Cyndi Lauper, best known for her hits in the middle eighties, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “True Colors,” but now she is best known for her Cosentyx commercials. She talks about the anguish of appearing on stage with psoriasis, of having it cover her arms in embarrassment. And the commercial goes on to talk about other people who suffer from psoriasis and also from psoriatic arthritis which is not only embarrassing, itchy, and painful, but also a very serious disease. And yet, she was able to continue making a living and now the residuals from those commercials will guarantee that she continues to make a very nice living.

If Cyndi Lauper had lived in time of Jesus that would not have been true, because all skin diseases that cause any kind of eruption were all called leprosy, and all of them equally make a person unclean. And so she would have been ostracized. She would have been required by law, under pain of death, to call out before herself, anytime she got near another person, ”Unclean, unclean,” because, as the first reading said, she was, in fact, unclean. Nowadays, with medical science, we know the difference between Hansen's disease and psoriasis, or acne, or some other fairly benign skin eruption, but back then they didn’t know that.

In our country’s contentious relationship with Iran, there’s been a little bit of saber-rattling just recently. The Iranians, perhaps understandably, are angry because of our black ops operation that took out one of their major military leaders in the recent past. And President Trump has been tweeting ugly things about any possibility that they might try to retaliate. But one of our major military commanders has tried to damp down the conflict by moving one of our major aircraft carriers out of the Persian Gulf. This is nothing new. This has been going on between ourselves and Iran since we helped to dethrone the Shah of Iran way back when I was a youngster. We thought we were doing the right thing, saving the world from a despot. We played ourselves right into the hands of insurgents, who eventually developed into what people now refer to as ISIS.

But that part of the world has been in conflict for a long, long time. In fact, over four thousand years, there has been furor in what historians call “The Fertile Crescent,” the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In biblical times, the main participants were one nation, referred to in the Bible as Assyrians. Take off the first two letters, AS, and you have Syria. Back then Assyria combined all of today’s Syria, plus bits and pieces of other land around it. They were in conflict with another group of people called the Babylonians, or the Persians. Right now, what’s left of ancient Persia is basically Iran, with a little bit of the land around it; what’s left of ancient Assyria is present day Iraq and some of the land around it.

I’m sure you heard it. Father Mathias actually emphasized it in the way he proclaimed the gospel. The first story ends with the shepherds going home. The first story begins with, “When the eighth day came for the circumcision.” And the story continues with the Presentation in the temple, which is the gospel we read last Sunday. Why was it done that way?

The scriptures that we have at Mass are placed there for the purpose of worship, not for the purpose of teaching or learning. And so they’re frequently edited in ways that we would not think about if we picked up our bible to read them. Very frequently there are lines left out of the scriptures we read at Mass on Sunday, because the people who composed our Masses did not want to distract people from the main point they wanted them to get out of the reading for the purpose of that Sunday’s worship. Many of these readings have been the same for centuries.

When I was studying this one, for this Mass, I discovered that this reading has been the same since Henry the 8th had one of his henchmen recompose the Book of Common Prayer. It’s been every Christian church’s reading ever since then. How come? Because there are several things that the church wants us to call to mind as we pray this morning.

Some longtime friends of mine sent me a Christmas card. On the front of the card was your typical picture of Mary and Joseph and the baby, and the shepherds in the stable. The bottom of the front of the card said “Remember the Miracle.” Remember the Miracle. I opened up the card, and the wife had written on the top, “Yeah, like you would forget it,” which I thought was really a kind of comment on a whole bunch of things. But it got me thinking about what we remember, what we remember.

I already mentioned once or twice during this Advent/Christmas season that St. Luke has constructed the first two chapters of his gospel in a very precise way, and he has several points that he makes over and over again in his gospel. One of them is that Jesus comes for all people. Glory for Israel, revelation for the gentiles, for the pagans. So Luke is all- inclusive in his message about salvation - Jesus comes for everyone; no one is left out.

At one point in my life, I collected crèche sets. I must have wound up, at some point, with about 10 or 15 of them. All very different, one from another. Over the years I either gave them away or put them out in yard sales until, now, I have only three left. They’re all on display in the rectory. One of them is just three statues of a Native American man, a Native American woman, and a Native American papoose - the Holy Family as envisioned by the First People. Then I have a set that’s only about an inch high. They’re perfect replicas of the very famous Italian set, made in resin which, for a while, was very popular as an alternative to plastic. But, on the buffet in the dining room, I have the set that my family had when I was a child growing up. They were very cheap. We bought them a piece at a time in the five and dime store. But I still have them all. Some of them I repainted when I was a teenager because they were chipped and cracked. When I put them out each year, I get very nostalgic as I place them all in place where they belong, where they always go. But this year, something else happened to me as I put them in place. I want to share that with you.

When we hear the story of the Annunciation, our minds are trained to go immediately toward the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This is where, in scripture, the roots are found of that doctrine. But that’s not the way it was at the beginning.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was a legitimate progression from something else. What was the something else? It was the doctrine of original sin. The words “original sin” do not appear anyplace in the entire scripture, from beginning to end. Saint Paul, in his letters, frequently talks about the sin of the first Adam and the salvation brought by the second Adam. That’s as close as we get. But the question arises then, for Christians, “saved from what?”

“Oh, somewhere … hearts are [happy] … and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.” Those are the stirring last words of a poem by Earnest Thayer written at a time when people wrote and recited poetry for entertainment.

I chose it to begin my homily because, as I mentioned at the beginning of Mass, today is Gaudete Sunday - the Sunday of Joy. It seems to me that if you feel like I do, you feel like joy is in pretty short supply these days. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what joy means in the sense of our scriptures and in the sense of our liturgy.

When I was working for WABC radio, their headquarters were at 1330 Avenue of the Americas, between 53rd and 54th St., and their building occupied the whole length between the two side streets, and halfway down the block. It had a beautiful outside plaza with two big fountains. You walked up two or three stone steps onto the plaza, then a couple more steps up to the entrance of the building. It was one of the most prestigious buildings on a prestigious avenue. Avenue of the Americas is really 6th avenue, but from 42nd St. up to 59th St., because of the tremendous amount of money installed there, they changed the name to the majestic Avenue of the Americas. But, outside that building every day, was this very strange character. I forget the nickname he was given, but he used to wear a Vikings helmet with horns and a leather coat with fur on it and buskins on his feet, and he had a spear. And he would accost the people coming in and out of the building all the time. Now you would think, considering the fact that this was the headquarters of ABC network for the entire United States, and that the building represented the attempt to capitalize on popular culture, to economize it and create money out of it, there must have been a whole flock of lawyers in the building. That they could not figure out how to get one homeless man off the front steps of their building is incredible. However, I think that they chose not to. Because people would avoid this character going in and out of the building, and certainly tried to stay downwind of him. But, I think in some strange way, they saw him as a countercultural symbol. A way of saying, “Yes, all this is about money and profit, but yes, there are other realities in the world.” And so they tolerated, having to go past him every day. I tell you this because both our first reading and our gospel are countercultural. And not understanding that, prevents us from understanding what each of these sacred writers wants to say.

Now Saint Mark, in his gospel, begins with the story of John the Baptist. But he asks his readers to see his story, not only the story of John the Baptist, but the entire story he’s about to tell - the Good News about Jesus Christ. He wants us to see the whole thing through the lens of one particular phrase in the prophet Isaiah. And that phrase is hidden in today’s first reading. I’ll show you what I mean.

If you go on the internet and look up “liturgical cycle,” one of the first illustrations that you’ll always find is a circle with colors. Part of the circle is purple, then a little bit of it is white, then some green, then some more purple, then some more white, then some more green. It’s blocked off into what they call “liturgical seasons.” We’re in the very first one right now for this year - the season of Advent - followed by the season of Christmas, and so on. You’d get the impression, from looking at the charts, that nothing ever changes. The only thing that really changes is what scriptures were used. Right now we’re beginning “Year B.” We just finished “Year A.” Next season will start “Year C.” They’re defined by which gospel is the primary gospel used during that season. But the charts are incorrect, because we do not have an endlessly repeating cycle in the life of the Church. It’s not a cycle at all. It’s something very different.

Carrie Underwood had a big country hit, and when I say country hit that means beware of overstatement. She had a big country hit called “Jesus Take the Wheel.” And it was a great idea. The story she’s telling is that she is overtired, car full of kids, and drifts away for just a second, and all of a sudden is confronted with an 18-wheeler bearing right down on her, and she panics. And says, “Jesus take the wheel; I don’t know what to do.” And the story goes on for two verses. And she flips the image into a metaphor about how the wheels frequently come off the car of life, and the only thing we can do in our desperation is say, “Jesus take the wheel.”

I was reminded of that because this very powerful parable that we just heard from Matthew’s gospel actually is based on the first reading, from the book of Ezekiel. And Jesus told, all together, in all the gospels, about five parables that involve shepherds in some way. All of them are rooted in the shepherd imagery from the book of Ezekiel, a little bit from the book of Isaiah, and the beautiful psalm we had as the psalm between the readings, “The Lord is My Shepherd.” The compound image has always been taken as one that is very gentle, very sweet, but the story in the first reading tells of a different tale.

All those of you who are now working for a living, or have ever worked for a living, think about the highest annual salary you ever made. Now round that figure up to the nearest thousand. Got it? Now multiply by five. I’ll wait. Got the figure? That’s how much the guy of the five talents got in 2020 figures. It’s a boat load of money! Even the guy with the two talents, even the guy with the one talent, got an awful lot of money.

And, since the story says that the master was gone for a long time, that means this money was invested in something that would yield a long term benefit, at least a CD. Nowadays, maybe one-and-a-half percent on a CD. But, in the stock market, which is ironically booming right now, that would’ve brought an enormous return on the individual investment. I mean an incredible amount of money.

Anybody who has had an association with scouting during their lives probably knows the Scout Oath, the Scout Law, the Scout Motto, the Scout Promise. What you probably don’t know is that when Lord Baden-Powell created scouting, he asked the help of a friend of his who was a Benedictine monk to create those slogans and those lists of virtues for boys and girls. The shortest of them all is the Scout Motto, “Be Prepared.” “Be Prepared.”

Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.” And that’s kind of the message behind today’s gospel. That’s why I asked you to listen for its inconsistency. The motto at the end of the gospel says, “Therefore be alert,” or the translations say, “Be awake.” But it’s the wrong motto, it’s the wrong lesson for the story that Jesus just told.

Jesus tells us the story about being prepared. The virgins, some of them brought extra oil, some of them didn’t. They were unprepared. The inconsistency is that all ten virgins fell asleep. So, at the end of the story, you can’t say the motto is to be awake if all ten of them fell asleep. What happened here? 

All of us who received a religious education, whether in a parochial school or in a religious education class, up until probably the early 1970s, were required to memorize the eight Beatitudes, and give them back orally or in a written form on an exam. Imagine my surprise then, as a little boy, the first time I was at Mass and the priest proclaimed the gospel I just read. I said to myself, “Ooh, Jesus had to memorize them too.”

That’s because we were not aware. we were not made aware, that what we memorized was part of gospel passage. That, in fact, altogether there were nine Beatitudes, the last one aimed directly at Jesus’ audience rather than at a presumed group of people. The “this,” and the “that.” You, “you were persecuted in my name.”

In order to understand what we need to know about these Beatitudes, first of all we have to realize that when we were taught them they were treated as individual maxims, separate from one another. And that each one of them was analyzed for us as though a particular virtue, which was meaningful enough as it stood. But the way the gospels were formed tells us a very different story about the Beatitudes.

James Henry Leigh Hunt, better known to almost everybody as Leigh Hunt, was a poet, an essayist, and a playwright in the 19th century. He was in that same circle of literary figures as Shelly, Wordsworth, and all of those people we were forced to study in high school. Like most people in England in the 19th century, he was serenely confident in the superiority of all things British. The sun never set on Her Majesty’s empire. And also, like most people in Europe during the 19th century, he had a tremendous fascination with all things Egyptian, Arabian, and Middle Eastern. And because of their unspoken assumptions about the world, they never really took seriously the faith of Muslim people, whom they would have called Mohammedans back in the 19th century, but they liked to fantasize about them. Leigh Hunt was also probably an Anglican Divine, a pastor. He never got a parish of his own, and drifted away from church things, but we can be fairly certain that he had a much better knowledge of both the Old and New Testament than you and I have. That was just typical of people at that time.

And so he writes a poem based on his enchantment with things Middle Eastern, but he also based it on an assumption that’s probably correct. And that is, across the spectrum of religious faith, at least the major known faiths at that time – Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, the Baptist churches, Judaism, and Islam, – all people reverence and hold as God’s word the two great commandments, which we just heard in today’s Gospel. So he creates a character for his poem. The character’s name is Abou Ben Adhem. Abou is what he thinks is a common Arabian name. But Ben means “son of;” then he chooses “son of” Adhem (Adam). He wants us to identify with this person as like you and me, descended from the first human being. And this is what he writes:

I recently read a novel called Damascus, about the life of St. Paul and other Christians, some of them martyrs during the 1st century. I didn’t care much for the book, by Christos Tsiolkas, but I did appreciate how he brought to life what if was like to live in the 1st century, what it was like to be a Christian back then. It was a tough slog in many ways, and the novelists graphic descriptions of the terrible conditions in which everybody, Christian and non-Christian, lived, the terrible things they endured, almost blistered my mind. I asked you to listen, during the second reading, for some of the vices, or character flaws, that St. Paul exhibits in that very brief passage.

I once had a friend who would give you the shirt off his back, almost literally. I remember one time, I needed money in a hurry. I told him my sad story. He opened his wallet and gave me a thousand dollars. Without blinking an eye, without making any arrangements to get it back. But he could not accept anything from anybody graciously. He simply did not know how to say thank you, or to show any appreciation. This is a wonderful man in many ways, but that one character flaw turned many people off from him, because they didn’t understand.

Reality TV. Reality TV is both the salvation and the destruction of the television industry. When many of us were growing up, for most of the day, all you could see on most channels was a test pattern. Then, when the kids got home from school, children’s programing began, followed by the evening news, followed by prime time scripted programs – comedies, dramas – and then the evening news, and then a sign-off, and a test pattern appeared again. But when we went to 24/7 programming, it became much more expensive to run television stations. Only the big three were really able to provide fresh programming all day and all evening long, because the cost of a scripted program was enormous – way over $1,000,000 per episode. And so, those stations needed to sell a $1,000,000 worth of advertising for each program just to break even. And the goal of the major broadcasting companies was not to just break even, they needed to make a substantial profit for their investors and for themselves. So in the early 1990’s they came up with a brilliant idea. Reality TV.

Because it only cost a fraction of what it cost to produce a scripted program. You didn’t have to pay those enormous salaries to the big-name stars, all you had to pay people on the screen was the daily minimum for someone who appeared on a talk show. Back in 1970’s, the daily minimum was about $79. So even given the cost of inflation, it didn’t cost much, say, to have a cook demonstrating how to bake something, or a carpenter, how to fix something, or some people fishing, how to find fish in deep water. So it’s simple to do. Instead of having five cameras on a set, you had one guy walking around with a camera on his shoulder.

A couple of days ago at dialysis, I was channel surfing and I came upon a Charlie Brown movie. I haven’t seen a Charlie Brown movie in ages. But this one was about Charlie Brown and the little red-headed girl. If you followed the Peanuts comic strip, you know that, for years now Charlie Brown has had a crush on the little red-headed girl and he never gets to speak to her, he cannot get up enough courage. But this time, one of his teachers intervenes. On the last day of school she assigns all the children a pen pal for the summer. And, as luck would have it, Charlie Brown is paired with the little red-headed girl, and he is terrified. Finally, at the last minute, as she’s about to get on the bus to go away to summer camp, he gets up the courage to ask her one simple question. Why would she write to him? He’s such a loser. And he takes a long time describing all of his faults and failings and foibles. And she answers him by saying she doesn’t think he’s that way at all. And she lists all the good qualities he has. His patience, his ability to forgive his friends when they tease him, his constantly trying to do better. And, as his eyes widen in appreciation, the doors close on the little red-headed girl. Keep that in mind, we’re going to talk about it more later on. But first I want to do something else.

The iconic movie, On the Waterfront, was all about corruption, especially mob-inspired correction, on the docks. It was a true story, based on the life of a Jesuit priest who worked for the betterment of the working conditions of people who worked on the docks. But we would be mistaken if we thought that today’s gospel has anything to do with social justice for workers. Why did Jesus tell this story? Why did Matthew include this story in his gospel?

It is almost the same story as a story with very different characters that we find in Luke’s gospel – the story of the Prodigal Son. In each story there is someone who obeys the rules and always does the right thing, and someone who seems to be messing up. Both of them are treated with the same kindness and generosity by the person who represents the authority figure. That’s the similarity between them, but one is found in one gospel, and one in the other.

When I was studying communications media at Loyola University in New Orleans, one of our assignments was to produce a fifteen minute movie using one of Jesus’ parables as our subject matter. We had to shoot it in Super 8. For those of you who are not of a certain age, Super 8 was home movie film that had no soundtrack. So we chose the parable that you just heard as our subject matter. And what we did was to turn it into a modern-day parable. The storyline was that the movie began with a priest being pulled over by a cop because he was speeding. And the priest begs, and wheedles and cajoles the cop into not giving him a ticket. And they ride off as best buddies. The priest arrives home at his rectory, and finds that some parishioner has had the audacity to park in the “clergy only” parking space behind the rectory. And just as he is having a fit, the offender comes out to get his car, and the priest really lands into him in a violent way. That was what you might call “Theology Lite,” but today’s story has a much more powerful punch than you might imagine.

It all goes back, the genesis of what Jesus says in the parable, goes all the way back, if you’ll pardon the pun, to the Book of Genesis. Chapter 4. All of us know the story of Cain killing Abel. We don’t pay much attention to what happens afterwards. God condemns Cain to be a wanderer across the face of the earth, and Cain says to God, “That punishment is much too harsh because I will be a victim of everyone who wants to take my life.” And God says, “Oh, no. I put my mark on you, and anyone who touches Cain will feel my wrath seven times over.” And you flash forward to Cain’s great-great-great-grandson, whose name is Lamech. Lamech calls his wives in one day and tells them, “If anyone wounds me, I will seek vengeance seventy-seven times. If even a little boy bruises me, I will seek vengeance seventy-seven times. Imagine what his wives thought about that; I’m sure they were impressed. But that’s where Jesus got the numbers in today’s story. The seven and the seventy-seven.

A couple of weeks ago, in our Gospel, we encountered that same phrase of Jesus, about binding and loosing. Binding means drawing together into community, which was clearly Jesus’ concern. As a matter of fact, tucked into this morning’s Gospel, is a little joke. He said if you can’t agree at all, and the church is no help, then treat the person as you would treat a tax collector or a sinner. But Jesus was known for treating the tax collectors and the sinners with a special affection in an attempt to draw them in. And the first reading this morning, the prophet talks about what happens when you don’t try to draw people in, and St. Paul’s letter talks about the ultimate result of trying very hard to draw people in. But for Christians, I should say for Matthew’s church, the issue of drawing in was especially important because they were on the verge of mission, and they were having trouble getting themselves started; getting themselves motivated for mission. But for Catholics – Christians generally, but Catholics in particular – gathering in means going on mission. Not that you twist people’s arms to make them believe what you believe, but rather, that you offer what you see as your gift and invite others to accept. And it’s in that context that I introduce this morning’s special guest, George Markolovitch, who represents the Diocese of Bar in Montenegro. He’s going to talk about how the effort goes on to draw people in in mission.