Karl Barth

If we are not in God's grace, may he put us there. If we are in God's grace, may he keep us there. Amen.

Karl Barth was born in May of 1886 and he died in December of 1968. He was born to Johann Fritz Barth, who was theology professor and a pastor. Unfortunately, I was not able to learn anything about his mother, other than the fact that her name was; Anna Katharina Sartorius and I do not know how she may have nurtured him or influenced him. It is clear, however, that Karl Barth followed in his father's footsteps, since he too, grew up to become a theology professor and a leader in the Confessing Church.

Karl must have made his parents proud; since he was so wildly successful that he is widely considered to be the greatest and most influential theologian of the 20th century. And, Pope Pius the 12th went even further and declared Karl Barth is the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas wrote a thousand years ago!

There is so much I could tell you about Karl Barth's life, his influences, his career. But the truth is, I was reading about Karl Barth and his work, two or three of his ideas really reached out and grabbed me by the collar and dragged me down the street. In fact, I am still wrestling with them and I imagine I will be thinking about these ideas for a long time. And these ideas are; Who is Christ? What is Christ? What is the work of Christ? And what does humankind have to do with it?

In the 500 years before Karl Barth began to think and teach, it is my understanding that Calvinist ideas predominated in Protestant thought. That is to say, most Christians saw that humankind was inherently sinful, predestined to rebel against God, behave in evil ways and hate God. Most Christians believed that only a select few would be saved and that the majority of the sinful human race would be condemned to hell. Karl Barth strongly disagreed! He couldn't believe this, not for a minute. For one thing, in Karl's mind, this kind of thing was rooted in error because it kept our eyes focused on the guilt and evil of humankind, Karl said that would be missing the point! Of course human kind is evil! Actually, he is quoted as saying;

"Men have never been good, they are not good and they will never be good."

So what else is new? That is simply not the point. The point, Karl said, is to keep your eyes on Christ. That's where the action is! In Jesus Christ, the reconciliation of all humankind had already taken place. The work is already done, for everyone... Now, I am not an expert on Karl Barth. In fact, I come to you fairly ignorant about him. So, at first glance, this seems like Christian Universalism to me. The idea that everyone is saved by God's infinite power and love, and no one is going to hell. I'm told that Karl did not quite go that far. That Karl insisted that eternal salvation was a work done by Christ for everyone (even the most sinful and rejecting of people), and so their salvation is a POSSIBILITY - it all depends on the Mystery of God and ultimately, it is not our job to judge, but to pray for them.

So, after 500 years of what seems to me to be a gloomy and pessimistic theology, Karl Barth opened the curtains and the windows and brought in the sunshine, brought in the fresh air of a Christ-centered optimism and hope. I love that about him!

Karl Barth was a unique figure in his day, for another reason, he stood against the skeptics of his day when he insisted that the teaching of Christ's conception by the Holy Spirit and His birth by the Virgin Mary be accepted at face value on Faith as something that happened in history. Karl Barth was surrounded by people who wanted to either, on the one hand, compare the Virgin birth of Christ to other similar mythologies, or on the other hand, wanted to explain it away with science. For Karl, both of those paths missed the point and were tragic errors. In Karl's mind, if you lose the Virgin Birth then you lose everything - EVERYTHING that came in the Gospel afterward. Because it simply isn't possible to talk about the person of the Christ without also talking about the work of the Christ. They are one and cannot be separated. And here is why...

Karl Barth said, "Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. Jesus, He, Himself IS the way."

What does that mean? ... It means a lot of things. First of all, in Karl's mind, Jesus is unique. His conception by the Holy Spirit and his Virgin birth cannot be compared to any mythology, because, first of all, Jesus is Eternal. He existed before his incarnation in human flesh. No other deity claims that. So, Jesus as the Eternal Word of God, has this great desire to have both reconciliation and communion, the deepest intimacy with humankind. (Jesus  even compared it to Marriage.) In order to accomplish this, Jesus the Eternal Word of God comes to the Virgin Mary through the Holy Spirit and takes on flesh.

As I have said before, for Karl, this is a matter of definite history - this happened, it is a moment in time. And it is a striking moment, for quite a number of reasons. First of all it is a moment of grace. God comes to Mary, God comes to humankind - to US, with the intention to heal and to save, with the power to heal and to save. It is all grace. Mary didn't do anything to deserve it, humankind didn't do anything to deserve it. We couldn't have done anything to deserve it. Grace, healing, love, salvation, it is all an act of God that is given, it cannot be earned. Humankind never ascends to God, God comes to us and he comes to us with healing in his wings.

Second of all, this moment when Jesus the Eternal Word of God comes to the Virgin Mary through the Holy Spirit and takes on human flesh, this moment is striking because... in the conception and birth of Jesus Christ, God and Man become ONE... Before this, God had no form, God had no face! Before this, God was separate. At this moment in history, God takes on human form, he takes on a face! And he becomes One with us. And not just for a human lifetime, but for all of eternity. The God is changed for all eternity. That, my friends, is an amazing thought.

If I am not mistaken, this moment of Oneness is when reconciliation happens - or at least, this is when it BEGINS, in the mind of Karl Barth. This moment is every bit as grace-filled, every bit as salvific and united with that moment of Christ's last breath on the Cross. They are both parts of a whole. One cannot exist without the other.

Another thing Karl Barth said about the Mystical Incarnation of God become flesh in Jesus Christ. He said; Jesus Christ is the Word of God, he is the Revelation of God. In Christ we learn what God is... But he also said,

"man does not first figure out what is humanity and then discover Jesus Christ to be that thing, rather he discovers in Jesus Christ what is real humanity".

Karl says, we don't even begin to know what it means to be human, we don't even begin to know what it means to be humane, until we know Christ, who is the first real human, the first whole human - the One who has come to make us whole.

This Christmas, I encourage you and even challenge you, my fellow rational and intellectual friends, to consider Karl's astonishing Christology. To consider the uniqueness, the power, the majesty and healing that it contains. Set aside, logic, the need to know the answers, the need for control and just be open (like Mary), accept what it has to offer - even if only for a little while. I guarantee it will transform you. I've lived with it for only 24 hours and I am already astonished and changed.

Feast of St. Bernadette Soubirous

Feast of St. Bernadette Soubirous

If we are not in God’s grace, may He put us there. If we are in God’s grace, may He keep us there. – Amen.

Tonight, we celebrate the life of St. Bernadette Soubirous. She is the patron Saint of the sick, the poor and those who are ridiculed for their faith.

Bernadette was born on January 7, 1844, in Lourdes, France. She was the oldest of 9 children. But the family lived in extreme poverty and because of both the inhumane conditions they lived in and lack of medical care, only 5 of those 9 children survived.

The family was so poor, they were forced to live in a single room. But this wasn’t just any room. It was so dank, so unsanitary that it was a condemned prison cell. It wasn’t even considered fit for prison-convicts! Living there was cruel and unusual punishment. But a family of 7 lived in this single cell and, we are told, they lived harmoniously. The family is remembered as being kind, polite, disciplined and loving, in spite of the inhuman conditions they were living in. Still, the poverty, lack of medical care, living in a damp, condemned prison cell would leave indelible marks of suffering on Bernadette. For one example, she fell ill with cholera as a small child and suffered severe asthma. For another, poverty forced her family to cut her education short and put her to work as a child.

On February 11, 1858, Bernadette and 2 young girls went out of the village and into the woods to collect firewood. The 2 girls walked ahead, while Bernadette stopped to take her socks and shoes off before crossing the stream. She didn’t want them to get wet. Suddenly, a wind blew and Bernadette saw something out of the corner of her eye, she turned to look… She saw a vision of the lady in white. The young girl was, at first, afraid, so she brought out her rosary. The lady in white brought out a rosary too and they began to recite together. Then the lady disappeared without ever having spoken a word to the young girl. This is how the story of St. Bernadette begins.

Bernadette would continue to have visions at the grotto, from February 11^th to March 4th. Before long, the entire population of Lourdes would follow her out into the woods, hoping see something magical, something freaky, or hoping for a miracle.

The town’s police saw these crowds as a dangerous threat, as public panic or hysteria, the next thing to a riot. So they arrested Bernadette and they interrogated her, they harassed her. Why was she going out to the woods, what was she seeing? Was she charging admission? Was she in this for any kind of fame or profit, or gain? When it became clear that the girl was innocent, the police handed her over to psychiatrists to be tested, to see if she needed to be put into the insane asylum. But she passed all their tests, she was deemed to be lucid and sober as a judge. In the end, they had to set her free.

The Church authorities, for their part had an extremely hard time. First, they wanted to know who or what Bernadette was seeing? Was this spirit damaging to the souls of the people of Lourdes?... It took a long time for the spirit to answer Bernadette, and when she did, she gave Bernadette a title, not a name. The lady in white said; “I am the Immaculate Conception.” This was a scandal when these words came out of Bernadette’s mouth! The 14 year old girl with a first grade education could not possibly know what these words meant! It meant that Heaven really was speaking to and through her. Her! An impoverished, ignorant, stinking peasant. Not to the bishops, not to the priests, not to the nuns…

Remember our reading: “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him.” God has long history of this, just within the New Testament alone; Jesus was a carpenter, his disciples were mostly fishermen, Mary Magdalene (a woman) was chosen to be the first evangelist of the resurrection. Even Mary, herself, sang; “My heart praises the Lord… for he has remembered me, his lowly servant.” She wasn’t just being modest – she really was socially lowly, being betrothed to a poor man.

I’d like to think that Mary chose Bernadette because she saw something of herself in the girl, because she felt she could relate with her. But Bernadette would not have been able to see or understand that kind of honor or kinship. Bernadette was once heard to exclaim; “Don’t I realize God and the Blessed Virgin chose me to carry the message because I was most ignorant? If anyone could have been found that was more ignorant than myself, she would have been chosen!”

This was pretty much the extent of Bernadette’s visions, except for one more thing; Mary told Bernadette to eat some wi1d herbs and dig in the dirt with her hands, then a spring would well up. Bernadette was obedient, she got on her hands and knees ate the wi1d grass and dug. She 1ooked crazy! On a11 fours with mud around her mouth, pawing at the ground… A 1ot of peop1e wa1ked away in disgust, having 1ost faith. But it happened. There, the healing waters of Lourdes sprang out of the ground and later, the shrine was built.

Bernadette did not see the shrine. She withdrew from society and joined a cloistered order of nuns. She spent the rest of her short life in prayer, dying at the young age of 35 of illness… When asked why she didn’t go to the shrine for healing, Bernadette simply said; “it isn’t for me.”

Who is it for? What’s it about? What are we really looking at here? What are we looking for?

If we look at this one vision, we don’t learn much, except about the Catholic doctrine of the “Immaculate Conception”. If that. It’s something that doesn’t mean much to us, it doesn’t strengthen our faith or give us anything to hang onto.

If we look at the healing waters of Lourdes, we may find the miraculous, if we believe… I will not deny the miracle. I’ve seen some pretty strange and inexplicable things. It’s important to know that God cares and reaches into our daily lives in a special way, sometimes.

If we look at how Bernadette was interrogated, harassed and ridiculed her whole life long, and yet retained both her dignity and her faith. That’s something we can hold onto, something that changes us and strengthens us. The Psa1m sings beautifu11y of Bernadette tonight; “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. … sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You…”

But there’s more to Lourdes than this. When we look at all of the accounts of the Marian Apparitions; Lourdes, Fatima, Medugorje, laSallette, even Norwood, Ohio and Cold Spring, Ky. We see they all have something in common. Our lady, our mother, consistently calls us to 4 things; repentance, prayer, confession and communion. She never proclaims herself but she points to Jesus through the sacraments of the Church. In this way, as a true mother, she seeks to gather us all together as a family with no one left behind.

Did I say, “no one left behind?” Yes, I did! There is one other thing that is incredib1y specia1 about the Marian shrines in this new mi11enium and here is where I find the greatest mirac1e of a11;

“The Indian Express* reports an upsurge in Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists visiting Catholic shrines dedicated to the Blessed Mother. In an unexpected twist of globalization, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and other pilgrims regularly worship at famous Roman Catholic shrines to the Virgin Mary such as Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal. They drink the holy water, light votive candles and pray fervently to the Madonna for help with life's hardships. Many venerate her like one of their own goddesses… Rather than turned away, the newcomers are free to join the crowds from Ireland, Italy, Spain, and other traditionally Catholic countries who flock to Europe's most popular shrines."

When I’d first reported this news to Mother Pau1a, she responded with the 2 words I choose to c1ose with; “Sa1ve Regina”!