On the Level Plain

Air travel has a way of bringing out the worst in a person. It starts with remote check-in. Long gone are the days when you paid for your ticket, were guaranteed an assigned seat, and could check a piece of luggage for free. Now, remote check-in might require you to pay an extra fee to choose your seat before arriving at the gate.

And then all the social stratification begins. At the time of boarding, the hordes are divvied up at the gate into first class, priority boarding, or some elite club based on the airline. At the time of boarding, the hordes are divvied up at the gate into first class, priority boarding, TSA pre-check, or some elite club based on the airline. Stepping onto the plane itself brings more frustrations. Do you ever feel that those in business class are pitying you as you make your way to the very back of the plane while your shoulder bag smacks people on the aisle seats? Or are you the one in business class?

Being packed into cramped seats in the economy section doesn’t do much to enhance self-esteem. You are handed a tiny packet of nuts if you’re lucky, and anything you might purchase is over-priced. You begin to feel sorry for yourself because you are subjected to such demeaning conditions. Meanwhile, the extra leg room in the front of the plane is enjoyed with some amount of unspoken gloating.

No wonder it’s so easy to begin judging others on the flight. Do you ever find yourself doing this? The person in front of you insists on putting the seat back as far as it will go, slamming your laptop up against your legs. How inconsiderate! The person seated next to you watching that show must be very shallow. And shouldn’t the mask be worn over nose and mouth?

It seems that it all started back before you ever arrived at the airport. From the point of remote check-in, you were already assigned to a social compartment. For the limited duration of your flight, you fume at those with more leg room, and they feel sorry for you as you eat your peanuts while being elbowed by your neighbor.

The superficial social stratification that is intrinsic to modern day plane travel is nothing compared to the vast chasms of inequity and inequality within our society. But being subjected to even minor inconveniences can certainly highlight our predisposition towards knee-jerk judgments, can’t it? And these hasty judgments of others usually belie just how complicated life really is.

It would be easy to make rash judgments of that vast crowd of people addressed by Jesus in the sixth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. This motley crowd includes locals, as well as foreigners, the diseased and those possessed by unclean spirits. Presumably there are also poor folk, and hungry ones, those in mourning, and others who are judged harshly because they have followed this itinerant Jewish preacher. Many have sought out Jesus because they truly believe that there is some mysterious, potent power in this man from Galilee that enables him to heal and to cure. I imagine there are others who scoff at the supposed displays of power and who want to jeer from the sidelines. Also present are the wealthy, the well-sated, the ones who laugh easily, and those who are well liked.

In Jesus’ blessings and curses, we are prone to see a tidy Western dichotomy. It would be so easy to pit the poor against the rich, the hungry against the full, the ebullient against the mournful, the scorned against the popular. If we’re not careful, we begin judging who should be in what category based on our own shallow assumptions.

Such judgment works both ways. Surely the poor are lacking because of something they have done. Is it their sin? And the hungry? They simply haven’t worked hard enough to earn their keep. The mournful are only lamenting the consequences of their poor choices or the brunt of God’s wrath. As for those who are reviled, what can they expect in return for following this controversial rabbi?

But if you have a soft spot for the downtrodden—the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, and the scorned—the woes are particularly delicious, aren’t they? Like the downfall of the bad guy in a movie, we delight in seeing the rich get their comeuppance. We love St. Luke’s great reversals, where those who are hungry will be sent empty away. Laughter will not last forever, right? And the popular ones are no different from those phony prophets of old.

It’s the same in our polarized society. Those on the mountain can so easily rail at those below, equating their misfortune with a failure in personal responsibility or with a deserved judgment from God. And those in the valley wait impatiently for the day of vindication when the prosperity gospel is shown to be a fraud. We live in stark categories that pit us against one another: the poor versus the rich, the powerful versus the weak, the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, the privileged versus the destitute, Republican versus Democrat, the religious against the secular, the well-educated versus the uneducated.

It would be so easy to valorize one side. Voluntary poverty or hunger is the way to heaven. And those who suffer in this life are de facto blessed because of their low estate. Those who are living well here below are mere hedonists who will pay on judgment day. We are either on top of the mountain or in the valley. Where else can we be?

Is it any surprise, then, that for so many, Jesus can only be in one but not both of those places at the same time? It all depends on whose side he’s on. As Lord, he reigns from the mountain, the triumphant friend of those who have done well and received their reward. As Savior, he is with the downtrodden in the valley, shaking his fist at the oppressors above. Jesus becomes the judge that either group wishes him to be, inherently opposed to the other side.

And this easily morphs into pie-in-the-sky religion. Heaven is the escape from earthly suffering, and hell is the just reward of those who have had too much of a good thing.

But this is not the vision St. Luke gives us. St. Matthew’s Beatitudes may be delivered by Jesus on a mountaintop, but in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is neither on the mountain or in the valley. He is on a level place when he announces the blessings and curses. Jesus stands, not in the place of easy equalities and simplistic assumptions but on the even plain teeming with earthly complexities.

On this plain, Jesus knows that there is no simple causal relationship between misfortune and sin. People are more nuanced than they seem on the surface. Here, inexplicably, bad things do happen to good people and good things to bad people. Here, the gospel makes no easy promises of good fortune, but neither are the poor and hungry automatically placed in heaven. Here, people of all nations come for healing and are cured. Here, the extraordinary power of the gospel is made available to all, knowing no boundaries.

On this level plain, God’s justice asserts itself not with brute force but with truth. Jesus, as Savior, is released from the vicious cycle of human judgment that is only rooted in vindictiveness. Here, the haves and the have-nots find their common ground in mutual poverty, even if of different sorts. On this plain, rich and poor, hungry and full are fed at the same Table with the same Bread and Wine.

On this level plain, Jesus stands as the one who comes to save all of humanity, the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, the hungry and the full, the popular and the unloved. Here, Jesus stands not as judge looking down from the mountain condescendingly to condemn. Instead, rooted among us in all our complexity and sin, he looks up at us with love and compassion.

Our Lord is calling you and me to stand with him on that level plain, to bring all our sorrows and joys and all our complicated humanity. He is calling us, the Church, to testify that on this level plain, all can find healing. On this plain, all nations, tribes, and races meet to learn that, in some way, they are all poor. When everything else threatens to divide us, our common poverty brings us together.

Here, on this plain Jesus has come down to meet us, just as we are. He rules as Savior and Lord not from above but on the ground with us. And he looks at us, not with condemnation from on high, but up at us with a judgment that heals. And he tells us that there is only one assumption we can make: on the level plain, we are loved by him.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 13, 2022

Getting the Order Right

Combination locks make me nervous. It all started back in middle school when I had to wrestle with them, both on my hall locker and then on my gym locker. It always felt like a race against the clock. With less than five minutes until the next class, my nervousness made fiddling with a combination lock a dreadful experience.

I’m sure you know the kind I’m talking about. 3 – 2 – 1 is apparently the trick to unlocking them. Turn the dial three times to the right to clear it and then stop on the first number of the combination. Then turn counterclockwise twice to pause on the second number. Finally, turn once more to the right, resting on the third number of the combination.

It sounds simple, but when you’re up against the clock, it’s nerve-wracking. Did I really make one full turn? Did I remember to clear the lock with three full turns at the beginning? Did I line the pointer up with the number? But just remember: 3 – 2 – 1. And above all, know that order is important.

Scripture frequently presents us with episodes where something is amiss, and then Jesus arrives on the scene to fix everything. It’s as if, until his arrival, people are anxiously fiddling with a lock, getting the sequence of numbers and turns all wrong. And then Jesus steps up, turns the dials with just the right amount of precision, and everything unlocks.

Do you remember when Jesus is with his disciples and a man brings his son for healing from epilepsy? The disciples were unable to cure him, said the man. And so, Jesus takes matters into his own hands, and the boy is cured. Then there is the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda. He has been ill for thirty-eight years and has been waiting for someone—anyone—to help him into the pool so he can experience the healing waters. But when Jesus encounters him, he skips the pool business altogether and orders the man to stand, take up his mat, and walk. And when Jesus and his disciples are faced with a large and hungry crowd of people, the disciples are anxious and doubt that there is any way to feed so many stomachs. But Jesus starts to give orders, and before long, a miraculous supply of bread and fish feeds 5,000 people, with leftovers remaining.

Jesus often appears at the right time when there is a problem, and somehow, the lock springs free. We marvel at how it happens, and we wonder just why no one else can figure things out.

It’s no different when Jesus’s future disciples are washing their nets by the side of the lake of Gennesaret. It has been a very long night, and it has been a very unproductive one. Fishing is naturally a slow-paced endeavor, but it’s absolute torture when hours of casting the nets renders no results. I imagine the disciples were forlorn, in addition to being exhausted. It must have been a sad sight, seeing their haggard appearances washing those empty nets that were bereft of any catch.

As he is wont to do, Jesus finds these disciples. They don’t know they need him, but he does. Even though a large crowd is pressing in on Jesus to hear him deliver God’s word, he is more interested in those lonely, tired fishermen cleaning their nets and probably wondering what they did wrong all night.

3 – 2 – 1. Three times to the right to clear the lock. Then twice to the left. Then once to the right. Were they casting their nets on the wrong side of the boat? Did they go far enough out into the deep? What did they miss, and how did an entire night go by without catching so much as a single fish?

But Jesus finds these disciples as if following a homing beacon. Inexplicably, he gets into Simon Peter’s boat. He orders him to push off a bit from the shore. He teaches the crowds from the boat. And then, he asks Simon Peter to go farther into the deep and let the nets down for a catch.

But, Jesus, Simon says, I already did this. I thought I did it right. Three times clockwise, then two counterclockwise, then one more time clockwise. Or perhaps I had the wrong combination? Oh, well, if you say so, Master, I’ll try again. And the lock springs.         

It begs the question, what did Simon and his fellow fishermen miss? Were they in the right place to fish? Was it just an off night? Did they fall asleep and miss their catch? Or is Jesus the only one with the ability to have any success in this fishing venture?

Yes, it is, of course, a miracle. The vast quantity of fish that ends up breaking the nets is none other than the work of God. How could such a catch have materialized the night before? It’s only God’s power working through Jesus that brings in this surprising catch of fish.

And as so often happens in Scripture, it might seem as if this is a trick question. The poor disciples are made to look like failures because they have not gotten something right or their faith isn’t strong enough. And Jesus always provides the key or the right answer.

But St. Luke masterfully presents the details of this miracle story so that we are given the key to this stubborn lock. It’s about Jesus, of course, but it’s also about something these disciples need from him. It’s not really that they’ve failed; it’s that after meeting the Christ, they are enlightened. When Peter falls to his knees and asks Jesus to depart from him because he’s a sinner, we might be tempted to think this is the obstacle. Peter just doesn’t have enough faith. He simply isn’t holy enough for God to act in his desperation.

Except this doesn’t seem to be the real answer. When Peter falls on his knees before the Christ, it’s as if he is saying, Master, I see now. It’s not that I forgot the combination to the lock. It’s not that I wasn’t trying hard enough. It’s not that the lock was defective. The problem is that I didn’t get the order right.

All night, I was fishing, hoping against hope for a catch, at least one fish. I know the fish were there. I wasn’t in the wrong place. At the time, I just didn’t understand. I was trying to go it alone and do it all by myself. I wasn’t responding to your call because you hadn’t called me yet. But when I encountered you and heeded your summons, everything changed.

Isn’t this a kind of parable for ministry? We so often profess that we are working hard and being creative as we faithfully undertake our various projects and ministry endeavors. We cast our nets, ready to haul in large catches. In many cases, we’re not even afraid of the deep water. But then we find ourselves, like those first disciples, the morning after we have tried and come up empty, wondering what went wrong.

If this story of the calling of the first disciples is indeed a parable for discipleship and ministry, we may have missed something. Could we, too, have gotten the order wrong? Perhaps we forgot the most important thing. We forgot that every series of events we undertake in the name of the gospel springs from God’s call to us. And unless we begin by responding to God’s call and asking God to help us, our nets will just be empty, time after time. The disciples came up dry until Jesus found them on that lake shore, called them, and then they obeyed.

If the order is right, if God calls and we respond by venturing out into the risky deep to cast our nets, the lock springs. We might find ourselves hauling in nets full to the breaking point. God has moved us into gospel work himself, but we need others to help us. And we invite them to share in this work with us. Community forms, and there is evangelism in the making. In addition to an overabundance of fish, God has also given us community.

This is how evangelism works. It’s not so much “build it and they will come” but let God help you fish, and others will need and want to come help. Maybe the Church’s growth lies in inviting other people into a place where they are fed by engaging in ministry that responds to God’s call. And it all starts with God’s call and a simple response of yes.

Remember: 3 – 2 – 1. Three times to the right, two to the left, and once more to the right. You have to remember the combination. But above all, order is everything, and it all starts with God.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 6, 2022

Not Taking No for an Answer

Two unrelated and diametrically opposed endeavors from the past fifteen years might have something to say to today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah. The first dates back to 2008, probably in Japan, when rage rooms were developed. Sometimes called smash rooms or anger rooms, they are now popular across the world. A brief Google search will reveal that there are rage rooms nearby, both in Philadelphia and in West Chester.

These rooms are places where people who are presumably filled with pent-up anger pay money to spend time smashing things. Some rage rooms allow you to bring in your own boxes of things to break. Others have mock living room sets that you can delight in destroying.

Rage rooms are supposedly about letting off some steam and having fun while doing so, all in an apparently safe environment. But a 2017 study showed that perhaps these rage rooms are not effective in serving as a safety valve for bottled-up emotions. They can, in fact, increase one’s anger.[1]

I, myself, have a number of questions about such rooms, even though I’ve never been to one. What is the real goal of such rooms? Is it really about letting off steam? And is breaking a bunch of glass with a hammer the most effective way to cope with stress? What happens when you leave the room? Does your anger disappear, or does it simply manifest in different ways? And when you become angry again, is it necessary to return to the rage room to deal with it?

Now, the second, very different endeavor that might tie into the Old Testament reading from today is the 2013 opening of the Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand. You may recall that in 2011, a disastrous earthquake devastated the city of Christchurch and severely damaged the Anglican cathedral. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, often characterized as a “disaster architect,” was invited to design a temporary cathedral that could also host concerts and civic events. Shigeru Ban came up with plans for a so-called cardboard cathedral, constructed from cardboard tubes, timber, and steel. The cathedral congregation still worships in this building to this day. Significantly, this temporary building stands on land where Anglicans in Christchurch built the very first church of permanent materials in the mid-nineteenth century.[2]

It strikes me that the production of the Cardboard Cathedral is precisely the opposite of a rage room. A rage room purports to serve a purpose by providing people a venue in which to let off steam, but I’m not sure it really does this. Rather, it seems to channel anger into wreaking destruction, even if on low-value objects. There is nothing creative about it.

But the cardboard cathedral is the result of a creative response to disaster. When faced with the mystery of human tragedy and suffering, creativity is not always the most obvious option. But when channeled properly, it enables a movement from destruction to rebirth.

Now, with these images in mind, let’s return to the prophet Jeremiah and to the very beginning of the book that bears his name. We hear Jeremiah’s call story, where God’s word comes to him, unbidden, and informs him that he has been predestined to serve as God’s prophet to the nations.

Jeremiah is wise and discerning. He knows this is not going to be easy, and so he makes excuses. He is too young, he says. It’s not dissimilar from God’s call to Moses, who hems and haws and tries to get out of a call, too. But with both Moses and Jeremiah, God is not taking no for an answer.

It seems that Jeremiah has no choice. God touches his mouth and puts his words there for Jeremiah to speak in the face of a recalcitrant people who will not want to hear these words. They will not be naturally inclined to turn back to God quite so easily.

Jeremiah is given an enormous charge. He is granted a significant amount of power to act in God’s name. He is able “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” But lest we forget what is really happening here, we must remember that Jeremiah is merely a vessel for God to act. Even if we’re reluctant to attribute destruction directly to God’s hands, it is God who acts in the midst of tearing down and overthrowing. It is God who can then build and plant.

God has done this before, after all, hasn’t he? When God’s good creation had so lapsed into sin and evil, in the time of Noah, a flood wiped out all of creation except for those saved on the ark. And then God renewed this creation and repopulated the land.

When God’s people later turned away from him and rebelled, and when they forgot to own up to their part in their covenant relationship, God’s people fell prey to their warring neighbors. Jeremiah is writing in such a time when God’s people are forced into exile and their Jerusalem home has been destroyed.

But after a time, God’s people returned to the Holy City. They were able to rebuild, and the Temple was restored to its central place in the life of Israel. And centuries later, when God’s Beloved Son has breathed his last on the cross and when Jesus’s disciples are left, forsaken and alone, God rebuilt once again. By the power of the resurrection, God’s people were empowered by the Holy Spirit and the Church was formed from the very rubble of a Roman crucifixion. God is not absent when destruction occurs, but God is most obviously seen in the rebuilding that follows. God’s nature is creative and is inclined towards restoration.

But for us, it is indeed the immediate aftermath of destruction that is the most spiritually precarious time. This moment, in between dismantling and rebuilding, is charged with great potential. Two directions are possible: one is towards a place of eternal despair, the other is towards a place of eternal hope. In this moment, a weighty decision lies. One can choose death, or one can choose life.

And this is why the development of rage rooms and the building of a temporary cathedral in New Zealand are so very different. One act deals only with anger and a need to express emotion through violence, even if it masquerades as silly fun. The end is destruction, with no positive response to reconstruction. The other moves from devastation into creative hope, from death into life.

And the great spiritual temptation for all of us is to choose wrongly. It is satisfying to hold onto our resentment in the face of injustice. It is pleasurable to feel righteous anger and then to act on it. It’s tempting never to let our rage go or to imagine that it can ever be transformed. All of this is quite easy. It’s not difficult to tear down, but it’s much, much more difficult to build up.

God’s words to the prophet Jeremiah suggest that destruction is not the end of the story. While it’s impossible to avoid misfortune or tragedy, and while on this side of heaven there will always be some measure of pain and loss, hope does not have to smolder in the ruins.

God made it clear to Jeremiah that what follows the plucking up and the pulling down, the destruction and the overthrowing, is building and planting. God is always moving us from places of destruction to places of renewal. God is always pushing us from death into life.

God will not take no for an answer. God didn’t accept Jeremiah’s no, and God won’t accept ours. It is assumed that each of us, as we walk in the paths God has prepared for us, will face rejection. We will face opposition. We will encounter destructiveness, whether in others’ behavior or in the suffering that is part and parcel of life. We will be tempted to try to evade God’s call, like Jeremiah. And even after we’ve accepted God’s call, we will also be tempted to claim power through our rage, to mope in the aftermath of devastation, to relive our ruinous past and to resist creative transformation.

But hear the call to the prophet Jeremiah and learn from it. You and I are more than our rage or anger. We are more than the wreckage of our lives and the world. It is sometimes in the tearing down that God is able to build something newer and better. And everywhere that human sin wreaks havoc, God is waiting to rebuild and usher us into places of forgiveness and hope. 

However much we might protest or choose complacency, God will not take no for an answer. When we are faced with despair or hope, when we can go the way of death or the way of life, God is very clear about where he is sending us. God won’t accept our no. Choose life, he says to us. Choose life, and live.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 30, 2022

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_room

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardboard_Cathedral

More than Luck

This past week, the New York Times featured an article on the fascinating history of how messenger RNA vaccines were created. The article begins and ends with Dr. Barney Graham, a virus expert in Bethesda, Maryland, at the Vaccine Research Center. In 2013, when the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome—or MERS—virus was killing one out of three infected people, Dr. Graham wondered if one of his lab scientists had contracted MERS while abroad. It turns out that the scientist had only a common cold. But it led Dr. Graham to an insight: maybe studying the ordinary cold virus of the lab scientist could help him with the vexing problem of creating a vaccine for MERS.

The eventual fabrication of a messenger RNA vaccine to address COVID-19 drew together the work of Dr. Graham and three other major efforts spanning over 60 years. It all started when two Pennsylvania scientists explored what seemed to be a wild idea. Maybe messenger RNA could cause cells to produce bits of a virus. It turns out that they could. The other major scientific endeavor came out of gene therapy, as scientists looked for a way to protect genetic molecules with fatty membranes as they made their way to human cells. And finally, the third piece of this large puzzle, involved the U.S. government’s massive undertaking to find a vaccine for the AIDS virus.

When on December 31, 2019, Dr. Graham first saw a report of a new pneumonia that had originated in Wuhan, China, he contacted a colleague and noted that it was time. All the complex work hitherto accomplished—the three scientific efforts spanning over 60 years and including scientists from various countries—was now coming together and could possibly be used for this puzzling new virus from China. And at the center of this astounding story was something that seemed to be a fanciful bit of intuition. A lab scientist’s mundane cold proved to be helpful in the ultimate production of a vaccine to combat COVID-19.

Dr. Hadi Yassine was that scientist from Dr. Graham’s lab, and when recently asked about how his common cold virus sparked efforts to create a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus, Dr. Yassine remarked: “You can consider it luck. . . or you can consider it a blessing.”[1]

For people of faith, to consider something as luck seems almost blasphemous. What seems to be mere luck to some can only be a blessing, even if in disguise, to those of us who believe in the power of God. Seeing something as just a bit of luck assumes that we inhabit a world of disparate pieces, randomly thrown together by fate. When the pieces align, it’s good luck. When they don’t, it’s bad luck.

But a universe governed by God, who can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine involves far more than luck. Such a universe radiates God’s blessing, even in what appear to be chance encounters. Diverse people are not disconnected from one another, duking it out in a competition for resources. The world that God has given us as our home is one where God, humanity, and all of creation are inextricably intertwined.

The apostle Paul’s metaphor of the human body to describe the living Body of Christ is so well-known in the Christian tradition that it seems almost banal. And yet I would venture to say that it’s the least understood of theological images. Isn’t it ironic that when the words of Holy Scripture cannot captivate our imaginations enough to illumine the bond of the human family, we must turn to science?

Science, which is so often unnecessarily used to combat religion, is one of the most powerful witnesses to a core precept of Christian faith: our undeniable relatedness and responsibility for one another. Look at the inseparable connections of the component parts of an ecosystem. If you can’t heed St. Paul’s words, just think of the last time your splitting headache was the result of eye strain. And if you’re still looking for evidence that none of us can exist as an isolated subject within creation, think about this horrible virus that has kept us in pandemic for nearly two years. At what point will the light bulb go on and will the human race realize that what is playing out in science is directly related to our moral cohesion as a society?

Or is it mere luck that a time of pandemic has brought into bold relief some of our societal sins? Is it just mere luck that the presence of a vaccine for the coronavirus has highlighted the gross social inequities among us, where parts of the world are heavily vaccinated and poorer parts cannot find enough shots to get into arms? Is there any connection between civil unrest and a raging pandemic that won’t leave us alone?

For those who think everything is just luck, there is no relation between the constitutive parts. These isolated incidents are simply random die thrown onto the gameboard of life. Their apparent lack of connection is just more evidence that we inhabit an aleatoric universe. The fact that there is so much chaos these days is simply another reminder that there is no cohesive meaning to our lives.

But let’s go back to the Christian view. None of this can be mere luck. There must somehow be a blessing in it all, even if it’s hidden. And if life is no more than a lucky game, then how is God working in the small details of life? Luck refuses to believe that the minor encounter of two people in the same place at the right time might be for a greater purpose. Luck could not comprehend something good or unifying coming out of a heated conversation between people with very different viewpoints. Luck has no time for the ordinary moments of life, where disparate pieces of a puzzle find their matching partners in surprising ways. Because luck is just luck. Luck has no higher purpose.

And St. Paul clearly understood this when he lectured the Church in Corinth. Paul knew that the assortment of random members, strong and weak, within the human body are not haphazardly put together. And Paul also knew that God has beaten us at our own game. God has always known that, because of human sin, we will give preference to the powerful members and ignore the weaker ones, and so God has inverted our values by bestowing dignity on those parts of the body that are most at risk of neglect.

You see, God has graced us with a built-in mechanism for looking out for one another. By linking us together as part of Christ’s living Body, God has handed us a supreme gift, if we can only recognize and accept it.

We can survey the social, medical, and environmental landscape around us and see it in one of two ways: as bad luck or as radiant with hidden blessings from God. It could appear blasphemous to expect to wring a blessing in the worst of times, but if God is truly at work among us, there is always a blessing to find.

And the blessing becomes more apparent when we realize that our ties to one another are not based on biology but on our constitution as Christ’s sacred Body on earth. If you think your presence here today is luck, think again. Have you considered that God has brought you to Good Shepherd for a very particular reason? Do you have any idea of how your own unique gifts are needed in this place for Christ’s gospel to flourish? Have you thought that refusing to share your gifts with this part of the Body of Christ can weaken the whole system? Are you thinking that you can just show up for Mass as an individual and leave afterwards as an individual? Or can you imagine that when someone in the pew across the church is hurting, you are, too? And if that person is hurting, maybe your sympathetic hurt is God’s way of healing the hurt. You see, in this interconnected universe we inhabit, nothing is random.

In such an interrelated world, science can teach us about our duty as members of Christ’s Body. In such a bound-up world, a common cold can spark insight to produce a vaccine for one of the world’s most traumatic viruses. In such a world, no person, no thing, no part of creation can say, “I have no need of you.” We all need one another. You are here today because of more than mere luck. It will take far more than luck to heal our deepest divisions. And just maybe in the most random encounters of your life, you will find, not luck, but God’s blessing.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 23, 2022

[1] “Halting Progress and Happy Accidents: How mRNA Vaccines Were Made,” Gina Kolata and Benjamin Mueller, The New York Times, January 15, 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/15/health/mrna-vaccine.html

The Party Goes On

Can’t you hear the music and the sound of voices? There has been dancing for quite a while now, several days, in fact. Everyone is having a wonderful time. The food has been plenteous. Until this point, the wine has flowed freely.

But now, Houston, we have a problem. There is a whisper, a rumor at first, that the wine has run out. This is unfortunate and unprecedented. It is extremely bad form and poor planning for the host not to have anticipated this possibility. The guests who have journeyed from far and wide to attend this several-day celebration will not be happy.

The rumor grows into louder voices of discontent. The wine has indeed run out. The music has come to a screeching halt. The dancing has ceased, and people are no longer just milling about aimlessly. They are threatening to riot if this problem is not solved soon, very soon.

Mary, Jesus’s mother, notices the problem. Discreetly, she finds her son, because he will know what to do. She knows that he will be able to do something. “Jesus,” she whispers urgently, “the wine has gone out.”

Jesus’s reply seems harsh, although it really isn’t. At first, he replies as some of us might be tempted to do upon learning that someone has not planned properly. “Woman, a lack of preparation on the part of the wedding host does not constitute an emergency on mine.” Fair point. Why should this crisis that stems from poor planning force Jesus into performing some miracle? He is not into parlor tricks. And besides, it is not yet the hour of his glory.

But then, after this equivocation, he does do something. Mary knew all along that he could and would. The other guests at the wedding are pretty clueless, though. Maybe the disciples know that Jesus will do something, maybe not. And, in the end, only the inner circle understands who it is that resolves this crisis and how he does so.

I wonder about Jesus’s initial comment, which seems to dismiss the request to fix the problem at hand. Is it simply his way of pushing reset on the whole situation? Jesus fully intends to do something, but he also needs to demonstrate in some way that the miracle he will perform is more than just a magic show. It is more than being a miracle worker on demand. The sign that Jesus performs is more than just a flashy display of power. The sign points not only to who Jesus is as Son of God but to God’s ability to bring extraordinary grace into situations of seeming scarcity. Jesus’s sign does not point to him. It points to what is possible with God.

The servants, whom Jesus has conscripted into his work, know the full details. This small group of servants, who do what Jesus tells them to do, have eyes that are now opened by the miracle they have witnessed. They can see that even six empty stone jars can be filled not just with water, but with the very best wine. Something that seems unrelated to the crisis at hand now becomes the means of resolving it.

Because Mary trusts in Jesus’s power, and because of God’s boundless grace working through Jesus, the party continues. The feasting goes on. The music starts back up again. This quiet miracle has transpired, unbeknownst to many at the party. But the servants have been changed. They do what Jesus tells them to do. And their vision will never be the same again.

We in the Church are in a position not dissimilar from those guests at the wedding party in Cana. For centuries and centuries, the Church feasted and partied, riding high on privilege and general favor in society. The Church counted on the party lasting forever. The food would always be plentiful. The wine would never run out. People would flock to the church in good times and in bad. All the priest had to do was ring the Mass bell and the faithful would come.

But in more recent decades, things have changed. Rumors and whispers have grown into anxious cries. The wine is running out! The guests are leaving the party! The invited guests are staying away! And those who still come are complaining that the wine has disappeared. Where are the people? The Church has lost her moorings! Things look so different than they used to! There is a crisis!

And the Church has responded in various ways. There have been demands. Jesus, do something! Some have resorted to parlor tricks, putting all hope in the latest gimmicks, testing God to work some miracle that will solve all the problems.

We have forgotten Jesus’s very own words not to be anxious and have drunk anxiety like it was going out of style. We have become obsessed with everything that could go wrong and that seems to be going wrong. We have let worries over money impede the proclamation of the gospel, lacking any faith that God could do something surprising among us.

And at this moment in time, our anxiety has been ratcheted up even more as we lament our ecclesiastical crisis as well as a medical one. We have good reason to worry about the party stopping entirely, because for periods of time, it seems as if it has. Just when we thought the wine was about to run out, we found more of it, and the music started again, only to be shut down in the past two months. How can we feast if we can’t gather the way we expect? Who will solve this massive problem on our hands?

We are just like those wedding guests who saw only a problem when the wine began to run out. Except that, in the end, the faithful servants who did what Jesus told them to do learned something that might be helpful to us. I imagine those servants learned that the wrong way of thinking is to see a crisis  as just a problem needing to be solved. The servants learned that if we simply shift our vision, we could re-envision our worst moments as laden with God’s potential to surprise us with his abundant grace.

It would be dishonest to conceive of our present situation as anything other than a crisis. But having settled that, we, as members of Christ’s living Body, have two options. We can respond anxiously to this crisis, or we can enter into a spirit of trust, like Mary, assuming that God will do something good and will surprise us.

Our assumption must be that the party will continue. The feasting here and now, even when it pauses for a time, will continue forever. Admittedly, this is difficult to see when people are dying and getting sick, when others are starving because the food has disappeared, and when the loneliness of this time threatens to overwhelm us.

But the Church, if she chooses, can embrace this moment to proclaim something that we have always known. It is our moment to teach the world. Even in the most incomprehensible crises, God is still working his purpose out, however mysterious it may be. Parlor tricks are not the answer to declining attendance in the Church. Praying to God is not the same as expecting miracles on demand. And when we seem to be looking at empty wine barrels and are staring at a host of empty water jugs, God can surprise us and give us wine. Really good wine.

Just as Mary knew that her son would do something, shouldn’t we expect that God will do something in the midst of our crises, even if we don’t know what it will look like? Now, is the time for the Church to pave the way for a new kind of thinking by learning from our own struggles. We can wring our hands and complain that there is no more wine while we gaze vacantly at empty water jugs. Or we can trust that the Holy Spirit, moving among us, will lead us into all truth and show us what to do when no one else has the answers. And it just might surprise us.

This is the moment for the Church. This is the moment for the gospel to break into a world that has no answers and is only trying to solve a problem. It is our task to tell the world that we can’t wait until the conditions are perfect to move on. We are to go forth boldly in trust, knowing that God will enable the party to continue. The empty water jugs will be surprisingly full by God’s grace. And the music will still play on.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 16, 2022

Giving Us Our Names Back

Two occasions from my first year of college over twenty years ago have remained in my memory. The first was during orientation week when the Vice President for Student Affairs met with groups of students from the new matriculating class. The university I attended was not especially large, but my matriculating class was still probably at least 800 students or so, if not more. When we were gathered in a room with the Vice President for Student Affairs, he then proceeded to call us each by name, without reference to photos or any other documents. At the time, I thought this was an astounding feat, and I still do. I was a shy freshman from a small town in southeast Texas at a major university. It was a vulnerable moment of transition in life, and I felt, in some small sense, valued.

The second instance I remember from my first month or so in college was being in a large sociology class. It was a popular course because of the professor, and therefore the class size of nearly 100 students was unusually large for that particular university. We were seated throughout a vast lecture hall, and this professor did just what the Vice President for Student Affairs had done. He called us each by name at the beginning of one class, without reference to any notes. He had also bothered to learn one additional fact about each of us, such as our hometown or a special interest we held.

Understandably, both these events from my college days have stayed with me. The uncanny capacity for memorization of these two faculty members was a part of student lore. But for me personally, these two stories are important not because of the phenomenal memories of two faculty members but because in a significant time of transition in my life, I felt valued. As one of thousands of students admitted to a university with a competitive application process, I found myself more than just a number. Moving from a smaller high school to a much larger university, I was more than just a statistic. I was a name. I was seen as a unique person.

Now, maybe this seems pretty straightforward. Of course, each of us is unique. Even identical twins have their own personalities, after all. Two music students studying with the same teacher and performing the same technical exercises all play differently; they play their personalities. It is no news flash that our individuality is an established part of what it means to be human.

The problem is that this common knowledge seems to be so easily ignored in society. Sometimes the most basic knowledge is the victim of collective amnesia. So, I ask you this question: do you feel like you are valued? Do you feel like you are called by name as a unique person? Do you feel like more than just a statistic or a number in the world’s vast population?

I believe it’s the extraordinary task of the Church to remind the world of what it has forgotten. That’s why the importance of being called by name is a central theme of today’s feast, the Baptism of Our Lord.

Let’s get one thing straight, though. Today’s feast is really about Jesus. It’s about his baptism, which is different from ours. It’s about his unique status as the Beloved Son of God. But because of all those things, today’s feast is also about us. It’s difficult to talk about Jesus’s baptism without talking about ours. And because of who Jesus is, and because we are baptized into his death and resurrection, we can claim something about our own identity that might seem preposterous if it weren’t actually true.

Of all today’s Scripture readings, it’s the prophet Isaiah’s words that strike me as hitting the mark here. Isaiah’s words were spoken to the people of Israel. In this passage, God speaks to his beloved children, his chosen ones, who are in exile from Jerusalem. They long to be back in their true home. How could they not believe that God had forsaken them in their current state? How could they not equate their misfortune with judgment or God’s wrath?

And into the midst of this state of despair, God speaks tender words that are profoundly personal and moving. To a nation who had been promised so much and given so much but now living in desolation, it would have been easy to think of oneself as just a number, just a number in a large host of people doomed to destruction, just a number in that long lineage promised to Abraham who were to be as numerous as the stars in heaven and the sand on the seashore but who now seemed forsaken. I imagine that the people of whom Isaiah writes felt as if they were drowning in a sea of anonymity.

But then God speaks. And God references the other surrounding nations, whose political affairs threaten to overwhelm Israel. Then the picture screen telescopes into focus on Israel, as if Israel were a singular, unique person at risk of being forgotten among the grains of sand on the seashore. God speaks: You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.

Reading and hearing these words, we feel almost as if we are intruding voyeuristically on a personal exchange between two lovers. But the speaker is God, the Almighty, the Creator of the universe. He is addressing his beloved. Yes, God, our God, speaks like this!

And we who have been baptized and adopted into the long lineage promised to Abraham, who find our roots in Israel, who are heirs of the extended promise to all nations, must be moved by God’s words so long ago to his chosen people. We can never go back in time to inhabit their specific circumstances, but we are allowed a glimpse into a delicate, beautiful moment when God zooms in on his people, as if the nation were one single individual. And God tells of his undying love for his children.

This picture window also illumines something of Christian baptism, as we understand it. In baptism, we are called by name and marked as Christ’s own forever. Our baptism echoes Jesus’s very different baptism, where he alone is called God’s Beloved Son. But because we are baptized into him, we have a right to relish God calling each of us by name. We can have no baptism without a name. The name is essential to what it means. A name is essential to our membership in the Body of Christ.

At different points in history, we might wish to linger with different moments in the baptismal rite. Usually, people like to focus on the baptismal promises, with the commitment to respecting the dignity of every human being and committing oneself to justice. But now, in 2022, in a global pandemic and living in a nation experiencing political and civic unrest, I wonder if we might rest for a while in the knowledge that, in baptism, God calls each of us by name.

For how can we not feel like a number? We all live in fear of being one of the 656,478 cases or the 1,524 deaths of the coronavirus reported yesterday. Do you long to be more than just a statistic in the workplace or the recipient of a sterile paycheck? Do you wish to be not just a student force-fed into an ultra-competitive educational system that takes your money and spits you back out into a hungry world? Look how many people are reduced to statistics of injuries or deaths in natural disasters or housefires or gun violence. At this very moment, think of how many of the aged and infirm are at risk of being forgotten and unloved in their solitary homes.

So, right now, I, for one, want to sit for just a time with the good news that I am more than just a number. You are more than just a number. Your worst enemy is more than just a number. You are honored and precious in God’s sight. You are loved. It’s a simple, obvious statement, but do you really believe it?

In this season of Epiphany, as we manifest the gospel to the world, we must learn to claim our God-given individuality and then respect that of others.

You, I, all of us are more than just a blank face in a sea of anonymity. No culture, no acts of oppression and violence, no cruel systems of injustice, none of it can take away this fact. And the good news we are called to share this season after Epiphany is that especially when the world clamors to take our names away, God always comes in Christ to give them back to us.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord
January 9, 2022

Staying in Our Lanes

Last week, driving back to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh, I spent several hours on I-76. While intermittently admiring the hilly terrain and rural countryside, I was frequently distracted by a series of religious-themed billboards. Perhaps you have seen them. They include a variety of messages, all of the same ilk.

Here are a few of them. “Where are you going? Heaven or hell?” “Jesus can free you from sin!” “Jesus: Your only way to God.” One of the more ominous ones had the following words inscribed above and below what appeared to be the squiggly line on a heart monitor, with the peaks and valleys morphing into a straight line visually signifying death. This sign said, “After you die, you will meet God.”

Now, some of the billboards I simply found hard to stomach for various reasons. But I couldn’t necessarily argue with all of them on the surface. Yes, I do believe Jesus can and does free us from sin! Yes, I can talk to God like Jesus did, although admittedly Jesus was a lot better at it than I. Yes, Jesus does offer peace and hope to us. Yes, I, do believe that Jesus is alive. If I didn’t, I would not be here in this pulpit.

The billboard I found most mystifying showed a teenager reading a Bible and had the clear suggestion that to know who Jesus is, we should read Matthew’s Gospel. Well, okay, but what about Luke, Mark, and John?

You get the point, I’m sure. I’m willing to give the benefit of a doubt that the intention behind these billboards was good, at least on some level. But to a T, what I discerned lurking in every single one of these billboards was smugness.

Every one of these messages, even if stating some truth about Christianity with which I would agree, had an implicit message. This unstated message read as follows: “Those of us who have prepared these billboards for your edification have the definitive truth, which we are sharing with you, so that one day, when you meet your Maker, you end up in the right place.” Although some of the billboard messages were more comforting than others, many of them played off an age-old tactic of fear.

The problem is that I don’t believe this kind of fear really works. I doubt many of us want to continue into the next life with a bunch of people who are scared out of their wits. I think heaven is much bigger than a holding pen for people who have been traumatized by the journey to get there.

So, what in the world do these billboards, I-76, heaven, and hell have to do with the Feast of the Epiphany? Well, I’m getting there. So, let’s go back to the Letter to the Ephesians. The author, probably not Paul himself but writing as Paul, is making a series of bold claims in chapter three. The author is claiming a special revelation from God of something radically new to the Hellenistic-Jewish world he inhabits. God’s promises of hope and salvation, first laid out in covenant after covenant throughout the Old Testament, then in the flesh of a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth, have now encompassed a new dimension. God’s promises are now shared between Jew and Gentile.

There is more: the author of the letter to the Ephesians claims to be God’s messenger to bring this good news to the Gentiles. And there is yet more, and this is where it gets even more daring: this author attributes to Paul a particular understanding of God’s mystery and eternal purpose. And finally, here’s the stinger: in Christ Jesus, all of us are reconciled to one another and God.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I notice two things in this excerpt from Ephesians. The first is that the author, purporting to be Paul, is fired up about some astounding good news, and he can’t help but share it. This news is meant to be shared by Jew and Gentile alike, and it is good news because its embrace is wondrously inclusive.

But the second thing I notice is a statement that “in former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind.” This can sound a bit exclusive, as if no one before had been able to understand anything of God’s mysterious revelation. As if anyone could fully understand the mystery at work here.

And so, we are left with a quandary. How do we reconcile a seemingly exclusive claim on truth with the inclusive vision that lies at the very heart of it? How do we hold the truth of the author’s claim and not use it to beat others down?

If we paraphrase the message of Ephesians, the Gentiles are late to the party. Not having been explicitly a part of the previous covenants between God and his people recounted throughout the Old Testament, the Gentiles are yet now described as “fellow heirs” and “members of the same body.” But, the author of Ephesians asserts, even if the Gentiles are late to the party, they are not missing out on anything. Now, all people, regardless of race or clan or tribe, have access to the full riches of Christ’s gospel. At its heart, the message of Ephesians is about the reconciliation of all people with one another and God. And at the center of this stands Christ.

And this is the first of two main messages of the Feast of the Epiphany: that in God’s manifestation to the world in Christ, we are reconciled both with one another and even with the most unpredictable and perhaps abhorrent strangers imaginable. In the way that God chooses for his Son to be revealed as light to the world’s darkness, we see all boundaries disappearing and all hasty assumptions falling away. We see in the journey of magi astrologers to the infant King that God works from within their unchristian, pagan ways to lead them to Jesus. The magi follow the only thing they know anything about—the stars—and they find Christ Jesus. But not first before confronting the evil Herod. Even here, God works through this tyrant to lead the magi on to the Christ child. You see, Christ’s epiphany is a mystery beyond our explaining. That the magi found Christ was straightforward. How they got there was less so.

As I made my journey on I-76 last week, trying to stay within the lines marked on the interstate while reading the religious signs ranging from ostensibly truthful to patently offensive, there was a paradoxical metaphor at work. Processing the implicit and explicit theology of the signs, I became more and more determined to stay within the lines God has charted for me. To be more open to God’s presence and work in the world around me, I should stay in my own lane and not attempt to control the lives of others. And yet, as God manifests the truth of his gospel to a dark world that so badly needs its light, God does not stay within lanes. God drives the vehicles of his revelation where he chooses, and his light reaches those it most needs to reach. In some way, perhaps unknown to us, we must play a role in helping that light reach those for whom it is destined.

There is a responsibility we must claim as ambassadors of Christ’s gospel. We are here because we believe it’s true. I hope we are here because the gospel has brought us life. I hope we have seen it bring life to others. I hope we all can trust that it heals and changes lives. I believe that it is what can truly heal the fractious, unruly character of this world. Epiphany is our own call to venture out into the world’s darkness to bring Christ’s light into it, to announce abundant light into overwhelming darkness.

But we are left with the puzzling paradox of staying in our human lanes to let God be God and also giving voice to the truth we know in the depths of our souls. We can’t simply reduce it to billboard slogans of fear and arrogance. So, we find ourselves confronted by the second main message of this evening’s feast: all we have is a gift from God.

We think we must come to this feast every year bearing the gifts of our lives, as the magi brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But our purpose in coming to God’s altar this night is also to worship, adore, and receive the gift that God gives us in every Mass. Tonight that gift is amplified by the knowledge that God’s manifestation to the world is pure gift. We cannot control it. We cannot wield the gospel to force others into heaven. All we can do is accept the gift of the gospel, ponder it in our hearts, manifest it in our lives, and let its light shine and speak for itself in a world that will inevitably be illumined by its radiance. Then we pray that others will receive the good news. This is our call and none other. It is pure gift.

And one final afterthought from the magi: let us stay within our own lanes with humility and reverence, because in sharing Christ’s light, we carry the mystery of the gospel into darkness. If we accept the gift, then we can let God do the driving.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of the Epiphany
January 6, 2022

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