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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homily for Sunday, 21 November 2021– Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Readings of the day: Daniel 7:13-14; Psalm 93:1, 1-2, 5; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33b-37

I am not sure how many of us realize this: When we pray the Nicene Creed, as we will in a few moments, we mention only three human beings by name; three people in the whole Creed. The first two are more obvious: Jesus and Mary. But the third human figure mentioned in the Creed is Pontius Pilate.

Pontius Pilate, according to ancient Roman records and those of Flavius Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian of the time, was not whom we might consider a good, benevolent, much less effective ruler. He was Governor of the Roman province of Judea for about ten years, coinciding with the passion and death of Jesus. Pilate was known for impulsive and brutal acts of violence toward anybody he saw as a threat to his own or imperial Roman authority. This impulsiveness and brutality was possibly his downfall; Josephus records his suppression of “an armed Samaritan movement at Mount Gerizim” that resulted in Pilate’s removal by Caesar Tiberias (although maybe a comfortable retirement; this is unclear) as Governor of Judea. Pontius Pilate has been portrayed frequently as somewhat of a coward in art and speech: The term “to wash one’s hands” of responsibility for a decision derives from Pilate’s evasion of responsibility for Jesus’ condemnation to death by washing his hands.

But Jesus was no threat to Pontius Pilate’s, or Roman, authority. Pilate knew this, or so it would seem by his provocation of the Jewish authorities who had brought Jesus to him under the charge that he claimed to be a king; equivalent to Caesar; a threat to Roman authority. Can we not hear Pilate mocking the Jewish authorities who brought Jesus to him bound? “Ecce Homo,” Pilate sneers, “Behold the man”! Behold, this Jesus of Nazareth: “Really? A king? A threat to Caesar? Maybe this Jesus of Nazareth is a threat to my afternoon power nap, but he is no threat to Caesar’s or my authority.”

Yet Pilate also knew to humour the Jewish authorities who had disturbed him with such rabble. He had Jesus scourged—a beating that, even if it were not followed by crucifixion, would often be enough to kill a condemned person—and then presented him to the crowd: “Do you wish to irritate me further? Well, then, behold your ‘king,’ bloodied and on the point of death. Take him yourselves and crucify him”! Just to be sure, though, Pilate takes Jesus to his seat of judgment, and asks him the questions that are at the centre of today’s Gospel proclamation, from John. Pilate’s questions to Jesus are at the very centre of today’s Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe: “Are you the king of the Jews?”…“So, you are a king”?

Jesus gives Pilate, and us, the key answer about his kingly identity: “My kingdom is not of this world… You say I am a king.” But what does Jesus mean when he says his kingdom “is not of this world”? If Pilate, a pagan Roman governor, struggled to understand a kingship “not of this world,” let me venture to say that our world, and maybe especially our Church, have struggled all the more since Jesus’ answer to Pilate to understand and apply what Jesus meant.

We can point to many instances in our Church’s history that show our Church’s often tense relationship with worldly power and authority; when and how it has claimed that authority for itself. Let me be clear: I am not saying (far from it!) that any claim or exercise by our Church of authority “of this world” is bad. Often it is necessary and even good. Yet our papacy and concepts of the ministry of the pope, bishops, and priests have historical foundations in challenging, but also often mimicking monarchical (absolute royal) forms of government; power; authority.

“My kingdom is not of this world”: Our struggle not to identify Jesus, much less the pope or other Church leaders, with worldly royalty goes back to the crowds in our Gospels who wanted to take Jesus away to make him king. Even our celebration today of “Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe” is historically grounded in our Church’s often tense relationship with worldly powers, if not its identification as a worldly power in its own right.

Today’s celebration of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe dates back in our Church to December 11, 1925. On that day, Pope Pius XI proclaimed this Solemnity of Christ the King in an encyclical letter to the bishops of the Church, Quas Primas (“In the First”; the title of any Church document is derived from its first words). Why “In the First”? “The First” there refers to Pius XI’s first encyclical letter, entitled Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (“When in the Inscrutable Designs of God,” published just before Christmas, 1922), in which the pope lamented the “manifold evils in the world… due to the fact that the majority of people had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives.” If these evils continued, said Pius XI, “there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.” What did Pius XI propose as a solution to this problem? He created this Solemnity of Christ the King as a counterweight to “individuals and states [that] refused to submit to the rule of our Saviour.”

Also debated at the time was the so-called “Roman question”: Should the Church be granted sovereign rule over a physical territory, much like any nation state in our world? The Church had lost its rule over the Papal States in the second half of the 1800s. Then there was the massacre of World War I. Finally (and through a complicated and controversial process), in 1929 the Vatican City State as we know it today was created through a Church treaty with Mussolini’s Italy. The Church had its sovereign rule over a (very small) physical territory, just like any other nation state, and political and diplomatic independence from Italy and other nations. We see the tension in this: On the one hand, our Church had become a power sovereign over a physical territory and, by Church law, the pope enjoys universal jurisdiction over the whole Church but, on the other hand, we worship a king, Jesus Christ, whose “kingdom is not of this world.”

So what kind of kingdom or kingship is the kingdom or kingship of Jesus? Many if not most portrayals of Jesus as king, from the Infant of Prague with the sceptre in one hand and a globe in the other, or the icon of Jesus, Ruler of All (“Pantokrator”) show Jesus much like the monarchs of this world; they portray Jesus as the kind of worldly king he actively resisted becoming during his earthly lifetime.

“My kingdom is not of this world.” But even the readings we have just heard for this Mass witness to the limits of human language around kingship, especially when we apply kingship to Jesus; to God. We hear today of Daniel’s vision of “one like a son of man” (a common royal, messianic title in our Bible, which Jesus even uses of himself) who will have dominion over the universe: “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”

Our Psalm, one of our Bible’s beautiful “royal Psalms,” speaks of the LORD as king, “robed in majesty… girded with strength.” The Book of Revelation speaks, at the beginning and end of our reading today, of Jesus as “ruler of the kings of the earth… ‘The Alpha and the Omega’… who is and who was and who is to come.” I find it fascinating, though, that, between these two statements about Jesus’ everlasting kingship, Revelation also affirms that we have a share in Christ’s kingship: Christ “made us a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father.”

How can we, as worldly creatures, have a share in Jesus’ kingdom that “is not of this world”? The simplest answer to this question, which Revelation gives us, is three words long: “By his blood.” Jesus is King of the Universe, not because he holds any traits of a worldly king. He has no physical territory to govern, no throne, no sceptre. He has no globe in his hands, but only the cruel marks of nails in his hands and feet by which he has saved our universe and everything and every creature in it.

“By his blood”… “My kingdom is not of this world.” And, by his blood, we have a share, sisters and brothers, in the kingship of Jesus Christ that indwells this world, and will fully so on the day of the Lord’s return in glory, but “is not of this world.” We share, by our baptism, a priesthood. And I do not mean the priesthood of the ordained (people like me); I mean priesthood in the sense of our having a share and a responsibility in the communication of the presence of God—the “other-worldly”—to this world by the way we live. Our priesthood and, in a perfect way, the one priesthood of Jesus Christ, is a priesthood of servant leadership. Our priesthood, in all we say, act, and do, serves God by serving and loving one another, to the point where we would be prepared to give our lives for one another, as Christ did for us.

This is the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. This is the kingship in which we share “by his blood”; a kingship evermore indwelling our world but not of this world; a kingship that is the only kingship that will save us, this universe, and everything and every creature in it.

Homily for Monday, 29 September 2014– Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael

Monday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 12:7-12ab; Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 4-5; John 1:47-51

Who are angels? What is their purpose? Today we celebrate the feast of three of the most important angels, or archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. But are not angels somewhat mysterious creatures to us? None of us has ever seen an angel; they are spiritual beings.

We might be familiar with the prayer to St. Michael, based loosely on our first reading today from the Book of Revelation:

St. Michael the Archangel,

defend us in battle.

Be our defense against the wickedness

and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him,

we humbly pray, and do thou,

O Prince of the heavenly hosts,

by the power of God,

thrust into hell Satan,

and all the evil spirits,

who prowl about the world

seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

The Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are rarely mentioned in Scripture. Michael is named five times: three times in Daniel, once in Revelation, and once in the Letter of Jude. Gabriel is named four times, twice each in Daniel and the Gospel of Luke. Raphael is named a whopping twenty-eight times, all in the Book of Tobit!

But what is the purpose of angels, and specifically of these three Archangels? By the well-known prayer to St. Michael and his mention in books of the Bible written in times of crisis (these “apocalyptic” books project struggles against occupying powers, Babylon in Daniel; Rome in Revelation, on a cosmic scale: heaven versus hell; God versus Satan), we can associate Michael with defense in times of crisis and battle. Is anyone here named Michael here? If your name is Michael, you may be interested to know that your name is a rhetorical question in Hebrew: “Who is like God”? Of course we know the answer to this question, or do we? No one is like God except God, we could answer. But then all of us are created in God’s image and likeness. All of us in this sense are like God. And yet Jesus Christ alone is at once fully human and fully God. “Who is like God?” Michael stands in place of God, in our defense against Satan or any force that could degrade our God-given dignity; our being in God’s image and likeness.

Gabriel is associated both with crises and battles, like Michael, and with the Incarnation, Jesus becoming human in Mary’s womb. Gabriel means “God is my strength.” How does St. Gabriel give us God’s strength; the strength to say “yes” to God as Mary did to bring our Savior into the world?

Raphael heals the cataracts from Tobit’s eyes in the Book of Tobit. His name means “God has healed.” St. Raphael shows us the healing power of God.

The word “angel” itself means “messenger of God.” A messenger is important, but never more important than the message. For us, God is the message, pointed to by the angels. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, like us in all but sin, is God’s message in human flesh, pointed to by St. Gabriel. We celebrate Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, along with all the angels, as God’s messengers. In special ways they show us God’s strength, God’s healing, and who is like God.