Music for Strings

At Christmas, music for strings seems more apt than music for brass. Don’t get me wrong. I love brass music. Each year, I listen with great pleasure to the spine-tingling brass arrangements of Christmas carols by the late Sir David Willcocks. But at Christmas, I really prefer music for strings.

It must be the intimacy of string music that I associate with the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of the eternal Word of God becoming flesh and dwelling on earth. String music is chamber music, music for close quarters and cozy spaces. Brass fanfares are for palaces and cathedrals. Brass instruments seem to herald the coming of a king with the acclamations of crowds of people. And a King does come to us this time of year, but this King comes with little fanfare. He comes quietly in a manger, unknown to the crowds outside the stable. He comes with human tendons and sinews flexing into new life. He comes with the music of strings that are energizing themselves into the frequences of music.

Have you ever watched a string musician making music? As a keyboardist and former trumpet player, stringed instruments fascinate me. I do have a sense of what it’s like to know one’s instrument, of forming one’s mouth into an embouchure to send vibrating air through brass piping, or of resting one’s fingers on the keys of a piano or organ, feeling exactly where middle C is. I can recall sensations of instruments that just didn’t feel right, of horns that produced a dull sound or of pipe organs where the keys resisted a precise touch.

But I know nothing of the relationship between a violinist and her violin, where her head rests gently on the chinrest, inevitably feeling the resonance of the instrument. I know nothing of the way a violin would sound with an ear so close to where the music is coming alive. The connection between a violinist and violin is so close that many violinists bear a visible mark of that proximity on their skin. While an unmusical pianist could stoically run his fingers over the ivories, how can a violinist not feel the intimate connection with her instrument, as her head snuggles up to the sound of wood and strings vibrating with life?

In the beginning, there was divine music, a perfect music of love between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It was always there, beyond time and space, and it will always be there, beyond time and space. But on a certain day in a certain year and in a very specific place on earth, this music, always present within the life of God, was perceived within human time and space. It was like music composed within one’s head that was notated and played in audible form for the very first time. It’s as if God lifted his bow, cradling all of creation next to himself as intimately as possible, in the crook of his neck, and the bow touched the strings. And the music sounded forth.

It was perfect music resonating within the soundwaves of imperfect time. For once, humanity could hear the perfection of this music, if it chose. The divine music came so close to creation that creation  was inflected by true life, and yet creation refused to receive this life. It’s almost as if this life was rejected precisely because it was so close. It was so near to human beings that they missed it.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. All of creation resounded with the glory of God in audible form when the bow touched the strings. But God came so close to his beloved children that they pushed him away. Maybe they couldn’t believe that God Almighty would deign to cradle them in the crook of his neck and play his divine music on the strings of their lives. And when the first prayer seemed to go unanswered, it was assumed that God had lifted his bow from the strings. When the first instance of suffering happened, it was because God was playing humans like a fiddle, manipulating their lives and yanking them around arbitrarily. When more and more tragedy occurred, it meant that God and his divine music were removed to a remote corner of heaven while humanity was left with cold silence below. Or could it be that God swooped down from on high in that year when the Word became flesh, playing the perfect music for thirty-three years until the world cut the strings of the violin and shattered its wood? Perhaps, people speculated, the music ceased, and God went back up into the sky. The divine music was so unbelievably close that the world couldn’t hear it, like our own heartbeats in our chest.

And yet, despite the world’s deaf ears, the incomprehensible mystery of Christmas remains, which is that the divine music never stops even in our time and space. It has never stopped. It will never stop, although it seems unthinkable to us that God would continue to cradle us near his heart, that he still allows our warped strings to resonate with hints of his divine music. It’s inconceivable that God would touch his bow of life on the reluctant strings of our own frail humanity to make music through us. Can this happen even after the crucifixion? Can these broken strings still produce the music of life?

In our loneliest moments or in the most difficult times of our lives, we may feel like warped wood, like strings that won’t flex, or like a cracked soundboard on a violin. God’s perfect music is inevitably distorted when sin damages the material of our lives. While the truth of Easter is that nothing in our lives is beyond repair, the truth of Christmas is that the restoration of divine music is possible even in the brokenness of our lives, all because God is closer to us than we care to perceive. With God’s grace—especially if we recall how close he is to us—our strings can soften and flex into divine music once again. Our soundboard can be mended. We can give voice to the music that God is animating from within us.

In the prologue to his Gospel, St. John makes a claim so astounding that it’s frequently tuned out by much of the world. Because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, we have the miraculous power to become children of God. Because we are God’s children, God’s Church, God’s beloved ones enlivened by the power of the Holy Spirit, St. John tells us that we are capable of doing greater works than we can ever imagine. Even on the cracked soundboards and brittle strings of our lives, God can make wondrous music.

Living as if we have the power to become children of God is the art of music, but it’s more than honing technique or blindly observing rules. It’s living as if the true Light of the world has enlivened every fiber of our being, warming cold strings to vibrate with the glory of God. It’s living as if we do believe that God continues to cradle us in the crook of his neck, close to his bosom, settling his bow on the strings of our lives.

We can feel the warmth of his love against our skin. We can sense his divine bow not coercing us into life but drawing life out of the hardened strings of our existence, mending the cracks in our soundboards, and coaxing sweet sounds out of bitterness. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God’s bow touched strings of flesh, and divine music resounded.

On this Christmas day, we celebrate the nearness of the divine music, so near we might refuse to hear it or might be prone to ignore it. But however dark your world may appear right now, however warped the wood and however calcified the strings of your life are, you’ve been kissed by grace. You’re still cradled in the bosom of God. You’re still granted the power to become children of God, made to bring forth divine music, despite your imperfections. So, nestle yourself in the crook of God’s neck, let his bow draw glorious music from your lives, and let them resound with the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
December 25, 2024        

Finding Our Way Home

It was sometime during the Twelve Days of Christmas, and he was standing by the crèche, gazing adoringly at the sheep and the donkey and the ox. He was making cooing noises, admiring the cuteness of the animals as they reclined before the baby Jesus. He had found his way to the church in the middle of a bustling urban center. Truth be told, it was a home of sorts for him. To my knowledge, he had no other home, but he frequently showed up at the church for daily prayer and Mass.

He was a character, to say the least. He’d been known to wave a Mexican flag at the peace during Mass on Cinco de Mayo. At other times, he could be seen striding up to Communion, with large designer glasses on and a scarf wrapped luxuriously around his neck. He knew the church was his home, because on the day that he was beaten up on the streets, he headed straight for the church, where he was lovingly embraced by the parish priest. The church may have been the only place on earth where he felt loved.

As he stood before the crèche on one of those Twelve Days of Christmas, admiring the animals in the nativity scene, he turned to my friend and asked, “Do you think the animals knew it was the baby Jesus?” Now, that’s a theological question if I ever heard one. It’s a question that most of us would be too embarrassed to ask. We don’t often think of the animals in the manger as having so much sentience. To be honest, no one really knows how the sheep, the donkey, and the ox came to be associated with the nativity scene. The Gospels say nothing about them at the manger. The sheep, we could reason, found their way there with the shepherds. But the donkey and the ox? Who knows? And yet, it would be an anathema to have a crèche without them.

Tradition tells us that these animals were introduced into the nativity scene because of a mysterious line at the beginning of the book of Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah says that “the ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” This is Isaiah’s prophetic judgment on our spiritual ancestors. He sharply suggests that, despite God’s gracious care, his people were so stubborn and willful that even an ox and a donkey would have a better sense of obedience. We might say the same of ourselves. An ox recognizes the feel of its owner’s pull on a halter, as well as the standard verbal commands. A donkey must sense the pressure on his back as its owner leads it where it should go. A cow clearly knows where the feeding trough is. Even Scripture tells us that the sheep will answer to the voice of the good shepherd. But many of us refuse to follow the lead of our true Master, nor do we really understand who’s leading us at times.

Animals know sometimes. They just know. They have a sense that someone can be trusted. They know where food is. They know where home is. My father-in-law recently told me a story about a dog he had when he was young. One day my father-in-law, his brother, and mother went over to the site of their future home in the town where they lived. And the dog went with them. But when they opened the car door, the dog jumped out and ran away.

They searched and searched for a couple of hours, but to no avail. They couldn’t find the dog, and so they eventually started home, worried about where he was. But when they arrived back home, several miles from where they’d been searching for him, the dog was already there, sitting patiently outside the house. For whatever reason the dog ran away, he knew where home was, and he found his way back there.

So, I wonder: did the ox and the donkey and the sheep know that it was the baby Jesus? We’ll never know, of course. But they did know where home was. The donkey knew the stable as his home. The ox knew it, too. And the sheep must have followed the shepherds, because wherever the shepherds were present to protect them, it must have been home to them.

That urban church of which I was a member years ago was also home to a restless soul who asked my friend a rather perceptive theological question. He knew that the church was home, where Jesus was always enthroned in the tabernacle on the altar. He knew that it wasn’t silly to query whether the animals at the manger knew it was the baby Jesus, because they at least knew where home was, through obedience and familiarity. And that sense of knowing is too often lost on us, however advanced we might be on the evolutionary scale. Maybe the animals did somehow know it was the baby Jesus.

In those days when a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled, the edict from on high was that every citizen should go home. Each was to go to his own city, which is how Mary and Joseph ended up in Bethlehem, the city of David. It was a nondescript place, a tiny hamlet not far from Jerusalem but worlds removed in terms of sophistication. To Bethlehem they went because it was home. Well, technically speaking, Nazareth was home, but from God’s perspective—from a spiritual perspective—Bethlehem was really home. From the viewpoint of salvation history, Bethlehem was where it all began. It was the city foretold by the prophets as the home of the Messiah. Bethlehem was home.

And through a marvelous intersection of history and divine providence, a stable became a throne. A sweeping decree from a worldly ruler enabled the true King of the world to begin his reign in the back room of a country lodge. A homeless family found a home in a stable that wasn’t technically home to them. And yet, it was home.

The manger was home for the animals, because there they found food. For the ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib, even if the rest of the world doesn’t know who its true King is. The sheep knew to follow their shepherd, even if thousands enrolled in an imperial census were led by bad shepherds, who for reasons of greed uprooted them and sent them each to their own cities. For Mary and Joseph, the stable was a home, because the baby was there, the Word was made flesh there, the Bread of Life was born in the House of Bread, which is what Bethlehem means.[1]

And on this night, we, too, have come home. Something other than Christmas cheer must have brought us to this church. I suspect that more than a few of us are struggling to find Christmas cheer, but we’re in this church for more than simple happiness. So, like an ox finding the comfort of its master’s lead and a donkey recognizing its master’s crib and a sheep following the guidance of its shepherd and a dog finding its way home again, we have found our way here. We must know this is home. Like that man who found his way to the church when the world beat him up, we have made our way here, to the crèche, to adore the newborn King, the Prince of Peace. He is our home.

On the other 364 days of the year, we might feel as if we have no home. We are frequently strangers, wandering all over a planet where there seems to be no peace, searching for our true home. We’re led by bad shepherds at times. We’re force-fed food that doesn’t nourish us. But tonight, we must return home to be quickened by the life of the Word made flesh.

For earthly homes aren’t always the places we think they’ll be. Earthly homes aren’t always happy. Going home can feel like a regression, backsliding from maturity into immaturity. But on this Christmas night, we can rest assured that this place is more than a mere earthly home. It’s an earthly home touched by heaven itself. It’s a home of peace, love, and joy. Perhaps, once again, we need to become an innocent child or take a cue from animals who can’t solve math equations but who at least know who their master is and where home resides. Tonight, we’ve come home.

And the marvelous mystery of Christmas is that home isn’t only in Bethlehem. Home isn’t only at the crèche at the back of this church. Home isn’t only before the altar of God where Jesus reigns in the Sacrament. No, because of the mystery of the Word made flesh, home has spread to the ends of the earth. Home is taken with us in our hearts, where Jesus also reigns in glory. Home is anywhere, in the grimiest alleyways of cities or in the feeding troughs of country villages. Home is where we know the love of our Lord, our true Shepherd, who leads us, guides us, and protects us forever. Home is where he feeds us and promises us eternal life, so that one day, we’ll abide with him in the heavenly mansion.

So, come, let us worship the newborn King! Come, let us adore the baby in the manger! Come, let us kneel before him and offer him our hearts, so that in them, he will make a home and abide there forever!

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
December 24, 2024

[1] This play on words has roots in the patristic tradition.

A Song, a Dance, and a Question

How many children do you know who refuse to sing? Singing is just what little children do. They sing as they play. They sing in front of adults without a second thought. Even the ancient chants of the Mass have a melodic resemblance to the sing-song intervals of children at play. And we adults aren’t usually surprised when children sing. We expect them to sing. We smile and laugh as we witness the carefree, joyful singing of children. It would, in fact, be odd for a child not to sing. It would be bizarre if we never sang to a child when she was sad or when we wanted to coax him to sleep.

Children dance, too. I used to watch with glee as my niece and nephews danced to music on TV. We adults would laugh, good-naturedly, as they danced, not laughing at them but with them. We didn’t think it strange that they would dance. Like singing, we would find it strange if they didn’t dance. And it would be equally unusual if we didn’t dance with babies, too, bouncing them on our knees while singing and comforting them and gladdening their hearts in play.

In case you haven’t noticed, children like to ask questions, as much as or more than they like to sing and dance. Children can ask some of the most theologically astute questions of all. Will we ever see him again since he died? Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? What happens to our tattoos when we die? I’m not kidding. I’ve heard all these questions at one point or another, and there may be no truer test of our own grasp of the Christian faith than to respond authentically to the questions of children.

But there comes a day—and I’m not sure when it happens—that shame enters from stage right or left in the drama of our lives. Is it in adolescence, or is it before? I don’t know when, but the day inevitably arrives when we feel that pang of embarrassment to sing or dance or question in public. We might sing privately in the shower or dance in the isolation of our rooms when no one is looking. And we certainly always continue to question in our hearts, wondering why something has happened to me or someone I love. But the song, the dance, and the question always remain, even if we hide them from the public eye.

Maybe someone tells us that we don’t have a good musical ear, and that callous remark stops our song. Or we become so self-conscious that we can no longer dance with others, and so we sit on the sidelines at the wedding reception as everyone else gyrates and busts a move while we watch, saddened by our inability to participate. We laugh at those who sing spontaneously in public, saying that it makes us uncomfortable, and so, we stand with hymnal closed as the rest of the congregation belts out the hymn. We laugh at the silliness of those who dance when something wonderful happens to them.

I can remember when I stopped singing in public; it was too embarrassing. I still refrain from dancing in public, because I’m too self-critical. And at some point in school, I stopped asking questions aloud, although I had plenty of them. I was worried that others would think I was unintelligent. Do you relate to this? What was it that made our songs cease and our dancing shameful and our questions anathema? Who told us that our questions were ridiculous and shut us up?

Maybe it’s actually the question that muffles our song and stills our dancing. We question why life has taken a turn for the worse. We question why a parent is terminally ill. We question why children starve and others have too much to eat. We question why we pray so hard and our prayers aren’t answered. With all these questions, how can we sing? How can we dance?

And yet, the story of the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth wouldn’t be the same story without song and dance. At first glance, we can only see why Mary would break into song as she greets Elizabeth. At a superficial level, we can easily grasp why John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. Mary has become mysteriously pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, and Elizabeth is also great with child, although like Abraham’s wife, Sarah, she is far too old to give birth. Of course, there would be singing and dancing at this news. Mary and Elizabeth have both received extraordinary blessings.

But there’s also every good reason that there should be no singing or dancing. If we can move past a greeting card’s romanticizing of this Biblical scene, we’ll discover that things were much more complex than the Hallmark company’s estimation. Mary was no more than a teenager when Gabriel announced to her that she would bear the Son of God. Undoubtedly, she was scared and frightened at her unexpected pregnancy. Can you imagine the shame she would have felt to be visibly pregnant with a child that was not Joseph’s? Do you remember how ancient society treated women in such situations? And what about Elizabeth? She was in her golden years, preparing for death, not birth. Did she have the energy and stamina to raise a child? What would people have said about her? Surely, she must have been wary and frightened, too.

As St. Luke gives us this story, at the center of this touching scene between two cousins, both surprisingly pregnant, there abides a question. It’s a wondrous question and less of a cynical, skeptical one. It’s a question of marvel and awe, and Elizabeth gives voice to it. Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Why indeed! Why should the elder woman be blessed by the greeting of the younger? Why should the Son of God be born into her biological family? How was Elizabeth pregnant? How was Mary pregnant? Why was the Son of God coming into the world as flesh and blood? Why indeed!

Elizabeth’s profound question could have justified every effort to stifle a song or to quell a dance. The question could have internalized an obsessive rumination about how things would be and about what burdens both Mary and Elizabeth might have to bear because of their startling news. But the question only elicits a song from Mary, and an intrauterine dance from John. The mystery of God’s unspeakable blessing to both women evokes a song and dance in the face of a very good question.

To live as part of the human condition is to accept that shame will find us. We’ll be privy to jadedness and loss of innocence as we get older. There will always come a day when the real questions of this world will overwhelm us, and with that sense of being overwhelmed, it will be natural to stop our singing and dancing. Indeed, in the face of the manifold problems of human existence in a world influenced by sin, it will seem unnatural—even inappropriate—to sing and dance.

How can we sing when others are given no voice to denounce their oppression? How can we dance when so many are shackled by human cruelty and violence? How can we even appear to be joyful when there’s so much sorrow and when others suffer because of our own privilege? These are the intractable questions of growing older as fallible human beings.

But Mary and Elizabeth witness to a joy and trust that persist despite the tangible realities of a broken world. Mary and Elizabeth find song and dance even amid their momentous questions, even as they wonder how such things could happen to them. Mary’s song testifies to the fact that God’s blessings and grace come to us from within the trials and tribulations of human life. As it was true for Hannah who first voiced that song so many years ago, it was true for Mary. And as it was true for Mary and Hannah, it’s still true for us.

God still brings righteousness. God still lifts up the poor and casts down the powerful. God still fills the hungry with good things. God still helps his people and remembers his mercy promised of old. Even as things seem so incomplete and our questions remain unanswered, God is still working and bringing all things to perfection and completion.

We sing and dance not because we experience completion or know all the answers. We sing and dance because we have faith that God is showering blessings on us and on the entire world even though sin is all we can sometimes feel and see. We sing because the question of Elizabeth is our question, too. Who are we that our Lord should come to us and visit us with his blessing? Who are we? We are God’s beloved children, still this day and forever, adopted by his grace and made heirs of eternal life. And that’s a truth in which we can have faith. It’s a truth that should make us sing and dance.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 22, 2024

All from Love

Everything from duty, nothing from love. That was the striking title of a chapter in a novel I recently read. I was hooked. I went on to read about the misery of a woman in a loveless marriage. Her life was full of wearisome tasks that wore her down. She had always been a dutiful person. She’d excelled in school. She’d held great promise, working hard to overcome a difficult childhood, until her life was derailed by an unexpected pregnancy and she was forced to marry at eighteen. Day after day, she fed the crying baby, washed the clothes, cleaned the farmhouse in which she lived with her husband, looked out at the loneliness around her, and despaired of her loveless marriage.

She found herself dreaming about creating more time so she could keep up with all the tasks demanded of her life. But each day, she got out of bed earlier than the day before to add more productive hours to her day. It seemed that more and more was required of her, and getting up earlier was the only way to cope. It never ceased. She was feeding a beast that couldn’t be satisfied. She couldn’t find love because duty was eating her up.[1]

Duty isn’t a bad thing, in fact, it can be a very good thing. I am, by nature, a dutiful person. The language of the Mass even tells us that it’s our “bounden duty” in all times and places to give thanks to God. Duty is an integral part of being a Christian disciple. Indeed, I often wonder whether the Church would be better off if more Christians had a sense of duty.

But duty can be stifling when it becomes the end and not the means. Duty is imprisonment when its aim is to please something or someone that’s never satisfied. So many strings can be attached to acts of duty. The duty-obsessed parent says to the child, “I raised you and cared for you and paid for your college education. I did what a parent is supposed to do. How dare you move out of the house and have a life apart from me!” Some churches say, “Your salvation is assured if you are in this fold and you simply follow these rules. If you’re obedient and dutiful and observant, you will be blessed. But should you leave the fold, you are anathema.” Yes, duty can be divorced from love. Duty can be the string that is attached to conditional love, which really isn’t love at all.

Everything from duty, nothing from love. Maybe this chilling statement summarizes the mindset of the crowds that approach John the Baptist. They’ve heard of a wrath to come, and they don’t want to meet that wrath. Perhaps they feel that the clock is ticking, and the alarm will go off soon. Maybe they need to make up for lost time. There’s a God who needs to be appeased, and they’d better hurry. And so, they arrive at John’s feet, by duty, we might say, rather than by love. John himself seems to encourage such duty as the proper response of a faithful child of God. Bear fruits that befit repentance, he says. Don’t rest on the laurels of your status as children of Abraham. Be dutiful, you brood of vipers!

But the crowds who come to John seem stuck on duty. And John’s exhortation to behave as if they are repentant also seems stuck on duty. The crowds don’t know what to do. There’s an urgency to John’s message, and they’re anxious, which is even more of a reason to demand specificity from John. “What then shall we do?”

But did John’s advice help the eager crowds, or did they become more stuck after John addressed them? Surely, those who had two coats went to share one of their coats with the unclothed. Surely, the tax collectors changed their extortionary financial practices. Surely, the soldiers tried to be a bit more just in their dealings with others. Surely, they all heeded John’s good advice. But did they become unstuck? Was everything still from duty? Was anything from love?

How often do we, too, get stuck on duty? Maybe in our own lives, we’re stuck right now. We get out of bed on Sunday mornings, pile on layers of clothing against the cold weather, and we show up here. We’ve heard there’s a wrath to come, and it sounds terrifying. The visions of hell, fire, and brimstone that we’ve heard about from TV preachers or that we’ve read about in Scripture sound a lot like words from the mouth of John. They’ve been used as sticks to beat people into submission. In gentler moments, they’ve been used as guilt-laced carrots to lure people into duty. But the duty that’s elicited by such tactics is based on fear, not on love. And once again, we’re stuck. We don’t know what to do about the state of our soul against the reality of future judgment. Duty seems the only answer when up against the specter of winnowing forks and an unquenchable fire.

And so, we show up here, or we kneel by the side of our beds at night, and we ask, “What then shall we do?” Perhaps it’s the threat of condemnation that has driven us through the doors of this church or to our knees by our beds. We want answers. What then shall we do? And the unspoken part of that sentence is the elephant in the room that we never want to name but is crystal clear. What we shall do is anything that allows us to escape the wrath of God and the flames of hell. Anything at all. Just tell us what to do. Everything is from duty, and nothing from love. We’re stuck.

Good works become the ticket into heaven. We use duty to get something, and love is nowhere in the picture. Let’s face it. In this earthly life, it’s so easy to become stuck. We’re stuck between the rock of God’s assumed wrath and the hard place of our compulsion to live and act justly. What then shall we do?

Maybe the answer lies in rescuing the image of John the Baptist and his fiery speech and his pointing hand from a crude summons to duty. Maybe the answer lies in following the pointing hand through duty to its ultimate reference, which is, of course, Christ, the Messiah. And if we follow John’s hand to Christ, we might be able to discern a deeper message beneath the call to duty, one that is indeed—as St. Luke’s words tell us—good news for us.

John isn’t pointing to good works themselves, which are bound up with Christian duty. John isn’t simply pointing to the good fruit on the tree as the end of all things. John is pointing to the image of God within each one of us that naturally bears the fruit of good works done faithfully and dutifully. John is pointing to the healthy root of the tree that will enable it to bear good fruit. John is pointing to the source of that tree’s life. And in this realization, we learn who we are and who we’re called to be. By virtue of our baptism into Christ in the Spirit’s power, we’re made children of God and heirs of eternal life. And through that same Spirit, God can raise up from our hearts of stone new hearts on fire with the love of God.

John calls the crowds to repentance not simply for the sake of duty; he calls them to repentance so that they can make an about-face in their lives and turn to see the wide-open arms of a God who has always been waiting for them to discover his infinite love. This God whom we worship and adore isn’t a hungry beast, demanding more and more good works. There’s no ticking time bomb of which we should be afraid. God doesn’t ask us to add more hours to our days to do more good works so that we can appease him. Through God-directed duty, God invites us to discover his love that frees us from the shackles of the machinery of all loveless duty that drains away our life. And it’s through repentance that we turn from our idols and misdirected duty to God, who desires love more than duty. With this God, because he loved us first, everything really is from love rather than from duty.

So, follow the hand of the prophet one last time. Don’t be put off by his fiery speech and rough appearance. Move through his words of repentance to notice where his finger is really pointing. It’s pointing through the duty of faithfulness to Love himself, Jesus the Christ. It’s pointing to the Son of God, who by virtue of taking on human flesh and defeating death through his resurrection from the dead has given us the power to become children of God. If we follow John’s finger, we will see more clearly who we’re called to be, which is a people growing more and more into the likeness of God. For John is pointing to Christ who was and is and is to come, who by the power of his Holy Spirit, reigns within our hearts and calls us to new life. And in him, we find that our bounden duty, however very meet and right it is, has now all become love. You see, although duty has its place, everything is really from love.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 15, 2024

[1] Chapter three from Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (New York: Back Bay Books, 2004)

How the Word Slips In

One of the treasured items in my office is a religious icon recently given to me by the wife of my former spiritual director, who died a year and a half ago. The icon is mounted in a glass box, preserved as if it’s a museum piece, although the icon is really a living vehicle of prayer that leads us to deeper union with God. The icon in my office dates from the fourteenth century. It may even be older than that.

The story behind this icon is fascinating. On the back of the box in which this icon is displayed is a typed note, explaining its history. It was purchased at a gallery in Philadelphia and given to an Episcopal priest, who bequeathed it to my former spiritual director. And then, it was kindly given to me. Supposedly, this icon was found strapped to the back of a Russian emigrant to this country at the time of the Russian Revolution. This emigrant was fleeing the unstable political scene there.

When gazing upon this icon, you can feel its age, so much so that I get little prickly goosebumps when I gaze upon it. It’s in the form of a triptych, like a miniature version of the triptych found behind the altar in our Lady Chapel. Two smaller outer panels frame a larger central panel. The outer panels can close inwards like doors, but in the icon’s current framed box, they remain open, fastened to the central panel with rudimentary wires.

It's difficult to tell exactly which saints are depicted on the outer panels because the layer of paint is rubbed off in many places, revealing the old wood beneath. But the center panel is almost fully preserved. In the center of this central panel is Christ himself, sitting, as if teaching, holding a book with Greek lettering, his hand raised in blessing. Mary and John surround him, gesturing to him with their hands. Christ looks straight at you, the beholder of this gorgeous icon.

Whether the legend of how this icon was transported to America is true or not, it’s an intriguing story. Imagine fleeing a country in turmoil and feeling compelled to bring an icon of Christ with you. Of all the things you could bring, why an icon? Did the emigrant sneak onto a boat crossing the Atlantic? Did he come by way of the Bering Strait? But the fact that this icon was supposedly strapped to the body of a Russian emigrant suggests that the endeavor had to be furtive. It’s as if this emigrant needed an image of Christ held close to his body to give him hope. It’s as if Christ were smuggled into this country, under the radar of authorities, and Christ’s visage, with hand raised in blessing, continues to bless those in possession of the icon. An image of the Word of God—capital W—entered this country on the back of a Russian emigrant.

It’s a strikingly good image for the way in which God’s word—lowercase w—seems to come to us. Through the ages, God’s word has come to dozens of prophets, alighting on them, unbidden and unsolicited, by surprise, slipping into their lives. Some of those prophets were called to give the people of Israel a good talking to. Others were called to encourage and comfort when times were rough. But through the ages, in a great succession of unlikely individuals, God’s word was smuggled into human time, and then passed on down the ages.

It's no different with how God’s word comes to John the Baptist. St. Luke the Evangelist seems to be making such a point as he lays out a litany of worldly authorities exercising power in the time when John the Baptist received God’s word. In the reigns of Caesar and Pontius Pilate and Herod and Philip and Lysanias and Annas and Caiphas, who all hold either earthly or religious power, John’s name is dropped in by Luke as an absolute nobody. He’s simply the son of Zechariah. He has no territorial jurisdiction. He’s not even in a city of great magnitude. He's in the desert, the wilderness, a wild and dangerous place that people generally avoid.

Into this unruly place, to a man of no fame, God’s word slips into human time. It seeps into human history from beneath the eyes of those wielding worldly power and abusing it all the same. God’s word enters the human story in a particular place and time, while rulers hold sway who would later be responsible for the death of Jesus, the Word of God—capital W. This is how God works. This is how God’s word—lowercase w—enters human history. God may be outside human time, but God works in our time.

But there’s more. The word comes to John as a chosen prophet. He has no claim to fame, except that we know him as the cousin of Jesus. But when God’s word comes to John, his mission doesn’t remain local. The word spoken into human history isn’t trapped in John’s head or heart or in his hut in the wilderness. That word is carried by John, as if strapped to his back like an ancient icon, and it goes into the region around the Jordan.

In this ungovernable region, into which only brave souls would tread, there’s no territorial jurisdiction by a Caesar or Pilate or Herod or Philip or Lysanias or Annas or Caiphas. It’s the wilderness, wild and free. It’s the area around the Jordan, where God’s people made their final journey from their wilderness wanderings across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. It’s the region that will be the site of Jesus’s own baptism. It’s a land of profound freedom.

Into this place, God’s word is carried by John, close to his heart, and then announced to all. It’s a message that might first seem about condemnation, but it’s not. It’s about freedom. It’s a call to be freed from sin and to live in the newness of that freedom and life. And like an icon that was smuggled into freedom and passed on from person to person, God’s word would be handed down from John through the centuries to us.

It was a word that made it to Jesus’s ears and called him to baptism. It was a word realized and fulfilled perfectly in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. It’s the word that alighted on the apostles at Pentecost and drove them to the ends of the world. It’s a word that has been taken into every corner of history in every time and place, to those who were willing to receive it. It’s the word that gives life.

The paradox of this holy word is that it’s always available. It’s the most transparent and open declaration imaginable. It’s a word that liberates people from secrecy and releases them from bondage to oppression. And yet it’s so frequently stifled or overlooked or rejected. In the face of human sin, this word must emerge from beneath the smothering effects of earthly might and human deceitfulness. But it always finds its way to us, not to trick us but to woo us in love.

No valley of pain and sorrow is too deep to escape the balm of this word of God. No mountain and hill of human hubris is too high for God’s word to humble it. No crooked path of life’s surprises and disappointments is immune from the reach of God’s comforting word. No rough patch of challenges is left untouched by God’s word of grace. God’s word always finds its way in to call us to repentance, forgiveness, and new life. And just when we think that God’s word has been snuffed out or drowned out by our cares and preoccupations, it comes to us to bless us and invigorate us. We only need ears to hear it.

The advent of God’s word to John was merely a precursor of that great advent of God’s Word—capital W—into human time, when Light and Life were smuggled into history in a dark cave in Bethlehem. But that’s for a few weeks from now. For now, it’s enough to prepare and make our hearts ready, and to clear an open path for God’s word to reach our ears and our hearts. It’s enough to welcome this word and treasure it and strap it to our bodies, like an ancient icon making its way from one continent to another. It’s enough to let Christ be on the central panel of our lives, to gaze upon his image, and to let it invite us to grow more and more into his likeness. It’s enough to know that God’s word will always find us, call us to repentance, forgive us, and set us free. And it’s enough to carry this good news into every place we go, proclaiming the timeless word that nothing can destroy: all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Advent
December 8, 2024

Watching and Praying

Alexandre Schmid is the night watchman of Lausanne, Switzerland. Five nights a week, he climbs 153 steps to his perch at the top of the cathedral tower and announces boldly to the city that he’s there. C’est le guet! Il a sonné dix…Il a sonné dix!” “It’s the nightwatch! It’s 10 o’clock! It’s 10 o’clock!” The night watchman has been on guard in the cathedral tower since 1405, following a disastrous fire. The position was created as a means of security for a pre-industrial age, a proactive response to a crisis. In former times, the night watchman would survey the horizon for fires or invaders, serving as the first harbinger of danger. He would also announce the time of day and ring the cathedral bells.[1]

But this position is, of course, a modern-day anachronism. We now have technological means of sensing fires and alerting others to their danger. Bells in church towers can be run on automated timers—that is, if they’re working, unlike ours! Few cities are worried about bands of threatening invaders approaching, and if invaders did show up, they would be detected by national security agencies, not a night watchman on top of a tower.

For the citizens of Lausanne, the night watchman may be an anachronism, but the position isn’t pointless. The night watchman is an institution, a valued part of society. Perhaps the real value of the night watchman isn’t practical but emotional and symbolic. The voice of the watchman crying out each night at the same time, regardless of the weather or wars or a pandemic, is comforting. C’est le guet! Il a sonné dix…Il a sonné dix! Maybe it’s like falling asleep in a thunderstorm, where the patter of rain on the roof is soothing and one is assured that inside the warm, dry house, all will be just fine.

The night watchman seems to thread a needle between overreaction and apathy. He will, of course, sound a warning should there be real danger, but he must also be careful lest he sound a false alarm. Nor should he become distracted or disinterested. No one wants a night watchman sleeping on the job. The night watchman is the bedrock of stability, of reliability, of vigilant presence. C’est le guet! Il a sonné dix…Il a sonné dix! In feast or famine, the voice continues to cry out.

 The night watchman is a helpful metaphor for the ideal posture of Christian discipleship. The spiritual tradition has always invited us into a median place, where we must thread the needle between severe anxiety and chilling listlessness. A look at the contemporary Church isn’t always encouraging in this regard. We hear, more often than not, cries of alarm. The night watchmen of the Church are usually not simply announcing the hours with patient confidence; they’re frequently crying out in alarm. The Church is dying! The Church is dying! It’s the eleventh hour! Save yourself! Maybe this is simply an overcompensation for decades of malaise—the other extreme.

This alarmist desperation has hardly been helpful. For decades, this anxiety within the Church has fed a strange sort of neo-Pelagianism, in which we’re supposed to pull more and more rabbits out of hats so that the people will show up to church. We’re supposed to be endlessly creative, and perpetually novel. It seems that someone is always crying, fire, fire,!, and we must react. Those who are part of the supposed problem—that is, the ones who have left the Church—have been equally reactive. They’ve abandoned the pews because of one crisis after another, having lost faith in the ability of the Church to do anything good. The ones who flee and the ones who stay are equally reactive.

But on the other side, there are those who have failed to react. They’ve even failed to respond. It’s as if it doesn’t matter at all what the Church does. They stay away from the pews not because they’re angry but because they don’t care enough to be there. Some are in the pews or even in the pulpit, but they’re apathetic and content with the status quo. There could never be a fire of which to warn people. These night watchmen have neglected their duties. They’ve fallen asleep at the switch.

Rarely do we hear voices from within the Church threading the needle. What has happened to the night watchmen of the Church? What has happened to that predictable faithfulness of showing up both in feast and famine to watch with reliable confidence and hope, expecting redemption to draw nigh?

And yet, this is precisely what our Lord consistently calls us to do. Throughout the Gospels, he entreats us not to be anxious. He urges us not to worry about tomorrow or be consumed with fear over the drama or exact time of the end of all things. And in his final words before his passion—words that anchor this season of Advent—Jesus offers his disciples words of comfort: watch at all times. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. These are words of reassurance that are too often lost in hypervigilance. Watch at all times, Jesus says, and above all, pray. This is how we thread the needle. We remain alert. We stay vigilant. And more than anything else, we pray, and we pray, and we pray.

The most obvious solution to the Church’s current situation is the one that we’ve consistently neglected. When many of the Church’s watchmen are crying out in alarm and predicting fires that have never happened, taking time to pray seems like a waste of time. Anxiety has a strange ability to convince us that we should always respond with everything but prayer, regardless of whether it’s meaningful or not. But Jesus tells us that watching, waiting, and praying are the bedrock of how we live faithfully in the world as we await the Second Coming of our Lord.

Over four years ago when I came to this parish as your priest, many were crying out in alarm. I was told that it was a mistake to come here. I was told that if things didn’t change, the church would run out of money. I was told by others that in light of the parish’s drastic decline in recent years, I had more than my work cut out for me. And I admit that it was difficult for me to ignore those cries of alarm. I wrestled with demons as I tried to discern what God was calling me to do.

But I came here anyway, and I’m so glad that I did. Even after I arrived, the voices of alarm continued to sound. And frankly, there will always be voices of alarm in our midst, whether we’re trying to make decisions for this parish or for our family or for how to live faithfully in this world. But there’s one thing that we did in this parish despite the cries of fire! fire! We prayed. We tried as hard as we could to listen to God’s voice and to respond faithfully. We woke from a long sleep. But above all, we prayed. And your presence here is a testament to that prayer.

There’s a lesson in our parish’s own story for the wider Church. Watch and pray. Watch and pray because the strength we need to endure the difficulties of this life will only come from prayer. The Church needs her own watchmen to show up, constantly and faithfully, to announce, It’s the Church! Our redemption is drawing nigh! Our redemption is drawing nigh! Pray, listen, watch, and pray!

We’ll seem to some like an anachronism, rather like the watchman on the bell tower of the cathedral of Lausanne. What’s the point in announcing our presence? Who needs the Church when we have social service agencies and medical care and technology? But we show up anyway, despite any accusations of futility, and we watch and we pray. We’re needed less to predict the future or cry out in alarm than to give the Church and the world the comfort of Christ’s good news.

We’re the watchmen of the Church. Our Lord invites us to not to be anxious and not to worry about the future of our existence as his beloved Church. He encourages us to lift our heads when the cares of the world threaten to weigh us down. He tells us to be alert, to watch, and to wait, because our redemption is always drawing near. We’re to cry out when the Church and the world need to be redirected to good news. But our most important task is to show up and pray. Watch and pray. Watch and pray, always in hope and joyful expectation and with confidence. Look up. Raise your heads, because our redemption is drawing near.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday of Advent
December 1, 2024

[1] “The Watchman of Lausanne” by Michael Cervin (https://craftsmanship.net/the-watchman-of-lausanne/)

Redeeming the Question

Can you recall the last time someone said or did something that you were convinced had already been said or done? Is it déjà vu? Or is it simply something from our subconscious rising to the surface? This happens to me occasionally. Sometimes, I realize that an actual event had been foreshadowed earlier in a dream. At other times, a person says something that sounds so familiar that I’m certain they must have uttered those words before. But there are also times in which a word or image will trigger a memory from long before, even though it’s seemingly obscure. The glimpse of a word or prior experience, even in a dream, might be a way for us to make sense of the story of our lives. It might be God’s way of speaking to us.

I had a déjà vu moment when reading about Jesus’s judgment before Pilate in John’s Gospel. At first, I thought contentedly, Oh, I know this scene. What new thing could I possibly discover? And then, a few words lit up for me like a light bulb, and I thought to myself, I’ve heard those words before. But where?

I wonder if they lit up for you as well. Pilate is annoyed that the chief priests and Jewish leadership have handed Jesus over to him for judgment. It’s utterly inconvenient to him, because he doesn’t want to be bothered with this itinerant Jewish preacher. He would prefer to offend no one and to wash his hands of this whole mess. He interrogates Jesus, What have you done?

Did those words light up for you, too? Where have we heard those words before? Was it from the lips of an irritated parent scolding you for making a mess in the kitchen? Was it in the exasperation of a frowning teacher who was trying to determine why other students were tattling on you? Was it in the ire of your boss attempting to pick up the pieces from a project that you totally messed up? What have you done?

I don’t know about you, but it’s very difficult for me to hear those words and not attach a tone of disapproving judgment to them. It’s hard for me not to hear an implicit answer, I’ve done wrong. The words What have you done? seem meant for judgment. Is it because we can’t escape the punitiveness and unforgiveness of the world in which we live? What have you done? Those words make me squirm and feel guilty even if I’ve done nothing wrong. So, where have we heard those words before?

Well, in the garden, of course. Adam and Eve have been told quite clearly by God that they shouldn’t eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden of Eden, or they shall die. But they do it anyway. And when they do, they realize they’re naked. In a bit of sad comedy, they attempt to cover their nakedness with fig leaves, a futile project if there ever was one.

But then, they hear God walking in the garden, and they hide, for they’re ashamed. God knows that something is amiss when Adam and Eve recognize their nakedness. Then the blame game starts. Adam blames Eve. Then God asks Eve, What is this that you have done? And Eve blames the serpent.

There’s the question. That’s where we’ve heard it before. Ah ha! What have you done? Maybe we feel uncomfortable with that question because we read the story of Adam and Eve as the first example of sin. There’s no particular reason why we should assume that God’s voice carried an angry tone when he asked Eve what she’d done. But that’s what we assume, which probably says more about our image of God and about the lack of forgiveness in the Church and in our world.

But regardless of God’s tone when he asks that pointed question, it’s one that elicits embarrassed attempts to justify disobedience. God’s question is followed by Adam and Eve’s punishment and banishment from the garden. But it’s also followed by God’s tender gesture of love, when he makes clothes to cover up Adam and Eve’s nakedness. In hindsight, surely this was a gentle foreshadowing of the later moment of déjà vu. But stay tuned. . .

So, when Pilate asks Jesus, what have you done, how can we not recall that question in the garden? Here the new Adam stands before an earthly judge, but his answer is quite different from the old Adam’s blaming of Eve in the garden. Jesus’s response is a non-answer. My kingship is not of this world. If his kingdom were, a blame game might ensue. The chief priests are responsible for my arrest, Jesus could have said. My own disciple has betrayed me, he might have said. Even Peter has denied knowing me, he could have lamented. But he doesn’t. And here in Jesus’s non-answer to Pilate’s loaded question, we find the true meaning of Jesus’s kingdom.

What have you done? Jesus redeems that question from a cycle of shame and guilt. He turns it from a condemning question directed at the Lord of all creation into an opportunity to confess the true nature of his kingdom. His kingdom isn’t of this world. His kingdom isn’t a kingdom based on earthly power. His kingdom won’t be ushered in with military might, as the Jewish people had assumed about their Messiah. His kingdom isn’t in competition with kingdoms of this world, because it’s a heavenly kingdom and holds no space in finite time.

And yet, that kingdom must be realized here and is partially realized here. That kingdom is comprised of citizens—of you and me—who live in this world but as if we are not of the world. Jesus’s mission is to bear witness to the truth, and as his beloved, we’ll follow his voice, which speaks only the truth. We’ll put ourselves as close as we can to the one who is truth.

What have you done? In a moment of déjà vu, Jesus redeems the question for all of humanity. As the Word made flesh and perfect image of God in human time, Jesus has no wrong to confess. The question of judgment directed at him becomes a question of judgment directed back at the world. What have you done?

And what we’ve done over so many centuries is turn our backs on the One who came to save us. We’ve gone our own individual ways. We’ve forgotten God’s many blessings. We’ve followed other gods and made other idols. We’ve turned inwards on ourselves. We’ve tried to be anything but ourselves, a people God calls daily to grow into his likeness. We’ve hidden in the garden when God has called our names. And when we find ourselves naked before him, we’ve tried to foolishly cover up our vulnerability with all kinds of fig leaves.

What have you done? Jesus isn’t scolding us with that question. He isn’t condemning us. He’s inviting us to confess, first, our falsehoods and deception. And then, Jesus redeems the question by inviting us to confess what he has done for us. We’re his risen Body. We’re his disciples. What have you done? This question is an invitation to us to confess what Christ has done for us and for the world.

What has he done? He’s freed us from sin. He’s freed us from our earthly divisions so that we can exist together in unity and peace. He’s reconciled us to God the Father and to one another. He’s made us into one family here on earth and in heaven. He’s loved us even when we haven’t shown love to him and others. He’s given us life even when we’ve denied fullness of life to others. He has and does protect us as a Good Shepherd protects the sheep. He’s sought us out when we’ve been lost. He continues to speak to us and comfort us with the Holy Spirit. What has he done? So much! And we must proclaim this good news to the world through our own lives. What have you done? Jesus has redeemed the question so that we can turn from sin and live in the fullness of life he’s prepared for us.

Here in the Mass, before the altar of God, there’s nothing we can or should hide. Outside the walls of this church, it’s almost impossible to be fully ourselves. We’re either told we’re not enough or don’t have enough. We’re judged by our worst mistakes. And we know that if we lived as truthfully as God desires us to live, we would suffer, as an echo of our Lord’s suffering on the cross. In some corners of the world, we would indeed be killed.

But this is the house of God, the gate of heaven, and in this holy place where there are no secrets before God, we remember that Jesus has redeemed the question for us. What have you done? It’s asked not in condemnation but to elicit first our confession and then our turn of repentance to face the true life given us in Christ Jesus. And that life is found when our whole lives are an answer to what Christ has done for us. What have you done? Pilate asks Jesus. And although he makes no real answer, we as his disciples and risen Body make our own answer. What has he done? He has witnessed to the truth. He has called our names. He has loved us and set us free. Thanks be to God.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King
November 24, 2024

A Time to Sit Down and a Time to Rise Up

The minute someone calls you and asks whether you’re sitting down, you know that the news is either bad or extremely surprising. It isn’t wise to take shocking news standing up. I’ve seen people fall to the floor and crawl into a fetal position in response to something distressing. Your heart rate increases. Your head spins. You wonder whether you’ll pass out. Some news is best received sitting down.

After the past few emotionally charged weeks, it feels as if we all need to sit down for a bit. We need to sit down, breathe, and collect our thoughts. Perhaps we should talk a bit less and listen a lot more. It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on. The fact is that we’re all in for a lot of change in the near future, and none of us really knows what things will look like a year from now. There’s far too much prognostication in the media, which is less than helpful. Everyone has a theory about the past, and too many have predictions about the future. But regardless of where you stand politically and how you voted, we’re probably all a bit surprised about our current situation. And that should be deeply humbling. It’s time to sit down for a while.

It’s not so strange that Jesus and his disciples are sitting down on the Mount of Olives when he describes the demise of the Jerusalem Temple in graphic detail. The disciples have no sooner marveled at the majesty of the Temple than Jesus bursts their bubble. It will all be thrown down. Can you hear the disciples’ thoughts? Thanks, Jesus. Couldn’t I have had one more minute to marvel at this wonder of the world? But Jesus gives the disciples no time. The fall of the Temple was an unimaginable tragedy of epic proportions. The Temple was the center of the disciples’ spiritual universe, where God was believed to be most vividly present. It was the place of true worship, and so, to imagine that it would one day no longer exist is news that can only be taken sitting down.

After sitting down, the disciples want to know when all this will happen. This is the age-old question. When will these things take place? It’s a horrible thing to know that destruction is in the future but not to know when it will occur. The disciples can hardly wrap their heads around a future without the Jerusalem Temple.

But Jesus isn’t finished with the bad news. False prophets will arise. They’ll claim to be the Messiah, saying I am he, certainly a blasphemous riff on the Divine Name, I AM. They will deceive people. Horrible things will happen, and it will seem as if the world is about to end. But don’t be alarmed, Jesus says. Those things are only the beginning. Imagine the disciples’ thoughts once again. Well, thanks a million, Jesus. Do you have any good news for us? So, it's a good thing the disciples are sitting down. How could they not be alarmed? The world they know is about to end. Jesus’s words must have been small comfort to the disciples, whose heads were undoubtedly spinning.

I hope you’re sitting down these days when you read your daily news. To some, it seems as if the world as we know it is about to end. I’ve met more than one person in recent years who’s convinced the end times are upon us. Things don’t sound too far removed from Jesus’s description of the final days. Wars continue to rage. The Middle East is in crisis. The worldwide economy is uncertain. Our own national discourse is in shambles. Nations rage against nations. There’ve been earthquakes and hurricanes and wildfires, and there will be others as our planet’s climate becomes more unstable. I hope you’re sitting down, because Jesus says this is only the beginning.

But there’s something else about the posture of Jesus and his disciples as he breaks this astounding news to them. While it’s a good thing that they’re sitting down to process the shocking news, Jesus is sitting down with them because he’s teaching. It’s the classic posture of a teacher in ancient times. He sits and teaches. Jesus and the disciples are sitting directly across from Jerusalem. They can marvel at its majesty. They can hear its hustle and bustle. They can feel God’s presence in the holiest place on earth. Now, as they gaze upon its beauty and ponder its destruction, Jesus sits and teaches. And the disciples sit and listen.

Picking up from where today’s passage ends, Jesus will go on to describe the cataclysmic events that will take place. But the time of that final hour isn’t for us to know, despite years of arrogant and futile predictions. Knowing the future isn’t so important. What’s important is being in the present moment, sitting down, and listening to Christ, our Teacher.

I wish we’d kept reading beyond the end of today’s Gospel, because just a few verses later, Jesus says something remarkable. I believe his words are the good news we should receive today in this moment when our future seems so uncertain. Hear his words: “when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” Wow. It’s worth sitting down for that news, too.

At this very moment, the world outside the Church has very little good news to share. Very few people, regardless of their political stance, believe that things should or will stay the same. The state of our world seems unpredictable and beyond our control. Social media has compounded our tendency to talk too much. Much of what’s on the television and internet is hyperbolized beyond belief. In a supposedly more sophisticated time, our ability to speak and think with nuance has winnowed away. And because we’ve put too much trust in people and agendas and institutions outside the Church, we’re shattered when those golden calves let us down. But the truth is that they never could do what they initially promised, and so, it’s easy to see only disaster in our future. We need to sit down to cope with it.

So, we should sit down, stop talking and arguing, and listen. Now is a precious moment for the Church. If the Church is living into her vocation, she won’t be taught by the world but by God. She’ll sit down in the face of worldly predictions of disaster, perhaps stunned but also trusting that all isn’t lost. We’re in desperate need of teaching by God. Through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, the risen Christ is still our true Teacher. And it’s time for us to be his students.

At some point, as our nation and our world try to sort themselves out, we as Christ’s living body on earth will need to act. We don’t yet know what crises we’ll face. We don’t know what kind of trials we’ll have to weather. We don’t know in what ways the Church’s mettle will be tested. But we do know this: Jesus tells us not to be alarmed, even when our world seems to be falling apart. Jesus tells us not to be distracted by false prophets, charlatan messiahs, and dramatic naysayers. And Jesus tells us that in our hour of need, the Holy Spirit will show us exactly what to do. In the meantime, the Church needs to be strong, patient, and ready.

This is but the beginning of the birth-pangs, but don’t be alarmed. There are things we can do, and more than anything, perhaps that is comforting to us. We’ll continue to show up here, week after week, to be fed and nourished with the Body and Blood of the One who is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. We’ll come here when we’re devastated by bad news, and we’ll sit down to be taught by God. We’ll strive to model the Gospel values we profess for an aimless world. We’ll love each other with a love that transcends partisan politics. We’ll hold one another accountable to grow into spiritual maturity. We’ll say our prayers. We’ll be faithful. We’ll never give up on hope. Yes, now is the moment for the Church to listen and receive wisdom from God.

And then, when we are brought to trial and our faith is sorely tested, we’ll be ready. We’ll have been fortified by those moments of silence and listening, where we sat before the feet of our Teacher. In our hour of need, whenever it may occur and however trying it may be, the Holy Spirit will show us what to do. The Holy Spirit will give us the right words to say. The Holy Spirit will help us respond faithfully to a world that needs the Church.

But until then, we’ll sit down and pray and listen and wait. We won’t be alarmed. We’ll resist anxiety. We’ll be aware and prepared, but more than anything else, we’ll put all our hope and trust in the resurrection that’s at the heart of our faith. And because Jesus has risen from the dead in the face of death, we trust that one day, even though our world seems to be ending, we’ll no longer need to sit down. It will finally be our moment to rise up in hope.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
November 17, 2024

The Greatest Gift of All

At first glance, it might seem like today’s Gospel reading were chosen precisely for Commitment Sunday, when we make our pledge commitments of money to support ministry here at Good Shepherd. But it’s not so. I don’t choose the readings. At another glance, it might seem as if this reading were chosen to respond to a nation in the aftermath of a contentious election. But it’s not so. As I said, I don’t choose the readings. Today, God has given us a living word spoken to each of us at this moment in time. And we need it.

But beware. Our temptation on this day will be to sit across from the Temple treasury, watching the poor widow as she puts in all the money she has, and we might be inclined to watch and evaluate—indeed, to judge—her situation. Look at the poor widow, we could say. She’s alone, marginalized, forsaken, and there she is donating the last of her savings to an institution that will take her money despite her poverty. Poor widow, we will say. Poor, poor widow.

We could read Jesus’s words in this way. We could imagine some pity in his voice as he says, poor widow. We could sit and feel sorry for the widow and rage against injustice. But if we were not in this church today, ready with our pledge cards to place in the collection plate, we could be sitting across the street, watching everyone enter the church. Poor, poor people, some might say. They’re giving everything they can to the Church, a Church that throughout history and even today in some quarters, has caused great harm. We could take this stance. But I don’t think we should.

We could choose to take the cynical view, as some commentators have, that the story of the widow’s mite is nothing more than an indictment of systems of power and the exploitation of the vulnerable. And while there could be some truth in that view, we can read this story as something more, too. This widow is poor, but she’s not poor. She powerful. She’s a walking example of hope.

I’m quite tempted to give her a name. There are far too many women in the Bible that have no names. But oddly, the case of this poor widow is one in which I think she is best left unnamed because it highlights even more vividly her marginal state. And to leave her unnamed means that every single one of us can be right there with her, putting all that we have and are into the coffers of the treasury.

Although we know the Temple would later be tragically destroyed, almost certainly the poor widow doesn’t know what will happen. So, here she is donating all she has to something that will soon be gone. We don’t know if the widow thinks of herself as exploited. All we know—and frankly, all that really matters—is that she still puts in all the money she has. She doesn’t just put in her meager store of money. She puts in her whole life. Her money isn’t just money. It represents everything she is. It symbolizes her whole self.

I suppose the widow could have put something else into the coffers. Metaphorically, she could have put in anger or resentment at her situation. She could have put in harsh words for the systems of the world that have taken advantage of her plight. But she doesn’t. She puts in her whole living, no matter how foolish it seems. Surely this must mean that she has incredible hope. She must hope in God’s power to right wrongs. She must believe that corruption won’t be the final word. Even if the Temple is one day demolished, and even if religious structures need reform, her financial gift isn’t a waste. Precisely because of her poverty, she’s able to put in an abundance of hope.

Her gift, we know, makes little sound in the coffers of the treasury. Others give in a flamboyant way that probably doesn’t hurt their pocketbooks too much. Their large coins ring and clang in the coffers. But the widow’s gift hardly makes a clink even though it’s the greatest gift of all. It’s the greatest gift because it's offered even though giving seems futile. In desperate times, hope can ring hollow or make hardly a sound. And yet, Jesus tells us that it’s the greatest gift of all.

Many who aren’t here in this church with us might question why we are here. They might question our gifts. Why are we giving not only our money but our whole selves to the Church as it seems to wither on the vine? Why are we putting all our trust in the Church when the world around us seems to be falling apart? What difference can our witness make in the face of so much evil? How can a few meager coins make such a difference?

But today, the risen Christ, speaking to us by the power of the Holy Spirit through God’s living word, sits across from the treasury, pointing out the poor widow to us, not out of pity and condescension, but to instruct us to go to her just as he ultimately went to the depths of hell to save us all. Get up from your seat of judgment, removed from this woman, and go stand with her, Jesus says. The risen Christ is exhorting us to move from a place of privileged pity of the poor to accept and embrace our own poverty. Jesus is urging us to go and stand with the woman and to dig deep into our hearts to face our own emptiness. Jesus has a call for the Church today, in a moment when some are hurting and some are rejoicing. Jesus is asking us as the Church to give not out of our abundance, which is the prerogative of only some, but to give out of our poverty, which is the condition of us all.

This kind of profuse, even reckless, giving is qualitatively different from what we see around us. This kind of giving happens not from a place of power or fear. It’s not giving to gain something. It’s not giving to compensate for those who can’t give as much. It’s not giving to assuage our guilt. It’s not giving even to expect specific results. It’s a kind of giving that can only come when we stand with and as the poor rather than over and against them.

This kind of giving believes that small things matter. This kind of giving trusts that even in the face of overwhelming anxiety in a divided nation, all hope isn’t lost. This kind of giving believes that even a Church supposedly in decline can be used by God to bring justice and righteousness back to the world when governments can’t or won’t.

In this fraught moment, the Devil, eerily known as the Adversary and Deceiver, is betting that we will be overcome with despair and that we’ll see former icons of trust as ones doomed to destruction. We could say this about our government. We could say this about the Church. But I don’t think we should. The Devil is also betting that our gifts will seem too small, like two copper coins in a vast treasury box. The Devil is also taking a gamble on our tendency to turn on one another in judgment. But Jesus has encouraged us not to pity those who give out of hope in desperate times. Jesus is asking us to stand right with them and look within ourselves to find the hope that lies dormant there.

Each of us must reach down as deep as we can into our hearts and find rock bottom. We must find those places of despair or hopelessness or material poverty or spiritual poverty or fear or anxiety, and then we must give from out of that poverty. We will not give more fear and anxiety or hopelessness or contented pride or money from our abundance. We must give our whole lives, in hope, out of our poverty.

We must put our lives on the line to stand for the Gospel values that we profess as part of our faith. We must throw everything we have and are into standing with those who have no one to stand up for them. We must stand on the same level plain with the poor widow and throw every ounce of hope into something that would otherwise appear useless and futile, because in such a time as this, our shared poverty is what unites us.

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, that poor widow is us. She has no name because she is us, and we are her. She holds nothing back, and neither should we. Every meager effort that we can make is worth far more than anything we give out of our abundance.

So, beloved, come with me. Let’s stop our judging and go stand with the widow. Let’s take a reckless chance on hope. Let’s give freely and generously of a currency that seems so meager these days. Let’s give our whole lives to selfless love, justice, righteousness, and peace. Jesus is asking us, what will you give? And when we’ve reached down into the emptiest place of our souls, we’ll find exactly what we need to give with abandon. And although it may make the faintest of sounds as we throw it into the coffers, it’s the greatest gift of all. 

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 10, 2024

Remember

Have you ever had one of those dreams where something marvelous is about to happen, where you can just about touch it and realize it, and then suddenly the alarm goes off? You’ve won the Booker Prize or the piano concerto competition. You’re walking towards the awards platform with a huge smile on your face, and then, the alarm goes off. It's a bit like driving hours and hours in your car to Toronto for a much-needed vacation, arriving at Lake Ontario, spying the city skyline, and then realizing that you must drive another two hours around the lake to get to your destination. The goal is so close you can smell it, but you’re not quite there yet.

Can you imagine what it would have been like for Moses on Mount Nebo looking over into the Promised Land? For forty long years, he led an ornery group of people from Egypt through the wilderness to this mountain, only to die there and never enter the land himself. Scripture tells us that somehow Moses didn’t keep faith with God in the wilderness as he shepherded the Israelites into freedom. Was he so frustrated with that recalcitrant band of people that he doubted if God could bring them to the Promised Land? We don’t know, but we do know that Moses wasn’t allowed to enter the Promised Land.

Now, on the verge of the Promised Land, knowing he won’t enter, Moses gives instructions to the people he’s led all these years in the wilderness. Surely, some of them were only the ancestors of the original lot that crossed the Red Sea into freedom. So many had died on the way. How many, I wonder, died doubting whether God’s people would ever reach their destination? But finally, the remaining lot of travelers are on the verge of seeing the land of which they had long dreamed, and Moses comforts them. Remember, Moses says, if indirectly, all that your God has done for you. Remember all those things. Never forget them. And you will be fine. If you remember these things, you’ll prosper and flourish. Your God is with you.

There’s something about keeping our eyes on the prize that might motivate good behavior. But Moses knows that once the people arrive at their destination, they’ll forget. When things are going well, we usually forget to remember and be thankful. On Mount Nebo, Moses offers a humility check to the people. Remember what God has done for you, even in the best of times. Never take it for granted. Tell it to your children and to their children’s children. Never forget. They can see the Promised Land. They can almost taste its milk and honey. They’re on the border. They aren’t very far from realizing their dream. . .

Jesus and the scribe are also on a border, looking into the future. Jesus is staring his passion and death and resurrection in the face, now that he’s entered Jerusalem for the final time in triumph. The scribe approaches Jesus after he’s weathered a series of intense questionings by the chief priests, scribes, and elders. And when this scribe asks Jesus about the greatest commandment, Jesus has one eye on glory and one eye on the uncertain past, when Moses stood on Mount Nebo.

Remember, Jesus says. Remember that great commandment, which Moses gave to the people so long ago, but which everyone seems to have forgotten again. Love God. Also, love yourself, and love your  neighbor. There’s nothing more important than this. If you remember one thing, remember this. You’re not far from the kingdom of God. Can’t you taste its milk and honey? Can’t you see its glory?

Here we, too, are on a border. At every Mass, it’s as if we’re on Mount Nebo with Moses and the people, looking over into the Promised Land. It’s so close we can almost touch it. Our taste buds water as we think of the milk and honey in our future. They’re so pleasing and delectable and sweet.

But perhaps this day, there’s a bitter taste that has crept into our mouths. It’s as if we’ve awoken from a bad dream. We thought we were on the verge of the Promised Land, but the alarm has gone off and we are face-to-face with reality. And while the reality might seem unprecedented, it’s really a variation on all those obstacles that confronted the people of God in their wilderness journey so many years ago.

An intractable roadblock is in the way of our journey, and we don’t know what to do. For the Israelites, they were hungry and couldn’t find food. They grumbled at Moses and God. They doubted. They gave up hope. And then they were thirsty because they had traveled for so long, and the desert was dry. And they complained again, and they blamed God. They made a golden calf because they became impatient waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain. Every time they turned around, something seemed to be in the way.

We must remember their story in relation to ours. Remember that God provided manna in the desert. Remember that God told Moses to strike the rock with his staff to provide water for the people. Remember that God forgave them and gave them the Ten Commandments again after they’d betrayed him. Remember that God never forsook his people. And he will not forsake us either.

But all around us, there’s a searing collective amnesia. We’ve forgotten what it’s like to work with one another rather than against one another. We’ve forgotten what it’s like to welcome the stranger into our midst. We’ve forgotten what it’s like to care for more than number one. We’re standing on a border, looking into a future that could be wonderful again. We can almost taste the milk and honey, but sin is in the way. We can see that it’s nothing new under the sun. Proud stubbornness. Willful obstinacy. Closed-minded tribalism. Rampant violence. Hateful speech. They’re back, and we seem helpless before them. Has God forsaken us? Will we die in the wilderness without ever seeing the Promised Land again?

So, like the scribe coming to Jesus amid conflict and argumentative rancor, we come to Jesus this day and ask, we plead before God’s altar, which commandment is the first of all? And the risen Christ says, don’t you remember? Remember now with me. Love God. Love self. Love neighbor. Nothing is more important than this. And if we realize that, we won’t be far from the kingdom of God.

And what a gift this is, because remembering is something we can do. It’s an act of the will, and it should arouse our hope. So, we remember. We remember that our ancestors in faith saw themselves as part of the human family. They provided hospitality for the stranger. They didn’t reap the harvest of their lands to the edges; they left what was on the border for the needy. We remember that when our ancestors in faith were slaves in Egypt, Pharaoh’s cruel oppression couldn’t withstand God’s compassionate liberation. We remember that when our forebears in faith were weeping in Babylon with no song to sing, God brought them back to their native land to sing once again. We remember that when humanity had forgotten to remember once again, God sent his only Son to embody in human flesh the meaning of the great commandment that we should never forget. Love God. Love self. Love neighbor. It’s one commandment. Remember it, and you won’t be far from the kingdom of God.

At this moment in time, it’s almost painful to remember. The kingdom of God seems at once so near and yet so far away that we’re prone to lose hope. The solution seems so simple. Love God. Love self. Love neighbor. And yet, we know it’s so very difficult.

It's so hard to maintain our faith during times like these. But the only way to conquer despair is to regain hope by remembering. Remember that great commandment that the Lord God gave us so long ago. Here, on the border, as we can smell the milk and honey of that Promised Land, remember what God has told us in Jesus. Love God. Love self. Love neighbor. Teach this to your children. Talk about it always in your house and outside your house. Remember it before bed and when you rise in the morning. Bind these beautiful words on your person by living them out. Write them on the walls of your homes and on your doorposts. Write them on your lives. Never forget them. And then remember, that although the kingdom of God at times seems so very far away, if we hope and pray and, above all, love as Jesus tells us, we’re not so very far from the kingdom of God. It’s just on the other side.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
November 3, 2024

Come and See

Grief is an elusive emotion. When we grieve, we never know when the tears might come. We can never really predict what might open the floodgates of our eyes. I recall attending the Requiem Mass of a friend some years ago. He was a wonderful singer in my spouse’s church choir, and he died of cancer when he was far too young. He was always the life of the party, always smiling, always eliciting laughs with his buoyant humor. He was a gem of a person.

At his Requiem, the tears came at an unexpected moment. The choir was singing Gabriel Fauré’s setting of the Requiem Mass, which we’ll hear tomorrow. And my spouse, eyes full of tears, leaned over to me and explained that our friend had auditioned for his choir with that very piece. And the floodgates of my eyes opened.

The unspoken thought was this isn’t the way it was supposed be. A man who was only in his fifties, gifted in so many ways and loved by so many, shouldn’t be dead. We shouldn’t have been there at his funeral so soon, listening to a piece of music that he’d once sung so beautifully. A portion of the Requiem Mass in live time brought back a poignant memory of that same Mass sung in an audition years ago. And the tears came.

There’s a moment like this in John’s Gospel when the tears come for Jesus. It’s a striking moment because nowhere else in the Gospels do we read that Jesus weeps. It’s a profound reminder of our Lord sharing a human emotion that we all know so well. But what is it that elicits Jesus’s tears? Why does he cry at this moment rather than before? Remember that he had known for several days that Lazarus was ill, and he delayed his departure for Bethany. So, why does he cry when he finally arrives? What opens the floodgates of Jesus’s eyes?

Three words do: come and see. Have you heard these words before? They’re the words Jesus himself says to those first disciples who decide to follow him. Rabbi, where are you staying? Come and see, Jesus says. And when Philip finds Nathanael and tells him that he has found the Messiah, and when Nathanael crudely asks whether anything good can come out of Nazareth, Philip says, Come and see. And when the Samaritan woman at the well has encountered the compassionate love of Jesus and runs into the city to tell others about him, she says, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Come and see.

Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus weeps at these words? It’s not the way things are supposed to be. When Jesus asks where they have laid Lazarus’s dead body, they invite him to come and see. No, this isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Jesus’s beautiful words have been stolen by death. Come and see is supposed to be the invitation to life. Come and see the one who is life. Come and see the one who is the light of the world. Come and see the one who knows all his sheep by name and whose voice the sheep will follow away from death. Come and see the one who knows everything about us and gives his life to draw the whole world to the Father. Come and see the one who is the way, the truth, and the life. Come and see the one who is the bread of life and who feeds us with life. Come and see.

But in Bethany, Jesus is invited to come and see death. It’s not the way things are supposed to be. In this cruel distortion of circumstances and dastardly coopting of words, the One who has come to bring life to the world must go and stare death in the face. Death has stolen his words. This isn’t the way things are supposed to be.

We know this perverse invitation, too. We’re not supposed to have to watch our loved ones suffer or die. We’re not supposed to watch the violence of death take them away from us. We’re not supposed to be taunted with a mocking invitation, come and see, come and see the violence, the mass shootings, the hateful political rhetoric, the loss of innocence in our children, the betrayals of the Church, the never-ending war in the Middle East, the starving faces of the poor. But this, alas, is the perpetual summons as we live here and now in this broken, sinful world.

It’s not the way things are supposed to be. So, on All Saints’ Day, for a time, the veil between this world and the next parts briefly, especially in this Eucharistic feast, and another invitation is issued from beyond the veil by the beloved saints in Christ, who are in the nearer presence of God. Come and see, that there’s something else. Come and see that the heart of God, seen vividly in Jesus’s presence before Lazarus’s tomb, breaks at the reality of death. Death and all its enslaving powers are impostors. Even though we will die one day, we’re, nevertheless, made for life. And on this day, the saints call us to life. Come and see.

In the sign performed by Jesus at Lazarus’s tomb, Lazarus is raised, not resurrected. He will one day die again, but for a moment, Jesus parts the veil between earth and heaven and shows how things should be. Lazarus, come out! Walk out of your tomb. Be set free from the grip of death, which is not how things are supposed to be. And to his friends, Jesus says, Unbind him and let him go. Let him cross the Red Sea. Let him walk from death to life. Let him come and see life itself. Let him walk towards the resurrection and the life.

Tonight, we don’t run from death. Despite the world’s attempts to the contrary, we can’t escape it. Tonight, we acknowledge that another invitation greets us with a truth that death can’t take away. The saints are witnesses to this. They have journeyed through the gates of death. They have experienced its ugliness. And yet, they are still alive—truly alive—at this very moment, rejoicing and singing and worshiping with us.

They beckon to us from the nearer presence of God. Come and see that all pain and suffering are gone. Come and see that true life is nothing but ceaseless worship. Come and see that what seems like death in the present–all the world’s troubles, the searing divisions among us, the hatred, the egregious individualism–all those are put to rest in heaven, where it’s unceasing, united praise. Come and see. Unbind yourself and be set free.

So, beloved in Christ, come and see. Come with me to the altar. Come with me and raise your voices in song with the great cloud of witnesses who sing forever. Unbind yourself and let go of all that is holding you back from life. And should your eyes shed a tear, know that something far greater awaits us, and that in our true home, God will wipe every tear from our eyes.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
All Saints’ Day
November 1, 2024

Cross-Tinted Glasses

Recently, I was thinking of my late PawPaw. Maybe it’s because All Souls’ Day is approaching, but I also thought of him when reading about Bartimaeus. PawPaw had a way of seeing life that I always admired. My maternal grandfather grew up dirt poor in south central Louisiana. Cajun French was his first language, and he was no stranger to tragedy and life’s difficulties. At the height of the Great Depression, his father took his own life when PawPaw was just fourteen years old, and from then on, he had to pull himself up by his bootstraps and carry on. When you’ve reached rock bottom, there’s only one place to go other than death, and that’s up.

PawPaw worked hard on a farm even while attending school. Even as a teenager, he had a role to play in the survival of his family, and there was no question that they were going to survive. Eventually, PawPaw moved to southeast Texas, where I grew up, to start a new life and find a career as a carpenter in the oil refinery business. He was a brilliant carpenter. He could make beautiful things out of any scrap of wood.

I didn’t know much about my PawPaw’s sad childhood until later in life, which said a lot about him. He never complained about his life. He never wallowed in self-pity. He just got on with things, because I think he loved life. Watching him cook and build everything from cabinets to houses, I would never have known how much despair my grandpa must have had to rise above to survive. PawPaw didn’t just have a natural inclination to work hard; I think he had a profound sense of faith in God. He saw possibility where others would have seen only impossibility.

I’m convinced that PawPaw’s belief in what was possible was both the direct result of his faith in God and his experience with poverty. The two go together. He had a favorite saying to redirect discouragement or despair. If someone started to fret or worry (as my grandmother was wont to do), or if something wasn’t going your way, he’d say, “don’t fuss; call Gus.” Gus was his father’s name. I’m not really sure what that saying meant, but I understood the “don’t fuss” part.

PawPaw was generous. He would fix things for widows who had no one to help them. He built the house I grew up in. And since he lived next door to us, he was constantly cooking up Cajun dishes and bringing them next door for us to enjoy: crab stew, etouffee, and beignets. But given his background, he would also make dishes out of things we wouldn’t normally want to touch. He would bring over gamey venison sausage and one time, a turkey stew, with a note left on it that said, “Don’t knock it until you try it.” He knew that my family and I would wrinkle our noses and try to dump the food down the drain. I’m sure he knew that was just our privileged perspective, not having lived through a depression or through the challenges he had, where you simply didn’t throw out food.

I thought of my PawPaw when reading about blind Bartimaeus because my PawPaw had a way of seeing things. I don’t think my PawPaw saw the world from a perspective of scarcity. I think he saw abundance where most of us would have been afraid of scarcity. I don’t think PawPaw really complained all that much because growing up on the poverty line in south central Louisiana, he didn’t have time to complain. His own personal story and his own faith in God, allowed him to see as others couldn’t see. And in hindsight, that’s a gift to me.

Of course, the story of blind Bartimaeus is all about seeing. But Mark the evangelist, for all his terse and breathless style of storytelling, isn’t content simply to present Bartimaeus as a raw example of Jesus’s power to heal. Jesus does heal Bartimaeus, but in typical Markan fashion, there’s irony at work, too. Bartimaeus is healed on the verge of Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem, the final stretch of his earthly life. Bartimaeus is healed as one on the margins. Bartimaeus not only regains his physical sight; he sees spiritually in a way that most people in the Gospel have been incapable of until this point.

Bartimaeus pleads for Jesus’s mercy after James and John have arrogantly asked for seats of glory in the kingdom. It’s precisely because Bartimaeus is poor and blind and on the margins—literally sitting by the roadside—that he can see in a way no one else can see, just like my PawPaw could see possibilities in a life that would seem limited and impoverished to others.

Bartimaeus is the one that no one else could see or would want to see. His is the voice that is silenced by the crowd because he’s a mere distraction to Jesus’s journey forward. His is the voice of so many in our own day who cry out, although most people don’t hear them. His is the voice of those we speak over because they challenge our comfort or distract us from pursuing greatness. His is the voice of the refugee who sees the potential for freedom in this nation—in a way that we might not—but who faces potential deportation. His is the voice of the store clerk who barely receives minimum wage and works three jobs but always has a smile for you because she doesn’t just look at you; she sees you. Bartimaeus sees in a way that many in his own world can’t see.

And it’s for him that Jesus stops dead in his tracks. It’s this blind beggar who’s literally on the margins who finally sees in the way that Jesus has been inviting everyone to see. Bartimaeus sees not with rose-tinted glasses of pollyannish optimism but with cross-tinted glasses of hope. A beggar by the roadside has no choice but to see everything through the lens of the cross, even if the cross is still in the future.

Finally, it all makes sense! All Jesus’s talk about dying to self and about suffering and self-denial and about the first being last and the last being first finally makes sense, and we learn it from the faith of a blind beggar sitting by the roadside. Following Jesus isn’t about a willing acquisition of suffering. It’s about looking up at the world from the lowest vantage point imaginable. It’s about kneeling at the foot of the cross and looking up at our Savior there, suffering so that we might live. It’s about seeing him look at you and really seeing you and also reaching his arms out wide to embrace the entire world and not just you. It’s about seeing all of creation through cross-tinted glasses.

It's no wonder that when we go to the poor, we find Christ. And when each of us recognizes our own poverty, we can’t help but see differently. Because each of us is poor, no matter how much we wish to stifle that thought. We’re all poor in different ways, but being poor, whether materially or spiritually, is one way in which we find our shared humanity.

The more we run away from the poor, the more we run away from our truest selves, and the more we’ll try to look at the world with rose-tinted glasses rather than with cross-tinted glasses. But everything changes when we see through the lens of the cross. We see gratitude rather than disappointment. We see failures as opportunities for spiritual maturity. We see scraggly scraps of wood as a beautiful house for someone. We see money not as something to hoard but as something to give. We see our own parish’s struggles as yet another opportunity to notice where God is redirecting our gaze to do the work he’s called us to do.

When we see with cross-tinted glasses, we learn that loss and poverty aren’t so much misfortune to be avoided but the very heart of the Gospel’s good news. It’s out of death that life comes. It’s on the cross that we find glory. It’s on the margins that we find our Lord, redirecting our gaze to the manifold possibilities for resurrection life in our midst.

I can’t imagine my PawPaw without his sad and difficult past, even while I wouldn’t wish that past on anyone. But because of that past, he could see with cross-tinted glasses in a way that I couldn’t as a child who had everything I needed and was privileged in so many ways.

And then there’s Bartimaeus, a visible sign—a sacramental one, if you will—that believing is seeing. Bartimaeus shows us how to see the world through cross-tinted glasses. Seeing through cross-tinted glasses is seeing through the eyes of faith that even when our voice is silenced, God always hears us and sees us. Seeing through cross-tinted glasses is trusting that when everything seems to have fallen apart, God can and will build something new.

In every moment of our lives, in our prayer and in our work and in our play, the risen Christ asks us, What do you want me to do for you? And of all the things we can ask of him, there’s yet one thing that we all need. And so, with Bartimaeus, we ask him, “Master, let me receive my sight.” And we jump up from our place of despair, we leave everything we have behind, and we follow him, all the way to the cross, and then all the way to glory.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
October 27, 2024

On the Way to the Kingdom

Over the summer, I was visiting my twin nephews, and they asked me to play the card game “Go Fish” with them, which I hadn’t played in decades. My nephews are five years old, so they were learning the game in stages. And they were in the intermediate stage, which meant that they were playing with modified rules.

We each had our distribution of cards, but instead of concealing them from the other players, we put them down so we could see each other’s cards. As I said, my nephews were gradually learning to play the game as adults would. If you recall, in “Go Fish,” you ask someone whether they have a certain type of card in their pile so that you can collect all the cards of that type, something known as a “book.” If the other players don’t have the type of card you want, you must “go fish” from the center pile, drawing a card and hoping it might be what you need. Once all the cards in the center pile are gone, the player with the most “books” wins. In my nephews’ version of the game, the books were all animals of various sorts: lions, elephants, monkeys, octopuses.

Now, my nephews are incredibly sweet and kind, and they have big hearts. They’re unusually effusive in how they show that love to others. Watching them play and interact with the world around them, your heart aches for the days of such innocence. But as they are getting older, they’re also beginning to learn what the world outside their loving home is like. And it’s, sadly, not the game they’re used to.

Much to my fascination, our seemingly low-risk game of “Go Fish” was a visible marker of my nephews’ transition from loving innocence to survival in a high-stakes world. At some point in the game, I looked at my nephew Mack’s cards and realized that I wanted to acquire another octopus. This would have put me closer to earning the book I needed to win. You see, I was definitely playing to win, but I don’t think that Mack fully understood that. I’m not entirely sure that he was playing to win, or at least not in the way that I was.

“Mack, I said, do you have an octopus?” I looked at him with an impish grin. And his face fell, and then he began to cry. “But I want the purple octopus.” There was a dilemma. I only see my nephews about twice a year. I don’t have quite enough uncle collateral to compete with tears. So, I caved. I gave in and let him keep the purple octopus, and I asked for another animal.

A bit later, in the kitchen with my sister-in-law, I explained what had happened. “Well,” she said, “at some point, he needs to learn that he can’t always win.” She was right. But I still wasn’t willing to risk all my uncle collateral on that game of “Go Fish.” In his beautiful childish innocence, my nephew didn’t yet understand how adults play games. For him, the game was more about having the kinds of cards he wanted, especially the ones with purple octopuses on them. For me, with several decades of trying to survive in a jaded world of competition, I was playing the game to win.

The disciples James and John are used to that same world of competition. They’re in a place of spiritual transition when they come to Jesus and ask him to grant them whatever they want. It’s a bold request, and it’s also full of spiritual naivete at best and spiritual ignorance at worst. Remember that they’re on a journey, and this is significant. For some time now, they’ve been walking along the way with Jesus, both literally on the way to Jerusalem and metaphorically towards the cross. And for the third time, Jesus announces his future passion and suffering, and yet one more time, the disciples opt for selective hearing and change the subject. The truth is that they don’t want to recognize that they must suffer, too, and give things up to follow Jesus, because doing those things is the only way to follow him in an unjust world where you can’t play the game and always retain your purple octopuses. Jesus says he must suffer and die and be raised on the third day, and the disciples respond with the equivalent of “isn’t it a beautiful day? Did you enjoy your breakfast this morning?”

James and John, and all the other disciples, are spiritually in transition. They’ve made a discernible commitment to follow Jesus by leaving their former lives and even their families, but they still don’t want to own up to what the ultimate cost of discipleship will be. They think they’ve paid the cost already, but it’s only just begun.

Jesus, they say, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Their habitual language is that of the world, of competition and of quests for success, status, and rank. They’re beginning to learn that it’s no small feat to live as Jesus’s disciples in a world oriented around domination, power, and wealth.

And so, Jesus can only speak to them in the language of the world in which they live. The disciples are struggling with how to hold onto the bliss of being close to Jesus in discipleship while living in a hard, cruel world that will eventually kill him and some of them. Jesus must translate the way of discipleship through the terms of this world, the world in which the disciples and we must inevitably live.

It's a world in which everyone is assigned a number, and following Jesus in a world of inequity and injustice will mean going to the back of the line. Following Jesus in a cut-throat world will mean sacrificing greatness and success for faithfulness and humble service. Following Jesus in an unmerciful world will mean giving up our individualism for the sake of the benefit of all.

This is our dilemma, too. We, like those early disciples, want to have our cake and eat it, too. We want glory without the cross. We want baptism without the commitment. We want union with Jesus without unity with others. We want salvation without too much change in our lives. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? We are! is our hasty reply, but we struggle to live with one foot in the kingdom of God, where a game is just a game, and the other foot in this world, where games are about fighting your way to the top.

In this earthly life, we’re always in via, on the way, with Jesus. We must go back and forth between speaking that primal language of love where we catch glimpses of the unity that God desires for us and the harsh language of this world which ranks us from greatest to least. And this is partly why Jesus’s words sound so harsh. It sounds as if Jesus is speaking the language of the world when he says, “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” It sounds as if he’s ranking everyone. But it only sounds that way to those of us who live in this world because that’s the way our world speaks.

In a world of competition, to give up success sounds like failure. In a world oriented around money, to give sacrificially seems like financial foolishness. In a world full of violence, to give one’s life for another seems like nothing but stark, cold death. But our true native language is the language of the kingdom of God, which we can only glimpses in fits and starts in this life. And in that language, a game doesn’t need to be played to win. A game can be played simply to delight in purple octopuses, which God will freely give. In that kingdom, there’s no competition. There’s simply wonder and love.

Jesus came to part the veil and show us what lies on the other side, where there’s no sorrow or sighing. There’s only life and joy and delight. It’s a perpetual feast. It’s the hope of glory. For now, though, we’re left with our earthly games and the language of this world. And we must live in this world as faithfully as we can while hanging onto the beauty of that glorious kingdom of which Jesus has given us a foretaste. We savor purple octopuses when we find them. And we also know that we must give them up sometimes because in this life, things are imperfect and unfair.

We also know that when Jesus gives us words that seem harsh and difficult, we must translate them from this world’s language into the language of the kingdom of God. And in that kingdom, our earthly gain is heavenly loss. But our earthly loss is our heavenly gain. In God’s kingdom, sharing in the cup of Christ’s Blood is a death to our sinful ways, but it’s also a feasting on the joy of forgiveness and love that reign eternally in heaven. In that kingdom, our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection is a painful relinquishment of our self-centeredness, but it's also a rising to a new shared life of glory. In this life’s journey, we might be last in line and slave of all, but in the kingdom of God, there are no lines and no slaves but only fellowship and rejoicing. We can simply delight in purple octopuses. And in that life, we will live forever.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
October 20, 2024

The Language of Love

During the pandemic, we became more adept at communicating with our eyes. At first, with masks covering part of our faces, it was difficult to tell whether the cashier at the grocery store was angry or delighted that you just smacked eighty-five food items down on the conveyor belt—unless you paid attention to the cashier’s eyes. If the eyebrows were slightly raised, she might be smiling. If they were furrowed and scrunched up, he might have been annoyed. Those masks, annoying as they may have been, pressed us to look beyond mouths and noses for emotional clues.

Married couples understand eye communication, don’t they? If you’ve been together long enough, you don’t need words to communicate; you can use your eyes. You can read the worry in your spouse’s eyes when no one else is likely to notice. You’ll observe the twinkle of amusement at a dinner party, although it’s disguised to everyone else at the table. You’ll see your beloved’s sadness and joy there, too, based on the circumstances. And even when it’s just the two of you, words are often unnecessary. A look can convey more than a thousand words.

Jesus says everything with just one look at the man with many possessions who kneels before him. It’s a striking and rare example in Scripture in which we’re invited to look into Jesus’s eyes. What was the color of his eyes? What was the shape of his mouth? What intangible, ineffable glint was present in his eyes as he looked upon the man before him? What did Jesus see in that man that Scriptural details don’t tell us? Jesus’s look, we could say, was worth more than a thousand words. His look was worth everything.

In Jesus’s long, loving look there must have been such delight in the man as a child of God. Jesus could see past his obsequiousness in kneeling before him and calling him “good teacher.” Jesus would have seen the man’s earnest desire to find salvation. Jesus would have noticed the man’s wealth on display in his clothing, for he had many possessions. Jesus would have observed the man’s diligence in keeping the commandments and in trying to be good. Surely, this faithfulness would have evinced a sparkle of joy in Jesus’s eyes.

But complicating that hint of pleasure, there would also have been some sorrow and sadness in Jesus’s long, loving look. He must have known that something was lacking in that man, and I suppose his heart broke for him. Jesus would have understood how difficult it would be for this man to give up the one thing that had shaped his identity until this point: his possessions. Jesus would have looked upon the man lovingly and yet with pity, realizing that it would be nearly impossible for him to speak the language of love rather than the language of transaction.

That’s the world in which the man lives. It’s the world in which we live, too. We live in the world of transaction, and we have become so fluent in its language for so long that to speak another language is like a middle-ager trying to learn a foreign language. It’s almost impossible on our own terms. Oh, that we could go back in time and be like a little child, the one whom Jesus embraces just before encountering the man with many things. Oh, that we could learn the language of love again.

The man sees Jesus’s long, loving look at him, but perhaps he only sees it as judgment. He certainly sees it as loss, because Jesus’s long, loving look is immediately followed by a crushing blow to the man’s eager hope for salvation. It makes little difference that he’s kept all the commandments since his youth and that he’s been diligent and faithful and pious. He still lacks one thing. He has too many possessions, and to follow Jesus, he must sell them, give the money to the poor, and then follow Jesus. The man must give up the very thing around which his life and identity have been constructed. And this is when his own countenance falls. This must be the moment when he looks away from Jesus’s long, loving look and stares at the ground before he walks away.

But if he’d only lifted his eyes instead of walking away, he would have seen the same long, loving look from the face of our Lord. It’s the look that never turns away from us. While there may have been judgment in confronting that look of love, Jesus wasn’t looking upon him with judgment, only with love. But when your only language is the language of transaction, the look of love might seem like cruel condemnation.

It's too easy to explain away the man’s problem as a universal problem with wealth. Undoubtedly, for this particular man—as for many people—his possessions are his peculiar problem. He’s lived so long in a world of transaction that he believes everything can be bought or earned. Everything can be measured or bartered in a tit-for-tat system. And strings could be attached to his wealth, too. Maybe he could use his wealth for charitable purposes, serving as a benefactor to those in need. And wouldn’t that gain him salvation points? And by keeping all the commandments, wouldn’t he be assured of eternal life? Surely, he must be justified in expecting to inherit eternal life.

And it’s in this posture that he kneels before Jesus, possibly expecting to be justified in what he’s already done. This man is proficient in doing¸for doing is the character system of the language of transaction. And should he have failed to do something, Jesus can definitely tell him what that final thing is that he needs to do to inherit eternal life.

Jesus does tell him to do something, but in a way, it’s not about doing at all. Jesus explains what the man lacks in order to receive the gift of eternal life. Jesus offers not an immediate answer to the man’s quest for the assurance of salvation. He gives him a long, loving look, a look that points to something eternal, worth more than a thousand words. This love isn’t something that can ever be bought, because it preceded our habits of transaction. There’s nothing we can do to win this love. It’s pure gift from our heavenly Father, something that we can only receive. And receiving may be the most difficult thing of all.

For the man with many possessions, his acquisitions are the primary obstacles in his life that prevent him from basking in God’s long, loving look. And this is why it’s so difficult to enter the kingdom of God when we’re attached to wealth and material things. Wealth is inherently structured around a language of transaction. Unless we can gaze back at God’s long, loving look, it will be impossible for us to speak the language of love rather than the language of transaction.

But it’s not only the wealthy who will struggle to enter the kingdom of God. We all will, and Jesus affirms that. For each of us, there’s something that will stand between us and God’s long, loving look. It may be our pride. It may be our resentment. It may be our covetousness or envy or desire for success. It may even be our own perpetual self-effacement. All these things will make it nearly impossible to enter the kingdom of God. But of course, finding eternal life is not impossible, because with God, all things are possible.

The face of Christ looking with love upon the man with many possessions was the face of God in earthly time inviting the entire world to speak the language of love instead of the language of transaction. God’s long, loving look summons us from transaction to trust, from grasping to receiving, from possessing to giving. And so, while we can never earn that love because it’s always available to us, there’s one thing we can do to receive that love with greater ease. We do it not because it will earn us something. We do it to empty ourselves, as an echo of Christ’s own self-emptying, so that God can fill us with his abiding love.

We give. We give selflessly and generously. We give recklessly. We let go of everything that has taken hold of our lives. In the Mass, we offer our selves, our souls and bodies to God so he can return them to us and eventually to the world, redeemed and made whole. We give sacrificially of our money because that emblem of the transactional world may be the most visible impediment to receiving God’s love. We give not to receive but because only in giving can we receive.

It’s so very difficult to enter the kingdom of God, but it’s not impossible because anything is possible with God. Our countenance may at first fall when we realize what we must relinquish to find eternal life. But if we hold our gaze high and look up, we will find there the gift that’s eternally present for us to receive. It’s the long, loving look that dispels all fear of not having enough or not measuring up or not being enough. In that long, loving look, we recognize what we lack, but we’re also assured that no matter what we must give up, something far greater is ours to receive. And when we are able to receive it, we’ll finally speak the language of love.

Sermon by Father Kyle
The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 13, 2024

Exceeding the Exception

The phone call came late in the evening. Was it because the children would be in bed and out of earshot? I was indeed in bed when the phone rang, but this curious child was also still awake and listening. One of my parents was on the phone with someone from the Roman Catholic diocese. A family friend was going through a divorce and was seeking an annulment by the Church. An official was calling to interview my parents about their experience of their friends’ marriage because a reason was needed to justify the divorce. A litany of questions had been prepared, which I couldn’t hear but I can imagine in hindsight. Did the couple behave lovingly toward one another? In your experience, were there ever any moments when the spouse was cruel or mean to the other? Do you think there was ever really love there to begin with?

I was too young to question this whole process or really understand what was happening, but even in my childish innocence, I was unsettled by it all. It seemed as if the annulment process was proceeding from a standpoint of deficiency. Something must have been wrong with one of the partners in the marriage for it to have fallen apart. Surely, he or she must have done something so bad that the marriage could be written off as never having really been valid. The annulment would, of course, free the two partners to marry again.

Now, as an adult, if I want to analyze why that late night phone conversation made me uncomfortable, I could talk about casuistry and legalism. But I’d rather focus on how it started at the wrong end of things. The interrogation seemed to assume that there was a deficiency that needed to be discovered. The process was intended to look for an exception to the rule that divorce should never happen.

If you ask me, this isn’t very different from starting with what’s wrong with humanity rather than the many things that are good about it. Imagine, for instance, the first story in the Bible being the Fall, when Adam and Eve messed up in the garden of Eden. But that’s not what the canon of Scripture gives us, and I think there’s a good reason for that. Scripture begins with the first creation account, when God created everything and called it good. And then when God made humans in his image, he said it was all very good.

The story of humanity’s relationship with God starts with goodness, not deficiency. It doesn’t take long for things to go off the rails, but it still begins with goodness, completion, and paradise, rather than with evil, deficiency, and hell. This beautiful story begins not with an exception to the rule but with the rule itself. Or we might say with an expectation that transcends a rule. The expectation is that humanity is capable of goodness. To speak in anthropomorphic terms, God, in some sense, expects and desires it.

And so, it should be no surprise that when Jesus gets drawn into a discussion about divorce, he starts with God’s expectation, not with the exception to the rule. The Pharisees who question him, attempting to trick him, are simply looking for the exception. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Forget the woman, in this case. She had no rights, which is also part of the problem. The Pharisees assume that divorce will happen. They don’t ask if it’s a tragedy. They just ask if it’s allowed.

But Jesus isn’t so much interested in what’s allowed as in what God dreams for humanity. And this is why Jesus references the second creation story. God desires a one-flesh union of two people. Jesus doesn’t want to start with humanity’s exception clause, which simply allows people to separate what God has joined together. Jesus takes the whole conversation back to the story of creation because it’s the only true starting place. It starts with goodness. And because it starts with goodness, we are dealing with God’s expectation rather than humanity’s exception.

Jesus seems to know that people will always try to take the easy way out. They’ll operate according to the lowest common denominator if they can get away with it. Does my term paper have to be ten pages double-spaced with 12-point font or 14-point font? Am I still an active baptized member if I only receive Communion twice a year instead of three times? Do I have to forgive her every time she offends me or just the first two times? Do I need to need to tithe on my whole net income or only on my net income after I pay the bills?

Looking for the easy way out assumes that there’s a deficiency within us. It assumes that our spiritual lives are beholden to the governing forces of industry in which we’re always striving for economy of motion or doing the least amount of work possible to earn the most amount of money. It assumes that we’re always searching for an exception to the rule.

But Jesus isn’t interested in exceptions to rules. He’s not even very interested in rules. Jesus is interested in God’s high expectations of his creation and in God’s vision for humanity. Jesus highlights what God intends and desires rather than what’s merely allowed. He sets the bar high because he knows there’s a still more excellent way than our tendency to settle for less.

It's not simply that Jesus always demands more and more in the sense that modern progress is no longer satisfied with working forty hours a week and must push for fifty. As Jesus draws his followers into deeper and deeper relationship, he also draws them more and more out of their own selfishness and isolation. He invites them into community. He does so by setting their sights on the immeasurable love between God and his people, a love that never settles for less and that can never be put asunder.

And this is why the world needs the sacrament of marriage. We need this sacrament to set our sights high instead of settling for less. The sacrament of marriage calls us to live into God’s expectations rather than humanity’s exceptions to the rules. In a good marriage, we see a glimpse of the love between Christ and his Church, a love that is indissoluble, even when we reject it.

In pointing to a more excellent way, Jesus navigates a different path from our two modern ways of dealing with difficulties in marriages. Marriage is either treated without reverence, tolerating divorce when a marriage simply becomes inconvenient. Or marriage is treated as something that can never be dissolved and requires a legal process to prove that it was never valid from the start. The problem with these two approaches it that they let Christian community off the hook.

When Jesus points to one-flesh marriages as embodiments of God’s high expectations of humanity, the implication is that more than the married partners are involved in a marriage. The whole Christian community is affected when a marriage is in distress. The community can’t easily write off a marriage because it has some troubles. They can’t write off a marriage as invalid because one of the partners didn’t behave well. The community is called to do everything in their power to support the couple when times are tough. The community is supposed to live into God’s expectations rather than settle for the exceptions to the rule.

Christ points us to a still more excellent way in which eschatological hope exceeds human deficiency, where with God, anything is possible. It’s possible that in a troubled marriage, God’s grace can help a couple emerge stronger on the other side. It’s possible that with the help of the Christian community, a couple can learn to delight in one another again after years of dissension. But it’s also possible that God can create a new future for those who’ve had to face the tragedy of divorce. God can heal and mend wounds. And it’s possible that God can still enable forgiveness to happen for those who’ve been wrongly hurt and judged by the Church after a painful divorce.

As Christian disciples, we’re called to live into God’s expectation, not into humanity’s exception. This doesn’t mean that the exceptions won’t occur or even be the best possible solutions in intractable situations. But there’s no good reason to make the exception the rule. Nor is God’s expectation itself a rule. It’s a vision of hope, a call into walking the way of the cross. And when we walk this way in community and fellowship with one another, we settle not for exceptions for rules or even for rules themselves. We learn to glory in God’s hope for all humankind. We refuse to settle for what’s allowed. More than anything else, we dare to hope for what is possible only with God, because with God, anything is possible.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 6, 2024

All the Time in the World

This past summer, while at a conference, I was attending an organ recital in a church when I looked up to see the most surprising thing on the wall—a clock! I was shocked. I can’t remember the last time I saw a clock on the interior wall of a church. It’s true that we have clocks all over this campus—in the sacristy, Choir Room, and Parish House—but you won’t find one inside the church and thank goodness!

Clocks and worship just don’t go together very well, or at least, they shouldn’t go together, so stop looking at your watches. Now, I admit that I’ve been in church situations where I did look at my watch. I was even in a service once where the preacher crossed the 30-minute mark on the sermon and someone in the congregation took off her watch and waved it in the air, for which I was quite grateful, to be honest. But in all seriousness, although we may start Mass punctually, once it starts, the clock stops. Of course, none of us expects to spend the whole day here at Mass, even though maybe we should. When we come to church, the last thing we should be thinking about is time, or certainly not human time.

Rest assured: you won’t find a clock on the wall inside this church. You won’t even find one above the west doors as you’re leaving. Above the west doors is a far better visual indicator of why we’re even here in the first place. Above the west doors is that magnificent window featuring St. Michael and All Angels.

The most obvious reason that the angels are depicted above those doors is that they’re God’s agents of protection. As we cross the threshold of this building, we’re reminded that God’s holy angels are hovering around to guard and protect us. Perhaps less obvious is that the angels help us lose our sense of time. They remind us that when we enter the doors of this sacred space, earthly time comes to a grinding halt.

For a long time, the Church has focused on the militant prowess of Michael and the host of angels. Just look at the window: they’re armed for battle. As the Revelation to John reminds us, there’s a good reason for this. There is a battle still taking place between good and evil. The heavenly battle may have finished, but woe to the earth and sea because the battle has been brought down to earth. Having been cast out of the heavenly realm, the devil is furious, and he will use every chance he has to rage against those of us who walk towards the light.

But the image of Michael and the angels armed for battle might seem somewhat repugnant in a violent age, where we wish to see fewer weapons and where weapons are bandied about as if they’re articles of clothing. At what point does combating evil become an obsession? Many Christians are, quite frankly, obsessed with evil, and that can be a very dangerous thing. At some point, fighting evil gives it more power than it has or should have.

The truth is, if you like to fight, if it gives you a rush, you’ll always find something to fight about. People in the Church do that all the time. The urge to fight is a vicious cycle that causes us to rehash the same old resentments and litany of grievances. But surely, there must be a way to break the cycle. Surely, there must be a way to recognize the reality of evil, resist it, and move on.

So, let’s return to that great west window here in the church. If those angels standing guard there remind us that earthly time must stand still when we enter the church, then there’s the answer to our question of acknowledging evil and letting it have no power over our lives. The angels assure us that there is no shortage of time. Our time is not real time. God’s time is what matters. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas has wisely said that we, as Christians, must profess that we have all the time in the world. And this is what the angels witness to. They remind us that we have all the time in the world.

The angels are, admittedly, an elusive lot. We can certainly find plenty of references to angels in Scripture. And tradition tells us that they’re spiritual beings, without physical bodies, who exist in the heavens. They’re creatures of God sent as messengers and as protection for us mortals. But because they dwell in the heavens, where evil has already been cast out, they’re always worshipping, singing, praising, and serving God. That’s the essence of their existence.

It should be no wonder, then, at that great moment in the Mass before we sing the Sanctus, we join our song with that of the angels. Heaven is brought down to earth, and we’re raised up to heaven. The angels are the epitome of worship. And in that worship, there are no clocks. The angels’ praise never ends because when God is all that matters to you, all you can do is worship and sing! Such worship reminds us that we have all the time in the world because God certainly does.

But there’s one being who doesn’t have all the time in the world. Did you notice that from the Revelation to John? He’s full of great wrath because he knows that his time is short. Yes, it’s the devil. All his wiles, accusations, and slander are the result of his anger. And he’s angry because he knows his time is short.

It adds up, doesn’t it? We might say that human impatience is the root of much evil. When we’re obsessed with fighting evil, we show our impatience, because we’re looking for the quickest solution to what vexes us. When we’re unforgiving, we reveal our impatience, because we won’t take the time necessary to see God’s image in another person. When we lose our hope, we show our impatience, because we demand an immediate answer to our problems. When we give up on peace or settle for an easy peace, we’re impatient, because we refuse to take the time to engage in difficult conversations and relationship-building. When we don’t get our way, we’re impatient, because our consumer culture tells us to demand results now, not later. And when we become impatient, we usually become angry.

But Michael and the glorious legion of angels guard us precisely by reminding us that we should live as if we’re in the kingdom of God. We need to live as if we have all the time in the world. Our Lord himself lived that way. He made time for the stranger. He stopped his journeys to heal the sick and needy. He took time from his work and ministry to be with God in prayer. He refused to resort to violence to hasten the coming of God’s kingdom. He lived as if he had all the time in the world.

The devil, on the other hand, is impatient. It’s his impatience that led him to tempt Jesus in the desert with quick fixes to spiritual problems. And he tempts us, too, by capitalizing on our impatience. He tempts us through those vile accusing thoughts that tell us our work is in vain. The devil taunts the Church with prospects of her decline, and the Church often believes him because she can’t see the bigger picture, which requires faithfulness and hope. The devil torments us with the ticking clock, convincing us that we don’t have enough time and are constantly in competition with others for our existence. The devil tries to get us to believe that God cares nothing for us because our prayers go unanswered, at least in the way we expect. Above all, the devil knows nothing of hope, because hope takes time and patience. The devil is just angry because he knows that his time is short.

But God has all the time in the world to put things right. And the devil has good reason to be angry, because his time is short. The victory has been won by Christ, and so we have all the time in the world to live in the kingdom of God. And that’s why the angels are constantly worshipping and singing.

And that’s why we’re here. That’s why our worship together is the heartbeat of our lives in Christ. When we’re here, the clock stops, and we’re taken up to heaven in wonder, love, and praise. Our only objective is to give glory to God, and when we do, we join our song with Michael and his angels, who are constantly worshipping and singing.

Michael and the host of angels protect us by pointing in their ceaseless praise to the One who has accomplished the victory in heaven. They guide us to the place prepared for us. They lead us to the place where there are no clocks, just ceaseless praise. And in that place, where there is neither sorrow nor sighing, there’s all the time in the world.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels
September 29, 2024

It All Started with John

He started it. John the Baptist, that is. So, blame him if you don’t like what he did. Maybe we could say that he simply continued what began way back with the Old Testament prophets. Their prophecies unsettled and angered people, but oddly enough, they didn’t draw attention to their own eloquence or perceptiveness. They pointed to God’s word. We Christians might say they gestured towards Christ even if they didn’t know it. They pointed to something beyond themselves. They pointed to God.

But it was John, that wild rabble-rouser, who really started it. During the time that he was baptizing, his disciples came to him, a bit disturbed that Jesus was also baptizing and drawing a crowd to himself. Presumably, this would draw people away from John. John, after all, had come first. And that’s when John said it, putting into words what the great line of prophets had done from the moment they were called by God. He must increase, but I must decrease. I’m not the Christ, he said. John added his own finger to that bold line of prophets, pointing not to his own work or to himself, but to Christ.

Yes, John the Baptist started it. And Jesus’s apostles, in the aftermath of his death, eventually learned how to keep John’s spirit alive. When the apostles were spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth and Paul healed a man who couldn’t walk in the city of Lystra, the crowds were amazed. They claimed that Paul and his companion Barnabas were gods. But they pointed away from themselves. He must increase, and we must decrease. We’re merely human, they said. The miracles are simply signs that point to the work of almighty God, not to us. John the Baptist opened that can of humility. Blame him, if you want to.

But the disciples weren’t always so humble. Look at the twelve on the road with Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, arguing about who’s the greatest. They’re concerned with being great, not with being faithful. And all this just after Jesus’s tells them quite clearly that the way to the cross requires self-denial and suffering. The disciples still don’t even understand what Jesus is saying when he speaks of his future passion and death. They refrain from asking him what this really means because they don’t really want to know. They just want to be great. At this point, they can only point to themselves and not to Jesus. They must increase, and he must decrease.

The disciples, as we so often do, think in terms of lines. Someone, of course, needs to be at the head of the line. Someone needs to be great, indeed, the greatest. And of course, that means that everyone else will fall behind, and someone will be dead last. Some student needs to be at the top of the class or the most popular or the most likely to succeed. Some politician needs to be the winning candidate. Some priest needs to be known for growing their church the fastest or having the most TikTok followers. Someone in the top one percent needs to be the richest person alive. And in a oddity of statistical greats, some big city needs to be the poorest one, like Philadelphia. Life has its pecking order, so get in line.

But Jesus mixes it all up when he says that the first must be last and the servant of all. He takes a line and begins to turn it into a circle. And then he does something even more spectacular. He doesn’t tie it up. He leaves it open, and he does yet one more thing that truly confounds the disciples. He invites a child into their midst and puts it smack-dab in the middle of the circle.

To us, this seems like a cute little exercise, like a children’s sermon where all the kids come forward so the adults can marvel at how child-centered the church is. But this is not what Jesus does. Imagine, instead, that Jesus takes the convicted felon on death row or the migrant who’s escaped from Venezuela or the poorest of the poor and puts that person in the center of the open circle and embraces that person. That’s what Jesus does. The child in his day barely qualified as a person. It was the one with no rights, who was constantly at the mercy of adults who often failed to care properly for the child. This child—this utter outcast in society—is placed at the center of the circle. Then Jesus says that to welcome this one, the one at the end of the line, is to welcome Christ himself.

And this is when Jesus does the most surprising thing of all. He continues what John the Baptist started and points away from himself to God the Father. Even the Son of Man, the Lord and Savior of all, doesn’t put himself at the front of the line. Yes, John the Baptist really started this whole mess. Whoever welcomes the child welcomes Christ. And whoever welcomes Christ welcomes the One who sent him, that is, God the Father. The line has become a circle, and at its center is God.

To be a Church that’s true to the values of the kingdom, we must stand in a circle and not a line. Outside the walls of this church, we can’t avoid standing in lines, whether it’s at CVS or the Phillies game. We can’t avoid getting in line to see whether Harvard will accept us or whether we’re next up for the transplant. Lines are the reality of life, and we must stand in them. And yet, Christ asks us to stand in those lines as if they can be shaped into circles of welcome. They’re circles that always have space for one more person to stand.

But along the waiting line of life, there’s a common emotion, and it’s usually not happiness. It’s stone-cold fear. Fear is the mechanism that ossifies lines and makes some great and others least of all. Fear is what causes us to hunger for tribal greatness at the expense of the greatest well-being of all people. Fear is what propels us to rush to the front of the line no matter how many others we have to trample on. Fear is what causes us to point to ourselves and not to Christ. Fear is what causes us to look some people in the eye when it’s just her and me but ignore them completely when we’re around the more important or popular. Fear is what has turned even the Church’s three orders of ministry into a rat race of ladder climbing. Fear turns open-ended circles into lines.

This fear starts with a nagging sense that we aren’t loved enough by God or that we must appease God to earn his love. And if we’re not loved enough by God, then we need to be loved by someone else. And to earn that love from someone else, we begin pointing to ourselves more and more, and the circle of inclusion becomes a line where some are great and others are not even human.

When we put a child or a despised immigrant or a condemned felon or an unhoused person at the center of our circle, we have nothing to gain. It’s simply a gesture of pure love. Loving the poorest of the poor will get us nothing in the world’s straight line. It won’t get us a promotion or a raise or tenure. Genuinely welcoming the poor and the stranger is the most selfless act of love possible because it has no ulterior motive except putting God at the center of the circle.

If our life in community at Good Shepherd is to be Christlike, then it must be an ever-expanding circle, not a closed one but one in which there’s always room for another to stand. It’s a circle where only God is at the center. All that we do and all that we are points to God, not to ourselves. In this circle, our own personal preferences and opinions can and should be voiced but are never given undue weight to the exclusion of the good of the whole. In this circle, no person is silenced, no matter how little money they make and even if they’re standing at the end of line. In this circle, the newest person to the group is valued in the same way as the person who’s been here for decades. In this circle, the need of the person on the other side of the circle is ours, too, and we’re always willing to take one for the team, despite any inconvenience it might cause us.

We can do all this only if the center of this circle isn’t fear. Fear would only warp it into a line. At the center of this circle is selfless love in the face of Christ, who we see is actually pointing to God the Father. In this life in community, we can only point away from ourselves and to God, who stands at the center of our open-ended circle. Yes, John the Baptist started it all, and we must keep it going. With every fiber of our being we should let the circle remain a circle and not be forced into a line. And in this circle, there’s always room for one more.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 22, 2024

The Costly Way of Life

It’s just after five a.m. on a Sunday, and you’re walking quickly—but not too quickly—through the streets of Center City Philadelphia. You have a purpose to your mission, but you don’t want others to pay you too much attention. Although it’s a Sunday, the city is already coming alive. Sunday is no longer a day set aside for public worship. It’s another busy workday like the rest of the week.

You’re on your way to Mass, but you don’t want anyone to know about it. What you’re doing is illegal, and if you’re caught, you could end up in prison, or worse yet, be killed. In one of your pockets is a small piece of bread that you baked at home. You turn a corner and are on Delancey Place, but you discreetly head to the back alley to enter the house of a wealthy Christian. Someone is keeping the door to ensure that those who enter are familiar and not spies. You nod at the doorkeeper and enter the parlor of the home. A small but faithful congregation has assembled around a table, covered by a white cloth. A man in civilian clothes sits in a chair, and you recognize him as the Bishop of Pennsylvania. Before you take your seat, you place your piece of bread on the plate resting on the altar.

After a few more minutes, the bishop rises, welcomes those gathered, and begins to pray. He’s joined by several other people in civilian clothes. They’re priests. The bread and wine, which have been brought by you and all those assembled, are prayed over, the Bread is broken, and then the Bread and Wine are shared.

When this sharing in the breaking of bread and common cup is ended, everything is put away, and all are dismissed. While you’ve only been there for twenty minutes or so, the city is now bustling outside. Under the current government, production is king. The workday is starting earlier and earlier. Many people are rushing to work, and should one of them see you and a host of other people leaving this prominent house at the same time, you might tip them off to the fact that you’re Christians.

If they noticed several people leaving the house on Delancey Place, it wouldn’t be too long before they whipped out their cell phones and called the police. Shortly thereafter, you, the others, and even the bishop, too, would be handcuffed and hauled off to the police station. You’d be efficiently judged—hastily, because there’s no real just process these days. You’d be asked if you’re indeed a Christian, and of course, how could you deny it? To deny it would be to deny Christ himself.

Now, there might be someone in the group that was hauled off to the station who waffles before that question, “are you a Christian?” He says no, but the judge suspects that he really is. “Bow down before that picture over there of the president and show your allegiance to our real ruler,” the judge says. For a time, the person is tempted to do it, but then he simply can’t. He turns his back to the picture on the wall and proclaims that he’s a Christian. You and your handcuffed companions become the next victims of the state’s violent system of capital punishment. And it’s not even noon yet.

What I’ve just described is very difficult for us to imagine. It’s a modern riff on an imaginative scenario posed by the late Anglican monk and liturgical scholar Dom Gregory Dix in his famous book The Shape of the Liturgy. Dix, writing in the 1940s, imagined a similar situation in his own day. A London grocer attended a furtive celebration of the Mass in the home of a wealthy woman in the Hyde Park neighborhood, under the constant threat of persecution from an anti-Christian monarchy. Dix was trying to demonstrate how modern Christians have lost a sense of the danger of Christianity.[1]

In the early Church, sharing in the breaking of bread and in the common cup was a life-or-death matter. But the riskiness of going to Mass was softened, even eliminated, once Christianity was legalized and became a source of power rather than a target of persecution. Christians became complacent. Dix’s transposition of the early Church’s Eucharistic practice into twentieth century London reminds us that at the center of every Mass, beneath the ritual actions and layers of tradition, is the seminal question of Christ: Who do you say that I am?

Jesus’s incisive question to his disciples lies exactly halfway through Mark’s Gospel. And Peter’s hasty answer shows that he, like the rest of the disciples, have no clue who Jesus really is. They may grant that he’s the Messiah, but they’re ignorant about just what kind of Messiah he is. And this is why Jesus immediately forbids them to tell others exactly who he is. To speak of Jesus only in terms of his healing work and miracles is to shield Jesus from the cross and to protect his followers from the cost of discipleship.

But while Jesus urges reticence about his messiahship, he speaks openly and plainly about his future passion, death, and resurrection. This is the kind of Messiah he is to be. He won’t be the anticipated Messiah who’ll gather an army and drive out the occupying Roman forces, thereby winning victory for the Jewish people through violence. He’ll be the victim of the state, the one who goes to the depths of hell and refuses to return violence for violence as part of his saving work. And by this action, he’ll destroy the power of human violence once and for all. In this great inversion, death becomes life, and life becomes death.

In an age where we can walk or drive without fear from home to Mass, we have it all backwards. In this nation, at least, we need not worry about being spied out leaving this church and then hauled off to a crooked court of law and executed. We can be Christian without others so much as blinking their eyes. Increasingly, it seems that the world outside the doors of this church is more and more apathetic to what we’re doing inside this church. And paradoxically, this has caused a huge problem for us as Christians.

We’re willing to confidently profess who Christ is for us. We wear crosses around our necks as attractive jewelry. We’re the rightful heirs of that primal Christian charge: go and proclaim the Gospel to all nations. And, of course, this we should do. But there’s also a tragic cost to the ease with which we embody our Christian faith, and the cost is that we forget about the demands of discipleship. We forget that when we answer Jesus’s question, “who do you say that I am,” our response is a matter of life and death. And what we think is life is often death, and vice versa.

Whether we’re living in a police state where Christians are persecuted or on the Main Line in the twenty-first century, one thing never changes. Christians in every time and place are always at the risk of choosing death over life, especially when they want to save their lives. To take up our cross to follow Jesus is far more than bearing with the annoyances and frustrations of a relatively uncomplicated life. And it’s most definitely not about voluntarily introducing unnecessary pain and suffering into our lives. Finding life is about putting ourselves behind Christ, to whom our answer is always yes, no matter the cost.

To walk the way of life and to follow our Lord is to find our lives bound up with one another. Another’s death becomes our own death, another’s pain becomes our pain. Another’s loss is our loss, but another’s rejoicing is ours, too. And in a privileged and complacent society like ours, this means that the seemingly small choices in life are really matters of life and death. They’re the choices of how we treat our neighbor, because the dignity of another can never be sacrificed to our own personal, emotional, or financial security. These are the difficult choices that lead us to deny our own comfort for the flourishing of the whole human family.

And while we might not lose our physical lives by choosing life over death, we’ll experience a kind of death. We’ll die to our selfishness and greed. We’ll die to some of our most deeply cherished convictions. We’ll die to our tightest alliances with earthly rulers and instead choose loyalty to our true King, the one who rights the world not by violence but by sacrificial love.

Here in the Mass, we choose life over death. At its heart, it appears to be an action centered around death, but it’s really all about life. Here in the Mass, we celebrate that the worst of human violence doesn’t have the last word but is overturned by a selfless act of love that sets us all free. Here in the Mass, we give it all—our selves, our souls, and our bodies—back to God. We give God all our petty grievances and all our selfish instincts. Here, we refuse to make peace with oppression, but we know that real peace doesn’t come quickly or easily. Here, we can’t choose life by ourselves; we must choose it together, in community. Here, we must make an honest answer to the question that Christ daily poses to us. Who do you say that I am? You are the Christ, we boldly say. And before we go to tell all the world that Christ is our Lord and Messiah, we must speak plainly about the way in which the Gospel will give us life. It will give us life when we’re willing to face death, whether physical death for the sake of the Gospel or death to our unholy allegiances that comfort us while causing death for others. You are the Christ, we say, and we know that if we lose our earthly life for the sake of the Gospel, we’ll gain something far greater.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 15, 2024 

[1] Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Dacre Press, 1945), 142-145, also referenced in Rowan Williams, Passions of the Soul (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 102-106.

More than Meets the Eye

Something changed for me in ninth grade, and it happened in Mrs. Hancock’s English class. She teed up the year by assigning us a ton of reading for the summer, which I was less than pleased about. While others played outside in the southeast Texas heat, I was reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and other classics from a long reading list and draining the ink from highlighters like there was no tomorrow.

We’d been instructed to mark comments and underline in the books themselves, which was new to me. I admit that I didn’t care very much for Hamilton’s Mythology. The world of the gods and goddesses was bizarre to me, and frankly, I didn’t see the point of reading about them. I said as much to an aunt who’d majored in literature in college, and she reminded me that reading about mythology would be helpful in making sense of allusions in other literature. I inwardly thought, okay, whatever. But I dutifully did my reading, and I’m glad I did. It changed me.

It was in Mrs. Hancock’s class that we devoured Shakespeare, parsing it for allusions, foreshadowing, paradox, symbolism, and above all, irony. It was in her class while reading Lord of the Flies that I learned that Piggy’s glasses were not just glasses, and owls in Shakespeare were not just cute animals. Although I was a complete and utter bookworm as a kid, I’d never realized that words weren’t just words. Stories weren’t just stories. The text was more than its literal meaning. There was more than met the eye. Things were not as they seemed.

Those high school literary exercises foreshadowed the way I would come to think about life in general. They might only have been interesting mental exercises for a ninth grader, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that the art of de-literalizing our speech and our thinking is part of what it means to be a mature human being. Finding echoes within a text and savoring the multivalence of words moves us from a simplistic, binary mode of thinking into honoring the complex nuances of our humanity.

I’m not sure why the lessons from Mrs. Hancock’s English class don’t always translate to the reading of Scripture. But since the word of God is a living word of God, then even and especially in Scripture, things are more than they seem to be on the surface.

I wish we’d read Mark’s Gospel in Mrs. Hancock’s class. We could’ve had a field day in discussing irony. Why do we always think of irony as sarcasm or skepticism or equate it with the hermeneutic of suspicion? Irony is also theological. Irony can tell us a great deal about the dissonance between our lives and the vision that God has for us. And if we can understand the irony of our spiritual lives, there will always be an invitation to something greater and deeper than what meets the eye. Irony can even move us into spiritual maturity.

There’s one person in today’s Gospel passage, other than Jesus, who understands that there’s more than meets the eye. I think she understands irony, too. It’s the Syrophoenician woman, whom tradition has called Justa. Let’s use that name, because she deserves a name. Justa is an outsider, a Gentile, and she inserts herself rather boldly into Jesus’s mission to the Jews. And that’s the root of the problem.

But poor Justa has been used by countless commentators to promote their own agendas. For some, she’s the one who “bests” Jesus in an argument. Give it to him, Justa! they say. For others, she’s the victim of Jesus’s rudeness, yet one more reason to try to exhaust the complex intricacies of Jesus’s humanity rather than embrace its mystery. But rather than go down one more rabbit hole with this story, what if we let Justa be the one who sees that there’s more than meets the eye.

Here's where we need Mrs. Hancock’s English class and a generous helping of faith to discern how Justa fits into the larger story of Jesus’s ministry. Context is everything. Justa appears from out of the blue after Jesus has fed the 5,000 and before he feeds another 4,000. Justa appears after Jesus has questioned traditional understandings of what’s clean and unclean. As one of the Gentiles, Justa might be offensively likened to a dog by some, and she emerges on the scene and aces the English test on literary devices.

Meanwhile, Jesus’s disciples are clueless and missing every question on the quiz. Although they’re of the chosen people and are chosen as disciples by Jesus, they’ve still failed to understand the meaning of his feeding of the 5,000. And even after he feeds another 4,000, they still don’t get it. They can’t understand that Jesus’s healing of the sick is more than meets the eye. They don’t understand that bread in the miraculous feedings isn’t just bread. They don’t understand that when there doesn’t appear to be enough, there might be far more than they need lurking below the surface. The disciples are royal failures in humility most of the time. Some want to be first in line and have the best seat at the table, but Jesus reminds them that the first will be last and the last will be first. But what does that mean? they wonder.

And then here comes Justa, with the unshakeable expectation that Jesus is more than meets the eye, that he can, in fact, heal her daughter who’s possessed by a demon, that even though he’s a Jew and she’s a Gentile, perhaps Jesus’s mission doesn’t have to rigidly follow a neat ethnic and geographic map. And when Jesus abruptly remarks that the children—that is, the Jews to whom he has been sent—must be fed first and that the dogs—the Gentiles—should not receive what the Jews deserve, she won’t take no for an answer because she knows that there’s more than meets the eye. Justa must comprehend that beneath Jesus’s remark, there’s a spiritual test, or better yet, an invitation to rise above petty emotions and reactivity. Is she offended by Jesus? Who knows? But what she does know is that a crumb is more than a crumb. It’s a gift from God. And no one else in the Gospel, at this point, seems to understand that.

And yet, commentator after commentator will tie themselves into knots trying to figure out how Jesus doesn’t sin here while behaving rudely. Or they use this as an opportunity to direct their latent anger at Jesus by accusing him of deplorable behavior. But Justa, the only one who might have a right to take umbrage at Jesus’s curt reply, rises above it because she knows that there’s more than meets the eye. The woman understands that even a few crumbs from the hand of the Lord are enough. She’s utterly persistent in that belief. She won’t take no for an answer because she knows in the depths of her soul that a little bit can go a long way. It doesn’t matter if the crumb is small. It doesn’t matter that one must eat it from below the table. It doesn’t matter if the acquisition of a crumb seems like an afterthought. This woman is most interested in the fact that the crumb is food indeed but also that eating the crumb is more than sating hunger. It’s about being spiritually fed, and it’s about being healed and made whole. And Jesus’s response to her gumption proves her right.

The irony in Mark’s Gospel is that we, the readers, know exactly who Jesus is and how the story will end. The disciples don’t, but oddly, Justa the Gentile outsider knows something that the insider disciples don’t. And yet, this irony is more than just an interesting literary device. It also points to the dissonance between our lives and the lives that God desires for us. Too often, we’re like the disciples and others who can’t see that there’s more than meets the eye. We see the unanswered prayer as the absence of God. We see our meager situation in life as a reason to be angry that we’ve only been given the crumbs beneath the table. We see someone else’s success as our failure. We imagine that we’re simply one more participant in the great game of competition, where those who are fed first are favored and those who eat last get the short end of the stick. And if we’re the ones being fed first, we imagine that we’ve done something right and that those eating the crumbs are inferior. The irony is that no matter how many literary devices we can pick out of a Shakespeare play, we often read the story of our lives on a literal level. But faith and charity demand that we rise above the literal level, because there’s much more than meets the eye.

In the kingdom of God, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear like Justa, those who have perfectly good hearing fail to hear, but those who physically can’t hear are healed and understand who Jesus is and what he’s done. In the kingdom of God, a crumb is far more than a crumb. It’s a sign that when we think there isn’t enough, we’ve failed to see that there’s more than meets the eye. In the kingdom of God, every tongue that is fettered must be unloosed to tell the world that death on a cross is more than death; it’s life. In the kingdom of God, Jesus can’t remain hid. He must be recognized and loved, and his marvelous works must be told out among the nations. In the kingdom of God, things aren’t what they seem to be, and we should never take no for an answer. Because in the kingdom of heaven, what’s impossible is always possible with God.  

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 8, 2024

Straight to the Heart

Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec isn’t your ordinary detective. He’s, of course, not a real person but the protagonist of Louise Penny’s murder mystery series set in the fictional town of Three Pines, just over the U.S.-Canadian border in the Eastern Townships region of Québec. Inspector Gamache is a French Canadian who graduated from Cambridge University. He has a fierce intelligence and a big heart. He’s brave, courageous, and thoughtful, with a penchant for reciting poetry in conversations with other members of the police force. Gamache tries to see the best in people and is known for giving opportunities to the most ostracized members of the Sûreté du Québec. He believes in the goodness of people; everyone deserves a second chance.

But Gamache is a particularly unusual detective in that he hates guns. He usually doesn’t carry one, and although he certainly uses guns in the line of duty, he detests them. More than one person accuses him of being a coward for not carrying a gun, but they simply fail to understand Gamache’s bravery. He dislikes guns not only because they harm and kill but because he’s acutely aware of the dangerous alliance of a weapon and human emotions. In the heat of the moment, with passions flaring, it’s easy to pull the trigger when a gun is readily available. Gamache knows that the most difficult course of action is to manage one’s own emotional volatility and see potential victims as real human beings, capable of conversation and dialogue, of conversion and redemption. Gamache is extraordinarily self-aware and psychologically mature, which is part of what makes his character so engaging. He doesn’t simply solve crimes through facts. He uses his heart, too.

Gamache is deeply in tune with the inner recesses of his own heart. When he sits across from a serial killer, he sees not only a murderer but the presence of murderous inclinations within himself. When he’s trying to figure out who committed a crime, he’s acutely aware of his own biases and unchecked suspicions. And that’s why he loathes carrying a gun. He can see what lies within his own heart. He knows that when dealing with the worst of human behavior and the presence of evil, he can’t fully trust his motivations for relying on a gun. Will he fire out of self-defense or because he despises the evil in someone? Will he use physical violence to keep the peace instead of taking on the more difficult task of risky dialogue in a hostage situation? Gamache is humbly aware of his own frailty as a human being because he’s befriended the scariest of human passions lurking within his soul.

There’s a spiritual analogy to the self-awareness seen in a character like Armand Gamache. Gamache himself is religiously inclined, although not a faithful practitioner of religion. But he nevertheless understands a spiritual insight that is quite ancient. It’s what the monastic desert fathers and mothers came to understand all too well when they fled the cities to be silent with God. They discovered that although they thought they had left the world, the world had followed them. They learned that each of them was a “little world,” to use the words of the early Christian theologian Origen.[1] Inside of them were all the evils imaginable in the wider world: murder, envy, rage, adultery, licentiousness, theft, deceit, pride.

And it was in the desert that those fathers and mothers learned to befriend the little worlds within themselves. They weren’t supposed to like the inclinations they saw inside, but they at least needed to recognize their presence. They couldn’t run from those real human emotions, and they couldn’t fight them. But they could acknowledge their existence and then ask for the grace of God to relinquish their power. Paradoxically, by embracing the darkness in their hearts, the desert fathers and mothers found that the darkness had less control over them.

It should be no surprise that the desert fathers and mothers came to see that they were “little worlds.” It should be no surprise that the demons of the world found them in the desert because those demons had made a home within their own hearts. None of this should surprise us because it’s precisely what Jesus taught.

His encounter with the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading seems, at first, to be a simplistic overturning of legalistic ritualism. But such a shallow reading conveniently excuses us from being honest with the state of our own souls. Armed with Jesus’s words to the Pharisees and scribes, it’s tempting—indeed dangerous—to lambaste those who are rigidly obedient to the Law or to Church teaching. And in doing so, we get no further than a vague preference for the spirit rather than the letter of the law. But Jesus is not eschewing the Law or religious duty in his exchange with the scribes and Pharisees. His teaching might as well be directed at us, too, and at every Christian who enjoys pointing fingers at those they deem immoral or law-forsaking. Christ’s wisdom is for any of us who secretly judge others while ignoring the spiritual turmoil within our own souls.

Jesus’s teaching goes straight to the heart because he’s showing us that each of us is a “little world.” Our souls are so often like closets under the staircases of our homes and of our retreat house next door: they’re the convenient places to store all our junk while making the visible parts of the house look presentable. Only by doing some spring cleaning within the closets of our hearts can we grow into spiritual maturity. If we recognize the murderous impulses within, we’re less quick to judge the convicted murderer. If we own the fact that we give our loyalty and love to gods and idols of our own making instead of to God, then we’re perhaps less willing to point fingers at a sexually promiscuous person. If we face the overwhelming covetousness within our own souls, we might be reluctant to judge the person locked up for embezzlement. Each of us is a “little world,” which means that none of us is far removed from those whom society considers to be the dregs of the earth.

But this sobering knowledge of our own little worlds would be nothing more than a source of shame unless we could see that there’s a profound grace in it. In this realization of our own little worlds, we’re brought to our knees in humility and utter dependence on God. We stand, of course, before God “to whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid.” It's futile to hide our hearts from God, as much as we might try to hide them from others, and this rather terrifying reality is also a gift. There’s a profound moment of grace in recognizing that the confusing mess of our hearts is the source of our shared humanity.

Our own fallibility, our human tendency toward sin, however awful that may be, is what unites us but not in a morbid acceptance of human depravity. It’s a humble recognition that each of us, from the weekly churchgoer to the felon on death row, is made in the image of God and is therefore nakedly reliant on the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God to be healed and saved. That is indeed the only thing that will make us whole.

Our unkind words and judgmental actions, our exclusion of others, our moral superiority, are all weapons that we wield to defend ourselves from befriending the terrifying emotions that nest within our souls. And like Inspector Gamache, that brave detective, we, too, would do well to cast away our spiritual guns and courageously honor our shared frailty with those whom we long to attack. Often the ones we try to attack are mirror images of ourselves.

Christ gently directs our spiritual eyes into the terrifying depths of our hearts. Those hearts are open to him even when we try to hide them from the rest of the world. Despite what lurks there and is disquieting, our hearts are made for goodness, not for evil. And although demons may find a home there, because Christ has the final word, those demons have no power over us. Christ is the light in our darkness. Christ is the one who forgives all that seems unforgivable. Christ is why we have no reason to be afraid of our hearts, because Christ himself dwells in our hearts. And when we befriend the turmoil of our hearts, we will find that Christ has been there all along. He’s always there, unafraid of what terrifies us, because he has unlocked the prison doors and set us free.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 1, 2024

[1] Martin Smith, A Season for the Spirit: Readings for the Days of Lent (New York: Seabury, 2004), 29-30.