May 29, 2022
Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 29, 2022 – Acts 7:55-60; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20; John 17:20-26
When I was 16 years old and a senior in high school, one of my classmates died. Our school didn’t have much in the way of a science program. In senior year you got to pick between physics and chemistry. And, apparently, my classmate, who sat next to me in several of my classes, was a science buff, and set up his own little chemistry lab in the basement of his parents’ home. And, on a Friday afternoon, after he got home from school and his parents were out, he was tinkering with something in the basement and accidentally created a noxious gas. Recognizing that he was in trouble, he lurched toward the basement window to open the window and didn’t get there in time. His parents found him dead in the basement when they got home. At least that’s the story we were told. Now, as an older man, I’m more cynical. I think perhaps my classmate may have taken his own life deliberately.
Nonetheless, we did not find out until Monday morning, when the principal made the announcements over the loudspeaker. And then we were expected to get on with our day. You know, most of us growing up in those big Catholic households in the 1950s and 60s were no stranger to wakes. But death happened to old people. And we couldn’t wrap our minds around it. The next morning, one of our teachers, a nice young Jesuit - probably a kid himself, 22 years old maybe, just out of college and one year of novitiate before going out to teach – sat down at his teacher’s desk and talked to us, in that intellectual way Jesuits have, about how to respond to this tragedy and what we should think as Catholic young men. And I sat there hating him. Absolutely despising him. Because me and my friends could not deal with this loss, and there he was, blathering on about stuff in Catholic religion. And, to the end of my graduation year, I still hated that poor young Jesuit, who thought he was doing the right thing. I was just too young to understand.
I wrestled, for the last couple of days, about whether or not I should speak about the great tragedy that unfolded in Uvalde this week. See, my heart says, “Those children! We’ve lost those children!”
But my priest head says, “Talk to the people about eternal life. They’re in a better place now.” And then my heart says, “That’s not going to do it. No one cares about that. Of course they were innocent children. What we care about is that we lost all these lives that will never see the thing that they were born to see, and do the things that they were born to do. And we have this community of parents and neighbors who will never ever be the same.”
And then my head says, “Talk about the permissive will of God.”
And my heart says, “Don’t tell me about that. Where the hell was God the other day? Doesn’t God care at all?”
And my head says, “It wasn’t God who took all that pack money from the NRA. It wasn’t God who bought his son a rifle. It wasn’t God who posted his intentions on the internet. It wasn’t God who left the back door of the school open. It wasn’t God who hung around, in his rapid response gear, not doing anything for 15 minutes.”
And I just don’t know what to say. But today’s scriptures offered me a different way to look at things.
Today’s first reading talks about a very different tragedy – the first martyrdom in our faith. And, if you listen carefully to the story, there are several things going on all at one time. You have a group of people who, out of blind rage, have decided to kill another person – the Sanhedrin. You have Stephen, who, with his dying act, imitates his Lord. “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” said Jesus, on the cross. “Jesus, receive my spirit,” says Stephen. “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing,” said Jesus, as they drove the nails into his palms and his feet. “Do not hold this sin against them,” says Stephen, with his dying breath.
And then, over in the corner there’s that despicable man, Saul, holding the cloaks of the executioners. Saul, who consented to the murder of Stephen, therefore making himself an accessory to that crime. Saul is the one that God is going to pick out to be his greatest missionary ever. The one who created and sustains Catholicism as we know it.
All that stuff going on at the same time. All this evil, all this good, and all this potential good, all at the same time. And I asked you, in the second reading, to listen to the four-way conversation.
Jesus speaks, and then the bride and the spirit speak to each other. Who is the bride? The bride is the church - you and me - all those whom Jesus came to save. And the other participant in the conversation is those mysterious hearers, listening in on the conversation.
Jesus says, “I am the beginning and the end of all things, and I will come to you soon. Soon I will come to you.” But the church cries out to the spirit, “Come.” And the spirit cries out to the people of God, “Well, come.” And we, who are listening to the conversation from outside, we say, “Yes, come. All of you, come.” That’s why I asked you where you thought Jesus was in the gospel. The way Jesus speaks to His Father about His followers, at one point, sounds like He’s praying that God will let them come to heaven to be with Him. At another point in the conversation, it sounds like Jesus is praying to His Father that He will remain on earth with them in some way. So Jesus is simultaneously hear on earth and in heavenly glory, both at the same time.
There were only two times, in the gospel, recorded that Jesus wept. The first time He wept was at the tomb of His friend, Lazarus, knowing that, in a minute or two, He was going to bring Lazarus back to life. Well, why was He crying then? He was crying for several reasons. First, because of how brokenhearted Martha and Mary were. They were inconsolable. He was crying because His good friend, a male companion, had died. He was crying because the community of Martha and Mary was all torn up over the loss of their brother.
The second time Jesus cried was on the hill overlooking Jerusalem, just before the famous big entry into Jerusalem with all the fanfare. He looked down at that city that He had visited almost every year since His childhood, the city in whose streets He ran, the city among whose people He preached and worked miracles. He cried because the people in that city had become unmoored from their spiritual roots. Even though He knew that in six short days He was going to hang on a cross to fix their faithlessness, still He cried over the tragedy of a people who had begun to corrupt and to lose their faith.
There is a time for dealing with how this tragedy came to be. But first, we simply need to cry. Jesus will come, but this weekend, Jesus is weeping.