Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

I am always on the lookout for a strong hook or theme when I do a homily, as I figure you need to leave people with a good take-away that can act as a reminder of the core message. A number of different inspirations presented themselves to me for today’s homily but one stuck with me. It came into view while I was out on a walk a few blocks from Seattle University and praying a rosary.

I am sure everyone here has seen the bumper sticker that uses the symbols of the major religious on the world that says: “COEXIST”. I give the creator of that bumper sticker an A+ for creativity and design. It all depends on how you read it theologically or philosophically on whether you agree with it or not. Surely the single theme of working together is admirable and something we can all agree about. However that was not the bumper sticker I saw on my walk through Capital Hill. The one I saw used the symbols of religion and same color scheme as “COEXIST” only it said: “FICTION.”  It made me laugh for its creativity and I even took a picture of it with my phone to email to some friends. 

I was not taken aback by the bumper sticker however. It is part of the package of living in Seattle and the Capital Hill neighborhood that one learns to accept as par for the course. However the message of this second bumper sticker is much different than COEXIST. One expresses a core belief in God albeit with a diversity of expressions or manifestations. The other intimates that all religious beliefs are nothing but make-believe—FICTION.

The reason it caught my attention is that I am guessing that most if not all of us—believers included—don’t take the whole of Christianity seriously. There are parts that we accept as fact—and other parts that might make us uncomfortable that we quietly dismiss as fictional or no longer see as relevant to our times.
We have recently concluded the Christmas Season. The whole of the story of salvation can sound fantastical to us third millennium people. That a primeval cataclysmic sin-event of human origin destroyed not only the paradise God created for us on Earth, but also ended the immortality we were originally gifted with by God. This primordial tragedy ushered in all the realities that cause of grief and suffering, not the least of which are sickness and death.

Truth or fiction: A primordial sin-event ended paradise and ended immortality?

How we answer will determine how we respond to the word of God we hear this day. Isaiah: The promise of Salvation“I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” The Chosen people were made a promise to be the people from whom would come the One who would save humanity and the world from this primordial cataclysmic event. And the Prophet Isaiah is perhaps the most consoling Old Testament voice of this promise and why we hear Isaiah during every Advent liturgy.

Truth or fiction: that God chose a people from which to enter history as a human being?

St. Paul’s greeting to the Church at Corinth marks the most important chapter in Paul’s most prolific set of writings to any of the early Church communities he corresponded with (according to the great scripture scholar, Raymond Brown). We learn that the reason for this is that the Christian community in Corinth had so many problems. It was a multi-ethnic and cross-cultural society and the problems Paul addresses in his writings to them sound very contemporary: rival theologians, factions, problematic sexual practices, marital obligations, liturgy, and church roles.

Paul’s letter begins: “To the Church in Corinth—Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Brown says that in the first few verses of this first chapter Paul states the name of Jesus nine times. This is because the name under which they identify themselves had not brought them into unity----they were torn apart by various factions and the first part of Corinthians addresses the scandal of caused by this factionalism.
I have come to believe that root of factionalism in the Church, whether it is in Paul’s Corinth or today’s Seattle Archdiocese has less to do with genuine intellectual disagreements and more to do with shallow or non-existent conversion.

Some months ago I spoke with Fr. Magnano about coming here and discussed the difficulty about doing pastoral ministry in a Church divided between left and right. I used the words of Jesus in Luke’s ninth chapter that says: “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” I jokingly said my redaction of the text was this: The foxes are the “righteous” traditionalists who know absolutely all the rules but have little or no mercy. And the birds of the air are the “righteous” progressives who have few if any rules but have all the mercy in the world---AND....The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

The mindset of both the traditionalist and the progressive reveal how each finds a way not to need a Savior. The traditionalist believes in sin but relies on his or her “perfect” execution of the law to do away with the need of a Savior. The progressive seeks to minimize the reality sin and so has no real need of a Savior.
When an individual truly confronts his or her sinfulness, they realize they need a Savior and they grow in compassion.

Truth or Fiction: the sin in your own life demands the sacrifice of Christ so that you can be healed—so that you can regain immortality?
And question brings us our Gospel today from John. John the Baptist—the greatest of the Old Testament prophets and the pivot between the Old and New Covenants—identifies Jesus as the promised Messiah—the Son of God—to all his followers. And he uses that phrase we say before communion at each Mass: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

Truth or Fiction: We are all sinners who need God’s Mercy and Forgiveness?

Perhaps we can take inspiration for Pope Francis’ confession in the now famous interview when asked: “who is Jorge Bergoglio?  I have the first question ready, but then I decide not to follow the script that I had prepared for myself, and I ask him point-blank: “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” The pope stares at me in silence. I ask him if this is a question that I am allowed to ask.... He nods that it is, and he tells me: “I do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.” Yes, ...the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.” “I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.¹ Pope Francis is inviting us to all be engaged in the proclamation of the Gospel. He said in effect his beginning on the same path was recognizing his need for salvation.

1 Taken from: http://americamagazine.org/pope-francis-interview

The reason I am here today is that I have invited Christ Our Hope community with Fr. Magnano’s blessing, to participate in a Forty Week prayer journey starting in March. Called, Living Life as Sacred Story, it is an opportunity to open our hearts to God and together come to realize the Lord Jesus as Savior in our lives and in our world. I have invited Christ our Hope to be part of a project along with Living Life as Sacred Story to help our Ignatian Sacred Story Institute build a full set of parish resources for the Forty Weeks program. More information will be forthcoming from the parish about how you can participate in Living Life as Sacred Story.

What will you gain from your participation? You will enter a school of prayer and discernment where you will personally encounter the Lord Jesus who seeks to help you build your life into a Sacred Story. We have just concluded a 14 month longitudinal study with laity in six parishes who helped us build the Forty Weeks book. What have they gained by the Forty Weeks program?

• Growth in Happiness
• Growth in Humility
• Growth in Gratefulness
• Growth in Self-Understanding
• Growth in Interior Spiritual Freedom
• Commitment to a simple daily prayer discipline that makes Christ more and more the center of their lives.

We have perhaps with the example of Pope Francis the most opportune time to fully engage the vision of the Second Vatican Council which more than anything sought to fully engage the laity in their faith—to revive the fullness of what it means to be a Christian community and so be a sign to the world of the power of the Christ event for human history.

The opening lines of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the first of Vatican II’s documents, proclaim the Council’s high ideals: “This sacred council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own time those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of humankind into the household of the Church.”

Truth or Fiction: Jesus calls us individually and as a body of Christ with the same promise and hope that Isaiah spoke to Israel: “I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

I invite each of you to consider this Ignatian Forty Week journey of prayer—Living Life as Sacred Story.
Who should participate? St. Ignatius told the early Jesuits to minster to the people who knew they needed help. These ones, he said, will be open to the help you can provide. So I guess the best qualification for engaging the program is to be a sinner who seeks the mercy of God in your life.
Truth or Fiction: God is calling you, a sinner, to share in his life and the mission of the Church today? God will choose the weak to help realize the great plan to save the universe and humanity. In choosing sinful, mortal humans for this greatest of missions, God must help them overcome their fear, convince them that what for them seems impossible is not impossible for God, and finally get them to trust completely in the faithfulness of God’s power to work through their human weakness. Overcoming great fear, surrendering to the impossible, and trusting in the power of God; this is the Christian pattern of mission and vocation as laid out in the very beginning of the gospel stories.

Let our response to the Word of God today and the invitation to journey for Forty Weeks in Living Life as Sacred Story be the refrain from our Psalm:
“Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.”

Rev. William M. Watson, SJ