what do you have to lose?

Homily

13th Week in Ordinary Time

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

28 June 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

What do I have to lose?

One of my pet peeves is when my teams play scared, when they're afraid of losing.  Nothing turns me off faster.  Especially when they have a lead and choke because they stop playing.  I'd much rather lose playing to win than to win by playing not to lose.

What do I have to lose?  That's our pivotal question for today.

For real disciples of Jesus, the answer is simple.  I have nothing to lose.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing that I am not already willing to give because I love God and live only for Jesus.

St. Paul reminds me that as I disciple I'm dead.  Dead to sin.  Dead to myself.  And so alive for God in  Christ Jesus.  And this is for every disciple.  Everyone who is baptized.  Christianity does not admit of exceptions.

Which is why Jesus speaks without exception in the Gospel.  The absolute speaks absolutely.  The only way to save lives is first to lose mine.  The paradox is at the heart of what it means to be baptized, to be a disciple, to be Christian, and to be alive.

We all know the situation we face.  We are all supposed to be saving lives without asking what it means to live.  We are to preserve existence through distance, or by canceling or erasing persons and the past.  

This isn't the way.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  If I want to save lives I first have to offer mine!  Nothing else will work.  Nothing.  Only absolute generosity, courage and detachment will work, and they are the non-negotiables of discipleship.

I'll tell you what it looks like.  Vic Johnson is on oxygen and he is here in the front pew during the coronavirus, because he knows what it means to live.  Life is Christ.  Vic knows he has nothing - no capacity to love his family - if he does first receive the source of all that he is - the source of all life and relationship - Jesus Himself.  Life is Jesus.  Life is the Eucharist.  Vic on oxygen is the last person who should be at Mass right now.  But he knows that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses it for Christ's sake will find it.

I have never argued against being safe or careful in the times that we are in.  And I won't now.  But let's all admit please that these can only go so far.  Being safe and careful are great for preserving life; but only courage and generosity beget life!  That's the meaning of today's Scriptures.

There is nothing God could ask of Vic that he hasn't already given.  He has nothing to lose.  He is living only the life that lies on the other side of the cross, the eternal life of the Resurrection.  Why does he do it?  Why does he life like he has nothing to lose?  

Vic loves God.  That's it.

If I truly want to save lives, especially the life of my family, I have to start by offering mine.

Jesus tells his disciples it is the only way.  

If he's right, what do I have to lose?

what does it mean to live?

Homily

11th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

14 June 2020

AMDG +JMJ +m

What does it mean to live?

That's the easiest pivotal question of all time!

Jesus the author of life gives us the answer.

To live is to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

No ifs, ands or buts.  That's it.

There's been a lot of talk in 2020 about saving lives that matter.

There's been too little talk about what it means to truly live.

Jesus gives us the answer.

To truly live is to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

Anything less than this is simply existence that fades into death.

The recent Pew Study says that 70% of Catholics don't believe Jesus.

I think that number is too low!

I would say almost 100% of Catholics don't believe in the Real Presence.

I think the number has always been close to 100%

Now don't freak out.

That's not my survey answer.

My survey answer is that I truly believe.

But it's my heart answer.  My gut answer.

What percentage of Catholics are truly saints?

That's your number - of how many truly believe.

St. John Vianney who adored Jesus in the Eucharist constantly, had it right.

If the Eucharist is really what Jesus says.

If it is all of God - all reality, all mystery, all story, all grace, all of life -

than anyone who actually receives what this gift is - would die.

Which is to say that he would stop simply existing,

and pass over to live only the eternal life that is the fruit of the Eucharist.

I wish that was me!

But it's not, not yet anyway.

I seem to be existing just fine,

with or without the Eucharist.

The COVID restrictions haven't killed me.

Which means only that I have yet to begin to truly live,

to fully believe.

So put me in the 70% or the 100% who struggle to receive this gift.

God help me.

Lord, help my unbelief.

Ultimately, I don't believe because I don't want the responsibility that comes with the gift.

That's how things work - we know it.

There is no gift without responsibility.

Regarding the responsibility of the Eucharist - 

it's way more than mere obligation to get your rear here every Sunday!.

No - it's a freedom, an energy, a capacity - an ability to respond to ultimate gift with ultimate thanksgiving and ultimate generosity!

Corpus Christi is the day marked for such ultimate responsibility - thanksgiving and generosity.

It's the day for me to take Jesus outside!

I've gone to enough World Youth Days to know how this works.

Jesus belongs ultimately not merely inside, but also outside!

I've gathered outside with millions - the largest, most peaceful, most diverse and unifying crowds in human history - gathered around the Eucharist.

But still I'm the worst at taking him outside, at sharing Him with others.

Instead, I'm tempted to use the Eucharist as a weapon for Catholic insiders - as part of the cancel culture judging who counts and who doesn't.  As a litmus test for identity politics - who's a real Catholic and who's a pretender.  To reduce the full sign of the Eucharist to mere virtue signaling of who's holy and who's not.

But shame on me if I abuse the Eucharist in this way!

The Eucharist, especially today, is meant more for outsiders than insiders.

The Eucharist was never given to be the magic pill or secret sauce of gnostic Catholics.  The gift is wasted if it is only a private possession hoarded from the inside, instead of fulfilling its destiny to be the universal sacrament of salvation for all people, and the only true hope of the world!

How dare I claim the Eucharist to be the source and summit of the Catholic faith if I do not also know it to be the engine of the Church's mission of evangelization to outsiders!

This is what it means to embrace the ultimate responsibility that comes with ultimate gift.

Why do black lives not matter?  Why is there still so much death?  So much doubt, discord, disagreement and distance, when the source of meaning, life, faith, communion, peace, reconciliation and intimacy is staring us right in the face?

The answer is too simple, but nonetheless true.  It's because I have barely started to unwrap and share the sublime gift of the Eucharist with outsiders.

Moses says to remember where we came from.

The Eucharist is a sacred remembering - yes!

Yet we remember not in order to go back,

but to activate the launching pad for going forward.

For all her rich history of Eucharistic tradition, theology and piety,

to mark Corpus Christi today, 

is never to wish we could go back,

but is a confession that I need to go forward in realizing this gift

and sharing it with outsiders.

What does it mean to live?

To live is to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

Lord, help me not to hoard this perfect gift!

To know that will never work!

May my one desire going forward,

be to unwrap this sweetest of gifts, and to share this most wonderful sacrament with outsiders!

is it a sin to be white?

Homily

10th Sunday in Ordinary Time AII

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

7 June 2020

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +JMJ +m

Is it a sin to be white?

No.  But it is a sin to stay white.

As a white American male I enjoy more power, privilege and protection (the three P's) than 99.999% of all persons in history.  It's a fact that is not hard to know, see and feel.  I remember how scared I was in 2010 in South Africa when I ventured into neighborhoods where white priests had been robbed and shot, places where I didn't have the three P's.  I know I'm a coward.  Even today I rarely spend time, money and energy in zip codes where I don't have the three P's.  I don't let myself experience the danger that is normal for most persons.

No, it's not a sin to be white.  But it is a sin to stay white.

Today is not a day for excuses.  Who cares if I've personally worked hard and that I'm not personally racist.  Compared to the white and black soldiers who on D-Day June 6, 1946, threw themselves into the heart of danger to fight the the evil assault on human dignity that was Nazi Germany, I have done nothing.  Nothing.  I want to honor those soldiers of all colors not with excuses, but with action. With my admission that our country needs new heroes, and that America is not great unless she gets a whole helluva lot better.

I'll be honest.  George Floyd is not my chosen rallying point.  I am concerned that the Black Lives Matter movement will be co-opted by politics, ideology, violence and hate and do more harm than good.  And I'm most angry about the violence done to innocent, unborn minority girls who are discarded and dismembered here and around the world because fathers will not fight for their right to breathe.  I would start by saying unless and until unborn lives matter, no lives matter.  But insofar as I am doing nothing either for the unborn or for George Floyd, I am a big part of the problem.

Right now, the Holy Spirit is breathing clarity and conviction into our nation through the image of a white officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on the neck of a black man, George Floyd.  Like it or not, his life is a new starting point.  Until George Floyd's life matters, no lives matter.  Unless black lives matter, no lives matter.  

Black lives matter.  It's not that hard to say.  And yes, I am sorry if as a white pastor or a mostly white Church, I'm afraid to say it, or am the last to say it instead of the first.  I do not care where you get your news.  Saying black lives matter is not political.  It's just not.

It's no more political that saying that one is three and three is one.  That's the mystery and the message of Trinity Sunday.  That the most real and the only lasting unity is born through a full diversity of persons.  One is three and three is one.  That's only true if there is no privilege or segregation or inequality in God. There is instead intimacy, closeness, communion, dignity, equality.  That's what we celebrate - the heart of all reality and any personhood is the Trinity.  Today's mystery is that before sin, violence, rivalry and politics entered the world, there are three persons who matter to each other.  Saying black lives matter is not political. It's written into the very heart of God.  That is why racism, as Archbishop Naumann says, is ultimately an insult to God, who Trinitarian image is written on people of every color.

To ignore today's mystery is to allow God to be perceived wrongly, to be experienced as a rich, privileged white guy who controls his slaves from far away.  Insofar as my Church rests in white privilege, and stays white, and my leadership is perceived in this way, I am not proclaiming the truth about God!

But this not the truth of who God is.  His Trinitarian mystery is revealed in the paschal one whose fullness we just celebrated at Pentecost.  God is a heartbroken Father who through His Spirit sends His Son into the heart of danger to be a victim who saves.  At the heart of God is not the privilege to separate and dominate, but a burning desire to suffer evil and transform it with mercy.

I am not proclaiming the truth about God, and I'm no disciple of Jesus unless I take a knee and give up my breath so that others may breathe.  

The breath of the Holy Spirit is speaking clearly.  Ready or not, there is a new starting point.  I must be able to see God and myself in my black brothers and sisters.  At the heart of reality there are persons who matter to each other.  Unless and until black lives matter, no lives matter.

No, it's not a sin to be white.

But it is a sin to do nothing, and to stay white.