Homily Easter

June 7, 2020

How many of you have heard of The Moth. It is on public radio and you can also get it as a podcast. It is people telling personal true stories before a live audience without notes. I listen to it all the time. I want to give you the reader’s digest version of one of the stories. There was a woman who was going to a men’s prison once a week to do ministry as part of a college class. She went once a week with 10 other students. They went together in a van. One day, when they were supposed to go to the prison there was a famous musical group giving a concert at the same time. Everyone wanted to go to this concert. When it was time to go, this woman was the only one that showed up, so she went alone. When she got there, one of the men asked: “Where are the other 10?” She explained they chose to go to the concert instead. He responded: “Don’t you like their music?”

She responded: “I love their music.” He responded: “Then what are you doing here?” She responded: “I came here because I love you. I love you guys.” The man began to weep because he had never experienced this kind of love. One by one these grown men, hardened criminals, were reduced to tears. They never experienced this kind of love. Do you think this is why they ended up in prison to begin with? I don’t know.

What do you think? We need to learn how to love and I think we learn how to love by being loved.

Today we celebrate the Trinity. We have heard many times that God is love. You cannot love alone.

That is called narcissism. But within the Trinity, the Father loves the Son unconditionally, the Son loves the

Father with this perfect love and the overflowing of this perfect love is the Holy Spirit. They are in this eternal relationship exchanging this perfect love. We were created in the image and likeness of God. We were created with the capacity to love as God loves, but we need to learn how to do that, and this is a lifelong effort. Babies are totally self centered. It is all about their needs and wants, and I watch our young families, parents bending over backwards, self sacrificing for their children. At some point, our children need to learn that is how they are to love their siblings and their parents and their friends. If you did not grow up in a loving family, you may not have learned that. We can learn how to love by experiencing the love of Jesus. Jesus also gave us an example of how we are to love one another.

1 In the second reading, we are told to “Greet each other with a holy kiss.” Right now we cannot even have the “Sign of Peace,” but this used to be called the “Kiss of Peace” and this holy kiss was actually part of our liturgy until 1582. I have heard people say that they think our new normal will be mainly relating to one another through technology, Zoom and email and cell phones. I do not think that will be our future. We are relational by our very nature and I think this personal contact is necessary for our well being.

We have worked a lot on being welcoming as a Parish Family and I think we have gotten pretty good at it. We know that welcoming is not just letting people into our church and Parish; it is about making them feel as though they belong, including them, trying to help them, and finding them a place at the table. It is about loving them. We need to start extending this love beyond our Parish borders. We have a problem with racism in our country that has come to light with the recent demonstrations. I agree with the cause, not the violence.

We think we have made progress, but maybe we just stopped talking about it. Everyone knows that it is socially unacceptable, so we do not verbalize it. If we can face this problem head on and work toward solving it, that could be some good that comes out of this pandemic. I heard from a 17 year old black man that runs track. He loves to run, but he lives in a predominately white neighborhood, so he cannot run in his neighborhood. He has been stopped by police while running and was asked what he was running from. I see a lot of people running down Newburgh and I never wonder what they are running from. This should not happen.

This problem is something that could be solved with love. When we see people of color we need to go out of our way to welcome them. Welcoming people of color is not about just letting them into our clubs, our churches or our neighborhoods. It is about making them feel that they belong, helping them, and finding them a place at the table. We need to love them. The more contact we have with people of other races the more we will find out that our fears are unfounded. It is all about the love. Shortly after I was ordained a wise pastor gave me some advice. He said: “Jim, your job as a pastor is to love your parishioners and then it is their job to love each other. It is all about the love. Never forget that.” And I never have.