by Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B
Old St. Patrick’s Church, Chicago
My sermon preparation this past week
Took an abrupt turn on Friday afternoon
When the first news of the terrorist attacks in Paris
Began cascading across western media.
By now you know the specifics
6 coordinated attacks by 8 terrorists
Kalashnikov machine guns … identical suicide bombs
At least 129 dead
352 wounded
And the city of light – my home for two years
plunged into darkness
not from a hurricane or earthquake
Tsunami or other natural disaster
But from a partial eclipse of humanity
Rising from an abyss of cruel and vile hatred
some tragic irony that these appalling atrocities
Occurred in the shadow of today’s texts
that portend of an end time
a moment of unspeakable tribulation
marked by the darkening of the sun and moon
the obliteration of every celestial body
and the disruption of heavenly powers.
The conjunction of Paris and the gospel of Mark
Isis and the 33rd Sunday in ordinary time
makes me wonder … and maybe you as well
Whether that time has come and the end is near …
At least the end of humanity and civility as I imagine it
The text from Mark at the center of today’s readings
sometimes called the “little apocalypse”
might sound quite oxymoronic …
At least incongruous if not contradictory
This passage in Mark, with parallels in Matthew and Luke
Is called the little apocalypse
In contrast with the great apocalypse narrated
In the book of Revelation
With its often impenetrable images
Of crisis, judgment and salvation
this designation “little apocalypse” is a reminder,
as one commentator mused,
that apocalypses do not come in only one size
Over the decades … over the centuries
Human kind has witnessed many apocalyptic sieges
In past 100 years alone
sometimes described as the most violent in human history
we witnessed the annihilation of 6 million Jews in holocaust
And 66 million other victims of World War II
Then there were genocides in Armenia, Cambodia and Rwanda
Juxtaposed with these towering narrations
of inhumanity to humanity
Are the “quote unquote”
little apocalypses that make us gasp in horror
A German airbus whose descent into hell
found its resolution on a French mountainside
The attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo
That snuffed out the lives
Of 12 beloved artists and social commentators
The execution of journalists displayed for the world to see
In the most brutal of ways
And on our own streets, in our own city
Too much repugnance to enumerate
Especially the slaying of the lambs
The killing of the innocent
Including the recent revenge execution
of a 9 year old boy … a 9 year old boy!
Maybe the state of the world today
Is that we do and always will live in apocalypse now …
Not only with man’s inhumanity to man on a global scale
But in those micro-apocalypses of our lives
When love evaporates, the diagnosis returns
And especially when the beloved, the spouse, the child dies
And our universe collapses
Aren’t the faces that radiate back to us
from our own shrine of remembrance
Our own altar of the dead
Isn’t each a testimony to such micro-apocalypses
The upended of life as we knew it
as the stars fell from the skies
and our universe, as we knew it, came to an end.
So maybe it is not just the state of devolving humanity
In the present age …
But the very nature of human existence itself
That always and forever
Embroils us in an apocalypse now.
And what do we do in the face of such carnage
Such inhumanity, such insanity, such brokenness, loss and grief?
Do we only have recourse childhood prayers
Evoked by the first reading from Daniel
and pray as I did in the 1950’s
ironically for the conversion of Russia:
St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle …
defend us in battle
defend us in battle
I recount this macro and micro apocalyptic litany
Not to scare or depress
Not to alarm or demoralize …
But to stir the ashes of loss
To fan embers that fade
In order to incite the promised phoenix of hope
That we name God’s Holiest of Spirits
that resides in us individually and collectively
Personally and ecclesially
To stir that phoenix to take wing
not despite our gloom but within it
So that God’s holy hope might surge
Not only in solace
But also in mission
Passages like the one we hear today from Mark’s gospel
convince many scripture scholars
That Jesus, like John the Baptist before him
was a kind of apocalyptic prophet
that does not mean that they were predicting the end of time
prophets of global cataclysm …
which would be a misguided interpretation of today’s text
Rather, Jesus, like the Baptist was an apocalyptic prophets
In the sense that he was expecting
An abrupt and decisive change in the world
What the gospels characterize
As the inbreaking of God’s reign in the world
That is evidenced in Jesus’ first words in the gospel of Mark
Chapter 1, verse 14:
The time has come
The kingdom of god has come near
Repeat and believe the good news.
Mark twain once remarked that what he called
The “human race experiment”
Is either unfinished or hopeless.
The Jesus data does not, in my opinion, opt for hopelessness
Rather … the Jesus agenda was all about
Engaging humanity in the unfinished business of creation
Fred Craddock was a celebrated professor
Of preaching and New Testament at Emory University
When pondering apocalyptic literature
And coaching preachers how to approach
Texts such as today’s
This prudent and savvy believer wisely noted:
“maybe people are obsessed with the second coming
Because, deep down,
They were really disappointed in the first one.”
Bam!
In the face of the Parisian apocalypse
And those micro-apocalypses that punctuate our lives
The liturgy goads us into remembering
That Jesus’ very birth … his incarnation
Was an apocalypse as well … and for Christians
The decisive one.
While in the popular imagination apocalypse denotes
widespread destruction or disaster
that is not its original meaning.
In Greek, which I recognize 2 out of 3 times,
Apocalupsis means an uncovering, a divulging
Pulling back the veil on a larger, cosmic framework
In order to impart wisdom, meaning and especially hope
To a people who are currently suffering or oppressed
Jesus was a gifted and determined veil puller
Curtain raiser – Scene changer – And situational critic
His own birth, the first apocalypse, symbolizes that gift
For in assuming flesh, Jesus with the Godhead proclaimed
Things are changing
There is a shockingly new divine divulgence here
And that is that people matter …
Ever person matters …
Black lives, white lives, brown lives, yellow lives matter
choose your color:
all lives matter, whether on the streets of Paris
or in the alleys of Chicago
Furthermore, this 1st apocalypse was wed to an apocalyptic mission
For the followers of Jesus to continue to pull the veil
Raise the curtain – Change the scene
And shine the spotlight
On every inhumanity to humanity
Every act that diminishes human dignity
Not only attacks with Kalashnikov and AK 47’s butt
But on every slur – no matter how prominent the speaker
that characterizes Muslims or immigrants
Mexicans or Iowans
Pediatric neurosurgeons
or Asians who speak English as a second language
As stupid, stupid, stupid
To me that is the language of an apocalyptic false prophet
Who wants the world to collapse so he can fill the void
And does not take the first apocalypse of incarnation seriously
To say that we live in tough times is an understatement
St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle
Defend us in battle … Defend us in battle
Mark our gospel writer also lived in tough times
Which is why he portrays Jesus as such an apocalyptic prophet
Mark wrote in the midst of the 1st Jewish rebellion against Rome
That culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem
And the Jewish temple
Decidedly apocalyptic for Mark the Jew and his Jewish readers
But this larger apocalypse for Mark
Does not erase the first one … the incarnation … the mission
With its glimpses of hope in the final coming of the son of Man.
They say it’s a true story, those are always the best
A man and his young teenage boy checked in to a hotel and were shown to their room. The two receptionists noted the quiet manner of the guests, and the pale appearance of the boy. Later the man and boy ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. The staff again noticed that the two guests were very quiet, and that the boy seemed disinterested in his food. After eating, the boy went to his room and the man went to reception and asked to see the manager. The receptionist initially asked if there was a problem with the service or the room, and offered to fix things, but the man said that there was no problem of that sort, and repeated his request. The manager was called and duly appeared.
The man explained that he was spending the night in the hotel with his fourteen-year-old son, who was seriously ill. The boy was very soon to undergo chemotherapy, which would cause him to lose his hair. They had come to the hotel to have a break together, and also because the boy planned to shave his head, that night, rather than feel that the illness was beating him. The father said that he would be shaving his own head too, in support of his son. He asked that staff be respectful when the two of them came to breakfast with their shaved heads. The manager assured the father that he would inform all staff and that they would behave appropriately.
The following morning the father and son entered the restaurant for breakfast. There they saw the four male restaurant staff attending to their duties, perfectly normally, all with shaved heads.
In her fertile imagine, Emily Dickinson envisioned hope as
The thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
For Christians that thing with feathers is God’s sanctified Spirit
But not a spirit that flutters overhead
But wells up within us, out of the ashes
Of every micro and macro apocalypse that touches our lives
A spirit that unites rather than divides
Heals rather than berates
Honors rather than excises
And loves in the face of every difference
Urging us never to fear to hope, fear to hope, fear to hope
Through Christ our Lord.
(Rory Cooney’s “Do not fear to home” then performed by choir.)
© 2015, Edward Foley. Fr. Edward Foley, Capuchin, is the Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality and ordinary professor of liturgy and music at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
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