It is Jesus who gives us cause for our celebration today. It was Jesus who said: “Amen I say to you, there has not been born of woman a greater man than John the Baptist.” Because of that divine praise, we step out of Ordinary time today to remember the greatest prophet, to tell again this story of his birth, and give thanks for the courage and vision that motivated his self – effacing life.
Ages ago, someone with a great insight into creation placed this feast of John’s birth directly opposite the birth of Christ. A celestial phenomenon occurs today, a solstice. Ancient patristic writings tell us that the birth of Jesus was placed on the calendar when the northern hemisphere experienced the longest night and the sun’s reversal toward longer days.
We are at summer’s solstice today with the shortest night and the longest day. Tomorrow the days shall begin to shorten again leaving people of faith with hope that the darkness which will now begin to grow will not prevail. There is Light eternal that will reverse the power of darkness.
So, as we celebrate the Birth of John the Baptist, it is not simply all about him. He would not have wanted it so anyway judging from what I have always considered his greatest line: “He must become more and more. I must become less and less.” As with every birthday celebration, there is always reason to think of and rejoice with those who gave birth, and so in John’s story the figures of Elizabeth and Zachariah, his parents are remarkable.
If the childless couple had given up, where would we be? If they had tired of waiting for God, or had because of their childless condition turned angry or perhaps bitter from the scorn and reproach of others, what might have happened?
No one would have preached repentance, and so forgiveness would never have been born. No one would have pointed to the unlikely son of a carpenter and so Immanuel would have never been recognized. Had there been no herald, the message would have never be heard. Had no one remembered the promise, it’s fulfillment would be missed. Without a witness, the Truth would be in vain.
And so today we rejoice, remember, and ponder the need to wait in hope for God to act; the memory of what happens when we become less and Christ become more; and the joy that awaits those who never tire of expecting the message of an angel and the power and presence of God.
2 Samuel 12: 7-1- + Galatians 2:16-21 + Luke 7:36-8:3
This little love story in the seventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel is troubling and far too complex for the superficial and shallow. This silly Pharisee can’t even see what is going on in his own house. All he can see is that she “touched him.” He is so shallow that he cannot see that Jesus touched her first. These Pharisees are too busy “watching” Jesus. They are so busy “watching” that they cannot see him. The preacher of repentance comes to the home of the Pharisee who refuses to repent. Conflict and controversy are sure to come.
These Pharisees have been busy attacking both John the Baptist and Jesus. Their shallow superficial lives cannot begin to deal with the message John and Jesus have brought: a call to change. Unwilling to address the challenge of that message, they content themselves with name calling and character attacks.
So obsessed with externals, the Pharisee cannot look into the wonder of what is happening in his home. He thinks Jesus cannot see what kind of woman this is, when in fact, Jesus sees quite well not only what kind of woman she is, but also what kind of man he is.
Compassion and Forgiveness are not for the shallow who can only look at the sins of others. To enter into the mystery of compassion and forgiveness one must venture into the depths of one’s own sin, name it, and then recognize the source of grace and mercy. Her presence there in the house of that Pharisee suggests a powerful tension in this gospel that takes the form of a question: Do we love because we are forgiven, or are we forgiven because we first love? Forgiveness is not something earned. We are not forgiven because we love. We are forgiven because we are loved, and the embrace of that love changes everything. It is called “faith.”
This is the real story being told in this Gospel: a story of love, not the love of the woman, but the love God has for her. She has come to realize it, believe it, hear it in the teaching of Jesus, and it brings her to his feet.
The Pharisees who talk among themselves, but not to Jesus can not grasp the simple connection between love and forgiveness. And so, they stay in their shallow little game-playing world pointing at the sins of others, calling Jesus “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” while they fail to see that Jesus is really a friend of God.
That woman who has no name teaches without words a lesson only those who listen to Jesus can learn. The Pharisee will not listen, he will only watch, But she has listened and heard the news of God’s Love. The gift of that love is forgiveness, and the loving response in her heart leads her to service and sacrifice. What the Pharisee does not do for the divine guest in his home, she does because she has heard the news of God’s love for her and risks the scorn and judgment of the Pharisee to enjoy the presence of mercy.
The observers think Jesus is forgiving her sins when he is actually confirming her love. This places the emphasis not on divine forgiveness but on the human openness and courage to respond to that love. It is her faith that saves her in contrast to the Pharisee whose lack of faith keeps him from love.
A holy woman in our own times described sin as the “Ice Age:” a slow advance of cold, a freezing process which we experience and try to forget; the absence of warmth, love, caring, trust and the destruction of our capacity for relatedness. It means being separated from the ground of life, having disturbed relationship to ourselves, our neighbor, the creation and the human family. The end of sin then will mean the warming of our hearts, the reunion of the human family, an age of compassion led by those who haves suffered, and ultimately, the victory of love found in sacrifice and service.
The fastest growing section of any bookstore these days is Cookbooks. There is even a 24-hour cable channel about food. At the same time, the diet and exercise industry is booming, and as a nation we face the terrible fact of child obesity, A visit to any of our schools makes it an undeniable and troubling fact. At the same time a greater proportion of our world starves. A disproportionate number of our own grandparents suffer from mal nourishment and diabetes often caused and complicated by issues of diet and food. We spend more in this nation on pet food than anyone would admit. It shames us.
On the second Sunday after celebrating the Church’s beginnings with Pentecost, we take another look at what we are as a church. Last week it was about relationships. The Trinity does not just tell us something about God. It is also about us, the church: living every moment of our lives in relationships of love. This Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is not just about God either. It is about us, the church,
continuing to live as the Body and Blood of Christ.
There are more than Ten Commandments. I heard another in today’s Gospel: “Give them some food yourselves.” Remember, our God is God who feeds. Over and over again the scriptures are filled with stories of food. The Last Supper isn’t the only food story in the Gospels. A people who believe in and make themselves obedient to that God, a people who pray daily for the will of that God to be done might be ready for a big question at judgment time: “Did you feed them?”
This Sunday set aside to honor and remember the presence of Christ and his body and blood demands that we reflect upon ourselves and what we become because of that symbol. Symbols are effective, not static signs pointing to something else. To recognize a symbol is to be changed.
This church which we are is both called to give and become food for others, because we are the presence and life of Christ who gave and became food for others. This Eucharistic gift we have is not just something to look at. It is food for us: food to nourish our growth and strengthen our resolve to be food for others. That Body was broken for us to bring forgiveness. How many more bodies have to be broken before we give it?
That Blood poured out for us was to bring us peace. How much more blood must be spilled before we choose it? Jesus believed that his body and blood would be enough.
We live in a world starved for peace and thirsty for justice. We live in a society broken and fractured by divorce and racism. A big helping of forgiveness and compassion would ease the hunger of loneliness, but it must be the forgiveness we give. Feeding as Christ commands is not a matter of countless sandwiches in brown bags. While we make the sandwiches, we must be changing the system that makes it necessary to fill the bags for people who come again and again. It is a matter of a changed heart and a changed life.
Until then we might ponder the fact that Gluttony, a deadly sin with food is a sin committed alone. Gluttons eat with their face in the plate, eating as though there would never be another meal; or as though consuming is all they are about. I remember as a child my mother and father saying time and time again at the table: “Stop talking and eat your food.” With a little Gospel wisdom, I now realize what I was learning at that family table: look into the face of another, not at your plate; talk a little more and take a little less, pass the food before you take some for yourself.
It was Eucharistic wisdom in that house. We would probably take a little less if we listened and talked with others a little more. And we would probably come to understand that in doing so we will discover the face of the God who feeds us and says again: “Give them some food yourselves.”
As long as we continue to think that the Holy Trinity is only about God, we will probably never get it, live it, nor understand all that is revealed by and through a God who is present and revealed to us as a creative and loving parent, who poured out love for us enough to take on the human condition even to the point of death, and continues to live in our midst by forming a community of beloved disciples who live in imitation of the One who created and brought them to life.
What I propose to you is that The Holy Trinity is about us too. I think that is why the Church celebrates this Feast on the Sunday after Pentecost. This is not just about doctrine. It is also about experience of living in love as a people of faith. In as much as we are made in the image of God, then we are an integrated community of love that is inspired, sustained, and enlightened by the spirit of truth.
The deepest meaning of the Trinity is not “God beyond us.” Rather, it is “God for us.” Simply put, Trinity expresses ‘the essential truth that the God who saves through Christ by the power of the Spirit lives eternally in the community of persons in love.
Relationship! That is the key to the Christian understanding of God. A God in relationship is the Father Jesus revealed. Living in that relationship of love is consequence of the Spirit making love the surest sign of the Spirit. This is why breaking the relationship is the experience of sin, and the restoration of relationship is salvation by forgiveness. The examples of sin in the stories Jesus used are always about relationships broken. Sin and Death its consequence are confronted again and again by Jesus who raises up people in order to restore them to relationships: the mother-in-law of Peter, the child of a Roman Centurion, a little girl, and his friend Lazarus.
The one who comes to save us from death restores us to one another. A people living in faith live in love, and in order to sustain and preserve that love, they forgive. Without forgiveness, we experience in deep personal and sad ways the absence of God. What we do when we act together in love is the work of God in this world. When we respond to brothers and sisters whose lives are up ended by natural disasters is the work of God.
When we share our faith with others, with our children, when we invite and bring the unchurched to worship with us or introduce someone to the RCIA or a Bible Study, it is Jesus Christ still teaching and revealing the Father because he told us to do that. When we Baptize, Confirm, Forgive, Anoint, Ordain, and bless the covenant of Marriage it is the work of God who is present, active and alive in those sacramental moments. This is the meaning of the Trinity: a living God found in relationships formed by love and fulfilling the Will of God. Anything we do, by and through love is the work of God, and our understanding of this draws us deeper into the awesome truth of God’s love and God’s life.
This Feast then is not intended for a clear articulation of some doctrine. It is meant to give us an opportunity to commit ourselves to this God who, though beyond our comprehension is not beyond our experience because that God is present and active at the very core of our being.
If we concentrate merely on the doctrine, we might be awed by an intellectual concept. But if we concentrate as the scripture texts of this day suggest we do on all the ways our triune God has blessed us, we may be more inclined to cry out with the psalmist who cry we have taken up already today: “O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!”
It was probably a long wait; the kind of wait I spoke of last week. It was probably a wait made all the longer because they did not know how long they might wait, nor did they really know what they were waiting for. They just waited, and they waited together. That waiting and that staying together resulted in some powerful and significant changes in those who waited together. Fear and its power over them was gone. Timid, inarticulate fishermen went fishing again but not for fish. Made bold by a promise kept this unlikely group begins to say and do some unlikely things. They have been ambitious for themselves. They have doubted, denied, and been nowhere to be found when loyalty to their friend might put them at risk. He speaks to them of peace, and they draw swords. But they stayed together and they waited.
What happened to them was not something anyone could have imagined. If the story we tell from Acts of the Apostles was not so familiar, it would be hard to believe. Peter who couldn’t get anything right before now has it all together and isn’t afraid to say. But they are in Jerusalem and we are in Norman. They lived more than two thousand years ago.
We’re living in 2007. If all that stuff really happened, why does the world look the same? Why is there so much religious and ethnic rivalry and obvious hatred? Why is this church born with such promise so easily reduced to quarreling factions arguing over trivial things? Why does it sometimes look like a side-show or a flea market? If signs of the Spirit and those born in that Spirit meant the end of different languages and all the self-consciousness that comes from linguistic and cultural difference, what’s going on today with our walls, our barbed wire fences and racism? Why is there any racism at all? Why do we continue to make distinctions between Jew and Greek or Arab and Palestinian, between slave or free, woman or man; distinctions that favor one at the expense of the other. Why is there so little peace or comfort, or solace? Why do we refuse to forgive or be reconciled? Is Pentecost just a day that comes to close the Easter Season?
What part of this earth’s face as been renewed is a very good question. We have some serious work to do here. If that Spirit really did come, and if this church was born because of it, we’re not finished with the mission these apostles began. Instead of forgiveness and healing, we hang on to hurts and open old wounds. Instead of making peace, we make more terrorists with our bombs. When one sure sign of the Spirit’s presence is the end of a language barrier, and people from every part of the known world become one, what are we doing to the face of this earth except working against that Spirit and its power. The self-righteous accuse poor immigrants from which they are descendants of being “illegal” while they cheat on their taxes and rob the pension funds of helpless employees. I keep wondering who’s illegal here? We have work to do. Trivial and shallow lives are not compatible with this Holy Spirit. No one will ever accuse the celebrities of sports or Hollywood of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Yet our children idolize them, follow their every greedy escapade, minimize their lust filled lives, and imitate their style, their dress, and contribute to their inflated incomes.
We have work to do.
When will it begin? When will we no longer need to read about signs of the Spirit’s in the past because they are unmistakably present? I would propose that the answer is: When we open ourselves to change. When we embrace diversity and celebrate its expressions. When we choose forgiveness rather than revenge. When we take peace seriously because it is always a matter of justice. When the comfort of others is our first concern and we find our own comfort in bringing them solace. When human hearts seek God first, and when a decision or opportunity comes along, we wonder first what God wants of us before what we can get out of it. These, and wonders like them will be signs of the Spirit’s presence, and then the face of this earth will really be renewed. We have work to do.
You have just heard the final words of Jesus which Luke records for us.
Because the description of the occasion is so fascinating, I’ll bet half of you would be puzzled and pressed to repeat his final command or his last wish. Artists in every age have painted the Ascension with clouds and feet and up stretched arms, with open mouthed disciples looking up at him. But hardly anyone remembers what he said as the scene closes. For Luke in his two volumes, it is a moment of transition and revelation. He records the last instruction simply and directly. “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” In the language of Luke, that means: “Stay together and wait.” Over time it has come to mean:
“Stay in the church (stay together) and be patient.”
We have gleaned all kinds of commandments, rules, does, and don’ts out of the bible, but this one always seems to slip by un-noticed, but it’s there plain as day. For many of us, this is one of the toughest commandments: waiting We don’t practice it very well, and judging from attendance figures and a few other indicators, some have decided not to “stay in the city” as this translation instructs.
I recently read that we can easily spend up to a quarter of our lives waiting at stop lights, sitting in airport terminals, standing in line at the post office, the grocery store, doctors’ and dentists’ office. Waiting on “hold” while some voice without a body tells me that my call is important has convinced me that I have no purgatory left after recently calling my credit card company and listening to every song the Carpenters ever recorded an entering my 14 digit numbers.
We don’t like this even though we can joke about it when we are not doing it. Waiting is not our best virtue, but I believe that our identity as followers of Christ is shaped by it. “Wait” is what Jesus said to his disciples, but it was not what they wanted to hear. We would rather be proactive. It is not just children who what to know if we’re there yet? Being told to stay put and wait undercuts our self-sufficiency and suggests that we’re not quite ready – that something is lacking. But Jesus says: “Wait.” He tells us we’re not ready, that what is missing is the Spirit and we can’t do anything without His Spirit. et the waiting is difficult, and so we tire of it and want to take control: do it our way, do it now, and be quick.
People who are good at waiting have a lot to teach us. I think of mothers pregnant with life who wait and hope. I think of how they are transformed by that waiting – transformed into loving nurturing mothers. I think of old people, home bound, waiting in nursing home hallways. I think of how they are transformed by that waiting into martyrs: witnesses to the patience and suffering of Christ and how they teach us about weakness, powerlessness, and simplicity.
We have much in common with the disciples of Luke and Acts. We want power, and we seem to be saying: “Lord, is this the time when you will establish the kingdom we expect?” But Jesus says “wait.” But that waiting is not a meditative, reflective rapture. The appearance of an angel clears that up immediately. To wait upon the Lord is for the purpose of renewing our strength, not hanging around waiting for Christ to return. We are to go into the city – stay together – be church, be one.
There we shall watch and pray and in doing so we discover that God is at work. A great theologian (Karl Barth) suggests that a hand clasped in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
He also notes that the time between the ascension of Jesus and the return of Jesus is a “significant pause” in which the primary job of the Church is to wait and pray, “Come Holy Spirit.”
At the ascension the world did not look much like a new paradise. To all appearances, it was pretty much as it was when he came. If anything for those who followed him it was a bit worse as rumblings of a persecution began. But after a little waiting and a little prayer, followers became leaders, converts became missionaries, the healed became healers, and nothing was the same.
They stopped looking up to heaven, and began to look at each other, and got on with the business of being church and being love. As mothers tell us when the time comes, “it’s worth the wait.”
The struggle and the controversy we study in Acts of the Apostles did not end with the decision of Peter. It was resolved for that time in that place,
but it continues here and now with the same intensity and urgency. The discernment of what is required to be a member of the Christian Community continues. The principals established back then in Jerusalem are still valid for us, the details less applicable. No longer is it a matter of circumcision, and how and where we wash pots and pans according to the Mosaic Law. What cut through all of that was an awareness that prompted by the Holy Spirit that Jesus was revealing and offering a relationship, and that in the strength of that relationship, one would be known, recognized, and claimed by God and the Savior Christ Jesus. Our God is a God of relationship. The unique element that sets Christians off from every other religion is the Trinity — an expression of that God of Relationships. Our relationship with God exists because of his love, and our response which is our spirituality must be a response or a return of that love. Anything else is unhealthy, just as it would be in any relationship. It is not about fear, nor is about rewards or getting everything you want — that’s not mutual love.
Being in love with God means doing everything necessary to make the relationship grow and prosper. Once you make that kind of relationship your own, then there is no other choice than to live the Gospel completely not because God wants it and we’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t, but because it is right to do so.
If what Jesus reveals and proposes for us is a loving relationship with God, then we ought to be able manage that by the same means we maintain our relationships with others we love and others who love us. If you think it’s good and right to spend time with your husband or wife, with your children or your parents, or your best friends, would it not be the same with God? I wonder how many marriages would last or how many families would stay together is they got an hour a week of your time. Many work, and they work hard to give and provide for their loved ones, but God gets what is left over – and sometime only on occasion after every other “obligation” is taken care of. Minimalism is not the stuff that makes a relationship, and asking what I will get out of it is a sure path to being out of it.
Our diluted version of being Christ like gives us every reason to sit with these readings today and wonder once more what it takes to recognized as a follower of Jesus and claimed by God His Father. It takes more than knowing the Ten Commandments. It means living them and the Beatitudes as well. Jesus wasn’t fooling around when he said: “Love your enemies.” He didn’t hide the fact that those who were his own would look foolish and be made fun if not even killed.
What they sorted out back there in Jerusalem were the “life rules” that the community must follow in order to be what it is called to be. These shape the attitudes and behaviors of those who truly believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Their mouths were always to carry words of peace and not take up arm. They were asked to live simply and to consider each other’s needs. They were also to not have troubled hearts and live without fear. In a nutshell, that is the Gospel message, and if we take it seriously, it will have a tremendous impact on how we live. But there is a problem to be resolved. We treat each other badly. We sacrifice innocent lives. We seek money and power destroy the environment, develop land and natural resources for our personal gain, exploit the poor and ask God to bless our wars. We promote capital punishment, refuse to moderate our sexual behavior, turn our back on the poor and the sick while never raising a question on how much to spend for our “security”. We abuse and neglect animals, ignore our spiritual lives,
celebrate sacraments when convenient and disregard the voice of our church. What’s worse, we do this and still feel as though we are right with God.
Perhaps as we move toward Pentecost through these Easter Sundays, we might take a hard and good look at how we measure up to the Gospel, ask what we have put before God and what we have preferred over the Holy Eucharist. Pentecost is coming. Indicators of that Spirit’s presence in the lives of Christian people are public and unmistakable. Our faith and its consequences are not private matters. Being loved and loving in return changes everything.
Acts 14:21-27 + Revelation 21: 1-5 + John 13:31-35
He has just made it around the table washing their feet. As he began, he silenced the quick talking Peter who objected at first, and after that they all kept quiet and watched as he went from one to another. It has been a lesson that salvation is a gift from God, and it must be accepted on God’s terms. Judas has gone, and now he settles down to make sure they understand that what is about to happen is about glory, not defeat, and about God, not just about him.
He gives a commandment, not as though it was an “order”, but a commandment in the covenant sense: a “rule” or way of life in which they will find their identity and by which they will be recognized. It is a commandment that is both old and new. It repeats a verse of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus which directs that they should love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Yet it is new because now this love will be proof of one’s love for God.
This love forsakes violence and is modeled on the self-offering of Jesus on the cross. This love goes far beyond feeling or passion, because this love is based on mutual communication between persons and it is manifest in deeds, not in words Dorothy Day speaks of this love and calls it a “harsh and dreadful thing”. She sees this love as a relationship tried and tested by fire. It is the fire of perseverance that she refers to: the fire of fidelity. It has nothing to do with feeling good. It has everything to do with doing good.
What Jesus reveals to those who would gather at table with him is that we cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love each other, we must know each other. This truth, this theme weaves its way in and out of his expression and his experience. He speaks again and again of knowing the Father and of knowing each other. For only in that “knowing” can His love be found. And so, we know him in the breaking of the bread, and we know each other in the breaking of the bread.
With the insight that only a lover could have, a poet of our time captures the challenge of this love: “Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” Think of that image for a moment. It takes work to be and stay in love. Just like bread which must be kneaded and worked which must rest and rise, our love cannot simply be left like a stone. Perhaps what we are called to be in this age and in this culture of fast-food and instant pleasure is bread bakers: people willing to work, to knead, to mix, to wait, to watch, to warm, and ultimately savor what can happen when love like yeast is worked into the dough of this world. Jesus must have thought of that when he left himself with us and lifted a piece of bread and said: This is my Body.
Acts 13:14,43-52 + Revelation 7:9, 14-17 + John 10:27-30
“Search for signs of intelligent life in the Universe” is the name of a play by JaneWagoner published in 1986. In it we find Trudy, a bag lady. She is a creative consultant for some alien visitors who are on an expedition searching for intelligent life in the universe. They are looking at us wondering if they have found any. Now Trudy used to be a creative consultant with Nabisco. Her job was simple: increase cracker sales. She says: “I got this idea to give Cracker consciousness to the world.I said, “Mr Nabisco, sir! You could be the first to sell the concept of munching to the Third World. We got an untapped market here! These countries got millions and millions of people don’t even know where their next mal is coming from. So, the idea of eatin’ between meals is something’ just never occurred to them!”
Before long she recognizes the evil of her plan, and her mind snaps. She describes then the problem she has with reality: “I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a collective hunch. My space chums think reality was once a primitive method of crowd control that got out of hand. In my view, it’s absurdity dressed up in a three-piece business suit. I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”
The problem with “reality” as this world sees it, is that it is always there, insisting that we get with the program, face the facts, be practical, use common sense and be reconciled with this world’s power. This “reality” is the “Great Ordeal” which the saints endure as we just heard it in the second reading today. There is a great struggle, a struggle of loyalties that poses a bigger threat than death. It is a grim conflict of loyalties that leaves a follower of Christ in genuine doubt wondering where duty lies. How do we see the world: from what it seems to be or from the point of view of what God intends for the world?
The Book of Revelation is a case study in how the early church audaciously confronted the world through its worship. John’s communities are bold enough to set their worship head-to-head with the worship of the mighty Roman Empire. They do this in spite of what might be called; “common sense.” This “common sense” would say that the real superpower in the world is Babylon, or Rome, or if written today, the United States. Revelation insists that the true superpower in the world is the Lamb of God whose power is made manifest, not in weapons of violence but in the sword of truth that proceeds from his mouth.
The problem we face today is the same: how do we not cave in to a common sense that defines reality as the power of wealth, violence, and exploitation of the environment, rather than as the Lamb of God who is before the throne? The Book of Revelation is about Worship and getting worship right. What is it followers of Christ worship: prestige, power, wealth, success, national security? I guess any of us could answer that by looking at our check stubs. Then we’re back to “reality”.
In John’s Revelation followers of Christ call this “reality” into question. Their “common sense” calls them to get with a different program, one proposed by Jesus of Nazareth. Despite what some fundamentalists may try to tell you, Revelation is about the end of the world, but not about creation ending in some cataclysm that will transport the faithful into some spiritual “other world” distinct from this one. God does not intend escape, God intends victory. Revelation is about the end of this world as we know it…….. violent, cruel, selfish, unjust, hungry, lonely, and broken. Revelation is about the coming world, transformed not destroyed. It is about the world as God intends: a world where those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb will hunger no more, will have shelter, suffer no more, and have their tears wiped away.
Seeing the world as God intends it to be is empowering. It gives us the courage to be angry at suffering not reconciled to it. It gives us the courage to be angry at injustice, not shrug and say that it’s just the way it is. It gives the church boldness when facing natural disasters like hurricanes or the smaller more intimate pain of human grief.
John’s vision can transform our understanding of the present. We can see God at work wherever captives are freed, the hungry fed, the homeless wrapped in the warmth of human love, or those fleeing poverty and oppression being welcomed with joy and respect not looked upon as a threat to jobs we won’t take anyway or as a drain on our “system”.
The white-robed: that’s us those Baptized and washed in the blood of the Lamb must not be intimidated by “reality” but rather begin to see this world as God sees it, and let that vision transform us, open our eyes, and make bold our witness. John’s vision of the future is proclaimed here to give us courage, to give us strength, to give us something more than life without end. It can give us the “fullness of life” which is what Jesus offers us, not unending life. It is a full life we are promised, not just one that goes on and on or starts up after death. John’s Gospel describes eternal life not in terms of duration but in terms of fullness. It is life with and for God which Jesus reveals, and it begins when people through faith and love commit themselves to the kind and quality of life that Jesus embodies.
Today the culture of death seems to envelop our lives at the very center of American life, and from the killing fields of political, ethnic, and religious wars, the plagues of pandemics, and even to schoolyards. The promise of present and future eternal life seems fragile. Yet the Good Shepherd promises his flock and those not of his fold that no human life is meaningless or forgotten by God. Love, joy, and life await even those whose lives, barely unfolding, were snatched away, when “God will wipe away every tear form their eyes.”
With some amusement I was entertained this past winter with news reports that an ancient ossuary had been found with inscriptions that led some to speculate that it contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth. My amusement at the enthusiasm of the reporters and the speculation of many was short-lived when I began to realize how poorly we have communicated our faith and our experience: the purpose of our assembly here today.
The faith of Christians does not rest upon an empty tomb, nor upon the absence of a body or bones. Our faith rests upon the continuing experience of the Risen One: upon our experience of Christ living among us. Somehow we have failed to make that clear, failed to realize and make it obvious that Resurrection Faith is more than curiosity about an empty tomb. It is a summons to return to the words and deeds of Jesus. When we get that right, a box of bones isn’t going to make any difference.
If we fail to get that right, fail to remember that the Resurrection is about experience, then faith degenerates into intellectual assent, dogmas, and tenets of faith over which people can and do argue, debate, accuse, blame and criticize and to our shame, sometimes even go to war! Those who address the Resurrection as though it were an idea become world-weary, and the cynicism of prosperity leaves them with no way to resist much less recognize death here and now. They are left with a pitiable hope for the next world as f death were an enemy awaiting us at the end of this life; something off in the future.
But it isn’t. Death is not something yet to come, private and personal. Death is everywhere every day. It is a power here and now that strangles the life out of people. There is economic death of those we allow to die of famine. There is political death for the countless who live under oppression. There is social death for the handicapped, gay people, the lonely, abused, and any who seem to be “different.” There is the noisy death that comes from bombs and missiles, torture and violence. There is the quiet death of the apathetic and those who decide to remain ignorant and live in denial. There is plenty of death, and you don’t have to wait for it to come later. Whatever threatens to diminish or destroy life is near at hand.
Catholics today are summoned to live, proclaim, and celebrate the victory of life by resisting every form of death and violence that saturates our culture. It is our privilege first, and then our duty to bring faith to bear upon death and revolt and protest against it while preserving every form of life.
The raising of Jesus is God’s protest against death and against all who work for death. We are here to affirm and recognize God’s passion for life and for all those threatened and burdened by death. It means rising above apathy and misery and climbing out of cynicism and denial.
We have to get it straight about what went into that tomb before we can understand what was left and what came out. More went into that tomb than a dead body. Hatred went in there. Envy and Lies were put in that tomb. Power, Violence, Abuse, Betrayal, and Jealousy: that is what was buried in that tomb along with the body of one victim of all those things.
There was also something else. Love was buried in there, a love that knew no limits or boundaries; a love that embraced and included everyone. Forgiveness was buried in there: forgiveness for those who asked for it, and for those who didn’t. Mercy was in there; the kind of mercy that tempers judgment and condemnation. What came out? Does love die? I don’t think so. The love of my parents isn’t dead. Anyone of you who have buried a loved one knows that love does not die even when a body is buried. Does Forgiveness die? I don’t think so. The forgiveness to which Jesus bore witness lives on every time we embrace another with understanding patience. So what are we doing here? What’s this all about? All of this is not about a box with or without bones. It is about Life. It is about Love. It is about Mercy and Forgiveness, and it is about our faith, and our duty celebrate, live, and rejoice in what came out of that tomb and what God has chosen to leave buried in there.