Homily:
Pentecost Sunday – Cycle A
Friends, it is truly good to
be with you here today as we celebrate this great feast of Pentecost. After so much time apart, I am so grateful
that you can once again join me in-person to worship God and offer him thanks
in the Mass.
Many have called this feast of
Pentecost the “Birthday of the Church”.
This is a bit of a contradiction, however, as many others have said that
when the soldier pierced our Lord’s side on the cross, and blood and water
flowed out from his side, that this was the birth of the Church. Perhaps, then, it is better to say that
Pentecost is more of the “rite of passage” day, when the “child” is
acknowledged to have matured and thus is ready to accept the responsibility of
being among the “adults”. I like this because
this means that Pentecost isn’t just an amazing “sign” (the rush of wind, the
tongues of fire, and the speaking in different languages), but rather a
commissioning: a “sending forth from the nest” for the Church to go out and to
do something of its own in the world.
This, of course, is what we
celebrate today: that the Good News that human kind has been redeemed from
suffering and death through Jesus Christ has been sent out into the world so
that all men and women might be saved.
We celebrate because we are beneficiaries of this good news, and because
we, too, have been given the gift of being able to share this good news with
others.
Lest we get too caught up in
ourselves, however, we also remember that what we celebrate today is the
revelation of the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God the Father and God the Son—who
dwells among us as God’s abiding presence with us. Jesus is Emmanuel—God with us—not just in his
human nature (which now no longer dwells with us, but dwells in glorified form
for eternity in heaven and in sacramental form in the Eucharist), but Jesus is
Emmanuel now in the Person of the Holy Spirit. It is this Person whom we worship today and
whom we invoke to bring forth a new springtime of evangelization—that is, of
proclaiming this Good News—to the world.
This proclamation is not
something remote from us—as if it is something the Holy Spirit does in
disembodied form—but rather it is something very close to us. In fact, it is a task that has been given to each
of us as a consequence of our baptism and confirmation. As Saint Paul indicated in the second reading
today, any of us who proclaim that “Jesus is Lord”, do so only by the Holy
Spirit dwelling in us. This proclamation
is a gift—the gift that we all need—but it carries with it a responsibility:
a responsibility about which each of us should examine ourselves to see if we
are fulfilling.
I am a fan of Dr. Jordan
Peterson, who is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of
Toronto. Dr. Peterson has gained a lot
of notoriety over the past few years as someone who contradicts a lot of the
“mainstream” cultural ideas about how to be happy and fulfilled in your
life. He’s a bit of a curmudgeon, but
also an absolute realist and a scientist, and someone who has a great desire to
see people set free from suffering, much of which has its roots in a person’s
psychology.
Dr. Peterson has a great
respect for the Bible and plumbs the depths of the text to extract from it
profound truths about human psychology. Because
of this, many people have concluded that he must believe in God and, perhaps,
even be a Christian. He’s been asked
many times whether or not he believes in God and he always hedges: meaning that
he won’t say that he does, but he also won’t say that he doesn’t. On a few more recent occasions, he has
ventured to say why and I’ll try to share briefly how I understand his response.
As a clinical psychologist, he
knows how crucial it is to psychological health that what we ascent to as true,
psychologically, and what we then do in practice must align. In other words, because of what he knows
about how the human mind works, he knows that hypocrisy is psychological disaster
for people. Thus, for him, to say “I
believe this to be true” means that he better be conforming his life absolutely
to whatever consequences that declaration demands. For him, the demands associated with saying
“I believe in God” are nearly impossible for most people to fulfill (himself
included); and so, instead of answering the question “Do you believe in God?”,
he’d rather retort, “How dare you say ‘I believe in God’ if your life isn’t
absolutely conformed to the demands that such a statement makes on you?” Therefore, in response to the question, “Do
you believe in God?”, he will often say, “I strive to live as if I believe.” An honest answer, even if to some it could
seem like a “cop out”.
I myself have been challenged
by his response and have thought about it a lot. I’ve often thought that I'd like to hear his
thoughts about the statement in the Gospels made by the man whose son was
possessed by a demon and who came to Jesus asking him to heal his son. When Jesus asked the man “Do you believe?”
the man said, "Yes, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!" Dr. Peterson asks, "How dare I say I
believe if I’m not actually putting all of myself into living in accord with
that believe?" That’s a darn good
question. His question begs the
question, though: "Can I be striving imperfectly to do that and still say
that I believe?" I think so; and I
think that this phrase helps me to say that: "Yes, Lord, I believe. Help
my unbelief!"
The problem for us, I think,
is that almost every one of us skips over the challenge of the first question
(“How dare I say...”) and jumps right to the second and its response (“It’s
okay to say ‘I believe’ without living it perfectly”). Thus, we can excuse our lack of commitment—that
is, our lack of willing absolutely everything in our lives to be in conformance
with the demands of that statement—solely because we've made an intellectual
ascent: "I believe". Belief, Dr.
Peterson is saying, and to say "I believe", is to "wrestle with
God", because to will that absolutely everything in our lives would be in
conformance with the demands of discipleship—that is, the demands of what it
means to say, “I believe”—is a life-long wrestling match.
Francis Chan is an evangelical
preacher and he recorded a little video in which he was asked what it meant to
surrender completely to God. In it he
brought up that there had been discussion in recent years among evangelicals
about whether one could separate accepting Jesus as “Savior” from accepting him
as “Lord”. He declared that that was
impossible: that we cannot receive the salvation that Jesus won for us without
placing ourselves under his Lordship. I
think, however, that this is exactly what Dr. Peterson is getting at. I think that, in practice, many of us who say
“I believe” live this way: “Thank you, Jesus, for saving me. I look forward to
‘cashing that in’ at the end of my life. I’ll see you then.” Nevertheless, there has to be some room for
our imperfection, right?
Therefore, on this great feast
of Pentecost, I might have this to say to Dr. Peterson: "How dare we say
'I believe'? Because the Holy Spirit urges us to do so. How dare we then
neglect the consequences—the demands—of that statement? This might be the better
question.” Because, my friends, to
neglect the responsibility that comes with that statement, and then still to
say "I believe", makes that statement completely devoid of meaning. Do you want to know why so many people are
turning away from religion all together?
Because they look at people who say “I believe” and they see (at least
outwardly) that it doesn’t seem to mean anything about how they live, and so
they think, “Why bother?” And so, NO, perhaps
we shouldn't dare say "I believe" until we are (to use Jordan
Peterson's style of speaking) DARN SURE that we are ready to accept all of the
responsibility that comes with saying it.
Better, perhaps, to say, instead, “I believe, but I ask the Lord daily
to help my unbelief” (that is, to help me daily to contend with and overcome
the ways that I fail to live in accord with that belief). My friends, the ones who have done this best,
we call "saints". The ones who
have refused to do this are in hell.
Today, as we worship the Holy
Spirit, whose revelation we celebrate, and as we commemorate (and celebrate)
the manifestation of the Church, let’s challenge ourselves to face the full
reality of what it means to say “Jesus is Lord” (that is, “I believe”); and
thus turn to that same Holy Spirit, asking him to fill us with the fire of his
seven-fold gift so that we might boldly manifest the Church once again,
proclaiming “the mighty works of God”, and bringing forth a new Pentecost: a
fruitful harvest of believers to give glory to God for all ages to come.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 31st,
2020
No comments:
Post a Comment