The Family Picture Book

On this great feast of Corpus Christi, it is tempting to talk about many things. We could split hairs over theological nuances regarding the doctrine of the Real Presence. But today, I want to explore another way of reveling in this great feast.

Here we are this day, not united uniformly by biology, but knit together as a unique family, the people of God by virtue of our baptism. This identity is why we call ourselves members of Christ’s Body on earth and consume his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. And each year, on this feast, just as we might celebrate our baptism like we celebrate our birthdays, we are assembled to look through our family picture book, to celebrate the living presence of Christ’s Body in the Eucharist and in us, the Body of Christ.

This picture book will not give us an explication of Eucharistic doctrine or Real Presence, but it assumes a profound reverence for the Sacrament of the Altar. It’s a reverence that cannot really be explained but must be learned by osmosis. And this is where we turn to our family picture book.

This picture book is not a set of mere memories that can only be relived as moments from the past. This picture book, when examined together as the family of God, brings the past into the present. This picture book is full of vivid memories that are not just gathering dust but are alive because they tell us something about the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood and about our family ties. The pictures in this book give us a glimpse into why Eucharistic fellowship is the source of our life as Christians. The pictures in our storybook tell us why we are Christian.

As I turn a page, I see one poignant image. It is at a family reunion of my large Cajun family over twenty years ago in southeast Texas. At each family reunion, the local Roman Catholic parish priest would be brought in to say Mass. When my family gathered, we simply had to have Mass. Hundreds of my family would assemble, and I will never forget the gentle tears of affection in the eyes of my great-grandmother, then in her nineties, as she beheld the mystery of Christ’s Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar. She had been fed for over ninety years by this true Food, but she never had enough.

In a haunting connection, as I turn yet another page in the book, the tears of my great-grandmother are echoed in a pastoral visit to a parishioner some years later when I was a priest. I had taken the Blessed Sacrament to a parishioner who was homebound and had been without the Eucharist for some time. As I placed the host into his hands, I recognized, in his own tears, that deep devotion for Christ’s Body and Blood that I had seen in my own great-grandmother. It was a devotion that surpassed time and even denomination. The devotion attempted no theological treatise of Eucharistic piety, but it was expressed tactilely in the tears of a Christian longing to be fed.

And I turn the page again to remember the occasion of attending a daily Mass in a Canadian Anglo-Catholic parish. Before the Mass, two elderly women from the neighborhood thumbed their rosaries in the quiet presence of a handful of worshippers. And for a little while, in the quirky simplicity of this holy place, on an ordinary, hot day in July, heaven met earth. Driving away from the church, I saw the two women slowly make their way home, having been fed with Christ’s Body and Blood. Their regular journey, perhaps daily, to the parish church was simply what they did and where, each day, God would meet them in a particular sacramental way. They needed to be fed, and they knew where they would be fed, without a doubt.

I turn yet another page and I am confronted with a moving sight. It is a communion rail in a nondescript parish church, where a motley collection of people, of all races, backgrounds, situations, with their questions, doubts, and struggles, kneel with hands outstretched to be fed with ordinary bread that is, in fact, no ordinary bread. This rail seems to be the only place where all can be fed in one place without being segregated in some way.

On the next page, there is the exquisite nineteenth century church in north Philadelphia, in a neighborhood neglected by the city for so long and disturbed by frequent violence. Here the church bell rings weekly, the doors open, and people know they can be fed with something real and true. The city itself has starved them in so many ways, but this parish church offers a true Food that will enliven their bodies.

One more page into the book, and we are in a church in Abu Ghosh in the Middle East, believed to be the site of Emmaus. And the pilgrimage group of which I am a part has come to visit, and the residents of the community there, all Roman Catholics, are ecstatic that they have had visitors. Not many people visit, they say, because of the violence in these parts. And at their Altar, where ordinarily we Episcopalians would not have been welcome, one of our priests says Mass. We knew that we would be fed in that place, but we knew not how we would feed the residents of the community there. We were all fed by Christ’s Body, and he was known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Although some of these stories seem like my stories, they are, indeed, your stories, too. There are many pages in this picture book, time is running out, so we flip to another page. And here we are, June 6, 2021, as we observe the Feast of Corpus Christi. We are here for a very particular reason: to be fed by Word and Sacrament. Soon enough, Christ will be known to us, most assuredly, in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist. We will receive him into our bodies, into our bloodstreams. His life will course through our veins. And as the hymn says, in the Eucharist, “[Jesus] is here: we ask not how.”[1]

Paging through our picture book has taught us something distinctive about our identity as Christians: we are fed with pure gift in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The gift comes unbidden and unsolicited to us, both when we are seeking it, and when we are not. Because it is pure gift, it cannot be controlled. It cannot be weaponized to control others. It is God’s gift to us for the life of the world.

But this is not all. Because we know we have been fed with this pure gift and are constantly being fed by this pure gift, we must feed others. We live because of this gift. It informs every action we undertake in the name of Christ. In this gift, we live and move and have our being. We are constantly being fed as pure gift, and so we must feed others in return.

People can only be fed so much by good works and fellowship. The family story we tell today reveals why we are Christian: our fellowship is no ordinary fellowship but is fellowship galvanized by the sublime Gift of Christ’s Flesh and Blood. Our good works are no ordinary good works but are good works animated by the Body and Blood of Christ coursing through our veins. The sacred rhythm of our life is not about mere self-care but about a life that is truly alive because it is centered around the supreme Gift of God. This is no ordinary food but Food that charges our bloodstreams with life. The eating and drinking of this Food are not quarantined behind closed doors, but as we celebrate our family story this day, we acknowledge the imperative to take our energized souls and bodies out into the world to tell our story to the world. When we cannot receive this Food, we are impoverished—something is missing.

The tears in the eyes of my great-grandmother and former parishioner as they beheld the Sacrament were evidence enough that eating this Food once is not sufficient. The regular journey to the parish church of those two women in a Canadian city was proof that we are constantly in need of this Bread and Wine. We can only have life by eating and drinking this Food, and we can never have enough of it.

But one day when we turn to the final page in the picture book and its story is complete here on this earth, and when we finally behold our Lord face to face in heaven, we will have had enough of this food, because we will be rejoicing in fellowship at another banquet that never ends. And we will know that because of the bread with which we have been fed, we will live forever.

 Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of Corpus Christi (transferred)
June 6, 2021

[1] “Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendor,” George Hugh Bourne, #307, The Hymnal 1982

Minding the Gaps

If you’ve visited London and traveled on the Underground, you will have heard the recurring caution, “mind the gap.” Step carefully into the train over the space—sometimes small, sometimes large—between the train and the platform. The gap could mean life or death if you daydream while boarding a crowded train at rush hour.

Mind the gap. We are always minding gaps. Having lived through a pandemic for the past year, we are minding the gaps between ourselves and the persons in front of us in the grocery store line. There are movements afoot to close the gaps between the implicit caste systems in our society. Gaps are everywhere, some of which we even quietly welcome in order to protect ourselves. Other gaps are disturbing in their seeming intractable nature and in the pain they cause.

We also mind the gap between God and ourselves, as we engage in self-examination. We ponder whether the gap has widened due to some negligence or willfulness on our part. We mind the gap in worship as our souls are drawn up to heaven for a fleeting period of time. The gap, of course, reminds us that God is God and we are not. There is a wide gulf between the immortality of God and our mortality.

In the year that King Uzziah died, this is where the prophet Isaiah begins. He is dutifully minding the gap. There is nothing like a theophany to highlight the vast chasm between God and humankind. Seraphim are flitting about in the presence of the Almighty. And even they are covering themselves to shield their presence from the glory of God, before whom no one can stand unaffected.

If the singing of the seraphim, the shaking of the Temple thresholds, and the smoke filling the space are not enough, Isaiah understands that there is yet another gap between him and God. Isaiah is a man of unclean lips, and he resides among a people of unclean lips. He and they are human, and God is God. So, Isaiah minds the gap.

Which of us has not been mindful of that gap when we’ve been in the presence of the Almighty? Who has not felt the weight of this gap on their knees in repentance and prayer? Who has not been overwhelmed by this gap when confronting the teaching of Jesus against the reality of our own lives? Think of how many people have been taught that the gap between God and humanity cannot be bridged without beating the gates of heaven with pleas for mercy because mere mortals are damaged beyond repair.

It’s a strange and mysterious thing, this gap, because it has two sides. It both instills a sense of awe and reverence for God, and at the same time, it makes us feel utterly unworthy of any benevolence from God. What can bridge this seemingly unsurpassable gap? Can anything bridge this gap?

Trinity Sunday hardly seems like the place to find any answers. This feast comes each year with the perpetual disclaimer that no matter how hard we try, we’ll fail to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity. And yet we try. And we must try. We stretch the limits of poetry and metaphor, because it’s the only language we know and can use to speak about the unspeakable. And usually it means that we get stuck on the heavenly plane until we get out of our heads and come back down to earth. The result is that the gap between heaven and earth only seems to widen. And turning back to Isaiah doesn’t seem like the place to go for something more concrete, especially on Trinity Sunday.

Isaiah commences his spiritual journey at the precipice of an enormous canyon, separating him from God. In his vision, God does not speak to him directly. Isaiah is absolutely terrified that, because he has now seen a vision of God, he will not fare well. Perhaps he will even die as a result.

Isaiah has two conceivable options: flee the scene and run for safety, or resign himself to his fate, which will be catastrophic. But Isaiah chooses a third. He boldly speaks before the face of God.

When he speaks, he begins by minding the gap. He is a man of unclean lips. He is helplessly part of the sinful human condition. He gives voice to the uncrossable gap between God and humankind.

And it’s at this point that something changes. There is no lightning bolt to strike him dead. There is no vocalized response. There is only the striking gesture of one of the seraphim who moves towards him with a burning coal held between some tongs, which has come from the sacred altar in the midst of the Temple. And suddenly, just like that, the gap closes for a moment, and Isaiah is cleansed.

But it does not stop here. Just when we think that the gap could not close any more, it does, for God himself speaks, as if drawing nearer to Isaiah. Although he does not address Isaiah directly, the question seems to be posed pointedly to Isaiah. “Whom shall I send?” To which Isaiah volunteers himself. “Here am I. Send me.”

What Isaiah probably does not realize is what he has signed up for. There is yet another gap, a gap nearly as daunting as that between God and humankind. It is the gap between Isaiah, this custodian of God’s burning word, and a world with stopped ears and a hard heart. Will he be able to cross this gap? Does he even want to?

Is this, too, where we find ourselves? Do we feel as if we’re stranded on an island, with a chasm between ourselves and God on one side, and a vast space between us and the world on the other? We hold the precious Word of God as our lifeblood. We are charged with proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to clogged ears and hard hearts. And it is a lonely place indeed, for what can bridge this gap? Who can bridge this gap?

This is the stubborn problem before our eyes until we remember who this God is on the other side of the gap behind us. God does not repose in static comfort on the other side of a vast chasm, waiting for us to soldier our way across a Red Sea that will only swallow us up. This God takes us by the hand forward, across the watery abyss. Our God is One who cannot tolerate any gaps among us, whether between us and him, between humans, or within any aspect of his creation.

And this gives us a glimpse into the mystery of the Trinity. The processions among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit moving within the very life of God countenance no gaps, because God himself has already closed the gaps. The Father has sent his Son into the world for its life and salvation in order to close the gap between heaven and earth. And even when the Son has returned to the right hand of the Father to reign in glory, the gap cannot remain. The Holy Spirit has been sent as our Advocate, Guide, and Companion. Because of the life of the Trinity, no gaps can remain.

This is indeed good news for us. But what about that other gap? What about the gaping hole between us and a world that seems to fight against the bold charge we’ve been given? What about a world that instinctively rejects God’s mission for us?

Here we are, back with Isaiah, standing with our missional charge on the edge of a gaping hole, trembling because we know not how to navigate it. There are more gaps on the other side of the gap ahead, between rich and poor, the loved and the unloved, the powerful and the weak, evil and good. The task is so daunting it is paralyzing. And like Isaiah, we acknowledge our incompetence for the task ahead, and then we fall silent.

But it is not up to us to close the gap. Remember that Isaiah merely speaks. He does not close the gap. It is God who reaches across the gap when the seraphim heals all of Isaiah’s sense of unworthiness with a burning coal. And then Isaiah is freed from his fear in order to go forth in mission.

So, too, with us. God has sent his Son across the gap to heal us and the world. And he continues to send the Holy Spirit to nudge us forward as God uses us to heal the gaps among us, although we may never see them fully closed in this life.

On Trinity Sunday, it is not so much our task to leave with answers or to close the gap between certitude and mystery. But standing in awe before the perceived gap between us and God is what gives us the courage to be grateful that our Triune God is constantly crossing gaps. And because we don’t really know what to do to cross the gaps, God does it for us. God in his infinite mercy moves across the chasm towards us, touches our lips to cleanse us, and then we are sent forth to mind the gaps. And this we know, no matter how much we can’t understand it: God himself will close the gaps.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2021

A Quiet Power

Our culture is one that inherently favors extroverts. This, at least, is the claim of writer Susan Cain in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. It’s difficult to refute this claim that there is a tendency to trample upon the quiet voices of introverts. You may have been one of those eager but quiet freshmen in college who dreaded the incessant, boisterous social activities of orientation week. I certainly was. How many classes have you taken where part of your grade was based on vocal participation, as if you couldn’t participate without always saying something? And did anyone ever tell you to be less shy?

It is, of course, true that shyness is not to be equated with introversion. There are, in fact, shy extroverts. But whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, if you are quiet, gentle, and understated in your demeanor, the world is likely to pass you by without giving you a second thought.

Maybe it’s one of the aftereffects of a buzzing age constructed around technology. Everything needs to be in your face, all the time. The most popular movies must incorporate the most dramatic stunts. Everything is so full tilt in your face that there is no time to think and process inside.

This is part of Cain’s point in her book about the neglected values of introversion. She doesn’t argue that introversion is better than extroversion, but she does point out that society often implicitly assumes that extroversion is better than introversion. Her point is that the world needs both introverts and extroverts. They complement one another.

And like the culture we inhabit, the Church herself, at least these days, often seems to favor the extroverts among us. In some corners, the Church has begun marketing the Gospel as if evangelism is only the domain of extroverts. Yes, there are indeed introverted evangelists, but the Church in her quest for relevancy has equated evangelism with that other E word: extroversion.

Nowhere is this perhaps more in evidence than on the Day of Pentecost. On this day, the Church in many places resorts to all kinds of antics either out of pure celebratory spirit (no pun intended) or out of desperation. And there’s little doubt where the Church has found such fantastic displays of Pentecostal power. We need only look at the account of the Day of Pentecost from the Acts of the Apostles to see the wildness of the Spirit’s manifestation among the early disciples. The Holy Spirit filled the house where they were, like the rush of a mighty wind. Tongues of fire alighted on the heads of the disciples. People understood languages foreign to them. It was pure holy pandemonium.

It is this imagery of the Holy Spirit’s work that has captivated the imagination of the Church for so long. The Spirit is wild, unpredictable, and spectacular. The Spirit is visibly evident in strange behavior and in incomprehensible miracles. The Spirit is the dynamism behind bold, prophetic preaching. And if none of these signs is evident, then maybe the Spirit is just absent after all.

But just as the world needs both extroverts and introverts, so, too, we need multiple ways of describing the Holy Spirit. We have become accustomed to envisaging the Holy Spirit as tailored only to an extroverted world. We forget that the description of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles is only one Scriptural voice testifying to the Spirit’s work.

And if we need both extroversion and introversion, maybe we can apply similar thinking to our knowledge of the Holy Spirit. The Church needs to embrace all aspects of the Holy Spirit’s power. The Acts of the Apostles gives us the proclamation of the Gospel on steroids. John the Evangelist presents us with the Advocate who will walk alongside us and lead us into truth. And St. Paul brings us into the depths of inner discernment.

If it’s true that extroverts tend to inadvertently trample all over introverts in a talkative world, it might be true that the babble of strange tongues, the noise of stupendous miracles, and visible manifestations of Spirit-filled ecstasy drown out the powerfully quiet voice of the Spirit related to us by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, a voice that we might need the most.

There are no mighty winds in Paul’s description of the Spirit. There is not even any clarity around real truth. There is, in fact, no speech at all. There is, instead, something that goes far, far deeper than mere human speech. It is a sound that is beyond speech. It is a primal utterance that cannot be clarified into intelligible words. The Spirit, along with all of creation, groans. This sigh that is too deep for words is a groan that matches the incessant groaning of creation that is held captive in travail.

The creation held in bondage to darkness and evil, wrestling with the problem of evil and questions about God’s presence or absence, all of this is too incoherent and formless to be spewed forth in words. There is no clarity of language comprehension in this imagery. There is only the drone of agony as creation itself, humans and everything else, utters its existential lament.

This groan of sorrow is heard beneath the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. It is detected amid smoking pyres in COVID-wracked India. It cries out in gasps from the wells of injustice in this own nation. It screams from the dissonance of interreligious and interdenominational strife. This groan is everywhere, no matter its timbre or pitch.

But a world bent on fantastic displays of might and power cannot bear this groan. There is nothing flashy to articulate from the groan itself; there are only pain and emptiness. The primal utterances of these cavernous sighs have not been formed into any kind of processed thought. The internal processing is the sigh itself. The groan knows not what it should say or ask.

This is why it is so much easier to turn to theatrics on Pentecost. Bring in the fire-eaters, loud streamers, and party horns. Favor an extroverted display of Pentecostal fervor that is audible and visible, but avoid the groans. They have nothing to say.

Except that they do. We need the multiple voices that attempt to convey the indescribable mystery of this misunderstood Person of the Trinity. As much as we need the excitement of the Spirit’s power, we desperately need the Spirit’s quiet, inner utterances that give us hope.

Because, as St. Paul tells us, it is hope, after all, that can be the only proper response to groans so deep that they have no verbal quality to them. It is a hope that we are not alone in our groaning. It is in the groaning itself that our groans are matched, neither in consonance or language, but in sincerity and truth, with the groans of the Holy Spirit who meets us in our anguish.

It is perhaps in the torture of this groaning that we discover the mind of Christ itself. Here, in the depths of inarticulate utterances, God the Father meets our travail as the Spirit gives quiet voice to what is voiceless to us. Here God the Son is found as the meeting point of heavenly redemption and earthly sorrow. And imagine how all of this would be lost if we didn’t heed this understated voice of the Spirit among us.

If most of us are familiar with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, it is probably found in this less obvious way, because this real groan is the bedrock of human life, even if it comes and goes. And the good news here is not that there is groaning but that when there is groaning there is One who comes among us, indeed within us, to intercede to the Father for us.

When forceful words are not able to quell war and violence, the Spirit is there interceding. When passionate and prophetic speeches cannot kill injustice, the Spirit is there nonetheless. When those who are anonymously suffering alone have no advocate, the Spirit who meets us within is a  friend and companion.

And when we have no words to pray or have even lost our ability to pray, this gentle, quiet, but powerful Guide is praying for us because God will not let us go. So, on this day, when we have so much to celebrate, I say, you can have your fire-eaters, banners, and loud testimonials. Any day, I would gladly focus on the power of the Spirit who is not above the depths of our sorrow, but who finds us in it and groans along with us. Because so often in life, we are simply speechless before God, and this is precisely where the Spirit comes to help us.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Day of Pentecost
May 23, 2021

Always Room for One More

I’m sure that all of us have had experiences in which we have been on the outside of a conversation listening in. Was it one of those times in your youth where, at night, you could hear your parents whispering secretively in the next room? You knew they were talking about you and all your teenage adventures. Or which of us has not overheard an uncomfortable conversation over dinner in a crowded restaurant (pre-pandemic, of course!) from the couple seated nearby.

I’ve certainly had my fair share of experiences in which someone was speaking about me—and not necessarily favorably—when I stumbled upon the conversation. And many of us have probably been on the outside of a clique looking in. We remember the conspiratorial whispering and laughing within the huddle of classmates as they glanced repeatedly in our direction. We instinctively knew that we were the topic of their surreptitious conversation. The members of the clique, from which we were excluded, also wanted us to know that the talk was about us and that we were not privy to its treasures.

Then there are those rare exchanges where you are on the outside of a conversation and are meant to hear what is being said. It is, in fact, being said for your benefit, knowing full well that you are listening and with the hope that you will heed the words spoken. Think of the young adult in the room next to her parents chatting with friends over coffee. “Well, she could really make something of herself if she fully embraced her remarkable artistic gift.” Saying these words indirectly is thought to be more effective than speaking them directly. Maybe the point will sink in more.

We probably wouldn’t ordinarily accuse Jesus of shying away from direct speech in the Gospels. But as his passion and death approach, in John’s Gospel, Jesus suddenly shifts from a long, farewell speech to his beloved disciples to an extended prayer addressed to God the Father. And it is indirectly intended for his disciples.

As we enter this scene today, Jesus is at table with his friends. He has washed their feet and offered a lengthy and somewhat ambiguous explanation of his impending departure from this world. Then, without missing a beat, Jesus looks up to heaven, still in the presence of his friends, and speaks to God as if they are not there.

Unless you backed up a few chapters in the Gospel, you would not know that Jesus’ disciples are still sitting at table with him. They are only mentioned obliquely. The language of Jesus’ prayer conveys the profound intimacy between Father and Son. The speech circles back on itself, so that the disciples are also bound up in this united fellowship of love. Jesus’ long prayer is clearly about the disciples, if never addressed directly to them.

On the surface, we might read a tone of cliquishness and exclusion into this prayer. The disciples are certainly being included inside the huddle of mutual love and self-giving. But the rest—the world—are out of the circle. Beware of those who do not accept Jesus’ true identity. They are of the world. They have been condemned because they have, in some sense, rejected the Christ and therefore do not have life.

It sounds rather like a version of that huddle on the school playground. Some are in, and some are out. Those on the inside of the huddle make a point of highlighting the exclusion of those on the outside, because no one wants to be out. And centuries later, as much as we may want to be inside the holy huddle, we hope and pray that we are not on the outside of it.

But this image of a tight circle into which only a select few are inducted is a troubling one. It seems to fly in the face of John’s earlier words that Jesus came into the world not to condemn it but to save it. What on earth are we to make of Jesus’ prayer to the Father from the inside of this holy huddle? What about those on the outside?

If Jesus’ prayer is really an indirect address to the disciples, then it is more than a simple indication that they are in the exclusive circle. They are meant to hear what he has to say. They are intended to discover the intense love between Father and Son into which they have been drawn. Jesus wants them to know that they will not be bereft after his departure from this world but will be protected by their loving Father. And Jesus says all this so that the disciples will understand the fullness of joy that God desires for them.

But this is not all. This, in fact, cannot be all. If the meaning of Jesus’ prayer were to stop there, then it would be only good news for those disciples on the inside of the exclusive circle and very bad news for those out. And this does not square with Jesus’ mission in the world. So Jesus eventually turns his prayer in a surprising direction when he asks the Father not to take his friends out of the world but to protect them as they are sent into it.

Jesus’ long prayer to the Father is intended to instruct the disciples about their privileged status and also about their purpose in the world. The prayer then becomes one not just indirectly addressed to the disciples but to the world itself. And it is precisely here where the prayer is no longer like the inside conversation of an exclusive clique. The disciples are meant to hear this address to God in order to build themselves up and to build others up, too.

For the love expressed in Jesus’ prayer to the Father is incapable of being exclusively guarded within the life of the Trinity. This love, generously given, defies jealous hoarding so that only a select few can be invited in to share of it. This unusual love is so abundant that it overflows from God into the lives of the disciples and from them into the world itself. That is the nature of this love.

It may be difficult to fathom a shared gift that is impossible of being jealously protected. What community of believers doesn’t feel the need to preserve its own claims on truth because it is the mark of their own special relationship with God? What religious group doesn’t want to fence in its customs and traditions in order to bolster its particular identity at the expense of the exclusion of others? How many Christians narrowly guard their spiritual gifts within the auspices of the Church while failing to share them with the world?

We have become so conditioned to proclaim the Gospel directly, from the inside out, by force alone or not at all. But the world might better feel the intensity of its effects indirectly by listening from the outside in. What would it look like to love so intensely as the Body of Christ that this love couldn’t be contained within the Body alone? Rather than pit ourselves against the world, how do we speak about the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so that the world indirectly hears our conversation and is cut to the heart?

It is nothing short of the evil one who will tempt us to keep our special relationship with God just between friends. The evil one would have us believe that the world is not deserving of a place in our exclusive circle. And it is because the evil one somehow knows that the dynamic nature of God’s love is dangerous, because it is a love that can only tumble out beyond its immediate circle to find others.

Jesus tells us that there is a conversation already happening within the life of the Godhead that has been indirectly shared with us, and there is a world that desperately needs to listen in. This conversation is a huddle bound by mutual love and not by exclusion. Its topic is a matter of life and death and is meant to be heard by those on the outside, listening in. And its message is so nuanced that it will find its way into the world in need of it; nothing can stop it.

If we can only keep the conversation going, this huddle of love will grow and grow and grow. It is meant to expand, not to stay small. It will extend beyond the boundaries of comfort and push through all the divisions and barriers that try to stand in its way. It will persist if we can keep the conversation going. Its truth must be spoken in the world. And in this huddle, where no one is to be excluded, there is always room for one more.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 16, 2021

Believe It or Not

One of my middle school science teachers had an exercise to open each class. It was called “Believe It or Not.” Each day, we would begin class with the teacher showing us a fascinating claim on the transparency machine (do you remember those?). We would then have to guess whether the statement was true or not.

Believe it or not: you have to close your eyes when you sneeze to protect them. Believe it or not: if we took the DNA from the number of cells in a human body and laid it out linearly, it would wrap around the earth 2.5 million times. Believe it or not: the lifespan of a turtle can be as much as several hundred years. For the record, I’m not going to tell you which of those statements are true!

The fun of this game was that it was nearly impossible to guess whether something was true or false. The claims were so astounding that when they were true, they were nearly impossible to believe.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes four astounding claims. The fact that we might fail to recognize them as nearly preposterous may be telling in and of itself. Perhaps we have we lost, over time, an ability to readily believe Jesus words. We are too skeptical of the claim that God can still work wonders among us. But in his Farewell Discourse to the disciples on the eve of his death, Jesus says four incredible things.

Here’s the first. Believe it or not: God wants us to have joy in our lives. On the surface, this does not seem so hard to believe. But how many people do you know who actually believe this? On the one hand, there are those who think the joy God desires for us is to be equated with perpetual happiness. Or joy means that God always wants us to have the most fashionable car or gobs of wealth.

But how many people truly believe that God desires for us to have real joy? Do you believe that God allows—indeed wants—you to have joy in your life? Can you believe this without imagining any strings are attached? How easily we forget that even in the marriage service of our prayer book, it is clearly stated that marriage is for the mutual joy of two people. Even people of faith have come to believe that if anything is enjoyed, there must be punishment waiting around the corner. Experiencing joy is almost too good to be true. And it is difficult to accept that things can be enjoyed as things in themselves, rather than merely utilized for some other end.

The second incredible thing that Jesus tells his disciples in his Farewell Discourse is that he considers them to be his friends. We are to extend that to ourselves. Believe it or not: Jesus considers us his friends. Again, does that seem ridiculous to us? And if not, perhaps it is because Facebook has trained us to cheapen the meaning of friendship. But this is no ordinary friendship of which Jesus speaks. It is a relationship of mutual love, of self-sacrificial love. It is a friendship that gives us the right to approach Jesus not from the perspective of a servant but nearly as an equal. It means that Jesus doesn’t hide from us the astounding things the Father has shared with him. It means that Jesus draws us, his friends, into the life shared between him and the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Can we even begin to imagine this type of friendship, something that goes far, far deeper than the click of a button on social media? This is not the kind of friendship that suddenly blossoms when we need a favor. If we understand the depth of this kind of friendship, it may be difficult to fathom that we are worthy to be called a friend of Jesus, especially since he is our Lord and Savior.

You will see that all these astonishing claims follow from one another and are related. So, the third amazing thing that Jesus tells us is that, believe it or not, because we have been chosen by the Father, we are capable of bearing tremendous fruit. Like the other claims, this may not resonate deeply with us. But recall the kind of fruit of which Jesus speaks. This is no meager batch of mealy apples that we are to produce. We are to generate fruit so rich and abundant that the world will never be the same after this fruit is created.

In the previous chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus describes what this fruit looks like. It is the fruit of marvelous works, not just good works, but works that create a seismic shift in the state of the world, for the good of the world. Believe it or not, Jesus says that the works we will do will be greater even than those he has done in his lifetime. This is not because of any superhuman power on our part, but it is because Jesus will ascend to the Father and unleash the Holy Spirit among us to work wonders. Can you really believe this?

Which brings us to the final unbelievable claim that Jesus makes. It is a claim that bears both a temptation and a promise. Believe it or not: if we abide in love of God and one another, and if we ask the Father for anything, anything, in the Name of Jesus, the Father will give it to us. It is such an astonishing proposition because we know how it might be abused. But the caveat is that it must be rooted in love. And if we are abiding in that love, we can’t help but ask for the right things.

Do you see, now, how incredible these claims are? Do you believe them? It’s not difficult to understand why the power latent in these words has been deflated over the years. These promises are almost too good to be true. Human greed and manipulation, yes even in the Church herself, have twisted pure joy into obligation and punitive enforcement of duty. Shame has replaced joy. The sins of pride and selfishness have prevented us from retaining a robust understanding of friendship. Self-preservation has all but ensured that a deep, sacrificial love between friends is a rare thing indeed. The idol of perfectionism and obsession with self-image has convinced us that we are not capable of bearing long-lasting fruit to benefit the world. Or if we do, we bear fruit of our own accord, not with God’s help, but because we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and take charge of our own lives. And as far as asking the Father for anything, well, this has been so misused, that it is no wonder many fail to believe it. The tenth time we ask for the winning lottery ticket or the new Mercedes without any result, any belief in this claim dies.

But these claims are not astonishing because we can’t believe them. They are not astonishing because they are not really true. They are incredible because they are true and because of what they say about God and about us, too. Jesus’ four staggering assertions reveal a God who is not an eternal sadist but One who loves us so much, and even trusts us so much, to send his Holy Spirit to enable us to do works so great that we cannot even imagine them.

These four amazing promises reveal that God has in mind a future for this world that is not catastrophic but inherently promising and good. It is an optimistic vision that flies in the face of much of what we read and hear in the news, but it is revealed in Jesus’ words to his disciples and to us.

These four nearly preposterous declarations by the Son are proof that God does not desire us to grovel before him or barter our way to happiness, but that God loves us unconditionally and longs for us to be in relationship with him. It is only we who have trouble seeing this.

And if we still cannot believe these stupefying claims, it is because we have not yet realized how confounding it is that our God would stoop so low as to send his only Son to die and prove to us that we are not mere servants, but we are his friends. It is only because of this profound truth that we have any right to believe the four unbelievable things that Jesus has told us.

It may be that we have become so complacent and lazy in our appreciation of God’s words to us because we have neglected to run with the baton that God has handed us. We have forgotten that God has already chosen us, and we are standing at the beginning of the race, waiting for it to begin. And by now, we should long have been running into the wind.

But God has not stopped waiting for us to respond. He has chosen us. He has sent his Son to call us friends. He has shared the love and joy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with us. He has told us, through Jesus, that believe it or not, we will bear unbelievable fruit for the sake of the world with his help. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. God doesn’t hope that we will ask him for things. God expects that we will. God is just patiently waiting, waiting for us to stop and remember all that he has done for us. God is longing for us to understand how much he has given us and how much we can do in his Name, if we can only believe that it is all true.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 9, 2021

God’s Gesture

Adults mistakenly think that children always need to learn from them, but perhaps it would behoove adults to learn a thing or two from children from time to time. I will never forget what occurred one Sunday when I offered the Dismissal at the end of Mass. As I chanted the words, “Let us bless the Lord,” I extended my arms towards the congregation, as I usually do. And as I did so, a child in the congregation immediately echoed this gesture back to me.

It was a beautifully profound act. It was unsolicited. No one else in the congregation was doing it, but this child instinctively discerned that it was only natural to respond to what I had done.

This open receptivity of children is what makes them such excellent learners of languages. Before the weary jadedness of adulthood enters in, children know how to respond without censoring themselves. They respond, in kind, to how they are treated. A funny face will frequently elicit a smile or laugh from a baby. A facial expression of distress may very well provoke a state of anxiety in a child. And extending arms out as a gesture of bidding, results in a similar gestural response.

It is no wonder that children can also teach us something about loving God. The role of formation typically lies with adults, but perhaps we adults can learn a few things from children. And the behavior of a child might even point to an initiating gesture from God.

It is terribly tragic that the older we get, the harder it may be for us to reciprocate God’s own gesture towards us. When we respond in our own ways, we most likely believe we are being true to how God has acted towards us. But it is possible that we have misinterpreted this action.

If we were to ask those around us how they imagine God’s stance towards humankind, what do you think they would say? Would they picture God with arms extended in love to us, or with a finger wagging in chastisement? I’m guessing that many would choose the latter. If my own experience is accurate, I think that most people’s conception of God is one of fear.

Fear can, of course, be holy fear, or fear shot through with great anxiety. Holy fear is entirely appropriate. It reinforces our understanding of God as God, and us as mere human beings. Holy fear engenders awe and inspires worship.

But anxious fear is toxic. This is the obsessive fear of condemnation and of being punished. Although fear can be intended to command devotion, it usually results in lack of respect and disintegration of relationship.

The author of the First Letter of John is quite clear: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” The fear of which John speaks is the fear associated with judgment. It is about the future of our souls before God. John is not so naïve as to believe that we will never be afraid in our lives. But John also understands that fear is a useful barometer for the state of our souls.

If we are in a state of unholy fear, then it may be telling about our own spiritual health. For if love means to walk as Jesus would have us walk, then our own anxious fear about salvation may be an indicator that we are not walking as we should walk. Fear, in this case, is a helpful guide as we seek to change the way we live.

But John states that God and unholy fear do not mix. Indeed, they cannot mix. It is like one of those electronic forms where you can choose one option, but not both. You cannot click the boxes for both love and fear. And if God is love, as John tells us, then fear cannot exist if we truly know God.

Why, then, do so many Christians seem to live in a constant state of anxious fear? Fear has often been the tactic used to make people attend church or say their prayers. It has been used to enforce specific standards of morality. Fear has been wielded to keep people in line, whether for their own sake or for the sake of those in authority.

This baseline of fear has spread beyond the Church to the world around us. Fear is a constant. People are afraid that they will lose their money or their status. They are afraid of being unloved or of lacking approval. They are terrified of being wrong. And often this circle loops back to a fear of God, because if they are afraid of being wrong, they are ultimately afraid of God’s anger when they are wrong.

We would be remiss in denying the numerous Scriptural depictions of God’s wrath and anger. But we would likewise be remiss in ignoring the constant gesture that reappears in Scripture from beginning to end. It is the gesture of God extending his arms out to humankind in love.

And John illustrates this most forcefully in the iconic image of love. It is the visible sign that God’s posture towards us is one of extended arms rather than a wagging finger. This visible sign is the gift of his only Son for the salvation of the world.

This gift is the visualization par excellence of God’s arms reaching out to us. Jesus Christ, offered to the world so that it may have life, is the corrective to all our misshapen images of God’s relationship with us. The Son did not fight against those who opposed him. He did not seek revenge, nor did the Father. But the Son willingly laid down his life, even for his enemies. Indeed, he broke the cycle of revenge in the world.

If we keep this image at the forefront of our minds, then we begin to understand that throughout the long history of Scripture and even to our present day, our fallible human minds have distorted God’s gesture towards us into a humanly interpreted gesture. The gestures that we have received from our fellow sinful neighbors have been echoed back to one another, and even ultimately back to God. We have projected our own anger, deceit, hatred, and fear onto God, who has revealed in Jesus Christ that his gesture towards us has only ever been one of arms extended out in love.

At what point did humankind begin to substitute its own actions of chastisement and revenge for God’s central act of love? Was it at the Fall? Was it at the first hint of human betrayal? Was it at the first experience of suffering or tragedy? And the anxious fear that has resulted explains so much of the world’s sin. If we cannot accept the image of God’s arms extended out towards us, it is difficult ever to accept that we are loved. And if we cannot accept that we are loved, it is nearly impossible to treat others with mercy and compassion.

It is then a vicious cycle, for every accolade that another receives is one that we do not receive. Every dollar given to a person in need is one taken from us. Every gift bestowed upon another is something we lack.

And when we refuse to accept God’s gesture of love towards us, even the good actions we undertake are undertaken from a deficit mentality. We must engage in good works because it is necessary to win God’s love, because we are scared to go without it. Every prayer said and every Mass attended without being a response to love then become the fulfillment of an obligation, because otherwise, the gesture of extended arms is contorted into one of a wagging finger.

Fear is the root of so much evil and spiritual unhealth. But love is the antidote. This antidote is not sickly sweet or saccharine. It is not amorphous and oblique. It is concrete and direct. Love is not even really visible in our actions towards our neighbors, because even these can be deceitful. But this true love is active in the primal response to God’s first gesture towards us.

Love is seeing God’s arms beckoning to us and then instinctively responding with our arms open to him, and consequently to our neighbors. Love is a response; fear is a reaction. Love is not one more thing to gain favor with God or others, but it is simply who we are when we respond to God’s gesture towards us. Love does not employ guilt or shame or manipulation. It simply breeds more love because its goodness is contagious.

But fear is when we turn God into a god that can never be appeased. It is a hungry god that feeds itself by sadistically withholding love and using the wagging finger as a motivation for control. Fear, ironically, is our own idolization of humanity’s sinfulness. And the angry god of our own devising is no god at all, because it has no relationship with us.

But love for the God who created and redeemed us is nothing short of pure worship. Love is not one more thing to do but who we have to be because of who God is towards us. And it all stems from that gesture that is all about God and not so much about us. It is the Son, the image of the invisible God, who has affirmed that the posture of God towards his beloved children has ever only been one thing, no matter how much humankind has misinterpreted it. And this gesture is a loving Father, with arms extended in love, waiting and waiting and waiting until one day, his children finally see what he has done for them. And then they reach their arms back out to him.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 2, 2021

We Know Him by What He Does

One Sunday morning, a few months ago, I was engaged in my usual routine prior to Sung Mass. At that point, before the arrival of our new livestreaming equipment, I was setting up my iPhone on a tripod in the nave and then starting the livestream on Facebook. When I returned to the sacristy, I would open my laptop and drop in the Mass leaflet. This practice had become tiresome because it was one more thing to do, and I found it hard to shift from tech management to prayer.

As I recall, this particular Sunday morning was during the difficult time when our doors were closed to public worship, and so it was just me, the musicians, and a server. It was a lonely time, and I longed to see people in the pews again.

And so, that Sunday morning, I was especially struck as I dropped the leaflet into the comment feed. Suddenly, I noticed people “logging in” to Mass. I hadn’t really paid attention to this much before. The people logging onto Facebook were not just numbers in the view panel; they were comments. Personal interaction was beginning to happen. “Good morning from Texas.” “Good morning from Chestnut Hill.” Each person would designate their respective locations.

And then one of the newest members of our parish logged in: “Good morning from Bryn Mawr.” It was a seemingly small thing, but I was extremely touched. I realized that I was watching community form before my eyes. There was a brief break in the cloud of loneliness created by a pandemic. I had been struggling, too, with the difficulty of building relationships during a pandemic and with the knowledge of the many challenges this parish had faced and would face. But I realized in that moment, that all was going to be just fine. I knew that I had experienced an acute moment of God’s grace. This is how God speaks—not always directly but clearly if we heed his voice. And God was saying, “I have not let you go.”

Hearing God’s voice may seem like one of the most intangible things we could imagine. I would guess that very few people have had experiences wherein they have heard God speaking to them as if in a distinctly audible voice. For most, it’s not so simple.

The world is noisy, and its perpetual din clamors above the still, small voice of God. The difficulty in hearing God’s voice can be witnessed in the large numbers of people who give up on hearing it. They look for affirmation in their work, hobbies, or social relationships. God’s voice seems to be absent to them in the face of loss or in the mundane. What then are we to make of St. John’s assertion that Jesus the Good Shepherd cares for sheep who know him, and who don’t simply know him but also know his voice? What does this voice sound like? How can we heed it if we do not recognize it? Is it possible that we don’t recognize the Good Shepherd’s voice because we can’t comprehend what it means to be a Good Shepherd?

When Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd, he draws on a rich Scriptural tradition of describing God as Shepherd. But this ancient tradition usually defines God as a benevolent, caring Shepherd over and against the numerous bad shepherds who are destroying or taking advantage of the sheep. Have we known too many bad shepherds to be able to recognize a good one? And is this why the voice of our Good Shepherd seems so absent at times?

Perhaps, then, we can take a cue from some other words of Jesus, this time from Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus tells his disciples that they will be able to tell true from false prophets by the results of what they do. A good tree does not bear bad fruit. The false prophets are the ones who come deceitfully in sheep’s clothing, but they are really wolves. If this is true and we can tell good from bad by looking at the visible signs of fruit, then we might begin to discern the Good Shepherd’s voice.

The Good Shepherd’s sheep know him by his voice. He is the Good Shepherd because of what he does. He gathers and doesn’t divide. He sacrifices his own life for the sake of his sheep. He visibly demonstrates that he intimately knows his flock. He does not behave as a mercenary but as one invested in his sheep. The sheep only follow when they hear his voice because they associate his voice with certain behavior.

We know from John that the Good Shepherd sticks with his sheep; he does not flee. The hireling, by contrast, is mercenary. The hireling phones it in. The hired hand is not invested in the sheep and runs away without a second thought when things go wrong. The Good Shepherd does not sacrifice the sheep to get what he wants; he sacrifices himself so that the sheep may have fullness of life.

The relationship between Jesus the Good Shepherd and his flock is rooted in Jesus’ own relationship with his Father. That relationship is not hoarded within the life of the Trinity, but the love Jesus experiences with the Father is extended to his sheep. And Jesus does not hoard that intimacy with his own sheep, but he shares that with sheep from other folds. The gesture is always one of openness and of overflowing love.

This might be the most recognizable fruit of the Shepherd’s voice: that no one is unworthy, small, neglected, or broken enough to be considered outside the fold. And not only that: those sheep in other folds are not simply worthy of the Shepherd’s care; they are quite capable of hearing and recognizing his voice.

We know the voice of our Good Shepherd by what he does among us. We see the fruits of his presence. And what our Good Shepherd does is gather his entire flock, from all corners of the earth, into his loving care. When we see the opposite of that, we can trust that the Good Shepherd is not behind it.

When we see dividing and scattering instead of gathering, then we can be certain that the Good Shepherd is not doing it. When we see exclusive folds that hoard their own truths or special relationships, then we can be assured that the Good Shepherd is not responsible for this.

But the opposite is true as well. When we see sheep in different folds who seem bereft of leadership and vulnerable to wild wolves, we can be certain that the Good Shepherd is present among them, reaching his arms out to put them on his shoulders. He will bring them home. His voice is there, even if lost amid the baying of wolves.

When we see sheep who are lost and exposed to great danger on their own, even when others have fled them in the face of difficulties, we can trust that the Good Shepherd is searching desperately for them. He is calling their names. And one day, we pray that they will hear his voice.

The Good Shepherd’s sheep know him by his voice. But he is the Good Shepherd because of what he does. He seeks the lost one among the ninety-nine because he cannot rest until all his sheep have made it back to the fold.

And this is why I was certain that I was hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd on that lonely Sunday morning some months ago. I didn’t hear an audible voice, but I saw what he was doing among us. I heard the Good Shepherd’s voice in its own complex way. I wasn’t looking for it in the presence of a vast crowd of people or in hundreds of people logging onto Facebook for Mass. I wasn’t trying to find it in prosperity or wealth or in flashy testimonials. I recognized the voice in community stirring into action. It was being formed from various folds and in the midst of looming challenges and from a difficult past.

I recognized the Good Shepherd’s voice because he gathers his flock and doesn’t scatter them. Gathering is associated with his name because his flock instinctively know his voice, even if they aren’t even aware of it. And there they were being gathered into his loving arms that Sunday morning, even on the internet.

And most of all, I knew the Good Shepherd was calling to me and to others because he does not let us go. He is no mercenary Savior. He has already paid the ultimate price by laying down his life for us. He has never let us go, even when we have fled from him. Even when the world tells us that the sheepfold is an anachronism, the Good Shepherd does not give up on us. He tends the gate of that fold and continues to open it for all his sheep. He sticks with us, and it is precisely when we feel lonely, lost, or helpless, that he is most fervently searching for us.

The Good Shepherd’s sheep know him by his voice. But he is the Good Shepherd because of what he does. And it is precisely when we have reached the valley of darkness and despair that Jesus does something more for us: he stoops down lower than we can even imagine, hoists us on his shoulders, and brings us home because he loves us.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 25, 2021
 

Finer Perceptions

Willa Cather’s 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop is set in the rugged frontier of the Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Based on historical figures, it is the story of Father Jean Marie Latour, later Bishop Latour, a French missionary priest sent to the southwest United States to establish a diocese there.

The situation in the Southwest was dire. Scores of people had never received Holy Baptism because of the lack of priestly presence, or in some cases, because of priestly neglect. People were living in all manner of immoral conduct because they had no one to shepherd them and teach them the faith—at least until Father Latour arrives on the scene.

Latour is the essence of a gentleman and a faithful priest. He is erudite, gentle, and pastoral. He knows how to be a faithful pastor to his flock because he is open enough to their circumstances and to God’s living presence among them. He loves his flock. He is a stable icon of God’s grace to a people starving for the sacraments and formation, to a people who have been neglected and even forsaken by their clergy.

Latour’s childhood friend, Father Joseph Vaillant, is sent to accompany Latour in his backbreaking work. They journey on horseback through the perilous terrain of unexplored frontier lands, narrowly surviving the harsh conditions imposed on them, but bringing the Gospel to all, no matter the cost. Father Vaillant is, in many ways, a foil to Father Latour. Vaillant is somewhat impetuous and emotionally volatile. He is not as subtle in his disposition as Father Latour. His faith is rustic, hearty, even flamboyant, but he is extraordinarily devout.

The difference in character between the two men is perhaps most pronounced in their understanding of God’s presence among them. Father Vaillant is entranced by miracles; he relishes such fantastic displays of God’s intervention in the natural order. As his friend Father Latour puts it, “his dear Joseph must always have the miracle very direct and spectacular, not with Nature, but against it.”

At one point in their travels in Mexico, Father Latour and Father Vaillant meet with a local priest who has just visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Father Vaillant is filled with excitement at the story behind this apparition of Our Lady to a poor Mexican boy. He tells Father Latour, “Doctrine is well enough for the wise, Jean; but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.”

Father Latour responds in his measured and thoughtful fashion: “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. . . The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

This definition of a miracle is perhaps the best I have ever heard. Both Father Latour and Father Vaillant appreciate something important about God’s manifestation to humans. Father Vaillant recognizes the spectacular nature of God’s grace. But Father Latour is able to find these supernatural disturbances more readily than Father Vaillant, in the everyday and ordinary.

There is nothing ordinary about the Risen Christ appearing to his disciples in the aftermath of his death and resurrection from the dead. The scene in Jerusalem is a flurry of excitement. There has been a series of miraculous appearances to the disciples. This is vividly portrayed immediately before today’s Gospel story begins. Two disciples have just seen Jesus on the road to Emmaus. The Risen Lord has appeared to Simon Peter. And as the disciples are buzzing with speculation and consternation following these apparitions, Jesus suddenly stands among them and gently pauses the conversation with his greeting, “Peace be with you.”

This new post-resurrection appearance only solicits more fear and excitement. Jesus is thought to be a ghost of some sort. To these confused disciples, the moment reveals the ways in which these disciples are so much like Father Vaillant. They need to behold something that is against nature. They have no real perspective on what has happened in the past few days. There is no doctrine to ponder. They want something to hold in their hands and love. There is no way to make sense of Jesus’ seeming absence from their lives, except that now they have miraculous proof of his presence, and they are giddy with excitement.

These disciples are, in some sense, unformed. They have no theological language of which to speak of their Lord and Savior. But at least now they have some proof that he is still living and among them, and that God’s promises are true.

And yet it is tempting to idolize the miracle’s vision. The wild image of the Risen Christ eating broiled fish as if it’s some kind of parlor trick is astounding. And its incredibleness has now become the focus of everyone’s attention. It’s the flashy image used to illustrate a point which has now obscured what it is pointing towards.

But after Jesus eats the broiled fish, he continues. And when Jesus continues, the pieces of the puzzle begin to be put together, piece by piece. Just like those disciples on the road to Emmaus, their eyes are slowly opened to what has transpired. Now, the law of Moses, the cries of the prophets, and the whole narrative of Scripture is starting to make sense.

The visible sign of Jesus with flesh and bones, eating broiled fish, is only a tiny part of this spectacular picture. Its purpose has been to jog the memory. This apparition of Jesus to the disciples, which is not simply a vision but a physical manifestation of his presence, is also more than a physical manifestation. It is, to use Father Latour’s words, “human vision corrected by divine love.” The sight of Christ eating broiled fish before them means nothing without the memory of divine love that has been with them as long as they have known their Savior.

The broiled fish recalls the feeding of the multitude who were hungry. The breaking of bread on the road to Emmaus brings the Last Supper into the present. The hands and feet before the disciples are evidence that the violence done to Jesus’ physical body has not been erased but has been transformed into a sign of the hope of our redemption. And so are all our sufferings and wounds because of this.

It is no wonder that in an age so devoid of theological nuance and formation, so many are left wandering and praying for a spectacular miracle. Perhaps Father Vaillant is right: “Doctrine is well enough for the wise, . . . but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.” Those who have been ostracized, wounded, and even neglected by the Church that should have loved and formed them may not really be uninterested in God. Maybe they are simply waiting for their own miracles, for the proof that God is living among them.

And those of us, too, who come week after week to worship our Risen Lord, in our moments of malaise and in the moments where we are mute before more unspeakable violence and tragedy may also find ourselves desperately longing for some incredible proof that God has not left us. We yearn to touch the hands and feet, to gaze at the wounds, to behold something more specific than bread and wine, to find proof that God is really longing to feed us.

But we know, too, that the eating of the broiled fish points towards something else. Jesus reminds the disciples of that great story of which they are a part. They now see how the gap in the puzzle has been filled. If their past is a vital part of this story, then there is a future, too. And this future is about them. It is about much more as well. It’s about the good news to which they have been witnesses.

The truth to which their eyes have been opened in that room cannot stay in that room. It must burst through the doors, locked in fear, into a world that is longing for a sign and searching for tangible proof that there is some other dimension that will satisfy their emptiness. The disciples are being called to testify to what they know because others are desperate for a sign that God is still with us.

And when this knowledge of God’s faithfulness is propelled into the surrounding world, it will interpret all that is confusing. Perceptions will be made finer. There will be no need for Jesus to eat broiled fish before our eyes. There will be no need to demand more from bread and wine, because they are enough and they have always been enough. Our eyes have simply been closed to the miracle within them.

And there is one miracle that can explain this all. It is not spectacularly visible as an apparition might be, and it cannot be touched with human hands. But it is truly present. And it is that radiant, divine love that has corrected our human vision and made our hearts sing with joy.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Easter
April 18, 2021

In the Zone

In the liner notes to his 2011 album Alone at the Vanguard, jazz pianist Fred Hersch described his playing on the night of the recording as being “in the zone.” Hersch’s live performance, captured in this album, was the culmination of a week’s worth of performances at New York City’s famous Village Vanguard jazz club.

You don’t have to be a jazz musician to understand what Hersch meant when he described being “in the zone.” He wasn’t bragging about his playing. He was acknowledging that, as a performer and improviser, something felt right during that live performance at the Village Vanguard.

Hersch’s playing on that album conveyed an intensity of musical genius. Any performer knows that the art of performing is more than just playing the notes with an acceptable degree of musicality. Being “in the zone” as a musician, means that the performer is acutely aware of her or his surroundings and capable of responding musically in the moment. This is particularly true of improvisation. The room’s energy feeds musical inspiration. It’s hard to improvise to an empty room.

On the album Alone at the Vanguard, one can hear the audience’s enthusiastic response to Hersch’s musicianship, both in the applause following numbers and in the middle of them as well. The playing is electric. There is no doubt to the listener that Hersch was definitely “in the zone” that evening.

Perhaps you have had moments in your life where you felt that you were “in the zone.” I suspect that we all know those moments when everything seems to be falling into place. The right inspiration happens. We have the necessary energy to accomplish the task before us. It’s hard to describe, but we all know what it feels like to be “in the zone.”

When reading the Acts of the Apostles, one has the strong feeling that thousands of people were constantly “in the zone.” The conditions were just right for the proclamation of the Gospel.

The book gets off to a dynamic start as Jesus ascends to heaven and the Holy Spirit’s Pentecostal fire lights upon the disciples. Thousands of people come to the faith and are saved. Many people are healed, some even being raised from the dead. And we are told more than once that Jesus’ earliest disciples proclaimed the Gospel with great boldness. Everyone, it seems, was “in the zone” all the time. There was something in the air in those days. People were fired up about Jesus, and the whole world was reaping the benefits of this.

And as if this were not enough, we are told in today’s reading that there was a profound unity among all these earliest believers. They were “of one heart and soul.” No one felt that their possessions were their exclusive property. People seemed to comprehend that all they had was held in trust for God. And as a result, no one was needy among them.

It is no wonder, then, that many have tried to write off the Acts of the Apostles as a piece of hyperbolic storytelling. How could everything have been so dynamic? Could fallible humans truly have been so selfless and altruistic? Did all those miracles actually happen? It is almost incomprehensible to imagine that so many people could have been “in the zone,” tapping into the same Pentecostal Spirit, feeding off the dynamism of post-resurrection power.

If we were to continue reading after today’s passage, we would know that there were indeed counter examples. Ananias and his wife Sapphira met their unhappy fate precisely because they did not adhere to the standards of communal living and self-sacrifice. But on the whole, the early pages of Acts seem to represent the epitome of Christian love, charity, and service, where all the characters are “in the zone.”

Two thousand years after the fact, we are tempted to put our heads in our hands and wonder what has gone wrong. Do you not feel even a bit guilty that things now seem so different? Is our own skepticism of the historical accuracy of events in the Acts of the Apostles proof itself that we do not expect the same things these days?

The other temptation is to assume that the palpable evidence of God’s work and action were only in full force in those earliest days of the Church. We may imagine that God’s work in the world is like a battery. In the immediate aftermath of Pentecost, the battery was fully charged and everyone was powered by its energy. But so many centuries afterward, we are left with a battery that has lost its charge, and we have no clue how to recharge it.

Where are the miraculous healings? Where are the thousands coming to the faith? Where are the bold testimonies of the resurrection? Where is the gumption that led the earliest believers to risk their lives for the sake of the Gospel?

This perceived disparity between the old days and the present stands out in vivid relief when we try to comprehend a group of people sharing everything in common and providing for the needy. How do we analyze this without twisting our own view of economics? Can we really believe that there was not a single needy person among them?

The only solution with which we are left, so it seems, is to write it all off. Either it did not happen that way, and the Acts of the Apostles is a huge example of storyteller’s license, or we employ all manner of hermeneutical gymnastics to justify why our own economic policies can never replicate those of the early Church.

And we are back to where we started. We are left puzzled by an age in which we seem to be desperately out of the zone. We might not want to be out of the zone, and yet we don’t know how to be in the zone.

But maybe the problem lies in our own perception. Could it be that our vision is myopic? Could we be looking for all the wrong signs? Are we looking for too many visible signs while ignoring the inward and invisible graces latent among us? Have we given up hope on our world when we should demand more of it? Have we let ourselves off the hook when we should hold ourselves to higher standards? A world that is constantly “in the zone” just might be too threatening to our complacency and require too much of us.

Because if what we believe is true—and I, for one, believe wholeheartedly that it is—then the central event of our faith has once and for all upended the world. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and ascension to the right hand of the Father has unleashed a power upon this earth that defies our expectations. It is a force so incomprehensible in its scope that it is no wonder that every fiber of the world’s being wants to resist it.

And maybe that’s why we seem so out of the zone. Maybe the world has gotten so used to a rut of normalcy that feels right only because it serves the self. Maybe we have forgotten how exhilarating it can be when Jesus upends our reality.

Our vision has followed suit. We have come to see the prevalence of the needy among us as a fact of life, impossible for us to change on this side of heaven. We are afraid of boldly proclaiming the resurrection because we will upset conventional sensibilities and others will think we are foolish. We are taught to stand against those who disagree with us because that is how we assert our independence and individuality. And while we’re at it, we might as well cling to all that we own, because, by golly, we earned it.

But if we can find a way to enter into the zone again, we might be able to believe what the Acts of the Apostles claims: that there is a buzzing undercurrent of dynamism let loose in the world with Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It is there, buzzing all around us, even if the buzz is too low or high to hear at times. And it is available to us.

This force gains strength in numbers, too. When we tap, however, briefly, into this zone of Good News, we will find ourselves being pulled along with it. And we, like those early disciples, will want to cry out what we have heard with boldness. Others will also want to join in. And little by little, we will find things changing.

Look around this room. Listen. Do you hear the buzz? It’s there. Haven’t you seen the Gospel energy lighting up all over this church and among this congregation? Don’t you see it from time to time making its way into the news? Even in a world that so often seems to be dead to the Gospel, it’s there, if you are attentive. If a numb complacency hasn’t dulled our senses, we will see it. God’s power has not left us. There is still boldness echoing the strains of the Good News to a world that wants to hear it. And that persistent buzz is proof that God is still calling us to be “in the zone.”

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2021

The Question Death Could not Kill

Imagine with me a triptych. It’s not the triptych behind the Lady Chapel altar, now opened once again. It’s a visual triptych, with three panels, telling the story from a first encounter with Jesus to Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances.

On the left panel of the triptych, we journey all the way back to the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel. Jesus has just been baptized by John the Baptist, and now he is about to begin his public ministry in Galilee. He is walking by John and two of his disciples. As soon as John identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God, the two disciples begin to follow Jesus.

The action scene represented in this first panel of our triptych shows Jesus turning to look at the disciples. And then he asks them this question: “What do you seek?” This panel might even display the Greek words from Scripture to elaborate on the scene.

The question, admittedly, seems rather vague. It’s the kind of question we might dread. What is the meaning of life? What do you want to be when you grow up? That kind of question. And, unsurprisingly, the two disciples don’t answer the question directly. They, in fact, answer with another question: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” And Jesus replies, “Come and see.”

Move with me now to the second, center panel of our triptych. In this scene, Jesus is in a garden, on the eve of his death, and he is facing head-on a menacing group of soldiers (600 or so soldiers, to be exact). They are carrying lanterns and torches and weapons. And Judas, the betrayer, is with them. Once again, we might emblazon on this panel the Greek words of Jesus’ question to the soldiers: “Whom do you seek?”

In contrast to the two disciples at the beginning of John’s Gospel, the soldiers answer quite clearly: “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus even asks the soldiers the question a second time, and they respond with the same answer. And Jesus, in turn, replies, “I am he.” Or more accurately, “I am.”

And this brings us to our third panel, on the right. This scene is also in a garden, and in this garden there is an empty tomb. The stone has been rolled away, and Mary Magdalene is weeping profusely just outside the opening. She does not know where her friend’s body has gone. She thinks it has been stolen. But behind her she has just heard a voice: “Woman, why are you weeping?” And as this third panel of our triptych depicts, Mary has turned to face the Risen Christ, although she does not yet know it is he.

The Risen Christ has asked her the question we are now all too familiar with. In this third panel, we behold the Greek words as well: “Whom do you seek?” But Mary does not answer the question. It is only a bit later, when Jesus calls Mary by name and reminds her of their friendship, that she calls him “Teacher,” just as those first two disciples did.

The unanswered question, though, continues to linger in the air. Perhaps we can assume that it is answered even if left unspoken. Mary has, of course, been seeking the body of her friend. But searching for a dead body is quite different from searching for a living relationship. And although Mary knows she has seen Jesus alive, and although she will communicate this knowledge to her friends as the first evangelist, I imagine it would take Mary a while to comprehend what she has just seen.

But this third panel of the triptych is not just about Mary. It is also the panel in which we find our place, too. In this panel, we discover Jesus’ question, etched onto the panel in Greek, addressed to us as well, two thousand years after the events depicted. “Whom do you seek?”

So often, when Jesus meets us, we, like Mary, are looking at an empty tomb. We are gazing into a mystery that we cannot understand. We are lobbing our own profound questions into the vacant space of the empty tomb, hoping for an answer. And in these moments, it might be that we hear a voice speaking to us, which causes us to turn around. And when we do, we are being addressed not so much with an answer but with this question: “Whom do you seek?”

Most likely, unless we are unusually open and vulnerable, we don’t really recognize, at first, that it is the Risen Christ speaking to us. We, in fact, do not really know what it is we are seeking. We simply know that we are seeking something. And the question hangs in the air. . .

But recall that middle panel of the triptych. It stands in the center because, in a way, everything hinges on it. This panel shows the eve of Jesus’ death; it represents his crucifixion. It is not the event we would like to focus on, but we do because it is the pivot point in the story of salvation. The question posed to the soldiers in this middle panel (“Whom do you seek?”) is unlike the surrounding panels in that the soldiers answer succinctly and confidently: Jesus of Nazareth.

We know that these soldiers are not seeking a relationship with Jesus. They are seeking him so that they can destroy him. The response of the soldiers has all the certainty of the task ahead. They want Jesus so they can kill him. There is no question that can be left in the air. This panel shows the definitive, finite nature of death.

Or, at least, this is what we so often think. This is what death would have us believe. Death, the great enemy, always wants to have the last word. It routinely conspires with its friend and accomplice Sin. And they are both led by the wiles of the Evil One, as they exhibit to the world a false confidence in their power. Death cries out loudly and menacingly as it destroys our mortal bodies. Sin haunts us every day of our lives.

But Death and Sin display a deceitful confidence because they know that they are surrounded, and outnumbered, by the outer panels of our triptych. And in these two panels, we find not the brazen statement of the band of soldiers, but we find the profound question: Whom do you seek?”

Sin and Death rightly cower because they know they have been defeated once and for all. The outer panels of our triptych reveal that what lingers, even after the body has been killed, are the deep questions borne out of relationship. And so the middle panel pivots into that undeniable truth of the resurrection which has conquered all evil.

There is no easy answer to the question, “Whom do you seek?” It is not meant to answered flippantly or casually. It is meant to be pondered in our hearts. It is a question that stays with us and propels us forward as our relationship with the Risen Christ continues on forever. Sin and Death cannot kill the questions.

Death, however, suggests that questions are the enemy of truth and life. Sin judges our questions as the great Accuser of our motives. Some would have us believe that the presence of a question is the end of faith. Or the question of survival marks the end of the Church. For others, the question of suffering ends in the need for a certain conclusion that there is no God. But the question that hangs in the aftermath of Jesus’ resurrection is proof enough that the resurrection is deep enough to hold all our questions. The heart of our faith is a mystery that cannot solicit easy answers. It is only by moving into resurrection light with our questions that we interpret the meaning of the resurrection.

The questions are, ironically, proof that we are still seeking the Risen One. The questions we carry mean that we still have the humility to know our place in relation to our Creator and Redeemer. The questions mean that our faith is alive because we are willing to believe in the One who has risen from the dead, redeemed us, and saved us, because we know in our hearts what he has done for us and for the world. We see it in glimpses and in fits and starts. And for over two thousand years the Church has bothered to get up, week after week, and day after day, because death could not kill a question. The empty tomb speaks a conviction of truth that we cannot deny even if it remains a mystery.

Death poses as the enemy, but it is really no enemy at all, as we know. It is weak and it is a liar. Death masquerades its bold statement of finitude, but we know that life continues and cannot be defeated by this coward.

And we see this in that middle panel of our triptych, where everything pivots into salvation. Here, the Good Shepherd stands facing head-on the prospect of the enemy, of Death. And he places himself between evil and his beloved sheep. And by doing so, he assures us that he will yet live and continue to be with us long after his physical body has been killed.

And even after our bodies are dust, this Good Shepherd will make sure that our bodies rise in glory to be with him forever. For he will continue to pose the question to us: Whom do you seek? Our questions cannot be killed by skepticism, violence, or hatred. Because our questions demand not simple answers but a relationship with the Risen One.

Death has been defeated once and for all. The heart of our faith is an empty tomb and a bold statement that it is our questions that propel us into belief. For that is what belief is: the willingness to move on in faith, in spite of the doubts that assail us.

And when we take that leap, we center our faith in this knowledge—that Jesus our Savior has trampled down death because he has risen from it. Death has no sting. The ultimate victory has been won. The tomb was empty on that third day, this day. Jesus is no longer in the tomb, but he is here with us. And if we hear his voice, turn around, and look at him, he is asking us, “Whom do you seek?”

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Easter Day
April 4, 2021

A Change in Perspective

The late Spanish artist Salvador Dalí is best known for his surrealist art. But when Dalí was inspired to portray the crucifixion in a 1951 work called Christ of St. John of the Cross, he momentarily stepped away from surrealism and rendered a somewhat traditional painting.

And yet Dalí’s portrayal of the crucifixion is nontraditional in one key respect. Unlike most other renderings of the crucifixion, the painting’s perspective is not from the ground looking up at Jesus on the cross, but, instead, it is a view from above the crucified Christ, looking down at the earth.

Below Christ, whose hands and feet interestingly bear no signs of the wounds, is a lake with two boats, a large fishing net, and three fishermen. We don’t know who they are. Peter? James? John? Or maybe Andrew?

Jesus’s face is not portrayed. We see merely the top of his head as he looks down on the world that has crucified him.

Dalí’s painting was inspired by a drawing by the sixteenth-century mystic St. John of the Cross, which employs a similar perspective. We are not used to seeing things from this perspective. It may even seem presumptuous for us to inhabit Christ’s vantage point. Is not this bird’s eye view from the cross to be reserved only for Jesus the Crucified One? Isn’t our place down below, looking up?

Or perhaps St. John of the Cross and Dalí were onto something. The central feature of their portrayals of the crucifixion is the change in perspective. And it is a change in perspective that is introduced by St. John the Evangelist in his account of Jesus’ passion. When we entered Holy Week on Palm Sunday with Mark’s Passion narrative, we entered a world of dissonance between loyalty and betrayal, between truth and lies. The journey to the cross ended with some of Jesus’ followers standing at a distance, looking from the ground up at the Savior dying on the cross. Jesus died with a painful cry, having quoted Psalm 22 in the depths of loneliness and despair.

When we encounter John’s world of the Passion, we find the same tension between falsity and truth. But from the very beginning of the Passion, Jesus states who he is with crystalline clarity. “I am he,” Jesus of Nazareth. More accurately, “I am.” Jesus has revealed his identity as God revealed his to Moses in the burning bush. He has staked his claim and there is no turning back.

And so, it is all the more heartbreaking when Peter denies Jesus three times. Peter’s “I am not” is the foil to Jesus’ “I am.” And Peter is just like everyone else in this story in that he is incapable of standing for something. He is mired in a tight web of deceit, accusations, and fear. The only words he can muster when a woman questions whether he is one of Jesus’ disciples is to answer in the negative: “I am not.”

Peter’s perspective is that of the world. It is that of our world. We, as it were, stand looking from afar at the Savior of the World hanging on a tree, with “I am not” ringing in our ears.

We recall how often we are more passionate about standing against something than in standing for something. What is it about the human condition that seeks to build up the self by tearing others down? Why are we so adept at saying no and so reluctant to say yes? Think how many people of faith are more enthusiastic about defining their identity over and against others rather than standing for the Gospel.
         The air we breathe is full of no’s. Pilate’s sarcastic retort to Jesus might as well define our reality at times: What is truth? The countless “I am nots” can be seen in the willfulness of going one’s own way, no matter the cost and no matter the harm to others. It is present in the stubborn refusal to identify with a neighbor, whether in compassion or joy. Its toxicity rears its ugly head in the defining of oneself over and against the other, those who are easily demonized and scapegoated.

It is present even in John’s Gospel itself, as the evangelist established his own religious tribe over and against an opposing group, whom he called “the Jews.” Centuries of anti-Judaism have fed off this tendency to stand against a body of people rather than standing beside them.

The motives for the naysaying characters in the passion are varied, and they are the motives that are just as present to us as well. It is the palpable presence of fear: the fear of losing one’s life, the fear of losing friends if you rally with the underdog, the fear of losing control of one’s own destiny. It is the fear of loneliness, of being the only one left standing for something or somebody, even if that somebody is the Christ. And it ends in the perspective from the ground looking up at the cross. We gaze with our own measure of sorrow at the cross, knowing what the world has done to its Savior, and feeling that we will always be defined over and against it.

But if we press John’s Gospel a bit further, we might find the perspective changing. After the excruciating journey to the cross, where Jesus carries it all by himself, and once he is hoisted up to the tree, the perspective alters. Jesus now looks lovingly at his mother and the beloved disciple, and he entrusts them to one another. “Woman, behold thy son!” My friend, “Behold thy mother!”

We are now looking down on things the way that Dalí and St. John of the Cross did. We dare to go for a moment to the top of the cross and look down with Jesus. We see the lonely boats on the lake, with their owners going about their business, saddened by their friend’s death. We see a world riven by sin and antagonism. We behold the violence among kin. We see the barriers being constructed among cities, communities, and nations. We see, from the vantage point of Christ, the venom played out in hateful words and meanness. We see the stubborn refusal to extend a hand in peace or love. We see a world of “I am not.”

But we also see that there is one true answer to all this mess, and it is the cross. There on the cross is the Savior of the World, lifted high, so that all people can be drawn to him. This yes is the meaning of the cross.

We see in the cross the love of the great I AM. It is the definitive yes to the good news of peace, reconciliation, and fullness of life. It is the yes that finds life in standing for something rather than against something. It is the yes that went to the cross without lifting a hand against those who were determined to offer a resounding no. The cross is the utter sacrifice of no for the sake of yes. The cross has broken the cycle of no once and for all.

And reigning from the cross is that Good Shepherd of the sheep. It is the Shepherd whose voice was ignored while the crowds followed the hired hand. It is the Good Shepherd who, having been glorified on the cross, becomes the sacrificial Lamb for the salvation of the world.

This Good Shepherd, who has maintained his steady yes to the life of the world, invites us to inhabit the place he has prepared for us. By his gracious permission, we are invited to change our perspective. We have for so long been looking from the ground up, confronted with the agony of the cross. But Jesus invites us to come up and look down from his view.

And Jesus, now reigning in glory, looks down on our world, with his arms stretched out in love, and says to us, Behold your brother and your sister. Look down at this world from my view and see how good it can be.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Good Friday
April 2, 2021

All In

“We will break the news to the family, and then we’ll leave. Otherwise, the family will blame us. You can stay and tend to them after we’ve left.” These were the words of a doctor working the Level I Trauma Center where I served as a chaplain intern six years ago during seminary.

A patient had just died of gunshot wounds, and being on call that night, I was responsible for pastoral care. On one level, I intellectually understood the doctor’s rationale. She needed to place some boundaries between her work in a desperate emergency situation and the family just learning of their loved one’s death.

But I was the one left alone in the room with a grieving family in the aftermath of a violent death. I knew that I could not put up any boundaries in my role. The specter of raw grief was before my eyes. It was palpable and it was audible. As part of the spiritual care team, my job was to stay and to sit with the reality of trauma. When science had no more answers, religion stayed to hold the mystery.

Inside, I secretly wanted to run from the room. At the very least, I wanted the crying and wailing to stop because, at heart, I imagine I didn’t want to be drawn into this painful reality. I did not know this family or the person who had died. Selfishly, I was slightly envious of the trauma surgeon who had departed abruptly after sharing the horrible news with the family. She had been able to extricate herself from this tragedy. I longed to put the whole situation at arm’s length.

The human heart is adept at keeping certain things at bay and at letting in what’s tolerable. Suffering and death are usually what we want to hold at a distance, and we are all too eager to welcome the happy moments. We choose what we want to invest in, and we block out the rest. At some level, it’s an innate survival technique. On another level, it’s a desire to be in control.

On the surface, Peter’s refusal to let Jesus wash his feet seems like a right-minded gesture of humility. Peter could not bear to have his Lord engage in such a demeaning act. Jesus had it all turned upside-down. If anything, Peter should be washing Jesus’ feet.

But there may have been more to Peter’s reaction. Perhaps Peter wanted to keep Jesus at arm’s length because he wanted to be in control. Peter, I would guess, did not want to be all in. Because I suspect that Peter knew what it would cost.

It doesn’t seem likely that Peter understood exactly where Jesus was headed when he supped with him for the final time. We know from Mark’s Gospel that Peter refused to hear about Jesus’ predictions of suffering. Peter wanted to keep the painful aspects of discipleship at bay. But it also seems unlikely that Peter would not have had some foreboding sense of his friend’s impending death. Jesus had been dropping ambiguous clues about his death for some time now.

Do you think there was some deeper, hidden motive for Peter resisting Jesus’ gesture of love and humility? Was Peter reluctant to go all in because he somehow sensed the pain and tragedy that lay ahead?

Peter’s initial refusal to let Jesus wash his feet proffered a false humility while masking a stubborn unwillingness to receive Jesus’ gift. It was Peter’s pride that got between him and Jesus. He was too proud to receive the gift of love before him. Peter wanted to be the one to make a grand gesture of his act of service to his master.

But I wonder if Peter was also afraid of the commitment that would come with letting Jesus wash his feet. If he could only keep Jesus at bay, he could avoid the ensuing responsibilities. If Peter could establish the conditions of the footwashing by washing Jesus’ feet himself, then he could escape the hard task of discipleship.

But Jesus was very clear about the true meaning of discipleship. The footwashing meant that the disciples were to love one another as Jesus loved them. Jesus’ act of love towards them implicated the disciples in a greater cycle of love. Once you’re all in, there’s no escaping the demands of the cross.

Maundy Thursday is the liturgical moment of Holy Week in which we can choose, or choose not, to turn to Christ, especially as we meet him in the depths of suffering and despair. It may be that, as we approach Good Friday, reveling in the agony of the cross can perversely be a means of putting distance between God and ourselves. And if the story is simply one more rehearsal of an ancient event, it will lose its impact on our lives. If we cannot put ourselves in the story, then we are, in some ways, refusing Jesus’ invitation to come into our lives.   

The human heart is all too adept at finding excuses for Jesus not to wash our feet. We are not worthy enough. The Eucharistic gift is beyond our reach because of our frailty. Our sins are too many. If we decide not to accept God’s forgiveness of our sins, then no amendment of life is necessary.

This protective distancing from God’s gift is a mere extension of our daily refusals. To refuse the gift of a conversation with someone who is different is to shun the possibility of changing one’s mind. To reject help from another is to claim self-sufficiency and reject relationship. To cast aside the gift of relationship is to deny that we are in any way indebted or connected to another. It is a shirking of the responsibility of being invested in the human condition.

As the agony of Jesus’ passion approaches with Good Friday, an awareness of our own frailty may be precisely the reason we keep God at bay. It is unfathomable to think of our Savior offering anything to us. We are the ones who should be on our knees in repentance and pleading for his mercy.

Our sins and weaknesses have become one more tactic that we use to keep God at bay. And the more we resist going all in, the more we can be in control.

But God knows that we need the gift more than we will ever realize. God knows that we will employ all manner of casuistry to politely refuse the gift. But God also knows that the way in which salvation comes to the world is for each and every one of us to be all in.

This evening, on the eve of our Lord’s passion and death, a great mystery confronts us. On some level, it may be that we would prefer to set some boundaries with this mystery. A domesticated and sanitized mystery will shield us from the trauma through which our redemption is accomplished.

But our Lord, who calls us friends, comes to us, not just this evening, but week after week in bread and wine. He stoops to wash our feet, and if we are vulnerable enough, we let him do it.

And this night, we are reminded of just what it means to be all in. Jesus asks us not just to stretch out our hand for his Body to be placed upon it. But he asks us to take off our shoes here on holy ground. He asks us to let him hold our worn feet, calloused by the trials of life. He wants to wash away the dirt and grime of our sinfulness.

And he knows, too, how hard this is for us. He knows how much we resist laying bare our souls before him, because it means that all the control that comes from nursing our grudges and resentments must be relinquished and that we turn it over to his healing grace.

But this night, Jesus asks that we commit to him and to his love. He asks us to be all in, to take the risk of vulnerability. He asks us to remain in the room with all the pain of the mystery of his death and resurrection and not to leave. He asks us to share in it with him. For Jesus knows, most of all, that this is not just about you and me. It’s about the whole world.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2021

The Dissonance No One Wants to Hear

Holy Week begins with the dissonant music that no one wants to hear. Yes, to some extent, the dissonance is the painful and strident noise of the crowds calling for a brutal death by execution. Yes, the dissonance is the clang of violent instruments of torture, the spitting at a human face, and the agony of death throes in a moment of utter loneliness and despair. Yes, the dissonance is the anguish and sorrow at Jesus hanging on a cross.

But there is another dissonance, too. It is not the most overt dissonance. It is not the dissonance of yet another Hollywood portrayal of a well-known tragedy. It is the dissonance of deceit, fickleness, and falsity. It is the dissonance of clashing testimony, dishonest words, and cowardice.

It may be that precisely because this particular dissonance hits so close to home, we do not want to hear it. We are much more comfortable with the cries of hosanna as Jesus enters into Jerusalem acclaimed as king. And we are left with a painful sense of whiplash as the music’s tone changes swiftly from consonant fanfare to raucous screeching. The voices and instruments once sounding in sweet harmony have gone out of control. Homophony and controlled counterpoint have veered into aleatory.

The dissonance is, of course, in the liturgy itself. It is in our corporate participation in the events of Jesus’ passion so many years ago, as those saving events are made real in our present. If it were a mere reenactment, it would be easy enough to keep the discord at a distance. But we know these events are real and present to us, that we are in them.

And the dissonance is also right there in the text of holy Scripture, subtly hidden amid the details of a theatrical spectacle of a Roman crucifixion. We are told that as some sought solid reasons to convict Jesus and put him to death, the testimony of many voices did not agree. Many came forward to indict Jesus, but when all the notes of their accounts were layered together, it was nothing but discordant noise.

From our place of righteousness so far removed from the historical events recounted, we fume at the dishonesty. We cover our ears at the blatant lies and the cruelty so blindly set on the death of an innocent man. Once a year, on this day, we wallow in the generous permission we give ourselves to entertain the modern-sounding dissonant music of old until Easter can re-organize it into brass bands and fanfares once again.

But every year, as we begin the holiest of weeks for Christians, we are jolted out of our complacency on Palm Sunday. And if we were to take our hands off our ears for a moment and enter into the disharmony that assaults our ears from all around, we might begin to hear the dissonance in our own hearts, too.

The dissonance starts, of course, with the story we so painfully listen to. Jesus has already announced that one of his closest followers will betray him. The one who dips bread into a bowl with him will hand him over to be tried and crucified. Later, Jesus is in Gethsemane with Peter, James, and John. These are the disciples who previously stayed close to Jesus on the mountain as he was transfigured before their eyes. And now, in the hour of death, they cannot even stay awake to be with him in his loneliness and agony. Judas’s subversive kiss of peace is tainted by its sign of betrayal. And Peter, the disciples of disciples, denies knowing Jesus three times, not long after he has avowed his utter loyalty to Jesus. The final scene of this drama shows the Son of Man alone on a cross as some of his followers look on—not at the foot of the cross, but at a distance.

This is the dissonance that lies beneath the passion story that begins this holiest of weeks. It is the dissonance between discipleship and desertion, between courage and cowardice, between following and fickleness. It’s easy enough to notice it in characters of a well-known story. But if we’re honest, it’s harder to see this own dissonance in our own hearts.

Isn’t this what Palm Sunday reveals? At the commencement of this Holy Week, we are cut to the heart by the dissonance between our own lives and that of the Christ. This is a week where we prepare to walk in the ways of holiness by acts of repentance, fasting, and self-denial, and from the first notes of the score, we have lost control of the piece. It is nothing but cacophony.

We want, for just a while before the sobering events of the week ahead, to sit with the fanfares. We want to feel in control of this week and gain mastery of our own pious practices. And instead, Palm Sunday reminds us that the dissonance starts right at the very beginning. No sooner has the overture begun than we are swung recklessly into the throes of the dissonance in which we live.

We are, I imagine, all too aware of this painful dissonance. We know how easily we mimic Peter, how facilely we profess our allegiance to Christ and also how quickly that allegiance turns to denial the minute our friendships or other loyalties are at stake. When our life is a series of mountaintop experiences, we cling to the Risen Christ and attribute our successes to his graciousness. But when we lose control of the piece, we are all hatred and venom.

We see this very discord in our own society. We readily acknowledge our commitment to liberty and the common good, but the reality that stares us down every day is out of phase with what we profess. We celebrate our success and civility, without realizing the jarring sounds of the overwhelming violence that has been blatantly evident in just this past week. Like Jesus’ fearful followers watching his death from a distance, perhaps we watch the horrors of racism, xenophobia, and cold violence from a distance, too.

We are all for Jesus when life is full of smiles, but when the musical score throws a surprise accidental into the mix, we flee. Or we move farther into the distance to see how things will play out before investing ourselves spiritually anymore. Palm Sunday, it seems, has a way of dredging up the muck from our hearts and exposing it to the light of day.

But the thing about Jesus is that none of this is a surprise to him. Jesus had already set his face like flint to his destiny long before he was left alone on the cross. Soon after that last supper in the upper room, Jesus quoted Scripture: “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’”

Jesus is not surprised that our hosannas will turn to calls for crucifixion. Jesus knows that the precious Blood he constantly offers us in the Eucharist is countered by sour wine that we offer him in return. He has heard us mock him, when we have had enough of the trials of life and we tell him to prove his power and come to our aid. But he does not respond by refusing to listen. He comes to save us anyway.

Jesus has already set his face like flint to do the work God had called him to do. He would not shrink before the mockery and shame of an ignoble death. He would go to the loneliest place on the planet, and even to the depths of hell to show the depths of God’s love. On that third day, his face, set like flint, would become the stone against which the new fire of his saving light would be kindled for a dark world.

And on that day to come, when it is time to hand the kingdom over to the Father, Jesus the Good Shepherd will call his sheep. They have fled, but his love for them has not. And if they can recognize his voice, they will hear him calling. And the sheep that have been scattered through the dissonance of their own lives, are gathered back to the One who has been the constant ground-bass of this unruly score. And the Good Shepherd puts them on his shoulders and brings them home.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
March 28, 2021

Dragged into the Light

One of the oldest tropes in storytelling is the struggle between light and dark. From Harry Potter to Star Wars, some of the most popular of stories revolve around competing worlds: a world of evil and a world of good.

The Western mind delights in such dualities. It is easy for us to comprehend this binary juxtaposition, even though, at heart, we sense that things are not usually so simple. Much of life falls somewhere in the middle, when it’s not being dragged into the light at times and then into the darkness on the worst of days.

St. John centers much of his Gospel on the play between light and dark. His Prologue deliberately echoes the story of creation in Genesis, as he describes the Word made flesh coming into the world. That Word is, of course, the Light of the world. Early in John’s Gospel, Nicodemus, who is both curious and tentative, approaches Jesus by night, under the cover of darkness. He is scared to be seen in the company of Jesus. And Jesus encourages his followers to walk in the light. He categorizes those who oppose him as ones who walk in darkness and stumble.

When Judas departs from the upper room where Jesus has just washed his disciples’ feet, it immediately turns to night. Judas is headed towards his betrayal of Jesus. And on the first day of the week, redemption comes in the dawn of early morning light, as the darkness is disappearing, when Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb.

This play between darkness and light is for dramatic effect, and I suspect that John himself knew exactly what he was doing when he used this literary technique. I suspect he also knew the world was not so simply divided between good and bad, light and dark.

When we enter John’s Gospel this morning, it’s around the time of the festival of Passover. It is also the eve of Jesus’ passion and death. And Jesus acknowledges the cosmic tension that is weighing on his heart. His soul is troubled because he knows where he is headed, but  he will not forsake the task ahead.

What Jesus describes is very much like a game of tug-of-war. Truth be told, I never liked this game very much when I was in school, because I always found it painful. My hands were either sore from tugging on the rope or blistered from rope burn. Do you remember this game from your schooldays on the playground? If you were on the winning side, it was much less painful than being on the losing side, both emotionally and physically. If all the strong kids were on the other side, you were likely to walk away with chafed hands or scraped knees from being dragged on the ground.

The unease that Jesus highlights as he looks towards his death has been part of a cosmic game of tug-of-war since he began his public ministry. In John’s Gospel, it is this constant friction between good and evil that is where judgment happens. Judgment enters into the midst of life. Judgment is the rope burn when the power of goodness naturally tends to pull us towards the light, even as we dig our feet into the shadows.

The feeling of being caught on the wrong side of the rope is part of the human condition. St. Paul described this reality forcefully in his Letter to the Romans, when he confessed that he so often was tempted to do the very things he knew he shouldn’t do. It’s as if being human is a perpetual struggle between light and dark. You keep your hands firmly on the rope of life, and inevitably, you are pulled to the wrong side. You lose your grip, or you simply are not strong enough to resist the pull of evil.

It often depends on who’s holding onto the rope with us. When all the weight is on the wrong side of the rope, we get pulled along where we might not want to go. Systemic sin drags us to a realm that we should avoid.

When we get to Jesus’ passion and death, it would seem that the game of tug-of-war is over and that Jesus’ side is the loser. He dies an ignominious death. He is spat upon, reviled, and his disciples are left standing at the foot of the cross, wondering what they will do next. The fear, anxiety, and confusion of his disciples gathered after his death suggests that they likely felt they had lost the game. They had not pulled hard enough on their end of the rope.

But the moment of glorification that Jesus announces in today’s Gospel proves this conception wrong. Jesus subverts the common understanding of victory by revealing the glory of the cross. And he announces that when he is lifted up from the earth, he will draw all people to himself. In fact, it is not so polite. Jesus will drag all people to himself.[1] Kicking and screaming they might be, but he will drag them to himself.

This is striking. It is unexpected. With all the tug of war that has been happening between light and dark, and with all the darkness that has been displayed in the face of the truth Jesus reveals, we might not expect all people to be dragged to Jesus.

If we probe deeply enough into our own hearts, can we admit that there are people that we simply don’t want Jesus to drag to himself? Are there people that we can’t imagine are capable of being dragged to Jesus, and do we secretly or overtly wish Jesus would let go of the rope and allow them to be pulled into the shadows? Do we think we are capable of being dragged to Jesus? Can we even begin to comprehend that Jesus desires to drag all people to himself, you, and me, and especially our enemies?

It is no wonder that we doubt, or conveniently ignore, these words of Jesus. Jesus clearly states the purpose of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. It is to reconcile all things to his Father. Jesus is pulling firmly on the rope in this cosmic game of tug-of-war. He is not letting go. How can we resist the pull?

But our world is a zero-sum game. If some win, others must lose. It’s impossible for everyone to win. Life is a competition. We treat God’s mercy as if it’s a limited supply of vaccines. If there’s a limited quantity, the fact that some are getting their vaccine means that others are not getting theirs. If some are receiving God’s gifts and mercy, then others are not.

To speak plainly, it is next to impossible to believe that God does not desire to let some people get pulled into the darkness rather than into the light. But hear the words of Jesus when he says that his lifting up will be the dragging of all people into the light.

And the reason we might resist the power of these words is that we long for justice. We want a balancing out of wrong with good. We want payback for those who relish the darkness and those who deliberately pull on the wrong side of the rope.

But this cosmic game of tug-of-war does not deny justice. It does not affirm some easy pull of the rope from dark to light, where the ones heaving and pulling with all their might in the darkest reaches of the rope gain an easy entrance into the light.

Do you remember the rope burn of your childhood games of tug-of-war? Do you remember the skinned knees as you were pulled to the victorious side by a force stronger than you and your team? So it is as Jesus drags us to himself. It is painful, because we so often resist that pull. Even when we know it’s good for us, we pull harder on our end of the rope. We dig our feet into hell, when heaven is trying to yank us forward.

And for some, it’s a long, long rope. When you’ve spent years and years digging your heels into the darkness and pulling against the light, it’s going to take a lot of work with God’s grace to be dragged into the realm of light.

But this is what Jesus came to do. The purpose of Jesus’s life, death, and glorification is for him to pull us to the Father. God’s judgment meets us in our waywardness and presents us with his truth, peace, and love. And all our attempts to resist simply injure ourselves and those we try to drag down with us. But God does not want to leave us there.

Jesus drags us kicking and screaming into the light. It is not that Jesus wants to force us into a place that we don’t want to enter. It does not negate our free will. It’s simply that as the power of God’s goodness catches on and pulls more and more people along, it is harder and harder for us to resist the pull of the light.

And when we reach that realm of light, where there is no more sorrow and sighing, we do not emerge unscathed. The scars are there to prove our struggle. It has not been easy. The triumph of glory does not negate the years of trauma, suffering, and hardship. But when we are finally pulled into the light, and we stand up on our skinned knees, we will remember what we once did not understand. Sin, pain, and death, however real they were, have no place here. They have lost their sting. And we thank God that he never let go of the rope and that we are home.

Sermon by Father Kyle
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 21, 2021

[1] See, in particular, the translation by David Bentley Hart in That All Shall Be Saved (New Haven: Yale UP, 2019).

Like Cures Like

At the beginning of the Book of Numbers, the children of Israel are in Sinai, having emerged safely from Egypt and Pharaoh’s cruel grasp via the exodus. Their journey in Numbers takes them through an arduous forty years of wandering as they move towards the Promised Land.

We can understand why the children of Israel became impatient. They had recently been through quite an ordeal as they escaped the clutches of a tyrant. Now, they simply wanted to be home.

And so, as usually happens when a group of people are journeying together, they become tired and hungry, and they grumble. The past was so much better, wasn’t it? How easily we forget about our former frustrations when we emerge into new territory.

There is not enough water to drink, but back in Egypt, there was at least water. The food before we left was tasty, but now we can find nothing to eat. Moses, as the fearless leader, takes the brunt of these grumblings.

Can’t you just hear what they say to him? It could even be a page taken out of the book of parish life in so many places. “Well, people are saying that the food we used to have at coffee hour was so much better.” “When we used to do things that way, everyone was happier.”

The story of God’s children trudging through the wilderness for forty years speaks to us as well in the wilderness of a pandemic. Many haven’t even made it a full year of wearing a mask before grumbling that their glasses are fogging up and they’re uncomfortable. The human condition is prone to complain, especially when we become impatient for an immediate result to satisfy our needs or provide a quick fix for our quandaries.

But all those times when God’s children mumbled with discontent, and all those times when we do as well, God provides, even if it’s not as we expect, want, or predict. This is the dilemma of human trust. Do we really believe that God will provide? But God sent quails in the desert, and made water appear for his children making their way to the Promised Land. And in a most striking way of countering snakebites, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and tell anyone who had been bitten by a snake to look upon it. And miraculously, the person was healed.

Isn’t it a bit uncomfortable when we hear God’s healing power equated with magic? It seems random and beyond our reach. It seems, quite frankly, false.

The bronze serpent cure has been described as a form of homeopathic healing.[1] The source of the affliction—the serpent—was the visualized source of healing. Curious indeed.

And it is curious indeed that John the Evangelist incorporates the image of the bronze serpent in close proximity to some of the most beloved verses in the entire Bible. If you are puzzled by the juxtaposition of the allusion to the bronze serpent from Numbers and the image of the Son of Man being lifted up, you are not alone. And yet, if we continue further with this unusual juxtaposition, we might have something to learn about salvation.

Let’s return to the explanation of the bronze serpent in Numbers as a homeopathic treatment of illness. This alternative form of medicine rests on the principle of “like cures like.” In other words, something that causes illness to someone who is healthy can also be a source of healing in that person. The cause of the illness becomes the means of a cure.

The children of Israel who suffered from snakebites looked on the bronze serpent, which wasn’t even a real serpent, and they were healed and survived. Magical homeopathy, you might say. What does this have to do with the Son of Man? Our salvation is bound up with Jesus being lifted up on a cross. The cross is the sign that rises above the sin and tragedy of the world to point to our healing in Christ. But is something else happening here? Are we not called to look upon the agony of the cross, with the epitome of self-emptying and sacrifice, as precisely the thing that does heal us?

Many of us also probably know how John’s words have been so vastly misinterpreted over the years. Generations of Christians have hitched God’s love conditionally to a mechanical affirmation of belief. God’s love has been twisted into a rescue operation that hinges on a one-time personal declaration of faith. We are seen as needing to be saved out of something rather than brought into something.

And what this engenders is something little more than magical thinking.[2] Similar to looking on a bronze serpent as a means of saving one’s life, it is now common to call upon Jesus’ name as a magical incantation. We are told by some that all we need to do is feel a certain warmth in our heart, make a simple profession of faith, and we are fixed forever.

The gift of eternal life available to the entire world is then reduced to a formula. And it is a formula that has been used to great harm, to keep people out rather than welcome them in.

If belief in God and in the saving works of Christ is reduced to a mere homeopathic remedy, akin to looking at a bronze serpent, it is possible that we will lose the gravity of what salvation really is.

Suppose, though, that the homeopathic analogy does have some relevance for us, minus the magic. If, indeed, like cures like, there is some theological truth to John’s use of the image. It is true that our salvation is accomplished in Christ as the one who took on the human condition. Only salvation by one who is fully human can heal us. St. Gregory Nazianzen told us that when he said that what has not been assumed cannot be redeemed. Precisely because of Jesus’ sinless humanity, he is able to heal us.

And if like cures like, then there’s something else to it as well. We look upon the cross and see our own call to take up the cross to be Jesus’ disciple. We see the need for humility and self-emptying. We see that the Son of Man lifted high upon a cross is far more than a magical cure for our brokenness. It is far more than a vaccine against sin. It requires something of us.

Because if like cures like, and we look at the cross, we find that the way of the cross becomes the means of healing. It is only when we sacrifice our own desires and self-serving interests that we find salvation. It is only when we die to self that we gain eternal life.

This is where we come face to face with the difficulty of the Christian journey. Like our spiritual forebears in the throes of forty years of wilderness wanderings, we long, perhaps, for the quick cure. We want the bronze serpent to gaze upon and heal us with no effort on our part. We yearn for that precise moment when Jesus rescues us from the sinful human condition and ushers us into a place of safety and security.

But if we gaze upon the cross, we know that it is not so easy and that it is more complicated than we might want to think. There is no cheap grace. Accepting the gift of salvation requires us to be transformed. If like cures like, then the cross shows us who we are to become.

Even when we accept the claim of the cross, we will continue to fall short. There is no pill to be taken for our salvation, because our own personal healing and salvation is not the full story. It is about something much more. This cross, when held before our eyes, is about nothing less than the healing of the entire world.

The individual bronze serpents that we long to instantly heal us can so easily become weapons to condemn others and beat them into submission and repentance. The cross, too, can become a way of intimidating others into being rescued by Jesus.

But if we gaze long and hard at the cross, and the Son of Man hanging high upon it above the horrors of the world, we will perceive that it is precisely the opposite. Only what has been brought down can be lifted up. We must die to our old selves to rise again to new ones. The cross requires that we change.

And the best part is that when we get to the point of change, we realize that we are not alone. We find ourselves among billions of people living the human condition, also in need of repentance. We are one of many who experience the suffering that is part of the fabric of this earthly life. But when we are brought down by the pain and vicissitudes of human existence, we can be lifted up by the cross. And we discover that this is precisely how God brings salvation and life to the world.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 14, 2021

[1] Commentary by Terrence E. Fretheim, The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 221.

[2] See Samuel Cruz. Commentary on John 3:14-21, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-314-21-4

A Most Unusual Sign

A couple of years ago, I was involved with a ministry that was being established in an abandoned church in Philadelphia. The church, which had a rich history, had been closed some years before, and the ministry of which I was a leader was seeking a home. We were also hoping that the ministry would bring life to an abandoned church.

I will never forget my first venture into the church. It was in shambles. I had half expected to find disarray, but I was cut to the heart when I entered the sacristy. It looked like it had been ransacked. The drawers that formerly held vestments had been opened and left bereft of their contents. The drawers were still hanging out from their cabinets. Debris from a crumbling ceiling was all over the floor. I walked gingerly on portions of the floor, wondering if the floorboards would hold my weight. I was both angry and sad. This space, which was meant to be a holy place of preparation for Mass, was a disaster zone.

Nearly a year later, as our ministry was getting off the ground and we were preparing for an opening event, I donned a face mask, months before a pandemic was in our sight. I wheeled a vacuum cleaner into the sacristy and began a painstaking process of cleaning it up. I swept. I vacuumed. I closed opened drawers. I tidied. I couldn’t bear the thought of this holy place sitting in such chaos. I considered it an act of prayer.

But perhaps most poignant about this abandoned church was that it was left hanging in the lurch. It had been stripped of its furnishings. Its sacristy drawers had been divested of their vestments. But no one even bothered to close the drawers before they left the building. It was heartbreaking.

We are accustomed to a certain amount of disorder when we read Holy Scripture. From disordered nothingness, God created everything that is. When creation moved from order to disorder, God renewed it once again. When the human race had gone off the rails, God sent a flood to destroy all but a remnant and then re-created. When God’s people went astray into anarchy, God sent them judges to bring back order. He then permitted them to have kings to aid the effort. When the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by foreign nations, God nevertheless sent the Israelites out of exile and back to Jerusalem to rebuild. The pattern is clear: there is a natural tendency to fall into disarray, but God gives order.

What was so disturbing to me about the abandoned church was that it was caught in the middle. Stranded in time between vibrancy and a possible future, it had never moved past its closing. The sacristy had been left in chaos, but nothing had been rebuilt.

Why should this make us uncomfortable? Are we okay with disorder and destruction, to a certain extent, if order and re-creation quickly follow? Perhaps we are less comfortable when God seems to be the agent of chaos or destruction.

The story of Noah and the flood is, in fact, such a story when it starts out. We often focus on the animals, Noah’s family safe on the ark, and the renewed creation after the flood. But what about those who perished? We know the Jerusalem Temple was ultimately rebuilt after the exile, but what about those invading armies seen as agents of God sent to wreak havoc on a people gone astray?

And what about Jesus, the Son of God, entering the holiest place in Jerusalem and overturning tables? Do we not wince a bit at the Prince of Peace overturning tables, emptying the moneychangers’ coffers onto the floor, and wielding a handmade whip in a sacred place? This is a side of Jesus that is bound to make any of us uncomfortable. The response is often to let Jesus’ zeal inspire us to prophetic ministry, where we lust after the overturning of the tables of injustice among us. We use it to justify righteous anger, claiming the example of Jesus himself.

And yet it might be that Jesus’ fiery behavior on the cusp of the Passover hits too close to home because his actions pierce into our own lives. Those confronted by Jesus’ actions in the Temple that day demanded a sign of Jesus. “Jesus, if you are going to wreak havoc in this holiest of places, you better have a good reason for it. Prove it. Show us a sign.”

Right before this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus has already shown his first sign. He has turned water into wine at Cana. Could it be that Jesus has in fact just given a second unusual sign by overturning tables in the Temple?

John has begun showing us a Jesus who is the living Sign of God’s visible presence. Jesus himself is the Word made flesh, Truth revealed in the world. And now this human Sign has just offered a sign that will make anyone squirm just a bit. He has caused a certain amount of destruction in the Temple in a fit of rage. He has left a sacred space in disarray.

But a sign always points to something. Jesus shows signs to make visible who he is and what he is bringing into the world. So, how has his act of violence in the Temple been a sign?

Jesus offers us a clue. As he told those in the Temple that day, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Jesus knew that his life was a sign of something that people would only understand after his resurrection. His life, with the fullness of God’s love, truth, and peace, was unable to be fully held by the world. A world distorted into its own image of hate and enmity would offer a stone wall to the convicting presence of the Son of God. Without even intending it, the Son of God’s very life wreaked havoc on the harmful bent of the world. And when God is finished with such a world, it will be left in shambles.

What do we do with this uncomfortable truth? How do we marry a God of peace with disorder and destruction? What do we do when God enters our lives, disrupts them, and we are left in shambles?

When we let him in, Jesus enters our hearts, those temples of the Holy Spirit, and begins to clean house. Old furniture is thrown out. The worn chairs in which we have become ensconced in our sloth are tossed out, and we are left standing in the room with nowhere to rest. The dirt and debris that have been disturbed when God comes in to clean are enough to make anyone cough. The demons that we have entertained and made our false gods are chased out by Jesus’s whip. And we are left alone, not knowing where to go.

This is so often where we get stuck. Indeed, we have been stuck since before the house cleaning ever began. Like the moneychangers in the Temple, we have been seated at our comfortable tables, engaging in the commerce of the world, without ever evaluating whether it is even ethical or giving life. Jesus’ whip then drives us out of our comfort zones, but we seem to have no roadmap.

What we see is a scene not unlike that church sacristy I encountered. Our lives have been ransacked. Drawers are left opened. But the old things are not there. And nothing new has replaced them.

Or at least this is how we think things are. If we stopped with the scene from John, chapter 2, we would miss the whole story. We would miss the fact that God does not leave things there.

This is what Jesus is saying as a reflection on his most unusual of signs. When those in the Temple demand a justification for his reckless behavior, Jesus offers a mysterious explanation that only makes sense after his resurrection from the dead. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The story is just beginning. It has not yet ended.

Can we remember the pattern that is all over the pages of Holy Scripture? Disorder, then order. Disintegration, then a new creation. Death then life. When we are caught in the middle, between destruction and rebuilding, and death and life, it is hard to see the future ahead. But Jesus gives us a sign that this is where God is leading us.

In the Temple, amid squawking birds fleeing for their lives and neighing cattle, amid tables left in splinters and moneychangers running out of the door, the story is not yet finished. It is only beginning. It will not make sense until the third day and the empty tomb.

God enters our lives, if we let him in. God finds our inner state to be one of stasis. God finds us digging our heels into our old ways, when the old ways no longer work. God finds cold, hard hearts of stone, and he knows that the only way to give us new hearts is to break the old ones down.

But rest assured with this good news: God will not leave the sacristies of our hearts in permanent disarray. God will not leave the vestment drawers yanked out, full of dust and dirt, and God will not leave the room without sweeping the floor and closing the drawers again. God will not leave before kissing our aging heads in love.

God will take the shambles of our lives and piece them back together again. He will heal our broken bones. And when our bodies have been ravaged by death, mark my words: God will raise them up again.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday in Lent
March 7, 2021

Unfinished Business

My eighth-grade American history teacher was determined not to give up on me. I wasn’t a bad student or poorly behaved. My teacher did not need to summon great patience to keep me in line or motivate me to do my work. My teacher chose not to give up on me because I was painfully shy.

Each day I entered his classroom, where he stood at the door as gatekeeper while also monitoring the sometimes-unruly hallways. And each day, my teacher insisted that, before I entered the room, I was to engage in some kind of small talk with him. It could be about the weather or a topic we were studying in class. But the deal was that it had to be more than a simple hello.

As I recall, I was more than a little irritated with this demand. I had no say in the matter, really. My teacher would be giving me a grade in the class and was my elder, and so I had little choice but to acquiesce to his request that I come out of my shell just a little bit.

At the time, my teacher’s actions seemed a bit over the line, even perhaps cruel. But in hindsight, I see that his actions were intended to help me. My teacher rightfully discerned that I had difficulty speaking freely with others, especially authority figures or strangers. I also suspect that he saw something in me that he felt could eventually benefit from being less reticent.

My teacher was determined not to give up on me, as much as I struggled to come up with small talk that wasn’t merely about the weather—which was always the same in southeast Texas, hot and humid.

I’m especially grateful for my teacher’s foresight, especially since I have been called to ministry where it’s important to speak comfortably and freely with all manner of people and inhabit pulpits like this one. My teacher could never have known how my life would end up. But I suspect he saw that there was some seed of potential that he might play a small part in shaping. He intervened in my life when I didn’t ask for it or want it. He was never finished with helping me live into a future that perhaps he alone could see.

Who was that person in your life, the one who never gave up on you? Who was the person who was never finished trying to help you or make you a better you? Or when was the last time that someone did give up on you? When was the last time that someone threw in the towel and made it abundantly clear that they were finished with you? And did you ever perceive that the person who was finished with you was God? Worn down by suffering or unanswered prayers, have you ever sensed that God has given up or been too busy to make time for you?

I wonder if Abraham, at age ninety-nine, felt that God was finished with him and Sarah. When God chose to appear to Abraham at his ripe old age, he and Sarah had certainly been through a lot with God. At age seventy-five, God appeared to Abraham and summoned him to a distant land, and Abraham and Sarah, along with their family, got up and went—no small feat. They even fled to Egypt to avoid a famine, all because God had them leave their homeland in the first place. Abraham and Sarah stuck with God.

And although God had already promised Abraham and Sarah a legitimate heir, at age eight-six, Abraham had come to doubt whether this would ever happen. At Sarah’s bidding, he took Sarah’s slave girl, Hagar, and with her had a child, Ishmael. I suppose that Abraham thought that God had reneged on his promise of an heir or was finished with him. So, he and Sarah took matters into their own hands.

But God was not yet finished with them. Full of gray hair, aching limbs, and a full life lived in faithfulness to God’s initial calling, Abraham and Sarah had settled in for their retirement years. Unbidden, God chose to appear once again to Abraham and announce that he and Sarah would have a son. And not only that. Abraham and Sarah would be the progenitors of a fruitful lineage, through which God would establish his covenant.

To mark this new beginning, even at age ninety-nine, God gave Abraham and Sarah new names. This renaming signaled God’s intention of a prosperous future for Abraham’s progeny. The very names God gave them manifested God’s intentions for Abraham and Sarah. Abram, or “exalted ancestor” morphed into Abraham, or “ancestor of a multitude.” Sarah would be a “princess” of kings and influential people. Abraham’s name change showed that God did not see Abraham as a moribund relic of the past but as the beginning of a new line of people blessed by God. Abraham’s new name was not backwards looking but positioned towards the future. Like God’s own Name, that would be revealed to Moses, Abraham’s new name was dynamic, bearing the seeds of generations to come who would be called to serve the Lord.

It is often surprising when God chooses to appear and bless us. Sometimes unbidden, perhaps especially in those moments when we believe God is finished with us, God comes into our lives and announces a new future for us. For some, God was seen to have given up a long time ago. Years of tragedy and perceived abandonment lead some to give up on God when he has never really given up on them.

For others, a life of prosperity and immense blessing may mistakenly cultivate a sense that God is finished because everything is perfect with life. God has done his good work in us, we have responded, all is taken care of, and we are set for our eternal reward. God is finished, and so are we.

Sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, many go their own ways, convinced that the deed is done, their fire insurance received, and the journey is ended. But God’s relationship with Abraham and Sarah reminds us that the work is only beginning when we are washed in the waters of baptism.

God knows, much better than we usually do, that we will wander. We will go astray, sometimes stubbornly and deliberately, sometimes inadvertently. Years might be spent in the wilderness, experiencing loneliness and despair. But God does not leave. Always, always, God noticeably enters our lives and announces a new future for us.

It is understandable why some are convinced that God is finished with them. They have either done all the good they think they can do, or they feel too tired and too old to try anything new. Some settle in for the long, slow decline. We are told that the Church is fighting futilely against a secular age, and so we may as well throw in the towel and hand it over to God. Parishes reduced to crumbles by conflict and strife imagine that the doors will soon close forever. God is finished, and we cannot change its course.

Like Abraham at eight-six, when we perceive that God is finished with us, we might still recall his promises of old. We sense that God has something good in store for us, but God seems to be seriously procrastinating. We take matters into our own hands to help God along. But look what happened to Abraham and Sarah. Ishmael aside, God stepped in, belatedly and unbidden, and announced that he had a different future in store for them.

It is not different for us. We know that God has not given up on us and is not finished with us because God was not finished with Abraham. God told Abraham that he would make an everlasting covenant with him, marked by the sign of circumcision. Generations and generations to follow would be a part of this gesture of God’s blessing. Precisely when we are too tired and burned out and have given up hope is the time to recall the seal of our baptism and to remember that God is never finished with us.

There will be times when we will laugh like Abraham and Sarah. God, what are you doing with this tired, old body? God, how can this small parish with financial challenges ever get back on its feet again? And we laugh sometimes to avoid the responsibility that we know God is laying on our shoulders.

But God is not offended. God hears our laugh and understands that in our human frailty, it is simply too difficult to maintain our trust in him. We too often measure God by human standards. One too many acts of betrayal or human neglect are projected onto God.

God, though, is never finished with us. God never gives up on us. Time and again, God has appeared unbidden into the story of humanity and given us new names when we have become too ensconced in the malaise of our old ones. God always has a new future in store for us. The story is never finished.

You may not remember when the waters of baptism were poured on your head. Or perhaps you have not yet had that experience. But in those waters, God reminds you of your past and tells you about your future. God seals your place in that great lineage of people sired by Abraham at the ripe old age of ninety-nine. God gently accepts your laughter at his intervention in your life and changes your name anyway.

God has never given up on you. God is not finished with you. God is always reminding you that he has a glorious future for you.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday in Lent
February 28, 2021

Life in the Wilderness

On July 30, 2020, the Mars rover Perseverance was propelled into space via an Atlas V launch vehicle. Perseverance soon began making its way to the Red Planet, and this past Thursday, landed on Mars at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Time. When Perseverance was launched back in July, it was not assured that the rover would ever make it to the surface of Mars. It was a harrowing final seven minutes on Thursday as Perseverance entered the atmosphere of Mars and descended to the planet’s surface, while mission control waited for news of an arrival or a disaster. Although there have been other successful missions to and landings on Mars, Perseverance is the first vehicle equipped to assess whether life has ever existed on Mars.

This rover has been sent into a wilderness land. Perseverance and its companion helicopter Ingenuity will venture into a strange place with a difficult terrain, and extreme weather conditions. The space vehicles that are now on Mars are equipped to withstand bitterly cold temperatures and conditions unlike anything on Earth. Perseverance and Ingenuity will trek into lonely territory where no life appears to exist, guided only by a space center some 128 million miles away.

Propelled from the hospitable conditions of Earth into a wild, foreign land, this Mars mission is in search of life in a place that seems to have none. And the question remains whether this wilderness will ever be able to sustain human missions. But life can blossom in the most unlikely of places, even in the wilderness.

Journeys into the wilderness, whatever they may be, are not for the faint of heart. Most people try to avoid them. We have been told that the wilderness is a dangerous place. No one wants to be stranded in a wild place, left out in the cold or heat with no provisions. We all know how such stories usually end. We can only imagine the intensity of Jesus’ wilderness experience, forty days and nights in a barren place, where water is hard to come by and where wild beasts prowl, looking for prey.

The wilderness we might envision is one of a dark forest with impenetrable vegetation and strange animals crying in the night. One can easily become lost in such places. But the wilderness of Jesus was the Judean desert. This sandy, dry, vast stretch of land east of Jerusalem is indeed a dangerous place. Water is hard to come by. The weather is harsh. It can be bitterly cold at night and scorching hot by day.

This wilderness is also terrifying because of its loneliness. You might travel for days without encountering a living thing, except for the wild beasts and tenacious plants.

But it’s the silence of the wilderness that is perhaps the most intimidating of all. When one is thrust into the wilderness like Jesus, one is alone with one’s thoughts, the wild beasts, and the demons.

It is a strange sequence of events that lands Jesus in the Judean desert. And with Mark’s fast-paced storytelling, it’s even more disorienting. Jesus suddenly appears on the scene in the first chapter, miles from his hometown of Nazareth, and he is baptized by John. In this moment, the heavens part—as the Temple veil will be rent at his death—and the Spirit descends on him like a dove. God affirms Jesus’ exalted status as his Beloved Son.

A strange twist emerges when the same Spirit that descends on Jesus at his baptism soon propels him into the wilderness, where he spends forty days and is tempted by Satan. Mark gives us few details, but we know it must have been an agonizing time.

Why does the same Spirit who rests on Jesus at his baptism also send him into the wilderness, where he is abandoned to wild beasts and the presence of evil? Mark makes no explicit causal connection between the Spirit sending him out into the desert and the temptations that follow. But in reading this story, one almost feels like God is casting his Beloved Son into the wilderness in order to be tempted.

We are so used to assuming that wilderness experiences are the result of our own making. We are either not well-prepared, or we are being punished. We think that if we are abandoned to wild beasts and demons, we have done something to deserve it. Or we imagine that God is testing us and deliberately building up our stamina so that we can withstand temptation and grow closer to him. No one wants to be in the wilderness by choice. It is a difficult place.

We have been journeying through a wilderness over the past year. Countless times, I have heard people compare the pandemic to a wilderness experience. And I suppose that it is, to a certain extent. Some make easy correlations between the devastation of a deadly virus and God’s intentions to test humankind.

But I wonder if something deeper is going on. Being in the wilderness can be a sign that we are entering more fully into holiness. It is no coincidence that Jesus’ wilderness sojourn immediately follows his anointing as God’s Beloved Son. Could it be that the wilderness is precisely the place where God is doing his most holy work with us? Could the wilderness be the place where we are called to find life?

When we are propelled into a wilderness, we usually try to escape as soon as we can. No good can come from a time in the wilderness. It can end only in death or in a bare escape back to civilization.

Right now, on Mars, Perseverance and Ingenuity are searching for signs of life. It may not be existing life, but they are looking amid the harsh conditions of a foreign planet for evidence of past life. Sometimes, in the most unlikely places, life can be found. And where it has thrived before, it can possibly thrive again.

When Jesus was propelled into the Judean wilderness for forty days and nights, he found life. He discovered his identity as the Beloved Son of God. He learned, as everyone in the wilderness eventually does, that we cannot live on bread alone. When fasting and confronting temptation, the securities that usually cushion our lives are of no help. The wilderness strips all that away and leaves us either dead through our attachments to the world, or alive and exposed to God.

It is, of course, to the wilderness that the devil goes to find Jesus, because that is the place where Jesus is up to his most holy work. It is only Jesus and God in that dangerous wilderness, other than the wild beasts and demons. We learn from Matthew and Luke, that the only ammunition the Devil could employ against Jesus was precisely what the wilderness ensures that we forsake. The lure of material things, power, and false idols stand out in relief in the wilderness, because it is a lonely, barren, and silent land. But these things cannot be grasped in the desert. They cannot give us comfort in the wilderness.

The wilderness is a wild and foreign place because silence has become anathema. We don’t know how to handle being alone with ourselves, with our haunted thoughts and vulnerable insecurities. We don’t know how to rely solely on God without putting our trust in an overabundance of resources. And so, the devil wants us to believe that the wilderness is a place to be avoided, hence all the temptations.

But God wants us to venture into the desert so that we can lose our lives to find our lives in him. The wilderness is where we will find ourselves drawing closer to God.

 It is possible that Perseverance and Ingenuity will discover evidence of past life on Mars, even in its harsh climate. The name of the Mars rover is apt, because in the most forsaken and desolate of places, nothing short of perseverance will lead to the discovery of life. And it might be that in the most unlikely places, the seeds of life are found hiding under a rock.

So, too, for us, the wilderness is not a place to be feared or avoided. It is a place where we can be changed and where we can find life. When we are alone with our thoughts and our self-obsessions, the wilderness is frightening, because there is nowhere to hide and there is nothing to feed our usual preoccupations.

But we know that it’s not just the wild beasts and the demons who flock to the wilderness experiences of our lives. When God draws us into holy places, the angels are ready to minister to us, for God has defeated the evil powers that feed like lackeys on the clutter of our hearts. If we persevere in the wilderness and overturn a rock or two, we might find the rivers of the water of true life, ready to nourish us so that we’ll never be thirsty again.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday in Lent
February 21, 2021

Corrected Vision

When our new livestream equipment was installed in the church last week, one of the final challenges was determining where to mount the camera. After some tinkering, the camera was placed just above the west doors. Once the technicians from the installation company had departed for the day, I finally looked at the computer image of the livestream. And I realized that it was a mirror image of reality.

Everything looked normal until you suddenly noticed that the pulpit was on the right side of the nave, and the lectern on the left, and the same was true for the organ and credence table. It was disorienting. In my quest to figure out why this was so, I examined the camera on the back wall of the church, and I saw that it was upside down. It had been hung upside down in order to allow for a better, less obstructed view of the high altar through the rood screen.

The company installing the equipment, of course, knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that the mirror image showing on the livestream could be altered, and so they knew they could hang the camera upside down to achieve the camera angle they desired. It turned out that with a couple of clicks of the mouse on the computer screen, the image was automatically corrected. When you view the livestream for the first time on Sunday, everything will appear as normal.

Technology has us well trained to expect easy changes when something is wrong. Simply click the mouse or punch a few buttons, and you can often get a desired result. And this is often how we approach God in prayer.

When things are wrong in the world or in our lives, when up is down and down is up, we get on our knees, clasp our hands in a pious posture, and hope that by clicking a button, we can summon what we want. We expect a change, and usually this change is expected of God. If we say our prayers just right, or if we adequately express our repentance, we can change God’s mind. We can wring something from the hands of God.

But Church tradition has historically maintained that God does not change. God’s very nature is unchanging. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, even though the witness of Scripture, especially passages like the one we heard from Joel this evening, suggest that God’s mind is capable of being changed. What are we to make of this?

Joel, like much of the witness of the Old Testament, seems to correlate disaster and God’s judgment for wrongdoing. It’s not clear what the people in Joel have done that is so bad, if indeed they have done anything to deserve the horror of their circumstances. What is clear is that things in the world have gone very wrong.

There has been devastation in the land. Joel looks upon a landscape where crops are withering, water has evaporated, and there is a threat of future disaster, with enemies on the horizon. In some sense, as Joel describes it, all of creation groans in the pains of this barren time.

And Joel is hopeful that these dire circumstances and the possibility of additional disaster in the future can be made right with the click of a button. All the people need to do is return to the Lord. If they will but look to God again, with fasting, weeping, and mourning, God might change his mind.

Joel believes two things: that acts of repentance are efficacious, and that God is, at heart, a merciful God. All it takes is for the people to stop in their tracks, make an about-face, and trust in God’s kindness. But in order to see results, one thing is sure: the people have to change their ways. They must do something.

Joel keenly feels the need to plead with God to change his mind. And he takes this even further. Joel bargains with God to redeem his honor. Joel feels the need to change others’ minds about the nature of God. Joel is concerned about those who do not believe in his God. He is worried that if the people of God appear to have been forsaken, other nations will scoff, “Where is their God?”

Joel employs his reasoning tactic with God. “God, if you will repent and show your mercy, others will see that you do not forsake your own. You will be able to defend your honor and prove your righteousness.” All it takes, Joel seems to suggest, is a click of the button. If the people change their ways, if they plead with God for mercy, God might just do it. God might change his mind, relent, and spare the people.

How often do we come to the altar of God at the beginning of Lent and identify to some degree with Joel? Is there not a part of us that takes time out of a busy work week to get to church or tune in online so that we will obtain something from God? Who knows if God will not change his mind after all, if this Lent, we begin anew? Why not make this Lent the time to let go of some of our resentments? Why not forgive the former friend against whom we’ve harbored a grudge for twenty years? This is the year to clean up our house.

This Lent, we might feel an even more uneasy resonance with the Book of Joel. Joel looked upon his contemporary situation and saw doom and gloom, even systemic ecological disaster. This Lent, we survey the landscape and mourn the uncountable deaths from Covid-19. We see the rapidity of alarming deterioration of the environment. We feel the raw wounds of violence fresh in our national history and know the wounds are still festering. We imagine the anxious uncertainty of our future—of virus mutations and variants, of delayed vaccinations, and of a future yet unrevealed. We sense that a corporate failing of humankind has gotten us to this place, and we wonder exactly where we went wrong. We accept the invitation to a holy Lent because if we press the right buttons by saying the right things and making the right kind of self-denial, we might get God to change his mind after all.

Like Joel, perhaps we even try our hand at bargaining with God. God, do not let your enemies see us forsaken! God, prove that you have not neglected your people and left them helpless against a pandemic! God, show at least some small sign that you care for your children!

How can we not feel a bit defensive for God’s sake, when one natural disaster after another lends ammunition to those who see no reason for God’s very existence? How can we not want to protect God from one more televangelist who claims a link between the latest tragedy and the sins of some segment of the population? Or maybe we are the ones who believe that our sickness is God’s punishment for our own sins.

But there is a refrain that we hear, time and again in Scripture, a refrain that is repeated even when God is portrayed as angry and capable of change. It is the leitmotif that shines throughout the Bible and that makes itself visible in the person of Jesus Christ. And this refrain is that God is merciful and full of compassion. As today’s collect reminds us, God hates nothing he has made. God is not the one who needs to change when we push all the right buttons. We are the ones who need to change.

This is the reason for getting to church on Ash Wednesday. This is the reason for accepting the invitation to a holy Lent. This is the reason for renewing our life of prayer, engaging in self-examination and repentance, and embracing spiritual practices. It is so that we can change, not so we can beg God to change his mind.

We don’t need to defend God’s honor to others. God can take care of himself. God would not be the merciful God that he is if he expected us to grovel in order to win his forgiveness. God calls us to return to him because God knows it’s good for us. And by being good for us, it is in turn good for the whole world.

In God’s gracious providence, the camera can be mounted upside down or right side up, and God can still render the correct image. God knows that. We give ourselves too much credit by assuming that we are responsible for God’s reactions. But when God acts, we are a part of what he does, because God made us and calls us good. God, in the unfathomable mystery of his providence, uses our prayer and actions for the life of the world. And God knows that our prayer and actions will change us, too, so that our view will change. When we come out on the other side of Lent, maybe the images will all be sorted out for us, because by turning to God, our vision has been made right.

As we approach the altar of God this night in full confidence of God’s boundless mercy, we accept an invitation to change. Let us thank God that our inconstancy can be conformed to God’s changelessness. And let us rejoice that in all the instability and change of our world, one thing forever stays the same. God looks upon us, smiles, and welcomes us home. There’s no need to press any buttons. Just turn around and see God waiting for you to come home.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2021

I Will Never Leave You

On a Sunday morning in 1784, a group of black members of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia walked out en masse. The number of black members of the parish had grown, due to the evangelistic endeavors of existing members, such as Absalom Jones and his friend Richard Allen. This disturbed the vestry, and so they decided to segregate the black members in a separate gallery in the church.

But the black members of the church were not going to settle for this. The walkout of Absalom Jones and other black parishioners at St. George’s Church in 1784 eventually led to Absalom Jones being ordained as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church. And the rest is history.

Today, one day after Absalom Jones’s name appears in the Episcopal Church’s calendar of feast days, our bishop has asked that parishes in the diocese commemorate Blessed Absalom Jones. After all, this was his diocese, where he served as priest and founder of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, now in Overbrook in West Philadelphia.

 Try to imagine with me the courage of Absalom Jones and his fellow Christians. Many of them, like Jones, had perhaps bought their freedom from slavery. But as they tried to make their way into the ordinary rank and file of society, even in the North, they found themselves in a liminal place: neither having real rights and yet legally free in some respects.

Imagine their tenacity as they clung to their heartfelt belief in God’s natural disposition towards the oppressed and forsaken. Imagine knowing the very real truth of God’s gracious care of the lowly that is evidenced time and again in holy Scripture, and yet not witnessing its manifestation in the Church. And imagine their heartbreak and sorrow as they had to walk away from their own church to claim their dignity. They stuck with God even when the Church turned its back on them.

Now, examine with me, the witness of the prophet Elijah. Throughout the First Book of Kings, Elijah clung fast to God’s holy word, revealed to him. As a prophet, it is to this word alone that he would cling, no matter the cost. In his prophetic zeal, Elijah faced formidable adversaries as he cried out against Baal. He ran from the dreaded Jezebel and heard God’s still small voice speaking to him in isolation. He raised a widow’s son from the dead, and he was ministered to by angels in his forty-day sojourn to Mount Horeb. And these among other things. But through it all, Elijah knew that he must hold fast to one thing: God’s word of truth.

His successor, the younger Elisha, went from being a farmer to following Elijah. And when we encounter Elisha today, he knows that, even though he has clung to Elijah in pursuit of God’s word, Elijah will soon be taken from him.

Elisha knows this, even though the sons of the prophets twice tell him that Elijah will leave him. Elisha knows that he will soon be bereft of his mentor, but he is more concerned about following Elijah than in beginning to separate himself from him. Elisha clings to Elijah out of zeal for God.

Even Elijah himself encourages Elisha to stay behind as he makes his way successively to Gilgal, Bethel, and then Jericho. But Elisha repeats his mantra of dedication each time: “I will not leave you.”

It might seem that Elisha is clinging in an unhealthy way to Elijah. Elijah is merely a human after all, even if he is a prophet. He will soon be mysteriously taken up by God. Where is Elisha’s sense of self-differentiation? But perhaps it is more complex than Elisha being a fanatical devotee of Elijah. What if Elisha is really sticking with God’s word and God’s voice of justice spoken by the prophets through the ages? Elisha knows that in following Elijah, by never leaving him, he is somehow following God’s truth. And yet, ultimately, he will have to let go of Elijah to follow God.

Elisha may be something of a zealot, but he knows what is proper and good in God’s eyes when he sees it, and he will do anything possible to follow that righteousness. So, too, with Elijah. With Jezebel’s forces hounding him, he ran in fear, but he nevertheless was not afraid to speak the challenging word to godless power.

Elijah and Elisha seem to understand something that not even Jesus’ own disciples would at first understand. In Jesus’ transfiguration before Peter, James, and John, the disciples are seeing a foreshadowing of glory to come. But they do not yet see that the road to glory is paved with suffering.

The disciples instinctively want to preserve glory in amber. But their suggestion to create three booths is not heeded. And Jesus forbids them from telling anyone what they have seen. Jesus knows that the disciples and most of his own followers are still clinging to all the wrong things.

Maybe it’s the same with us. We are poised today at the top of a mountain with Jesus. We have been shining with the light of Christ, basking with his revelation to the magi at Epiphany. But now we are looking on the other side of the mountain to the long season of Lent, where we are vividly confronted by our own mortality. We might wish to jump ahead to Easter or to cling only to glory.

But Lent will reveal the unhealthy things to which we hold fast. Lent will unearth our own pride, our conceited projects, our desire to be in control, our tribalism, and those things that comfort us the most. Lent will dredge them up to the surface and expose them to God’s cleansing light. And if our wilderness journey in Lent has any effect, we will emerge at Easter knowing exactly what it is we should really be clinging to, perhaps having let go of the rest of it.

It is clear that Elisha was perturbed by the impending departure of Elijah. He was experiencing beforehand the loss and pain he would eventually feel, plunged into a solo career or prophetic ministry without his mentor. And Jesus’s disciples clung to their own preservation as Jesus approached the cross. As they did so, they began to let go of Jesus until he was the only one awake in the Garden of Gethsemane in anguished prayer.

We, too, know the discomfort that comes with letting go of our own idols and attachments. And as we fear losing our security, we cling more closely to those things that do nothing but make us more dependent on them. At the end of the day, we might even sacrifice the truth for our own pleasure, because we can only find reassurance in the idols of our own making. Sometimes an idol is our very own image of God, made in our own image.

But now imagine with me if we placed Elisha’s words to Elijah in the mouth of God. What if we heard God saying what is easily doubted from time to time: “I will not leave you.” Elisha stuck with God by sticking with Elijah because he knew that he was following God’s holy word, even if it meant the loss of his mentor. Elisha seemed to sense that God would, in fact, not leave him.

And Jesus’ disciples eventually learned that God would not leave them comfortless. The end of Jesus’ earthly ministry was not the end of his presence with them. And so, too, Absalom Jones and his fellow Christians knew that by letting go of their church and even something of their past, they were sticking with God. By walking out of their church in the face of injustice and disrespect, they were saying that God would not leave them. They knew that God’s words to us are always, “I will not leave you.”

We still hover in the midst of a pandemic on the precipice of Lent. The snow still falls, and spring might seem a long way off. And Lent calls to us from the valley below and beckons us to let go—to let go of those things that have consumed our lives, to let go of our resentments, our envy, our individualism, and our antagonism. Lent calls us to stay only with God’s holy word and to walk into his open arms.

The degree to which we stick with God may vary, but the degree to which God stays with us, loves us, and cares for us does not. Imagine if we stop talking at God, stop even trying to cling to him in a possessive way, and instead listen to his still, small voice, as Elijah once heard it. If we could but quiet the raging weather around us, we might hear his beautiful voice saying, “I will not leave you.” I never have. I will not now. And I never will.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 14, 2021