Homilies 2008

“Look!  There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”

With these words, John the Baptist greets his cousin Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry.   What did John mean when he called Jesus the “Lamb of God” and what are the “sins” that are taken away?   Unfortunately these terms are now so heavily overladen with theological significance that it’s difficult to guess at John’s original meaning.   Today I hope to roll the clock back a little bit so that we can see these terms in a new light.

When we think of “Lamb of God” we might think of the Passover lamb that was sacrificed in memory of the night the people of Israel escaped from their captivity in Egypt.   The blood of the slaughtered lamb was smeared on the door posts so that the “angel of death” would pass over this household and that the first born would be spared. John the Baptist may have been saying that Jesus is like this lamb to be sacrificed to protect his chosen ones from harm.

Alternatively we might think of the “scapegoat” of the day of atonement celebrations who was loaded up with all of the sins of the people by the high priest and sent off into the desert to wander and die.   In this way, the people’s sins were removed from the community and with them the punishment that they merited.

If it had been the case that John the Evangelist had had John the Baptist make his declaration before the passion story, then we would be more inclined to plump for one or other of these interpretations of what he meant by “Lamb of God”.  Unfortunately, John the Baptist is beheaded by Herod long before Jesus reaches his passion.   Speaking three years earlier, at the beginning of his public ministry, we are entitled to seek an interpretation of “Lamb of God” that includes the whole of Jesus public ministry.  

John the Evangelist discloses the true identity of Jesus in and through the seven signs which Jesus performs at regular intervals throughout the Gospel.   I feel that we are entitled, therefore, to look at these signs afresh and ask ourselves two questions.   How does this sign reveal Jesus and the “Lamb of God” and, through this sign, what “sin” is being taken away.

The first sign is the story at Cana in Galilee where, at the request of his mother, Jesus changes the water into wine.   Jesus shows himself to be someone who is sensitive and compassionate and who wishes to spare the newly weds embarrassment on their “big” day.   The 6 large stone water jars were not just turned into any old sort of run  wine, but the very best wine the steward had ever tasted.   What sin was being taken away?   The shame the couple would have felt was removed and Jesus’ identity was revealed.

The second sign is the healing of the court official’s son, done remotely, without Jesus even seeing the boy.   Jesus is so impressed with the man’s faith that he says the word and the boy is healed.   Jesus is shown to be the one with authority and the sin that is taken away is sickness and unbelief.

The third sign involves a cripple who spends his days by a pool next to the portico of Solomon.   There is a superstition that the first sick person into the pool “after the waters have been disturbed” is healed.   There is always a mad scramble, and because he has no one to help him, our paralysed man is left behind.   Jesus heals him without the need for him to get into the pool.   He shows he is superior to superstition and the “sin” that is taken away is torpor and a failure of solidarity with those in need.

Sign four is the feeding of the five thousand.   The crowds are provided with both physical and spiritual food and what is taken away is the scandal of hunger.

Closely following this, the fifth sign has Jesus walk on the water towards his terrified disciples who are in a boat far out on the lake.   Once they are sure it is Jesus, and not some ghost, they take him into the boat.   The Lamb of God is a real human being and the sin he takes away is fear.

The sixth sign is the story of the blind man who Jesus heals by making a paste of mud and placing it on the man’s eyes.   After he washes in a pool he can see again.   The disciples had asked the cause of his blindness – was it through his own fault that he was blind?  His cure, however, is only the beginning of the man’s worries.   The authorities give him a hard time and even his parents are called into the story.   Here blindness and ignorance of the origins of human misfortune are swept away by the lamb who wishes to challenge beliefs and assumptions.

The seventh and final sign is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.   In a very dramatic way, Jesus is able to give him back to his grieving sisters.   The lamb, who is shown openly weeping by the graveside, has power over life and death and takes away grief and a sense of hopelessness.

Thus, through these seven signs of John’s gospel, we get an insight into what sort of “Lamb of God” the Evangelist has the Baptist proclaim and, even more interestingly, what sort of sins he removes:  shame, unbelief, ignorance, superstition, hunger, fear and grief.   More astonishingly, not one single sin removed is a sexual sin.

John the evangelist does, however, include the story of the woman caught in adultery, which we do not find in the other gospels.   The trembling woman is brought before Jesus by a murderous mob baying for her blood (as they were entitled to according to the law of Moses).   Jesus stoops to write on the ground, and the angry men drop their stones and go away one at a time, starting with the eldest.   When Jesus is alone with the woman he does not condemn her but sends her away with instructions to “sin no more”.   Certainly her sins of sexual impropriety are taken away, but, perhaps even more importantly, so to is the lust for vengeance of the unruly mob.

In each Eucharist the priest holds up the consecrated host and proclaims the same words as the Baptist when he pointed out Jesus to his own disciples:  “Look, here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”.   Perhaps, in our Eucharist today we can have a better insight into who this Lamb of God really is and what sort of sins he is interested in removing from the midst of our lives.

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Homily for the Feast of the Epiphany - January 6  2008

Fr Philip Endean SJ

This year the Church takes its Sunday gospels from the evangelist Matthew. Matthew’s Jesus provokes a crisis for the chosen people, the people of Israel. He is the promised Christ, the Messiah, the Holy One of God; he has come not to abolish the Law, but to bring it to fulfilment. Nevertheless he is rejected by his own, and dies under their curse. When he rises, he sends his disciples to a New Israel, beyond the geographical and cultural boundaries they know—no longer are they to proclaim the Kingdom to the house of Israel’s lost sheep, but rather good news to the whole world. The conflicts between the new and the old Israel remain unresolved—if reconciliation is possible, it exists only in hope. The business of the Kingdom has begun, and begun irrevocably; but it remains unfinished.

Today the Church celebrates the liturgical feast of the Epiphany. Whereas in the Masses of Christmas we have drawn on Luke and John, here we draw on Matthew. And Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth foreshadows the drama of his gospel. This child is the fulfilment, the culmination of the Law: the gospel begins with an evocation of Jesus’s descent from Abraham, lovingly and proudly evoked. Yet the order is counterpointed with occasional hints, associated with women, of something foreign, or something dodgy: Ruth the Moabitess; Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, with whom David had committed adultery, and finally Mary, who may be Joseph’s wife, but of whom Jesus is born through the Holy Spirit, with at least a hint of illegitimacy. Moral and racial purity are important, but other factors are at work as well. The pattern continues in Matthew’s second chapter. Jesus is born in Bethlehem in Judaea as the prophet wrote; indeed he re-enacts the early history of the chosen people by travelling to Egypt and then being called back by the Lord. But the birth is hidden from Herod, king of Judea—a Herod associated with just those chief priests and scribes who will eventually cause Jesus’ death; instead it is revealed to wise travellers from the East. The consequences are violent; the innocents are massacred. Jesus, the fulfilment of God’s promises, polarises those to whom he came; the conflicts remain unresolved; and for the moment, it is only the Gentiles who see the light. Pagans—so proclaims the letter to the Ephesians—now share the same inheritance; they too have become part of Christ’s body. And yet, just as the Magi are led back to their home avoiding Herod, so Christianity has developed in painful, indeed tragic, alienation from its Jewish roots.

This feast of Epiphany and its scripture reminds us that the mystery of the Incarnation is not something static; it never simply reinforces cultural norms and traditions. It raises challenging questions about who does and does not belong; and it may be a sign of this community’s health that its celebrations are often accompanied by the prayers of ‘our friends outside’ who believe it has no business to exist. The challenges to growth which Jesus issues to the religion of God’s chosen people don’t stop when he founds the new Israel, the Church founded on the rock of Peter. They remain. Our community is faithful only if it remains open to the voice of God outside itself, constantly calling us all forward. This life-giving action of God’s is always something shared, mutual, reciprocal; moreover, the forms it takes may be quite unexpected and subversive. We need to stand ready.

This liturgy of Epiphany is a joyful one. The wise men at Bethlehem fulfil Third Isaiah’s prophecy, as he imagines new sons and daughters coming towards Jerusalem, and the Temple as a mother, its heart throbbing and full. But we must be prepared to put away the crib, and move beyond adoration of the baby’s presence. Like T. S. Eliot’s Magus, we are drawn by the Christ child into a path of surrender and transformation; we must remain haunted by grace’s subversive questions and paradoxes. Amid the old dispensations, amid those who, rather than surrender to the divine freedom, merely clutch at their gods, followers of Christ can never be at ease. We come together, we profess our faith, we joyfully celebrate a feast such as this—and it is good that we do so. But the faith we profess remains essentially a matter of journeying, of following the star—a star which, in this life, will always remain ahead of us.

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Homily for First Sunday of Advent – World AIDS Day    2.xii.2007

Mgr Seamus O’Boyle VG

In the early 90’s I, no doubt like some of you, saw a friend of mine fade away to a skeleton and later die in the clinical calm of the Mildmay Hospital. With great black humour he would joke about his ‘vanishing cream’ actually working! At that time I learned quite a bit about opportunistic infections: PCP, cryptosporidiosis, Kaposi lesions.  He was from an Irish Catholic family – very Catholic actually, with priests and at least one nun in the clan.  For that older generation it was easier to say that this young man had died of cancer. A more acceptable disease to die of!

Around that same time I remember seeing a documentary on television about groups at ‘high risk’ of infection, rather neatly they all began with the letter ‘H’: Haemophiliacs, Haitians, Heroine addicts and Homosexuals.  Since my friend very sadly died, I have had little or no personal or actually much professional contact - apart from one haemophiliac - with anyone suffering with HIV.  I am ashamed to admit it, but it is true, for me it has been slightly ‘out of sight out of mind’.

This summer I had the opportunity of going to South Africa to visit Ian, a friend of mine who is working there as a priest and paediatric nurse.  He is based with the Sisters of Mercy in a place called Winterveldt about an hour’s drive north from Pretoria.  One morning we were out doing the tourist thing when a phone call came from the Mercy Clinic – a little girl of three had been brought in because she had been raped by her uncle.  As if this were not horrific enough – by the calmness in Ian’s voice as he told the auxiliary nurse on the other end of the phone what she must do for the child, I realised it was not an unusual occurrence. Quite the opposite! It seems the local traditional medicine men tell males who discover they are HIV + to have sex with a virgin and the sickness will go away.  In the Winterveldt, a terribly poor hopeless dustbowl of a place, the infection rate is near to 50% of the population.  High even by South African levels.

I had read the statistics about Sub-Saharan Africa and it all seemed so far away and unreal. At the Mercy Clinics in the Winterveldt the immense tragedy of the pandemic was there to be seen all around. Many of the people living in the scattered townships around the Clinic also have respiratory problems – TB is rife. As I said a large number are living with HIV infection and some with ‘full blown’ AIDS.  Yet, oddly, one of the most memorable things about the mornings there was the smell of freshly baked bread.  They have a bakery providing good bread for all the families who can make it to the Clinics, and for those who can’t. The bread is also sold to local schools which helps bring in provisions for the next batch. Singing women in relays tended a patchwork of allotments, growing fresh mineral-rich vegetables for their sick husbands, children and themselves.  Having managed finally to get hold of them, there’s not much point giving hard-won anti retroviral drugs to the malnourished!  There are education programmes run from the Clinics on all manner of things. There are women’s health groups and men’s health groups. There’s a ‘catch up’ school for older youngsters who have missed out on their education because they have been nursing family members. There’s a school for bricklayers – to help get skills that might provide employment. Information, communication and leadership all going on – the themes of this World AIDS day in action daily.

At the heart of the compound is the Parish Church where on a Sunday hundreds come smiling to hear the local PP and Ian telling them in their own language (Ian has gone to school to learn it) that, no matter what, God is with them. Catherine McCauley would have every reason to be proud of her sisters and their associates attempting the impossible in that place day after day. What amazing tough, hope and faith-filled women they are too! And the Catholic Church has every reason to be proud of what we are doing in countless places like that  – not pointing fingers or judging – but being down, in the dust, with these poorest of the poor, as Jesus himself certainly would be. A warm welcome, bread, loving care. In fact if Christian Charities were not there in Africa working in so many ways the situation would be even worse. 

Nearer to home we hear the depressing news that over 70000 people in the UK live with the infection and there are thousands of new cases each year. It is no longer the ‘Gay Plague’ that the ignorant tabloid headlines in the 80’s once proclaimed. 

We all belong to this ‘high risk’ group – which also begins with an ‘H’ – Humankind.

And World AIDS Day coincides in our calendar with the beginning of Advent – the Season of Arriving. During this Season we prepare to receive, believe in, enjoy, and be given life by God’s arriving as one of us on earth – God becoming human in Jesus Christ.

We are invited to stay vigilant and prepared by living as Christ commands and as Paul describes in today’s extract from his Letter to the Romans. It is full of great opposites: night/day, darkness/light, sleep/wake. Our human existence is a life of tension between these opposing forces.  Paul also provides a list of sinful ways of acting which seems designed to take the fun out of the party season! And my life, dare I say it, our lives are lived immersed in that constant imbalance and mess.

On the BBC programme ‘Monarchy’ this week we got the chance to see the now famous tetchy exchange between the Queen and Annie Leibovitz.  The photographer wanted to catch HMQ - all Garter Robes, velvet cloak and tiara - in the natural light coming through a window (à la Cecil Beaton). And after some negotiation what a stunning portrait resulted – the sunlight flooding in being the magic ingredient, lighting up the Queen’s face, lines and all, and picking out the recesses of the room behind.

During Advent we Christians, we Catholics, as it were stand in the dark allowing our faces to be lit by the approaching dawn.

In the liturgies of Advent we actually say that we look forward, with longing, for the ‘dayspring from on high’. Not just at Christmas but at the summation of time, whenever that might be.

Isaiah’s challenge to beat our swords into ploughshares has been around for centuries, as have the other biblical challenges to cast off deeds of darkness.

It is now the hour for us to do something about it, to wake from sleep. We should attempt to live today “as in the day”. Unfortunately you and I are still in the night, in the darkness - of our selfishness, our wayward desires and addictions, our weakness and ignorance.

But there is hope of course, because it is not by our own unassisted effort that we as believers are to conduct ourselves ‘becomingly as in the day’, but rather by “putting on the Lord Jesus.”  We must turn to face his dawning brightness.

Let us use these days of Advent to do just that – ‘put on the Lord Jesus’ - for Christ to be out of our sight does not mean that he should be out of our hearts and minds too.