26 Apr 2015
4th Sunday of Easter, Year
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[Scripture Readings: Acts 4:8-12; Ps 118:1,8-9,21-23,26,28,29; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18]
Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and
Savior? I know: That’s a rather
Evangelical Protestant question to be asking.
But it’s a legitimate question.
It’s pretty much the same question Peter asked the Jewish leaders. They had rejected Jesus. But that saw all the things the Apostles were
doing, and so Peter threw the question to them: So, my Jewish brethren, are you
going to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?
About ten years ago when I was in college for music, someone
came up to me on campus. He gave me a
flyer and asked if I knew Jesus. And I
just said to him, “Yes, thank you,” and went about my business. I’m pretty sure I threw the flyer away in the
next available trash can (I admit it).
But the question stayed with me.
And even today when I hear that question, I remember that guy on campus
who’d asked me if I had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.
Now, at the time I was already busy working in a parish as a musician
and choir director, and going to school so I could get better at it. I’d already
committed myself and my life to God and the Church—how much more could I prove
that I’d accepted Jesus? But that
question—or some variation of the question—was still on my mind. And, similarly, the assertion of Peter that there is no salvation through
anyone but Christ is still on the mind of humanity today. It’s a legitimate, relevant question.
Really, Peter seems to be getting at the basic question of commitment. He was saying to the Jews: “If you want to be
true to God, then commit yourselves to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And he says the same to us and to all people
today—and he does so without mincing words: “There is no salvation through
anyone else,” but Jesus Christ alone.
And so, Peter asks: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord
and Savior?
It’s actually a pretty startling question; it doesn’t matter
who’s asking it—whether it’s an Evangelical Christian on the streets or St.
Peter in the pages of Scripture. And all
the readings from Scripture today hit again and again on this idea of
“commitment.”
The psalm proclaims that “It is better to take refuge in the
Lord than to trust in man.” It’s better
to commit yourself to God than to other people.
And it’s good to give thanks because the Lord has “been my savior.” In the first letter of St. John, he writes
that we are “children of God,” we belong
to God; God has committed himself to us.
And in the Gospel of John we hear about the good shepherd who commits
himself to his flock to the point of laying down his life for them. We also hear about the sheep who commit
themselves to the good shepherd, who know the shepherd’s voice and who follow
him.
Scripture brings out very clearly today the idea of
“commitment,” and especially our commitment to the Lord and—by extension—his
Church. But this notion of “commitment”
isn’t talked about a lot. Nor do we see
it or experience it as often as we should.
Consider the divorce rate among US Catholics. It’s about 28%, which is pretty high
considering the weight our faith gives to the idea of “commitment.” And the rate among Americans overall is about
45%. And the very idea of getting
married in church or anywhere else has been falling off for decades now. Even the numbers of couples getting married
in our local Church here in Appleton is just a handful. We don’t see that commitment of marriage as
often as we should—especially within the Church.
Consider the falling numbers of vocations to the
priesthood. It’s good that we’ve been
averaging two ordinations a year for a while now. But when we have a dozen or so priests who
retire or die each year, we have a problem.
Anybody who knows to how to balance a checkbook knows that when there’s
more going out than coming in, there’s eventually going to be a problem. And with more priests going out than coming
in, we’re going to have a problem.
Bishop Ricken is known to remark that there isn’t a shortage
of vocations to the priesthood—rather, there’s a shortage of “yeses” to
God. In other words, there’s a shortage
of the value of commitment:
commitment to prayer, commitment to the idea of considering priesthood,
commitment to something bigger than ourselves.
Consider also some of the other ways we might expect to see
the value of commitment at work, but don’t always; for example, liturgical
ministries. Here at Sacred Heart, the
number of altar servers we have is low—it’s beyond low. The same can be
said for Readers, Hospitality Ministers, and musicians. It’s a beautiful thing to commit yourself to
serve at the altar of God, to serve as a proclaimer of the Word of God, to
serve the people of God by being the face of God when they come to worship. And yet, we struggle with our liturgical
ministries.
Now, it might be a long-shot to try and connect, say, the
need for more altar servers with that question: “Have you accepted Jesus Christ
as your personal Lord and Savior?” But they
are connected: It’s a question of personal commitment to God, a commitment
which plays itself out in the life of the community. Being an altar server is a way to express
one’s commitment to God. Being a Reader,
being a hospitality minister, being a deacon, being a priest, being a musician,
being a faith formation catechist . . . they’re all ways we concretely live out
our personal commitment to God.
Of course, there are literally countless ways that we show
our commitment to God. But all that we do comes—firstly—from who we are.
And who we are is a community
of people who commit themselves intentionally
to the one Lord Jesus Christ. The Good
Shepherd “lays down his life” for his sheep.
And we here at Sacred Heart—in this little corner of the Lord’s pasture—we
would, ideally, lay down our life for our Shepherd. Not as a matter of Catholic guilt, but as a
matter of committed love and adoration for God.
We do it out of passion for
God and our faith.
We serve at the altar of God out of love for God. We proclaim
the Scriptures out of love for the
Word. We get ordained, we get married,
we practice the virtues of faith, hope, and charity out of love for God and others.
Ideally, we do these things
because we are fully committed to the Lord as our Lord and Savior. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that
way.
If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we have to admit
that sometimes we’re not as committed to God as much as we can be. And that’s not just
a Catholic problem; that’s a more broadly cultural problem. The prevailing culture today isn’t a Catholic
culture—it’s not even necessarily a Christian
culture. The prevailing culture that we
live in today—and in which our children and youth are immersed daily—is a
largely non-Christian, and even anti-Catholic
culture.
When we come here for an hour a week, we get just a pinch of
Catholic spice in our life. And the
other 167 hours of the week we’re immersed in a broader culture which often
doesn’t nurture or even support our Catholic values—the value of “commitment”
being one of them. How can this not affect the shrinking number of new
priests we have? How can this not affect our views on all the big
questions of life: birth, death, marriage, family, human dignity? How can this not affect the numbers of people who truly want to be altar servers, or readers, or hospitality ministers, or
catechists, or whatever?
Our one-hour-a-week commitment to come to Mass on the weekend
just doesn’t do it. Maybe in years past
it worked . . . when Christian values were all over the place in society—on tv,
in the stores, at school, in the home.
But that’s all changed. We step
out the doors of this church and into what?
Into a culture which isn’t too interested in what Catholics have to say. And so, today’s Catholics are going to be
those who are intentionally Catholic. Today’s Catholics are those who’ll take personal responsibility for committing themselves to God.
Nobody “out there” is going to push you to do that—except
for, maybe, the Evangelical Christians and the megachurches. They’re
the ones who’ll get in your face and say: “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as
your personal Lord and Savior?” They’re the ones who’ll test your sense
of commitment. But not too many people are going to hold you
accountable for your specifically Catholic
faith. And so, we have to hold ourselves
accountable.
Every weekend we stand here before the altar of God and we
profess our faith. “I believe in God,
the Father almighty. I believe in Jesus
Christ his Only Begotten Son. I believe
in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the
one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.”
I believe. Not your neighbor, not
your spouse, not your friends, and not even God. It’s “I” believe. It’s your
personal commitment to God—and by extension—your personal commitment to the faith he’s given to the Church throughout
the ages.
Just after Christmastime, there was a little note put into
one of the offertory baskets. And on
this note there was a question. It went
something like this: “How can you (the Parish) say that all are welcome to the
Eucharistic celebration, but that only Catholics are able to receive
Communion? It doesn’t sound very
Christian or loving to me.” That’s an
excellent question. And the answer gets
down to the basic Christian value of “commitment.”
When we say “All are welcome,” we mean that “all are welcome to commit themselves to God through the
Catholic way of life.” That’s what
we mean. Baptism, Confirmation,
Eucharist—those are the steps in the process of being initiated into this community we know as the
Catholic Church. And all are welcome to
be initiated into the community of faith—into a global community that values
the idea of personal commitment to
something bigger than ourselves. And the
Eucharist is for those who have made that
commitment . . . a commitment, above all, to God, but also to their
brothers and sisters who have made the
same personal commitment.
At the heart of our worship, at the heart of our lives as
Catholics is the Eucharist—a Flesh and Blood reminder that the Good Shepherd
lays down his life because he is committed to us. He doesn’t ask us to give ourselves in exactly
the same way. But he does ask that we
give . . . something. And that something
is the most basic act of love we can give—it’s our sincere commitment to the
other. And that requires a spirit of
selflessness, a spirit of generosity and humility, a spirit of goodwill and
patience.
The broader culture isn’t going to push you to commit
yourself to God or Christian values, certainly not Catholic values. But you can push yourself. I’m sure God will give you a nudge if you ask
for help. The staff here will give you
some help, and so will your neighbors here who are intentional about their Catholic faith. The commitment to God and faith and Church is
something we each have to make on our own.
But we make it with the help of others.
And then, there, in an atmosphere of real, selfless
commitment to God and one another, a truly Catholic culture might emerge—or at
least, the beginnings of a renewed Catholic culture. It might be small to start out but, then
again, so was that little group of Twelve Apostles who transformed the world
with their concrete witness to faith and the value of commitment.
And so, the question of the Evangelical Christians still
lingers. St. Peter’s question still
lingers: “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and
Savior?” It’s a question of trust and
love. It’s a question of personal
commitment. And the life of the Church
depends on our answer to that question.
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