Dreaming Like a Child

With the news of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s death last Sunday, I have been reflecting on the witness of his extraordinary life. And as I pondered today’s Gospel lesson, I could think of no better place for inspiration than Archbishop Tutu’s Children of God Storybook Bible.

I have referenced this marvelous book in another sermon. We keep it on the bookshelf in our children’s formation room because sometimes the best way to enter the Biblical stories is through the eyes of a child. Until the day of his death, Archbishop Tutu radiated a childlike character stemming from his profound trust in God’s promises.

It is remarkable that a victim of the sinful horrors of apartheid who received death threats for his protests against that unjust system, and who ostensibly had every reason to be bitter and resentful, actually emblemized the exact opposite. This he showed to the world in his leadership of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The truth must always be told for healing to happen, was his consistent message. But once the truth is told, forgiveness must follow.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission embodied the heart of the Gospel that we so often forget. The consequences of truth-telling are not punishment and retribution. The fruit of truth-telling is forgiveness. Only such forgiveness can release God’s children from the slavery of sin and death into new life. What a strange dream it seems to us.

It is perhaps no surprise that Tutu’s Children of God Storybook Bible refers over and over again to God’s dream. It is simple yet profound. This dream is something unimaginably good for God’s people. It is the restoration of relationship with God and others. It is freedom. It is a way of living in which God’s people see the goodness for which they were made, to quote another of Archbishop Tutu’s book titles. It is seeing God’s goodness in others, too.

 But God’s dream is not just a dream because it heralds something wonderful for humankind. It is a dream because it seems like a fantasy to most of us. We inhabit the place of tension between the stupendous, promised reality of God’s dream and the absence of its fulfillment in this life.

In his children’s storybook Bible, Tutu retells Jesus’ final moments on the cross and has him pray to his heavenly Father to forgive those who have put him to death. In Tutu’s words, Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not understand your dream.”[1]

Perhaps this should be our prayer, too. Father, forgive us who do not understand your dream. How can we possibly understand God’s dream? We receive occasional glimpses of it, but then the quotidian and often tragic reality of life here below obscures our vision. And God’s promises to us too often seem like dreams that could never happen.

Because of this skepticism, it could be easy to dismiss the numerous dreams in Matthew’s Gospel. For Matthew, dreams are an important vehicle for God’s revelation. With all respect to Dr. Freud, many of us may enjoy our dreams and even derive fun from trying to interpret them, but do we really believe that God might speak to us in dreams? And do we dare imagine that a dream might be something more than fantasy? Do we believe that dreams might reveal something that is true?

It is somewhat difficult to accept Joseph’s unquestioning obedience to his dreams, on not only one occasion, but on three, as he seeks to protect Jesus and Mary from the cruel machinations of Herod. Within Church tradition, Joseph has become a model of exemplary obedience that could only be borne out of a deep trust in God’s faithfulness. In spite of the circumstances, Joseph appears to assume that God has what Desmond Tutu would call a “special plan” for the Holy Family.

But if we fail to understand God’s dream, we look at Joseph’s behavior and call him a fool. Who in their right mind would get up in the middle of the night and journey to Egypt, a place whose history loomed ominously for the Jewish people? Who in their right mind would then get up again and yet again to go to other lands, all because of some dreams?

And this entire story is made even more fantastical by what we do not hear in today’s Gospel passage. We do not hear the horrifying story of the massacre of the holy innocents, which is the tragic episode immediately before the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. Jesus’ life was spared because of God’s “special plan” for him and his family, and yet the lives of thousands of innocent children were not spared. What do we make of that? And how is there any good news in this dream?

On many days, it’s hard to wake up, look at the news, and imagine there is any “special plan” for us. If you are like me, you are sick and tired of more dreadful news. You are weary of yet more environmental disasters and the prospect of others to come. You are fed up with unnecessary violence, injustice, and the fact that humanity seems utterly incapable of living into God’s dream, much less even realizing that God has a dream for us. Archbishop Tutu’s own description of God’s dream as becoming “one big, happy family sharing everything together” might seem laughable based on what we know. In our jaded moments, it’s the stuff of children’s books, we say. The prospect of hope in the future seems precisely like a pipedream. Our dreams of a different future are tantalizing only as escapist episodes, not as legitimate visions of a real and tangible future.

But in his storybook Bible, Tutu has Jesus utter these words: “Everyone who wants to see God’s dream come true must see with the eyes of a child.”[2] I can’t get away from this admonition. Is this what we’re missing? If anyone had reason not to believe in God’s dream because of tangible hardships and the prevalence of systemic sin, it was Archbishop Tutu. And if anyone could show forth childlike faith, it was he. If anyone could help point to God’s dream, it was also he. God’s dream becomes more than just a dream when it begins to change the present. God’s dream begins to plant its feet on the ground when it summons obedience precisely when the impossible seems possible.

Having been duped by hope in too many instances, do you find it easier to play the role of skeptic? Is vindictiveness more satisfying than forgiveness? Is doubt more emotionally gratifying to you than trust? If so, then maybe we can only offer the prayer that Tutu gives us: “Father, forgive us, for we do not understand your dream.”

The difficulty with Matthew’s description of the wild journeys of the Holy Family is that it all seems so pat and tidy in hindsight. In the midst of infanticide, a “special plan” for one baby hardly seems like a dream. Joseph’s motivation to get up and go based on dreamy angelic revelations might tempt us to doubt the integrity of his faithfulness. He had angelic wisdom to act upon, after all. It’s easy to get up and go when your dreams are divinely inspired. But hindsight is always 20/20. How can we really know how Joseph perceived his dreams? But what we do know is that Joseph acted and lived as if God’s dream were real. Not knowing the future, he nevertheless took his family and ventured into its uncertainty.

And so, with Archbishop Tutu’s help, we offer our prayer. Father, forgive us, for we do not understand your dream. Father, forgive a world that cannot glimpse your dream and venture into an uncertain future. Father, forgive a world that thrives off resentment and cannot extricate itself from that vicious cycle. Father, forgive those who think our trust in a gospel of hope is simply a pipedream. Father, forgive us when we cannot imagine that you are working from within human tragedy and horror. Father, forgive us who call ourselves Christians and can’t find enough good news to share with the world.

Can you imagine a world that dares to believe in God’s dream? Can you imagine a future where forgiveness reigns and resentment falls away? Do you believe that God will fulfill his promises, even if you don’t know how?

In our efforts to believe and dream, we continue to make our prayer. Father, forgive us when we do not understand your dream. Father, help us to act in the present even, and especially, when the future seems like a pipedream. Father, give us the eyes of children. Father, help us always to believe that your dreams for us will one day come true.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday after Christmas Day
January 2, 2022

[1] Desmond Tutu, Children of God Storybook Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), p. 111.

[2] Children of God Storybook Bible, 78-79.

The One Thing that Is Certain

The celebration of the Baptism of Our Lord had already passed, meaning Christmas was officially over, but the town was still festooned with Christmas trees and lights. The air was slightly chilly, but not incredibly so. It was the Middle East after all. My tour group had traveled to the West Bank by bus that day. And after enjoying a delicious lunch of salads in a small restaurant, we entered Bethlehem’s narrow, hilly streets.

We soon pulled up to the Church of the Nativity, which tradition tells us is built on the site of Jesus’ birth. It is an impressive edifice, with its foundations dating to the fourth century. I was traveling with a group of seminarians, as well as others who were immersed in a two-week study tour in which we walked in the footsteps of Jesus. The course was being led by someone deeply influenced by the Jesus Seminar movement, which meant that he was concerned with the historical Jesus and therefore doubted the veracity of many of the traditional sites associated with Jesus in the Holy Land.

I and many others on the tour found this mildly frustrating, even though we knew that a large number of the holy sites could not be authenticated by archaeological, factual, or historical evidence. And for most of us, that was okay. It was, in fact, not really the point of these holy sites. But the leader of this tour had, sadly, disturbed the comfort zone of some people in our group, especially those with little scholarly study of the Bible. And I understood their disappointment. Sometimes, it’s better to revel in mystery rather than trying to look for proof. And I had come to encounter the mystery, not to wallow in skepticism.

When we entered the massive Church of the Nativity, we first had to wait in a long line. We patiently held reverence and anticipation as the line snaked its way slowly to the front of the church. At the east end of the church is the altar, which is located behind an iconostasis, a large, ornate screen, adding to the mystique of the place. And below this grand altar is a grotto chapel, where tradition holds that Jesus was born sometime around the year 4 B.C.

During the long wait my heart raced with excitement. I could feel on my skin and with each breath I took the centuries of prayer seeped into the walls of this church. It was simply overwhelming. It was impossible not to be touched inwardly by the crowds of people who, like me and my tour group, had journeyed to pay homage at this place.

Finally, I and a handful of people entered the tiny grotto space. We stooped to go through the small doorway, and then we waited yet again to revere the holiest spot in the church, and one of the holiest in the world.

There on the floor below the main altar in that small chapel was a fourteen-pointed silver star with a Latin inscription reading, “here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.” I eventually took my turn in the line of people to place my head behind the curtains partially shielding the silver star. And I kissed the spot. My skin prickles thinking about it. Then, it was all over. I had to move on because a long line of other pilgrims still waited to venerate the supposed site of Jesus’ birth.

Throughout the rest of my trip in the Holy Land, I reflected on the sites we had visited. And I realized that neither I nor anyone else would ever really know the true history behind some of the holy sites, such as the Church of the Nativity. I was looking for a certainty that I could never, ever find. Others were, too. Some, like our tour guide, relished bursting the bubbles of other people’s certainties. But why? I admired the simple faith of those who did believe in the authenticity of the holy sites. And I admired the deep mystery of not knowing for sure, either.

In spite of my questions and lack of certitude, there was something that I knew for certain. And because I knew this one thing for sure, it didn’t matter to me whether I could prove the validity of holy sites with factual or historical information. The one thing I knew and treasured in my heart was that in some year, perhaps unknown to us, and in some historical place, which Scripture tells us was Bethlehem, Jesus Christ was born. This we know. God entered the human condition. God seeped his way into earthly existence so intimately that he got under our skin. And he touched us. And that, for me, is all that matters, because it is everything.

When St. John unfolds the wondrous Prologue of his Gospel, he takes us to the beginning, although there really is no beginning with God. And there, with echoes of the Book of Genesis, we find the pre-existent Word of God, waiting until that Word would become flesh and get under our skin. I found the anticipation and fulfillment in John’s words echoed in the long line leading to the grotto at the Church of the Nativity, waiting, suspensefully and hopefully, to confront a mystery in the flesh. And then, God comes among us and gets under our skin.

For the thirteen verses that open his Gospel, John spins poetic, philosophical, and theological language in what seems to be vague terms. It goes on and on until we finally arrive at verse fourteen. We enter the grotto. And since we have probably heard this passage of Scripture many, many times, we know it is coming. And if you are like me, it never loses its power. When I read it or hear it, I literally get goosebumps, because I remember that it points us to what really matters: that God, in some historical year and historical place, came so close to us, that he got under our skin to touch us in the most intimate way imaginable. We stoop to enter the grotto, and we mirror God’s motion of stooping to get under our skin. We kiss the silver star. We hear John’s words: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is what matters. This we know for sure. This no skeptic can take away, because its power has enthralled the human race for a long, long time. Maybe you, like me, get goosebumps when you hear those words. It’s the bending down to kiss the star in the Church of the Nativity. It’s the prickly sensation we have when we suddenly understand that God has not remained aloof from us but has come to get under our skin so that we might become children of God.

I suspect that this Christmas, you, like I, have many, many questions. You may be seeking answers, too. With so much uncertainty around us, is it too much to ask for a little certainty? Don’t you at least want to know when this pandemic will end? Don’t you wonder whether we’ll be wearing masks again next Christmas? Wouldn’t you like some reassurance that everything will be okay, that all this illness and death will cease?

I don’t blame you for seeking those answers. I want them, too. I wish we could find them here today. But right now, our task is simply to celebrate a truth that may not answer all our questions but that rings with a profound certainty.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This we know. God did not remain far off and distant. God got under our skin in a manner so intimate that we will never understand it. It’s the reason that every year at this time we metaphorically bend to kiss the silver star below the altar of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We don’t do it because we have all the facts about that place. We do it because the place is holy. We do it because generations of people have made their way there because they know with certainty that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that God got under our skin.

Only such a certainty could give us goosebumps. Only such a certainty could bring you here today. Only such a certainty can give us the hope that we desperately seek and find in the mystery of worship: that the Light that once shined in the darkness, in a definite point in history still shines among us. And even in the midst of all our questions, we can know for sure that this Light will pierce our darkness again at a time and a place that we might not yet know. And in spite of our lingering questions and uncertainty, we know one thing more: this Light that got under our skin and illumines our darkness, will never, ever go out.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after Christmas
December 26, 2021

The Light that Never Goes Out

Somehow, this night, in spite of the darkness outside and all around us, you have found this place. You could have been in any number of other places: at home by a cozy fire, celebrating at dinner with friends, or isolating yourself for fear of contracting the new variant of the virus. But you are here, and something has drawn you to this place.

Maybe it’s the light. At the time of year when the days are shortest and darkness comes too soon, something within us always seems to want to find the light, like insects gravitating to a flame. Maybe that’s why you have come to this church on this night. Are you looking for the light?

There is something irresistible about the charm of candlelight. Every year, people flock to candlelight carol services. Each Christmas Eve, during the singing of “Silent Night,” we dim the church lights and bask in the glow of hand candles. Even when all the world outside the walls of this church seems to be moral darkness, we still come to sit for a time in darkness knowing that there will also be candlelight to pierce through the gloom.

I witnessed this last Sunday evening at our service of Advent Lessons and Carols. We began in darkness, and there was a moment at the beginning of the service that, to me, felt a bit chaotic. Everyone stood up when the Tower bell rang, and just as we were supposed to light the congregation’s candles, we discovered that our candlelighters were out of wick. I found myself scurrying to the Tower doors to obtain a hand candle and pass it to an acolyte, who then proceeded to spread the light among the gathered congregation.

It was an awkward, perhaps suspenseful moment as we tried to summon light into the darkness. The light was supposed to appear, but for a minute, it seemed as if it wouldn’t. But once it did, it started to spread. And it could not stop. The next day, I watched the livestream of the service, but I didn’t sense the anxiety I felt inside as we sought to resolve the problem of wickless candlelighters. Instead, I saw something incredible happen. While I was inwardly anxious about resolving a liturgical detail, what I saw outwardly—and probably what most people saw—were tiny pricks of light spreading throughout the dark nave of the church. In the midst of the darkness, light had appeared.

And when finally it seemed that most people’s candles were lighted, one person on the Gospel side of the nave crossed the center aisle to pass the light to someone on the other side. I realized, then, that as much as I wanted to control the light that evening, I couldn’t, and even still, the light didn’t go out. It spread from person to person. The light was in no danger of being extinguished. Because it had been ignited, it could only be shared.

At this moment in time, when the entire world seems captive to chaos and illness, the image of light on this most holy night brings us back to the basics. The image of light is a simple image. It is used throughout Holy Scripture, and it may seem to be a trite one because it is used so much. There’s nothing clever about it. And yet, most people seem to understand what it means. That’s why it’s such a wonderful image.

As the prophet Isaiah tells us, to God’s people wandering in darkness, there is a great light sent from God that will shine the people into a new, better future. Eventually, there will be a Messiah who will bring his kingdom to reign and establish peace. And later, in the time of Caesar Augustus, to a land held in the vice-grip of Roman authority, the light appears in an angelic annunciation of a Savior’s birth. The glory of the Lord shines all around a huddle of lowly shepherds keeping watch in their fields. The light is carried by these same shepherds to the Holy Family itself, and Mary takes it inside, and she ponders it in her heart. And even when the light seems to become invisible, it never, ever goes out. It stays in the hearts of those like Mary who keep it aflame.

This light is pure gift. It is pure mystery. It cannot be fully fathomed or understood. It cannot be controlled. And yet it shines. We do not know when a gust of wind will threaten to blow it out. The more we try to protect it and keep it burning, the more we risk smothering it ourselves. But it always keeps burning. All we need to do is gaze upon and tend the flame.

We can imagine Blessed Mary after the shepherds have departed from her in Luke’s Gospel. She is left with a little flame in a candle, gazing upon it, pondering it in her heart. Meanwhile, the shepherds must go to other places, to share this light they have been given with others. The light has been ignited, and they must tell the good news of a Savior born for the salvation of the world.

And tonight, this is where the story stops. There will be other acts in this play. Mary’s entire life will be a grand sharing of the light that her Son Jesus has brought into the world. She will nurture the light as she rears her son and as he perfectly manifests the light of God to a world drowned in darkness. Even when people fail to perceive the light, the light is still there. It is a delicate, precious flame that can never, ever go out. The light always brings us back to the basics of the hope that is within us.

Here’s another truth: our present age is not the first to walk in darkness. Isaiah told of a people wandering in darkness, threatened by enemies, but seeing light in the hope of God’s future protection and blessing. The age of the shepherds, Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus was ensconced in its own vale of darkness. And tonight, I imagine that many of us are bringing the sorrows of our hearts, our weariness, and all that weighs us down to the Christmas crèche. We are longing to behold even a glimmer of light to reassure ourselves that the flame has not gone out.

Two Christmases ago, who would have guessed we’d be fumbling in the dark of a pandemic? One Christmas ago, who would have thought we’d still be sealing our faces with masks, letting the chilly night air into the church, and dealing with new utterances of a vicious virus? Would you ever have imagined in your lifetime that you’d fear getting too close to someone or that you’d meet someone for the first time without ever seeing their entire face? Nearly two years in, we are just plain weary. We know there must be light at the end of the tunnel, but we can’t see it yet. And that, in and of itself, is frightening.

Last Sunday evening, as I stood at the back of the church before Lessons and Carols, I waited for the light to spread, not knowing how or if it would. I could not control it. But it spread and it lingered for over an hour. Throughout the service, I watched my hand candle get smaller and smaller, but it never burned out. The hand candles throughout the church lighted the way for people to sing carols and, perhaps, it brought into a dark time some glimmer of hope.

I suspect that you, like me, have come here tonight not to deny the weariness of this time but to find burning within it some light to give you hope. There are many who would try to squelch our hope or who would tell us that we are looking for it in the wrong place. But we all know better, I think.

The darkness is all around us. It will, in some sense, to a greater or lesser degree, always be with us. But emerging from within it, is a light that shines forth to a new future. This is how the light of Christ works. It shines out from the heart of the darkness. There are plenty of times when the light will have seemed to go out. And when that occurs, look inside your neighbor. Look inside yourself. Look especially to the manger and the cross. The light is there.

The reason we flock to church every Christmas is not only to celebrate the birth of Jesus, our Messiah and Savior, but to remind ourselves that there is a light burning within us that we must tend. It was shared with our ancestors long, long ago, and passed down through the ages. It sparked into the world on that dark night in a cave in the Middle East. It lit fires across the world, and although some burned out, the flame itself never did. At times, in order to preserve the light, it has been pondered in the hearts of the faithful until it could be shown forth again.

We, too, have been charged to tend this flame. Like a delicate candle, let us not walk too fast with it, lest a gust of wind overwhelm it. Let us not hurt the eyes of those around us by shining it too forcefully upon them. Let us hold it gently in our hands as the mystery that it is, knowing that it is ultimately beyond our understanding.

Do not hide this light. Carry it with you into the darkest places of the earth. And when those around you fail to shine their lights, look inside yourself to find the light that was given to us so long ago. For on this night, a Child was born. A Light was given to us and to the world. And all the ages, including ours, that have walked in darkness, have seen a great light. May we always look to it, both within and without.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Christmas Eve 2021

To Sing and To Dance

I have three confessions to make. The first is that I’m not a fan of musical theatre. I mean no offense to those of you who like it, but I just have never personally taken to it. The second confession is that, although I am trained as a professional musician and adore classical music, opera is not my favorite genre. I don’t dislike it. I go to operas and do enjoy some of them, but I prefer other musical genres. The third confession is that this sermon might have something to say to the first two confessions I have made.

As I reflect on why it is that I don’t particularly care for musical theatre or that some operas fail to captivate me, I think it might have to do with some lack of imagination within me. Maybe I find it difficult to take seriously the way people suddenly stop their normal speech and begin to dance and sing about something that is happening, especially in musical theatre. And it bothers me that as a trained musician I might find that nearly preposterous.

And yet, that is what both musical theatre and opera do. They suggest that the richness of life can’t be limited to the dry, spoken word. Some things must be sung about. Or danced out. And if we really engage with the mystery of life, perhaps singing and dancing are not ridiculous responses after all.

This inner compulsion to move our bodies and engage our vocal cords is not limited to musical theatre and opera. Perhaps you have witnessed it in everyday life among those who are less guarded than you. Or maybe you are free enough to act spontaneously, in the moment. I suppose I forgot to add another confession about myself. I don’t like to dance.

But I remember fondly the student in my choir at St. James School, when I was on the staff there, who in nearly every rehearsal could not sing without also dancing. To stop her from moving to the inner pulse of the music would have been cruel. Her inner impulse was always to dance.

It is this invisible, responsive energy manifesting itself in charged, visible action that strikes me in the story of the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth. It is a familiar story, but I wonder if we often miss what is pulsing like a strong electrical current beneath the surface of the text.

Mary has just been visited by the angel Gabriel, who has announced that she will bear the Son of God, although she has not known a man. This annunciation comes to her, unbidden and unsolicited. Mary is a teenager. She is not married. And now, she has a piece of astounding news hidden within her soul. With whom will she share it?

I am sure that much inner turmoil happened between the story of the Annunciation and the story of the Visitation that we hear today, although Scripture doesn’t help us here. What single, teenage girl in a society with strict norms about marriage would not have been terrified by the news from the angel? How many people would even have moved beyond fear in order to consider this as good news?

We have no reason to doubt that Mary was vulnerable to all these emotions. But the important thing for us is how she responded, and that’s what we hear about today. Mary is practically running from Nazareth all the way down to the hill country near Jerusalem. It’s a long journey by car, much less by foot. She makes haste, because, it seems, her soul, her heart, her mind, her whole being is radiating the electricity of the good news imparted to her. Her only response is to share it.

Share it she does, and when she does, Elizabeth responds in kind with a radiant blessing of Mary’s state. Even the unseen child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy. This is a scene in which ordinary speech fails. The only appropriate response is song and dance. And Mary sings her praise of God, echoing the strains of Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel. The shared tradition of generations of women whose forlorn state is then blessed is a common song.

What is also so striking about this literal song and dance is that many people, perhaps many of us here today, find it preposterous. It is similar to the way in which musical theatre and opera stretch the limits of my own imagination at times. And maybe this says more about my need for imaginative growth than about the artistic media themselves.

But there is something else to this story of the Visitation that adds to its potentially preposterous character. It’s not that Mary and Elizabeth break into song and that even an unborn child dances. It’s why they do so. This is not some scene from a musical theatre production or an act from an opera. This scene is an embodied realization of the stupendous works of God.

For Mary and Elizabeth are united in being surprised by God. It is utterly nonsensical that someone of Elizabeth’s age could bear a child, but she does so by the grace of God. It is unthinkable that a human being could conceive a child without a human, biological father, but Mary does so by God’s initiative. And this, to most people, seems absurd.

But like my own criticism of musical theatre or lack of interest in some operas, this seems to say more about the jaded state of the world in which we live rather than about the veracity of what God has done.

What a contrast lies between God’s mighty works and what we believe God can actually do! It puts into bold relief the expectation of hope to which we are called as Christian people and the prevalent sterile skepticism that any hope is even possible.

Which is why the song and dance of Mary and Elizabeth are so important for us. It’s as if we are suspended in time and space, while confronted by injustice, inequity, violence, and destructive willfulness. And we watch not some grand entrance of a mighty God to stomp it out, but instead the ecstatic play of two humble women, graced by an unbelievable power. Their song and their dance are the profound faith in something seemingly unthinkable and absurd.

Day after day, it probably seems impossible to us to sing and dance like Mary, Elizabeth, and the unborn John the Baptist. Mary’s song appears to be a pipedream relegated to some inane musical theatre production. For the strong among us seem only to get stronger, the weak only weaker. The powerful literally get away with murder, and the rich become richer. The hungry are not fed in so many places, and the promise made to our ancestors is perceived to be a distant hope.

There are good reasons why many people cannot sing and dance like Mary and Elizabeth. Maybe you, too, feel that way. But maybe, too, our imagination needs to be inspired by the song and dance of Mary and Elizabeth. Perhaps, after all, there is something incredible we are missing.

It is easy to dismiss Mary’s song as musical theatrics if we think she only sang and danced because of what God did to her. We are also told that she is blessed because she believed that what God promised would come true. There was some potential for belief in Mary before she ever received the good news of God. We would be naïve to think that Mary witnessed the rich becoming poor and the poor becoming rich, and the hungry being fed and the powerful being knocked from their thrones. But Mary didn’t sing to respond shallowly to what she saw happening. She sang because she knew that in some unseen, perhaps even absurd world, God would and was already delivering on his promises. Mary required not visible signs. She believed. She trusted. And she sang.

Can you imagine such a world, where we could be filled with such intensity of hope in God’s promises? Can you imagine if we couldn’t help but move our bodies and sing and dance? Can you conceive of a world that could dare to imagine the unimaginable? Can you imagine saying no to the tired and benumbed illness of unbelief and saying yes to a fantastic world that is not only hopeful but true?

There may be no more demanding and essential task as Christian disciples than to cultivate, like a well-tended garden, the fruit of this hope. It will be a challenging endeavor on many days; we cannot deny that. But we cannot also deny the power of this hope.         

Let us look to Mary. Let us look to Elizabeth. Let us believe that even a child in the womb could be receptive to a dynamism among us testifying to the unbelievable power of almighty God. Let us revel in the dance. Let us embrace the absurd. Because God has delivered on his promises. He is doing so now. And he will do so again, throughout eternity.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 19, 2021

Pictures from a World Unseen

I was recently introduced to the poetry of the British Anglican priest and poet Malcolm Guite. Guite was formerly chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, and has written some marvelous sonnets on the Advent O Antiphons, which we will incorporate as part of our service of Lessons and Carols next Sunday.

A brief internet search will reveal a series of videos in which Guite invites the viewer into his cramped little office, where he steps over piles of books and guitars to pull works by John Milton and George Herbert off the shelves. He lights a pipe and begins to expound on connections between the works of these contemporaneous but rather different literary figures.

In another video, Guite is standing in what appears to be a wilderness place, but I believe it is actually the Texas Hill Country, of all places. Gesticulating dramatically and leaning on a walking stick, Guite describes a moment when he was photocopying some poetry before a talk he was about to give. Suddenly, the machine jammed, and the person in charge of the machine appeared on the scene and pointing a finger at Guite, exclaimed, “Your poetry is jamming my machine!”

Guite says that he then went on to use that line as the basis of a clever little poem. It goes like this:

My poetry is jamming your machine

It broke the photo-copier, I’m to blame,

With pictures copied from a world unseen.

My poem is in the works - I’m on the scene

We free my verse, and I confess my shame,

My poetry is jamming your machine.

Though you berate me with what might have been,

You stop to read the poem, just the same,

And pictures, copied from a world unseen,

Subvert the icons on your mental screen

And open windows with a whispered name;

My poetry is jamming your machine.

For chosen words can change the things they mean

And set the once-familiar world aflame

With pictures copied from a world unseen

The mental props give way, on which you lean

The world you see will never be the same,

My poetry is jamming your machine

With pictures copied from a world unseen.[1]

As I reflected on the ministry of John the Baptist, whom we encounter again today for the second week in a row, I couldn’t help but think of Malcolm Guite’s humorous poem. John the Baptist may not have brought poetry before the people who came to be baptized by him, but he certainly jammed their mental and spiritual machines.

The jamming starts right out of the gate. John does not welcome those who come to him. He berates them by likening them to a brood of vipers. John is aware that these people have lost the plot. They ostensibly desire baptism, but clearly something is amiss in the way they live. Their hearts are not aligned with their feet. So, John addresses all this by jamming their machine with pictures copied from a world unseen. The crowds need a new vision, and John gives it to them.

The machine that John jams is a culture of complacency. The crowds who come to John are looking for what we might call cheap grace. But cheap grace is not on offer, and so John jams the machine with pictures copied from a world unseen. And when the machine’s problems are corrected, we see spewing forth, pictures from an unseen world that offer a vision of hope.

The crowds who flock to John have defined their identity around the wrong things. It is curious that John calls the people a brood of vipers. They are children of snakes. How can we not think of the most famous snake of all, that serpent in the garden back in Genesis 3? Whether this reference is intended or not, to be the offspring of a viper seems to entail finding identity solely in the self, in one’s rebellious will. And as the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 tells us, this leads to a sense of alienation from God.

But John continues by attacking the holy lineage of Abraham’s children. Now, John is really jamming the machine, because being a child of Abraham means taking root in that long lineage of promise that began when Abraham followed God’s unbidden call and entered into covenant with God.

Jammed is an unhealthy system of ancestral narcissism. Lineage will not get you into heaven, John is saying. Your actions must match where you come from.

But let’s pause for a minute. Maybe we can cut the crowds some slack. Perhaps their intentions are good, after all. Presumably, they heard that a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins was on offer, and they decided to avail themselves of it. Can they really be faulted for desiring something good? Isn’t there something laudable in the fact that they seek John out?

And yet, something more is needed. So, when they arrive at the feet of John the Baptist, he jams the machine of their hearts and minds with pictures copied from a world unseen. The baptism they desire will upend their lives more than they could imagine.

You see, the people’s patrimony in Abraham is no longer their ticket to favor with God. Merely coming before John is not going to earn them grace. Something else is called for. John has jammed their machines. To quote Malcolm Guite’s poem, the “once-familiar world” is being set aflame with surprising new pictures from a world unseen.

And the way this passage from Luke’s Gospel ends is almost comical. John has berated the crowd and threatened any slackers with unquenchable fire. Luke tells us that “with many other exhortations, [John] preached good news to the people.” Good news? Really? How on earth is this good news?

But if we dig deeper, we see that this is good news indeed. John the Baptist is not some radical firebrand who stomps on the scene to jam the machine of people’s lives just for the sake of it. I’m sure we all know people who get a kick out of jamming machines. They label themselves prophets and make a living out of saying controversial things or shaking things up just to shake things up. But this is not what John does.

John has not come with his own agenda. John has come to prepare the way for the gospel of Christ. That is his sole agenda. And because his only task is to prepare the way for Jesus and his message, it is only natural that in a world disordered by sin, the machine will get jammed. The pictures copied from a world unseen are a vision of the gospel. They are the vision of a world restored to a state of grace through the life and witness of Jesus Christ, the One who is coming soon.

When John appears on the scene, pride reigns and heritage is seen as a free pass to favor with God. And in such a world, it matters little whether clothes and food are shared with those who are lacking. It matters little whether financial dealings are dishonest and whether people are taken advantage of by extortion. If your ancestral DNA defines your spiritual status, why would it matter what you do?

This distorted world is the machine jammed by John’s preaching, and rightly so. It is the machine jammed by everything that Jesus would teach and preach and manifest in his life. And our own world, too, is a machine that needs some jamming by the good news of Christ.

The pictures copied from a world unseen are the ones that will spring forth when the jam is cleared. They show images of a new creation. DNA does not privilege certain people with exalted status. Indeed, in this new creation, we are children of God by adoption and grace. We are defined not by biology but by sharing in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our family is the family of God, and that is all that matters.

The machine that controls our lives in a disordered world thrives on status, privilege, and wealth. It inducts people into cliques and church families that are only concerned about those who are in and care little for those who are out. In this world, spiritual status is not connected to living ethically in the world. In this world, people are disconnected unless they belong to their own rigidly-defined family, race, or clan.

So, thanks be to God that the good news brought by Jesus Christ, foreshadowed by John, jams the machines of this world. This good news stops us short in our tracks so that we can envision a new future where the rough places are leveled out by love, peace, justice, and righteousness. As Malcolm Guite would say, the props on which we have leaned have fallen away and the world will indeed never be the same. We see that something is jamming the machine of our lives, and so we must stop and read the poetry jammed inside. And we see visions from a world unseen, a world that gives us new hope. It gives new hope, not just to us, but to all who have been trodden by the injustices of the old machine.

Our world can never be the same, and it shouldn’t be. The Gospel of Christ has upended our world. It has jammed our machine. Thanks be to God.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 12, 2021

[1] https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/a-villanelle-for-national-poetry-day/

Pointing Towards the Face of Love

The Roman Catholic nun Sister Helen Prejean recently wrote in the New York Times about her experience as a spiritual adviser to death row inmates. Sister Prejean is probably best known as the inspiration for the 1995 movie Dead Man Walking.

Sister Prejean noted that on only one occasion has she been allowed in the same room as a criminal in his final hour. She recalls how difficult it was in 1984 when she could not physically lay hands on an inmate as he died. She writes, “I touched him in the only way I could. I told him: ‘Look at my face. I will be the face of Christ, the face of love for you.’”[1]

Sister Prejean writes powerfully of the importance of human touch, noting how intrinsic it is to the Christian tradition. Jesus laid hands on people to heal and took children in his arms. The laying on of hands is used for empowering people, like the earliest apostles, to go forth to proclaim the Gospel.[2] Touch is a vital part of the healing ministry of the Gospel. Touch, in many instances, can show us the face of Christ, just as Sister Prejean has been the face of Christ to condemned inmates. And when physical touch is impossible, it’s still possible to point to the face of love.

Sister Prejean’s ministry testifies to a core truth of our faith, but one which the world so often ignores. It is a truth often ignored even by many who would profess the Christian faith. Perhaps they were never taught this truth, even though it is quite simple. The image of God within each one of us, tarnished though it may be by sin, by heinous sin in the case of some people, is never, ever lost. Sister Prejean sees her mission as manifesting the belief that a criminal “is worth more than that singularly worst act of his [or her] life.” Making this truth known is pointing to the face of love in Christ. The most profound truth of Christ’s life is that we are not defined by our sins but are always worthy of God’s forgiveness.

It is during this season of Advent that we look to the hands of the prophets. As we look back on them, we see them in some mysterious way pointing to the face of love in God and declaring repentance, most especially when we have lost our way. It is so when in Luke chapter three, John the Baptist appears on the scene, pointing the way to Jesus, the face of love revealed in human flesh.

In the Godly Play curriculum that we use in children’s formation each week, we often ask the question, “is there any part of this story that we could leave out and still have the whole story?” If we were to ask ourselves this question about the first six verses of Luke, chapter three, we would have to say an emphatic no.

And yet, it seems that the historical context in which God’s word comes to John, as narrated by Luke, is an excessive elaboration of unnecessary information. Is it really important for us to know that all this occurred in the reign of the Emperor Tiberias, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and Philip and Lysanias were also earthly rulers, and when Anna and Caiaphas were high priests? Surely, we could leave this part of the story out and still have the whole story.

Or can we? This seemingly dry recitation of historical information helps us understand just why the advent of God’s word to John in that particular time and place was so important. It’s into this complicated mess of both earthly and religious power that God’s word comes. His word appears to arrive unbidden, but at the right time and place. And it arrives to the right person, who lifts his hand and points his finger to the face of Christ, for whom he is merely preparing the way. John is pointing to the face of love.

John the Baptist has one mission, and it is to proclaim a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Set in the context of the prophet Isaiah’s words, this is the great leveling of God’s justice. The world’s wrongs will be righted, and the end result is that all flesh—all flesh—shall see the salvation of God.

How different the values of this heavenly kingdom are from the historical kingdom into which it enters! These earthly kingdoms are sorely limited by physical boundaries and geographical space. They are limited by the fallenness of the earthy rulers and religious hierarchy and by the lack of human forgiveness. These earthly kingdoms define themselves through power, by further oppressing the lowly and enslaving those who never even had a real chance to begin with.

Standing in stark relief to such earthly kingdoms is the kingdom of God. With its infinite scope and infinite mercy, it undercuts all limitations of earthly rule and hardness of heart. And at the heart of this kingdom is the forgiveness of sins. It all starts with John’s call to repentance and baptism, and it is the foundation of being baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There is one clear message here. It is simple, but few truly understand it. You and I—no one—is defined by our worst sins. No one is unworthy of being forgiven again, and again, and again. It’s not about second or third chances. There’s no rule of three strikes and you’re out. There are infinite opportunities to get it right with God. And each time, God welcomes us as we turn to walk back towards the face of love. But to see that face, we must first turn.

It is the hands of the prophets we now see pointing towards the face of love seen in God’s boundless mercy and compassion. Many years later, there on the cross, crucified between two criminals, Jesus showed it. There as he was spat upon and abused before his death, Jesus showed it. To us, as we confess our sins and turn again and again and again back to him, he shows it. It never goes away. The face of love is always there, even when we fail to see it.

John the Baptist, that fierce prophet of God, straddled the border between earthly condemnation and heavenly forgiveness. He stood in that uneasy place, which eventually led to his own death. He stood there proclaiming, if stridently at times, for people to repent, turn to God, and receive the forgiveness of sins. And this forgiveness was a freedom that earthly authorities could never offer, because control and power can’t offer a gift as free as love. It was up to John to point the way to the face of love in Christ.

I do not need to tell you that we inhabit a culture that has largely forgotten the meaning of forgiveness. We might ask whether many people even know where to find the face of true love. The lonely ministry of Sister Helen Prejean is a testament to this fact. It is not just about criminals on death row. We see it in how we cannot forgive ourselves. We see it in the structures of our society that pressure us to be perfect, to achieve impossible standards, and that demonize people for their worst mistakes. We see it in the recurring violence that can only be explained by lonely souls, sensing they are not loved and acting out in anger. We see it, sometimes even most prominently in the Church herself. If our culture’s behavior is any indication, it’s that we are defined by our sins. There are no second chances. Condemnation is a life sentence, and even making amends will never buy one true freedom.

But it is in the cross that we see this blasphemy shattered. There on the cross, Jesus reveals completely and utterly that at the heart of the salvation he so freely offers us is freedom from all that enslaves us. With God’s forgiveness, we have countless opportunities to be born again into a freed life, recognizing that God’s love is not conditional, like that of the world.

It is now, maybe not more than ever but as much as ever, that the witness of the Church is needed to stand in the breach between earthly vindictiveness and heavenly forgiveness. We find ourselves in a long chain of people, from ancient prophets through John the Baptist and to those in our own day, like Sister Helen Prejean, who feel compelled to point the way to the face of love that God so freely offers. We, too, as disciples oriented towards the face of love can do nothing else.

To those who have never seen true forgiveness, let us point the way to Christ. When we can’t forgive ourselves, let us look to the fingers of others pointing us back to the one whose image we bear. When society tells us not to let go of our grudges and grievances, let us feel the healing touch of Christ, who lightens our burdens by freeing us from all that weighs us down. Each week in the Sacrament of the Mass, we are privileged to gaze upon and take into ourselves the face of love.

This Advent, may we look to the hands among us pointing the way to the face of love. May we let that face of love bore deep into our souls. And may we never lose sight of the heart of our faith, the face of love, that calls us back again and again and again and never lets us go.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Advent
December 5, 2021

[1] “‘Look at My Face,’ I Told a Man before He Was Executed,” The New York Times, November 9, 2021.

The Real Ending of the Story

I recently rewatched the 1999 movie The Sixth Sense. I have seen this movie countless times, and I particularly like the scenes from various locations in Philadelphia. If you have not seen this film, I won’t spoil the ending for you, but suffice it to say that it all hinges on a huge twist.

This time when watching the movie, I was watching it with a friend who had never seen it. At every turn in the plot, I was convinced that my friend would figure out the twist at the ending before it actually occurred. Because I was fully aware of the ending, I couldn’t imagine that someone else might not figure it out. For the record, my friend never did.

We all know books or movies like this, ones that are structured tightly around a surprising conclusion. You read or watch them once, and you can never encounter them again in the same way. They almost lose their effectiveness on subsequent viewings or readings. Knowing the ending automatically colors everything that comes before.

Today, as we begin a new liturgical year, we start at the end of a story. In the unfolding of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’s description of the end of time occurs even before he is put to death. And yet it is written after Jesus’s death and after Jerusalem’s subsequent destruction in 70 A.D. We hear the end of the story, so to speak, before the climax of the Christian narrative ever happens. Luke colors the first part of the story by viewing it through the lens of the ending. How can he do otherwise?

The end of this story culminates in an apocalyptic vision. It’s full of terrible images of natural disasters and cosmic calamities. This ending is about far more than humanity. It is about the entire cosmos itself.

In the midst of these cataclysmic events, the Son of Man comes again, riding on the clouds. There is the very real threat of being caught unawares by this Second Coming, like a trap snapping viciously on its prey.

I imagine that many, if not all, of us are disturbed by these apocalyptic visions. There is something far beyond our understanding or control that instills a deep fear within our hearts. Knowing the ending of this story colors everything from the beginning of the story, and this includes the beginning of the story of our own lives. Jesus is abundantly clear: our redemption is somehow mixed up with these fearful signs at the end of times. And if we’re not ready for it, we will miss redemption itself.

There may be no dramatic plot revelation here, but knowing the story’s conclusion has perhaps spoiled the beginning of the story. And for some, it’s difficult to read the part of the story that leads up to the ending without seeing it through the lens of fear.         

Think of it. When the chronology of Jesus’ earthly life begins in a few weeks with the telling of the Christmas story, we can’t help but see it through eyes jaundiced by the apocalyptic vision of the end times. We find ourselves adoring the babe in the manger, but at the back of our minds is an eerie vision. This child will eventually suffer, die, rise from the dead, and sit at God’s right hand in glory. He will come again, and according to what we have just heard in Luke’s Gospel, it will be a frightening time. How can we look at the babe in the manger without a vision of this baby coming in great judgment? When we look at the baby in the manger, do we see him judging us, deciding whether we make it into heaven or not?

And we continue to read this story throughout Jesus’ earthly life, with our vision constantly tinted by images from Luke, chapter 21. Jesus teaches, preaches, and heals, but many reject him. With our apocalyptic glasses on, we know that one day, they will be caught unawares in a feisty trap. The good news of healing and teaching is here intertwined with condemnation.

And on the cross, crucified between two criminals on Calvary, we hear the incredible words from Luke’s account, where Jesus does not judge the criminals, who unlike himself are guilty as charged. We hear Jesus plead for his Father to forgive them, for they do not know what they have done. But is that what we really hear and take away? Or with terrifying apocalyptic visions dancing in our heads, do we only see a crucified Savior who will one day tally up points for both of those criminals and for each of us, weighing our merits and deciding if we’re in or if we’re out?

This is the problem with thinking that we know the end of the story. When we learn what the end times are really like, everything else changes as a result. Our redemption is drawing near, there’s no question about it. But it is something we might view with great terror.

And yet, I wonder if this is the only way to read this story. We can’t help but know the ending. We know how this story ends, not just with Jesus’s death but with the end of all time. Is there any other way to read this story from the beginning without being a hostage to fear?

I believe there is. This redemption that is at the heart of Jesus’s life and ministry is too often colored by the fear of eternal judgment from a perspective of those who, in the ending of the story, realized too late what was happening. The terror of those who were unprepared is perhaps mistakenly seen as the real ending of the story. But being surprised by the ending is not yet a foregone conclusion, is it?

At the heart of this story of redemption is a glorious freedom motivated purely by love. And it might be that we have lost a real appreciation of this wondrous, loving freedom because we have heard an ending of the story focused on being late to the party. But right here, right now, the story hasn’t ended yet, has it? So, could we start again from the beginning?

When we start again from the beginning of this story, it’s true that we know the ending, but this ending is different from the one we usually focus on.

In the beginning of this story, the eternal Word was there when all things came into being. In this beginning, God created us out of love and gave us the freedom to choose between good and evil because he knew that we could only experience love if we were free. And even as humankind rebelled against the order which paradoxically provided such great freedom, God continued to draw humankind back into intimate relationship. There is judgment in this part of the story, but it is a medicine for our salvation, not condemnation. It is what we experience when we turn our backs on God. This is the judgment that is meant to help us find true life.

As the story continues, when human nature became so utterly obstinate, when something much more obvious than before was needed to invite humanity into salvation, God sent the eternal Word into the world as a tiny baby who experienced the vicissitudes of human life, not to bring us condemnation and shame but to offer us the gift of remarkable freedom. This Jesus is the one who wrote in the sand before the woman caught in the act of adultery, challenging her accusers to throw the first stone if they were themselves without sin. This Jesus loved us in spite of our sin. He chose to see his image within us rather than define us by our sins.

And the ending of this version of the story reminds us that Jesus died so we might be free. He died because the world could not contain his truth, but he uttered that truth into fleshly existence through both his life and his words. In Jesus’s passion and death, we were intended to be brought from slavery into freedom, not from slavery into eternal fear. In this ending of the story, Jesus brings us from bondage into the freedom of eternal life.

Yes, the real ending of this story is our redemption. It is our freedom from captivity to sin and death, and it is already drawing near. It is nigh upon us. It comes to us on the clouds, but not like some alien spaceship ready to attack us and trap us into slavery once again. No, this redemption is a release from fear, and it comes to set us free. This is the real ending of the story.

And precisely because we know this ending, we can choose to act not out of fear but out of joyful expectation. We can lift our heads and stand up straight, confident and ready to greet our salvation. If we let Christ constantly judge our actions, all the time and in every place, it is a gift. Our lives will be one extended anticipation of the most amazing end to any story. We will live eternally with God. And Christ’s daily judgment in our lives will not be to condemn us or shame us into huddled fear. It will be an invitation to stand tall and welcome eternal life.

Because this we know: Jesus is coming on the clouds. He is drawing near. He is coming soon. We know the real ending of the story. And that is such wonderful news.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday of Advent
November 28, 2021

Where Our Eyes Should Be Focused

When working on a computer and intensely engaged in a particular task, it can be a dangerous thing, to have too many windows open in a web browser. In one window, Facebook is open. In another, it’s your work email. In yet another, it’s a news media source. And no matter how hard we try to home our vision in on the project at hand, we are vulnerable to distractions. It can be difficult to know where our eyes should focus.

A new Facebook notification pops up. You suddenly notice that instead of 59 unread emails, you now have 60. A news source pings the latest update on the escalating migrant crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus. So much time is wasted on these other distracting windows while the current task remains unfinished and rather static.

There are variety of distracting images, like multiple windows on a computer screen, as Jesus describes an apocalyptic vision to his disciples. It’s difficult to know where our eyes should focus. Sitting across from the Jerusalem temple, Jesus has just offered an eerie prediction of the temple’s fate. His disciples now want some specific answers and a timetable for this prophecy of destruction. If Jesus is going to open this can of worms, can’t he at least give them more information?

But Jesus, in typical fashion, does not answer the disciples’ question, or at least not directly. And this question has continued to fascinate generations of people ever since Jesus uttered this “little apocalypse” in Mark’s Gospel. When will the world end? What signs will tell us that it’s all about to be over and Jesus is coming again?

Haven’t you asked this question? Did you ever eye a spooky horizon before a big thunderstorm as a kid, wondering if it was the end of the world? Did you ever think you were living through the end times, either during a war, major crisis, natural disaster, or pandemic?

So, why doesn’t Jesus answer his disciples’ reasonable question? Or could it be that Jesus doesn’t answer the question because there is no adequate answer. Knowing the answer, he seems to suggest, is not the point at all.

In one window of the future that Jesus describes, we see images of false prophets, roaming the globe, claiming to be the Messiah. In another window, we see news reports of brutal wars and looming reports of future crises threatening down the road. In yet another window, reports tell of an earthquake. And if we were to read on in Mark’s Gospel, an open window on the browser shows Jesus’s disciples being handed over to authorities and mistreated. In other open tabs, there is fighting between siblings and terrifying meteorological events.

To all this, Jesus offers a peculiar response: “Do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” It’s as if Jesus calmly places his hand on the computer mousepad and begins to close the windows in the browser. One by one they disappear. Jesus is not being insensitive or mean. He simply knows that all these distractions in the other windows, as real as they may be, detract from where our eyes should really be focused.

Maybe the open windows in our own mental and spiritual browsers are not of natural disasters or world wars. Maybe they are at times. But often they are just the seemingly small but insidious diversions of daily life. They are the culture wars in which we get embroiled. They are the petty conflicts within the Church, the quests to prove that our faction is right and the other is wrong. They are the distractions of deferred maintenance within the parish, which loom larger than calls to ministry. They are our human projects, our grand endeavors that convince us that God’s mission can only be accomplished by us, without acknowledging that, just like the temple, all our human projects will one day fall, too.

If we journey deeper within ourselves, we notice the ways in which sin and evil become distractions for us. Browser windows pop open, tempting us from the good. New tabs showcase our fears and anxieties that derail our focus in so many ways. And especially when we are oriented towards the good, the evil one himself knows that opening up one more accusing thought within our mind is exactly the way to divert us from the call of holiness. For when we are getting close to our holiest work, we are most vulnerable to the Accuser himself.

But as Jesus sits on the Mount of Olives, where he will pray alone before his death, he begins to close all the windows he has opened on the screen. Jesus is no fool. He is teaching his disciples. He is not denying the reality of what these open browser tabs portray. There would be wars. There would be conflict, natural disasters, and destruction. There are today, right now, escalating crises all over the globe and valid concerns about the state of our environment, not to mention our daily distractions of sin and self-doubt.

Jesus doesn’t close these windows in order to deny their existence. He closes them because he longs to focus our eyes on something that he considers to be vastly more important. It is something that will speak to every other open browser tab that vies for our attention and focus. Jesus leaves one window open, and it shows no dramatic scene or spectacle. It consists of a simple yet challenging command: go and proclaim the good news to all nations.

This is it. This, Jesus commands, is where our eyes should focus. This is where our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength should lie. Our sole objective as we seek to follow him is to proclaim the gospel to all nations. Anytime we undertake any project, any task, any endeavor, the question must be, “will it proclaim the gospel?” Anytime we direct our attention to a natural disaster, global crisis, or salient need among humankind, we must always ask ourselves how we will proclaim the gospel in the midst of these demands on our attention. What we say and do might challenge the status quo or it might simply affirm something already happening, but whatever the case, we have to stand for the gospel and not simply against something.

On the Mount of Olives, not long before his death, Jesus is fully aware that the going is about to get tough for his disciples. As he approaches his passion and death, his closest followers will begin to distance themselves from him because they are distracted by too many things. They have asked for clarity about so much—about Jesus’s teaching and preaching—and now, they want clarity on when the glorious consummation of all things will occur. But his disciples are looking at all the wrong windows. They are distracted by the signs when their eyes should be focused on the gospel that Jesus has shown them in his life.

We must ask ourselves, too, why so many distractions take our eyes off the good news of Christ. Is the gospel too subtle and nuanced, or does it speak too quietly for a noisy world? Are we overwhelmed by the gargantuan charge to proclaim this good news near and far? Are our silly divisions, gossipy Church talk, and institutional preoccupations simply far more compelling than the good news, which demands so much of us?

And this brings us back to the disciples’ initial question to Jesus and to the question we may very well be harboring ourselves. When will all these things be accomplished? If we can only prepare ourselves for the end and have some sense of clarity and finality, we will be ready to undertake our role in proclaiming the gospel.

But Christ’s gospel does not assert its power through triumphalism or eradication of everything that stands in its way. It does not claim its authority by force or brute strength. It, in fact, cannot be known as the gospel unless it is announced from within the situations of injustice, horror, and destruction that it denounces. That is how the gospel finds its meaning. The birth pangs of the new creation that God has established in Christ are always just beginning. We are always surrounded by death and from out of this death, new life is born.

Jesus closes, one by one, the open browser windows on our spiritual radar screen, because he knows that every disaster, breaking news event, and anxiety that demands our attention has the potential to steer our eyes away from the good news. But if we keep our eyes focused on Jesus’ gospel of peace and righteousness, everything else will fall into place, and Christ’s gospel will have something to say to every looming distraction open on the screen of our lives.

So, beware of the false prophets. Beware of the many distractions that the evil one will lob into your path to pull you from the good news. And know that, in an unsettled world of constant change and instability, Christ’s command rings loud and clear: keep your eyes focused on the gospel.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 14, 2021

When Fear Gets in the Way

The American writer and theologian Frederick Buechner has described a vocation as a calling by God, where one’s deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.[1] It takes two to tango, claims Buechner. You can love the work you are doing, but if it does nothing to satisfy a need in the world, then something is missing. And vice versa: you might be fulfilling a great need while hating every minute of it.

Buechner’s understanding of vocation recognizes the importance of relationship. God’s calling is far more complex than a mere desire to do something that you are passionate about. A calling matches your own enthusiasm and gifts with one of the world’s hollow cavities yearning to be filled. Your deep gladness must fit inside the world’s deep hunger, like a hand in a glove.

This nice fit does not seem to be the case when the Lord sends the prophet Elijah to Zarephath to find a widow, who will supposedly feed him. True, Elijah has a deep need of water and food. We have been told earlier in this chapter that God has caused a drought to come upon the land, presumably because of the wickedness of the people who have disobeyed the Lord and worshipped other gods. Not only is Elijah bringing a challenging, prophetic word to a recalcitrant people, but he is trying to do so while also navigating a dearth of food and water.

So, why not send him to a poor widow, who clearly doesn’t know where her own next meal will come from? This does not seem to be a match made in heaven. Both the widow and Elijah are hungry. This scenario does not appear as if it will end well. Something is amiss here.

The pairing of prophet and widow is almost cruel. The Lord sends Elijah to demand water and food from a woman who has only a couple of sticks with which she can prepare a final meal for herself and her son. No wonder that she tries to politely excuse herself from Elijah’s charge. She has resigned herself to the sober reality that she and her son will soon die from hunger. She might as well already be dead.

And Elijah’s response is almost comical. We all know in a horror film that if someone says, “wait, don’t be afraid,” the opposite is true. That’s always what someone says when you should run and fear for your life. Telling a poor widow who cannot find enough food in a forsaken land not to fear is laughable, if not downright mean.

But things in this story are not at all what they seem. Things don’t seem to add up. We have been told that God’s punishment on the people is a severe drought. But could it be that the drought represents the spiritual aridity of the people? The Lord has supposedly sent Elijah to Zarephath so that the widow can feed him. But is that the real reason he has been sent there? The widow believes she will die, but are things really that bad for her, or has her own sense of scarcity simply focused her eyes on death? And is this whole episode really about two very different people being hungry or about something else?

The seemingly misaligned paths of the widow and Elijah might echo our own experience. We find ourselves being drawn to certain people or places or occupations, convinced that there is something in it for us until we are sorely disappointed. The world seems full of people talking past one another, naming their own passions and needs but not hearing the hungers of the other. There is a great polyphony of voices and actions, but so often, the overall piece seems to be in a dozen different keys.

This is the case with Elijah and the widow. They are playing in different keys, or so it seems. The widow is focused on gathering whatever meager provisions she can find for herself and her son’s final meal. Elijah is responding to God’s confounding call and searching for some food. But it’s not really about any of this. Nothing seems to add up, and so we must go a little deeper until the mystery of this story begins to open up.

It is finally Elijah who speaks the prophetic word that unlocks the solution to this puzzle. He utters the words spoken throughout Scripture, words voiced into situations that make no sense. “Do not be afraid,” he says. These words are, again, almost laughable, for the widow has every reason to be afraid. These are the words later echoed by an angel to a young teenage girl in Nazareth who learns she is to bear the Son of God, although she has never known a man. Should she laugh, like Abraham’s wife Sarah, when God tells her she will bear a child, although she is well past childbearing years? Or should Mary cry for fear of the unknown? But when Elijah tells the widow not to fear, what has been named is precisely what now unlocks the riddle of this story.

Until this point, fear has prevented any real communication between the widow and Elijah. It’s all too easy to pin fear solely on the widow. She is told not to be afraid by Elijah, even though she has every reason to be afraid. But don’t you think Elijah is also afraid? Don’t you think he, too, fears that he will not find the widow to whom God directs him? Does he, like the widow, fear that he will die of hunger? Does he fear that no one will listen to his strange prophetic words?

It is with the naming of this horrible monster of fear that a wall is broken down, and suddenly it begins to become clear why Elijah and the widow are meant to be speaking to one another. There is a hunger and a deep passion meeting and starting to fit together like a hand in a glove. Yes, the widow is physically hungry, but it is she who feeds Elijah. And Elijah is more than physically hungry; he is passionate about God’s truth. And the widow eventually recognizes that he is a man sent from God.

And although the widow provides for Elijah’s physical hunger, she meets a man who will go on to raise her own son from the dead, later in the chapter. This woman also needs assurance of God’s faithfulness, and at the end of this chapter, when her son has been brought back to life by Elijah, she receives that assurance. All along, fear is the only thing standing between the widow and Elijah.

Doesn’t this sound familiar? It’s fear that turns us inward on ourselves, so that when we are desperately hungry, we can only see what we need rather than what we might offer. When we are utterly satiated, we are blind to our own hunger and think we should only be helping others. There are times when we are thrust into situations that make no sense to us until we realize that we can only understand them by overcoming our own fear. We are afraid that we are not enough. We are afraid that we don’t have enough to do what God calls us to do. We are afraid that we will lose what little we do have. We are so, so afraid.

And it seems laughable, even cruel, to utter these words, “do not be afraid,” to the millions of people on this planet who have every reason to be afraid. How can we discourage fear among the impoverished widows and women of third world countries? How can we exhort the homeless simply to have greater courage and faith? How can the words “God will provide” comfort those for whom a simply stroll to the corner store at night could end in death? None of this seems to add up, like Elijah and the widow before they began to communicate. There is something else to this story that we have not yet figured out.

The charge “do not fear” is not a charge to rise above misfortune but a naming of what obscures the blessings of God’s abundance. It is fear that stands between the privileged and the under-resourced. The rich fear the poor’s demands on their possessions. The poor fear the suffocating squeeze of those wealthier than they. The powerful fear the loss of their power, and the weak fear being stamped out by the strong. And each group retreats into its own corner, with nothing to talk about, and only fear stands between them.

But when fear is recognized as the enemy that it is, everything opens up. Then, we begin to see the meaning of vocation and God’s call on our lives. We comprehend why God has brought us into a particular circumstance or to a particular person. And the key to unlocking the solution to that puzzle is understanding how needs meet up, how gladness and hunger intersect, how another’s presence in our lives is so often more than meets the eye.

The only thing standing in the way is fear. It is an enemy, like sin and death. It is, in many ways, the root of all sin. But if we can learn not to fear fear itself but to look it in the eyes, we might see through to the other side. On the other side, is the hunger that can open up our self-absorbed gladness. On the other side is the gladness that can satisfy our deep hunger. Underlying it all is the knowledge that, so often in the mystery of God, nothing is quite what it seems on the surface. And in this glorious mystery and providence, with even two sticks gathered together, God can build a fire and prepare for us a feast.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
November 7, 2021

[1] https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2017/7/18/vocation

Singing the Themes

There are people who dislike modern music because they find it untuneful. Admittedly, it can be difficult to find a tune in some avant-garde music. How many people, after all, walk around singing excerpts from the works of Milton Babbitt, Morton Feldman, or Philip Glass? And if you haven’t heard of these composers, then I’ve demonstrated my point.

The presence of an identifiable tune is why many people gravitate towards the Classical period of music history. They want Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. All these so-called Classical composers made use of an established form of the time called sonata form.

If you’ve been to an orchestra concert and heard a Mozart piano concerto or a symphony, you are familiar with sonata form, even if you don’t know it. It’s straightforward and clearly structured. A piece begins with an opening section called the exposition, where two or three themes are presented. The tonic, or home, key of the piece is established, with the second theme usually modulating to the dominant key, a closely-related key to the home key.

Then, after a transition, the middle section, called the development, expands on the themes, wandering in different harmonic lands and creating a fair degree of harmonic instability and tension until, at the right moment, the final section begins. This final section is the recapitulation and does exactly what its name suggests. It re-presents the initial themes, usually stating all of them once again, but this time in the home key, so that everything is resolved and tied up.

Sonata form is, in many ways, neat and tidy. It offers harmonic resolution at the end, even if in between beginning and end, the most adventurous of composers can wander into strange lands. But everything is held together by the themes clearly stated at the beginning of the piece.

When Moses offers his extended speech to the Israelites in the Book of Deuteronomy, they are on the precipice of entering the Promised Land. Moses’s speech is like the grand recapitulation of a symphony. In this symphony, the initial themes were stated in the first four books of the Bible. Moses does not explicitly recapitulate them, but they are there. God created everything and called it good. When God’s people wandered astray, God called them back into relationship with him. God established his covenant with them, in various ways, and when they were enslaved in the land of Egypt, God freed them and guided them back to their ancestral home.

Moses picks up the story after God’s people have wandered for forty years in the wilderness and the first generation has died. He now addresses the second generation of people who will finally live to see their feet touch down in the Promised Land. But Moses himself will not make it.

The themes presented in the exposition of this grand symphony are God’s love for and mercy towards his chosen people and his commitment to covenant relationship. The development of this symphony consists of God’s people veering into sin, experiencing punishment perceived as God’s wrath, and the constant turning away from and returning back to God. And finally, on the verge of entering the long-awaited Promised Land, Moses must recapitulate the foundational themes. In spite of all they have done, God has guided his people through foreign lands. God has been faithful to his promises. God has brought them home.

Moses’s speech is a moral exhortation. Moses knows that when God’s people arrive in the land of milk and honey, they will be prone to forget God, as they have in the past. They will encounter valleys in their story with God, and they will turn from God. Or when they are on mountain peaks, they will also forget God because they don’t think they need him for anything. Moses’ advice is simple: sing the primal themes over and over again. And these are the themes of love. God loves his people, and this infinite love must summon a response of love. Love God alone. Everything springs from that.

Sing these themes to your children. Sing them at home, and when you are wandering along the sinuous paths of life. Sing them before bed and when you rise in the morning. Sing them as you enter and leave your homes. Never forget these beautiful themes.

But we know what will happen to God’s people after Moses’ parting speech. We know that after they have settled in their Promised Land, they will be invaded. Their home will be pillaged. They will go into exile, and they will not be able to sing those initial themes of God’s mercy and compassion. They will have no faith in a future recapitulation where everything is resolved.

And even when they return to the Holy City of Jerusalem and rebuild and regroup their lives and communities, they will once again forget the themes of their ancestral days. They will fail to sing the themes. They will become so distant from God as they forget his themes, that the grand symphony might threaten to fall apart.

We know what this is like, don’t we? On the mountaintops of our lives, we sing lustily these themes of God’s graciousness. When we feel favored, we sing heartily to God. Or perhaps when we feel favored, we forget to sing because we are complacent. Sometimes in our valleys of despair, the themes take on a minor key. But at our worst, we think we own the themes. We think we can morph these themes to our own needs and desires. We share the themes only with those we want to share them with. We dull their tunefulness because we often take God out of the themes.

Perhaps we, like God’s people of old, think that God is only on our side. We seek to conquer the lands around us in the name of our causes. We push anyone and ever yone out of the picture, perhaps at all costs, as God’s people destroyed the foreign nations on their way to the Promised Land. We give up the tuneful themes when we experience hardship, thinking that God has punished us. All this is proof that we have lost the foundational themes stated so beautifully at the beginning of this symphony. We are in desperate need of a recapitulation because we have lost our way in the strange harmonic lands of the development section of this piece.

But, almost as a surprise, in God’s grand symphony, we are offered an incredible recapitulation. Some scribes come to Jesus and ask him to remind them of the themes. And Jesus does. He sings the themes of God’s love for them and of the need for our unwavering commitment to love God in return. Jesus is the embodiment of the recapitulation. He brings everything back to the home, tonic key of love.

Don’t you remember, he says, the theme of loving God with every fiber of your being? In all your wanderings and tribulations, this theme has been there. But there is another theme. It’s not new, and I’m here to remind you of it. Remember when it was first presented, way back in the beginning of this grand symphony? Love your neighbor. It was back there in Leviticus, in the midst of the statement of so many commandments. It was there. Leave the boundaries of your harvest land for the poor and alien. Back in Deuteronomy it was stated so clearly: love your neighbor. This theme of love in action was in that long development section of this symphony: care for those who are oppressed. Do not forsake those in need. I say it again, love your neighbor.

Jesus came to express in living flesh this unifying theme of God’s grand symphony when people had forgotten the tunes. When people had given up on singing the themes of this piece because everything had become so distorted, Jesus came to sing the themes once again.

Jesus came to offer a dramatic recapitulation. And he knows that we will continue to forget the themes. We will allow them to be hijacked by others. We will neglect them. We will fail to sing them because we are stubborn, or lazy, or at times, cruel. But he has commanded us to continue to sing.

We do so today. We sing all the themes and development of this grand symphony over bread and wine in the Mass. We whistle them as we go into the world to love God and neighbor. But we have to keep coming back, again and again, because we can never let these themes die.

We are Christ’s living Body. We have been entrusted with these themes. Outside those doors, it’s a loud cacophony of dissonance and confusion, with every person singing their own themes. But we have the true themes to sing. Love God. Love your neighbor. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. And so we keep coming back, again and again and again, to remember and to sing.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
October 31, 2021

Circles of Generosity

After last Sunday’s Main Line Early Music concert here at Good Shepherd, I attended a fundraising event to support the concert series. During the evening, while enjoying delicious hors d’oeuvres, I found myself talking to one of the musicians. She told me how some time ago, I think even before the pandemic started, she lent one of her instruments to a student to use for practice. She did not want to charge the student for use of the instrument, because, as she put it, she believes in a circle of generosity.

It turns out that the same student, grateful for use of the instrument, decided to make a donation to her, which the teacher in turn gave to support the Main Line Early Music concert series. As this musician suggested to me, generosity breeds generosity.

I think this particular musician related this story to me because she was likening what she did to Good Shepherd’s support of Main Line Early Music. This concert series, sponsored by Good Shepherd, is an example of generosity, because we invite first-rate musicians to perform concerts in our beautiful church, free of charge, and ticket sales go to support the musicians and series.

The intention of Main Line Early Music is to engage in ministry by offering one of our resources—that is, space—for the benefit of others. We are supporting musicians, many of whom have struggled mightily through this pandemic because of restrictions on performance. These musicians are seeking to feed the world with beauty. We are working with them to offer this beauty to the world. We have space, they have beautiful music. It’s a wonderful relationship, and in turn, goodwill is built. Parish and musicians find themselves getting drawn into this circle of generosity. Because generosity breeds generosity. Imagine how quickly something lifegiving can spread when it moves from person to person. Generosity is the gift that keeps on giving.

You may be wondering what in the world a circle of generosity has to do with blind Bartimaeus. Wait, you say. It’s in two weeks that we get the story of the widow’s mite and hear of the generosity of a poor woman who put everything she had into the Temple treasury. But there is a method to my madness. I happen to believe that the story of blind Bartimaeus is all about generosity.

True, it’s about healing and about regaining sight, both physical and spiritual. But what undergirds all that happens in this transformative little story is a vast circle of generosity. Below the surface of this well-known account there is more than meets the eye, pun intended.

Take for instance, Bartimaeus himself. In one sense, Bartimaeus epitomizes what it means to be lacking. He is blind and therefore lacking in physical sight. He is presumably poor, for he is described as a beggar. He has no place in the crowd, because he is on the margins, by the side of the road. He is in need of healing, as he acknowledges through his plaintive cry to Jesus. This, of course, is juxtaposed with the fullness of the large crowd following Jesus on their way out of Jericho.

But underneath the clash of the more privileged crowd and one lonely beggar in need is stirring a great circle of generosity. And it starts, first, with Bartimaeus, and spreads so that what is revealed at its center is the healing work of Jesus himself.

Isn’t it often those we think have little reason to be hopeful, optimistic, and generous who actually show us how to be so? Isn’t it often those who hardly have a roof over their head who teach us that, in God’s gracious provision, there is always a measure of abundance?

This is what Bartimaeus does. He may be lacking in physical sight and material resources, but he is, above all, profoundly generous. Look at what he does. In spite of his marginalized position by the side of the road, he cries out for mercy from Jesus. In spite of cries to shut up, he cries even louder for mercy. In spite of having next to nothing, he leaves even his cloak to spring up and go to Jesus for healing. In spite of having every reason to sink deeper into despair and self-isolation, Bartimaeus assumes from the outset that Jesus will help him and that he will find community. In spite of lacking physical sight, he trusts that, with God’s help, he will see once again. In spite of what he seems to lack, Bartimaeus has a generous view of what is possible.

Bartimaeus triggers the circle of generosity in this story, and it’s infectious, and it spreads, so much so that Jesus stops dead in his tracks. And we then see the center of all this generosity in the person who is God’s ultimate gift to the world. Although Jesus is heading out of Jericho, he halts and embodies generosity. It is this generosity that fuels Bartimaeus’ own generosity, although he may not yet know it.

Jesus is not too busy to stop for Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is a person in need, and Jesus is here to fill that need. It’s the crowd that proves to be stingy. They seemingly have everything they need: the presence of Jesus himself, physical sight, and a way forward with Jesus. And yet all they can do is hoard Jesus to themselves and silence Bartimaeus, because he is an annoyance along the way, and they have somewhere to go.

But Jesus does what he was called to do. He is the center of this large circle of generosity. Jesus does not heal Bartimaeus directly by ignoring the crowd. Jesus draws them into the circle. It is they who must call Bartimaeus to Jesus. It is they who must acknowledge that they can’t have Jesus without having Bartimaeus, too. And we see the circle of generosity expanding outward in concentric circles until the margins themselves are a part of that growing circle. And those margins include Bartimaeus and others who remain unnamed.

It’s so very easy to be stingy. Stinginess comes from both having too much and thinking it’s yours, and from not having enough while also being scared of never having enough. But both can be transformed into circles of generosity. When we lack what we think we need, chances are, God has given us something else to share. When we lack money, perhaps we have kindness, warmth, and a spare room or two to share. When we have too many things, maybe parting with a few of them will show us that our hearts have been expanded more by relinquishing than in accruing. This is how the circle of generosity works, and it can spread more rapidly than you could ever imagine.

But the circle of generosity ultimately says more about how we are in relationship with God. If you were to read Bartimaeus’ request to Jesus in the original Greek, he doesn’t command Jesus to restore his sight, although it sounds like this in our English version. Bartimaeus simply states his desire that he might see again. It’s not a bossy command. There’s no overly specific request that God do exactly what he wants and how he wants it. Bartimaeus knows what he wants, and that is to see again. But he is so generous that he trusts God enough to let him work it all out through Jesus.

And yet, how often do we throw our laundry list of requests at God? Give me that new job. Give me that pay raise. Take away my illness. Make my sister understand that she is throwing her life away. True, ask and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you. But let God give what he wants for you. Let God open the door in the way that he knows is best. Because God does know what’s best.

And just when we think the story of Bartimaeus has plumbed the depths of generosity, we see one more astounding thing. Not even Jesus the healer himself takes credit for what happens to Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus, he says, your faith has made you well. Give the glory to God is the implied message. It’s God’s generosity that has made this possible.

Bartimaeus, this man who seemed to lack everything, offers a challenge to each of us, whether we are rich or poor. Are we willing to take time with those who can offer us nothing in return? Are we generous with our time, even and especially, when we don’t have enough time? Do we stash away all our material resources with the desperation of a squirrel putting away acorns for winter? Do we see others as objects to be used or as people to be honored? Do we see our resources and gifts as ways to make money or as gifts to help others find fullness of life? Do we believe that God will help us and make us whole?

These are the hard questions that Bartimaeus’ generosity puts before us. And how we answer them says everything about whether we trust in God’s abundance or are blinded to it. Generosity breeds generosity. It is a vast circle that will sweep the whole world into its sway if we let it. And at its center is the One who came to show us the infinite generosity of God, who is always capable of far more than we can ask or imagine.   

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
October 24, 2021

And Yet. . .

Perhaps at some point you were told, as I was, not to begin a sentence with a conjunction. From what I gather, it’s no longer taboo, and it’s certainly not incorrect. Beginning a sentence with a conjunction can be the perfect way to change directions in a train of thought while still maintaining fluidity of style. In the last of the so-called suffering servant songs in the Book of Isaiah, one conjunction is worth gold. It is the pivot point of hope itself.

When we pick up the last of these servant songs today, we are on the downward arc of a parabola if you recall your high school mathematics classes. The story of Israel up to this point has been a difficult one. God’s people have been exiled to Babylon. The center of their liturgical life, the Temple, has been destroyed. They are lonely, bereft, and aimless in their exile. They feel convicted by their past misdeeds, and their state of distress is seen as God’s punishment for their former sins. It may be that as we continue to trudge confusedly through a lingering pandemic we, too, feel profound distress and wonder who’s to blame for this epic tragedy. Is it ourselves? Maybe the bigger question is, what is God doing?

For the people of Israel, their distress was nearly too heavy to bear. Would they ever see their true home again? How could they establish roots or sing songs in a strange land? True, there are glimpses of hope in Isaiah’s writing, hope of future restoration of a rebuilt home in Jerusalem, of a resurrected common life. The storyteller, with the benefit of hindsight, can easily drop nuggets that foreshadow future glory. But those who were in exile had no certainty of their future. They didn’t know how the story would end. In what was their hope?

Enter now, if paradoxically, the suffering servant.

Let’s be honest. We do not know who this servant is. Scholars have debated for centuries. They continue to debate. Christians have usually identified this servant with Jesus. But what we need to accept is that this servant is a mystery to us, and that is most beneficial to how we see the good news in Isaiah’s words. So, let’s accept this mystery, because if we do, it’s a gift.

The ambiguous, anonymous suffering servant does not seem promising, as we’re told right before today’s passage begins. He’s not exactly the kind of person in whom you’d naturally put your hope. His countenance is marred. He’s not lovely to gaze upon. He has been ostracized from his people. He has been wracked by suffering and disease. He has been treated horribly by others, and yet this servant opened not his mouth. Everything about this servant flies in the face of how we are taught to respond to mistreatment. There is no standing up for himself. There is no retaliation. There is not so much as a single word uttered. It is pure submission, and that, we are often told, can be problematic.

Who is this servant who enters onto the scene of Israel’s downward spiral? What can this dejected and sad servant add to a story that is already unpromising?

It’s hard, in a way, not to begin to resent this servant, for not speaking up, for letting himself be the brunt of so much cruelty. We may resent him simply because we do not know who he is and why he is in the picture.

And the downward spiral continues, circling the drain of diminishing hope, in spite of promises of a brighter future. The hole at the bottom of the drain is getting closer and closer. . .

When suddenly something happens. As we go further and further into obscure mystery, when the identity of the servant is unclear, when even the identity of the people for whom the servant suffers is unclear, something happens that is not vague at all. God creates a new future.

It all hinges on one conjunction. Though this servant had reached death’s door itself although he was blameless, yet “it was the will of the Lord to bruise him.” That’s the conjunction on which restoration and salvation hinge. Yet. But really? How is this promising? Why would God willingly inflict punishment on one of his own? Why does punishment have to happen in order for good to follow? Why is this God’s will?

And yet. . . what we see is a sudden shift in another direction. The parabola has reached its vertex. It is the nadir of the long, spiraling descent. The bottom of the parabola is the valley of death itself, and when the servant hits rock bottom, just as God’s people hit rock bottom, God does something, and then the story begins to change. It’s okay—indeed essential—to begin a sentence with a conjunction, because a new sentence is the beginning of a new future created by God.

Now, we see what God is doing. We are moving from death to life, from exile to restoration, from loneliness to community, from sin to forgiveness. But we do not understand it. How does all this goodness hinge on one person who has suffered for all? And yet. . . God is doing something very good. That is what we know.

In our own perspective, unlike the ancient people of Israel, we see the entire parabola. We know how the story ends. We know that God promises good from bad. We know that after death there is resurrection.

And yet . . . it is hard for us to move past the vertex of the parabola, that lowest point where we hit rock bottom and spring back upwards. We cannot move past the bottom of the valley because incomprehension weighs us down. We get hung up on the mystery of suffering.

It’s deep down in the valley that we are so often caught in our own traps. Don’t you know the questions? If God is so wonderful, why did he let you get sick? Why did God allow the coronavirus happen? How do you explain the co-existence of God, abject poverty, mass genocide, and natural disasters?

And yet the valley is the place where we are supposed to hang out because the valley is where God meets us. The valley is where we sit silently before the questions with which people grill us. The valley is where we have to answer with honesty, “I don’t know.” We hold the mystery of the valley with such reverence that we can’t claim to know why cancer still exists or why people still use Jesus’ name to hurt others. The valley is where we own our frailty and humility and shift the focus back to what God is doing, even and especially when it’s beyond our understanding.

The valley is where we recognize that, after all these years, we are still mystified by forgiveness, so mystified that we can’t even accept that God could forgive us. We are confused at how with a simple conjunction, God can begin a new sentence in our life. This low point is where we own our confused acceptance of everything that flies in the face of what we are so often told: that our past does not control our future, that God gives us all kinds of chances, infinite chances, to try to get it right. And none of this have we earned or deserved. It is simply given to us.

Here at the bottom of the parabola, where we stare mystery in the face, we also stare at the suffering servant, whoever it originally was. And as Christians, at the bottom of this parabola, immersed in the shadows of incomprehension, we can’t help but also look into the face of Jesus. We cannot understand why he had to suffer. We simply know that he did. We cannot know for sure why the Father had all this in his gracious providence, but we know that he did. And because it is a mystery, perhaps we should simply be grateful for God’s wondrous gift and let mystery be mystery.

As we stare at the face of Jesus, we see the One rejected by his own people, and still rejected by so many in the world. We see One who did not just passively accept death but who went boldly and lovingly into its arms to bring us safely out of the valley.

We see One for whom the world was disappointed in its expectations before they saw his glory. And we see something of ourselves, too. We hear all the cruel words of those who said that others could never expect too much of us. We feel the jabs of those who said that this small parish circling the drain could never find resurrection. We withstand the jests of those who throw us out of the comfortable circle because we dare to welcome the unloved and be generous towards those who are different.

And as we set our faces like flint to move forward, we see yet another one, so much greater than us, who set his face like flint, too. We see him at the bottom of the parabola. We weep at how he died for our salvation. We know not why it had to happen, but we know it did happen.

And yet. . . we know that the story is not ended. We know that the arc is moving up into new life. That the chastisement of the suffering servant is what can make even our bitter fragmentation whole. His stripes alone are able to heal us. His rejection means our inclusion. And his silence is the most powerful proclamation of good news we could ever know.

Make no doubt about it: it is a mystery beyond our understanding. And yet. . . if we can accept it, it is the most tremendous gift imaginable.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
October 17, 2021

Giving up What Is Possible

It may be that the lectionary has presented us today with a quintessentially Anglican passage from Scripture. When we are asked, what do Anglicans say about any number of issues, the answer is usually, “Well, it could be this or it could be that.” To some, this sounds mealy-mouthed, but when your way of being Christian is a via media, easy answers are rare.

At our best, we Episcopalians in the Anglican tradition are naturally reticent. At our best, we embody a holy humility. If God is God, then there is very little we can say with certainty about him. This is not a stance of avoidance but a respect for God’s transcendence and our own frailty.

Now, we might be a people of the via media, or the middle way, but we are perhaps more intensely a people of the via negativa, the negative way. This is the ancient Christian tradition of seeking to draw near to God by refraining from saying too much about him or by only saying what God is not. Because, God, after all, is ultimately beyond our knowing. And who better to sum up this via negativa than the great Anglo-Catholic poet T.S. Eliot.

In his poem “East Coker” from The Four Quartets, Eliot says the following, echoing the sixteenth-century mystic St. John of the Cross.

                  “In order to arrive there,

         To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,

                  You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

         In order to arrive at what you do not know

         You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

         In order to possess what you do not possess

                  You must go by the way of dispossession.

         In order to arrive at what you are not

                  You must go through the way in which you are not.

         And what you do not know is the only thing you know

         And what you own is what you do not own

         And where you are is where you are not.”

Eliot’s poem demonstrates the circularity of this way of thinking, which is frustrating to some. Perhaps you have felt like a broken record when yet another person asks for a clear stance on some complicated issue. When you seem to vacillate, you are actually being as honest as you can. This is often what it feels like when we try to say anything about God.

We might seem to be caught in a carousel of the via negativa when we try to make sense of Jesus’ encounter with the wealthy man in today’s Gospel passage. Jesus offers a blunt assessment of wealth and money in relation to the spiritual life. It seems rather plain in the end. But a closer reading of the text beckons us to eschew a simplistic reading. I’m going to complexify this text because that, I believe, is where it’s true meaning lies. Now, I really sound like an Anglican, don’t I?

Yes, this passage is about possessions and how they can become baggage in the spiritual life. As T.S. Eliot puts it, “In order to possess what you do not possess/You must go by the way of dispossession.” But Jesus also intimates that his words are about much more than material possessions and wealth. So, if we want to distill one maxim from Jesus’ words today, and to riff on T.S. Eliot’s words, we might say, “To gain what is impossible, we must let go of what is possible.”

Isn’t this what Jesus suggests? For mortals salvation is impossible, but for God, all things are possible. It’s vexing to encounter these words. We are left with a desperate hopelessness that we have been given no clear clues towards attaining salvation. There is, in fact, nothing we can do to attain it. And this is precisely the point. “To gain what is impossible, we must let go of what is possible.”

What is possible for the rich man are those things that, in some sense, are easy to accomplish. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother. And like the rich man, we might easily say, “Jesus, I have kept all these things from my youth.” But, as Jesus says, this is not enough. “To gain what is impossible, we must let go of what is possible.”

For the rich man, what was possible was to keep all the commandments and to check all the boxes in his spiritual life. And even though he seemed to shirk the charge to sell all that he had and give the money to the poor, perhaps even that action would have been possible for him had he persevered. And yet, based on his own efforts, he would nevertheless have fallen short of that impossible eternal goal of salvation.

This passage is not so much about the things we hoard and treasure. It’s about using those things, whether it’s money or our charitable works, to earn something that can only be a gift from God. And the only way to inch closer to receiving God’s gift of salvation is to let go of what is possible so that God can give us the impossible, which is eternal life with him. The things that are possible may be good and even necessary in our lives of discipleship, but God demands something more for salvation.

It may be that you have come here today longing for the final word on riches and possessions. Maybe you want the reassurance that hanging on to your wealth is really no impediment to discipleship. Maybe you want someone to tell you quite clearly that you must give it all up in order to follow Jesus. But I suspect that, in the end, when we desire the neatly packaged recipe for the path towards salvation, Jesus will always tell us that we still lack one thing, and that one thing might be a sense of holy humility. It might be that we lack a tolerance for the discomfort of not always knowing the answer when it comes to God. It might be that we lack a willingness to let go of what is possible for us, because what is possible for us becomes the way of controlling our own salvation.

It is true that for many, wealth and riches become a stumbling block in the life of discipleship. It is true that for others, it’s their pride, their envy, their resentments, their judgment of others. For some, it’s their dutiful obedience in taking all the right steps into heaven. The truth is that it’s different for every single person. For “to gain what is impossible, we must let go of what is possible.”

And frankly, this may not seem like good news. We may feel as if we are playing a cruel game that we can never win, like one of those claw machines in an arcade that never seem to pick up the toy you desire, no matter how much money you put in. God can seem like a hungry beast that we must constantly feed but who never gives us the salvation we long for.

But this misses the point. The hungry beasts that strip us dry but offer nothing substantive in return are those voices among us that demand our money in exchange for status. The hungry beast is the world in which one’s value is based on achieving an impossible goal of perfection. The hungry beast is the vast amount of material need that we think we can satisfy on our own to gain our salvation. But all these endeavors fall short and take something of our souls, because, in the end, it’s not possible to earn our way into heaven.

But Jesus tells us that “to gain what is impossible, we must let go of what is possible.” Sure, we can bone up our resumes, fill up our individual treasure houses, and fake our perfection. But we will gain nothing for it, and we might even lose our souls. It is true that following the possible commandments of God is a necessary part of Christian discipleship, but the impossible way of salvation is a mystery given only by God.

To gain the impossible, is to let go of the possible dream that we can ever be finished with the life of discipleship. It is to give up the easy answers that are peddled in so many churches. To quote T.S. Eliot, it’s “to go through the way in which you are not.” To be certain of our futures and to have all the answers on how to find salvation is like a camel trying to go through the eye of a needle.

The task Jesus has given us, to gain the impossible by letting go of what is possible is not a trap. It is a gift. If we can accept it, God will accept us where we are and then show us the way to eternal life. We can’t show ourselves into heaven. For us, it’s an impossible task, but for God, all things are possible.

 Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 10, 2021

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.