Listening for good news in a bad news world—Advent 2, Year B

“Advent” is from a Latin compound verb advenire, which means “to draw near” or “to approach”. The past participle of such a verb, a verb which you might say leans toward the future, is even more complex, sort of Einsteinian in its vision of approach as accomplished, yet still approach. It’s perfect, even if I am overstating it a little bit. The readings for this Sunday capture this longing for God’s approach perfectly, because that’s the human condition. We’re desperately aware, most of us, that we’re in dire straits, that the world is a place of uncertainty, insecurity, and violence. The strategy of civilization itself is to achieve equilibrium by vectors of violence, compromise, and various forms of anesthesia. For some of us, like the Israel of Isaiah or John the Baptist, or the Christians being addressed by the author of Second Peter, the threat to survival is real. Hunger, panic, persecution and harassment, these are the daily experience of many in the world even today. The strategy of the herald of good news is to tell the people to cling to the promise, to remember their story, because it’s a story of victory, even though it’s not a story of conquest and physical might. This might seem, to some, as just an opiate, urging folks to get through this life for the hope of a better life in another world. Only the heralds of scripture are convinced that God’s presence is near, is adventus, in this world, if we look for the signs of its arrival.





Now, as terrible as it is to have to admit this, we Christians have had two thousand years to be turning things around, and while baby steps have been made here and there, we’ve been a part of unspeakable violence and murder. Certainly there’s little doubt that the greatest blot on mankind in recent memory, the Holocaust, was perpetrated by a largely Christian nation upon the Jewish people. Let’s just admit that, and admit the complicity of indifference that did not confront the evil until it was too late. Similarly, the genocides of native peoples of the Americas by European settlers was rationalized by a strategy of christianization; the genocides of the Balkans and even of Rwanda were acts of Christians against Muslims in the one case and members of another tribal group in the latter case. We’ve given out as much as we’ve received, that much is clear. Nationalism has created thicker bonds between us than baptismal water, and it is a lie, because there is no bond deeper than the baptismal bond. I myself have been too often silenced by the proclamation that I only have the freedom I have to disagree with, in my case, “the American way” because others have fought and died for that freedom. Now I’m beginning to see that that’s a lie, that is civilization's way of keeping itself going by continuing to reject the God of life, the one who sometimes leads a ragtag band across the desert from exile to start over, the God who joins the race as a member of a dominated culture, and dies by capital punishment at the hands of imperial power. We need to rethink this violence of preservation, or else give up our self-designation as a “Christian” nation.





Remember Christiane Amanpour’s ongoing articles on signs of hope in areas of the world where there have been epidemics of genocide? We slowly come to know the horrors of these things through the truth and reconciliation committees in place in so many locations. Brave witnesses and even victims come forward to tell the truth. They expose for us the ugly truth that counterfeit communities of “in groups” form in these genocidal situations, and that previously normal neighbors who had worked together and intermarried become murderous thugs, torturers, and rapists. These counterfeit communities, like street gangs in cities all over the world, are doing for evil and the dehumanization of the planet the very opposite of what true religion is for, that is, to bind people together in communities of mutuality and respect. Today as in the days of Isaiah, John the Baptizer, and the persecutions of Christians by the Roman empire, there are forces in the world that seek to victimize and scapegoat groups of outsiders. There are strategies of grace at work in these horrible conditions. There are heralds of good news in every walk of life, bringing life to places that are full of death and horror, making the path straight for the return of God’s people.





Natalie Dubose, Ferguson bakeshop owner

We like to see strategies of grace close to home, too, like Brad Pitt's “making it right” project in New Orleans, building 100 homes a year to allow people to come back and have a place to live, after they were abandoned by their government in the wake of the hurricane there. After the riots in Ferguson MO a couple of weeks ago, community members came forward quickly to asser the values of solidarity and reparation, working to re-enfranchise local businesses. Artists turned out in dozens to decorate the boarded-up windows of riot-damaged restaurants on South Grand while their owners reopened behind those same boarded-up windows in 24 or 48 hours. (Pictures here. Check out the messages in the art, and lines like, "Pay what you can.") That’s a strategy of grace. Even closer to home, right in my parish, I see already overworked suburban families reaching out to our sharing parish, to our food pantries, to the poor in the area through Project Hope, even to a mission in the Congo. This kind of work helps reinforce baptismal bonds among us in the Holy Spirit, bonds that made us the body of Christ, and bonds that need to be strengthened to stand up to the assault of the call to violence and sectarianism that echo even to our little suburb in northern Illinois.





So we sing this weekend the words of Psalm 85: Lord, let us see your kindness! Grant us your salvation. Put the accent on “us” when you pray it. In other words, we know you save, God. We know you are kind. Let us see it. In my paraphrase we’re using at St. Anne’s, I put it even more explicitly in the refrain:





Let me taste your mercy like rain on my face.



Here, in my life, show me your peace.



Let us see with our own eyes your day burning bright.



Come, O Morning. Come, O Light.






Here’s the rest of our music for the weekend:





Gathering: Come to Us, O Emmanuel (Haugen, GIA)



Psalm 85: Your Mercy Like Rain (Cooney) The link goes to the "Songstories" post on this blog about "Your Mercy Like Rain," which has a SoundCloud excerpt embedded. Give it an audition, if you haven't heard it before. Mysteriously, it disappeared from Gather between versions 1 and 2. Sigh.



Preparation Rite: Come, O Lord (Damean Music, GIA)
 




Communion: The Wilderness Awaits You (Cooney, GIA)
 This also links to the appropriate "Songstories" post about "Wilderness," which is, as I see it, one of my best songs.




Closing: On Jordan’s Bank (traditional, #321 in Gather). As an option at the Sunday night mass where the teens participate, we’ll be using Come, Emmanuel by Tony Alonso, his litanic and upbeat adaptation of the plainsong hymn.

Mystery of Incarnation: the sinless made to be sin

I waken every morning in complete darkness during winter, and unbelievably, this morning I started thinking over this passage from 2nd Corinthians that we hear on Ash Wednesday. I’ve heard it dozens of times; more than most of my colleagues, in fact, because not only do I get to hear it four or five times a year that day, I also got to hear it and practice with readers at Forum institutes on reconciliation many times in the past. And it always makes me stop and wonder, how is it that God made Christ “sin”? It can’t simply be incarnation, not if God created people to be good. Making a person can’t be making sin. In my half-sleep, that creatively annoyed phase between REM and coffee, I mused over this.



It occurs to me that the issue might be our pesky individuality, the illusion that we (western?) humans labor under, that we are disconnected from everyone else. Even in a tribal culture like that of Judea in the first century, where belonging to the “in” group was everything, the difference between life and death, individuation seems to have been a problem, and understandably, as the rivalry among siblings might impinge on one’s survival. In our time, in the United States, individualism has risen to an art form, and amplifies our competitive nature. We pride ourselves in the “pioneer spirit” and “rugged individualism,” forgetting that few pioneers or rugged individuals survived on their own, relying both on the power of numbers and of cavalry outposts to enforce their survival. We are “self-made” men and women, we think that anyone having trouble ought to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” because “God helps those that helps themselves,” reinventing the gospel for übermenschen. We even have a political party whose task, it seems, has been to uproot government as much as possible so that the individual has as much authority to do what s/he wants with her life and wealth no matter what happens to anyone else. The mutuality represented by government is seen as an oppressor, and one that needs to be overcome. As one venerable party member from a conservative think-tank put it, “I want to shrink government to the size where I can drown it in a bathtub.”



God counters this with the revelation that God’s very self is communitarian, that God is both one-and-three. Perhaps Jesus had to weave his way through the minefield of individuality, probably quite a task for a person who was probably very talented and inquisitive, until he reached a point where it was possible for him to internalize the Torah, to see that loving God and neighbor are equally important tasks, that to love one’s neighbor, that is, to live for one’s neighbor, is to love God, and that one ought to love one’s neighbor as one loves oneself. This is not to say that individuality is bad; we’re not the Borg, after all. But when push comes to shove, we have to be able to say and know that the other person is as important as we are, and so our choices really come down to what is better for the other, not what is better for me. “He made him who did not know sin to be sin,” but by the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the triune God, Jesus became aware and began to act for a world where everyone is equal because we’re part of a living organism, a family that is God’s alone.



And so we have a sacrament of baptism to remind us of this, and we even use the word “incorporation” into Christ to describe the grace of baptism—we go from being individuals to being members of a body. “I live now no longer I, but Christ lives in me,” says St. Paul. By the gift of that Holy Spirit, especially when we cooperate with it, we “become the very holiness of God,” we share in God’s communitarian life, we live it in this world, loving our enemies, welcoming and helping strangers and all who need us. We live the kenosis life of God that does not deem even godliness something to be held onto at all costs, but pours self out for the life of the other. This is what it means to be God, and thus it is what it means to be fully human, made in the divine image.

Not me, but us. And so the Advent question becomes, “which world am I living in, the world of self-preservation or the world of mutuality and self-gift?” It is this latter world that John the Baptist and Jesus came to announce as the reign of God, that no one is alone. No one is alone because God is come to save us, and is coming through the presence and ministry of the reconciling community. Whose is the exile I’m called to ease this week? Who is the captive that needs release in my neighborhood, or my circle of acquaintances?


The author of the earliest gospel was excited about the possibilities, but possibly cautious after the first fires of apostolic zeal had started to burn down. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is begun. Who has the desire to listen to its vision, and be carried by it into the future?

For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. (2 Cor. 5: 21)

Interlude

Advent

shock and aftershock
eruption and quiet
November’s wordstorms,
downpour of images, now
quiescent, december one.
the humid respite after coupling,
acrid silence after gunshot,
there is a space after wonder,
as rest after creation.
The artist, even God, uses self up,
and there must be time to collect,
gather strength, sinew, a seventh day.
When the metaphors crawl,
when the well is more stingy
though the arm toil no less at the pump,
the heart darkens with amethyst wonder:
“will the muse sleep here again?”
will meaning vibrate again between
touch and color, the sound of things,
wriggling carelessly into words
representing life’s agony and elation
only like costumes, children on Halloween,
or, rarely, transparent actors?

Nothing is enough. Neither
the typhoon nor its eye, nor
the chase, nor embrace. But
better these inkstained knuckles,
blank paper, the haunted
sleep of the watchman, the ache
of a lover waiting a word,
than the silence after the encore,
the viscous glop of time while things grow.

Rory Cooney, 12/1/92

Advent (Year B)

So here we are starting Advent again, a whole month after Christmas carols started playing nonstop on WXMS-FM and Walmart started selling candy canes and reindeer wrapping paper. Everyone (including most of us, I suppose) is in the middle of a season for which we are now on day one of preparing. Does it feel a little foolish?

I used to think so. I was probably a little too literal with the idea of Advent preparing for Christmas, as though Christmas hadn't happened yet, and we were going to spoil it by celebrating too early. But I've come to see that there's a sense in which all the “merry Christmas” wishes, baking, card mailing, gift buying, and partying can all be part of preparing for Christmas. I'm not quite ready, though, to dispense with the Advent season and its pared-down signs and expectant language full of “keep awake” and “prepare” and “save us” and “mercy." In fact, of the four Advent movements in the liturgy every year, "watch," "prepare," "rejoice," and "yes," I think we're only good at "rejoice," and usually for the wrong reasons, because we leave people out. 

I'm certainly not ready to forgo the great Advent word, the word built into the name of Advent itself: “Veni” or in our own tongue, “Come.” Because we know, through all the commerce, the parties, and the One Direction Christmas Spectaculars, however much we think the Christmas deed is done and Jesus has come and gone and it's all ancient history, that something's still not quite right. God may be with us, but not, it seems, all the way. Or is he? If Christ is among us, can things be as fractured, violent, and joyless, even in the church, as they seem to be? 

We see a world in need of peace. We are aware of kidnappings, drone strikes, and beheadings. We need to be saved by someone with a strategy for peace other than violence and retribution. We sing, “Come to us, O Emmanuel.

We see a world in need of healing. We mourn our losses from alcohol and drug addiction, worry about cancer and dementia, cut public funding to care for the physically and mentally challenged, and argue over who should receive and pay for access to health care. We need to be saved by someone who will waken us to our responsibility to each other, with a strategy for healing that embraces and does not isolate. We sing, “Come to us, O Emmanuel.”

We see a world fractured by divisions,  a world of closed borders and bitter acrimony in the very places where compromise and cooperation ought to mark our discourse. We need to be saved by someone with a strategy other than separation, armament, and argument. We sing, “Come to us, O Emmanuel.”

We live in a society that glorifies competition, that deifies winners, grooms entertainment  idols and sports champions. We need to be saved by someone who can give us relationships that are not adversarial, that build people up and care for the weak. We sing, “Come to us, O Emmanuel.”

However comfortable we try to be, however good our economic and physical defenses are, we know something's wrong. The only escape path from fear, we think, is escalation: higher walls, better weapons, more prisons. But that is a circular path, in fact, a downward spiral paved with loss and anguish. We need to be saved from that road to a hell that we ourselves have designed. We sing, “Come to us, O Emmanuel.”

Advent says, “You can’t shop and party your way out of unhappiness and fear. Oblivion isn’t a cure; it’s a delusion.” Advent says, “Not so fast with the celebration. Look at what's going on around you. Face the sign of the times.” Advent says, “The patient God has a plan for you in Christ, and it requires your participation. Are you all in? Not yet. Not by a long shot. But there is some good news. Something good has already started. Look for the signs of God’s strategy, listen for God’s invitation, and turn around. Cooperate, surrender, opt in, and God will see it to completion.” 

And so we begin to share Mark’s story of Jesus. We should sit up and take notice, because there's something here for this broken, sick, divided, adversarial world of ours. “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The beginning of the gospel? What will happen next? 

That will depend, somehow, on how we spend Advent. Watch. Prepare. Rejoice. Say yes. “Come to us, O Emmanuel.”

Keep Awake - Advent 1, Year B

It’s always a little bit of a surprise when Advent starts again. For us church musicians, there’s that cold shiver unrelated to the falling snow that Christmas has to be less than four weeks away. But for everyone else, and for us, there’s also the strange sense that something new is starting at an inconvenient time, that we’re at the end of the year, but something new, a new year of grace, is beginning. And equally strangely, it seems to start about where the last year ended: at the end.



For me, mixed into this mixed-up scenario is the mass on Thanksgiving Day. We’re in a real mess here in this country, and this country is certainly not alone. But it occurred to me that it was a very small step from “thanksgiving” this week to a prayer that sounds scarily pharisaic: “I thank you, God, that I’m not like the rest of the people out there: unemployed, poor, blown to smithereens, addicted to heroin, not born in the U.S.A., homeless, illegal.” 



Maybe we sometimes revert in our hearts to the old “prayer” that goes, “there but for the grace of God go I.” That is the ultimate irony. Because according to the gospel we heard on November 23, wherever that pitiable “other” is that causes our pathos gene to fire off an RNA message to lip synch gratitude, s/he is, in fact, the grace of God passing by. The other, sick, in prison, hungry, thirsty, is me. 



So it seems that the grace involved in these encounters really isn’t pity. There’s no time for pity. Pity is a waste of time, clutching chronos rather than embracing kairos. The only response of a grateful Christian heart is action on behalf of the other. To love another person is to love Christ and God and self all at one time. To ignore or pity the other person is to do the same to our best self.



Advent is asking us, it seems to me, to rouse our wakefulness to the signs of Christ’s presence and absence. We are a mess, in Ferguson, in the Middle East, in Congress, because we're a mess inside. Isaiah admits that we’re a mess, but that things aren’t hopeless because we’re clay in the hands of the potter, we’re a work in progress. St. Paul says that everything we need is already inside of us because of the Holy Spirit’s living within us through Christ. Where is Christ in the justice system? Where is Christ in the economy? In the health care and climate change and immigration debates? In the clamor for LGBT rights? There has to be an answer. Where there are needs, there are gifts already given. What can we do about it? We can ask that question about all the places in which God seems to be hiding from us, that great Absence that makes our best deeds seem like “polluted rags,” leaving us feeling guilty and withered. 





Here we are at the end again, but at the beginning of a year, “the beginning of the gospel.” Here we are at the outset of Advent again. How will God invite us to participate in the gospel during this year of grace? First question is, where are we needed? Then, what are our gifts? What are the signs? Keep awake! 



And that is an effort in itself on these shortened days, when darkness gathers well before even an early dinner hour. Everything except the gospel seems to be telling us, “Go to sleep. It’ll be all right.” Or maybe, "Buy things. Eat more. Drink more. It'll be all right." Well, it’s not all right. But from out in the wilderness a shout of good news flies on the wind. There’s a gospel voice announcing an alternative way, and it's close, very close. Let’s try to keep awake and listen.

What we're singing at St. Anne’s on the first Sunday of Advent, Year B, 2014.



Gathering: Come to Us, O Emmanuel (Haugen, Gather 3rd ed.)
Psalm 80: Lord, Come and Save Us (Kendzia, OCP)
. Simply put, the most gorgeous, lyrical setting of Psalm 80 available. Melodically irresistible, harmonically rich, emotionally pleading. I'm prejudiced, I know, but there's no need for any other setting of this psalm.
Preparation Rite: Turn Around (Cooney, GIA, unreleased)
 The published version of this song (I've just seen the proofs in the last couple of weeks) will include the three recorded version and three optional verses for the last Sundays and Advent. The theme of the song is wrapped around a way of hearing the proclamation of John the Baptizer and then of Jesus in their ministry, "Turn around (i.e., repent) and believe in the gospel." The Advent verse is like this:

Good news, you who long to be free from the rod,
Good news, you perplexed by the silence of God.
The vile ancient spell of the merchants of death
God breaks with a word from a maid.
Come then, with voice glad and clear
Announce the good news for all people to hear,
The good news of Christ: "God's reign has come near,
Turn around and believe in the gospel."

Communion: Christ Be Our Light (Farrell, OCP)
Recessional: The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns
 (arr. Cooney, GIA)

“Watch, therefore;


you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming,


whether in the evening, or at midnight,


or at cockcrow, or in the morning.


May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.


What I say to you, I say to all:

‘Watch!’”

For Ray East, my brother (November 1992)

I've known Fr. Ray East for a long time, thanks to the conference circuit to which I was occasionally attached from the mid-1980s for 25 years or so. Ray is still a frequent speaker at major conferences, in fact, he was a plenum speaker at this summer's NPM in St. Louis. Ray touched Terry's and my heart forever when he came to our hotel room in the summer of 1995 after another NPM (Cincinnati?) just a month or so after Desi had been born, and sat on the bed with Terry and blessed Desi in that way that Ray has that makes you know that that baby was really blessed, and things would be good for him.

Ray was also a passenger on the famous Big Island Bus Ride of 1992, and he and I stayed together, with the late Fr. Jim Dunning, at the house of some Malia Puka o Kalani parishioners. My most persistent memory of Ray that year was that somehow he loved to eat breadfruit, which I found puzzling to the point of incredulity. That is some nasty food, at least it was to my then-carnivorous taste buds, and I could only shake my head in amazement at his apparently bottomless appetite for the stuff.

Anyway, in the subsequent weeks to that trip, I wrote this poem about him, which still resonates with me a little bit, the ideas helping me to overlook the shortcomings of my poetic style. Without any further self-pity, here's the poem.

For Ray East, my brother

raymond lives
in the United States of America.
Not one of the fifty, but deep
in the City of Compromises.
He rejoices when a man’s years
exceed his ability to live them,
for he has spent too many nights
like this, tracing oily crosses
on the bloodied brows of boys,
watching the foamy convulsions
of girls whose innocence did not dim
when they opened themselves to strangers
to buy, from a looking-glass Moses
escape or orgasm from a rock. 

raymond sings
when he drives, sings 'Been So Busy,’
or Paul Simon, Jacques Brel.
Saturday night in the District
crouches around him,
lies and broken promises roam freely here,
they resent the rich baritone with tears in it,
hold their ears until hell
can silence him with sorrow, sirens, street beat. 

raymond is
a small man who lives on his smile
he takes his bread
at the table which invites him.
raymond remembers
Moses, and says, Yes, my brother,
raymond worships
Jesus and says, Yes, my brother,
raymond believes
in Sojourner and Harriet and Rosa, says, Yes, my sister,
raymond knows
Martin and Malcolm X, Desmond and Biko, says, Yes, my brothers.
raymond parks
and wonders why the children don’t cry
why the police don’t cry
where are the mothers, fathers,
and why doesn’t the city stop?
Hasn’t a piece of the continent
been washed away? 

raymond weeps
for this boy whose heart has a steelblown hole,
this girl whose dead black eyes need more
this baby whose screams burst her lungs,
(crack convulsions)
raymond leaves
the scene in silence.
darkness is cocked like a gun. Then 

raymond sings.
It is Sunday, raymond thinks,
today I will tell them a story.
Today the ancient Spirit
will enter raymond, a zebra
Spirit, Bantu Spirit, gazelle.
raymond’s people will remind him,
—God is good ALL THE TIME—
sirens. a baby cries. someone
says, Amen, amen. Fat flies
circle over wine like blood.
When the heaven’s black light turns him
to a river of obsidian fire
where his people can swim,
we hear (sirens) drums and music
hammer on spike, a stone rolls.
Raymond dances.

Rory Cooney, © 1992

Cleaning up our mess (Christ the King, Year A)

We buried our friend Tom O'Hern this week. Tom was a former Vincentian priest who had been serving in the seminary in Nairobi. When he reached a certain point in his life, let's call it his conversion, he left the priesthood, but stayed in Kenya. Eventually, he stayed among the half a million people who live in the five-square-mile slum called Korogocho. Unable to cleanse his consciousness of the hopelessness of their situation in a land whose government is thoroughly corrupt and whose poverty is endemic, he left his old life behind, and entered into their world. He saw his job as trying to impart to them some sense of their own value, some glimmer of the truth of their humanity as children of God, by starting soccer teams and support groups, eventually building a charity called "Family Hope Charity" that worked in recovery, halfway houses, medical care, and shelter for abandoned children. He survived thefts and assaults, and with the kind of irony generally associated with fiction, finally lost his life while on an annual visit to the USA and checking in with his family, friends, and the charity's board and benefactors. He poured himself out, and his body could not keep up with his spirit.

Tom did what God does: poured himself out. Entered the lives of the poor, and gave everything. A Kenyan priest, speaking words of remembrance, gave Tom credit for his vocation, and said, "I am—we are (referring to his colleagues)—the seeds Tom planted." People in Korogocho know that God-is-with-us because they know that Tom-is-with-us. Tom lives still because God remembers Tom. Others, inspired by the gospel that inspired Tom, will take up his work. Cleaning up the mess that is the poverty, corruption, and violence of life is a long, patient process of participation in God's project. That's what the feast of Christ the King is about. So let me start with that, and finish up this Year A with some thoughts on the scriptures and music for this week.

At the end of the gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus leaves his apostles with the command to "Go and preach the gospel to all nations," and reassuring them with his promise, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age."(Mt. 28:20) It seems reasonable to imagine, given the chaos in the Roman empire by the end of the first century, that early Christians wondered whether that was actually the case, and if it was, how exactly was it true? How is Jesus with us in the devastation that was Jerusalem and the violent vortex of "civilization," Rome under Nero and his successors?

The chaos wasn't new, but the gospel of "Emmanuel," that is, God-with-us (Mt. 1:23) is proposing an answer to the question about Christ's presence in the chaos in a number of ways, certainly in the "church discourse" in chapter 18, where the gospel points to harmony in the community and unity in prayer as signs of the indwelling presence of Christ. Joseph's dream in chapter one and the parting words of Jesus are an inclusio, sort of literary bookends to the gospel, and the reader is thus alerted to look between them for the meaning of "being-with" in the life of the believer.

One interpretation of the life of the "historical Jesus" is that he was an eschatological prophet, unique in his message, but similar to others who arose in Israel between the time of the Maccabees and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Prophets from Moses to Elijah to Ezekiel (who speaks in today's first reading) to John the Baptizer arose at critical times in Israel's history to help Israel navigate the times when the power of pharaohs, kings, and emperors seemed to be at odds with the power of God, and not just at odds, but winning the battle, at least the exit polls. Prophets are sent to tell the truth to power, usually at mortal risk, and their truth is witnessed by the rest of us, who are, finally, allowed to choose between the truth of God's covenant and the truth of the emperor. In this, at least, Jesus is in the prophetic tradition.

Around the time of the the Maccabees, apocalyptic literature began to appear in Israel, which I understand to be a sort of "underground newspaper", the herald of a different empire, a way of letting people know to "keep the faith" in coded language of allegory and metaphor. The Book of Daniel is an example of this that survives in scripture, with its message of a "son of man" who will arise to clean up the horrors associated with the malevolence of Antiochus Epiphanes and his blasphemous desecration of the temple. Around this time as well, other "wisdom" literature begins to suggest that a just God must have a resurrection of the dead in mind as a reward for those who gave their lives in defense of the faith. Ezekiel's promise in the first reading today, in which God promises, against the shepherds who have misled Israel, that "I myself will shepherd them," is an early parallel of this kind of apocalyptic promise. It is God's intention, scripture promises, that what has been messed up on this planet will be remade, even if God has to do it personally.

The "son of man" who appears in the apocalyptic parable in the gospel this Sunday is first found in the book of Daniel as the agent of God's "clean up" of the situation in the world. (That image is not mine, but John Dominic Crossan's, and can be found, for instance, in his book God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now as well as in numerous other books and articles on the subject). "Son of man" is an aramaism that simply means "a human being," so the one called upon by God to do the cleaning up just appears to be a human being, although given divine authority and power to do the job given to him. It is the "son of man" who appears in the parable at the end of time, and while tradition has come to the conclusion that the "son of man" is Jesus, there is no evidence that Jesus thought so when and if he spoke the words, or that it was meant to be prophetic in the secular sense of "seeing into the future." The gospel is describing something about the present situation in a world that needs to be cleaned up. It is answering the question, "If Christ is God-with-us, and present with us now, then where is he?" It's a question about the current situation of the world, and what God is doing about it. And it's answered by the parable. "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me."




Of course, there is all the (important, of course) academic and theological discussion about who "the least of these" refers to, and what the condemnation of the goats to "eternal punishment" means. But in any case we need to be careful not to turn the parable into an allegory. The core of it, it seems to me, is that Christ is present in the needs of people here and now, and to serve them is to serve Christ. The "second coming" of Christ, like the first one, has already happened, is happening now. We might miss it if we're looking for the wrong kind of emperor, and the wrong kind of God. This God, this emperor, this "king of the universe," has poured himself out into history, and taken the side of the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoner, the sick, and the poor.

Which brings us back to the feast day today, the feast of "Jesus Christ, King of the Universe." We can put all the red cloth, gold, trumpets, and festival anthems out there that we want to, but the word of God cannot be contravened, and every year it comes back convicting us by its truth and pushing back against our dreams of glory, conquest, and the violent defeat of our enemies. "The Lord is my shepherd," we hear, not "The Lord is my stealth bomber." God's justice is not retributive, paying back evil with vengeance, but distributive, giving to each what each needs. And it is participatory, which is to say, we are invited into the action, to be part of God's great clean-up of the earth, because "whatever you do to one of these least brothers and sisters of mine, you do unto me." Whatever the reason the Church had through the years for instituting and revising the feast of Christ the King, it cannot dispense with the gospel, which can only present the true Christ. That Christ is servant, healer, first of many brothers and sisters, whose irrevocable identification and alliance with the poor and strategy of participatory distributive justice is the gospel, is God-with-us, "until the end of the age."

My friend Tom O'Hern knew that, and participated in God's project with his "whole mind, soul, heart, and strength." If our faith is true, then he has heard the words we all ache to hear, and which continue to needle our complacency and call us to be imitators, like Tom, of Christ:

Come, you who are blessed by my Father. 

Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 

For I was hungry and you gave me food,

I was thirsty and you gave me drink,

a stranger and you welcomed me,

naked and you clothed me,

ill and you cared for me,

in prison and you visited me.’

Then the righteous will answer him and say,

'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,

or thirsty and give you drink? 

When did we see you a stranger and welcome you,

or naked and clothe you? 

When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’

And the king will say to them in reply,

'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did

for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

You can donate to Family Hope Charity here, if you like, in memory of Tom and his work.

What we're singing at St. Anne this week (updated for 2017):
Entrance: Psalm 122 The Road to Jerusalem (Cooney, OCP)
Mass of St. Ann-with-no-E Gloria (Bolduc)
Psalm 23: The Lord Is My Shepherd (Daigle, GIA)
Preparation Rite: To You Who Bow (Coone, GIA)
Communion: Whatsoever You Do (Jabusch)
Sending Forth: Find Us Ready (Booth)