Welcome to CatholicPreacher! I use this page as a type of archive of my thoughts for my Sunday homily.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Got Good News?

Luke's gospel puts Jesus' declaring his mission at the beginning:

“He has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free . . . .”

Jesus proclaims good news, like Ezra standing before the people who have become disheartened at the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple after returning from captivity in Babylon. Ezra, the great priest who inspired the rebuilding of the Temple in fifty days after returning to Jerusalem from being held captive in Babylon, reads from the writings of Moses (probably Deuteronomy) as a way to energize a dis-spirited people returning from exile only to find their homeland in ruins.  From this and with Nehemiah's leadership, the Temple is rebuilt in an amazing act of the community like Americans experienced immediately after 9/11.  Rebuilding the Temple was a metaphor for rebuilding a relationship with God through their tradition; it was the proto-Good News of the gospels.

After a week contemplating (celebrating?) Christian unity, Paul's letter to the Corinthians strikes me as good news as well; so in today's readings we have Ezra proclaiming good news, Jesus proclaiming good news, and Paul writing to the church at Corinth of unity that, if taken to heart, is certainly good news for such a difficult group of relatively wealthy, first-century Christians.

Evangelization is ubiquitous these days in Christianity. With the Roman Catholic Church talking about the "new" evangelization as if it has discovered something quite different from the "old" evangelization, the idea of spreading the message of the gospel as good news is front and center for catholics of every denomination.  The reason why people don't react with overwhelming enthusiasm for the Gospel is that very often the promise of liberation, and of healing---two essential elements of Jesus' ministry come at the cost of realizing you are not well (or at the very least, not fit), and you are essentially a slave to sin.  Want the good news now?  Some have characterized this realization as the "good news-bad news" of the Gospel.  While I believe that humility is essential for spiritual growth, the big mistake of much evangelization is that the Gospel is presented as a tool of humiliation rather than healing. There are essentially two models of evangelization I've witnessed in my life:

1. Evangelization as Persuasion to Join
2. Evangelization as Acts of Selfless, Healing Love

Jack London in his non-fiction work "People of the Abyss" wanders the streets of early 20th century London to gain insight into the plight of the poor.  He finds himself hungry and drawn to seek help from a Christian organization that provides food at the cost of standing for what seems like an eternity listening to a sermon, the "Good News" while hunger pangs persist, before being fed.  Essentially, the idea behind this rather misguided attempt at proclaiming Good News is that one must be fed spiritually before being fed physically; classical Christian fail.  Good News must be good news.

God becoming human is at the heart of all Christian understandings of true evangelization.  Because of this central truth, what we, purveyors of Good News must accept, is that meeting the immediate need of the one who seeks our help is the Good News of the Gospel.  Opening soup kitchens to increase church membership, planting tracts with a handy three-step process of "accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior" are all variations of meeting people where you would like them to be rather than where they are. The power of Christ to change lives is betrayed when we expect conversion as the end product of our help.  The old adage "let go and let God" is appropriate in these circumstances.  As evangelical Christians (there really are no other types, I suppose), the Good News is that true salvation does not lie at the conclusion of a tract, a testimonial, or a creed; it lies at the bottom of a bowl of soup.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time


And Now for Something Completely Different . . .



“Everyone serves the good wine first,
and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one;
but you have kept the good wine until now.”


One thing that strikes me as odd in this parable, aside from turning water into wine, is that Jesus associates new wine with superior wine.  Everyone knows newer wine is inferior to wine that has had time to ferment and age.  Why, then, is this “new wine” Jesus has transformed from water superior?
The account is that the head server tasted the newly created wine, not knowing its source, and declared it superior.  Had he been told this wine was just created a few minutes ago, he would have probably not even tasted it, confident in its inferior quality.
As Jesus’ first recorded “sign”, which is the terminology John uses rather than “miracle”, its significance lies in its link to Jesus’ passion.  In verse 4, Jesus responds rather strangely to Mary’s revelation that the wine has run out with “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”  Jesus implies that his only concern is with the fulfillment of his mission, and the miracle becomes a sign of this mission of transformation.
At the level of symbol, the water—the fundamental association being humanity—is transformed into wine, the symbol associated with divinity.  In the Mass, the priest says as he pours the water into the wine: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity”.  This symbolic act is charged with Christ’s mission to “divinize” humanity, to use an Orthodox term.  The forming of God into our human existence wasn’t so much the humanization of God, but the divinization of humanity; God didn’t need to experience us, we needed to experience God.
This “in-breaking” of divinity into our world as God who martyred Himself for His people out of love is the great sign and pathway to our divinization.  If we wish to follow Christ, we must be caught up in a life of sacrificial love.  In a world full of martyrs who blow themselves up for a political cause masked by pseudo-religion hobbled by hatred, God’s martyrdom was borne of perfect love that sought not the destruction of sinners but their salvation.
The “old wine” now becomes the wine of hatred of the other--- whatever the label: sinner, infidel, terrorist.  The “new wine” is the transformation of this self-seeking love of tribe, of country, of religion over that of neighbor to be transformed into a love that seeks out the other in an act of selfless love.  Jesus’ miracle at the wedding resonates with Isaiah’s imagery of God’s people as the bride, God as supreme lover---the promise that “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.”  
            The great revelation of the Gospel is the good news that God’s love is the counter-intuitive truth that the new wine is superior to the old.  Behold, God is doing something new!


Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

 Gifted with Spirit
Luke's account of Jesus' baptism de-emphasizes John's role.  The gospel records that "Jesus had been baptized", but it does not explicitly mention John.  God's role in transforming his relationship with His people is evolving, moving on, with Spirit and fire, into a new era.  Luke's gospel seems geared to the future movement of Jesus' future.  It is, as biblical scholar Reginald Fuller asserts, that Jesus' ". . . sonship is not an ontological status, but a function that Jesus will embark upon later.  The descent of the Spirit and the heavenly voice now inaugurate that function."  In other words, Jesus as Messiah was not inextricably linked to his being, but a future mission that he must respond to and cooperate with.  Jesus wasn't a GPS guided Messiah drone with God the Father at the controls, but a human with a developing will of his own and, as God's son, a growing and intense relationship with God the Father.
     The implications of this understanding of Jesus is profound for me.  It emphasizes God initiating action that redefines how he relates to the world, rather than simply call for a greater faithfulness to the old tradition; it was fulfillment rather than addition.
     I frequently encounter folks anxious that we need to "preserve" all sorts of things regarding church tradition as if the essentials of God's action in this world is dependent on our propping up structures in a mistaken understanding of the role of tradition in our spiritual journey.  The church is NOT the organizational boundaries within which lie the fullness of God's actions and ongoing revelation in our world.  This does not mean that God does not work within the Church, but it does mean that God also works outside the Church when the Church fails to accommodate God's will.  My former denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, would have me up on ecclesiastical charges for publishing that statement; however, most Christian churches implicitly, if not explicitly, assume they are the sole repository of God's revealing truth.  What all these theological views lack is the requisite humility necessary for the Holy Spirit to find an environment hospitable enough to sustain life.
    What God sent Jesus was the Spirit, not the answers to a catechism.  As fire, the Spirit is a dynamic presence brought into our lives at our baptism, and freely makes dwellings where hearts are open to receive her.  As followers of Christ, to imitate the obedience of Jesus is giving the Spirit room to work in our lives with the corresponding willingness to discern God's will by submitting to the demands of love in a community.  Our companions in this community, which I call church, should expect less dogmatic pronouncements, and reams of documents declaring God's will, and more of a leadership which fosters respect for dialogue and sensitivity to how the Spirit is working within our lives every day.  For the Spirit to dwell in our midst, we must love one another enough to speak in truth and humility and not simply fall back on archaic power structures to do our thinking (and feeling) for us.  Like Jesus standing at the headwaters of his journey to Jerusalem, we must live a profound openness to God working in our lives by availing ourselves of our greatest gift of our baptism: the Holy Spirit. 
        

Friday, January 4, 2013

The Solemnity of the Epiphany of Our Lord



Epiphany means "manifestation", that is, a revealing, an illumination, which is precisely how we experience the jubilation of Israel experiencing the fulfillment of Isaiah 40.  This passage is the joyful song of those who have returned from exile and whose reinvigorated relationship with God will serve as a beacon for "the nations" which signifies the non-Jewish peoples.  The God who has delivered Israel in an act of great salvation becomes, for Christians, the sign of God's supreme act of salvation that saves not only the people of Israel, but the world.  Paul's epistle picks up this theme in "the mystery made manifest" and the notion of the Gentiles being "coheirs, members of the same body".  In the Gospel, we have the ultimate revelation of God's salvation in the form of Jesus' birth, being announced to Gentiles, who then come to worship the Christ child; again mirroring the idea expressed in Isaiah that "Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance."  This king has qualities of the Davidic kingship of justice and concern for the poor contrasted with the megalomaniac paranoia of King Herod.  There are a few important ideas developed in today's readings, I think.

It strikes me that God's revelation over time with the Jewish people, and then to the Gentiles, has been expansive.  Rather than simply lavishing all His attention on his "chosen", we come to see that the choosing is for a role in salvation history.  It is the God who is incredibly lavish with his love and attention, that is a key element in understanding God's manifestation to the world.  It is a God of great inclusion rather than exclusion, yet so much of what we see in Christianity today seeks to privatize God, limits access to communion, sets up laws of access, decides who's "in communion" and who isn't, goes against God's essential movement to embrace humanity, all of humanity, in all the messiness and chaos that this momentum encounters.  We promulgate doctrines that attempt to put a legal tabernacle around God and deny anyone access except through priests who have the stamp of approval from the corporate office; perhaps chaos isn't so much a sign of evil in the world as the facade of unity that is really uniformity.  When we put "Christian" in front of nouns to transform them, like "Christian writer," we mistake God's act of salvation.  The transformation of Christ in the world came from the center of lowliness, vulnerability and exile as a child in a manger, and expanded through acts of healing and resurrection rather than from the outside in.  A "Christian writer" becomes in this new world a "writer of Christ," one whose work brings Christ to the world, helps manifest Christ.  Now we can ask if the writing brings Christ's healing and resurrection rather than concentrate as to whether or not the writer is a Christian.  "The writer who is Christian" is the focus on Christ's presence though the boundless and expansive energy of the Holy Spirit, "the Christian writer" is an investigation as to the legitimacy of affiliation with the Christian community.

When we make decisions as a faith community that defines ourselves over and against those who are not-like-us, we make feeble attempts to limit the Spirit.  When we reach across denominational and even religious boundaries to recognize the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and of Christ, in those not-like-us, we act most in concert with God whose saving act in Christ is for "the nations", not "the nation." It is shameful that those who most need God's love and salvation are often handed literature rather than a hug, a dismissive tone rather than a place at the table.  In a modification of St. Francis's admonition, we need to go out and preach the Good News, and  if we have to, use words.


Note: This was originally posted last year for the celebration of Epiphany. The readings are the same.