Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year A, 2014

Below is the homily I gave this past weekend at St Wenceslaus church. Though the Masses were completed and everyone gone home, I tend to reflect on the Mass afterward. For whatever it is worth, in the relating of the story of my encounter with the homeless man at St Stephen's in South Minneapolis back in 2005 and the stream of consciousness that occurred at that time, I discovered in my reflection that I underwent a conversion at that particular moment in my life. Something I was not able to recognize until I told the story in my homily this weekend.

HOMILY FOR THE 5^TH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR A, 2014

I have, for most of my life, have always been a huge fan of the Minnesota Twins. Perhaps it is because both the Twins and I happen to move to Minnesota at approximately the same time. They were transformed from being the Washington Senators to become the Minnesota Twins, and I was transformed from being a kid from Chicago to become a Minnesotan. From early spring to the first signs of winter I normally wear my Twins baseball cap wherever I go. In 2005, I was coming back from a Rotary meeting in Minneapolis to my parish assignment at St Stephen’s in South Minneapolis. I was dressed in jeans, shirt, a coat and my brand new Twin baseball cap. It was a cold, very rainy April day. One of the homeless men that hung around St Stephen’s was standing out in the rain. He was dressed rather shabbily in a thin coat and had no hat. The rain ran of his bare head as he poured down upon him. As I was going into the parish office, he caught me by the arm and asked if he could have my hat to keep his head from getting wet.

You know how a million thoughts can go through your mind in what seems like a second? That’s what happened to me. Initially, I was irritated by his request. I had just bought this new Twins hat, and, then my irritation quickly passed to me thinking back to my ordination as a deacon. I was dressed in my alb and stole. It was communion and, it being the custom that at Cathedral liturgies the deacon is normally the minister of the cup, I was standing by the Dale Street door distributing the blood of Christ from this huge 16 ounce flagon the Cathedral has, to a number of priests waiting in line. A homeless man comes in the door off the street, budges in line and approaches me saying, “What do you got there?” I replied, rather solemnly, “This is the blood of Christ.” He looked at me and said, “I’ll have some of that.” I was always taught in formation that you never refuse anyone in line for communion, so I handed him the cup. He practically drained it before I was able to get the cup back from him. He looked at me, smacked his lips, and said, “Amen to Jesus!” and, then went back out the Dale Street door. I looked at the bottom of my cup and there was about an ounce of the precious blood left. Needless to say, I was the first one to go back to the sanctuary with an empty cup.

My mind went from that scene to my three years in diaconal formation. Over those three years my classmates and I formed into becoming Christ as Servant. Though as deacons, we receive the faculties to preach and assist at Mass, and are the ordinary ministers of the sacraments of baptism and matrimony outside of Mass, and preside at other liturgical rituals, we are ordained primarily to be Christ as Servant to others. My mind remembered what we heard in the first reading today of those ordained as the first deacons by the apostles to minister to the poor and the disenfranchised of their time and place.

All of these thoughts were running through my mind as I stood out in the rain with that homeless man. The words from the letter of St James came back to me, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, that faith is dead.” I recalled the words of Jesus from the gospel of Luke, “Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as [also] your Father is merciful. …Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

My mind went to the gospel reading at my ordination, the one of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus has gotten down on his knees and washed and dried the feet of all who were at table with him. Today’s gospel reading is taken from the Last Supper discourse of John’s gospel that comes immediately him washing their feet. His words are his last teaching to them before he goes to the Mount of Olives and to his passion and death. Note, that when he tells the apostles that he goes to prepare a place for them, it is a continuation of his washing their feet as servant. The angels are not going to prepare a place for them, but, he, the Christ, their creator, as a servant, will prepare a place for them.

All of this went through my mind as I stood in the pouring down rain with this homeless man at St. Stephen’s. I took off my hat and gave it to him. He put it on his head and wandered off down the street without a “thank you” or any acknowledgement of gratitude. The words of Jesus came to me, “Lend to others expecting nothing back in return…” One does not have to be ordained a deacon to be Christ as Servant to others. Jesus calls all of us who are baptized into his death and resurrection to be servants to all who are in need, even when it may be inconvenient to us. 

If we are to live fully our faith as disciples of Jesus, it requires us to serve others as Jesus served us. All of us must get down on our knees, figuratively for some of us, literally for others, to wash the feet of those in need. One of the greatest signs of a parish as the living and breathing body of Christ is how the members of the parish individually and collectively serve the needs of others. Families Moving Forward, Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes, the Peace Center are just a few of the ways that we, individually and collectively, as a parish community, embody Christ as servant to others in our greater community. 

The homeless man needed that Twins cap much more than I did. I did not have to sleep outside in the rain that night, he did. As St James reminded his community, faith without good works is a faith that is dead. Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve you and me. We, in turn must go and do the same.