Hi everyone. Let me offer a bit of an apology: I feel I haven't been pulling my weight here recently. Unfortunately, work, family and ministry commitments have been consuming all my time.
I know this is late, and now out of season, but: this is the homily I gave on Good Friday. The readings for Good Friday (which are the same every year) are here.
“My kingdom does not belong to this world.”
One of the things about Jesus which must have annoyed some of his contemporaries, and frankly, probably annoys some people to this day, is that he never seems to give a direct, simple answer to a question. For example, when the scholar of the law asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, Jesus answered a question with another question: he asked him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” Or when his disciples, seeing the man born blind, asked him, “Whose sin was it, this man’s or his parents’, that he was born blind?”, Jesus answered, “Neither.”
Sometimes, questions are hard to answer, because the person asking the question has so many unexamined assumptions or such a narrow view of things that it’s nearly impossible to have fruitful dialogue.
Consider these bits of Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus in tonight’s Passion reading:
Pilate asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?”
And when Pilate asked, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
How is that for non-dialogue? Pretty clearly, these two men were not talking about the same thing.
Jesus was not in Jerusalem to claim kingship of the city or the district – something Pilate fundamentally misunderstood (but in fairness to him, apparently so did some of Jesus’s own followers.) It was for that reason that Pilate had Jesus put to death as an insurrectionist. But Jesus was there to proclaim another kingdom, a different kingdom – a kingdom which Pilate, and Jesus’s enemies, and apparently his followers, cannot imagine.
Pilate was the official of an empire which fought wars of conquest and enslaved many of those they conquered. At the time of Jesus’s life on earth, the Roman transition from Republic to Empire was comparatively recent, but already it had been marked by assassinations and civil wars as rivals battled for the throne. That was how the kingdoms and empires of earth functioned. They have always functioned that way. To some extent, they still function that way today.
But that is not the kind of kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. The kingdom of God is not a kingdom of greed and ambition. It is not a kingdom of warfare and slavery. It is not a kingdom in which the privileged will go to ruthless lengths to preserve their position.
The kingdom of God is a very different kingdom. It is a kingdom ruled by God, and God is love. The power of God is not in arms; it is in love. And so, God’s kingdom is a place where those with illnesses and ailments are healed. It is a place where the last are first and the meek inherit the earth. It’s a place where the hungry are filled with good things. It’s a place where even men born blind can see. It’s a place where a woman of ill repute like the woman at the well can be held in high esteem. It’s a place where even the dead, like Lazarus, are called forth from their tombs to live again. It is a place marked by love and justice and truth and peace.
Doesn’t it sound wonderful? Who could oppose such a place? And yet, the life and death of Jesus illustrates that the kingdoms of this world see such a kingdom as a mortal threat.
Most of us would like to live in quiet peace. Just speaking for myself, I have a reasonably comfortable existence in this particular kingdom of earth. It would be pleasant for me to try to live with a foot in each kingdom.
But the Passion of Jesus teaches us a lesson which Christians have had to learn, over and over again, for the last two thousand years: often it isn’t possible to live in both kingdoms. Often, we must choose which kingdom we’ll reside in.
The choice is ours: do we want to live in the kingdom of earth, or in God’s kingdom? Because at some point, we will have to choose. All of us must choose. And we know it is very easy to choose what we know, which is the kingdom of earth. But Jesus is calling us to reconsider. His life, and even his death, are an invitation to think hard, and not just default to the easy choice. Let our prayer tonight be that we support one another in making the right choice. Jesus died for us so we could be offered that choice. Let not his death be in vain. He is on the cross, with his arms outstretched, to welcome us. Let us fall into his embrace.
I find it strange that there would not be a priest presiding at Good Friday. I guess I would not find it strange that a deacon might give the homily to save the priest preparation time.
ReplyDeleteDo priests that do not preside just skip the Good Friday Service? That would appear odd, rather like saying that the Good Friday service is not that important, maybe because it is not a Mass?
(On the other hand, one of our priests who is a very good homilist simply did not give a homily but went and sat in the front pew for a period of reflection. In a way it was a rather dramatic homily, like saying that he could not find words.)
Sometimes on Holy Thursday, the same pastor would elect not to preside since there was a priest from the seminary that regularly said weekend Masses at the parish. Rather than vesting as a concelebrant he simply came dressed in clerical collar and suit and sat in one of the front pews. Again, it was a kind of interesting statement that he was a baptized person just like the rest of us. It helped that he was not simply skipping Mass period that day.
If I were a priest, deacon or musical minister, I would find it very difficult to do more than one Mass a day. I would not mind doing the Saturday Vigil Mass even through it is the same text as the Sunday Mass. I would find extremely distressing would be to be the choir director for Saturday Vigil, 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 plus 5:00 pm Sunday Masses as happens in our parish. No amount of money could get me to do it.
A fundamental principle of the liturgy is that there should be diversity of ministries, different persons as readers, cantors, Eucharistic ministers, deacons, and celebrants. Somehow doing some of these things at more than one Mass seems to be defeating that ideal. Like you are taking someone else's place.
The churches seem to have filled up again this year. There was standing room only at the National Shrine. Our large local parish had Masses in both the church and community room for both 9:30 and 11:30 Masses.
However, I noted in the bulletin that there is a process now going on in our diocese to reduce the total number of weekend Masses to accommodate the lesser number of priests. The bishop’s ideal is to have at least sixty percent of capacity at each Weekend Mass.
"Do priests that do not preside just skip the Good Friday Service? That would appear odd, rather like saying that the Good Friday service is not that important, maybe because it is not a Mass?"
DeleteAt our parish, they don't skip it. Sometimes, they do sit with the community; other times, they may "hover" in the back.
You make a good point that they could preside, and assign a deacon to preach.
Btw, our church was full on Easter Sunday. We were at something like 97% of our pre-COVID Easter counts. Christmas wasn't as full. Pre-COVID, I think Christmas usually outdrew Easter. But Easter was a beautiful day here. Why people decide to go to church on some days, and decide not to on other days, is a mystery to me.
I think it is encouraging that gradually people have come back. Maybe not all the way back to pre-covid numbers, but close. Saw more people at daily Mass during Lent, seems like they were taking Lent seriously.
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