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, 13 August 2023– Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

I must say I feel badly for Elijah and Peter! Elijah in the First Book of Kings and Peter in Matthew’s Gospel from which we hear today cannot seem to act in such a way that fully pleases other people or, more importantly, pleases God.

By the time Elijah finds himself in a cave on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings, we find ourselves, in a way, dropped into the middle of the story of the reading we have just heard. Before Elijah ends up in the cave on Horeb, he confronts the king of Israel, Ahab, and his wife Jezebel, over their worship of false gods. If there is a way to combine a comedy and tragedy into a single scene, the part of 1 Kings just before Elijah hides in the cave on Mount Horeb may be it! God has sent a drought over Israel to punish Jezebel’s and Ahab’s idol worship.

After three years of drought in Israel, God orders Elijah to speak with Ahab to end the drought. On top of worshipping foreign gods—for which we could excuse Jezebel somewhat, because she was not from Israel—Jezebel spent the years of drought slaughtering the prophets of the LORD, the God of Israel. So Elijah organizes a great contest on Mount Carmel between the prophets of Jezebel’s gods, the Ba’als and Asherah, and himself, representing the true God of Israel. The four hundred fifty prophets of the Ba’als (pagan gods of storms and rain) and the four hundred fifty prophets of Asherah (a fertility goddess) will call on their gods to send down fire to consume a bull presented as a sacrifice. Elijah will do the same. Whichever side’s gods send down fire will decide which god(s) the people of Israel will worship.

This sounds like a great idea: Elijah, the prophet of the LORD, true God of Israel, allows himself to be outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one by the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah! Thankfully, God accepts Elijah’s sacrifice and sends fire over the altar Elijah builds to God, consuming the bull. The gods of the nine hundred prophets are shown not to exist, because they do not send fire on request to consume the bull sacrifice. Israel’s people (except for Jezebel and Ahab) are moved to worship the one true God of Israel, not the Ba’als or Asherah. For good measure, Elijah—spectacularly because, remember, he is outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one—has all the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah killed.

All this makes Jezebel and Ahab very angry at Elijah. Jezebel wants Elijah dead. At least, besides reporting Elijah to his wife Jezebel for so-called “murder” of her false prophets, Ahab only calls Elijah “disturber of Israel” for bringing Israel back to the worship of the one true God. But now Elijah sinks into despair. Jezebel’s army is after him, so he hides in a cave on Mount Horeb. Elijah (and who could fault him?) wants nothing of God’s fire that consumes bull sacrifices. He wants nothing of the sword with which he has slain nine hundred false prophets. Elijah just wants to die. This “disturber of Israel” is done disturbing the peace. But God is not done with Elijah yet.

Today’s reading from 1 Kings begins at this point. The LORD disturbs the peace, and the sleep, of the once-“disturber of Israel,” Elijah. God calls Elijah to “stand on the mountain” outside the cave, “for the LORD is about to pass by.”

Just then, “a great wind” begins, “so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks before the LORD.” We have had some pretty good storms this summer, but none quite that strong. Elijah seems to know right away that the LORD “is not in the wind,” that the wind and storms were said to be signs of the Ba’als, the false gods worshipped by Jezebel and Ahab. I imagine Elijah saying into the wind, “You do not scare me. Try again.” And so there is an earthquake, “but the LORD [is] not in the earthquake,” either. Elijah is too good at discerning when God is truly present, so the earthquake does not faze him. Neither does the fire. It is a little more surprising that Elijah is not duped into believing that God is present in the fire, since this is how God was present to him in consuming the bull sacrifice. But, no, “the LORD [is] not in the fire.”

“After the fire,” Elijah (rightly) discerns the presence of God in the “sound of sheer silence.” Elijah is, we have to admit, really good at knowing when God is present and responding to God’s presence. But the reading we hear from 1 Kings today leaves out two short lines (or the same line, twice) from this story in the Bible. In 1 Kings, before and after the sequence of the wind, earthquake, fire, and silence, God asks Elijah, “Why are you here”? Both times, Elijah answers God, in short: “I give up. The people of Israel are unconvinced by the spectacular pyrotechnics on Mount Carmel, the bull sacrifice now a heap of ash. They are still worshipping false gods. Jezebel and Ahab want to kill me for killing nine hundred of their false prophets. I will admit that was pretty spectacular, too, a bit gruesome, but… just… You know what, God? Just leave me alone and let me die.”

But neither time does God take Elijah’s “no” for an answer. The first time God asks Elijah why he is hiding on Mount Horeb, God tells Elijah to wait outside the cave for God “to pass by.” And, the second time, God tells Elijah to go toward Damascus and anoint Hazael as the king of that region (Aram). God tells Elijah to anoint Jehu as king of Israel, which means Ahab’s time as king is almost up; Jehu will be the one to order Jezebel’s servants to kill her. And God tells Elijah to anoint Elisha as his own successor as prophet of Israel.

It is as if God repeats to Elijah, “I will not let you give up! You are too good a prophet to end like this”! Elijah will become even greater than a prophet: A kingmaker and a prophet-maker. God takes who Elijah is and calls him to be something, somebody even greater.

Can we think of a time in our own lives when somebody has challenged us at the right time to be even better than we are, even better at something we are already good at? I can think of many instances in which this has happened to me. I think of my colleagues at St. Joseph’s College when they say, “You will be very good at teaching that course, at researching in that area of theology. Here is a challenge that will push you just beyond the limits you sometimes impose on yourself.” I think of my students, when they say, “We really enjoyed this activity, this assignment in class. But we only got to do it once or twice. We should do more of this, or you should do more of that the next time you teach this course.” Outside myself, I think of great minds, great athletes, great anything, who are great in part because a coach, an advisor, a friend, a student, God pushed them to be greater than they thought they could be in a critical moment.

This is true of Elijah, when God appears twice to him in the silence, the “still small voice” on Horeb and asks, “Why are you here, Elijah”? And it is true of Peter in his relationship with Jesus in our Gospel today.

Please allow me to say that I feel a lot of empathy toward Peter when I hear today’s Gospel reading. My retreat before professing final vows as a Basilian and being ordained a deacon ten years ago was in the Holy Land. I will always remember standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, feeling a slight increase in the wind, and seeing the surface of the water go from completely still to white-capped waves in minutes. So I can appreciate how this (so I understand) frequent weather phenomenon could have frightened Peter and Jesus’ other disciples that day. And then to have Jesus walk toward them on the stormy sea: I am not surprised at all that Peter and Jesus’ other disciples responded with the terror they did!

Still, as Peter does so often, he (almost) gets it right; he recognizes (as well as Elijah recognized God in the silence on Horeb) that it is Jesus walking toward him on the sea. And Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him “on the water.” That is, may I say, very bold of Peter. It is a display of faith from Peter maybe second only to when he identifies Jesus as “the Christ, Son of the living God.”

So why, at this moment, does Jesus call Peter, “You of little faith”? Is this not unfair of Jesus not to recognize the (in fact) great faith with which Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him on a stormy sea? Sure, Peter becomes scared right away after that and starts to sink. But maybe he was not a great swimmer. Surely there are worse things than not being able to swim well, right?

I think here, though, Jesus is doing with Peter something very similar to what God does with Elijah in 1 Kings. Jesus sees the great faith of which Peter is capable in word and action, in this and many other instances in our Gospels. But in any moment, Peter’s faith will always be littler than what it can be with some coaching. It is as if Jesus says to Peter (and, through Peter, to us), “It is not me, but you, who does not see in this ‘stormy’ moment how bold your faith actually is. Come to me on the water, so you see how great your faith can be. You, like the great prophet Elijah, have an uncanny ability to discern and reach out to God in the most challenging circumstances. Like Elijah, with my help and grace, you will become even better at reaching out to me, praying, walking on water, discerning my presence in the storms of life as in the sacred moments of ‘sheer silence.’”

Homily for Tuesday, 3 January 2023– Christmas Weekday

Readings of the day: 1 John 2:23-3:6; Psalm 98:1, 3cd-4, 5-6; John 1:29-34

Optional Memorial: The Most Holy Name of Jesus

In these days between Christmas Day and the Baptism of the Lord, which marks the end of the Christmas season, we hear a lot from the Gospel and letters of John at Mass. And there is, in these readings we hear, a pattern. Our readings from John’s Gospel and letters remind us of who God is (or who Jesus is) and who we are.

Neither who Jesus is nor who we are changes. Jesus is, has been, and will always be “the Son of God.” We are, have always been, and will always be “called children of God.” But our perception of who Jesus is and who we are is what changes. Our faith is not static. Could we not say that our faith is a constant process of growing into our realization of those central truths of who we are, “children of God,” and who Jesus is, “the Son of God,” God made flesh?

Over this Christmas season, I have been able to spend some time with my youngest nephew, August or Gus, who is almost a year old. Gus received several articles of clothing from family and loved ones over Christmas. Those of us who have had (or still have) young children or grandchildren will appreciate this: It is very difficult, I find, to know what size of clothing to buy for a baby. Many people bought Gus clothing sized for an eighteen-month-old. Now, most of those eighteen-month-old clothes are a little big for him (although he is already beginning to fit comfortably into some of them). In six months, will he have outgrown some of those outfits already?

This is a similar reality to our Christian faith, sisters and brothers. Who we are and who God is do not change. But faith is an invitation to grow into, and maybe even eventually to outgrow, how we perceive God and how we perceive ourselves before God now.

If the great John the Baptist had to put on the “baby clothes” of faith, before he was baptizing people in the Jordan—and before he baptized Jesus himself—how much truer is this of us? John admits that, not long before he baptized Jesus, he “did not know” Jesus. But, John says, “the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” Only then is John the Baptist able to testify to Jesus “that this is the Son of God.” Only then is John the Baptist ready for the next size up in faith clothing: “That will be one camel hair onesie, please, men’s size, hand washable in a river.”

And the same is true of us, sisters and brothers. The First Letter of John says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” We have always been and will always be God’s children; this will never change. But the same letter goes on to say that “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” Yet when God “is revealed,” 1 John says, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

This is quite a bold statement: We will grow in our faith. We will outgrow our present faith clothing. In fact, our faith will grow so much that, sometime between now and when we are in heaven, when God’s presence is revealed to us fully, we will need extra-extra-large, God-sized clothing, because “we will be like” God. We, like John the Baptist, if we are not able to do so already, will be able to point to Jesus and testify that he “is the Son of God.” We will be able to point to other people in our experience who live as Jesus Christ did, who are the saints living among us, and say, “this is a daughter, this is a son of God, beloved of God.”

It looks as though we will need to start looking for the next-size-up outfit!

Homily for Tuesday, 3 August 2021– Ferial

Readings of the day: Numbers 12:1-13; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 6cd-7, 12-13; Matthew 14:22-36

Tuesday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

“You of little faith”… Whenever I hear this Gospel account of Jesus walking on water, Peter taking up Jesus’ invitation to walk toward him on the water and then becoming frightened and sinking before Jesus reaches out to save him, I have a lot of empathy toward Peter and Jesus’ other disciples.

Much of my empathy toward Jesus’ disciples here derives from my having stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and seen a fascinating (and possibly frightening, if one were ever caught out on the water when it happened) phenomenon about this body of water. The Sea of Galilee is not especially large. But, because of how it forms a basin surrounded by hills and how this orients the wind over the Sea of Galilee, the water can go from perfectly calm to white-capped or even choppier waves in little time and with seemingly harmless winds.

Much of my empathy toward Jesus’ disciples here derives from my having stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and seen a fascinating (and possibly frightening, if one were ever caught out on the water when it happened) phenomenon about this body of water. The Sea of Galilee is not especially large. But, because of how it forms a basin surrounded by hills and how this orients the wind over the Sea of Galilee, the water can go from perfectly calm to white-capped or even choppier waves in little time and with seemingly harmless winds.

And I am sure it is not every day that one witnesses a person walking on water, even if that person is the Son of God! So in many ways I empathize with Peter’s and the other disciples’ reaction to Jesus walking on water, when the wind had already been “against them.”

Peter and the other disciples endear themselves to me by how bold they in fact are when they witness Jesus walking on water. I do not think I would have asked Jesus, as Peter does, to command me to walk toward him on the water, even if I knew it was Jesus, the Son of God.

Jesus seemingly chides Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt”? But I interpret this less as Jesus scolding Peter than motivating him to see just how significant the “little faith” he has is. Peter’s “little faith” enables him to ask Jesus to command him to walk toward him on the water. Although Peter takes his focus away from the Lord and begins to sink, the fact that Peter has already willed himself to get to this point is significant.

We can think of other moments in the Gospels—the parables of the mustard seed and of the small measure of leaven come to mind—when Jesus points out how significant even a small amount of faith can be, because Jesus will take our small contributions and multiply them: Quell our fears, motivate us to see the best in ourselves. In today’s Gospel is not so much a moment when Peter is scolded as a “you can do this… See what you did there?” moment.

And I pray that Jesus will motivate me in the same way as he once did his disciples on the sea, when I need to be motivated or to exercise a quality in myself that I may not value as I should. I pray that I will be able to perceive the best in other people—confrères, family members, friends, the People of God who are the Church—to be able to encourage them, people of (a) “little faith” as we all are, so that the “little faith” we contribute will enable us to act with great boldness, great courage, great loving kindness in the Lord’s name.

Homily for Sunday, 27 June 2021– Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalm 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-23

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

This week, I just finished teaching a Spring Term (May and June) Introduction to Catholicism course through St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta. The last lecture of the course was based on a topic the students proposed, which was meant to apply in a more focused way a theme we had discussed earlier in the course. The topic the students chose for the final lecture of this Spring Term centered on Catholic theology, ritual, and pastoral and ethical issues around death and dying.

How is that for a morbid way to end a course term? (I kid, but only to a point). I find it fortuitous that the last lecture of our course is so coherent with our readings for today. “God did not make death,” our reading the Book of Wisdom begins today. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus performs two interwoven miracles; the beginning and end of the Gospel reading we hear proclaimed focus on Jesus’ raising of the twelve-year-old daughter of a synagogue official, Jairus, who “is at the point of death” as today’s Gospel opens.

Also fortuitously, as we hear from the Book of Wisdom, “God did not make death,” from Mark’s Gospel Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter, and in our Psalm response a hymn of thanksgiving for God’s victory over death—“I will extol you, Lord, for you have raised me up”—today [yesterday] we mark the first anniversary of the death of my grandmother, Barbara Schmidt. [We offer today’s Mass in her memory.] At Grandma’s funeral, and every funeral I attend, I am especially drawn to the beginning of what is called the prayer of commendation. At the end of a funeral Mass, we commend or leave our loved one who has died to the mercy of God. The priest prays: “Into your hands, Father of mercies, we commend our sister (or brother) in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she (he) may rise with him on the last day.”

I will admit that, at Grandma’s funeral Mass, since I was the presiding priest, it was especially difficult for me to pray those words: Sure and certain hope. Now, I consider myself immensely blessed, particularly as the priest in the family, to have ministered to Grandma as I did, especially in her last years. She was a person of tremendous and holy Christian hope; a hope that showed itself throughout her life through acts of outstanding generosity. Grandma was generous with every gift she had; with her time; with any wealth, even though for most of her life she could hardly have been considered wealthy. She became a widow at a young age, and raised five children on her own after Grandpa died, while also caring for her father until his death. Grandma embodied during her life what the prayer of commendation during a funeral Mass expresses, “Sure and certain hope” in our God who saves and raises us even from death.

Still, if I am honest with myself—and maybe many if not all of us will be able to relate—I consider myself a person of hope; of faith in a merciful and saving God. But am I a person of sure and certain hope? Sometimes I am not so sure my hope and my faith are that strong. In those moments, sure and certain hope becomes more of a prayer for God to fill in what I lack than a statement of something I have. This was certainly true at Grandma’s funeral, as I prayed those words, “in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she may rise with him on the last day.” This was true as I looked out upon family and a few of Grandma’s closest friends; as we remembered and prayed for Grandma in the midst of a COVID pandemic that also has made sure and certain hope difficult to come by for so many people.

Sometimes are we not (as I know I am) more like Jairus, who pleads desperately for Jesus to heal his sick daughter in today’s Gospel; Jairus who, after Mark purposefully has members of Jairus’ household tell Jesus that Jairus’ daughter has died, needs Jesus to remind him, “Do not fear, only believe”? I wonder what Jairus thought when Jesus spoke these words to him: “Do not fear, only believe.”

We know that the crowds at Jairus’ house “make a commotion and weep”; that they laugh at Jesus when Jesus says that “the child is not dead but sleeping.” We know that Jesus allows “no one to follow him,” but only the girl’s “mother and father and those who were with” Jesus; that Jesus puts everybody else outside the house. But Mark says little about Jairus until after Jesus raises his daughter. After Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter, Mark says that Jairus and all who witnessed Jesus’ miracle “were overcome with amazement,” that Jesus orders them not to make known his raising of Jairus’ daughter to anybody, and to give the girl “something to eat.”

Contrast this with the explicit faith of the woman, midway through today’s Gospel reading, who touches Jesus’ clothes and is healed of twelve years of hemorrhaging that no physician could treat, but only made worse. “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease,” Jesus says to the woman. This woman’s faith and hope that Jesus could heal her, if she only touched his clothing, is more obviously “sure and certain” than that of Jairus in today’s Gospel. Her faith is at least extremely bold.

Many Biblical experts have commented on how this woman’s flow of blood over twelve years would not only have been a physical health problem, but it would have put her in a state of ritual impurity. She would have been considered an outcast in Israel’s society of the time, so clearly, she has nothing to lose by desperately reaching for Jesus’ clothing so that he might heal her. But one commentator I read, more than pointing to the ritual impurity and social ostracism the woman’s hemorrhaging would have brought her, focuses on Jesus first address to her, as “Daughter.”

In Israel in Jesus’ time and well before then, “daughter” not only represented one person but was a metaphor for all of the people of Israel, especially the poor, sinners or, for whatever reason, outcast or exiled. Many times, the Old Testament prophets address Israel’s people as “daughter Jerusalem” or “daughter Zion” when they want to console and strengthen the people, or call them back from exile to their homeland. On the one hand, the woman with the hemorrhage in today’s Gospel could represent the people of Israel as a whole, especially the majority who were poor and many who were outcast, but who still lived with bold hope and faith that God would intervene in their favour. On the other hand, the synagogue official Jairus represents Israel’s elites, who needed to be challenged in a different way than the poor and outcast to live lives of bold hope and faith that were shown by acts of justice, mercy, and generosity.

Jesus’ last command to Jairus and his household is to give his daughter “something to eat.” I wonder if Jairus, in a way, represents us, to the extent that we have something to offer from what God has given us, especially to anybody who is poor, sick, outcast, or even “at the point of death.” The miracle is by God’s grace: “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease”; “Talitha cum… Little girl, get up”! But God entrusts us to receive God’s grace with hope and faith, as well as we are able, and then to communicate that saving grace to the world as generously as we have received it. “Give her”—give this world—“something to eat,” something that will nourish, sustain, and save!

“Sure and certain hope,” boldness in faith, are processes more than they are a destination. Each in their own way, the woman with the hemorrhage who touched Jesus’ clothes, Jairus who pleaded (with some boldness in his own right) for Jesus to heal his daughter, and each of us have the faith and hope in us that we need to receive God’s grace and to nourish the world with it. We may not (or maybe only rarely) feel that our faith; our hope in God is anything close to “sure and certain.”

In this case, “sure and certain hope” becomes not a statement about where we are, but our prayer for the process; our pilgrimage of faith: “God, make our faith; our hope in you ever more ‘sure and certain.’ Help us to overcome all fear and unbelief, to be generous with any gifts and blessings we have received. Give us the boldness of the woman who touched your clothes and was healed. Like Jairus, may we be sent forth to nourish a world you will to be raised up and saved. You did not make death, but have ‘made us for incorruption’; for eternal life. May we live to praise and ‘extol you, Lord, for you have raised [us] up.’”

Homily for Sunday, 11 August 2019

Readings of the day: Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

Have any of us ever delayed in accomplishing a task or making a decision? What was the reason for the delay? Did we delay because of fear or insecurity in acting or deciding to act? Have we ever been afraid of how somebody might judge us for an action or decision, and so delayed acting or deciding on something important? Have we ever feared a loss of control over a situation, or maybe a relationship, and so have delayed in acting or deciding something?

Have we ever had good reason to delay an action or decision? Good reasons for delaying an action or key decision might be that we have needed to take time to consult others who have expertise in the kind of action or decision we are making, or who may be affected by the action or decision we make. We might want to delay sending that biting e-mail or social media post when we are frustrated or angry. There can be good reasons to delay important actions or decisions.

But our readings today tend to favour people who decide or act with the most conviction and with minimal delay. The Book of Wisdom today takes us back to “the night of the deliverance [of the people of Israel] from Egypt.” These Israelites were, in many ways, ready to return home, led by Moses to Israel already by the time the LORD called them to leave Egypt. Wisdom says that this “night of deliverance was made known beforehand to our ancestors” and that “the deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies were expected by [God’s] people.”

The reading we hear today from the Letter to the Hebrews takes our memory back even farther than Wisdom, to the time of Abraham and Sarah. Hebrews praises the faith of Abraham and Sarah; that when Abraham and Sarah were called by God to act “by faith,” they did so decisively. “By faith Abraham obeyed” God when God called him and Sarah “to set out for a place… not knowing where he was going… By faith he stayed for a time” in this place. This was “a land [Abraham] had been promised” by God, but only as a stopover point on their way to a more permanent homeland. “By faith Sarah… received power to conceive” and bore a son, Isaac. From Isaac, as a reward for their faith Abraham and Sarah received the promise of descendants. But even these descendants, Hebrews says, would not see for many generations the fullness of God’s reward for their faith: The resurrection from the dead we as Christians believe is made fully possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Still, from at least the time of Abraham and Sarah, people have been acting “by faith”; decisively and with conviction that God has promised them (and promised us) eternal life; a permanent homeland in heaven with God. We hear from Hebrews that these long-ago generations, and every generation since, has had one fundamental longing in common that has driven us to act with faith; with conviction; without delay: We long for heaven. We, like our ancestors in faith, “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” Hebrews says.

Like the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus’ two parables we hear today in Luke’s Gospel, those of the Waiting Servants and the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants, also favour people who are ready; who act with decisive and faithful conviction. Jesus’ parables urge us to be ready to encounter God, “the master” of his parables. Jesus’ parables are full of strong, decisive action verbs: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet… You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Luke’s Gospel was probably written fifty or so years after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. By that time, the faith of Luke’s Christian community, a generation or two removed from those who had known Jesus personally, had become a bit slack. Jesus had promised to return at the end of time. And, well, the end of time had yet to happen, so writers like Luke, leaders of their early Christian communities, had to rally the people, to keep their faith ready and active. If we are able to understand how people in Luke’s time may have allowed their faith to become a bit slack, not as ready for Jesus’ return as they had once been, can we not understand how this may be an even greater challenge today, more than two thousand years after Jesus walked this earth?

We “must also be ready”: This invitation to faith; to convicted decisions and actions oriented toward our desired goal, heaven, is just as timely now for us as it was in the time of Luke’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel reminds me of an experience when I was about twelve years old and visiting my father in Montreal. Dad had been in Montreal, away from home for a year, on a course needed to begin his career in meteorology. One day, like most days Dad was on his meteorology course, he arrived home, exhausted from a long day’s studies, and set his clipboard on the end table in his apartment. I was constantly fascinated by the complicated math formulas that would fill the pages in Dad’s clipboard, so I would look in awe at Dad’s clipboard when he set it down on the end table. This one day must have been especially exhausting for Dad because, when I looked at his clipboard, thinking I would see some awesomely complicated math formulas, the page was completely filled with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”… written in capital letters!

“Stay awake”… “You must also be ready.” I doubt that, on that day, Dad was anticipating the immediate return of Jesus, although the swift arrival of the end of time then might have relieved Dad’s exhaustion and boredom in that class. I may just now have given anybody here who is a student an idea for when we are bored or tired in class: Fill a sheet of paper with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”…

Whether we are simply trying to ward off exhaustion or boredom, or (at least I hope and I believe that, ultimately, we are as Christians) faithfully anticipating the promised return of Christ at the end of time, the message is the same: We “must also be ready… Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return.” “Stay awake”!

But to heed this call to action; to alertness to the presence of the Lord even now among us; to await heaven faithfully; to orient our decisions and actions with conviction toward the eternal life with God we desire can be easier said than done. Do we not often experience situations in our lives when it is best to delay: To “sleep on” or, better yet, give ourselves time to pray over a key decision or important message we need to communicate? In these kinds of moments, our delay in acting or deciding something important is anything but disobedience to the call of God’s Word today to faithful action; alertness; convicted orientation of our decisions and actions toward heaven. On the contrary.

And our discernment of when it is better to delay, especially prayerfully, a key action or decision, or when it is better to act or decide immediately and decisively, is often difficult. From our hearing today of Wisdom, Hebrews, and Luke, might it seem to us that it was all too easy for the people of Israel to leave Egypt under Moses; for Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants, and for the people to whom Jesus addressed his parables in Luke’s Gospel to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and not to delay unreasonably? We know from the rest of the Bible that obedience to this urgent call from God was often difficult for all these people.

It is and will always be difficult for us, too, to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and to orient our actions and decisions toward our ultimate heavenly goal. This takes a commitment on our part to depend on God; to prioritize God and our relationship with God in our prayer and our worship as a community of faith above all else. In this way, we will remain faithfully and decisively alert to how God calls us to act in the concrete situations of our lives. We will be like the people of Israel whom Wisdom describes; like Abraham and Sarah; like those who “seek an unfailing treasure in heaven,” who are “dressed for action” with our “lamps lit”; like those who are constantly alert for the Lord’s final return for our salvation. We will be the people who “Stay awake”…