Homily – 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Guillermo’s Story

SIRACH 3:17-18, 20, 28-29

HEBREWS 12:18-19, 22-24A

LUKE 14:1, 7-14

Jesus is in a tight spot again.

He’s talking to a hostile audience of Pharisees and lawyers.  As Luke’s Gospel puts it, the guests had Jesus under close scrutiny.  These are people who had grudges with Jesus and were lying in wait for him to slip up and say something they could persecute him with.

To add insult to injury, this is the Sabbath and a few moments before today’s Gospel passage, Jesus cured a man of “dropsy.”  This is a no-no to some in Jesus’ world on the Sabbath.

But Jesus seizes the moment to feed our souls with a lesson in humility.  

Jesus is teaching us how to approach Him, how to approach God and how to approach heaven. Not as people believing ourselves worthy of something, but as people who are totally dependent on the mercy God for our very being, for every gift in our life, and for our potential future entrance into heaven.

Webster’s Dictionary defines humility as:

“The quality or state of NOT thinking you are better than other people”

In God’s eyes, we are humble when we are free of pride and arrogance. 

God desires us to not think of ourselves as better than others.  That kind of thinking only generates bitterness and division, and can lead to embarrassment when we overstep our place with God and with our brothers and sisters.

In other words, if we walk around with our noses up in the air, we may land flat on our faces.

One bible scholar says the Mediterranean world was an honor-shame based culture and “the social gaffe of overstepping one’s station, such as Jesus describes, would have been a mortifying experience.”  But he says this “points to the proper disposition toward God and how we define our need for God’s salvation in our lives. Social self-inflation is equated with spiritual self-inflation.

Do any of us see ourselves as better than others?  Do any of us see ourselves as more worthy than others for God’s mercy? Do any of us see ourselves as righteous enough to be worthy of heaven… without God’s help?  Or do we see our unworthiness and total dependency on God’s love and grace for everything in our lives, including our entrance into heaven?

This is the lesson Jesus wants us to learn this weekend. 

Drop our airs of self-importance.  Get real.

And again as part of this lesson, Jesus wants us to pay attention to the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast.

Jesus goes on to remind his fellow guests and us that a true act of generosity is one given to someone who can give us nothing in return, who cannot repay us, whose very social standing carries with it no prestige, no honor.

This is the exact way Jesus went about doing good, by emptying himself for others (especially the poor, marginalized and outcast) without counting the costs.

Once again, Jesus is sharing what’s expected of us as we build up the Kingdom here on earth.  

I’m reminded of something that happened earlier this year.

In early January, an Archbishop Murphy High School sophomore came up to me in Campus Ministry, and said, “Deacon Dennis, we need to help the people affected by the Bluff’s Apartment fire.” 

The Bluff’s Apartments house very low income families near Casino Road, many of them Hispanic.

I said, “Sure, Guillermo.  We can do something.  Do you know someone who lives there?”

He said, “Yes, I do, because I used to live there.”

Guillermo told me his family has limited means (as did most who lived in the apartment complex).  With little siblings, his heart ached for the kids who lost their Christmas presents in the fire.

By the way, Guillermo’s family belongs to the Spanish language community in our own parish.

I asked him what should we do? He said, “Could we raise funds for the families on campus?”

The following week, we held our Martin Luther King Jr. Mass. I asked him to come up and speak about the need and ask his classmates and teachers and the entire school community to dig deep and give to these burned out families who lost so much.

The response was great. When all was said and done, Guillermo’s fund raised nearly 7-thousand dollars for the people of the Bluff’s Apartment complex.

A week or so later, we invited the families to Immaculate Conception after Sunday Mass and Guillermo handed each one of the 20-plus families hundreds of dollars in donated cash.

Some cried as they received the money. Some embraced Guillermo with a big hug. Others just humbly expressed their gratitude to Guillermo and shook his hand. 

I’ve posted a picture from the experience and an article on Guillermo that ran in the Herald a few days later on my blog at DeaconDennis.com.     Link to article on Guillermo in the Herald

  

 

Guillermo is a soft-spoken, humble young man. He's at a prestigious private Catholic high school, but Guillermo remembers his roots. He remembers the community from which he comes and does not consider himself better than them, but seeks what's best for his friends in need.
          Jesus is pointing a finger at Guillermo’s example and asking us to follow it in our daily lives.

We live in some of the richest zip codes on the planet.

People from poorer parts of the world would give anything to live where we live and live how we live.

We are blessed to have been born into this wealthy society.  We are blessed with plenty, especially when compared to the rest of the world.  

As we heard in today’s first reading on the importance of humility from the Book of Sirach, “Water quenches a flaming fire, and alms (giving to the poor) atone for sins.”

So how do we bless others with the many blessings we’ve been given by God?

 

Homily – 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Miracles In Our Lifetimes

1 KINGS 17:17-24

GALATIANS 1:11-19

LUKE 7:11-17

What amazing times we live in?

In our lifetimes, we’ve witnessed prophets, seen the world turn away from a grave social sin, and experienced miracles from this social metanoia.

Metanoia is a big word we heard a lot in deacon formation.  It’s a word I hadn’t much heard before entering the diaconate.  Webster’s Dictionary defines Metanoia as a transformative change of heart, or a spiritual conversion.

Metanoia is what St. Paul experienced when he converted from Christian-hunting Jew to the man who brought the Good News of faith in Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.  We hear him reference his personal metanoia in today’s letter to the Galatians.

God calls us all to constantly pray for transformative changes of hearts when it comes to the sins that dictate our lives (both social and personal); to spiritually turn away from these sins and walk closer to God. 

As I said, what amazing times we live in. In our lifetimes, many of us have been blessed to watch our country turn away from a glaring social sin: institutional racism.

As a child of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had a big impact on me.  I still remember the April day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

In my family, I was blessed with a father and mother who judged a person “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” In fact, my Godmother is an African-American nurse who attended Seattle University with my mom. 

Still, I can remember the taste of 1960’s racism.

Growing up we had a sweet, elderly next-door neighbor lady who became a hate-spewing racist when talking about people of color. 

For a young boy, this was all too confusing. I never understood this level of hatred toward a person solely due to the color of their skin.

Hatred is never from God, only love is from our Lord and Savior.  Hatred comes from another source -- the opposite of a divine source.

What’s the miracle in all of this, you ask?  Who in the turbulent 1950s or 1960s would have ever believed an African-American would be elected President of the United States?  Like or dislike the man himself, one must marvel at how far we’ve come as a country when we as a society turned away from the social sin of racism. 

This is not to say racism is dead and gone in America. Sadly, as a nation, we still have a lot of work to do in this area.

In South Africa, apartheid was the law of the land until the early 1990s. Minority whites ruled over a majority, black population 10-times bigger than their white masters. 

It was a brutal, repressive and abusive system.

Many of the whites there were certain of the coming retaliatory violence when blacks took over as the ruling race. Retaliations seen in other parts of Africa would inevitably happen in South Africa.

Enter Nobel Peace Prize Winners Rev. Desmond Tutu and eventual black President Nelson Mandela, a man imprisoned for nearly 30 years by the white South African government. 

 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called Children of God.”

Rev. Tutu, President Mandela and the last white South African leader President F. W. De Klerk helped a nation to turn away from its social sin.

By their words and actions, South Africa (a poster-child of modern day racism) had a transformative change of heart.  South Africa witnessed a peaceful transfer of power from white to black rule without the retaliation seen in earlier national transformations in Africa.  This, too, can only be seen as a modern day miracle.

What does all this have to do with today’s Gospel and readings?

 Let’s use St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians as a guide to the miracles of Jesus in our world today and yesterday.

To understand its context, one needs to understand what was happening in Galatia two-thousand years ago. Paul spent time there and formed a beautiful Christian community.

But after he left, a group of Jewish missionaries came along and challenged what Paul taught. They felt Paul had watered down the Gospel message to please the gentiles of this dusty outpost in what is now modern day Turkey.

These missionaries said the only true Disciple of Christ must be a practicing Jew, must be circumcised, must diligently follow all 613 laws of the Torah.

 In other words, the church had two entrance doors. One for Jews only.  Another for non-Jews. 

Sound familiar?

Sound like the Jim Crow laws that kept racism alive and well in the U.S. after the Civil War?  

Sound like a society of minority whites who felt moral superiority over less educated blacks in South Africa?

Miracles let God’s voice be heard in 1960s America, in 1990s South Africa, and in Paul’s world two millennia ago.

Jesus and His Gospel message of love conquer the human inclination toward hatred, racism, and social sin.

As St. Paul would argue to the people of Galatia, the Good News of Jesus knows no boundaries of Jew or gentile, free or slave, male or female. As St. Paul tells the Galatians, “you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

   So what social or personal sin do we need to turn away from today? What transformative change of heart is God calling us to?

Pray.

Check our prejudices.

Listen to our hearts.

Ask God for guidance as we become the saints God wants us to be in this life.

Let Jesus resurrect the dead man, or dead woman, lurking in old sinful thoughts and ways, and breathe new life into our spiritual journey.

 

 

Homily – Pentecost – Follow The Whisper In Your Heart

GENESIS 11:1-9 – ACTS 2:1-11

ROMANS 8:22-27 – ROMANS 8:8-17

JOHN 7:37-39 – JOHN 20:19-23

When we walk in the spirit, we walk without fear.

Every Thursday evening, our Operation Nightwatch homeless street ministry team ventures into “The Jungle” to bring Jesus to some of the most marginalized people in Seattle.  “The Jungle” is a large area of homeless encampments under and around I-5, south of the city. It stretches for miles, has 400 residents and can be a dangerous place. A shooting there earlier this year claimed two lives.  (Read about people who live in "The Jungle" at this LINK)

Last time I was there, we met a woman who was shot during the ordeal. The bullet is still lodged in her spine. She had just taken off her back brace and left her walker behind a few days before. She admitted she still falls navigating the steep hillsides around “The Jungle.”

Her sad, timid smile lit up her face in the darkness as she described the events of that night.  As someone who spent 20-years working at a fire department, she’d been trained to run toward danger instead of away from it.

Instead of running away from the sound of gunfire that fateful night, she came running toward the bullets and ended up spending a month in the hospital as a result.

She’s still living in “The Jungle” because she has nowhere else to go.

The spirit called her to respond that fateful night – to help her friends. Her first-responder instincts nearly cost her her life.

When we walk in the spirit, we walk without fear. 

Working with our area’s growing homeless population can be a scary at times. We’ve encountered tense situations, but always listen to that tiny voice in our hearts as we navigate “The Jungle” and the streets of downtown Seattle.

Blessed Mother Teresa talks about her call by Jesus to be a light in the darkest places. For her it was the slums of Calcutta.

When we walk in the spirit, we walk without fear.

What is the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit is that “tiny whispering voice” that exists in all our hearts. It prompts and guides us as we do the ministry of Jesus in the modern world.

Noted author Fr. Richard Rohr wrote this about the Holy Spirit,

“We are always waiting for the Holy Spirit – somehow forgetting that the Spirit was given to us from the very beginning. The Holy Spirit has rightly been called the forgotten or denied Person of the Blessed Trinity. We cannot sense the Spirit, like we cannot see air, silence, and the space between everything. We look for God ‘out there’ and the Spirit is always ‘in here’ and ‘in between’ everything.”

 When guided by the Holy Spirit we can do incredible things for our Lord and Savior, especially when we take care of the people he was most concerned with during in his ministry, “the least of our sisters and brothers.”

SATURDAY -- (In today’s Gospel of John, we hear Jesus preparing us for the arrival of the “paraclete,” the Holy Spirit. He’s preaching in the Jerusalem Temple on the Jewish feast of Tabernacles. There, guards are in the crowds sent by the High Priests to arrest Jesus. The scene is electric. Is this the messiah? The Pharisees think a messiah cannot possibly come from Galilee. He’s a nobody. Jesus knows what’s on the hearts of the Pharisees in the crowds. On the last day of the feast priests carry out an elaborate water ritual. Jesus is telling the crowd, “If anyone thirsts, let them come to me and drink from rivers of living water.” He says this to foreshadow the arrival of the Holy Spirit which He will give.)

SUNDAY -- (In today’s Gospel of John, we see Jesus breathing on the fear-filled disciples, giving them the “paraclete,” the Holy Spirit. They’re locked away in hiding, scared that what happened to Jesus might happen to them. Jesus brings them eternal peace in the way of the Holy Spirit, giving the Apostles the courage to spread the Gospel to the world. All, but John, will suffer a similar fate as Jesus. Thomas a week later will voice the doubt he has about Jesus being the messiah.  Jesus will breathe the peace of his Holy Spirit on Thomas in that exchange. And Thomas will have the courage to bring the Gospel to India and die a martyr’s death.)

The spirit allows God’s word to penetrate, like an arrow, deep into each human heart.

Each Sunday or each Mass, and every time we open the bible and read the word of God, we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd leading us to places we’d rather not go.

When we walk in the spirit, we walk without fear.

 There was an article recently in the Seattle Times that was a particularly poignant illustration of who our homeless brothers and sisters are today.

  The article was entitled “The Hidden Homeless: families in the suburbs.” It featured the picture of a father and his four young children living homeless right here in Everett.  (Click here for LINK to the story)

  Zach Weber is a single father with four kids. His plight highlighted a heartbreaking fact: More than 35-thousand students in Washington schools were homeless in the past year.

  Think homelessness is only an adult problem involving people with mental illness and addiction issues? Think again.

Many of the area’s homeless are children, living in cars and shelters in places like Edmonds, Mukilteo and Everett.

The number of homeless students has nearly doubled since 2007-2008, when the Great Recession hit our country’s economy.

One school nurse in the Mukilteo School District says students try to hide being homeless.  You may remember how cruel kids can be about fashion and hygiene.

She says, “In every school, there are families in transition that try to keep it confidential and only tell a select few” the truth about their homelessness.

She says there are many reasons for the homelessness she encounters. Some parents may be dealing with alcohol or drug abuse, some may have mental illness. Some have moved outside the area, leaving the kids behind to finish school while living in a shelter.

But this school nurse says the number-one reason for homelessness is “economic misfortune,” a lost job, a sick kid and large hospital bills, an eviction.

She tells of one family she knows with two adults and nine children. They were living in their Suburban in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

This is the face of homelessness today. It’s not just the scary people we see pacing the streets of downtown Everett ranting and raving at traffic.

The problem is more complex than that.

This is why our parish community will give birth to a new homeless street outreach ministry this fall. We’re holding an information night on our project this coming Wednesday evening at 7pm at Hensen Hall.

If the spirit is speaking to your heart, we welcome you to join in our efforts. Come find out how you and your family can be a light in the darkness and bring Jesus to our sisters and brothers and their children living homeless.

In the second reading from St. Paul to the Romans, Paul is saying something quite profound about God and the Holy Spirit that rings true even today.

When we walk in the spirit, we stay connected to God and forget our human inclination to think of our own selfish interests.

When we think about homelessness, do we dwell on our own self-interests or on God’s interests?

In essence, St. Paul is saying, “Focusing on self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God… That person ignores God and what God is doing. And God isn’t pleased with being ignored.”

 Pope Francis said something quite profound last week about what we Christians are called to do in the world today.  While receiving the prestigious Charlemagne Prize for European Integration he said, putting our faith in action is what counts. “Christianity, he seems to believe, is best defended not by fighting battles over symbols or verbiage (or waging war against secularism), but by putting (our Christian) convictions into practice at moments when the world needs them most.”

This is what Christians have done throughout the ages and this is how best to make Christ present in a broken world.

When we walk in the spirit, we walk without fear.