Chris Anderson

for a recording of this homily: https://soundcloud.com/smcc-14184039/september-8-2024-23rd-sunday-in-ordinary-time-dcn-chris-anderson?si=0fbd2da7d98c4e75a5a5b4bac36b914e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

September 8, 2024

James 2:1-5; Mark 7:11-37

     One day I get a call to drive over to Lebanon to visit a woman who is dying.  It’s a gray, overcast day and the house is dark and dirty.  A little dog barks at my feet.  The woman is leaning back in a bulging recliner held together by duct tape.

     But then we start praying the Rosary.  Hail Mary, I say, full of grace, and the woman answers me each bead, Holy Mary, Mother of God, back and forth, and she has this beautiful voice, deep and silky, like a contralto.

     God is always speaking to us, and sometimes his voice is a deep contralto, but our ears are closed and our hearts are closed and he must reach out first and touch us:  Ephphetha.  Be opened.

     God shows no partiality, as the Letter of James says.  The poor person in shabby clothes is just as beloved to him as the rich man with golden rings.

     The Ephphetha is built into the Baptismal rite.  It’s part of our lives from the beginning.  The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak, the priest or deacon prays, and then, as we sign the baby’s ears and mouth:  may he soon touch your ears to receive his word and your mouth to proclaim his praise.

     This is what we try to teach our children and what we keep trying to teach ourselves:  how to hear the Word of God.  How to listen to our lives.

     There are so many other voices in the world, voices of hatred and judgment and condemnation, and they can drown out the goodness in a child.  They can overwhelm us all.  There are so many other voices within us, voices of anger and violence and self-loathing–they just seem to be a part of who we are, they might be underneath what we call Original Sin–and we have to learn what they are and separate them out.   Whatever leads to freedom, whatever leads to peace, whatever makes us feel loved and able then to love others:  that’s the voice of God.

     This what we have to teach our children, and we have to make sure that our own voices don’t add to the clamor, don’t add to the vitriol and the lies, because whatever comes out of our mouths goes into the ears of our children and into the ears of many, many others, and then it comes out of their mouths, too, again and again, in an endless cycle.

     We’re all so closed off.  We’re afraid to the face the facts, because sometimes they’re complicated and hard and they might force us to change our minds.  We’re afraid to face the tensions inside of us, the ambiguities and the sadness, and so we blame others and cling to false, easy answers, to oversimplifications that free of us from thinking for ourselves, free us from taking responsibility.  We eat too much, drink too much, buy too much.  We’ll do anything to distract ourselves from what’s going on in our own souls.

     Ephphetha, Jesus says.  Be opened.  Be not afraid.  Trust in me.  Risk believing.  Today, listen to the voice of the lord.  Do not grow stubborn as your forbearers did in the wilderness when at Meribah and Massah they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works.

     I’m walking back to my car after another thesis defense, and a homeless man in the parking lot asks me what time it is.  Bearded.  Gap-toothed, wearing an old bomber jacket and black watch cap.  I don’t believe in time anymore, he says, and now I’m always late.

     And I laughed.  I thought that was a profound thing to say, and told him I did.  Was that man’s voice the voice of the Lord?  What was God telling me?  What did God want me to hear?

     Ephphetha:  be opened.

     Think of the ripple effect of our words.  How what this man said stayed with me, and I told Barb about it, and she told others, and they told others.  How what I said might have stayed with him, and how he might have told others, and they told others.  With every creative thought and action, Teilhard de Chardin says, a little more health is being spread in the human mass, and in consequence, a little more liberty to think, to act, and to judge.

     O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.

    Sometimes there’s only silence, only emptiness.  No birds sing.  No children play.  We are desolate, we are in desolation, and we have to learn hear those moments, too.  God is present even when we don’t feel that he is.  Desolation is just part of the process, just part of the journey.  However terrible it is, however long it lasts, it doesn’t mean that God is a lie.  It doesn’t mean that joy is a delusion.  Hold on.

     We must be ready to believe that nothingness is the presence of divine reality, Ruth Burrows says, that emptiness is a holy void that Divine Love is filling.

     Hold on.

     I once married two people in their mid-seventies, Patty and Joe.

     Both had lost their spouses, and in their loneliness they’d become friends.  Joe had worked for the Forest Service and been a cook and done odd jobs.  He’d had a hard life, and Patty had, too.  They were wonderful people, generous and kind.  Neither had very much money–they were both just getting by.

      I’ll never forget the moment of their wedding.  This was when the tabernacle was still over on the side of the church, and we just stood there, the three of us, and a couple of Patty and Joe’s children.  Patty wore a simple print dress, Joe a straw cowboy hat with a feather in the band.  It was quiet.  I was saying the words of the marriage liturgy.

     And then, out of the blue, Joe interrupted and asked if he could say something.  He just stopped the flow of the rite.  And taking Patty’s hand, and looking into her eyes, he said, haltingly:

ain’t no mountain high enough   aint no valley low enough

aint no river wide enough    to keep me from getting to you     

     I wasn’t expecting this.  It embarrassed me at first.  But then I realized, what a minute, this is beautiful, this is important—this is the voice of the Lord.

     Ephphetha.  Be opened.

     God is always speaking to us, in time and out of time, whatever time it is.

     Last week a man wrote in an email that when he went out in the morning to listen, there were so many Swainson’s Thrushes calling and flying overhead it was like a “river of thrushes.”

     Weep weep weep.   That’s the flight call of the thrushes as they fly home to the Amazon every fall.  But we have to listen for it.  We have to get up early.  It’s still dark.  The stars are out.  We have to stand on the porch and strain to hear it, above the sounds of the semis going down the road.   

            weep   weep   weep

            Hail Mary, full of grace

     Be opened:  aint no mountain high enough     aint no valley low enough

   aint no river wide enough

December 7, 2018

St. Ambrose

Psalm 27; Matthew 9:27-34

Today on the memorial of St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, I think of his reputation for flexibility when it came to the liturgy.

You know the old joke.  “What’s the difference between a terrorist and liturgist?  You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

But St. Ambrose wasn’t that way.  He refused to give in to the demand that the liturgy be made the same in every parish and every church.   As he told his protégé, St. Augustine, “When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not.  Follow the custom of the church where you are.”

In fact, a version of this advice has come down to us in English in the famous saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

The fundamentals of the mass must remain the same, of course:  the structure of the Eucharistic Prayer, the words of consecration, the overall logic and sequence of the celebration.  But as for styles of music, St. Ambrose taught, or vestments, or certain liturgical gestures:  it doesn’t matter.  Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees.  The mass must be reverent.  The mass must be in keeping with the tradition. But there are lots of ways of doing that.

“One thing I ask of the LORD,” as the Psalmist says today.  “This I seek:  to dwell in the house of the LORD / all the days of my life, / That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD / and contemplate his temple.”  And we cangaze on his loveliness.  We are, right now, as we reflect on the scriptures–and we will be again in a few minutes, when Father elevates the host.

We dothe dwell in the house of the Lord.  This is it.

Today let us pray for the intercession of St. Ambrose to help rescue us from our petty concerns—all of us, whatever our preferred styles and ways of going about things.   Let us not be blind to what really matters, and not just with the liturgy but with the way our neighbors do things or our kids or our coworkers, however much it might irritate or offend us.  The Lord is present in the scriptures, the Lord is present in the Eucharist, the Lord is present in the faith and the actions of the people.  He is here, in this place, and he is here in our lives, and nothing any of us can ever do can change that or diminish that or dilute that even one degree.  His grace is pouring down on us, and it always will be.  He will be with us always, even unto the end of time.

Luke 21:12-19

When I was a little boy my dad used to cut my hair.  I’d sit in a high chair and he’d shave me down almost to the skin.  I’ve got a picture of him bending over me with the clippers.  You can see my little toy gun sticking out of its holster underneath the towel he put over me.

When I was in high school of course everyone wanted their hair long.  We all wanted to look like George Harrison in the Beatles, at least I did.  There’s a picture of me in the yearbook with hair as long as dad would let me grow it, over my ears anyway.  I’ve got fuzzy sideburns, too.

And then there’s a recent picture of me, in Jerusalem, at the church in the Garden of Gethsemane, kneeling by the stone where tradition says Jesus knelt the night before the crucifixion and asked that the cup might pass from him.  I don’t remember who took it but he or she was looking down on me from above.  You can’t see my face, just the top of my head, and the way I’m balding up there. I hadn’t realized this before, until I saw the picture.  My hair is so thin on top you can see all the way to my crown.

And here’s the amazing thing.  Here’s why I’m telling you this.  Who cares about our hair?  Your hair, my hair?  Who cares about all the silly stuff in our lives?  God does.  Jesus does. He tells us so today, explicitly: “not a hair on our heads will be destroyed,” even in the midst of all our trials and tribulations, even at the end of the world.  The amazing thing about our faith is the conviction that no matter what happens, God is with us—that Jesus himself is our truest and closest friend, unable to be bored by us, unable to be offended by us.  Things willfall apart.  The world willend, again and again.  But God will never leave us, and we need never be afraid.

Here’s a lovely, lovely prayer by the seventeenth century Jesuit St. Claude de Colombiere:

Jesus, you are my true friend, my only friend.

You take a part in all my misfortunes:

You take them on yourself;

You know how to change them into blessings.

You listen to me with the greatest kindness

when I relate my troubles to you,

and you always have balm to pour on my wounds.

I find you at all times.  I find your everywhere.

You never go away;

if I have to change my dwelling, I find you wherever I go.

You are never weary of listening to me.

You are never tired of doing me good.

I am certain of being beloved by you if I love you;

my goods are nothing to you,

and by bestowing yours on me you never grow poor.

However miserable I may be,

no one nobler or wiser or even holier

can come between you and me,

and deprive me of your friendship;

and death, which tears us away from all other friends,

will unite me forever with you.

All the humiliations attached to old age

or to the loss of honor will never detach you from me.

On the contrary, I shall never enjoy you more fully,

and you will never be closer to me,

than when everything seems to conspire against me,

to overwhelm me, and to cast me down.

You bear with all my faults with extreme patience,

and even my want of fidelity and ingratitude

do not wound you to such a degree

as to make you unwilling to receive me back

when I return to you.

Isn’t that at wonderful prayer?  And here, listen to this, this final part of the prayer:

Jesus, grant that I may die praising you,

that I may die loving you,

that I may die for the love of you.

Amen!

October 14^th, 2018

Titus 3:1-7

Sometimes scripture is obscure, full of levels and layers and complications. Sometimes it isn’t.

And this is one of those times when it isn’t.

We are “to slander no one,” St. Paul says to Titus.  We are “to be peaceable, considerate, exercising all graciousness toward everyone.”

Graciousness to “everyone,” not just to the people who belong to our church, not just to the people who are citizens of our country or whose skin is the same color as ours, not just to the people of our own political party.

Everyone.

Slandering “no one”–not even the people we don’t like, not even the people we don’t respect, not even the people we don’t understand.

No one.

On Facebook, in letters to the editor, in public debate, in private conversation, in our own thoughts and prayers:  we must be “peaceable.”  We must be “considerate.”

If we’re not, we have to stop and really think about ourselves.

If we’re not, we really can’t call ourselves Christians.

November 7^th, 2018

Philippians 2:12-18; Psalm 27; Luke 14:25-33

I’m married to someone who hardly ever “grumbles,” this word that St. Paul uses in Philippians today.  “Do everything without grumbling,” he says, and Barb is really like this.  When we travel she doesn’t complain about the food or the beds or standing in line.  She makes the best of it.  When she does things at home or takes care of her parents, she just does it, just goes about the task.

And maybe that doesn’t seem like such a big deal, and maybe in a way that’s the point. In the Gospel today Jesus asks us for everything, asks us to be heroes, to sacrifice it all and to join him, and that can seem so intimidating that we don’t think we can ever do it.  It’s too much.  And so we don’t do anything.  We give up. But as Pope Francis says in his latest apostolic exhortation, Rejoice and be Glad, “the holiness to which the Lord calls you will grow through small gestures.”  Not grumbling, for example.  Or gossiping. Or telling little lies.  “We are called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves.”

Last Sunday at mass I loved seeing some of the children dressed up as saints. They were wearing habits or robes or crowns.  But they could have come dressed as their parents, too, or the person next door, because holiness happens in our kitchens and our cars, too, in our own backyards, in small ways, all the time.

Besides, as a master grumbler myself, I don’t think these little things are that easy anyway.  The big, dramatic sacrifices, the great heroic deeds–they get us all this attention, all this glory, but the little things usually go by unnoticed, unrewarded. No one sees us doing the work we have to do.  No one knows. It’s so hard to control our impulses anyway, so hard to say no to the second cookie or glass of wine, so hard to bite our tongues.  What’s the point if we’re not going to get any credit?  What the heck?

That’s the challenge, the hardest challenge of all.  There’s the speech we give when we accept the Nobel Peace Prize, and then there’s emptying the garbage or taking the dog for a walk.

And in the end, Paul is saying, emptying the garbage can make an enormous difference. In the end the little things arethe big things.  Look at the world.  It’s defined by grumbling:  by snotty little remarks, by little cuts and digs, by labeling, by dismissing, by all this worrying about this petty thing or that petty thing, because that’s what “grumbling,” implies, not genuine resistance to real problems, not real speaking out against injustice, but just mumbling under our breath about whatever interferes with our own little daily enjoyments or patterns or routines. That’s the whole world now.  It’s structured by grumbling.  We have all these grievances but we never grieve. All our indignation is for ourselves, never for others.

But if we try to do everything without grumbling and complaining, without calling attention to ourselves, St. Paul says, we will “shine like lights in the world,” “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.”  For not grumbling?  Shining like stars?  Yes.  To do everything without grumbling is the first small step towards dying to self, and through it Jesus can begin to do his work of transforming the world.

I don’t know how you feel about the results of the midterm elections.  We have different feelings, I’m sure, depending on our own politics, and the results are mixed anyway.  Maybe you don’t care—maybe you’ve been trying to ignore it all. But what if as Christians, as followers of Christ, we set out in the aftermath of the elections not to grumble and complain, under our breath or in our hearts or in any other way, if we treated other people with kindness and gave them the benefit of the doubt—if we practiced peace, in our own hearts, in our own small behaviors?  And what if when we have a real issue to stand up for, something we really care about, we stand up for it, directly and honestly, with courtesy, with courage, not holding it in or half-letting it out so that it just festers, just turns into a private bitterness?

After all, “the Lord is our light and salvation. / Whom should we fear? /   The Lord is our life’s refuge. /   Of whom should we be afraid?”