Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1 Pt 3:15-18; Jn 14:15-21 (April 27, 2008 – Fifth Sunday of Easter)

In the last few weeks, Jesus Christ has been inviting us to hope. He has been calling us to have faith in him and to remain in his love. In the face of all the pains and tribulations we go through, why should we still hope? For those who have suffered for many years, the question becomes, what is the fruit of hoping all these years? Our Christian hope is not foolish hope as some of my skeptical friends think. Our hope is not a pie in the sky as Karl Marx will think. It is not an illusion or at consequentially, a delusion as Sigmund Freud will argue. The temptation is that when we hope and hope for many years and nothing seems to change, we begin to believe that our hope is delusional.

In the last few months, there is hardly a day that goes by without using the word “hope.” For a friend who has just lost a loved one, I say “hope;” to a parishioner that has just been diagnosed of cancer, I say “hope;” to a class mate who has just been laid off because their company is moving over to Taiwan, I say “hope.” It is not uncommon to hear these people ask me, “Do you really believe that things will be better?” I do believe that things will be better. Why do I believe that things will be better? That is what I want to share with you today.

St. Peter tells us in the second reading of today that we need to have an explanation ready for anyone who asks us why we hope. My skeptical friends want to know why I will continue to hope in the Lord after letting my brother and sister die in accidents. Let me tell you, after going through traumatic or difficult circumstances in your life, it sometimes become difficult to remember why we hope. My job this morning is to remind us why we Christian people hope and to give you reasons why we should hope.

We hope because God is truth. He is always faithful to his word. He does not deceive us. Again and again throughout scriptures, he blessed those who hoped in his promises. The story of Abraham in the book of Genesis, is a story of hope. Abraham hoped that the promise which the Lord has made to him would be fulfilled. Biologically, it was impossible for him to become the Father of all nations because his wife Sarah had reached old age. He mistakenly thought that, that promise was to be fulfilled through Haggai, his slave woman. God still made it known to him that, it was Sarai that would fulfill this promise. He believed and because of his hope in the promise of the Lord, St. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:6 that he was credited of all righteousness.

We hope because we are children of Abraham. Through Jesus Christ, the singular descendant of Abraham, we too are sons and daughters of Abraham. The promises and blessings of Abraham are also rightfully ours. This promise from the Lord is of good and not of evil. In Deuteronomy 28:12-13, the Lord makes a promise to us, “The Lord will open up for you his rich treasure house of the heavens, to give your land rain in due season, blessing all your undertakings, so that you will lend to many nations and borrow from none. The Lord will make you the head, not the tail, and you will always mount higher and not decline …” It may be difficult to see how this promise would be fulfilled in your life if you are going through difficult circumstances. The promise of the Lord, is his promise, how he will fulfill it is not for us to decide. I remember what Mike Huckabee use to say in the campaign trail, “I am in the business of miracles and not Math.” Our science cannot explain how God will bring to fruition these promises. Job, the righteous man must have been wondering how God will bring about a change in his life after going through those years of tribulation in his life. His friends had all given up. He was even persuaded to curse God and die, but he stayed firm in the Lord. His response is found in Job 42:2, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be hindered.” As we see at the end of the story of Job, his situation was turned around. Job 42:12 tells us that, “The Lord blessed the late days of Job more than his earlier ones.”

We hope because hope does not disappoint. St. Paul in Romans 5: 4-5 says that we can now boast of our afflictions. We boast of our afflictions because they produce endurance, and endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. It is hope that brings you here every morning, it is hope that makes you go to school, it is hope that makes you go to work. If you have no hope, you can do nothing. In Ezekiel 37, we have the prophecy of the dry bones. God asked the prophet Elijah to prophecy so that these dry bones will come back to life. He says that these dry bones are the house of Israel, their hope is lost and they have been cut off. God asked Elijah to prophecy that their graves will open and they will rise from them. He will put his spirit in them and they will live. He concludes that, “I have promised and I will do it.” We have become like dry bones without life in them. We have been buried in our problems and difficulties, but God has made a promise he will keep. He will open our graves and we will have life and live.

How is he going to give us life? He says to us in the gospel of today that, I will send you the Holy Spirit, the helper, the comforter. Help is on the way. On Friday, the President told us that the treasury department will be mailing out our stimulus checks beginning this Monday. That is help on the way. It will be foolish to sit down and hope that the checks are not coming. We know they are coming. In the same way, Jesus has told us that help is on the way, the Holy Spirit is coming to help us, it will be foolish to stop hoping and believing that help is not on the way. If we do that, we are making Jesus Christ a liar.

We hope because of what God has done in Jesus Christ. He sent him to come and set us free. What greater witness there is, for us to hope? If we believe that Jesus Christ died for us, then we have no option than to hope. His death and resurrection, guarantees everyone of us a place in his father’s kingdom, where as Revelation 21: 3-7 tells us, there is no pain and suffering. We must keep our eyes on this eternal prize. As St. Paul exhorts us in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “we are not discouraged by this momentarily light affliction … we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen, for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Let us not give away our greatest and only weapon, hope. If all fails, the one thing we must hold unto is hope. The moment you let go of hope, your life will become meaningless. It is hope that will bring us successfully to our kingdom. I live you with the words of the prophet Jeremiah in 31:17, “There is hope for the future, says the Lord.”

Romans 4: 13, 16-18, 22 (Saturday March 15, 2008 – Solemnity of St. Joseph, husband of Mary)

Do we follow Jesus because we have faith in him or do we follow him because we are afraid we will go to hell? We Catholics sometimes get fixated on laws. We like so much the language of obligation. I have to go to church on Sunday to fulfill my Sunday obligation; I have to go to church on the feast of the Immaculate Conception to fulfill my holy day of obligation. True and convicted Christians do not go to church because they are obliged to, they go because they have a relationship with Jesus and they know that in order to sustain this relationship, they need to be where he is with his people. It is this faith in Jesus that matters and not laws. The laws are not there to replace our personal relationship with Jesus, their purpose is to guide and strengthen us in this relationship.

We have to be careful not to take our gaze away from this relationship and concentrate on the laws. This is the situation St. Paul is facing with the people of Romans. They have reduced true religion to observing the Jewish laws and in a sense made religion more an external thing than what comes from within. Abraham was credited righteousness because of his faith in God. St. Joseph whose feast we celebrate today also had faith in God and did not go ahead to give Mary a bill of divorce.

How has your faith led you to righteousness?

John 8: 51-59, (Thursday, March 13, 2008)

Jesus Christ reveals himself to the people as “I Am.” They were very familiar with God’s revelation of himself to Moses as the “I Am.” For them, Jesus must be going crazy to think of himself as God. Jesus is making so many assertions that they are finding uncomfortable. He is telling them that if they keep the word, they will never die. How can they make sense of this?

Abraham kept the word, and for that it was credited to him of all righteousness. The prophets kept the word and that is the reason they continued to be the messengers of God. But these all died. For them, Jesus is making a very illogical assertion. What they failed to understand is that good logic does not always translate into good theology, neither does the word of God follow human logic. Jesus Christ was referring to the eternal life that he offers. For Christian people, death is not a total annihilation but a transition into a new life. It is in this sense that Jesus Christ was speaking to them. It is this eternal life that Jesus Christ offers everyone of us that keeps his word.

How can we keep the word of God?

Luke 8: 19-21 (Tuesday, September 25, 2007)

The primary requirement for becoming a member of Jesus' family is hearing the word of God and acting on it. The Word of God is manifested in the person of Jesus. Striving to be like him is important in order to become members of the family of Jesus. All through the New Testament, we see a new election theology in which not only the people of Israel are called to become members of God's family but everyone who adheres to the Word of God, Jesus Christ. St. Paul does a beautiful job when he reconciles the election theology of the New Testament with that of the Old Testament. He says that Jesus Christ is the singular descendant of Abraham and all Christians are rightful descendants of Abraham by what God has done in Jesus. The waters of baptism are very strong and they make us rightfully members of the family of Jesus. Baptism is not a ceremony that we celebrate in order not to go to hell should we die, it is rather, an election into the everlasting bond of the family of Jesus. This calling is so special that Christians should have nothing more important for them than working to remain in this relationship with Jesus. The key to remaining in this relationship with Jesus is hearing the word of God and acting upon it.

Prayer:
Jesus, thank you from liberating us from our life of bondage and making us your sons and daughters. Help us to always remain in this relationship of love with you and the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 19: 16-22 (Monday, July 20, 2007)

True religion is not only staying away from the prohibitions, but it is also being at the service of others; it is working actively to change our society. The young man in the gospel of today was doing a good job staying away from the prohibitions. Jesus says that was not good enough. If he truly wants to be perfect, he needs to go sell his possessions and give them to the poor. The man walked away sad because he had so many possessions. The problem is not that he had many possessions, but he was attached to his possessions. In a sense, the possessions became his own little God. This story can be contrasted with the story of Abraham who had only one child, the child of promise and had no hope of getting another, but when God demanded of this child for sacrifice, he generously wanted to sacrifice him. While Abraham was blessed due to his faith in God, the young man walked away sad.

There are things that we sometime hold on to that prevent us from being the people that God wants us to be. We need to spend some time today reflecting to see what those things are. For some of us, it might be our time, for others it might be our cars; our electronic gadgets, etc. Begin to let go of you attachment to these things and attach yourself to Jesus. When you do this, then you are practicing true Christian religion.

Prayer:
Lord, draw us closer to you that we might take our hearts off the things of these world and put our hearts on you alone who is the Lord of our lives. Give us the graces we need that each day, we will become the people you want us to be.

Hebrews 11: 1-2, 8-19 (Sunday, August 12, 2007)

This reading from the book of Hebrews is in my opinion an excellent teaching on the meaning of Christian faith. The writer says that “faith is the realization of the things hoped for.” This means we are certain of the things that we hope for. As Christians, we hope for eternal life – this is not empty hope or what Sigmund Freud would call “the future of an illusion.” We are absolutely sure that there is eternal life. We are so sure of this because Jesus Christ, who is the singular descendant of Abraham taught us so and not only that he taught us to believe in eternal life, through the event of the Cross and his subsequent resurrection and ascension, he assured us of his power over death and guaranteed us everlasting life with him in heaven.

When God makes his promises to us, we must always take them serious because God does not make empty promises – He doesn’t make promises that he cannot keep. Our acceptance of God’s promises even when we do not know the outcome is what is meant by faith. The people of Israel suffered in the wilderness for forty years because they lacked faith in God. When in the book of Numbers, God commanded Moses to Choose one man from every tribe to go survey the land of Canaan, (the land of promise) he is giving to them, the people doubted the power of God to give them that land. They went and surveyed the land for forty days came back with the confirmation that it was truly flowing with milk and honey. However, they started doubting the possibility of getting this land. They started spreading the rumor that in the land, they saw the Jebusites, the Hittites, the Amorites, and even the Anakims (who were giants.) Not only that, they described themselves as grasshoppers. Due to their lack of faith, God told them that they will receive what they wished for themselves. As grasshoppers their bodies would be buried in the wilderness.

Our lack of faith can turn our blessing to a curse. This is what happened to the people of Israel. The blessing of a land flowing with milk and honey was turned to a curse of forty years in the wilderness suffering. This is the path that was not taken by our father in the faith, Abraham. In his story as portrayed by the book of Hebrews, we learn three significant things about faith:

Ø Faith is a leap into the unknown. When God directed Abraham to leave and God to a land he was going to give to him, Abraham did not know where this land is; he did not know the conditions he will face there; he did not question the Lord. He trusted in him and he proceeded to the unknown. Sometimes God confronts us with such difficult challenges. How do we respond to him? Faith requires that we drop our own plans for our lives and let God lead us. Sometimes we work out our own template of our lives and then we want God to conform to our own template. Faith means working according to God’s template for our lives. It means letting God take charge of our lives; it means becoming a blank check in his hands so that he will write any amount he wants on it and cash it whenever he wants. This is a very difficult thing to do, yet it is just what Christians are called to do. How wonderful it is to be in a situation where you do not want to worry about anything because God is in control. That is how life would be if you surrender to God in faith.

Ø Faith means trusting that God will make the impossible things possible. In our day to day language, we do not hesitate to use sentences such as “it can never happen.” I want to assure you today that, that sentence is not in any of God’s books or scripts. Christians should never use such languages. With God, “all things are possible.” That situation you were just thinking today that is irreversible, God can reverse it within a twinkle of an eye. The scripture abounds with great miracles where things that human beings thought were impossible became possible. The whole event of the resurrection is what would seem like impossibility to human beings. Yet, Jesus did it. He even brought his friend Lazarus back to life. Don’t give up yet and Christians should never give up. We need to always hold firm to Christ because he may change that situation in the split second. Abraham and Sarah having a child at that point of their life was an impossibility to human beings but they trusted in the Lord and it came to pass. Put your faith in God and not in the human person.

Ø Faith demands that we are ready to make sacrifices when God wants us to. We must be open to sacrifice our most precious treasures. Isaac was the precious child of promise. When God demanded of Isaac from Abraham, he trusted in the Lord and he offered Isaac for sacrifice. You may have been saving money all through your life to buy yourself, your dream car at retirement. You just went to a dealership and negotiated for a 2008 Mercedez. You will return the next day with a Cashiers check from your bank. On your way home, you hear a story on West Virginian Public radio of children dying of hunger and disease in Darfur. You could hear God speaking to you to give away that money to save lives in Darfur. What are you going to do? Will you say Lord, I have saved all through my life to buy this car, I cant give this money out; or would you say, Lord, this is your gift to me, you will bless me more, I will give out this money. This was a similar situation Abraham found himself in. In his own case, it was even a human life. When God calls us to make sacrifices to him, we must make them because that is the seed of more blessings in our lives.

We are called today to have the faith, like the faith of Abraham. He is our Father in the faith and we all who believe in Christ are his descendants. If we have the kind of faith he has, we too would share in the blessings that have been extended to Abraham.