Message: I invite you to join me – to learn from Jesus what it means to become a disciple and disciple maker.
Happy Easter! My name is Fr. Phillip Bloom. This is my sixth Easter as your pastor here at St. Mary of the Valley.
For my Easter homily I begin with a remarkable interview. A journalist decided to track down survivors of suicide attempts on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He asked them what was going in their minds during the 4 seconds of that fall. All of them responded that they regretted the decision to jump, one saying “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I thought was unfixable was totally fixable, except for having just jumped.”
That man, Kenneth Baldwin, is still alive – 30 years after the suicide attempt. He has raised a family and teaches high school students. What good words for all of us, but especially young people: “Everything I thought was unfixable is totally fixable.”
Kenneth Baldwin’s words also describe the first Easter morning. It began in desolation, even despair. The disciples had followed Jesus for several years. They listened to his powerful teaching. They saw his amazing works. And now it all fell apart. And the disciples carried a burden of guilt. They had ran away. They abandoned the man who had done everything for them. One had the courage to go back and stand with Jesus. But two of them – Peter and Judas – had betrayed Jesus with acts of cowardice and greed. Of those two, one committed suicide.
Easter morning began in darkness, desolation and guilt. Now, we might think the resurrection instantly changed all that – and in one sense it did. The things unfixable became totally fixable. But that did not happen in an instant. It began a process that continued 50 days until Pentecost – and beyond. They once thought they knew what it meant to be a disciple. Now they were really doing to learn.
That’s the invitation I give you this Easter: To join me in learning what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus.
At the beginning of Lent many St. Mary of the Valley parishioners took a survey called “Disciple Makers Index.” The survey will help us become a parish of disciples and disciple makers. We will get the survey results during the Easter season.
The survey responds to an urgent need. We need disciple makers – people who are willing to share their faith, to talk with others about what God, Jesus and the sacraments mean to them, to invite others to come to the parish. Only a small percentage of Catholics are disciple makers. We want to change that. We want to become a parish of disciples and disciple makers. During this Easter season I will explore with you what it means to become an intentional disciple and a disciple maker.
I’m not so good at it myself. All of us live surrounded by what Thoreau called “quiet desperation.” You see signs of that desperation in the increase in drugs, pornography and gambling, but despair takes makes forms.
Ultimately only one can give lasting hope in the face of despair – the one St. Peter describes today: The man who “went around doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil.” The man put to death “on a tree.” The man whose cross becomes the tree of life. The man who takes our desolation and guilt. Because of Jesus those things that seem unfixable are totally fixable.
I know many people have become disillusioned. Young people especially tell me that they are losing their faith. I do understand. To maintain one’s faith with today’s culture is like standing in a rainstorm and trying to keep a candle burning. It takes determination and even some outside help.
But if you have become disillusioned, I also say, “good.” You are like the disciples on that first Easter morning. Come back next weekend. I invite you to join me – to learn from Jesus what it means to become a disciple and disciple maker. Amen.