Homily 5.3.2020

Readings: 

Acts 2:14, 36-41
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:20-25
John 10:1-10

The Divine Shepherdess

May is here, and in the Catholic tradition this is a whole month dedicated to Mary, the Divine Mother, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Perhaps in your family you have participated in special devotions to Mary this month such as building a special altar for Mary and crowing her with a wreath of flowers, or giving renewed energy to praying the rosary. Maybe you didn’t even know that May was Mary’s month and now that you do you can create new traditions or recover ancient ones.  

The connections between the divine feminine and May pre-date Christianity, with the Greeks having dedicated this time of year to Artemis, the goddess of fecundity, and the Romans dedicating this time to Flora, the goddess of blooms. Christianity picked up these ancient connections between spring time and the divine feminine, and lifted up Mary as Queen of May, in connection with the season of life and beauty.  

This weekend, due to our lectionary readings, is also known as Good Shepherd weekend. We heard these passages about the Lord as shepherd, and Jesus as shepherd probably many times, and seen many statues, paintings and artistic representations of this image of the Good Shepherd. But since this is Mary’s month, I would like us to imagine and reflect today on the image of Mary as Divine Shepherdess. 

I did not invent this idea, the devotion to Mary as Divine Shepherdess has been around since at least the 1700s as Divina Pastora (or Divine Shepherdess in Spanish). This image of Mary as a shepherdess is credited to a vision of a Spanish Capuchin friar named Fray Isidore who lived in Seville, Spain in the early 1700s. He was devoted to Our Lady from early in his life and as a religious brother built small shrines to Our Lady along the roadways and taught the people how to sing the rosary while walking along the street. During one of these street tours Christ’s words, ‘I am the Good Shepherd” flashed across the Fray Isidore’s mind. That night he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin as a young shepherdess with a crook in her hand and a large straw hat falling over her shoulders. The next morning he hurried to an artist’s shop telling of his vision and ordered a picture be painted of Our Lady as she had appeared to him.

“Our Lady,” he said, sat on a rock under a tree. Her face radiated divine and tender love. Over a red tunic she wore a jacket of white sheepskin such as shepherds wore; from her shoulders hung a blue mantle. A large straw hat, held by a ribbon, dangled over her left shoulder. Near her right hand was a shepherd’s crook, symbolic of the love and care she gives her children. In her left hand she held a rose, while the right hand rested on the head of a lamb, which had sought shelter in her lap. The flock of sheep which surrounded her carried in their mouths – the Virgin’s Flower.  

The admiration of the Spanish for Our Lady as a Divine Shepherdess quickly spread. Practically every church had set aside a corner for the Divine Shepherdess. The Franciscans and Capuchin friars spread the devotion of Divina Pastora along with their missionary activities, as did other missionaries. Devotions to the Divine Shepherdess today are present around the world most notably in the Philippines, Venezuela, and France. 

The same characteristics that make a shepherd good as we heard in our Psalm and our Gospel reading today make the shepherdess good. She is the one who truly knows her flock, and will do all she can to ensure that they are safe, that they can rest, that they are well fed, that they have abundance of life. This is in contrast to what we know of those who are false shepherds, the thieves and robbers who only look out for themselves and steal, destroy, and kill. You can probably think of examples of these two different kinds of leaders or pastors right now, in your own life and experience. Those who truly know, love, and care for the well-being of others, and those who seek to gain and maintain their own power or privilege at the expense of the flock.   

One key characteristic of the good shepherdess is that she knows her sheep by name and we know her voice and follow that voice. As I contemplate the state of the world right now, all of the suffering and division, and the ever growing climate crisis, I can’t help but think we are where we are because we have forgotten the voice of the Divine Shepherdess. And it's not surprising given all the other voices that we have been inundated with since birth, voices that seek to foster ongoing division and discord, doubt and fear, voices that feed us lies daily about who we are and what we should do with our lives.

It has been and continues to be an ongoing journey of personal healing and transformation for me to tune out all those other voices and remember the voice of my Mother, the Divine Feminine, the Good Shepherdess; to reconnect to her in my body and the surrounding body of life. She has never left, I and we have just forgotten, and now is the time for us to remember and return.     

To return to the Mother is to return to the earth, to know the presence and power of resurrection budding all around us in the trees, flowers, greening of grass, and garden seedlings poking their head above ground. To return to the divine shepherdess and trust in her care and guidance is to know the peace and freedom of the sheep who wander the land, snack, take a nap, bask in the sun, frolic and play, and take another nap, trusting that in the words of Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Because to know her is to know her constant presence, love, and protection, just like a good shepherdess.  

I believe she is calling to her sheep now, inviting us to come back home through her, the very gate that incarnated the Christ presence more fully into the world. To know and follow Christ is to know and follow the mother that brought him into the world and taught him the ways of the shepherd, taught him the ways of the earth and the path of love and beauty. 

This time of great challenge and change is also filled with great opportunity to sit and listen, to sing and listen, to dance and listen, to create and listen, to rest and listen. Listen for the voice of the Divine Shepherdess calling you home to her heart. Take a minute now of quiet, of breathing, of tuning into your heart, and listen. Who is the Divine Shepherdess to you? What might her invitation be to you this month of May, this month of Mary, this month of resurrection energy and new life? What questions or petitions do you have for her? 

[time of reflection and open response] 

Homily 2.8.2020

Readings: 

Isaiah 58:7-10

1 Corinthians 2: 1-5

Matthew 5:13-16

Grief and Praise

I’d like to do something a little different in the homily tonight, there are different stories and contexts I want to share that are all woven together through this chorus of grief and praise, and so I’d like to teach you a song, that we can sing together throughout the homily, as we weave these stories together. You up for that?

You have the words on a half sheet of paper, I’ll sing a couple lines then have you repeat it back to learn the tune. This is a song by Auspry that I learned at a community song circle.

[teach Grief and Praise]

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone

So when you hear me say “Grief and Praise” throughout the homily, I invite you to join me in this chorus.

There are a four different but intersecting contexts to our liturgy this evening that I’d like us to focus on. The first is the context of the faith tradition passed down through the centuries revealed in our Scripture readings tonight. Jesus as a Jewish rabbi, knew well the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the prophets as he quoted them and their teachings often. It is the passage from Isaiah tonight that gives context to Jesus’ message about salt and light. Pairing the reading from Isaiah with this Gospel prevents an individualistic interpretation and puts it into its proper context of community, and more specifically a community that ensures the most vulnerable are cared for and protected as the true path towards making God’s light and love shine forth in the world.

There’s this great series of If/Then statements - IF you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; IF you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; THEN light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday. We can’t just say, “I’m going to let my light shine today” and then do nothing else. Non-action, silence, and complicity in systems of oppression are the equivalent of continuing to hide our light under a bushel basket, regardless of what we profess with our lips. The light in us, this spark of the divine present in all of creation, is what impels us to take action, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the unhoused, call out the lies and malicious speech that surround us and enter into the struggle for liberation from all interconnected systems of oppression.

And this is not easy work. It is work that calls us to enter into the suffering, to be broken open, to shed tears of grief. But it is also through these salty tears we shed that our hearts of stone are broken open so that the light of Christ, the light of divine love, can being to shine forth. As you gather around the altar tonight, you will be encouraged to symbolize the tears you shed for the world by placing a pinch of salt into the bowl of water before the altar, entrusting them to the community gathered and the mystery of transformation we celebrate in the breaking and sharing of the bread. The stories of the steadfast presence of God, accompanying us, working for liberation in the context of great oppression and suffering, stories of salt and light, these are our stories, the stories of our ancestors, stories full of Grief and Praise.   

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone  

We are also in February, black history month, a time to honestly acknowledge and repent for the horrors endured by the black community at the hands of white supremacy and also celebrate the incredible brilliance and triumph of their spirit and the many ways they have made a positive impact in the world. Both are needed as we seek to live out the call of the prophet, to remove from our midst all oppression, false accusation, and malicious speech.

We need to tell the whole truth about the complicity of white Christians in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the wealth accumulated on the backs of enslaved Africans, the abuse and torture of chattel slavery, and the silence and quiet complicity of all those who did nothing. We need to keep looking at how these systems of racial oppression continue to disproportionately harm the black community in the U.S. in basically every category of human rights. We can’t be salt and light, if we don’t honestly face this history and present reality. 

And we also need to tell the whole truth about the incredible brilliance, culture, and creativity of the many diverse people from the continent of Africa, who were brought to this country against their will and yet managed to keep alive that spark of the divine within them, resisting oppression and liberating their communities and continuing to foster and encourage that same spirit of brilliance, culture, and creativity of their ancestors. As we sit in the context of black history month, we sit in the reality of grief and praise.

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone

Today is also the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, patron saint of survivors of human trafficking, as she herself was a survivor of slavery in the 1800s. Her feast was chosen as the World Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking. So we take time today to reflect on her story, an important part of black Catholic history, and connect it to our current reality that holds both grief for the millions of people in our world who are still enslaved through forced labor and sexual exploitation and also praise for the many who have been able to escape, reclaim their freedom, and pursue their dreams.

St. Bakhita was born in the Darfur region of South Sudan in 1869. At the age of seven she was kidnapped by Middle Eastern slave traders and re-sold multiple times throughout her childhood and adolescence. She was sold so many times she forgot her original name, and was given the name Bakhita by her slaver owners which meant “fortunate one.” She eventually ended up in Italy and was entrusted to the care of the Canossian Sisters while her owners were away on business. Living with the sisters she came to learn more about God and was able to put words to this Spirit that accompanied her and kept her alive during the brutal years of slavery. With the help of the Sisters and the patriarch of Venice she was granted her freedom and officially joined the order of the Canossian Sisters in 1896, choosing the name Josephine for herself. She lived and ministered with the Sisters the remainder of her life, sharing her story with all who would listen. She embodied the teachings of the prophet, caring for the poorest around her, shining the light of love brightly with all whom she encountered. 

While the legal slave trade that existed in the time of Bakhita has since been abolished, an illegal slave trade still exists in our world today in the form of human trafficking. Economic and gender based systems of oppression continue to treat people like commodities to be used, bought and sold for an individual’s profit or pleasure. St. Bakhita was targeted as a young girl, only 7 years old, and unfortunately children are still targeted today both for sexual exploitation and labor. It is estimated that one in four victims of human trafficking is a child. These aren’t just children living in foreign countries, that are our children, right here in this community who are being targeted.

I have been heart broken and inspired by the stories of survivors who were first trafficked at ages as young as 4 or 5, many by family members or trusted adults, and have since found the strength not only to heal themselves as adults but to advocate on behalf of others, and I continue to be outraged that this evil and abuse continues to persist in our communities and our world. St. Bakhita’s story like the story of so many survivors of human trafficking is one filled with deep grief and pain, but also hope and praise for the possibility of healing, restoration, and new life.  May this reality crack us open to let the light shine through and heal the broken body of Christ through Grief and Praise.

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone

Finally we are living in the context of our own community’s story, one of transition and visioning as we take this 2020 year to reflect on who we are, where we have been and where we are going. We are a community that over the years has experienced and shared together moments of deep grief for communal losses and transitions and also deep joy and praise for renewed life and hope. I believe this to be an important part of community, to be able to bring our whole selves just as we are, to accompany one another through the difficult moments of life as well as the celebratory ones.

To live the calling of our faith as Isaiah reminds us is to reach out beyond the boundaries of this community to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the unhoused, and remove all oppression and malicious speech from our presence.  It is by entering into these painful realities, accompanying one another as siblings in Christ, that THEN as the prophet reminds us, THEN we will make real the presence of God on this earth and our light shall shine through. And that is something to praise God for, that the spark of the divine in each of us grows and is illuminated in and through community, loving and serving one another through the good times and the bad, through both the grief and the praise.

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone