A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 21, 2024
Jer 23:1-6, Eph 2:13-18, Mk 6:30-34
I’ve been to a few concerts in my day, a list filled mostly with rock concerts, and one sticks out in my mind.
Not for the songs at the show, but for the crush of the crowd.
Some members of Lynyrd Skynyrd who survived the horrific 1977 plane crash returned to the road as the Rossington Collins Band, and I was covering their appearance at the Garden State Arts Center (now PNC) for The Daily Register. I was sitting in the center orchestra section, about eight or 10 rows from the stage.
Nice work if you can get it.
As soon as the house lights dimmed, a tsunami of fans jammed my section, forcing everyone to stand and let the seat cushions flip up. We were three deep in every row and, with girlfriends on their men’s shoulders, variously two high.
Also, probably, too high. But that’s for another day.
I’m not claustrophobic, but I wasn’t prepared for this kind of hot and sweaty (and puke-splattered) squeeze. Still wet behind the ears professionally, and the product of a semi-sheltered upbringing, I didn’t understand fans’ burning need to get as close as humanly possible to their jukebox heroes … or, as I later saw in other venues, their athletic or political or Hollywood or Broadway idols.
Here’s the thing, though:
In the 45-ish years since that concert, and over many years before that, I’ve never personally experienced a crowd surge forward similarly to get close to someone preaching Jesus Christ’s gentle but powerful Law of Love.
I’ve not been crushed by the kind of insistent crowds who followed Jesus himself and impelled him to skip dinner and a nap to teach and preach and heal, as St. Mark chronicles in today’s Gospel passage.
Those first-century folks desperately needed Jesus.
If we still need Jesus desperately — and I know we do — I’m not convinced we’re showing it.
Yes, I have seen televangelists on Channel 9 light figurative fires at megachurches. I’ve seen footage of Christian pop concert-goers with their upswept arms swaying left and right. I’ve been near — but not in — tent revival meetings.
And every time, in every observation, I’ve wondered how much was true hunger for The Word and how much was a Taylor Swift/Beyonce/Childish Gambino/Paul McCartney/Bruuuuce!-style exhilaration. Whether what I observed was hyper-emotional more than spiritual or religious.
Dunno. I can’t see into those folks’ hearts and minds and souls. Maybe.
What I do know, though, is that — just as every summer movie has to be a blockbuster or it’s a bust — every modern religious experience has to have pyrotechnics and a danceable bass line to draw a crowd.
Even the phrase “a religious experience” is applied more to secular occurrences than to actual religious ones.
Dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant? A religious experience.
Driving a Bugatti or a Formula 1 racer or the original Batmobile? A religious experience.
Kissing someone for the first time? A religious experience.
Learning how much God loves us? How much Jesus sacrificed for us? How far his Apostles traveled from hearth and home and family to spread the Good News?
Wait; wasn’t that on Prime Video or Netflix? It kinda sounds familiar. It might have been a religious experience.
Hmmm.
In today’s Gospel, before Jesus recognized that the flock who chased after him needed a spiritual shepherd, Our Lord and The Twelve intended to go someplace quiet. To shake off the literal and figurative dust of the road. To chat in peace.
To let the Holy Spirit recharge their souls just as loaves and fishes and good wine would recharge their bodies.
But the people who followed Emmanuel two millennia ago had a deeper hunger, and Jesus took the time to feed them with inspiration, to nourish them with faith, hope and gentle love. No lightning bolts or earthquakes needed. And we have every reason to believe the people were sated.
We don’t do that enough, that quiet thing, that listening-for-God-in-the-whisper thing.
We may not be doing the other thing enough, either, the random-act-of-kindness thing, the loving-our-neighbor-as-ourselves-for-the-love-of-God thing.
Ditto dunno. Only each of us individually can judge.
But of this I am certain: The compelling power of God’s love is seen in our outstretched hands offering help, in our open arms offering comfort, in our eyes making contact and in our ears listening attentively.
It’s the power of this boundless eternal love that should be drawing throngs to share as a community living the Gospel.
That’s the real light show.
The Light of Christ.
