Homily for Sunday, 10 July 2016

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69:13, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

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

Mercy: Is there a word more popular among Catholics; among Christians today, especially the many of us who admire and attentively follow Pope Francis? Our pope has mercy built into his motto as a bishop, Miserando atque eligendo, which means roughly, “by having mercy and by choosing.” In an interview a few months after his election as pope, Francis showed his deep sense of God’s mercy as essential to his life and ministry: “I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon”; chosen by God’s mercy as the Bishop of Rome to lead our Church. Mercy is one of the most common words in Pope Francis’ writings; his speech; his homilies. In April 2015, when Pope Francis proclaimed this Jubilee Year of Mercy we will be celebrating until December, he spoke of mercy as “the beating heart of the Gospel.”

But, as often as we; as Pope Francis speaks of mercy, how well do we actually understand and live out mercy? Is mercy not still one of the most mysterious and even scary words, even to the most faithful Christian? Should it not be?

Today we encounter in Luke’s Gospel a lawyer, literally a scholar of the law. I am not about to make any cheap jokes here about lawyers. I have a few personal friends who are lawyers, and there may be lawyers among us here this morning. Besides, I do not really want to follow Jesus in nearly being thrown off a cliff (as he does near the beginning of his public ministry in this same Gospel of Luke; it was a tough first attempt at preaching for Jesus)! In fact, the lawyer in today’s Gospel reading gets a bad rap, undeservedly at least at first. His motives are right, I think, as he asks Jesus: “Teacher… What must I do to inherit eternal life”? Who among us here does not want eternal life? If anybody here does not, I might question why you are here.

But the lawyer’s question is only a starting point. It takes this question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” for Jesus to begin the process of conversion of this lawyer; of us, from experts of religious law to experts of mercy; into people fully able and willing to live out God’s gift of mercy. How, then, does Jesus begin the process of the lawyer’s conversion from expert of law to expert of mercy? Jesus begins by meeting the lawyer where he is; by asking him basic first year law school questions: “What is written in the law? What do you read there”?

And the brilliant lawyer passes the test with flying colours; he even gets all the available bonus marks! He quotes from the heart of the Jewish Law, from a prayer that all observant Jews pray morning and night to this day and that is in our Bible in the Books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “Hear, O Israel… You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

But then the poor lawyer gets scared. Jesus announces with joy to the lawyer that he has just aced the graduate-level law course that sends most every student cowering. “Great work”! Now, “do this and you will live.” Next up is Mercy 101, which will last the rest of your life, not in the class or courtroom but in practice. You will die, unsure of having passed Mercy 101 until you are raised up and received into heaven by God with mercy beyond the comprehension of the best of students and even of the experts.

The lawyer sputters with fear: “And who is my neighbour”? Jesus could and maybe should have failed the lawyer on the spot. Clearly he is not ready for Mercy 101. Instead, Jesus uses this ideal teaching moment; a “mercy moment,” to give us the story of the Good Samaritan.

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan, right? A man on the road “from Jerusalem to Jericho” is beaten and left “half dead.” A priest and then a Levite, people in a position to help the wounded man, instead cross over to “the other side” of the road and continue on their way. A Samaritan becomes the unlikely hero. I say unlikely because the Samaritans were the enemies; the greatest misfits in Israel in Jesus’ time: Too pagan to be Jewish and too Jewish to be pagan. And yet this Samaritan binds up the man’s wounds, cares for him, and then entrusts him to an innkeeper, promising to pay any extra expenses, until the man is healed.

We know the story of the Good Samaritan well. Or do we? What if I were to suggest that the story of the Good Samaritan is taking place here and now? I suggest this not only because in our world, in our nation, within our families, even within our Church there continue to be people excluded; laughingstocks; enemies, although this is, sadly, part of our story. We would not experience Orlando; Istanbul and Baghdad; St. Paul and Baton Rouge; Dallas; countless tragedies met with silence, were the dignity of all human life honoured regardless of race, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, wealth, age, occupation, whether we are born or unborn, and so on… We would not need to wait for unlikely heroes; the Good Samaritans of our time (among them let me propose Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini) to stand with the excluded; those, literally or figuratively, left “half-dead” on the roadside or worse, because there would be nobody excluded; no “other”; no enemy, but each of us a neighbour.

“Do this and you will live,” Jesus says to the lawyer; to us. “Who is my neighbour?” the lawyer asks and then answers his own question; our question: “The one who showed… mercy.”

Mercy: This reason we live, this “beating heart of the Gospel,” perhaps scares us. We cannot fully comprehend mercy before we experience it in heaven. Yet in this world we are given many tastes; many previews of this fullness of mercy. Our world itself, creation, is a work of God’s mercy. Our Church gives us Christ, mercy really present in our Eucharist under the appearance of bread and wine; mercy really present in her other sacraments; mercy really present in one another and waiting to be worked in our world.

Mercy is present; spoken of in the Word of God. Moses speaks today in Deuteronomy: Mercy, God’s greatest law and gift, is neither “too hard” for us nor “too far away”; neither confined to the distant heavens nor “beyond the sea” but “in [our mouths] and in [our hearts] for [us] to observe.” We plead with the Psalmist to our God of “steadfast love… According to your abundant mercy, turn to me.” For “those who love [God’s] name,” Mercy, “will live in it.”

And the great hymn from Colossians speaks of Christ, God’s greatest act of mercy yet, as the one in whom “all things hold together,” from God’s creation of the world of which Christ is “firstborn” to our “peace through the blood of his cross”; from act of mercy to act of mercy.

God’s mercy is so great as to be overwhelming; often scary. Yet we are called to imitate this mercy as neighbours; without exclusion. And who is our neighbour? Who are we but the ones who show mercy?

“Go and do likewise”… “Do this and [we] will live.”
    

Homily for Sunday, 6 September 2015

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37

“Ephphatha”! …“Be opened”!

How many of us remember our own baptism or have been to a baptism that we remember? Most of us here were probably baptized as infants and so do not remember our own baptism. But if anybody here has attended a child’s baptism recently, do you remember this strange but beautiful prayer over the ears and mouth of the newly-baptized child? We pray, touching the ears and mouth of the child: “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the mute speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father. Amen.”

This prayer is called the “ephphatha,” or “be opened” prayer. It is one of the oldest prayers of the Rite of Baptism of Children as we know it. The “ephphatha” in our Rite of Baptism is drawn from the Gospel reading we hear today, from Mark. We hear of Jesus’ encounter with “a deaf man who had a speech impediment.” Jesus takes this man “away from the crowd.” He puts “his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, [touches] his tongue.” Jesus says to the man in Aramaic, “ephphatha”‒ “Be opened”! The man is able to hear and speak again. The crowd is astonished: “He has done all things well,” they exclaim. And the people who witness Jesus’ healing give us the words we hear to this day at children’s baptisms: “He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

For me as a priest, at least some of the beauty of the “ephphatha” prayer at baptisms is not so much in the words of this prayer. But often at the moment I touch and pray over the child’s mouth, the baby will try to suck on my thumb. It is as if the baby, newly alive; baptized into Christ, is saying, “I’m opened, alright… And your thumb tastes way better than my pacifier”!

Is it not most beautiful that, from the moment of Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man; from the very moment of our baptism, we are called to “be opened”? And in what ways are we called by our baptism to “be opened”? What are some of our obstacles to being “opened”; to hearing and proclaiming the Word of God; the faith of Jesus Christ?

I ask you these questions. But in my two years here at St. Kateri, my diaconate and first year of priesthood, you have shown me; shown one another; shown our communities and our world in countless profound ways what it means to “be opened.” You show time and again by word and action what it means to live out the baptismal calling we have in common. The number of ministries and devotions here at St. Kateri is truly astounding. We have people here who visit and bring communion to the sick and homebound. We have people who accompany those who have lost loved ones; who help to prepare and assist at funerals. We have people who prepare the many aspects of our liturgies day after day; weekend after weekend. We have people who care for our young people; who prepare “care packages” for our college students; who are involved in Faith Formation and sacramental preparation. We support a lively parish formed from five parishes. We support St. Kateri School. We have the Ladies’ Guild, the Knights of Columbus, many other groups who build friendship; build social justice; build up the Kingdom of God. So many times I have entered one of our churches and seen a prayer group meeting here; a rosary or a novena being prayed there; somebody praying in private; in silence…

It is impossible for me to list all the ways in which we live here at St. Kateri by Jesus’ words: “Be opened.” If I have not named you here I certainly hold you in grateful prayer. I am blessed to be ordained a priest for you; for our universal Church; to have served here for these past two years. Yet my and my brother priests’ ordained priesthood exists to lead; to unite us in our common priestly, prophetic, and royal baptismal vocation. And if I may say this again, I believe we live this vocation very well here at St. Kateri. By ordination I am your priest; in baptism I am forever your brother in Christ.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, you are my great teachers in being “opened” as we are called in baptism. And yet we still may experience obstacles to fully living out our baptismal calling. What are these obstacles, and perhaps some remedies to what keeps us from being fully “opened”? One of the greatest obstacles we face to being opened, to hearing and proclaiming Christ, is fear. Isaiah speaks in our first reading to a people living in fear; people who were living in exile in the prophet Isaiah’s time. Isaiah says, “Be strong, fear not”!

What or whom might we fear? Do we fear speaking the truth; speaking for our faith in Christ, even if (as hopefully is the case) we speak and act with love? Perhaps we fear somebody with power over us. Perhaps we have experienced fear of those who disagree with us; those who are different from us. Perhaps we fear our own weakness; our own sin. Isaiah speaks to our fears the same words he once spoke to the people of Israel in exile in Babylon: “Be strong, fear not”! Here is your God. He comes with vindication. With divine recompense he comes to save you.” Isaiah’s prophecy of the deaf hearing, the lame leaping with joy; the tongue[s] of the mute singing is realized in Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man in our Gospel reading today.

Even more importantly, this prophecy is realized in us. In baptism we are called: “Be opened”! But there is another obstacle, related to fear, to our being “opened” to hearing and proclaiming Christ. This obstacle is undue “partiality”; exclusion of people or groups. St. James speaks in our second reading today of this kind of partiality in our churches; the temptation to give the rich places of honor while poor people, if they are present in our worship spaces at all, are sidelined and excluded: “‘Stand there’ or ‘Sit at my feet.’”

I do not see this kind of exclusion here at St. Kateri. Yet I invite us, in light of St. James’ words, to continue and to strengthen our effort to welcome those who are poor. I invite us not only to go out to our streets; to the House of Mercy; to Bethany House and the Catholic Worker to meet those who are poor and homeless but to take increasingly active steps to welcome the otherwise socially excluded into this worship space. In this way we make St. Kateri Parish not “our” space into which we allow a foreign group of people (“they” or “them”), but God’s space in which “they” become part of “us.” This takes a constant conversion of our hearts to be welcoming; a constant effort to “be opened.”

But if the horrific image this week of a drowned Syrian refugee boy on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea is any indication, our world presents us with many temptations against being “opened.” We hear cries from many countries to close borders; to limit the number of refugees and immigrants accepted; to build walls and prisons to keep the unwanted out. We hear attitudes, spoken or silent, shouted forth in their increasingly harmful effects on our society: Be closed to the right to life from conception! After all, some regard the unborn as mere commodities to be bought and sold. Be closed to those in need of social assistance! Be closed to racial integration! Be closed to the elderly; to the sick! Be closed to those who struggle to practice every teaching of the Church to my satisfaction! Be closed to reconciliation in our relationships; our families! Be closed to peace! Be closed to protecting the dignity of all creation! “Be closed”: This attitude is a direct countersign to the Gospel that calls to us, “Be opened”! And only death can result from being closed.

Our Gospel calls us to life. Christ’s Gospel; our Christian baptism calls us: “Be opened”! Isaiah’s prophecy of the deaf hearing; the mute speaking; the lame leaping; social need being met with justice and kindness; God’s “vindication” and “salvation” present and alive in our world is not something of the distant past. Isaiah’s prophecy was not only realized once, two thousand years ago when Jesus healed a deaf and mute man. This prophecy is being realized in us here and now, to the extent we live our Gospel; our baptismal calling: “Ephphatha! …Be opened!”