All Things Seen and Unseen

I have a dirty secret. I suppose since you are here that you too have one. We share a dirty secret. And today we are ready to go public. We are ready to let the truth emerge, we are ready to walk from here with the mark of our origins plain for everyone to see, we are ready to admit our involvement with the strangers who share our dirt.
For some reason today all over the world people come in their droves to make the truth plain in a smudge of dirty ash on the brow. No one says we must, but so many of us do. And though we probably wonder why we do, or wonder what Lent means to us, or wonder even why we bother with God at all, our bodies seem to know better and they bring us here to celebrate the truth of our creation. We are creatures made from dust and dirt. Men and women of the soil. Children of earth. It is not only our feet which are clay, it is our whole self, every bit we hold in common with each other and with every other creature God has made.
We are an uppity people who like to think we have better origins. But while we might have a greater destiny we cannot turn away from the God who gave birth to us from the dirt and dust of this earth.
Lent is all about the question of roots. Who am I? Who am I really? When the paraphernalia are stripped away, when the rubbish is gone, when the pretence is put away, who am I? Who are we? When we are down to dust and dirt who do we find ourselves to be?
We ask this question every year because every year we forget. Every year we abandon our God-given home in the earth for a skyscraper of our making, built from our fantasies on a foundation of shifting sand. Lent brings us down to earth.
That in itself would be a blessing. To be once again ourselves. Comfortable with what we are. But Lent always looks to Easter. Easter can never happen in our secure dirt-free lives. Easter only happens to the people of dust who follow Jesus, the man of dust. Who go with him every year into the desert to ask with him the question of what we are and what we are to become.
So what we do today, we do for our own sake, and we do for his. So that he will not be alone on the way. So that he will not be forgotten. So that on Easter morning when he rises again from the womb of earth he will find a people who, because they know themselves, know him.

I stand before you this day to tell you that Jesus got it wrong. Either that or we did. Here he is again this morning, speaking to the victims: to those who are hated, who are cursed, who are maltreated; victims of violence, victims of theft and plunder. It seems like he forgot to speak to us: we who hate, who curse, who maltreat; we who wage war and thrive on the spoils of peace. What are we to do while the victim is turning the other cheek or giving us the shirt off her back? Does Jesus think we’ll be so impressed we’ll change our ways? I don’t know. I do not know. I only know the headlines.
All week, the front page: Olympics; Iraq (and Lewinsky pressed between the two). There’s an image in my mind that won’t go away. It’s of the Greek goddess of victory – one of the many statues who stood and guarded the original Olympus. She stands there, winged, hefting a spear, ready with Zeus and all to defend the Olympic truce. The truce which allowed all the warring factions to lay away their arms and come to honour their gods and compete in stadium and gymnasium.
It’s that image of truce that scares me, because as our own games draw to a close, doesn’t it feel that war with Iraq is inevitable? Doesn’t it feel that it has already begun? When the Pentagon is discussing its war plans in the press and predicting “only” 1500 deaths (not to mention the other casualties)? As Nike—Victory’s Greek name—prepares to lay down her spear are we about to take up our own?
Nike wasn’t the only defender of the Olympic truce—more important I’m sure were the armies of Sparta ready to punish truce-breakers. There’s a truth there: truce is never real peace. Truce is always part of war. Just as the games were part of war, providing just enough cohesion for wars to continue without destroying the whole. And providing a warlike model of human excellence: the victor, the winner, the proud. It was strictly no admission to victims: no foreigners, no slaves, no women. And, then as now, such shame to go home defeated.
If the bombs fall on Iraq it will be because someone sends them and because many more stand by in support or in merely silent opposition. If 1500 die who will they be? They will be foreigners, poor people, women and children: they will be victims all. It will be the foot soldiers on both sides. Who will be untouched? Bill Clinton on one side and Saddam Hussein on the other? The Generals on both?
So what does Jesus say about that? I don’t know. All his talk seems to be for the victims. And I don’t want to hear that message too clearly in case I become one. It’s almost as though Jesus never imagined he would have followers who weren’t victims; as though he couldn’t foresee a time when his disciples were the haters, the slappers of faces, the strippers of comfort, the plunderers of livelihood … the wagers of war.
But here we are. The Olympic victors had their goddess Nike to enforce order and the appearance of peace and we have ours. But the Christians have a different God who it seems enforces nothing. Their God doesn’t judge but pardons, does not condemn but gives without thought of recompense. Their God is compassionate—suffers with those who suffer. Their God knows life from the victim’s angle—they say he made the universe but it seems he couldn’t even save his own life.
So thank the gods we are different, we who follow victory and pursue the laurels of war. Thank Nike that we are the bombers and not the bombed.

It came flooding back this weekend, the memory, clear and embarrassing, of sitting in my mother’s house one Holy Week afternoon, aged twenty or so, watching Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Zeffirelli’s sweet and oh-so-sixties story of Francis of Assisi. Watching it, trying to be above its sugar and sentiment, and failing—instead being drawn in, being drawn into a helpless envy. If only I could be that wholehearted, that complete in my dedication, that free from convention, and comforts, and confusion. If only… I remember clearly and embarrassingly the little voice in my heart that spoke quietly: “Rob, why not?” I remember my immediate response: “Shields up, Mr. Sulu—evasive action.” I switched off the TV and decided foolishly I needed time alone. So I went to my room, sat on the bed, picked up my Bible, and opened by chance (ha!) to Jeremiah chapter 1: “before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you; I have appointed you as prophet to the nations.” Out of the frying pan into the fire.
It’s a shame our reading today misses out the next bit, that delicate exchange between the reluctant prophet and the persistent God.
“I’m just a child.”
Doesn’t matter.
I can’t speak.
Doesn’t matter.
I’m afraid.
Doesn’t matter.
“It doesn’t matter because I know you, I have always known you, I know what you are capable of, I exactly how much you’ll wriggle, and I’m looking forward to knowing how much we might do together.”
We are each and all called to be prophets. It is our baptismal call. A call not to believe, but to do. Believing is nothing—the devil believes. Doing is everything. As infants water is poured over us, words spoken over us, promises made for us because we haven’t the tongue to make them ourselves. And those promises are carried for us—something precious, something delicate—kept for us by family and community. Not kept in a closet somewhere but kept here, on a Sunday, in worship and kept every day in between when one of us, not only believes, but does.
Which isn’t to say that each one of us doesn’t respond to our own prophetic call with reluctance—even with resistance. We each have that moment, that succession of moments, when we put childish ways aside to answer for ourselves, to keep our own promises, to move beyond belief into action.
And I think there’s a glimpse of how hard these moments can be in the gospel this morning. You’ve got to remember the context. “Previously in Luke”: Jesus standing with all eyes upon him, in the synagogue of his hometown, reading the words of Isaiah the prophet, words he has come to hear as his own calling: to be someone sent with glad tidings for the poor, liberty for captives, sight for the blind, release for prisoners, and God’s favour for everyone. He stands there and says, “Folks: this is me, this is who I am.”
He has the words—everyone is marvelling at him, speaking favourably of him—but it seems like the actions fail him. Everything is going well until what sounds like a wave of insecurity washed over him. All eyes upon him, it seems for a moment that he has forgotten who he is. He lays into the people who are hanging on his word. Provokes them: “I know what you’re thinking, you’re going to say, ‘show us your miracles,’ you’re going to say ‘physician heal thyself’. Well let me tell you…”
It’s no wonder his kin turn against him and drive him away. The poor guy nearly gets lynched for his outburst. Not even Jesus, it seems, finds it easy to be a prophet. It takes him time and reluctance and mistakes and second chances to learn to be who he is called to be.
But like I said a few weeks ago. Luke’s Jesus is just one of us, an ordinary guy, given an extraordinary prophetic mission when he was baptized… just like we were.

There’s a strange thing going on with time in these readings. We start with the very beginning of St. Luke’s book about the life and ministry of the early Jesus movement and finish with the very end of St. Luke’s book about the life and ministry of Jesus in the flesh. Time is out of order. And here at the hinge we have a rush of events and a lull of waiting. Time is racing. Time is on hold.
Time is racing with Luke’s description of the forty days of intermittent presence of the risen Jesus and of the strange departure of their already elusive friend. Time is racing as Jesus promises his followers a great and energetic future moving out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth preaching and giving witness.
But time is on hold too as this same Jesus tells them to wait, to stay in the city and wait. And they do, no longer hiding behind closed doors in fear but constantly in the temple singing the praises of God.
It might seem a strange thing to be doing, given that they have just lost someone they loved. But it is only strange if you are mistaken about where he has gone.
The Church draws us each year into this mystery of disjointed time and absent presence. We, with our ancestors, the first followers, are waiting: Jesus has gone in the flesh and has not yet come in the Spirit. But only St Luke rubs it in – the other gospel writers don’t see the gap or don’t trust it. But Luke thinks it’s so important that he tells it twice and makes it the hinge on which his two-part story turns.
The risen Jesus has gone. The spirit has not yet come into the church. And yet the assembly prays. This is the first novena. The original. The nine days of joyful waiting. And they could be joyful because they didn’t feel that Jesus had gone the way dead people go, only to be present in memory, but that he had been lifted up and put in charge, in charge of everything.
I don’t know if any of you saw the last Oscar ceremony? There was a moment when James Cameron, riding high on the victory of his film Titanic, seemed to be about to be briefly humble and thankful and full of praise for others, but instead couldn’t resist stealing a line form one of his characters—”I’m king of the world” he shouted. It was embarrassing to watch. But it makes me wonder who is in charge. When we look around the world we have to wonder. With promise of peace in Ireland; with revolution in Indonesia; with deadly horror in Oregon; with nuclear bombs in India. Just who is in charge?
Bill Clinton? Bill Gates? Hardly! Frank Sinatra’s gone. And Godzilla’s only managed to be a blip on the screen.
St Luke says that Jesus is in charge. He has taken a throne in the heavens and now everything is his to put in order. He has taken the reins. And, though the Spirit has not yet come to bring the church to birth, God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world. The coming task of witness and ministry and justice is all still to be done—for them and two thousand years later for us—but, even before it begins, the victory is assured because Jesus has been raised from the dead and raised up to rule the world.
That’s why the prayer of the waiting community is so full of joy and the praise of God. Because we have a friend in the heavens. One who walked with us, wept with us, one of us has been raised above angels and principalities and powers. The lowly has been lifted up and mighty cast down.
It seems to me that the prayer of the waiting church, then and now, should be Mary’s own song of praise. I see her singing it for the gathered community in those days. Letting it’s words of praise now speak not just for herself but for her son and for all her son’s friends. God has looked with favour on our lowliness so that all times to come will call us blessed for the mighty one has done marvellous things for us. God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, dethroned the powerful, and lifted up the lowly. The hungry have found satisfaction and the rich discovered their own emptiness. God has promised the victory of Justice and the defeat of Death. And holy is God’s name.

Oreo Cookies, Family Photos, and Steve Young. Not necessarily in that order.
Item: Family Albums. “Who’s that?” ask Laura, to her little one. And with a roll of her eyes, as if the question was a no-brainer, Amy says, “that’s me.” This is New Year’s Day and the old photos are out and we’re looking back, to look forward. And Amy is pointing at her mother’s swollen stomach and seeing herself. Clever kid! Then comes the question that makes you glad you’re a visitor: “but where was I before that?” Aa!
Item: Steve Young. Best player in the NFL. That’s what the New York Times says this morning. But, they wonder, if he’s so good – and they have all the stats to prove it – if he’s so good why does he still fall behind Joe Montana in the hero stakes? Myself, I think he’s too nice to be a hero. In the TV ads he’s this big, genial, slightly dopey, all-round nice guy. The ideal big brother, the perfect uncle, the model son. But I like my heroes to be just a little less “nice” than him. A little more out of reach. A little more … special.
Item: Oreos. After 85 years of being a disguised pork-product the archetypal American cookie is about to be declared … kosher: no longer off limits to Jewish kids across the country. And a Rabbi, long tempted by this chocolatey forbidden fruit, sees this as the end of Jewishness as he knows it. “Can we,” he asks, “survive being so normal?”
Three good questions for a Sunday morning/afternoon: how did we begin; who are we taking after; and what makes us different?
(pause)
A New Year, and though the church’s year began with advent, today we begin reading in earnest from Luke’s gospel. We are going to spend the rest of this year with Luke’s Jesus. And though most of the stories are the same, the character at their heart is different. So who’s the hero of the story as Luke sees him? Well it’s not the troubling, miracle-worker that Mark marvels at; nor Matthew’s great preacher of a new inner law; and above all it’s not John’s commanding, all-knowing, super-hero who walks through the gospel two-inches off the ground. Luke sees Jesus as one of us: an ordinary person, a good person, who prays like the rest of us, gets tired like the rest of us, gets baptized like the rest of us. Jesus is a gentleman, a gentle, kind soul with a desire to cure all the ills of the world. With a powerful message of liberation delivered quietly and without violence. This is our hero: one of us; a son of Adam. But if he’s so like us doesn’t he make a lousy hero?
Luke takes us back to our beginnings to answer that question. Back to this moment at the Jordan when something happens to Jesus which makes all the difference. It’s not the baptism. And it’s not voice from heaven. It’s when the Holy Spirit comes and settles on Jesus.
As Luke sees it, Jesus begins his ministry because the Spirit comes to him and begins to lead him and empower him. The Jesus that we follow begins there, drenched and praying, when God comes to him anew with a message and a mission.
Luke wrote the Acts of Apostles too. And today we hear Peter talking to a bunch of foreigners. Peter’s just had a vision telling him to break kosher – to eat his Oreos — so here he is swallowing religious pride and speaking the gospel to outsiders. And what happens next? As they are all praying the same Holy Spirit settles upon them all. God comes to them anew with a message and a mission.
For Luke it’s the Holy Spirit that makes all the difference. It’s where we all begin. Jesus began there. The Jewish Church began there at Pentecost. The universal Church began there in Cornelius’ house. And we begin there too.
Our hero, the Jesus we’ll be with all this year, is just some nice guy who let himself be seized by the Holy Spirit, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and led on a wild goose chase by the Holy Spirit.
I for one find that disturbing. I like my heroes a little out of reach, a little special: not so ordinary. Because then I can let them be who I am supposed to be. I can watch from a safe distance while they take my risks for me and live my life.
I like Mark’s Jesus because he’s wilder than I am. I like Matthew’s Jesus because he’s wiser than I am. I like John’s Jesus because he’s more magical than I am. But Luke’s Jesus frightens me because he leaves me no excuse.
I don’t like my heroes to be too much like me, because then I might have to be one too.

Looking for the rising star where else do you go but Jerusalem? To Zion set on a hilltop; to the king in his palace; to God in his brand new Temple? You make the pilgrimage. You don’t mind the desert chill or the barren winter plains because ahead, always rising, is the jewel of Judah, is Zion, is Jerusalem, city of Kings and the one place in all this round world where God dwells by his promise. Every step takes you upward as the ground breaks into hills and the hills into mountains and the valley you follow rises and dips and rises again. You remember the pilgrimage songs of the Jewish people, the songs of ascent, as they walked this same road long ago:
“How I rejoiced when they said to me “Let us go to the house of Adonai” and now our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem restored! One united whole!” “May Adonai bless you from Zion, God who made heaven and earth.” “For Adonai has chosen Zion, chosen to make it God’s home.”
Ah, the songs of Zion. Looking for a rising star where else would you go? But to the heart, to the eternal city, to the holy dwelling place of God.
(pause)
It is night. Deep and dark as velvet. Unbroken by moonlight. It is cold, bitter and bleak and black. Almost there, the climb almost complete, you pause for breath, winded by the ascent, and your gaze falls back on the way you have trod. Isaiah is in your ears: “See, darkness covers the earth and thick clouds cover the nations. But upon you Adonai shines and over you appears God’s glory.”
Once maybe, and maybe once again. “Rise up in splendour Jerusalem: your light has come.” But not tonight. So here you are, in darkness, travelling in hope after a rising star. After a light, at the turn of the year, to guide your steps and make the future bright, brighter than the year’s difficult climb to where you stand exhausted now, remembering, regretting, hoping. Trying to be ready for the rising star. Ready to give whatever you need, all your golden talents, all your hopes like incense, to receive the new light of the world. But all is dark. Not only the valley: but Jerusalem too, city of kings, chosen dwelling place of God, heart of the earth. Dark and cold. But you will wait.
(Pause)
Jerusalem by daylight. City of contention and uneasy peace. Of occupying armies and quarrelling priests. What you will never know, for all your golden gifts and fragrant prayers, is that the star is already risen, the light already come, but shining obscurely miles from here. Not in the city of Kings, but unnoticed, in poverty, a child was born. To a mother and father, refugees fleeing the chosen dwelling place of God. A dim light, a fragile light, one that might be easily put out. So while you wait in the sensible place to see the rising star, to find the light in darkness, the heart of the earth has shifted. The axis of the world has tilted. Once again the radiant presence of God is on the move. As of old Adonai walks with a pilgrim people, as once before God is homeless with the chosen stranger.
Away from the safety of golden palaces and incense-scented temples, the Creator of the Universe has dwindled to infancy, the Word become flesh cannot speak, and the eternal God learns the bitter perfume of embalming oil. The risen star is to be found in all the wrong places. The light shines in darkness and – miracle – the darkness has not overpowered it.

The TV does it! The magazines do it! Even the Sunday liturgy does it! “Does what?” I hear you ask. Does this: goes all nostalgic. We’re all looking forward to Christmas by looking backward in memory.
The adverts are full of warm hearths and ruddy-cheeked children and Victorian windows and period costumes and gently drifting snow. Santa Claus speaks in an antique accent and even his ho-ho-hos hearken back to an earlier, rosier time. The table is crammed, the tree is laden, and every eye is full of tinsel and fire.
The ghosts of Christmas past have done their work for Scrooge. Charlie Brown has got his Christmas tree. And once more the Grinch has failed to steal Christmas. It is, indeed, a wonderful life!
Do you remember the songs of Christmas? The tunes that transport you to some former time when you were younger and wiser, when your back ached less, and the Christmas tree loomed so large, and the crèche brought tears to your innocent eyes? Do you remember when all the family managed to be together for the holidays before death and distance made their claim? Do you remember the hush of a silent night, the sleepless wait for a gift-rich daybreak, the rush and tear of all that wrapping paper and ribbon?
Ah, things worth waiting for, things worth remembering. All that nostalgia, all that juice and all that joy, and not a word of Jesus! Isn’t there always a pang of guilt that in all the rush and fluster of Christmas coming and going we miss the reason for the season, as some say. So here’s a Christmas question for you: if Jesus were here, in the flesh, this morning how would he be getting ready to celebrate his birthday?
And while you ponder your answer for a moment let me lead up to mine by dwelling on the extraordinarily ordinary meeting in today’s gospel.
Two women meeting: a young women pregnant in hasty circumstances; an elderly woman expecting after all these years. Two women of no account who wouldn’t be worth a second glance if they weren’t both heavy with child. Two women bound by blood and bodies that ought to be barren but in this winter time are ripening new fruit.
Two odd, simple women suddenly brought to joy by the life inside their bodies and the kinship between them. A simple meeting. A simple pleasure felt in the flesh: “He’s kicking!”
This is how Jesus comes into the world. The headlines don’t shout his coming. The churches are not filled on his account. But two women, in the hills, miles from nowhere, feel it in their waters and find themselves laughing and embracing and singing for the joy and surprise of it all.
And how they must have remembered in later times the sweetness of that meeting and felt again for a moment the confidence in their flesh that joy was alive within the world through them.
Didn’t they take their boys on their knees in later years, when birthdays approached, and tell them the story of that meeting? As they cooked their sons’ favourite food, didn’t they reminisce about warmer times when their backs ached less, and all the family managed to be together, and joy was simple and hope abundant? Didn’t they remember and relish and relive?
With a mother and an aunt like that how else would Jesus be getting ready for his birthday than by remembering! Remembering the day-to-day joys of simply being alive to breathe and taste and hold; relishing all that past pleasures have laid up in his flesh and today’s delight rekindles; reliving with laughter and shining eyes his blood’s excited pulse of waiting.
May we do likewise: remember, relish, relive!

Isn’t it a strange time of year? I’ve always loved Advent and I’ve come in these years to love Thanksgiving yet I never know at this time of year which way to turn, which way to look. This year especially it’s been ambiguous. I’ve had two dear friends here to celebrate with and we’ve found ourselves trying to recapture past experiences of cooking great feasts together and relish a companionship that can only be intermittent these days. And so we find ourselves looking forward to the next time we’ll be together and planning ways to let it happen. But though the past is always with us, and the future never far away, always the present presses in with its own mystery as we grapple together with advent homilies and the daily doings of God in our lives.
This time on the cusp between past and future is a fragile and glorious one. It’s the time of Advent. The time when the clock’s stately sweep moves without faltering, smoothly, from one epoch to the next. The monotonous tick of the clock hardly captures anything of our experience of time because our time is always a time of significance. What difference is there between the dying instant of the last watch of the night and the first glimmer of dawn? Nothing and everything.
My Celtic ancestors had a thing about such “times between times”: the twilight and the dawning, times when the veil between this world and the Other grows thin, the borders of reality waver, and anything might come pouring, half-seen, across the threshold to keep this world of mortals on edge. Things awful or things glorious but always things of significance.
As we cross the sword-bridge at this time-between-times and step from Ordinary time into Advent what things come pouring across the threshold to make our lives significant?
I can’t decide whether Union Square this last week was intent upon exorcising the significance of the season of Advent or was just anticipating the feast with a vengeance. For there, with its glowing lights and angel choirs, its stuffed toys and glittering prizes, the Christ-Child has already come, is already in stock and available for purchase. While here, in this place, we have hardly begun to wait and hardly begun to wonder whether that waiting will be more dread than yearning. Our readings offer us both: a coming time of justice and safety and security but also a time of distress and fear and foreboding. And our secular scriptures – the advertisers – offer us similarly mixed messages with confused images of Christmas warmth and generosity – all hearth-glow and ruddy cheeks – neck and neck with needed panaceas of the pursuit of plenty – for heartburn and headache.
Yes, we live in two worlds but right now the veil draws thin and the times drip with significance. I read recently that new technology has given rise to speculation that the moon might be an ideal laser-powered billboard. After all nobody owns it – it’s free real-estate just begging to bear the logo of Nike or Coca-Cola. There might indeed soon be signs in the heavens.
Speaking of Nike, I hear that while they make their profits from sweatshop labour in the Philippines and while they blitz the inner-cities with advertising for footwear which can only be afforded by theft, they also support at least one Jesuit school with extravagant building programs. The only price being to wear the logo and ignore the pain of taking blood-money.
Or I read yesterday, that in a survey, 1000 Americans claimed they would spend as much time in worship these holidays as in shopping. 16 hours they said. Do you believe that? Or as the article said can it only be true if the it’s the same 16 hours! When shopping is worship the veil has indeed drawn thin!
Or take El Niño. The scapegoat for every ill from unseasonable weather to stock market craziness. Blame it on El Niño: El Niño, the Christ-Child! The Christ-Child is coming and his advent disturbs the heavens and brings turmoil on earth.
So what must we do to be ready for his coming? How must we spend our lives this Advent, this time between times? Well in defiance of the reigning wisdom I say forget the instructions to make space, make time, to pray and ponder lest the real meaning of the coming Christ child get lost in consumer frenzy. Forget it because we live not in two worlds, one silent and serene and the other crazy, but in one. Because the veil has drawn thin and all things have their significance and El Niño is coming to this one world. And all borders have lost their meaning but one. All boundaries have blurred but one: the cut made by the sword of justice. The Christ-Child is coming and his coming means justice. But justice is a sharp and ambiguous sword. For some it means freedom and release and a longed-for joy. For those who need liberating, who bear oppression, who suffer injustice. But for those who impose the slavery, who ignore the oppression, who profit from the injustice, it is will be a day of dread, a day of loss.
So do we know our need for liberation or do we fear what we might lose? There’s an Advent question for us. May it burn in our hearts. May it give us heartburn.
Let us pray that God make our hearts strong in our love for justice so that we long for Christ’s coming, so that we hear his words as a promise and blessing. Stand erect, hold your heads up high, for your liberation is near at hand.
Jesus said to his disciples: “there will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars. On the earth, the other nations will be in anguish, distraught at the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding in anticipation of what is coming upon the earth. And in the heavens the powers will be shaken. After that, people will see the Son of Man coming on a cloud with great power and glory.
When these things begin to happen, stand erect, hold your heads up high, for your liberation is near at hand.
Be on guard lest your hearts grow heavy with indulgence and drunkenness and the anxieties of life and that great day take you unawares like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may be able to escape whatever is in prospect and stand secure before the Son of Man.

“Cheer up,” they tell you, “it’s not the end of the world.” When the horrible happens, when someone irreplaceable dies, when someone you love doesn’t love you, when illness strikes like lightning or wastes like acid. “Cheer up! It’s not the end of the world!”
But what do they know? It should be the end of the world. If the world had any decency it wouldn’t want to go on with this pain in it. It shouldn’t be able to just carry on a normal. The stars should fall from the sky. The earth should shake. The ground should open up. The darkness should fall. And then there might be an end to horror and loss and rejection and death.
When the pocketbook is empty, when the baby isn’t born, when the oncoming car isn’t going to miss, when the news reveals another heartbreak, when good people are killed for their goodness. Why doesn’t the world itself wind up its career, call it a day, pack its bags and be done with it. Bring on the darkness!
Today is the eighth anniversary of the killing of six of my brother Jesuits in El Salvador because they would not be silent about the evils done against the poor of that country. Not just killing – butchery and mutilation. And not just the priests but two women who worked with them. Some of the men who followed orders and did the killing had been trained in this country by the American army at the School of the Americas. A place that apparently knew of the use of torture and violence in El Salvador long before this tragedy.
Three weeks ago another Jesuit, this time in India, was beheaded at the hands of a rebel group because of his work with the untouchables; the poorest of the poor in Bihar province.
Here in quiet California, three days ago, the President of the Jesuit School of Theology, hardly a radical, was effectively removed from the job by a letter from Rome referring to an interview he gave years ago to an alumni magazine in which he spoke amongst other things, with measured words, about dissent within the church and about the ordination of women.
“Cheer up,” some have been saying, “it’s not the end of the world.” And maybe it’s not. No butchery; the beheading only symbolic; just bureaucratic abuse by those who should know better.
So it’s not the end of the world. The sun rose this morning. The moon will shine tonight. The stars will be where the stars always have been and the world will go on as if nothing had happened. As if my woes and yours were insignificant.
But the promise of Scripture today is that there will be a time when our troubles will bring on the end of the world. “After trials of every sort the sun will be darkened, the moon will not shed its light, stars will fall from the skies, and the heavenly hosts will be shaken.” The world at last will begin to respond to the horrors we have experienced. And in the middle of all that, when evil is at last unmasked, then we will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory to vindicate his people; to vindicate you and me. It will be the beginning of the end, the end of all evil and hurt, but it will be more. It will be the end of the beginning. Because the end will not be the end. “Learn a lesson,” says Jesus, “learn a lesson from the fig tree. Once the sap of its branches runs high and it begins to sprout leaves you know that summer is near.” The fig tree, which is last to bud and last to green, which sits there looking as dead as winter while all the others bloom and ripen their way through spring. When all hope for petal and leaf is long lost, why, just then the fig tree opens up its heart and summer is here. That’s the lesson: the promise that all our pain and hurt and disappointment, that all the horror and evil and injustice in this world, that all this will bring on the end of the world, yes, but the beginning of a new one. That’s the promise — summer is coming, Jesus is coming.
When doesn’t matter: only why. Why? Because God cares. Because God has already sacrificed his own life for us. Because God feels our pain and wants to share our joy. Because “Cheer up” is never enough.

I’m looking at all your faces and I’m wondering what I can see … you’re a little on edge, you don’t know who I am, but besides that you really quite relaxed, quite calm. You’ve heard the same readings I’ve just heard and you’re calm! You call yourselves disciples and yet you’re relaxed, comfortable. You can listen to this Gospel story and feel … what? superior, safe, reckon you know better … what?
You don’t know how it was for us, we Twelve, trailing after him, down dusty roads, into stinking towns, never knowing what was going to happen next. “Followers of Jesus”! We certainly were followers. I don’t know how many times the morning found us lagging behind as he hurtled on ahead to some private goal, driven by some inner urgency, we could barely grasp. Followers! Sometimes he left us so far behind we lost all sight of him. I don’t know whether it was our confusion that made us lag behind or our hanging back that left us confused. Because, when we were with him, it didn’t seem much to matter, the confusion. We’d stop our wrangling and find ourselves caught up again by him. By his energy, by his gaze, by the strange words that tumbled out of his lips and left an ache in the brain … and one in the heart. And the things he did! We were never sure what came next? One minute he’d be crying inconsolably over a baby’s death and the next curing an incurable old woman. “Why one and not the other?” I’d ask him and he’d give me one of his looks. I thought it was a good question.
One minute he’d be dragging us all to dinner with a bunch of whores or standing on a street corner denouncing respectable religion but then before you knew it he’d be round at their houses too, drinking and feeding his face and letting them pamper him. “How can you accept their money,” I’d ask him, “when you know how they got it?” And he’d look at me, with a smile, and say “Good question. Think about it.” Infuriating!
But at least when we were with him, like that, we felt something and all the voices of doubt would fade and we wouldn’t think of leaving him until the next day on the road.
But those days when he was hurrying ahead and we were dallying behind were different. What an assortment of weirdoes we were, with hardly a thing in common. Except perhaps that we all thought we were the special one, with a unique place in his heart. You can imagine the tension. Especially with all the sleeping rough, with the enemies he was making, with the crowds of hangers on who never left us any peace. Some of them were searching like we were, others were just out for scandal. John Mark was the one I hated the most, always there, always scrounging a story, always ready to blow it up out of proportion with the point nicely tailored to make us look like fools, make us look like we never got anything Jesus said. But he said such strange things, contradictory things. Life and death, together in one sentence, suffering and glory, betrayal and loyalty.
To hear Mark you’d think we were idiots. But we kept our arguing to ourselves. Especially when Jesus began to whisper in private to us about how he’d end up dead and broken and betrayed. It’s all right for you. You’ve had 20 centuries to get used to the idea, 15 or 16 of them adoring my friend’s broken body on the cross. But we could make neither head nor tail of it. Not that we didn’t try! Twelve of us and twelve different opinions. From pious Matthew, who would offer up every flea bite and stubbed toe, to Simon who counted every misfortune as another reason to torch the Temple, or Thomas – the twin we called him because he was always in two minds – who half believed God was in the punishment business. Confused!
Then Jesus disappears up Mt. Tabor with Peter and James and John and comes back intoxicated, glowing, and glorious but dropping details about his dying – betrayal, abuse, flogging, death on a cross.
And, in public, he begins to do his trick with the little kid, and shock everyone silly, and tell us the greatest would be the least and the slave would be the master–and the masters would quail and the slaves stare.
But when we were alone, trailing behind, Peter and James and John would tell their mountaintop story of sound and light and heaven come to earth and we would hope for a while that our tale might have a happier ending than the one Jesus seemed set on. James saw the personal potential right away, I think, and John was always one to tag along. Peter, well Peter, was as stupid as the fish he used to catch – lucky Peter!
And the story, as Mark tells it, isn’t really wrong. The two of them did get more, and less, than they bargained for and the rest of us were angry. But more at Jesus than at them. Why was he going to ruin his life and ours with all this talk about pain? When glory had been given him why was he going to let it all end in shame?
I asked him that too, the first rare moment in private. “You used to love life so much: why this obsession with death?” And again that unsettling look. Right in the eyes. “I thought you would understand, Judas, even if the others didn’t.”
I think that was when I did begin to understand. I saw his future and mine, vaguely at first. I think—I hope—in the end—I did what he wanted. I’m not trying to justify myself. Why should I care what you think? I was there. You weren’t. And he chose me for the job not you.
You should be grateful.