My friends, as I said in the bulletin, we are back to Ordinary Time, which our Church names as such because it represents an in-between time that is not about the major times of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter, but as we know, if we are trying to “walk in Jesus’ footsteps,” it is not, “ordinary” at all! This time brings challenge with every week! 

   We only need look to this Sunday’s Scriptures to realize the truth of this.  The first reading from Genesis lets us know that it is very much the human condition, when something goes wrong, to look for blame in someone other than ourselves.  Looking within ourselves is always a challenge—what part of this is mine is a question that we need to routinely ask. 

   “Fear” is another human condition or reaction that we often experience when “wrong-doing,” or “something out of the ordinary” takes place, and we are at the center of the apparent conflict.  We see our brother Jesus, who we confess to follow, in calling ourselves “Christians,” facing this dilemma today.  The locals are saying that he is probably “possessed” in curing people, so his brothers and sisters and mother go to rescue him. 

   His family, along with the locals are challenged to see that Jesus’ words often are pointing to a “bigger picture” than what the words say.  Of course, he is not denying his physical family, his mother and his siblings, who in many ways are partially responsible for the man he has become in his relationship with them. No, Jesus is teaching a larger truth; “those of you who are willing to challenge yourselves, becoming the best that you are capable of, for yourselves and for others, become to me, in a special way, my sisters, my brothers, and my mother!”

  Unfortunately, for many humans, we don’t want to “stand out,” or “be different,” because punishment, physical, or worse, at times, emotional or spiritual punishment may be a consequence of our brave, different, or lone action.  Again, unfortunately, our Church hierarchy uses “fear” in the face of actions that they don’t understand, or more so, haven’t sanctioned.  I would suggest that “fear” plays a part in the present push with the Eucharistic pilgrimages which are attempting to move our beloved Church backward instead of forward. 

   This year, as we remember our beginnings 16 years ago, I recall being personally threatened (fear) with the loss of episcopal endorsement to serve as a Catholic-certified chaplain, a needed piece, by the way, for a lay person to be certified with the National Association of Catholic Chaplains, and eventually with excommunication from the Church that I have been faithful to for my entire life, if I didn’t recant my ordination as a priest.  And all of you, simply by attending Mass here are supposed to consider yourselves, excommunicated too—these words came from retired Pope Benedict XVI.  In choosing not to “recant,” me and you are saying to the powers-that-be that in the end, we choose, “love” over “fear.”  Fear keeps us from doing what love calls us to do. 

   Our brother Jesus, in today’s gospel asks an obvious question of the “powers” in his time:  “Why do you assume that when someone comes in strength and goodness, that it has to be about the devil?” One of the “fears” of the original bishop who asked me to recant, was that I would “be confusing the faithful.”  There was never the thought, as with our brother Jesus, that I, along with him, might be doing anything good. 

   So my friends, with you as well, when you question whether you can, or should speak, or act in a certain way that is against the status quo, you must always, as Jesus has told us, “check the fruits,”  –always look at how “love” is being served,” because, in the end, it can’t just be about the law! Our present-day bishop, Robert Barron won’t sit down and talk with us because we won’t recant, and it is hard for me to see this as anything but law over love.  Why, as with Jesus today, does our “holy presence,” which again, I humbly suggest that we are in this community, that has served many over the past 16 years need to be looked at negatively, rather than positively? 

   The psalmist today gives us hope in this prayer: “I trust in you O’God… and my soul waits for you more than sentinels wait for the dawn.  For with you is kindness and plenteous redemption.”  St. Paul, a tentmaker by personal trade, gives us a wonderful image today as we strive to follow our brother Jesus, the Christ, “when our earthly tent is folded up,” “may thanksgiving overflow” within us [because of the] “grace that is reaching more and more people—to the glory of God,” due to the strength and goodness that we allowed to happen in our lives through love.  Amen? Amen!

   My friends, today’s liturgy brings us to the 3^rd of three, rather hard to understand, in other words, “get our minds around,” themes presented to us in this interim between Easter and a return to Ordinary Time in our Church Year.  And once again, it is best to come at this theme of the “Body and Blood of Christ” as with the other two, Pentecost, and Trinity Sundays, through our hearts, as our minds aren’t expansive, or flexible enough to take in what I believe our God wants us to “get” here. 

   Now if we were to stay on the surface of today’s theme, “the Body of Christ,” as do many in the teaching authority of our Church, we would spend most of our time considering the “real flesh and real blood on the altar, and consider what we do here at Mass, each time we do it, as a reliving of Jesus’ death on the cross and not much more. Apparently, this is the prime intention of the National Eucharistic Conference coming up in July in Indianapolis. 

   And granted, that takes a great deal of faith to imagine the “bread and wine” in that way, as real flesh, and real blood, if the only purpose is to somehow get ourselves to believe what our minds tell us, is just not so.  And please, don’t get me wrong; I am not denying that Jesus is fully and miraculously present here in the bread and wine, on our table of thanksgiving, but I don’t find it necessary to place “that presence” in a teeny, tiny box of physical elements, especially when that focus keeps us from moving out, and seeing that wonderful presence in others and our world.

   I believe that our brother Jesus had this totally bigger, more expansive view for all of us when he said, “This is my body, [all that I taught and modeled for you] this is my blood, [all that I am doing for you in living and dying to let you know how much my Abba loves you] and do this in memory of me!”  We must remember that these words come within Jesus’ priestly prayer, the night before he died, where he asked our God to bless his followers, and by extension, that includes us, with a sense that “they would try to be one, and find a place in their lives going forward, to include everyone,” as for our brother Jesus, these, and all of us, are his “Body and Blood” and the ones he wants us to “worship” –or better said, “care for.” 

   That first “Eucharist” was simply the starting place where the apostles, disciples, and all of us received a physical, everyday sign, “bread and wine”—the stuff of life, meant to help us recall all that Jesus taught us through his earthly life, through his very, “body and blood” poured out, in action for us.  So, my friends, I guess what I am trying to say is, we shouldn’t merely look at Corpus Christi Sunday as a noun wherein we worship Jesus’ physical “body and blood,” but as a verb that moves us to recognize in others and all of creation, “his body, his blood,” and care for it.

   We don’t receive much help through today’s chosen readings from Exodus, Hebrews, or Mark in seeing this greater mission of ourselves being Jesus’ “body and blood” in our world—living as he did in order that our lives are more often than not, about seeing him in others. 

   These chosen readings are basically showing us the history of the “Chosen” people in understanding their relationship with God—one that was about “atonement for their past failings through animal sacrifice that would be “made perfect in the sacrifice of Jesus.” 

   And if we “stay there,” in this mindset, then it is all about, a one-time action that basically calls us to do nothing in our life’s journey but be “grateful.”  If that was all that the Incarnation was about, then I don’t think that says much that is good about our God! 

   But, if Jesus was meant to show us through his “body and blood,” basically his life, how we then could also be his “body and blood” in the world, then we are talking about a God who really loves us in an over-the-top way. 

   I would much rather use my time and energy attempting to see Jesus’ physical presence in our world, where unfortunately, it is too often denied, then to somehow recognize that “Jesus is physically present” in the elements on an altar for a select group who believe all the rules and regulations.  I believe our brother Jesus would much rather we “worship and care for him” in the immigrants at our southern border, in all the homeless and hungry not only here, but around the world, in those abused because of race, gender, or any other impediment we can think up to discount folks, than in the physical elements on an altar.

   But, let’s go back to today’s Scriptures, as I always feel we need to start there, and allow the Spirit to show us the “good, and not so good.  From the Exodus reading, if we simply take the idea that our God is making a covenant, or promise with these “chosen” people to be their God, and they in return, will be God’s people, which, by the way, includes us all as Jesus so clearly stated during his physical lifetime.  We don’t need to “get lost in the weeds” here with all the animal sacrifice.

   If we jump ahead to the psalmist in 116, we get quite a different sense about, “who” God is for them: “What return can I make to the Most High for all your goodness to me?”  And again, “Precious in your eyes is the death of your faithful.” 

   My friends, it is hard to bring this homily to a close, because this feast day in our Church is about so much, “profound stuff,”  that we can never truly understand, and thus I believe, we shouldn’t necessarily try so much “to understand,” but simply, “to do.”

   Corpus Christi Sunday is really about seeing our world, and its people, as much as possible, as God does, and then, love all, “wastefully” as Bishop John Shelby Spong has so rightly said of our God! Amen? Amen!