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All posts for the month November, 2001

Christ the King & Vietnamese Martyrs

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on November 25, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

November 25, 2001 2 Samuel 5:1-3 + Colossians 1:12-20 + Luke 23:35-43

It is a wonderful and thoughtful co-incidence of dates that often brings together the Church’s Feast of Christ the King and the Feast of the Martyrs of Vietnam. Here in our parish it is even more festive and more appropriate for us to combine these observances of the Universal Church; for the message the Church proclaims to the world on the Feast of Christ the King is the very message that sustained the faith and the witness of the Church of Vietnam during decades of suffering and violent persecution. The Gospel on this dayturns royal dreams and ideology upside down. This King we proclaim is indistinguishable from the bloodied martyrs whose loyalty to their King Jesus brought them to glory and roots them forever in our memory.

The long journey to Jerusalem this year led us to the home of Zachariah, and then to the Temple where the Lucan Jesus cleansed the Temple and preached his final sermon before turning his head toward the cross which ends up being more of test of our belief than of his courage and wish to fulfill the Father’s Will. As Luke finishes the story, we begin to see that the whole story has been about power.

Human history is one long list of Power’s abuse which would give us every reason to abandon royal images. But the feast gives us another vision of Power. This power is for love. This power is for service. The great struggle for power, which is the dynamic tension of Luke’s Gospel, is finally displayed in these two men on either side of him. They say it all. They reveal it all. They leave us stunned by their honesty with no way to avoid or deny what it’s all about.

The power of Jesus is never more evident and effective than at that moment. Now it is not power to come down from the cross, call from a tomb, restore sight or hearing, or straighten twisted limbs. Now it is power over the human heart. Only Luke’s Gospel tell of these two men, and by placing them in the great contest of power, Luke shifts the image slightly so that suddenly it is not just about Jesus. He isn’t the only one who dies. He isn’t the only one who faces raw power. He isn’t the only who looks death in the face. Those two men draw us into the picture as well. In them we  see ourselves and all humanity. Now, the consequences of power used or abused are inescapable. At the end, there are only two choices, darkness or light, right or wrong, power or service, death or life.

In the context of our celebration today in this parish, we lift up the memory of those who made the choice. The image of this King which would confuse those who look for power and might, gave comfort and courage to those who saw themselves in his suffering. It bonded them in a loyalty that led them to victory.Those who abused power and killed them are long forgotten, dead in the eyes of this world, ignored and forgotten except as examples of evil. Those who were loyal to their King Jesus are alive in glory, remembered, imitated, and treasured as examples of faith and hope’s best glory.

Martyrs of Vietnam or of any age or place, for that matter, are the surest sign of the Gospel’s vitality and the ultimate victory of service and love over power and self. They speak the words of a thief, the words of a sinner, the words of one overwhelmed by the power of love. The words are perhaps the first act of faith, the very first creed: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” They are words of intimacy. They are words that express a simple faith, and words that once spoken establish a bond of loyalty and friendship that even death cannot destroy. In some way, I believe that the martyrs of Vietnam, the martyrs of central America in our own age, the martyrs of North America, the martyrs of Rome, and the faithful loyal servants of others we always remember in this season said the same thing in some way or another. We can hardly do better if we make the choice of that one hanging beside Jesus, and make his words and his hope our own: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”.

Ordinary 33

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on November 18, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

November 18, 2001 Malachi 3:19-20 + 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 + Luke 21:5-19

We like permanence. We like to pretend that things will last a long time, and we get impatient when they wear out. Yet, we live in an economy based upon obsolescence There is a light bulb in a fire station somewhere in this country that has been burning for more than 100 years, and the company that made it is gone!Adolescents live as thought they are indestructible and will live forever. They become impatient with those who have passed fifty or so seasons and might suggest seatbelt, helmets and caution. In this country, we consume the resources of this earth as though they were permanent and inexhaustible. There are some who resent and ridicule anyone who would suggest caution and care.

The Jews at the time of Jesus hada history of destruction and desolation. Yet something about that Temple was beginning to suggest otherwise to them in spite of the fact that they were an occupied nation under the control of the Romans. That place must have been something, the biggest and the best of everything. Herod had doubled it’s size. It was big before he started. You could see it from a long way off. No expense had been spared in its construction. It was older than most of the pilgrims who came there to pray, lacked nothing that could astound the mind or the eye. It was covered on all sides with plates of gold. When the sun would shine on it, people for miles would have to tum away their faces because the light was so intense. The suggestion of Jesus that it would come down was intolerable, unacceptable, and a little over the line of loyalty. It struck at their very identity.

Since September 11, 2001, what goes on in this piece of Luke’s Gospel has a different ring to it for us, especially in this country. Now what Jesus explores and suggests is a little bit more than just history and squabble between himself and the Jews in the Temple. It is a little harder to avoid what he is proposing, and the Lucan image is a little more real to us. That Temple came down, all the way down just like those buildings in New York City. It didn’t come down without the cost of human life either, and the experience of those people who lived to see it was not much different than our own.

It raises big questions about what lasts and what doesn’t, what  matters and what matters not, about whether or not bigger is better, and about how much control power really has, and what makes us secure and what makes us afraid.

Faced with their experience, those early Christians thought that it all was a sign that the world was going to end. Here we are, a couple of thousand years later looking at their expectation and wonder with a little more experience. There are some these days who, like those first Christians, think it’s all over, and we’d better get ready for the rapture. In time, by prayer, grace, wisdom, and the power of the Spirit, they came to understand and hear what Jesus was telling them: “that not a hair of their heads would be harmed.” “By patient endurance you will save your lives.”

What he promises is not that we shall be free of risk, danger, death, and destruction; but that we shall have the strength to endure what comes and victory when it’s all over. Our identity is not in the things we have made nor built; but in what we have become through our relationships with Christ Jesus andeach other. Since we all die sooner or later, there is only one possible interpretation of the promise Jesus makes there in Jerusalem. It is the guarantee that no one can destroy us within, take away our faith or our integrity, or cause us to lose our eternity with God.

We have heard all this before, but we need to thrill to the promise again, to react the way a lover does when the beloved is speaking. That lover, the one who delivers us, is Jesus, and he has many names. The old testament prophet we just heard calls him the SUN OF JUSTICE. When we are wounded by life, beaten down, or simply tired, when we are ill and unable to avoid that final darkness, then those words come true for us: “The Sun of Justice will arise with its healing rays.” This is the Word of the Lord.

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Ordinary 32

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on November 11, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

November 11, 20012 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14 + 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 + Luke 20:27-38

This question about death comes to us in Luke at two levels, andit is not at all difficult to identify with one of them.Thefirst is theliteral level of a conversation between Jesus and the Sadducees.It is cold, impersonal, theoretical, and full of subtle threat.Their aim is to argue, embarrass, and force Jesus into one school of thought or another.There is no spirit of inquiry or a desire to learn.They want to divide the audience, and they are simply baiting Jesus with one of their classic “what if’ questions.It is a question they have already decided.They do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. J esus answers their question, not their attitude.The second is the personal, pastoral level of the Lucan church which is experiencing the death of friends and relatives creating a mood of unrelieved grief, sadness, and mourning,much like the mood that has settled upon our country in the past six weeks.

This Gospel is for us, not the Sadducees.The specific response of Jesus leads us beyond trying to imagine what it’s like on the other side of death to reflect on what matters on this side and what matters on that side.The “how” and “what” and “when” and “where” of resurrected life is not what we are given,and our Christian ancestors knew no more about it than we do. What is revealed to us in the Gospel is that we are to anchor ourselves in a sure faith that we have a living and loving God who has accomplished our salvation by the death and resurrection of Jesus.This faith gives us hope that provides meaning and purpose for our days and nights until we shall move beyond time into everlasting life.

There is nothing revealed to us that should lead us to be swayed or confused by ideas that lead us to an unhealthy and unholy fascination with popular phenomena like seances, mediums, psychics and advisors who claim  ontact with the dead.Out of body experiences have nothing to do with faith and life  everlasting.They are distractions to a people who are urged by the Gospel to keep their feet on the ground and stick with what we know to be true:that God is a God of the living and our relationship with thatGod is all that matters.What we know to be true is that all life, here and hereafter, consists in friendship with God.Death may put an end to physical existence, but not to a relationship that is eternal.Consequently, Jesus says, the relationship of those brothers (in the silly story of the Sadducees) to each other and to this woman is of no consequence whatsoever.At death, we lose everything except our relationship to God.

What is revealed to us is that all the effort, concern, worry, and anxiety that fills our lives over what people are going to think of us, what they may say about us, how well they will like us, is as silly as the story of the Sadducees.This Gospel proposes that we take a look at how much of our energy and time is spent on things that are irrelevant and on relationships with others in this life in terms of what they can do for us, or how they are going to help us get ahead.It proposes that we look at how much time and energy we put into the relationship we have with God, because in the end,that’s the only relationship that is going to get is anywhere at all.

The Lucan church was beginning to figure this out as things fell apart all around them,and family and friends suddenly and violently began to be taken from them.They began to realize that what really mattered was their sound and deeply rooted relationship with God.Friendship with God is what constitutes life here and hereafter.Death cannot take that away nor change it.On this truth rests our expectation of resurrection.

Ordinary 31

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on November 4, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

November 4, 2001Wisdom 11:22-12:2 + 2 Thessalonians 1:11-2:2 + Luke 19:1-10

We are at the end of the Journey Liturgically for us it was a 19 week trip that walked us through Luke’s School of Discipleship. Scripturally for us it was an exploration of Lukan thought from chapter nine to nineteen. It began with these words in verse 51 “Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem….” But notice how it ends. This visit to the house of Zacchaeus was not a delay or a detour on his journey to Jerusalem. This was and is, the very purpose of the journey “The Son of man came to seek and to save what was lost.” Luke will get Jesus to Jerusalem in another few verses; but that city is not where Jesus is going. He is headed for our homes to stay with us, be with us, live with us, and die with us.

The final virtue of the disciple – that characteristic perhaps toward which all the others have pointed is the virtue that brings Jesus, that attracts him, draws him, invites him: the virtue of Repentance.

Zacchaeus stands before us in sharp contrast to that crowd who can’t quite see Jesus because they are too busy looking at and criticing Zacchaeus. They have shut him out, and in their righteous critique of his life, they have shut out Jesus. Zacchaeus, unlike the crowd can see Jesus, wants to see Jesus, and is willing go to some inconvenience and take some risk to do so. Never mind his dignity, stature, or what he might look like in the eyes of others, he will see Jesus, and he will do what ever it takes; and Jesus sees him. You can almost see the two of them walking over to the house – walking away from the crowd, their backs turned away from the whispering, accusing, blaming crowd who do not hear themselves called “Children of Abraham”, and will find no salvation in their homes. It is the crowd that is indicted by this story They were so put off by their suppositions concerning Zacchaeus that they failed to “see” that in terms of the righteousness of God they were as “lost” as anyone, and were diverted from “seeing” Jesus and gladly welcoming him to their salvation.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus announces three times that salvation has come. First at the synagogue when his tum came and he rolled up the scroll, sat down, and said. “Today this message of salvation is being fulfilled.” (4:20). It happened in Nazareth and it caused a riot. Then, a second time he says it in today’s passage in Jericho. He will say it one more time to a condemned dying thief hanging at his side (23:42). What it takes to experience this “salvation” is seen in these two who are outside the symbolic synagogue: repentance.

In Zacchaeus we see it best and understand what it means. The virtue as Luke explores it is not something Zacchaeus did, but something he became that brought  other consequences. Luke’s Gospel of Grace is joined to Repentance, and this Repentance is not solely a transaction of the heart. It isn’t just feelings.Repentance bears fruit: this was made clear as early as m the preaching of John the Baptist as soldiers, and tax collectors came to him in repentance asking: “What shall we do?”

This life of repentance bears fruit, not only for the household of Zacchaeus, but also the poor who will be beneficiaries of his conversion as well as those people whom he may have defrauded. Repentance has more than personal effects. There is a domestic, social, and economic dimension as well. In Luke, salvation is not simply a matter of the soul. It touched the whole human family and the whole fabric of human before.

In the great, soon-to-unfold story of Jesus and the cross, the presence of the Risen Christ makes noble and holy the home and the table of the faithful disciple. It happened in Jericho, it happened in Emmaus, and it can happen here ifwe will be his disciples.

All Saints

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on November 1, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

November 1, 2001

As Luke tells the story, Jesus is surrounded by the desperate and the despised. They probably pushed and shoved wanting to touch him because they needed healing. Some translations begin by saying that Jesus “lifted up his eyes to them”. It gives us a sense that he was down there on the ground with them tending the pain, looking them in the eye, touching their tears, listening to their whispered pleas. He was there in solidarity with the needy. He was more comfort giver than teacher, more tender than instructive, more embracing of their pain than the distant lawgiver.

Then he talks of them to those who are watching. He speaks of the poor, the persecuted, the grieving, the lowly, the hungry, the sad, the hated, the outcasts and he calls them “Blessed.” They are the holy ones, they are the Saints. Not the comfortable, powerful, respected, and secure. His message comes as a surprise to a people who look upon the comfortable, powerful, respected and secure as being blessed and special.

It is a message that belongs on this day: All Saints Day, and it is one that bears repeating, year after year until we get it right. The Saints, the Holy Ones, the ones who bear the face of God for us are not all in heaven, and they are not dead.They don’t look too good. They are dirty and feverished. Theyare poor and diseased. They don’t wear the latest style, and no one is pushing to sit next to them. Yet, Jesus says: they are Blessed, and he’s down there with them.

Perhaps this dayinvites us to get real about Saints; to get honest about them; and get serious about our own call to sanctity. The road to holiness may not be a way of piety, countless pious prayers, and perfectly sinless lives.Considering those Jesus has called Blessed, one might wonder how they got that way: how they got hungry, poor, persecuted, abandoned, and sorrowful. It might just be because they took Jesus seriously, and they paid a price for it.