And the one who searches hearts
knows what is the intention of the Spirit,
because he intercedes for the holy ones
according to God’s will.

Brothers and Sisters, with our celebration today we have come to the end of the Easter season. Perhaps you did not realize that for the past 50 days we have been celebrating the resurrection of Jesus even as the world around us has moved on to Memorial Day, graduations, weddings, ordinations, the Fourth of July, whatever.

Today we celebrate that day when the disciples of the Lord and his mother, once overwhelmed by grief at the crucifixion of their Lord, were empowered by the Spirit of God to boldly proclaim the Truth in his name.

And proclaim it they did. They proclaimed it in words, words expressing those groanings that only could be interpreted as divine. They expressed it in every language, foreshadowing the spread, of the Church’s message to every corner of the earth. They proclaimed it in deeds, sheltering the homeless, comforting the widow, consoling the orphan and of course, in the fullness of time, those apostles proclaimed the Truth of Jesus with their lives. And they did it without compromise wrapped in the reality of blood and ashes. In that reality that we celebrate today, there is a kind of wildness.

There is a wildness in that early Church, that account of the Day of Pentecost, a wildness that can only come from an inebriation in Christ, that fullness of the Spirit that gives us the courage and the conviction that our faith is something were fighting for, worth dying for.

Where is that wildness today? I wonder

I wonder if in our Church today we expect wildness, inebriation, danger?

I wonder if we have not become complacent, attached too much to the numbers, to the financial pictures of Church life, odd assertions of the viability of parishes..

I wonder if that spirit of adventure, that wildness played out on the day of Pentecost has become confined by the niceties to Church life, not too much Spirit please, it’s not polite. Have we become lost in the babble of our own tower building, erecting in our lives barriers to the spirit which transform themselves into barrios of mediocrity and, ultimately, desolation?

Where is the wildness?

I wonder if we have left room of the Spirit in our modern tower building, because I am sure that Spirit of God is as much ours today as it was for those disciples long ago.

The same Spirit that touched the lives of those frightened apostles and made them bold, that same spirit is still available for us today even as we strive to shelter ourselves from the fearsome powers of the world around us, a tower of Babel we have built.

That Spirit is there to comfort us in our weakness and in our vulnerability when we shed our banal facades in the shadow our own rooms and tearfully implore the God of ages to touch our age, to renew us, only to be “enlightened” by the light of day, a day that promises nothing but more of the same.

That Spirit is there to give us courage to face what we have to face, the breakdown of homes, the sickness of families, the desolation of communities, death, addiction, diseases, it is there even when we think we can do something on our own, even when we live into the damnable illusion of self-power, self-aggrandizement, and self-rule.

That Spirit is there for us hidden in the folds of our garments, the garments of industry turned to tyranny, the garment of ambition turned to greed, the winnowing garment of control turned to being controlled by money, power, drugs, sex, whatever it is

That Spirit is incontrovertible

That Spirit is dangerous and wild

And how do we get that Spirit? How do we get that Spirit back? How do we become renewed in our hearts and in our minds, in our families and in our world?

Brothers and sisters it is time to reform.  Because if that Spirit of God is a comfort, it is also a wrecking ball.

Reform our lives to live more purposefully into the deliriousness of the Gospel

Reform our communities to make them places of love, of compassion and of service.

Reform our families to make them true homes of God’s care for lives young and old

Reform our schools to make them true temples of wisdom

Reform our workplaces to create there works of joy

Reform our nation to make it a godly nation rather than a nation of wanton prosperity and delusory freedoms

Reform our world to make it a fit habitation for our children and ourselves.

If we reform in the Spirit of God what can we expect to find?

In that reformation we will find a necessary conduit of the Spirit of God, that Spirit will descend upon us mightily.

Do we expect it or do we wallow in the false comfort of a Spiritless world?

What will this Day of Pentecost be for us? Will it be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit?

Will we learn to speak new tongues or with the same old drivel dribble from our mouths?

Will we be bold or will we shirk the responsibilities of reform?

Will we be brazen or will we be endlessly apologizing for a faith that means nothing more than a place to show up on Sunday when we have nothing better to do?

Each year the Church offers us in the liturgical year a way to check our lives, evaluate our discipleship.

What will it be today?

O my brothers and sisters, look at the news. Hundreds of children’s bones are discovered on the sight of a Catholic orphanage in Ireland. Little girls attempt to murder their classmate at the behest of a video specter. Terrorists steal the lives of hundreds of children in Africa in the name of God and religion. And we continue to fight our internal struggles in the Church with no regard for the mandate of love given by the Spirit of God.

We need examples of love. We need examples of courage. We need examples of those willing to witness with their lives, not so we can admire them but so we can be inspired to act as they do, to make our lives as theirs are.

And today we have an example for us, the example of our new priest, Fr. Tim.

As it was for the disciples on the Day of Pentecost, the advent of a new priest is a time of expectation

What will HE be today and in the years to come?

Fr. Tim what will you be?

Will you be a man of courage and a man of faith who is able to accomplish the complete annihilation of the spirit of this age, a spirit of compromise, a spirit of cowardice, a spirit of degeneracy?

Will you be a man of faith, a man who prays and thus casts down the demons of ease and comfort which threaten with their base simplicity the demands of a God of justice and complicated truth?

Will you be a man who cultivates a love for the Church, not separating yourself from the people you are called to pour out your life in service for, not setting yourself a part in the isolation of your commitment to celibacy, but seeing your celibate life as a freedom, a means of gaining access to the unloved and the unwanted.

Will you

Father, here are some words I spoke to you just  a few weeks ago: I want to repeat them today because on this Day of Pentecost I would like for these words to form a contract of the Spirit between you and these folks that you are called to serve, between you and the God you are called to serve.

Here we go:

Tim, ask God to make you a man of love and compassion:

Ask that of God and you will find in a world of doubt and confusion what is really important. You will find the love of all because you want to love. Love in the name of Jesus, love in the name of His holy Church. Love in the name of the misunderstood Christ. Love in the eyes of the old and the dying seized with mortal anguish at the threshold of the awesomeness of eternity, love in the sparkle of the new parent, love in the forceful embrace of little ones, in the handholding of the housebound, the trembling grasp of the grieving. Love without compromise and without cost. Love the unlovable, the stranger, the unbeliever, the prisoner, the street-person, the defiant one. Love the lukewarm and the mediocre. Dare to love in the face of the world’s gross indifference. Dare to love when all skill for love has been eroded. Be a prophet of love, a priest of love.  Love with all your heart and you will never be lonely, never lacking in friends. His love, as you give it away, will be sufficient for you. Love with the conviction that God alone will turn our sorrows and our sense of being outcast into gladness, into the fullness of joy, so ask Him.

And the one who searches hearts
knows what is the intention of the Spirit,
because he intercedes for the holy ones
according to God’s will.

The threshold is before us today, here and now and strengthened by the power of the God which comes to us in the form of bread and wine, but is the Body and Blood of Christ, strengthened by that power, with the leadership of our new priest, we go forth today to proclaim the Glory of God to a world.

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the ascension here in Prattville. I have to say that I am a bit self-conscious about the homily today for a few reasons. First, being truly back in the South makes me aware that a certain homiletic energy is necessary for any real success. I think I would rather preach in St. Peter’s basilica than in Prattville, because I have confidence that you folks of Prattville know a thing when you see it. Secondly, I was at a conference in Grand Rapids Michigan this week composed of Protestant teachers of homiletics, very nerve-wracking. Finally, this is Father Greenwell’s first time to preside at the liturgy in his hometown, We know how all of that ended up for Jesus. I am prepared for the quick and perhaps necessary escape.

Nevertheless, here we are in Prattville and I am happy to be here. In reflecting on my time in Grand Rapids, I have to admit that I have very little idea about what makes preaching interesting, even less so after talking to the experts. I do know this however, when we read, or hear the Scripture passages for today I wonder, in fact I know, that we are caught in a dilemma, the dilemma of being at a major theological juncture, that is the ascension of Jesus into heaven and nobody really caring.

Jesus went up. Today’s feast reads to the modern mind like a fairy tale. Jesus said some wise things and then he flew away.

It leads us to a couple of questions. The first of which is who is Jesus? Is he merely a nice man who talked about sheep and children, someone who forgave sinners, whatever that might mean, or was he something else, someone else, someone whose presence in our world was not only nice, but needful. And reflection on that issue might lead us to another question

Where is Jesus? If I went back to my Protestant teachers of homiletics we could come up with a very succinct answer: Jesus is in heaven. He remained here for 40 days after his resurrection. He talked to the disciples. He cooked some fish. He was wise and then … up, up and away! And today, according to our sisters and brothers across the divide, there he remains, waiting for the rapture, the second coming, the parousia, or what you will. It doesn’t mean much, but it is safe.
It is safe for us to think about Jesus as somehow removed from our daily discourse. We can refer to him and his teaching but it’s not as though he is standing there looking over our shoulder.

It is safe for us to think of Jesus, just out of sight, just out of earshot of our tired personal dramas, our beleaguered rhetoric.

It is safe to imagine the Son of God entangled in the worn out language of our Church chat, be we Protestants or Catholics, or whatever. It is interesting that I heard a Protestant minister say recently how much he admired Pope Francis because he sounded like a preacher and not a professor.

It is safe to keep Jesus neatly locked in the promise of the parousia so that he doesn’t threaten the nice delineated patterns of life we have set up as idols of worship.

It is safe to keep Jesus in heaven, out of sight and out of mind. Heaven is like a great safe deposit box. You can access it when you need it, but really it’s not needed every day.

And so Jesus is safe, but in being safe, ultimately, not very meaningful.

What would it be like for Prattville if Jesus returned today?

Well, I have news for Prattville. He is returning. He has returned.

On that day so long ago, our Lord did ascend into heaven but the question heard by the apostles remains for us as well. It is our question:

Men of Galilee, why do you stand there looking up into the skies?

The very asking of the question seems to make everything clear. The eschaton, the rapture, the second coming can take care of itself. It WILL take care of itself. The message of Jesus needs to be proclaimed here and now. The question of the mysterious men seems to be this: What do we have here? Even without reference to his future coming. How is Jesus among his people now? Because Jesus is among his people and his Holy Spirit fills both the halls of so-called authority and the beleaguered embarrassments of the human condition.

HE is here in the Church. He is here in the brightness. Here in the joy and He is here in the darkened corners of the human condition. Here in Prattville.

Jesus is among his people and his love fills the lives of those who mourn, those who suffer and his gladness overflows in those who rejoice, those who celebrate in Prattville and around the globe in little places in Korea and Vietnam and Africa

Jesus is among his people in the sudden intake of breath in the new born baby and in the sighs of relief of his exhausted parents in Alabama, throughout the world

Men of Galilee, why do you stand among his people looking into the skies?
For Jesus is among his people in the tragedies of infantile longing and infatuation and in the tyranny of innocence lost, in the dramas of childhood and the anguishes of adolescence. He’s in the triumph and in the trash.

Jesus is among his people even now in the vows exchanged by married couples, in their ups and downs, their heartbreaks and joys, their getting together and their drifting apart

Men of Galilee, why do you stand among his people looking into the skies?

When Jesus is among his people in black eyes and barroom brawls, playground scuffles, in cool cloudless nights and heat oppressed days, in every season, when we need him and when we ought to need him

Jesus is among his people as we jolt our way through the mundane tasks of life, in dead end jobs and hopeless relationships, he fills our days with this presence, his silent presence, his love, his powerful love when we fail, when we drink too much, when we gossip too much, even then.

Jesus is among his people in the power of his word, his mighty word that thunders over the rhetoric and privations of the politics of this town, this country, this world.

It is a word that breaks hearts, that opens our ears to the cries of the needy and shuts the mouths of the proud and the ignorant, the word whose syllables are themselves the awesome dynamism of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Jesus is among his people here in Prattville, in his Word that meets the conceit of men on the battlefields of the human psyche and announces boldly and without compromise a word of peace and reconciliation,

Jesus is among us for all who need him, the threatened, the unborn, the marginalized, the outcast, the despised, the old, the forgotten.

O, Men of Galilee, why do you stand among his people looking into the skies?

Jesus is among his people as we struggle with economic hardship, as we lay awake at night wondering how we will keep our families safe, in the wail of confusion, in lives tainted with the awful tincture of cynicism and doubt

Jesus is among his people as we struggle and as we sin, he holds out his reconciling hand to our lack of courage and our fear

Jesus is among his people as we make our mistakes, make friends, cling to our sons and daughters, work and study and live and work some more

And brothers and sisters, Jesus is among his people in the power of this sacrament, he shows himself in the bread and wine, his presence is known to us in simple things, his majesty is cloaked in the disguise of compromise, his greatness in the form of food which he offers to us, his body and blood offered for us. How more among his people can Jesus be than in our flesh, in our blood, in our bodies, in our souls?

Jesus is among his people in the Church, the apostles and preachers and evangelists the teachers. And He is among us in our priest, our new priest. Fr. Greenwell.

What are we to make of this new priest? He is a man called by God, not for convention, but to change the world. Father, you are called, not to serve meekly in the context of this local Church, but by your preaching, by your celebration of the sacraments, by your bold witness, you are called to change the world, to change this country, to change this archdiocese, to be a prophet from Prattville.

Now, father, do for us what you have been called to do. Do it boldly and without compromise for I know that the Spirit is within you. Give Christ to an expectant people, a waiting people, a people who even here, even now are called to the Glory of a Kingdom of peace in this sacrifice which we now accept from your hands. It is a sacrifice that gives meaning to our past, gives joy to the here and now and configures the future into the bright promise of beatitude here, today, in Prattville.

On that day long ago Jesus ascended into heaven. And now he is here among us. Blessed are we who are called to this altar, to this celebration of the Mass, to this supper of the Lamb.