Going with the Tug

In the early days of the pandemic, I began taking my dog, Beau, for mid-day walks. Because I was largely working from home, I could no longer include Beau’s need for regular exercise as part of my walk to and from church each day. The pause in the middle of the day for a substantial walk became a refreshing break from being couped up inside a small Center City apartment.

These walks have continued since my move here to Bryn Mawr. I have discovered, however, that if dogs could qualify as contemplatives, Beau would be one. Unlike my previous dog, Lana, who walked everywhere as if she were late for a business meeting, Beau is prone to stop and sniff—very frequently. Sometimes he will simply pause because he doesn’t want to move at that moment. If he sees a car pull up to the curb, he stops and waits because he wants to greet the driver.

And I will admit that I have found this incredibly frustrating at times. Now that I am back in the office and not working from home, I am usually fitting in a mid-day walk to an already busy schedule. The walk is no longer a respite from cabin fever but an intrusion into my work day. I know that Beau loves these walks, because for him, the sniffing of flowers, grass, and lampposts is pure bliss. For me, there is a practical function to the walks: the dog needs his exercise. Needless to say, there is a discrepancy in how Beau and I each perceive our neighborhood perambulations.

But I have learned something from these walks, both about myself and about God. I have learned that as much as I long to be a contemplative, I struggle with it. I am action oriented. I always have my eyes on the clock, and I’m usually looking to the next task. My life is hopelessly teleological. Beau has taught me that I have passed over countless opportunities to relish the present moment, to notice a particularly beautiful flower, and to recognize that there are people in the cars who drive by or try to unsuccessfully parallel park.

The reality is that, when I walk Beau, I am usually tugging on the leash to move him forward. At some point in these daily walks, I simply realized that I would benefit from seeing Beau’s resistance as an invitation. He is not being recalcitrant. He is simply, if unintentionally, inviting me to stop, be still, and notice the present. He is drawing me into something beyond my superficial obsession with the clock, schedules, and tasks. And this has taught me about God.

God the Father, as St. John tells us, draws his children to Jesus. The Father teaches us by drawing us to his Son. It is even more forceful than drawing: it is a dragging of us and all of creation into salvation. And we resist, sometimes kicking and screaming. John also says that Jesus is the living bread from heaven, and if we eat this bread, we will live forever. It is God the Father, in drawing us to the Son, who teaches us how to find true life by feasting on Jesus.

The truth is that there are usually obstacles along the path to finding Jesus. As much as we want to blame other people or things for standing in our way, many times, we are the obstacle. God is drawing us towards his Son, the source of true life, and we are yanking back on the leash as I do with Beau. As much as I want to think of Beau resisting my lead, I am resisting his. And in life, we yank back as God leads us somewhere because we think we know where we are going. We have a plan and a series of projects to structure our way to Christ, and when the leash pulls us in a different direction, we see it as resistance when, instead, it is an invitation to pause and see that Jesus is right before us and that we are being led exactly where we need to go.

Resistance is what lies behind the complaining in John’s Gospel when some balk at Jesus’ proclamation that he is the bread of life. They have been invited into relationship with Jesus. If we apply John’s theology to the situation, they are being drawn to Jesus, to feast on him as the source of true life, and yet they have yanked back on the leash. They seem to know too much. They know who Jesus’ parents are, and they are mere humans. So how can Jesus be from heaven? They think they already know the way ahead. They have the answers, and to be gently pulled into a new understanding is inconceivable because it does not fit what is in their minds.

How are our own complaints any different from those who saw Jesus in the flesh? Do we not find one reason after another to yank back on the leash when the Father is dragging us to the Risen Christ? Do we not believe that we already have the road map to salvation? How can we ever reach the gate of heaven unless we implement all our brilliant projects? How can we trust God to lead us somewhere if we know what’s best for us? How can we even trust others whom God himself has sent to lead us?

And there is yet another confounding reality: if God is drawing people to his Son, and if his Son has such an irresistible allure, why is it that so many people do not go to him? Why are so many people yanking back on the leash?

The truth is that it’s not for lack of interest in something beyond the banalities of daily life. It’s abundantly clear that there is no shortage of hunger for mystery and for something deeper and more life-giving than a nine to five job. It’s why people are drawn to the yoga studio, gym, or sports game on a Saturday morning, while they sleep in on Sunday. People are desperately longing to be drawn to something, and they are being drawn. But somehow they are not always finding the source of true life, the bread that will offer them eternal life.

All the activities that offer to slake our thirst and satisfy our hunger convince us that they will provide what they can never provide. And as much as they may give us, when we have received their offerings, we will once again be hungry. They are all responses to the default message of our culture, which is “you are not enough.” Come to the superficialities of the world and they will make you enough. They manipulate us so that we can devote all our attention to them.

But Jesus does not offer any quick fixes to our self-esteem or control needs. He simply offers us himself as food so that we will never want to stop eating. We will not want to stop eating this food because eating is the point. It’s about feasting on Jesus so that he can raise us to eternal life. 

There is nothing utilitarian in this feast, even though we want to drag Jesus along on the road we have paved for ourselves. We have tried to suit the bread of heaven to our own needs. We eat Jesus’ true bread because we want something out of it. But all the Father asks is that we go along as he draws us to his Son so that we can then enjoy the feast. The act of feasting is what this is all about. And this is why the bread from heaven is living bread. We will always long for it, because to be physically satisfied is not the purpose of eating it. The purpose of eating is simply to be in relationship with Jesus Christ.

Every complaint of scarcity is a yanking of the leash against God’s pull. It is an inability to eschew our pet projects and best laid plans and to submit to the mystery of the present moment, which says that when we see only deficit, God shows us abundance. And when we discover this abundance by feasting on the living bread, we will never be hungry.

I have already said that walking Beau has taught me about God. If I can’t let myself be drawn by God—if I can’t let go of my own need to control where I’m going—I will miss the bread of life that is set before me at the table. I will miss the fact that the bread of life is not some means to an end or object to be used to find God. Rather, it is in feasting on this bread that I find myself no longer hungry, with nowhere to go, with no clock to monitor, because I have found heaven on earth.

There is a tug on all our lives. It is present to all. Some of us resist this tug because we think we know better. Others of us try to manipulate this tug so that it suits our needs. But if we can stay with this tug and let it pull us into the present moment, with nowhere to go and nothing to achieve, we might just find ourselves feasting on the bread of life. And we will see that it is indeed possible to live forever.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 8, 2021

Help from the Sky

As the well-known folk tale goes, one day Henny Penny is going about her business, gathering corn in the farmyard, when an acorn falls on her head. She immediately jumps to the conclusion that the sky is falling. Like any good responsible chicken citizen she thinks to herself, if you see something, say something. So she sets out to tell the King about this imminent danger.

On her way, she meets Cocky-locky and tells him, and then eventually Ducky-daddles, Goosey-loosey, and Turkey-lurkey. They all team up to go and tell the King about the impending doom that Henny Penny has discovered. The sky is falling! Eventually they meet Foxy-loxy. Now, we might know that foxes are always sly and not to be trusted, but Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-loosey, and Turkey-lurkey do not. And Foxy-loxy convinces them that he can provide a shortcut to the King that conveniently runs through his own burrow.

Well, sadly, the animals discover they’ve been deceived when it’s too late. This spells the end for Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-loosey, and Turkey-lurkey. But Henny Penny escapes unharmed at the last minute when she hears Cocky-locky’s cry. Ironically, it is Henny Penny, the source of all this misinformation about the supposed end of the world, who makes it out alive. And she is left alone with her mistaken view that the world is going to end. The moral of the story rings true: don’t believe everything you’re told, especially when it foretells doom. There might be more to the story.

Can’t you hear a bit of Henny Penny in the Israelites as they are wandering in the wilderness? The sky is falling! They are stuck in a desolate place without any food. They are hungry. They are convinced they will die. Yes, after all they’ve been through and all they’ve survived, they will perish with true freedom in sight. How easily they’ve forgotten their recent history. It’s been just over a month since God delivered them by the hand of Moses from slavery in Egypt. And God has only just given them water to drink at Marah, although it has already become a distant memory.

This is not to say that the Israelites have no legitimate concerns when they are hungry in the wilderness. It has been rough for them in recent years. They barely made it out of Egypt, and we can hardly blame them for wanting to find safety and stability. They are emerging from trauma. But at the first sign of any trouble, in spite of all that God has done for them, they cry out, “Disaster! The sky is falling! Death is near!”

You have to wonder whether it was indeed the whole congregation of the Israelites who found reason to complain. Or did one person become hungry, look around and see no food, and foretell doom to the others? And so, the chain of doomsday predictions moves along: one person after another, passing on the news that they will now die in this God-forsaken wilderness. They make it as far in the chain as Moses and Aaron, their chosen leaders, but they never make it to the King. They seem to have forgotten that God their King is even in the picture, in spite of all that he has done for them.

In all fairness, the cute little character of Henny Penny might seem a bit removed from God’s chosen people and their tragic history as they are starving in the wilderness. But like Henny Penny, the Israelites let their immediate circumstances blind them to the larger picture. If Henny Penny had only stepped back for a moment and contemplated the situation, if she’d only had some perspective and not reacted, she might have realized that there was a bigger world above that was responsible for the falling acorn. Something had indeed fallen from the sky, but maybe the sky was not falling.

And what if the Israelites had stepped back from their immediate hunger and remembered all that God had done for them? Was there something beyond the hunger? Didn’t they know that there was a God leading and guiding them, who time and again in the past had fed them with what they needed?

How many times have we all heard someone say that the sky is falling? The crumbling plaster means the whole building will collapse. A few members of the church have left in a huff, so the parish will close. The economy has taken a nosedive, so the savings account will be depleted.

And how infrequently have these immediate, dire predictions actually come to pass? With a little time and perspective, you might learn that there is something more than the facts of life—that there is a God who cares for us and provides, often in unpredictable ways.

In the Israelites’ localized journey through the wilderness, they have gotten so used to being led by Moses and Aaron, that they have forgotten that they are, in fact, being led by God. What falls from the sky—or doesn’t fall from the sky—spells doom because their world goes no further than what they can comprehend.

And yes, God for whatever incomprehensible reason, has chosen to speak through Moses and Aaron. That is how God has deemed it appropriate to guide the Israelites. But in the end, it’s not God they blame; it’s Moses and Aaron, because the people don’t seem to remember that there is hope in a God beyond the sky that seems to be falling.

We don’t know the exact purpose of God’s testing of his chosen people or why he does it at all. We don’t understand why we seem to be tested at times. It’s all contained within the mystery of God. But we do know that what God desires from his chosen people is trust. He longs for them to do what he says, even if conveyed indirectly through his messengers. Because God seems to be saying that unless you can trust, you will not get very far. There is no relationship without trust.

Henny Penny may be a cute children’s story, and it may seem silly to us, but we are not so far removed from the moral it conveys. We may judge the ingratitude or shortsightedness of the Israelites in the wilderness, but we are all on some version of that wilderness journey where we can easily lose our trust in God and in one another.

Lost in the indirect communications we receive from God, we struggle to see that no matter what ill befalls us, we can still find God in it. In all our perceptions of doomsday and misfortune, we often forget to approach the throne of heavenly grace where our true King reigns, and to beseech his mercy and help. We become so used to receiving indirect communications from God that we fail to see that God wants us to communicate directly with him. Through his Son’s life, death, and resurrection, he has authorized us to approach his heavenly throne and to find fullness of life. And he has given us the Holy Spirit to enflame our hearts and nudge us more and more towards the will of the Father.

Recall Moses’s advice to Aaron: “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, ‘Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.’” That’s it. That’s the ultimate call: draw near to the Lord. Do not hold back your prayers. Draw near to the Lord, because the Lord desires no separation between himself and us in our prayers. The Lord hears our complaints. And the foundation of this trust is that God can hold all those complaints and worries, and he will provide.

Sadly, Henny Penny and her animal compatriots never make it to the King. Their hasty evaluation of their circumstances leads to unexpected trouble. They go down a fox hole—literally and figuratively—of gloomy predictions. But the Israelites, fare a bit better. Thanks to Moses and Aaron and a recovered memory, they begin to see that the picture is not so bleak. The sky is far from falling. It’s actually raining God’s gracious provision for them, and there’s plenty of food to eat. With Moses’ help, God’s people find that the mysterious manna on the ground is what God has provided to satisfy their hunger. It is a gift, and it can’t be controlled.

As much as we want to control the future ahead of us, it remains yet a looming question mark to us. But there is something beyond the ceiling of the sky, no matter what rains down, or doesn’t rain down, from above. And beyond that ceiling of the sky is a God who asks for our trust. Because only then will we see that sometimes when the sky seems to be falling, God just might be sending manna to feed our hungry souls.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 1, 2021

Spinning Straw into Gold

In December 2019, the New York Times featured an article on a Brooklyn-based fashion designer named Daniel Silverstein. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Silverstein has pioneered his own line of clothing called Zero Waste Daniel. This “ragpicker of Brooklyn,” as the Times dubbed him, makes clothing in a rather unusual way, using preconsumer and postproduction waste from the garment industry. In other words, he uses scraps of clothing, and scraps of scraps of clothing, that other designers do not want. And from them, he creates art.

Silverstein’s model for clothing production is related to some environmentally-conscious efforts at reducing waste, such as upcycling and even recycling. But Silverstein’s model is more than utilitarian. As he stated in the Times article, “I prefer to think of it as Rumpelstiltskin, spinning straw into gold.”[1] The Zero Waste Daniel line of clothing has made it to the high-end fashion line and has been worn by celebrities. It is proof that, in the right hands, even scraps can become works of art and highly-valued items.

It is not surprising that, in a waste-driven culture, the scraps are not the first place we might look for beauty or aesthetic value. I imagine that very few of us think twice before throwing out a scrap of clothing, much less spinning it into something beautiful. Too often, it seems as if life has handed us only scraps, and there’s no hope. How many of us lack the vision to see that even scraps can have a future, a latent potential within them for something useful and lovely? And, more often than not, the scraps are right under our eyes.

To the pessimistic, uncreative eye, the scraps are simply that—junk worthy of the trash heap, unworthy of our attention. Unlike a clothing designer set on spinning straw into gold, we usually don’t even have to go seeking for the straw or searching through the trash heaps for it. We are walking right on top of it. Our creative material is within our field of vision, if we can see it.

The problem, of course, lies with seeing. We are usually looking immediately for the gold, for the miraculous, and all we see is straw or scraps. When we encounter the account of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, we may find it difficult to move past the miraculous. Make no mistake about it: there is a miracle happening here. But if our eyes are only fixated on the shiny gold—the miracle of multiplying loaves and fish—we easily gloss over one seemingly small detail almost hidden within this extravagant feat performed by Jesus. Did you notice that, when all had been fed, Jesus ordered the leftover scraps to be gathered? Nothing, he says, should be lost. Nothing. This miracle story begins with scraps: a few barley loaves and two fish, which are transformed into a golden abundance. When the meal has ended, scraps remain, but they are no longer scraps. They are precious remnants of a feast.

Jesus’ instruction to gather up the leftovers is far more than a humanitarian impulse that food should not be wasted because so many are starving in the world. Jesus’ simple and yet profound statement is a testament to the untapped potential of these lingering scraps of barley bread and fish. Sure, the remaining food could feed more people, and most likely, that’s what they ended up doing. But salvaging the scraps is much more than a utilitarian gesture. It is a theological statement about what God can do with the fragments of our lives.

It’s no coincidence that Jesus feeds the five thousand around the festival of Passover. Once before, God delivered the Israelites from captivity into freedom and fed them with manna when they grumbled. And he would do it again. Once before, God’s prophet Elisha knew that even twenty barley loaves and a few ears of grain could feed a multitude by the hand of God. God fed others from a scanty supply in the past, and he would do it again. Yes, the scraps remaining after the feeding of the 5,000 demonstrate the abundance of God’s provision, but they also reveal the hidden power of even the smallest of remnants. Countless times before in the story of salvation, God has spun straw into gold for his people, and he would do it again.

But on that mountain near the Sea of Galilee, with a great, hungry crowd pressing upon them, Philip and Andrew can only see straw. We might pity them in hindsight for their short-sightedness, but in all fairness, Jesus does somewhat set them up for failure by testing them. Jesus is like the Socratic teacher, trying to help them learn what is before their eyes.

Jesus intimates that Philip and Andrew need to go somewhere to buy food to feed the multitude. That’s how he sets up the question: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip sees only the numbers in the crowd and the few scraps of barley bread and fish before them. He sees only scarcity. Andrew tries to be a bit more creative by suggesting a possible solution: the boy with five barley loaves and two fish has some food but hardly enough for the thousands of hungry people. Or so he thinks.

Which is why Jesus must take control of the situation and reveal that it’s not about how much is present or about our own creative solutions to the problem. It’s not about numbers, and it’s not about us. It’s about what God will do with the scraps that we have. Because God can spin straw into gold. He’s done it before, and he will do it again.

We don’t know exactly how all those people were fed, but we do know that they were fed. The extravagance of Jesus’ miracle is not that the people had so much food they became gluttonous. It’s that they had enough to eat and what was left over was not relegated to the trash heap but treasured as a sacred reminder that God can always spin straw into gold, and that the hungry will always be fed with his true food.

Which of us is not like Philip or Andrew? Which of us has not woken up on some day and felt that all we’d been handed was a heap of trash? Which of us does not perpetually wrestle with the feeling that we do not have enough? Is there ever enough money to be satisfied? Is there ever enough recognition or approval to love ourselves? Are there ever enough people in the Church to do God’s work, to survive, and to thrive? Or do we have only scraps to work with?

The answer is not to tempt Jesus to perform some miracle for us but to know that Jesus directs our eyes to the miracles present among us. Like the barley loaves and fish, what we need is right before our eyes if we can see it. But too often, we see only scraps and straw.

Our biggest enemies are the quiet but insidious voices haunting us: there is never enough; you are not strong enough; you are not capable enough; you do not have what you need to succeed. And this is how the devil—the Accuser—works, by having us see only straw and scarcity, when there is great potential for gold and abundance, not gold for wealth and shallow prosperity, but for richness of true life in God.

When you look around in this place, do you see only deferred maintenance or small numbers? Do you see too many scraps of the past with no way to piece them together? Or do you see material that can be woven into a new creation? Do you see straw that by God’s gracious provision can be woven into a cloth of gold?

Because if God willingly chooses to feed us with Christ’s Body and Blood in meager portions of Communion bread and small sips of wine, God can choose to satisfy our needs with scraps of any kind. God works among us not to impress us but to ensure that we are filled with his true food.

We may not always be satisfied in the way we want. We may have just enough to eat our fill, but when our spiritual senses become dull and all we see is scraps and straw, know that God has given us and will give us just what we need. And God can spin all the straw of our lives into gold, because he’s done it before, and he will do it again.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 25, 2021

[1] Vanessa Friedman, “The Future Is Trashion,” The New York Times, December 26, 2019.

Standing Out in the Crowd

What does it take to stand out in a crowd? At a sports game, the person whose face is painted with the wildest colors stands out. At a concert, it’s the person cheering the loudest, or even booing. On a street, maybe it’s the one with the quirkiest apparel. Some of us don’t want to stand out in a crowd because we prefer our anonymity. We would rather be the average person clinging to the subway pole and making eye contact with no one.

Scripture is full of such people, whom we never come to know because they stay in the shadows. But the ones we do hear about stand out for some reason. Take, for instance, Jairus and the woman with a flow of blood, whom we meet today. Neither of these persons is crying out or making a great commotion. They are not the local eccentrics or the most flamboyant individuals. Jairus simply kneels before Jesus and pleads for him to heal his dying daughter. The woman is not even honored with a name in Mark’s account. She is only known as suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years. Neither this woman nor Jairus is out to make a production of themselves. But both are in great need.

Picture this scene in your mind’s eye. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of people in this crowd, and they are pressing in on Jesus. It’s enough to make any claustrophobic person sweat. Surely, many in this large crowd would have benefited from Jesus’s attention. Perhaps many were crying out to Jesus, wanting something from him. We will never know. But of this great throng, only two receive his specific attention.

It’s as if a theatre spotlight has suddenly homed in on Jairus and the unnamed woman. There is nothing spectacular about either person. And indeed, everything about the woman would justify ostracization from the crowd. She is unclean by Jewish purity standards. We don’t know whether she or Jairus had any previous relationship with Jesus.

But these two ordinary individuals stand out. Jesus drops everything to follow Jairus in order to tend to his sick daughter. And when the hemorrhaging woman touches Jesus, his trajectory is momentarily interrupted. He becomes aware of power going out from him. This makes the woman stand out in the crowd. She knows Jesus has power, and she receives its benefits.

Conversely, there is something about the rest of the crowd that makes them anonymous to Jesus. Not even the naysayers from Jairus’s house can stand out in his vision. They discourage Jairus from bothering Jesus, and Jesus merely ignores them and speaks incisively to Jairus: “Do not fear, only believe.” And when Jesus finally arrives at Jairus’s house, what stands out is not the dramatic weeping and wailing of mourners lamenting the death of Jairus’s daughter. These mourners laugh at Jesus, and he simply puts them outside the house so as not to interfere with his mission. It’s Jairus and his dead daughter who stand out in the crowd. What is it about Jairus and the unnamed hemorrhaging woman that catches Jesus’s attention?

If these two stand out in any way, it could be because of their presumption. Who are they to demand something from Jesus? Who are they to deserve his immediate response? They stand out because of their naivete and unwillingness to face reality. After twelve years of wasting her money on quacks, this woman is foolish enough to think that this strange Galilean peasant can cure her illness. Likewise, Jairus can’t even accept the fact that his daughter has died. He still nags Jesus to go to his home. If Jairus and this woman stand out in any way, it could be because they are a nuisance.

But from the view of Jesus, and not that of the crowd, Jairus and the woman stand out because of what they can see. Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman stick out like sore thumbs in the crowd because, unlike the rest of the hoi polloi, they see open doors where everyone else only sees closed ones.

We don’t know the real reason why throngs of people gather about Jesus in the Gospels. They may truly believe that he could work miracles. Their motivation for following him might be pure curiosity. But what seems clear is that they seem to be pressing up against Jesus as if against a closed door that will not open. And Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman are different. They manage to open the door, and that’s why they stand out.

Jairus demands something specific—perhaps even impossible—from Jesus, and Jesus follows. Jairus is clear about his need because he is clear in his heart about what Jesus will do for him. The unnamed woman knows in the depths of her being that if she can only touch Jesus’s garment, she will be healed. And when she is healed, every fiber of her being confirms her healing. There is no doubt in her mind of Jesus’s power, and she is proven correct.

Jairus and this faithful woman give voice to Yes in a crowd of No. They see possibility where the crowd assumes impossibility. Jairus and the woman are generous in their faith to the point of risking embarrassment and presumption, but the crowd is safe. Jairus and this believing woman cross boundaries where others protect themselves. They are persistent where the crowd is prone to give up. They are serious about Jesus’ real healing power, whereas the crowd simply scoffs at him.

Like Jairus and the woman with a flow of blood, we find ourselves in a great throng of people, nearly 8 billion to be exact, rendering us anonymous. Nothing, it may seem, causes us to stand out. We follow the precepts of a religion that comprises over a quarter of the world’s population, and yet our religion is one of myriad competing voices in the crowd. The Way that we are to follow has in some places so lost its verve and dynamism that it hardly stands out in the crowd.

We live in a nation where No has become the rallying cry for unity and definition over and against others, and if we stand for Yes, people mock us. And it seems as if we are merely lost in the great crowd. We are suffocated as the crowd presses in on us with its skepticism, jadedness, myopic greed, and lack of hope. Very few in the crowd see open doors, and most of the crowd sees closed ones.

And yet in the beautiful story of Jesus’ encounter with Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman, something does stand out, and it is what should make us stand out, too. It is not the scathing sarcasm of the disciples as Jesus asks who touched him. It is not skepticism and pessimism. It is not the ones who bear the bad news of Jairus’ daughter’s death. It is Jairus who stands out because he is foolhardy enough to believe that one who is dead can yet live. It is the hemorrhaging woman who stands out because she knows that Jesus is more than a quack who will waste her money. He is someone with real healing power. In a vacuum of belief, it’s no wonder that Jesus knew when healing power escaped him.

We may not have come here today asking for a loved one to be raised from the dead or to have a chronic illness cured immediately. But if the Mass means anything, it is that Jesus will heal us. And I suspect that we are all here because we know this.

The crowds press in on us. They scoff at our belief that a man who has been resurrected from the dead and taken his place at the right hand of the Father in heaven will heal us in this Eucharistic feast. Members of the crowd will tell us that what has died cannot be given new life, but we know that Jesus can do anything, especially what seems impossible to us. Some in the crowd will tell us that we are not worthy enough to touch Jesus’ garment and that our petty problems are just a bother to him. But Jesus commands us to touch more than his garment; he invites us to consume his very Body in the Eucharist.

The peer pressure of the crowd will try to convince us that we can be healed in other ways and to give up on Jesus because he has lost his healing power and can do nothing for us except impart a bland, wholesome morality. Others will tell us that what has grown old or become sick cannot be healed, but Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman believed otherwise, and so should we.

It is precisely the unique Way that we follow that should make us stand out in the crowd. We claim something that the crowd cannot understand. We believe in an eternal Yes as opposed to a finite No. We know that if we kneel at the feet of Jesus and beg him to heal us, he will do so. If we but touch his garment, we will be saved. And in this we will find true life.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 29, 2021

The Unanswered Question

We have all probably heard the expression, “so-and-so has the patience of Job.” Of all Job’s qualities that we could glean from the forty-two chapters in this oft-neglected book of the Bible, it’s rather interesting that patience comes to the fore in our colloquial parlance. A close reading of the Book of Job would reveal Job’s anger, frustration, doubt, confusion, and what some might call blasphemy. But I suppose there is some patience present.

Job is patient in the sense that after losing nearly everything except his own life and his wife, he waits thirty-seven chapters before hearing a direct response from God to his existential questions. Meanwhile, Job loses much that is of value to him. Job is stripped of his possessions, and his children perish. The Book of Job is even more sinister in that Job’s misfortunes stem from a disturbing arrangement made between God and the Satan. The Satan challenges God, who accepts: if Job is such a loyal follower of yours, then afflict him and see how he holds up. Here is Satan the tempter even before he met Jesus in the wilderness.

In the end, Job more or less holds up: he endures the self-righteous scolding of his friends, who claim that Job must have committed some kind of sin or else he would not be suffering so. In their worldview, sin and suffering are causally connected. And besides, just who does Job think he is to question God’s ways? In short, Job’s friends are immensely unhelpful, and annoyingly self-righteous. We can at least admire Job for his gritty honesty and unwillingness to settle for shallow answers to the ultimate existential question: why do bad things happen to good people?

And so, when we enter Job’s story today at chapter thirty-eight, God speaks directly to Job for the first time. God has made Job wait all this time, and so we are quietly hoping that God will finally show some mercy to him. Instead, what we hear is God’s rebuke of Job. God puts him in his place. It’s the classic justification of a power differential: who are you to question my behavior? God is God, and Job is not. How can Job, in his puny human wisdom, begin to fathom the mystery of God? Who is Job to question God’s ways and whine about his misfortune? God can do whatever he wishes, including putting limits on creation. And if Job’s own story is an example, he can even make a deal with the Satan to test Job.

This is not what we, as sympathetic readers, want to hear, nor is it what Job wants to hear. Job has all along been demanding answers, but God does not give him any. And we, like Job, want answers. If the statistics on growing religious denominations are any indication of that craving, then people are flocking to denominations that give them certitude, and they are fleeing those that are unwilling to venture too far into speaking for God. And two extremes emerge: we are left with pat answers and shallow faith, or no answers at all and low expectations for belief.

This bifurcation of belief need not be the end of the story. And can you really blame a desire for an answer to existential plights? Remember that God asks Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you when I contained the raging sea within its borders? And yet we might well volley the question back to God: where were you when the waters of the sea raged over the coast of Japan in a the tsunami? Where were you when my loved one died of a terminal cancer far too young? Where were you when over three and a half million people died of a virus in a year and a half?

If we cannot be honest about these questions, then something is amiss. If our religion cannot tolerate such questions, then it must be frightened of its own flaws. And if God is not big enough to handle our challenges and cries of anger, then this God is not the God in whom we believe, and to whom Scripture and tradition attest.

If there’s one image to describe this seemingly intractable scenario of faith, it is for me a game of Jenga. Jenga comes from the Swahili word that means “to build.” The game commences when a tower of wooden blocks has been constructed in a prescribed way. Each participant must then remove one wooden block from the middle of the stack and place it on top without dismantling the tower. The game ends, of course, when the tower, like that of Babel, comes crashing down.

When we consider Job and his questions, as well as our own questions about God’s role in the midst of darkness, evil, and trauma, it is tempting to imagine it as a game of Jenga. In our minds, God has constructed a world of order from that of chaos. God has built a marvelous tower of wooden blocks. And when the tower inevitably falls, time and again, we wonder why. Is God less skilled than we hope? Has God himself blown upon the tower to knock it down because we have messed up? Have humans rearranged the blocks too much, ending in the tower’s ultimate destruction? And if God is so powerful, why can’t the tower simply stand tall and erect without collapsing?

But perhaps this metaphor of a Jenga game is less about how God controls or doesn’t control the universe and more about how we imagine God. Think back to Job’s friends, who were not all that helpful to him. Job’s friends either tell him that he is too small in the grand scheme of things to question God’s actions or that he must have done something to deserve retribution. Job’s friends represent those of us who claim absolute certainty about God’s ways. In this worldview, there is a direct correlation between punishment and sin because it can neatly explain evil. If disaster occurs, God is punishing us. The other side of the argument is nothing short of a weak avoidance of challenging questions. All the bad things that happen to us and others are simply the result of our limited knowledge. And who are we to question God?          In this colossal Jenga game of reckoning, our view of God’s providence and behavior is so tightly constructed that if one wooden block is removed, the tower comes crashing down, and with it, any confidence in God’s goodness. This Jenga tower is sturdy until it is blown by the wind of life’s greatest tragedies. The tower stands with confidence until it attempts to answer the unanswerable.

To preserve the peace and the stability of the tower, people of faith have gone to all extremes: inquisitions, scapegoating, orthodoxy hunts, and ultimately exclusion of those who those who push against their own towers of certainty.

But the reality is that, when confronted with innumerable questions about suffering and human destruction, this seemingly solid Jenga tower cannot stand forever. It will crash and burn. Job seems to sense this even when grilled by his friends. Job waits and waits and waits until God finally speaks, because Job hopes that if he can only hear from God himself, he might learn something.

Although God finally responds to Job, he doesn’t answer him. And yet at the end of the story, God does indeed bless Job. It’s not a blessing that affords Job any answers, but he comes to this realization: God can do anything for us, including great good, even if we do not understand why evil happens. It is Job’s self-righteous friends who get rebuked by God, because they have tried to equate God with a Jenga tower of their own making. Job may settle for not having the answer to the problem of evil, but unlike his pious friends, he maintains that he must be able to give full vent to his anguish before God. God can handle it.

This we know: the course of human history has provided ample evidence of human cruelty, of savage behavior done even in the name of God, and of the bewildering inconstancy of life. We will be tempted over and over to build our own Jenga towers as we try to conceptualize God, but these towers will always fail. Someone or something will nudge the wrong block, and the whole edifice will come crashing down. Whether it’s by the hand of God or by human error, we will never know.

But we also know something else: we know that Job’s story sits alongside another story that forms the basis of our belief, and that is the story of Jesus. And we know from that story that when God acts, it is not by force or by stampeding over the wrongs of life. When God acts, he is able to build something beautiful from the ruins of incomprehensible tragedy. And when things come crashing down, God always rebuilds. Maybe not in our own time, but in God’s time. The Gospel tells us that God makes no deals with the Satan, because a deal between God and Satan is simply one more Jenga tower constructed in our imagination to explain things away. The Gospel tells us that when our human towers of conceit, pride, and self-righteousness come crashing down, God will help us rebuild something better, block by block—a new creation to replace the old. It is not for us to know how. But it is for us to know that God will do it.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 20, 2021

In Between

A little over a year ago when we first entered into lockdown and as COVID raged across the world, I decided to experiment with baking cakes. Although I am quite fond of cooking, I have tended to shy away from baking.

There is a reason for this: I don’t like the unpredictability of it.. And though I enjoyed chemistry in high school, I don’t care for chemistry in the culinary realm. Baking is chemistry, they say, but I’ve always preferred cooking because it’s more like creative improvisation.

When I assemble ingredients, I like to know that I can fudge a bit here and there and that the final product will still turn out well. My previous forays into baking cakes, over ten years ago, were mixed, pun intended. I started with the scrumptious Decadent Chocolate Cake from the Silver Palate Cookbook. On more than one occasion, the cake stuck to the pan. It tasted delicious, but it looked terrible. Ultimately, in frustration, I eschewed baking cakes for over ten years.

Whether you’re a baker or not, I imagine you have a general concept of how it goes. Maybe it’s not quite as maddening to you as it is to me, in that baking is both a science and an art. You must precisely measure out the ingredients, combine them in a specific order, and bake at a particular temperature for a determined amount of time. There’s not much wiggle room there. With baking, you can essentially control the preparation and when the cake comes out of the oven, but everything in between is out of your hands. And for some, like me, this can be very, very frustrating.

Besides all this, there are a number of other factors that determine whether the cake is light, moist, and intact, or dense, dry, and crumbling. There is the humidity in the room, the accuracy of the oven, the quality of the ingredients, and often it seems, what direction the wind is blowing. There’s so much uncertainty in this in-between time, when the cake bakes in the oven, out of your hands.

Now, if Jesus had lived within a culture that baked cakes as we do, he might have used the image of baking, instead of scattering seed, to describe the kingdom of God. There is, of course, no adequate metaphor for this kingdom. And this elusive kingdom is always like something but not equivalent to anything. We are always talking around the kingdom and trying to get a glimpse into its ultimate opacity.

Appropriately, Jesus uses an agricultural image: the kingdom of God is like seed being scattered, perhaps recklessly and wantonly, creatively and generously. The casting of the seed is something that we can actually do. God has called us to be sowers of his word. And this resonates with us, because we can, in some sense, be in control.

But unless we are avid gardeners or horticulturalists, some of us might resonate more with the metaphor of baking to wrap our minds around this mysterious kingdom of God. We can spend hours and hours mixing the very best baking ingredients in a precise order and in very finite quantities. But at some point, we will have to turn it over to that in-between time, the time that we cannot control.

Once the ingredients are mixed and the cake is in the oven, we must wait and wait and wait. We can sleep and rise and go about our business. We can twiddle our thumbs or fidget with anxiety. But this period of baking is uncontrollable, even though we may want to manipulate its outcome.

If it happens that the cake is a success, we bask with not a little pride in the reward of our labor. But if the cake sticks to the pan or weighs as much as a brick, annoyance might tempt us to give up on our efforts.

When we are alert and attentive, we eye the cake through the glass of the oven door so that we are ready at just the right moment to swoop in and gather the culinary fruits of our labor before the cake is overcooked or burns. The beginning and the end we think we can manage, but as for the in-between, it escapes our grasp.

Understandably, we might be left confused about our role in relation to God’s kingdom, especially if it is anything like baking a cake—or scattering seed, for that matter. If we can only perfect the beginning and be ready to act at the end, what do we do in between? Can we ultimately do anything at all? We are torn between a desire to rely only on our own efforts and the temptation to do nothing.

During the in-between time, we try to mix all the right ingredients when raising our children in the faith, but we know ultimately that how they turn out is in God’s hands. We aspire to embody the Gospel in our lives, but we know, at the end of the day, that we cannot guarantee anyone will notice it. We say our prayers with diligence, but how those prayers will be answered is out of our control. We busy ourselves with evangelistic efforts, parish activities, and programming, hoping that our little sliver of the kingdom will grow. But we can never be certain of the results.

And this may seem to bring little good news. It is the reason why so many people simply give up on it all. Rather than becoming more abundant with the way they live, they become more miserly with anxiety and fear. They stop sowing the seed with abandon and turn inwards. They give up baking for over ten years as I did, because if the outcome can’t be guaranteed, it’s better not to try at all.

But there is always good news from the mouth of Jesus, even if we don’t understand it at first. We will not be able to predict the exact outcome when God takes over. We will have to live with the uncertainty of the in-between time. And yet God has something good in store for us; this we know. Baking may be a useful metaphor for the kingdom of God, but only to a point. Some of the cakes are going to taste like cardboard or stick to the pan. But Jesus has assured us that the kingdom of God will flourish by the hand of God, no matter how incompetent we feel in our own endeavors or how confused we are about our role.

The decline of the Church or the winnowing down of God’s kingdom is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we tell ourselves it is happening, the more it will be realized in our psyche and the more we will convince others it is true. But the cake has not yet come out of the oven. God is always moving in and among us, so that we can remain alert for the first signs of the fruits of our labor.

Throughout history, God has brought growth into the least likely circumstances. What have seemed like unfortunate occasions have mysteriously ushered in a revivified spread of the Gospel. Where there has been malaise in the Church, accidents of history have brought gifts to the spread of the Gospel. Where the seed has appeared to be dormant, life has suddenly sprung into being. Even a parish like ours, which has at times questioned its future, can be brought to life again, all by the grace of God. At times, we may give up on God, but God has not given up on us. Jesus has told us that the seed will sprout and grow, even though we know not how. We may fret about how the cake will turn out, but God has something delicious in store for us.

For some, our lack of control during the in-between time is an invitation to laziness, for others permission to micromanage. But Jesus calls us to something else. He calls us to patience and to the long view of history. He calls us away from easy triumphalist accounts of modern progress. And he summons us towards an unflinching conviction that God will make his kingdom flourish, although we know not how.

And because we know that God works for good and that his kingdom will ultimately reign, then Jesus calls us away from anxiety and to a celebration of this in-between time. Here Jesus is asking us to work, to mix our ingredients, and then, to turn our labors over to God. Jesus urges us to be alert and ready, because one day, we will suddenly see that the harvest is ripe. And it will be time to feast.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 13, 2021

The Family Picture Book

On this great feast of Corpus Christi, it is tempting to talk about many things. We could split hairs over theological nuances regarding the doctrine of the Real Presence. But today, I want to explore another way of reveling in this great feast.

Here we are this day, not united uniformly by biology, but knit together as a unique family, the people of God by virtue of our baptism. This identity is why we call ourselves members of Christ’s Body on earth and consume his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. And each year, on this feast, just as we might celebrate our baptism like we celebrate our birthdays, we are assembled to look through our family picture book, to celebrate the living presence of Christ’s Body in the Eucharist and in us, the Body of Christ.

This picture book will not give us an explication of Eucharistic doctrine or Real Presence, but it assumes a profound reverence for the Sacrament of the Altar. It’s a reverence that cannot really be explained but must be learned by osmosis. And this is where we turn to our family picture book.

This picture book is not a set of mere memories that can only be relived as moments from the past. This picture book, when examined together as the family of God, brings the past into the present. This picture book is full of vivid memories that are not just gathering dust but are alive because they tell us something about the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood and about our family ties. The pictures in this book give us a glimpse into why Eucharistic fellowship is the source of our life as Christians. The pictures in our storybook tell us why we are Christian.

As I turn a page, I see one poignant image. It is at a family reunion of my large Cajun family over twenty years ago in southeast Texas. At each family reunion, the local Roman Catholic parish priest would be brought in to say Mass. When my family gathered, we simply had to have Mass. Hundreds of my family would assemble, and I will never forget the gentle tears of affection in the eyes of my great-grandmother, then in her nineties, as she beheld the mystery of Christ’s Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar. She had been fed for over ninety years by this true Food, but she never had enough.

In a haunting connection, as I turn yet another page in the book, the tears of my great-grandmother are echoed in a pastoral visit to a parishioner some years later when I was a priest. I had taken the Blessed Sacrament to a parishioner who was homebound and had been without the Eucharist for some time. As I placed the host into his hands, I recognized, in his own tears, that deep devotion for Christ’s Body and Blood that I had seen in my own great-grandmother. It was a devotion that surpassed time and even denomination. The devotion attempted no theological treatise of Eucharistic piety, but it was expressed tactilely in the tears of a Christian longing to be fed.

And I turn the page again to remember the occasion of attending a daily Mass in a Canadian Anglo-Catholic parish. Before the Mass, two elderly women from the neighborhood thumbed their rosaries in the quiet presence of a handful of worshippers. And for a little while, in the quirky simplicity of this holy place, on an ordinary, hot day in July, heaven met earth. Driving away from the church, I saw the two women slowly make their way home, having been fed with Christ’s Body and Blood. Their regular journey, perhaps daily, to the parish church was simply what they did and where, each day, God would meet them in a particular sacramental way. They needed to be fed, and they knew where they would be fed, without a doubt.

I turn yet another page and I am confronted with a moving sight. It is a communion rail in a nondescript parish church, where a motley collection of people, of all races, backgrounds, situations, with their questions, doubts, and struggles, kneel with hands outstretched to be fed with ordinary bread that is, in fact, no ordinary bread. This rail seems to be the only place where all can be fed in one place without being segregated in some way.

On the next page, there is the exquisite nineteenth century church in north Philadelphia, in a neighborhood neglected by the city for so long and disturbed by frequent violence. Here the church bell rings weekly, the doors open, and people know they can be fed with something real and true. The city itself has starved them in so many ways, but this parish church offers a true Food that will enliven their bodies.

One more page into the book, and we are in a church in Abu Ghosh in the Middle East, believed to be the site of Emmaus. And the pilgrimage group of which I am a part has come to visit, and the residents of the community there, all Roman Catholics, are ecstatic that they have had visitors. Not many people visit, they say, because of the violence in these parts. And at their Altar, where ordinarily we Episcopalians would not have been welcome, one of our priests says Mass. We knew that we would be fed in that place, but we knew not how we would feed the residents of the community there. We were all fed by Christ’s Body, and he was known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Although some of these stories seem like my stories, they are, indeed, your stories, too. There are many pages in this picture book, time is running out, so we flip to another page. And here we are, June 6, 2021, as we observe the Feast of Corpus Christi. We are here for a very particular reason: to be fed by Word and Sacrament. Soon enough, Christ will be known to us, most assuredly, in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist. We will receive him into our bodies, into our bloodstreams. His life will course through our veins. And as the hymn says, in the Eucharist, “[Jesus] is here: we ask not how.”[1]

Paging through our picture book has taught us something distinctive about our identity as Christians: we are fed with pure gift in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The gift comes unbidden and unsolicited to us, both when we are seeking it, and when we are not. Because it is pure gift, it cannot be controlled. It cannot be weaponized to control others. It is God’s gift to us for the life of the world.

But this is not all. Because we know we have been fed with this pure gift and are constantly being fed by this pure gift, we must feed others. We live because of this gift. It informs every action we undertake in the name of Christ. In this gift, we live and move and have our being. We are constantly being fed as pure gift, and so we must feed others in return.

People can only be fed so much by good works and fellowship. The family story we tell today reveals why we are Christian: our fellowship is no ordinary fellowship but is fellowship galvanized by the sublime Gift of Christ’s Flesh and Blood. Our good works are no ordinary good works but are good works animated by the Body and Blood of Christ coursing through our veins. The sacred rhythm of our life is not about mere self-care but about a life that is truly alive because it is centered around the supreme Gift of God. This is no ordinary food but Food that charges our bloodstreams with life. The eating and drinking of this Food are not quarantined behind closed doors, but as we celebrate our family story this day, we acknowledge the imperative to take our energized souls and bodies out into the world to tell our story to the world. When we cannot receive this Food, we are impoverished—something is missing.

The tears in the eyes of my great-grandmother and former parishioner as they beheld the Sacrament were evidence enough that eating this Food once is not sufficient. The regular journey to the parish church of those two women in a Canadian city was proof that we are constantly in need of this Bread and Wine. We can only have life by eating and drinking this Food, and we can never have enough of it.

But one day when we turn to the final page in the picture book and its story is complete here on this earth, and when we finally behold our Lord face to face in heaven, we will have had enough of this food, because we will be rejoicing in fellowship at another banquet that never ends. And we will know that because of the bread with which we have been fed, we will live forever.

 Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of Corpus Christi (transferred)
June 6, 2021

[1] “Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor,” George Hugh Bourne, #307, The Hymnal 1982

Minding the Gaps

If you’ve visited London and traveled on the Underground, you will have heard the recurring caution, “mind the gap.” Step carefully into the train over the space—sometimes small, sometimes large—between the train and the platform. The gap could mean life or death if you daydream while boarding a crowded train at rush hour.

Mind the gap. We are always minding gaps. Having lived through a pandemic for the past year, we are minding the gaps between ourselves and the persons in front of us in the grocery store line. There are movements afoot to close the gaps between the implicit caste systems in our society. Gaps are everywhere, some of which we even quietly welcome in order to protect ourselves. Other gaps are disturbing in their seeming intractable nature and in the pain they cause.

We also mind the gap between God and ourselves, as we engage in self-examination. We ponder whether the gap has widened due to some negligence or willfulness on our part. We mind the gap in worship as our souls are drawn up to heaven for a fleeting period of time. The gap, of course, reminds us that God is God and we are not. There is a wide gulf between the immortality of God and our mortality.

In the year that King Uzziah died, this is where the prophet Isaiah begins. He is dutifully minding the gap. There is nothing like a theophany to highlight the vast chasm between God and humankind. Seraphim are flitting about in the presence of the Almighty. And even they are covering themselves to shield their presence from the glory of God, before whom no one can stand unaffected.

If the singing of the seraphim, the shaking of the Temple thresholds, and the smoke filling the space are not enough, Isaiah understands that there is yet another gap between him and God. Isaiah is a man of unclean lips, and he resides among a people of unclean lips. He and they are human, and God is God. So, Isaiah minds the gap.

Which of us has not been mindful of that gap when we’ve been in the presence of the Almighty? Who has not felt the weight of this gap on their knees in repentance and prayer? Who has not been overwhelmed by this gap when confronting the teaching of Jesus against the reality of our own lives? Think of how many people have been taught that the gap between God and humanity cannot be bridged without beating the gates of heaven with pleas for mercy because mere mortals are damaged beyond repair.

It’s a strange and mysterious thing, this gap, because it has two sides. It both instills a sense of awe and reverence for God, and at the same time, it makes us feel utterly unworthy of any benevolence from God. What can bridge this seemingly unsurpassable gap? Can anything bridge this gap?

Trinity Sunday hardly seems like the place to find any answers. This feast comes each year with the perpetual disclaimer that no matter how hard we try, we’ll fail to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity. And yet we try. And we must try. We stretch the limits of poetry and metaphor, because it’s the only language we know and can use to speak about the unspeakable. And usually it means that we get stuck on the heavenly plane until we get out of our heads and come back down to earth. The result is that the gap between heaven and earth only seems to widen. And turning back to Isaiah doesn’t seem like the place to go for something more concrete, especially on Trinity Sunday.

Isaiah commences his spiritual journey at the precipice of an enormous canyon, separating him from God. In his vision, God does not speak to him directly. Isaiah is absolutely terrified that, because he has now seen a vision of God, he will not fare well. Perhaps he will even die as a result.

Isaiah has two conceivable options: flee the scene and run for safety, or resign himself to his fate, which will be catastrophic. But Isaiah chooses a third. He boldly speaks before the face of God.

When he speaks, he begins by minding the gap. He is a man of unclean lips. He is helplessly part of the sinful human condition. He gives voice to the uncrossable gap between God and humankind.

And it’s at this point that something changes. There is no lightning bolt to strike him dead. There is no vocalized response. There is only the striking gesture of one of the seraphim who moves towards him with a burning coal held between some tongs, which has come from the sacred altar in the midst of the Temple. And suddenly, just like that, the gap closes for a moment, and Isaiah is cleansed.

But it does not stop here. Just when we think that the gap could not close any more, it does, for God himself speaks, as if drawing nearer to Isaiah. Although he does not address Isaiah directly, the question seems to be posed pointedly to Isaiah. “Whom shall I send?” To which Isaiah volunteers himself. “Here am I. Send me.”

What Isaiah probably does not realize is what he has signed up for. There is yet another gap, a gap nearly as daunting as that between God and humankind. It is the gap between Isaiah, this custodian of God’s burning word, and a world with stopped ears and a hard heart. Will he be able to cross this gap? Does he even want to?

Is this, too, where we find ourselves? Do we feel as if we’re stranded on an island, with a chasm between ourselves and God on one side, and a vast space between us and the world on the other? We hold the precious Word of God as our lifeblood. We are charged with proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to clogged ears and hard hearts. And it is a lonely place indeed, for what can bridge this gap? Who can bridge this gap?

This is the stubborn problem before our eyes until we remember who this God is on the other side of the gap behind us. God does not repose in static comfort on the other side of a vast chasm, waiting for us to soldier our way across a Red Sea that will only swallow us up. This God takes us by the hand forward, across the watery abyss. Our God is One who cannot tolerate any gaps among us, whether between us and him, between humans, or within any aspect of his creation.

And this gives us a glimpse into the mystery of the Trinity. The processions among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit moving within the very life of God countenance no gaps, because God himself has already closed the gaps. The Father has sent his Son into the world for its life and salvation in order to close the gap between heaven and earth. And even when the Son has returned to the right hand of the Father to reign in glory, the gap cannot remain. The Holy Spirit has been sent as our Advocate, Guide, and Companion. Because of the life of the Trinity, no gaps can remain.

This is indeed good news for us. But what about that other gap? What about the gaping hole between us and a world that seems to fight against the bold charge we’ve been given? What about a world that instinctively rejects God’s mission for us?

Here we are, back with Isaiah, standing with our missional charge on the edge of a gaping hole, trembling because we know not how to navigate it. There are more gaps on the other side of the gap ahead, between rich and poor, the loved and the unloved, the powerful and the weak, evil and good. The task is so daunting it is paralyzing. And like Isaiah, we acknowledge our incompetence for the task ahead, and then we fall silent.

But it is not up to us to close the gap. Remember that Isaiah merely speaks. He does not close the gap. It is God who reaches across the gap when the seraphim heals all of Isaiah’s sense of unworthiness with a burning coal. And then Isaiah is freed from his fear in order to go forth in mission.

So, too, with us. God has sent his Son across the gap to heal us and the world. And he continues to send the Holy Spirit to nudge us forward as God uses us to heal the gaps among us, although we may never see them fully closed in this life.

On Trinity Sunday, it is not so much our task to leave with answers or to close the gap between certitude and mystery. But standing in awe before the perceived gap between us and God is what gives us the courage to be grateful that our Triune God is constantly crossing gaps. And because we don’t really know what to do to cross the gaps, God does it for us. God in his infinite mercy moves across the chasm towards us, touches our lips to cleanse us, and then we are sent forth to mind the gaps. And this we know, no matter how much we can’t understand it: God himself will close the gaps.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2021

A Quiet Power

Our culture is one that inherently favors extroverts. This, at least, is the claim of writer Susan Cain in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. It’s difficult to refute this claim that there is a tendency to trample upon the quiet voices of introverts. You may have been one of those eager but quiet freshmen in college who dreaded the incessant, boisterous social activities of orientation week. I certainly was. How many classes have you taken where part of your grade was based on vocal participation, as if you couldn’t participate without always saying something? And did anyone ever tell you to be less shy?

It is, of course, true that shyness is not to be equated with introversion. There are, in fact, shy extroverts. But whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, if you are quiet, gentle, and understated in your demeanor, the world is likely to pass you by without giving you a second thought.

Maybe it’s one of the aftereffects of a buzzing age constructed around technology. Everything needs to be in your face, all the time. The most popular movies must incorporate the most dramatic stunts. Everything is so full tilt in your face that there is no time to think and process inside.

This is part of Cain’s point in her book about the neglected values of introversion. She doesn’t argue that introversion is better than extroversion, but she does point out that society often implicitly assumes that extroversion is better than introversion. Her point is that the world needs both introverts and extroverts. They complement one another.

And like the culture we inhabit, the Church herself, at least these days, often seems to favor the extroverts among us. In some corners, the Church has begun marketing the Gospel as if evangelism is only the domain of extroverts. Yes, there are indeed introverted evangelists, but the Church in her quest for relevancy has equated evangelism with that other E word: extroversion.

Nowhere is this perhaps more in evidence than on the Day of Pentecost. On this day, the Church in many places resorts to all kinds of antics either out of pure celebratory spirit (no pun intended) or out of desperation. And there’s little doubt where the Church has found such fantastic displays of Pentecostal power. We need only look at the account of the Day of Pentecost from the Acts of the Apostles to see the wildness of the Spirit’s manifestation among the early disciples. The Holy Spirit filled the house where they were, like the rush of a mighty wind. Tongues of fire alighted on the heads of the disciples. People understood languages foreign to them. It was pure holy pandemonium.

It is this imagery of the Holy Spirit’s work that has captivated the imagination of the Church for so long. The Spirit is wild, unpredictable, and spectacular. The Spirit is visibly evident in strange behavior and in incomprehensible miracles. The Spirit is the dynamism behind bold, prophetic preaching. And if none of these signs is evident, then maybe the Spirit is just absent after all.

But just as the world needs both extroverts and introverts, so, too, we need multiple ways of describing the Holy Spirit. We have become accustomed to envisaging the Holy Spirit as tailored only to an extroverted world. We forget that the description of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles is only one Scriptural voice testifying to the Spirit’s work.

And if we need both extroversion and introversion, maybe we can apply similar thinking to our knowledge of the Holy Spirit. The Church needs to embrace all aspects of the Holy Spirit’s power. The Acts of the Apostles gives us the proclamation of the Gospel on steroids. John the Evangelist presents us with the Advocate who will walk alongside us and lead us into truth. And St. Paul brings us into the depths of inner discernment.

If it’s true that extroverts tend to inadvertently trample all over introverts in a talkative world, it might be true that the babble of strange tongues, the noise of stupendous miracles, and visible manifestations of Spirit-filled ecstasy drown out the powerfully quiet voice of the Spirit related to us by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, a voice that we might need the most.

There are no mighty winds in Paul’s description of the Spirit. There is not even any clarity around real truth. There is, in fact, no speech at all. There is, instead, something that goes far, far deeper than mere human speech. It is a sound that is beyond speech. It is a primal utterance that cannot be clarified into intelligible words. The Spirit, along with all of creation, groans. This sigh that is too deep for words is a groan that matches the incessant groaning of creation that is held captive in travail.

The creation held in bondage to darkness and evil, wrestling with the problem of evil and questions about God’s presence or absence, all of this is too incoherent and formless to be spewed forth in words. There is no clarity of language comprehension in this imagery. There is only the drone of agony as creation itself, humans and everything else, utters its existential lament.

This groan of sorrow is heard beneath the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. It is detected amid smoking pyres in COVID-wracked India. It cries out in gasps from the wells of injustice in this own nation. It screams from the dissonance of interreligious and interdenominational strife. This groan is everywhere, no matter its timbre or pitch.

But a world bent on fantastic displays of might and power cannot bear this groan. There is nothing flashy to articulate from the groan itself; there are only pain and emptiness. The primal utterances of these cavernous sighs have not been formed into any kind of processed thought. The internal processing is the sigh itself. The groan knows not what it should say or ask.

This is why it is so much easier to turn to theatrics on Pentecost. Bring in the fire-eaters, loud streamers, and party horns. Favor an extroverted display of Pentecostal fervor that is audible and visible, but avoid the groans. They have nothing to say.

Except that they do. We need the multiple voices that attempt to convey the indescribable mystery of this misunderstood Person of the Trinity. As much as we need the excitement of the Spirit’s power, we desperately need the Spirit’s quiet, inner utterances that give us hope.

Because, as St. Paul tells us, it is hope, after all, that can be the only proper response to groans so deep that they have no verbal quality to them. It is a hope that we are not alone in our groaning. It is in the groaning itself that our groans are matched, neither in consonance or language, but in sincerity and truth, with the groans of the Holy Spirit who meets us in our anguish.

It is perhaps in the torture of this groaning that we discover the mind of Christ itself. Here, in the depths of inarticulate utterances, God the Father meets our travail as the Spirit gives quiet voice to what is voiceless to us. Here God the Son is found as the meeting point of heavenly redemption and earthly sorrow. And imagine how all of this would be lost if we didn’t heed this understated voice of the Spirit among us.

If most of us are familiar with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, it is probably found in this less obvious way, because this real groan is the bedrock of human life, even if it comes and goes. And the good news here is not that there is groaning but that when there is groaning there is One who comes among us, indeed within us, to intercede to the Father for us.

When forceful words are not able to quell war and violence, the Spirit is there interceding. When passionate and prophetic speeches cannot kill injustice, the Spirit is there nonetheless. When those who are anonymously suffering alone have no advocate, the Spirit who meets us within is a  friend and companion.

And when we have no words to pray or have even lost our ability to pray, this gentle, quiet, but powerful Guide is praying for us because God will not let us go. So, on this day, when we have so much to celebrate, I say, you can have your fire-eaters, banners, and loud testimonials. Any day, I would gladly focus on the power of the Spirit who is not above the depths of our sorrow, but who finds us in it and groans along with us. Because so often in life, we are simply speechless before God, and this is precisely where the Spirit comes to help us.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Day of Pentecost
May 23, 2021

Always Room for One More

I’m sure that all of us have had experiences in which we have been on the outside of a conversation listening in. Was it one of those times in your youth where, at night, you could hear your parents whispering secretively in the next room? You knew they were talking about you and all your teenage adventures. Or which of us has not overheard an uncomfortable conversation over dinner in a crowded restaurant (pre-pandemic, of course!) from the couple seated nearby.

I’ve certainly had my fair share of experiences in which someone was speaking about me—and not necessarily favorably—when I stumbled upon the conversation. And many of us have probably been on the outside of a clique looking in. We remember the conspiratorial whispering and laughing within the huddle of classmates as they glanced repeatedly in our direction. We instinctively knew that we were the topic of their surreptitious conversation. The members of the clique, from which we were excluded, also wanted us to know that the talk was about us and that we were not privy to its treasures.

Then there are those rare exchanges where you are on the outside of a conversation and are meant to hear what is being said. It is, in fact, being said for your benefit, knowing full well that you are listening and with the hope that you will heed the words spoken. Think of the young adult in the room next to her parents chatting with friends over coffee. “Well, she could really make something of herself if she fully embraced her remarkable artistic gift.” Saying these words indirectly is thought to be more effective than speaking them directly. Maybe the point will sink in more.

We probably wouldn’t ordinarily accuse Jesus of shying away from direct speech in the Gospels. But as his passion and death approach, in John’s Gospel, Jesus suddenly shifts from a long, farewell speech to his beloved disciples to an extended prayer addressed to God the Father. And it is indirectly intended for his disciples.

As we enter this scene today, Jesus is at table with his friends. He has washed their feet and offered a lengthy and somewhat ambiguous explanation of his impending departure from this world. Then, without missing a beat, Jesus looks up to heaven, still in the presence of his friends, and speaks to God as if they are not there.

Unless you backed up a few chapters in the Gospel, you would not know that Jesus’ disciples are still sitting at table with him. They are only mentioned obliquely. The language of Jesus’ prayer conveys the profound intimacy between Father and Son. The speech circles back on itself, so that the disciples are also bound up in this united fellowship of love. Jesus’ long prayer is clearly about the disciples, if never addressed directly to them.

On the surface, we might read a tone of cliquishness and exclusion into this prayer. The disciples are certainly being included inside the huddle of mutual love and self-giving. But the rest—the world—are out of the circle. Beware of those who do not accept Jesus’ true identity. They are of the world. They have been condemned because they have, in some sense, rejected the Christ and therefore do not have life.

It sounds rather like a version of that huddle on the school playground. Some are in, and some are out. Those on the inside of the huddle make a point of highlighting the exclusion of those on the outside, because no one wants to be out. And centuries later, as much as we may want to be inside the holy huddle, we hope and pray that we are not on the outside of it.

But this image of a tight circle into which only a select few are inducted is a troubling one. It seems to fly in the face of John’s earlier words that Jesus came into the world not to condemn it but to save it. What on earth are we to make of Jesus’ prayer to the Father from the inside of this holy huddle? What about those on the outside?

If Jesus’ prayer is really an indirect address to the disciples, then it is more than a simple indication that they are in the exclusive circle. They are meant to hear what he has to say. They are intended to discover the intense love between Father and Son into which they have been drawn. Jesus wants them to know that they will not be bereft after his departure from this world but will be protected by their loving Father. And Jesus says all this so that the disciples will understand the fullness of joy that God desires for them.

But this is not all. This, in fact, cannot be all. If the meaning of Jesus’ prayer were to stop there, then it would be only good news for those disciples on the inside of the exclusive circle and very bad news for those out. And this does not square with Jesus’ mission in the world. So Jesus eventually turns his prayer in a surprising direction when he asks the Father not to take his friends out of the world but to protect them as they are sent into it.

Jesus’ long prayer to the Father is intended to instruct the disciples about their privileged status and also about their purpose in the world. The prayer then becomes one not just indirectly addressed to the disciples but to the world itself. And it is precisely here where the prayer is no longer like the inside conversation of an exclusive clique. The disciples are meant to hear this address to God in order to build themselves up and to build others up, too.

For the love expressed in Jesus’ prayer to the Father is incapable of being exclusively guarded within the life of the Trinity. This love, generously given, defies jealous hoarding so that only a select few can be invited in to share of it. This unusual love is so abundant that it overflows from God into the lives of the disciples and from them into the world itself. That is the nature of this love.

It may be difficult to fathom a shared gift that is impossible of being jealously protected. What community of believers doesn’t feel the need to preserve its own claims on truth because it is the mark of their own special relationship with God? What religious group doesn’t want to fence in its customs and traditions in order to bolster its particular identity at the expense of the exclusion of others? How many Christians narrowly guard their spiritual gifts within the auspices of the Church while failing to share them with the world?

We have become so conditioned to proclaim the Gospel directly, from the inside out, by force alone or not at all. But the world might better feel the intensity of its effects indirectly by listening from the outside in. What would it look like to love so intensely as the Body of Christ that this love couldn’t be contained within the Body alone? Rather than pit ourselves against the world, how do we speak about the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so that the world indirectly hears our conversation and is cut to the heart?

It is nothing short of the evil one who will tempt us to keep our special relationship with God just between friends. The evil one would have us believe that the world is not deserving of a place in our exclusive circle. And it is because the evil one somehow knows that the dynamic nature of God’s love is dangerous, because it is a love that can only tumble out beyond its immediate circle to find others.

Jesus tells us that there is a conversation already happening within the life of the Godhead that has been indirectly shared with us, and there is a world that desperately needs to listen in. This conversation is a huddle bound by mutual love and not by exclusion. Its topic is a matter of life and death and is meant to be heard by those on the outside, listening in. And its message is so nuanced that it will find its way into the world in need of it; nothing can stop it.

If we can only keep the conversation going, this huddle of love will grow and grow and grow. It is meant to expand, not to stay small. It will extend beyond the boundaries of comfort and push through all the divisions and barriers that try to stand in its way. It will persist if we can keep the conversation going. Its truth must be spoken in the world. And in this huddle, where no one is to be excluded, there is always room for one more.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 16, 2021

Believe It or Not

One of my middle school science teachers had an exercise to open each class. It was called “Believe It or Not.” Each day, we would begin class with the teacher showing us a fascinating claim on the transparency machine (do you remember those?). We would then have to guess whether the statement was true or not.

Believe it or not: you have to close your eyes when you sneeze to protect them. Believe it or not: if we took the DNA from the number of cells in a human body and laid it out linearly, it would wrap around the earth 2.5 million times. Believe it or not: the lifespan of a turtle can be as much as several hundred years. For the record, I’m not going to tell you which of those statements are true!

The fun of this game was that it was nearly impossible to guess whether something was true or false. The claims were so astounding that when they were true, they were nearly impossible to believe.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes four astounding claims. The fact that we might fail to recognize them as nearly preposterous may be telling in and of itself. Perhaps we have we lost, over time, an ability to readily believe Jesus words. We are too skeptical of the claim that God can still work wonders among us. But in his Farewell Discourse to the disciples on the eve of his death, Jesus says four incredible things.

Here’s the first. Believe it or not: God wants us to have joy in our lives. On the surface, this does not seem so hard to believe. But how many people do you know who actually believe this? On the one hand, there are those who think the joy God desires for us is to be equated with perpetual happiness. Or joy means that God always wants us to have the most fashionable car or gobs of wealth.

But how many people truly believe that God desires for us to have real joy? Do you believe that God allows—indeed wants—you to have joy in your life? Can you believe this without imagining any strings are attached? How easily we forget that even in the marriage service of our prayer book, it is clearly stated that marriage is for the mutual joy of two people. Even people of faith have come to believe that if anything is enjoyed, there must be punishment waiting around the corner. Experiencing joy is almost too good to be true. And it is difficult to accept that things can be enjoyed as things in themselves, rather than merely utilized for some other end.

The second incredible thing that Jesus tells his disciples in his Farewell Discourse is that he considers them to be his friends. We are to extend that to ourselves. Believe it or not: Jesus considers us his friends. Again, does that seem ridiculous to us? And if not, perhaps it is because Facebook has trained us to cheapen the meaning of friendship. But this is no ordinary friendship of which Jesus speaks. It is a relationship of mutual love, of self-sacrificial love. It is a friendship that gives us the right to approach Jesus not from the perspective of a servant but nearly as an equal. It means that Jesus doesn’t hide from us the astounding things the Father has shared with him. It means that Jesus draws us, his friends, into the life shared between him and the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Can we even begin to imagine this type of friendship, something that goes far, far deeper than the click of a button on social media? This is not the kind of friendship that suddenly blossoms when we need a favor. If we understand the depth of this kind of friendship, it may be difficult to fathom that we are worthy to be called a friend of Jesus, especially since he is our Lord and Savior.

You will see that all these astonishing claims follow from one another and are related. So, the third amazing thing that Jesus tells us is that, believe it or not, because we have been chosen by the Father, we are capable of bearing tremendous fruit. Like the other claims, this may not resonate deeply with us. But recall the kind of fruit of which Jesus speaks. This is no meager batch of mealy apples that we are to produce. We are to generate fruit so rich and abundant that the world will never be the same after this fruit is created.

In the previous chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus describes what this fruit looks like. It is the fruit of marvelous works, not just good works, but works that create a seismic shift in the state of the world, for the good of the world. Believe it or not, Jesus says that the works we will do will be greater even than those he has done in his lifetime. This is not because of any superhuman power on our part, but it is because Jesus will ascend to the Father and unleash the Holy Spirit among us to work wonders. Can you really believe this?

Which brings us to the final unbelievable claim that Jesus makes. It is a claim that bears both a temptation and a promise. Believe it or not: if we abide in love of God and one another, and if we ask the Father for anything, anything, in the Name of Jesus, the Father will give it to us. It is such an astonishing proposition because we know how it might be abused. But the caveat is that it must be rooted in love. And if we are abiding in that love, we can’t help but ask for the right things.

Do you see, now, how incredible these claims are? Do you believe them? It’s not difficult to understand why the power latent in these words has been deflated over the years. These promises are almost too good to be true. Human greed and manipulation, yes even in the Church herself, have twisted pure joy into obligation and punitive enforcement of duty. Shame has replaced joy. The sins of pride and selfishness have prevented us from retaining a robust understanding of friendship. Self-preservation has all but ensured that a deep, sacrificial love between friends is a rare thing indeed. The idol of perfectionism and obsession with self-image has convinced us that we are not capable of bearing long-lasting fruit to benefit the world. Or if we do, we bear fruit of our own accord, not with God’s help, but because we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and take charge of our own lives. And as far as asking the Father for anything, well, this has been so misused, that it is no wonder many fail to believe it. The tenth time we ask for the winning lottery ticket or the new Mercedes without any result, any belief in this claim dies.

But these claims are not astonishing because we can’t believe them. They are not astonishing because they are not really true. They are incredible because they are true and because of what they say about God and about us, too. Jesus’ four staggering assertions reveal a God who is not an eternal sadist but One who loves us so much, and even trusts us so much, to send his Holy Spirit to enable us to do works so great that we cannot even imagine them.

These four amazing promises reveal that God has in mind a future for this world that is not catastrophic but inherently promising and good. It is an optimistic vision that flies in the face of much of what we read and hear in the news, but it is revealed in Jesus’ words to his disciples and to us.

These four nearly preposterous declarations by the Son are proof that God does not desire us to grovel before him or barter our way to happiness, but that God loves us unconditionally and longs for us to be in relationship with him. It is only we who have trouble seeing this.

And if we still cannot believe these stupefying claims, it is because we have not yet realized how confounding it is that our God would stoop so low as to send his only Son to die and prove to us that we are not mere servants, but we are his friends. It is only because of this profound truth that we have any right to believe the four unbelievable things that Jesus has told us.

It may be that we have become so complacent and lazy in our appreciation of God’s words to us because we have neglected to run with the baton that God has handed us. We have forgotten that God has already chosen us, and we are standing at the beginning of the race, waiting for it to begin. And by now, we should long have been running into the wind.

But God has not stopped waiting for us to respond. He has chosen us. He has sent his Son to call us friends. He has shared the love and joy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with us. He has told us, through Jesus, that believe it or not, we will bear unbelievable fruit for the sake of the world with his help. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. God doesn’t hope that we will ask him for things. God expects that we will. God is just patiently waiting, waiting for us to stop and remember all that he has done for us. God is longing for us to understand how much he has given us and how much we can do in his Name, if we can only believe that it is all true.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 9, 2021

God’s Gesture

Adults mistakenly think that children always need to learn from them, but perhaps it would behoove adults to learn a thing or two from children from time to time. I will never forget what occurred one Sunday when I offered the Dismissal at the end of Mass. As I chanted the words, “Let us bless the Lord,” I extended my arms towards the congregation, as I usually do. And as I did so, a child in the congregation immediately echoed this gesture back to me.

It was a beautifully profound act. It was unsolicited. No one else in the congregation was doing it, but this child instinctively discerned that it was only natural to respond to what I had done.

This open receptivity of children is what makes them such excellent learners of languages. Before the weary jadedness of adulthood enters in, children know how to respond without censoring themselves. They respond, in kind, to how they are treated. A funny face will frequently elicit a smile or laugh from a baby. A facial expression of distress may very well provoke a state of anxiety in a child. And extending arms out as a gesture of bidding, results in a similar gestural response.

It is no wonder that children can also teach us something about loving God. The role of formation typically lies with adults, but perhaps we adults can learn a few things from children. And the behavior of a child might even point to an initiating gesture from God.

It is terribly tragic that the older we get, the harder it may be for us to reciprocate God’s own gesture towards us. When we respond in our own ways, we most likely believe we are being true to how God has acted towards us. But it is possible that we have misinterpreted this action.

If we were to ask those around us how they imagine God’s stance towards humankind, what do you think they would say? Would they picture God with arms extended in love to us, or with a finger wagging in chastisement? I’m guessing that many would choose the latter. If my own experience is accurate, I think that most people’s conception of God is one of fear.

Fear can, of course, be holy fear, or fear shot through with great anxiety. Holy fear is entirely appropriate. It reinforces our understanding of God as God, and us as mere human beings. Holy fear engenders awe and inspires worship.

But anxious fear is toxic. This is the obsessive fear of condemnation and of being punished. Although fear can be intended to command devotion, it usually results in lack of respect and disintegration of relationship.

The author of the First Letter of John is quite clear: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” The fear of which John speaks is the fear associated with judgment. It is about the future of our souls before God. John is not so naïve as to believe that we will never be afraid in our lives. But John also understands that fear is a useful barometer for the state of our souls.

If we are in a state of unholy fear, then it may be telling about our own spiritual health. For if love means to walk as Jesus would have us walk, then our own anxious fear about salvation may be an indicator that we are not walking as we should walk. Fear, in this case, is a helpful guide as we seek to change the way we live.

But John states that God and unholy fear do not mix. Indeed, they cannot mix. It is like one of those electronic forms where you can choose one option, but not both. You cannot click the boxes for both love and fear. And if God is love, as John tells us, then fear cannot exist if we truly know God.

Why, then, do so many Christians seem to live in a constant state of anxious fear? Fear has often been the tactic used to make people attend church or say their prayers. It has been used to enforce specific standards of morality. Fear has been wielded to keep people in line, whether for their own sake or for the sake of those in authority.

This baseline of fear has spread beyond the Church to the world around us. Fear is a constant. People are afraid that they will lose their money or their status. They are afraid of being unloved or of lacking approval. They are terrified of being wrong. And often this circle loops back to a fear of God, because if they are afraid of being wrong, they are ultimately afraid of God’s anger when they are wrong.

We would be remiss in denying the numerous Scriptural depictions of God’s wrath and anger. But we would likewise be remiss in ignoring the constant gesture that reappears in Scripture from beginning to end. It is the gesture of God extending his arms out to humankind in love.

And John illustrates this most forcefully in the iconic image of love. It is the visible sign that God’s posture towards us is one of extended arms rather than a wagging finger. This visible sign is the gift of his only Son for the salvation of the world.

This gift is the visualization par excellence of God’s arms reaching out to us. Jesus Christ, offered to the world so that it may have life, is the corrective to all our misshapen images of God’s relationship with us. The Son did not fight against those who opposed him. He did not seek revenge, nor did the Father. But the Son willingly laid down his life, even for his enemies. Indeed, he broke the cycle of revenge in the world.

If we keep this image at the forefront of our minds, then we begin to understand that throughout the long history of Scripture and even to our present day, our fallible human minds have distorted God’s gesture towards us into a humanly interpreted gesture. The gestures that we have received from our fellow sinful neighbors have been echoed back to one another, and even ultimately back to God. We have projected our own anger, deceit, hatred, and fear onto God, who has revealed in Jesus Christ that his gesture towards us has only ever been one of arms extended out in love.

At what point did humankind begin to substitute its own actions of chastisement and revenge for God’s central act of love? Was it at the Fall? Was it at the first hint of human betrayal? Was it at the first experience of suffering or tragedy? And the anxious fear that has resulted explains so much of the world’s sin. If we cannot accept the image of God’s arms extended out towards us, it is difficult ever to accept that we are loved. And if we cannot accept that we are loved, it is nearly impossible to treat others with mercy and compassion.

It is then a vicious cycle, for every accolade that another receives is one that we do not receive. Every dollar given to a person in need is one taken from us. Every gift bestowed upon another is something we lack.

And when we refuse to accept God’s gesture of love towards us, even the good actions we undertake are undertaken from a deficit mentality. We must engage in good works because it is necessary to win God’s love, because we are scared to go without it. Every prayer said and every Mass attended without being a response to love then become the fulfillment of an obligation, because otherwise, the gesture of extended arms is contorted into one of a wagging finger.

Fear is the root of so much evil and spiritual unhealth. But love is the antidote. This antidote is not sickly sweet or saccharine. It is not amorphous and oblique. It is concrete and direct. Love is not even really visible in our actions towards our neighbors, because even these can be deceitful. But this true love is active in the primal response to God’s first gesture towards us.

Love is seeing God’s arms beckoning to us and then instinctively responding with our arms open to him, and consequently to our neighbors. Love is a response; fear is a reaction. Love is not one more thing to gain favor with God or others, but it is simply who we are when we respond to God’s gesture towards us. Love does not employ guilt or shame or manipulation. It simply breeds more love because its goodness is contagious.

But fear is when we turn God into a god that can never be appeased. It is a hungry god that feeds itself by sadistically withholding love and using the wagging finger as a motivation for control. Fear, ironically, is our own idolization of humanity’s sinfulness. And the angry god of our own devising is no god at all, because it has no relationship with us.

But love for the God who created and redeemed us is nothing short of pure worship. Love is not one more thing to do but who we have to be because of who God is towards us. And it all stems from that gesture that is all about God and not so much about us. It is the Son, the image of the invisible God, who has affirmed that the posture of God towards his beloved children has ever only been one thing, no matter how much humankind has misinterpreted it. And this gesture is a loving Father, with arms extended in love, waiting and waiting and waiting until one day, his children finally see what he has done for them. And then they reach their arms back out to him.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 2, 2021

We Know Him by What He Does

One Sunday morning, a few months ago, I was engaged in my usual routine prior to Sung Mass. At that point, before the arrival of our new livestreaming equipment, I was setting up my iPhone on a tripod in the nave and then starting the livestream on Facebook. When I returned to the sacristy, I would open my laptop and drop in the Mass leaflet. This practice had become tiresome because it was one more thing to do, and I found it hard to shift from tech management to prayer.

As I recall, this particular Sunday morning was during the difficult time when our doors were closed to public worship, and so it was just me, the musicians, and a server. It was a lonely time, and I longed to see people in the pews again.

And so, that Sunday morning, I was especially struck as I dropped the leaflet into the comment feed. Suddenly, I noticed people “logging in” to Mass. I hadn’t really paid attention to this much before. The people logging onto Facebook were not just numbers in the view panel; they were comments. Personal interaction was beginning to happen. “Good morning from Texas.” “Good morning from Chestnut Hill.” Each person would designate their respective locations.

And then one of the newest members of our parish logged in: “Good morning from Bryn Mawr.” It was a seemingly small thing, but I was extremely touched. I realized that I was watching community form before my eyes. There was a brief break in the cloud of loneliness created by a pandemic. I had been struggling, too, with the difficulty of building relationships during a pandemic and with the knowledge of the many challenges this parish had faced and would face. But I realized in that moment, that all was going to be just fine. I knew that I had experienced an acute moment of God’s grace. This is how God speaks—not always directly but clearly if we heed his voice. And God was saying, “I have not let you go.”

Hearing God’s voice may seem like one of the most intangible things we could imagine. I would guess that very few people have had experiences wherein they have heard God speaking to them as if in a distinctly audible voice. For most, it’s not so simple.

The world is noisy, and its perpetual din clamors above the still, small voice of God. The difficulty in hearing God’s voice can be witnessed in the large numbers of people who give up on hearing it. They look for affirmation in their work, hobbies, or social relationships. God’s voice seems to be absent to them in the face of loss or in the mundane. What then are we to make of St. John’s assertion that Jesus the Good Shepherd cares for sheep who know him, and who don’t simply know him but also know his voice? What does this voice sound like? How can we heed it if we do not recognize it? Is it possible that we don’t recognize the Good Shepherd’s voice because we can’t comprehend what it means to be a Good Shepherd?

When Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd, he draws on a rich Scriptural tradition of describing God as Shepherd. But this ancient tradition usually defines God as a benevolent, caring Shepherd over and against the numerous bad shepherds who are destroying or taking advantage of the sheep. Have we known too many bad shepherds to be able to recognize a good one? And is this why the voice of our Good Shepherd seems so absent at times?

Perhaps, then, we can take a cue from some other words of Jesus, this time from Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus tells his disciples that they will be able to tell true from false prophets by the results of what they do. A good tree does not bear bad fruit. The false prophets are the ones who come deceitfully in sheep’s clothing, but they are really wolves. If this is true and we can tell good from bad by looking at the visible signs of fruit, then we might begin to discern the Good Shepherd’s voice.

The Good Shepherd’s sheep know him by his voice. He is the Good Shepherd because of what he does. He gathers and doesn’t divide. He sacrifices his own life for the sake of his sheep. He visibly demonstrates that he intimately knows his flock. He does not behave as a mercenary but as one invested in his sheep. The sheep only follow when they hear his voice because they associate his voice with certain behavior.

We know from John that the Good Shepherd sticks with his sheep; he does not flee. The hireling, by contrast, is mercenary. The hireling phones it in. The hired hand is not invested in the sheep and runs away without a second thought when things go wrong. The Good Shepherd does not sacrifice the sheep to get what he wants; he sacrifices himself so that the sheep may have fullness of life.

The relationship between Jesus the Good Shepherd and his flock is rooted in Jesus’ own relationship with his Father. That relationship is not hoarded within the life of the Trinity, but the love Jesus experiences with the Father is extended to his sheep. And Jesus does not hoard that intimacy with his own sheep, but he shares that with sheep from other folds. The gesture is always one of openness and of overflowing love.

This might be the most recognizable fruit of the Shepherd’s voice: that no one is unworthy, small, neglected, or broken enough to be considered outside the fold. And not only that: those sheep in other folds are not simply worthy of the Shepherd’s care; they are quite capable of hearing and recognizing his voice.

We know the voice of our Good Shepherd by what he does among us. We see the fruits of his presence. And what our Good Shepherd does is gather his entire flock, from all corners of the earth, into his loving care. When we see the opposite of that, we can trust that the Good Shepherd is not behind it.

When we see dividing and scattering instead of gathering, then we can be certain that the Good Shepherd is not doing it. When we see exclusive folds that hoard their own truths or special relationships, then we can be assured that the Good Shepherd is not responsible for this.

But the opposite is true as well. When we see sheep in different folds who seem bereft of leadership and vulnerable to wild wolves, we can be certain that the Good Shepherd is present among them, reaching his arms out to put them on his shoulders. He will bring them home. His voice is there, even if lost amid the baying of wolves.

When we see sheep who are lost and exposed to great danger on their own, even when others have fled them in the face of difficulties, we can trust that the Good Shepherd is searching desperately for them. He is calling their names. And one day, we pray that they will hear his voice.

The Good Shepherd’s sheep know him by his voice. But he is the Good Shepherd because of what he does. He seeks the lost one among the ninety-nine because he cannot rest until all his sheep have made it back to the fold.

And this is why I was certain that I was hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd on that lonely Sunday morning some months ago. I didn’t hear an audible voice, but I saw what he was doing among us. I heard the Good Shepherd’s voice in its own complex way. I wasn’t looking for it in the presence of a vast crowd of people or in hundreds of people logging onto Facebook for Mass. I wasn’t trying to find it in prosperity or wealth or in flashy testimonials. I recognized the voice in community stirring into action. It was being formed from various folds and in the midst of looming challenges and from a difficult past.

I recognized the Good Shepherd’s voice because he gathers his flock and doesn’t scatter them. Gathering is associated with his name because his flock instinctively know his voice, even if they aren’t even aware of it. And there they were being gathered into his loving arms that Sunday morning, even on the internet.

And most of all, I knew the Good Shepherd was calling to me and to others because he does not let us go. He is no mercenary Savior. He has already paid the ultimate price by laying down his life for us. He has never let us go, even when we have fled from him. Even when the world tells us that the sheepfold is an anachronism, the Good Shepherd does not give up on us. He tends the gate of that fold and continues to open it for all his sheep. He sticks with us, and it is precisely when we feel lonely, lost, or helpless, that he is most fervently searching for us.

The Good Shepherd’s sheep know him by his voice. But he is the Good Shepherd because of what he does. And it is precisely when we have reached the valley of darkness and despair that Jesus does something more for us: he stoops down lower than we can even imagine, hoists us on his shoulders, and brings us home because he loves us.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 25, 2021
 

Finer Perceptions

Willa Cather’s 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop is set in the rugged frontier of the Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Based on historical figures, it is the story of Father Jean Marie Latour, later Bishop Latour, a French missionary priest sent to the southwest United States to establish a diocese there.

The situation in the Southwest was dire. Scores of people had never received Holy Baptism because of the lack of priestly presence, or in some cases, because of priestly neglect. People were living in all manner of immoral conduct because they had no one to shepherd them and teach them the faith—at least until Father Latour arrives on the scene.

Latour is the essence of a gentleman and a faithful priest. He is erudite, gentle, and pastoral. He knows how to be a faithful pastor to his flock because he is open enough to their circumstances and to God’s living presence among them. He loves his flock. He is a stable icon of God’s grace to a people starving for the sacraments and formation, to a people who have been neglected and even forsaken by their clergy.

Latour’s childhood friend, Father Joseph Vaillant, is sent to accompany Latour in his backbreaking work. They journey on horseback through the perilous terrain of unexplored frontier lands, narrowly surviving the harsh conditions imposed on them, but bringing the Gospel to all, no matter the cost. Father Vaillant is, in many ways, a foil to Father Latour. Vaillant is somewhat impetuous and emotionally volatile. He is not as subtle in his disposition as Father Latour. His faith is rustic, hearty, even flamboyant, but he is extraordinarily devout.

The difference in character between the two men is perhaps most pronounced in their understanding of God’s presence among them. Father Vaillant is entranced by miracles; he relishes such fantastic displays of God’s intervention in the natural order. As his friend Father Latour puts it, “his dear Joseph must always have the miracle very direct and spectacular, not with Nature, but against it.”

At one point in their travels in Mexico, Father Latour and Father Vaillant meet with a local priest who has just visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Father Vaillant is filled with excitement at the story behind this apparition of Our Lady to a poor Mexican boy. He tells Father Latour, “Doctrine is well enough for the wise, Jean; but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.”

Father Latour responds in his measured and thoughtful fashion: “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. . . The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

This definition of a miracle is perhaps the best I have ever heard. Both Father Latour and Father Vaillant appreciate something important about God’s manifestation to humans. Father Vaillant recognizes the spectacular nature of God’s grace. But Father Latour is able to find these supernatural disturbances more readily than Father Vaillant, in the everyday and ordinary.

There is nothing ordinary about the Risen Christ appearing to his disciples in the aftermath of his death and resurrection from the dead. The scene in Jerusalem is a flurry of excitement. There has been a series of miraculous appearances to the disciples. This is vividly portrayed immediately before today’s Gospel story begins. Two disciples have just seen Jesus on the road to Emmaus. The Risen Lord has appeared to Simon Peter. And as the disciples are buzzing with speculation and consternation following these apparitions, Jesus suddenly stands among them and gently pauses the conversation with his greeting, “Peace be with you.”

This new post-resurrection appearance only solicits more fear and excitement. Jesus is thought to be a ghost of some sort. To these confused disciples, the moment reveals the ways in which these disciples are so much like Father Vaillant. They need to behold something that is against nature. They have no real perspective on what has happened in the past few days. There is no doctrine to ponder. They want something to hold in their hands and love. There is no way to make sense of Jesus’ seeming absence from their lives, except that now they have miraculous proof of his presence, and they are giddy with excitement.

These disciples are, in some sense, unformed. They have no theological language of which to speak of their Lord and Savior. But at least now they have some proof that he is still living and among them, and that God’s promises are true.

And yet it is tempting to idolize the miracle’s vision. The wild image of the Risen Christ eating broiled fish as if it’s some kind of parlor trick is astounding. And its incredibleness has now become the focus of everyone’s attention. It’s the flashy image used to illustrate a point which has now obscured what it is pointing towards.

But after Jesus eats the broiled fish, he continues. And when Jesus continues, the pieces of the puzzle begin to be put together, piece by piece. Just like those disciples on the road to Emmaus, their eyes are slowly opened to what has transpired. Now, the law of Moses, the cries of the prophets, and the whole narrative of Scripture is starting to make sense.

The visible sign of Jesus with flesh and bones, eating broiled fish, is only a tiny part of this spectacular picture. Its purpose has been to jog the memory. This apparition of Jesus to the disciples, which is not simply a vision but a physical manifestation of his presence, is also more than a physical manifestation. It is, to use Father Latour’s words, “human vision corrected by divine love.” The sight of Christ eating broiled fish before them means nothing without the memory of divine love that has been with them as long as they have known their Savior.

The broiled fish recalls the feeding of the multitude who were hungry. The breaking of bread on the road to Emmaus brings the Last Supper into the present. The hands and feet before the disciples are evidence that the violence done to Jesus’ physical body has not been erased but has been transformed into a sign of the hope of our redemption. And so are all our sufferings and wounds because of this.

It is no wonder that in an age so devoid of theological nuance and formation, so many are left wandering and praying for a spectacular miracle. Perhaps Father Vaillant is right: “Doctrine is well enough for the wise, . . . but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.” Those who have been ostracized, wounded, and even neglected by the Church that should have loved and formed them may not really be uninterested in God. Maybe they are simply waiting for their own miracles, for the proof that God is living among them.

And those of us, too, who come week after week to worship our Risen Lord, in our moments of malaise and in the moments where we are mute before more unspeakable violence and tragedy may also find ourselves desperately longing for some incredible proof that God has not left us. We yearn to touch the hands and feet, to gaze at the wounds, to behold something more specific than bread and wine, to find proof that God is really longing to feed us.

But we know, too, that the eating of the broiled fish points towards something else. Jesus reminds the disciples of that great story of which they are a part. They now see how the gap in the puzzle has been filled. If their past is a vital part of this story, then there is a future, too. And this future is about them. It is about much more as well. It’s about the good news to which they have been witnesses.

The truth to which their eyes have been opened in that room cannot stay in that room. It must burst through the doors, locked in fear, into a world that is longing for a sign and searching for tangible proof that there is some other dimension that will satisfy their emptiness. The disciples are being called to testify to what they know because others are desperate for a sign that God is still with us.

And when this knowledge of God’s faithfulness is propelled into the surrounding world, it will interpret all that is confusing. Perceptions will be made finer. There will be no need for Jesus to eat broiled fish before our eyes. There will be no need to demand more from bread and wine, because they are enough and they have always been enough. Our eyes have simply been closed to the miracle within them.

And there is one miracle that can explain this all. It is not spectacularly visible as an apparition might be, and it cannot be touched with human hands. But it is truly present. And it is that radiant, divine love that has corrected our human vision and made our hearts sing with joy.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Easter
April 18, 2021

In the Zone

In the liner notes to his 2011 album Alone at the Vanguard, jazz pianist Fred Hersch described his playing on the night of the recording as being “in the zone.” Hersch’s live performance, captured in this album, was the culmination of a week’s worth of performances at New York City’s famous Village Vanguard jazz club.

You don’t have to be a jazz musician to understand what Hersch meant when he described being “in the zone.” He wasn’t bragging about his playing. He was acknowledging that, as a performer and improviser, something felt right during that live performance at the Village Vanguard.

Hersch’s playing on that album conveyed an intensity of musical genius. Any performer knows that the art of performing is more than just playing the notes with an acceptable degree of musicality. Being “in the zone” as a musician, means that the performer is acutely aware of her or his surroundings and capable of responding musically in the moment. This is particularly true of improvisation. The room’s energy feeds musical inspiration. It’s hard to improvise to an empty room.

On the album Alone at the Vanguard, one can hear the audience’s enthusiastic response to Hersch’s musicianship, both in the applause following numbers and in the middle of them as well. The playing is electric. There is no doubt to the listener that Hersch was definitely “in the zone” that evening.

Perhaps you have had moments in your life where you felt that you were “in the zone.” I suspect that we all know those moments when everything seems to be falling into place. The right inspiration happens. We have the necessary energy to accomplish the task before us. It’s hard to describe, but we all know what it feels like to be “in the zone.”

When reading the Acts of the Apostles, one has the strong feeling that thousands of people were constantly “in the zone.” The conditions were just right for the proclamation of the Gospel.

The book gets off to a dynamic start as Jesus ascends to heaven and the Holy Spirit’s Pentecostal fire lights upon the disciples. Thousands of people come to the faith and are saved. Many people are healed, some even being raised from the dead. And we are told more than once that Jesus’ earliest disciples proclaimed the Gospel with great boldness. Everyone, it seems, was “in the zone” all the time. There was something in the air in those days. People were fired up about Jesus, and the whole world was reaping the benefits of this.

And as if this were not enough, we are told in today’s reading that there was a profound unity among all these earliest believers. They were “of one heart and soul.” No one felt that their possessions were their exclusive property. People seemed to comprehend that all they had was held in trust for God. And as a result, no one was needy among them.

It is no wonder, then, that many have tried to write off the Acts of the Apostles as a piece of hyperbolic storytelling. How could everything have been so dynamic? Could fallible humans truly have been so selfless and altruistic? Did all those miracles actually happen? It is almost incomprehensible to imagine that so many people could have been “in the zone,” tapping into the same Pentecostal Spirit, feeding off the dynamism of post-resurrection power.

If we were to continue reading after today’s passage, we would know that there were indeed counter examples. Ananias and his wife Sapphira met their unhappy fate precisely because they did not adhere to the standards of communal living and self-sacrifice. But on the whole, the early pages of Acts seem to represent the epitome of Christian love, charity, and service, where all the characters are “in the zone.”

Two thousand years after the fact, we are tempted to put our heads in our hands and wonder what has gone wrong. Do you not feel even a bit guilty that things now seem so different? Is our own skepticism of the historical accuracy of events in the Acts of the Apostles proof itself that we do not expect the same things these days?

The other temptation is to assume that the palpable evidence of God’s work and action were only in full force in those earliest days of the Church. We may imagine that God’s work in the world is like a battery. In the immediate aftermath of Pentecost, the battery was fully charged and everyone was powered by its energy. But so many centuries afterward, we are left with a battery that has lost its charge, and we have no clue how to recharge it.

Where are the miraculous healings? Where are the thousands coming to the faith? Where are the bold testimonies of the resurrection? Where is the gumption that led the earliest believers to risk their lives for the sake of the Gospel?

This perceived disparity between the old days and the present stands out in vivid relief when we try to comprehend a group of people sharing everything in common and providing for the needy. How do we analyze this without twisting our own view of economics? Can we really believe that there was not a single needy person among them?

The only solution with which we are left, so it seems, is to write it all off. Either it did not happen that way, and the Acts of the Apostles is a huge example of storyteller’s license, or we employ all manner of hermeneutical gymnastics to justify why our own economic policies can never replicate those of the early Church.

And we are back to where we started. We are left puzzled by an age in which we seem to be desperately out of the zone. We might not want to be out of the zone, and yet we don’t know how to be in the zone.

But maybe the problem lies in our own perception. Could it be that our vision is myopic? Could we be looking for all the wrong signs? Are we looking for too many visible signs while ignoring the inward and invisible graces latent among us? Have we given up hope on our world when we should demand more of it? Have we let ourselves off the hook when we should hold ourselves to higher standards? A world that is constantly “in the zone” just might be too threatening to our complacency and require too much of us.

Because if what we believe is true—and I, for one, believe wholeheartedly that it is—then the central event of our faith has once and for all upended the world. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and ascension to the right hand of the Father has unleashed a power upon this earth that defies our expectations. It is a force so incomprehensible in its scope that it is no wonder that every fiber of the world’s being wants to resist it.

And maybe that’s why we seem so out of the zone. Maybe the world has gotten so used to a rut of normalcy that feels right only because it serves the self. Maybe we have forgotten how exhilarating it can be when Jesus upends our reality.

Our vision has followed suit. We have come to see the prevalence of the needy among us as a fact of life, impossible for us to change on this side of heaven. We are afraid of boldly proclaiming the resurrection because we will upset conventional sensibilities and others will think we are foolish. We are taught to stand against those who disagree with us because that is how we assert our independence and individuality. And while we’re at it, we might as well cling to all that we own, because, by golly, we earned it.

But if we can find a way to enter into the zone again, we might be able to believe what the Acts of the Apostles claims: that there is a buzzing undercurrent of dynamism let loose in the world with Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It is there, buzzing all around us, even if the buzz is too low or high to hear at times. And it is available to us.

This force gains strength in numbers, too. When we tap, however, briefly, into this zone of Good News, we will find ourselves being pulled along with it. And we, like those early disciples, will want to cry out what we have heard with boldness. Others will also want to join in. And little by little, we will find things changing.

Look around this room. Listen. Do you hear the buzz? It’s there. Haven’t you seen the Gospel energy lighting up all over this church and among this congregation? Don’t you see it from time to time making its way into the news? Even in a world that so often seems to be dead to the Gospel, it’s there, if you are attentive. If a numb complacency hasn’t dulled our senses, we will see it. God’s power has not left us. There is still boldness echoing the strains of the Good News to a world that wants to hear it. And that persistent buzz is proof that God is still calling us to be “in the zone.”

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2021

The Question Death Could not Kill

Imagine with me a triptych. It’s not the triptych behind the Lady Chapel altar, now opened once again. It’s a visual triptych, with three panels, telling the story from a first encounter with Jesus to Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances.

On the left panel of the triptych, we journey all the way back to the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Jesus has just been baptized by John the Baptist, and now he is about to begin his public ministry in Galilee. He is walking by John and two of his disciples. As soon as John identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God, the two disciples begin to follow Jesus.

The action scene represented in this first panel of our triptych shows Jesus turning to look at the disciples. And then he asks them this question: “What do you seek?” This panel might even display the Greek words from Scripture to elaborate on the scene.

The question, admittedly, seems rather vague. It’s the kind of question we might dread. What is the meaning of life? What do you want to be when you grow up? That kind of question. And, unsurprisingly, the two disciples don’t answer the question directly. They, in fact, answer with another question: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” And Jesus replies, “Come and see.”

Move with me now to the second, center panel of our triptych. In this scene, Jesus is in a garden, on the eve of his death, and he is facing head-on a menacing group of soldiers (600 or so soldiers, to be exact). They are carrying lanterns and torches and weapons. And Judas, the betrayer, is with them. Once again, we might emblazon on this panel the Greek words of Jesus’ question to the soldiers: “Whom do you seek?”

In contrast to the two disciples at the beginning of John’s Gospel, the soldiers answer quite clearly: “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus even asks the soldiers the question a second time, and they respond with the same answer. And Jesus, in turn, replies, “I am he.” Or more accurately, “I am.”

And this brings us to our third panel, on the right. This scene is also in a garden, and in this garden there is an empty tomb. The stone has been rolled away, and Mary Magdalene is weeping profusely just outside the opening. She does not know where her friend’s body has gone. She thinks it has been stolen. But behind her she has just heard a voice: “Woman, why are you weeping?” And as this third panel of our triptych depicts, Mary has turned to face the Risen Christ, although she does not yet know it is he.

The Risen Christ has asked her the question we are now all too familiar with. In this third panel, we behold the Greek words as well: “Whom do you seek?” But Mary does not answer the question. It is only a bit later, when Jesus calls Mary by name and reminds her of their friendship, that she calls him “Teacher,” just as those first two disciples did.

The unanswered question, though, continues to linger in the air. Perhaps we can assume that it is answered even if left unspoken. Mary has, of course, been seeking the body of her friend. But searching for a dead body is quite different from searching for a living relationship. And although Mary knows she has seen Jesus alive, and although she will communicate this knowledge to her friends as the first evangelist, I imagine it would take Mary a while to comprehend what she has just seen.

But this third panel of the triptych is not just about Mary. It is also the panel in which we find our place, too. In this panel, we discover Jesus’ question, etched onto the panel in Greek, addressed to us as well, two thousand years after the events depicted. “Whom do you seek?”

So often, when Jesus meets us, we, like Mary, are looking at an empty tomb. We are gazing into a mystery that we cannot understand. We are lobbing our own profound questions into the vacant space of the empty tomb, hoping for an answer. And in these moments, it might be that we hear a voice speaking to us, which causes us to turn around. And when we do, we are being addressed not so much with an answer but with this question: “Whom do you seek?”

Most likely, unless we are unusually open and vulnerable, we don’t really recognize, at first, that it is the Risen Christ speaking to us. We, in fact, do not really know what it is we are seeking. We simply know that we are seeking something. And the question hangs in the air. . .

But recall that middle panel of the triptych. It stands in the center because, in a way, everything hinges on it. This panel shows the eve of Jesus’ death; it represents his crucifixion. It is not the event we would like to focus on, but we do because it is the pivot point in the story of salvation. The question posed to the soldiers in this middle panel (“Whom do you seek?”) is unlike the surrounding panels in that the soldiers answer succinctly and confidently: Jesus of Nazareth.

We know that these soldiers are not seeking a relationship with Jesus. They are seeking him so that they can destroy him. The response of the soldiers has all the certainty of the task ahead. They want Jesus so they can kill him. There is no question that can be left in the air. This panel shows the definitive, finite nature of death.

Or, at least, this is what we so often think. This is what death would have us believe. Death, the great enemy, always wants to have the last word. It routinely conspires with its friend and accomplice Sin. And they are both led by the wiles of the Evil One, as they exhibit to the world a false confidence in their power. Death cries out loudly and menacingly as it destroys our mortal bodies. Sin haunts us every day of our lives.

But Death and Sin display a deceitful confidence because they know that they are surrounded, and outnumbered, by the outer panels of our triptych. And in these two panels, we find not the brazen statement of the band of soldiers, but we find the profound question: Whom do you seek?”

Sin and Death rightly cower because they know they have been defeated once and for all. The outer panels of our triptych reveal that what lingers, even after the body has been killed, are the deep questions borne out of relationship. And so the middle panel pivots into that undeniable truth of the resurrection which has conquered all evil.

There is no easy answer to the question, “Whom do you seek?” It is not meant to answered flippantly or casually. It is meant to be pondered in our hearts. It is a question that stays with us and propels us forward as our relationship with the Risen Christ continues on forever. Sin and Death cannot kill the questions.

Death, however, suggests that questions are the enemy of truth and life. Sin judges our questions as the great Accuser of our motives. Some would have us believe that the presence of a question is the end of faith. Or the question of survival marks the end of the Church. For others, the question of suffering ends in the need for a certain conclusion that there is no God. But the question that hangs in the aftermath of Jesus’ resurrection is proof enough that the resurrection is deep enough to hold all our questions. The heart of our faith is a mystery that cannot solicit easy answers. It is only by moving into resurrection light with our questions that we interpret the meaning of the resurrection.

The questions are, ironically, proof that we are still seeking the Risen One. The questions we carry mean that we still have the humility to know our place in relation to our Creator and Redeemer. The questions mean that our faith is alive because we are willing to believe in the One who has risen from the dead, redeemed us, and saved us, because we know in our hearts what he has done for us and for the world. We see it in glimpses and in fits and starts. And for over two thousand years the Church has bothered to get up, week after week, and day after day, because death could not kill a question. The empty tomb speaks a conviction of truth that we cannot deny even if it remains a mystery.

Death poses as the enemy, but it is really no enemy at all, as we know. It is weak and it is a liar. Death masquerades its bold statement of finitude, but we know that life continues and cannot be defeated by this coward.

And we see this in that middle panel of our triptych, where everything pivots into salvation. Here, the Good Shepherd stands facing head-on the prospect of the enemy, of Death. And he places himself between evil and his beloved sheep. And by doing so, he assures us that he will yet live and continue to be with us long after his physical body has been killed.

And even after our bodies are dust, this Good Shepherd will make sure that our bodies rise in glory to be with him forever. For he will continue to pose the question to us: Whom do you seek? Our questions cannot be killed by skepticism, violence, or hatred. Because our questions demand not simple answers but a relationship with the Risen One.

Death has been defeated once and for all. The heart of our faith is an empty tomb and a bold statement that it is our questions that propel us into belief. For that is what belief is: the willingness to move on in faith, in spite of the doubts that assail us.

And when we take that leap, we center our faith in this knowledge—that Jesus our Savior has trampled down death because he has risen from it. Death has no sting. The ultimate victory has been won. The tomb was empty on that third day, this day. Jesus is no longer in the tomb, but he is here with us. And if we hear his voice, turn around, and look at him, he is asking us, “Whom do you seek?”

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Easter Day
April 4, 2021

A Change in Perspective

The late Spanish artist Salvador Dalí is best known for his surrealist art. But when Dalí was inspired to portray the crucifixion in a 1951 work called Christ of St. John of the Cross, he momentarily stepped away from surrealism and rendered a somewhat traditional painting.

And yet Dalí’s portrayal of the crucifixion is nontraditional in one key respect. Unlike most other renderings of the crucifixion, the painting’s perspective is not from the ground looking up at Jesus on the cross, but, instead, it is a view from above the crucified Christ, looking down at the earth.

Below Christ, whose hands and feet interestingly bear no signs of the wounds, is a lake with two boats, a large fishing net, and three fishermen. We don’t know who they are. Peter? James? John? Or maybe Andrew?

Jesus’s face is not portrayed. We see merely the top of his head as he looks down on the world that has crucified him.

Dalí’s painting was inspired by a drawing by the sixteenth-century mystic St. John of the Cross, which employs a similar perspective. We are not used to seeing things from this perspective. It may even seem presumptuous for us to inhabit Christ’s vantage point. Is not this bird’s eye view from the cross to be reserved only for Jesus the Crucified One? Isn’t our place down below, looking up?

Or perhaps St. John of the Cross and Dalí were onto something. The central feature of their portrayals of the crucifixion is the change in perspective. And it is a change in perspective that is introduced by St. John the Evangelist in his account of Jesus’ passion. When we entered Holy Week on Palm Sunday with Mark’s Passion narrative, we entered a world of dissonance between loyalty and betrayal, between truth and lies. The journey to the cross ended with some of Jesus’ followers standing at a distance, looking from the ground up at the Savior dying on the cross. Jesus died with a painful cry, having quoted Psalm 22 in the depths of loneliness and despair.

When we encounter John’s world of the Passion, we find the same tension between falsity and truth. But from the very beginning of the Passion, Jesus states who he is with crystalline clarity. “I am he,” Jesus of Nazareth. More accurately, “I am.” Jesus has revealed his identity as God revealed his to Moses in the burning bush. He has staked his claim and there is no turning back.

And so, it is all the more heartbreaking when Peter denies Jesus three times. Peter’s “I am not” is the foil to Jesus’ “I am.” And Peter is just like everyone else in this story in that he is incapable of standing for something. He is mired in a tight web of deceit, accusations, and fear. The only words he can muster when a woman questions whether he is one of Jesus’ disciples is to answer in the negative: “I am not.”

Peter’s perspective is that of the world. It is that of our world. We, as it were, stand looking from afar at the Savior of the World hanging on a tree, with “I am not” ringing in our ears.

We recall how often we are more passionate about standing against something than in standing for something. What is it about the human condition that seeks to build up the self by tearing others down? Why are we so adept at saying no and so reluctant to say yes? Think how many people of faith are more enthusiastic about defining their identity over and against others rather than standing for the Gospel.
         The air we breathe is full of no’s. Pilate’s sarcastic retort to Jesus might as well define our reality at times: What is truth? The countless “I am nots” can be seen in the willfulness of going one’s own way, no matter the cost and no matter the harm to others. It is present in the stubborn refusal to identify with a neighbor, whether in compassion or joy. Its toxicity rears its ugly head in the defining of oneself over and against the other, those who are easily demonized and scapegoated.

It is present even in John’s Gospel itself, as the evangelist established his own religious tribe over and against an opposing group, whom he called “the Jews.” Centuries of anti-Judaism have fed off this tendency to stand against a body of people rather than standing beside them.

The motives for the naysaying characters in the passion are varied, and they are the motives that are just as present to us as well. It is the palpable presence of fear: the fear of losing one’s life, the fear of losing friends if you rally with the underdog, the fear of losing control of one’s own destiny. It is the fear of loneliness, of being the only one left standing for something or somebody, even if that somebody is the Christ. And it ends in the perspective from the ground looking up at the cross. We gaze with our own measure of sorrow at the cross, knowing what the world has done to its Savior, and feeling that we will always be defined over and against it.

But if we press John’s Gospel a bit further, we might find the perspective changing. After the excruciating journey to the cross, where Jesus carries it all by himself, and once he is hoisted up to the tree, the perspective alters. Jesus now looks lovingly at his mother and the beloved disciple, and he entrusts them to one another. “Woman, behold thy son!” My friend, “Behold thy mother!”

We are now looking down on things the way that Dalí and St. John of the Cross did. We dare to go for a moment to the top of the cross and look down with Jesus. We see the lonely boats on the lake, with their owners going about their business, saddened by their friend’s death. We see a world riven by sin and antagonism. We behold the violence among kin. We see the barriers being constructed among cities, communities, and nations. We see, from the vantage point of Christ, the venom played out in hateful words and meanness. We see the stubborn refusal to extend a hand in peace or love. We see a world of “I am not.”

But we also see that there is one true answer to all this mess, and it is the cross. There on the cross is the Savior of the World, lifted high, so that all people can be drawn to him. This yes is the meaning of the cross.

We see in the cross the love of the great I AM. It is the definitive yes to the good news of peace, reconciliation, and fullness of life. It is the yes that finds life in standing for something rather than against something. It is the yes that went to the cross without lifting a hand against those who were determined to offer a resounding no. The cross is the utter sacrifice of no for the sake of yes. The cross has broken the cycle of no once and for all.

And reigning from the cross is that Good Shepherd of the sheep. It is the Shepherd whose voice was ignored while the crowds followed the hired hand. It is the Good Shepherd who, having been glorified on the cross, becomes the sacrificial Lamb for the salvation of the world.

This Good Shepherd, who has maintained his steady yes to the life of the world, invites us to inhabit the place he has prepared for us. By his gracious permission, we are invited to change our perspective. We have for so long been looking from the ground up, confronted with the agony of the cross. But Jesus invites us to come up and look down from his view.

And Jesus, now reigning in glory, looks down on our world, with his arms stretched out in love, and says to us, Behold your brother and your sister. Look down at this world from my view and see how good it can be.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Good Friday
April 2, 2021

All In

“We will break the news to the family, and then we’ll leave. Otherwise, the family will blame us. You can stay and tend to them after we’ve left.” These were the words of a doctor working the Level I Trauma Center where I served as a chaplain intern six years ago during seminary.

A patient had just died of gunshot wounds, and being on call that night, I was responsible for pastoral care. On one level, I intellectually understood the doctor’s rationale. She needed to place some boundaries between her work in a desperate emergency situation and the family just learning of their loved one’s death.

But I was the one left alone in the room with a grieving family in the aftermath of a violent death. I knew that I could not put up any boundaries in my role. The specter of raw grief was before my eyes. It was palpable and it was audible. As part of the spiritual care team, my job was to stay and to sit with the reality of trauma. When science had no more answers, religion stayed to hold the mystery.

Inside, I secretly wanted to run from the room. At the very least, I wanted the crying and wailing to stop because, at heart, I imagine I didn’t want to be drawn into this painful reality. I did not know this family or the person who had died. Selfishly, I was slightly envious of the trauma surgeon who had departed abruptly after sharing the horrible news with the family. She had been able to extricate herself from this tragedy. I longed to put the whole situation at arm’s length.

The human heart is adept at keeping certain things at bay and at letting in what’s tolerable. Suffering and death are usually what we want to hold at a distance, and we are all too eager to welcome the happy moments. We choose what we want to invest in, and we block out the rest. At some level, it’s an innate survival technique. On another level, it’s a desire to be in control.

On the surface, Peter’s refusal to let Jesus wash his feet seems like a right-minded gesture of humility. Peter could not bear to have his Lord engage in such a demeaning act. Jesus had it all turned upside-down. If anything, Peter should be washing Jesus’ feet.

But there may have been more to Peter’s reaction. Perhaps Peter wanted to keep Jesus at arm’s length because he wanted to be in control. Peter, I would guess, did not want to be all in. Because I suspect that Peter knew what it would cost.

It doesn’t seem likely that Peter understood exactly where Jesus was headed when he supped with him for the final time. We know from Mark’s Gospel that Peter refused to hear about Jesus’ predictions of suffering. Peter wanted to keep the painful aspects of discipleship at bay. But it also seems unlikely that Peter would not have had some foreboding sense of his friend’s impending death. Jesus had been dropping ambiguous clues about his death for some time now.

Do you think there was some deeper, hidden motive for Peter resisting Jesus’ gesture of love and humility? Was Peter reluctant to go all in because he somehow sensed the pain and tragedy that lay ahead?

Peter’s initial refusal to let Jesus wash his feet proffered a false humility while masking a stubborn unwillingness to receive Jesus’ gift. It was Peter’s pride that got between him and Jesus. He was too proud to receive the gift of love before him. Peter wanted to be the one to make a grand gesture of his act of service to his master.

But I wonder if Peter was also afraid of the commitment that would come with letting Jesus wash his feet. If he could only keep Jesus at bay, he could avoid the ensuing responsibilities. If Peter could establish the conditions of the footwashing by washing Jesus’ feet himself, then he could escape the hard task of discipleship.

But Jesus was very clear about the true meaning of discipleship. The footwashing meant that the disciples were to love one another as Jesus loved them. Jesus’ act of love towards them implicated the disciples in a greater cycle of love. Once you’re all in, there’s no escaping the demands of the cross.

Maundy Thursday is the liturgical moment of Holy Week in which we can choose, or choose not, to turn to Christ, especially as we meet him in the depths of suffering and despair. It may be that, as we approach Good Friday, reveling in the agony of the cross can perversely be a means of putting distance between God and ourselves. And if the story is simply one more rehearsal of an ancient event, it will lose its impact on our lives. If we cannot put ourselves in the story, then we are, in some ways, refusing Jesus’ invitation to come into our lives.   

The human heart is all too adept at finding excuses for Jesus not to wash our feet. We are not worthy enough. The Eucharistic gift is beyond our reach because of our frailty. Our sins are too many. If we decide not to accept God’s forgiveness of our sins, then no amendment of life is necessary.

This protective distancing from God’s gift is a mere extension of our daily refusals. To refuse the gift of a conversation with someone who is different is to shun the possibility of changing one’s mind. To reject help from another is to claim self-sufficiency and reject relationship. To cast aside the gift of relationship is to deny that we are in any way indebted or connected to another. It is a shirking of the responsibility of being invested in the human condition.

As the agony of Jesus’ passion approaches with Good Friday, an awareness of our own frailty may be precisely the reason we keep God at bay. It is unfathomable to think of our Savior offering anything to us. We are the ones who should be on our knees in repentance and pleading for his mercy.

Our sins and weaknesses have become one more tactic that we use to keep God at bay. And the more we resist going all in, the more we can be in control.

But God knows that we need the gift more than we will ever realize. God knows that we will employ all manner of casuistry to politely refuse the gift. But God also knows that the way in which salvation comes to the world is for each and every one of us to be all in.

This evening, on the eve of our Lord’s passion and death, a great mystery confronts us. On some level, it may be that we would prefer to set some boundaries with this mystery. A domesticated and sanitized mystery will shield us from the trauma through which our redemption is accomplished.

But our Lord, who calls us friends, comes to us, not just this evening, but week after week in bread and wine. He stoops to wash our feet, and if we are vulnerable enough, we let him do it.

And this night, we are reminded of just what it means to be all in. Jesus asks us not just to stretch out our hand for his Body to be placed upon it. But he asks us to take off our shoes here on holy ground. He asks us to let him hold our worn feet, calloused by the trials of life. He wants to wash away the dirt and grime of our sinfulness.

And he knows, too, how hard this is for us. He knows how much we resist laying bare our souls before him, because it means that all the control that comes from nursing our grudges and resentments must be relinquished and that we turn it over to his healing grace.

But this night, Jesus asks that we commit to him and to his love. He asks us to be all in, to take the risk of vulnerability. He asks us to remain in the room with all the pain of the mystery of his death and resurrection and not to leave. He asks us to share in it with him. For Jesus knows, most of all, that this is not just about you and me. It’s about the whole world.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2021

The Dissonance No One Wants to Hear

Holy Week begins with the dissonant music that no one wants to hear. Yes, to some extent, the dissonance is the painful and strident noise of the crowds calling for a brutal death by execution. Yes, the dissonance is the clang of violent instruments of torture, the spitting at a human face, and the agony of death throes in a moment of utter loneliness and despair. Yes, the dissonance is the anguish and sorrow at Jesus hanging on a cross.

But there is another dissonance, too. It is not the most overt dissonance. It is not the dissonance of yet another Hollywood portrayal of a well-known tragedy. It is the dissonance of deceit, fickleness, and falsity. It is the dissonance of clashing testimony, dishonest words, and cowardice.

It may be that precisely because this particular dissonance hits so close to home, we do not want to hear it. We are much more comfortable with the cries of hosanna as Jesus enters into Jerusalem acclaimed as king. And we are left with a painful sense of whiplash as the music’s tone changes swiftly from consonant fanfare to raucous screeching. The voices and instruments once sounding in sweet harmony have gone out of control. Homophony and controlled counterpoint have veered into aleatory.

The dissonance is, of course, in the liturgy itself. It is in our corporate participation in the events of Jesus’ passion so many years ago, as those saving events are made real in our present. If it were a mere reenactment, it would be easy enough to keep the discord at a distance. But we know these events are real and present to us, that we are in them.

And the dissonance is also right there in the text of holy Scripture, subtly hidden amid the details of a theatrical spectacle of a Roman crucifixion. We are told that as some sought solid reasons to convict Jesus and put him to death, the testimony of many voices did not agree. Many came forward to indict Jesus, but when all the notes of their accounts were layered together, it was nothing but discordant noise.

From our place of righteousness so far removed from the historical events recounted, we fume at the dishonesty. We cover our ears at the blatant lies and the cruelty so blindly set on the death of an innocent man. Once a year, on this day, we wallow in the generous permission we give ourselves to entertain the modern-sounding dissonant music of old until Easter can re-organize it into brass bands and fanfares once again.

But every year, as we begin the holiest of weeks for Christians, we are jolted out of our complacency on Palm Sunday. And if we were to take our hands off our ears for a moment and enter into the disharmony that assaults our ears from all around, we might begin to hear the dissonance in our own hearts, too.

The dissonance starts, of course, with the story we so painfully listen to. Jesus has already announced that one of his closest followers will betray him. The one who dips bread into a bowl with him will hand him over to be tried and crucified. Later, Jesus is in Gethsemane with Peter, James, and John. These are the disciples who previously stayed close to Jesus on the mountain as he was transfigured before their eyes. And now, in the hour of death, they cannot even stay awake to be with him in his loneliness and agony. Judas’s subversive kiss of peace is tainted by its sign of betrayal. And Peter, the disciples of disciples, denies knowing Jesus three times, not long after he has avowed his utter loyalty to Jesus. The final scene of this drama shows the Son of Man alone on a cross as some of his followers look on—not at the foot of the cross, but at a distance.

This is the dissonance that lies beneath the passion story that begins this holiest of weeks. It is the dissonance between discipleship and desertion, between courage and cowardice, between following and fickleness. It’s easy enough to notice it in characters of a well-known story. But if we’re honest, it’s harder to see this own dissonance in our own hearts.

Isn’t this what Palm Sunday reveals? At the commencement of this Holy Week, we are cut to the heart by the dissonance between our own lives and that of the Christ. This is a week where we prepare to walk in the ways of holiness by acts of repentance, fasting, and self-denial, and from the first notes of the score, we have lost control of the piece. It is nothing but cacophony.

We want, for just a while before the sobering events of the week ahead, to sit with the fanfares. We want to feel in control of this week and gain mastery of our own pious practices. And instead, Palm Sunday reminds us that the dissonance starts right at the very beginning. No sooner has the overture begun than we are swung recklessly into the throes of the dissonance in which we live.

We are, I imagine, all too aware of this painful dissonance. We know how easily we mimic Peter, how facilely we profess our allegiance to Christ and also how quickly that allegiance turns to denial the minute our friendships or other loyalties are at stake. When our life is a series of mountaintop experiences, we cling to the Risen Christ and attribute our successes to his graciousness. But when we lose control of the piece, we are all hatred and venom.

We see this very discord in our own society. We readily acknowledge our commitment to liberty and the common good, but the reality that stares us down every day is out of phase with what we profess. We celebrate our success and civility, without realizing the jarring sounds of the overwhelming violence that has been blatantly evident in just this past week. Like Jesus’ fearful followers watching his death from a distance, perhaps we watch the horrors of racism, xenophobia, and cold violence from a distance, too.

We are all for Jesus when life is full of smiles, but when the musical score throws a surprise accidental into the mix, we flee. Or we move farther into the distance to see how things will play out before investing ourselves spiritually anymore. Palm Sunday, it seems, has a way of dredging up the muck from our hearts and exposing it to the light of day.

But the thing about Jesus is that none of this is a surprise to him. Jesus had already set his face like flint to his destiny long before he was left alone on the cross. Soon after that last supper in the upper room, Jesus quoted Scripture: “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’”

Jesus is not surprised that our hosannas will turn to calls for crucifixion. Jesus knows that the precious Blood he constantly offers us in the Eucharist is countered by sour wine that we offer him in return. He has heard us mock him, when we have had enough of the trials of life and we tell him to prove his power and come to our aid. But he does not respond by refusing to listen. He comes to save us anyway.

Jesus has already set his face like flint to do the work God had called him to do. He would not shrink before the mockery and shame of an ignoble death. He would go to the loneliest place on the planet, and even to the depths of hell to show the depths of God’s love. On that third day, his face, set like flint, would become the stone against which the new fire of his saving light would be kindled for a dark world.

And on that day to come, when it is time to hand the kingdom over to the Father, Jesus the Good Shepherd will call his sheep. They have fled, but his love for them has not. And if they can recognize his voice, they will hear him calling. And the sheep that have been scattered through the dissonance of their own lives, are gathered back to the One who has been the constant ground-bass of this unruly score. And the Good Shepherd puts them on his shoulders and brings them home.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
March 28, 2021

Dragged into the Light

One of the oldest tropes in storytelling is the struggle between light and dark. From Harry Potter to Star Wars, some of the most popular of stories revolve around competing worlds: a world of evil and a world of good.

The Western mind delights in such dualities. It is easy for us to comprehend this binary juxtaposition, even though, at heart, we sense that things are not usually so simple. Much of life falls somewhere in the middle, when it’s not being dragged into the light at times and then into the darkness on the worst of days.

St. John centers much of his Gospel on the play between light and dark. His Prologue deliberately echoes the story of creation in Genesis, as he describes the Word made flesh coming into the world. That Word is, of course, the Light of the world. Early in John’s Gospel, Nicodemus, who is both curious and tentative, approaches Jesus by night, under the cover of darkness. He is scared to be seen in the company of Jesus. And Jesus encourages his followers to walk in the light. He categorizes those who oppose him as ones who walk in darkness and stumble.

When Judas departs from the upper room where Jesus has just washed his disciples’ feet, it immediately turns to night. Judas is headed towards his betrayal of Jesus. And on the first day of the week, redemption comes in the dawn of early morning light, as the darkness is disappearing, when Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb.

This play between darkness and light is for dramatic effect, and I suspect that John himself knew exactly what he was doing when he used this literary technique. I suspect he also knew the world was not so simply divided between good and bad, light and dark.

When we enter John’s Gospel this morning, it’s around the time of the festival of Passover. It is also the eve of Jesus’ passion and death. And Jesus acknowledges the cosmic tension that is weighing on his heart. His soul is troubled because he knows where he is headed, but  he will not forsake the task ahead.

What Jesus describes is very much like a game of tug-of-war. Truth be told, I never liked this game very much when I was in school, because I always found it painful. My hands were either sore from tugging on the rope or blistered from rope burn. Do you remember this game from your schooldays on the playground? If you were on the winning side, it was much less painful than being on the losing side, both emotionally and physically. If all the strong kids were on the other side, you were likely to walk away with chafed hands or scraped knees from being dragged on the ground.

The unease that Jesus highlights as he looks towards his death has been part of a cosmic game of tug-of-war since he began his public ministry. In John’s Gospel, it is this constant friction between good and evil that is where judgment happens. Judgment enters into the midst of life. Judgment is the rope burn when the power of goodness naturally tends to pull us towards the light, even as we dig our feet into the shadows.

The feeling of being caught on the wrong side of the rope is part of the human condition. St. Paul described this reality forcefully in his Letter to the Romans, when he confessed that he so often was tempted to do the very things he knew he shouldn’t do. It’s as if being human is a perpetual struggle between light and dark. You keep your hands firmly on the rope of life, and inevitably, you are pulled to the wrong side. You lose your grip, or you simply are not strong enough to resist the pull of evil.

It often depends on who’s holding onto the rope with us. When all the weight is on the wrong side of the rope, we get pulled along where we might not want to go. Systemic sin drags us to a realm that we should avoid.

When we get to Jesus’ passion and death, it would seem that the game of tug-of-war is over and that Jesus’ side is the loser. He dies an ignominious death. He is spat upon, reviled, and his disciples are left standing at the foot of the cross, wondering what they will do next. The fear, anxiety, and confusion of his disciples gathered after his death suggests that they likely felt they had lost the game. They had not pulled hard enough on their end of the rope.

But the moment of glorification that Jesus announces in today’s Gospel proves this conception wrong. Jesus subverts the common understanding of victory by revealing the glory of the cross. And he announces that when he is lifted up from the earth, he will draw all people to himself. In fact, it is not so polite. Jesus will drag all people to himself.[1] Kicking and screaming they might be, but he will drag them to himself.

This is striking. It is unexpected. With all the tug of war that has been happening between light and dark, and with all the darkness that has been displayed in the face of the truth Jesus reveals, we might not expect all people to be dragged to Jesus.

If we probe deeply enough into our own hearts, can we admit that there are people that we simply don’t want Jesus to drag to himself? Are there people that we can’t imagine are capable of being dragged to Jesus, and do we secretly or overtly wish Jesus would let go of the rope and allow them to be pulled into the shadows? Do we think we are capable of being dragged to Jesus? Can we even begin to comprehend that Jesus desires to drag all people to himself, you, and me, and especially our enemies?

It is no wonder that we doubt, or conveniently ignore, these words of Jesus. Jesus clearly states the purpose of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. It is to reconcile all things to his Father. Jesus is pulling firmly on the rope in this cosmic game of tug-of-war. He is not letting go. How can we resist the pull?

But our world is a zero-sum game. If some win, others must lose. It’s impossible for everyone to win. Life is a competition. We treat God’s mercy as if it’s a limited supply of vaccines. If there’s a limited quantity, the fact that some are getting their vaccine means that others are not getting theirs. If some are receiving God’s gifts and mercy, then others are not.

To speak plainly, it is next to impossible to believe that God does not desire to let some people get pulled into the darkness rather than into the light. But hear the words of Jesus when he says that his lifting up will be the dragging of all people into the light.

And the reason we might resist the power of these words is that we long for justice. We want a balancing out of wrong with good. We want payback for those who relish the darkness and those who deliberately pull on the wrong side of the rope.

But this cosmic game of tug-of-war does not deny justice. It does not affirm some easy pull of the rope from dark to light, where the ones heaving and pulling with all their might in the darkest reaches of the rope gain an easy entrance into the light.

Do you remember the rope burn of your childhood games of tug-of-war? Do you remember the skinned knees as you were pulled to the victorious side by a force stronger than you and your team? So it is as Jesus drags us to himself. It is painful, because we so often resist that pull. Even when we know it’s good for us, we pull harder on our end of the rope. We dig our feet into hell, when heaven is trying to yank us forward.

And for some, it’s a long, long rope. When you’ve spent years and years digging your heels into the darkness and pulling against the light, it’s going to take a lot of work with God’s grace to be dragged into the realm of light.

But this is what Jesus came to do. The purpose of Jesus’s life, death, and glorification is for him to pull us to the Father. God’s judgment meets us in our waywardness and presents us with his truth, peace, and love. And all our attempts to resist simply injure ourselves and those we try to drag down with us. But God does not want to leave us there.

Jesus drags us kicking and screaming into the light. It is not that Jesus wants to force us into a place that we don’t want to enter. It does not negate our free will. It’s simply that as the power of God’s goodness catches on and pulls more and more people along, it is harder and harder for us to resist the pull of the light.

And when we reach that realm of light, where there is no more sorrow and sighing, we do not emerge unscathed. The scars are there to prove our struggle. It has not been easy. The triumph of glory does not negate the years of trauma, suffering, and hardship. But when we are finally pulled into the light, and we stand up on our skinned knees, we will remember what we once did not understand. Sin, pain, and death, however real they were, have no place here. They have lost their sting. And we thank God that he never let go of the rope and that we are home.

Sermon by Father Kyle
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 21, 2021

[1] See, in particular, the translation by David Bentley Hart in That All Shall Be Saved (New Haven: Yale UP, 2019).