Month: December 2019

A homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, Dec. 29, 2019

It’s 2 a.m., and the phone rings. It’s your son.

“Um, Dad? Uh, yeah, hi, I’m still at the party and I had too much to drink and I can’t get a taxi or an Uber. I’m sorry I’m calling so late.”

It’s 2 a.m., and there’s a knock at the front door. It’s the police.

“Ma’am, there’s been an accident. Your daughter is in the hospital. She’s unconscious.”

It’s 2 a.m., and rifle butts are breaking down your door. It’s the renegade militia. They’re coming to steal your children and turn them into little soldiers, and probably to kill you.

Of course you go pick up your son.

Of course you speed to the hospital and stay by your daughter’s bedside.

Of course you escape out the back, go into hiding, even flee your country to someplace safe. If you can.

Of course.

Because that’s what families do.

Just as St. Joseph did, in this Gospel and in the few other times he’s mentioned in Scripture. He heard the call, assessed the situation, did the best he could with the resources he had, and cared for his family. Became a refugee, more than once. Stepped out of the spotlight usually given to Jewish fathers more than once.

In doing so, Joseph helped fulfill Jesus’s destiny, helped Jesus be aligned with the prophets’ vision of him.

We have every reason to believe the Holy Family supported each other as a loving unit. We don’t know a lot about them or their day-in-day-out lives in Nazareth, and in a lot of ways that’s good, because of course Jesus had a cold or refused to go to bed on time or procrastinated on his chores once or twice, because of course he was a fully human boy in Israel, and that’s what kids do.

Scripture need not get muddied up with obvious details.

So, indeed, we have the Holy Family as role models.

Joseph’s strength and obedience to God.

Mary’s heart, and an even deeper obedience.

Jesus’s evolving understanding of who he is and what he is called to do.

Families then, families now are built to guide younger generations to become the best people they can be, to fulfill their destinies, to use their God-given lives and talents to their fullest.

Families then, families now are built to support older generations, as the prophet Sirach says, to live the full length of their lives in dignity, and to revere the experience those elders can share, which also enables younger generations to fully achieve a God-given destiny.

Families have evolved through the millennia.

In Jesus’s time, the notion that “it takes a village to raise a child” was a literal statement of life. Villages in ancient Palestine often were the home to only one or two families, so child-rearing was a communal effort. The strict notion of brother or sister blurred when dozens of cousins were in the mix. In fact, people continue to ponder whether Jesus had biological brothers and sisters because the ancient Greek of the Scriptures used a word that means siblings and cousins or same-age relatives.

Families evolved by adapting to their living situations.

Living in the city, as cities developed, meant less privacy as people were crammed into tight living quarters. So people gained respect for each other’s individuality and, in turn, took on common characteristics. Families took on a common identity, and learned to defend it, learned to proclaim its value.

Conversely, families who moved to frontiers – farmers, homesteaders, people separated from their neighbors by miles, or miles and miles – those families bonded more tightly, more inwardly, became a village unto themselves. They developed a deep sense of individualism and self-reliance. Nonetheless, like city dwellers, they wrapped themselves in a common identity.

This difference – city vs. country, executive vs. laborer, rich vs. poor – is worldwide, cross-cultural, spanning the ages, though as we know from the news, it’s taking on extreme proportions in modern America.

And the so-called nuclear family may be splintered, relatives scattered rather than living near each other in extended families. Phone calls and Skype help, but they’re not replacements for hugs.

So how do we follow the Law of Love with a challenge like this?

First, we need to revisit the definition of family, of village, of identity.

For Jesus – and for us – “family” was far more inclusive than blood relatives. His table welcomed sinners, strangers, the learned and uneducated alike, the other, refugees like him. Family became a verb more than a noun; “to family” meant – means – embracing. Welcoming. Setting a place. Listening so as to understand.

That effort to understand and celebrate differences results in a new sort of village, a village not necessarily of houses and streets and geographical permanence but a village of open hearts and open minds.

Opening minds refines our identities, so that we are first and foremost children of our loving God, thankful for the gift of life itself, for our talents and treasures and all that was showered upon us strictly by an accident of birth. Open minds recognize that there are many ways to do things, say things, many ways to work and play and love, and all of them make us truly human, make us the best image and likeness of God our Creator that we can be.

And so, as children of God, we are

All.

One.

Family.

Which means that, at 2 a.m., or any time of the day or night, any day of the year, when the call comes, when the knock comes, when the danger presents itself, we know what to do.

Because that’s what families do.

Because that’s what Jesus does.

A homily for the Second Sunday of Advent 2019, from the Gospel of Matthew 3:1-12

A lady goes to the doctor because her shoulder hurts.

“Does it hurt all the time?” the doctor asks.

“No, just when I do this,” she says, flapping her elbow like a chicken wing.

“Then don’t do that.”

Rimshot, please.

OK, it’s an old joke, but it shines a lot of light on today’s Gospel.

John, the cousin of Jesus, the wild-eyed man living in the desert, wearing Fred Flintstone furs and eating bugs, is calling on people to repent, and baptizing them in the scuzzy river water.

And people are coming from all over, walking miles to see this prophet and get themselves clean. Spiritually clean. Because their souls are sick; their hearts and consciences are in pain. And this ritual washing is the cure.

But in every act of repentance, there’s a promise, a promise that makes this cleansing and healing possible.

“I won’t do that anymore.”

There’s no sense in getting clean if you’re going to roll around in the mud again.

In Scripture, descriptions of encounters with The Baptist are vivid; he clearly is the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s expectation of a voice crying out in the wilderness. He is gruff, rough around the edges, and loud.

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus gently forgives trespasses and asks people to go and sin no more. John, on the other hand, is fire and brimstone and “Repent! Repent!” His baptism in itself implies – loudly – that people should go and sin no more.

And if we’re talking loud and gruff, listen again to the insult he shoots at the religious leaders of the Jewish community:

“You brood of vipers! … the chaff – meaning all of you Pharisees and Sadducees – he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

John lays a smackdown on the holiest men, the most powerful men in town. To him, they’re snakes in the grass, slithering on their bellies, waiting to strike if somebody crosses their path. If somebody strays from the path they say is the right one to follow.

To John, they’re the stems and stalks and garbage left over from the harvest, the harvest that symbolizes the people of God who let The Word grow in their hearts.

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.”

As we listen again to John, as we imagine him waving his arms and shaking his fists at these men who surely were dressed in fine clothes and jewelry and who likely were recognizable from blocks away, there’s an anger that’s, frankly, scary. That seems so un-Christlike.

The coming wrath? That seems out of sync with the love of God through Christ, and definitely doesn’t sync with how we believe we should be living today.

No, it smacks of Noah and the flood, or Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt.

But producing good fruit? That’s in tune.

We’ll come back to that in a second.

Now, just a quick refresher on the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Throughout history, the Jewish people have been guided by what’s popularly known as The Law and The Prophets – the commandments sent by God through Moses, and the detailed rules for living as catalogued in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, alongside the preaching of men such as Elijah, Samuel, Jeremiah and Isaiah, who spoke eye-opening truth to human power, whether the people wanted to hear it or not.

The Pharisees embraced both the law and the prophets; Sadducees, the law.

By the time of Jesus, though, both groups were showing devotion to the letter and not the spirit of the law.

All head, no heart.

Which is why the Gospels portray John first and then Jesus as chastising Israel’s leaders for being rigid, for lacking charity and mercy and compassion. For saying the rules are the rules are the rules, and they must be obeyed 100 percent. Without question or thought.

Which is why John first and then Jesus are the radical counterparts, the disruptors who know that people sometimes commit sins, and that when they do, and then when they seek forgiveness, they should receive it.

As long as they promise they won’t do that anymore. Or try their hardest not to.

People then, people now need to be busy. It’s in our nature. The whole idle hands, devil’s workshop thing.

So when people repent for having strayed from the way God wants them to live, and promise not to do that again, whatever “that” was, then folks need something better to do. This is where heart comes in.

If someone is atoning for a specific sin, especially one that affected someone else directly, then the heart calls out for repairs or restitution. As Jesus said, make peace with your brother and then bring your offerings to God together.

If the trespass had a different impact, then the penance could be an act of justice or charity for the greater good.

Best yet, though, is not being transactional. Not “paying for your sins” on a one-to-one basis, the way you wipe up spilled grape juice with the quicker picker-upper.

Best yet is to live a life guided by Christ, strengthened by his Spirit, in which you produce good fruit, in which you strive to be the best you that you can be, and when you slip up – because we all do – when you slip up, you apologize to our merciful God, and then say …

“I won’t do that again.”