April 24, 2005
Acts 6:1-7 + 1 Peter 2:4-9 + John 14:1-12
We have passed through a very significant time that is ripe with opportunities. In the grand scheme of things however, it is a blink in history. It would be prideful on our part to suggest that is “best of times” or the “worst of times.” It is simply the only time we have,
and we did not get here without a lot of good times and bad times. What is most extra ordinary is that at this time there is this globalization unknown before in human history.
We are becoming one human family. The age of media communication, with its images and voices makes it so. While an unprecedented experience unfolds for us in an instant, it brings with it a new level of experience and with it a challenge that is timeless.
In years past, Popes died and were elected over there before people 10,000 miles away every heard about it. What has taken place in Rome this month has taken place in every room where there is a television. Suddenly the clock or the position of the sun means nothing.
There is no time. People were watching a funeral in the morning, the afternoon, and the middle of the night. They were watching a chimney at breakfast, dinner, and bedtime. It was an experience shared in every language and on every continent. It unified and focused the attention of the world for a brief moment on something other than war, natural disaster, and scandal. As I have reflected on my own experience of this, some parts of it in a foreign country,
I think we are getting a sense of what Pentecost was like for the apostles. That language thing with them is even part of our experience. But the biggest issue the events of the past month raises concerns our identity and what it means to be church.
There is risk involved in sitting with the images we have seen this month if we fail to ask what it means. If someone were to simply look at the screen and fail to ask what it means, they would be left to think that all of this commotion, all of these people, all of pageantry and celebrated tradition, with its music and costumes and customs and language is about a man from Bavaria who is now called Benedict.
It’s not about him. It’s about us, because it’s about church.
Luke, in the first reading today reminds us of what it means to be a church. He reminds us that service is an essential constituent of church service to God, service to the word, service to one another,
and in particular, service to the poor and the disadvantaged. We gather here close to the Feast of the Ascension – about to recall that mystery of Christ’s presence and absence. Addressing that experience to his disciples, Jesus promised that they (meaning we would do the works he did and works far greater than his.
He left us an agenda to be accomplished in the interim between his advents Part of that agenda is to continue being a church who fully and truly reflects the loving concerns of Christ for humankind.
The truth that springs from Pentecost and was affirmed by the last Council is that you, lay people do not belong to the church,
nor do you have a role in the church, you are the church.
The risk we face with all the images on television this month is thinking that one man is the church, when in fact, that crowd in Saint Peter’s Square, and every one of us there vicariously through the media are the church, filled with the Holy Spirit and enlivened by God’s gifts of faith, hope, and love.Endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, everyone of you shares in the threefold office of Christ: priestly, prophetic, and royal. The people of God enjoy true equality, genuine freedom, profound dignity, global responsibility, a sense of vocation, and a personal union with Christ and his mission. Everyone one of you has a proper and indispensable share in the mission of the church that no one else can fulfill. “Let someone else do it.” is not an acceptable attitude, because what you fail to do, no one else can do.
On Monday, some of our finest young people will stand around this altar to be CONFIRMED in this faith, in this unique relationship with Jesus Christ as a church. It will be a true and authentic Pentecost in this place, a moment of transformation, of inspiration, and rebirth. They shall become what we have all been called to be: church, ecclesia, holy people whose lives bear witness to presence and power of God. As thousands came to faith and were baptized on that first Pentecost, so it can be again because of the unique and awesome experience of this past month. Millions of people have seen us, become curious, and they are asking questions about us as a church, and we must not miss this opportunity to share what we have, bring them to this place, and open their lives to the Gospel and the fullest relationship with Christ the Risen Lord. There is no one in this church who has not had someone say to them this month: “What do you think of the new Pope?” or “Wasn’t John Paul great?” Behind that question and the experience that gives to rise to it is an opportunity, because this whole experience has not been about John Paul or Benedict. It is about us. No one should be left uninvited or feel unwelcome in the kingdom of God as we live it in this church.