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Year C
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What
follows is a homily for January 18, 2004,
the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year
C. What might mystagogical preaching sound
like on this day when the lectionary, rather
than diving into Luke, gives us John’s
story of the wedding at Cana and, in doing
so, makes this Sunday not so much the start
of the Ordinary Time that follows but the
conclusion of the Christmas/Epiphany mystery
that we have been observing since December
25? Mystagogical preaching is a communal
exploration of the mysteries into which
we are initiated lifelong. As it happens
in 2004, in the United States this is the
day before the observance of the birthday
of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gabe
Huck
On
the books we have returned to what is called
Ordinary Time, those counted Sundays between
Epiphany and Lent, between Pentecost and
Advent. On the books. But were we to judge
only by the readings, we would see that
on this Sunday — seemingly so far
from Christmas in our bodies and souls — we
are in fact still caught up in the Christmas/Epiphany
mystery. The same words from Isaiah that
we heard this morning were the words that
began the liturgy on the Vigil of Christmas — “No
more shall people call you ‘Forsaken,’ /
. . . but you shall be called ‘My
Delight,’ / . . . for the Lord delights
in you / . . . as a bridegroom rejoices
in his bride, / so shall your God rejoice
in you” (Isaiah 62:4, 5). That sounds
like a wedding, the clamorous celebration
of two persons casting their lives together.
That image of two lovers — even more
than the image of the Bethlehem manger — proclaims
the mystery that holds us through the season
of Christmas. The stories we tell of birth
giving, angels singing, shepherds and magi
processing, innocents slaughtered — all
these are part of a larger story, how God
weds this world of ours, despite everything.
In
some places Christians know Epiphany as
the celebration of three manifestations:
the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, the wedding
at Cana. Old songs of the church have taken
these stories and playfully brought them
together in chants like this one:
Today
the Bridegroom claims the bride, the church,
for Christ has washed our sins away in Jordan’s
waters;
the magi hasten with their gifts
to the royal wedding;
and the wedding guests rejoice,
for Christ has changed water into wine. Alleluia!
So
there is a wedding, and here come the Magi
with their wedding presents, and at that
wedding see what happens: Christ changes
water into wine! The stories run joyously
together, all of them being proclamations
of how God clasps the world in wild and
wide and tender love. When we spread out
the stories of Magi, baptism, and Cana’s
wedding, as we do this year, we are weeks
past December 25 before we tell this final
story of how the wine ran out! Never hear
this story as some flashy miracle. In fact
it wasn’t flashy at all: nobody except
Mary and Jesus, a few servants and few disciples
ever knew what was going on. The point is
not that somebody once got water to taste
like very good wine — more than a
hundred gallons at that. The point is the
wedding of God and us, the point is that
the good wine is in our midst, the point
is abundance, the point is — as we
heard in that second reading where Paul
is writing to the church at Corinth — God’s
lavish gifts of wisdom and healing and discernment.
And
where is all this happening? Let those with
eyes to see, see! What we do here Sunday
by Sunday around this table on which we
place our bread and our good wine, what
we do here is sing out this single word:
Today. Hodie was
the Latin word and it marked the great feasts
of the church because they were never about
the long ago and the far away. They were Hodie!
They were “Today!” We heard
this a moment ago:
“Today (!) the Bridegroom claims
the bride, the church!” Today. All
that is true in the stories of shepherds
and farm animals and crib, in the stories
of stars and magi, in the stories of John
the fierce baptizer of Jesus, and in the
strange story of that wedding at Cana,
all this is the stuff of our Hodie,
our “Today!” We the baptized
give thanks at the table that God has
clasped us in love, clasped the world
in love, and done this in Christ our Lord.
Done it when? Done it today! Today the
six stone jars of water are filled to
the brim. To the brim! Jars that big you’d
think would hold plenty if they were anywhere
near the top. But the point is: To the
brim! And then some. It is a story of
God’s way with us — forgiveness
to the brim, tender love to the brim,
peace to the brim. Today is the best wine.
So what if all the guests have used up
the wine supply? Here is wine in abundance
and not just any wine, but the finest
of all.
That’s
the cup that is set on our table, that’s
the cup that we are all (all!) called to
taste on this Lord’s Day, the love
of God poured out in abundance, intoxicating
and sobering all at once, sweet and bitter
all at once. That is Christmas and that
is Cana and that is this Lord’s Day
round this table and this mid-January week.
All at once. These stories haven’t
been told to make us think: Oh how pretty
Isaiah talks! How lucky for that couple
that Jesus was on the spot! What a guy to
come through for his mom that way! The literal
has nothing to do with why we are here this
morning with our book open and our table
about to be set. Let us together open our
eyes to the great hodie of
the church. See what glory is revealed here,
this parish, this Sunday.
How
else are we, all of us baptized into the
death and risen life of Jesus, to look at
the one we honor this weekend, Dr. Martin
Luther King? We don’t canonize, we
simply praise God that in the hardest of
places our God raises up such a person,
that manifestations of the Spirit abound
in tough times. We have eyes wide open then
to see this one time not so far away and
not so long ago when a man who never made
it to age forty — and pretty well
knew he wouldn’t because of what he
was doing — when this Martin Luther
King drank deeply of the new and fine wine
of God’s love for this world, and
then talked in a straightforward way to
the world and straightforwardly walked the
talk.
Now
as then the world is full of harshness,
of cruel deeds, of hunger and of sickness
in a time full of food and medicine, yet
even more full of racial hate, greed, and
discrimination. Now even more than in King’s
time the world’s rich are scrambling
to separate themselves from the world’s
poor. And now as then the world is full
of decent people like us who are sad about
all of this but are too busy or too rich
or too scared or too overstressed or too
discouraged or too plain selfish to open
their mouths or move their feet forward.
King opened his mouth. King moved his feet
forward. He didn’t say he had everything
figured out, he didn’t say he wasn’t
afraid, he didn’t say it was simple
or always clear. But he figured this much
out: the God we meet in Jesus is calling
us to the side of the poor, the hungry,
the old, the disabled, the prisoners, the
persecuted and humiliated, and all those
the powerful have left out. And he figured
out that the God we meet in Jesus wouldn’t
care much for the praise of folks who live
apart from all that harshness.
Now
many people get that far as they ponder
the scriptures and the gospels. Then a lot
of us shake our heads and say: It’s
too much and I’m just not up to it;
all I can do is not contribute to the hate.
I’ll raise good kids. I’ll be
a good neighbor. I’ll vote for decent
politicians. I’ll get on a committee
or two, write some letters to the editor
and the senator, pray for the poor and pray
for justice. For some of us some of the
time, that is the gospel. But maybe we have
to keep our eyes open and one day we’ll
see what King saw. He saw those big stone
jars that were brim-full and he saw that
this was the best wine and he saw that he
could talk and walk as if that’s what
we could expect of our God.
Sometime
this weekend we’ll probably all hear
King’s “I have a dream” speech
and that’s fine, but we can’t
take it as the whole of this servant of
God. Yes, he could speak of dreams but we
have to pay attention to how King figured
out, with help from some other just souls,
that the God we meet in Jesus’ gospel,
even the God who loved the innocents slaughtered
by Herod, wasn’t dreaming about revenge,
wasn’t dreaming about bringing down
punishment on those who had for centuries
loosed violence on the descendents of African
slaves. He figured out that this God loved
the soldiers who did the slaughter and loved
even the tyrant who sent them. That was
the hard part, but that is what we need
today to take hold of. What does it mean
to do these two things at once: to care
about justice and to renounce violence?
Is God’s abundance that abundant?
Is God’s way so unlike our way?
A
year to the day before he was assassinated
King took the pulpit at Riverside Church
in New York City and let flow what had been
in his heart a long time. If we would keep
his memory this weekend, then what he said
that day about his country and ours must
trouble and rouse us.
King
began by saying that the time comes when
silence is betrayal, that even when the
issues are complex and we are “on
the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty,” we
must move on. He said he was moving to “break
the betrayal of my own silences and to speak
from the burnings of my own heart.” He
spoke of his confrontations with angry young
people in the ghettos of the North, when
preaching nonviolence to them brought this
question: What about Vietnam? “They
asked if our own nation wasn’t using
massive doses of violence to solve its problems,
to bring about the changes it wanted. Their
questions hit home,” King said, “and
I knew that I could never again raise my
voice against the violence of the oppressed
in the ghettos without having first spoken
clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence
in the world today — my own government.” He
continued: “For the sake of those
boys, for the sake of this government, for
the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling
under our violence, I cannot be silent.”
King
said he came to speak out not only as a
civil rights leader but as a minister of
the gospel of Jesus Christ. “To me
the relationship of this ministry to the
making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes
marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking
against the war. . . . Have they forgotten
that my ministry is in obedience to the
one who loved his enemies so fully that
he died for them? What then can I say to
the ‘Vietcong’ or to Castro
or to Mao as a faithful minister of this
one? Can I threaten them with death or must
I not share with them my life? . . . We
are called to speak for the weak, for the
voiceless, for victims of our nation and
for those it calls enemy.”
King’s
judgments were severe. He said: “Increasingly,
by choice or by accident, this is the role
our nation has taken — the role of
those who make peaceful revolution impossible
by refusing to give up the privileges and
the pleasures that come from the immense
profits of overseas investment.” All
that, thirty-seven years ago. “Our
only hope today,” he said, “lies
in our ability to recapture the revolutionary
spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile
world declaring eternal hostility to poverty,
racism, and militarism.”
Such
is the abundance of God’s love, the
jars brim full, the wedding of earth and heaven
proclaimed, the finest wine come as grace.
It is not to a peaceful retirement home that
Jesus summons us, but always to the cross,
to a love like God’s own that knows
how outrageous we must be.
Copyright © Gabe
Huck. Used by permission.
Originally written for Celebration,
the worship and preaching resource of the
National Catholic Reporter (visit their
Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org).
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Year C
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What follows is a homily
for February 22, 2004, the Seventh Sunday
in Ordinary Time, Year C. The homily attempts
to unfold (to be mystagogy) not just this
Sunday’s particular scriptures, especially
the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures,
but the place of scripture in the assembly
and in the home. But this is also the Sunday
before Ash Wednesday, so the presumption
is that preaching about Lenten preparation
has already been done on previous Sundays.
In preparation for Lent last year, the February2003
issue of Celebration provided a homily
suitable for the Seventh Sunday in Year
B. Much of it dealt with the Lenten disciplines
of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. The
homilist may wish to draw on that text for
one of the Sundays leading up to Lent 2004.
Gabe
Huck
No one in the Bible has
stories like those about David. In our Sunday
assemblies we read only a few of them, so
today is a chance to ask: Who is this David
and what’s he up to? And: Should we
care?
We are roughly three thousand
years ago, in the days when the various clans
who had escaped slavery were gradually figuring
out that survival meant putting aside differences
and forming a single nation. But being a nation
meant having a king or a queen, and Israel
had never had such a thing. This business
of monarchy got off to a rough start. The
prophet Samuel, following instructions from
the Lord, anointed a man named Saul to be
the first king. But while Saul was building
up the new nation, prophet Samuel got word
from the Lord that Saul is no longer pleasing
and so Samuel should go out to Bethlehem because
one of Jesse’s sons is the Lord’s
new choice for king. So now Samuel has anointed
two kings, but no one knows about young David.
Meanwhile Saul and his
forces on the battlefield meet the enemy’s
secret weapon, Goliath. Just then David shows
up with some food for his soldier brothers,
and soon young David is offering to accept
Goliath’s challenge and do battle one-on-one.
King Saul says, nonsense, “You are just
a boy!” David claims: “I have
killed lions and bears when they attacked
the family’s flocks. Besides, who else
have you got to fight Goliath?” Finally
Saul gives in and orders David clothed with
the king’s own armor. But David says: “I
cannot even walk with these on! Take it off!” With
only stones and a slingshot he goes out to
slay Goliath. David is an instant hero. Saul’s
son Jonathan becomes his best friend. The
people are wild about David and make up a
song that celebrates the boy who beat Goliath.
The song is not popular with King Saul.
Still, the king makes an
effort to get along with David, even invites
him to marry into the royal family. David
would come and play music for Saul—it
seems David could do everything well and this
of course didn’t help the relationship.
One day while David was playing, jealous Saul
throws a spear at David. David takes to the
hills with Saul and his troops in pursuit.
Soon Israel had a low intensity guerilla war.
In the midst of this, twice David has the
chance to kill King Saul.
The first time, David and
his gang are hiding in a deep cave and Saul
and his army pass by. Saul stops and goes
into the cave to relieve himself. David’s
followers, hiding in that very cave, see a
chance to kill the king, but David will only
creep forward and, without Saul noticing,
cut off the corner of Saul’s robe. After
Saul and his troops are some distance off
David comes out of the cave, holds up the
corner of Saul’s robe, and shouts: “King
Saul! Look what I’ve got! Some wanted
me to kill you, but I will not raise my hand
against the Lord’s anointed.”
Saul continues to hunt
David down and that’s when the story
we heard this morning happens. This time it
is night and there’s no guard awake
in Saul’s camp. David comes with one
other person, stands over the sleeping Saul,
but refuses to kill him. Instead, he takes
Saul’s spear, goes off a good distance
and shouts to awaken Saul and his army. David
doesn’t jeer at Saul, instead he pleads
with the king. “Why has the king come
out to seek a single flea?” Then David
goes into exile.
But wars continue and word
comes to David that the Philistine army has
defeated Israel’s army. King Saul and
his son Jonathan are dead. The Bible tells
how David laments over Saul, his king and
his enemy, and over his dear friend Jonathan.
David, ever the musician, composes a song
that we find in the first chapter of Second
Samuel.
Your glory, O Israel, lies
slain upon your high places!
How the mighty have fallen!
. . . Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.
. . . How the mighty have
fallen,
and the weapons of war perished!
(2 Samuel 1:19, 23, 27)
It is takes years before
David is recognized as the king, but when
he is, we still have stories upon stories.
David founds Jerusalem and brings the great
ark of God there—the ark that the tribes
had carried generations earlier during their
forty years of wandering in the desert. And
as the great ark is carried in procession,
King David leaps and dances before the ark
of the Lord.
David the King expands
his realm, but he stumbles also. He falls
in love with Bethsheba, the wife of Uriah.
David arranges to have Uriah placed in the
middle of a battle and Uriah is slain. When
Bathsheba has mourned for her husband, she
marries David and they have a child. Then
Nathan, the new prophet in town comes to David: “King
David, once upon a time there was a rich man
and a poor man. The rich man had flocks and
herds galore; the poor man had one lamb. One
day the rich man had a guest and he wanted
to give a fine meal, but he didn’t want
to slaughter a single one of his own sheep.
So he took the poor man’s lamb and made
a fine dinner for his guest. Now, King David,” says
prophet Nathan, “what do you think of
that?” When David rages against the
rich man’s greed, Nathan says: “King
David, you are that man! The Lord gave you
so much, but you have taken the life of Uriah
in order to marry his wife.”
And this is the turning
point. David, who had spared the life of Saul
twice, had sent Uriah to certain death. When
the child of Bathsheba and David becomes ill,
for seven days and nights David will not eat
and he sleeps on the ground beside his child.
At the end of the seven days, the child dies.
When David then washes and asks for food,
the servants do not understand and David tells
them: “I fasted and wept for I thought
perhaps the Lord may be gracious to me and
the child will live. But now the child is
dead and why should I fast? I will go one
day to be with this child, but the child will
not return to me.”
After three thousand years
with all their bloodshed and all their delights,
we gather here this morning and open our book
to read about this David who wouldn’t
take the life of the one who wanted David
dead.
Here on Sundays, when the
book of our scriptures is opened, we sit down.
But we don’t sit down to rest. We don’t
sit down to be passive and to look around
and to let our thoughts wander away. We sit
so we can listen to the story, listen to the
scripture, listen to God’s word speaking
to the church. We try to be the church attending
to what is said, pondering it, chewing it
over. We don’t try to find some moral
or some lesson for each of our lives. We try
to be the church that is ever in need of the
word, the church that loves God’s word.
This happens best when we keep our Bible open
at home and prepare for this liturgy by seeking
out its scriptures even before we come here.
Then we can do our best at giving attention,
at being alert, at seizing on some good or
troublesome word or phrase or sentence.
Each of us as part of this
assembly has to take responsibility. One person
distracted increases like ripples in a pond.
Children and parents can give good example
to one another of how to put your hands in
your lap and your eyes on the reader and be
the church listening hard to God’s word.
Whether it is David’s story or Paul’s
poetry or Jesus preaching, we are never to
be a passive audience. W are in dialogue with
our God here. These are various kinds of writing
that we proclaim here, but all of them are
part of our story. Out of our listening comes
our prayer of intercession and our thanksgiving
over bread and wine and our holy communion.
This confrontation with God’s word,
here and in our homes, is the solid foundation
for all else we do here and all the ways we
go out to love the world God loves.
Lent begins this Wednesday
when we are all marked with ashes. That day
and for all the days of Lent let us all renew
our bond with the Bible. Maybe it has been
neglected in our homes. Maybe it is time to
see if we have a translation that we can read
with understanding. During Lent, we can all
put the Bible in a place of honor in the home.
We can put a cross beside it, both on a lovely
piece of fabric. We can each make a time to
come and read every day of Lent, individually
or as a household. We can read the scriptures
from the daily Mass (published in the parish
bulletin each week). Or we can read through
Genesis, or through the Gospels. Or we can
read these David stories in Samuel and Kings.
If you feel ready, read Job or Jeremiah, read
Exodus and Paul’s letters. For our prayers,
we can open the book of Psalms.
This is not a burden, my friends, not some
weight to carry through the Forty Days. No,
this will be a joy, a delight to take up these
words of the scriptures that have carried
our ancestors and now carry us, to take up
these words that can be life for us and for
our children. Speak them aloud, speak them
with care. Let that be a Lenten work in our
lives and homes.
Copyright © Gabe
Huck. Used by permission.
Originally
written for Celebration, the worship
and preaching resource of the National Catholic
Reporter (visit their Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org).
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Year C
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What follows
is cast as a homily for July 25, 2004, the
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year
C. On the previous Sunday and this Sunday
we have a rare occurrence: the first readings
on these two Sundays are from the same group
of stories in Genesis 18. Preaching both
weeks on Abraham and the Genesis stories
is one possibility. In addition, on the
last three Sundays of July we have second
readings from the beginning of Paul’s
letter to the Colossians, also texts with
much to offer the homilist, especially in
preaching consecutive Sundays with the second
reading as the central focus (rarely done).
But the text below attempts something else:
to provoke interest in the Genesis story
and from that a way to hear the Gospel parable
and Luke’s text of the Lord’s
Prayer in the context of the way our assembly
does its own interceding, its own singing
and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
Like others in this series, we are seeking
to find how are we to do mystagogy, to “unfold
the mysteries” of our Christian rituals.
Gabe Huck
The obvious question to ask after the Genesis
story in today’s first reading is: Why
did Abraham stop at ten? The bargaining had
gone on for some time. Abraham was winning.
Notice, he started off with a fairly high
number: “Suppose, God, that there were
fifty innocent people in Sodom and Gomorrah?” Fifty
. . . Innocent . . . People! Today we would
call them, obscenely, “collateral damage.” Innocent
people who get hurt or killed when they are
leading their everyday lives and are suddenly
in somebody’s line of fire. In this
case, God’s. Listen to Abraham talk
to God: “Wouldn’t you spare these
cities for the sake of fifty innocent people?
What kind of god are you, anyway?” Abraham,
of course, thinks he knows. He takes an awful
chance by putting his notion of God to the
test. “Far be it from you to kill so
many innocent people,” Abraham says.
But why is it up to Abraham to remind God
that killing lots of innocent people isn’t
right? What’s going on here?
God backs off. “If,” God says, “if
I can find fifty innocent people in Sodom,
I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Abraham knows when he has the advantage.
God has blinked. “OK,” says Abraham.
“That’s good. But do you mean
to tell me that if you find only forty-five
innocent people, then the whole city goes
including the forty-five? If fifty is enough,
would the lack of just five people mean all
are to die?” Notice too that bold Abraham
wants to let God know how much he appreciates
the opportunity to even have this debate. “I
am only dust and ashes,” Abraham says. “Should
I really be talking to God this way?”
When God says all right, forty-five will
be enough to spare the city, Abraham knows
he has the upper hand and he presses on. What
if you find five less than forty-five? OK.
Then what if there are only thirty? All right,
thirty will do it. What if only twenty? Twenty
will do! Ten? Ten!
And there the story has Abraham stop. The
bargaining is over. The Lord moves on, Abraham
goes home. But what was this about?
At the start, Abraham said something crucial
to God: “Would you sweep away the innocent
with the guilty, the just with the unjust?
Far be it from you! Should not the judge of
all the world act with justice?”
We might well wonder why some pious scholar
didn’t clip this story from the pages
of Genesis early on. Censored! What business
is it of Abraham, of anyone, to be standing
up to God, reminding God of what God is supposed
to be, reminding God that we’re in this
covenant together, so can we talk? Somehow
the story survived.
Notice this is not extortion. Abraham isn’t
saying, “OK, God, if you’ll just
do this one little thing for me — you
know, spare Sodom, heal my arthritis, give
me a winning number in the lotto, help me
find a job — just this one little thing,
then I’m going to do something really
great for you or for somebody else. A big
donation maybe.” It isn’t that
kind of bargaining. Abraham is talking to
God about what it means to be just and to
do justice.
Jesus, on the other hand, says justice is
OK, but maybe it isn’t enough. Maybe
we have to press on beyond justice. The neighbor
shouts back, “Do you know what time
it is? My family is in bed! I cannot get up
to give you anything!” The person knocking
on the door in the middle of the night had
no claim on the neighbor’s bread. All
this person had was an empty breadbox and
a hungry guest just arrived. And no convenience
store. Justice has nothing to do with this
story.
Where is Jesus, who certainly had heard often
the story of Abraham bargaining with God,
taking us with this parable? A popular song
thirty years ago said, “Knock, knock,
knocking on heaven’s door.”
Or maybe it should have been, in Jesus’ version,
knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
Whatever it takes to get the neighbor out
of bed, to get God’s ear.
The bargaining story of Abraham and the knocking
story of Jesus give us a way to understand
what it is we do every Sunday when we come
to the prayers of intercession. We’re
taking the covenant seriously. We’ve
got our responsibilities but God has responsibilities
also. We’re confronting God with unfinished
business, the woes of the sick, the loneliness
of the elderly, the terrors of those with
no one to protect them from violence and poverty
and disease, even the tired and sad old troubles
of the church. We have the troubles in the
family here and we have the troubles of the
neighborhood and the city and the nation and
the world. No lack of troubles. We are knock,
knock, knocking on heaven’s door. Last
Sunday. This Sunday. Next Sunday. On and on.
And we do this knocking on God’s door
in those prayers of intercession, but not
only there. In our Catholic tradition we’re
naming the family’s and the world’s
woes to God each night in our bedside prayer
also. Call it justice, we say, or call it
mercy, but dear God, you had better attend
to the cries of this world. That’s exactly
what we mean to do when we raise our voices
to remind God that all is not well.
What we do in those prayers of intercession
echoes through other moments of the liturgy.
Even within the eucharistic prayer, when we
lift up our hearts to give God thanks and
praise, even there we have words of intercession
before we can say to God that all glory and
honor is yours! When we have said our Amen
to that, we take a deep breath and together
we sing or recite the prayer that draws together
all our acclamation and our intercession.
We heard it this morning in Luke’s Gospel.
We call it the Our Father or the Lord’s
Prayer, the Pater
Noster in Latin. When the disciples
asked Jesus to teach them to pray, this is
what they received.
Jesus certainly had that knocking neighbor
in mind when he taught them this prayer, and
Jesus knew from scripture how Abraham went
to intercede with God. And Jesus knew the
psalms and all the ways handed on from generation
to generation to speak to God. So Jesus gives
us — as Luke tells the story — six
lines of prayer so we can begin to learn our
part. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Our Father
is longer and that is the form we still use
to pray together. But listen again to the
intensity of Luke’s version:
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily
bread.
And forgive us our sins,
as we forgive everyone
indebted to us.
And do not bring us to
the time of trial (Luke 11:2–4).
Maybe this is more a “beginner’s
version,” a version without sugar-coating,
that we can take hold of and so learn how
to imitate the knocking neighbor and the insistent
Abraham in our address to God. Listen to it
phrase by phrase and think about each line
as spoken not by an individual but as the
sound of the whole baptized community. “Father,”
the simplest word of address: abba, papa. “Hallowed
be your name,” the ancient praise that
echoes Jewish prayers. “Your kingdom
come,” the plea for God’s kingdom,
that single image from prophets and from Jesus
of God and sinners reconciled. “Give
us each day our daily bread,” the demand
for that which we need until kingdom come. “Forgive
us our sins as we forgive everyone indebted
to us,” the plea for reconciliation,
the will to reconcile. “Do not bring
us to the time of trial,” the final
plea with “trial” probably a stronger
notion than “temptation.”
Each Sunday we sing or recite the Lord’s
Prayer. Probably many of us pray it every
day, perhaps many times. What kind of a person,
what sort of life, does this most basic of
our Christian prayers give us? What does this
church think it is doing when we raise our
hands and begin, “Our Father. . .”?
With what persistence and with what attention
do we proclaim the Lord’s Prayer? Are
we capable of being as bold and as firm as
our ancestor Abraham in calling on the God
of justice to be just? Are we capable of being
as brash and obnoxious as the knocking neighbor
of the parable in rousing God?
When we, like other disciples, say, “Teach
us to pray,” we better be ready. If
we pray, for example, day after day and Sunday
after Sunday, for God’s kingdom, God’s
reign on this earth, are we ourselves little
by little learning to long for that reign
of God? If we demand daily bread, for whom?
If we say,
“Forgive us,” have we forgiven?
Now each of us hears those questions, and
I think about how I’m doing, and each
of you thinks about how you are doing. That’s
the easy part. Today, in a little while, when
we have finished our eucharistic prayer and
we begin, “Our Father,” it doesn’t
do to act as if so many individuals are praying
at the same time. The hard part is this: The
church is praying. Maybe we can take a common
posture, the ancient posture of arms and hands
extended. Then we start to look like what
we want to sound like, a church praying. Maybe
we can chant rather than speak. Maybe those
of us who are parents or grandparents or godparents
or teachers can do with these words what the
Lord spoke to Moses: “Teach them to
your children, speak them when you rise up
and when you lie down, when you sit in your
house and when you walk by the ways.” What
times of the day should this prayer be ours?
Maybe just once, but once every day. Then
on Sunday when we are ready to pray “in
the words our Savior gave us,” we will
know Sunday by Sunday and year by year what
it is to stand before God and demand that
the just one do justice, to stand before the
neighbor God and demand even more, demand
mercy.
Copyright © Gabe
Huck. Used by permission.
Originally
written for Celebration, the worship
and preaching resource of the National Catholic
Reporter (visit their Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org).
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Year C
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What follows
is cast as a homily for August 8, 2004,
the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time,
Year C. It is the Sunday the church begins
reading the later chapters of Hebrews (chapters
1 through 10 of Hebrews were read last October
and November). It is the Sunday that comes
between Transfiguration (the previous Friday)
and Assumption (next Sunday). It is also
the Sunday between the anniversary dates
of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (August
6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945).
A mystagogical preaching this Sunday would
keep all that and more in mind.
Gabe Huck
When we say this morning, as we do every
Sunday, that we believe in one, holy, catholic,
and apostolic church, what does the “holy” mean?
Where is the holiness of the church? What
and when is the holiness of the church? Or
maybe it is not a question of where, of what,
of when, but of who: Who is the holiness of
the church?
Sometimes we pray a shorter form of the creed
and we say: We believe in the holy catholic
church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness
of sins, the resurrection of the body, and
the life everlasting. Again, the “holy”
catholic church, but this time it comes right
before “the communion of saints.” Perhaps
if “holy” is a “who” question,
then “the communion of saints” is
part of the answer. Where is the holiness
of the church, what and when is the holiness
of the church? Who is the holiness of the
church?
Every Sunday when that creed is finished
and we have prepared the table, we gather
around it to lift up our hearts and give God
thanks and praise. And the words of that praise
always get around eventually to the “who” of
our “holy.” Sunday after Sunday
these words are spoken in our assembly. Sometimes
we are listening, sometimes they sail by.
But listen now to several ways that our different
eucharistic prayers talk about this “who” of
the “holy.” If we want to know
what the “communion of saints” means,
listen well. Here is the first example:
Make us worthy
to share eternal life with Mary, the virgin
Mother of God,
with the apostles and with all the saints
who have done your will throughout the ages.
May we praise you in union with them, and
give you glory.
Don’t let such words wash harmlessly
over us. Listen because in reality these words
are the word of our whole assembly. We say: “The
saints who have done your will throughout
the ages.” Throughout the ages! That’s
with whom we’ll praise you, God, and
give you glory.
Another of the prayers at our table puts
it this way:
May [Christ]
make us an everlasting gift to you
and enable
us to share in the inheritance of your saints,
with Mary,
the virgin mother of God;
with the
apostles, the martyrs, Saints N and N, and
all your saints,
on whose
constant intercession we rely for help.
Listen:
“Enable us to share in the inheritance
of your saints.” Are we sure that’s
what we want? Don’t be too quick to
make it all sugar and sweetness.
And another of our eucharistic prayers has
us say:
Help us
to work together for the coming of your kingdom,
until at
last we stand in your presence to share the
life of the saints,
in the company
of the Virgin Mary and the apostles
and of our
departed brothers and sisters
whom we
commend to your mercy.
Listen to that: work together, we work together
for God’s kingdom come, for then we’ll
be standing with Mary and the saints.
Until 1970, the eucharistic prayer we used
every Sunday was full of the actual names
of saints. Some will remember lists like this
one: Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John,
Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew,
Simon and June, Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus,
Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus,
John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian. Good list
except for three things: first, only Jews
and Romans and Greeks made the list; second,
nobody from the last eighteen centuries; third,
no women. Not very “catholic.” But
fortunately that same eucharistic prayer has
yet another list: John the Baptist, Stephen,
Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus,
Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes,
Cecilia, Anastasia. At least we name a few
women and a few Africans.
And here is a last example from our eucharistic
prayers:
You have
gathered us here around the table of your
Son,
in fellowship
with the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and all
the saints.
In that
new world where the fullness of your peace
will be revealed,
gather people
of every race, language, and way of life
to share
in the one eternal banquet with Jesus Christ
the Lord.
Here the emphasis is right here at the table
that is surrounded by saints past and by us
and so may it be until the new world is revealed
where peace will overflow and God will gather — who?
People of every race, every language, every
way of life! But how could that be? Every
race? Fine. Every language? Of course. But “every
way of life”? Think about it: Why would
God let people of “every way of life” into
our cozy communion? Sounds risky, but maybe
we don’t yet get just where the holiness
comes from.
We never, never, never gather at our table
then without words to remind us of this communion,
this community, this commonwealth of the holy
ones. It is an amazing juxtaposing of the
past times when these ancestors of ours lived,
with the present time when we pray to carry
on, and with the future when we’ll all
go marching in together.
Next Sunday will be August 15, a day when
in some places and times people celebrated
summer’s harvest: the juicy berries
and cherries and leafy plants, the vegetables
just getting ripe on the vines or underground,
the fruit taking shape on the apple trees,
the grains ripe or nearly ripe in the fields.
Catholics came to mark this time of earth’s
bounty with the feast of the harvesting home
of Mary, the feast sometimes called the Assumption
and sometimes called the Dormition or the “falling
asleep” of the Mother of God. Mary,
it has seemed to Christians, is the best harvest
earth has to offer, the saint we always call
by name in our eucharistic prayers. Later
in the fall, on November 1, when most harvests
are complete, we celebrate the whole company
of the saints. But in the middle of hot August
we bring into our home the fruits of the early
harvest, grapes and sweet corn and apples
and tomatoes and basil and thyme and juicy
watermelon. Whether we dwell on concrete or
wide-open fields, the fruit of the earth and
the work of human hands is what we await and
savor. Mother Mary, Mother Earth. One reflects
the other. There’s a bond there that
is expressed in a prayer for Assumption Day:
God, harvest
of mercy, our hearts exult in you.
In the abundance
of this August,
we see the
mothering of Mary.
Let us know
her in fragrant herbs, in grains and grasses,
in fruit
trees and vines,
in all that
grows wild and all that is cultivated.
The eyes
of all who hunger look to you
and at this
table you provide.
Open now
our hands to share your abundance
until the
day when hunger and thirst are no more.
Within this communion of saints, this harvest
into which we too shall be gathered, call
to mind now today’s second reading and
see what wonder it proclaims like the start
of a mighty litany. We heard about Abraham:
“By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was
called to go out . . . not knowing where he
was to go. . . . By faith he sojourned in
the promised land as in a foreign country
. . . By faith he received power to generate,
even though he was past the normal age . .
. By faith Abraham, when put to the test,
offered up Isaac” (Hebrews 11:8, 9,
11, 17).
If we look up that remarkable eleventh chapter
of Hebrews, we find that the author begins
even before Abraham: “By faith Abel
offered to God a sacrifice greater than Cain’s
. . . By faith Enoch was taken up so that
he should not see death . . . By faith Noah
. . . built an ark for the salvation of his
household” (11:4, 5, 7). And after Abraham
we hear about the faith of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,
Moses, the people fleeing Egypt, and Rahab
the prostitute. The writer says: “I
have not time to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson,
Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets,
who by faith conquered kingdoms, did what
was righteous, obtained the promises; they
closed the mouths of lions, put out raging
fires, escaped the devouring sword; out of
weakness they were made powerful … They
were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at
sword’s point; they went about in skins
of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, tormented.
. . . They wandered about in deserts and on
mountains, and in caves and in crevices in
the earth” (11:32, 33, 34, 37, 38).
So it seems that these
holy ones named around the table are more
the rag-tag dregs-of-society, and not some
respectable, well-ordered choir. Their number
probably includes convicts and some who are
homeless. Also the occupied, the abused, the
spat upon, the welfare folks, the refugees,
the demented, the child-like, the child. And
we must add some other names to that litany
of God’s holy ones. Last Friday marked
fifty-nine years since the atomic bomb was
used by the United States on a city full of
civilians, Hiroshima. And fifty-nine years
ago tomorrow, Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands
died. The safety of the little ones, the weak
ones, always shaky in war time, was violated
on a vast scale. Years ago our American bishops
called on all American Catholics to do penance
for these deeds, but the call was a feeble
whisper, unheard. Perhaps, many savage wars
later, we are nearly ready to hear that summons.
When we think then of
the holy ones, the holy innocent children
especially, we cannot forget the dead of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. The scripture only knew about
things like stoned to death, sawed in two,
killed by the sword. Such simple times! But
listen to what the scripture says today:
“God is not ashamed to be called their
God, and has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews
11:16). O what a beautiful city that is and
will be! No wonder when we praise God around
this table we always ask, always, always,
to be counted in their number.
Copyright © Gabe
Huck. Used by permission.
Originally
written for Celebration, the worship
and preaching resource of the National Catholic
Reporter (visit their Web site at www.celebrationpublications.org).
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These homilies
may be copied and adapted for your own use;
however, they may not be commercially published
without permission of the author.
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