Journey's Weekly Homilies

June 16 (11th Sunday Ordinary Time) (Father's Day!)
Homily by Tom K.

It is Love that brings us into being.  It is Love that creates the vast spaces of the universe.  And it is Love that reaches into the inner spaces.  It is Love that creates the restless heart.  And it is Love that knows love alone will suffice and bring us to that for which we so deeply long.  Love is the desire that drives us to itself.  Love is that in which we rest and long for and rest and long for . . .until our last days.  It is Love that brings us to healing and wholeness.

It is important, I think, that the miracles Matthew’s Jesus is involved with proceeding today’s reading are the same miracles the disciples are commissioned to.  It is healing, in the fullest sense of that word, which Jesus charges his disciples to be about.  It is a healing into wholeness.  Healing is the mark of the reign of God, the presence of God.  It is typical of Jesus in the synoptic gospels that the words Jesus wants his disciples to preach are few.  The healings Jesus wants his disciples to be about are the main thing.  They are the work of Love.  The work is the message.  It is the work that shows the presence of God.

Maybe it’s all projection on my part, but I cannot believe that all the disciples were that hot about what Jesus was asking them.  “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”  Here comes the cynical and suspicious disciple: “Oh sure, Jesus, no problema, you bethcha, J.C. Let’s do one for the Gipper.”  Then there’s the gung-ho type whose really going to show Jesus what he’s made of.  “By God, I’m going out there and do something really good, really big.”  And there are the disciples who are keeping their own counsel.  These are the comparers, the ones who are always measuring themselves by someone else’s successes and failures. “Peter and James will probably come back with all of the good healings.”  Finally, there are the manipulators, the organization men, the ones who are already writing their mission report before it has even started.  They will put things in the best light possible.  They might even have to fudge the figures a bit.  “It wouldn’t do to tell the unadulterated version.  That would just be a downer and not good for the morale of the team,” they calmly rationalize.

I can even imagine the disciples walking down the road after one final pep talk, Jesus yelling after them, almost as an after thought, “Boys, I hope you won’t start feeling that you are better than the folks you are healing.”  Ouch, that is the one that really bites. It is not so much that we are not supposed to have good feelings when we are to participate in someone’s healing, their coming to wholeness, their coming to a better place in their lives.  Such feelings seem natural and good.  It is rather that we need to be wary of any sense that we are in some kind of superior place and that it is our goodness or wholeness that has made the healing possible.  This has been so much the temptation of the West to the third world, of the European church to the Asian/African church, but it can also happen on a personal level.  I can remember those mission films that were shown in my church all about those “poor” Africans and Indians.  But it can also happen on a personal level.  Healing -- I am not referring here to any kind of technical assistance -- is fundamentally relational.  Healing is, in this biblical sense, a mutual participation in the nearness of God. It is a response of love that speaks of people’s equality before God and of our mutual dependence upon God.

To participate in another’s coming to wholeness, to be a healer, is a sign of equality and mutuality, what Nancy reminded us last week as being Christ for one another.  It is a sign of a willingness to participate in the depths. Mutual healing is a promise to be present to one another at the deepest level.  And how hard this is.  It is a promise we make to one another that we are willing to engage together the deep down demons that bind us, that keep us from being free and whole. It is a life of faith with another that believes no matter how obscure God’s presence may be in the present darkness and disease, that presence is still there.

A life that participates in healing is a life that is beatitudinal.  Such a life knows that it is the poor that are blessed.  It is the poor of the earth who await justice and whose very existence calls out to us, whose demands interrupt us.  They help make us whole for they are messengers of God’s dream in the midst of a groaning creation.  It is the poor in spirit who have discovered that they need blessing and healing and so have a freedom that we often forget.

The twelve step programs have been a powerful reminder to us.  They tell us that only at ground zero, when all the usual tools for saying that we are in charge, that we know what we are doing, that we do not need help.  Only when all of the usual props (and lies) fall away, only then do we have the freedom to journey to wholeness.  It is a kind of powerlessness that is no shame.  If we have experienced that woundedness and we are willing to carry it with us wherever we go, we will know the blessing of it.  Such a blessing can bring us to wholeness.  Such a blessing lets us walk with those who walk in the shadow of grief and trial.  Together we will not be overcome by fear.

It is now thirty-five years ago since I read Paul Tillich’s famous sermon, “You Are Accepted.”  It came to me like a thunderbolt.  I remember sitting in a college library with tears flowing down my face.  I was outraged.  How could I have had 19 years of religious training, bible school, Sunday school, sermons, and church camps and not once in all of that time heard  the message of God’s love in a way that really touched me?  I mean hearing the message that God loved me not in spite of who I was, not for the sake of who I might become, not in order to get me to do something or be something.  Not for any reason except that God’s love flows forever freely to me, to all.  God accepts all of me allowing me to accept all of me.

Even after thirty-five years I find I still struggle with this.  Unless I am willing to see myself as an accepted human being how can I offer acceptance to anyone else?  So, I want to ask, is there anything about us, anything in our personal lives or in our lives together as Journey, that is be a stumbling block, an impediment to God’s free flowing love to another human being?  If so, we need to pray for its removal.

For anyone who has experienced such healing, healing is a miracle.  Love is the means by which the miracle becomes possible.  Love moves us to mutuality, presence, inclusion, gratitude, and solidarity, Love in human beings is the miracle of God’s movement in history.  Often this miracle is beyond what words can say.

There is a story that sounds as if it were hagiographic excess but which I believe is true, for the person who told it was present.  It is, I think, a healing story.  Or, it is a story about one person whose struggles for healing became his whole life.  It was at one of those international  gatherings, a kind of parliament of world religions I believe it was called, that the incredible Bishop from Brazil, Dom Helder Camara, was to speak on the role of religion and it’s obligation or solidarity with the poor of the world.  Bishop Camara, a small, squat man, stood up before this assemblage and started to speak.  But no words came.  He started to weep.  And he kept weeping.  For five minutes he stood in front of this august body of leaders of the world’s religions and wept.  Such was the power of his presence that no mention was made of Bishop Camara’s speech.  What Dom Helder’s grief, and his love of the poor of the world made clear, words were superfluous.

And that, it seems, is as Jesus would have it.