HOMILY FOR THE 6TH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR A
The summer of 1969. I had just gotten my driver’s license. Every Friday or Saturday night saw Ruthie and I going out on a date to a movie theater in downtown St. Paul. Her older sister, Annie, working the ticket booth at the Riviera Theater on Wabasha, would let us see a free movie from time to time. One movie we saw a number of times was “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Butch, Sundance and their gang robbed trains and did so with the ease of someone picking fruit off a tree. (For our high school and college graduates present today, I must add that robbing trains, anyone, or anything is a very poor career choice.) The railroad, tired of having their payroll robbed, hires a special posse to kill them. In a series of scenes, unable to escape the posse that is tracking them, Butch keeps on asking Sundance the question, “Who are these guys? Just who are these guys?” Butch and Sundance to escape being shot by the posse jump off a high cliff into a river far below. Sundance complains just before he jumps that he can’t swim, and Butch shouts, “You crazy? The fall will probably kill ya!”
Butch Cassidy asked a very fundamental question, “Who are these guys?” The most fundamental question that all of us ask ourselves is the question, “Who am I?” “Who am I, really?” Like the posse that chased Butch and Sundance this important question relentlessly chases us throughout our lives. It is a question that cannot be answered by what we do for an occupation, whether we be a student, a graduate, a farmer, a business professional, a homemaker. The question, “Who am I?” is not about what we do, but with whom we are in a relationship. I can answer the question with “I am the husband of Ruth. I am the father of Andy, Luke, Meg, and Beth.” While all of this is true, my answer is incomplete. It still does not answer the question, “Who am I?” With whom was I in relationship before I was even born? I was in relationship with God. From the moment God thought me into existence, I have been in relationship with God. This is true for all of us. First and foremost, we were children of God. The gospel tells us today that we are not just children of God. We are more. We are the Christ!
Jesus tells his disciples today, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.” If the world can no longer see Jesus because he has ascended to the Father, how is Jesus going to be revealed to the world?
There is only one way. You and I are the living presence of Jesus to our world. The only way our world will come to see and know Jesus is through you and I.
How can this be? I am a very flawed person. How can I be Christ to the world? Jesus tells us, “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” The world will know that we are truly the revelation of Jesus by the way we live his commandments.
So what are these commandments? In his first letter, St. John is quite specific. He writes, “Love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” St. John concludes, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.” Jesus is revealed to the world in the way we love as God loves.
You may have already heard this story from me, yet, for me, it remains one of the most profound acts of God’s love being lived out. It was my first Christmas Eve at St. Stephen Catholic Church in South Minneapolis. The parish of St. Stephen’s at that time was made up of many people who were broken by life. Some were homeless. Others were ex-priests, ex-nuns, gay and lesbian, developmentally disabled, ex-offenders, and so on. Many self-righteous Catholics of the Archdiocese pretty much wrote off the parishioners there as already being damned by God. The parish ran and to this day continues to run a homeless shelter that sleeps 45 homeless men every night.
On my first Christmas Eve at St Stephen’s, a homeless man, intoxicated and dressed in a purple suit, sat in the front pew of the church. He wept throughout the Christmas Eve Mass. At the conclusion of Mass, he had no place to go to sleep that night. Because he was intoxicated, the parish homeless shelter could not take him. With 45 men sleeping in close proximity to one another, the parish homeless shelter had to have strict rules about the use of alcohol and drugs. I struggled greatly as to what to do for this homeless man. Not dressed for the weather, he would have frozen to death were he to sleep outside that night. I appealed for help to one on my parishioners, a gay man, who with his partner and their children, were at Mass that night. The gay man reassured me and then sat next to the homeless man speaking quietly to him. The homeless man turned toward him, put his arms around him, and wept in great heaving sobs on the gay man’s shoulder. It was as if all the burdens of his life were emptied in the tears he shed on that man’s shoulder. The gay man comforted the homeless man, till the homeless man’s sobs ceased. Then the gay man, his partner, and their children drove the homeless man to another homeless shelter, a safe, warm place that accepted and housed intoxicated people until they sobered up.
St Peter in his first letter today writes, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence.” With gentleness and reverence , the Christ sanctified in the hearts of that family was revealed to the homeless man and to me on that cold, Christmas Eve night. That family on that Christmas Eve, gave up all the family activities and fun they had planned, so that the homeless man had a safe, warm place to spend the night. They loved as God loves.
Today, we sit in this church and are faced with the question “Who am I?” It is the same question that all Christian communities have pondered since the time St. Peter wrote the letter we heard today. Who am I? Whether we be graduating from school and going on to further education, or graduating from school and looking to work in a career. Whether we leave church today and go home to the life of our family. Whether we leave church today and go off to work or go some place for recreation, the answer remains the same. Who am I? In so much we love as God loves, we are and must be Jesus Christ revealed to the world today. Let us sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts. Let us always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks us for a reason for our hope, and do so with gentleness and reverence.
