Confounded by Grace

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, a motley group of people found themselves together in one place in the face of an unspeakable tragedy. To their surprise, it was the tragedy itself that united and inspired them. In their grief, when their own words failed them, they were given a new language.

On that day, a long, long time ago, through an indescribable power, this ragtag group suddenly discovered that they could speak in new ways. They could say startling things and others could understand, no matter their race or language. Diversity was no longer a divider. It was a unifier. A mysterious power moving among these persons gave them a purpose. Through that same power, they understood what they needed to do. They began to move. And the journey began.

A little way into this long journey and the problems began. Spectacular things were happening, but there was also trouble, trouble and troublemakers. Some of this group, fired up by the initial power that propelled them forward, were persecuted. Many died. But still, most of them were undeterred. They ventured forth. They followed their call. They advanced. They scattered and spread to the ends of the known earth, for that was what they were meant to do.

Some died brutal and bloody deaths in foreign lands. It was even said that their blood was the seed that would bear much fruit. And as this rough crew of quirky humans spread from east to west, they encountered mountains and hills, rough terrain, and dangerous passages. Nothing about the journey was easy.

Until one day, many years after the story began, they came upon a level plain. After such a rough and tumultuous pilgrimage, this plain was a welcome sight. They soon forgot the initial charge of their ancestors and the fire that had been enkindled at the beginning of this family story. Indeed, they forgot the story itself.

Looking at the level plain, free of vexing passages and steep hills, they said to one another in their common language, “Let’s settle here. Let’s build a grand city like none other on earth. Let’s build up and make a name for ourselves.” And they did. For a while, the city thrived. In fact, more cities were built. Soon, many of these cities were structured around grand buildings where they worshipped the Source of the power that had moved them on. They knew this Source as the living God. If you were journeying out on the open land, you could locate a city by a building dedicated to this God. People flocked to these buildings. And although the people continued to build up and up, with grander projects, and even though this family of people seemed to become more and more powerful, something was amiss.

This people, convinced that they were doing the right thing, made one major mistake: they forgot their story, and they failed to tell it. Over the centuries, they had lost the memory of that initial catalyzing event when diverse peoples were gathered around an incredible fire of passion and witness, around suffering and death. And although this amnesia persisted for many centuries, one day everything came crashing down.

Some said it was God’s punishment. Their enemies used their misfortune to mock them. What had the people done wrong? What egregious sins had they committed? What had provoked God’s wrath? The people were confounded. The earlier united purpose was now fractured. The people were fractious, arguing and fighting. No longer were their sacred buildings the centers of cities; cities were built around much taller buildings dedicated to wealth and other types of power. No longer were the sacred buildings even full of people. Something was wrong. And all the people could imagine was that they were being punished. The lingering question was whether they would even survive.

You’ve probably guessed it already. We are that people. This story is our story, the Church’s story. Yes, in some sense, it’s the story of Babel, too. And today, on Pentecost, we celebrate that auspicious beginning so many years ago in Jerusalem. This is the day to remember our story, which perhaps we have forgotten. Some have called Pentecost the birthday of the Church. So, let’s stand around our birthday cake, if you will. In the middle of it stands a tall candle. But don’t blow it out. Gaze upon this candle and offer a prayer instead of a wish. Offer a prayer that we will remember and reclaim our story.

If you survey the scene of our family, scattered across the earth, we appear to be more divided than united. We are more violent than peaceful. We have been ravaged by deadly diseases. We talk to screens more than to human faces. Some who look at us are increasingly less inspired by our unity, because we seem to have lost a common purpose. Our sacred buildings are not very full. What has happened to that mysterious power that started our grand story? In the long story of advancement, we seem to have paused and are standing still.

In some sense, existential questions such as these were the questions of that confident group of people, our ancient ancestors in the Book of Genesis, who journeyed westward and settled in the land of Shinar. United by one language, there was nothing the people couldn’t do together. But they chose to stop their movement, to stop advancing, and build up rather than across. They chose the vertical over the horizontal. And so, God confounded them.

We, too, may wonder what we have done to be so divided. Why are we standing still without a perceived destiny? The easy answer is to pin all the blame on God. But what if being confounded is a gift, a moment of grace.

We have spent so many years building up, out of complacency, arrogance, and even laziness, that we have forgotten the impulse of the beginning of our family’s story. We have to go far back, even before the incident at Babel, to the moment right after God renewed creation following the flood. God gave a charge to his people. “Be fertile and increase and fill the earth.”

God wanted his people to scatter to the ends of the earth, to fill it with his good news, to bear fruit in all times and places. At Babel, when God scattered his people, it was not a gesture of cruel punishment but a moment of grace. The people needed to be confounded in order to remember their story and their mission. Building up would stop the advancement of God’s mission. Only a moment of profound humility would remind God’s people of their call.

Today we are invited to reclaim our story as we gather around this tall Paschal candle. We will soon journey to the font by its light to welcome new members into our motley crowd, to charge them with God’s mission, to unite them under the name of Jesus. We will renew our own baptismal covenant and be reminded that God wants to scatter us. Like Eucharistic bread that must be broken to be shared, we must be broken and shared with the world. Our purpose is not to stay still and build up but instead to be scattered and continue advancing the cause of the Gospel.

Sometimes what we build must be rebuilt by God. When human hubris values sameness over a unity in diversity, then it’s a precious moment of grace when God confounds our pride. Perhaps we would do well to invert the words of the great Te Deum hymn. Lord, let us be confounded, especially when we have forgotten our story and lost our way.

There are two ways to look at this present moment. We can remain still and create a story of blame, where we blame God, others, disease, or whatever else we choose for our inability to keep advancing. Or we can be humbled and confounded and let God scatter us to the ends of the earth. We can let God shatter our idols and our grand projects that we’ve long outgrown.

We can bravely choose the rugged mountains and deep valleys over the easy, lazy plains. We can venture out with the Holy Spirit at our backs, knowing that we can never rest until the peace of Christ reaches not upwards but horizontally across the face of the earth.

This is our family’s story. Today is the day to remember that story. Caedmon and Meredith, this is about to become your story. This day, more than ever, is the day to retell our story. Let us reclaim it. Let us keep moving and advancing until we have been scattered by God to the ends of the earth.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Day of Pentecost
June 5, 2022

What's Meant to Be Heard

One of my seminary Bible professors used to say that reading the apostle Paul’s letters is like listening to one end of a phone conversation. We can hear what Paul is saying to the early  churches, but we can’t hear what the churches are saying back. Reading a Pauline letter makes you itch to know just what naughty things those Corinthians were doing. What we primarily hear, though, is Paul scolding them.

Listening to Jesus’s prayer to God the Father is quite a different experience. It’s more like listening in on a phone conversation from somewhere else in the house. You quietly pick up the phone in the guest bedroom, and you hear everything your mother is saying to your father who is traveling out of town. And you hear your father’s response. Your mother tells of your recent poor behavior, and your father demands that you should be grounded for a week.

Yet even this analogy is not quite accurate. Slyly listening in on a conversation via an extra phone involves hearing something you’re not meant to hear. The fact that you want to listen in secretly is perhaps proof enough that you’re in trouble and that you shouldn’t be listening in after all. But listening in on Jesus’s prayer to his heavenly Father is hearing exactly what we are intended to hear.

Jesus’s prayer to the Father feels like a monologue, but it’s really a conversation directed to the ears of Jesus’s disciples, even if we don’t hear God the Father’s response. When we are handed the phone to listen in on this prayer, Jesus is at table with his friends on the eve of his death. He has washed their feet. He has offered a long farewell discourse, explaining in lofty language what is about to transpire. And without missing a beat, he begins to pray to his Father in the hearing of his disciples. He wants them to hear what he says. And we are also meant to hear what he says.

Listening in on this prayerful conversation somehow feels as if we are eavesdropping. It seems odd that we are meant to hear the surprising content of Jesus’s prayer. The Father has had a plan for us from before the foundation of the world. Jesus’s work now depends on us. Indeed, he has said that we will do greater things than he has done. He has said that partaking of real, selfless, cross-shaped love is possible even for us. Indeed, unity of purpose and will is also possible for us. And if we can show such unity in our lives—if others can taste, smell, see, hear, and touch this oneness of mission—perhaps they, too, will believe in the power of Jesus, who was sent by the Father. Jesus’s conversation with the Father is still alive, and it’s up to us to invite others to listen to it.

But if this conversation seems strange to us, it’s a testament to how strange its language has become to our modern ears. Love and unity sound like vague concepts because we so rarely see this kind of love and unity realized in the flesh. Maybe we can’t hear this conversation because our fingers are in our ears. Or are we too self-consumed? Maybe we can’t understand the self-giving love of Father and Son because our society puts too much love in material things over love of God and neighbor. After such a week as this one, shouldn’t we identify what is keeping us from knowing concrete love and unity? What do we really love? Has our fear of losing our rights or our guns surpassed our love of God and neighbor? Did Jesus ever tell us that love wouldn’t require some sort of sacrifice? Because if our desire to hold onto something is so great that we’re willing to tolerate one more needless massacre of our brothers and sisters, then it’s clear that we are listening in on the wrong conversation. We are, in fact, listening to no conversation at all.

Jesus’s prayer often gets lost in the noise of other words that are hurled at us from all directions. You’ll hear this flurry of words in the incessant blare of television commentators in hospital waiting rooms and airport lounges. It appears in written form in the newspaper and online, in tweets and Facebook rants. This verbosity is one sided. There’s no dialogue. There’s no listening. It’s just a lot of talking with no real conversation.

This talking speaks loudly. And it usually gives us one consistent message, even if it’s phrased in different ways. The distinct message here is that Jesus’s prayer for love and unity is over, has petered out over the centuries, is unrealistic, is utterly impossible. Of course, Jesus’s name is rarely mentioned, but the implication is clear. We’re listening to a faint whisper from the past that is soon to die out if it hasn’t already.

This barrage of words convinces us, even if unintentionally, that sacrificial love can hardly be real for us. We should be afraid instead. There’s little we can do except to embrace our fate and ride out the wave of troubled times. Jesus’s prayer has died out. We are left hanging with the dreadful ring tone of a phone line gone dead.

This cacophony of words to which we are subjected day and night, even against our will, is no conversation at all. It’s a narrative spun out of anger and fear. It’s the reactionary claim of talking heads disconnected from a larger body who have lost the ability to hope that Christ’s love can be made real. It’s the language of a world that is afraid of such love because of what it demands. In response, words are flung against a wall and into our faces without seeming to expect anything back in return. There is no conversation.

Which makes it so very different from what St. John invites us to listen in on. Jesus prays to the Father not just for his immediate disciples but for us, too. We only hear Jesus’s voice, but if we listen carefully, we can also hear the implied response of the Father. And before too long, we are a part of that conversation between Father and Son.

But despite our distorted values, Jesus’ prayer has not been entirely drowned out. It’s still humming in our ears, a faint tone underneath raucous clanging. The tone of Jesus’s prayer is still heard in tactile and compassionate responses to unspeakable violence. Christ’s prayer has threaded its way down the ages in the lives of saints and martyrs whose lives enabled love to be real on the ground. This prayer sounds in the ordinary corners of our communities if we listen closely and don’t hang up the phone.

The conversation we’re meant to hear does not control us by fear or anger or reactivity but draws us in by love, because the only way that we can keep the conversation going is to experience, know, taste, feel, smell, hear, and see what this love is really like. And once we know such love, we are compelled to pass it on in our lives. Selfless love lived might just be a love embraced.

This conversation of love is so dynamic and alive that it spills out beyond its immediate participants. Its purpose is to widen the circle so that the conversation never stops adding more voices to it, and it never ends. This conversation is meant to give life, not to kill it, to open dialogue and not to shut it down.

I don’t know exactly when some people stopped listening to this conversation. I don’t know what happened for some to begin to favor the sound of angry and fearful screeds and to submit to nihilism. I don’t know what has led others to give up godly love and to retreat into wordless words or numbing silence or murderous action.

But I do know that because we are in this church today, we are being called to listen to something else. We are called to hone our ears like the finest musicians to tune into a conversation that has been happening since before the worlds were made. We’re not being asked to eavesdrop. The conversation to which we are asked to listen is intended for us to hear. It’s meant for us to carry on, because there is an aching world that needs to hear it.

Despite what we are told, Jesus’s prayer has not been lost. It’s still alive. No matter how many people have hung up the phone on this great conversation, I urge you: continue listening. Stay in the room. Keep the conversation going. And just maybe, others will listen.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 29, 2022

Somewhere between the Clouds and the Earth

This week is a week when all I want to do is look up. I find it difficult to look down, because when I do, it brings my spirits down, too. Do you feel the same? It seems that when we look around, the bad news keeps coming. For the second week in a row, we are reminded that the ordinary places of our daily routines are stoked with fear because they can be the sites of gruesome gun violence.

When I look down, I see in the news the anguished faces of parents, weeping outside a school building, wondering about the fate of their child or knowing what has already happened. I worry for the parents who worry about their own children’s safety. I see an intractable conflict across the globe. I see rising prices on everything from gasoline to groceries, which I know means for some, one fewer meal. I see yet another subvariant of a tenacious, awful virus in its third year. I see friends and loved ones suffering. Where is the good news?

And so, it’s very tempting just to look up. If I divert my gaze to the sky, I can escape from this world for at least a bit. If I look up, I don’t have to look down, because when I look down, it drags me down.

Ascension Day would seem like an occasion to look up. It’s obvious why the disciples stood gazing up when Jesus ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives. It was quite a spectacle. They were rightly gobsmacked and a bit sad too, I’m sure. Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances were now at an end. They wouldn’t see him anymore. They really didn’t want to look down. And when they did look down, perhaps their spirits were brought down as well. Certainly, they saw the biting inequities of their own day. Surely, they saw a world that was messed up, even if in different ways from our own. So, for a variety of reasons, those disciples looked up, choosing for a time to be drawn into awe and wonder, choosing to check out of painful daily existence for at least a bit.

Many people don’t know what to make of Ascension Day. Some cannot get past literal images of Jesus being physically taken up into heaven. Just as the disciples gawked at Jesus’ feet sticking out of the clouds, some in our modern day laugh at a preposterous image and defiance of spatial reasoning. And this only deflects from the deeper meaning of the Ascension. Ascension Day is the feast that helps to locate our vision in the right places. It restores a balance to our vision.

If you ask me, on this Ascension Day, we should claim the Church is primarily a place for two things. The Church is called to gaze up into heaven in worship. And the Church is also called to look back down and around and realize that we have something utterly unique to say to the world, that it is imperative for us to say it, repeatedly, in word and action. We have the good news of redemption, of second and third chances and more, of a peace that passes all understanding, which really is possible if we desire it. We bear the good news that God’s image is in each and every one of us, and if we only really believed that, things might be so much different. The good news could go on and on. This week is a vivid reminder that we have an alternative vision that needs to be proclaimed. Last week was a reminder, too, and countless weeks before that. We could add a long list of weeks where we could have been reminded of the Church’s higher calling, where we could have been called to action.

But too often for us in the Church, our gaze is not balanced between these two places. Our vision is directed to only one of the places. And I wonder, is this why so many people are fleeing the Church for the religion of the workforce? Is this the reason that school and extracurricular activities are chosen over Sunday School? Is this the reason that Sunday brunch tables or the golf course are more popular than the pews? Is this the reason that we see so much despair? If all your faith is put in a failed human system of government or secular mechanisms of change, in a week like this one, it seems there is nowhere to turn.

But there is a dual identity to the Church that is emblemized on Ascension Day, and it is a source of hope. Awe and transcendence must be balanced with on-the-ground action. And when people lose faith in the Church, it could be that they see us gazing in only one of the two places rather than both. So then, why go to the Church for anything? Ascension Day is also conviction day for the Church.

I don’t need to tell you that many in the Church find it all too easy only to gaze up into heaven. They are rightly fascinated with the transcendence of God. But it ends there. To quote Oliver Wendell Holmes, they are “so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good.” Worship becomes an excuse for inaction. Transcendence becomes escapism.

On the other hand, there are others who never look up. Church is simply the place to find community and to relieve privileged guilt by engaging in acts of charity. Transcendence matters little; action is all that matters. The purpose of the Church has become humanist. Jesus is not worshipped; he is followed as an ethical guru.

I wonder if those who choose to give up on the Church have become disenchanted by our distorted gaze. Are we seen as looking too much up into heaven or not looking up into heaven enough? Where have things gone wrong?

Ascension Day is an opportunity to refocus and rebalance our gaze. It seems, at first, that this is a feast only about transcendence and staring up into heaven, a feast to look at dangling feet in the sky. But if we probe deeper into its mystery, we will find an indispensable piece to that heavenly gaze which is often forgotten. Looking up into heaven at Jesus’ feet hanging below the clouds, the disciples stood for a moment in awe before two men in white reminded them to come back to earth. Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

Look around you. Look at yourselves. When the Holy Spirit alights upon you, you will be the Church. You will be charged with a great task: to do even greater things than Jesus. How’s that for a mission? Jesus’ power will no longer be confined to his physical earthly presence. It will be spread to the ends of the earth in you and me, his living Body.

That message is for us, too. Make no doubt about it: many will call us fools. They will accuse us of gazing up into heaven and putting our trust in something unseen, beyond the clouds. Some will say we should seek only policy and action, not thoughts and prayers. Others see no connection between Sunday mornings as we gaze up into heaven and weekdays where homeless people sleep on church steps and Christians bully one another like children on a playground.

But none of that should be the final word. This evening, we are gazing up to heaven because it’s the beginning of everything we do. If we don’t start there, then very little else matters. The meals handed out to the hungry and the beds offered to the homeless will only be navel gazing, unless we first gaze up into heaven.

But after gazing up, we must look back down. We see the face of Christ in the person at the bus stop and above the hand that gives us change at the grocery store. We see Christ in the faces of parents who have lost children, in the faces of the lonely, and of those who suffer. It’s this face that will call us to a proper response. Only by looking up first will we know how to respond and take action.

Somewhere between the clouds and earth is the deepest meaning of all. It’s the only meaning that can fill the void in our lives. The 70-hour a week job, the countless extracurricular activities, the gym, and the yoga studio may seem to fill our lives with value, but they lack the one thing that Christ alone can give. He corrects our vision and rebalances our gaze. Christ recalls our gaze to this place, this community, the Church. It is here where the vertical and the horizontal meet. Ascension Day is the Church’s strongest charge both to gaze up into heaven and then back down. We look at him, and then we look around. And if we hold our gaze in both places, we will never be left comfortless.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Ascension Day
May 26, 2022

A Tale of Two Cities

I have recently been reading a book by Rowan Williams, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, entitled Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love. In this book, Bishop Williams is exploring a theology of aesthetics. He suggests that, in the sacramental life of the Church, most notably in the Mass, “God makes himself other; the world is a world in which things make themselves other or are made other (they are more than they are and give more than they have.”[1]

What an astounding claim this is. Because God took on human flesh, the material world—this world in which we live and move and have our being—can represent, indeed can be so much more than it is or seems to be.

Now, remember that, because we’ll come back to it. But before we do, I want to offer a tale of two cities. The first city I want to describe is the city described in the Revelation to John. If we were to include some verses of chapter 21 that were omitted from this morning’s lectionary excerpt, we would get a vivid physical description of this city. It’s a perfect cube, and the foundations of its wall are bedecked with jewels. It sparkles in the light. It has twelve pearly gates, and the names of the twelve tribes of Israel are inscribed on these gates. The single street that runs through this city is pure gold but also transparent, like glass.  

We hear in today’s reading that this city’s gates are always open. It is lit only by the glory of God; it needs no artificial light. There is no darkness; nothing is hidden there. Everything is exposed and brought into the full light of day. There is no need for secrets; there is no room for secrets. And in the middle of that gold, transparent street is a crystal-clear river, flowing from the very throne of God. Along its banks is a fruitful tree, whose leaves are intended for the healing of all.

The denizens of this city are continually worshipping God. It is their only business and their supreme joy. They see the very face of God, something forbidden until one arrives in this city. And all these citizens are marked with the name of Christ.

But there are other qualities of this city that we can assume, knowing that this is the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. In this city, there’s no fighting or violence. Even though people there bear the painful markers of their past experiences in another less heavenly city, in this city, the suffering and violence are gone. All are now at peace. And there are a variety of people here, from all races and nations. This city is heaven itself.

To use Rowan Williams’ words, it’s a city in which things are other, or have been made other. Things are more than they seem. The vision of this city is something that literally seems unreal to our minds and imaginations.

But the second city that I want to tell you about is much more familiar to us. You will recognize it. It’s a place where things seem to be precisely as they meet the eye.

In this city, there are no definable boundaries. Rather, the boundaries, size, and shape of this city seem to mutate frequently, like an amoeba, based on human whims. And its gates are routinely closed in the faces of those who seek entrance, for whatever reason it may be. Even once inside this city, if you’re lucky enough to pass through its gates, there are usually more gates to navigate. And if your circumstances are too unfortunate, those gates will be closed to you. You can bet on that.

This city is full of light, but that light alternates with darkness that covers all kinds of sordidness, shame, and evil. The light, though, must come either from the sun itself or from the artificially produced light of human technology; it is not constant. When overconsumption and human greed dominate, the power fails, and the light goes out. If people can’t pay their electric bills, the lights are turned off.

There are many streets in this city. Depending on where you live, some are maintained better than others. There are certainly rivers here, and there is plenty of water. But in some locations, the public water supply is contaminated.

Trees abound in this city, at least if they haven’t been cut down or died because of extreme climate conditions. But their fruit is usually controlled by regulations and rules. The fruit is not available without a price. And rarely do the leaves of these trees lead to the healing of all. Usually, the frenetic pace of this city impedes healing. Stress, exhaustion, and poor health are common.

The citizens of this vast city worship all manner of things. Some purport to worship God. Others refuse to worship God. Some worship multiple gods. Many say they worship God, but they really worship a variety of things: status, success, affirmation, money, material goods, power. You will find some people in this city who are covered with tattoos, but these markings commonly proclaim the names of earthly idols and Pelagian claims to achieve happiness and success on their own.

Unsurprisingly, there is a diversity of people in this city, but too often, they don’t get along. Peace is rare, violence is more common. People are shot in grocery stores, schools, and churches. Wars are waged simply because national leaders lust for power. Children starve. Pandemics rage. Death is unavoidable. What you see is really what you get. Even if the image isn’t appealing, it’s not a surprising one. We know what this city looks like.

And I dare say that the first city, what Scripture tells us is the city of God, seems less real to us. It’s something like a theological Disneyworld. We imagine that we can take trips to it in our minds, but such a city can never really exist. Whether we like it or not, the second city is the stuff of our world. It’s the unavoidable reality of our daily existence.

And sadly, much Christian preaching has led us to believe that these two cities can never meet. We are told to pray that we will be a part of that heavenly city, which is our ultimate destiny. If we do all the right things and if we are well-behaved, one day, we might be fortunate enough to walk through the pearly gates of that holy city. Meanwhile, we toil through the city here below, praying only to escape it.

But in a world that God himself deigned to enter and inhabit, in what has sometimes been called a sacramental universe,[2] things are “more than they are and give more than they have.” While we may settle for less, and while our expectations might be detestably low, isn’t something more possible?

And isn’t this the good news in St. John’s vision of the city of God? Far from being a theological Disneyland or a hallucination prompted by a laughable naivete, it is a glimpse of what can be realized but what so often isn’t due to human sin. And this sin is usually a failure to dream and hope. It’s a failure to see that things “are more than they are and [can] give more than they have.”

Contrary to the ways in which St. John’s Revelation is usually interpreted, the heavenly Jerusalem is not something to which we escape. It’s something that God will bring to us, if we will bother to let him.

St. John’s vision of God’s kingdom will never be fully experienced by us in this life. But the city that we currently inhabit, the one I have described in such sobering terms, is not all there can be. We should thank God for that. It’s God in Christ who gives us the hope to believe that we live in a city where things are so much more than they are and can give so much more than they seem to give. Our faith is one where things are never what they seem. Things are, can be, and should be so much more.

It’s not exactly true that the world has needed the Church now more than ever. It has always needed the vision of the Church. And it does need it now. Things are not and do not have to be what they seem. God gives us another vision. Visions of two cities are before us: one we can only see in our mind’s eye, but we walk the streets of the other each day. With God’s help, we have a choice to make. The question is this: what city will we choose?

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 22, 2022

[1] Rowan Williams, Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love (London: Continuum, 2005), 82.

[2] A phrase used by Archbishop William Temple

First on the Scene

The relationship between worship and belief has been summed up in the well-known Latin maxim lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of what is prayed is the law of what is believed. Belief follows practice. Belief, indeed, emerges from prayer and worship. The primary material of the creeds, of Scripture, and of any belief system is human experience and encounter with the Divine. Any system of theology is always a reflection on what God is already doing in the world. To put it another way, God is always on the scene first.

But for all our good intentions, we Christians usually think we are on the scene first. Humans are used to being in charge, and we too often believe that everything starts with us. We put ourselves in the position of the primary actor, usurping the place that belongs rightly to God. Without even realizing it, many Christians tell others to believe or to behave like them before worshipping with them. Our belief is the right belief, so if you don’t think like us, you are not one of us.

This way of thinking is not just limited to the Church. The history of colonialism has been driven by nations assuming that they should impose their way of being on other cultures, usually deemed inferior. One culture’s way of living is better than another’s, and so whoever wields the most power can make the rules.

When this mentality has infiltrated Christianity, it has led to much harm. It has fostered an underlying assumption that it’s the task of Christians to bring God to places where God has never been. The effort, it would seem, all lies in the hands of humans. God has been sidelined to the role of spectator, and we have asked God to cooperate with us. At our most arrogant, we have invited God to accompany us to places where we think God needs to go.

If any book in the Bible smashes this way of thinking to smithereens, it’s the Acts of the Apostles. Consistently throughout this action-filled book, there is one primary actor, and it is God. God sends the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is the source and catalyst for what God is doing in the world. The Holy Spirit alights on people and empowers them to proclaim the Gospel. The Holy Spirit causes people to speak in tongues. The Holy Spirit inspires people to do lots of strange things so that others think they are either drunk or out of their minds. One thing is always true: humans are the secondary source to God’s primary source. God acts, and people respond. But when we think that we were on the scene first, God’s actions seem very strange indeed.

This is exactly what is happening when we pick up the story today in the Acts of the Apostles. There is no small degree of consternation among the early followers of Jesus about what has been occurring in recent days. Not only have the Gentiles accepted the Gospel, but no less a person than Peter has violated his usual practice by sharing table fellowship with Gentiles, disregarding certain prohibited foods. Peter himself is perceived to have betrayed his identity as a Jewish Christian by eating with Gentiles. And beyond all this, it seems incomprehensible that the Gospel news could be shared by both Jews and Gentiles. The converting message of repentance and new life in Christ is now available to all, with no distinctions.

It’s hard for us to imagine just how shocking this would have been. It’s just as shocking for us when the Church discerns that she is being summoned to follow a new course of action, especially one that has never been done before. It’s shocking for us to imagine that our belief system might not always have existed in its current form. Isn’t it shocking to realize that maybe we don’t have everything figured out? It was shocking for Peter’s companions to comprehend a shared fellowship with Gentiles who had very little in common with them, and it would have been shocking for Gentiles to conceive of sharing the same Gospel message with Jews. It’s all so very shocking, and yet it's only shocking if we forget that we constantly need to catch up to what God is already doing.

And without this realization, nothing makes sense. Peter has a vision in which he is told to disregard food purity norms. Peter is told by the Spirit to go to Cornelius and his Gentile companions and not to make a distinction between them and him. Peter is told to proclaim the Gospel to them. And then Peter sees the Gentile believers manifesting signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence when they speak in tongues. Peter is undoubtedly flabbergasted until he has a stark realization. He remembers the word of the Lord. John may have baptized with water, but you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit. Humans will move from the place of actor to passive recipient of God’s gift. The correct order will be restored, and God will be the one acting first.

But if we are used to making distinctions between them and us, then any attempt to ignore such distinctions seems dangerous. In its most evil form, it results in racially or ethnically motivated violence, as we’ve just tragically witnessed in yesterday’s shooting in Buffalo. Fear breeds suspicion in the Church, too. If the Church does something she has never done before, it often creates discord and is treated as a passing whim. Isn’t this the root of so much current Church conflict? If we admit that perhaps we have not always had all the answers, it’s an admission of failure. And if something seems alarming to us, then it can’t be of God.

Unless, of course, God has been on the scene long before we ever were. If that is so, then it’s our responsibility to figure out what God has been doing all along. But such a quest to find God in unexpected places can only begin with our own humble confession. Recall Peter’s own confession in the Acts of the Apostles: who was I that I could hinder God? It’s only through Peter’s own experiences with the power of the Spirit and those unlike him that he comes to see what God has been doing all along. Because Peter thought he was on the scene first, he tried to put up roadblock after roadblock to the Spirit’s initiatives. But when he realized that God had been there before him, and that God had always been on the scene, everything changed. And it changed for his companions, too. Their assumptions and expectations were disturbed by God, and they were reduced to silence.

The experience of Peter and the early Church is also a challenge to the contemporary Church. Even though we are preceded by a long history of God breaking in to reestablish himself as the primary actor, we usually forget it. Even though we know intellectually that God has always been on the scene of creation, we forget it. Every possible change is a threat to our way of being. Difference is seen as a threat to conformity. Innovation is viewed as the murderer of tradition. The new is a shallow bulldozing of the old. Unless it’s really true that God has been on the scene before us. Because then, it may not even be that God is doing something new. It only seems new because our vision is catching up to the vision that God has been paving for ages and ages.

And the real challenge is this: how do we know what is of God and what isn’t? How do we recognize a change as true and lasting as opposed to ephemeral and cheap? How do we hold to tradition while being open to the uncontrollable impetus of the Spirit? Once again, the Acts of the Apostles helps us out.

Amid all the surprising things that the Spirit was doing with Peter and Cornelius and the earliest Christian believers, if you read carefully, there is one constant. Going down to the root of it all, there was a primary foundation that supported a future of newness. There is always a primary source to our secondary source. Peter’s vision was not a random dream. Peter’s vision came about as the result of prayer. Cornelius didn’t hallucinate that an angel visited him. An angel came to him in prayer. The Gentiles didn’t fake speaking in tongues. They spoke in tongues as a response to the prayerful proclamation of the Gospel.

It is the presence and power of prayer that testifies to what we so often miss. Prayer reveals to us how God has been on the scene doing things long before we ever get there. God has always been on the scene, and it is we who respond to what God has already been doing. And if we keep this at the forefront of our minds, then maybe we will be a bit less surprised by God. It should indeed be no surprise at all that when we catch up to God, we find he has been on the scene long before we ever knew it. And this is the sublime gift that is available to all, with no distinctions.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 15, 2022

The Music that Continues Forever

Chances are, at least one of the beloved songs you learned as a child was a musical canon. “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and “Frère Jacques” are two of the most famous. Countless brides long to walk down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Just pick up the hymnal in front of you, and you will find an entire section of hymns that can be sung in canon.

The genius of a canon is that counterpoint and harmony are created by staggering the entrances of a particular melody. And you can’t speak of a canon without using two Latin words: dux and comes. Dux, which means “leader,” is the first part to enter in a musical canon. The second part to enter is the comes, which we might call the follower.

Canons come in a myriad of forms, but there’s always a dux and a comes, a leader and a follower. And the leader’s task is to establish the theme of the ensuing piece. After a suitable interval, the comes follows with the same line, and voila, you have a simple piece of counterpoint. And you, my friends, have just received a free lesson in counterpoint.

But it might seem, based on that cursory description, that a canon is somewhat mechanical. It’s a simple matter of leading and following, of mere imitation. Can there be any freedom in the follower’s part? Is there not some mindless relation between dux and comes? Is the follower anything more than an automaton?

Other questions arise, too: How does the piece end when the first statement of the theme must finish before the ensuing statements? Is the point of a musical canon primarily about a mechanical demonstration of contrapuntal prowess, or can an imitative piece like a canon be deeply expressive? Is the piece ultimately designed to go somewhere, or does meaning lie fundamentally in the relationship of the two parts? And perhaps the million-dollar question is this: what happens when the follower doesn’t follow?

These questions might very well be asked of Christian discipleship. Jesus, of course, is the dux. We are the comes, at least if we continue with St. John’s image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We didn’t initiate the musical theme of our lives; Jesus did. Jesus has set the pattern. Jesus has, in fact, set abundant life in motion. And to be his disciples, we must get behind him and follow.

And here we are brought back to those questions that inevitably arise when we talk about leading and following. Where is the freedom in following this leader? How do we follow and exist as unique individuals? What is the destination? Is there a destination? And one thing is sure: because of sin, we will be prone to wander and not to follow. So, what happens to the musical piece then?

In some cases, there are no easy answers to these questions. But it seems to me that there is often a misperception of the relationship between the two parts: dux and comes. Musical canons, after all, come in many shapes and sizes. The most interesting canons are those in which the imitation of the following part is not simple repetition at the unison or the octave, but even sometimes at the fourth, or fifth, or heaven forbid and only if you’re J.S. Bach, the seventh! Sometimes the following parts start after the interval of one measure, sometimes it’s four. Occasionally, the following part is stated in augmentation and at a slower rhythm than the leading part. Sometimes the following part is an inversion of the leading part.

And there will be times, too, when the following part seems to deviate more than the rules of counterpoint allow. At times, the canonic repetition of a part is really a stretch and seems nearly unrelated to the dux. But two things are true about every canon: the theme holds it all together, and the canon is not primarily about the ending and how you get there. The genius of a canon lies in the relationship between the parts while they are sounding, and that’s where the music happens.

Is our relationship with Jesus really any different? There are many who can’t wrap their minds around Christian discipleship because they can’t fathom a lifelong relationship of following. For them, following is mere imitation, and second-rate imitation at best. It is mechanical and uncreative. No matter how good Jesus was, for them, a life of following is a life of slavery. They want to know where they are going, and mindless following just seems to be an abdication of freedom. For others, following is all there is. Jesus was no more than an exemplary person, and if we want to be good, too, then the solution lies in following. Jesus started a canon at the unison, and our job is simply to do our best to keep it faithfully and strictly.

At the end of the day, where are we going anyway? If you surveyed many Christians today, I would bet that many are looking for definite answers about how the musical canon ends. Where are we headed, and most importantly, how do we get there?

But this is not what a canon is about. If you ask me, the least interesting and least important thing about a canon is the ending. And it’s the same with Christian discipleship. When the end drives everything else, we miss the point of true discipleship.

And this brings us to two of the passages of Scripture we have just heard: Jesus’s Good Shepherd discourse in John’s Gospel and the vision of eternal life from the Revelation to John. In one sense, with the Gospel, we get the beginning of the story, the statement of the musical theme. With Revelation, we hear how this theme works in canon. We catch an extraordinary glimpse of eternal life. But something profound is lost when we are narrowly focused on reaching heaven rather than the art of following. When the end is all that matters, the canon becomes mechanical and cheap. The canon becomes less about a relationship of parts and more about idolizing the ending.

Think of that vision of eternal life offered in the Revelation to John. The musical canons that have led to this place have been varied and diverse, and in this place, around the throne of the Lamb, the music continues for ever and ever. And the point is not so much about the ending; it’s really about the music itself.

In this place, where the song goes on and on, there is no erasure of past suffering. It has been intrinsic to the journey, for a life truly lived cannot avoid such earthly travail. Some of this pain is the knowledge of times when our musical lines have been distorted by sin. Some of it is not of our own making.         

But on the other side of these earthly sorrows, eternal life is musical merry-go-round. It is circular. Those who find themselves in that heavenly throne room are circling round and round their leader, the Good Shepherd, the Shepherd of the sheep who has also been a slaughtered lamb for their salvation. There is no need to be anywhere else. It is enough to be in the presence of the Lamb, the Good Shepherd. Indeed, this has been the whole point of following him: to be in deepest relationship with the Lamb, who is the musical center of this grand canon of life.

We who come here to the Lamb’s throne week after week, know something of this musical theme. We know its irresistible pull. We know how one sweetly sounding voice has called our own names and invited us into relationship. We have been enticed into following, I hope, not to get or win something, but because to be in musical canon with this Leader is the entire point of the piece.

We follow not to seek arrival but to find abundant life. We follow with our comes to the Good Shepherd’s dux, because when we do, we find God, we find ourselves, and we find our neighbors. This canon will never end. It’s not meant to. It’s intended to go on forever, because the point is not the end. The point is in the beautiful interplay of the musical lines, weaving in on themselves in loving interaction. The true motivation is to follow the Good Shepherd, who is strangely enough, also the Lamb. Following him simply for the sake of relationship is the real point of this piece of counterpoint. And one final thing is true: if we follow the Good Shepherd, the music will continue forever.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin

The Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 8, 2022

Open Wide the Doors

When in January of 1959, Pope John XXIII called for a Second Vatican Council, the first of its kind in almost 100 years, he famously said that it was time to open the windows of the Church. Opening the windows would let in fresh air and fresh ideas. It would reinvigorate the Church. The famous quotation believed to be uttered by John XXIII was this: “I want to throw open the windows of the church so that we can see out and the people can see in.”[1]

Whether or not John XXIII actually said that or not, it’s still a compelling image. Throw open the windows. Fling wide the doors. Let the outside come in. But also, let the inside go out.

In the past two years of pandemic, it has been interesting to worship inside this church with the windows cracked open for safety reasons. Admittedly, it’s distracting at times, as cars gun down Lancaster Avenue or trains roar by. But it’s a helpful reminder that, inside these walls, we are not meant to be a cloistered community. We are a living body of people energized for service. This building itself is porous to the world. We are porous to the world.

It doesn’t require much mental stamina to imagine what John XXIII was responding to when he called for the windows to be opened. Even more than a half century since he uttered his famous words, we probably know all too well the shadow side of a worshipping community of the faithful who gather day after day within the stone walls of a church.

This parish church is a rare exception with its doors open every day of the week. Most red doors of parish churches are bolted shut much of the time. So often, the light of Christ streams in through the stained glass, energizes the room with its radiant light, and then it stays. The interior of a church creates a greenhouse effect: the light comes in and warms bodies and souls, and then it seldom leaves. The Gospel heat generated in that activity buzzes within the church itself, but does it really go anywhere? Perhaps it only stays in the room, an intense and escalating heat energy that is trapped within.

Even when we imagine that we are taking this energy out into the world, is it really so? How much of the fire and dynamism that we experience within these walls during worship escapes out into the world? How much stultifies here due to the greenhouse effect? And if the heat of energized faith never leaves the room, why is that the case?

There are no easy answers, of course, but I wonder if today’s reading from St. John’s Gospel might offer us some possibilities. As difficult as it may be, we must recall that when the disciples are cloistered in the upper room in fear, it’s still that first day of the week, the Day of Resurrection. That is one very long day. Is it any surprise that they would be holed up together with the doors shut, if not actually bolted?

They have any number of things to fear: their lives, the loss of their past with Jesus, their memories, their security, their sense of orientation. Trauma does not breed an easy recovery, and these disciples had indeed experienced trauma, all in three days’ time.

The furthest thing from their mind would be any inclination to open the windows, fling wide the doors, invite the outside in. Fight or flight mentality breeds turning inwards, battening the hatches, and aroused amygdalas. With bated breath, thumping hearts, and hypersensitive emotional energies, the disciples huddle closer together. And then Jesus appears.

There is no invitation for him to come. Even despite the discovery of the empty tomb, there is no sense that Jesus could make himself present in their midst. No door needs to be opened or window unlatched. He appears, and he offers the truest antidote to the disciples’ fear: Peace be with you. Yes, perhaps love is the opposite of fear, but according to St. John, it is the peace of Christ that heals all fear.

And how unlike an exchange of peace at Mass or with a friend this is. This peace is not about ramping up the friendly heat in a room. It’s not about catching up on the latest news. It’s not about easy assurances that there will no longer be any conflict. The Risen Christ, bearing the wounds left by his traumatic death, comes into that room and offers the peace that passes all understanding. But it doesn’t stop there.

This fresh peace is aspirated as the very breath of the Holy Spirit that moves into the lungs of the disciples. It is meant to become their own breath. It is meant to fill their lungs with the fire of the Holy Spirit so that the breath can no longer stay there but propel them outside the shut doors of that house.

But it doesn’t. Yet a week later, and the disciples are once again shut up inside that room. Where did the breath go? Was that room baking with the radiant heat of Christ, pent up for a week rather than released into the world? Why did that gesture and breathing of peace not transform them?

And does it transform us? Week after week, even day after day, people are drawn into this church. Sometimes all the windows and doors are indeed shut, but Christ’s light still gets in. The breath of life gets in. Day after day Christ comes among us and bids us peace. This room is baking with the fire of God’s Holy Spirit. Can you feel the heat? So, what keeps much of this heat from returning back outside to catalyze the world?

The locked doors, the shut windows, the hermetically sealed environments of our faith are all controlled by one thing, and it’s a monster, a Leviathan, an enemy. It is fear. This lurking presence manifests itself in so many ways. It’s the fear of God itself—not a holy fear but a fear that if we don’t get everything just right, we will suffer another more dreaded eternal heat. It’s a fear that we will be shunned by our skeptical friends for sharing some of our Gospel passion with them. It’s the fear that we will offend someone by mentioning the name of Jesus. It’s the fear that the faith we share is somehow not compelling enough for an overly critical and rational world. It’s a fear of the other, of the stranger, of the one who is unlike us. It’s a fear of other people’s fears. It’s a fear that we simply don’t have enough money or resources to incarnate the Gospel in the world. It’s a fear that we are defined by our past rather than our future. It’s a fear of being vulnerable with others, vulnerable enough to share what’s behind this epicenter of Gospel fire that draws us here every week.

Amid so much fear, the doors between the Church and the world seem to get thicker and stronger. The windows appear to be latched even tighter. And the pent-up heat of this room seems to get more and more overwhelming until we can’t stand it.

But although we may grope in the dark for an escape valve and although we may be literally incapacitated with fear, there is an answer, and Jesus has shown us this answer in his response to those first disciples’ fear over two thousand years ago. The answer is the Risen Christ himself. No closed door or shut window can keep him out. It matters not whether we bar the gates or batten the hatches. He comes, week after week, day after day. He knows when we are afraid, and it is precisely then that he comes, surely and faithfully.

While we may in some inexplicable sense be afraid of him and of his Gospel, he is not afraid of us. He comes to us. He meets us as we secretly cower in fear even while we still worship the living God. For it is only the Risen Christ, the One who has conquered sin, death, and ultimately fear, who can provide the antidote to our sickness of fear.

He meets us not to scold us but to encourage us. His words are simple: Peace be with you. It’s a freeing peace, where past sins are forgiven and a new future is paved. It’s a peace that gives us an incredible power to forgive and let go and move on. It’s a peace that animates our bodies and souls with a fire that forges a new creation from the old.

I don’t know about you, but I can feel the heat. The windows may be slightly cracked in this place, but the heat is building up. It’s the heat of a Gospel that will save the world if we resist the temptation only to hold it here inside. Christ is alive. We are alive through his power. And if we let the Risen Christ dispel our fear, we have no choice but to run from this place, as if we are running from an empty tomb, to tell all the world why we are on fire.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 24, 2022

[1] https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/saint-pope-john-xxiii

Staying at the Tomb

At least three things are necessary in a mystery novel. The first, of course, is a crime. The second is a detective. And the third is a slate of possible suspects. But what makes a great mystery novel is a crime that is vexing and impenetrable. Add to this a detective who is brilliant, insightful, and persistent, and the mystery genre is taken to a whole new level. If you ask me, the best mysteries are those in which the evidence has been staring you right in the face from the beginning, but identifying the culprit is essentially impossible until just enough suspects are eliminated. And the astute detective is the one who saves the day.

Mystery novels are not really designed to be read twice, and if they are read more than once, the experience is completely different. The challenge of trying to identify the culprit has lost its verve. A second reading is more about seeing how you missed all the right clues the first time around.

John’s Gospel account of the discovery of the empty tomb is rather like this. There is no mystery to be solved, but once the ending of the story is known, it takes a lot of imagination to identify with the confusion of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the Beloved Disciple.

First of all, why would Mary not have peered into the tomb when she saw the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. Why did the Beloved Disciple not enter the tomb? And when Peter went in and discovered the curious state of the burial shrouds, what did the Beloved Disciple finally believe? Because we’re told that neither he nor Peter understood the Scriptural predictions of Jesus’s eventual resurrection from the dead. But perhaps the most bewildering part of this story is that after finding an empty tomb and abandoned grave clothes, Peter and the Beloved Disciple returned home.

Let’s just pause right there. They did what? They went back home? Something does not add up here. With the advantage of hindsight and knowing the real end of the story, it’s very difficult for us to understand how Peter and the Beloved Disciple could not comprehend what had happened. Jesus had already given a long discourse on going to a place where they could not themselves go. And hadn’t Jesus revealed enough clues for people, especially two of his closest disciples, to put two and two together?

They ran to the empty tomb to corroborate Mary’s story. They found it empty with discarded grave wrappings, and then they went to their homes. This is very odd. Something does not quite pass the smell test here.

Which is why Mary stays. This is the amazing moment in story. It’s a crucial moment indeed. Mary is like the classic detective in a mystery novel. You know the type, don’t you? The master detective who is pitted against every local yokel small town sheriff who finds the quickest way to identify a culprit, even if that culprit is not really the culprit at all. The master detective stays around with the scene of the crime, pressing every corner until the most vital clues reveal themselves. The master detective doesn’t look for the easiest way to a solution; the master detective sticks with the case until the truth is found.

But Mary is hardly a detective here, and there is no murder mystery in today’s story. Mary is not looking to solve a crime. Mary is seeking the truth. After Peter and the Beloved Disciple have gone home from the empty tomb, we find Mary still there at the entrance to the cave. She doesn’t know what has happened. But something doesn’t add up.

In fact, it’s not entirely clear that Mary even knows what she hopes to find or discover. Does she even know what she’s looking for? But in her mind and heart, some truth is waiting to be revealed, and she waits for it, beside an empty tomb and discarded grave clothes. This is different from what happened to Lazarus. At the very least, maybe Mary could find Jesus’s body and return it to its place of burial. These are all practical things she must have considered.

But I suspect that there was something more. We don’t know what encounters Mary had had with Jesus before, but we must assume they were transformative. She was at the foot of the cross. She saw Jesus take his last breath. And now, at the empty tomb, she is sticking it out until the bitter end, longing to find her Lord’s body, whatever the cost.

It’s because Mary stays with this perplexing situation until the end that she has the first real definitive encounter with the risen Christ. In her confusion, she is looking and probing. She is weeping. She is there, fully human, truly befuddled, and yet unable to move. And there, her Lord comes to her. When the Good Shepherd, now risen, calls her name, she finally discovers who he is. This is the clue she has needed. It’s the clue that neither Peter nor the Beloved Disciple wait long enough to find. Mary, who has remained with Jesus until this very moment, can now go and proclaim the true meaning of the resurrection.

It is Mary who can bring the real good news: I have seen the Lord. This is far richer than reporting that you have seen an empty tomb. This is on a wholly different level than announcing that grave clothes were abandoned, and the body was gone. Mary’s proclamation attests to the real presence of a Lord whom death could not bind and who is fully alive. This proclamation announces that even after death, the Good Shepherd lives to call us each by name and to continue to be in relationship with us. All of this is revealed because Mary stuck with it. She stayed to the end.

It’s difficult for many in our modern world to imagine such a commitment, where allegiances are so often shallow. It’s hard to imagine sticking with a crucified Lord after the tomb is empty and no answers are in sight. In such a world, it’s not easy to stay with a Lord whose presence is revealed in absence. It’s not easy to persist with some sense of faith when life hands you a bad hand or when your deepest loves are taken away. It’s a challenge for many to recognize Jesus calling their names when the world strives viciously to take their names away. How do we persevere, searching for our Lord, amid our weeping? Could we dare to think that if we stay at the tomb long enough our Lord will find us, too? Maybe staying there and waiting is our way of finding him.

The easier road is to see the empty tomb and then go home. It all ends there, so we think. The resurrection has been established as fact. And we can go home with this knowledge, certified in our faith. This is the path of religion that offers easy answers. This is the temptation to a simplistic faith with only a head nod to Jesus’ resurrection but no underlying commitment of discipleship. The easier road is simply to go home rather than stick with it.

But Mary couldn’t simply go home. Something about that empty tomb didn’t add up. She had known her Lord, and she had been changed. This Lord, who had taught and healed and preached and claimed astounding things about himself couldn’t just be gone. The evidence was in his life. So, Mary waited at the tomb, not rejoicing in some triumphalist assertion of life over death, but weeping, distraught in her grief. There had to be more to this story. That’s why she stuck with it.

And so, year after year, even with all our questions, we return to the empty tomb. We might say that we have been here all along. We have been waiting all this time. At times, perhaps in the past, perhaps now, we have been weeping. We have been weeping at the cruelty of a world that hasn’t stuck with the message proclaimed over two thousand years ago. We sit at the entrance to the tomb, bringing the confusions of the past year: the lost loved ones, the lost jobs, the financial challenges, the never-ending pandemic, the war. Whatever it is, we bring it all to the empty tomb. And I suspect that because we are here today, we have wanted to stick with it. We have sensed that there was something more to this story all along. There was an empty tomb and an absent body, for sure, but there was something else as well.

If we have stuck with it this long, then we are sure to discover the real meaning of what is happening today. He is risen, that is certain. But something else is also certain. He is alive. He is with us. He meets us weeping, or laughing, or even numb with pain, as we keep vigil at the door to the tomb. Listen. He is calling our names, the names of every one of us. He has gotten our attention. So, we turn, and we see that he is there. He is still with us. And now, we must run, not home, but into the world with this good news to proclaim. The tomb was empty. Our Lord is risen. He is still alive, calling our names. We have seen the Lord!

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day
April 17, 2022

On the Other Side

In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Baby Suggs, an enslaved woman, is offered an opportunity to gain freedom. Her son Halle works it all out with Mr. Garner, Baby Suggs’ master. Halle’s desire for his mother to find freedom surpasses Baby Suggs’ own desire for freedom. She, after all, doesn’t want to leave still in bondage her sole surviving child, of nine, the rest of whom are absent from her life and are likely dead.

And so, after Baby Suggs “crosses the river” into freedom in Cincinnati, it is a disconcerting, utterly novel experience. It is described this way in the novel:

“[W]hen she stepped foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn’t; that Halle, who had never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her.

Something’s the matter. What’s the matter? What’s the matter? she asked herself. She didn’t know what she looked like and was not curious. But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, ‘These hands belong to me. These my hands.’ Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat.”[1]

On the other side of the river, Baby Suggs finally discovers not only freedom, but herself. Only there in the land of the living does she become aware of her heartbeat. On the former side of the river, in the land of numbness and of death, it was as if she were not even alive.

This is the night for us to become alive once again. This is the night for crossing over. It is the crossing from death into life, from slavery into freedom, from chaos into order, from numbness into awareness of a living heartbeat. The journey is as old as creation itself. It was God who, in the beginning, made the heartbeat of creation sing. From the primal nothingness, God created an ordered, vibrant creation. From a world scattered into chaos and disorder by sin, God sent waters of the flood to wash everything anew and revive the heartbeat of all creation. From the chest pains inflicted by Pharaoh’s cruel grip, God let the Israelites cross over into freedom, where they could once again hear their collective pulse. Into the dry bones of a people living in exile, God could breathe new life and give a new heart of flesh. To a people unable to sing a song in a strange land, God could bring them back home again, where they could see their hands as their own once again and hear the thumping of life in their chests. On this night, the Christian Passover, we learn yet again what it’s like to hear our own heartbeats, beating in sync as one living Body of Christ. We learn what it’s like to move from the land of the dead to the land of the living.    

When we started this evening, the death of Good Friday lingered in our minds and hearts. We entered the darkness of this church as if coming to the tomb. There we were, with the women, who went early on that first day of the week. Those women, perhaps like us, were prepared only for death. They came bearing spices to anoint Jesus’s dead body. They went into the dank tomb, ready for the aroma of their gifts to overpower the stench of death. But they discovered something else. And it caught them off guard.

On the other side of an empty tomb, those women, like us here tonight, found something unexpected. With minds and hearts numbed by the tragedy of death, the women could not see beyond the tomb into the future. They couldn’t see beyond the tomb into the past. They were frozen in the death grip of a bleak and stagnant present. But then something happened. They remembered.

The terror and surprise of finding an empty tomb, along with the assistance of two angels, revived their memories. Now, they recalled the words of their Lord, that Jesus had already told them the end of the story. They had already known this, but they couldn’t understand it until they had moved to the other side. It was their memory that ferried them across to the other side. And in doing so, they became aware of their heartbeats. They came to the tomb prepared only for death. But to their amazement, they crossed over into life.

There is always the danger of forgetting. These women were not the first ones in salvation history to forget. The whole history of humanity in relationship with God is a struggle to avoid amnesia and reclaim memory. In the covenants of the Old Testament, God’s people deliberately recited words to remember what God had done for them. They repeated words to recall what God said he would do for them, time and again, lest they forget. We do the same, every time we gather to celebrate Mass, lest we forget that Christ is with us in the breaking of bread.

But too often, we think that God is the one who needs reminding, as if it’s our job to help God be faithful to his promises. We obsessively recall God’s words of promise lest he forget what he said he would do. In the face of a brutal war or human trafficking or subway bombings or a tiresome pandemic, we wonder if God has indeed forgotten to be gracious to us. We wonder if he will indeed save us.   

But God has not forgotten. It is we who have forgotten that when it seems like we are living on the death side of the river, we are never really there. God has already helped us cross over. We have been living all along on the other side, where there’s life.

It is we who need that reminding, like Baby Suggs, that our hands are our own, that we can do something with our hands. We need reminding that our heartbeat is there, that we are alive in Christ Jesus and that our individual heartbeats can sound together for the good of the world. We need to constantly remind ourselves that we have already been brought from death into life.

Every year, on this night, we follow a small light, our pillar of fire by night, to remember that we have already been brought onto that other side. On that side, we are amazed anew that a recalcitrant people whom God has helped to cross the river are still called very good. This is the night to remember with dazzling clarity that God will never again let the earth be destroyed in the waters of a flood, and that those waters will be the source of new life in Christ in baptism. This is the night for our memories to recall that even when the Israelites had crossed over into freedom and still got testy with God, he yet sent them manna. God brought them to that promised land in spite of their complaining. This is the night to hear anew that when the Jerusalem Temple was reduced to rubble, God would bring his beloved back home and make them living stones to bear his truth into a dark world.

There is no tragedy or war or human evil that can bring us back to the death side of the river. The current will always want to pull us back, but that side of death no longer has any power over us. For this is the night to remember. It is the night to celebrate that the victory has already been won. We may have come to the tomb decked with spices and prepared only for death, but we have discovered once again that deep within us, our heart beats with new life in Christ.

This is the night. Christ has brought us over into freedom. This is the night. Our hands are ours to give flesh to his Gospel in the world. This is the night. Our hearts beat with Christ’s life. Why do you look for the living among the dead? There is not death on this side. Only life. For he is not here! This is the night. He is risen, that we may rise again, too. Thanks be to God!

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter
April 16, 2022

[1] Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Vintage, 1987, 2004), 166, Kindle edition.

Unanswered Questions

Does Good Friday leave you with more questions than answers? Even yet, is there not some small hope each Holy Week that we will find a hint of an answer to our deepest questions when confronted with the mystery of the cross? Is there not something definitive about this day, of all days, that might offer us answers?

If we look to St. John’s Gospel itself, we are not reassured. Look at how many questions are unanswered in this Passion narrative. There are many, many questions, and as is so typical in John’s Gospel, few are answered directly. It seems like everyone is talking past one another.

In John’s account of the Passion, only two of the questions posed are answered directly. When Jesus is confronted by those coming to arrest him in the garden, he asks, “Whom are you looking for?” And the answer is clear: “Jesus of Nazareth.” The answer may seem direct, but don’t you have follow-up questions? Do those coming to arrest Jesus really know whom they are seeking? Other than some historical figure named Jesus of Nazareth, do they understand who he truly is?

The other question is really a series of three questions that are posed to Peter, in which he is asked about his relationship with Jesus. “You are not also one of this man's disciples, are you?” Peter’s answer is definitive: no, he is not one of Jesus’s disciples.

So, according to John’s rendering of Jesus’ Passion, two answers to two questions are clear: Jesus of Nazareth is being sought for arrest and trial, and one of his closest disciples denies him three times.

But the rest of this narrative leaves us with so many other unanswered questions, either stated or left unsaid. And I would guess that we all bring our own questions to the foot of the cross this day, longing for answers to them. Last evening, on Maundy Thursday, we entertained the possibility that perhaps we come to the liturgies of Holy Week each year expecting to be able to do something for God. Can we offer our heartiest repentance this year? Can we turn Peter’s clear denial of Jesus into our own definitive affirmation of him as our Lord? Can we at least put ourselves in some place of deep sorrow and hurt to watch for just a minute with our Lord, to share in some small part in his suffering?

But the questions keep coming. We can’t avoid them. How could Jesus have been denied by his closest followers? Why did the cross have to be the means of our salvation? Did God abandon Jesus on that cross, and if so, why?

And sometimes, the questions become much, much more personal. Isn’t today the day when we face head-on the mystery of suffering, especially that of our own lives and of our loved ones? How can we not bring to the foot of the cross today the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine, of innocent lives lost, of homeless refugees, and of destroyed cities? How can we not bring to the foot of the cross today the unholy divisions in our own nation and the desperate cries of anguish in our own communities? Today, at the foot of the cross, how do we repent for and respond to centuries of horrifying and heinous acts of violence and murder against our Jewish brothers and sisters in this holiest of weeks and on this day in particular?

The questions go on and on. We cannot keep them out. If we hope that this day will be a day for answers, we are sorely disappointed. There is even a mute resignation on this day that avoids superlatives. But shouldn’t this be the day for superlatives? Is not this day, on which Jesus accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished for the salvation of the world, the day for a superlative? Is this not just a Good Friday but the most excellent Friday, the best Friday there ever was? Or is this the worst Friday because of the manner in which our salvation had to happen?

There is, it seems, not much we can say this day except nothing at all. Maybe we can only accept a half-hearted acknowledgment that this day is good and stop there. Superlatives fail. Words fail. And meanwhile, the questions keep coming.

When the answers do not arrive, and when our words are fragile, sometimes poetry is our friend. Poetry understands that sometimes to speak to a truth, we must speak around it, knowing that we can never express the ineffable. It is on this day, where words are inadequate, that we might savor the words of the Welsh priest and poet R.S. Thomas, who attempts to give voice to our confusion. We are like the unnamed person in one of his poems. There, in a lonely church, is a solitary man. “There is no other sound/In the darkness but the sound of a man/Breathing, testing his faith/On emptiness, nailing his questions/One by one to an untenanted cross.”[1]

Are we in that place today? Is there anything more we can do than sit in the darkness of a world being rent apart daily by sin? Can we do anything other than breathe into the silence, where sometimes no answers come? Can we do anything more than venerate a cross, seemingly tenanted by a corpus of our crucified Lord but truly left empty because he has risen and now reigns with God? Can we put up with nailing our questions, one by one, Good Friday after Good Friday, day after day, to a cross where we find no answer but the knowledge that on Easter Day, the tomb was empty?

Maybe this day is one in which we stop trying to answer all the world’s questions and even our own. Maybe this is the day to sit with the one answer that reigns above all and that towers above this ravaged earth, which is littered with our questions. And even when our fiercest questions clutter an untenanted cross, there is one question that we so often try to answer ourselves, as if we are the ones to answer it. But what if we posed this question to God himself? We have already heard this question today: Whom do you seek? And here we find the most definitive answer in the world.

Because the cross is untenanted, we know this answer is true. So, we direct to God the question that we usually try to answer ourselves. Whom do you seek, God? And God responds, you, my beloved child. On Good Friday, the one answer we can be certain of is that our crucified Lord, now risen and ascended, is constantly seeking us. On this good day, he is the Good Shepherd, the one who never stops looking for us, even when we get lost in our questions. He has left the cross untenanted so that we can nail our questions there, and his way of answering is to find us, in whatever desert land we have wandered to and in whatever hole we have dug ourselves into.

And although we will continue to breathe into the darkness and test our faith by nailing question after question to an untenanted cross, and although we may not hear the answers we want in return, we know this: the Good Shepherd has called us each by name. And if we ever doubt that we can hear his voice, we must recall the place where we can hear it most clearly: at the foot of the cross.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Good Friday
April 15, 2022

[1] R.S. Thomas, “In Church”

Brought Up Short

When was the last time you were brought up short? We all know these moments, I’m sure. You wax eloquently on some subject in order to demonstrate your intellectual prowess, only to discover that you have revealed your lack of knowledge to a vastly smarter group of people. Is it merely a moment of humiliation or a call to humility? Then there’s the well-meaning phone call placed to a friend, which offers her the chance to note that it would have been nice had you called when her mother died. Do we sulk after such an encounter or learn something about ourselves? What about the rejection letter to a choice university after a long string of acceptances, which dredges up plenty of self-doubt. Is it another occasion to make excuses, or is there a blessing in it?

Whatever the experience is, being brought up short is a eureka moment, one in which our safe and proud worlds are disoriented. We question our values. We seek someone to blame. We wander aimlessly without a purpose. We are confused about what to do next. Or we see an invitation to be changed.

Were you brought up short this past Palm Sunday? Did you find any self-conviction in the distortion of hosannas into calls for crucifixion? Have you been disoriented this week as you journey with Christ to the foot of the cross, hoping to find salvation somewhere along the way?

This evening, we are reminded of Jesus’s new commandment to love one another as he loves us, and so it’s perfectly natural to want to devise a strategy for selfless love. Emerging from the haze of distorted hosannas and blood-curdling cries for crucifixion, tonight, Jesus seems to offer us a practical plan.

Wash the feet of others as Jesus has done for us. Serve as Jesus has served us. Be humble. Take on Jesus’ model of servant leadership. Now, this is precisely the kind of action plan that satisfies our urge to do good and to do the right thing for God.

But something about this rings shallow, doesn’t it? Jesus’s commandment feels straightforward enough, but there’s a hidden risk. If we’re not careful, we will mistake this new commandment with seeking out the nearest soup kitchen, making a few generous online payments to a charity, or trying to smile a bit more at the disgruntled grocery store clerk.

It’s not, of course, to say that any of those things are bad or wrongheaded. But if we really listen carefully to this evening’s Gospel text and if we let the footwashing in a few minutes captivate us in some way, we might find that instead of receiving an action plan this evening, we have once again been brought up short.

At least, I certainly have, because I can’t get past what has just happened to Peter. I see myself in him, for I know that I would have done precisely what he did. Had my Lord deigned to wash my filthy and unattractive feet, I would have resisted. No, my Lord, you will never do so. In fact, I would have added something Peter never does say, but which perhaps he left unspoken. Lord, you must let me wash yours.

Yes, I would have been embarrassed to show my unshod and unshapely feet to Jesus. I would have felt some compunction, even guilt, at seeing Jesus stoop to delicately bathe my feet. I would then have worried about what others would have thought if I had let Jesus wash my feet. And then, my hasty offer to wash Jesus’s feet instead would have been more about my avoiding judgment from others than about a desire to serve. If I had been in Peter’s shoes and had any inkling of who Jesus was, I would have felt extraordinarily guilty sitting idly by without doing something for him.

Is it Peter who also brings you up short as well? If we entered this night looking for an action plan that would allow us to set ourselves right with God, Peter does bring us up short. Peter reminds us of the temptation to use our sinfulness as a shield against being vulnerable with God. Peter reminds us that our extravagant humility before God is its own kind of sin—the sin of pride. Peter reminds us that it is deliciously tempting to create our own spiritual strategies to make ourselves righteous before God.

Peter points to the ways in which we try to hide from the God from whom no secrets are hid. Peter is an uncomfortable reminder of our willingness to cling to our mistakes and failures as a way of keeping God at bay. Because when we let God in, there is no telling what will happen.

If we have been brought up short this night, and if we are indeed brought up short in a few minutes when feet are exposed to the light and bathed by an unfamiliar hand, then maybe it’s a blessing. Maybe it’s a blessing rather than yet another moment to become mired in our guilt and a sense of our unworthiness. Perhaps by bringing us up short, God is getting our attention and showing us another way.

Yes, the great temptation of this Holy Week is to focus only on doing all the right things in order to please God. But instead, it seems, that by bringing us up short, God has inverted our thinking. This night is the night in which we are vividly reminded that God is here to do something for us, because we desperately need that from him.

Only when we receive God’s gift of himself and let him in can we begin to understand Jesus’s new commandment of self-giving love. Jesus has modeled this perfectly for us. He has accepted the Father’s glorification of himself because it is the Father’s will. Jesus did not use false humility as a reason to evade glorification. He accepted the Father’s gift, and in doing so, he was able to offer himself up freely for the salvation of the world. And in this mystery, he is able to come to us, to wash our feet, and to teach us to receive his gift so that we can then offer that gift to others.

Undoubtedly, it brings us up short to recognize that there is nothing we need to do for God. God doesn’t need us to wash his feet. God doesn’t need our praise or anything we offer, but we do it anyway. Because when we accept God’s gift of himself, repentance, prayer, and praise are indeed our appropriate responses.

There is nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy to come to this Altar tonight and to accept God’s gift onto the throne of our hands. The hardest thing to accept is that, worthy or unworthy in our own estimation, God has invited us here. God comes to us, always, frequently, and without reservation to be known to us in the breaking of bread.

Now, let God wash your feet. Let him come to you in the Sacrament of the Altar. Let God do something for you so that you can do something for the world.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Maundy Thursday
April 14, 2022

The Last Word

Who has the last word in the account of Jesus’s passion? Is it Jesus’s dying words on the cross? Is it literally the last spoken words in Luke’s passion story, on the lips of the centurion who professes Jesus’s innocence? Is it the unspoken words of the women watching from a distance but who will discover the empty tomb in a few days’ time? In the drama of this story, it’s not clear where the final word lies.

The traditional seven last words of Christ are themselves a conglomeration from all the Gospels: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Woman, behold thy son.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
I thirst.
It is finished.
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.
Three of these traditional last words are from Luke. So, which is the last word?

Are any of these really the last word? But there is another last word that seems to speak with a finality transcending musical settings that are brought out of the library each Holy Week. There is a last word from Jesus that comes not in his dying moments but early in his final steps towards the cross.

You can certainly be forgiven for not noticing it. There is so much happening in the Passion Gospel. But hidden in this overwhelming drama is a last word from Jesus that has little power of eloquence but rather speaks a profound truth that lies at the heart of his death on the cross.

Jesus’s final hours bring to the fore the grating dissonance of a world oriented towards retribution and violence. If it were not so, he would not have been put to death. When the status quo is threatened and earthly power is questioned, the voice that turns over tables must be silenced, and in the semantics of such a broken world, only violence, both literal and spiritual, will do.

Violence, anger, hate, and meanness seem to be the lingua franca of not just first-century Palestine but of our own day. It is sometimes even the language of the Church. Governments know of no other formula to settle disputes than force or threatening words. People know of no other response to a biting comment or hurtful action than reciprocating the same. Institutions know of no other means of ensuring conformity than heavy-handedness.

The disciples show themselves to be as inept as we in learning this new language of Jesus, the language that is the source of that profound final word of his earthly life. When Jesus warns them of the danger of discipleship to come, they mistakenly think he wants them to buy real swords for their mission. They simply don’t understand. Nor do we. After years of speaking a language where words are used as swords, how can we so quickly learn another that is vastly different?

Which is why perhaps the truest final word of Jesus is buried in today’s long Passion story. Our minds and hearts may have settled for a moment on what Jesus said and did, but I imagine, we quickly moved on to other gorier scenes.

Did you catch it? It’s early in the Passion Gospel. Judas has entered the scene to do his dirty work of betrayal with a kiss, and suddenly, those around Jesus now understand what is taking place. They know of no other language to speak in response to this wicked deed than to use a sword to cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave. It might elicit within us the satisfying response of the bad guy in a movie getting his comeuppance. It’s the delight of schadenfreude when a sworn enemy hits rock bottom. We all know this language deeply.

But into this horrible language of human sin, Jesus speaks a last word of truth which expresses most vividly the meaning of his passion, death, and resurrection. This word will not be remembered for elegance or lyricism. It matters not what English translation you use. This word goes beyond mere speech and moves into the realm of action, the apex of which is the Lamb of God sacrificed for the salvation of the world.

No more of this!, says Jesus, when the slave’s ear is severed. This is the last word. It is a command both for that gruesome moment in the first century and for ages to come. It is also a statement of what Jesus accomplished for us in his life, passion, death, and resurrection. And it is emblemized in Jesus’ next action, where he touches the ear of the wounded slave and heals him.

This is it. In this we can begin to see the meaning of this holiest of weeks. In this we catch a glimpse of the mysterious heart of salvation. This is how God’s power manifests itself, which is so incomprehensible in the language we usually speak. This is the last word, the final word, the word that exchanges healing for violence.

But it seems quite the opposite, doesn’t it? How can this have been the final word when it was followed by so much evil? How can that have been the final word in the face of war? How can that have been the final word when suffering, like the poor and oppressed, is always with us? How can that have been the final word when so much is left unhealed?

It is this perplexing question itself that paradoxically attests to the truth of Jesus’s final word. For this word’s finality comes not through heavy-handed power but through quiet confidence and persistence. This last word doesn’t assert its strength by yelling down other words. This last word reveals its power in the silence of Jesus’s own submission to his Father’s will. It reveals itself in Jesus’s healing of a severed ear. It reveals itself in Jesus’ forgiveness of those who put him to death. It reveals itself in Jesus’ dying words on the cross, by which he surrenders everything, including his own life, for the sake of the world. It reveals itself in the Eucharistic feast in which the disparate members of Christ’s Body are made whole again. It reveals itself in Jesus’s kiss of peace given to us, which is the opposite of Judas’s kiss of betrayal.

This is the final word that dispels the cycle of retribution. This is the final word that conquers death by breaking the cycle of violence which is death’s only weapon. This is the final word that still speaks, albeit in a different language, after death has killed the body. This is the final word for us, as we enter this holiest of weeks.

It is the only word that can bring us from death into life. It is the only word that offers true freedom. It is, at its heart, the only word that matters. And in the midst of the world’s incoherent babbling, it speaks the only language that can have the last word.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
April 10, 2022

No Waste at All

If you want to understand what Gothic architecture is really about, start with the highest vaulted roof or the most obscure corner. Examine the finials on a cathedral tower. Notice the finest details on the hand of a saint poised above the doors to a church. Or research the structural proportions that render mathematical ratios symbolizing the perfection of God. The real meaning of Gothic architecture is found in those places usually invisible to the human eye.

If you really want to understand the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, move beyond the beautiful counterpoint and adventurous harmonies of this musical giant. Look to the hidden messages encoded in the music, those cryptic compositional features that most people never know are there. You will find Bach’s own name spelled out in musical letters or the shape of a cross created by inverted musical lines of a sacred work.

If you really want to understand the culinary arts, before you shovel a piece of food into your mouth at a fine restaurant, notice the arrangement of the food on the plate before you: the visual appeal of contrasting colors and textures, the carefully dripped sauces in patterns, the precisely measured portions of food.

In a functional and mechanistic world, it is perhaps only the arts that have retained the wonder of play. Art, at base level, still prizes the creation of beauty for beauty’s sake: not to win a prize or make money but to offer something beautiful to a demystified world. In most universities, arts programs are the first ones to have funding cut when there are financial challenges. Many parents are quick to redirect their children to other disciplines when they want to study music, art, or dance. What’s the purpose of spending money on college to study the arts when you will never have a financially lucrative career? To artists, making art is a vocation, while to the rest of the world it seems like a waste of time and money.

Of course, medieval sculptors assumed that they would be the only ones to behold the exquisite details on the claw of a gargoyle perched hundreds of feet in the air. I’m sure J.S. Bach knew that few people would be able to decipher the musical codes in his compositions that rendered his own praise of Almighty God. Most chefs assume that the average restaurant patron will immediately destroy and devour their culinary creations. But the point is not so much in customer value as it is in creating art for art’s sake.

For the medieval artisan or J.S. Bach, it takes on another meaning. Art is prayer. Art is praise. Lavishing hours and hours on a work of art that will only ever be seen by the artisan and by God can be nothing other than an act of prayer. But if this is considered a waste, it is very much a holy waste.

There is perhaps no better Scriptural image that represents such seeming wastefulness than Mary anointing Jesus’s feet with oil. Jesus has just raised her brother Lazarus from the dead, and he is the dinner guest of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Everything about what Mary does is utterly extravagant. She uses a pound of oil, worth nearly a month’s wages, if we insist on putting a numerical value on it. It is pure, unadulterated nard. There is no functional reason for this anointing. Jesus has no need of it, nor do his feet. Mary wipes his feet dry with her hair, which means that now her hair is oily and reeking of perfume. Indeed, the entire house is permeated by the smell of this oil. Mary has even risked her own good image by engaging in such an intimate act.

What purpose could this gesture have served? We can’t help but see in it a foreshadowing of Jesus’s own washing of his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, as well as the anointing of Jesus’s dead body after his crucifixion. But in that moment when Mary anointed Jesus’s feet, there were undoubtedly starving people on the streets of Bethany and nearby Jerusalem. And the smell of nard threatened to overwhelm the smell of the food prepared for Jesus. And Jesus was less than a week away from death, so what purpose could Mary’s anointing have served except no real purpose at all? It was a waste unless you could see it from the eyes of Mary, who wished only to honor Jesus for his own sake and enjoy just a few moments of his glorious presence.

It was Judas who ruptured the beauty of that moment with his cynicism and false self-righteousness, but his voice rings familiar to us doesn’t it? This voice rings down the millennia to our own day mocking us for spending so much time in prayer when we could be out on the streets helping the poor. This sly voice still enters our thoughts when we are taking a moment to be with those we love rather than toiling away at a thankless job. This voice fusses when we insist on beautiful churches and organs, glorious choirs and transcendent worship. This voice argues that we could worship in a much plainer setting and spend the money on those who are hungry. This accusing voice haunts us when we set grand visions for ministry in a parish that relies too heavily on investments. Logical voices say that it would be much wiser to make budget cuts and preserve our meager savings.

Before long, this persistent voice has convinced us that we are left with a moral dilemma and an either/or proposition. Either spend money on those in need and forego art and beauty, or pour it into lavish, self-serving worship and feel guilty forever. But Scripture tells us that Judas’s critical question rang hollow from the start. We know that he had no real interest in the poor. And it reassures us that the accusing voices in our heads and in the world ring false, too. There is no dichotomous choice to be made here.

Nowhere does Jesus say to ignore the poor. Indeed, if we followed Jesus’s own statement back to the Book of Deuteronomy, we would know that because the poor will always be with us, God’s mandate is to care for them.[1] To enjoy God’s presence in prayer, praise, and worship simply for its very enjoyment is no alternative to caring for those in need. It is, in fact, the very source of that care.

The more we are extravagant with God—in our prayer, praise, and giving—the more we can’t help but be extravagant with the poor. The more we engage in holy wastes of time, we will see that lavish worship of God for no other reason than to be with him draws us out of our own agendas. In such praise, our actions are no longer directed towards some end, which often is designed to make us feel good. Wasting time with God reminds us that we must rely on God’s grace alone rather than on our pet projects and task lists.

When Mary revels in Jesus’s presence as she anoints his feet with oil, there is no other purpose than to be with him. It serves no end. She gets nothing from it except a precious moment of being with her Lord. It is an utter waste in the eyes of the world.

And this wastefulness is but a shadow of God’s own wastefulness. What kind of deity is committed to saving a group of people that so persistently turns from him? Could there be anything more wasteful than sticking with a bunch of fickle sinners? Is there anything more wasteful than an act of creation that will be marred time and again because of human arrogance and neglect? It’s all so incomprehensible, and yet it demonstrates the extravagant love of a God who seems to want nothing more than to be in our presence and to love and treasure us as we should love and treasure him.

God’s unflinching devotion to us his sinful children seems to be noticed by fewer and fewer people these days. Like the eyelash of a saint sculpted in stone on the portal of a medieval cathedral or a nod to the Holy Trinity in the key signature of an organ piece, it seems wasteful in its futility. Often, God’s wasteful extravagance goes unnoticed even by us, the recipients of his grace and mercy.

But there is no better way to waste time than to pour it all into being with a God who cannot get enough of being with us. God doesn’t do it to get anything from us, nor should we do it to get anything from God. Wasting time with God humbles our grandest human projects and our sterile mechanization of a world created by a God who longs for us to enjoy it and his own presence. God does not force false choices on us. God is extravagant with us so we might be extravagant with him and the poor and needy. If we can only enjoy his presence, then we will find that such a holy waste of time is, in fact, no waste at all.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
April 3, 2022     

[1] Deut. 15:11

The Art of Life

In a 1982 introduction to the book On the High Wire by the French tightrope artist Philippe Petit, the American writer Paul Auster wrote of his first encounter with Petit in Paris in 1971. On a Parisian street, he happened to encounter Petit as he was juggling, performing magic tricks, and riding a unicycle before a silent and captivated impromptu audience.

A few weeks later, late one night, Auster spotted Petit and a group of young people surreptitiously moving ropes, cables, and other equipment near Notre-Dame Cathedral. Auster recognized Petit as the street performer he had previously seen in action. He knew something was about to happen, but he could not imagine what. The next day, Auster discovered the answer when he came across a photograph in the International Herald Tribune showing Petit walking on a wire between the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral. This was the result of the furtive late night activity Auster had witnessed. For three hours, Petit had juggled and danced on the wire before an awestruck audience at street level. He was then promptly arrested and charged with violating the law.

But Auster never forgot the photograph of Petit’s tightrope act that he saw in the newspaper. He couldn’t forget it. Auster noted that the stunt was really no stunt at all. Petit was not a flippant stuntman who sought people’s attention by risking his own life. He was not a superficial crowd-pleaser. He was an artist. And he could see art where others could only see the possibility of death.

There was something beautiful and artistic in Petit’s dangerous forays out over canyons between skyscrapers, most notably when he walked between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. And for Paul Auster three years before, seeing a tiny figure suspended between the vast towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral transformed his view of the cathedral itself. Petit had shown it to be alive in some new and creative way. Auster observed that, because of the photograph of Petit’s tightrope dance at Notre Dame, his perception of Paris itself changed.[1]

When Petit repeated the tightrope act by walking from a tower of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York to an apartment building across Amsterdam Avenue, Austen recalls that not for a single moment did he think that Petit would fall. It was simply not a part of this artistic act. Death was not—could not—be in the picture. In Auster’s words, “[h]igh-wire walking is not an art of death but an art of life—and life lived to the very extreme of life. Which is to say, life that does not hide from death but stares it directly in the face.”[2]

Philippe Petit is an artist precisely because he can see possibilities for new life and new creative impulses in places and situations that most people would only regard in an ordinary way. Indeed, most people could only imagine a devastating end to a tightrope walk hundreds of feet above a hard city pavement.

But the mark of the artist is countercultural. It’s an ability to see with the mind’s eye, to envision that a lump of clay can become an exquisite piece of pottery or that a series of white and black notes on a piano can coalesce to form a sonata. To Paul Auster, tightrope walking is an “art of life” because it demonstrates that a thin wire strung several hundred feet above the ground can be the stage for a dance that leads not to death but instead enlivens the imaginations and hearts of its witnesses.

It’s not entirely obvious what the apostle Paul means when he speaks of regarding no one from a human point of view. But I wonder if tightrope artistry might help us begin to understand. Maybe St. Paul is enjoining us to see people and the world with the eyes of life. These are eyes that are colored by the new creation instituted by Christ. These are eyes that do not look away from death but, instead, stare death directly in the face, knowing that there is something greater that always triumphs.

The mind’s eye of a new creation not only stares death in the face. It sees through death into new life.  Places and situations of fear are transformed into ones of possibility. What appears to be old is seen as new by the grace of God.

Does this seem to be an impossible thing to you? Aren’t our eyes usually tinted with jadedness? How can we see a new creation in pointless war and the slaughter of innocent lives? How can we see the image of God in a person who has deeply offended us? How can we see the potential for good in a person who is responsible for catastrophic evil? How can we see hope for the future when our past is weighed down by tragedy and trauma? And when does optimism and hope become naivete?

It doesn’t seem that St. Paul is giving us easy answers either. He isn’t summoning us to implement an action plan that will provide an easy fix for our shortsightedness. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be about us at all. It’s about what God has done in Christ. Paul’s words seem to be an invitation to recognize this and then let it captivate our mind’s eye. And then, in the mystery of God, what appears to be only death becomes an art of life.

Can we even begin to imagine that a tightrope strung hundreds of feet in the air between two towers might be art rather than a recipe for death? When we speak about original sin, we might imagine it as an  innate tendency to let our inner vision become narrow, hardened, and stagnant. We can’t catch glimpses of a new creation. Our vision is impaired because we have not owned up to what God has done in Christ. Perhaps we can’t even see that God has done anything at all.

Think of the ways in which our vision is skewed from a human point of view. We only see sinners as the sum of their worst actions, not as those who were lost and have been found. We only see God as a scorekeeper, not as One who forgives endlessly. We only see wrongs done to us as grievances to hold, not as opportunities for forgiveness.

From a human point of view, our future is self-made, not created by God. Challenges are problems to be solved, not chances to become closer to God. Death is an end, not an entrance. Our ideological and political differences are insurmountable obstacles, not invitations to conversation. From a human point of view, we only see creation as serving ourselves, not as a gift for us to treasure.

But Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. Everything old has become new. And while we are so used to looking to the future for newness, Paul tells us that, in some mysterious way, the new has already arrived. It is here. God has already done something beyond our wildest imagination. If only our perception could change, we might be able to see just how possible the impossible can be.

The invitation to be Christ’s ambassadors is to act as if the new has already arrived and to see the world as if it has already been made new. It is an invitation to stare death in the face and realize that God can string a tightrope across the most forbidding canyon and help us make art out of life.

In this art of life, the worst sinner can be forgiven. In this dance, the most savage enmities can find reconciliation. In this grand symphony, the deepest wounds can be healed without the difficult truth being erased. Here, the obsessive rehashing of our anxieties and resentments can be released into a more capacious future. Here, a Church that some say is dying can indeed spring to new life and be a source of inspiration for an aimless world.

It’s a bold and courageous step to walk out onto the tightrope of life and to accept its risks. It’s utterly countercultural to imagine that the entire world can be remade by the hand of God, to realize that it has in some sense, already been remade. It is almost incomprehensible to think that, in our humanity, we can still see the world with the mind of Christ and not only from a human point of view.

But Paul tells us that, with God, the impossible has become possible. The old has become new. Our broken selves can become whole. And a tightrope strung high up in the air can be more than a formula for tragic death. For the art of life is about staring death in the face and knowing that, in spite of the odds, it is only the beginning of something unbelievably and wonderfully new.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 27, 2022

[1] https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/03/philippe-petit-artist-of-life/

[2] Ibid.

The Gift of Time

Some years ago, over dinner with several musician acquaintances, talk turned to music studies. I happened to mention the name of my first organ teacher in college, and this prompted one of the other musicians to make a derogatory remark about my teacher.

I found myself somewhat defensive in that moment. Although I wasn’t personally being attacked, I was defensive for the sake of my teacher. Indeed, I was actually offended. One’s identity as a musician is often bound up closely with one’s genealogy of teachers. Musical pedigree and style are quite personal.

It was true that my first teacher was eccentric, quirky even, but who ever said that was rare among musicians? It was indeed some of this eccentricity that made my first teacher such a good one. So, when I found myself confronted with a snide remark about him, my hackles were raised. And what I kept repeating internally was that the person who criticized my teacher didn’t even really know him.

But I did. I knew that my teacher, an esteemed if colorful organist, had sensed the potential in an eighteen-year-old college freshman who had never studied organ before. He had seen that I could be a professional organist based merely on a piano background and musical ability. This teacher had the patience to sit with me and other students as we labored through boring technical exercises. And contrary to some people’s views, none of us played in the same way because our teacher taught us how to bring out our own inner musicality and to make real music, not as dry technicians but as artists.

I had spent three years studying with my teacher, and the person who made a negative comment about him didn’t really know him. The best quality of my former teacher was that he offered me the gift of time, to work with me and to cultivate my inner gifts. He didn’t accept me into his studio because I was already blazing through major repertoire; he accepted me because he recognized potential. This teacher was a great one because he appreciated that often strong musical talent lies dormant, waiting to be realized.

The gift of time is vastly under-appreciated in our society. We are trained from an early age to follow a path headed towards making the most amount of money in the least amount of time. Long gone are the days when faced with an unfamiliar word in a book, we would retrieve a dictionary from across the room and hunt for a word’s meaning. Now, we have all the information we need right at our fingertips.

We are an impatient people. We have been impatient for two years to take masks off. We are impatient with the volatility of the stock market. If our internet connection is sluggish, we become angry. We demand answers and solutions, and we demand them now.

Frequently, we press forward with changes, even when quite drastic, in the name of justice or whatever cause will justify our whims. But less frequently are we willing to take the time we need to listen to God’s direction, to test the spirits, to discern what is true.

God’s time, of course, is an eternity, and it seems like such. To us, three years seems like a long time. So, a fig tree planted for three years should certainly be bearing fruit. In today’s Gospel passage, we might not be inclined to fault the owner of the vineyard for being impatient with the tree. The tree, he says, is a waste of space. It’s using up perfectly valuable earth. So, get rid of it!

Thank God for the gardener, though. The gardener reminds me of my first organ teacher. Just give the tree another year, the gardener says, and then make a judgment. Don’t be so hasty. Remember that bearing fruit takes time. This little parable ends mysteriously. We don’t know what really happened to that fig tree. It seems that we’re not meant to know.

What we also don’t know is whether the vineyard owner planted the fig tree himself. Based on the Scriptural text, I’m suspecting he didn’t. He had the tree planted. Someone else did the work for him. What we do know, though, is this: he seems to have checked in only occasionally to see how the tree was doing. He was clearly not the regular tender of this plant. That was the gardener’s job.

The owner treats the fig tree in a utilitarian way. The tree is planted, and it needs to bear fruit. The owner remains at a distance, with hands clean, infrequently checking in to find the desired-for progress. But the gardener tends the soil, watches the tree every day, and buries hands in the manure to fertilize the tree. The gardener does the dirty work and journeys patiently with the tree that requires time to bear its fruit.

And it’s the gardener, the one with dirty hands that have labored in love, who sees the potential in this tree. The gardener knows the cycles of warmth and cool, the periods of sunlight and cloudy skies, the days of rain and the days of drought. The gardener has a horticultural relationship with this tree. The gardener is invested in the tree. The gardener is the only one in this parable who understands the gift of time.

In parables, we are so often tempted to allegorize. Which character is God? Which is Jesus? Which is us? There’s no easy way to do so, and I’m not convinced that’s the most helpful way to read parables. And with this particular parable, who’s who is not clear. But if I had to guess, I’d say God is much more like the gardener than the vineyard owner. And I’d also guess that many people see God the other way around.

In their eyes, God is the impatient ruler of our lives. God sits afar off, having set creation into motion, and then God drops in from time to time to check in on how we’re doing. And when there’s no visible fruit or when the fruit is spoiled, it’s time to be cut off from the vine and thrown out. Is this possibly the root of so much spiritual fear? Are we afraid that when God spies in on us, we will be found lacking and then cast off?

And if we can’t imagine that God gives us the gift of time, are we then impatient with God? When our prayers are not immediately answered or answered in the way we expect, do we assume that God is not invested in us? Do we stop investing ourselves in God?

The parable of the fig tree is intentionally juxtaposed with Jesus’s call to repentance. If we wait too long, we might miss the boat. If we constantly delay our own self-examination and grappling with our own sin, there will come a time when we will be faced with the consequences of our stubborn and foolish choices.

But this parable adds some nuance to the anxious urgency associated with calls to repentance. This parable teaches us that God is not, in fact, like the vineyard owner but more like the gardener because God gives us the gift of time.

God is invested in us because God created us. This is the same God who created our inmost parts and knit us together in our mother’s wombs. This is the same God from whom no secrets are hid. This is the same God who called the wayward human race back time and again when they just couldn’t get it right. God does not give up on us precisely because God knows us intimately. God is invested in us in a way we can’t even begin to see. It turns out that the gift of time is not an excuse for inaction. It’s permission to understand the investment that God has in us and that he calls us to have in him.

God doesn’t behave as we so often do, with our hasty judgments of others, especially those with whom we have no relationship. God doesn’t operate according to the rash moral reasoning we employ that often contains very little nuance and understanding of the complexities of life. God doesn’t have a rule of three-strikes-and-you’re-out.

One of the most distinctive aspects of Christianity today is that we profess to understand the gift of time. We claim that one bad choice doesn’t mark us forever. Because we are claimed as Christ’s own forever in baptism, we are marked towards a life full of plenteous chances to repent and turn to God. But we must first understand God’s investment in us and God’s willingness to forgive us so many times. Sadly, we usually don’t live up to what we profess, even in the Church.

God gives us the gift of time because God knows that repentance needs to be cultivated, not summoned with the snap of a finger. God gives us the gift of time so that we can be more patient with him, more understanding of his role as the gardener of our souls, and ultimately more patient and forgiving of others and ourselves.

This is the message of Jesus in today’s Gospel: none of us is wasting the soil. None of us is indispensable. God gives us the gift of time to help us learn and understand this. It will take a long, long time to realize this. It won’t happen in this life, for sure. But if we’re patient, it’s well worth the wait.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday in Lent
March 20, 2022

Closing the Gap

There has been much media hype recently over meetings between world leaders sitting at opposite ends of a twenty-foot-long table in the Kremlin. The pictures of these occasions boggle the mind. Even in a pandemic, we’re not used to meetings where people are separated by such great distances when they are intending to have a conversation. One wonders how a conversation in such conditions is even possible.

We could speculate about the extreme distance in these meetings. Was there a real concern about contracting the coronavirus? Was it a powerplay? But for our purposes, let’s just focus on the image for a minute. Two powerful world leaders sit at extreme ends of a very long, ornate table—just two people, no one else in sight. It’s a helpful metaphor for the state of the world at the moment, isn’t it? There is very little real or productive dialogue happening, and not just in Ukraine and Russia. The distance between two world leaders seated at a long, long table is a helpful metaphor for the countless ways in which we, as citizens of a shared planet, are quite adept at putting distance between ourselves.

And because we are so used to human separation, do we also assume such distance exists between God and humanity? Do we assume this, too, when God enters into dialogue with chosen people in Scripture? Do we imagine God and Abram sitting at a long, long table as they negotiate their covenant relationship? God begins the conversation by telling Abram not to fear. Meanwhile, Abram sits twenty feet away wondering how in the world he is not to fear.

God has just brought him from his homeland in Ur of the Chaldeans with little more than a promise that the nations of the world shall be blessed through Abram. Abram has journeyed a vast distance, along with his family, presumably because he trusts God’s promises.

He now sits at one end of a long, long table, while God sits at the other. God is still telling him that his reward shall be great, but the only thing that is obviously great to Abram at the moment is the chasm between him and God. Can he still believe God’s words? A significant period of time has passed since God first made a promise to him, but Abram still has no biological heir. And he and Sarai, his wife, are a little long in the tooth.

Abram, still sitting yards away from God, decides to name the discrepancy between God’s promise and his experienced reality. Abram doesn’t seem terribly confident that God will make good on his promises. So, God brings Abram outside and directs his gaze to the heavens, promising that his descendants will be as numerous as the number of the stars, which are uncountable. Then we are told that Abram believes.

But Abram still wants more. At the long, long table, Abram longs for something to close the gaping hole between him and God. God, he says, how will I know your promises are true? Close the gap. Show me a sign that the land you have also promised me is my possession and will be populated by my heirs.

And God does. God doesn’t remain in the sky, distant from Abram. God touches down in the form of a flaming torch passing between pieces of slaughtered animals, enacting a covenant of promise with Abram. God gets up from his end of the long, long table, walks over to Abram, and shakes his hand. It's a done deal. My word is trustworthy.

In a cursory reading of the Book of Genesis, Abram seems like a profoundly trusting person. It would be easy to surmise that he is almost naïve in his willingness to leave his homeland based on a surprising vision from God. Time and again, when he still has no children, he continues to follow God’s call—through a brief sojourn in Egypt to avoid famine and through battles with surrounding foreign nations. Abram remains steadfast in following God, even when it seems ridiculous.

But sitting at that long conference table with God, when we encounter him today, we see that Abram’s inner state is more complicated than simple acquiescence to God’s demands. Somewhere inside Abram’s soul, there is a chasm to be crossed in belief. Will God really honor his promises? Was he stupid to leave everything that was familiar to go to a strange and foreign land? Abram wants some proof. Abram yearns for God to get up from his end of the table and to come to him, to certify that his promises are trustworthy.

Perhaps Abram is not so unlike you or me. How can faith and trust even be real if there is no gap of belief from time to time? We are told to wait on God, as if we must sit at a long, long meeting table, shouting down towards God and, if we’re lucky, we hear God respond, albeit faintly. In our prayer, we recall the powerful and almighty God sitting high and lofty. We plead, we ask, we entreat, but can we cross the mental and spiritual chasm we feel exists between God and us?

Feeling powerless before God, humans amass their own fragile power in other ways and play off the canyons of separation within the human race. We bully by email because the computer screen offers a comfortable virtual buffer. We jealously guard our choice morsels of anger and our resentments because if we hold onto them, we have something to wield over the one who has offended us.

We exercise and claim our power by widening the distance between ourselves and others. We play hard to get. We pout. We gossip. We judge. And all these things place us at one end of a very, very long table, while the targets of our meanness sit at the end. There in an empty room sit two parties, one offending and the other offended.

But in his encounter with Abram, God does something quite extraordinary that reverses all our expectations. As we so often conceive it, God sits in authority at one end of a long, long table, wielding judgment over us and deigning to heed our requests. So often the gap between us and God is silence, unanswered prayers, and loneliness.

And yet, God does something incredible with Abram. God reveals his power not by creating an unfathomable distance between himself and Abram but by closing it. God gets up from his end of the table and walks over to Abram. He comes down in a flaming torch and makes a hard and fast covenant with Abram, literally promising that God himself will be like slaughtered animals if he does not measure up to his promises.

And God does something else, too. He directs Abram’s gaze up to the heavens and teaches. Abram, it’s not I who have created a void between us, but you. You are so hyper-focused on your biological kin and on your own parcel of land to possess. But I am giving you a much larger vision. And the larger the vision is, the closer the distance is between us.

What God promises to Abram transcends the idolatry of familial ties. It transcends nationalism. It surpasses the human tendency to turn everything in on ourselves and circle the wagons with those who are like us. The human tendency is to sit at opposite ends of a twenty-foot-long table and keep plenty of distance between us so that we can survive, so that we can be powerful, so that our own interests are met.

But paradoxically, God demonstrates his power by closing the distance between himself and us and by widening his vision for us. God has made covenant after covenant with his people, putting everything on the line for a sinful and wayward people who frequently forget what he has done for them. And in the fullness of time, by sending his only Son into the world, he crossed that gap in a profound way so that the entire world could be drawn to himself.

As we sit at the table with God, we will fill up the chasm between us with all kinds of things: with our pride, with our lust for power, with our anger, with our lack of trust, and so often, with our acute fear. And because we are usually incapacitated in our sinfulness, God moves. God takes action. Time and again, God reassures us that the chasm we have created or imagined has never really been there.

God stands up from his end of the long, long table and comes to us. God has done so throughout human history and will continue to do so. And God doesn’t just shake our hand. God reaches out to us with arms wide open.

Look to the heavens and see the immensity of what I have in store for you, God says. I will help to widen what you have narrowed. I will help you trust and love. I will help you let go of your fear. If you can but believe in my promise, you will see that there is no gap between us. Believe me, because my promises are true.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday in Lent
March 13, 2022

Contrario Modo

Tell someone that you believe the devil really exists, and they might look at you askance. A demystified world doesn’t have a lot of time or imagination for the supernatural. And even those who do have some time for the supernatural—especially when it makes them feel good—might dismiss Satan and his evil minions as antiquated superstition.

But it’s difficult to take seriously the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness if we don’t believe in some sense of palpable, existential evil in the world. The fact that this story occurs in three of the Gospels cautions us from dismissing it as mere fabrication. And how can we not heed the latest news from around the world and indeed in our very own neighborhoods without acknowledging that there are sinister forces that appear to be affecting us and which are clearly beyond our control. So, then, why is it so preposterous to believe in a Satan or a devil or a Prince of Darkness who is opposed to the Prince of Peace?

It is to our great peril that we deny the reality of evil. And yet this is a double-edged sword. Paying too much attention to the devil as the embodiment of such wickedness can paradoxically cause us to view him as little more than fabrication. Most of us have watched one too many movies like The Exorcism or its ilk, and this can numb us to the true reality of evil.

So, to get a real handle on this thorny topic, we often have to go far back in history to earlier Christian writers who didn’t inhabit a world as demystified as ours. Earlier Christians were convinced of the reality of the devil but also believed firmly in a power of light that was much, much greater.

I want to take us back to St. Ignatius Loyola, the sixteenth century founder of the Jesuit religious order. Ignatius recognized the all-too-human problem of wrestling with doubts, especially when determining whether something is sinful or not. And Ignatius knew that the devil often assails our sensitive consciences by making us over-scrupulous.

Say, for instance, you are considering doing a good work or a charitable deed. But suddenly you find yourself questioning whether you should do said deed because it might seem like you’re being overly pious. This, Ignatius would say, is the evil one trying to keep you from doing the right thing. And Ignatius’s advice was to observe the practice of moving contrario modo, or “in the opposite direction.” In our example, the person assailed by doubts should be somewhat less scrupulous and, in fact, do the good deed.

However, a person who rarely is disposed to follow God’s will or to any kind of scrupulosity is often beset by the opposite problem. The devil will seek to make that person even less scrupulous. That person, moving contrario modo, should be more scrupulous.

The logic seems inverted, but it is brilliant. This sounds very much like modern psychology, but it is deeply spiritual. Which of us doesn’t have many doubts? Don’t many of us have overactive consciences from time to time? And have you ever been tempted not to do a good work because of an accusing internal voice?

Ignatius understood something else that modernity has lost. The devil doesn’t usually manifest himself with contortions and spinning heads but rather with sly nuances that creep into our minds and hearts. And this brings us to St. Luke’s account of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness.

The devil is not described in graphic detail by St. Luke. He is not carrying a pitchfork or even embodied as a terrifying presence. The devil is simply a constant, ominous presence with Jesus, tempting him for forty days and forty nights.

Not even the temptations themselves are what we might imagine. We are so used to thinking of temptations as attractions to do horrible things or towards horrible things. But the devil is not that simplistic. In the wilderness with Jesus, he knows that he is up against someone who is far more powerful than he is. So, he must be on his game to stand even a chance in this fight.

There doesn’t seem to be any if in Satan’s mind about whether Jesus is the Son of God, although the translation in Scripture doesn’t emphasize this. Satan knows that Jesus is the Son of God. That’s why Satan shows up. And it’s why he shows up in the wilderness, a lonely place, where Jesus is famished from his fasting.

The real temptation for Jesus is whether he will remain loyal to God the Father. The devil knows that he can’t tempt Jesus to one of the more obvious sins, so he takes a subtler path and tries to get Jesus to use his authority for the wrong reason, to summon stones into bread to feed himself and perhaps those who might be hungry. If Jesus were only to worship Satan, even the corrupt kingdoms of the world could be transferred from worldly leadership to Jesus’s reign. Perhaps even Jesus’ willingness to summon God to save him from hurtling down the side of a mountain could prove God’s words from Scripture to be true and provide some defense of God.

But Satan is no match for Jesus. Vulnerable though he may be after such a long period of fasting and loneliness, Jesus understands the real temptation at hand. It’s not some wild act of wrongdoing to which he is tempted, one that would cause others to reel in horror were they to witness it. The real temptation is not about whether Jesus is the Son of God. It’s about whether there is something conditional about God. This underlies everything that the devil lobs at Jesus.

The clue to the devil’s weakness lies in the second of the devil’s temptations. The devil promises the glory and authority of all the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus will worship him. This is the devil’s dirty little secret. The devil’s so-called power is only conditional and hinges on whether Jesus will worship him or not. And up against this sobering reality, the devil’s only ploy is to try to cause Jesus to question the reliability of God’s authority and also the unconditionality of God’s love.

It’s the same temptation for us, too, isn’t it? The real temptations that accost most of us are usually not to murder or heinous crimes. They are not usually to worship Satan rather than God. The temptations that assault us in insidious ways are those that stir up doubts within us. Will God love me if I’m not successful and recognized in my professional life? Will God forgive me yet again since I’ve made a mess of things one too many times? Will I make it to heaven if I’m not constantly busy doing good deeds, even if I have no time for prayer? Is God still active in the world, or is it all up to us, the Church, to effect the change that is needed?

Is it any wonder that we have been lured into questioning the unconditional nature of God’s love, mercy, and compassion towards us? We are conditioned by a world in which we calculate every risk. If we intervene in a war, will we provoke an aggressive power into worse actions? If I am honest with that person about their involvement in an injustice, will I lose that person’s friendship or love? If I don’t worship the god of work or academia, will I ever be able to put food on the table or make ends meet?

It’s a slippery slope from good intentions towards giving into the sly temptations that come our way. But if we return to the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, perhaps there is something we can learn. For those of us who have come to this Altar to be close to holiness, our vulnerability lies in our own sensitivity to such holiness. For those of us who wish to do good, our potential weak spot lies in that very effort. And before long, we are doubting whether goodness is a fabrication of the mind and whether our well-intentioned acts will ever make any difference in the world.

But I think Ignatius would tell us this. When you feel those sly assaults, turn. Turn in the opposite direction. Remember the principle of contrario modo. For the sake of the good, do the opposite of your haunting thoughts, trusting that God is leading you back towards him.

And in our weakest moments, the greatest temptation of all might be to believe, even just for a minute, that somehow, we are worshipping and devoting our lives to a God who only loves us if we do things on command or if we ask for things in the correct way. It’s a terrifying thought to imagine losing the love and favor of a God who patrols our every movement and attaches conditions to our actions.

So, resist this temptation will all your strength. Remember: contrario modo. Turn the other way. Turn away from the falsity of cunning doubts and accusing thoughts. Turn towards the Light. And walk with confidence into the arms of the One who will never let you go, whose love is never conditional, and who always welcomes you back home.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday in Lent
March 6, 2022

The Face that Never Turns Away

The Virgin of Kyiv is one of the most famous icons in the world. Although historical details of this icon are murky, it is believed to have been written in Constantinople in the early twelfth century and eventually given to the Grand Duke of Kyiv around the year 1131. Some years later, the duke’s son, after sacking the city of Kyiv, transported the famous icon to the city of Vladimir in modern day Russia. Legend says that the icon itself chose the city when the horses moving it from Kyiv stopped moving somewhere close to Vladimir. It’s likely that such a story was used to justify Vladimir’s claim to replace Kyiv as the principal city of the ancient kingdom of Rus.[1]

The icon of the Virgin of Kyiv represents what is known as the Eleousa pattern of icons. There are myriad writings of this form of icon, but the Virgin of Kyiv is perhaps the most well-known. In this icon, the Virgin Mary cradles the Christ child. Her left hand points gently up to Christ, signaling that he is the focal point of this image. With her right hand, she holds up the infant Jesus as he reaches up with his body to gaze into her face, his own face pressed snugly against his mother’s. His right hand is placed firmly on his mother’s breast.

There is so much to take in. It’s difficult not to feel a pang of poignancy in one’s chest as you see Jesus as a human child who cannot part from his own mother. Indeed, he is actively seeking her face. But then there are Mary’s eyes, which are unsettling. She looks not at Jesus but at the person gazing on the icon. Her eyes are sorrowful. Does she know her child’s fate? Does she know about the sword that will pierce her own soul, too?

I recently saw someone post this icon on Facebook as an obvious reference to the devastating war that is ongoing in Ukraine. When I read more about the Virgin of Kyiv icon, I was struck by the eerie connections with the current crisis in Ukraine. This icon represents such heart-warming tenderness, showing in so many ways the love of Christ for the human family, which is symbolized by the Blessed Mother. This icon, too, stands at the center of a centuries-long tumultuous history between historic capitals representing modern Ukraine and Russia respectively.

But what does this icon have to do with Ash Wednesday? What does a work of sacred art have to do with this somber evening, where we are reminded of our own mortality? The brittle ashes that will soon be imposed on our foreheads are scratchy reminders that from dust we came and to dust we will return.

Of all things, the Virgin of Kyiv icon has made me consider the reading from the prophet Joel. It is difficult not to think of the current war in Ukraine as Joel sounds the alarm amid his own people. Joel is using apocalyptic language, but there is also an imminent threat, vague though it may be. Is it real war? Or is it a figurative way of speaking of God’s judgment? There is an approaching cloud of gloom and doom. It seems to be from God, although nothing is certain.

Joel, like so many of us, is quick to establish cause and effect. What have God’s people done to deserve this threat on the horizon? There is clearly some state of sin for which they must repent. Joel’s command is clear: return to the Lord. Repent. Who knows whether God might turn and relent?

Joel, like so many of us, can’t help but read the crisis at hand as God’s judgment. Joel, like so many of us, reacts to catastrophe by resorting to the only tactic he feels is worth the gamble: turn to the Lord. Joel, like so many of us, is torn between two things: fear of God’s wrath and appeal to God’s graciousness and mercy.

Joel’s words may seem like nothing more than unleashed anxiety in reaction to crisis, but Joel also can’t shake a particular understanding of God’s nature. It has been emphasized over and over again in Scripture. Long before Joel’s words, we hear back in the books of Exodus and Numbers that God is full of compassion and mercy. We hear it, too, in other prophets and in the Psalms. This is nothing new. As confused as God’s people may be time and again as they wrestle with disaster, enemy invasion, and their own sinfulness, Joel reminds the people not to forget this irresistibly compelling attribute of their God.

And for some reason, this has drawn my attention to the icon of the Virgin of Kyiv. It is seemingly far removed from the words of the prophet Joel, but it is not really so far removed. In this icon, we see the face of the One who came in human form to remind the world of God’s very nature, which humanity would so often forget and still so often forgets.

=Which of us does not struggle to see the face of mercy looking into our eyes when we can’t bear to face the wrong we’ve done? Which of us doesn’t imagine God’s face somehow turned away from those on the wrong side of a war? Which of doesn’t have trouble seeing God’s face still turned in love towards a world that has gotten things so horribly wrong?

The tension in Joel’s own words between a God of wrathful judgment and a God who is steadfast in mercy and compassion and who might yet forgive is also mysteriously present in the icon of the Virgin of Kyiv. Christ does not turn from humanity in anger. In the icon, Christ is reaching up to cuddle his own face against his mother’s with endless longing. But Mary gazes at us. Representing humanity, perhaps she, like us, is trying to comprehend the gaze that will not let her go.

Is it a profoundly moving accident of history or a beautiful wink of God’s providence that the icon of the Virgin of Kyiv images the incomprehensible nature of God’s steadfast love toward humanity? This icon moved from ancient, ransacked Kyiv to modern-day Russia now sits in a modern-day Russia that is ravaging Kyiv. The only thing that can bring peace into this intractable conflict is the steadfast face of Christ’s mercy and compassion.

We, too, this day, sit in a place of so many tensions. We come knowing that we must acknowledge our sinfulness. Every Ash Wednesday is a reminder that after a year of wandering and turning away from God, we are invited yet again to turn. Frustrated by our foibles and stubbornness, by our selfish ways and easy resentments, we, like Joel, decide that it’s worth the effort. Maybe, after all, God will turn and relent.

Without realizing it, we like Joel, assume that God has turned from us. We struggle to imagine how, after all the evil the human race has done, God could still be turned towards us. It’s hard to shake this notion. But Joel reminds us that it’s hard to shake something else, too. Joel has been unable to get something else out of his head, and I pray that we will never be able to get it out of ours either. God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

No matter how much we feel compelled to look away and no matter how much we can’t really believe it, Christ is grasping onto us with passionate hands of love. He’s not forcing us to look at him. But if we remember this day, as we do every year, to look down at his face, it is pressed against ours. His eyes look into ours if we dare cast them down. And we know that Joel was on to something. We mourn our sins and repent of our past misdeeds, but turning always shows us what never changes. Always, always, Jesus is looking at us, reaching up our bodies to press his face against ours and to remind us that God has always been gracious, merciful, and forgiving. And he always will be.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Ash Wednesday
March 2, 2022

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

An Immersion Experience

A few weeks ago, I was attending a family wedding, and at the reception, one of the toasts was given in Spanish since the bride was born and raised in Spain. With four years of high school Spanish and a year from college, I rather enjoyed testing my ability to comprehend what was being said.

Writing and reading other languages has always been much easier for me than hearing and comprehending, primarily because I have never had an immersive language experience. But I love languages, and as much as I wanted to understand every word of the toast at that wedding, the reality was as I predicted. Listening to the Spanish words was like sifting for pebbles in the sand. Most of what I heard was sand, a cloud of words that rushed by too quickly for me to translate. And thrown in were little pebbles of light, words I could readily comprehend.

I found myself longing to sit with those moments where I understood a word, or if I was lucky, even a phrase. It felt good to receive occasional glimpses of clarity from the fog of another language. And in my pride, I patted myself on the back in those fleeting moments of comprehension.

Perhaps you, like me, have had dreams where you were speaking fluently in another language. These are wonderfully satisfying dreams, elusive proof that somewhere inside of us, we are capable of understanding another language. Uninhibited in the world of sleep, we comprehend clearly. In the muddle of a busy world with worries and cares, we can only glean pebbles of words.

If only translating were as simple as understanding individual words! Anyone who has studied another language knows that translation is an art. You can’t simply Google translate, literally transcribing word for word. Words have multiple meanings in some cases, and a literal translation will sound like nonsense in addition to being inelegant. Translation is not for those who like rigid clarity. It can’t be accomplished successfully without swimming in the linguistic sea of a culture different from one’s own.

I dare say that many people approach conversation with God with a literalism similar to novice translators. Listening to God’s voice feels like paddling our way through a cloud of confusion with a desperate desire to pick out one or two choice morsels of wisdom, hope, or clarity.

In Scripture, there are numerous stories where crystalline voices sound from heaven, obviously from God and unambiguously stating God’s purpose and will. These are the moments we want to enshrine in our memories and hearts. These clear glimpses of the divine are like those dreams in foreign languages that we want to hold onto forever. If only we could.

In the New Testament, we get just a few of these moments where the voice of God breaks distinctly into the earthly realm. At Jesus’s baptism, before his earthly ministry begins, the heavens part and God’s voice speaks directly to Jesus, designating him as his Beloved Son. And at Jesus’s transfiguration on the mountain with Peter, James, and John, God does it again. God speaks from heaven to earth with great lucidity, but this time to the disciples, and presumably to us as well. This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!

Don’t you long to experience one of these moments? Don’t you yearn to hear God speaking directly to you, with such transparency? And are you somewhat mystified and frustrated by God’s clear command as Jesus was transfigured before his disciples on that mountain? This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!

The command is direct; how to observe it is less so. How, Lord, do we listen to Jesus? How, through the din of war, of voices raised in anger, with ears clogged by fear can we hear Jesus’s voice? How do we know which voice is his? What does his voice even sound like? And what does it mean when we hear no voices except the incessant roar of a noisy world around us?

We are usually looking for blatant signs, whether voices or visions. Few of us are afforded what is offered to Peter, James, and John. Few of us will ever see such a vision of glory in this life. And so, is it any surprise that, in spite of his sleepiness, Peter tries to memorialize the spectacular scene before him by building booths?

Peter opts for the easy route of Google translation. He has grasped one clear morsel from heaven—albeit in a vision—and he wants to etch it in stone. But he has missed the point, for no sooner has he attempted to freeze in amber this remarkable moment in time than he is confused by a cloud. Peter has been listening to speech in another language, but he has only pulled out a few words that make sense to him. And he has thereby missed the point.

It’s only when Peter and the other disciples are overshadowed by the consternation of the cloud that a coherent command can be gleaned from this experience. Only when human confidence and arrogance are humbled by ambiguity can God’s voice ring clear in our own ears. This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!

Undoubtedly, like us in our daily lives, Peter and the other disciples were searching for answers to Jesus’s identity. And Peter himself had been so bold as to state that Jesus was the Messiah. But did he know what this really meant? Does anyone know what this really means? Do we know what this really means?

Peter represents those of us who want an uncomplicated Messiah who does not have to suffer. Peter represents those of us who want unequivocal answers to our theological queries without periods of dryness and confusion. Peter wants the ability to make sense of his faith by translating a stray word here or there from heaven, enshrining it in his memory, and calling it a day.

We who hear this story of the transfiguration have the benefit of knowing the whole story. We know that Peter missed something in his haste to memorialize the mountaintop experience, because he would soon deny Jesus. It would take him some time to learn Jesus’ language and to translate with some degree of fluency Jesus’s commands.

Which of us is not like Peter in some sense? We are instructed to follow God’s will and listen to Jesus, and our intentions are good. We want to do so. But so often it seems unclear how we are to know what God’s will is or what Jesus is saying to us. We cherry pick commands as we see fit and as they make us feel good, yet at the bottom of it all, we are missing the semantics of Jesus’s language. We have failed to immerse ourselves in it.

On the verge of Lent, we are perhaps looking for some clarity before we begin our long wilderness wanderings. Before we enter the cloud completely, can we have just a few simple and direct words?

As much as it is mystifying and mysterious, the story of the transfiguration provides us with some clues in our quest to heed God’s voice. St. Luke tells us that the setting of Jesus’s transfiguration is one of prayer. Jesus goes to the mountain to pray. It is while he is immersed in prayer, fluently communicating in the language of his heavenly Father, that this theophany happens. Might this have something to teach us?

Prayer frequently seems like uttering words into a cloud, and while we long for God to respond back to us with clarity, it is never so simple. On the mountain with his disciples, Jesus models something else for us. Jesus affirms the value of prayer as learning to speak God’s language. Discerning the results of prayer is rarely like translating random words from a cloud of confusion. It is more about conforming our lives to a different language, God’s language.

And when we immerse ourselves in that language, it may be that we can make more sense of the voices we hear, the nudges we feel, and the things we see. Unless we are steeped in the language of prayer, everything will seem like babel. But the language of prayer shapes our hearts and minds to listen and see in new and unexpected ways. When we become fluent in God’s language, we find ourselves able to heed our instincts and gut reactions more and more because we can trust they are really from God. We can trust that they are God’s words to us.

On the verge of this Lent, the noise is deafening. The cacophony of violence and the roar of evil is sickening. Voices cry in anguish and protest, and to begin to make sense of this cloud, we need the courage to enter it. God is inviting us to become fluent in his language, because God is not silent. God has never been silent. And God will never be.

 Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 27, 2022

So Unbelievable It Must Be True

A few years ago, when I was a newly-ordained priest and serving in my first parish, I led a Bible study on the parable of the prodigal son with the youth group. I was excited about an opportunity to crack open one of my favorite Bible stories. As an interactive way to get inside this famous passage from Luke’s Gospel, the youth and I created a digital story using iMovie, including images from contemporary life to relate an ancient story to a modern way of living.

Just to refresh your memories, in the parable of the prodigal son, an arrogant young man demands his inheritance prematurely from his father, and goes off, squandering it in dissolute living. When he reaches rock bottom, he comes to his senses and decides to return and admit his mistake and ask his father for a place in his household as a hired servant.

The beautiful part is that the father seems to have been waiting for him to return all along. Rather than upbraiding him upon his homecoming, he throws a lavish party for him and welcomes him back with open arms.

In my discussions on this passage with the youth group some years ago, I wanted them to see the radical nature of this parable. I hoped to relate the abundant compassion of the prodigal son’s father to God the Father’s extraordinary ability to forgive. I truly believed that this incredible story could change their lives if they opened themselves to it.

I was dead wrong. My initial fervor in approaching this beloved parable was quickly squelched as the youth responded to the story itself. Rather than being astounded by the beauty of forgiveness found in the story, one person pointed out with some measure of weary scorn that the prodigal son didn’t even seem sorry for what he had done. He didn’t really care that he had deeply offended his father by asking for an inheritance far too soon. In fact, this son simply made the only decision he could make when things got rough. He would take advantage of his father’s compassion and be welcomed home. The son had never truly repented, this young person said. And it was grossly unfair that he was given a lavish party after all he had done. The gist of her argument was that this son should have gotten what he deserved.

Having heard this, my hopes of highlighting God’s mercy and compassion were somewhat dashed. I was trying to find good news in the parable, and the youth were not seeing it. In hindsight, I realize that something far more troubling was happening. These youth, although they didn’t know it, were struggling to believe in a God that could be so extravagantly, even foolishly, forgiving.

Now, today, we are not given the parable of the prodigal son. We will, in fact, get that parable a few weeks from now during Lent. But there is a strong connection between that parable and today’s Gospel lesson. Listen to what Jesus is saying to his disciples in the continuation of the Sermon on the Plain: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. It goes on and on until we are stupefied at what Jesus is demanding in the life of discipleship.

How do you love someone who hates you? What kind of weakness of character is required to turn the other cheek when someone strikes you? Is it even ethical to do so, especially when such violence becomes a pattern of abuse? How can we possibly take Jesus’ words seriously? The problem is that we can’t avoid these words. They are from Christ, and they are meant to throw a wrench into our usual way of behaving.

In a striking blow to ordinary habits of thinking, Jesus ups the ante in what he demands of his followers. It’s not difficult to love those who reciprocate that love, so what is extraordinary about loving those who are likeable? And in a tit-for-tat world, why should one bother doing something for someone who is unkind and nasty?

The temptation is simply to write off what Jesus has demanded and settle for an easier interpretation. Jesus is speaking in hyperbole. It’s not practical. Jesus was preaching to a different world. Surely, he doesn’t really mean for us to do exactly what he says. It’s the spirit of what he suggests that matters.

It even seems for a moment like Jesus has violated his own admonitions. The measure you give will be the measure you get back, he says. It sounds remarkably like tit for tat. And before too long, we are caught in the Gospel’s trap. Jesus is precisely right! If we only respond with tit-for-tat, then we will forever be a part of that vicious cycle, exchanging good for good, and bad for bad. We treat others as we want them to treat us, and so it’s self-serving. Our understanding of what is morally right and ethically sound is now transactional, weighing one side against the other.

If we’re honest, our approach to life is so often transactional. Why should we go out of our way to speak to the person who has offended us? If someone hits me, it would be an affront to my honor not to strike back. If someone commits a crime, it haunts them forever, even when they are no longer behind bars, for it is their just deserts. If one political party leverages a tactic to their gain, then the other party has their opportunity when they’re in the majority. If someone doesn’t have enough money to afford basic resources, it’s their own fault, so why should I have to be responsible for their welfare? There is no shortage of examples, and do any of these seem wrong to you?

As I think back on that youth group Bible study of the parable of the prodigal son, I realize that I was hastily judging the responses of the youth. How could they not see the good news in that parable? How could they not see the son’s father as our loving and merciful God? But Jesus says, judge not, lest ye be judged. And I was definitely judged because I hadn’t looked deeply enough at myself.

If I thought about it hard enough, I would have to ask how many times I failed to forgive myself. And each time I failed to forgive myself, did I subconsciously believe that God could not forgive me? And were the times in which I struggled to forgive others due to the same reason? The youth were no more engaged in tit-for-tat thinking than I was. I was also being judged.

What about you? Do you find it difficult to love an enemy because it feels powerful to harbor resentment against them? Is it uncomfortable to behave in the extreme and break the cycle of resentment because it feels too foolish and weak?

The truth is that many struggle to believe in a God who can forgive no matter how badly we mess up. Such a God does seem foolish and weak. It can be impossible for some even to respect a God who continues to call us back time and again when we turn our backs on him. Maybe this is why some can’t believe in God.

In response, Jesus offers a strongly compelling reason to believe in such a God. This is why he asks us to behave with such ridiculous abandon, to act in the extreme, motivated by love. If life is only tit-for-tat, it is a business transaction. And when the transaction turns sour, it leads only to evil, and evil propagates evil. But when we love recklessly, loving the enemy, praying for those who hurt us, and lending without any expectation of reciprocity, we have the power to break the vicious cycle. The world is changed by the Gospel not simply through good actions but by a profound faith in the One who lifts us beyond our cycles of human pettiness, violence, and retribution. This nasty cycle was broken supremely by our Lord’s death on a cross, where he forgave even those who had crucified him before breathing his last.

It is almost unbelievable to imagine God would never tire of loving us. It is almost unbelievable to imagine that we could begin to love those who hate us. And if we find ourselves struggling to love our enemies, it might have more to do with our inability to accept that God can love each one of us in spite of our sins.

I would love to go back to that youth group Bible study and say a few things. I now see that I shared the same struggles as those young people. If I could do it over again, I’d say this to them: you’re right. It is absurd and ridiculous that the prodigal son’s father threw a big party for him, even when he didn’t even necessarily apologize. It is unfair and even foolish that we are called to love our enemies and turn the other cheek. And this is how foolish and unfair God’s love is, because God doesn’t play tit-for-tat. It is so unbelievably amazing that perhaps the best response is simply to say thank you. Thank you, God, that you love us in the extreme. It is so unbelievable, that it must be true.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
February 20, 2022