God plants us on a rock – 2 Tim 4:6-8, 17-18; Matt 16:13-19

Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Joe.


God plants us on a rock.  I find that a very realistic image for what it looks like to live out our lives in the Church.  We don’t live in a rose garden, yet, and we don’t experience perpetual banquet, yet.  As much as I hope we get glimmers of those realities now furtively, we live on a rock.  It’s big and it’s craggy and it’s home.

God reforms our vision – 2 Kings 11, Matt 6:19-23, SS. John Fisher and Thomas More.

Friday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time, St. Joe.

When did you last have your vision checked?  I don’t mean by an eye-doctor; I mean by Jesus.  In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us that the quality of our vision will determine the health of our entire self.  Our Holy Cross Constitutions tell us that “for the kingdom to come, disciples need the competence to see and the courage to act.”  The world looks different through eyes of faith, through kingdom-focused eyes, through compassionate eyes, through courageous eyes.

Godly vision doesn’t make the world looked rose-tinted; it doesn’t look nicer in a cheap way.  The priest Jehoiada in our first reading had the keen vision to see more clearly the injustice of Athaliah’s power-hungry reign. He also had the courageous vision to see this as injustice he must right, and we just heard how he managed to preserve an heir, depose Athaliah, destroy the site of Ba’al worship, and bring calm to Judah.

SS. John Fisher and Thomas More also had the God-given vision for injustice to see how Henry VIII was acting irreverently towards the Pope, wickedly towards his first wife, Catherine of Aragorn, and hubristically towards God by claiming the power to annul his own marriage.  They also had the courageous vision to see these wrongs as wrongs they must try to address.  They failed.  They were put to death and Henry abandoned Catherine and the Catholic Church.

But we celebrate their feast day today.  Why would we celebrate failures?  To see them as failures is to see them with clouded eyes.  Godly eyes do not let their death blot out the rest of reality.  Godly eyes see two men who loved: who loved their queen, loved England, loved the Church, loved justice, loved God… who loved enough to die for love.

That’s not failure, that’s what Jesus died for.

God humbles us – 1 Pet 5:1-6

Moreau Lucenarium; 1/26/12.  I didn't preach this week as I was on vacation, so here's an old one from earlier this year.  Note: I instructed the lector to say "be humbled" rather than "humble yourselves" in v. 6.  Both are grammatically possible translations, but the passive is preferred to the middle as it puts the emphasis on God's saving action rather than making it seem as if we could humble  ourselves without His grace.

“My future spouse often humiliates me.”  That’s a red flag.  When you’re preparing a couple for marriage and one of them agrees with that statement on the FOCCUS questionnaire, you know you’ve probably identified something you’ll need to talk about during the preparation process.  In fact, when you get the results printout from the computer, it even puts a big star next to that statement, in case you couldn’t guess that it’s kind of a big red flag.

So, when I brought this up to Maria during one of our meetings, I was surprised when she was surprised that I brought it up.  Her fiancé was pretty surprised about the whole thing too.  Eventually, and there’s five confusing minutes of conversation I’m abridging, we worked out what was going on.  Maria is not a native speaker of English and in her language (actually, in many languages), the word for ‘to humiliate someone’ is the same word as ‘to humble someone.’  “John makes me humble,” she told me. “To be loved by such a wonderful man, how could that not make you humble?  Isn’t that beautiful?”

I couldn’t help but agree with her.  That is beautiful.  That’s not a red flag, that’s good news, great news, for their future marriage.  During that conversation, I struggled to put into words something so seemingly obvious as the difference between being humiliated and being humbled.  Part of it is consent – humiliation ordinarily happens against our will, it’s forced.  To be humbled, we must cooperate, “not under compulsion but willingly.”

To be humiliated is to be pushed down, often by someone smaller than you, so you are forced to crank your neck to see them.  To be humbled is to stand tall willingly straining your neck to gaze upon something much bigger than you.

God never humiliates us.  God humbles us.  That’s good news, that’s great news not for our future marriage but for right now.  It’s so tempting to skip past that line in our reading, “be humbled under the mighty hand of God” and jump to “so that he might exalt us.”  And that’s beautiful too – the exaltation that is to come, the unfading crown that belongs to a future age – all wonderful.  But, “be humbled under the mighty hand of God…” that’s not quid pro quo; that’s not the price, how we earn a crown we could never earn.  That’s the good news for right now.

God takes our virtues and shows us what they look like in their fullness, in his mighty hand.  To strain your neck to gaze at that is to be humble.

He takes us when we finally realize we have slipped up and fallen down and offers us that hand.  To be humble is to take it, to grasp that loving hand, that wounded hand.  To be humble is to bear witness to the sufferings of Christ and say look at this hand that holds me, look at the sign of love etched into its palm.  Can I love like that?  On my own, am I nothing, but I am not on my own.

Jesus is Lord – 2 Tim 3:10-17; Mark 12:35-37

Friday of the 9th Week of Ordinary Time; St Joseph parish.

What’s the brashest way you can think of to proclaim “Jesus is Lord”?  Picture a van careering through traffic on a dusty street, crammed with 12 people in the back with about enough seating for 6, open to the air except for a brightly painted wooden frame enclosing them, decorated with vibrant patterns, joyful pictures and religious phrases written in French or sometimes Creole.  This is a tap tap and they function as buses all over Haiti.  The phrases vary – you can ride in a “Blood of Jesus” tap tap, or a “Promise of God” tap tap, or a “Jesus is Lord” tap tap.

These were some of the first sights to greet me when I arrived in Haiti and they surprised me.  I went to Haiti thinking I was going to a very poor country, and I was.  Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the poverty I saw was crippling and horrific.  Disease, disaster, malnutrition, poor education, a history of oppression, dictatorship and corruption conspire against life.  But, Haiti is not hopeless.

Naïve Haitian art is colorful and daring. It focuses on what makes Haiti so very rich – its beautiful natural surroundings; its welcome of the stranger; its familial sense of mutual support and biblical neighborliness; its lively faith.  It sees what a cursory glance cannot see.  It sees through all of the rival powers that seem to overwhelm the country and declares that they do not have the final word.  Jesus is Lord.

Our reading from 2^nd Timothy tells us that all scripture is useful training for righteousness.  The insight from today’s gospel that brought the crowd such joy – that the Christ is Lord – is emblazoned on so many tap taps because it’s part of the Haitian training regime.  It’s what gives hope.  It’s what tells them that wounds don’t get to have the last word: resurrection does.