Spiritus Christi
February 21, 2021
Father Jim Callan
Last Thursday as you know, the United States landed another rover on Mars called Perseverance. It sent back pictures of itself landing on the surface, took some selfies, and then it showed the panoramic views of the planet, the characteristic red color of the Martian surface, the craters, the volcanoes, the rocks, the dry lakebeds and dry river deltas. A vast wilderness, an endless dessert. And now it is time for Perseverance to explore that desert.
So today, the first Sunday of lent we hear about Jesus being out in the desert. Mark says that the Spirit drove Jesus out in to the desert. It sounds like it was involuntary. Maybe it wasn’t his idea. Maybe God wanted him to have this experience and he needed a lot of perseverance to be there for 40 days.
Now the desert is not just a lonely, isolated place. It is a metaphor. It is a frame of mind. You can enter the desert any time you want. How? Just sit down without a book. Without a smartphone. Without headphones. Without a TV or internet. Without any electronic device. Just unplug and say, “Ok God! I’m ready.” And meet God on God’s terms.
Lent is a time to get rid of our sedatives and pacifiers. To let go of them just for a few weeks and get ready to meet God. What is your escape hatch? What is your pacifier? Books? Netflix? Alcohol. Internet. TV. What prevents you from facing the desert? What prevents you from facing the wilderness?
People have different names for the wilderness. The Twelve-Step program calls it “powerlessness”. Buddhist call it emptiness. Franciscans call it poverty. The author of Jonah calls it the belly of the whale. Mystics call it the dark night of the soul. Christians call it the way of the cross. Jews call it the desert. Today we might call it the Corona virus lockdown. And like Jesus, the lockdown was not voluntary. It was involuntary experience. Maybe God wanted us to have a growth experience. A desert experience. A time in the wilderness. So the wilderness is a time-honored place to sort things out. Now, years ago, Mike Ranella lost his teaching job and it was a terrible thing for his family. He tried everywhere. He applied to public schools, the Catholic schools, and the private schools. It was so stressful. At about nine months later into his search he was offered a job in Penn Yan. I said, “Mike that is so far away. Are you going to take that job?” He replies, “Of course I am! I’ve had enough of this character building crap.”
The wilderness might be a scary place but that doesn’t mean that it is a bad place. It is a holy place where we meet God. Israelites spent 40 days without any pacifiers or sedatives. And Jesus spent 40 days without anything to distract him. When you are in the desert, what happens? You confront your demons.
Now in the past evil was described as Satan or the devil or Lucifer. Today we say that evil is racism, sexism, militarism, greed, envy, lust, gluttony. These are our demons. Or we might even call the demon our ego. Martin Buber says that we cannot wipe out evil but we can turn evil into good. Just like when we lose a loved one, somebody close to us, we can never forget that person but we can turn our grief into compassion for other people.
Or when we deal with our alcohol addiction or a drug addiction. We never eliminate the addiction. But we gain a dependence on our higher power. Rabi Abraham Heschel, whom I got to meet one time, said: “The Biblical answer to evil is not good but the holy. The scared.” We are not alone when confronted with evil. God gives us power to overcome it. No matter what it is. Pride, gluttony, racism. So we need to be in touch with the sacred. What is the sacred? The Divine in us and in everything. Divinity in me and you and the plants, the holiness in animals. The divine in all of us. If we are out of touch with that sacredness and holiness we won’t be able to deal with the demons in our lives.
What to the demons do? They tempt us. They try to convince us to eat and drink things that aren’t healthy. To buy things that we don’t need. (That’s a big one!) Or tell us that God is an angry parent who is punishing us. Or to become work-alcoholics that deprive our families. A demon that might instill in us a fear of foreigners or superiority over people of color.
Now a big temptation for us white people is to avoid facing the present moment of racial reckoning. To use our white privilege to say we are tired of hearing this about Danielle Prude, about race violence and racism in Rochester. We have had enough homilies about this. It makes us feel uncomfortable. It makes us feel guilty. But our comfort becomes more important than the suffering than the people of color. You know, I haven’t heard any black people complain that they have heard this too much.
Jesus told his disciples in Gethsemane, the worse night of his life, the night before he died. He said, “Pray that you don’t fall in to temptation.” Do you remember what happened next? He said to the apostles, “Pray that you don’t fall in to temptation,” and the next thing they do is fall asleep. They entered unconsciousness as a way to escape reality. They couldn’t deal with Jesus being in pain. So they numbed themselves to sleep and they avoided that. They left Jesus to fend for himself in the worst night of his life. Jesus said ‘don’t all in to temptation,’ stay awake. Be with me and help me through this.
Then good old Jesus finds something to compliment them about. Don’t you love this about Jesus? Here they disappoint him like crazy. They fall asleep. He says, “The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” In other words: You let me down but I know you mean well. Even in his agony he finds something kind to say.
Jesus might say to us white people: Your spirit is willing; you really do want to end racism. I know you do. But your flesh is weak. You want to escape. You want to avoid the pain. You want to avoid the work that we need to do to get there. So this is not a time to sleep or to avoid our discomfort. We need to stay awake for the revolution that is happening. And a revolution is happening, something is moving on this planet. People of color have been crying out for 400 years just the way our planet has been crying out because of the stress that we put on it.
Martin Luther King often said: Don’t sleep through the revolution. Stay engaged in the fight for justice. Rip Van Winkle slept for 20 years and he slept through the revolution. Those are the 20 years that he slept. Don’t be like him said Martin Luther King.
So these are some of the temptations that we deal with. What did Jesus have to deal with?
Well, one of his big temptations was to use violence. To become a military messiah. That was appealing to him. Throw out the Romans violently because the devil said, “I’ll give you all these nations. I’ll give you the Roman Empire if you just worship me.” Be a violent messiah. This will be cool; you’ll have the whole Roman Empire.
So there was a temptation of Jesus. Jesus rejected the temptation of patriarchy. Patriarchy is about domination and control. Domination is behind slavery, rape, pedophilia, sexism, homophobia, war and racism. We saw unleashed patriarchy on January 6th at the Capital. Unleashed patriarchy. White men violently trashing Congress, leaving dead victims, not wearing masks because real men don’t wear masks. Jesus rejected these temptations. To dominate and control. It was tempting but he didn’t fight.
Another temptation was to turn the stones in to bread. To feed people. He knew people were hungry. They still are. His temptation was to feed people, to be a social worker, to be a nice guy to make life bearable, to be more comfortable. Instead of transforming life through radical justice. Just make it a little better instead of turning it upside down.
Another temptation, a huge temptation for him: Jump off the temple and watch people see God catch me. He knew he had special gifts and powers and he was tempted to impress people with those. To be a magician and to wow with his tricks instead of doing a more difficult thing which is speaking truth to power. Siding with the oppressed and then suffering their destiny.
Mark tells us something more about the desert. That Jesus was with wild beasts and there were angels ministering to him. So he had two things: wild beasts and angles. He had jackals growling at him, predatory birds sweeping down at him, poisonous snakes hissing at him but then he also had angles administering to him.
Isn’t that true for us? We have got beasts and angles. We have beasts trying to devour us. Cancer, diabetes, Covid, heart disease, arthritis, scam artist, thieves, dishonest politicians, terrorists trying to devour us. But then we have angles administering to us at the same time. You probably heard about that guy in Houston, Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale. Houston had a terrible week with snowstorms and power outages. It left people homeless and without water, electricity. This Jim owns a furniture shop and he is called “Mattress Mack”. He has been there forever. During this last week every night he takes out his furniture truck and he rounds up people on bridges, street corners. Every night in his furniture store he has 300 homeless people, including 100 kids sleep on his brand new mattresses and eating on his brand new dining room tables. He says, “Isn’t that what furniture is for? For sleeping and for eating?” He told ABC, “To hell with profits. This is the time to help people.” “The essence of living is giving,” he said.
Angles.
A woman said in the parish this week, “I didn’t grow up Catholic. But when it came to Spiritus I was impressed with how people were turning to God to help them. That was new to me. I was taught to be self-reliant. I had to figure out everything on my own. But now I see how important it is to turn to your faith. Now I am not alone.”
Last Friday some guys were working on a house across the street from me on Copeland Street. It was a Habitat for Humanity, refurbishing an old house. There was a guy in a truck who said, “Hey! Father Jim! Right? Do you live here?” So I came out and said to him that I didn’t recognize him. He said that he went through Rogers House 23 years ago. He knew Jim Smith, Pastor Mary. He went to church at Hochstein. So I asked about his going through the prison program and asked how he was doing now. He smiled and pointed to his name on his new Dodge truck. He said, “I own my own window and siding business now. All these guys are working for me. I have been sober all these years. I never would have made it if it weren’t for you folks at Spiritus Christi.”
Last Thursday night mass Bonnie Kryzanowski sang: We are standing on holy ground and I know that there are angles all around.
So today is the first Sunday of lent. We have 40 days to spend in the wilderness, in the desert. Is it enough to give up chocolate or dessert or scotch or prime rib? Well, that is a good start. But don’t stop there. It’s time to give up our beloved distractions and safety features and to face our demons. To let ourselves be uncomfortable. To let ourselves be silent and to hear the God of love, not those lesser Gods that we are very familiar with.
If lent isn’t scary for you then lent isn’t working. If it is not scary, it’s not working. L Those demons and beasts are threatening but don’t lose heart. Live the rover Perseverance that just landed on Mar, we can persevere. We are not alone; there are angles all around. And I’m looking at them right now.
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