Category: Preaching, Homiletics & Scripture

Today’s readings
[Mass for the school children.]

Jesus tells us today that sadness is always going to be a part of life. That’s not the good news, that’s just the way things are. I think we can all think about things that have made us sad. Maybe we have had a good friend who has moved away and we don’t get to see them very much. That makes us sad. Maybe we have lost a pet or a toy that we have liked a lot, and that makes us sad. Maybe we didn’t get picked for a team, or didn’t understand something in school, and those things have made us sad.

And some of us have had harder things that have been sad for us. Maybe your parents aren’t getting along or have split up. That’s very sad. Just last week, my father died. I miss him a lot, and I am very sad – maybe you too have had a grandparent or someone you’re very close to die and you don’t get to see them again. That’s very sad.

But sadness is a part of our life. But Jesus says today that sadness is not forever. He says that it’s just like a woman who is having a baby. She is sad because giving birth hurts so much. But after a while, the baby is born and the pain stops, and she gets to see the beautiful child she brought into the world and is happy again. Just like that, the things that make us sad won’t last forever. One day, we will get to see Jesus face-to-face and he will bring us happiness that lasts forever. Then there won’t be anything that can make us sad again.

That doesn’t mean that our sadness doesn’t hurt right now. It just means it won’t hurt forever. Because Jesus loves us, we can look forward to happiness forever, even if we have to put up with a little sadness now and then.

Today’s readings

This would not be the Gospel I would have picked today considering the grief that I’m still working my way through. But the truth is, who of us is not touched by grief? We all have to deal with it at some point in our lives. Indeed, we who are disciples can look forward to a lot of grief in this world, which is what Jesus means when he says:

Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices;
you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.

The Gospel begins by Jesus pointing out that for a while, the disciples won’t see him, but then a little while later they will see him again, and this would be the cause for their true joy. I think that whenever we grieve much, it is often because we have lost sight of God. Whatever the event that caused our grief, that grief causes us to lose sight of our God. And it hurts a lot because while we weep and mourn, it seems as if all the world is in the throws of joy. We have to grieve, but we must know that by seeing our Jesus again, we will once again experience true joy. The disciple who trusts in God knows this is true. However painful the grief may be, the joy that Jesus provides us will be the greatest joy ever.

Today’s readings

Today’s readings are a reminder that we disciples have to be discerning. It is important for us to discern what the truth is so that we can be led to the one who is Truth itself. The Gentiles, who worshiped idols, didn’t have the context of monotheism – that there is one God – to help them. Paul and Barnabbas did their best to catechize them, but there was much work to be done to overcome something that had been for the Greeks so culturally ingrained. The Gentiles didn’t have a context of God working through human beings, so they naturally mistook Paul and Barnabas for gods.

And in today’s Gospel, Jesus spells out how one can discern who is a true disciple. The true disciple, claiming that he or she loves God, will be one who keeps God’s commandments. If the disciple truly loves God, keeping God’s commandments would be second nature for him or her. But if one were to see someone claiming to love God and be his disciple but not obeying God’s commandments, one could conclude that person is not a true disciple.

Discernment is important for us, because we want authenticity in our worship and in our belief and understanding. Discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When we come to know the One who is Truth itself, then we will be filled with the Holy Spirit and come to know the truth.

Today’s readings

The One who sat on the throne said,
“Behold, I make all things new.”

That was, as we just heard, the end of today’s second reading. The book of Revelation is all about the persecution of the early Christians, and it looks forward to the day when all that persecution would end. People were dying for the faith, being forced to give it up or be cast out of the synagogues. That left them open to the persecution of the Romans who demanded that they take up the worship of their pagan gods or face death. They were a people looking for newness, healing, and re-creation. Fittingly then, John reports what is heard in his vision: “Behold, I make all things new.”

There is a clamor for newness, I think, in every age and society. We are a people who could use some re-creation even today. Look at the way our own faith is received. The voices of death have such a foothold that they have many faithful Catholics believing that babies can be aborted in favor of personal choice. Sunday family worship takes a further back seat to soccer games, baseball, and other sports and activities. Rudeness and hurtful language are used in every forum, and we call it entitlement. Prayer is not welcome in almost any public location, for fear that someone might be offended by our religiosity. Concern for the poor and needy, and a longing for peace and justice are bracketed in favor of capital gain. We Christians today are persecuted just as surely as the early Christians, even if we don’t pay for it with our lives. We Christians today are in need of hearing those great words: “Behold, I make all things new.”

The good news is that as an Easter people, we can already see the newness that is God’s re-creation of our world. We know the story of our salvation: This world was steeped in sin and we are a people who, though created and blessed by our God, time after time and age after age turned away from our God. Every generation turned away in ways more brazen than the last. We are the heirs of that fickle behavior and we can all attest that our sins have led us down those same paths time after time in our own lives. But God, who would be justified in letting us live in the hell we seemed to prefer, could not live without us. So he sent his only Son into our world. He was born as one of us and walked among us, living the same life as ours in all things but sin. He reached out to us and preached the new life of the Gospel. And in the end, he died our death, the death we so richly deserved for our sins. And not letting that death have the last word in our existence, he rose to a new life that lasts forever. He did all that motivated by the only thing that could ever explain away our fickle sinfulness, and that motivation is love.

I give you a new commandment: love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.

The love that Jesus is talking about here is not some kind of emotional infatuation that fades as quickly as it grows. It is not a love that says “I will love you if…” You have heard it before, I know: “I will love you if you remain faithful to me.” “I will love you if you are successful in school.” “I will love you if you meet all my own selfish expectations.” “I will love you if you ignore my imperfections.” “I will love you if you become more perfect.” Because the kind of love that says “I will love you if…” is not love at all. If God loved us if… we would be dead in our sins and there would be no reason to gather in this holy place day after day. If God loved us if… we would have nothing to look forward to in the life to come.

No, God does not love us if… God loves us period. As we know, God is love. God is love itself, love in all its perfection. Love cannot be experienced in a vacuum, so God created us to love him and for him to love us. We are the creation of God’s love and God cannot not love us! The kind of love Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel can only be summed up by the two crosses here in our church. First, the love that is poured out on the cross behind me, in which Jesus takes our sinfulness and brokenness upon himself, and stretches out his arms to die the death we had deserved for our unfaithfulness. It wasn’t nails that held him to that cross, it was love, and we are totally undeserving of it. The second cross is over to the left of the sanctuary and portrays Jesus rising from the dead against the backdrop of the cross. The Resurrection means that, because of love, death and sin have lost their sting. They no longer have the last word in our existence, because our God who is love itself has recreated the world in love.

And with this great act of sacrifice that restores us to grace, Jesus also gives those who would be his disciples a commandment: Love one another. And that sounds like an easy thing to do. But the second line of that commandment gives us pause and reminds us that our love can’t just be a nice feeling. He says to us: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” And we know how he has loved us, don’t we? Whenever we forget, all we have to do is look at the nearest crucifix. Our love must be sacrificial. Our love must be unconditional. Our love cannot be “I will love you if…” but instead, “I love you period.” Our love must be a love that re-creates the world in the image of God’s own love.

We live in a world that is broken and dark and evil at times. But our God has not abandoned us. Taking our death upon himself, he has risen triumphant over it. In spite of our unfaithfulness, he has re-created us all in his love. So now we disciples must continue his work of re-creation and love the world into a new existence.

“Behold, I make all things new.”

Today’s readings

Well, today’s Gospel reading is an exact repeat of the Gospel we had for the Feast of Sts. Philip and James, which was just two days ago. That’s the kind of coincidence that happens on the church calendar sometimes. So I’m not going to say much about the Gospel today. Instead, I want to pick up on the last line of the first reading. Just to refresh our memories, that line was: “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”

That’s an amazing line considering what happened to them earlier in the reading. The Jews showed them violent abuse and completely and vehemently contradicted their testimony to the Gospel. So they turned to the Gentiles who received the Message with great joy, but were later incited by some prominent Jews to expel them from their territory. When we look at that kind of situation, it has to strike us that joy is the last thing these men could possibly be filled with, right?

Yet that’s what happened. They were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. That’s the way joy works. It’s not something conditioned by the external events of a person’s life. Joy is not a feeling. Joy, instead, is a direct result of the disciple’s decision to give their life to Christ and to follow his way. Joy does not mean that the disciple won’t experience sadness or even hard times. I can fully attest to that in these days myself. But joy does mean that the disciple will never give in to the sadness or the hard times because all those things have been made new in Christ.

Christ is the source of our true joy. We disciples must choose to live lives of joy and remain unaffected by the world and the events of our lives. We choose joy because we know the One who is our Salvation.

Today’s readings

The last two days, the Gospel has overlapped by one verse, John 14:6. It appeared at the beginning of yesterday’s Gospel reading, and at the beginning of today’s:

“I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”

To me, this has always been a rather clear and uncompromising statement. How can a person come to the Father? Only through Jesus Christ, who is not just a way, a truth and one possible life, but rather the way, the truth, and the life, without whom no one can come to the reward of knowing God the Father, the one who created us for himself. This statement is Gospel, so we are called to believe in it, but it is one of those Gospel statements that is, well, a little troubling.

Because sometimes we would rather not make waves. Hey, anything you do is okay as long as you’re a good person. And aren’t all religions going for the same thing anyway? Well, that’s not what we’re hearing this morning, is it? St. Paul was pretty clear on this in today’s first reading from Acts, too. Listen to the end of his declaration one more time:

“We ourselves are proclaiming this good news to you
that what God promised our fathers
he has brought to fulfillment for us, their children, by raising up Jesus,
as it is written in the second psalm,
You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.”

Speaking to the Jews at Antioch, Paul makes it clear that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophets, even if the Jews at Jerusalem had Jesus put to death. Jesus alone is the one of whom prophets and psalmists have spoken, and we are now called upon to accept that truth.

As troubling as this Gospel may be, we have to look at it and come to terms with it, because it is the core of the Gospel faith. If Jesus isn’t the one way to the Father and to eternal life, then we could pick a faith that’s a lot easier. We could stay home and pray to trees and try to be as nice as we can to everyone. But the Gospel demands a lot more than that. It demands that we recognize Jesus as the one truth, and his way – which, let’s face it, is the Way of the Cross – is the one way, and his life of service and love is the only life there is. And if that’s true, we all have to be proclaimers of the Gospel so that this troubled world might be converted.

Today’s readings

A little over three weeks ago, we heard of the Twelve, gathered with Jesus in the upper room, celebrating the Passover for the last time together. Jesus tells them that he must suffer and die, and Peter proclaims on behalf of all of them, that they would suffer and die with him if necessary. But, of course, when the rubber meets the road, they all scatter. Peter himself says not once or twice, but three times that he is not only not one of them, but that he has never heard of the man, this man who had been his friend for three years.

Now the crucifixion is history and Jesus has risen from the dead, and the Eleven have no idea what to do. So they go back to their former way of life. They’ve given up, they are dejected and broken and it seems like their last three years have been wasted. So they take up what they knew best: fishing. Only, that doesn’t go so well for them either. They have caught nothing all night long, these men who grew up knowing how to fish and had made their living on it.

To these men who have completely failed at everything now, Jesus comes and helps them reel in a catch large enough to be a vision of the men and women they will gather in for the Lord in the future. They share a meal and are fortified for the mission ahead. They are healed and lifted up and given strength to do what they’ve been created for. Even Peter gets not just one or two chances, but three chances to proclaim his love for his friend, this man he had denied three times just three weeks ago.

To all of us who have messed up in life, all of us wounded disciples who have been confused and dejected and disillusioned and have even denied our Lord, these Eleven show us great promise. Our Jesus is a Lord of second chances. And even third chances. Our God never gives up on us, even if he has to catch us in a net with 152 other fish.

Today’s readings

There’s that old kitschy question, “If you were arrested and accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” As we’ve been hearing in our first reading ever since Easter began, that question is becoming a real source of anxiety for the Apostles. The Acts of the Apostles tells us of a group of Apostles who have been fortified by their experience of the Risen Lord and have finally come to enough of an understanding of the Gospel that they can really preach it with all their heart and soul and strength. The problem with that is that when they preach that way, it attracts the attention of the Jewish authorities, the very people who put Jesus to death. And now they are seeking the opportunity to put the Apostles to death also.

Hearing today’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking early on in his life and ministry. We see that, even early on, Jesus was warning his disciples that testifying to the Truth is going to come with a cost. They may not be believed, but those who do believe will have the great gift of eternal life. He says: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.”

It’s easy enough for me to tell you that we are all expected to preach the Gospel, all of us who have been baptized and saved and redeemed by the blood of our Lord. It’s easy enough for you to enthusiastically take up that call and preach the Gospel in what you say but even more in what you do. But when the rubber meets the road, and there is a cost to it, will we remain faithful? Will we preach the word when it puts us at odds with family members, or threatens our professional standing or prospects for advancement at work? Will we preach the word when it is inconvenient, or when we are tested in our faith? The Apostles came to know that that was exactly what they were called to do, and now it is up to us.

We must be able to say with Peter, “We must obey God rather than men.” We must have the courage to testify to the truth of the Gospel at all times, even when it’s hard, knowing that as the Psalmist tells us today, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.”