“Peace be with you”: We hear the same oh-so-familiar greeting; it is the same Christ really and truly present in one another as in the “grave and formal” Congar, the excitable Chenu, or the terrified disciples who had just witnessed Jesus’ death on a cross and “thought they were seeing a ghost.” It is the same Christ who makes himself known “in the breaking of the bread” and who opens our “minds to understand the Scriptures”: That death no longer has power over the risen Christ, or over us; that we are invited to proclaim the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that Jesus’ resurrection has made possible, “to all nations.”

This seems to be a daunting task, does it not? How are we to proclaim this “repentance and forgiveness of sins… to all nations” in Jesus’ name? Well, we could begin with a familiar greeting, one that captured its hearers’ attention when Jesus said it, and still does whenever we say it and live it: “Peace be with you”; shalom!

The familiar peace Jesus offers us stirs the world to attention because it does not and cannot come from this world. Jesus’ shalom captures our attention, but it also consoles, reconciles, empowers each and every one of us not only to speak this greeting to one another, but to live it: To seek to console, to reconcile, to empower and so to point out God’s work to still more people in our world and to point one another to God, our only everlasting peace and salvation.

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter gives us an example of how to proclaim and live the risen Christ’s shalom. Yet, I will admit, I find the way in which Peter addresses the people “at the temple gate” in Jerusalem a bit troubling at first hearing. His preaching sounds at first to be heavy on the fire and brimstone, speaking to the people about “Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate… You killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead,” Peter rails. This is not a homily I think I would be capable of giving!

But, if anybody knew their need for Jesus’ shalom—“Peace be with you”—it was Peter. It was Peter who stood before the temple gate, a redeemed sinner, witnessing to his reconciliation and peace with God made possible only by Jesus’ death and resurrection and that is now available to all of us, redeemed sinners whom we are. “Repent therefore, and turn to God”; turn toward the one who greets us, “peace be with you”… “so that your sins may be wiped out.” How remarkable is Peter’s message from the temple gate?

And the first Letter of John proclaims the same message, the same greeting at its heart, in a slightly different way than Peter. Jesus Christ is “our advocate with the Father… the atoning sacrifice for our sins” and the sins “of the whole world.”

Jesus Christ, crucified at the hands of sinners,

Jesus Christ, “our advocate with the Father” and the redemption of sinners,

Jesus Christ, our reconciliation with God,

Jesus Christ, who calls us to proclaim his peace to all peoples and nations,

Jesus Christ, really and truly present in all the Scriptures, in the Eucharist, and in each of us and our signs of peace,

Jesus Christ, of the familiar greeting that stirs the world to attention; that forgives; that quells fears and doubts; that saves,

Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,

Jesus Christ, our shalom.

“Peace be with you.”

Homily for Sunday, 9 June 2019‒ Pentecost

Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Pentecost Sequence; John 14:15-16, 23b-26

This homily was given at St. Kateri Parish, St. Margaret Mary Church, Rochester, NY, USA.

A proverb I heard not long ago says this: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” How might this proverb speak to our culture, including how we understand and live as Church? What might this kind of proverb have to do with Pentecost, which we celebrate today?

If I were to ask us when each of us thinks the Church began, historically or otherwise, how many of us would answer, “At Pentecost”? But then what is (or was) Pentecost? What is Church and why?

Might the readings we have heard today give us a clue toward the answers to these “brainstorm”-type questions? Fifty days after Jesus had risen from the dead (which is the meaning of the word “Pentecost,” fifty days), the Acts of the Apostles says to us that Jesus’ apostles, if not a larger group of Jesus’ disciples, those who had followed Jesus during his public ministry, passion, death, and resurrection, “were all in one place together.” It was at this point, when Jesus’ disciples “were all in one place together,” when the Holy Spirit descended upon them “like a strong driving wind” and in “tongues of fire.”

The rest of this account of Pentecost we hear from Acts also speaks of togetherness among the disciples of Jesus and an even larger group of “Jews from every nation under heaven” gathered in Jerusalem at the time. But this togetherness was not and could not be a too-simple and artificial uniformity. The group that witnessed to this first Pentecost, the birth of our Church, was too large and too diverse to be so uniform. All these different people from all over the world would witness together, but each “in their own tongues” to “the mighty acts of God”; to the power of God’s Holy Spirit; to the birth of a Church.

Does this not sound a lot like the Church today; like our reality here in Rochester and at St. Kateri? “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I do not believe that proverbs like this are meant to be a criticism of those who “go alone” in our Church or civil society, or in our St. Kateri Parish for that matter, as if acting together is always better than acting alone; as if going far is always better than going fast.

The rightful diversity within the Church will forever welcome the faithful who view change in the Church—in decisions made at various levels of Church leadership, the people who lead, or sometimes even the teachings that guide and result from those in leadership—as more often good, and the faster the better. And the same rightful diversity within the Church will necessarily welcome those with usually the opposite view, who are wary of change or who stress caution or consensus before allowing change; who prefer going far to going fast; going together to going alone.

Instead of serving as an indictment of people with either view, I think our experience of Pentecost, in a similar way to that first Pentecost of which the Acts of the Apostles speaks to us today, has two effects on the Church and on us as the Church’s faithful. First, our experience of receiving the Holy Spirit, our experience of Pentecost, puts in right order these two complementary movements in the Church of going alone and therefore faster, and of going together and therefore farther. Second, our experience of Pentecost purifies our intentions behind preferring either to go alone and therefore fast, or together and therefore far, or a bit of each preference depending on our particular circumstances of life.

Our experience of Pentecost, like the very first experience Jesus’ disciples had of Pentecost, rightly orders the desire or movement in our same Church toward going together and therefore far, versus the desire or movement toward going alone and therefore fast. We hear of this right ordering in our readings today. The Holy Spirit first draws all this diversity of peoples together, so that they will be able to go far once they are sent out by the same Spirit, not in spite of but precisely because of their diversity. But the diversity of these earliest disciples of Jesus is a diversity whose unity is safeguarded by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the same is true of the Church today. The same Holy Spirit who once drew together the diverse peoples of the earliest Church draws us into this “one place together” so that we may honor and celebrate together our diversity held in unity by the Holy Spirit. We may not be “Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs.” But we are from East Irondequoit, West Irondequoit, elsewhere in greater Rochester, New York State, or beyond; rich, poor, and middle class; ideologically left, right, and center; people who prefer more pre-Vatican II liturgy or post-Vatican II liturgy, and so on, all called to this “one place together.” We might only want to be wary of letting in certain Canadians who study in France; they may be a little suspect…

Only once we have been drawn together by the Holy Spirit into the unity of “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” in this one celebration will we be able to set out, each in the particular ways in which we are called, to proclaim the Gospel, “glorifying [the one] God by our lives.” Only by learning by celebrating here and now our “going together,” our being “in one place together,” will we then be effective, if not sometimes surprisingly fast, if and when the Holy Spirit calls us to “go alone,” each putting our individual or unique gifts to the service of the same Gospel, remaining faithful to our unity as Church.

In John’s Gospel today, Jesus reinforces this point: To learn by celebrating our “going together” is necessary if and when the Holy Spirit, who keeps us together as one Church, calls us within this Church to “go alone”; to exercise our more particular or unique gifts at the service of the Gospel. In the same discourse as when Jesus promises his disciples the Holy Spirit, “another advocate to be with [us] always,” Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments… Whoever loves me will keep my word.” My sisters and brothers, love; keeping the commandments of Jesus, first among which is to love one another as Jesus has loved us; keeping Jesus’ word: These are not individual actions that we accomplish without any grounding in community; as one Church that gathers together to hear and celebrate God’s word in our Eucharist, together. To keep Jesus’ commandments, to love, presupposes our gathering “in one place together.” In fact, God himself is a communion, a “togetherness” of three distinct persons (more on this next Sunday, when we will celebrate more specifically the Most Holy Trinity).

Yet togetherness, unity, communion does not stifle diversity, individuality, uniqueness of spiritual and other gifts. In fact, our unity reinforces and honors our diversity, individuality, uniqueness of gifts. Our Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit not only puts in right order the complementary movements in the Church of going together and therefore farther so that we may be able to, if necessary, go alone and therefore maybe faster, but also our Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit purifies these two seemingly opposite movements, so that indeed they are complementary and will never stifle each other. As 1 Corinthians says to us today, we remain “one body though [with] many parts. We receive “different spiritual gifts” by “the same Spirit.” We perform “different forms of service” by the grace of our “one Lord” and God.

By “going together,” we gain the strength and unity we need for when we are called to “go alone.” As Church, we breathe with two lungs. Our unity and then our diversity are inspired by the same Spirit. Insofar we gather “in one place together” to celebrate this, we will both “go far” and “go fast,” because our Pentecost experience empowers us to do both.

Homily for Sunday, 26 August 2018

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Ephesians 4:32- 5:1-2, 21-32; John 6:60-69

This homily was given at Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, Vancouver, BC, Canada. 

Baseball great Yogi Berra once famously said, “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” Of course, he also once quipped, “I never said half the things I said,” so sometimes what Yogi Berra actually said is up for debate.

Our readings today present us with “fork in the road” situations; we are required to make choices: In Joshua, whether to “serve the LORD” or the gods of foreign nations and faiths; in Ephesians, whether to act in our relationships among one another with the love with which Christ loves us; in John’s Gospel, whether or not to continue to follow Jesus when his teachings and those of the Church he has founded become “difficult.” When have we been faced with situations in our lives when we have had to make choices, practically, morally, or otherwise? Does this not happen to us constantly?

Are we not all here because we have chosen to be here? Our reasons for being here at this Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows vary: Maybe we are here out of a simple joy and love for the Mass. Maybe we are here with friends or family. Maybe we are here because the time of this Mass allows us to sleep in just a bit longer before we drag ourselves to Mass (that is not necessarily a bad thing), or because “Mom, Dad, or somebody made me get up for Mass,” or some other sense of obligation, or maybe some other more or less noble motive. The point is that we have all made a choice to be here. And, from the choice to be here to worship as a Catholic community of faith to simpler everyday choices like what to eat or wear, we are constantly making choices.

But relatively few of our choices are of the magnitude of the “fork in the road” moments faced by the people of Israel in Joshua’s time, the early Christians addressed by the letter to the Ephesians, or Jesus’ disciples in John’s Gospel grappling with what Jesus meant by making eating his flesh and drinking his blood essential for their eternal life. Each of these groups of people featured in our readings today also faces great pressure in making the choices they need to make. Would it be fair for us to wonder whether these people may have been tempted to evade making choices at all, or tempted strongly to make the wrong choice?

We hear first today from the end of the Book of Joshua. By this point in the Book of Joshua, the people of Israel who had been led by Moses and his successor, Joshua, back to their land have conquered this land for themselves from the Canaanites with relative ease. They might have thought, and probably many of them did think reasonably that it would be just as easy to maintain the land they had conquered as it had been to take possession of it. Sure, there are nations more powerful than Israel surrounding Israel and who worship other gods than the LORD. It would be tempting for Israel, in this situation, to bow to these surrounding nations and their gods to avoid being invaded and overtaken by these more powerful nations. Still, Joshua, in his last address to the people of Israel before his death, gives Israel a choice: “If you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve.”

When Israel could have chosen the easy way of alliances with pagan nations and worship of their gods, they choose freely under Joshua’s leadership to be different from these other nations. The people of Israel choose freely to take a risk of angering these other nations by trusting solely in the one LORD they know to be the true God, and not to trust in alliances with worldly power to save them.

A similar choice to the one put before the Israelites under Joshua is put before Jesus’ disciples in John’s Gospel. We have arrived at a decisive point in our relationship with Jesus as his disciples. Jesus has repeatedly claimed that he is God, the one LORD the people of Israel have worshipped since the time of Moses and the gift of manna in the desert. Jesus claims to be the true food from heaven to which the manna only pointed. Jesus claims that the only way to eternal life is to eat his flesh and drink his blood. By this point, the people hearing Jesus are outraged. Most of them turn away from Jesus and return to the way they were living before encountering Jesus. His own disciples ask a very legitimate question, one perhaps many of us have asked about particular aspects or teachings of our faith: “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it”? How can this man claim to be God, and how can he claim that the only way to eternal life is to eat his flesh and drink his blood?

Jesus’ disciples are at a fork-in-the-road moment, and they have only one choice: To take the fork. And our salvation depends on making the right choice.

“Do you also wish to go away”? Jesus asks his twelve closest disciples, his Apostles, as many if not most of his followers to that point turn “back and no longer [go] about with him.” Jesus knows that, even among these twelve, one will betray him outright, maybe not at this decisive point that is difficult for Jesus’ disciples to commit to following him, but at another fork-in-the-road moment not long thereafter. Might we imagine that even Simon Peter, the leader and usual spokesperson for the Twelve, may not have been so sure if he and the other Apostles in fact wanted to “go away” from Jesus at this point. Peter answers Jesus with a cautious, introspective kind of question at first: “Lord, to whom can we go”? Did Peter pause before continuing to answer Jesus, as if to say, “I need a second to think about this”?

We cannot know fully what was on the mind of Peter and the other disciples, only that this could not have been an easy question for him to answer on their behalf. I imagine Peter, looking up at the thinned-out crowd after many had turned away from Jesus, complaining and disputing among themselves. And yet Peter makes a decisive choice; the right choice. He answers Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter answers “yes” to continuing to follow Jesus, not because he is the perfect disciple, but because he freely chooses to allow Jesus to strengthen him and the others who continue to follow Jesus. Peter freely chooses to continue to walk with Jesus, at least until the next fork in the road.

My sisters and brothers, this is all Jesus; all God asks of us (or at least all Yogi Berra asks of us): “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” There will be points in our lives, if there have not been already, when we must choose and there is no intermediate option between “yes” and “no”; between serving the LORD and serving other gods, ourselves, or worldly goods and pleasures as gods; between continuing to follow Jesus, who has the “the words of eternal life,” as difficult as his way and words can be to follow, and not.

There will be points in our lives, as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us with the imagery of a faithful marriage, when to love another person, let alone God, will be a difficult choice. Our readings call us beyond the attraction-infatuation stage we might experience at first in a relationship with somebody, and even with God. Love becomes a choice. Being Church, a community of faith in worship and actions of kindness and mercy, eventually becomes not mere infatuation but a choice. It becomes a difficult choice in love when any members of the Church, especially in leadership, idolize and abuse power and prestige. They walk among the crowds who turn from Jesus; who make the easy but wrong choice; who refuse to walk with Jesus beyond the fork in the road.

Will we, then, continue with Jesus beyond the fork in the road, at least until the next decisive moment? Will we choose to be Church? Will we choose to serve the LORD faithfully? Will we choose to love as Christ loves us and “gave himself up for” us? Will we choose to let the words of Simon Peter be ours: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”