Homily for Sunday, 8 March 2015

3rd Sunday in Lent

Readings of the day: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

Here is maybe a difficult question: In whom do we trust? To any of us who have a U.S. bill or coin on hand, I ask us to take it out and look at it. What do our bills and coins say on them about who we trust? They all say, “In God we trust.” This makes our task of knowing in whom we trust easier, right? If our money says, “In God we trust,” it must be true.

If only our answer the question, “In whom do we trust?” were that easy! And even if we are able to answer this question with “God,” are we not then invited to answer some even more difficult questions: In what kind of God do we trust? How do we understand and experience God, so that we are able to trust in God? The trouble, for me at least, is that our readings only help us with these questions if we are attentive to one common way, in our readings today and in all of Scripture, in which God makes God’s self known to us. And what is this common way in Scripture; in our readings today in which God makes God’s self known to us? What is the one consistent trait of God in which we are invited to trust? Stay tuned…

But if we are not so attentive to the one consistent way in which God reveals God’s self to us does God not seem woefully inconsistent to us, especially in the readings we have just heard?

Perhaps when we first hear the Ten Commandments that God gives to Moses on Mount Sinai in our first reading, from Exodus, might our first impression of God be that he is somewhat mean? God promises “mercy down to the thousandth generation” to those who obey his Commandments, but this is only after promising “punishment… down to the third and fourth generations” on those who disobey God’s Commandments. If God were really a God of mercy and kindness, why would God threaten to curse those who disobeyed him at all? It would seem that we cannot trust God to be merciful and kind all the time, depending on how we hear these Ten Commandments.

Our first reading also raises the problem of the anonymous God. The “Big Guy in the Sky” shouts down commands at us from a pillar of fire, just like the one in the Cecil B. DeMille movie, “The Ten Commandments.” God does not seem very friendly. He does not even introduce himself to us by name. God just begins by telling us to do a few things and not to do many other things: “I Am… I Am… I Am the LORD, thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” God is so anonymous; so distant that whoever played God’s voice in “The Ten Commandments” was not included in the credits at the end of the film.

I must admit that God sounded awesome back in 1956. To some of us, Charlton Heston as Moses looked almost as awesome as God back then! And those divine sound effects and fire were well ahead of their time. But, in the Biblical version of the Ten Commandments if not in the movie version, God still may seem distant; anonymous. God shouts forth the Ten Commandments, engraving them with his fingers on stone tablets (I wish my fingers were that strong). God blesses all who obey his Commandments, but curses all who disobey them, all from a distance, as the “I Am” hidden behind a pillar of fire.

I would have difficulty trusting in this kind of God. Would you? I would have difficulty with a God who shouts at us, let alone when people shout at one another. When I was a child, one of my favorite comic strips in the newspaper was called “One Big Happy.” This comic strip centers on six-year-old Ruthie and her eight-year-old brother, Joe. One day, as Ruthie and Joe are arguing, Ruthie says, “Stop shouting at me, Joey! Shouting is against the Ten Commandments”! Joe asks, “Which one”? Ruthie responds, “All of them! They all begin with ‘Thou shout not…”!

And yet if God shouts out the Ten Commandments, God’s shouting, in the person of Jesus, is even worse in our Gospel reading today. God is no longer anonymous and distant as in giving Moses the Ten Commandments. In Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple in John’s Gospel, God is just plain angry: “Take these out of here,” Jesus shouts at the people selling doves near the Temple as he overturns the money changers’ tables, “and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” I cannot say this for sure, because John’s Gospel does not say so, but I wonder how important a role Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple played in his death. At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in John, during his first visit to Jerusalem, Jesus becomes violently angry in the Jewish faith’s holiest place, the Temple. Would the cleansing of the Temple, followed by Jesus’ claims in John’s Gospel especially to be God, “I Am,” so offended the people that they would demand that Pontius Pilate have him crucified? Did the people of Israel; the religious leaders in particular, become so unable to trust a God who could be so angry with them that they decided to kill him?

The Cross of Jesus Christ presents us with yet another challenge in knowing and trusting in God. This challenge is at the heart of our second reading, from St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians. St. Paul says that “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified.” We also hear, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” Is this not a strange argument to trust in God? Who would trust in a God who is foolish; who is weak; who would submit himself to die a shameful death on a cross? Would St. Paul have been very successful at first in convincing the Corinthians, seekers of “signs” and of “wisdom”; Jews and Greeks alike in his audience, to trust in this kind of God? Somehow I doubt it. But eventually our Christian faith gained enough believers; enough people to trust in God even in stubborn Corinth, and around the world.

Why is this? Again, what is the one consistent trait of God in which we are invited to trust? What is the trait of God in which two thousand years of Christians and our sisters and brothers in the faith of Abraham, the Jews and Muslims, have come to trust? This trait is not that God will only bother us when God wants to shout laws at us, is angry at us, or when we want something from God. This trait is not that God is, in a strange way, so foolish and weak that he is actually wise and strong. These arguments to trust in God are not very persuasive, I do not think.

So why would we trust in God? I think we trust in God the more we understand and experience God as the God who wants a relationship with us; who invites us to strengthen our relationships with one another. God does not give us the Ten Commandments just to be mean to us while retreating into the distance behind a pillar of fire. No, God gives us the Ten Commandments to govern and strengthen right relationships with God and with one another.

Jesus did not clear the money changers and their goods out of the Temple just because he felt especially angry that day. No, Jesus invites us to put aside barriers to right relationship with God and with one another: Wealth when it does not serve people in need but selfishly feeds a “marketplace” mentality, even among people of faith.

And St. Paul speaks to us of a God who so desires relationship with us that, in Christ, he willed to die for us; to save us. And so we, too, “proclaim Christ crucified.” Not only on our coins, but in our hearts and on our lips, we as Christians can and do proclaim, “In God we trust.”  

Homily for Saturday, 7 March 2015– Commemoration of Sts. Felicity and Perpetua

Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent

Readings of the day: Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Has anybody here ever experienced making a bad choice, possibly even sinning, when somebody else, especially somebody in authority (a parent or grandparent; a teacher; your employer perhaps) knew you were about to make a bad choice but did not warn you not to make this choice?

What about the “Prodigal” Son and his father in today’s Gospel reading? What was the father’s first reaction to his younger son’s demand for his share of his estate? If I were the father in our Gospel reading, I may have thought: “This will not end well. My son will spend his share of my inheritance unwisely, will find himself in need, and then come home asking for a handout.”

As the eldest child of my family, I may have thought: “The eldest is usually the obedient, responsible type. The youngest is stereotypically playful and causes all the trouble. To give the youngest son a large share of the estate is probably not a good idea. I should warn him not to spend all his money irresponsibly.” In reality, I have made (and grown from) my share of irresponsible choices. My brother Eric, meanwhile, gives me many reasons to rejoice in him. He is, like the stereotypical youngest sibling, easygoing, funny, and even playful. But he is also very responsible and hard-working.

In our Gospel reading today, the father does not warn his younger son away from his irresponsible actions, as I probably would have were I in the father’s place. This father gives his younger son his share of the inheritance and watches him “set off to a distant country.” The father respects his son’s free will.

What sadness the father must have felt for his younger son! The years pass. The father worries about his son’s well-being: “It is not like my son to give no sign of life: No letters home; not even for birthdays and important holidays. Telephones, text messaging, and Facebook have not been invented yet for faster communication. Should I file a missing person report? I suppose I will need to wait… And wait…”

One day, the father sees a small shadow on the horizon. It gets bigger; closer. “It is my son! I thought he was dead; he was gone so long! Throw a party for him!”

“Wait a minute,” the responsible eldest son says to his father, “‘All these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders,’ and you want to put on this great feast for that wild little brother of mine”?

“My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’” This is our God to us. God does not warn us when we are about to behave irresponsibly. No, God respects our free will, which is itself God’s gift to us; our share of God’s own free will.

And when we become lost by our irresponsible actions; distant from God because of sin, our Prodigal Father waits for us, ready to put on a great feast when we return home.

Homily for Thursday, 5 March 2015‒ Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 5:7-10; Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6; Luke 16:19-31

How many of us have heard sayings like, “That’s just the way it is”? How many of us wonder whether it is possible for us, alone, to change entrenched individual and, with even more difficulty, social habits that draw us away from right relationship with God? How many of us, despairing of being able to change these habits, have ever been tempted to give up trying; to accept that this is “just the way it is”?

Today’s Gospel story of the Rich Man and Lazarus from Luke reminds me of a song I have loved since I was a boy, “The Way It Is” by Bruce Hornsby and the Range.[1] “The Way It Is” speaks about the American Civil Rights movement, its effects now, and social issues still to be resolved. The final chorus of “The Way It Is” features the line, “That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change. Ah, but don’t you believe them.”

The message in Luke’s story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is similar. The “rich man” is “dressed in purple garments and fine linen and [dines] sumptuously each day.” The poor Lazarus is “covered with sores” and “would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.”

“That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change.” Jesus says little about the moral character of the rich man or of Lazarus. We hear that Lazarus ends up at “the bosom of Abraham” while the rich man ends up “in the netherworld… in torment.” So we assume (not wrongly) that Lazarus, unlike the rich man, pleased God enough to be in heaven. But, from what we hear in our Gospel reading, Lazarus does nothing exceptionally good, and the rich man does nothing exceptionally evil.

And yet the rich man has an opportunity in this life: Use his wealth to lift even one person, Lazarus, out of misery, or despair of his ability by himself to change the lot of Lazarus and so many like him. Can we imagine this line on the tongue of the rich man: “That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change”?

“Ah, but don’t you believe them.” Who is Lazarus today? Will we ask if he is African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, First Nations, or Asian; if he is a U.S. citizen or at least has valid immigration or refugee papers; if he is among the working poor, or at least trying to find work, or on disability? Will we give up, faced with the number of people in need not far from us: “That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change”? Or will we go forth from this place, God’s house, and perform one act of mercy; of kindness toward one person in need, without asking first how this person came to be in need?

God, I think, does not ask us individually to solve every need in the world. But God invites us not to be indifferent or to give up: “That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change.”

“Ah, but don’t you believe them.”

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[1] Bruce Hornsby and the Range, “The Way It is,” Rumbo Recorders, Los Angeles, 1986.

Homily for Tuesday, 3 March 2015‒ Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 1:10, 16-20; Psalm 50:8-9, 16bc-17, 21, 23; Matthew 23:1-12

Is there any way to soften the harshness of our readings today? Perhaps this is the wrong question to ask. And yet today our Liturgy of the Word presents us with two of the most scathing criticisms of people supposedly of faith, of religious authorities especially, in the entire Bible. Are not our readings today difficult for us to hear? They are shocking and also challenging to me as a priest!

Our first reading, from Isaiah, is a tale of two nations, or the same nation present and future. The nation present, Israel of Isaiah’s time, is prosperous but has forgotten the prime importance of justice toward the least well-off: the poor, “the wronged… the orphan” and “the widow.” Could I say that, without trivializing the problem of addiction and substance abuse in our own society, the people of Israel of Isaiah’s time had become addicted to injustice? Isaiah forewarns his people that they, like an addict, will hit rock bottom if they persist in evil, oppression, and injustice toward those most in need.

But Isaiah’s message is unsuccessful at first; Israel hits rock bottom. Only then will the people, the nation future, possibly be willing to listen to Isaiah. And so we hear the second half of our reading: “Come now; let us set things right.” Sins that were once “like scarlet” and “crimson red” may now become “white as snow” or “as wool.” God waits with open arms and heart of mercy to lift the sinner, the addict to evil habits, oppression, and injustice, up from rock bottom. Do we accept God’s mercy when we have sinned; misused our prosperity; not acted justly toward the least well off: The working poor; the migrant or refugee; the unemployed; the homeless person? Or do we allow ourselves to hit rock bottom? Do we allow “the sword to consume” us?

And Jesus is just as scathing as Isaiah before him toward “the scribes and the Pharisees” of his time. They have become prosperous and proud of their teaching position, seated “on the chair of Moses”; guardians of religious law. They have taken fancy titles, “places of honor at banquets” and in places of worship. They wear garments that draw attention to themselves instead of toward God as these “tassels” and “phylacteries,” which contained short passages of Scripture for prayer and meditation, were intended. The “scribes and Pharisees” will not help others to observe the religious law, and in fact make the law more difficult for all to observe.

Are not the same temptations present in our world and even in our Church? I am challenged to pray constantly that I do not succumb to any prestige of the priesthood, of ordained leadership in our Church.

I ask all of us: Pray for me. I ask us to pray for our society’s leaders; for one another. Prosperity, prestige, wealth, power: These are not in and of themselves bad. But without recourse to God’s grace and mercy, these can pave the way to rock bottom; to addiction to injustice; to consumption by “the sword” in Isaiah’s words. With God’s grace and mercy, these can be used justly; rightly; to benefit especially those in most need.

Homily for Monday, 2 March 2015‒ Monday of the Second Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Daniel 9:4b-10; Psalm 79:8, 9, 11, 13; Luke 6:36-38

What is mercy? Have we heard it said, or even thought or said ourselves, that our world; our society perhaps especially, is losing a sense of sin? More importantly maybe, is our culture not lacking in a sense of mercy, both the mercy of God and in a taking to heart of our own calling to “be merciful”?

Our Gospel reading today from Luke renews for us this Christian calling, “Be merciful as your Father is merciful.” But then does not our Gospel reading confuse us with Jesus’ next words: “Stop judging and you will not be judged”? Has this prohibition of “judging” not too often been extended to reluctance in our society to hold one another accountable if need be; as an excuse for moral relativism in which we ought not to judge another’s actions or cultural tendencies as right or wrong at any cost? This kind of relativism is both morally and logically untenable. We make moral judgments all the time, I hope, as is right and human for us to do.

I only hope (and have confidence that at least most of us do) that we hold ourselves to the same moral standards, not more lenient or severe, as we hold other people. From time to time, I hear the symptoms of the evil twins of laxity, when some are too lenient with themselves (“Do I really need to pray to overcome this sin, or even confess it sacramentally?), and scrupulosity, when some are too harsh with themselves, thinking that almost all they do is sin.

Both laxity and scrupulosity are failures to recognize not so much sin as mercy. God is eternally merciful. Pope Francis says, “God never tires of forgiving us”; we sometimes “tire of asking God for forgiveness.” Let us not “tire of asking God” and one another “for forgiveness” as needed! But let us acknowledge God’s mercy and grace at work in most of our actions, even those that do not result in the good that we sincerely intend. After all, God did not create us as bad or sinful, but good; in God’s own image and likeness. To think otherwise is heresy. Even more, it is an illness from which I pray that those afflicted may be healed.

“Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.” I do not think that most of us, or most of our society, have a problem with condemning. We have a healthy aversion in our society, I think, to condemnation. And again, God is not a condemning God with a ledger up in heaven to keep score of our right and wrong actions, but a God of mercy; a God of forgiveness.

But do we not still hear, in dealing with people who are troublesome to us, “Kill them with kindness”? This phrase also deviates from Jesus’ invitation, “Be merciful.” Kill them with kindness? No! Give them life by our loving kindness; by our mercy that is God’s gift, to the point that forgiveness hurts us; is a cross for us; is “Spirit and life” for us!

“Give and gifts will be given to” us in abundance: Kindness; mercy… “Be merciful,” then, “as [our] Father is merciful.”