Our Undoing Is Our Remaking

My high school piano teacher would laugh when she made mistakes. I vividly remember sitting at a Steinway piano in her music studio while she sat at the piano next to me. She would demonstrate something, and then I would try to imitate what she did. And I was always surprised, and delighted, when she made mistakes because she would gently laugh.

As a seventeen-year-old perfectionist who was very hard on himself, I was not only surprised when my teacher laughed. I was impressed. In fact, I was somewhat envious. I secretly wished that I could laugh when I made mistakes at the piano. But I was incapable of it because my developing emotional self was too riddled with self-judgment and guilt to do so. I would scold myself over every missed note or memory slip. To make a musical mistake was another blow to my self-esteem.

But unlike me, my teacher was able to extend grace to herself. While demonstrating a figurative passage in a Scarlatti sonata, she would misjudge a leap, and then she would smile, laugh, and continue. This was no scornful or dismissive laugh. It was a laugh of good humor, a laugh demonstrating that my teacher was abundantly aware of her own imperfections and, I imagine, confident enough in her many gifts as a musician and teacher. It reflected her personality itself, which was always kind and gracious. Mistakes couldn’t suppress the smile, laugh, and twinkle in her eye because she didn’t take herself too seriously. She didn’t keep score of all her mistakes. She was in it for the music.

The secret envy I had of my piano teacher’s ability to laugh at herself was not just about music. I longed to be able to extend grace to myself in all aspects of my life, especially in my life with God. Our spiritual lives are hardly like piano lessons, but perhaps there is some analogy here. Are we in it for the music, or do we fearfully tally mistakes and shortcomings? Of course, missing an accidental is morally neutral, and committing a sin is not. Laughing at a missed octave leap in the left hand isn’t an offense against God, but laughing at your sin could be blasphemous. So maybe the analogy lies in how we manage our mistakes and faults. Are we in it for the music, or do we ruthlessly keep score?

This would be a good question to ask the prophets, who seem to be custodians of long lists of faults and failings. Where’s the music in their judgmental speech, which fastidiously keeps score of the sins of God’s people? As difficult as their speech is, we tend to love the prophets only when they support our agendas. Liberals love the prophets because they speak truth to power and are strident voices for social justice. Conservatives love the prophets because they pronounce God’s judgment on those who willingly defy God and commit immorality. But one thing holds both sides in common: they both love the prophets as voices of judgment against their enemies. And they love the prophets because the prophets reinforce their own moral superiority.

But these are all the wrong reasons to love the prophets. Truth be told, if we love the prophets so easily, we must not be hearing what they’re really saying. And if we love the prophets because they accuse our enemies, then we, too, are ruthlessly keeping score and are unable to hear the music.

It seems clear what the prophet Micah is saying to the false prophets of his day, but it’s not so clear where the music is in what he says. Micah castigates those who say what the political and religious powers want to hear. If they’re given enough money, they will say anything, regardless of the word of God. They are the ones who avoid speaking the truth out of fear of losing the wealthy parishioner’s pledge. These prophets don’t challenge an unjust social order; they reinforce it by tailoring their words to encourage the oppressive status quo. They say comforting things to the upper crust of society whose mouths are filled with good things while those working the land can find no bread. These prophets make crooked the straight ways of God. They are charlatans, not prophets. And Micah is also clear about the destructive consequences of such behavior.

But in Micah’s caustic words, is there yet music to be heard amid all this score keeping? Is the point of judgment to lead to destruction, or is there something more? After all, it would hardly be appropriate to laugh lightheartedly at the egregious sins of the false prophets and power-hungry leaders of Micah’s day. But is it too preposterous to think that underneath all the talk of God’s wrath and anger there might be some music?

Not so fast, say those who boisterously advocate for the oppressed. The rich who complacently abuse the poor and think they can rely on God’s favor should be punished. We need justice. Not so fast, say those who might be less concerned with the poor and more intent on desiring God’s vindictive wrath towards those who sin.

But true justice is far more than punishing the offenders. And it’s far more than needing an angry God to make things right. Micah, after all, is a true prophet. Micah might be naming the hard truth, but his end goal is neither retribution nor affirming the agendas of others. Micah is involved in a far grander project because he knows that despite the proliferation of mistakes, and as much as we might tend to keep score, it’s really all about the music.

Is judgment, then, a gift? If we were less serious and could laugh at ourselves occasionally, we might see this. If we weren’t so proud as to avoid naming our human frailty, we might hear the music in judgment. If we could understand what Jesus taught us, that our sins and failures do not define our identity as God’s children, then there is music to be heard. And if so, then our sins need not entrap us in quagmires of guilt and shame but instead can prick our consciences so that we are able to receive God’s love and mercy. They prompt us to hear the music once again. God judges for our own good: not to make us miserable but to ensure that no one makes crooked the straight path toward righteousness and equity.

With this good news, can we flip the narrative of the false prophets? The false prophets are constantly telling us what is wrong. The Church is dying. The Church is full of hypocrites and injustice. Our nation is falling apart. The world will never have peace again. It is a perpetual headline of bad news, of keeping score.

But if God’s judgment is a gift, then true prophets help us to hear the music beneath the litany of offenses. The Church’s present state is an opportunity to set human ego aside and reclaim the Gospel’s power. A nation’s political dysfunction can be a prompt towards reform and collaboration. And amid global conflict, relationships among enemies are possible, which will enable God to bring true peace. Sometimes our undoing is our remaking, and this can be a great gift.

Micah and all the other prophets dismantle our fragile egos and sinful human projects so that God can remake them in his image. The prophets bring the worst injustices into the light of God’s judgment, which is painful to us who continually walk in darkness. The only agenda of true prophets is to point to God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness. It might take harsh language to command the world’s attention, but the end goal is far beyond wrath and anger. The prophet’s job is not so much to keep score but to help us hear the music.

And to hear the music in the Book of Micah, we must jump to the end. After seven chapters of uncensored language, after accusing the false prophets of being merciless cannibals, and after foretelling the destruction of the holiest of cities, Micah ends with an exquisite ballad of love that will move any warm heart to tears. God will again have compassion on us, Micah says. God “will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” God will show faithfulness and loyalty to his people, as was sworn to “our ancestors from the days of old.” And that is how his book ends: with God’s gracious music of salvation.

Our sins are nothing to laugh at, but we ourselves are laughable. We’re so foolish as to think we can be perfect. We’re so ludicrous as to imagine we can save ourselves. We’re so judgmental as to think that we need an angry God to make everything right again. We’re so good at keeping score but so very poor at hearing the music of God’s love that surpasses our understanding.

But the music is there, behind all our sins and hidden within the disappointments of daily life and in our failures. The music lies as an invitation of grace to deliver us from our valleys of guilt and despair. So, laugh at yourselves. Laugh at the inept wiles of the devil, who would have us believe that our sins have more power over us than they do. Laugh and rejoice that when we stumble and fall, God will help us get up again and walk into his arms of love.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
November 5, 2023

As Certain as the Promise of the Rainbow

Although it’s never happened to me, I know people who have received messages from the dead in their dreams. I don’t think this is strange, even though since Sigmund Freud’s work with dreams, perhaps we’ve tended to dismiss the spiritual power of dreams, consigning them to the realm of psychology. But Scripture testifies repeatedly to the vivid ways in which dreams are part of the spiritual life.

Some people say that loved ones who have died appeared to them in dreams and urged them not to worry. Everything is going to be okay, I’m okay, is often the theme of these dreamlike messages. Why is this so hard to believe? Since we say the dead don’t really die but continue to live in Christ and if we say that we can pray for the dead and that they can pray for us, why, then, shouldn’t they occasionally visit us during our sleep to give us hope?

Maybe it’s less about the dream being something fantastical and more that hope itself seems so unearthly. Hope itself seems like nothing but a dream these days, a dream that can never really be true. In a world so afraid of death, death is the ultimate enemy, because the one thing we know for certain is that we will all die. It’s the one thing we can’t control. And when a loved one dies, and especially when it’s an untimely death, the act of death can rightly seem like the end of the world. Death is the end of the story. It’s real, and hope is a mere dream. Considering this, is it so strange, then, that the dead might wish to visit us with words of comfort that are more than a dream, words that are actually true? Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.

Dreams of reassurance about the destiny of someone who has died shouldn’t seem so odd at this time of year, which we say is a thin time when we’re especially attuned to the porous veil that lies between this world and the next. Any of us who have sat at the bedside of someone dying, know how thin that veil is. One minute there is breath, the next it is gone. “Our days are like the grass,” Psalm 103 tells us.

On All Saints’ Day, we celebrate the thinness of that diaphanous veil that separates this world from the next. We rejoice in it because it means that scattered throughout our mortal lives, we are given glimpses of that heavenly kingdom on the other side of the veil. These glimpses come to us rather like dreams where departed loved ones greet us with comforting words: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.

Such a dreamy scene is found in the Revelation to John when the curtain between heaven and earth is pulled back for just a bit. Cast away from your brains the tendency to decipher this strange book like a code or to predict the future, and instead, encounter it as a living vision, a dream of what is to come and a dream of what already is. Imagine it as heavenly reality breaking into our world for a fleeting moment.

Envision the comfort of John’s magnificent vision to an early Church held under the boot of a ruthless empire. Behold what blessed assurance this vision must have been to those trying to follow the way of the cross, where the meekest and quietest voices were drowned amid the cacophony of violence and oppression. It’s as if the company of saints were singing into their world: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.

It can’t be mere coincidence that the final word of the Christian Bible is that of the Book of Revelation, a word that essentially speaks to us as if in a dream: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay. The evil you see daily, the innocent murdered victims who are the devastating casualties of human greed, the persistent naysaying voices of despair, the barbarous behavior of uncivilized civilians: yes, even all this horror is not the final word. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.

Yes, everything is going to be okay because the saints teach us, even if as in a dream, that heaven is a celebration of the ultimate truth of God’s promises. This is no false dream; this is abundantly true. With the aid of the saints, we savor all those hints of hope that God has dropped along the pilgrimage of God’s people throughout time. Do you remember the aftermath of the great flood, when Noah, his family, and the animals exited the ark? God promised never to let such destruction happen again. God set the rainbow in the sky as a reminder that the final word of our collective story is not death but life.

One of the most moving pieces of liturgical art I have ever seen is a cope—the cape-like vestment worn on special occasions, such as at the beginning of tonight’s Mass. The cope of which I’m speaking is an exquisite black cope, which is intended for a Requiem Mass, and on its hood, blazing forth from deepest black, is a bright rainbow. The rainbow means that although we recognize the darkness of death and sin and evil around us, and although they threaten to swallow us up, the final word in Christ for us is that of the rainbow. Life, not death. Hope, not despair. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.

Tonight, we bask in the promise of the rainbow, of which we catch a peek in the Book of Revelation, where a multitude of people beyond what we can count stands around the throne of God. They sing without ceasing, because making music is pure praise. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay. The curse of Babbel is undone, and all people—Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Greeks, sworn enemies of all sorts—all communicate in the language of worship and of heavenly song.

The blood-soaked clothes of martyrs like the apostle Paul and Perpetua and her companions and Lucy and Edith Stein and Jonathan Myrick Daniels and Óscar Romero have become blindingly white, washed in the eternal blood of the Lamb. In heaven, the slain Lamb is the true Shepherd because he gave his life for the sheep, and he continues to give life. The rainbow set in the sky is like encouragement in a dream. In God’s eternal realm where earthly values are inverted, death cannot have the last word. Death’s presumed power is laughable. Heaven’s dreamy message to us is the absolute truth: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.

Everything is going to be okay because the father of all lies, the one who has continually deceived God’s people, has already been defeated and he knows it. And we have all heard his lies and accusations: that the Church will die, that we will fail, that we are foolish to hope, that the death of our spouse is the end of our own happiness, that death itself is the end of life. But they are lies. This night, God invites us to listen to the dreamy message of truth that he sends us in the lives of the saints. Life continues on the other side of suffering, sorrow, and death. The song goes on eternally. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.

We don’t need to worry because we can remember. Remember how God set his rainbow in the sky. Remember how when God’s people were famished, there was manna. Remember how when they were enslaved, God freed them. Remember how when Jerusalem was sacked, God brought the exiles back to rebuild their temple. Remember how when humanity had once again lost its way, God sent his Son to draw all people to himself. Remember that, even now, while missiles fly and bullets ricochet in schools, we should never forget that the veil between this life and the next is very thin and that the saints can speak to us in dreams. And that we can trust that everything will be okay because when everything seems lost and defeat seems near at hand, God will always make good on his promises.

The saints offer us a reassuring vision of continual praise and worship on the other side of that nearly transparent veil between this world and the next. They remind us that in our worship we are always experiencing heaven itself. In worship, we see God’s rainbow set in a sky that might normally seem as dark as night. The saints remind us that heaven will always surprise us with its capacity to include far more people than we ever can or want to imagine; it can include even us. The saints remind us that hunger and thirst and scorching heat will not conquer us because the Good Shepherd will bring us to springs of living water, and he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. This is more than a dream. It’s a dream that brings us the undeniable, living truth of God, which is as certain as the promise of the rainbow.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
All Saints’ Day
November 1, 2023

Somewhere between the Altar and the Door

As a child, I was obsessed with a series of biography books found in my local public library. The books in this series had red covers and included biographies of everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Olympic athlete Babe Didrickson Zaharias, who was born in the same town that I was. I devoured these books, and relished their musty, old book smell. In my mind’s eye, I can still see that section in the library, my favorite place to visit in childhood summers.

And I still recall an image from one of those books, although I haven’t the foggiest idea about whom the book was written. I remember that the subject of this biography was an early American, probably living in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, most likely in a rural setting. And the scene from that biography which is seared into my memory is of a church service in what was probably an austere Congregational church. In that spartan religious setting, while attending a worship service, you were always supposed to keep your eyes directed towards the front of the church, presumably on the pulpit and on the preacher.

If, however, you had the audacity to turn around, say, to smile at a friend or check out who had just entered the door of the church, you would be chastised with a firm tap on the shoulder by a man standing at the back of the church wielding a long stick. I don’t know who this person was, although I imagine he was a sexton of sorts. In this church, you were never supposed to look behind you during the service. It was considered rude and a mark of bad behavior.

This image has stayed with me. I’m still hesitant to look behind me in church. But it occurs to me that maybe there was some hidden theological reality in that little red biography’s depiction of an early American church setting. Maybe the prohibition against turning around to look at the door of the church grew out of the piety of a particular brand of Christianity. If you can’t look at the door of the church or other parishioners in the room, then you can only look at the pulpit. You can only pay attention to the word proclaimed and the word preached. Your eyes are always and only on the front of the church.

Your eyes are decidedly not on other people. Not on your neighbor in the pew nor even on your parents who might be sitting next to you, and certainly not on the stranger walking in off the street. And for heaven’s sake, don’t ever look at the man holding the long stick. Does this speak to an individualistic piety that is more concerned with salvation and less attentive to the plight of those whose salvation is inextricably wrapped up with ours?

Such a piety is not mine, and such a piety is not typical of the Anglican tradition. Rather, our piety, our practice of being Christian, lies somewhere between two extremes. And in between two extremes we find the meaning of Christian love, agape love, that selfless, self-giving love exemplified by Jesus Christ in his life, death, and resurrection. Such Christian love takes root somewhere between the altar and the door of the church.

When pressed to name the great commandment in the law, Jesus invites us squarely into that holy space between the altar and the door of the church. Although Christians have for years erroneously tried to claim that Jesus was saying something radically new in this summary of the law, it’s more accurate to say that Jesus was trying to direct his audience back to the heart of the Law as he understood it and which he embodied in his own life.

Jesus brings us back to Deuteronomy, chapter 6, and the Shema, the commandment to the people of Israel to love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and strength. The life lived in God starts by loving God. Even more than that, it starts with God’s first love of us. Hidden behind the Shema is that foundational love of God that takes us all the way back to the Book of Genesis when God called everything very good. To remember that love, keep your eyes on the altar.

But then, there’s a tap on the shoulder, not from a scolding stick but from the gentle hand of Christ who reminds us that while everything starts with the love of God, it doesn’t end there. It only begins there. Love your neighbor as yourself. Turn around, Jesus says, and look at the door. Look at your neighbor. Look at the stranger in your land. Look even at yourself. Without most people knowing it, Jesus has taken us back to the Book of Leviticus, chapter 19.

The injunctions in this chapter are concerned with love that’s formed in care of the neighbor. Don’t hold grudges. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. And while you’re at it, when you reap your harvest, don’t reap to the edges of your land. Leave some for the poor and the alien. Rather than fearing the foreigners in your land who might take your jobs, care for them. Keep your eyes on the door. But remember that first, your eyes were on the altar. They have to be on the altar first, because there you’ll remember that the Lord is God. The Lord is holy. And true love can only come from a love responding to the boundless love of God, who is holy, who is the saving Lord. Otherwise, any other notion of love will be false.

Somewhere between the altar and the door of the church is where true love starts to take on life in human flesh. That’s where it moves from the altar to mold lives of holiness to venture into the world to make that love concrete and visible. Its story begins way back when God created everything and then continued to shepherd God’s people from slavery into freedom. This love never stopped being love even when God’s people complained, grumbled, made idols, and turned away from God. That love was forgotten when people first began to look too long at the altar or too long at the door, and ultimately too long at themselves. People still forget such love when they fail to keep one eye on the altar and one on the door, because inevitably they end up looking too much at themselves. Inevitably, they become afraid.

When we lose sight of the altar, we become our own saviors. When we lose sight of the door, we become self-consumed and focused only on our own salvation. The Christian life starts with our eyes on the altar, where we see love given freely to us in the word proclaimed and the holy gifts of the Mass. But when our eyes are on the altar, and if we are paying attention, our gaze can’t help but shift to the door. The door is where we encounter the stranger. The altar is where we find love, not fear. If we start with the door, we will only see fear, because outside the church door, everyone seems so afraid. We must start with the altar, with love. And to walk in love as Christ loved us, our eyes must go constantly back and forth, between altar and door.

And when we lose our focus, which invariably we will, Christ offers us a saving tap on the shoulder. His tap is so very different from the punitive tap of the sexton in that biography I read as a child. Christ’s tap is always a reminder and expression of love, which is who he is. It’s the love summed up in that great commandment and the one like it. They are of one piece. To love God is to love the neighbor as we love ourselves, and to love our neighbor is to love God.

When our eyes are obsessively hungry for the Eucharistic bread but care nothing for the stranger lacking bread on the street, Christ taps us on the shoulder and reminds us to look at the door again. When our privileged guilt keeps our eyes too focused on those outside the door, Christ taps us again gently, inviting us to remember that the source of our salvation is the living word of God and the Bread of the Mass, which give us true life.

In this earthly life, we will always need the gentle taps offered by our Savior. He knows all too well our human tendency to drift to extremes rather than inhabiting that place in the middle. And so, constantly and lovingly, he taps our shoulders to call us back home.

 A stopped clock is always right twice a day, so there was something right in that little Congregational church in early austere America. First, look at the altar. That’s where it starts. But there’s more, much more. Christ’s merciful tap on our shoulders reminds us that there’s a door opening into a world desperate for the stream of love coming from the altar. And our true home is that holy place somewhere between the altar and the door. It’s right here. To live and breathe as people of love, we must first start with our eyes on the altar, and then we see Christ anew: in the jobless foreigner in our land, in the lonely coworker, in the enemy who votes differently from us, in the one who has wronged us, even in our own selves. And because we have seen Christ when our eyes were on the altar, we can then see him everywhere.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
October 29, 2023

Nothing Short of Exceptional

“He’s a nice guy, but a little boring.” Those were the words spoken about me to a friend of mine twenty years ago. My friend was a housemate whom I had only known for less than a week after his relocation to the United States from another country, but we had become fast friends. And we obviously shared a lot with each other, which is how I found out that I had been deemed boring.

It’s a testament to the human struggle to forget hurtful words that decades later, those words still haunt me, just as they were hurtful to me when I first heard them. They haunt me because I see that words like that retain a certain relentless power. If I still find hurt in them, then they somehow have found a home within my soul. And they have found a home within my own soul because I have inadvertently fallen prey to the spirit of our age, where individualism reigns, novelty is king, and standing out is how you survive. To be boring means to fly under the radar and resist the temptation to be radically individualistic.

By this standard, we might categorize the first-century church in Thessalonica, Greece, as boring. Consider the primary characteristics of that church as expressed by the apostle Paul in a letter to them. They have been faithful in their work and labored in love with a steadfastness of hope. They have imitated the self-emptying behavior of Christ. They have persevered despite trials. They have turned from idols to serve the true and living God. They have waited patiently for Christ’s second coming. They are bor- ing.

Now, hold on a minute, you might say. St. Paul is writing this letter because he has heard about the exemplary behavior of the Thessalonians. Indeed, others have learned of their behavior, too. Something about the Thessalonians must have stood out. How can the Thessalonians be boring if they have made such an impression on others?

True, but can we honestly say that a group of people behaving like the Thessalonians today would gain such recognition? To say the Thessalonians would be seen as boring judges them by modern standards. Faithful work, labors of love, and steadfast hope rarely make the news in our day. Imitation of others, especially good people, is hardly spectacular and terribly uncreative. You’re supposed to innovate not imitate. Turning from idols makes it very difficult to survive in the modern world. And waiting patiently on the second coming of Christ when centuries of people have promised it to no avail is nothing short of foolish in the eyes of many.

Practical theologian Andrew Root has suggested that the governing spirit of our own age is that of exceptionality, at least in much of modern Western culture.[1] It’s all about the individual, and the individual needs to be exceptional. Look at our schools, where getting a 4.0 grade point average isn’t enough and taking only a few AP classes is just boring and unexceptional. Look at the workforce, where there’s an incessant expectation of unparalleled creativity rather than consistent, faithful work. Look even at our churches, where it seems that to survive, you must stand out, not necessarily in good works and example, but in novelty. You must be doing things that no other churches are doing. Andrew Root would claim that this drive for radical originality in churches is just the backflow from a secular culture that is all about the creative, uniquely innovative, exceptional self.

And like many, I, too, am a product of such a culture, which is why it stung to be labeled as boring. It means that I long for self-recognition or affirmation. I long to stand out, because to be successful, you need to be unique. You need to have not just a good idea, but the best idea. You need to be gifted at not just one thing but many things. And the clencher to inhabiting a world built around “I” is that it knows nothing about “we.” In the world of “me,” the greatest fulfillment is usually found in the self, rather than in community.

So, yes, by contemporary standards, the early church in Thessalonica is boring. It’s not exciting or even exceptional to be merely faithful in your work. To labor in love hardly earns you recognition unless your labor is tied up with the latest fad. And to be steadfastly hopeful that God can bring something good out of bad smells of antiquated ignorance, because God becomes the actor and we become, well, boring. The Thessalonians are boring precisely because they are unlike the other churches to which Paul writes. Who wants to quote from Thessalonians when you can secretly relish the juicy immorality of the Corinthians or Romans?

The behavior of the Thessalonians might seem boring by modern standards, but that says more about our own skewed judgment than about them. It speaks to the relentless anxiety of our age, which explains why people act out or need to assert their individuality.

We’re all so very anxious, and if you don’t feel particularly anxious right now, I would bet that you know the anxiety of which I’m speaking. We’re anxious that what we do and who we are is not enough. We’re anxious that if we’re not recognized as exceptional, we’re losers. We’re anxious that if someone calls us boring, then others will also think we are. We’re anxious that if we trust God too much, we’ll be disappointed. We’re anxious that if we’re hopeful that God can bring good out of the worst situations then when we keep experiencing bad things, we’ll lose our faith in God. Ultimately, we’re anxious because we’re very afraid, and we’re afraid that in God’s eyes we’re not exceptional. We’re afraid that if we’re not exceptional, then we’re not really loved by God.

But any fear of being too much like those boring Thessalonians is more than just a fear of seeming unexceptional. It’s also a fear of giving up the things that have begun to rule our lives like the lives of the Thessalonians were ruled before they turned from idols. To be boring by modern standards is to turn from the idols of our own day, which feed our desire to be exceptional and falsely promise us security and worth. To be boring by modern standards is to sacrifice our self-consumed identity to our true identity found in Christ, where no one stands out because we’re all chosen and loved by God. And by that account, we are truly exceptional.[2]

The early church described by Paul, a church that was within spitting distance of Jesus’s death and resurrection, was a church so very different from the modern church. Our current anxieties of decline and relevance are nothing compared to the anxieties of imminent death for being a Christian and of sustaining a radically new movement with no roadmap. Maybe we struggle with faith, hope, and love because we receive so many messages that we aren’t worthy of love or that we’re not loved. And that makes it just too hard to trust in a God who supposedly loves us unconditionally and beyond our ability to imagine.

And this is why those early Thessalonians were indeed exceptional. By the standards of God’s kingdom, they were radically innovative because they upended a world centered on the self, much like ours is. They weren’t exceptional in our modern kind of way. Paradoxically, they were exceptional precisely because they are boring by modern standards. We don’t remember the Thessalonians for employing the latest fads in evangelism. We don’t even know anything about individuals in that particular community. We hear nothing of magnetic personalities or charismatic leaders. We only hear from St. Paul’s words that this collection of motley individuals found their deepest identity by being grafted into the living Body of Christ. By hiding themselves in Christ and sacrificing their individual identities for a larger corporate identity, their ordinariness was exceptional, and it changed the world.

This faithful, constant, hopeful, and loving ordinariness was so exceptional that it resounded beyond their own community. It didn’t resound because the Thessalonians were loud talkers or theatrical in their behavior; it resounded because the only thing that seemed to matter to the Thessalonians was trusting the Gospel. They trusted the power of the Gospel enough to know that once the bell of the Gospel was rung, all they needed to do was let its vibrations resound in their own lives and out to the ends of the earth.

And here’s the good news. The Gospel doesn’t need our exceptionality or our personality to make it work. Its voice alone is exceptional. The living Gospel of Christ is the most powerful thing alive if we can dare to risk being called boring, so boring that our work and our play and our speech become sympathetic vibrations of that beautiful Gospel that is nothing short of exceptional.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 22, 2023

[1] Andrew Root, The Church after Innovation: Questioning Our Obsession with Work, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022).

[2] See Andrew Root, p. 176.

Moving to the Right End of Things

Last month, some parishioners and I attended Bryn Mawr Day, an annual opportunity for local businesses and organizations, including churches, to engage with the local community. Those of us from Good Shepherd had set up a table with several flyers on it, including advertisements for our retreat house as well as our concert series. People would stop by and chat with us or share information about their own organization.

And this is how I came to have a brief conversation with a man associated with another local church who was handing out pamphlets. They were typical stock, evangelical pamphlets, intended to persuade people to accept Jesus into their lives. Maybe you’ve seen some of these before. Some have injunctions to obey Scripture. Others have calls to repentance. The little pamphlet in my hand had a picture of a building going up in flames. The message was clear: turn to the Lord or meet your fate.

The man was obviously excited about sharing these little pamphlets with the hundreds of people present. He asked me, with an earnest glint in his eyes, “You know what that is, right?” I was at first speechless, primarily because I was horrified. “Yes,” I replied, checking my initial urge to express how appalled I was. I nevertheless remained quiet because I was sure that whatever I said wouldn’t deter this man’s zeal. I winced inwardly at the thought of dozens of children enjoying their ice cream and suddenly receiving a pamphlet from that overzealous man.

It made me think, as I often do, about how we Christians can be prone to start at the wrong end of things. For centuries, the Church has led from an evangelical posture that is not dissimilar from the pamphlet-wielding man at Bryn Mawr Day. The threatening prospect of eternal flames has been used to motivate people to find Christ. And, paradoxically, maybe this is why so many people refuse the invitation.

It might also seem that St. Matthew often starts at the wrong end of things. This is the second Sunday in a row that we hear a challenging parable depicting the horrible fate of those who don’t accept Christ into their lives. There’s no obvious hint of forgiveness in the text. Instead, there are clear decision points, and if the wrong decision is made, one is doomed.

This doesn’t sit well with many people. It doesn’t sit well with me. And it’s not because I believe that following Jesus is easy or that judgment doesn’t exist. It’s because I believe that starting at the wrong end of things can distort our image of the One sent in love for the salvation of the world by God, who is love. Starting at the wrong end of things doesn’t mesh well with the constant message of God’s forgiveness and mercy that runs like a stubborn strand throughout the Bible, trampling over human fear of rejection.

When something disturbs me in Scripture, I see it as an invitation to wrestle with it and to probe it until it opens up. And that’s why I think Jesus’s parables, like the one we’re given today, are like autostereograms. If you don’t know what those are, I bet you’ve seen them. They’re two-dimensional images that can become three dimensional when you refocus your eyes. It’s what Elaine’s boss, Mr. Pitt, spent hours trying to figure out on Seinfeld. If you stare long enough at a surface image—often a series of random dots—you will eventually see another image not readily apparent to the eyes.

When we confront the parable of the marriage feast, the most obvious image is not unlike the pamphlet handed to me by that man last month. We see an angry king, who symbolizes an angry God. We see troops sent by that angry king or angry God to destroy those invited to the marriage feast who refuse the invitation and behave abominably. We see their city going up in flames that resemble the ones on the pamphlet given to me last month. We see a speechless, improperly clad guest at the marriage feast thrown into the outer darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth. All this, despite his having accepted the invitation in the first place.

Is it any wonder, then, that many, upon being given this image or, let’s say, an evangelical pamphlet, then throw away the pamphlet or walk away from the image? This parable seems to start at the wrong end of things to get people to do the right thing, but it might have the effect of enabling exactly what the parable decries. Those invited to the feast disregard the invitation or behave badly in response.

But what if Matthew’s parable is more like an autostereogram? What if we’re only seeing a surface image of flames of fire and wrathful destruction while another truer image lies hidden beneath? What if we could see that truer image by refocusing our eyes? What if that other image contains good news?

If you will, join me in refocusing your eyes on this image. True, you’re seeing a very challenging, even disturbing scene, but what we find revolting has caused us to look more closely at the image because it has now garnered our attention. And we have a hunch that there’s something more that we can’t yet see but are meant to see.

The hints of that new image, which is Christ’s good news, are, in fact, already present in the surface image. With time, we begin to discern a new picture that’s emerging from the flames and scene of destruction. We see a grand banquet hall, with table after table piled high with unending rich food and wine. We see a meal prepared by a king who has spared nothing to put on the best banquet imaginable. We see that uncountable places have been set at these tables, waiting to be filled by those invited. We see that this king has been utterly tenacious in summoning people to the feast. He never gives up. When some decline the invitation, he invites others, until finally, the most unlikely suspects are invited in, both good and bad.

But influenced as we are by human sin, our eyes soon lose their focus on the alternative, truer image, and we see only the faces of those who refuse the invitation. They all refuse for different reasons. Some feel unworthy of being there. Some are told they aren’t good enough to be there. Some never even received an invitation because the deliverers slacked off. Some feel they have better things to do, like putting more hours into the grind of the voracious beast of their jobs. Some are apathetic and uninterested in the invitation. Some have no clue how amazing the banquet will be.

And then, for a minute, our eyes settle on that poor fellow who accepts an invitation to the feast but isn’t properly attired. He’s the one who never passes up an invitation to the feast but whom the feast never changes. He’s the regular churchgoer who can still leave Mass and treat others like garbage. He’s the one who thinks mere attendance will save his soul although he never acts on his faith. He’s the one who has accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior and thinks he has an immediate ticket into heaven. Having lost our focus, we are rightly troubled by the fate of those in this first image because we sense this is not how things are meant to be. And we realize that we are once again at the wrong end of things.

Maybe this is precisely Matthew’s intention. Maybe he has deliberately created an autostereogram for us. He starts at the wrong end to wake us up to the fact that there’s a right end below the surface of what we’re seeing. We can’t deny the impoverished, horrible world we will inhabit if we refuse God’s invitation to the feast and turn inward on ourselves. But that’s not the end of the story nor is it what God desires for us. There’s a right end of things if we refocus our eyes. And if we do, here’s what we’ll see.

We’ll see a king who is not vengeful but infinitely loving, sitting at the head of a vast table with more seats than we can imagine, waiting for them to be filled by us. This banquet hall is, in fact, the only place on earth where no matter how many times through sin we refuse the invitation, we can always accept it again by turning to God for forgiveness. There’s no other place on earth where the food is available, all the time, free of charge. There’s no other place on earth where the food will change our lives forever. There’s no other place on earth where our income, status, or achievements have nothing to do with sitting down at the feast and where the unemployed feast together with the world’s wealthiest people. There’s no better place on earth to be than here.

We are at that feast, right now, although it’s only a taste of the eternal feast to come. Whether you’ve spurned an invitation to the feast before or do on occasion when you succumb to malaise, the invitation is always open. When you realize that you’re not properly clad for the feast, you can always turn to Christ so that he can clothe you in his righteousness. It’s never too late to accept the invitation, with all its costs and sacrifices, because there’s nothing else on earth that can be of more value for us. And once we get a taste of this feast, we will see that it’s an offer we can never refuse again.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 15, 2023

Ripe for Flourishing

You know what they say: when the cat’s away, the mice will play. The teacher leaves the room, and the students start throwing erasers at each other. The dog owner leaves for the evening to go out for dinner and returns to find that the house is littered with toilet paper. The unattended child is left in his highchair for one minute, and when the parent returns, he has crawled into the kitchen and is opening all the cleaning supplies.

Scripture is full of such behavior. Moses leaves the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai to go up and speak with God and receive the Ten Commandments, and when he comes back down, the Israelites have made a golden calf. In one of Jesus’s parables, a man who goes off on a journey, leaving his property with his slaves. When he comes back, two of the slaves have made more money from the talents entrusted to their care, but one slave has buried his talent, instead of investing it, because he was afraid of his master. Preserving the talent was safer than the risk of investing it. And finally, when Jesus has died and been raised from the dead, the disciples retreat into an upper room and lock the doors, scared out of their minds. When the cat’s away, the mice will play, or at the very least, they will have no idea how to act.

And this is exactly what happens when a householder plants a vineyard and then leaves it in the care of some tenants. This vineyard isn’t a chunk of useless land that the tenants must work hard to cultivate so that it will bear fruit. The householder has already done everything possible to ensure that the vineyard will produce abundant good fruit. He has made sure that it’s protected from wild animals and has furnished it with a wine press to turn the harvested grapes into good wine. Every detail is set in place to facilitate an incredible harvest.

Having done all this, the householder entrusts the care of his vineyard to tenants, leaves the scene, and then the mice begin to play. We don’t know much about what transpired after the householder leaves, but I’m guessing that nothing happened. The mice slept rather than played. Or maybe they were lazy and acted horribly. I’m guessing that both might be the case because of Jesus’s challenging words to the chief priests and Pharisees to whom he tells this parable. Something has not happened in the landowner’s absence. Perhaps the vineyard was left to rot. Maybe the tenants were too overwhelmed by the task they were assigned. Whatever the case, not only are the tenants unproductive, but they also behave abominably. They harm the servants sent by the householder to gather the harvest, and finally, they kill the householder’s son, the one sent to be respected and revered.

Jesus tells this parable to convict the Jewish leadership, but it is most certainly not about God taking away the kingdom from the Jewish people. God’s kingdom is available to all. This convicting parable highlights the judgment present to anyone who fails to be a good steward of what God has entrusted to their care and who willingly rejects God’s gifts. It’s a difficult lesson for all who want to play, or sleep, while the cat is away.

It might as well be a parable of judgment told to the modern Church. We inhabit a period of waiting like that of the tenants. We live in the time between Jesus’s first coming to us and his eventual second coming. We’ve been entrusted with a tremendous responsibility, and so often, we treat it as another menial task. Or we sleep or refrain from working.

In John’s Gospel, on the eve of his death, Jesus tells his disciples that after the Holy Spirit has been sent to empower them for ministry, they will do greater things than he has done. It’s an astounding claim of which the modern Church usually seems ignorant. And so, like Jesus’s disciples after his death and resurrection, we retreat into our closed quarters, most often out of fear and anxiety. Or while the cat is away, we resort to gimmicks and cheap tricks to lure people back into the pews instead of being faithful with our prayers. Or we pitifully accept a doomed narrative of decline. Or we wring our hands and cry out that we don’t have enough to do what God has asked us to do. There’s not enough money or people or resources. The vineyard is riddled with too many insurmountable problems: with leaking roofs, aging buildings, and too much deferred maintenance.

Or even worse, when the cat is away, we grow impatient and distrustful, like the band of people led by Moses out of Egypt, who wasted no time in making a golden calf so soon after being delivered from slavery. Our anxiety forces us to turn inward on ourselves and to look only to our own efforts to make ends meet. We begin to think that what we’ve been entrusted with is ours to keep, and then we try to defend it at all costs. We become drunk with greed so that anyone who desires what we have, or anyone who asks for a share in the harvest entrusted to our care is a threat. And the cycle spirals out of control.

When the cat is away, and we’re left with our own narrow, self-centered worlds, the illness that strikes is another cause for a grievance against God. The financial pickle is one more reason to hunker down in fear. The possessions we have are just more things to hoard. As I said, when the cat’s away, the mice will play.

But maybe the problem is that we imagine ourselves as vulnerable little mice running from the predator cat. It seems that the tenants who abuse the householder’s servants and kill his son fail to trust and respect the householder. And their tragic attitude toward life is revealed in the judgment they offer against themselves when Jesus asks them the million-dollar question: “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

All the tenants can imagine is that the householder will put them to a miserable death. Is this the reason why the tenants behave so badly while the householder is away? Do they believe that the householder cares nothing for their well-being? Can they only imagine a world without mercy and compassion? Do they fail to envision a world of abundance? Are they completely unable to trust that they could be good stewards of the vineyard? Are they so anxious that they can’t imagine that returning the fruits of the vineyard to the householder might not mean that they get nothing in return?

And do we also imagine God as a punishing householder who entrusts his vineyard to our care? Do we see ourselves as little mice, constantly running from a God who simply wants to capture and torture us if we mess up, and if so, is this why we misbehave when God seems to withdraw from us? And while we’re at it, why would we imagine that God leaves us to begin with? The only reason would be that have failed to trust. We have failed to hope. And without hope, we become like a child without a parent.

And so, to reclaim our trust and hope we need to return to the beginning of this parable, where we get a glimpse into God’s true nature. God is rather like that householder who doesn’t leave a stinking mess for people to clean up but who provides everything that is needed for a copious harvest of good fruit. In Christ, God has given us the confident assurance that no evil powers and no false lies from the evil one can undermine our holy work. God has strewn the landscape of our lives and our churches with abundant resources: with physical space, with beautiful people, with talents and gifts, and with money that sometimes needs to be coaxed into use.

God, indeed, has given us everything we need to fulfill the mission to which he has called us. And if we can’t see that, it’s because we could benefit from more trust and hope. When God seems absent, it’s only the accusing voices of our insecure minds and hearts that try to convince us otherwise. It’s a lie that we must always play it safe to come out okay. It’s a lie that we must cut our way to prosperity. Even when the vineyard seems like nothing more than a tangle of brambles, God has nevertheless prepared rich soil ready to be loved and tended into a fruitful harvest.

God doesn’t abandon us. Jesus doesn’t go to the Father to leave us with the dirty work. Jesus goes to the Father so that the Holy Spirit may come to us and propel us into works greater even than his. It’s an astounding thought that we can only cherish in trust and hope. And, yes, one day the householder will return to gather his harvest. Can we look forward to that day with joy rather than fear? The vineyard has been prepared for our work, and there is much work to do. God has given us everything we need. It’s time to work. And on that day when the householder returns in love, may we be ready to accept with joy our Lord’s praise when he looks at us and says, “Servant, well done!”

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 8, 2023

More Than Just a Game

When at some point I moved on from the innocuous Candy Land game as a kid, I became a big fan of Monopoly. To a young kind, it seemed like a grownup kind of game, and it was exhilarating to deal with all that paper money. The wispy bills came in all denominations and colors—gray, yellow, green, blue—and there were many of them. Each time you passed GO time, the banker doled out $200. Every player began the game with the same amount of money. What wasn’t there to like about this game?

As if that were not enough, in Monopoly, the bank never runs out of money! The banker only needs to create more money on ordinary paper if the bank goes dry. Now, admittedly, landing in jail or having to pay income tax is a drag, but stacking up piles of colorful money and using it to buy property like there’s no tomorrow more than makes up for it.

The most obvious reason the younger version of myself liked this game was that there was no real risk involved in it. The money was fake, even if its inauthenticity provided a strange thrill during the heat of the game. What was the harm in buying a string of properties on Park Place or Boardwalk? If you lost them, it was just a game. At the end of the day, even if you had to give up all your amassed property and fake bucks in Monopoly, chances are, there’s still the real home in which you’re playing the game. There’s still the checking account with money in it. The game was just a game.

Have you noticed that Jesus seems to have no interest in playing games? Now, don’t get me wrong. I happen to think Jesus had a great sense of humor. To see it, you must use your imagination when reading Scripture. But Jesus is not playing games when he’s grilled about the origin of his authority. And yet, I suspect there’s a wry humor behind his blunt unwillingness to offer any explanation for the nature of his authority. And when he asks a question of those who question his authority, Jesus receives no answer at all. So, perhaps with a glint in his eye, Jesus refuses to answer the demand made of him. You won’t give me an answer, then I won’t explain the origin of my authority. In the stage cue direction, Jesus winks at others in the crowd looking on.

Jesus might have a sense of humor, but he never plays games because his life and his witness and all that comes with it are no game at all. The characters in his life are not pawns but souls in need of a Savior. And as Jesus nears the cross in Matthew’s Gospel, it is evident that those around him, especially his very own disciples, still fail to understand that what might have seemed like a game before is no game at all.

As the cross looms on the horizon, the money put down on the string of houses on Park Place is looking cheap. When it runs out, people just handwrite new bills. To get ahead in the game, people say the right things to please the right people and avoid saying things that will offend those dealing in property on Boardwalk. And if they’re worried about committing to any answer, they say nothing at all.

Which is why Jesus suggests that it’s better to say no and change your mind than to say yes with fake money and then close the game when the going gets tough. In other words: put your money where your mouth is. Let your heart and your deeds demonstrate that this is no game at all.

Right now, in a world of conflicting messages, low commitment, cheap words, and shallow friendships, it’s easy to be a Christian dealing fake money in a board game. Jennifer Reddall, the Episcopal Bishop of Arizona, recently named this quite bluntly in a message to her diocese. Here’s what she said: “The skepticism of many young people in our nation towards organized religion often has its roots in the sense that churches are hypocritical–they profess faith in a God of loving relationships, but sometimes exercise behavior that is un-loving and abusive.”[1] To many so-called Christians, discipleship seems to be more than a riskless game. Bills can be printed on demand, and you can close shop when things get too risky.

Should we, then, be paying more attention to the ones who are saying no? On a first reading, the first son in Jesus’s parable who initially says no to his father’s request to go and work in the vineyard seems insubordinate. Why won’t he go to work? How can he be so disrespectful of his father? But the twist in this parable—and there’s always a twist in a parable—turns the screw in our gut. This first son ends up being the most righteous, not because he said no, but because he changed his mind. It takes a significant amount of humility, self-awareness, and courage to transform a no into a yes.

But the second son is dealing out fake money in a game where the stakes are abominably low. His yes is not really a yes at all. His yes is a no. Why not stay in the game until the fake money runs out? But of course, then, the banker can just create more. Stay in the game until it gets too boring or hard. Enjoy the allure of winning and calling the shots. But don’t risk too much. Say yes to save face, but then do whatever you want.

Perhaps we should listen, for a minute, to those who are saying no. Why are they saying no? And when we find out why, maybe it can help us understand the true meaning of Christian discipleship. Those who want nothing to do with the Church abhor the slippery feel of fake money doled out like there’s no tomorrow. They’re tired of hearing people quote the baptismal covenant and then treating others as pawns in an abusive game. They’re tired of seeing the Bible hijacked to beat people into submission. They’re tired, perhaps, even of well-behaved Christians who do not offend or hurt but whose lives have no spiritual seasoning or spice. They attend Church each Sunday, but as soon as the service is ended, they fold up the game as if it has no relevance to the rest of the week.

Even more shockingly, could it be that those who say no to laboring in the field say no not just because they hate hypocrisy and the proliferation of fake money? Could it also be because they have some instinctive idea of just how difficult discipleship is? Are they so in awe of what Christian commitment really entails that they’re worried about saying yes and then trading in fake money for the rest of their lives?

So, before we pass GO one more time, maybe we should look at the bills in our own hands. Is the money fake or is it real? Are we playing a game that we can end at any time, or is this the way of Jesus, which never ends? And when the tragedy strikes, or when we’re asked to put our money down to support ministry, or when we’re invited not just to sit in the pew but labor in the field, are we willing to do it?

Of the many things that I value about this parish, it’s that I don’t find it to be a place that deals in fake money. I see a profound movement of the Holy Spirit among us that is causing all kinds of people to take Christian discipleship seriously, whether those who’ve been here for decades or those who’ve been here for a few weeks.

Week after week, we find people coming to Mass, laboring in the vineyard of ministry during the week, going deep in formation, and giving sacrificially of their resources and time to enable God’s ministry to flourish here. Here, we strive to deal in real money. Here we try to avoid playing riskless games.

Perhaps at some point in your life, you’ve said no, but now you’re saying yes. And what about those who aren’t yet here? What about those who are presently saying no, those who would rather play no game at all than play with fake money? What can they teach us? And what would it take to turn their no into a yes? Because in the Christian life, an unwillingness to change one’s heart is perhaps the most chilling offense against God’s grace. And a meaningless yes is just fake money when heart and deeds don’t match it.

There is something incredible behind a no that understands the power of becoming a yes. Every time we fall into sin and then turn again to God, our no becomes a yes. None of us is immune from no, but thanks to God’s abundant and never-ending grace, every no can become a resounding yes.

And best of all, God always says yes to us. Sometimes, the response might seem like a no, but in the mystery of God, it’s always a yes. God’s yes is always available to us, even when we say no. No never has to be our final word, for sometimes a long period of no might result in the most genuine yes of all. As much as we might play games with our faith, God never plays games with us. God doesn’t trade in meaningless denominations of cash. And when our hardness of our heart is softened and our no finally becomes a yes, we’ll find that God’s eternal yes has never, ever left us.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 1, 2023

[1] https://azdiocese.org/2023/09/decline-and-discipline/

An Equal and Similar Action

Two statements from high school are seared into my mind. One is from economics class, and it may very well be the only thing I remember from that class. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. I’m sure you’ve heard it before. I suppose it’s true, although I’ve been in some situations in my life where I did indeed feel like I was getting a free lunch. It was usually when I was the recipient of a free trip or a lavish gift of some kind from an institution with way too much money. But in general, and certainly where capitalism reigns, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I don’t think this is meant to be a pessimistic statement but rather a wise admonition. Wikipedia will tell you that it means that the universe is basically a closed system.[1] If you want that fancy vacation home, you will either have to earn more money or make some cuts to your budget. There’s a finite number of resources, and so something must be sacrificed for everything to equal out.

And this brings me to the second memorable statement from high school, but this time from physics class. It was not my favorite class, but I do remember Newton’s third law of motion: for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. If you push on a wall, it’s also pushing back against you. According to this law, the universe is definitely a closed system. There’s a finite amount of energy that must be conserved, hence the equal and opposite reaction.

Those two statements from well over twenty-five years ago have stayed with me not because I’m obsessed with economics or physics. I can assure you that I don’t miss those classes. But I remember those statements because they apply to more than just the physical exchange of money or the world economy or the daily gravitational forces we experience but usually fail to think about. Those two statements from high school imprinted on my brain also apply to human nature.

We humans are wired to operate within a closed system. Think about it. If someone is offering you an unexpected gift, your first reaction will probably be to assume that you owe something in return. What’s the catch? you might say. This is too good to be true. Someone could be giving you a free trip to Bermuda, but you’re going to have to pay somehow. Maybe you’ll owe them a favor, or maybe the trip comes with a whopping dollop of a guilt trip, but whatever it is, I’ll bet that you won’t think the trip is a free lunch after all.

Or think about this: if someone insults you or someone you love, I’ll bet that your instinctive reaction will be to respond in kind. We can write it off as righteous indignation or defending ourselves or someone we love, but at the end of the day, Isaac Newton’s epiphany extends well beyond the physical world. It reaches into the emotional and spiritual depths of our being.

Unsurprisingly, Jesus teaches us a very different way. Jesus seems to know very little of this closed system that we inhabit, which is why his way makes no sense to us. We’re wired to be suspicious of free lunches and to respond with equal and opposite reactions, but Jesus tells us that when someone strikes us on the cheek, we’re to turn the other cheek, not lash out in response. We heard just a few weeks ago that when someone sins against us, we’re not supposed to return the sin or to lick our wounds until they’re raw. We’re to name the offense and seek forgiveness. When Jesus heals, he doesn’t charge by the hour. When he invites people into a relationship with him, there’s no ulterior motive and there are certainly no strings attached.

I suspect that this is why people can’t understand Jesus or why he simply disturbs them. His actions, preaching, and teaching sound like fairy tales. And this is also why the parable of the laborers in the vineyard makes absolutely no sense. What did you think about it? Since I’m already on a betting streak today, I’ll bet again. I’ll bet you thought that the owner of the vineyard was ridiculously unfair. What kind of employer gives the same wages to those who work all day as she does to those who work only one hour? What kind of stupidity is this? The landowner sounds utterly capricious: can’t I do whatever I want with whatever is mine? How many of us would last more than a day working for such an employer?

But then, the landowner says something that cuts through the bone way down into the marrow: are you envious because I am generous? Or more literally in the Greek, is your eye evil because mine is good? Ouch. That one hurts. Suddenly, we have been extracted from a closed system and into a completely different universe, where the laws of economics and physics don’t apply, and we have no clue how to act.

We have, in fact, been brought into the kingdom of God. As we describe it in Godly Play during Sunday School, this kingdom is not like the kingdom we live in. It doesn’t sound like a kingdom we’ve ever heard of. This kingdom is utterly foreign to us because it’s so difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that God doesn’t work in the closed system in which we live.

And what a gift that is! It frees us from the closed system that turns us inward on ourselves and pits us against the rest of the world. In our world, there’s a limited supply of everything. If someone else gets the job we desire, we lose. If someone else gets into Harvard, our chances of getting in get slimmer. If someone else is given praise, then we are insulted.

But it goes deeper, because the closed system in which we live starts to eat at our trust and it injects us with a strong dose of fear. I’m underpaid at my job, so why should I advocate for salary raises at the non-profit for which I volunteer? I wasn’t given a pay raise last year, so why should I increase my contributions to that charity?

Soon enough, the closed system breeds entitlement. I’ve worked here for twenty years, she’s only been here five, and she got the promotion. I’ve been following Jesus for forty years, he’s a recent convert, and I have an incurable disease while he’s healthy. I’ve not missed a Sunday of church in all my life, but that criminal on death row finds Jesus at the last minute. You see how it goes. When someone else wins, we lose. It’s a closed system. And for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

Which is why I’m going to make another bet. Why not? I’ve been doing it all over the place for the past eight minutes. I’m going to bet that all these equal and opposite reactions are because most people can’t even begin to comprehend the extent of God’s love. Of course, how can we ever understand it? But then again, there are those who claim to understand it, and then live their lives as if in a closed system. They live with strings attached to everything: to their money, to their volunteered time, to their gestures of “love.” And this simply means that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. And there’s certainly no such thing as a free lunch.

But let’s say that God is more like the landowner in the parable than like us. Or perhaps better yet, let’s imagine that God operates within an infinitely open universe that is based on the bizarre economics of that parable. When people rage against God and curse him and go after other gods, God still gives back infinite love. When a convicted murderer repents minutes before being put to death, God forgives just as much as he forgives the pious churchgoer of eighty years. When we hold back on our gift to the church because we’re too worried about our future, God doesn’t put our name on the chalkboard; God loves just as much as he loves the most generous donor in the world. God knows no equal and opposite reaction. God only knows an equal action extended to all his beloved children.

So, what if we could live in God’s open universe? What if we responded to every action with an equal action of love? What if when we see generosity we responded with generosity in kind, not with envy or resentment? What if the only reaction or action we knew how to take was that of love, generosity, mercy, or compassion? What if we let God cut all the enslaving strings attached to our relationships and money and gifts of time? What if we stopped keeping score? What if we forgave even when we’re not forgiven? What if we loved even when we feel unloved? What if we rejoiced in others’ successes even when we seem to be failing?

Maybe, just maybe, we could then catch a fleeting glimpse of an infinitesimal amount of God’s infinite love. The same is given to the first as to the last. Its abundance knows no end. And no matter how we act toward God or his beloved children in our distorted, closed world, God’s reaction is always the same: God’s reaction is no reaction at all. It is one wondrous action of pure, unbounded love.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 24, 2023

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

A Hermeneutic of Trust

I don’t remember exactly when it was, but there was a point in my life when I realized that things are not always as they appear, that there are layers of meaning to what I previously thought were just simple things. Maybe it started with the learning of critical thinking skills in high school. Maybe it was when I learned that a pair of glasses in The Lord of the Flies was not just a pair of glasses but a symbol for something else. Or it might have started with a biology teacher who ratcheted up my intellectual powers to draw connections that were not immediately obvious in the natural world. Or it could have been just the inevitable reality of growing older and seeing that life is far more complicated than I had ever realized.

I didn’t know it then, but I was being taught a hermeneutic of suspicion. In some ways, it wasn’t all a bad thing. The universe began to light up with multivalency, my thinking matured, and life became richer in some respects. On the other hand, I began to understand how jaded humanity could be and how a tragedy might lead some even to blame God for evil or fail to see mystery in life or lose hope. The irony is that while a hermeneutic of suspicion is intended to expand critical thinking skills and open the mind to invisible things, it can, at the same time, cause people to lose their grasp on that invisible thing we Christians call hope.

And so, I was struck this past week as I watched a TV show featuring the case of a young woman whose tragic death by murder occurred over twenty-five years ago. I was surprised that there was no malice among the victim’s family members who were interviewed. I never once heard them say they wanted the perpetrator to suffer punishment. In fact, I never heard any anger at all. Although the family didn’t talk at great length about their faith, it was clear they were Christians, and it was clear that the bedrock of constancy in their broken lives was their trust that God was still with them.

And I was especially moved by the comment of the victim’s sister as the episode was winding to a close. By this point, the identity of the killer had been discovered, and he had been duly prosecuted and convicted. But without any visible ill-will towards her sister’s murderer, the victim’s sister said that even despite the sadness and heart-wrenching loss she and her family had experienced, she couldn’t ignore that so much good had come out of everything.

If the hermeneutic of suspicion is your modus operandi, then you might think the victim’s sister to be a simpleton. We are more accustomed to expecting rageful calls for someone’s suffering in return for suffering inflicted. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. I couldn’t help but wonder what my own reaction would be if I had experienced such a tragedy. What is it that makes us think we’ll be at peace when someone who has committed a heinous crime is consigned to an earthly hell? On the other hand, what is it that allowed the family in question to avoid being caught in cycles of vengeful thinking and resentment? And what is it that allows Joseph, of technicolor dream coat fame, not to seek vengeance against his brothers who have wronged him but rather to provide for their families and be at peace?

It's one of the most well-known stories in the Bible, and I think one of the most engaging and compelling. And its ending, where we enter the story today, is a profound testament to the loving providence of God and the power of God’s mysterious ways. If you recall, back in chapter 37 of the Book of Genesis, seventeen-year-old Joseph has a dream in which he is to rule over his brothers. They, of course, become angry and conspire, at first, to kill him, and then to throw him into a pit, and finally, to sell him into slavery to some Midianite traders.

Fast forward some years later, and Joseph becomes a favorite of the Pharaoh of Egypt, primarily because of his ability to interpret dreams. Joseph has also been storing up grain, and when a famine comes into Joseph’s native land of Canaan, his brothers—sent by Jacob his father—come to Egypt to find food. Joseph recognizes them, he but doesn’t let on to this.

Finally, Joseph lets the cat out of the bag, and he shares his identity with his brothers. It turns out that Joseph is able to provide for the physical salvation for his family, as well as many others, all of whom benefit from Joseph’s store of grain during a famine. And this brings us to the final scene of the Book of Genesis, which we have just heard. Joseph’s brothers are terrified that, after the death of Jacob their father, Joseph will finally revenge himself upon them. To which, Joseph responds with one of the most moving lines in all of Scripture: “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good.”

This doesn’t sound like a hermeneutic of suspicion. It sounds an awful lot like the sister of a murdered woman who has the grace to say that despite the tremendous tragedy she experienced, there was still so much good that came out of it. It must seem incomprehensible to a modern, rational mind that when something horrible happens to us, and when we suffer, that good might come out of it. Maybe it initially sounds like we’re trying to justify evil. Or maybe it sounds like we’re suggesting that God will cause evil so that a greater good can come out of it. But I don’t think either of those is the point, and we should rightly balk at those suggestions.

What Joseph intimates to his brothers in their paranoid fear is that on ground level, we usually only see evil. In our quest to evaluate life critically, we can very easily—and rather ironically—lose sight of another invisible possibility that lies behind the horrible things we encounter. We, understandably, can’t get past what is bad because we know that there’s something sick, terrible, and wrong with evil. But Joseph, for whatever reason, which we can probably only attribute to God’s grace, Google maps out and takes us to God’s view. There, from out of what we humans intend for evil, God brings great good. This is how God’s power is revealed.

Remember that Joseph’s brothers are afraid. They live in a similar world to ours, where everyone must get their comeuppance, where we rejoice in others’ downfall, where victims are given permission to delight in the deaths of others, and where we live by transaction, tit-for-tat, and eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

And this, I believe, is why so many people simply can’t believe in a God of love, mercy, and compassion. They have wrongly assumed that God is just like us, that God seeks revenge and enacts justice by smiting some and consigning others to eternal punishment. Using a hermeneutic of suspicion, they have failed to see that perhaps God’s justice is to bring good out of what we have intended for evil.

Perhaps unintentionally, a hermeneutic of suspicion can suggest that evil is greater than good, that the presence of suffering means the absence of God, and that anyone who doesn’t desire a vengeful justice is soft and weak. Such a hermeneutic urges us to be wary of any happy ending and of seeing hope where reality lures us into fear.

But Joseph, and those who choose to forgive their enemies and who have risen above a transactional view of life, have opted for what some have called a hermeneutic of trust.[1] Those who use this way of interpreting life are hardly naïve. They aren’t stupid or foolish. They haven’t denied evil or their own suffering. Instead, they have realized that vengeance and retribution will give them no power but will instead eat them alive. On the contrary, they have chosen to adopt a posture that will help them begin to see things from God’s level, where what is intended for evil can be transformed into good, because with God, anything is possible.

What’s possible is what happened on the cross with Jesus, where a means of punishment became the path to eternal life. On the cross, Jesus prayed for his enemies. On the cross, a wide-armed posture that would cause physical death became the embrace to draw all people to God the Father. Through the cross, God swoops down to earth and lifts us up to see things from his point of view, not with a hermeneutic of suspicion, but with a hermeneutic of trust.

 A hermeneutic of trust tells us this: we should leave justice to God, because God will see that justice is realized. God will do an infinitely better of job of it, too, for what we imagine is justice is usually just petty revenge. A hermeneutic of trust invites us to try to begin to see with the eyes of Jesus, who reigns from the cross and cancels all our hermeneutic of suspicions and offers us the gift of hope. And if we choose to accept this gift, we will see that there is no evil that our gracious God can’t transform into good.  

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 17, 2023

[1] Some have attributed the coinage of this term to Hans-Georg Gadamer.

The Place to Be Found

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow.” If you spend enough time with holy Scripture, you will find that it pierces the veil between heaven and earth. In ordinary, random moments, the Holy Spirit draws an illuminating connection between the word of God and our lives.

So it was on Thursday when I opened the church doors around 8:45 a.m. for Morning Prayer, and I noticed what seemed to be a lifeless baby squirrel just at the entrance to the bell tower. My heart sank as I stared at the little creature, and I hoped that he hadn’t suffered. All through Morning Prayer the sad prospect of digging a grave for the squirrel loomed over me.

After Morning Prayer, I went to get a shovel from the retreat house tool shed, and when I arrived at the door to the church, I discovered that the squirrel had moved. It was alive! I was momentarily overjoyed, but soon, a new worry fell upon me. I thought the helpless creature might be injured, and I couldn’t imagine what rescue organization would want to help a squirrel. Throughout the scorching day, our parish administrator, Chris, and I checked in on the squirrel and provided water for it, hoping it would survive the oppressive heat and the threat of predators. As I went to sleep on Thursday night, I was still worrying about the squirrel, because I hadn’t seen it before Evening Prayer.

On Friday, I opened the tower doors again for Mass, and the squirrel was once again by the Tower doors. I knew that another day in brutal heat would be disastrous for it, but I didn’t know what to do. It was at this point that a kind parishioner came to the rescue. After calling many vets to no avail, she found one that would take in a squirrel. So, she rushed over to the church with a cat carrier and whisked the squirrel away to safety.

Although I don’t know why this little animal appeared at the door to our church, I suspect that its mother had died, perhaps near the doors of the church. The squirrel was lost, not knowing where to go or even how to survive. It was trying to find nourishment, but it didn’t know where to find it. And although the squirrel would occasionally wander off to the bushes, it would always find its way back to the same spot by the welcome sign to this church, as if it were the only familiar place it knew.

I have been reflecting on why I was so concerned about that squirrel and why the animal even made it into my prayers. It sounds silly to say it; and maybe you think it’s ridiculous. Why would this little creature, often considered a nuisance, compel the time, attention, and affection of two busy staff members and a parishioner? Why did my heart break for the little thing? And then I realized that our collective attempt to aid the animal was emblematic of an instinctive human urge to provide for the helpless, especially the abandoned and lost. I wonder if that’s because each of us knows what it’s like to be lost.

By Friday morning, the rescue of a baby squirrel, ordinarily considered yet one more wildlife nuisance, had intersected in my mind and heart with chapter 18 of Matthew’s Gospel. What’s not clear from today’s Gospel is that immediately before our passage, Jesus talks about how God always seeks out and finds the lost. God is like a shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to find the lost one, rejoicing when that sheep is brought back into the fold.

Jesus draws on this ancient Jewish imagery of God as a good shepherd to preface his instructions to the church in chapter 18, which is where we enter the Gospel today. Jesus’s words of wisdom to the church are concerned with accountability to one another and how to handle conflict and dissension. Go directly to the one who has wronged you, name the wrong, and seek forgiveness. And if it doesn’t work in private, broaden it to include more of the church. Finally, if you aren’t successful, take it to the whole church.

This isn’t shaming. It’s not revenge. It’s striving for forgiveness and reconciliation. It has to do with bringing the lost back home. Do you see what’s happening? Jesus is saying that the church can only be the church when her desire for forgiveness and reconciliation tries to replicate the tenacity and love of a God who always desires to bring us back to the sheepfold.

And this has everything to do with the community of the church. God said it in Genesis, and God says it again in Matthew 18 through the indirect words of Jesus: each of us is not meant to be alone. We are meant to be together. And the church is the place God has given us to find that community. However bizarre it may seem, my encounter with an abandoned squirrel at the door of this church emphasized for me the importance of being found. It reminded me that we are all lost sheep, or lost squirrels for that matter.

Why is it, then, that there are so many who believe that they don’t need the church? They look for community in all kinds of places, and while they may find some companionship there, they won’t find the community of which Jesus is speaking. The church is the place where we find our deepest meaning, because to be the church assumes that we are all accountable to one another. Jesus knows that if we try to go it alone, we’ll cling to our resentments. We’ll bind what shouldn’t be bound, and we’ll fail to loose that which should be loosed. Alone in our heads and in our private rooms, we’ll imagine that we’ve achieved forgiveness or reconciliation, but we won’t have sought them in the flesh. Apart from the church, we will scour the earth for bread that doesn’t nourish, because it will simply take our money and never satisfy. By ourselves and without the church’s community, we will demonize those with whom we disagree because we will refuse to look them in the eyes. Above all, in the community outside the church, we will be told that in our sinfulness we’re utterly alone and that we’re defined by our mistakes. Second chances are for wimps, and punishment equals justice.

But when we’re accountable to one another for our sins and faults, we find the greatest companionship of all, because our frailty is what binds us together. When we share the precious food of the Mass, we’re collectively made whole again by a God who simply wants us to accept his boundless love and who will never leave us abandoned at the door of the church.

The zinger is this: when Jesus says that God is like a shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, I know that the sheep is a sinner like me and you, but a sinner who is redeemed by the life and death of Jesus Christ. We’re not defined by our sins. The sheep is one who is often lost and doesn’t know it. It’s one who is hungry but doesn’t know where to find real food. Or maybe we could say, we are each like the little squirrel abandoned at the door to this church. When we are apart from the church, we’re like newborns without parents, not really knowing where to go or how to survive. But we’re not meant to be alone.

When two or three are gathered, God is there. Sure, God is with us in our private rooms and private prayers. But God reveals himself in an utterly profound way when we are gathered in this place, in God’s presence, before God’s altar, in the breaking open of Scripture and bread. Here we seek eternal food and forgiveness. Here we vow to find those among us who are lost.

That baby squirrel couldn’t have known that it had found the right place to be rescued. Whether you are new here or whether you have been here for ages, in this church, you will be found when you are lost. I can tell you that. In my short time here, I have been amazed at how lost sheep always arrive at our doors. Some have a past here, others are new. And when I myself have been lost, someone among us here always brings me home.

If two or three of us will not rest until a baby squirrel finds help, can you then imagine how present God is to us when we are lost? In the human hands of this church and of churches throughout the world, God brings home the lost. And this is why we need the church. This is why coming here, week after week, is the most important thing we can do in our lives.

The door to the church is the door to our true home. Outside the door, each of us may be regarded as little more than a nuisance, but inside the doors to this holy place, we’re loved beyond measure. Outside the doors we may starve for food, but inside we feast on the bread of heaven. Outside the doors, we’re defined by our frailties, but inside we’re loved into forgiveness and reconciliation. Outside the doors, we’re divided and scattered, but inside, we’re brought together into a fellowship that surpasses all understanding. And outside the doors, we imagine that we know what love is, but when we walk inside, we will be surprised by a love that we never knew was possible.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 10, 2023

Investing in Love

In her book Walking on Water, the late author Madeleine L’Engle tells a story of an English friend whose husband was an officer in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Every day that her husband was away in service of his country was one of constant anxiety over his safety.

And then, one day, her husband was granted an unexpected visit home. With great joy, the woman left her husband and three small children in the house to go shopping for a celebratory dinner. But while she was away, her home was hit by a bomb in a surprise air raid, and her husband and three children perished.

For the remaining years of the war, the woman bravely persevered, quietly grieving, but she got on with her life. Her tragedy didn’t prevent her from being a productive member of society. She eventually met a man, and they fell in love. And when the man proposed marriage to her, the woman had to make what she deemed the most difficult decision of her life. She could play it safe by never marrying again and avoid the risk of being hurt again by investing in love. Or she could choose love, courageously remarry, have more children, and open herself to the possibility of suffering loss once again. As Madeleine L’Engle wisely puts it, “[i]t is easier to be safe than to be vulnerable. But she made the dangerous decision. She dared to love again.”

L’Engle later retold her friend’s story at a college that she was visiting. Afterwards, she was approached by a young philosophy professor who shared that her husband had died, but she would not do what L’Engle’s friend had done. She, in turn, would play it safe; she would refuse to be vulnerable, to use L’Engle’s words. Madeleine L’Engle noted that she didn’t think she would want to be a student in that professor’s philosophy classes.[1]

I tend to agree with L’Engle here. And yet I know that to love involves enormous risk. To bare one’s heart and soul to another takes profound courage. To cultivate relationships and to invest in lives beyond your own is a dangerous enterprise. It could lead to joy. But it also might expose you to profound suffering. It’s much easier to opt for safety.

Could this be the unstated reason why some people shy away from following Jesus? Is it that safety is more comfortable than vulnerability? Is the risk of relationship with God less desirable than the security of a life without God?

Peter’s rebuke of Jesus shows his reluctance to embrace the fullness of discipleship. Peter has already demonstrated his fear when trying to walk on water. Peter has already shown that he is risk averse. And yet, Peter has also chosen to drop everything of his past career and follow Jesus. Peter is now in conflict.

And the rubber hits the road shortly after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. It’s only then that Peter really begins to understand that following Jesus is more than mere lip service. It’s going to require sacrifice. It’s going to require loss. It’s going to require giving up control. And above all, it’s going to require getting behind Jesus, not trying to lead him where he wants to go, and not even trying to walk beside Jesus. To follow Jesus, you must be behind him. You must be all-in. No half measures will do.

No wonder this frightens Peter so much. No wonder his immediate instinct is to try to shield Jesus from future harm. But I also suspect that below the veneer of altruism, Peter isn’t merely trying to protect Jesus. He’s also trying to protect himself. Peters stands at a crossroads, just like Madeleine L’Engle’s friend. Do I take the path of love and go with the risk? Or do I play it safe and seal myself off from love? Am I all-in with Jesus, or am I simply giving lip service to discipleship without corresponding action?

It’s not surprising that Jesus calls Peter Satan, for Satan is lurking behind this encounter between Peter and Jesus. Satan is the one Scripture also calls the Accuser. The Accuser is the one who tempts Jesus in the wilderness, trying to lure him into doing the wrong thing for the right reason. And Satan does the same to us, just as he did to Peter. In the heat of discernment, when it’s most difficult for us to heed the voice of light rather than the voice of darkness, the voice of darkness masquerades as an angel of light.

Haven’t you heard the voice before? Don’t let your child grow up, because it’s better to smother him with safety than to accept the risk of letting him be free. Don’t date another person after your nasty breakup because your heart might get broken again; play it safe and don’t take a chance on love. Don’t dip your toe too much into the water of church life, or else you will be asked to share your gifts or your money. Don’t adopt the elderly dog who needs a home because she will soon die, and investing too much of your emotions in this pet will eventually lead to sorrow. Don’t risk your financial security by leaving a soul-killing job to do what you’ve always wanted to do. It’s better to play it safe. The voices never stop, do they?

So, I keep wondering whether the perceived contemporary malaise within Christianity isn’t so much about unbelief but rather about an unwillingness to accept the risk of relationship and to pay the price of being in love with God. Are we willing to put all of ourselves into a way of life that demands so much from us? Are we prepared for the risk involved? Can we own the fact that being a Christian is more than saying we are disciples of Christ because it involves living as if we are disciples? Are we prepared to invest in love?

And maybe this explains why church is so often an afterthought. Isn’t it easier and less risky for people to give their lives to sports, dance practice, clubs, and the academic arena than it is for people to give themselves to God? When we give ourselves fully to those other things, we have some tangible sense of what we will get in return. Rarely would we need to sacrifice our life for any of those things, and rarely would devotion to those things require us to part with what is most dear to us. Above all, if our investment in everything other than God works out as we hope, we gain something: a promotion, entrance into an esteemed school, even money.

But when we give ourselves to Christ, when we invest in his way of living, there’s a profound risk, and that frightens us. There’s the risk that our heart will be broken. There’s the risk that when we encounter suffering or death, we will be tempted not to believe in God. There’s the risk that when we give our hearts to relationships in the extended family of Christ, we will be responsible for the well-being of more people than we can handle.

At the end of the day, this risk doesn’t seem worth it, for there’s a lack of tangible evidence of what we shall gain in exchange for what we invest. If we can’t see God and if we can’t prove that God exists, aren’t we then just wasting our time on God? Aren’t we wasting our hard-earned money on God? Aren’t we throwing away our future to commit ourselves to something we don’t understand? And are we willing to hand everything over to God and trust that God knows what’s best for us, even if it makes no sense to us, even if we are disappointed, even if finding our life means losing what we most deeply treasure?

This, ultimately, is Peter’s dilemma. And it’s your dilemma and my dilemma as followers of Christ. We’re constantly at a fork in the road, and we can make one of two decisions. We can reorient our entire lives around God, the Gospel, and the Church, and we can accept the risk involved. Or we can play it safe and choose an easier, less committed path.

The problem is that this choice is too often made to be a choice for God and against the world, when really what we’re being asked to do is to choose life, not death. When we choose God, we also choose the world, because we commit ourselves to a way that desires nothing less than the full flourishing of all people.

If Christianity is honest and true, it won’t make easy promises. It won’t promise a life of worldly success or wealth. It won’t promise that you won’t be burned by the Church or be hurt at some point. It won’t promise not to ask you to share your talents and your money for God’s sake. And it certainly won’t promise to save your life.

But in accepting the risk, we choose love, and living out of love is the only way a Christian can live. To follow Christ, the cost is steep, but with God’s grace, the stumbling blocks of our lives can become launch pads into human flourishing. And the voice of light can hold more sway than the voice of darkness. For we live in the kingdom of Christ, and in that kingdom, the Accuser’s voice has no power. The only thing that has power is love, the voice of God, which invites us to forsake ourselves and get behind Christ. And when we do so, and no matter what we might lose, we will find the only life that is worth living.    

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 3, 2023

[1] Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Bantam, 1980), 192-193.

No Mere Hyperbole

I have a good friend who loves English choral music. Give him recordings of the music of Charles Villiers Stanford, C.H.H. Parry, and Herbert Sumsion, and he couldn’t be happier. My friend once told me about an experience he had while attending Choral Evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. He was overwhelmed by the gargantuan building and by the sound of the organ reverberating for ten seconds in the room after the last chord was released. The sheer size and beauty of the building was of jaw-dropping splendor. The music was utterly superb. It was like a little glimpse of heaven. And as my friend recounted the story in his heartfelt and colorful way, he said that he was so moved by the service that he simply wanted to take his American passport and throw it at the altar.

I had to laugh when I heard this story, because I know my friend was using a storyteller’s license to make the story engaging. The telling of the story was to some extent hyperbolic. But the fact remains that the sentiment underlying it all was completely genuine even though my friend would no more have renounced his American citizenship because of Choral Evensong than he would have sliced up his driver’s license. But the point is this: an experience in worship was so transformative that my friend’s only reaction was to imagine chucking what amounted to his official, secular identity at the altar. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but hyperbole that flowed out of a moment of heartfelt transformation.

When you hear the words of the apostle Paul, I wonder if you’re quick to accuse him of hyperbole in his speech. Admittedly, before I began to have a deeper appreciation for Paul’s integrity and wisdom, I often found his letters to be either obtusely theological or annoyingly hyperbolic. He uses imagery of a human body to describe the Church. He urges people to give up their own desires for the sake of the larger community. He even tells some people that it would be better if they didn’t marry so that they can control their unruly passions.

Paul always favors the community over the individual. He has one of his companions circumcised so that his message might be more readily received by Jews. Paul even suggests that the irreconcilable differences among groups of people are indeed reconcilable in Christ. In short, Paul seems ridiculously pollyannish, needlessly demanding, and at times, very much lost in his own head.

Not to mention, Paul has the obvious zeal of a convert, which he, of course, was. He does not mince words. He does not proffer a mealy-mouthed version of the Gospel. In fact, he suggests that the Gospel is both the best news imaginable and the most challenging thing to live out. Is it any wonder that many people love to dislike Paul?

Look, for instance, at his exhortatory words to the Romans in chapter 12. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Do not be conformed to this world. Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought. We are, individually, members one of another. This not only sounds preachy, but it sounds unrealistic if not incomprehensible, to some extent. I mean, come on, Paul, what else do you want us to do? Throw our passports at the altar?

Well, actually, I think he might. As I reflected on Paul’s words to the Romans, I couldn’t help but think of my friend’s humorous response to a glorious evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Yes, I think Paul might be asking us to throw our passports at the altar, and in this case, it’s no hyperbole. It is for Paul the Christian Gospel.

We can’t fully understand Paul’s argument here unless we consider the first eleven chapters of the Letter to the Romans. As Paul begins chapter twelve, he recommends a response among the Romans that hinges on his entire argument up to this point. To put it succinctly, in God’s mysterious providence, goodness, boundless mercy, and compassion, God has enabled the Gospel to be available to all, both Jews and Gentiles. God has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to unite us in the prayer of the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, Paul says, you are to live accordingly. Paul’s exhortations to offer ourselves to God, to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, to be humble, to live together amid our differences as one body, and to use our God-given gifts are all responses to what God has already done for us. They are responses to grace, a grace that is so hyperbolic that our responding actions seem ludicrous. Chapter twelve is the hinge-point where we shift from theological argument to hyperbolic action. It’s the moment where we throw our passports at the altar in response to God’s wondrous love.

But let’s be clear. Paul is not simply asking for our spiritual worship to be confined to dropping into church every week or for the renewal of our mind to be limited to reading an occasional religious book. He’s not simply asking for us to live in harmony with those who are similar to us or whom it’s easy for us to like. He’s not recommending that we use our giftedness in competition to be the best athlete or math student or musician. Paul says that the Gospel demands much more of us, something that sounds like pure hyperbole.

Our spiritual worship is giving everything we are and have to God. Everything. Our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our possessions. And it’s letting go of our self-centeredness, our envy, and our resentment. Everything. We give it all up to God. The renewal of our minds means that we live and think according to the mind of Christ, not how we are often told to think in this world. The Gospel expects nothing less than living with a spirit of compassion and mercy toward our most hated enemies, including those who have wronged us. Using our gifts means undergoing the effort to thoughtfully discern the true gifts God has given each of us, all of which are different, and all of which are needed for the flourishing of God’s kingdom on earth.

Paul is asking us to throw our passports at the altar. This is no hyperbole. It’s not even really a metaphor. It’s the only proper response to an honest acknowledgment and appreciation of all God has done for us. When we recognize how generous God has been with us, we will find ourselves surprising ourselves by our own generosity.

When we throw our passports at the altar, we’re owning the fact that in baptism, a person is given a new citizenship, a citizenship in heaven. And that citizenship in heaven does not mean that we deny this world or fight it or reject it. It means that at some point our marker of identity in the country God has prepared for us defines us more than our identity in our nations of origin or biological families. Our God-given citizenship defines who we really are. That identity is what transforms our minds and hearts.

And when our minds and hearts are thus transformed, we will find ourselves truly free, because our earthly citizenship ultimately diminishes our capacity to live as fully as God desires for us, even though we are called to live in this world. Our vulnerability to the powers and principalities of this world means that we are always captive to fear, anxiety, wealth, status, power, and approval. When the powers and principalities have become our idols, we throw our money at the things that elevate us in the eyes of others, or the things that only make us individually happy. And we are usually  quite willing to throw so much of ourselves at those things, while God and his Church remain an afterthought. Which is why it’s no surprise that what the Gospel demands sounds like a hyperbole. It sounds unattainable because we have functioned and existed for so long in a foreign country that will never stop demanding more of us.

But God is different. God doesn’t demand more and more from us. God doesn’t really demand anything at all. God still loves us and gives to us and forgives us even when we cling fearfully to our pocketbooks and let everything but God suck up the hours of our day. God is simply always there ready for us to live out of response to the stupendous awareness that God gives infinitely of himself even when we turn to other gods.

But, I urge you, now—not later—is the hinge-point of our lives, where Paul’s words no longer sound like hyperbole. Now—not another time—is the moment for our minds and hearts to be renewed and transformed. This transformation should not elicit perfunctory obligation or a begrudging sense of duty. It should draw out of us a loving, heartfelt, genuine, willing response to the incredible generosity and love of God, which no longer seems like hyperbole. It is simply the right and only proper thing to do. In awe and amazement, we stand up, throw our passports at the altar, and we are truly free.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 27, 2023

Out of the Future

Astronomers tell us that it’s possible to look back in time. All we need to do is look at the night sky. Because the universe is so vast, even with light traveling at its own speed, light from an object in a remote part of the universe will reach us much longer after it emanates from its source. For example, with the naked eye, we can see stars in the Big Dipper, and when we do so, most of us are looking at light from before we were born. Unaided by telescopes, we can even see 2.5 million years into the past if we look at the Andromeda Galaxy.[1]

But what astronomers haven’t been able to find is a way to see into the future. To go there, we would definitely need a time machine. Although we could imagine precognition as a way of seeing into the future, the fact of the matter is that the future is off-limits from a scientific perspective. But theologically speaking, seeing into the future sounds a lot to me like what it means to have faith.

And faith is what Jesus and his disciples see coming towards them from the region of Tyre and Sidon in Matthew’s Gospel. Significantly, the Canaanite woman is coming out of the region towards them. It’s not clear from the Greek text whether Jesus goes into that foreign country or not. But as the woman approaches them, crying for help, it’s as if Jesus and his disciples are seeing into the future.

And for us to see into the future, we need to put ourselves there with Jesus and his disciples as they move toward Tyre and Sidon, a region in the north of the Middle East around present-day Lebanon. It’s foreign territory, historically at enmity with the Jewish people. The people in Tyre and Sidon, represented by the Canaanite woman, aren’t Jewish. They’re Gentile pagans. And in terms of God’s mission at this point in the Gospels, Gentiles aren’t even in the picture. After all, God started his mission with the people of Israel, God’s chosen people.

This might begin to explain why, when the Canaanite woman approaches Jesus to ask for healing for her daughter, he ignores her. When his disciples ask him to send her away because she’s annoying them, Jesus remarks bluntly—if not, rudely—that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. At this point in the story, Jesus is sent to the Jews, not the Gentiles. And when the woman persists in her plea for help, Jesus’s words are even more offensive to our ears. The Canaanite woman and her people are likened to dogs, who aren’t even entitled to the crumbs from the table.

This is perhaps one of the most perplexing and troubling episodes in Scripture because it doesn’t seem to cast Jesus in a favorable light. But it also doesn’t seem honest to soften his words. And so, we’re left with Jesus showing a side we don’t like and wondering how to reconcile this with the compassionate Jesus that we know and love.

And yet I wonder if attempts to understand Jesus’s behavior miss the point of the story, too, rather like trying to ascertain whether Jesus had a form of ESP. It seems to me that we’re intended to put ourselves into the story the Gospel gives us, and what’s happening is that Jesus and his disciples—and we, too—are seeing into the future.

Our attempts to explain away Jesus’s seeming rudeness are colored by the fact that we have the benefit of hindsight. We know the end of the story. We know how it all ends. We know that there will be an empty tomb on the third day. We know that Jesus will appear after he has been raised from the dead. We know the early Church will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to reach the ends of the earth, moving from out of the Jewish people to include all. We know that death is not the final word for us. We know that sin should not have to have supreme authority in our lives, because we have the 20/20 vision of Gospel hope.

But when Jesus and his disciples are moving towards Tyre and Sidon and the Canaanite woman comes out of that region pleading for her daughter’s healing, for the sake of the story, we don’t really know the end. We’re with Jesus and his disciples as they witness how everything plays out in human time. And we see the future only because of the Canaanite woman’s profound faith.

Extraordinary faith is what Jesus recognizes when he commends the woman. The Church father St. John Chrysostom suggests that Jesus’s rebukes of the woman were intended to allow her to exhibit her profound humility and faith in the face of offense.[2] I think there’s something to this rather strange argument, and our unwillingness to accept that possibility might be further evidence that we could learn a thing or two from the Canaanite woman’s faith.

Her faith is like divine light breaking into the rigid chronology of our human time. God’s mission that begins with the Jewish people moves into all corners of the earth to touch and bless them. The Gospel is for all people, and nothing we do can restrict its encompassing reach. The fulfillment of God’s mission happens in God’s time, no matter how impatient we may be and how much we may take umbrage at the way in which God accomplishes it.

When we confront this challenging story, we probably find ourselves feeling offended for the sake of the Canaanite woman. But her faith moves our vision from beyond our restrictive interpretations. She moves us beyond trying to make sense of how God works in human time when God is beyond human knowing. Here’s what the woman helps us see.

She helps us see that true faith doesn’t take offense at the order of events in human time. If God reaches the Jewish people first, it doesn’t mean God won’t ever reach the Gentiles. If your neighbor’s illness is cured while you’re still suffering, it doesn’t mean that God won’t heal you, too. If some people are eating well and others are starving, it doesn’t mean that God is the cause of food deserts. The Canaanite woman knows that your place in line is not proof that God loves you more than others. She simply knows deep down in her heart that God always provides for everyone.

This woman has enough humility not to expect to be in the front of the line. God doesn’t dole out loaves of bread to some and crumbs to others. God doesn’t keep score and then show favor based on merit points we’ve accrued. God doesn’t operate within human boundaries or according to any category into which we want to assign our neighbors. God is simply love, and love knows no order of preference or specific favor or chronological time. Love can only be what it is, and when we see what it really is, it’s like seeing beyond the distorted present into the redeemed future.

Which is precisely what the Gospel story is all about. Its end is really no end at all. It’s more of a beginning. Jesus’s resurrection allows us to see into the future, where what we think are crumbs are loaves of bread to feed the whole world. In God’s kingdom, order makes no difference, because the first are last and the last are first. Scarcity is really abundance and abundance is scarcity. Knowing is not really knowing, and knowing everything is knowing nothing at all. The lost are never lost, and those who never think they are lost really need to be found. Seeing into the future may currently be a scientific impossibility, but it’s a religious reality. Faith like that of the Canaanite woman is available to all who are willing to see into the future that God has prepared for us in Christ.

In that future, what is old is made new and what is bound is released into freedom. Death is not an end but a beginning to live fully within the triune life of God. The future, in short, is heaven, where there’s no special favor, no competition, no impatience, no anxiety, no envy, no jealousy. What is available is available to everyone. And if we allow ourselves to look into the redeemed future with the eyes of faith, the only thing we will see is pure love.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 20, 2023

[1] “Why Looking At The Stars Is A Look Back In Time,” Forbes (7 February 2018), https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/02/07/why-looking-at-the-stars-is-a-look-back-in-time/?sh=3e26ba7014ec

[2] John Chrysostom, Homily 52 on Matthew, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200152.htm

Into the Wind

I want to tell you about a little church. This little church was once not so little. On Sunday mornings, the pews were often full. During church school, there weren’t just one or two classrooms filled with children but many. Multiple priests said the numerous weekday Masses. Parish fellowship events were boisterous affairs. It was a happy place, and although like any parish, the boat was occasionally rocked by low-level drama, in general, this parish sailed easily on untroubled waters.

But at some point, the waters on which the boat of this church was sailing became more troubled than quiet. Some in the boat said that it was the wind. The winds of change in the wider Church were against this little boat of a church. The stable grounding of calm waters seemed a thing of the past, and navigating the increasingly troubled waters wasn’t for the faint of heart. Indeed, it often appeared as if there was no navigation chart for these new waters, and that was scary to many in the boat.

After some years, the boat was so rocked by the chaos of the deep, that it looked as if it would split apart into pieces. Some doubted whether this boat would be able to continue sailing on the waters. Others were convinced that there was only one proper course to save the boat from the threats around it. But at some point, it became clear that the instability of the waters was a major threat to this sea vessel.

The people in the boat were of two minds. A minority believed that staying in the boat was the best course of action. The troubled waters were simply part of the reality of sailing on the seas. But a majority could only see the winds against them. The roiling of the seas was interpreted as a visible sign that forces were against them. There was only one choice for this latter group: abandon the boat and flee to safer waters.

But interestingly, the boat was never lost at sea, although it came perilously close on multiple occasions. The boat was never torn apart by the winds. A small handful of brave souls stayed on that boat for the years to come. While the sea had calmed down considerably, there were still moments of nautical drama. Some on the ship eventually left, but there was always a small core hanging onto the rudder who were determined to pilot this boat into an uncertain future.

That, it seems, was the answer. Embracing the uncertain future was indeed the only way to pilot the ship. Under the right conditions, strong headwinds could become graceful tailwinds. The remnant in the boat began to include a growing number of new persons who had decided to join the boat after its most threatening episodes on the sea. But even more importantly, at some point, those who were now in the boat realized that even on the tumultuous and threatening seas they could find their Lord walking toward them. And something else strange happened. When they stepped out onto the troubled waters in faith, if they paid too much attention to the strong winds, they would sink. The winds were always there. The waves were always there. But when they kept their minds and hearts on Jesus, they could walk on water.

Soon, a new mindset came over the place. Those things that the world would label as threatening or anxiety-provoking were simply part and parcel of navigating the waters. Financial challenges and building problems became reasons, not deterrents, to step out onto the water and fix their eyes on Jesus. The people in this boat had come to know that true faith was not certainty about the future or knowing all the answers about God. True faith was knowing that Jesus was always to be found in the troubled waters.

Now, I dare say that this is a countercultural viewpoint. We tend to refute those who claim not to believe in God with beautifully crafted logistical proofs of God’s existence. Offering some kind of certainty is the answer. And for those who claim to be believers in God, concrete, tangible evidence of the miraculous is like heavenly manna. It’s not enough to trust that Jesus works miracles; we must see them. It’s not enough to believe that God heals; we must idolize those who can perform visible works of healing. It’s not enough to believe in miracles; we must have firsthand witness of how the laws of nature are superseded. These are all the footnotes of our thesis that God is real and powerful.

And while the miracle stories of the Gospels on the one hand offer us some footnotes for this thesis, they also present some of the most difficult interpretive quandaries. If we take them at face value, Jesus defies nature in a way that we can’t explain. I, for one, do believe in these miracles. I have no reason to think that any of the Gospel evangelists needed to make these stories up. But I also believe that there is a deeper level to these miracle stories that lies below the visible manifestations of God’s power in them, and it’s on this deeper level that the miracles have the most to teach us.

The miracles are a bit like sacraments. We see something that points to a richer, invisible reality. But in the common interpretation of miracles, everything is reversed. The defiance of nature is the fireworks show that can buttress our weak faith. And yet, I’m guessing that the point of the miracles is the opposite. When Jesus walks on water, he clearly defies the ordinary laws of nature, but something else is going on. Jesus isn’t walking on untroubled waters; he’s walking on water that could easily capsize a boat. The true miracle here, emblemized in the physical defiance of the laws of nature, is that the Son of God is found not only in the calm waters but in the most dangerous places on the seas.

 And this is why Jesus’ presence on the waters is miraculous. The disciples in the boat can’t comprehend that anyone could be walking on water in a storm. They’re looking for certainty of knowledge about their Lord. I suspect they’re looking for calm waters, but it’s in the eye of the stormy chaos that they find their Savior.

It’s only when Peter notices the winds against him that he sinks. And when he begins to sink, he cries out for Jesus to save him, which is how we so often treat our relationship with Christ. We only venture out onto the troubled waters when we’re certain that he will be there, ready to call us towards him and then take our hand if we fall like a toddler learning how to walk. When we sail into a gale, we cry out to be rescued. And when we’re rescued, we worship Jesus.

But the miracle of Jesus’s walking on the water is calling us to something riskier. This riskiness is venturing out into an uncertain future, especially when the odds seem against us. When the entire culture around us seems like an opposing wind, we’re called not to fight it or flee from it but to sail into it, trusting that God will teach us something in the experience. When we’re tempted to play it safe, God invites us into the stormy waters to witness to the Gospel boldly, even recklessly. It’s in the chaotic waters that we find God’s most creative potential.

Right now, hordes of people are fleeing the changing headwinds in certain sectors of the Church. They’re fleeing to churches that will ensure them that they can cruise through peaceful seas if they call on Jesus to rescue them. Religious promises of certitude are more appealing than a path of silent humility. Obsessions with all things supernatural are comfort food for those who are starved for visible proof of God’s power.

But the truth is that we live in the moment of that Gospel story when Jesus says to the disciples, “Take heart; it is I. Have no fear.” Like Peter, we will sink if we lose heart. We will sink not so much when we doubt but when we assume that the stormy winds against us are signs that we’re not doing something right or are heading in the wrong direction. And we will definitely sink if the certainty of safety is more important to us than the risk of being bold and adventurous on the rocky seas.

Remember that little church that I told you about, the one that bravely sailed into winds that threatened to bring it down? Well, it’s you. You and I are the church in that boat, sailing out into waters with no real navigation map but with a lot of hope and faith. I can’t and won’t promise you that there will never be a storm. I can’t promise you visible miracles, but I can promise you that the God in whom we trust does work miracles. They’re all around us, although we usually don’t see them in the storm. But it’s in the storm that Jesus asks us to step out of the boat and to walk towards him. He’s not merely someone to rescue us; he’s someone to save us and make us whole. He’s someone who’s always with us, especially in the stormy waters. So, pay no attention to the winds against you. Keep your eyes on Jesus, take a step out of the boat, and walk on water.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 13, 2023

The Heart of Discipleship

I’ve learned a lot about God from walking my dog, Beau. Beau has his own way of approaching a walk, and it’s not the way I usually conceive of it. On most days when I’m in the office, I take Beau for brief walks throughout the day. Well, the walks should be brief. A walk around the block from the retreat house to the rectory shouldn’t take twenty minutes. But Beau has little regard for chronological time.

We start out getting the leash. I announce to Beau that we’re going for a walk, and he becomes very excited. He loves to go outside. For Beau, going on a walk doesn’t mean the same thing as it does for me. I think of the walk as going from A to B. We’re going from my office to the retreat house. But for Beau, going for a walk is an opportunity to revel in and respond to everything nature has to offer.

Every turn of the corner is a moment to stop and sniff the breeze that has brought new smells around the side of a building. Every blade of grass brings news of other canines who’ve perambulated around the neighborhood. Beau makes me cross the street because something beckons from a strip of grass. And since Beau loves people, every person is someone to stop and greet. Walks are pure bliss for Beau.

But for me, they usually end up being stressful. I’m always in a hurry to get from the rectory to my office to answer emails or write a sermon. I’m rushing home for a quick lunch in the middle of the day, but Beau is in no hurry. And what I’ve discovered walking Beau is that he goes where he wants to go. If he doesn’t want to cross the street, he stops and digs in his paws. If he wants to stop and smell something, he does the same. But more importantly, if I tug on the leash to get Beau to do what I want him to do, he moves even more slowly. Paradoxically, trying to rush Beau along slows the walk down even more.

So, I sometimes try a different tactic with Beau, and it’s something that’s very difficult for me to do. I let him take me where he wants to go. Instead of luring him to the parish office with the exciting prospect of seeing Chris, our parish administrator, or Mary, our financial administrator, I let him go where he wants to go, no matter how long or what path it takes. Hey, Beau, where do you want to go? And it’s anybody’s guess where he’ll take me.

And so, I’ve found that walking Beau is a helpful spiritual metaphor for prayer and listening to God. I’m fully aware of my own control needs, but I also know from experience that the more I try to control prayer, the less I get from it. I’ve discovered over the years that praying is like allowing God to take me for a walk.

The problem is that usually I’m the one who’s trying to walk God. I live for plans and structure. I plan my days and weeks carefully. I watch the clock constantly. I try to make informed decisions about the most diplomatic or sound way to go about a course of action. Sometimes it works. But there are many times when my plans evaporate before a greater creative intention that I know only comes from the living God.

The most obvious theme of today’s Feast of the Transfiguration is the revelation of Jesus’s glory and the ensuing clarification of the disciples’ awareness of who Jesus is, fully divine as well as fully human. Like Jesus’s baptism, at Jesus’s transfiguration, God declares that Jesus is his chosen, well-beloved Son. God reaffirms this unique identity of Jesus as the Son of God. The truth is that the disciples have been dense about this fact. By accompanying Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, they have become more and more aware that Jesus is no ordinary human. But even by chapter nine in Luke’s Gospel, they don’t fully appreciate who Jesus is nor do they grasp what it really means to follow him. The disciples still want to go where they want to go rather than being led by Jesus. The mountain of the transfiguration isn’t only where Jesus’s divine nature is made clear. It’s also where the nature of discipleship is revealed. Even as Jesus’s glory is revealed, the descent from the mountain will lead to the cross.

And at the heart of the mountain experience is something seemingly less spectacular than transfigured faces, a numinous cloud, and a voice from heaven. The mountain is where Jesus goes to pray. It’s while Jesus is praying that Peter, James, and John struggle to stay awake, foreshadowing their later drowsiness in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is again praying on the eve of his death. And it occurred to me, while reflecting on this story, that rarely, if at all, in the Gospels do we hear that the disciples are explicitly at prayer.

Many times, we’re told that Jesus goes off by himself to pray, often on a mountain. The disciples frequently see him at prayer. They even ask him how to pray, which causes Jesus to give them the Lord’s Prayer. But do we ever see the disciples at prayer?

The disciples certainly seem comfortable fulfilling their commission to teach and preach in response to Jesus’s commission. They enjoy being busy. But at times, we’re told that they aren’t able to heal in Jesus’s Name, and why is that? Could it be because the disciples, even on the mountain with Jesus, don’t yet know how Jesus is inviting them to pray?

Of course, the disciples prayed. They were faithful Jewish men and observed the law and commandments, but it also seems that in his transfiguration, Jesus is handing to Peter, James, and John the key to unlock the door to the heart of ministry and of their very lives as they have been transformed by his own life.

The disciples will shortly be sent down the mountain to carry out the ministry they have been called to do. But first, they must know how to pray. And it’s only through prayer as Jesus teaches them that they can begin to discern the voice of God leading and guiding them. It’s that same voice that they will later know as the Holy Spirit moving among them, tugging them along.

On that mountain, the disciples are rather like us, I suspect. They aren’t eager to accept suffering and confusion along with the glory of following Christ. They aren’t used to listening to where God wants to go. So, too, with our best-laid plans. So, too with the plans we have for our children’s success, or our hopes for a career path, or our opinion on what ministry God is calling our parish towards. So, too, with planning for retirement or in trying to follow God’s will in our daily lives. We typically decide where we want to go or where we think we should go, and we devise a story to explain how it’s God’s will.

I’m usually like Peter, who can easily associate busyness with faithfulness. Peter wants to build three tents to concretize the moment, and the confusion of the cloud and God’s voice shuts him up, because it’s not about what Peter thinks should be done or even about the most logical thing to do. It's about what Jesus is summoning them to do. On the mountain, while Jesus is praying, passion is inextricably tied up with glory, revelation is mixed with clouds of confusion, and human certainty is tempered by God’s creative freedom. Listen to Jesus, God says. Listen to my Son.

The story of the transfiguration shows us a different, more excellent way, which is God’s way as he gently tugs us along through the power of the Spirit. God doesn’t keep us on a leash, and God certainly doesn’t yank us into pre-fabricated plans. God tugs on the strings of our heart and invites us to ask this question of him: Where do you want to go?

Our freedom as God’s beloved people is manifested in our ability to ask this question of God and listen for God’s response. And in the listening, we will see the disparate strands in our lives—people, places, and things—being woven into a single strand that leads us where God is inviting us to go. For it’s only through letting go and entering the cloud of uncertainty that we can truly listen to Christ’s voice, revealed in the power of the Spirit.

I’ve recently tried a new way of walking Beau. I’ve given myself permission to let go of my plans and set the clock aside when I walk Beau. And when he stands still and I’m tempted to yank on the leash to move him where I want to go, I ask him, where do you want to go?

And he shows me. He shows me flowers blossoming that I’d never before seen. He shows me people patiently waiting in the summer heat at a bus stop. He shows me people whom I might ordinarily never stop to acknowledge. But more than anything else, Beau shows me how to be in the moment and to listen.

The foundation of discipleship is prayer, and prayer’s foundation is listening. And letting go is accepting curveballs as gifts of the Spirit and confusion as its own form of paradoxical clarity. And when we loosen our grip on the leash and ask God, where do you want me to go?, the voice of the risen Christ is always there saying, come and see.  

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of the Transfiguration
August 6, 2023

A Little Goes a Long Way

Once upon a time—until quite recently, in fact—there was an annual gathering of a consortium of Episcopal parishes with large endowments. To be invited to this gathering, your church’s endowment had to be of a certain size, and that size was not small. (Translation: Good Shepherd, Rosemont would not have been invited.) This annual meeting of parishes ended up being an elite convocation of large, wealthy churches, while smaller, less wealthy churches who weren’t invited sometimes cast verbal stones from afar on Facebook.

But I want to create another consortium. In this more expansive annual gathering, struggling parishes wouldn’t celebrate their smallness in contrast to larger and wealthier parishes, but instead, they would recount how in their experience of ministry God had created something incredible out of something tiny and insignificant. In this consortium, we might find small and large parishes, because large parishes must begin small, right?

To group parishes into large ones and small ones, successful ones and struggling ones, would intimate that we can evaluate the success of Gospel work based on numbers and statistics or on sizes of endowments. If you’re only impatiently looking for size or wealth to measure fruitfulness, you might be blind to mustard seeds that can grow patiently into fruitful shrubs. In the economy of God’s kingdom, large and small parishes, well-endowed and barely endowed parishes can speak the same language. A consortium of large, endowed parishes assesses Gospel ministry from a place of arrival, but our hypothetical consortium of parishes would reflect how the kingdom of heaven can flourish from out of nothing.  

When Jesus himself talks about the kingdom of heaven, he gives us many images. No image fits the bill completely. The mustard seed, for instance, is a valuable image of the kingdom of heaven, but Jesus also gives us the wonderful image of leaven hidden in flour. And this image beautifully describes how our imaginary consortium of parishes could begin to talk about the kingdom of heaven.

The leaven of which Jesus speaks isn’t like the yeast we buy in the store and mix with water, salt, honey, and flour to make bread. This leaven is more organic and much messier. It’s like a sourdough bread starter. Have you ever made sourdough bread?

Several years ago, I led a young adult ministry that was based in an abandoned church in south Philadelphia. This church had been closed years before by the diocese. The historic building where Marian Anderson had once sung in the choir and where W.E.B. DuBois had worshiped was empty and silent. When our little group of young adult leaders began to organize the ministry there, we were told that the building was unsafe and that it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the building structurally sound. There was mold in the ceiling tiles. Part of the nave floor was structurally unstable. The sacristy was littered with debris from a collapsed ceiling. Drawers in the vesting cabinet were left open as if someone had ransacked the place, or more likely, scurried away with the church’s possessions after being told the church was closed.

         But that didn’t deter us. Our group was there to try something new, to try to reach young adults in the neighborhood who might be suspicious of the Church and to form community around the baking of bread. While the dough was rising, we engaged in conversations on various topics.

And I’ll never forget that sourdough starter. It belonged to a member of our group who was especially enthusiastic about making bread. One day, that person combined a little flour and water in a mason jar and left it in the church’s parish house where we gathered. When we came back to the building a few days later, the jar was overflowing with activity. It was frothing like crazy, and we all laughed. We laughed not because it was frothing like crazy but because we knew why it was full of bubbles, foam, and literally overflowing out of the jar. This little sourdough starter, formed by mixing a bit of water and flour had very quickly begun feeding on bacteria and yeast in the room. It was alive.

Had we left this starter in a restaurant kitchen that had passed safety inspection, it would not have looked the same. Had we left it in the industrial kitchen of a large, endowed parish, it might only have been lightly foaming. But this starter was growing out of control because it had been left in an abandoned, dirty, smelly, moldy church. All that nasty stuff we’d rather not think about and that might not even be very good for us was causing that sourdough starter to sizzle with life. And soon enough, that boisterous starter would serve as leaven for some dough to be baked into a gorgeous, delicious loaf of bread. And that tasty bread would feed all kinds of people: misfits, the lonely, the distressed, and those longing for meaning in their lives.

Now, for the end of the story. The ministry we started never took off. COVID didn’t help it. But what did happen is that the parish was reopened by the diocese and is now a living congregation. I like to think that our presence in that building for a brief period played some small part in that parish’s reopening, even if the end result looked nothing like what we had initially envisioned. And through that experience, I learned that a sourdough starter is a fantastic image of how things work in the kingdom of heaven.

When you heard today’s Gospel lesson, did you wonder why the woman hid the leaven in the flour? Could it be that the catalyst for growth and change is often something that we fail to notice? Could it be that God will use what is seemingly insignificant, unnoticeable, small, and even nasty to create a buzzing hive of Gospel activity?

Jesus’s parables invite us to focus not on the end result of our labor or ministry but on the beginning. This is the difference between a consortium of parishes celebrating their wealth and visible significance as opposed to our imagined consortium of parishes. Our consortium would reflect on how we must temper our human impatience with God’s divine patience to truly see what growth in the kingdom of heaven looks like.

This is good news to every church that was on the brink of closure but then was given a second chance. The movement of the Holy Spirit is often most palpable in those places where the roofs leak and windows are broken. In those places and people, God will surprise us by using all kinds of natural yeast and bacteria to leaven a lump of dough that can be baked into delicious bread that will feed the world.

Jesus’s parables of the mustard seed and the leaven don’t encourage complacency with being small. Far from it. And the status quo of size can be its own idol, whether large or small. All the parables of the kingdom of heaven assume growth. They assume that in the heavenly kingdom, sin will be transformed through repentance, and what is old will be made new. In the kingdom of heaven, nothing stands still. Jesus’s parables assure us that God wants ministry to flourish, not to decline. They assure us that the Church won’t die out but will once again send out her members in peace and love to the ends of the earth, even if some pruning and purging must happen first. Jesus’s parables are no excuse to celebrate our smallness. They are invitations to hope that even when it seems like we are nothing or don’t have enough, God will surprise us.

And God will surprise us with those things that sometimes remain hidden at first. All around us is fodder for the sourdough starter that will leaven ordinary dough into a beautiful loaf of bread. Hidden among us are unused gifts and the gifts of others whom God will send here to build up his kingdom on earth. Unknown to us are the ways in which leaking roofs, frustrated plans, and budget challenges will lead us to pursue the ministry to which God is calling us. Yet unseen are the mustard seeds of this world that God will plant in the soil of this place that will one day flourish into shrubs to provide shelter for the wandering birds of the air.

Put a mason jar with a bit of water and flour down in this place, come back in a few days, and you might be surprised. Go ahead, laugh, because like the elderly Sarah in the Book of Genesis, we should laugh at how God surprises us by leavening our lives with hope.

We are flour and water. We are ordinary stuff meant to be transformed into something extraordinary. We may think we aren’t enough to do anything. We may think we don’t have enough to do anything worthwhile. But think again. One life lived and sacrificed on a cross was the source of the entire world’s salvation. What is hidden among us can be revealed by God as leaven to transform a plain lump of dough. God will make it rise. We are to bake it. And with just a little, the entire world can be fed.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 30, 2023

In God's Good Time

It wasn’t an easy summer, but at the top of the list of difficult things to endure was learning that in that hospital, there was nothing I could fix. I was in the middle of three months of chaplaincy as part of Clinical Pastoral Education following my first year of seminary. And, oh, how I wanted to fix so many things, but above all, I desperately wanted to fix people.

My chaplain supervisor, on the other hand, constantly urged me and my fellow interns not to try to fix anyone or anything. His advice was to say little and be present more when visiting patients. Sit and listen. Don’t try to make the patients feel better. Just be with them. Don’t try to fix them or tell them what to believe. Above all, don’t try to dole out vapid assurances of comfort when someone is suffering. Trying to make patients feel better is usually about our own need to make ourselves feel better. If we can make cancer patients smile, then we don’t have to face their pain.

Although I understood this, I just couldn’t let go of the need to fix. I was perhaps a bit arrogant and too confident that I would help them in their suffering by bringing a generous understanding of God to their bedsides. I sat in the rooms of patients who were convinced that their suffering was God’s punishment. And I was only supposed to listen, not fix? I longed to correct their bad theology. After all, if I knew what was good for them, why couldn’t I share it with them? Why couldn’t I help them see a God of love instead of a vindictive God of wrath? So, I became quite adept at threading the needle of obedience to my supervisor’s instructions. I refrained from telling people what to believe but tried to suggest that there was another way of looking at the situation. Maybe your heart condition is not because God is angry with you. Maybe your cancer is not because you sinned.

And so, when I shared one of those bedside experiences with my supervisor, I could see his face fall. He became a bit exasperated when he pointed out that I was trying to fix things and that wasn’t our job as interns. Just be with people, he said. That’s all. So, I sighed and wept a bit inside.

My experience in that summer of hospital chaplaincy reminds me of the parable of the wheat and weeds, or to put it more traditionally and eloquently, the parable of the wheat and the tares. I can readily identify with the servants of the householder who spot weeds in the wheat field and instinctively want to root them out, because like me, they are fixers. When I see bad theology, I want to beat it down like the devil under my feet, to borrow the words of the Great Litany. In pastoral ministry, if there’s a hint of a bad seed being sown amid the parish, I want to root it out. And especially when I’m standing in the middle of a field of good seed, ready for ample wheat to be produced, I’m usually mystified and disturbed when I realize that weeds have been sown among the grain. How did they get in? Who sowed them? And isn’t it my job to get rid of them?

But my own knee-jerk reactions, perhaps like yours, are probably the mark of an impatience with views different from our own. The householder in Jesus’s parable is much more like my chaplain supervisor in clinical pastoral education. Let it be, he says. The sorting and reaping are not to be done by us but by God.

This approach doesn’t immediately sit well with me. We’re habitually trained by both our culture and sometimes by others in the Church to sort people into good or bad, moral or immoral, valid or invalid, bound for heaven or condemned to hell, worthy or unworthy, sinful or redeemed. And every parable that Jesus ever told, like that of the wheat and the tares, confounds our easy binaries. If we’re not unsettled by this, then we probably don’t have ears to hear.

But the householder in Jesus’s parable is wiser than his servants. He knows that leaving the sorting to the reapers at harvest time is best for everyone. If you’re a fixer like me, it would seem, at first glance, that it’s a very poor decision. The weeds will destroy the health of the field. They’re vile and unattractive. But the householder knows something that the servants don’t know.

At first, in the initial stages of growth, those pesky weeds look an awful lot like the wheat growing alongside them. In fact, they grow together, intertwined with one another, good and bad, wheat and weed. And if the supposedly bad weeds are pulled up too soon, they will uproot some of the wheat as well. The householder is concerned about the health of the wheat. But that’s not all. I suspect that the householder is also concerned about the well-being of the weeds, not because they’re weeds but because they might not be weeds after all.

Let them grow up alongside the wheat, the householder advises. Their lives are mysteriously bound together for a time. And at harvest time—God’s time—what once seemed to be a weed might be revealed as wheat. At harvest time, it will be clear what’s to be kept and what’s to be burned up. The reaper knows better than the servant. And the householder knows best of all.

It’s not much of a leap to see how God is like the householder. God knows how to lovingly temper our overzealousness for his sake. We want to think that we’re always the wheat in the good field of God’s planting, and it’s utterly satisfying to do our own mental sorting from a place of superior comfort. But it’s not harvest time yet in this life. Any final assessment of good and evil is too soon. Any premature sorting into final eternal destinations is irresponsible if not downright harmful.

God knows that it’s best for us to stop trying to fix others and focus on faithful, compassionate, and godly living. The less time we spend sorting others into categories and trying to fix them, the more time we have to grow by God’s grace into wheat bearing much fruit. Go to Mass, say your prayers, love your neighbor, serve the poor, act charitably, turn constantly to God in repentance, seek relationship with others. All of this is our Christian vocation. Leave the sorting and reaping of others’ souls to God and his angels.

While our culture and even parts of the Church are inordinately concerned with extirpating the weeds among us, God is concerned with the growth of the wheat. And God is concerned, too, with the weeds. At some point the image of weeds falls short as a metaphor. In God’s astounding providence, who’s to say that the weeds we’d like to root out couldn’t learn from the growth of the wheat? Can a grain of wheat teach weeds to bear fruit? Do weeds remain weeds for eternity?

When humans meddle in sorting and reaping too soon, it’s not just the weeds that suffer. The wheat suffers, too. Think of the souls fleeing the Church at the damage done by premature reaping. Think of the Church’s tarnished reputation because grains of wheat tried to do their own sorting and reaping. Think even of bundles of wheat and weeds in parasitical relationship all because of hasty reaping when the wheat itself has gone astray. If the time isn’t right—if the time is not God’s time—irreparable harm is done to both wheat and weeds.

In that hospital eight years ago, I sat at the bedside of people who would probably have put me in with the weeds had they known me better. And I cringed at what I perceived as their bad theology. I thought I needed to fix them, to make them more open-minded and generous. But what did I know? Wouldn’t it have been better to let God be the custodian of their souls and for me to simply live faithfully and honestly as a follower of Jesus Christ? Is there any better way to testify to the good? Is there any better way to ensure that abundant, precious fruit will be borne?

Whether I truly know what’s good or bad theology, and of all the things I don’t know, I do know some astounding good news from the parable of the wheat and the tares. I know that God is the only one who can sort and reap. I know that none of us is compassionate, discerning, or wise enough to sort and fix others. And I also know that the fullness of God’s kingdom is realized not by placing people into categories or making facile judgments but in courageous and faithful living as Jesus taught us. And above all, a strong dose of humility and a great deal of godly patience will teach us that in the kingdom of God, wheat and tares growing together can yield the most abundant harvest imaginable.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 23, 2023

Away from the Page

While on retreat this past week, I made my way through Madeleine L’Engle’s lovely book Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. L’Engle suggests that artists instinctively understand faith at a deep level because of the creative process of making art. True art isn’t perfunctory. It isn’t produced by formulas. It isn’t rendered solely for commissions or to gain approval. Real art is birthed when the artist responds to a creative gift from God.

Artists, we might say, are completely reliant on the grace of God. That’s what grace is: a gift from God, “unearned and undeserved,” as our prayer book catechism says.[1] Grace, like any true gift, can’t be controlled. Grace isn’t predictable. Grace is freely given, and hopefully, it’s freely received. Madeleine L’Engle believed that true artists, whether they purport to be Christian or not, whether they believe in God or not, and whether they know it or not, are responding to God’s grace. To create art, then, is an act of faith. The creative process requires faith that the work of art is worth creating, and it demands faith in a creative power greater than we are that allows us to create. For those of us who profess belief in God, we can clearly name the source of that power as God.

Now, journey with me for a minute to the organ console, where Matthew Glandorf sits for his penultimate Sunday here at Good Shepherd. You’ve already heard him improvise during this Mass, and there’s more to come. If creating art or music is an act of faith, then in Matt’s incredible gift for improvisation, we have a glimpse into what faith looks like on the ground. Improvisation, while it may or may not be explicitly Christian, helps us understand the relationship between law and grace. And this, I promise, has nothing to do with Matt taking a Lutheran church position in Germany.

Matt will be the first to tell you that while his knack for improvisation is a gift from God, to improvise well necessitates discipline. No one can improvise well without practicing scales, understanding harmony, and studying musical form. But no one can improvise well by attending only to scales, harmony, and form. And this is where grace comes in. This is also what Madeleine L’Engle would call the paradox of making art. True artists don’t wait for creative gifts to plop into their laps. True artists labor in the field of technique and daily practice so that they can eventually submit to God’s freeing gift of inspiration. This is how grace works. Grace happens in the moment where discipline, musical rules, and musical reasoning give way to inspiration.

Any novice improviser will tell you that venturing away from the written musical page is the most difficult aspect of improvising. Initially, it’s frightening to think of creating music that is not written out. It requires a leap of faith. It requires an ability to trust oneself in a vista that has opened out from beyond rules, technique, and form. It requires courage, risk, and an ability to let go of control. In theological terms, it’s so much like yielding to God’s grace.

And this brings us to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In chapter six, where we find ourselves today, Paul makes an astonishing claim. All who have been baptized have been transferred from one jurisdiction to another. The baptized are moved from the realm of sin and death to the realm of grace and freedom because they now live in Christ. And this is where faith comes in. To have faith means to accept that at some point in the game, laws and rules must open into something unpredictable and uncontrollable, which is the surprising freedom of God’s grace.

For Paul, the Jewish law is certainly not bad, and it’s most definitely not to be equated with sin, as much as some have mistakenly made this claim. The law provides a framework for right relationship with God. It contains an essential discipline that allows for the reception of God’s grace. But ultimately, any religious law, whether Jewish or Christian, must allow for God’s gift of grace to break in and take over. If we are to truly yield ourselves to God, we need the courage to be part of a musical improvisation. We must move from a land of certainty to a land of uncertainty. We must travel from a place of security to a dangerous land. We must leave all our worldly idols behind and put our whole trust in God, the only One who can give us true freedom.

In Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle quotes the late Anglican theologian H.A. Williams who said that “the opposite of sin can only be faith, and never virtue.”[2] Why? Because faith means relinquishing control to receive God’s gift of grace. Sin doesn’t know how to let go; it only knows how to enslave. Sin knows nothing of trust. It only breeds doubt and fear. At the end of the day, faith means having enough trust in God to give ourselves completely to him, with nothing held back. And as L’Engle would offer, all true artists understand something of this. And like such artists, we must all learn to improvise and allow God to help us paint outside the lines. We must learn to make music away from the written page.

But Paul isn’t naïve either. On the one hand, he says that all the baptized have already been transferred into the realm of God’s grace. But we, like Paul, also find ourselves struggling with sin. The safety of doctrine and ethical rules can easily become an idol. We find ourselves wanting to play it safe to ensure our salvation. And at some point, we are tempted to believe that just because we practice our scales every day, we are entitled to a burst of inspiration. We try to earn what can only be a gift from God.

Here we see sin at its wiliest. It’s sin that tells us we can’t trust the grace of God. It’s sin that empowers the religious voices that promise to give you God’s truth in a neat little package. It’s sin that perpetuates legalism in the Church. It’s sin that forces us to stay away from God’s grace because we aren’t worthy enough to receive it. It’s sin that urges us to seek the immediate satisfaction of knowing exactly what God wants us to do at any given moment. It’s sin that scares us into thinking that no matter how much we love God, we can’t take the bold step of yielding our complete selves over to him. It’s sin that won’t allow us to let go because sin won’t let go of us.

This is why we still cling to our reputations, to our fear of God’s wrath, to our money, and to our tidy theology. It's sin that exhorts us never to give up control. It’s sin that still enslaves us and forces us to stick to music on the page, in terror of making any mistakes. All this when God wants us to improvise with him.

But the worst trick that sin plays with our minds is when it would have us believe that we need to earn God’s love and favor. Play it safe, color between the lines, and seek clear answers, sin says, because only then will you be privy to God’s love.

But though we live with one foot being yanked back into the realm of sin and fear, and while we try with all our might to stand firmly in the realm where there is true freedom and imagination, if we can trust God enough, just maybe we can stand with both feet in the land of freedom and grace. Maybe we can learn to improvise.

I, for one, am grateful for Matt and all artists who can help us understand something of what it means to yield to God’s grace, to improvise through life. Talk to any artist or musician, and they will tell you about a moment when they are “in the zone,” or perhaps even outside their bodies. They are so completely caught up in the creative act of making art or music, that they are utterly free.

Can you imagine, then, a spiritual life like that? Can you imagine trusting God so completely and utterly that you would give up your worst fears and worries just to make music with God? Can you imagine yielding your whole body, everything you have, and your entire soul to the One who created you in love? Such yielding isn’t only for artists and musicians. It isn’t only for saints. It’s for you and me. For to yield to God in such a way is to have faith. And faith is the opposite of sin. Faith is what it means to be absolutely free because we are living, breathing, and moving in a new kingdom. And in this kingdom, sin has no authority and no power. This kingdom can’t be bought or earned. All it takes to get there is a leap of faith.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
July 2, 2023

[1] p. 858.

[2] Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Bantam, 1980), 148.

What Fear Can Never Kill

If you turn on your television or open a news app, I’d bet some good money that you’ll probably find your spirits sinking. I was reminded of this recently when I was visiting my parents and sitting in front of their television. Since I haven’t had cable at home in over a decade, it’s rare that I’m sitting in front of live television news.

But last week, I became painfully aware that if you want 24-7 justification to destroy your faith in humankind, just watch the news. It’s one dramatically bad story after another, and TV anchors do their part to play this up. If it’s not one more shooting making the headlines, it’s yet one more medical scare or a political system in shambles.

With perpetual news coverage, every story, no matter how big or small, is elevated to crisis level, with a basso continuo of throbbing anxiety. And the recipients of such news coverage are in a constant position of high alert. In fact, just Google “high alert,” and see how many recent news stories pop up. You’ll be convinced that the world is spiraling out of control.

While pondering the fearful, anxiety-ridden nature of modern news, I also stumbled across an interesting opinion piece in The New York Times authored by an experimental psychologist. The title was “Your Brain Has Tricked You into Thinking Everything Is Worse.”[1] The author of this piece asserts that at least since 1949, there’s been a general tendency to assume that humankind is morally worse than it was in the past. But as the article claims, this simply isn’t true. The assumption that people in the past were more altruistic or more morally upright is the result of two juxtaposed psychological phenomena: biased exposure and biased memory. Biased exposure means that we tend to pay the most attention to negative news. And biased memory means that positive memories tend to have more power in our memory than negative memories, even if those negative memories seemed awful at the time. Combine the two and there’s a mistaken view that the past was an unvarnished golden age, and the present is infinitely worse.

This unfortunate juxtaposition of psychological phenomena has infiltrated our perception of Christianity, too. If you believe the new headlines or what comes at you from some pulpits or what many churches are saying, Christian discipleship was unquestionably stronger and less complicated in the past. Fifty years ago, church attendance was better. A hundred years ago, our culture was generally more supportive of the Church. In the past, being a Christian was not as countercultural as it is today, and it was more acceptable to be a Christian. There weren’t so many secular forces working against us. Today’s nonstop news headline about the Church is that the plane is getting closer to the ground, and the pearl of great price is circling the drain.

For this very reason, it’s imperative that we sit patiently, if uncomfortably, with Jesus’s most challenging words in the gospels. At the top of that list are several of Jesus’s sayings that we’ve just heard from St. Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus hasn’t come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword. The cost of discipleship is division and possibly even estrangement within families. There’s no following Jesus without the cross.

But these difficult words seem to have faded into biased memory. Most Christians tend to remember the positive memories of Jesus’s life. We love to recall the healing stories of Jesus. We love the stories about Jesus’s love and acceptance. We relish the moments when Jesus smacks down his opponents. We rest easily with crowds being fed or Jesus walking on water or the victory of an empty tomb. And the difficulties of Jesus’s passion and crucifixion can get lumped in with the resurrection in terms of our biased memories.

And so, when we stumble across Jesus’s more perplexing words, it’s difficult to know what to do. Could he possibly have meant what he said about bringing a sword instead of peace or in creating family divisions? Or are these words just the fodder of an angry evangelist? But consider for a moment the possibility that Jesus really did say what is recorded in the Gospels. Such troubling words will come back to haunt us as long as we come to Mass and our ears are open to God’s word. We can’t run from Jesus’s hard teachings.

The biased memory of the Church’s past is of a golden age with a Jesus of positive memories and glorious salvation on offer. And the biased exposure of the present day is this: a Church in perpetual decline that’s constantly at odds with the surrounding culture. Combine biased memory and biased exposure and you will wonder if there’s ever been a more difficult time than the present day to be a Christian.

But if the myth of a lost golden age of the Church is really just the confluence of two psychological phenomena, the truth is much more complex. It has always been difficult to be a Christian, and the great sin of the Church is that she has forgotten how difficult it’s supposed to be. She has failed to preach it. She has failed to live it.

It should therefore be no great surprise that amid today’s Gospel passage there’s a big, stinking elephant in the room. And this elephant has emblazoned on its side the word “fear.” Yes, Jesus names this elephant multiple times in just sixteen verses of Scripture. Have no fear of them. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. Here’s the sober truth of discipleship that’s masked when biased memory and biased exposure combine to have us imagine a nonexistent golden age of following Jesus. The sober truth is that fear has been around ever since Jesus’s disciples first began to follow him.

And Jesus doesn’t dance around this fear. He doesn’t sugarcoat the cost of discipleship. He doesn’t promise a life without struggle or illness or even death. Instead, he offers a Gospel far more powerful than fear but which rarely makes the news headlines.

In his lifetime, Jesus said much about fear. Fear is the enemy of love. Fear is living in darkness. Fear is the 24-7 news headline that won’t shut up and will scream louder and louder until you believe its lies. Do you hear the voices? Things are worse now than they ever have been. Everyone is actively working against the Church. You don’t have enough time for God and your job. People are after your money and your possessions, so cling to them as tightly as you can. If you speak up in the face of injustice, you will lose your friends. If you’re honest about who you are, your family will forsake you and God will reject you.

And while these incessant voices scream about fear, the soundless captions below on the TV screen scroll by with more news of fear. If you choose to worship God, do it quietly, or others will think you are foolish. Don’t be too vocal about your faith lest some think you are like those reactionary Christians. Why don’t you give up on a Church that has hurt too many people in the past? In fact, how can you even trust the Church at all?

By this point, it should be clear, shouldn’t it? Fear has always been with Christians. It raged in the mouths of lions devouring early Christian martyrs. It stoked the flames of the Inquisition. It unleashed dogs on those marching for civil rights. And it’s still doing what it’s always done: it’s trying to make us think that things are so much worse than they’ve ever been. Fear has always done what it could to silence the Gospel’s voice by wielding its weapon of biased exposure.

But the reason we shouldn’t ignore Jesus’s difficult words is because the best news of all is hidden within them. Amid the hyped-up anxiety of divided families, lost friends, and the specter of death, is the pearl of Gospel wisdom, which is not circling the drain after all. The past was never better than the present. Fear always haunted the followers of Jesus. And above all, the future is infinitely capable of beauty, promise, and goodness. There’s always hope, and God is always with us. And no matter what you’ve done, God will never leave you.

Although around us, there are many things to fear, Jesus tells us to fear only one thing: fear God. Fear God not with anxiety over hell but with reverence and gratitude because of God’s love for you and the love it asks from you in return. Fear God because the truth is this: even in the present moment, there’s never been a better time to find your life. And if we’re willing to lose our lives for Jesus’s sake, we’ll find the life that fear can never touch.  

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 25, 2023

[1] By Adam Mastroianni, June 20, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/psychology-brain-biased-memory.html

Tell Me What You Eat

If you call yourself a gastronome, you might be familiar with Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a nineteenth century French lawyer, politician, and gastronome himself. In his 1826 book that roughly translates into English as The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarin suggested that food was an art, something much more than a practical matter. What we eat, in some sense, defines who we are.

It’s no surprise that the slow food movement across the world has picked up on Brillat-Savarin’s philosophy. The slow food movement has three basic tenets: eat good food, eat clean food, eat fair food.[1] In other words, good food will be tasteful and enjoyable. Clean food is food that doesn’t come from processes of production that are detrimental to the environment. And fair food is food that can be available to all people, regardless of their socioeconomic status, and whose producers receive fair wages.

Slow food, by its very nature, isn’t fast food. According to slow food principles, good, clean, and fair food can’t be produced quickly. Fast food treats food as less than an art. It prefers quantity over quality. It’s utilitarian and practical. Fast food is concerned only about squeezing a meal in during the shortest amount of time and for the least amount of money. It’s not primarily concerned with being good, clean, or fair.

Slow food, on the other hand, is the art of long meals in fellowship with others. One can’t partake of slow food without being somehow connected to creation. Eating slow food is living close to the ground. Eating slow food involves a willingness to sacrifice speed and financial savings to ensure that those producing the food are treated fairly and that the environment is respected.

“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,” said Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. If you ask me, that sounds rather theological. It sounds like St. Augustine of Hippo, who famously said in a sermon on the Eucharist: “If you, therefore, are Christ’s body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord’s table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying “Amen” to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith.”[2] Behold, who you are. Become what you receive. Indeed. Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.

When looking at Scripture, it becomes clear that God doesn’t readily offer fast food. Have you ever wondered why when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he didn’t bring them out the most direct way? He brought them out the long way. We hear today in Deuteronomy that the Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness, being tested and humbled. Between grumblings and disobedience, though, God fed them. There was always enough, if just enough.

And the food of which Jesus speaks in chapter 6 of John’s Gospel is not food on demand. It’s not fast food. It’s slow food. Consuming his flesh should never stop. Consuming his blood should never stop. But those who hear Jesus’s words, from his disciples to those who oppose him, don’t yet understand. Their eyes don’t yet see. Their ears don’t yet hear. Their hearts are still somewhat hardened. They want fast food: miracles, signs, and immediate satisfaction.

But only slow food is on offer. When Jesus feeds the five thousand from five barley loaves and two fish earlier in John’s Gospel, it’s not fast-food service. When Jesus later says that he is the bread of life, and that eating his flesh and drinking his blood is the means of finding eternal life, the disciples and crowd still don’t get it. Where’s the fast food, they seem to say? This is what the Israelites said in the wilderness. Hunger is immediately associated with God’s abandonment. They have no concept of what slow food is because it’s about more than just the food. Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.

And so, it begs the question to us: what are we eating? What we’re eating says everything about who we are. On this Feast of Corpus Christi, we celebrate who we are by virtue of what we eat. We celebrate that in the Church, we are part of a slow food movement, because what we eat and how we eat it says everything about who we are and how we are more truly becoming who we are called to be.

“The destiny of nations depends on how they nourish themselves,” Brillat-Savarin also said. We can likewise say that the destiny of the Church depends on how she nourishes herself. If the Church feeds on the wrong things, she will wither. If she hungers after quick fixes and gimmicks, she will fail to thrive. If she feeds on power, she will oppress. If she feeds on status, she can’t be Christ-like. If she tries to control or weaponize the gift of the Eucharist, she will cause others to starve. If she’s only concerned about the meal, she will never serve the poor. If she only wants her heavenly food quickly, she will never be patient with God’s time. If she stops eating, she will have no strength to thrive and spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth. If her members refuse the gift offered to them, they will fail to find their lives tied up with others, and the Church will wither and die. Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.

But we know what we eat, and we know who we are by virtue of the heavenly food promised to us by Christ. While beyond the doors of this church, we may consume power, status, money, and quick fixes, here, in this place, we slow down. Here we learn the art of eating well. Here we feast together, not alone. Here the TVs are turned off and the phones are put away while we feast together. Here all people share a meal, because those baptized into Christ have put off all other identity markers in order to be clothed in the goodness of Christ.

Here the supreme gift of heavenly food is available to all those baptized into Christ so that they can truly become what they eat. Here the food will sustain us not for a few hours but for eternal life. Here the food that we eat is truly the Body and Blood of Christ. And what we eat is who we are.

We have no choice but to be the Body of Christ in the world. We have no choice but to be a part of a broken world being put back together again. We have no choice but to feed those who have no food, to love those who have no one to love them, to bind the wounds of those who have been ripped apart by cruelty and injustice. We have no choice but to be the lifeblood of peace, love, and mercy that will course through the clogged and poisoned veins of a fast-food culture that’s slowly dying. We are a slow food movement whose mission is nothing less than the life of the world.

Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. If others look at us, they should be able to trace us back to our roots. They should be able to find this place where we feast together and the food of which we partake. Because we are what we eat. And our destiny depends on how we nourish ourselves. And if we truly become what we eat, maybe others will find themselves longing for that heavenly food which never ends and by which we will live forever.  

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of Corpus Christi (transferred)
June 11, 2023

[1] https://www.slowfood.com/about-us/our-philosophy/

[2] https://earlychurchtexts.com/public/augustine_sermon_272_eucharist.htm