Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A 

“Nothing will harm you.” Gospel of Luke, ch. 10

 “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which  the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Galatians, ch. 6

“As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms, and fondled in her lap;

As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you;

in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.” Isaiah, ch. 66.

This is a terrible sermon and intentionally so. This weekend we are celebrating the Sacrament of Baptism for a number of infants: a time of joy for their parents, families, and our parish community. It can also be the beginning of an anxious time too; there are so many perils in our world today. Such a combination of joy and fright I am going to define as excitement.  This excitement will keep coming back again and again. 

There is an old lullaby long known to the poor which has the words: "Hush, little baby, don't you cry; you know your mamma is bound to die."  If it seems odd to mention a song like this in connection with Baptism, how much more strange to have a mother sing these words to her child for comfort, for resting, for lulling to sleep.  How terrible to sing of death instead of painted ponies! 

Hans Kung, in his book Does God Exist?, delays answering that question until he makes the reader confront another, one  more immediately experienced. "Is life good?”  That is a question more within our immediate frame of reference. Not is it part good and part bad? Is it partly to be sought and partly to be avoided at all costs? But is life, taken as a whole, with all its pain and pleasure, with all its joy and sorrow, with its isolation and belonging, with its dangers and fears, with its comfort and courage, is life itself good? Only those who can answer with a Yes should ask whether God exists. If life is a good gift, then the one who gives the gift is life and goodness Himself. And the Son of that giving God, Jesus Christ, who takes our life as His own, sees the goodness of life from our human perspective. He redeems the totality of our life. 

We baptize into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; we are identified with Him in His dying and rising. And so when St. Paul boasts in nothing but the cross of Jesus Christ, when he realizes that he is crucified to the world and the world to him, what a terrible, joyful reality; what excitement that prospect brings.  

 Our stations show Jesus being placed on the cross, lying backwards and thrown upon it.  A terrifying, terrible moment!  It is possible to picture Jesus moments earlier facing His cross and lifting His arms to embrace it: accepting death willingly to bring us life. What was once an emblem of shame has become the means of victory.  We are joined in that victory; we wear that symbol; we are marked with that cross to show that we are a part of the saving action of Jesus Christ, bringing others to that cross, to that excitement, to that life. 

Our God, whom Jesus asked us to call Father, is depicted as a mother in our first reading today, a mother comforting each of us as a child. “Hush, there, there, it will be all right.” This bond and promise persists throughout history. When the Romans besieged the hilltop fortress of Masada and women and children died, mothers comforted their children. ”Hush, it will be all right.” When Mary held the lifeless body of Jesus, she remembered how she had comforted him growing up. ”There, there, it will be all right.” When Jewish mothers accompanied their children in the Holocaust, there was only one way of comforting possible. When your children today scrape their knees or break your hearts or worse, theirs; they need to hear: ”Hush, there, it will be all right.”  Those words, placed in God’s mouth, do make everything, even death, even the death of his son on a cross, do make everything all right.  

Here today and every day we gather, it all needs to come together: life, death, joy, sorrow, fear, excitement. At our Eucharist we celebrate how it all comes together, celebrate the One who does make everything all right. Teilhard de Chardin was correct in saying that one day all this will make sense to everyone of us and on that day we will again have discovered fire.