IS  ANYTHING  SACRED?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Third Sunday in Lent - Year B -  is, “Is Anything Sacred?”

That’s the question that hit me as I reflected on today’s readings - especially today’s gospel.

SITUATIONS

Have you ever found yourself saying, “Is Anything Sacred?” or “Isn’t Anything Sacred Anymore?”

What was the situation? 

Was it something that happened in the park or on a train or bus - or even in a church?

Was it something said in a song or a scene in a movie?

Was it the tone in political discourse - in debate - in talk shows - in conversation with coffee?  November the 6^th is a long way off.

Why do we talk differently when we talk about people when they are absent compared to when they are right there in our presence?

I think our everyday situations - can be looked at - in the light of Jesus’ everyday situations.

So what are the situations that get you to say, “Is Anything Sacred?”

What happened?

What was going on?

What triggered the feeling - the mismatch - the something’s wrong here reaction - the ugly anger in the moment or the situation because we didn’t expect what was happening to be happening?

TODAY’S GOSPEL: UPROAR

In today’s gospel Jesus walks into the temple area in Jerusalem. It’s near the feast of the Passover. The place is filled with buying and selling. Something’s wrong. There’s a discord. Jesus makes a whip out of cords and drives all the animals out of the temple area. He turns the tables on the money changers. Coins and doves go flying. Jesus yells out his motive: “Take these out of here. Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” Uproar results. Want to know why they crucified Jesus - as mentioned in today’s Second Reading? Here’s one reason. Here’s one scene.

What causes you uproar and agita?

What pushes your buttons?

What does your list of beefs look like?

Abuse of children? Offensive language? Going to a movie with kids and there’s a scene you didn’t expect? Noise in libraries? People who write in library books? People late for the play or the symphony and they come down the aisle rug in the semi-darkness  and their seats are is in Aisle C - numbers 11 and 12 - right in the center middle? Or a similar moment happens  at Mass. The reader is proclaiming the Second Reading.  Someone walks down the main aisle heading for a seat close to the front - and the person in that seat doesn’t  move in because they are going to give out communion or they like the aisle seat and the whole center of the church is watching - and missing the whole Second Reading?

REVERENCE - RESPECT - COURTESY - AWE

What’s going on here is the issue of “awe”.

Where and when do we learn a style of courtesy?

What do we find awesome?

What do we find awful?

What demands our respect?

What do we reverence?

Answers: persons, places and things.

Today’s First Reading gives us a list of commandments - which have as their underneath bottom line: the sacredness of God, the Sabbath, each other, marriage, children, neighbor, aliens, animals, property.

When I was at my first assignment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 1960’s, someone started a movement to clean our streets and improve our neighborhood. So on Saturday mornings in the Spring people came from all over the city to a street - say, “East Fourth Street from Avenue D all the way up to  2^nd  Avenue.” With plastic bags and brooms, shovels and trucks, an army of cleaners cleaned the street.

Then there was a lot - the lot with lots of stuff. I often walked down a certain street and there was this small lot in the middle of that street where a building once stood. It was filled with bathtubs, sinks, shopping carts with 3 wheels, mattresses, bottles, newspapers, garbage bags ripped with insides spilling out, etc. etc. etc. It was a place where you dumped what you wanted to dump and get rid of.

This lot was more difficult to clean than to clean a whole street. Some folks took the time to find out who owned the property. They got permissions. They got dump trucks and front end loaders. They went to work on that lot. Volunteers cleaned it all out. They made brick  paths. They got topsoil. They planted grass and flowers. They built a fenced in area for dogs. They put in some cement tables - with nice benches.

It took a lot of Saturday mornings, but folks made it happen. Walking down that street after that - seeing old men playing cards or chess - seeing grandmothers with little children - going by that open space that once was a dump, a different feeling would hit me.

Awe was my reaction. “Oooh!” was my sound. If someone videoed my face when I went by the dump and compared it to my face when it was a space and place of beauty, I’m sure you could see a vast difference.

Everyone has the ability to feel awe. This is the major proposition of this homily.

What do you find awesome?

The teenage boy with the skateboard - and a buddy with a video camera - going down banisters and steps - when looking at a replay goes, “Awesome!”  Homeowners and those in charge of maintenance at schools go crazy at scraped paint off banisters caused by skateboarders.

Some people like Beethoven; some people like Bach; some people close their eyes and sway back and forth during a Taylor Swift concert.

It’s in us - the possibility of awesomeness as well as reactions to the gross and the awful - whether it’s graffiti or people talking in the middle of a great scene in a movie - and we’re crying or emotionally caught up in the story.

Respect is called for. Consideration of others is called for. Reverence is necessary.

PROBLEMS RESULT

Problems result when there are differences of how we see what we see or don’t see - compared to what others see and how they see.

My face twisted. My mouth said, “Ooooooh!” I winced when someone showed me their brand new blue car that was keyed by somebody in a Mall parking lot. Someone scratched it along the side from the front door to the gas cap.

If the culprit who did this - could be caught - what would they say - if anything? Would it be cruel and unusual punishment to put such a person in stocks in the city square - like the Dutch did in colonial American times - with the description of their crime listed next to them? Would they or their parents have the cash to pay for the restoration? Could their trinkets be sold for the cost of restoration? How could they be helped to grasp the golden rule?

When it comes to just dumping paper or plastic coffee or milk shake cups and cardboard wrappers on our parking lot here at St. Mary’s it seems better to me than in the past. How do we get people to have reverence not just for their living room floor - but the living room floor of a parking lot? Do we give a specific class in the school the job of cleaning a street or parking lot - and surprise, they get the message?

This past week we went with some high school juniors and seniors to a 4 day retreat in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Mr. Matt Martelli - a wonderful teacher at St. Mary’s high school - announces before and after we get started: “Keep this bus clean. There is a plastic garbage bag up here. Put your trash in it!”

The team asked that the kids have the same respect and reverence for the retreat house. I sense that people treat rented cars and rooms and places with less reverence and care than their own stuff.

Is reverence and a sense of the sacred innate or earned or learned?

DOES IT START WITH SELF?

How do we gain respect, reverence, a sense of awe?

A few weeks ago, out in the corridor here at St. Mary’s, I bumped into a couple visiting from somewhere. They dropped into St. Mary’s as part of a self tour of Annapolis. First or second graders had been in the church for a kids’ prayer service. The lady said, “It brought back memories and tears to my eyes when I saw the little kids walk into church with hands folded.”

Does reverence, respect, awe, come from practice, practice, practice?

Does the reverence kids who making their First Communion depend upon their parents? How much does the reverence teachers who prepare kids for communion effect what the kids pick up? If they are told to make a throne to receive the king of kings with their hands - would that excite and insight their being when they receive Jesus for the first time in communion?

I like to drop into the space of this church - when it’s empty - quiet - and just imagine the sacredness and history of this place. I think of the prayers said in this space during the Civil War, World War I, II, the Korean, Vietnamese, Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. I close my eyes and think of all those baptized, married, and buried from here. I think of the priests from here serving the Naval Academy and the Naval Academy people coming up the hill to worship and pray here.  Just as these benches have gum under the seats - maybe over 100 years old because chewing gum goes well back into the 1800’s - so too these benches have history sticking to them. I like to sit in here and read Robert Worden’s book on the History of Saint Mary’s Church. I sense the Jesuits who came here in the early 1700’s and said Mass at the Carroll House on the top floor next door - and on and on and on. Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos preached and prayed in this church.  Do we, do visitors to St. Mary’s, feel the same awe folks feel when they enter or are at  sacred spaces - like St. Peter’s in Rome, the Grand Canyon, Chartres Cathedral or Lourdes in France, the Lake of Galilee or the Wailing Wall in Israel? 

Would growing in reverence by being in this sacred space effect and affect how we receive Holy Communion, how we treat each other, how we visit folks in nursing homes, how we look at baby pictures by overwhelmed grandparents who meet us at a Lenten Soup Supper, how we feel when we drive by a cemetery or a funeral hearse and a stream of 25 cars in procession.

CONCLUSION

Is anything sacred?

The answer is, “Yes!”

Rearranging just two letters in the word "sacred" we have the word, “scared” - and I would hope we would be scared when we and our families and our society lose our sense of the sacred.