Christmas, 2016

Luke 2:1-14

Why do people come out in the middle of the night when you would normally be in a nice warm bed? After all, you could attend Mass at a much more convenient time if you wanted to. And yet, here we are. I don't know about you, but my reason, and just so you know I would be here even if I weren't the preacher, is because it brings back memories of other Christmases, together with the feelings and thoughts that go with them.. It reminds me of people who shared Christmas with me in the past, most of whom have passed away. But behind all these memories and feelings is a certain something – which is there when you peel everything else away. Remember this Hebrew word: Yirat.

Religion really consists of two dimensions: Most of us spend our time in the dimension that has to do with us loving God and our neighbor. We pray, we fast, we donate time and money, we come to Mass and participate in the sacraments. That's where I find myself most of the time. In this dimension we are reaching out to God, we are trying to respond to his great love.

But in the other dimension, God reaches out to us. The great mystics knew about this; that's all mysticism is, anyway, becoming sensitive to God's act of loving me. And that's something I experience, and hopefully you do as well, at Midnight Mass on Christmas.

Mystical experiences are all around us. I've had them out in nature – which is not surprising, because God is revealed in his creation, he is present in his creation, and when you aren't being bombarded by the sounds and sights of civilization you sometimes sense his presence. Sometimes when you are in the presence of someone you love you may feel God's touch. And that's not surprising; after all God is love itself, so where love is happening, God is there. Many people, myself included, sometimes experience God's presence when we are learning something and suddenly we understand something in a different way – we have an insight that seemed to come out of nowhere. And that's not surprising; God is truth itself, and as we struggle for understanding, we sometimes touch God. And some of us feel his presence when we are experiencing beauty – not surprising of course. God is the source of beauty. So remember that word, Yirat.

People who are mystics learn to cultivate the experience of God, who is always reaching out to us, who is always loving us, who holds us in his arms like a mother holds a child. And look what the Church does at Midnight Mass: First, we hold it at night – the darkness shuts out the world, it blankets us in intimacy. We change everything we can – trees with lights in our sanctuary. Music we don't hear any other time of the year. Incense. The chanted Proclamation. Most of us wear our best clothing. And we set up a manger scene.

Look at the manger scene. There is the angel reminding us that we celebrate the breaking through of heaven into our world. There is an ox and a donkey – it reminds us of that passage from Isaiah in which God laments: the ox knows its master and the donkey knows it's master's stall, but my people do not know me. And God seeks to remedy that by becoming knowable, by becoming human. We see the shepherds – who during those days were the lowest of the low – unclean and poor; and we remember that Mary prophesied that God would lift up the lowly. And of course there is a lamb frolicking – reminding us that Jesus is the lamb of God, and Jesus is the lamb who was slain and leads the nations of the world. But look at Mary. She usually wears a blue or white mantle, because she is the especially beloved of God. And she holds her hands over her breast, because we know she will ponder all these things in her heart. And she gazes at the child in the manger – the manger from which the animals eat – which now contains the bread of heaven. Remember that word, Yirat.

Do you remember the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord. I never had a problem with the first six, but Fear of the Lord? Why does God want me to fear him? But that's probably not a good translation of the Hebrew word, Yirat. When we see the word being used in the Old Testament, it is sometimes used to describe people who are in a fearful situation, but more commonly it refers to the experience people have when they come into the presence of God. Moses experienced it when he approached the burning bush; Elijah when he heard the voice of God in the gentle breeze that followed thunder and lightning. And I suspect Mary and Joseph experienced it that night when Jesus was born – especially when the great company of the heavenly host began praising God.

Yirat is a gift, just like the other gifts of the Holy Spirit. Like the other gifts, it enhances something that is natural in us. It is a gift that allows to be more sensitive to the presence of God. It's the reaction that comes when we experience the Holy. It's one of the reasons we human beings have liturgy – we try to create the conditions so that we are more sensitive to God's touch. Because he touches us all the time, and wants us to know. A mother who holds her sleeping baby loves the baby just as much as when he is awake and smiling at her, but when that happens there is something new and wonderful – and God our Father is like that; we please him when we love him back.

So tonight during this Midnight Mass, this time when we remember that God chose to enter our world because he wants to be with us and share everything, good and bad, that goes along with being human – tonight let us experience that Yirat, that Fear of the Lord, in the mystery we celebrate.

At communion time you will hear David, our cantor, sing “Mary Did You Know..” The person who wrote the lyrics was standing before a manger scene just as you are today, and imagined himself asking these questions of our Blessed Mother. When you hear this musical meditation, make those questions your own and experience the gift of Yirat, of fear of the Lord. That is the gift God seeks to give you tonight, the gift of his presence, the gift of himself in Mary's Baby Boy.

Mary, did you know

that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?

Mary, did you know

that your Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters?

Did you know

that your Baby Boy has come to make you new?

This Child that you delivered will soon deliver you.

Mary, did you know

that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary, did you know

that your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand?

Did you know

that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?

When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?

Mary did you know

The blind will see.

The deaf will hear.

The dead will live again.

The lame will leap.

The dumb will speak

The praises of The Lamb.

Mary, did you know

that your Baby Boy is Lord of all creation?

Mary, did you know

that your Baby Boy would one day rule the nations?

Did you know

that your Baby Boy is heaven's perfect Lamb?

The sleeping Child you're holding is the great "I am"

Fourth Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 1:18-24

Today we turn our attention to Saint Joseph. We don't know a lot about him, and what little we know comes mostly from the gospel of Matthew. The only way we know what Joseph did for a living is because of a passing reference to Jesus as the son of a carpenter. In the gospels we have no quotations from Joseph; for that reason some refer to him as Joseph the silent. We glean certain things about him because of what is not said; at the Wedding feast of Cana it says the mother of Jesus was there; no mention of the father. And at the foot of the cross, Jesus puts Mary into the care of the apostle John; which wouldn't be necessary if Joseph was still alive – or for that matter, if Jesus had biological brothers and sisters.

But if you want to know more about Joseph, perhaps the best place to look is to Jesus. While it's certain that Mary had a lot to do with bringing up Jesus, the kind of man he became was most likely due to the influence of Joseph. Jesus may not have had a biological father, but he did have a male role model, and most sons who have good relationships with their fathers “take after” their fathers, as we say.

Joseph taught Jesus many things. I think we can identify some of them.

In the gospel Joseph is introduced as a righteous man. Some translations use the word “just”. But Matthew is writing for Jews who have become Christians, and the word he uses here means that Joseph was a very careful observer of the Law. Now the book of Deuteronomy says that if an unmarried woman becomes pregnant, she and the father (assuming the latter can be found) are to be taken outside the city gates and stoned. I guess if you couldn't find the father, you just stoned the woman. Deuteronomy says why this should be: so that Israel would remain holy. The interesting thing is that Joseph chooses to violate this law. Instead, he plans to put Mary away quietly – a man could divorce his wife for nearly any reason, including that she did not please him; so Joseph was planning to do that. He was willing to take shame upon himself. And of course, in doing so, he is again violating the law.

Joseph, in other words, knew when human beings were more important than legalism; and he knew how to decide which laws were more important. And we see Jesus with that attitude as well. He said, “the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath”. He pardoned the woman caught in adultery; he did not accept the common idea that if a person was blind, it was due to their own sin or the sin of the parents. And there are many other examples of how Jesus imitated Joseph.

Another thing Joseph taught Jesus was that the will of God came first. Four times Joseph receives a divine message in a dream; you've just heard the first. Later, he will be told to take his family to Egypt. After a period of time, another dream will order him back. The last dream will direct him to settle in Nazareth rather than somewhere in Judea, which was the original destination. And when Joseph gets a message, he acts. There is no questioning, no hesitation. And we hear about Jesus going to the cross saying “not my will but thy will be done.” But perhaps even more important, if Joseph was willing to shake up his whole life because of some message that came to him while he was sleeping, he must have been able to distinguish between a true message of God and an ordinary dream. Jesus recognized that the messages he received in the desert were not from God, but from Satan. And Jesus spent hours in prayer listening to God speaking to him. That of course is how we distinguish the voice of God from other voices; we are on intimate terms with him; we pray. Would that we could learn from Joseph how to enter into that silence where God's voice can be heard.

But perhaps the most important thing Jesus learned from Joseph was something about how God works in the world. Joseph agonizes over Mary's pregnancy by what he assumes is another man; he trudged from his home to Bethlehem where he had to spend a night in a stable, and probably had to deliver the baby. He had to hike from his home to Egypt, worrying about bandits, making sure Mary and Jesus got fed. In Egypt he had to find work, any work, so that he could take care of them. And when he was finally told to return, he was told to go and live in a different region than where he had intended to go – to Nazareth where everyone would be a stranger. Joseph worried as much as Mary did when they lost Jesus in Jerusalem; and Joseph must have pondered the prophecies of Simeon in his heart as well.

And don't you think that Joseph must have asked himself every now and then, “why is doing your will so hard? You are God; is there a reason Mary and I have to go to such lengths to do your will? And you could have accomplished all these things and we could have still had a comfortable, ordinary life. Joseph might have said, with Saint Theresa of Avila, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!” Jesus learned that God whispers, he does not shout; God gives us tasks to do, but then allows us to do them in our own way; God does not spare us heartache and discomfort, but is with us when these things come into our lives.

So Joseph teaches Jesus that there is a heirarchy of laws; it is more important to love your neighbor as yourself than it is to put her to death to keep Israel pure. It is more important to protect the innocent than to worry about how doing so might shame you. Joseph teaches Jesus that God's will comes first, and that this implies that we need to know God's will for us. And that can only come through developing a relationship with God – through prayer and meditation and spiritual direction. And Joseph teaches Jesus that God does not make life easier for us even when we are doing his will, even when we have been put in charge of a great mission; we human beings will always be subjected to material dangers because we are material, and danger from other people because we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve the first parents, the first sinners.

And so, like Jesus, let us learn from Joseph as well.

Third Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 11:2-11

A long time ago my family and I were in Palm Springs. When we came out of our room to get our car we were held up because Ronald Reagan was coming to that same hotel to address a convention of businessmen of some sort. As we strained to get a look through the secret servicemen and other dignitaries, we finally got a glimpse of him. And my first impression was, he is certainly short. I had expected him to be tall. In the movies he was tall. Whenever he made a public appearance or appeared on television, he seemed tall. But it's all optics. His handlers always saw to it that he was either photographed alone, or at a podium, or with his wife, who was quite short. Anyway, in that moment my whole image of him changed.

In today's gospel John, who last week was talking about the one who is to come, who would baptize with fire, whose winnowing fan was already separating the wheat from the chaff, who would be the one to lay the ax to the tree, is beginning to wonder whether his cousin is really the Messiah. He doesn't seem to fit the image John had, the great warrior of God who would finally set things right, who would rescue Israel and punish the wicked and bring about the great reign of God in the New Jerusalem. As far as John could tell, he was wandering around the countryside with a bunch of Galilean peasants. And so he asks, “Are you the expected one, or shall we look for another?” Did I waste my life getting things ready for you? Where are the fireworks?

Isn't that our question sometimes? Weeks and months and years go by and things don't seem to change much. It isn't obvious that we live in a time that has been redeemed by Christ, a time when Jesus is making all things new, gathering everything into himself so that he can return all of Creation to his Father. Two thousand years have gone by; saints and sinners have come and gone; and in our own time it sometimes seems that Christianity is not making progress; and our own Catholic church is fading away in the very countries in which it grew and flourished.

And our prayers. I think it's interesting that almost all the intentions people have masses offered for are for dead people. We offer masses for the repose of someone's soul. That's great, but there isn't a way to check whether they are effective or not. If we offered masses for specific verifiable interventions of God – a better job, a cure from cancer – would our faith be shaken if and when what we prayed for did not come about? And it's not just true of masses; we all know that our private prayers aren't answered – at least in the way we would hope.

Jesus replies to John's question not with a simple yes or no, but he points out that a lot of things are happening that have been predicted by the prophets; miracles of healing indeed, but Jesus emphasizes that the poor have the gospel preached to them – Isaiah mentioned all those other things but never mentioned this last fact. John, Jesus says, draw your own conclusions.

And then Jesus turns to the crowds and tells them that first of all John is indeed a prophet, in fact the greatest who has come along up to that time. But even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than him.

And I think there is a clue in that. Jesus is not just giving us a compliment; he's inviting us to contrast John and perhaps the other prophets with a person who is in the kingdom of heaven – and that doesn't mean to be in heaven, it means to be someone who has given his life over to Jesus' leadership; someone who has become a disciple, someone who understands what Jesus is all about.

John and indeed the other prophets all hoped for an end time, a time when all the contradictions would be resolved, a time when good would win and evil would lose. They dreamed about the time, and imagined how it would be then. Just read Ezekiel or Isaiah, or even the Book of Revelation.

But the kingdom of heaven is not like that. It is exactly what Jesus says it is – a time when the blind see, the lame walk, and we might add, the hungry are fed, the ignorant are educated, the lonely are befriended, the foreigner is welcomed – and most of all, the poor have the gospel preached to them. If you and I are attending to these things, to that extent we are in the kingdom of heaven; and we will be like Christ, and just as he has been raised up, so will all of those who are in the kingdom of heaven be raised up at the end of time.

The amazing thing about the kingdom of heaven is that it is already here. To the extent that we do what Jesus did, we are already in the kingdom of heaven. And there is a connection between being in the kingdom and living forever, being resurrected at the end of time.

There are forces of evil in this world. We don't have to look past the daily newspaper to notice that. But God has given his Son the power to conquer evil, to set things right, to bring into union all that was separated. And the Son has done that. We are trapped in time, so we think in terms of past and present and future. But the will of God cannot be denied, and the victory is already won. And we who are brothers and sisters of Jesus contribute to this victory by doing what Jesus did – when a child scrapes his knee and you put on a bandage and say soothing words; when you take the time to visit your aged aunt who is in a nursing home with Alzheimers disease; when you go to work in a job you aren't too fond of because you want good things for your family – everything you do can be part of the coming about of the kingdom.

So today let us rejoice because we know what the kingdom is all about; we know that the victory is won; we know that bringing about the kingdom is something that Jesus has granted to us. Let us go forth and bring about the kingdom.

Second Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 3:1-12

Speaking of John the Baptist, It seemed a priest and a minister were putting up a sign alongside a road. It read, “The End is Near! Turn Yourself Around Now! Before It's too Late!” A man drove past them and turned to his companion and said “Those crazy religious fanatics!” and he pushed down on the gas pedal and barreled around the corner. There was a loud splash, then silence. The priest turned to the minister and said, “Maybe the sign should have just said 'Bridge Out'.”

Today we meet John the Baptist baptizing, of course. And when the Pharisees and Saduccees come to be baptized, he gets angry. “You brood of vipers, he says, who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come. Clearly no way to make friends. Now we have to ask, why were they there to be baptized? And why did John get mad at them? We are very early into the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus hasn't even appeared on the scene.

The reason for the baptism is not hard to understand. It was not a sacramental baptism; it did not free anyone from original sin. John and other baptizers of that time would go down to the Jordan river where Joshua and the Israelites had crossed to enter the promised land. When that happened, the tribes that had wandered in the desert finally became a nation. The nation which had once been prosperous and powerful was now reduced to a small fragment of what it had been, under the control of the Romans. The prophets blamed this on the fact that the people had lost their way, that they had abandoned God and begun following idols. To be baptized was to dedicate yourself to what Israel stood for – it was an outward sign of your intention to take your faith seriously, to become one with those ancestors who had kept the faith. John says to the Pharisees and Saduccees, “If you are serious about your repentance, show it by bearing good fruit.” The word repentance, though is better translated as “change of heart” or “change the way you have been thinking”. John sees through them; even though they are on opposite sides of many issues, the Pharisees and Saduccees both insisted that they were the true Jews; they were the ones who carried on the faith most completely. The Pharisees by keeping every last point in the law of Moses, and the Saduccees by their adherence to the temple rituals of blood sacrifice. And John knows that they might be completely sincere in wishing to show their solidarity with their ancestors. But he also knows that they will go into the water and come out unchanged – because they have no motive to change.

That's a problem with religious people in general, and I include myself. We don't like to change; we don't even think we should change. After all, I have an active prayer life, I study my faith, I think I'm generous with my time and my money, and I try to follow the Golden Rule. What more could God want? If God grades on a curve, I'm okay.

But John is basically saying that the Pharisees and the Saduccees and Me and maybe you are missing the whole point. Jesus is coming into the world to create a new people, and if we want to be part of this new creation, we have to become intentional disciples. That's the change he's talking about. That's putting on a new mind, that's repentance.

So what is an intentional disciple? I remember in college when I signed up to learn German. My class was 8:00 in the morning, and since I was away from home and living in a dormitory, I did not get to bed at a decent hour; we spent a lot of time discussing profound things. So German class almost always saw me dozing off, telling myself that I would have no problems with the exams because many of the words were kind of like English and I could probably guess the rest; and besides, I had a lot of harder subjects to master. Our mid-term came along and I did very poorly in German. At that point I decided to take it seriously and spent time studying every day. I became an intentional student of German.

An intentional disciple is someone who decides that the most important thing in life is to learn what God wants of me and to carry out God's will for me. Unfortunately, that means we have to work at it every day, all the rest of our lives. We have to learn to distinguish between God's will and our own will. We have to allow God to rule over more and more of our lives, instead of the part we allow him to rule over. And it's like learning German; you have to learn what God wants, do it, then learn some more. You have to recognize when your actions are flowing from your own will – and they might be good actions – but if they aren't what God wants, we are missing the mark. And that process never ends, which is why John can tell each of us every day to repent, to convert, to change our minds. Being an intentional disciple is not to become a member of a club, like the Pharisees or the Saducees or the Saint Mary's parish. Don't get me wrong, that's important. But being an intentional disciple is a process, the process of surrendering everything to God. Saint Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. We are designed to be filled up by God, and we go through life trying to fill up that space with other things. And as long as there is anything else in this space, there is no room for God.

Advent is the beginning of a new year; we are reminded that Jesus is coming to make all things new. John invites us to not be left behind. How do we respond? What steps will we take to become intentional disciples?

First Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 24:37 – 44

My mother was a chronically busy person. It was hard for her to sit still. She had a bunch of things she had to accomplish every day, and heaven help you if you interrupted her efforts. My father's parents had the habit of dropping in unannounced. They would open the front door and say, “Is anybody home?” and walk right in. My sisters and I were always happy to see them, but even at that age we could tell my mother did not share our joy. She would keep puttering around, answer their questions with single words, and after they had left, she would usually tell us that even though she liked them, she wished they would let her know when they were coming.

My mother's brother, my favorite uncle, was just the opposite. He ran a farm and always had something to do. But if you dropped in on him unannounced, he would usually put everything aside, invite you into his kitchen and depending on the time of day, offer you coffee or something with a little more punch. And he would converse with you as though he didn't have anything else on his mind. He was always ready for company.

Today Jesus makes it very clear that we would be better off imitating my uncle than my mother. When Jesus comes again, I am sure some of us will say, “wait a minute, Lord, I just want to finish this project!” and we will be left behind.

Advent is a reminder, not just that Jesus will come again and nobody knows when, but that most life-changing events will come when we least expect them. I recently met a young man paralyzed from the waste down, who woke up that way one morning. He has a tumor on the spine, and it is likely that it can be cured – but the damage is done and his life and livelihood will be forever changed. So Jesus' discourse today, and indeed all of Advent, reminds us that we need to be prepared.

So advent is about being prepared – being prepared for God's intervention in our lives, which is really what the whole mystery of the Incarnation is all about. That's what Christmas is about – God inserting himself into humanity, God pitching his tent among as as John the Gospel writer says. And God is always intervening in our lives, sometimes for the good and sometimes it seems not so good.

So how do we enter this state of preparedness? I think Jesus may have given us a hint when he told us that we had to become like little children if we wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven. Having nineteen grandchildren and remembering my six children, I know a thing or two about little children. They are noisy, they interrupt you, they are messy – and the list could go on and on. If they weren't so darn cute, we wouldn't have them. But there are some things little children know that we adults forget.

First, they know how to forgive. Most of us remember times when someone hurt us, and sometimes we have a hard time letting go; but more importantly, there are times in the past where we wish we could have a do-over; times when we did something we aren't proud of, times when we harmed someone else with our carelessness or maybe just plain maliciousness. And late at night when our guard is down, we relive those moments; the moments we wish hadn't happened. And that's what forgiveness is all about; it's letting go; it's recognizing deep in our hearts that there is nothing we can do to change the past. I know we all know that, but as long as things in our past cause us to feel guilty or resentful or angry, we haven't let go, we haven't learned to forgive.

Second, little children know how to live in the present. They have no trouble dropping what they are doing because something new or more exciting comes along. And we adults have often lost that wonderful ability to be truly in the present. We spend a lot of time making plans and lining up what we are going to do tomorrow or next week. We fail to notice the wonders God puts in our present. We just went through a spectacular fall. Did you remember to go for a long walk and just soak in the beauty that God put out there for you. Did you pass up an opportunity to spend some time with a parent, a friend, a loved one because you had something important to do? We don't want to spend all our time just hanging out, but if you are like me you miss the opportunity to be present to someone else, which is part of living in the present.

Third, little children trust. Jesus said that if God cares about sparrows and the lilies in the field, we can be pretty sure he cares about us, and since he loves us and since he is love, we can trust that he is there with us, bring good out of bad, bringing joy out of sadness – doing everything he can short of taking away our free will to bring us home to him. And yet so many of us, me especially, don't really trust God; we don't really want to turn our lives over to him, to let him be in control.

So God is always in the present, never in the past or the future. When we grow up, we spend a great deal of time in the past and the future, and much less in the present. Advent is a time to begin to reverse that way of being; it's a time to learn to be like little children again and wait expectantly for God. What will our Father do next? What gift will he give us? What in fact is he giving us right now? Because he wants us to have joy and it is there for the taking.

Christ the King, cycle C

Luke 23:35-43

The feast of Christ the King was created in 1925 by Pope Pius XI – not that long ago in terms of Church history. And it's interesting to read the words of Pius when the feast was promulgated: he made the Feast because the people of the day had “thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives” and “these had no place in public affairs or in politics.” The pope went on to claim “that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.” I guess he could have written those words today and they would still apply.

But I'd like to focus on today's gospel, in which the so called Good Thief acknowledges that Jesus is a king.

The story of the good thief has captured the imagination of artists and poets down through the ages. In the fourth century, in the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus, he was given the name “Dismas” which comes from a Greek word meaning dark or night – the same root as the word “dismal”. He was also declared a saint by popular acclamation and is honored as such today in the Western church on March 25^th.

But it's interesting that we only hear of Dismas in the Gospel of Luke. In Mark and Matthew, we are told that Jesus was crucified between two other persons – in Mark they are called “insurgents” or “rebels” and in Matthew, “robbers”. In John, it says that Jesus was crucified between two others, but doesn't say anything about them. But it is only in Luke that we have this story, and it fits with the overriding concern of Luke – to show that God is merciful and has a special concern for those who are at the margins, those who are outcasts, those who have lost all hope.

Dismas was probably in no sense “good”. He is being crucified; the Romans didn't just crucify anyone; you had to be guilty of sedition, you had to be a traitor – that was why Jesus was crucified. Or you had to commit some horrendous crime or be a habitual criminal. Dismas himself admits this; he tells the other thief that they deserve what is happening. If Dismas was a rebel against the Romans, he would certainly not express that he deserved death for this. Dismas isn't one of these people that blames society or his parents or his circumstances for his crimes; he knew what he was doing and he accepted the consequences once he was caught. Some of the early Fathers of the Church said that in addition to being a thief he was a murderer. He knows he's going to die and knows that he deserves to die.

Sometimes we focus on the mercy of Jesus in this story. But think about how it looked to Dismas. He knew enough about Christ to proclaim that he was a good man who did not deserve crucifixion. He probably knew that many people had recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the one who would save Israel and be the just ruler who had been expected. He knew about the following that Jesus had attracted, and the expectations of all those people. And yet, was this Jesus, dying on a cross, all those hopes and expectations for nothing. What possible reason did Dismas have to think that Jesus could do anything for him?

But somehow Dismas calls out, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom”. To me this is the most remarkable thing about this story. Dismas did not know that Jesus was God, that Jesus would rise from the dead – facts that bolster our own faith. Dismas may have had a vague belief in the afterlife; if he was on the side of the pharisees he believed in resurrection of the body; if he was on the side of the Sadducees, he did not. Most people believed that after you died you lived on in Sheol, the hebrew name for what the Greeks called Hades. This was a place underground where you lived in sort of a limited way, ghostly, without pleasure or pain. And that was not something religion taught; it was just part of what people in those ages believed, Jewish or not. Against all evidence, against all reason, Dismas threw his lot in with Jesus; his one bit of hope in the midst of hopelessness was that Jesus really was the Messiah, he really was the one who would be King of Kings and Lord of Lords, as the prophets had foreseen.

So Dismas seems to be a hero of faith. And maybe this criminal from 2000 years ago can teach us something. Because we live in an increasingly secular age, where the supernatural recedes from us, where science tells us that we can't say anything about God or life after death because science can't prove it; our age tells us that it is foolish to believe, and that if you have to believe, keep it to yourself. And compared to older times when most people in our country shared certain common beliefs, it's harder to have real faith, the kind that moves you to go against the grain, the kind that lives in the knowledge that we are only on the front porch of the real life awaiting us.

I think Luke tells us the story of Dismas because he wants us to see the essentials every Christian must go through; to admit one is a sinner in need of saving; to acknowledge publicly that Jesus is Lord; and to ask for mercy. And Luke wants us to see that as long as we can draw a breath, we can access that Mercy. And once we do this, we too can hear those words, “Today you will be with me in paradise”.

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 21:5-19

If you have a Facebook account, like I do, over time you get more and more “friends”. I have a number of them – people I've known in the past or people who are friends of my friends and somehow got on my feed. I glance through their posts now and then, but almost never reply or “like” or comment. Facebook can be a time waster in many ways.

One of my facebook friends is an extremely liberal woman. She frequently posts about the terrible things people are doing that make life hard for minorities, people of color, immigrants, the LGBT community. She is very active in many organizations that champion their rights.

The day after Trump was elected, she posted a very long piece about how we could expect people to be rounded up and put in prison camps for being gay; trains full of illegal immigrants would be shipped to Mexico and could never return because of a giant wall on the border; women would be afraid to venture out on the street because our new president is a sexist pig and probably a rapist as well; and worst of all, her little children would never know when that knock on the door would come – just like Nazi Germany. I suspect many citizens of Massachusetts and members of this parish feel the same way, probably not so extreme; but being from Montana, I've also seen long posts about how the world would end if Hilary Clinton was elected. These posts usually predicted that Catholics would have to go underground; our institutions would be taxed out of existence; our hospitals would be forced to perform partial birth abortions and our priests would have to officiate at same-sex marriages – trains full of illegal immigrants would be imported from Mexico and delivered to a neighborhood near you – and the list goes on and on.

Today our Gospel reading begins with the apostles staring at the Temple. They had grown up around Galilee, which was the sticks, so Jerusalem must have been like New York City. The Temple in Jerusalem might have been one of the largest buildings in the world at that time, and a temple had been in that exact spot for about a thousand years. To Jewish people, this was the very center of their universe, and it was hard to think about a world in which the Temple did not exist. Jesus predicts that it will be leveled, not a stone will be left on a stone. But he goes on to say, not only will the temple fall, but catastrophes of every kind will happen; nations will rise against nations – that's still happening; earthquakes – check. Famines – we still have them. Pestilences – ebola, the zika virus. And other fearful events – like presidential elections.

And Jesus goes on to promise that in addition to all these things, our own friends and family will turn on us, maybe even to the point of death. If the terrible things that people think are going to happen under Trump actually occur, – or if Mrs. Clinton had been elected a different set of terrible things – well, Jesus said we shouldn't be surprised.

But Jesus tells us two things. First – and this just happened on a national level – in times of great turmoil we are always tempted to look for someone to lead us, and we endow our chosen leader with almost magical powers. Many Trump supporters actually believe he will make things right, he will correct all the things which seem to threaten our security. And Clinton supporters felt the same way – hers would be an era of great progress and somehow her approach would lead to peace and the end of turmoil. Jesus says, don't listen to people who come and say, “I am he”. Don't listen to people who tell you that they are the only ones who can keep the world from falling apart. In our presidential elections unless you are completely non-political, it's hard to follow Jesus' counsel, so we do listen, and to some extent, believe what we hear.

Jesus also tells us that we can count on him no matter what happens. If we are steadfast, if we are living in his friendship, then even if those closest to us turn on us and betray us – and they do – it isn't the end of the world, because Jesus is with us and that's what really matters.

So today's gospel is a gospel of hope, because Jesus is promising us that no matter what happens, we, his followers, will have the opportunity to bear witness to Him, and he will give us the words to speak, the actions to carry out. In a way, he is telling us that if we are steadfast, he will be there with us. And we know that the early Christians certainly believed that, even to the point of death.

Jesus is saying, whatever you think is permanent, it isn't. Whatever you think is central, maybe it isn't. The Temple which had stood for a thousand years certainly wasn't. What is permanent and central, though, even through prison and persecution and death, is the relationship we have with our savior. And if I keep my eyes focused on Him, nothing that happens can make a dent. Not a hair on my head will be harmed, even if I am put to death. Kind of an odd thought, but I think Jesus is reminding us that whether I am beheaded by a member of Isis or killed in a drive-by shooting on the streets of Springfield or Holyoke, or die in my bed of old age, my real home is not here, my true life is in Christ in the heart of the Trinity, and I am in that life even now.

I am not a fan of our new President; but who knows? Maybe I will be in a year or so. But I'm pretty sure we won't be a very different country four years from now; nothing will change very much. And in four years we will again bemaking apocalyptic predictions about the terrible things that will happen if the person we don't like gets elected. Because we always seem to do that. Jesus' words today comfort us and remind us that God has everything under control, and we are God's beloved, and life eternal is His promise to us.