A Message to Catholics
Luke 7:11-17
When I was little, I wanted to be a nun. I didn’t much care for the outfits, maybe because I never saw a nun in heels with painted toenails, but I loved the idea of marrying God. Even though I grew up in a United Church of Christ congregation, I delighted in the prospect of spending my days feasting on scripture and listening for God. I wanted to be like Maria in the Sound of Music. It seemed as if she had it made. She got to hang out with her best friends and sing in the hills, with some prayer and study mixed in.
My dad’s side of the family is full of devout Catholics. He is one of seven children, raised by my Meme and Pepe who invested their hearts deeply and genuinely in the Catholic faith. When I was born, my mom received a note of great joy from my Meme who was ecstatic that I was born on the day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a fact about which my mom still teases me on occasion. But as much as I loved the idea of grounding a life in God, I dreaded going to the Catholic Church. I never saw a woman stand behind the table and raise up the wafers. I cried when I learned that despite my years of faithful attendance in my Open Door Congregational Church, I was not allowed to join in the meal that Jesus started. And when my UCC church called a woman as our interim pastor, I realized that I didn’t have to be a nun to spend my life on God.
It has been a few years since I have stepped foot inside a Catholic Church because like many of you, I feel a deep sense of sadness. I am sad that the beauty intended by its ancient commitments has been lost by years of hypocrisy, especially among those who were entrusted with caring for the vulnerable. I am sad that people who fell in love with God through the Catholic faith have not only left the Church, but have left God too. And I am sad that so many of you feel a deep sense of loss, not only in losing the faith of your childhood, but in losing part of your identity. So, this message today is not meant to be a anti-Catholic, rather my aim is to offer you an invitation to bring all of who you are, including your Catholic faith to this community of God’s people. And for those of you who are not Catholic, my hope is to invite you to articulate some of the differences in our traditions, not as a means of division but as a way to affirm who you are, what you love and why it matters.
The more time I spend following Jesus in community, the more I think of this place as a sanctuary. Not a sanctuary in the sense of a hideout and not a sanctuary in the sense of a place that is ultimately separate from the world, but sanctuary in the sense that this place literally provides holiness and healing. Sanctuary in the sense that this place can be like the place where Jesus saw the woman weeping and turned her to God. As Jesus approached the gate of the town and saw a man who had died who was being carried out. He knew that the woman was a widow and likely had just lost her only hope of status, her only hope of food, her only son and the keeper of her heart. And his first response was compassion. He didn’t judge her for whatever failings he knew she had. He didn’t ask her questions or try to fix her. Instead, he had compassion for her. We might not be able to heal the way God does, or bring people back to life the way Jesus does, but I wonder if this story in the Gospel of Luke is not as far from us as we think. The scripture makes a point of telling us that Jesus’ very first response was compassion and it seems to me that this is the foundation for who you are, what you love and why it matters. Compassion for anyone who comes through these doors is the first step toward abundant life.
And abundant life, fullness of life, a life grounded in joy is just the thing that all of us are seeking. For many Catholics who find their way here, I have learned that joy has been missing from faith for a while. Many of you have spent your whole life hearing that you are a sinner and yet you never heard that God still wants you. Many of you have spent your whole life hearing that you are broken and yet you never heard that God has makes a habit of working through brokenness. Many of you have spent your whole life sitting in hard pews saying words that feel empty and yet you never heard that God wants to fill your emptiness.
And many of you have spent your life in the Catholic Church and instead of feeling empowered to seek a personal relationship with God, you have felt overwhelmed by a pile of guilt. And often this is one of the first things I hear from Catholics. You feel guilty about the fact that you have chosen another path in the life of faith. You feel guilty about the possibility of upsetting faithful Catholic family members. You feel guilty and for some of you even a deep seeded shame that God is not only troubled, but genuinely mad at you. In fact, many of you don’t need much of a reason at all to feel guilty. Am I right? So to those of you who have guilt nestled deep within you, to those of you whose hearts are overflowing with guilt, I want you to hear me say that guilt can be toxic. Guilt can be toxic because often it is used as a weapon. When guilt is used as a weapon, God’s Spirit can be suffocated. Remember that this church, the Catholic Church and any church is a human creation. And even though we pray and hope that God’s spirit will continue to inspire us and lead us, at the end of the day, Churches are just as human as they are holy. This means that the guilt you feel has been planted by human beings, not by God. Regardless of where it came from, guilt is not something to which you should surrender your life. Guilt can fill up your heart and eat through it like a cancer. Guilt can prevent you from moving closer to God and seeking a relationship with God that is guaranteed to bring you joy. Guilt can grow so big that it starves the seeds of faith within you. I know that one sermon cannot take your guilt away for the ways that you have left your Catholic faith behind, but at the very least I hope you will hear me say that this guilt is not something that God has planted within you, because I am not so sure God minds much whether or not you go to the Catholic Church. For many of you, guilt was planted in your heart as a way to manipulate you and I want to invite you to begin to let go of it so that it can no longer have power over you. Part of your journey here is to surrender enough to God that guilt will slowly dissolve and leave room for new feelings and new life within you. I suspect that this could be a lifelong process, but I want you to know that it is a worthwhile one, a process of unraveling the layers of suffocation that have prevented you from feeling fully alive. I invite you to dig deep and ask what the guilt is about. Is it about upsetting your family? Is it about wondering whether you really will burn in hell for leaving the Catholic faith behind? It is about upsetting God? When you can walk to the heart of your guilt, you might find that it comes from something that you no longer hold to be true or maybe you will find that the guilt is a hollow force, a force that only has the power you give to it. Guilt cannot be worshiped if you want to worship God. Let me say that again guilt cannot be worshiped, cannot be allowed to be the leading force in your life, if you want to worship God.
And that leads me to a second important point, the rituals of worship, but most importantly our sacraments. The theological differences between our traditions are most highlighted when we talk of our sacraments. In the United Methodist Church and in the United Church of Christ, we have just two sacraments, communion and baptism. Both of these sacraments have very different understandings in our traditions than in the Catholic Church. Communion is the meal where we remember Jesus’ last meal with his friends. It is holy both because we have said these words and eaten this bread and drank from a cup together for a really long time. And although it has gotten fancier and more removed from the way Jesus did it, we do it to remember him. We remember the way that he asked us to do what he did, to sit with whom he sat, to love the way he loved. We remember him, so we never forget him. We do not believe that the grape juice literally becomes Jesus’ blood nor do we believe that the bread literally becomes his body. It is holy for other reasons. It is holy because we are all made equal at the communion table, not because of us, but because of Christ. This is a place where we greatly diverge from the Catholic perspective. Jesus did not put any boundaries around who was invited to eat with him. He didn’t ask for a profession of faith, he didn’t ask for evidence of membership in any particular group, he didn’t verify whether the person was supposed to be with him or somewhere else. At one point, he was even accused of dining with sinners and that is just the point. We are all sinners and this holy meal that we will share today is open to everyone who desires to know God more intimately. We don’t exclude non-members and we do not exclude children. When I was going through the ordination process someone asked me about the United Church of Christ stance on children receiving communion. I have heard it said that in the traditions where children are not invited to the Table, it is because they do not understand what is happening, but who among us does? The point is that Jesus extended an invitation to each of us, regardless of the labels we carry and he invited us in the hope that we might then invite him into our hearts. When we can break bread together regardless of class, race, sexual orientation, age, ability or whatever category the world has put upon us, we are experiencing the harmony and radical love, that is God. We do all of this as way to remember him.
The second sacrament in our traditions is baptism, which is equally challenging. Most of the time when I receive a call about baptism and it is urgent, the family is Catholic. There is a sense of urgency because there is a longing to protect the baby. After the first few calls I was confused, what’s the rush? Why not wait until your family can be here with you? I quickly learned that for those of you who grew up Catholic, the baby must quickly be baptized to ensure its salvation if anything should happen. And again this is a place where we diverge greatly from the Catholic faith. In United Methodist theology, baptism is the place where God initiates a covenant with us, announced with the words, “The Holy Spirit works within you, that being born through water and the Spirit, you may be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.” And similarly in the United Church of Christ, the sacrament of baptism is an outward and visible sign of the grace of God. Through baptism a person is joined with the universal church, the body of Christ and with a particular family of God’s people. In baptism, we say yes to God’s invitation to us, which means that often the family will make promises on behalf of a baby, promises to raise the child in the Christian life, promises that are simply too difficult to keep without help. Baptism is not about saving the child from hell, baptism is about promising to raise the child in the Christian life, which means this is a huge commitment. It would be so much easier if we could sprinkle some water on our heads and magically be saved from our worst decisions, but baptism is a lifelong vocation where we have agreed to be claimed by the God we know in Jesus Christ. Baptism doesn’t happen in private, it happens here in worship because life in Jesus is possible in community. The Church makes big promises in baptism, promises that are real and promises that are about this life here and now. We baptize babies and adults and on both of these occasions we are promising to hold each other up even when we have nothing in common but our shared desire to follow Jesus Christ.
If current trends continue, this church and many churches will continue to welcome Catholics through our doors. And I think that this is essential and lifesaving work. We can be a place of healing for those who have been hurt. We can be a safe place to doubt and to ask the deep questions about where God is and how hard life can be. We can be like the disciples who gathered with Jesus when we saw a woman whose heart had been shattered. And his first response was compassion. He didn’t judge her for whatever failings he knew she had. He didn’t ask her questions or try to fix her. Instead, he had compassion for her. We might not be able to heal the way God does, or bring people back to life the way Jesus does, but I wonder if this story in the Gospel of Luke is not as far from us as we think. The scripture makes a point of telling us that Jesus very first response was compassion and it seems to me that this is the foundation for who you are, what you love and why it matters. To all of you, regardless of the tradition that formed you, we are a church that seeks first to respond with compassion. We believe that God loves you as you are. God invites you to leave your guilt behind so there is room for faith. God welcomes you to the communion table to remember who Jesus was and God claimed you in baptism not to spare you from hell but to offer you life. Jesus’ first response was compassion and may it be ours as well. May it be so. Amen.