Hebrews 12:1
A Great Cloud of Witnesses

August 23, 2009, Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18 Ephesians 5:21-23 John 6:51-61, 66-69

To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]

First reading from Joshua

Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem, summoning their elders, their leaders, their judges, and their officers. When they stood in ranks before God, Joshua addressed all the people: “If it does not please you to serve the LORD, decide today whom you will serve, the gods your fathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are now dwelling. As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” But the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD for the service of other gods. For it was the LORD, our God, who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, out of a state of slavery. He performed those great miracles before our very eyes and protected us along our entire journey and among the peoples through whom we passed. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

The word of the Lord
Thanks be to God

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John
Glory to you, Lord.

Jesus said to the crowds: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”At this the crowds began to argue fiercely among themselves, “How can He give us his flesh to eat?” Thereupon Jesus said to them: “Let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate bread from heaven and died nevertheless, the one who feeds on this bread shall live forever.”Jesus said this as He taught in the synagogue in Capernaum.

After hearing his words many of Jesus’ disciples remarked among themselves, “This sort of talk is hard to take. How can anyone take it seriously?” Jesus well aware of his disciples’ grumbling asked them, ”Does this scandalize you? From that time on, many of his disciples parted company with Him and returned to their former way of life. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered Him, “Master, if we leave you to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ

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Introduction
No better place to go

My dog is a typical canine; when he hears the car keys clanging, he’s up and at it and ready to go. I always take him with me because it’s so much easier than having to get down on my knees and try to explain to his sad drooping face why he can’t come along. He simply doesn’t understand.

If I’m going grocery shopping on a hot summer day, I park in a shady place and leave the car windows wide open. One day a lady passing asked, “Aren’t you afraid he’s going to jump out of the window and take off?” The words of Simon Peter to Jesus came reverently to mind, and I said to her, “If my dog leaves me, to whom shall he go?” My dog, you see, has it made; he has no better place to go. I prepare three square meals a day for him, even though he never lifts a finger to help me cut the lawn in the summer or shovel the snow in the winter.

Jesus & the church: a scandal

Jesus makes the incredible claim that He is bread from heaven and that whoever eats his flesh and drink his blood will live forever. That stirs great unbelief among the crowds. Hearing their grumbling He asks, “Does this scandalize you?” It’s a literal translation of the Greek scandalidsei. Less literal translations read, “Does this shake your faith” or “Does this shock you?” or “Does this cause you to stumble?”(Jn 6:61).

In Corinthians Paul writes, “Jews demand signs and Gentiles look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified who is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (I Cor. 1:23) In the Greek text the word for stumbling block is scandalum. Jesus at times was a scandal, i.e., a stumbling block. At times He made it hard for people to believe in Him and easy for them to turn their backs and walk with Him no longer. At the end of the day, Jesus’ mortal humanity, which could be nailed to a cross and die, was a scandal – a stumbling block - to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

Like Jesus in his humanity the church, too, in her humanity is often a scandal -- a stumbling block. The scandal of clergy sex abuse (which came to light in recent years) shocked the faithful. For a few that scandal became a last straw--the excuse they were looking for and finally found--to turn their backs on the church and walk with her no longer.

Morris West: why he didn’t leave the church

Australian writer Morris L. West (1916-1999) found the church to be a scandal – a stumbling block. West who had been a Christian Brother but left without taking final vows is famous among Catholics especially for his books The Devil’s Advocate and The Shoes of the Fisherman. The latter book envisioned the election and career of a Slavic Pope, 15 years before Karol Wojtyła, a Pole, became Pope John Paul II. West died while working at his desk on the final chapters of his novel The Last Confession. It’s about the trials and imprisonment of Giodano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for heresy, February 17, 1600, at Campo de' Fiori in Rome. West had long sympathized and even identified with Bruno. In A View from the Ridge, West tells us why he didn’t leave the church.

I believe I can say with certainty that I remained in communion with the Church even when the Church itself excluded me,[3] and I remain there still, principally because of the presence of John XXIII, the Good Pastor, whom I never met, though I did meet his predecessor and his successor. Goodness went out from this man to me. I acknowledged it then. I acknowledge it again.

The Romans named him un Papa simpatico. And everyone wished he were younger, so that the imprint of his personality might be deeper on the corporate life of the Church and the common life of the world. We had had a surfeit of princes and politicians and theologians – even of conventional saints. We needed a man who spoke the language of the heart, who understood that the dialogue of God with man is carried on in terms far different from the semantics of professional philosophers. We had John too briefly.

Sr. Joan Chittister: why she doesn’t leave the church

Sister Joan Chittister, OSB (b. 1936- ), an internationally known theologian, also sees the church as a scandal – a stumbling block. She is highly critical of the church. She maintains it is riddled with inconsistencies, closed to discussion about those inconsistencies, and is sympathetic only to invisible women. One day a woman asked her out-rightly, “Why doesn’t such an unhappy woman like you leave the church?” In response Chittister used the imagery of an oyster to explain. The oyster defends itself against the irritation of sand within itself by secreting a substance. The more sand in the oyster, the more chemical the oyster produces until finally, after layer upon layer of gel, the sand turns into a pearl of great price (Mt 13: 44-45).
If she would rid herself of the irritation by leaving the church, she said, the process would be over, and at the end of the day there would be no pearl of great price, neither in her nor in her church. “Over the years,” she writes, “I have come to realize that the church is not a place; it is a process. And if you leave the church you leave part of the process that cultivates a pearl in you and in your church. So I stay in the church as a restless pilgrim.”

Chittister reminds us that Thomas Aquinas said we might have to leave the church if that became necessary to save our souls. Aquinas warns us, however, not to leave quietly if we leave, or not to stay quietly if we stay. By speaking, she says we perform a needed ministry of irritation, like the sand that irritates the oyster but causes a pearl of great price.

Fr. Hans Küng: why he doesn’t leave the church

Swiss- German theologian Fr. Hans Küng (b. 1928) also finds the church to be a scandal -- a stumbling block -- for a litany of reasons which are more theologically profound than sexual misconduct. In a little volume entitled Why I am still a Christian he writes that he cannot believe:

- that Jesus who warned the Pharisees against laying intolerable burdens on people’s shoulders would today declare all artificial contraception to be mortal sin;
- that He who particularly invited failures to his table would forbid all remarried divorced people ever to approach that table;
- that He who was constantly accompanied by women (who provided for his keep), and whose apostles, except for Paul, were all married and remained so, would today forbid marriage to all ordained men, and ordination to all women;
- that He who said “I have compassion on the crowd,” would have increasingly deprived congregations of their pastors and allowed a system of pastoral care built up over a period of a thousand years to collapse;
- that He who defended the adulteress and sinners would pass such harsh verdicts in delicate questions requiring discriminating and critical judgment, like pre-marital sex, homosexuality and abortion.

In that same little volume Fr. Küng tells why he doesn’t leave the church despite his long litany of complaints. “First of all,” he says, “despite all my criticisms and concerns, I can nevertheless feel fundamentally positive about a tradition in which I live side by side with so many others, past and present.” Furthermore, Küng writes, “I would not dream of confusing the great Christian tradition with the present structures of the church, nor [would I dream of] leaving the definition of true Christian values to its present administrators[4].” In that great Christian tradition, Küng says, he finds “a spiritual home on which I do not want to turn my back.”

Conclusion
A great cloud of witnesses

Despite the clergy sex abuse, despite the refusal of the church to deal meaningfully with the shortage of priests; despite her macho approach to the ordination of women, despite the church’s great pretense that gays do not exist or that the faithful don’t practice birth control--despite all that, we still find in the church “a spiritual home on which we don’t want to turn our backs.”

Despite everything, we “feel fundamentally positive” about a church suffused with a great cloud of witnesses[5] living and dead. In that great cloud are St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Pope John XXIII, former Archbishop of Seattle Raymond Hunthausen, former Auxiliary bishop of Detroit Thomas Gumbleton, Capuchin friar Sean Patrick O’Malley, the present Cardinal Archbishop of Boston, Eunice Kennedy Shriver[6] and many other witnesses big and small. If we leave the church we leave that great cloud of witnesses nurtured by a church which is a strange mixture of the human and the divine. Despite everything, we remain in the church as West, Chittister, Küng and many others remain in the church because, like my dog who won’t jump out of the open windows of my car on a hot summer day, we have no better place to go.

[1] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!

[2] Acts of the Apostles 17:24

[3] Though West was and always remained a Catholic, his writings contain a good deal of criticism about the church, and the institution was not always pleased with him.

[4] Why I am still a Christian was written back in 1986 when John Paul II was pope.

[5] Hebrews 12:1

[6] Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of President JF Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy,[6] died Tuesday, August 11, 2009. She was a saint.