SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER – DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY
April 12, 2015
Rev. Dcn. David Justin Lynch
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Acts 4:32-35 / Psalm 118:2-4;13-15;22-24 / 1 John 5:1-6 /
John 20:19-31
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, AMEN.
{Sing, plainsong} “The stone which the builders rejected has
become the chief cornerstone.” I
couldn’t have had a better set of scripture lessons on which to preach for our
inaugural Mass today. So many people
have walked away from church, spirituality and religion overall because they
don’t feel welcome. Saint Cecilia
Catholic Community is here to change that. Here, all are welcome.
{Sing,
plainsong} “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone.” What a wonderful text for Divine Mercy Sunday! Too much of
conventional, classic Christianity, catholic or otherwise, has been all about
rejection other people, being holier-than-thou, anything but merciful.
Christians have a bad name in the public mind because they’re seen as
judgmental, rather than accepting.
Starting a new church is not going to be easy. The demand
for church as we know it is diminishing. The latest statistics the latest numbers
from Pew Research Center, and other polling organizations for religion in the
United States, peg the number of people not affiliated with any church at about
twenty percent, and among those under thirty years of age , it’s even higher, about thirty two percent.
Agnosticism, that is people who aren’t sure about God’s existence, and atheism,
people who don’t believe in God at all, are also on the rise. Overseas,
particularly England, the picture is even less favorable, with over forty-four
percent having no religion among the general population, and over two thirds of
those under thirty years of age are non-churchgoers.
{Sing,
plainsong} “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone.” The world today outside the church is filled with more and more people
like Thomas. Yet, rather than show mercy, ardent Christians are very tempted to
pass judgment on, and reject, those who don’t to church. That’s called
“triumphalism.” It’s not uncommon to
hear statements like, “you don’t go to church so you’re going to blazes.” But
in today’s Gospel, that’s not how Jesus handled the situation. Thomas wasn’t sure Jesus had risen. Thomas
would only believe it if he could touch the crucifixion wounds of Jesus. The
response of Jesus to Thomas, however, was one of love. “Here are my wounds, see for yourself.” The
Gospel doesn’t tell us whether Thomas actually touched those wounds, but it’s
certainly possible. What did happen was that Jesus made Himself vulnerable, as
we all must do if we are to truly love others. Jesus was merciful to Thomas. He
showed Thomas His Divine Mercy.
Jesus invites us in the Gospel to show the same Divine Mercy
on those folks out there who aren’t part of our world at the altar. I can
guarantee you, we’re not going to attract them to church if we behave like the
stereotypical, judgmental Christians who turn off and turn away so many people
from the church. And even more
distressing, is that some Christians, like Pope Francis, talk the talk of
mercy, but don’t walk the walk. The fact is, Rome still officially bars
divorced and remarried persons from Holy Communion, won’t let its priests
marry, and won’t marry same sex partners. Here at Saint Cecilia’s, we’re going
to walk the walk of mercy, as well as talk the talk.
The fact is, the secular world is sometimes doing a better
job of being merciful Christians than are Christians. In Denmark, where a very
small percentage of people go to church or believe in God, there are four
weeks of maternity leave before childbirth, fourteen weeks afterward for
mothers, and parents of newborn children are assisted with well-baby
nurse-practitioner visits in their homes. Contrast that with the conservative
Christian politicians in this country, who pass anti-abortion laws, but slash
human services programs. To truly celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday would be an
anathema to them. The lack of mercy in
the American Christian community is most poignantly presented in the unholy
alliance between conservative Christianity and capitalism. To their way of
thinking, if you don’t work to support yourself, or you don’t have money, you
should starve. But as we heard in
today’s lesson from Acts, the early Christians were anything but capitalists.
They sold what they had and pooled their resources for the greater good of the
community. That notion is totally antithetical to the idea of distributing
goods and services in free market fashion based on one’s labor or one’s wealth.
What those early Christians thought
about first was caring for the human needs of the community rather than
personal accumulations of wealth. The dignity of the human person was
paramount. But can you imagine the members of a wealthy church, somewhere like
Christ Church, Greenwich Connecticut, or Saint James, La Jolla California,
selling their homes, financial investments, and other material goods, and then
turning over the proceeds to their church community, to be distributed on the
basis of need rather than merit? We all know that’s not going to happen. That’s
because the agenda of many of the wealthy people in this country is to enrich
themselves by rejecting stone after stone so that none ever becomes the chief
cornerstone. They do this by paying inadequate wages, opposing universal
healthcare, and shredding the social safety net – how antithetical to the
Gospel of Jesus can you possibly get? The message of Jesus, a message where the
poor will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, where the hungry will be fed and the
rich sent empty away, where the mighty will be put down from their seat and the
lowly exalted, where the blind see, the lame walk, where the mercy will be
shown the merciful, is not the world of the one percent who control the wealth
of this country. If Jesus were alive
today preaching the same message he did two thousand years ago, the religious
people among those wealth collectors would be the modern Sanhedrin, looking for
any way they could to persuade today’s Pontius Pilates in secular government to
crucify Him.
{Sing, plainsong} “The stone which the builders rejected has
become the chief cornerstone.” For Saint Cecilia Catholic Community,
Christianity is about acceptance, not rejection. We’re going to be here for all
the people who’ve been rejected by other churches. In starting Saint Cecilia’s,
I’m reminded of Saint Anna’s Episcopal Church in New Orleans. One of the first
things its pastor did to revive a dying church was to contact all the other
pastors in the area, and ask them to send him all the people that they don’t
like, all the troublemakers, all the misfits. That got him a flourishing
congregation that fills the church. For him, the Gospel was not just words. It
was an action. He did what Jesus did. Jesus dined with tax collectors, sinners,
and even with Judas, the many who betrayed him. Our job as Christians is to make rejects into
cornerstones. Our policy here at Saint
Cecilia’s is, and will always be, that everyone will be welcome here to receive
the sacraments, regardless of race, gender, marital status, sexual orientation,
or any other immutable or arbitrary category. In the words of the song from Oliver Twist,
{Sing| Consider yourself at home
Consider yourself one of the family.
Again, {Sing Brubeck} “The stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.” That’s from a jazz oratorio by Dave Brubeck,
and the reason I remember it so well and internalized it was because it was
sung to me rather than just spoken to me. Music has a way of penetrating the
heart that the spoken word does not and cannot. That’s why here at Saint
Cecilia’s, our norm will be to sing most of the service. At Saint Cecilia
Catholic Community, we’re here to put out a message that penetrates to the
heart, that all are welcome. It means belonging to one another in a lifestyle
of action, to make the Kingdom of God a reality, here and now, in this world.
{Sing, Brubeck} “The stone which the builders rejected has
become the chief cornerstone.” The
concept of resurrection is a much broader term than resuscitation of a dead
body. It means rising to a new form of life. It means coming into a new
existence.
Consistent with
life in the Risen Christ, Saint Cecilia Catholic Community is going to be a new
form of ecclesiastical existence, a new way of life for a church. It is going to be a musical community where
all are welcome, where everyone will be welcome to sing, play their instruments,
and compose music for the liturgy, with no auditions, mistakes and all. Sopranos,
countertenors, tenors and basses, all are welcome. Keyboarders, trumpeters,
guitarists, clarinetists, drummers, all welcome. We will be doing music of all
periods and styles, from medieval plainsong to Victorian Protestant hymns to
pieces written the same week as they will be heard in church for the first
time. We will be a place where creative people will be at home.
We are going to sing a new song unto the lord, a song to be
sung on mountain heights, to exalt this Coachella valley, to make its rough
places plain, and to build a highway for our God here in the Desert. In the
words of the song by The Carpenters,
{Sing}
Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad.
Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last
Your whole life long
Don't worry that it's not
Good enough for anyone
Else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.
I invite you to make that your vision of church. AMEN.
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