Get Out of the Boat - A Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter

 Here's the homily I would have given today, had I not confused the preaching schedule.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit intervened for the good.  You be the judge . . . .

          A bishop, a priest and a deacon were out fishing on a lake when they realized that they had left their beverages of choice on shore.  The priest said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get them,” as he stood up, stepped out of the boat, walked across the water and retrieved their drinks.  Upon his return, they soon found that they also had left the bottle opener on shore.  So the deacon said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” as he stood up, stepped out of the boat, walked across the water and retrieved the bottle opener.  The bishop was amazed and humbled at what he had seen, so when they noticed that they had also left the pretzels on shore, he felt obliged to demonstrate his trust in God in a similar way.  Nervously, he stood up, stepped out of the boat, and quickly plunged to the bottom of the lake.  As the priest and deacon were hauling the bishop back into the boat, the priest said to the deacon, “We probably should have told him where the stones are.”  The deacon replied, “What stones?”  In the priest, deacon and bishop we find reason, faith and courage, the three key components of Christian belief that today’s readings present so beautifully.

            If nothing else, our readings this morning tell us that Christianity can be hard to believe.  In our first reading, we find the apostles rejoicing because they suffered dishonor in Jesus’ name, while in our Psalm we learn that God can turn our mourning into dancing.  So apparently we’re called to believe that God can transform curses into blessings.  In our second reading from Revelation, John learns that the Lion of Judah who will open the scroll of God’s providence is, in fact, a Lamb that was slain.  So we’re called to believe that power reveals itself most fully in weakness and humility.   In our Gospel, we encounter the risen Jesus feeding his apostles.  So we’re called to believe that Jesus, who suffered, died and was buried, rose again from the dead.  Christianity can be hard to believe because it doesn't always align with our expectations.  To believe all that Christianity teaches, we need reason, faith and courage.  Allow me to address each in turn.

          I’ll begin with reason.  The priest in our little joke observed his surroundings and used his God-given gift of reason to find a way to get out of the boat and walk across the water to shore.  Christian belief doesn’t require us to check our brains at the door.  Jesus came to take away our sins, not our minds.  That’s why “Catholicism is an intellectual religion.  If it holds something to be true, it has reasons for this claim, reasons that should be valid in logic and in evidence.”[1]  And if we take the time to read Scripture, the Catechism and the magisterial teachings of the Church, we’ll find that they are.  In his somewhat infamous lecture at Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI said that it’s both “necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason.”[2]   God is the source of all knowledge - knowledge obtained through Divine Revelation and knowledge obtained through reason.  Faith and reason do not contradict each other.  “There is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith.”[3]  God gave us our brains to use them, not just to contemplate the world around us, but his eternal truth as well.  After Jesus’ gruesome death and burial, the apostles saw the risen Lord with their own eyes; they touched him with their hands; they spoke with him; and they broke bread with him.  They had ample evidence to believe, through the use of reason alone, that the one who appeared to them “was not a vision, nor the figment of someone’s excited imagination nor the appearance of a spirit or a host; it was Jesus who had conquered death and come back.”[4]  Christian belief requires reason.

          Faith – We’re often told in religious contexts that we need to have faith, but what does that really mean? At its core, “faith is, not a system of knowledge, but trust.”[5] Trust is an essential component in life because we simply can’t know or do everything. I’m a lawyer; I’m not an electrician. You may well find me reviewing a contract before I sign it, but you won’t find me rewiring my house. We trust others who know more than we do all the time: our doctors; our teachers; and especially at this time of year, our accountants. Well, “[w]e also need someone trustworthy and knowledgeable where God is concerned. Jesus, the Son of God, is the one who makes God known to us.”[6] Jesus is the one who makes the superabundance of God’s love and peace available to us, if only we have faith in him. Our good deacon in the joke relied upon faith to get out of that boat and walk across the water to shore. The apostles had fished all night and caught nothing. They had every reason to think that they wouldn’t catch anything at all. But when they faithfully follow Jesus’ instruction, they gather so many fish that they can’t even haul in the net. Christian belief requires faith.

          Saint John Paul II said that “[f]aith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”[7] But these two wings are useless to us, if we don’t have the courage to step out of the nest in the first place (or the boat, as the case may be). Courage is essential to Christian belief. In an increasingly secularized world, religious belief is often greeted with patronizing disdain. That’s because Christianity calls us to the highest standards of moral living – God’s standards – and human standards don’t always live up to God’s standards. So for some, it’s easier to criticize and dismiss God’s standards as archaic, irrelevant or oppressive than to try to live up to them. For some, it may seem easier to go along with the critics and ignore what faith and reason compel us to believe. I encourage you, particularly our teens and young adults, to have the courage to believe anyway. That bishop didn’t want to leave the safety of the boat, but he had the courage to do it anyway. I challenge you to be like that bishop and the apostles in the Temple, summon up the courage to proclaim Christ crucified unabashedly, even if it’s not the cool thing to do, the easy thing to do, or the dry thing to do. Christian belief requires courage.

          Let’s face it, Christianity is hard to believe. It takes reason, faith and courage. But if Christianity weren’t hard to believe, it wouldn’t be worth believing at all. You see, “the entire purpose of the Christian life [is] to make us, not simply better people . . ., but to make us divine, to conform us to a participation in the life of the Trinity.”[8] What greater goal could we have than to be holy and burning with God’s eternal love through Jesus Christ? Scripture shows clearly that every encounter with Christ is life-changing. But first, we have to engage our reason, our faith and our courage and believe. You can’t walk on water, if you don’t get out of the boat.

Readings:  Acts 5: 27-32, 40b-41; Psalm 30; 5: 11-14; John 21: 1-14

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[1] James V. Schall, The Order of Things (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2007) at 170.

[2]  Pope Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and the University, Memories and Reflections (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006) <http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006>.

[3] Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998) 16.

[4] William Barclay, The Gospel of John, vol. 2 (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 1975) at 283.

[5] Pope Benedict XVI, Faith and the Future (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2006) at 33.

[6]Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei, (Vatican City, Libreria Vaticana, June 29, 2013) at 18.

[7] Pope John Paul II at 1.

[8] Robert Barron, The Strangest Way:  Walking the Christian Path (Maryknoll, Orbis, 2002) at 29.