P.S. Next Sunday is "Liturgical New Year's Day" (the First Sunday of Advent). Are you planning any celebrations for the New Year?
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Homily:
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe – Cycle C
Michigan mega-church pastor Rob Bell has produced a series
of videos that take a simple, straight-forward approach to demonstrating how
the Gospel applies to everyday life. In
one of the videos that I’ve seen, Mr. Bell speaks about the importance of
saying “yes” to something. In doing so,
he emphasizes, we can then come to know what it is that we need to say “no” to
in our lives. He uses Jesus as an
example to illustrate his point, stating that because Jesus said “yes” to do
the Father’s will, announcing the Good News and redeeming God’s people, he
could say “no” to many other things (like when Jesus turned away when he knew
the crowd was going to carry him away to make him their ruler).
This is a video (a short film, really) and so of course
there is a visual component to his speaking.
In the film, the whole time that he is talking he’s walking, seemingly
from one side of a city to another. At
first his surroundings just seem like normal busy streets, but if you’re paying
attention you begin to notice that the surroundings are part of the point. The visual noises are distractions that
surround him as he walks. At a couple of
points, a person actually walks in between Mr. Bell and the camera as he’s
walking, but he never loses his stride until he arrives at his destination
(which happens to be a school where he meets a young girl that we are to assume
is his daughter). The well-made point of
both his words and the visual presentation is to emphasize how knowing what it
is that we have said “yes” to keeps us focused (i.e. able to say “no”) in the
midst of the world’s distractions.
In the Gospel today, we jump right into the middle of
Luke’s account of the crucifixion. In it
Jesus is being taunted by bystanders while he is in the midst of his greatest
suffering. The Jewish authorities, the
Roman soldiers, and even one of the criminals crucified with him all pressure
him to prove he’s the Messiah—the divinely appointed King of the Jews—by using
divine power to save himself from the crucifixion. I can only imagine what Jesus felt. He knew that he was the king, but reviling
him these men were calling him a phony, a poseur, because the real king would save himself from this
disgrace.
Jesus also knew that he had the power to save himself. Recall what happened when, in the synagogue
at Nazareth, the townspeople tried to throw Jesus over the brow of the hill on
which the town was built for what he had said, but that Jesus “passed through
the midst of them” and escaped. But Jesus
didn’t do that this time, did he? And
why? Well, because he knew that he had
already said “yes” to do the Father’s will, which was to be sacrificed for the
redemption of all mankind. And because
of this, he could say “no” to the distractions surrounding him: the temptations
to use his divine power to save himself from this incredible suffering.
Yet, there was one voice that refused to revile Jesus: the
voice of the other criminal crucified with him. He, it seems could see
something… let’s say… incongruent
about Jesus’ crucifixion. This criminal
could see that Jesus was innocent of any capital crime and hadn’t really been
any threat to the power of the Roman occupiers, and so perhaps he thought Jesus
really was who he said he was: a king who has yet to come into his kingdom. And so, in his own suffering and nearness to
death, this criminal makes an incredible act of faith in Jesus—he decides to
say “yes” to Jesus by acknowledging him as King—and for that “yes” he received
his eternal reward.
And so the question, of course, comes back to us. Have we said “yes” to Jesus? In many ways, this is what the Year of Faith,
which ends today, has been all about.
It’s been about re-discovering and renewing our faith—our yes—in Jesus. And whether or not we spent this year well,
today we are called to acknowledge the kingship of Jesus—that he truly does
rule over us—and to renew (or, perhaps, to speak for the first time) our “yes”
to follow Jesus, so that a new flourishing of faith can blossom as we begin a
new liturgical year.
You know, as Catholics, we don’t do the whole “Have you
accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior” thing, but the idea of it is
what we are constantly being called to.
In baptism, we receive the grace of salvation: the grace won for us by
Jesus’ death and resurrection. Yet, at
some point in our lives, we all have to say “yes” to Jesus and to acknowledge
him as Lord and ruler of our lives. In
other words, we have to let Jesus be our king.
But this is dangerous, is it not? I mean, if we say “yes” to Jesus, then we’ll
have to say “no” to so many other things, won’t we? So how, then, can we say “yes” to him? I mean, where can we find the courage to
allow him to be Lord and ruler of our lives?
This courage, my brothers and sisters, comes only through an encounter with him. And where do we encounter him? In prayer (especially before the Blessed
Sacrament here in the Church) and in communal worship (especially here in the
Eucharist), in the Scriptures (especially when we meditate on them and allow
them to speak to us and to our lives), and in our suffering (i.e. when we are
able, in our suffering, to turn, like the “good thief” in today’s Gospel, and
see Jesus, crucified there with us).
My brothers and sisters, when we encounter Jesus we can see
the hopelessness of our striving in contrast with the hope contained in Jesus’
resurrection from the dead, and in this light we can find the courage to say
“yes” to him (and, thus, “no” to so much else).
In this Eucharistic encounter with Jesus, let us not fear to say “yes”
to him and acknowledge him as our King; and let us not fear all that we’ll have
to say “no” to because of this: because paradise—that is, eternal
happiness—awaits us.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – November 23rd & 24th, 2013
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