How Do You Treat Them?

My high school chemistry teacher was a brilliant man and an excellent teacher, but his style of teaching was somewhat unusual—or at least, it was different from all my other teachers. Suppose we were having a class discussion and came across the word “ubiquitous,” and someone asked what the word meant. Well, he would not tell you. He would make everyone in the class walk across the room, grab a dictionary, and look the word up. And of course, few people ever again forgot what “ubiquitous” meant.

For assignments, this teacher would give us difficult chemistry problems to tackle, with very little preliminary information, which meant that we all struggled mightily through our homework as we prepared for a class lab. Upon returning to class, we weren’t graded on right or wrong answers, but instead, we learned from our mistakes as our teacher guided us through the correct line of thinking. The process of wrestling with difficult chemistry problems forced us to begin to think for ourselves. We didn’t absorb information spewed forth by the teacher. We learned how to be stronger independent thinkers.

We might label such a teaching style as a kind of interactive dialogue, like a game of ping pong. A student asks the teacher a question, but the teacher does not give a direct answer. In some cases, the teacher asks another question as a type of response, but the answer still requires reflection and mental stamina from the student. The teacher does not handfeed the student. The teacher coaxes and challenges. The teacher lobs responsibility back onto the student.

In the Gospels, Jesus is usually this kind of teacher. Today’s Gospel reading is a classic example. When the Pharisees approach Jesus to test his beliefs about divorce, the test is intended to trip him up. It does not really seem like a question designed to elicit the truth. The test is used by the Pharisees as a distraction from examining their own inner beliefs. And Jesus knows this in his heart.

So he ping pongs the Pharisees’ question back to them with his own question. You want to know if it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife, well, then tell me what Moses said. Don’t rely on me for easy answers. Take some responsibility for yourself in this conversation. Once the Pharisees have been drawn deeper into this dialogue, Jesus reveals what he really thinks about divorce. And I suspect that the Pharisees did not want to hear what Jesus had to say because it was too difficult.

Does this sound familiar? Perhaps we are all hung up on the word “divorce.” Make no mistake about it: this is a challenging passage, no less because Jesus’s standard for marriage flies in the face of modern reality. But there is something deeper going on that can be missed in splitting hairs over moral quandaries. The more we argue over various views of marriage and divorce and judge others who disagree with us, the more we excuse ourselves from something else that Jesus happens to be doing.

Jesus, it seems, is offering us a test of Christian discipleship. Jesus, the blunt and challenging teacher that he is, ping pongs responsibility back to us. His challenge is not directed only to the historical Pharisees or to those who have been divorced or to those who are struggling in unhappy marriages. Jesus’s test is directed to every single one of us. And Jesus’s litmus test of true Christian discipleship doesn’t even occur in relation to the question of divorce. It emerges in Jesus’ teaching on children.

Once Jesus has volleyed the Pharisees’ initial question back to them with his own question, he has drawn them into an intricate dialogue in which they are now invested. Their accountability is demanded by Jesus’ answer. They can no longer merely test Jesus. Now, he is testing them.

Jesus’ teaching on children is not unrelated to the dialogue with the Pharisees. It is the response to it. How we treat children is the litmus test of discipleship. It’s not about children being cute and innocent. The point is that the children represent exactly the kind of people Jesus wants us to welcome: those forgotten by society, those relegated to the margins because they have no money to offer the jaws of big business, those who are considered quirky or weird and who make for easy scapegoats in overzealous quests for orthodoxy. But, says Jesus, the children are the ones we should pay attention to. And how we treat the children is our own test of Christian discipleship.

When we test God, like the Pharisees tested Jesus, God doesn’t challenge us by offering a pop quiz on how to be a Christian. God simply puts the children, the poor, the unloved, and the marginalized before us with the implied question, how do you treat them? God places in our path those who have suffered devastating divorces and broken relationships, those who have been ostracized because of difficult choices they have made, those who have been ill-treated through lack of understanding, and God ping pongs back to us the question, how will you treat them? Will you welcome them? And how we treat them tells us something about how we’re doing in our relationship with God.

Jesus knows that we often come before God with our own complicated reasoning in order to justify what we are already doing in order to test God and to justify our behavior. If I do this in such a difficult situation, is it really a sin? God, give me a clear answer on this ethical dilemma so that I understand exactly what your will is. God, I’ll believe in you if you will only heal my cancer. God, this failed relationship wasn’t really my fault, because there was never any love in it from the beginning, right?

This Gospel passage that speaks directly about divorce and that challenges casual approaches to marriage is actually about so much more than this one pressing issue. And the more we try to box God into a neat system, the more we fail to live up to the discipleship test that Jesus has offered us.

Because it’s much easier to cast stones than to apply Jesus’ litmus test to our own lives. Judging others becomes the distraction from self-examination. When we demand Jesus’ answer to difficult moral questions, he sends back to us the responsibility that each of us is to bear if we wish to become one of his disciples.

Have we done our part to uphold and support the struggling marriages in our community, or would we rather judge the result of a failed marriage? Is it easy for us to become comfortable with divorce and therefore excuse ourselves from supporting the sacrament of marriage? Do we point fingers of blame at difficult choices that others have made without recognizing the nuances of moral complexity? And can we accept the deep moral responsibility that God has tossed back onto our own lives?

How do we treat the vulnerable and the hurting among us? How do we treat the person who has offended us deeply? Do we flippantly dismiss the person with whom we disagree, or do we seek to engage them in conversation? Our self-checks hold us accountable to our baptismal promises. They help ensure that Christianity does not become a religion of convenience but a way that leads to fullness of life.

It is often our hair-splitting over the fine details of God’s will that prevents our own self-reflection. The testing questions that we throw at God for our own reassurance are usually answered by an unexpected question in return. And rather than testing us directly, God’s question pulls our attention back to our own hearts and souls, where work needs to be done. Are we trying to force our way into the kingdom of God, or can we receive it as a gift? Have we defined the Way of Jesus too narrowly in order to let only ourselves and those like us into heaven?

The truth frequently obscured by our testing of God and judging of others is that the way to eternal life is a big, wide boulevard, but the effort required to walk it is immense. We are the ones who make it narrow rather than God. And yet, at the end of this road is our gentle Savior, who came to save the world not to condemn it. He stands there with arms outstretched, no matter how many stand in the way to obstruct the path to him. And when we find ourselves before him, he scoops us up, lays his hands on us, and blesses us. No matter how much we fall short in honoring our commitment to God, it doesn’t change God’s steadfast and reliable commitment to us, and this commitment is always to bless us and welcome us home.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 3, 2021

The Recording that Never Lies

Back when I was studying organ performance as an undergraduate, my professor asked every student to purchase a tape recorder for weekly lessons and studio classes. The fact that this was a tape recorder shows my age, I realize. But, in any case, I dutifully bought the recommended high-end tape recorder and a rather expensive microphone.

Each week I would faithfully record my private lesson, as well as any performances I did in the studio class in front of my student colleagues. The purpose of these recordings was obviously to learn from them. And as my professor wisely said, the tape recorder doesn’t lie.

He certainly was correct about that. There were times when I was convinced that I had done something exquisite in a particular performance, only to discover after listening to the recording that the reality wasn’t what I thought it had been. The rubato at one moment in a piece was perfect in my mind, but virtually nonexistent as revealed on the recording. On the other hand, there were occasions when I wasn’t pleased with a performance, but after some time had lapsed, I listened to the recording to discover that my playing was better than I had thought. The advice of my professor was true: the recording never lies.

It matters, though, which recording we listen to, the one in our imaginations or the one of reality. In the Book of Numbers, we encounter God’s people in the midst of their wilderness journey, and we hear a familiar refrain. The going gets rough, and the people begin to complain, for they have been influenced by a certain recording in their imaginations. In this particular instance, the prompting for complaint arises from “the rabble,” those non-Israelites who made their way out of Egypt with the Israelites. This rabble suddenly gets a craving, and the people of Israel are then reminded of what they had before—or at least what they think they had before.

And we find God’s people in a feedback loop, playing a recording over and over again in their minds. Back in Egypt, there was tasty fish aplenty, and juicy melons, cucumbers, and leeks, as well as onion and garlic. But now, there’s only manna, which is seeming rather bland. If only we could rewind the tape and have some of that delectable food from the past.

What a relatable human emotion this is! The grass is always greener, except that in this case, it’s not in the future but in the past. The craving of one group of people becomes the catalyst for disquietude, even though this one group of people knew nothing of what God had already done for the Israelites. They knew very little of the story of the people of Israel. Moses gets caught up in all this discontent. And for a time, God himself gets angry. The situation has disintegrated into a complicated imbroglio between God and his people.

It seems like a vicious feedback loop. The complaints throughout this wilderness journey have been numerous, and at this point in the story, negativity threatens to hijack the trajectory of God’s people. The tape keeps playing over and over again, rehearsing the woes of this nomadic family and longing for a supposedly better time that was in the past.

But it is God himself who breaks the feedback loop. God stops the incessant rewinding of the tape recorder and pushes play. And in this case, as the tape moves forward, we encounter something new. The people don’t realize that they have been listening to the wrong recording.

So, when God finally commands the attention of the people, the tape recording stops and resumes playing, but it goes to a very different place. God does not respond to his children’s complaints with ceaseless anger and retribution; he responds by unleashing his spirit upon them to advance them to a new location.

When negativity spreads among the Israelites, God, in turn, spreads the spirit of prophecy. And just as such negativity proliferates like wildfire, God’s spirit counteracts the spirit of complaining as it foretells a new future of hope that empowers scores of people to speak God’s truth. And that spirit spreads so that it goes beyond the seventy chosen to receive it, and it even reaches Eldad and Medad back in the camp.

Time and again, the people of Israel had listened only to the fictional recording in their heads, the feedback loop playing over and over again. Back in Egypt things were so much better. Before this endless wilderness journey began, there was safety, comfort, and security. And the food certainly was more delicious.

But the real recording never lies. And if God’s people had been listening to the actual recording of their past, they would have heard quite a different story. Back in Egypt, they had been in bondage. They had been treated as inhuman and forced to labor under cruel circumstances. Back in Egypt, their future had seemed to hold little hope. Back in Egypt, in the eyes of their oppressors, they were no people, but now, they were God’s people, chosen for a glorious future of freedom beyond their imagining.

But the real recording of the Israelites’ past also told another truth, which the people of Israel seemed to forget. And this truth revealed a God who sent Moses to lead the people from bondage into freedom, from death into life. This truth showed that when the waters of the Red Sea threatened to be an obstacle to freedom, God parted them through Moses’ raised staff. This truth evidenced a God who constantly sent provisions when the people were in need, and who was doing it yet again, and would do it forever.

The problem was that the time lapse between the past and the present had obscured the real recording. The only recording the Israelites were listening to was a fictional one in their heads. But the real recording never lies.

And so, when Moses comes before God to complain that he has been sent to shepherd a recalcitrant and ungrateful people, God stops the feedback loop of negativity and pushes play on the real recording. God launches his beloved children into a new future.

In this future, God’s kingdom advances through a ministry shared by a whole host of people. The future God has prepared for his people surpasses the tired leitmotifs of the past to encompass possibilities for freedom and life beyond human imagining.

The Lord’s response to complaints is not to give up on the people but to bring them together. The Lord’s response to the people is not abandonment, but revelation of new insights. When the people become resistant, the Lord becomes more flexible and shows yet a new thing, imparting fresh wisdom. The Lord does not let the people stand still or become stagnant. The Lord pushes them on into a new understanding.

What are the tape recordings that play in our heads, and are they the real ones? Are they recordings that replay old grievances or traumas that provoke new fears? Are they recordings prompted by lone voices crying out in negativity or ingratitude? Are they recordings that romanticize the status quo? And was all of the past really as wonderful as we imagine?

Or can we let God pause the fictional recordings in our heads and press play on a new future that he has prepared for us? Are we willing to let his spirit rest not just on one or two of us who have been here all along but on a whole company of people, some of whom may not even be among us yet?

The truth is that the recording never lies. If we were to play the recording of our past, we might see a people broken by sin and ingratitude. We might see a past sometimes characterized by human-wrought tragedy and unchristian divisions. But the lie is that everything about this past must shape our future. The lie is that our past sins enslave us. The lie is that past trauma has to define what lies ahead. The lie is that we can never move past our resentments and grievances into a freedom of forgiveness and renewal. The lie is that God’s future for us is located in this false recording that plays only in our minds.

But if we were to let God show us the real recording of our story, we would see something new. We would see a moment in time, crystallized in a public execution on a cross, in which God pressed play on a radical transformation. We would see grudges morphed into forgiveness. We would see death turned into life. We would see reconciliation rather than division. And we would see a God of mercy who desires for our flourishing, not for our condemnation.

This is the recording of our past that will shape our future. This is the real recording that God wants us to listen to. And this is the recording that never lies.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 26, 2021

The Fine Print of the Gospel

Now that you’ve signed up for this trip, fasten your seat belts and let’s get going. Do you have your passport? Check. Do you have your vaccination card? Check. Are you wearing your mask? Check. Do you have plenty of water and hand sanitizer? Check. Okay, then. First, stop: Caesarea Philippi.

But first, I want to warn you about the risks. We’ll be heading to occupied Syria in the Golan Heights. It’s a tense place of divided loyalties, and it could be dangerous. But once we get to Caesarea Philippi, you’ll see how beautiful it is. The Jordan River has its source there, and the waters that bubble up and flow down closer to Jericho are beautiful and crystal clear.  

Next, we’ll head down the river in the direction of Jerusalem. That’s our final destination. But on the way, we need to make a stop down near Jericho and the Dead Sea. Here, we’re told, is the site of Jesus’ baptism. And this part of the Jordan River, well, it doesn’t even look like the same body of water we saw up in Caesarea Philippi. It’s muddy, and quite frankly, it looks disgusting. You can’t even see to the bottom of it. It’s no majestic river; it’s just a tiny stream.

Oh, and by the way, since it’s my job to warn you about danger, let me do so now. Don’t go too far into the river, and please do stay on this side of that rope halfway across. The other side is Jordan, where you can see those armed guards on the other bank. We only have permission to be on this side of the river. And I should mention, too, that there could be land mines in the riverbed. Do be careful.

Once you’ve finished your picture taking, it’s time to head to our final destination, Jerusalem. We’ll be going up a hill. It’s a bit of a slug to the top of the holiest city on earth. I wonder if it’s what you expected. Did you expect the visible markers of Jesus’ life and death to be so marred by conflict? Did you ever expect to see Christians fighting over ownership in the church built on the site of Jesus’ final hours? Did you ever expect to see people vie hostilely with one another to revere the holiest sites of their faith, even though it’s inherently one of peace?

Could there be any more perfect metaphor for the Christian life than the geography of the Holy Land? From the area around Galilee to Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem itself, the topography and geography of the land itself represents the Christian journey.

And as Peter finds out halfway through Mark’s Gospel, when he gets to Caesarea Philippi, it’s time for Jesus to head south to his final destination. This is the turning point in Mark’s Gospel after the innumerable highlights of Jesus’ Galilean ministry. After healing, teaching, and attracting crowds, now it’s time to go to Jerusalem. And impetuous, brash, and feisty Peter is all too eager to sign up for this cruise, too. The auspicious beginning of the journey is in Caesarea Philippi, where the waters of the Jordan have their origin in natural beauty, where you can practically see your feet while wading in the water.

What better place is there for Jesus to pose his question? Who do you say that I am? After all, everyone else is offering their answers. It’s clear to the disciples that there is something peculiar and notable about Jesus, that he is even sent from God. The waters of the Jordan at Caesarea Philippi are as clear as the tidy answers to Jesus’ question. So, Peter thinks, why not up the ante and get the best grade on this quiz? Jesus, he says, you are the Christ.

But Jesus’ response is oblique. Tell no one about this. And he has more to say. Like the tour guide who is about to spoil the cruise by mentioning potential danger, Jesus starts reminding everyone of the fine print. Do you remember that cruise you thought you signed up for? Well, it’s more complicated than you thought. We’re headed into precarious territory. In fact, right now, we’re in hotly contested country. And when we get down to that baptismal site, you know, where I was baptized, you will get a taste of what you signed up for.

You’ll be disappointed that the waters are a bit muddy. Those clear answers you think you have right here in Caesarea Philippi will become cloudy farther down the Jordan. There, you won’t be able to see your feet. You won’t be able to see if there really are land mines remaining on the riverbed. You better be careful.

But Peter is having none of it. He knows what cruise he signed up for. He knows who Jesus is, and he knows what this journey is going to be like. Hush, Jesus, let me enjoy the sun and the good food. Don’t remind me that the extra frills weren’t included in the initial asking price. Don’t tell me that the ship we’re on isn’t fit for the rough seas. And please don’t tell me that the waters are about to get choppy.

But Jesus replies, and not just to Peter, but to everyone within earshot. And he says, Peter, you did sign up for this cruise, and just wait until you reach Jerusalem. Just wait.

And this is precisely where we, too, might find ourselves getting stuck. We are on the same cruise as Peter. We have entered full tilt into this journey, paid our deposit, and boarded this cruise with our eyes set on Jerusalem. We have checked the box of our baptism, probably in the clear waters of a safe font, and we have checked yet another box by being here today. We’re ready for this journey. We’re going from here to there, and there is Jerusalem.

But, Jesus says, just wait until you reach Jerusalem. Then you’ll really understand.

And we might cry out, like Peter. Jesus, this is not the cruise we signed up for! We climbed up this mountain towards Jerusalem, carrying our cross, too, and when we got here, we saw only fighting, rage, animosity, and petty grievances. Right now, all we see is human agony wrought by natural disasters. We are meeting people wracked by grief because the human family simply can’t get along. We looked for you, but we didn’t find you. We were expecting our reward. We were looking forward to beautiful views. We wanted to see you in glory and to share in it, too. But all we see are the depths of despair, a cleft rock, and an empty tomb. What happened? How did we miss you? Or did we sign up for the wrong cruise?

And Jesus’ words sting: you were ashamed of me, he says. When I showed you all the rough spots on this journey, you blissfully ignored me with your eyes set on your final destination. You took pictures, but you failed to see me in them. And now that you have reached your destination, you still miss the fact that I’m actually here. I’m standing right before you.

Here I am on this lonely hill that once sat outside the holy city, and I am the only one who can bring peace to this place. I have brought everyone here to be together, but they are hating one another rather than seeing me.

Because some who have lured you into this journey with me have shown you the flashy large print, the spectacular rewards and the descriptions of the beautiful views. They have taken your money and given you the easy answers, which so easily get lost in the muddy waters of the Jordan.

But, says Jesus, there in the small print, you will find me. And because you have inverted my own values, you cannot see that the small print is the good news of the gospel, and for that small print, you should be willing to give your life.

And this fine print of the Gospel, even if it is hard to swallow at times, speaks of hope in the midst of despair, of grace even in the throes of tragedy, of deep truth that speaks more authentically than shallow promises, of the lowly being lifted up and the powerful being cast down. It’s a strange Gospel, but a beautiful one. The fine print of the Gospel reminds you that in all those dirty places you’d rather avoid, in all those muddy river currents of this life’s journey, there I am. That’s where I bring my Gospel, even if it’s a long way from Caesarea Philippi.

This small print of the Gospel is something that few people want to talk about. Most, like Peter, would rather speak of it in hushed tones. But I, Jesus, announce it boldly, because it’s the only way the world can be turned upside-down to be made right-side-up.

And Jesus concludes, having reached Jerusalem, and climbed to the top of that beautiful mountain, you will not be able to ignore the anguish or the aching hearts. But if you look out over the land, the valleys and rifts merge into one with the surrounding terrain, and the divisions seem to disappear. And if you’re honest, you’ll realize that while it may not be the cruise you signed up for, it’s definitely worth taking. Because on this trip, no matter what you lose, you will gain your life.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 12, 2021

To Be Noticed

On January 12, 2007, just before 8 a.m., in the middle of the morning rush hour in a Washington, DC, metro station, the brilliant American violinist Joshua Bell took out his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin and began playing. Dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap, Bell was supposed to be in disguise. He began the morning with J.S. Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor, a 14-minute movement. For a grand total of 45 minutes, Bell played on and on as commuters rushed past on their way to work.

This was no concert performance; it was actually a social experiment concocted by Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten. Weingarten’s objective was to answer a question: would anyone stop and notice the incredible music being performed? Or would the commuters simply trudge ahead in the paved path of their daily routine?

Out of the 1,097 people who passed by Bell that January day in the L’Enfant metro station, twenty-seven people put money in his open violin case, and only seven people stopped to listen for a significant period of time. Bell made a grand total of $32.[1]

This particular experiment might reveal the lack of musical appreciation in American society. Or it could shed light on the obsessive grip of the workplace on Americans, who are increasingly tied to the clock and the almighty dollar. But whatever the case, the results of this experiment were sobering. Not even one of the greatest violinists in the world could manage to capture the attention of more than a handful of people. Most commuters didn’t even seem to notice what was happening as they hurried on their way to work. This violinist and his sublime music quite easily escaped notice.

But the opposite seemed to happen when Jesus was touring the region of Tyre and Sidon and the shores of the Sea of Galilee in the thick of his ministry. St. Mark tells us that Jesus could, in fact, not escape notice. He could not be hidden. Even when he didn’t want anyone to know he was in the area, people found him. They heard he was there and went to great lengths to seek him out. Crowds of people could not ignore the fact that Jesus was in their midst, and they brought all their needs, problems, and illnesses to him, because they knew he could and would help them.

On the one hand, this does not seem terribly surprising. By this point in his ministry, Jesus had already fed the 5,000, healed many people, and worked any number of miracles. His fame had spread in the region of Galilee, and as much as Jesus seemed to eschew the spotlight, people found him like insects drawn to a light. Jesus could not escape notice.

Such a magnetic appeal helps explain why this one man changed the world. The fact that Jesus, at one point in history, could not escape notice explains the fact that we are here today, worshipping our Risen Lord and preparing to feast on his Body offered to us. Only the transformative witness of the Word made Flesh could withstand over two thousand years of fumbling human attempts to follow him and to preach his good news to the ends of the world.

And yet two thousand years later, even while we identify with those who flocked towards Jesus to be healed and to be changed forever, if we zoomed out we might see a different picture. In this wider picture, it might seem as if Jesus is the lone violinist in a busy metro station, causing his violin to sing and sing with the most exquisite music, while person after person—thousands, even millions—pass by and do not notice. It might appear that two thousand years after Jesus could not escape notice, somehow, he has become hidden, and too many people fail to pay him any attention.

This is the picture we are handed by statistics and the news media. People are spiritual but not religious, they say. The number of religiously unaffiliated has risen consistently in the past ten years or so. On Sundays, the pews are less crowded and the sports fields are more so. While some choose to feast on the Sacrament on Sunday mornings, others are at their favorite local restaurant or enjoying the comfort of their cozy beds.

But it’s not as simple as this. It’s not as neat as a divide between the religious and the non-religious. If we were to survey the scene of Christianity, we would easily find that even many Christians, while professing faith with their lips, seem to hustle past Jesus in the crowded metro on their way to the next task because they have figured it all out. They have become so convinced that they know where they are going that they can’t stop and listen to the beautiful music that might take them by surprise, cut them to the heart, and change them.

We might wonder how the values that turned the world upside down two thousand years ago are now ignored as elevator music in spite of profound social inequity, glaring hatred, and systemic bigotry. How did we go from worshipping a Savior who died a violent death on a cross because he could not escape notice to worshipping an idol of our own desires who has become all too familiar and comfortable? Is this the Jesus represented by innocuous, pretty crosses on our living room walls?

Could it be that many have let Jesus escape their notice because they themselves feel unnoticed? Have they given up on being healed or transformed because they think they don’t matter or that Jesus can’t really do anything for them? Is this the case with us? When we come to Jesus with our unanswered questions and incurable illnesses, do we feel summarily dismissed like the Syrophoenician woman? When we can’t get to Jesus on our own, do we lack anyone to bring us to him, like the deaf man in need of healing? And if so, maybe we give up on begging to be healed or changed. Maybe we opt to rush on our way to our ordinary work, while passing by the amazing music offered to us.

But when we are tempted to imagine that we are an impediment to Jesus’ healing ministry, that, perhaps our problems are not worth his heeding or that we are not worthy of being healed, we would do well to look more closely at what Jesus did two thousand years ago when he was noticed. Look at the witness of the Syrophoenician woman, who countered Jesus’ harsh reply to her request by persistently pleading for him to do something for her. Look at the people who brought the deaf man to Jesus and begged him to heal. And take note of Jesus’ responses to all of them: he stopped and looked at them. And he noticed them.

In those days when Jesus could not escape notice, he himself stopped to notice those who were brought to him and who so often went unnoticed in their society. And in a day where we might feel as if Jesus does regularly escape notice, maybe we can summon the energy to seek him out and to let him notice us, for he is ready to do so.

Jesus is so unlike the crowds who tunneled through the DC metro station back in 2007, unwilling to pause and receive the gift being offered to them from one of the greatest living musicians. Even when we are tempted to hurry through our lives and ignore Jesus, he waits for us, playing his violin, offering his beautiful gift to us, ready to heal us.

Our Risen Lord plays on and on. The crowds rush by, and many do not heed his music. But he still plays, waiting for someone to notice. For there was a time when he could not escape notice, and perhaps that will happen again. And he plays on and on. . .

And finally, when someone notices, when we notice, that he is there and has always been there, he looks at us and stretches out his hand ready to do the work he was called to do and still does among us. He molds our hearts into the shape of his love. And he unstops our ears so that we can hear his beautiful music, and he lets us know that, even if we don’t always notice him, he always notices us.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 5, 2021

[1] Gene Weingarten, “Pearls before Breakfast” in The Washington Post, April 8, 2007 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/pearls-before-breakfast-can-one-of-the-nations-great-musicians-cut-through-the-fog-of-a-dc-rush-hour-lets-find-out/2014/09/23/8a6d46da-4331-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html)

What's on the Inside?

It may be a peculiarity of the American can-do spirit that is somehow convinced you can spruce something up that seems undesirable, or that you can always make lemonade out of lemons. The stuttering jalopy of a car just needs a new coat of paint. The tattered book simply needs new binding. The human face wrinkled by time and aged by hard living can be renewed by all manner of cosmetics and plastic surgery. If we deal with the outside enough, we can make up for what’s lacking on the inside.

But the human heart is more difficult to spruce up and much easier to hide. The heart does not readily show its true colors. It’s not visible. All manner of hardened emotions and resentments steep and fester while papered over with one layer of makeup after another. No wonder today’s Gospel reading is over-simplified into easy judgment of hypocrisy. It’s an excuse for avoiding the difficult interior work of the heart.

If we’re honest with ourselves, some of us probably love the moments where Jesus becomes indignant at others, especially so-called hypocrites. We encounter this today. Jesus enters the scene after he has performed numerous healings, taught the crowds, and fed the 5,000. He is riding on a high of approval from many in the crowds, and his opponents are in for it. We rub our hands together with glee, waiting for Jesus to deliver the zinger. Whether it’s with his closest disciples or other religious figures, Jesus cuts to the chase, going deep into the heart and criticizing facades. And on the right side of history, perhaps we rejoice in the downfall of his opponents. You got what was coming to you, didn’t you? You were so hyped up on piety and tradition, but you missed the point of it all. Get ‘em, Jesus!

But the truth is that dichotomizing Jesus’ teaching in such an extreme way has raised up all manner of straw men. You know them, I’m sure. Church traditions are getting in the way. All those vestments—forget about them! All the public prayer and private devotion just turn everyone into religious automatons. We should be more earthy, less pretentious. Isn’t that what Jesus would want?

And without realizing it, suddenly we have become caught in our own trap. As we furiously point fingers at the makeup on the faces of those around us, we find we have it right on our own hands and on our faces. We are guilty as charged. We are indicted. We have revealed the depths of our own hearts, full of vindictiveness, rage, jealousy, mean-spiritedness, and all manner of spiritual filth. And when we find ourselves oversimplifying Jesus’ words, we inevitably find ourselves accused by them. And this is precisely why Jesus cuts straight into the heart.

What Jesus does not say is that traditions are bad. What he does not say is that rules and regulations are not of God. What he does say is that your faces may look good, but your heart is in bad shape. You’re too worried about the outside and not concerned enough with the inside. So, what are you going to do about it?

The problem is that when God starts to unpack the baggage of our hearts, we find ourselves in yet another bind. Jesus lists all manner of vices, and I’m fairly confident that if we did a word cloud of these vices, we would have a few words in bigger letters than the others. Theft, murder, fornication, adultery, licentiousness, deceit, slander, wickedness! And in smaller letters, mumbled half-heartedly, we find evil thoughts, coveting, envy, pride, foolishness. The things we can see get judged and the others ignored. And the most toxic and dangerous are usually the things that are invisible because they hide and proliferate and grow sour.

And this seems to be Jesus’ point: that like any weed we want extirpated from our garden, we have to dig down to the root to get rid of it. Deep down, in the dark places, is where the bad stuff goes to hide, plant itself, and flourish. And who wants to go there?

What Jesus does not do, and what we are probably sorely tempted to do, is pit actions against contemplation, law against grace, traditions against innovation. All Jesus is saying is, don’t forget about your heart. Watch your heart. Be vigilant. Because those invisible things inside are more powerful than you might think. You can put all kinds of makeup on your faces, but never forget what’s in your heart. And really, you can’t always judge a book by its cover.

Jesus has revealed an almost inevitable tension between what we say and what we do. He points out how we don’t put our money where our mouth is. But most importantly, he shows that exactly when we are tempted to judge the makeup on others’ faces, if we only looked into a mirror, we’d see plenty of it on our own. Instead, why not look into our own hearts, as scary as it may be?

Inside the hearts of each and every one of us is a “little world,” to quote the great Christian thinker Origen.[1] Lest we judge a murderer, we should look within for the rage that can lead to such a hideous act. Lest we judge another’s sexual sin, we should confront the unexpressed lust inside us. Before we cast stones at egomaniacs, we would benefit from acknowledging the destructive pride, envy, and resentment lurking within our own souls. Because a book that needs some serious editing can hide easily under a flashy cover.

But there is something else to Jesus’ admonitions. If we stay with the seemingly indignant and angry Jesus, we miss the good news. And if there’s anything that we’re meant to hear from him, it is good news. If there’s anything we’re meant to hear in this tumultuous time of pandemic, worldwide violence, natural disasters, and societal instability, it’s good news from the mouth of the Prince of Peace. And he has plenty of it to share with us.

Jesus’ words may judge us, but he looks on us with compassion and love. His words judge us not to condemn us or shame us, but to change us. Jesus shows us unequivocally the vast amount of makeup on our faces that seeks to glamorize our outsides while neglecting our insides. But Jesus also shows us that God sees more than the façade. God sees more than just sour lemons or a terrible book that needs a distracting cover. We are beloved children. And if the heart is sour, there’s always the potential for change.

And God looks on us with every bit of optimism that wants to make lemonade from lemons. God wants us to let him in to our hearts to make us beautiful not just on the outside but on the inside as well.

This is the hardest part, because which of us wants to let the King of heaven into our jaded old hearts? Which of us wants to invite him into our house of disarray that has not been cleaned in years? And which of us wants to let him do some spring cleaning, to throw out those things with which we don’t want to part? And maybe this is why we usually don’t want to let him in.

But hear this: God wants our hearts and nothing less. God wants to go deep inside our souls. He doesn’t mind it when we tend to our faces, and he doesn’t mind our pious actions, ritual, or traditions. But he wants something else, too. He wants to take all our hard hearts of stone and to give us new ones of flesh.

And if we let him in, he will do so. He will heal us on the inside, not just on the outside. God does not need to change our exterior. He strips away all that we use to protect ourselves from the truth, and most importantly, from himself.

And when God has wiped all this façade away and done his work of healing, he reveals that image that he remembers from the moment he created us. God sees not some shameful creature, but he sees what he once made with love. And God says, it is very, very good.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 29, 2021

[1] This is referenced in A Season for the Spirit by Martin L. Smith (New York: Seabury, 2004), 29-30.

Right Where We're Supposed to Be

Over a decade ago, when I moved from New York City to Washington, DC, I was constantly perplexed by the traffic circles. I found them maddening. After four years without a car, I suddenly found myself a driver again, vexed at every turn. It was traffic circle after traffic circle, not to mention one-way streets that change direction halfway down the block. It made for extremely frustrating driving.

On more than one occasion, I found myself going round and round in a traffic circle like a vicious feedback loop, unable to make the proper exit. I would second guess the signs and then miss where I was supposed to leave the loop. Before I knew it, I had circled ten times around the statue of George Washington.

At this point in the lectionary calendar of Sunday Gospel readings, it’s beginning to feel as if we are in a traffic circle, going round and round, and unable to spin off to our destination. This is the fifth Sunday that includes a reading from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. It is a rich chapter, no doubt. But John’s literary style is somewhat circuitous, containing a lot of repetition. We hear that Jesus is the bread of life more times than we can count. And often, when Jesus makes a new point, he still repeats something he said earlier.

To make matters even more confounding, Jesus’ bread of life discourse does not take us in any narrative direction. There’s no typical story to tell here. Jesus is teaching, giving commands, explaining, but after seventy verses, we might be even more confused about what Jesus is saying than we were in verse one. We are still in the traffic circle looking for our exit.

In this traffic circle, we are going round and round Jesus, who sounds like a broken record. I am the bread of life. This is the true bread. If you eat this bread, you will live forever. The old bread you ate, well, it was not the bread that will give eternal life. You must eat me, and then you will live forever.

And by the end of chapter six, the disciples who are still going round and round the traffic circle are frustrated. They are beginning to complain, just as their ancestors did in the desert when food seemed scarce and water non-existent. The source of life is in their midst, but they cannot see it. They are angry because they cannot find their exit and move on with their journey. They want to be somewhere, but they don’t know how to get there.

There is something stubbornly mystifying about Jesus. He says seemingly plain things, but the meaning is not plain at all. He invites belief, but then obfuscates belief. He even suggests that anyone who comes to him is only drawn by the Father, which makes getting to Jesus seem all the more ambiguous.

At times, he appears to contradict himself. He orders his disciples to eat his flesh but then says that the flesh is useless. Just when our exit from the circle seems to appear, Jesus says something else that keeps us circling round and round.

It thus makes perfect sense that by the end of chapter six, some people have chosen their own exits. St. John is clear: because Jesus’ sayings are difficult, challenging, and rather impenetrable, many disciples took the first exit in sight and never looked back. They opted for a quick escape rather than sticking it out for the right exit, if there even is one.

Simon Peter, on the other hand, utters his own confession of belief. It is different in John’s Gospel than in the others. He does not literally state that Jesus is the Messiah, but in effect, he does. Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. Lord, I may not know where I am going or why I seem to be stuck in this traffic circle, but how can I take an exit? This is where I’m supposed to be.

Peter, for all his bumbling ways and inherent stubbornness, has understood something important here. He has comprehended, if intuitively, what those many disciples who exited the traffic circle did not get: the exits are not the point. Being in the circle is, because at its center is Jesus.

Until this point, every disciple who has encountered Jesus has approached him not as a source of life and mystery, but as a problem to be solved. These disciples have listened to Jesus speak, and then they have demanded solutions to perceived problems. They have asked for answers to open-ended questions. What must we do to perform the works of God? How can this man have come down from heaven when we know who his parents are? How can this man give us his flesh to eat? This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? For each of these legitimate questions, there’s no exit off the traffic circle, because exits are not the point.

And in today’s Gospel, we have reached the breaking point for some. The frustrated disciples have had their eyes set on a destination, and if the traffic circle is in the way of getting there, they will circumvent it and go their own way. They may reach their destination, but they will also miss Jesus.

John’s Gospel must be read in a different way from the other Gospels. It is not linear. And that is the point. It breaks our inherent Western desire to hear a neat story plot, with tension and resolution. John brings our minds and our hearts to a constant circling around the source of all life.

For this is the Christian way, a way that summons us to a traffic circle, wherein we are orbiting around Jesus with all our questions, uncertainties, and challenges. We bring all the mess of our lives into that circle. And although our souls long for quick answers and solutions to perceived problems, we are usually left wandering round and round, with no exit in sight. And truth be told, few people stick with it. Many opt for the first exit and accept whatever the destination will be.

This is precisely why the Christian life can never be completely about a simplistic affirmation of faith. It can never be relegated only to what happens at a particular moment and the ensuing feeling in your heart. It can never be just about merely a perfunctory vocal acknowledgment of Jesus as one’s Savior. It can never be confined solely to the moment when water is poured over your head at the font. It can never be located to one occasion when your hands were outstretched to receive the living bread from heaven. What St. John tells us is that we don’t come to the traffic circle to find the correct exit. We come to the circle to orbit round and round the center of our lives, and Jesus is that center. Going round and round Jesus is exactly where we are supposed to be.

This is why we never have enough of the true food, the living bread from heaven. And it’s also why it is always enough. It is both never enough and always enough. Every minute of our lives as Christians is a decision to stay in the circle, to avoid looking for quick exits, to let ourselves revolve round and round the source of true life and to be drawn more deeply into relationship with him. Because this is where our true home is. This is where we are meant to be.

Admittedly, at times, the Church has done a poor job of preserving the traffic circle. She has tried to direct traffic off into neat exits, providing clarity where none can be found and sometimes adding confusion where none should be. Where so many get hung up is on the demands of the Christian life, on sticking with it for the long haul. Who wants to sign up for a journey with a destination that is at times uncertain? Who wants to commit to being in a perpetual traffic circle, with no clear exit in sight? Who wants to sign up for encounter with a mystery rather than a problem that can be solved and rendered a concrete solution?

But this is precisely what we have signed up for when water was poured on our heads and we were marked as Christ’s own forever. We said yes to the path that leads us to an eternal traffic circle, whose hub is the living bread from heaven. Jesus calls us back again and again to circle around him, to find in him the meaning for all that we do. He doesn’t always give us the pat answers that we long for, but he invites us into relationship with him and one another. And this is where eternal life lies. We can’t come to the circle without being drawn by the Father, because otherwise, we would cheapen the way to Jesus. We would try to invent the Christian life on our own terms. If we can accept that, the traffic circle is heaven; if not, it might seem like hell.

But the eternal traffic circle, with no exit, is not a hell of entrapment or static ennui. It is a dance of pure bliss, where we are circling round and round the King of heaven, singing, and feasting on the true bread from heaven. And here, we know in our hearts that we are not meant to find an exit. Circling round and round is the point. We are meant to stay here for ever. Because going round and round Jesus is right where we’re supposed to be.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 22, 2021

It's Not Too Late

My favorite children’s version of the Bible is Desmond Tutu’s marvelous Children of God Storybook Bible. The words sparkle with the liveliness and joy of Tutu’s own personality, and the illustrations are superb. There is hardly a living person I would trust more than Archbishop Tutu to tell stories from the Bible to children.

You can be certain that his own retelling of the salvation story will not be cheap, especially given his courageous commitment to dismantling apartheid in South Africa and his leadership of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And while Archbishop Tutu always emphasizes God’s boundless love, mercy, and compassion, he also does not shy away from conveying the demands of real Christian commitment. Tutu’s own life of struggle would not sit well with an easy and flabby Christianity.

This past week during children’s summer camp, I found myself telling the version of Matthew 25 from the Children’s Storybook Bible. If you recall this story, Jesus teaches his disciples that when the Son of Man comes again in glory at the end of time, God will gather everyone together, separating the sheep from the goats. As Tutu puts it, those who have “helped God’s dream come true,” the ones who were “generous” will sit on the right hand, and those who were not generous will sit on the left.

In Matthew 25, walking the way of Christ is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the lonely in prison, and giving water to the thirsty. Doing these practical but lifegiving things is also doing them for God himself. The image of God is to be found in the faces of “the least of his children.”[1]

In Archbishop Tutu’s rendering of this sobering story, he does not mince words. Those on the side of the goats come to God and say, “Hey, wait a minute, God! If we had realized that it was you, we would have helped too.”[2] But as Tutu poignantly puts it, “God’s tears will fall as he says, ‘It is too late. Every time you turned away from one of my children, you turned away from me.”[3]

Now, I am not one to hide difficult things from children, but it struck me how this phrase caught the attention of the children. “It is too late.” I could see in their eyes that they were bothered, even disturbed, by this. I, of course, understood that this judgment scene was intended to grab our attention and express the deep demands of the Christian life and the reality of judgment. But I also knew that I needed to flesh out the phrase “it’s too late” for the children. I knew that if I didn’t unpack this phrase a bit more, these children would simply take away a message of fear, and this would ultimately do nothing to increase their faith and motivate them to true Christian service.

It’s a sad fact that many Christians live in abject fear. These days, I see far too many professed Christians perpetrating heinous acts in the name of God because they are terrified of what they will lose. Trying to please someone, most especially God, out of fear, is the quickest road away from true love.

Such fear leads to a distortion of the words that we hear in the Letter to the Ephesians today, where the author tells us that “the days are evil.” It’s a strong statement, and there’s truth to the fact that the days are evil. There is sin and darkness among us, make no mistake about it. There are cosmic forces trying to pull us away from Christ.

But just because the days are evil, does not mean that we are supposed to adopt an escapist mentality of the world. It also doesn’t mean that it’s too late to do something. There are Christians who care nothing for the environment because they think its destruction will hasten the Second Coming. For some, living in a state of holiness means shunning the world, denying the beauty of our earthly existence, and longing to be taken out of this world. A modern-day dualism, pitting the evil ways of the world against the good ways of the spiritual has dredged up old heresies. And we are no better for it.

But if you look closely at the text, the author of Ephesians is saying precisely the opposite of what we might be tempted to think. The author is telling us to live, not to escape from it. He is telling us to walk with our two feet firmly on the ground, and to make the most of it. He is saying, it’s not too late. He is advocating for a practical, action-oriented Christianity. And in the words of the King James Version of the Bible, the author is saying that living wisely is a way of redeeming the time. Each moment of our earthly existence is a chance to squeeze as much life as we can out of it.

And yet instead of summoning as much as they can from each pregnant moment of our existence, many simply discard countless minutes as if they were disposable waste products, littering the pathways of life. Each day has become a monotony of the same old thing, the same old job, the same old routine, the same old means of making the most amount of money as quickly as possible.

Every needy person we ignore and every failed act of kindness and grace is a missed opportunity to redeem the time. Every instance in which we look to our own perceived right instead of the good of the community, we throw away a priceless minute. Every person we fail to forgive because our resentment is so satisfying is a forsaken moment to redeem the time.

And this brings us back to Desmond Tutu’s memorable, if slightly chilling phrase, from the Children’s Storybook Bible. It’s too late. Every time we neglect to reach out our hands in love or fail to check our caustic tongues is another moment closer to hearing those awful words: it’s too late. If we are so obsessed with getting as fast as we can to heaven, we might be surprised when we stand before God and hear him say it’s too late. On the road behind you were countless opportunities to see me in the faces of the thousands of people you met in your earthly life. It’s too late.

But there is more to this story. What I imagine Desmond Tutu would preach and what I taught the children this past week is that, in the story, when we hear that it’s too late, we are at the end of time looking back. But now, we are in the middle of time, so to speak, looking forward. As I explained to the children during storytime in the Lady Chapel, the good news of Jesus tells us that while it may be too late to alter the past, while we are still on this earth, the future is always ahead of us. And that is very good news.

Here in the present, with the future before our eyes, we are being called by Jesus to redeem the time. Jesus teaches us that every single moment of our lives is a moment to learn from what has happened. Every second is a golden opportunity to choose, from this point on, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and love the forsaken. Every moment is a now that is saturated with the possibility of repentance and turning again to see God’s dream for the world.

I don’t believe that God’s dream for the world is for us to live in fear of being too late to the party as a motivation for doing good. And yet, perhaps the thought of being too late to do some act of kindness to God himself can teach us to embrace the present with joy. We can embrace it with joy because every moment of our lives is a chance to reform our ways and orient our lives to Christ. Every moment is a chance to accept that in this life, it’s really never too late. Time can be redeemed.

For now is precisely the moment to accept that living wisely is to put our feet firmly on the ground and let God redeem our time. What we’ve done in the past is too late, but the future is ahead of us. God has sent us the gift of the Holy Spirit to work towards redeeming this time, so that with God’s help, we will do the greatest of works in his Name. And no matter what we’ve done, where we’ve been, or how many regrets we have, in this life, with God’s help, it’s never too late.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 15, 2021

[1] All quotations are from Desmond Tutu, Children of God Storybook Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 100.

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