WHAT’S IT LIKE?
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily is, “What’s It Like?”
This is a question and a theme we ought to reflect upon from time to time.
It’s a question that jumps out at me regularly – and especially from today’s readings.
Today’s First Reading and Gospel trigger the question: “What’s it like to have leprosy – a skin disease – when everyone goes, ‘Oooooh! Disappear!’?” Today’s Second Reading triggers the questions: “What’s it like to be Christ or Paul?” or “What it like to be denied or to be seen as a criminal or suffering or dying?”
What’s it like?
20 QUESTIONS
What’s it like to be alone at a wedding – and your spouse has died or left you or you had to break up – or what have you – and everyone seems connected to someone and you feel so single, so singular, so all alone?
What’s it like to have AIDS?
What’s it like to be out of work – and you have sent your resume to every company and every country on the planet and nobody seems to want you?
What’s it like to expect to make the team and you don’t make it?
What’s it like to have more acne on your face than a stop sign has paintball gun splotches on the first road outside a paintball gun shooting range?
What’s it like to come into church late because it was tough getting an aged mother or four kids organized for church and the traffic was crazy and the only seats are the front row of church?
What’s it like to have an emotional “Thing” and on planes or in church you have to sit in an aisle seat and you’re getting dirty looks for not moving in and you can’t explain your quirk in church?
What’s it like to have a couple of kids – and you do everything possible for them and two of them never ever say, “Thank you!”
What’s it like to have had an abortion and you come to a church that seems to only have pamphlets and pictures at every entrance about abortion – and you don’t notice anything else and you have made your very difficult and painful peace with God twenty years ago - but it seems to get triggered every time you come to church?
What’s it like to be a kid that loves skateboarding and everyone curses you?
What’s it like be wound up and your spouse is not wound up?
What’s it like to start telling a story – and you’re cut off by someone who wants to tell their story – which your story triggered?
What’s it like to be preaching and you notice 37 yawns and 23 watch watchings – in your 9 minute and 49 second homily?
What’s it like to be a Catholic and a couple of people at work say things like: “I would think someone like you would be a reader or more intellectual that that?”
What’s it like to have 5 great suggestions to solve the parking problem here at St. Mary’s or the traffic flow in Annapolis and nobody seems to care about your suggestions.
What’s it like to live in a dysfunctional family?
What’s it like to have had a mastectomy?
What’s it like to be overweight and you’ve tried 316 different diets and you have estimated that you have taken off 3,160 pounds in your lifetime so far – and you’re 6 pounds more than when you started your last diet?
What’s it like to have had plastic surgery and you overhear some friends in the other room laughing at your plastic surgery?
What’s it like to be me?
What’s it like to be you?
INCARNATION
One of the key words to understand in Christian theology is the word, “Incarnation.”
This can be a bit heavy - but I want to give some bread today - not just jam or peanut butter. You know the complaint about homilies: "All fluff; no stuff!"
So let me say a few words about incarnation – because underneath it is the theme of this homily: “What’s it like?”
The incarnation is saying, “God knows what it’s like to be human, because God became human – so we can become God.”
That’s a key message in the theology of Incarnation.
Incarnation.
We know the Latin word “carne” means “flesh” – from words like “carnivore” – “a meat eater” or “carnival” – “Celebrate – because Lent is coming. Say ‘farewell’ to meat”.
The great Christian message - the great Christmas message – is that God became one of us – in the flesh – in the person of Jesus.
Incarnation.
That’s an amazing message – a gigantic teaching – that Christ was both one of us and God at the same time.
Christ is human and divine. It took the church centuries of theological struggles – heresies, councils, in-fighting, etc. to finally come up with what we have in our Creeds.
For example, the great Council of Nicea (which is now part of modern Turkey) gave us the Nicene Creed in 325 which we say together after the homily each Sunday.
Arius, a priest in Alexandria, Egypt, got into a fight with his bishop, Alexander of Alexandria - on how and who Christ was. Arius didn’t believe that Christ was consubstantial or coeternal with God the Father. The Council of Nicea said to him and his followers, “Wrong!” and Arius and his followers were excommunicated.
We – who make the sign of the cross – believe there are three persons in One God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and all are equal – and all are One God. And Christ, the Second Person became Human – and has both a human and a divine nature.
This is tough stuff to fathom, understand, and believe – yet this is central theology to our faith.
The Incarnation – Mary becoming pregnant with God – with Jesus – is a big teaching to accept. Yet we’re all here week after week – because we believe.
Amazing. Not everyone on the planet accepts that.
We believe the great teaching of the Incarnation. We proclaim our belief every time we say the creed. “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”
Incarnation.
God became one of us.
We have heard and have read this mysterious message over and over again – especially in the Gospel of John.
Did God after creating us ask, “What’s it like to be human?” and finally become one of us?
That might be the 20th Question we’ll ask God after we die.
Christian theology asks the other question: “What’s it like to be God?” and God sometimes whispers, “Become Christ.”
Paul says that over and over again.
Christian theology says the Bread becomes the Body of Christ – and take and eat. Become what you eat.
Incarnation: bread becoming the body of Christ.
What’s it like to be Christ? Take and eat. Chew on Christ. Digest Christ. Become Christ.
What’s it like to be Christ? Take and read. Chew on the Word. Digest the Word. Let the Word become you. Become Christ.
At every meal we eat and talk.
At every Mass we eat and talk.
And hopefully by eating together we become each other – by sharing communion with each other.
Husbands and wives do this in the great Christian sacrament called “Marriage” – two becoming one flesh. Incarnation.
Good marriages and good families know this. That’s why there is so much hurt and pain when another dies or moves.
Great parishes are hard to leave. We’ve become one – a communion – a community – a parish family.
Great neighbors are hard to move away from.
We’ve become one.
CHRIST MUST HAVE ASKED THE QUESTION: WHAT’S IT LIKE?
As I listen to the scriptures I often think that Christ must have stood there or sat there for his first 30 years in Nazareth wondering.
What’s it like to be Christ?
I see him first of all as a watcher. I see him as a questioner? I see him as a wonderer before he became a wanderer.
I hear him thinking: “What’s it like to be a Pharisee? Why are they the way they are? Why are they so hard on themselves and other people?”
I see him standing in the temple and saying, “What’s it like to be a widow in a temple putting in her two copper coins and nobody notices her – not even herself – but every one notices the Pharisees and their loud coins?”
I hear him wondering:
· “What’s it like to be a person with leprosy and everyone shuns you?”
· “What’s it like to be a blind person or a widow and your only son dies?”
· “What’s it like to be deaf or a cripple or a child in the market place and nobody wants you on their lap to watch and explain the world as it goes by?”
· “What’s it like to be caught in adultery and the whole village wants to stone you?”
· “What’s it like to be a foreigner – a Samaritan – and nobody likes you?
· “What’s it like to be hungry or thirsty and nobody will give you anything to eat or drink?”
What’s it like?
CONCLUSION
The “What’s it like?” question can lead to incarnation.
The “What’s it like?” question can lead us to greater understanding of each other.
The “What’s it like?” question can get us to talk to each other and really find out what the other is thinking and feeling – by simply saying at the end of a day, “What was it like to be you today?”
The “What’s it like?” question can lead us to call up our parents and say, “Thank you!” or if they are dead, to talk to them in prayer and say, “Thank you!”
The “What’s it like?” question can get us to understand who Christ is and what he was about – that by taking time out to watch and wonder about others, we will see lots of folks all around us – whom we might not be seeing.
The “What’s it like?” question will help us understand the story we heard from Luke’s gospel today – that Christ also felt bad when only one person in ten came back to say, “Thank you.”
The “What’s it like?” question will help us understand Christ was not just a beautiful baby – but he was also like those with leprosy: the outcast, the rejected, spit at, laughed at, nailed to a cross, and crucified – and when it happens to us, we look at Christ on the cross and say to him, “Thank you. Now I know you know what I’m going through. Thank you. And now I know what you went through for us. Thank you.”
