FIRED UP FOR SERVICE

Jesus said to them,

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Then he breathed on them 

and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

John 20

I began my path to priesthood 62 years ago: 12 years as a seminarian and 50 years as a priest. In fact, I celebrated my first Mass on a Pentecost Sunday in 1970 - 50 years ago! During the last 62 years, I have watched the stumbling of a once arrogant church. Like an aging old movie star in denial, she seems to find herself embarrassed on a daily basis these last few years. But, do you know what? I love her more now than I did way back then. Like an alcoholic approaching recovery, she is going through that inevitable break down that leads to a breakthrough. It’s messy, but it’s real. I don’t despise her because of her sins, I love her for her courage to keep going, in spite of her sins. I stand by her. She can count me in during these critical days of recovery.

When I say “church,” I am not talking about the Pope and the Bishops. I mean us! We are the church and I believe that we are going to get well. I see signs of hope and encouragement, even in the rubble. I see and hear more people looking for God today, than I ever have!  The problem is, there are more looking for quality spiritual food than there are places that can deliver it. People are grazing across parish boundaries, denominational lines and traditional sources, looking for something spiritually satisfying. I see and hear people sick to death of second-rate preaching and obsession with religious organizational trivialities. I see and hear people looking for God in growing numbers. This gives me great hope.

"As the Father has sent me, so I send you." 

Where is God?   For a few years, the early church stood around watching the heavens, anticipating the return of Jesus, as he had promised. Expecting it any day, they were content to sit and wait.  This feast marks the beginning of the realization that the return could be a long way off and the realization that they had to roll up their sleeves and get to work. They transferred their gaze from the heavens to the world around them. Once they received the power of the Holy Spirit, they were ready to carry on the work of Jesus to the ends of the earth until that time when he would return.

Where is God?  People may be looking for God in great numbers, but unfortunately the pickings are thin. Some people are looking backwards and romanticizing the past. They believe that God was alive in the “good old days” and if we could only return to those “good old days” then we would all find God again. Thy are playing vicious politics in every denomination from Southern Baptists to Roman Catholics. There are others who look for God in the extraordinary. Since they cannot find God in ordinary life, they run from one reported apparition and miracle rumor to another. Others find God only in the future. They turn to passages in the Bible and claim to be able to decode secret messages and obscure prophecies and interpret natural disasters as signs that the end of the world is immanent.  Rather than trying to clean up the world that God has given us, they yearn for its destruction by an angry God.

This feast does not deny that God has acted in the past and that he will act in the future, but it reminds us, in capitol letters, that God is acting, through us, right now.  The angels in the gospel for the Feast of the Ascension tell our earliest brothers and sisters in the church to quit looking up, to quit looking back for God, but to look around them and see God acting in the present. “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” “They received power when the Holy Spirit came upon them.”

My friends, the reason people today are looking for God is they are not finding him in the people who are supposed to be his ambassadors – us!  That’s why they are out looking in new and exotic places. It reminds me of that old bumper sticker from the 60s. “If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”  Instead of focusing our attention on being the best ambassadors of Christ, we are arguing over church structures and pious practices and looking for perfect church leaders. The purpose of today’s feast is that we have power to do good because we have the Holy Spirit.  Then when people see our goodness, they could experience the goodness of God flowing through us. In the Beatitudes, Jesus taught us to let our lights shine, so that people can see our goodness and seeing our goodness, they will give glory to God. 

The message today? Quit looking for God only in the past and the future! Find out what God is doing in our world today. Get to work. Unleash the power that the Holy Spirit has given you. Let God reveal himself through you. Together, we are Christ’s Body in the world, commissioned to carry out his work, right here and right now!    

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”