In and Out Among Us

Sermon for the Sunday after the Ascension (RCL – Year B)
Offered by Nathan Ferrell at Holy Spirit, Bellmawr & St. Luke’s, Westville

Texts: Acts 1:15-17,21-26 ; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13 ; John 17:6-19

My friends, today we find ourselves in a state of narrative limbo.
This is an odd Sunday in the cycle of the Church year. We find ourselves today between the departure and the arrival. Today we sit in the waiting room. The ascension has passed. Our Lord Jesus has gone up into the heavens, but the Holy Spirit has not yet come.

But it’s not only odd for us. It certainly was odd for the apostles as well. What do we see them doing now in this waiting time? The work of the kingdom is on hold. So they gather to take care of administrative details. They need to elect another apostle. It’s a fairly mundane task. Matthias is elected by way of a prayer and a coin toss. He fills the vacant spot, but after this, he sinks away out of sight. Never again do we hear about Matthias in the New Testament.

This does not mean, however, that Matthias was not a faithful and devoted disciple. We must be careful not to confuse faithfulness with success.

“Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners.”
Let us remember that to be righteous is to be filled with a true inner goodness that reflects the amazing generosity of our Creator. But it is not flashy or spectacular. Most of the time, righteousness is a very mundane, ordinary affair. Most righteous actions go unnoticed and unrecorded.

Is this perhaps why the way of the righteous seems so hard to follow? Is this perhaps why the path of the wicked is so enticing to follow, even for those who know better?

If you pay attention to general church news, you will know that these days are filled with dark and confounding headlines.
Last week, a special commission of the Republic of Ireland released a 5-volume report that details 80 years of abuse committed against thousands of Irish children by monks and nuns of the Roman church. 2,600 pages of systematic and brutal violence against children in need: orphans and foster children. Along with numerous personal testimonies, these investigators were able to review confidential Vatican documents that clearly demonstrated how pedophiles in Ireland were known even back in the 1930s, and how they were protected by the church and moved to new posts whenever suspicions about their behavior arose.

The life lived by these children was horrendous. Thousands of children were forced to work every day producing rosaries, and were beaten every evening if they failed to meet their quota. Think of the shameful irony here: rosaries made to honor the Mother of God, and to remember the birth and childhood of Christ, made by frightened, tortured, abused children whose prayer to God for help was left unanswered for decades.

Think also of the twisted irony when he hear these words from our Lord: “I protected [those you have given me]. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost.”

I guarded them, I protected them. But how many have we lost today? How many has the church lost in our day?

God, forgive us for tolerating anything else but godliness and faithfulness among our leaders. God, forgive us, your people, for failing to protect and guard those you have given to us, for losing the children.

In the Gospel of John, this is called our Lord’s High Priestly Prayer, in which he intercedes on our behalf with the Holy Father of life. His words strike the heart: “Sanctify them in the truth,” he prayed, “your word is truth.”

But we human beings are quite adept at hiding from the truth. The annals of the wicked never cease to be written. Many of you heard of Father Charles Newman, who served as President of Archbishop Ryan High School, the largest Catholic school in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Two weeks ago he pleaded guilty to forgery and to stealing somewhere between $600,000 to $900,000 from the school and from his own Franciscan brothers. What could a single priest possible do with that kind of money?

More than that, my question is this: why is the narrow way of the righteous so difficult to follow? Do you think this money made Father Newman a happy man? Do you think he is happy now that he, at 58 years of age, will spend the next decade of his life in prison?

However: “The righteous are like trees planted by streams of living water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.”

The truth is that it has been this way in every generation of the church. As the great Saint Augustine said back in the 5th century, the church is a corpus permixtum: a mixed-up body, all jumbled together with both good and evil. But quietly in the background, rarely drawing attention to themselves, the saints of God continue on as the righteous of the Lord, with God’s love burning in their hearts, committed to living like their Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, to allowing his light to shine in them and through them.

You know the stories of the righteous, and the problem with determining between the two. How easily we mistake success for faithfulness.

Let’s take two recent examples of famous people recently in the news.
Mel Gibson is a famous actor and one who made a lot of noise when he decided to fund and direct The Passion of the Christ , released back in 2004. His stated aim was to present the truth of our Lord’s passion with artistic clarity and vision. Gibson, a staunch Roman Catholic, is a very successful man by most people’s standards. His fortune is estimated at $1.5 billion. He has been married for 28 years to Robyn Moore, the mother of his seven children. But now his mistress is expecting a child, and so he has left his family and is getting a divorce. Unfortunately, his apparent love for the Lord did not penetrate his heart, where it really matters. He has lingered in the way of sinners.

In contrast, take the new internet star, Susan Boyle, of Britain’s Got Talent fame. If you do not know her, she is a 47 year old single woman from Blackburn in western England who loves to sing and has an amazing voice. You never heard of her before April, when she made her television debut, because she spent much of her adult life working in a college cafeteria and caring for her ill mother. The youngest of nine children, Susan was born with mild brain damage. In school, she had learning difficulties and was bullied by her schoolmates. But she never lost her joy in life, and she faithfully labored at her mother’s side until her passing. Susan Boyle also is a faithful Catholic, and it seems that the message of God’s sacrificial love on the cross has indeed made a difference in her heart. Before her singing made its way across the internet like wildfire, she lived a life of quiet righteousness. Doing what needs to be done, doing what is right without any consideration for personal gain.

Remember, my friends: trees planted by streams of water grow quietly but steadily upward and onward. The fruit of our lives show clearly what is in our hearts. The light of God’s truth will always prevail. And the most important thing is for us to be faithful, faithful in all the small tasks of love that the Holy Spirit brings to us every day.

So may it always be among us here who are called together to new life in Jesus Christ. Amen.