Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

HOMILY FOR THE 2^ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A, 2014

Greetings are important. How we are greeted and welcomed by others often defines our relationship to them, doesn’t it? Greetings are doorways into which people can enter into a deeper relationship.  In today’s scriptures we hear 3 greetings. The first is one that God makes to the prophet, Isaiah. “The LORD said to me: You are my servant, Israel, through whom I show my glory.” Then, we hear that beautiful greeting that Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” And, lastly, we hear the greeting of John the Baptist, who introduces Jesus to his followers. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Each and every greeting carries with it a Divine blessing.

In each and every greeting we make, we have the same opportunity, as we hear in the readings today, to bestow a blessing from God to others not only in words but in our tone of voice, our facial expression, and our body language. Our greetings to others are gateways into which we and others are led to a deeper relationship with God. I would like to talk about three greetings that had a huge impact on my life.

In the summer of 2004, I was in my 20^th year of ministry at St Hubert in Chanhassen. In my 20 years serving that parish, it had grown from a small town parish of 450 households to become a rich, suburban mega-parish of over 3200 households. I had served in the parish as an educator, a director of liturgy and music, and as a director of pastoral ministry. The one reality of church work is as the needs of a parish grow, so do the items in your job description. After so many years in one place, I felt real comfortable, and I was at a point in which I thought I would be at St Hubert to the time I retired from ministry. Right around the 4^th of July, I received a call, a greeting from the Archbishop’s office congratulating me on my new appointment as parish life administrator of an inner city South Minneapolis parish. Now, that was a greeting that was totally unexpected by me.

This parish in South Minneapolis was one that did not have a pastor. The problem the Archbishop had, was there was no priest willing to be assigned to that parish as a pastor. By appointing me parish life administrator of this parish, the Archbishop was, in fact, making me the pastor of this pastorless parish.  At my ordination, I, as do all deacons and priests, made a promise to obey the bishop and all his successors. This promise of obedience is very significant and powerful. When we do this, we kneel before the Archbishop, fold our hands together in the gesture of prayer and then the Archbishop places his hands over our hands. Just as I take the vows I made in marriage to Ruth seriously so too, do I take this promise of obedience to my bishop and his successors. The Archbishop wanted me there and, in spite of how comfortable and at home I may have been at St Hubert, I didn’t have a legitimate reason to disobey what he wanted. So, I packed up my stuff at St Hubert, loaded up my car, and began ministry to this South Minneapolis parish.

All the time I had been doing parish ministry, I had been working in parishes that had little to no diversity. Living in New Prague in which there is little to no diversity, and having worked in a very white, affluent suburban parish, I found myself introduced to a parish made up of many people of diverse color and cultures. Needless to say, my senses were on overload and my comfort level stretched.

On my first day of ministry at the church, I was warmly greeted by a man, who was a black Muslim, who helped me bring the stuff from my car into my office. Feeling overwhelmed by the new parish setting and the burden of responsibility that was now mine, I sat down at my desk and found a note on the desk written by a former pastor, Fr. Ed Flahavan. The note said this, “Warm congratulations and God’s best blessings, Bob, on your new ministry at St Stephen’s. It is a unique, lovely and harsh place filled with people at the margins of society, civil and ecclesiastical. It is, therefore, very close to the circumstances to where Jesus did his earthly ministry. I wish you all the best of God’s blessing in it. Ed Flahavan. I found that the feelings of overwhelment that I had, lessened by these two greetings I received.

St Stephen’s is  located on the corner of Franklin Ave and Clinton Ave. It is a stone’s throw from the freeway and about 3 blocks from downtown Minneapolis. It was a parish known for its service and outreach to the homeless. It had a homeless shelter on the lower level of the rectory that slept 44 homeless men each night. The first location of Loaves and Fishes, that serves free hot meals 5 nights a week to the poor, was located on the lower level of St Stephen’s school.

The parish had a large community of developmentally disabled adults, a large gay and lesbian community, ex nuns, ex priests, ex-convicts, street people, disenfranchised  Catholics of all sorts of shapes and sizes and economic means, Lutherans, Methodists, Quakers, Jews, and so on. The parish also had a substantial Latino community. The way I came to think of St Stephen’s was that it was the Last Gas Station of faith for many Catholics on their way out of the Church, a re-entry place for Catholics who had been away from the Church for many years, and a haven for people of many different life styles and religious traditions. It was truly what Ed Flahavan said it was, a parish that was made up primarily of the marginalized of the church and society and a unique, lovely and harsh place. The way parishioners described the parish was that it was a big circus tent under which everyone was welcome.

I once asked one of my staff members why people were so attracted to St Stephen’s. She said that  many people, especially street people, because of the way they looked, or smelled, or acted, were shunned, reviled, feared, unwelcomed, and  kicked out everywhere else by respectable society. At St. Stephen’s they knew that not only were they welcomed and accepted, but even more importantly, everyone knew them and greeted them by name. Everyone knew their name. At St. Stephen’s the dignity and the humanity that had been taken from them in life was restored to them. One unique feature of the parish, not normally found in most parishes was two outhouses, similar to what you see at a construction site, in the parking lot of the school so that the homeless had a place to go to the bathroom with dignity and privacy and not be forced to urinate or defecate in public.

Was St Stephen’s a perfect parish? No, being as marginalized and diverse as it was, there were many challenges civilly and especially ecclesiastically. At the end of the last liturgy on Sunday night as I drove home, I often thought, “I think we’re still Catholic.” Every parish has its issues and St Stephen’s was no different. It took the Archbishop 3 years to find a priest willing to be a pastor at St Stephen’s, but during those 3 years I listened, I observed, I learned from the very broken people to whom I ministered, how to welcome, how to greet, and to make present Christ in the midst of a very diverse and broken humanity.

On the 2^nd Sunday of Ordinary time, Jesus’ earthly ministry begins. Jesus’ ministry begins with a greeting to all whom God had created, a greeting from God made present and embodied in his beloved Son, Jesus. Jesus in healing the broken hearts, broken bodies, and broken souls of humanity showed us how much God loves us, and by dying out of love for us, and then, rising from the dead, restored to us the dignity and the humanity we lost in the sin of Adam and Eve. When his earthly ministry was completed, he ascended to God, but before doing so passed on to you and to me the ministry of greeting everyone in God’s name and introducing all to the love of God. It is of this ministry entrusted to us that we remember on this 2^nd Sunday of Ordinary Time. A ministry so beautifully summed up in this hymn that David Hass wrote years ago (sing At Evening).

AT EVENING (text by Fred Pratt Green, melody by David Haas, © 1985 GIA Publications, Inc)

Now it is evening: Lights of the city,
bid us remember Christ is our Light.
Many are lonely, who will be neighbor?
Where there is caring, Christ is our Light.
 
Now it is evening: Little ones sleeping,
Bid us remember Christ is our Peace.
Some are neglected, Who will be neighbor?
Where there is caring Christ is our Peace.

Now it is evening: Food on the table,
Bids us remember Christ is our Life.
Many are hungry, Who will be neighbor?
Where there is sharing Christ is our Life.

Now it is evening: Here in our meeting,
 May we remember Christ is our Friend.
Some may be strangers, Who will be neighbor?
Where there’s a  welcome Christ is our Friend.