Sacred Heart Catholic Parish, Teddington

Homily

27 May 2007

Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2.1-11, Psalm 103,

1 Corinthians 12.3-7 and 12-13 (or Romans 8.8-17), John 20.19-23 (or John 14.15-16 and 23-26)

The Holy Spirit is the gift of the risen Jesus and makes us into reconcilers

It is often hard to breathe in our world. Closed doors can prevent the free flow of oxygen, and environmental pollution can pollute our lungs.  There are also barriers of sin and prejudice which can pollute our spiritual and moral lives. We should be able to celebrate the differences between cultures and peoples, but, too often, these differences lead to conflict. When the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples they were behind closed doors, ‘for fear of the Jews’ (By ‘Jews’ John means the Jewish religious authorities opposed to Jesus).

In the Holy Land today a wall separates Palestinians from Jews. Pope John Paul II said that the Holy Land needs bridges and not walls, but fear seems to have triumphed again. In the Holy Land and in neighbouring middle eastern countries the ecumenical charity Living Stones founded by our late friend Father MP works to build such bridges—particularly bridges between the Christians in Britain and those in the places where it all began. The Christians in the Holy Land, and even more perhaps those in Iraq, are afraid. The very survival of these communities is in doubt.  When Peter had finished his sermon on the day of Pentecost the people asked ‘What can we do?’ And we can ask what can we do to help the Christian communities in the Holy Land and in Iraq…and you will not be surprised to hear I can make some suggestions…to help Living Stones in its work: join, come on pilgrimage, give money and sign a tax form; come to memorial lecture and, not least, pray for the LS and for all the peoples and religions of the Middle East. As Paul reminds us, ‘We are all part of ‘the same body’ (1 Corinthians).

Having made an appeal on Pentecost Sunday I cannot leave the message there

—the same fear that puts up barriers in the Holy Land, in Lebanon and Iraq puts up barriers between peoples in all the conflicts and wars that plague our world.

Barriers can also exist in the same workplace, the same family, even among the same church congregation! There is an absence of peace. People are afraid and unable to be reconciled with God and with each other. Fear is the enemy of peace--and Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you” and he breathed the new life of the Spirit upon them, giving them authority to be reconcilers, breaking down barriers. God's Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the risen Jesus, can change everything.

The Holy Spirit is the gift of the risen Christ.  On the day of Pentecost, the people who heard the preaching of Peter and the apostles came from different places and spoke different tongues but everyone heard the message in their own language. When we think of the risen Jesus breathing on his disciples we are reminded of the story in Genesis where God breathes life into the lungs of the first human being. As he breathes on them Jesus speaks words of peace and ‘peace’ (Shalom/Salem), is something that brings new life and breaks down barriers and walls and makes those who receive it into witnesses for Christ.

The risen Jesus speaks words of peace and reconciliation to our own fearful hearts but he goes on to charge us with a mission to reconcile. At the exchange of the peace in the Eucharist we reach out first to those that are nearest to us in our own community-- to others who have been baptised into the same Spirit. And when we go out share his message of peace with the wider community,  those who accept it will find God's forgiveness and those who refuse it will not: ‘the sins you forgive will be forgiven and the sins you retain will be retained.’  Through the risen Jesus, God gives us his Holy Spirit to unite and to reconcile human beings with God and with each other. And those who hear us will say, ‘We hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God.

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homily

Feast of the Ascension

When one looks back at some of the most brutal dictatorships of the twentieth century, one of the most common strategies for keeping the dictator in power was the cult of personality.     No public square, no public office and often no private home was complete without a picture of the dictator looking down upon his people.     The leader would ensure that artists and the media always presented them in the most favourable light.    Their decisions would be presented as infallible and dissent of any kind would not be tolerated.     Political correctness was the order of the day;  careless talk was dangerous because one did not know who was listening, suspicion of one’s neighbour and a readiness to denounce them was encouraged  and a culture of dependency by the people on their leader was fostered, so that a myth could be created that people’s salvation depended upon the leader always being in control.   If the ideals fostered by the myth were to slip, then the secret police were there to bring everything back on course.

How different in spirit is the myth behind the feast that we celebrate today.   Today we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus to heaven.     Whereas the dictator maintained his power and influence by taking steps to ensure that he was always present to the people, Big Brother style, Jesus did precisely the opposite.    He relinquished any personal control over people and departed from the midst of his disciples, not leaving behind any system or institution or means of control that might promote his message or his influence.

In the gospel of John we see Jesus having a long conversation with his disciples on the night before he died.    Much of that conversation was about his impending departure, and it is clear from the conversation just to what extent the disciples felt dependent on Jesus.    They feel like orphans, bereft of a parent, leaderless and rudderless.   They cannot understand why he should chose to let go of his life, rather than become an even stronger leader consolidating his power.

Why indeed?   Precisely because Jesus was not in the business of keeping power to himself and creating around him a network of people caught up in dependency.   Rather he wanted to depart and by departing share with them that deep inner freedom which he reveals in the words, ‘No one takes my life from me.    I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again.   Like the good shepherd, laying down his life is an integral part of his strategy to save those under his care.    Clinging onto life would be like allowing the disciples to continue in a state of dependency, like children who cannot leave home or live without a parent figure in their lives.

In this conversation in the gospel of John it is clear that the disciples do not understand this at the time.   The Ascension of Jesus marks the moment when the disciples come to terms with the fact that Jesus is leaving them and they will never see him in the old familiar way again.

And yet the Ascension of Jesus is not a moment of desolation but a moment of hope.   It is a moment of growing up for the disciples, when they must step out on their own with no one to hold their hand, so to speak, no one to speak for them.      Only by seizing that moment are they able to discover that while Jesus is departed they are able to meet him again, but in a more mysterious way than before.   ‘Why stand looking up into the sky?  Jesus will come back in the same mysterious way you have seen him go.’     In other words Jesus will come back in the gathering of the little Christian community.     He will come back in the words of Scripture and in particular the words of the gospel; he will come back in liturgy and in prayer, he will come back in the lives of those who are drawn to him in faith, no longer in a small community in Jerusalem, but anywhere in the world where Christians are called to gather.

Homily

Homily Sunday 6 in Eastertide c.

At one point in the gospel of John Jesus says to his disciples, and to us, ‘I no longer call you servants, but friends’.   Why does Jesus make this distinction?   Because the role of a servant is to obey, without questioning, but with a friend it is different.    A friend is one with whom we share our intimate thoughts, and our plans, and we allow friends to ask questions.   So Jesus does not treat us like servants and keep us in the dark about God’s plans;  he reveals to us the plan of God which the Father shared with him.

In our second reading from the Apocalypse that plan of the Father takes expression in the image of a city he calls the new Jerusalem.    It is an image of what we might all be one day in the future, but the visionary who wrote the Book of the Apocalypse wants to say that while it is a city full of people just like us, it is still a city like no other.   What distinguishes the new Jerusalem from all other cities is not that it has less crime or better transport facilities or better schools or hospitals, but that it is a city unlike anything that human beings can build, left to their own resources.

Notice how the writer tells us that the city is one that is built by God, land given to us.     So it is described as a city that has come down from heaven, and it is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the Lamb, in other words on the risen Christ and those who first witnessed to Christian faith.   We are reminded here of the words of the psalm, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do the builders labour; in vain is your earlier rising, and your going later to bed’.    Building this city, a civilisation founded upon divine love, is not something we can achieve by our own human efforts alone.     Building this city involves more than getting our politics right, or our technology right.    We can only do so if we co-operate in the building with God, the master builder.    The new Jerusalem is about spiritual endeavour.

An interesting feature of the new Jerusalem is that it has no temple, no trappings of religion.   In the best sense of the word it is a secular city, not because it has banished religion, but because in this city religion has fulfilled its task and done what it was meant to do.   The principles and values of religion have become fully internalised by those who inhabit the city.    So the city no longer needs street lighting for security, because everyone is enlightened from within, or in the words of the gospel, everyone keeps the word of Jesus which enables us to be open to the guidance and the love of the Father.    In this city the things that threaten peace and happiness are no more.

Just recently a leader of a country in the developing world was told that if he did not give his attention to a certain ecological project then disaster lay just round the corner.    Some of his advisers offered him a way forward, but others said, ‘If you undertake that project, it will take twenty years to complete’.    ‘If that’s the case’, the leader replied, ‘We’d better begin now’.

For us too, the new Jerusalem may seem a long way off, and the project too demanding.    But in faith we can make a start, and we do that by starting where we are, whatever our work and calling, but being attentive to the words of Jesus as we go about our life, internalising them with the help of the Holy Spirit, and living our lives by those words.    If we do so, God the master builder will be using us to build the new Jerusalem, right here where we are.

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