Thursday, December 29, 2016

Homily, Thursday in Christmas Week preached by Sr. Constance Joanna SSJD


St. John’s Convent, December 29, 2016
Sr. Constance Joanna




“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”
These are the theme words that are spoken in the beautiful 2011 film The Help. It takes place at the height of the American Civil Rights Movement in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi – ostensibly the worst of all the states for its mistreatment and persecution of African Americans.

Aibileen, the black housemaid for a prominent and wealthy Jackson family, says to the toddler she looks after, in her southern black Creole dialect: “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” She makes the child repeat the words. And when Aibileen is later fired because she has spoken out against the injustices to African Americans, she speaks these words to the child again, and again makes her repeat them. “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” As she leaves the house, the toddler screams after her, “Aibileen, don’t leave.” Aibileen is the only person in her life who has made her feel special, who has taught her that she is loved.

The words are in strong contrast to the institutionalized racism of the south. Somehow Aibileen must have grown up hearing these words from her own mother – how else could she possibly have survived the verbal abuse she received from her white employers? Particularly the “you is kind” part.

But would this white toddler that she looks after grow up to teach her children that they were special and loved? Or would she simply interpret the words as an expression of her own sense of entitlement? Would she be kind as well as smart and important? That is an issue at the heart of today’s readings.

In the gospel, Mary and Joseph bring their child to be presented to God in the temple, and they make the customary offering required of a poor family – a couple of small birds. They did what many young couples did at the time. But there was something special about this child and this event. Simeon, known to the people in Jerusalem as a holy man who prayed for the coming of the Messiah, took the child in his arms and praised God in the words we have come to know as the Song of Simeon and which we sing at Compline every night:
He could now die rejoicing because his hope had been fulfilled:

Lord, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel. (Luke 2:29-32)

How that song must have warmed the hearts of Mary and Joseph – and most likely the child as well. Even at 40 days old, a child knows when he or she is loved; a child can feel the meaning of the words “you are special, you are kind, you are smart.” Even if they can’t yet process the words intellectually, they know they mean “you are loved.”

And Simeon’s song was not the first time that Mary and Joseph had heard words about their special child. Mary heard them from the angel Gabriel. Joseph heard the message when an angel spoke to him in a dream. Mary heard it again when she visited her cousin Elizabeth and the child in Elizabeth’s womb leapt for joy, Elizabeth responding with the words “blessed are you and blessed is the child in your womb.” They both heard it on the night of Jesus’ birth, from angels and from shepherds. This child is special, holy, loved. He will also be kind, and smart, and important – not self-important but important because he is God’s beloved and important to salvation history.

And – Simeon now adds when he blesses Mary and Joseph – “he is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34)

This holy and special child has come to teach that every human being is holy and special, and that message is going to threaten the establishment – as it did 2,000 years later in Jackson, Mississippi. And as it is doing now in Europe and North America.

Writing nearly 100 years after Jesus’ birth, and with the hindsight of the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, someone in the community of St. John wrote:

Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness. (1 John 2:9-11)

This is a really strong reminder that while God has created each of us to be unique, special, holy – to be God’s beloved – we have also been created to share that love, to love others as God loves us.

The toddler’s mother in the movie declares “I am a Christian woman” and yet she has no respect for either the lower classes of white people she calls “white trash” or for black people. But Aibileen demonstrates a love for her own children and her own people as well as for the rich white children she looks after and for the ostracized “white trash.” Her love is universal, and like Jesus it drives her to work for justice.

Aibileen is clearly a follower of Jesus, and she lives out Jesus’ teachings. She is also a kind of Simeon who can raise up a child and say “you are special.”

May you be kind, sharing Jesus’ love with all.

May you be smart – smart enough to know how desperately others need your love.

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And may you know you’re important – not with the self-importance that can cause us to treat each other unkindly, but with the importance that comes from knowing we are God’s beloved and are meant to share God’s love in every way we can.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Homily for St. John’s Day, December 27, 2016


The Rev. Lucy Reid, Incumbant of St. Aidan in the Beach, Toronto


Readings: Sirach 15:1-6; Psalm 93; 1 John 1:1-9 John 21:19-24



It’s such a privilege and a pleasure for me to be here with you on your patronal festival. Thank you. And may I wish you all a merry Christmas and a hopeful new year.


I want to share some reflections that come from the writings of John Philip Newell on John the Evangelist, or John the Beloved as he is sometimes called. Newell writes that in the Celtic tradition when John leans into Jesus at the last supper he is listening to the heartbeat of God. And, seen that way, Newell writes:
He became a symbol of the practice of listening—listening deep within ourselves, within one another, and within the body of the earth for the beat of the Sacred Presence.


And he continues:
Do we know that within each one of us is the unspeakably beautiful beat of the Sacred? Do we know that we can honor that Sacredness in one another and in everything that has being? And do we know that this combination—growing in awareness that we are bearers of Presence, along with a faithful commitment to honor that Presence in one another and in the earth—holds the key to transformation in our world?
-Newell, The Rebirthing of God, 2014 (Skylight: New York) xvii.

In the passage from Sirach that we heard before the gospel today, describing the one who seeks and finds Wisdom, it says that such a one “will lean on her.” This echoes the image of John leaning into Jesus, who embodied Holy Wisdom.

When we encounter true wisdom, we discover or remember who we are, and who God is.
As Newell writes, The gospel is given to tell us what we do not know or what we have forgotten, and that is who we are, sons and daughters of the One from whom all things come. It is when we begin to remember who we are, and who all people truly are, that we will begin to remember also what we should be doing and how we should be relating to one another as individuals and as nations and as an entire earth community.
John Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts, 2008 (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco) p7-8.


The contemplative life, as you know better than I, enables us to listen to the heartbeat of God, to hear our true name, to see as God sees with compassion and hope. Sometimes the contemplative life simply enables us to keep calm and carry on in the midst of the messy brokenness and pain of the world around.


The contemplative way helps us all to see the treasure hidden in the field, the Christ child in the most ordinary of places, the handprints of God in all of creation.


Newell shares another image to convey this hidden truth:
A nineteenth-century teacher in the Celtic world, Alexander Scott, used the analogy of royal garments. Apparently in his day, royal garments were woven through with a costly thread, a thread of gold. And if somehow the golden thread were taken out of the garment, the whole garment would unravel. So it is, he said, with the image of God woven into the fabric of our being. If it were taken out of us, we would unravel. We would cease to be. So the image of God is not simply a characteristic of who we are, which may or may not be there, depending on whether or not we have been baptized. The image of God is the essence of our being. It is the core of the human soul. We are sacred not because we have been baptized or because we belong to one faith tradition over another. We are sacred because we have been born.
- Newell, Christ of the Celts, 2008 (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco) 2-4.


John the Beloved shows us this golden thread.
May we, like him, lean into the loving heart of Jesus, lean into Wisdom, and listen to the heartbeat of God. Amen.





Read about Lucy Reid's spiritual journey HERE 

Monday, December 5, 2016

Homily: Advent 2, Year A


St. John’s Convent, December 4, 2016

Sr. Constance Joanna, SSJD

Isaiah 11.1-10         Psalm 72.1-7, 18-19
Romans 15.4-13 Matthew 3.1-12


CHARLIE THE BAPTIST

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord,  make his paths straight.” (Isaiah 40.3; Matthew 3.3)

In the classic TV animated film first shown in 1965, Charlie is a typical post-modern guy going through an existential crisis as he is growing up. He feels bad about himself: a failure, unloved, ridiculed, alienated from his culture but seeking meaning in his life, desperate to be accepted, longing for unconditional love which he has found not in his peers, not yet in God, but in his beloved and faithful dog. (Don’t forget though that dog is God spelled backward!)

In 2016 Charlie is just as relevant as he was 50 years ago. It seems as if a lot has changed in western society – and it has – but one thing that has not changed is peoples’ longing for God, for acceptance, for belonging, for love.

When the story opens, Charlie is feeling depressed. He hates the commercialization of Christmas but doesn’t understand why because he doesn’t really understand Christmas. He goes to Lucy for psychiatric help and the advice she gives him is to direct a Christmas play – she is sure that will give him the “Christmas spirit” (whatever that is) and will get him out of his doldrums.

But Charlie doesn’t have an easy job keeping a bunch of rude and unruly children focussed on a Christmas play. He probably feels like John the Baptist and would like to yell “you brood of vipers!” except that he doesn’t have the courage to do so. His friends just erode his lack of self-confidence more and he gets more despondent. He decides the one thing that might make the whole play hang together is a Christmas tree. Lucy wants him to get a nice shiny aluminum tree, but he is determined to find a real one – and ends up with the last one on the lot – a straggling, struggling little rut of a tree – rather a projection of Charlie’s view of himself.

When he gets the tree back to the auditorium where they’re rehearsing the play, all the kids mock him and make fun of the tree before leaving Charlie alone with the tree and Linus. Charlie cries the existentialist cry: “Does anyone know what Christmas is really about?” Or he might say, “is there any meaning to life?” Linus replies by reciting the narrative from Luke about the angels announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds.

Charlie regains enough composure to take the tree home to decorate, thinking that will help. The single ornament he puts on it makes the tree lopsided, even more ridiculous looking and he thinks he has killed the tree. But with Linus taking the lead, the other kids show up and take the decorations from Snoopy’s doghouse (presumably with Snoopy’s permission) and decorate the tree. The story ends joyfully with everyone singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and it reminds me of today’s passage from Romans:

May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 15.5)

The little community of “Peanuts” has come together against all odds, overcome their differences, and harmoniously giving glory to Jesus. Charlie, in his vulnerability, has led them to that place of reconciliation and rejoicing.

Charlie, it seems to me, is a lot like John the Baptist, the “voice crying in the wilderness” which is the theme of the second Sunday of Advent. He is the one among the children who has a passionate longing for the coming of the Messiah, though he would not use that word. He knows there is something more that the values of the society he’s living in.

The same was true for John. He came proclaiming repentance in preparation for the coming of Jesus, “the one who is greater than I”. While Charlie wasn’t asking people to repent in the same way, his mission was certainly to prepare the way for Jesus, to open his own eyes to the truth of what Christmas is about and to get others to see. His seeking Lucy’s help, his agreeing to direct the play, his looking for a real tree instead of an aluminum one, were ways of preparing the way – both for himself, to get himself out of his depression, and for his friends, family, and schoolmates.

And that tree! – Isaiah tells us that the coming Messiah is the branch of Jesse – another way of saying the descendent of David. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,” says Isaiah, “and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him . . . “ Charlie the Baptist’s tree reminds me of that branch of Jesse – just a small branch, a sapling really, like the tiny human born in a stable. Charlie’s tree reminds us of what great beauty can grow from something unremarkable –  even “despised, forsaken, rejected” as Isaiah describes the Messiah in another place.

And on that small branch of Jesse, we read, will rest the Spirit of the Lord – the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

And his coming will bring healing for people and renewal for creation: the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the lion – all will lie down together in the peaceable kingdom – “and a little child shall lead them.”

The little child in Isaiah reflects Jesus, the sapling, the little shoot from the root of Jesse. But it also reminds us of Charlie the Baptist or John the Baptist. John was, after all, only a few months older than his cousin Jesus. The vision of the Messiah was passed o to him from his parents Elizabeth and Zechariah. And so the grown-up John started as a sapling himself, a shoot form the roots of Elizabeth and Zechariah – one child preparing the way for another.

And what of us? Each of us is called to be a baptist, a forerunner – perhaps not literally baptizing people but certainly preparing the way for them to become followers of Jesus.

And how do we do that? I think the experience of Charlie and his friends can teach us a lot. We stick together. We help each other. We try our best to live in peace together just like the lion and the lamb. And after all is said and done, even when we give each other a hard time, even in conflict and hurt and misunderstanding, we help each other through the rough times, decorating a tree for someone who has hurt us or whom we have hurt when they are at the end of their rope as Charlie was, and allowing the beauty of the sapling to grow out of an unlikely beginning.

“They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain” Isaiah goes on to say. “For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.”

May each of us be open to be used by the Spirit to bring the knowledge of the Lord to those who are desperate to know about God and the Son and the Spirit. May each of us nurture the Jesse tree we have been given. And may we stand tall and straight, like beautiful trees ourselves, so that we may be signs of the coming Reign of God.