God's mystery in the unexpected

Homily: 3^rd Sunday in Easter – Cycle A

Friends, as we begin this third week of Easter, we are taken back, once again, to Easter Sunday.  After viewing the experience of Christ’s resurrection through Mary and her encounter with the empty tomb, then the disciples gathered in the upper room, we now view the experience of the resurrection through the eyes Cleopas and his companion as they travel back home to Emmaus.  One of the things that strikes me today as we encounter this very familiar story once again, was that these two disciples thought that they had it all figured out: the Messiah was going to be a great king who would rid them of the Roman occupation and restore the kingdom of God’s people.  Surely this Messiah would be recognized by all of Israel who would rally behind him, glorifying God and rejoicing that he, after many centuries, had finally fulfilled his promises to his faithful people.  When many of the Israelites, especially the religious elite, rejected Jesus as the Messiah—going so far as to have him killed as a blasphemer—many of Jesus’ disciples began to think, “Well, we must have been wrong about him.”

Striking about this conclusion is the fact that not only had these two heard the testimony of the women who went to the tomb, saw it empty, and received a message from two angels that Jesus had been raised, but they also heard the testimony of others who went to the tomb and found it as the women had described (perhaps one or both of them were in that group).  Not only is this evidence that they were not expecting the resurrection (something for which Jesus will chide them along the way), but it is also evidence that, for them, resurrection from the dead was so implausible that they didn’t wait around to find out whether it was really true or if there was some other “foul play” at work.  No matter how they came to the conclusions to which they came about the Messiah, Jesus’ death and resurrection didn’t play into them and so they turn away from the community of believers and walk back to their home: their former way of life.

The great 4^th century bishop and theologian, Saint Augustine, reminds us (and I paraphrase) that “If at any time we feel like we have come to some conclusion to our inquiry about God, we are wrong.”  What he is saying is that it is impossible for us to have God completely figured out.  God is mystery.  Of course, a mystery is not just something that is unknown, but rather something that is unknown yet knowable.  As a mystery, therefore, God is knowable—infinitely knowable, in fact.  Our human minds, however, can never know him completely; and so, whenever we find ourselves coming to a conclusion about how God is going to respond in a certain situation, we should pause and make room for God to surprise us with something unexpected.  The (presumably honest) error of Cleopas and his companion was that they didn’t allow for the unexpected resurrection of Jesus.  God’s loving kindness, however, wouldn’t leave them in their error.

One of the things that always surprises me about this passage is that the “eyes” of Cleopas and his companion “were prevented from recognizing” Jesus as he walked with them.  “Prevented?  Why?”  Let’s think about that for a moment.  Last week we heard Jesus tell Thomas... what?  “Have you believed because you have seen me?” he said, “Blessed are those who have NOT SEEN, YET BELIEVE.”  This incident with Cleopas and his companion happened before Jesus spoke these words to Thomas, but they can help us make sense of why their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.  Looking back at Jesus’ ministry, we’ll see that his goal was always to demonstrate that he was not some “new thing, come to shake up the establishment”, but rather that he was the fulfillment of all of the promises that God had made over the centuries: for if he was just a “flavor of the day”, and if there was no scriptural foundation for his claim to being the Messiah, he’d be quickly forgotten.  But if he is the fulfillment of God’s promises, well then his disciples would have a solid foundation on which to build.

Therefore, Jesus spends his time walking with the disciples explaining how he (whom they don’t yet recognize as him, remember) fulfilled all of the ancient prophesies.  In other words, he invites them to “unravel” the mystery.  By their own admission later, the disciples’ hearts were “burning within them” as they recognized that, indeed, Jesus was the Messiah as they came to understand that the Messiah had to suffer and then be raised from the dead.  Now that they understood how the Scriptures all pointed to him—that is, now that they had solidified the foundation for their belief—they were then ready to recognize him in the breaking of bread: that is, the Eucharist.

Friends, we are now more than one month under this “stay at home” order, which has separated us from the sacraments: a separation made especially painful because it comes during the time of year that we most have cause to celebrate.  Perhaps some of you are starting to feel a little confused about your faith.  Perhaps you’re starting to feel comfortable with livestream Masses and that realization is unsettling to you.  Or perhaps the opposite: you cannot get comfortable with livestream Masses and so want to abandon them, and that is unsettling.  Or maybe it’s just the prospect that this could go on for a much longer period of time that makes you question where God really is in all of this (or even if he is in it at all!).

No matter what you are experiencing today, the message of our Gospel reading is this: go back to the scriptures—that is, the source and foundation for what you know and believe—and seek the assurances that God does indeed work in unexpected ways to lead his people through uncertain times and look for the clues that he is present in our own time (trust me, they’re there!).  (The “Lectio” series on Formed.org has a collection on the biblical foundations of the Eucharist.  I recommend you watch it.)

Perhaps you’ll find your heart burning within you as you encounter these familiar sources in the context of our novel circumstances.  Regardless of whether your do, make yourselves open to the sometimes unexpected ways of God and your efforts will make you ready to see Christ with renewed eyes in the breaking of the bread here in the Eucharist, ready to receive him into your bodies once again, and ready to rush back into the world to proclaim what you have seen and heard: that “The Lord has truly been raised and we have seen him!”

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – April 26^th, 2020

Come, be filled with the joy of the resurrection!

Homily: Easter Sunday – Cycle C

Halleluiah, we made it!  After forty days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, here we are on Easter Sunday.  What a joy it is to be here with all of you: my still new family in Christ.  Like any good engineer, however, I’m never content just to arrive at my destination.  Rather, there’s always a little part of me that wants to look back at where I’ve been and how I arrived here in order to see if I accomplished all that I had set out to accomplish.  I think that it is a valuable thing for us to do on Easter Sunday: kind of like looking over photos from a trip as soon as you get home so that you don’t quickly forget the experiences you had.

To begin, let’s go back to Ash Wednesday, all the way back on March 6^th.  There we heard Christ call us to repent from our sins and to believe in the Gospel and I encouraged you to look hard at what your Lenten fasts would be to ensure that they produced more than just forty days of punishment, but that they would also produce in you a sense of detachment.

Then, on the first Sunday of Lent, we recounted how Christ modeled for us what our forty days of fasting should produce in us.  He spent forty days in the desert, fasting and praying; and the Scriptures tell us that when he emerged from the desert, he was hungry (Duh!).  What Jesus realized during that time of fasting and prayer was that it wasn’t food or other worldly things that he wanted, but rather it was communion with God towards which all of his desires were pointing.  Therefore, when the devil tempted him to change rocks into bread, to worship him so he could have dominion over the kingdoms of the world, and to put God to the test by throwing himself off of the parapet, Jesus could resist him.  His fasting had led him to detachment from any desire for these worldly things.

A couple of weeks later, if you were with us for the celebration of the scrutinies, we heard about the Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets at the well.  Poor woman was just trying to get to the well and get home without running into anybody, but there was Jesus ready to flip her world upside down.  Jesus innocently asks for a cup of water, but when the woman questions him about asking a Samaritan for something, Jesus reveals to her the real reason why he is there: he tells her that if she knew who she was talking to that she would be asking him for water, because the water he would give would never leave her thirsty again.  What Jesus was revealing to her was that what she was really looking for couldn’t be found in husbands or in a well, but that it was sitting there right in front of her: that what she really thirsted for was to know God and that this knowledge alone would satisfy her thirst.

While I could go on picking out other examples from our Scripture readings from these past seven weeks, I won’t.  Hopefully, however, for these last forty days, this has been the work that we have been doing: removing the “old yeast” of malice and wickedness, as Saint Paul describes it today, so that we can celebrate this feast with the “unleavened bread” of sincerity and truth.  Hopefully, by our fasting and almsgiving we’ve been detaching ourselves from the things of this world: things that only provide a temporary satisfaction.  And hopefully through our prayer—which is where we meet God like that woman did at the well—Jesus has been showing us what it is that we are truly thirsting for.  And so, hopefully, you find yourself today like Jesus did when he emerged from the desert and like the woman did when she encountered him at the well: hungry and thirsty for what truly satisfies.

If you’ve done your work well, then you probably feel a sense of freedom from whatever it is that you gave up.  Thus, you won’t be easily tempted to go back to it now that Lent is finished.  If, however, you haven’t done this work so well, then you’re probably looking forward to getting out of this Mass as quickly as you can so that you can indulge again in whatever it was that you sacrificed for the last forty days.  Either way, I can tell you that the hunger that all of us are feeling today—the hunger that we are left with after forty days of fasting—is not a hunger for worldly things (although it may feel that way); rather, it is a hunger for God.

Saint Augustine famously wrote: “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.”  I think that he could have just as easily said the same thing if he would have said: “We are always hungry, O Lord, until our hungers are satisfied in you.”  And so, whether you have used this time of Lent well or poorly (or not at all), I can tell you that whatever hunger you feel inside of you today is truly a hunger for God and only communion with him will truly satisfy it.

Now, I’m enough of a realist to realize that some of us here see this and some of us don’t.  Those who see it are here today rejoicing with full hearts and full voice that God has not left us alone to die in our sin, but rather that through the resurrection of his Son he has redeemed us so that our hungers can be satisfied.  Maybe, however, that’s only a few of us.  Perhaps, though, many of us have gotten a glimpse of this during Lent and so come here today with great hope that something new is happening in our lives that can move us towards finding meaning and purpose in all that we do.  Yet I am sure that there are still some of us here who just don’t see it at all.  And you know what?  That’s ok.  Because we are all here today, just like Jesus’ disciples were all together on the first Easter.  And we are all hearing the same news—the joyful, compelling, and confounding news: He is risen!

And so regardless of where you find yourself today, the Good News is that He is risen and for the next fifty days we will be feasting on the joy of this day, and everyone is welcome to join in this feast from wherever it is that you are at.  This feast is truly the foretaste of heaven: for it is the joy that on this day nearly two-thousand years ago Jesus the Christ of God rose from the dead and conquered sin and death forever, restoring our communion with God and making it so that we can all truly live in harmony and peace.

My brothers and sisters, if you have been waiting for your invitation to join into this feast, then here it is.  Whatever it is that compelled you to be here today, know that God wanted you to be here and that he invites you to experience the richness of this banquet that he has prepared for you—for all of us—from before time began.  He knows that each and every one of us is hungry and he longs to satisfy that hunger.   Therefore, lift up your hearts to experience the satisfaction that only he can give: the union of love that he offers us here in this Eucharist.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – April 21^st, 2019