Lavish Love

As is sadly so often the case, today’s reading about King David [2 Samuel 12:7-13] is such a small excerpt from a larger episode that someone unfamiliar with the whole story might have some trouble figuring out exactly what’s going on. Even so, it is clear that David has committed a serious sin, but that God forgives him. David does actually get punished for his sin, but God’s commitment to the royal family of David is decisive. So he was forgiven and kept his special place in God’s plan.

The situation is completely different in the Gospel, however, where we meet another sinner, but a non-royal, not at all important, anonymous one [Luke 7:36 – 8:3]. I stress her anonymity, because this story has historically been the basis for a famous case of mistaken identity – identifying the sinful woman in this story with Mary Magdalene. The confusion may have been caused originally by the fact that Mary Magdalene does get mentioned at the end of the story – not, however, as the sinful woman but rather as one of the wealthy women, whom Jesus had healed and who accompanied Jesus, and helped pay the bills. (Mary Magdalene and her friends remind us that, from the start, the Church’s mission has always depended on collaborators able and willing to provide material support; but Mary Magdalene herself has nothing to do with the sinful woman earlier in the story).

Another common misunderstanding, which this story can help correct, concerns Jesus’ relationship with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were pious laymen, committed to living as religiously as possible, devoted to observing faithfully all the commandments of the law, but living in the world (not going off to the desert as some other groups did, for example). The Pharisees also had certain distinctive beliefs that separated them from the more conservative, priestly aristocracy, known as the Sadducees. Jesus shared many of the Pharisees’ beliefs – for example, belief in the eventual resurrection of the dead. After the destruction of the Temple, the Pharisees would emerge as the leaders in post-Temple Judaism, setting the stage for the next 2000 years of Jewish life. Their only real rivals would be the one other group to emerge from 1^st-century Judaism – the Christians.

Reflecting the later 1^st-century quarrel between Jews who accepted Jesus as their Messiah and those who did not, the New Testament highlights the conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees. Still, stories such as this, in which a Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him, remind us that the actual relationship was not always hostile in every respect.

Needless to say, this was not coffee at Starbucks. It was a real meal in a home, the kind of social and religious fellowship one did not normally share with just anyone.

Shortly before, Jesus had been acclaimed (as we heard last week) as a great prophet. Prophecy had by then officially ceased in Israel and was not expected to reappear until the coming of God’s kingdom. Hence the excitement generated first by John the Baptist and then by Jesus himself. Was Jesus really a prophet? Was he the prophet they were expecting? And how would one know for sure?

This accounts for the Pharisee’s reaction. If Jesus were really a prophet, the Pharisee figured, he would know who and what sort of woman was touching him! He probably wasn’t alone in wondering. Formal dinners were public events. The woman’s presence in the crowd watching the festivities was no big thing, but weeping and bathing Jesus’ feet with her tears, wiping them with her hair, and kissing and anointing them, that was not normally accepted behavior. If she didn’t have a reputation already, such behavior certainly assured her one!

Simon the Pharisee kept his reaction to himself. But we know his thoughts. And we know who Jesus really is! And Jesus does know who and what sort of woman is touching him even better than the Pharisee does. Hence his little parable about the two debtors – suggesting that if only Simon understood his own need for forgiveness, then he too might respond to Jesus just as the woman did.

The point, of course, is that we all need forgiveness. The anonymous woman appreciated what Jesus had to offer – nothing less than the forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God. The Pharisee had taken an important first step in inviting Jesus to dinner, but that was as far as he was ready to go. Like David before him, he could recognize others’ sinfulness but seemed clueless about his own.

When we hear this story, knowing already who Jesus is, we recognize the insufficiency of the Pharisee’s hospitality – because, from God’s perspective, everyone is like the debtors in the parable. Everyone is totally unable to repay. Everyone needs to be forgiven by God, who is willing to write off our debts, reconciling us to himself through Jesus his Son. So everyone should really respond to Jesus as exuberantly and lavishly as the sinful woman in the story.

The story ends with Jesus on the move again, journeying from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God, accompanied by the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities. What was that already but the Church in miniature? What was that but what the Church was then and what it must likewise be now – a community of forgiven sinners, reconciled to God and to one another, recognizing what Jesus had to offer and embracing him in a life lived in love, caring for one another and the world in a life lived in love!

 

Homily for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, June 15, 2013.

Man of Steel

I went to see the new Superman movie, Man of Steel, earlier today. I generally avoid action movies and have little feel for science fiction. But, having grown up with Superman comics and the George Reeves' 1950s Superman TV series, I find each new iteration of the Superman story almost irresistible. 

As I posted earlier this afternoon on Facebook, the movie has more mayhem and special effects silliness than anyone should need, but I thought it was worth it in spite of that. That's partly because - special effects silliness aside - the timeless story still soars, as of course does the star, Henry Cavill (formerly the Duke of Suffolk in Showtime's series, The Tudors). Thus, critic Kenneth Turan claims that Cavill is “a superb choice for someone who needs to convincingly convey innate modesty, occasional confusion and eventual strength.” I would agree, and add that Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner are excellent as Superman/Clark's kryptonian and human father respectively - the two figures who together formed him into the unique being he is.

What makes the Superman myth so special is how it highlights what one could call its "incarnational" theme - the alien who becomes human and who, while remaining kryptonian, identifies himself fully with the human race for the salvation of the human race. The analogy is not perfect, of course. No analogy ever is. But the parallel has been made many times. And it does resonate enough to be immediately recognizable. 

Indeed, one of the problems with the inevitable overdoing of the special effects silliness is how it distracts from Superman's assumption of humanity, how his identification with humanity determines his decisions - as does his heroic (but admittedly still human) morality. One of the most poignant lines in the movies is when one of the kryptonian villains tells Kal-El/Clark that the fact that he has morality will be his undoing, that the kyrptonians have evolved beyond morality, and that evolution always wins. The movie's outcome poses the possibility - and the hope - that that may be wrong.

Of course, evolution did win on Krypton, which was why the planet destroyed itself - because its culture had destroyed itself morally. It's not that Kal-El somehow rose above a decadent kryptonian culture, but rather that he escaped being formed by it and instead was formed in a non-decadent human culture (a traditional farming family in Kansas) which still had serious moral values. 

O Sant' Antonio

Today's feast of the "Evangelical Doctor," Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), one of the Church's most popular saints, reminds me of my first assignment - as associate pastor at St. Peter's parish, Toronto, in the late 1990s. One of the annual highlights of parish life was the St. Anthony Festival, in which for six years I had the great privilege of carrying the saint's relic in the procession through the neighborhood. What a wonderful parish community I experienced there! Anthony being my middle name, that also makes Saint Anthony one of my patrons. O Saint' Antonio, prega per me!

My grandmother was very devoted to Saint Anthony, to whom she had prayed for the safe return of one of her sons who was serving in the war against Japan. She had a high opinion of his intercession - and was of the opinion that he ranked very high in the heavenly court. Like St. Francis before him - and Padre Pio after - Anthony is indeed very popular. I'm sure the Franciscan habit helps!

It was the Franciscans who gave him the name Anthony when he joined the order in 1220 filled with missionary zeal to imitate the Franciscan martyrs of Morocco. He had been born Ferdinand and had initially pursued a more conventional vocation as a Canon Regular of Saint Augustine in his home city of Lisbon, Portugal. Anthony never got to Morocco. Instead sickness and shipwreck landed him in Italy, where he exercised a fruitful, productive ministry for the rest of his life - hence, the popular identification of Anthony with Italy and Italians' great devotion to him. He was a zealous missionary preacher - and, as anyone who wants to preach should aspire to be, also a very learned one. He was the first Franciscan professor of scripture, and was referred to as "the Living Ark of the Testament" by Pope Gregory IX.

After his death in Padua  on June 13, 1231, he was quickly canonized in less than a year. When his tomb was opened some 30+ years later, his tongue 9with which he had preached so eloquently and effectively) was found to be incorrupt. On that occasion, Saint Bonaventure, held the precious relic in his hands and exclaimed "O blessed tongue, that always blessed the Lord and made others bless and praise him, it is now manifest what great merits you possess in the sight of God!"

Preaching is not the only way God's kingdom advances in this world. As Saint Anthony himself said (in a sermon!): "The man who is filled with the Holy Spirit speaks in different languages. These different languages are different ways of witnessing to Christ, such as humility, poverty, patience, and obedience; we speak in those languages when we reveal in ourselves these virtues to others. actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak."

And, as Anthony's own life of heroic sanctity eloquently witnesses, preaching - aimed at true conversion - has its important part to play in evangelization. Historically, it has been understood as a constituent element of the Paulist charism.  Anthony's example of learning and eloquence combined with zeal for souls remains a model to be emulated, as he himself occupies his present prominent place in the Mystical Body as intercessor and miracle-worker.

The Titanic in Tennessee

My friend and fellow Paulist Ivan Tou (presently a pastor in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is in Knoxville this week. So yesterday the two of us  went to the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge.  Now what's East Tennessee doing with a Titanic Museum? Good question! This isn't exactly Belfast or Southampton or Cherbourg or Queenstown or New York or Newfoundland - all places with some tangible connection with the Titanic itself, either with its construction or its tragic voyage. And the Titanic clearly wasn't cruising too fast on the Tennessee River that calm, moonless night when it hit an iceberg. Yet here she is! (Or at least a facsimile of half of her!)

For all sorts of reasons, the Titanic's sinking became a quasi-universal tragedy. So perhaps it's presence in Pigeon Forge is not so odd, after all, speaking as it does to the universal interest and emotional responses that the Titanic evokes over a century after her sinking. And in fact it really is a great museum - filled with lots of information about the experience of being on that ill-fated ship and stories about the actual people who had that experience, only one-third of whom survived it. 
The exhibit includes photos taken by the Irish Jesuit Fr. Brown, who sailed on the Titanic from Southampton to Queenstown and took a series of pictures - the only photos we have that were ever taken during the actual voyage (photos found years later in the Jesuit house in Dublin). This summer, the museum also features for the first time in the United States the actual violin that was used by Wallace Hartley on the deck that night. The violin had originally been given him by his fiance, and it is the violin on which Hartley famously played the hymn Nearer My God To Thee, the last music ever heard on the Titanic.
When you enter the museum, you get a "Boarding Pass," with the name and some biographical information about a passenger. I got James Hyland, a 19-year of member of the crew (one of 431 in the crew), whose pencil sketch of the ship is included among the exhibits.  At the end, you pass through the Memorial Room, where you can look up the name and learn his or her fate. My guy survived - and died at age 81! 
The Titanic's tragic end occurred on Low Sunday night. The following Sunday, April 21, 1912, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) preached about the Titanic: "I believe that, just as we may not approach events such as this one out of curiosity and a thirst for sensation, nor may we disregard them in silence and indifference, however much daily newspaper reports might cause us to do so. Rather they should speak to us. For through them God addresses us with a power and urgency that we only rarely perceive concerning the greatness and nothingness of human beings who are so like God, and yet so unlike him, concerning the wrath and the mercy of the eternal God who reigns in us and over our destinies, sometimes close at hand and tangibly, but sometimes infinitely far away and mysteriously. (Tr. Christopher Asprey, in The Word in this World: Two Sermons by Karl Barth, ed. Karl I. Johnson, 2007)

The Summer of '63

Fifty years ago today, Governor George Wallace famously stood "in the schoolhouse door" to block the integration of the University of Alabama. It was the summer of Civil Rights, the beginning of a much more violent time in American life than post-war Americans had become used to, and also an important transitional season in the struggle for racial equality. The summer ended with the March on Washington and led eventually to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts under the effective leadership of President Lyndon Johnson. 

And 1963 was also the year of Buddhist protests in South Vietnam against the American's client, the Catholic President Diem, which culminated in a November 1 coup and led rather inexorably to a pattern of escalation of American military involvement in Vietnam.

The Civil Rights revolution dramatically transformed American society largely for the better. - so much so that it is hard to convey to those not then alive how different things are now. In the process, however, it created a template that claimant group after claimant group has invoked to pursue its own aspirations, regardless of how similar or not its grievances are. One result has been a vastly more open, more tolerant society, which younger people now more or less just take for granted as the obvious state of affairs. That undeniable benefit has been balanced, however, by the elevation of identity politics and a pervasive culture of grievance and victimization. The accompanying "political correctness" had created  its own intellectually "closed" society, which is the problematic underside of our much more open one. Meanwhile, politically, Barry Goldwater's vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act presaged a pattern of political realignment culminating in today's radically polarized political culture of "red states" and "blue states."

Along with the Civil Rights revolution, the Vietnam War was the other major contributor to replacing the world of 1963 with what we have today. Unlike the Civil Rights revolution, Vietnam's legacy was almost entirely negative. A long and destructive war which destroyed far too many lives was lost in the end. Meanwhile it set in motion an ambivalence and uncertainty about America's global role and the use of its military power that remains with us.