Homily : November 19

by daniel couper

Texts for Week 33 of Ordinary Time, Year C

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Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.  Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made.  It will become for us the bread of life.  Blessed be God forever.

I beg your forgiveness as I say this prayer out of its proper context.  Though many of you never hear it, it is nonetheless the first words uttered by the one who presides.  In just a few words, it puts forth the beauty of the reality that occurs at this table.  The earth gives forth, we work within it, and God transforms our efforts into mysteries that we could never conceive on our own.

The second prayer is much the same:  Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.  Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands.  It will become our spiritual drink. 

I wish some of the Thessalonians could have seen the beauty in the work that brought about their food.  I would like to extend my thanks for those who bake the bread for us here each Tuesday night.  What you have prepared will become my spiritual food, and for that, I owe you a debt of gratitude.

But, truly, it is not the Thessalonians passage that confounds us this evening.  It is the Gospel.  It is our Lord speaking of horrible atrocities that would yet be.  It is the fact that he confronts us with the end.  But, really, we know.  Having recently turned back our clocks, the darkness of evening is now impossible to deny.  As we draw into winter, the days are growing short.  And time, too, grows short.  The leaves have almost all fallen, the air is cold, and Jesus reminds us that the end must come.

And so for us, in the church, we are drawing things to a close.  The liturgical year, which started with prophecies of its own as we waited for Christ’s first coming is inching towards its final chapter.  We spent the first half of the year focusing on the person of Christ: waiting for his coming and then rejoicing upon his arrival.  We walked through Lent, remembering his temptation in the wilderness, then saw him betrayed and crucified, but after three days’ time, he was resurrected—just as he foretold—and lived and walked among us again for a while.  Then he went back to the Father, and we turned our focus onto Christ as we know him through his body, the church.

The church, too, was waited for, prophesied about, promised.  And at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came.  Now here we are.  We have grown and learned and struggled and tried.  We have remembered and honored the saints who have gone before us.  And tonight, Jesus speaks to us.  He says that it’s not over yet.  That there’s still struggle to be had.  But when it is all said and done, there is salvation for us as well.

For some of us, this causes us to shudder.  We like our lives.  Sure, we could have aspects of it improved for the better, but not at the risk of losing that which we have.  When confronted with the self-imposed challenge of doing something extraordinary, we assure ourselves in our Prufrockian way that there is time: “And time yet for a hundred indecisions/And for a hundred visions and revisions/Before the taking of a toast and tea.”  Yes, for some of us, we are content to delay the end, to revel in our lives, such as they are.

But for others, Jesus’ words are like the relief felt by a patient whose doctor states that it’s time for hospice.  The knowledge of the end is not so horrible as the conflict between the dread fear of what you know your sick body is telling you versus the hope that you are wrong.  So, for those who weep for the people in the Philippines, who imagine the names of children killed in Syria, Jesus’ words are a comfort in that they provide a context for all we see.  These things are expected.  And while the thought of persecution is never welcome, there are nonetheless days when my values are antagonized, my efforts exploited, and my intentions misinterpreted.  And in those times, Jesus calls me to his faithfulness.

And was not our Lord betrayed?  That, too, we say every time we come to this table: “On the night in which he was betrayed.”  We sup as Jesus did with his disciples, but let us not forget that he went out from the meal to his death.  Jesus’ words to us tonight are that we should not be surprised if we are asked to follow in his footsteps.  It may be that there are those of us here who, like him, will lose our earthly lives for the sake of the Gospel.  Perhaps it will be we who are remembered as saints of the church, used as a model for those who come behind us, as we go before the Lord on behalf of those who suffer after us as they, too, wait for the second coming of Christ.

There is no escaping the death of the body.  But St. Augustine asserts, “The soul dies when it loses God.”  So let us hold fast, knowing that by our perseverance we will secure our lives.  And when the clouds of doubt arise in the complaint that “It’s not fair,” my prayer is that you may feel what Malachi promised, the glowing rays of the sun of righteousness that shall rise, with healing in its wings.

So let us offer our lives like the bread that is brought forward at the time of this meal.  Events occur and nature gives us what it will, good or bad.  In the midst of all of this, we work.  And God transforms our efforts.  God transforms us.  To resist Jesus’ prophetic voice is to deny our salvation, and to miss out on beauty that our minds cannot conceive.

Blessed be God forever.

– Anna Butler