“I have discovered over the years that if you save your big point for the end, people have often tuned you out,” Deacon Fritz Bauerschmidt says, “You really have to give them something in that first minute.”
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Fritz is a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Baltimore assigned to the Cathedral of Mary, Our Queen. He is also a professor of theology at Loyola Maryland University, the Jesuit university in Baltimore, an author, a husband and a father of three.
After the homily, Fritz explains to host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., why the rapper Post Malone provided the perfect hook for his homily.
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I have discovered over the years that if you save your big point for the end, people have often tuned you out … You really kind of have to give them something in that first minute.”
Scripture Readings for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Ex 19:2-6a
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 100:1-2, 3, 5
Second Reading: Rm 5:6-11
Gospel: Mt 9:36—10:8
You can find the full text of the readings here.
Homily for the Solemnity of the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, by Fritz Bauerschmidt
In a song entitled “Enemies,”
the rapper Post Malone sings,
“Used to have friends, now I got enemies, Used to keep ‘em close, now they dead to me…
It’s too late to turn this mess around.”
(Actually, he doesn’t say “mess.” He uses a word you can use in hip-hop but you can’t really use in the pulpit. So I’ll just say “mess.”)
Now I don’t know Mr. Malone,
or even much about him,
so I don’t know how sincerely he holds this view,
but I do know that God
has something different in approach to his enemies;
an approach that is, for us, good news.
In our second reading,
St. Paul writes to the Christians in Rome:
“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
through the death of his Son.”
Here, the good news
comes wrapped up in bad news.
And you can’t really ignore the bad news
and simply focus on the good news
because you can’t appreciate
how good the good news is
apart from the bad news.
God has something different in approach to his enemies; an approach that is, for us, good news.
The bad news is that sin makes us God’s enemies.
We sometimes try to soft-pedal this bad news.
We speak of “mistakes” or “flaws,”
or say that sin “separates” us from God,
suggesting perhaps that we’re like a wandering child at the mall
separated from an inattentive parent.
But there’s no soft-pedaling in Paul;
he is clear that sin brings about a radical rupture
in our relationship with God.
As Post Malone might put it,
God used to keep us close,
but now we’re dead to him:
we’re dead in our sin
because we’re cut off
from the source of all life.
And our enmity toward God spreads forth
into enmity toward each other;
friendship with God lost,
friendship with each other becomes impossible,
the world becomes a place of savage competition
as we each try to the cling
to the scraps of life left to us.
We are, as Paul says, sinners, ungodly, helpless.
But there’s no soft-pedaling in Paul; he is clear that sin brings about a radical rupture in our relationship with God.
Bad news, indeed.
But it is only when we recognize the devastation
that sin has wrought in our relationship with God
that we can really grasp the astonishing glad tidings
“that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
It is not too late to turn this [expletive] around.
Because God does not wait
for us to make the first move,
for us to make a gesture
of friendship or reconciliation.
No, God steps into the full fury
of our rejection,
our hatred and cruelty,
the kind of furious cruelty
that we reserve for our worst enemies.
On the cross Jesus bears the full force
of our enmity toward God and each other.
And he does this because he loves us,
enemies that we are,
sinners, ungodly, helpless.
And this is how God differs from Post Malone
and from us.
Paul says that perhaps
we might find it in ourselves
to die for a good person:
a beloved friend or family member,
or we might give our life for some abstract idea,
like our nation or religion,
but no one dies for their enemy.
Yet the astonishing glad tidings of Christ
is that this is precisely what God does,
so that we might be justified, reconciled,
brought back into friendship with God.
Because God does not wait for us to make the first move, ... No, God steps into the full fury of our rejection.
Certainly, by human standards,
we might agree with Post Malone:
“It’s too late to turn this mess around.”
There are lines that can be crossed
that cannot be uncrossed,
acts of betrayal that
make people dead to us
make relationships beyond repair.
But God’s not like that.
God is, Paul tells us, the one
“who gives life to the dead
and calls into existence
the things that do not exist” (Rm 4:17).
For God, who holds our lives in his hands,
it’s never too late to turn this mess around,
no matter how devastating the damage.
For God, who holds our lives in his hands, it’s never too late to turn this mess around.
So, what does this mean for us?
How do we live out this restored friendship
with God through Jesus Christ?
Here, the good news within the bad news
becomes a news that brings challenge and hope.
Just as lost friendship with God
makes friendship with each other impossible,
God’s resurrection of that friendship
makes it possible to live
in friendship with each other once again.
Jesus says to the disciples he sends out in today’s Gospel,
“Without cost you have received;
without cost you are to give.”
Without cost, we who were God’s enemies
have received mercy and reconciliation;
without cost, we who are now God’s friends
are to extend mercy and reconciliation to others.
We are to show mercy even to our enemies;
we are to show mercy especially to our enemies,
because in doing this our love
becomes most like God’s love.
Jesus challenges his followers,
those enemies whom he has made into friends,
to see their own enemies
not as those to be abandoned as if dead,
but as lost sheep without a shepherd,
as an abundant harvest waiting to be gathered
into the community of God’s friends,
as those who are waiting to hear the glad tidings
that it’s never too late to turn this mess around.
So let us pray,
that the God whose mercy makes us friends
have mercy on us all.
