Homily: 3rd Sunday of Easter – Cycle C
For
many of us, when we were in our most formative years, a certain style of music
or perhaps one band in particular, had a profound influence on how we came to
understand ourselves, that is, who we are, and how we approach and deal with
life. When I was in high school, the
alternative rock band Pearl Jam was that band for me. In spite of being a fervent follower of the
band, and in spite of the fact that I lived near Chicago, which meant that on
each of their tours there was a stop close enough for me to have a chance to go
to it, I had never been to a Pearl Jam concert.
A
couple of years ago Pearl Jam came to Chicago to play a special concert at
Wrigley Field. A few of my friends from
high school, who still lived in the Chicago area, called me and invited me to
go. I had stopped following Pearl Jam
some years before, so I didn’t feel like this was something I had to do, but
the chance for a “reunion” of sorts with some of my high school friends was
enough for me to agree to go.
Now,
I hadn’t been to a rock concert in many years—since before I entered the
seminary, really—and so there were a lot of things about this experience that
were kind of shocking to me. The most
surprising of them all to me was what I observed after the concert started. It was nothing that I hadn’t seen before, but
in the light of my “conversion” to follow the Lord and my seminary formation,
it was very striking to me.
What
struck me was how the people responded when the band came out to play. There was a lot of applause, of course, which
was to be expected, but a great majority of people spontaneously thrust their
hands into the air and began to scream at the top of their lungs. And what struck me at that moment was the
thought: “Oh my, these people are worshiping!
They are worshiping these men on stage!”
If
you’ve never thought of it before, perhaps now you will, but this motion
(thrusting your hands in the air and crying out in the direction of some object
or being) is an act of prayer: either adoration (in which we are trying to
“throw” our praise towards the object of our prayer) or petition (in which we
are trying to “pull” help and favor from the one to whom we are praying). Thus, when I saw this at the concert, I was
immediately struck that this act of fervent prayer was being directed to these
men playing music on a stage.
Now,
my purpose here is not to condemn these people for idol worship (it would be
presumptuous of me to accuse them of that); but rather to highlight something
about what heaven might be like, in light of our experience of something as
inspiring of our passions as a rock concert, and to invite us to imagine how
our lives here on earth can draw us into that experience until the day that we
experience it fully.
In
our second reading today, we read from the revelations given to the apostle
John while he was exiled on the Greek island of Patmos. His exile came during a time when the early
Church was experiencing increasing persecution from the Roman authorities. These visions were given to John as a way to
bolster the faith of Christians in the face of these persecutions. The vision comes in fantastical imagery,
which included symbols that Christians would understand, but that their
persecutors wouldn’t necessarily understand.
The vision we read from today is a vision of the ultimate victory of the
Lamb (that is, the Lamb of God, who is Jesus), seated on the throne of heaven (that
is, the highest throne of the universe), and who is worshiped by all the beings
in heaven and all of the creatures of the universe (that is, everything that
exists).
This
is a very powerful image! In a time when
the active worship of God was part and parcel of people’s daily lives—and when
kings and rulers often claimed that their people should worship them (as Caesar
did)—an image of the one that you acknowledged as king and God being worshiped
by every creature of the universe would be powerful and inspiring.
Unfortunately,
however, we seem to have accepted an image of heaven as a place where we lounge
around on clouds, listening to gentle music from harps, and where everything is
colored in light pastels: in other words, we’ve accepted an image in which
heaven is a place in which none of our passions are excited, but rather where everything
is artificially sweet and calm. The
image presented to us in this reading, however, seems to indicate that heaven
is much more like a rock concert than a serenity garden.
And
so, what should we take from that? That
heaven will be like a rock concert and, if we don’t like rock concerts, then
too bad? No, of course not. I think what we can take from this image of
heaven, however, is that heaven will be a place in which we are fully alive,
passions and all; and that this experience of the fullness of life will be very
dynamic, joy-filled, and never-ending.
When people leave a concert, they are often full of energy: still
screaming, laughing, and often immediately reliving the best moments from
it. In other words, it is an experience
that stays with them and gives them a fuller sense of living as they return to
their daily lives. Imagine that kind of
experience never ending and you’ll begin to have an idea of what it means to be
in heaven, before the throne of the Lamb, worshiping him for all eternity. It’s like a never-ending Pearl Jam concert.
(I just ruined it for most of you, didn’t I?)
Why
is this important for us to realize?
Well, for starters, perhaps it can give us an awareness of where we have
been worshiping false idols in our lives, right? I mean, if we find ourselves responding to
things that aren’t God with gestures and acclamations of adoration and praise,
then perhaps we need to review where those things are on our list of
“most-important things” in our lives.
More than that, however, when we realize that heaven won’t be a place in
which, it seems, we will be barely alive, but rather a place in which we will
be fully alive, we can choose to begin to approach that experience by striving
to live as fully-alive as we can in this life, giving God adoration and praise
by being the fullest and most alive versions of ourselves, using all of our
gifts and talents for our good and the good of everyone around us.
Saint
Irenaeus of Lyons wrote in one of his defenses of the Christian faith that “The
glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding
God.” Thus, to give God glory in this
life we must be fully alive, or living,
so as to move us towards that for which we are alive: to behold God, the Lamb
of God on the throne of heaven.
This,
my brothers and sisters, is what the Easter season calls us to do: to live
fully alive in this world in anticipation of the true fullness of life we will
experience in the next: the fullness of life made possible for us by the death
and resurrection of Jesus our Lord. The
temptation is to think that the Lord has abandoned us, having gone back to
heaven; and to respond, like the apostles did, going back out into the boat
without Jesus, just trying to make something of our lives. The joy of Easter reminds us that it is for
God that we live and so our lives must always move in response to God; and when
they do, like when Jesus intervened for the apostles, they will be abundantly
fruitful.
Let
us, then, my brothers and sisters, commit ourselves to the proper worship of
God: the full living of our lives for him in this world in anticipation of the
fullness of life that we hope to enjoy in his presence in heaven; a glimpse of
which we receive when we re-present to him this perfect sacrifice of
thanksgiving: the Lamb of God who has taken away our sins and who now sits on
the throne in heaven to rule for all eternity.
Come, now, let us adore him.
Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – April 9th
& 10th, 2016
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