Homily for Tuesday, 17 December 2013– Ferial

Tuesday of the 3rd week in Advent

Readings of the day: Genesis 49:2, 8-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 3-4ab, 7=8, 17; Matthew 1:1-17

Have any of you ever worked out your family’s genealogy, or been interested in doing so?

This past weekend, one of the “Pickles” comics in Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle newspaper was about genealogy. The grandson walks in on his grandfather, who is at his computer working on his genealogy. “What’s up, Grandpa?” the boy asks.

Grandpa replies, “I’m doing my genealogy. Do you know what genealogy is? A word that ends with ‒alogy means the study of something.”

“The study of Jeannie?” the grandson wonders. “Does Grandma know you’re studying Jeannie?”

The Jewish people at and before Jesus’ time kept genealogies just as many of us do today. We hear an example of such a genealogy in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew. However, unlike our genealogies, the genealogies of Biblical times were not primarily historical records of generations. Instead, they served to make a point about who God is and how God has acted in our favor in history.

Matthew’s Gospel begins with just this kind of genealogy, not for the purpose of historical accuracy but to show how God can, did, and does bring order to our often chaotic human situations. From Abraham to Jesus, Matthew lists three sets of fourteen generations; three by two by seven. These numbers in the Bible signify supreme orderliness.

On closer scrutiny, though, God’s orderliness of three by two by seven involves much chaos by Matthew’s own account. The second set of fourteen generations extends from David through the Babylonian exile, the most chaotic period of early Israel’s history during which the royal line of Israel collapsed entirely. But God brings order even to this chaos.

Then Matthew includes five women, rarely included in Biblical genealogies, in his list of names.  These are not just any women, but women we would least expect to be involved in God’s plan to bring us a Savior. We hear of Tamar who, in the Book of Genesis, tricks her father Judah into thinking that she is a prostitute; Rahab who actually was a prostitute; Ruth the foreigner (Moabite) who somehow figures in an Israelite genealogy; Bathsheba the illicit wife of King David; and Mary the virgin.

God chose some strange and sometimes downright disreputable characters to bring about our Savior, Jesus Christ!

If, then, your genealogy includes some strange people; the disreputable; those about whom we prefer not to speak, let us remember that this was Jesus’ genealogy, too. Out of human chaos comes God’s order; God’s salvation. Because God so loves us, he has given us his only Son to live as one of us amid our chaos; to redeem us; to save us.

Homily for Tuesday, 10 December 2013– Ferial

Tuesday of the 2nd week in Advent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 96:1-2, 3, 10ac, 11-12, 13; Matthew 18:12-14

“What is your opinion?” Jesus asks his disciples at the beginning of today’s Gospel: If one sheep strays from the flock, would the shepherd not leave the ninety-nine sheep that did not stray to search for the one lost sheep?

I do not know how each of you would answer Jesus’ question, but my inclination is that no shepherd in his right mind would leave ninety-nine sheep vulnerable to the elements and to predator attack to search for one stray sheep!

Of course, Jesus’ rhetorical questions are meant to surprise us, as they were meant to surprise Jesus’ earliest disciples, as to the depth of God’s love and mercy for us.

Isaiah also uses surprise and the image of a shepherd to describe how much God loves us and desires that none of us be lost; that we all be welcomed; that we all be one. Isaiah writes in the midst of Israel’s exile and destruction. Jerusalem’s temple had been destroyed; its elites deported to Babylon. And yet Jerusalem, or Zion, was to be God’s “herald of good tidings.” Jerusalem was to proclaim the love and mercy of God.

Today, to proclaim the love and mercy of God continues to be our mission, even as we are all in need of this divine love and mercy ourselves. How do we accomplish our mission as heralds of the love and mercy of God? Shortly after his election as pope last March, Pope Francis called upon us as Christians to smell like the sheep, not to hide from our responsibility to seek out the lost; the outcasts; those who have been ostracized for whatever reason in our world and from our Church.

If we go out to smell like the sheep; if we go out intent upon even a small daily act of kindness or mercy, to each according to her or his capabilities; if we go out seeking to bring back the lost; the outcast; the sinner, we will have proclaimed God’s own love and mercy well. We will have lived the memory of our Good Shepherd who searches out and brings back the one lost member of the flock over the ninety-nine who have not strayed.

We will have lived the memory of this season of Advent, and preparation for Christmas, of the baby who as the supreme act of God’s love and mercy first came to us in a lowly manger. How is this for smelling like the sheep?

Homily for Sunday, 8 December 2013

2nd Sunday in Advent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3:1-12

Advent is a time of joyful and hopeful waiting for the return of Our Lord Jesus Christ in glory, even as we prepare to celebrate his first coming in human form two thousand years ago. Every time we profess together our belief in “the life of the world to come,” when we pray the Creed, I think of this profession of faith as a little Advent.

We believe “in the life of the world to come.” We believe that Christ the Messiah will return again at the end of time as he promised. But what kind of Messiah do we believe will return at the end of time? Perhaps, if we think and pray over this question, we might find that our answer to what kind of Messiah we are expecting has changed over time. But that our active waiting for the Messiah is changing us is most significant, as it was most significant for people we hear about in today’s readings.

Some aspects of how we understand the day of the Messiah’s return may not change much, or may not have changed much since Biblical times. We still believe and pray that the Messiah will bring fullness of justice and peace that is beyond our imagination in our current world. We pray as the psalmist did that “justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever.”

We believe, as Isaiah did, that the Messiah will be endowed with God’s own spirit: “A spirit of wisdom and understanding; a spirit of counsel and strength; a spirit of knowledge and fear of the LORD.” The Messiah will not judge by outward “appearances” or by “hearsay,” but with justice for all. This all-inclusive justice, though, will especially alleviate the suffering of the poor and the afflicted. Our hope for this kind of Messiah shines through our stained glass windows here at Christ the King Church, which are inscribed with Isaiah’s words that we have just heard.

We hope and believe in this kind of Messiah without much change in our belief over time. And yet in some respects what we believe and expect in our Messiah does change with time. Just last year, our community’s and our nation’s joyful preparation for Christmas was shattered by the tragedies of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and then the ambush killing of firefighters right here in Webster, New York. What kind of Messiah will it take to put an end to such violence? Will the day of the Lord be upon us anytime soon? Will such violence, death, tragedy, and suffering worsen before the Messiah returns, or can there somehow be a gradual alleviation of these human experiences before the final day of the Lord?

Changes in how we conceive of the return of our Messiah are appropriate, as are our questions of how and when our Messiah’s return might actually take place. And yet, in light of today’s readings from the Word of God, we are being called to change to meet our Messiah, however and whenever our Messiah’s return occurs.

Our question, then, is not primarily when the Messiah will return or what the return of the Messiah may look like. Our question is primarily this: How are we being called to change, and how are we being changed already through our awaiting of the Messiah’s return?

John the Baptist speaks of the urgency of this call to change: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The kingdom of heaven is not a far-off reality, but is here now. The “voice crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths’”‒ the voice of John the Baptist and of the prophet Isaiah before him‒ is now our voice. God’s grace and invitation to repent is now ours. The gifts of God’s spirit that Isaiah says will be associated with the coming Messiah are now ours. We are being changed by this divine gift into a people of “wisdom and understanding… counsel and strength… knowledge and fear of the LORD.”

How do we show, then, that we are a people of these gifts of the Holy Spirit; a people invited to change; a people already being changed by God’s grace?

When we think of change or repentance, many of us often think first of the sacrament of reconciliation. Celebration of this sacrament is an excellent first step in answering this vocation to change and to give thanks that we are a people being changed, especially if you have not encountered God in reconciliation in some time.

But there is more to showing that we are being changed than the initial encounter with God in reconciliation and the other sacraments. Our calling to change entails bringing this change to the world. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul proposes practical ways in which we can bring this change to the world; ways in which we can show that we are a people of change; a people of God’s grace.

St. Paul prays that “the God of endurance and encouragement” might “grant [us] to think in harmony with one another in keeping with Christ Jesus.” Then he urges us, “Welcome one another, as Christ welcomed you.” When we think and act in harmony as Christians; when we build one another up as one community; one parish; when we endure in faith, come trial or prosperity; when we encourage those in special need of our encouragement and kindness to keep up or to return to their faith; when we welcome one another warmly, especially those who are marginalized in our Church and in our world, we act as Christ acted.  We act as the people of God’s grace; the people being changed by the Advent of God’s kingdom; the people endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit; the people not only passively but actively anticipating the return of the Messiah and “the life of the world to come.”

While our concept of the return of the Messiah may change over time, since we cannot conceive with certainty of how or when this will take place, that we are invited to change‒ to repent‒ that we are being changed by our Advent waiting for the Messiah is most significant. To God’s glory and for our salvation, this change that God is already working in us and will complete at the end of time is drawing us toward “the life of the world to come.”

Homily for Friday, 6 December 2013– Memorial of St. Nicholas

Friday of the 1st week in Advent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 29:17-24; Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14; Matthew 9:27-31

This season of Advent is especially about waiting for and trusting in the Lord, but have anyone here ever found this trusting in and waiting for God difficult?

Maintaining one’s faith and trust in God is challenging when we experience God as most distant; when we experience declining health or disability; when we experience or know others who experience grinding poverty or unemployment; when we experience a kind of spiritual darkness or desert in which our prayer gives us no immediate indication of how God is acting in our lives or how we are called to act to please God.

Today’s readings hearken back to situations of deep despair, when it was most difficult in the experiences of Biblical times to have faith and trust in God. And yet precisely from the depths of despair, the “doom and darkness” of which our first reading from Isaiah speaks, we are invited to trust that God is working in the favour of the most afflicted: “The lowly will ever find joy in the LORD, and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.”

These “lowly” and “poor” yet faithful people are represented by the two blind men in today’s Gospel reading. Indeed, Jesus allows them to see again, but even before this miraculous moment they see with the eyes of faith and trust in God. Only so is Jesus able to say, “Let it be done for you according to your faith.”

How great it would be for us to see with the eyes of such deep faith! But most if not all of us have experienced times when having faith and trusting in God are difficult. For these times, I share with you a prayer from the Trappist monk Thomas Merton that I find particularly beautiful. Thomas Merton prays, and so I invite us to pray together, for strength of faith and trust in our loving God:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.  

Homily for Tuesday, 3 December 2013– Memorial of St. Francis Xavier

Tuesday of the 1st week in Advent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17; Luke 10:21-24

If I were to ask each of us to draw on a sheet of paper the first images that come to your mind when you hear “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit,” how many of us would have difficulty with this exercise?

Each year while I was in the seminary in Toronto, I would assign this same exercise to teenagers I was preparing for the sacrament of confirmation. Many of them would draw an old man in the sky, a young man on land, and a bird. There would be bonus points for representing the Holy Spirit with wind or fire, or something more creative… One year, one confirmation candidate, completely mystified by this question, presented me with a blank page. This, I said to him and the class, was the best answer I had ever seen!

God as Trinity, and especially the Holy Spirit, defies imagery. We may try to capture the Spirit of the Lord in images: a bird; lines and clouds indicating wind; fire; the beautiful inscriptions on our stained glass windows of the gifts of the Holy Spirit of which we hear in our first reading today from Isaiah, but all these are approximations of who God the Spirit is. We might as well represent God’s Spirit with a blank page.

Yet, even though we cannot represent the Spirit with mere images, we know and perceive the Holy Spirit among us here in this very celebration. When we are gathered as a worshipping community, the Holy Spirit is present. When we await with joy the return of Our Lord Jesus Christ in our celebration of Advent, the Holy Spirit is present. When we hear the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is present. When we call the Spirit upon our gifts of bread and wine on the altar, the Holy Spirit is present. When we leave here and bring the Gospel message into our world though our actions and words, the Holy Spirit is present.

Today’s Gospel reading especially emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s presence in the present. We are invited after Jesus Christ to rejoice “in the Holy Spirit.” We rejoice not in a Spirit who can be reduced to an image, but in the Holy Spirit whose wisdom is first revealed to “the childlike”; those most open to and trusting in this divine wisdom.

We who perceive, confess, and bring this gift of the Holy Spirit into our present world with joy will be blessed as were Jesus’ first disciples. In this time of Advent, then; in this time of anticipation of Christ’s coming again in glory, may we be blessed in the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ: “Blessed are you who see what you see.” Blessed are we who have the gift of the Holy Spirit among us in the present.