am I humiliated?

Homily

5th Sunday of Lent C

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG 

Am I humiliated?

It's a hard no for me.  When my sin gets exposed, I think I'm gonna die.  I don't but I think I'm gonna.  I once asked my spiritual director if the only way to humility was through humiliation.  He kicked my butt.  He said for some people yes, but not for me.  If humiliated, I wouldn't face it.  I would run away and quit.  Ouch, dude.

It's all to say that if I can hide and pretend and save face I will.  I can't image being in the position of the woman caught in adultery, my sin in full display.  Even if getting caught would be the best thing for me, I'd rather get away.

Yet Jesus invites me into humiliation, for my own sake. The word is from the Latin humus, literally meaning dirt.  It's where you started Lent, remember?  You let me throw dirt on your forehead and remind you that you will die in your sins.  Humiliating, right?  Yet you lined up and loved every second of it.

It's still where we are now, five weeks later.  At least it's where Jesus is.  There He is, down low, writing the only words He ever writes in the Gospel.  Why down there, Jesus?  You know why.  It's so He can look up at you whenever you are humiliated.

When the Jayhawks play tomorrow night, glory and humiliation will be on stage in equal parts.  One can be the GOAT - the greatest of all time - or the GOAT - meaning the scapegoat. What a stage for our players!  Playing in front of hundreds of millions, exposed and replayed by so many cameras, the results never to be forgotten.  It's why players come to Kansas.

It's also why you are a Christian, for glory and humiliation to be played out on stage in equal parts.  

Instead, if I settle for what is hidden, and what I can get away with in secret, neither humiliation nor glory can result.

The woman caught in adultery has the most humiliating confession, yet she experiences something that the cowardly Pharisees never will.  

I invite you the next time you go to confession to put it all on the line.  Take the lowest place, and see whether Jesus condemns or looks down on you.

Through humiliation, you may encounter a mercy that alone makes all things new.

Am I humiliated?