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RETURN TO > HISTORIC DOCUMENTS > ARCHIVES > WHAT IS DIGNITY? > HOME
Homily from DignityUSA’s Liturgy of Solidarity and Support
By Rev. Jon Schum
DignityUSA's Liturgy of Solidarity and Support was held in Dallas, TX, June 14, 2002, in conjunction with the meeting of the US Catholic Bishops' Conference on the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The Gospel was Luke 4: 16-21.
I have often wondered, if I had been there when the gospels we hear week after week were being composed and assembled, what incidents in the life and ministry of Jesus I would chosen to be included in those gospel stories? And when I think about it, when I hear this gospel story today, I always come back to it in some way, because to me, it's such a significant moment in the ministry of Jesus.
It's often called the "inauguration of his ministry," as Jesus returns to his hometown to be among his family and his old friends and neighbors. When Jesus is handed the Scriptures, with great deliberation and clear intention he opens to the Book of Isaiah, and he reads that wonderful poetic passage about the prophetic call. And what is so marvelous to me about this reading is that there is something happening here, something that has never happened before in human history. God is breaking into human history in a way that has never happened before.
In this gospel reading Jesus makes is quite clear he has come with a promise, and although he doesn't say a new era is breaking into history, the signs are clear:
The poor who have longed to hear good news shall hear it.
Captives will be released.
The blind shall see.
The oppressed will be liberated.
A year of favor from God will be proclaimed.
To the people in Jesus' day, these were very clear messianic expectations. Jesus, in a sense is setting out the agenda for his ministry.
But there are a couple of things happening in the gospel that always seem to grab my attention. Jesus isn't just telling us what his ministry is going to be about. Jesus is holding out to us a promise...that some of the deepest longings we have shall be fulfilled, that these deep longings will not go unseen and unrecognized.
There's one more thing that's happening here. I believe that in these prophetic promises Jesus holds out to us, there is also God's desire for us. What is that God hopes for us all? To hear good news; to be free; to see fully and deeply; to cast off oppression; to celebrate God's favor and blessing. These are some of the deepest human longings we have. God's desire for us is that these longings be fulfilled.
I'd like to spend some time reflecting a couple of these promises and desires, because they are so significant in the light of what we've been experiencing in our Church.
Jesus came to promise and to be release for the captives.
I would like to speak briefly to those of you who are survivors of clergy sexual abuse. You know that no one can completely comprehend your pain except you. None of the rest of us here can enter into your pain as you have. Only you know the trail of suffering, bewilderment, betrayal, and loneliness that you have walked, and you've walked it with your families, spouses and partners, and closest friends, and they bear witness to the pain you have endured.
I have seen remarkable courage and incredible resolve as you chosen to tell your stories to the rest of us. You have taught me and many others what it is to have the courage to release oneself from the captivity of a scandalous silence imposed upon you. You have shown the resolve to hold our shepherds accountable for secrecy and betrayal.
Only the great heart of God can contain your pain. Only the touch of God can truly renew and make whole. I echo the wish of the prophet we heard this evening: "May the healing spring forth with great speed"
So let there be release for the captives. God's desire. Jesus' promise.
Jesus came that there might be recovery of sight. How many of us have had our eyes opened these past few months, perhaps in ways we didn't want them opened?
We have told ourselves for a long time that reforms would happen. It may take time, we told ourselves. We can wait it out for a new bishop or the next consistory. Well, we waited for change and reform within our church, and while we waited we saw the momentum of renewal of the Second Vatican Council slow to a crawl and almost a complete stop. We've seen dialogue stifled and scholarship suppressed. The voices of victims, voices of mothers and fathers, aunts, grandparents, teachers, have been ignored and silenced. People feeling a genuine call to ministry, including ordained ministry, have had their gifts rejected because they were considered unsuitable: namely, they were not unmarried males.
We have come to see how deeply, deeply flawed is this system...this structure, this manner of being church. And we can't wait anymore. So let there be recovery of sight to all who are the blind. May the light break forth like the dawn. God's desire. Jesus' promise.
And let us learn to do what many physically blind persons do with such grace; namely trust our inner voice, honor our judgment, and listen with the heart.
Jesus comes that there might be liberty for the oppressed. Look in the dictionary and you will find that to oppress means to use force or authority in a tyrannical way. It is the use of absolute power in an arbitrary, harsh or severe manner.
The scandal for many of us is the scandal of a church which oppresses its own, and we know there are whole groups of Catholics which have been marginalized and even driven out: divorced and remarried Catholics, women and married men seeking ordained ministry, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons.
Our shepherds are not the ones who determine our freedom. Our freedom rests in our inherent dignity as the daughters and sons of God. We can acknowledge and celebrate this freedom, because it is God's deep desire for us.
As gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons, we refuse to be scapegoated and depersonalized and instead bless and honor our sexuality. We remain determined to take our rightful place at the table.
Responding to, addressing, and fighting oppression have always been at the heart of the gospel call. So let there be liberty for the oppressed. God's desire. Jesus' promise.
It was back in January when all the carefully sealed seams began to break open. Boston, where I come from, became the epicenter of what is now not just a scandal but a tragedy. And I'm sure that like you I read and re-read stories of now young and middle aged adults, who as children, were violated by priests who then terrified and silenced them. You read stories of bishops and other high churchmen who hid the crimes, protected and even promoted the abusers, again and again and again. You heard stories of parishioners who awoke in the morning to discover their parish priest had been removed from his post. And people in the pew found themselves reeling from the storm about them.
In response we heard litanies of rationalizations, finger pointing, and feeble explanations.
A lot of us responded with the claim "I'm not going to let the church stand in the way of my faith." You may have heard yourselves say that. I think I heard myself saying it. Faith holds on, doesn't it? Faith, deeply personal, gets us through. We won't surrender our faith.
But I'm not so worried about faith. I'm worried about hope. Will hope be the casualty in all this? How will we not allow these events to stand in the way of our hope? Hope comes from being in communion with others who hope. It's hard to have hope all by yourself. And in a world where there is so often despair, the church seemed to be the beacon of hope. So where is hope now? That's the challenge.
And will we ever be able to look upon this year as a year of favor from our God?
I guess hope doesn't become hope until it is tested. Perhaps only when we taste some degree of hopelessness do we learn the lessons of hope. When problems seen insoluble and solutions seem far away, and change is resisted....then hope has to step in to keep the vision alive.
When Jesus proclaims a year of favor he was speaking of a Hebrew tradition called the Jubilee Year, always considered to be a moment of liberation, celebrated every fifty years or so. When the Jubilee Year came around lands were returned to the families who owned them, slaves were released, debts were cancelled. All this happened because the people and the land belonged to God, and to no one else. It was a kind of social blueprint, but observed in a spirit of profound reverence for personal rights and human dignity. Justice and equality are always the hallmarks of the jubilee year, the year of favor. We need a Jubilee Year. This is the season for hope, and for courage.
And it's also the time for committed discipleship. Allowing the spirit to birth a new church is no neat, orderly, step by step project. It's painful, and chaotic, and unpleasant. Remember that the story of Jesus in the synagogue that day ended with his being expelled from Nazareth, his home town. His words stung his old relatives and his old friends and neighbors into a fury. In a rage they tried to take him outside of town and attempted to throw him over a cliff. But in some mysterious way (we're not told how) he walked straight through the crowd and eluded them.
St. Augustine, in his Confessions, said "it is one thing to look at the land of peace from atop a wooded knoll, and another to take up the road leading there." I don't know if we've ever reached the land of peace...in fact, I'm quite sure we're not there. But we surely can't stay on top of that wooded knoll and gaze at the land of peace. Sooner or later we have to take up that road that leads there. And it's time to set out on that long and perilous journey, because like that day in the synagogue in Nazareth, something has been set in motion, and it is irreversible. The spirit of God is upon us. Upon you, upon me, upon us.
So that which is God's desire for us and Jesus' promise to us now becomes our task:
To preach good news to the poor,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
Recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed,
To announce the year of blessing from our God.
God's desire. Jesus' promise. Our task.
