Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 04/06/25 The Place of the Way: Dead Ends

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

Homily from the Fifth Sunday in Lent. We run out of all hope...and then Jesus. The Dead End is a necessary place of the way. The location where we run out of our own skill and our own strength and find ourselves completely unable to move forward on our own. In the midst of the dead end...and then Jesus. Mass Readings from April 6, 2025: Isaiah 43:16-21 Psalm 126:1-6Philippians 3:8-14 John 8:1-11

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Chapter 8, verses 1 through 11. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, but early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?

They said this to test him so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger, but when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. Again he bent down and wrote on the ground

and in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the last alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She replied, no one, sir. Then Jesus said, neither do I condemn you. Go. And from now on, do not sin anymore. The gospel of the Lord. Wait you to have a seat. So I have a friend who spent a lot of time in her early life, raising chickens. In fact, it was a situation where in 4Hs here in Minnesota, we have kind of

4H is kind of big in Minnesota. And so she spent like years, seven, eight years raising chickens and showing chickens. You go to the county fair, right? And if you're good enough in the county fair, you go on to the state fair and maybe beyond that kind of a situation. So much of her life was surrounding this raising and showing of chickens. And she told me that one summer, or, you know, late spring, early summer, a mink got into the chicken coop. And I had no idea about this. She was describing how, you know, like a fox, if a fox comes into the chicken coop, a fox would grab a chicken and run away with it, right?

It takes one chicken and goes. And she was like, mink are vicious. Like, they're like the mess murderers of the whatever world in the sense that she said, mink would come into the chicken coop and like slits the necks of all the chickens. Like it's not just one chicken, like a fox would take one chicken away. the mink goes in and again just cuts the throats of every one of the chickens and she said at one point late summer or late spring early summer a mink got into the chicken coop and she said the sound it was horrible just this absolute like terror for like 20 40 seconds coming from the chicken coop as this mink

literally killed every one of the chickens in the chicken coop and then it's opening up and seeing like oh my gosh this is devastation this horrible not only was all the chickens dead, of course, but also her dreams that when raising these chickens to show these chickens, right? The goal to get the county fair, the goal to get the state fair. And what do you do? Like, again, this, what do you do in a place where there's nothing left? Right? What are you doing a place where everything I was counting on is now gone? I cannot show my chickens. So that summer, she didn't only enter the county fair, but she entered the state fair and actually

went to Nationals for preparing grilled chicken. It was a situation where here is this out, the loss, right? This everything was gone. Everything was lost. And there was a complete dead end. But actually went even further all the way to Nationals with their grilled chicken recipe. Which again, it's one of those fascinating things. It's kind of a funny thing.

Yet at the same time, we all experience this, right? At the same time we have experienced what happens when the things we had hoped in run out? Like what happens when we're living and we're like, okay, all the things I counted on, they're all broken. What happens when you and I have reached the dead end? What happens when you and I've reached the dead end? Where there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to pivot. There's no silver lining here.

It's just the dead end. You know, this whole Lent, we've been being reminded of the fact that the Lent is not just a season where we have more discipline or have more self-denial, or we just kind of get slightly better or slightly holier, but Lent is a season of training, right? A Ceticism, that word C-Sys means training. And so we've been training with a goal, and the goal is, I want to become more like Jesus. I want to look more like Jesus at the end of this Lent than it did at the beginning of this Lent. And so this time of Lent is the Dojo, right?

Christ's Dojo. And that word dojo, the Japanese word dojo, in English means the place of the way. So this whole lent we've been talking about the place of the way is, you know, enter into silence. That's the place of the way. And the desert and the crossroads and the valley last weekend was to learn how to live at home in the presence of the father is the place of the way. This weekend, we realize the truth. And that is this.

The place of the way is the dead end. The place of the way is where there is nothing left I have to offer. The place of the way is when I'm broken, and I can do no more. The place of the way is the dead end. And I think about that in the gospel today. Here's, right, this gospel is horrible, I mean, just terrible beginning of this story

of the woman caught in adultery. And this is literally, this is the dead end. Because why? Because here is what the scribes and Pharisees say. Moses commanded us in the law to stone such women. She literally is, this is her dead end. There's, she is so broken. She's in their minds, in their eyes,

and how they saw her, maybe how she saw herself. she's broken beyond repair. And here's the question. What is our temptation when we encounter the dead? And what's our temptation when we encounter that place, like maybe like the woman here caught in adultery? I think our temptation is one of two things. Either we're tempted to excuse ourselves

or we're tempted to condemn ourselves. Right? We're tempted to excuse ourselves. Well, I mean, you might have even done this when you heard this story where they bring this woman and say, hey, she was caught in the very act of committing adultery and maybe your thought was, wait, wait, wait, what about the guy? And that's not a bad question.

The excuse, you know, the excuse is this, is like, wait a second, obviously, that's real, right? Takes two to tango. No one argues that. But our temptation to excuse ourselves and say, well, wait, there's someone else involved. You know, someone else also sinned. That's true, but it's not an argument. That's what we do, though, right? Oftentimes we say, well, I'm no worse than anyone else.

You know, so we've been following the story of Takashi Nagai, this entire lent. Takashi Nagai, who was born in 190-something in Japan, he was raised Shinto. became an atheist on his way to becoming a Catholic. He encountered a Catholic author named Blaze Pascal. And Blaise Pascal has a series of thoughts in French, Ponce, right? A series of thoughts that was really intriguing for Takashi and a guy. But at one point, he not only found Blaise Pascal's thoughts intriguing. He also sometimes resented a few of them.

In fact, Blaze Pascal's last thought in the wager is this. He says, he says, only Christianity, makes a bold claim, he says, only Christianity makes men both happy and lovable. Another way to say it is, only Christianity makes men both happy and good. And Takashi did not like that because he said, actually, I know a lot of people who are happy and good. He said, he even pointed to his parents. He said, my parents are good people and they're happy people. And yet, at the same time, later on, he would realize that, okay, are they good? or are they good enough?

He would look at himself and say, no, no, I'm good. You have to ask the question, okay, am I good or am I just kind of, quote unquote, good enough? Because why? Because his parents might have been good, but they're normal. And he was normal. This is just what people do.

People, they might not be amazing, but they're not horrible. The temptation, again, when we find ourselves in that dead end, we say, yeah, maybe I'm the best person who's ever lived, but I'm definitely not the worst. Or we say things like, well, here's the thing.

thing. I did this because, in my case, right? We have this temptation again and again when we find ourselves at the dead end to excuse ourselves. Here's the problem. In the gospel today, she's guilty. Right? Even the scripture says, Jesus, we caught her in the very act, which, again, aside from being kind of creepy, the fact that they busted in on her in the moment of this committing adultery, the fact is she was guilty. In fact, I don't know, I was looking at my Bible, you know, preparing for this weekend for a number of weeks now. And the header over this section of my scripture says, the woman caught in adultery.

And it just convicted me where I was like, wait a second, all we need is those first three words, the woman caught. Because I think sometimes we might say, the woman caught in adultery, and we might excuse, again, excuse ourselves, and to be tempted to have the selfish, well, I've never done that. I've never committed adultery, or I would never commit adultery. And the key word here, though, is she's caught. and the reality is for any of us,

we can be caught in the midst of anything that could be that thing. Like those moments when you and I, we realize, okay, this is the truth. And I'm caught in my sin. Or I'm caught in my shame. Or even I'm caught by my illness. Or I'm caught by my limitation. Something I find myself, right, the dead end moment of,

I'm caught in my pain, or I'm caught in my sorrow. I'm caught in my loss. Basically, that moment, every one of us have to experience where it's just, it's so broken. I, on my own, can't fix this, right? It's, I'm caught in the dead end, where I realize that if I'm going to be honest, there is no excuse, there is no argument, this pain or this shame or this brokenness, this is my dead end. And again, the option then is what?

The option is self-condonation because those are, in our world, those are the only two options that we do, how we deal with dead ends. Either we deny them or we're defined by them. The brokenness? No, no, no, there's no big deal. Or the brokenness, yeah, that is my identity. In fact, you look at St. Paul right near the Philippians today. He says this, he says, okay, I've got everything.

Everything's a loss. Like, I'll look at my whole life. And it is the loss of all things. I consider all of this. Everything I've tried, everything I have to offer. Here's Paul, who's reached a dead end. He says, everything I have in me, I consider so much right. rubbish. But basically, all of my arguments, all of my skill, all of my, my own goodness, all of it

is just a dead end. So either I'm going to excuse myself and say I'm just like everyone else, or I'm going to condemn myself and say I'm just as guilty as everyone else. The incredible thing is, when Paul reaches the dead end, he has the dead end plus Jesus. right? When Paul's excuses run out, when his strength runs out, when his skill runs out, when his goodness runs out, he says, I consider all these things as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. You guys, this is why the place of the wood, the dead end is the place of the way. Because until we get the dead end, until we get to that place where, like, oh, no, where a skill runs out and my strength runs out, until I get to the place where my goodness runs out,

I think I can still do it. Until I get to that dead end, I think, well, I'll still work really, really hard, and I'll make a way. But Paul realizes, no, I don't have any righteousness based on my own. I only have the righteousness that comes from faith in Jesus. The place of the way is the dead end when we realize there is no way. That's why I love the book by Isaiah, his first reading in Isaiah today, where God says, the Lord God says this. He says, who opens a way in the sea?

God is the one who makes a path in the mighty waters. What's the sea? You get to reach to the sea. That's a dead end, right? the people of Israel fleeing from Pharaoh in Egypt, and they get to the dead sea, get to the Red Sea, and what happens? That sea is a dead end. The mighty waters, it's a dead end. The desert, it's a dead end. The wasteland is a dead end. And what's God say? I open a way in the sea. I open a path in the mighty waters. In the desert, I make a way. In the desert, I make a way. When there is a

dead end, here's God. Here's God who makes a way where there is no way. as long as we're willing to tell the truth and not just partial truth. Partial truth is this is the dead end. The whole truth is, this is the dead end with Jesus. Go back to the gospel. The truth of this woman's life is she's guilty, she's broken. The truth of this woman's life is, this is her dead end. And then Jesus.

Just even add those three words. this is the dead end. This is my brokenness. I am guilty. And then Jesus. And all of a sudden this woman whose life is at her dead end, all of a sudden she has a way.

Why? Because and then Jesus. You know, Takashi, for years when it came... This is us right when it comes to sin. And this is Takashi when it came to sin. I mean, Takashi is so interesting that how he just saw himself.

Again, he saw himself as just normal. What did he do? He had the normal vices at a college student back in Japan in those years. So he drank a lot. Again, as I mentioned, he slept around, went to went to brothels. And that kind of thing was this. That's just what college students do. We drink and then we go down to the brothel and that's life. And at one point, he realized, oh my gosh, I'm neither good nor am I happy. And he couldn't escape. an excuse, and so he found himself in this place of condemnation, and when he finally told the truth about himself. No, this is the weight of my sin.

And I don't know if you've ever been to that place where you just are willing to finally tell the truth. I'm not going to excuse this anymore. I'm going to actually experience the weight of my own sin. And he found himself in this place where, as he was coming closer and closer to faith in Jesus, he had a choice. And the choice was, I can focus on the dead end. I can focus on these things that I'm guilty of and they're destroying me.

or I can take these things that destroyed me. I can take these things of the guilty of. I can take my dead end and then Jesus. I can bring him to Jesus. And it was this incredible moment of him bringing his brokenness to confession. That changed everything. Because of Jesus, he could go places where he previously could not go. You know, I was reading in the book, you know,

The Bells of Nagasaki, or song for Nagasaki. And it talked about it. There's a story about a nurse. So the author, he's a Jesuit. He had been in Japan and he actually was interviewing people who had known Takashi Nagai. And there's a nurse that he was interviewing. She was an old nurse and she used to work in one of the local hospitals in a night. It was like leprosarium, right?

So where lepers were. And she said that one of her jobs, one of the first things that happened is if you're a leper, you were ostracized from your family. You were completely cut off. The moment you saw that spot of leprosy on your skin, everything about your life that you knew was completely gone. You're taken from your family, you're taken from your property, you're taken from your life, and you're put in like a leper colony, essentially. And so this nun, she was taking, or this nurse was taking care of lepers.

And part of, one of the things that happens is one of the first things to go is your eyesight. So a lot of these lepers were blind. And so one of the jobs of nurses was to read books to the lepers. She told the story about in 1949, right, four years after the bomb was dropped in Naguio. In 1949, she was reading some of Takashi Nagai's books to these lepers. And she said this, she said it's so beautiful. She said, she wrote to the author, Takashi, telling him how beautiful it was to see hot tears running from their sightless eyes.

Because Takashi gave witness to the dead end and then Jesus. Tagashi gave witness to not just his own sin, his own brokenness, but also here is the devastation that he experienced through his leukemia. Here's the devastation he experienced through the bomb being dropped and killing almost everyone he loved, destroying everything he owned, and still having hope. And one of these lepers wrote about this. He said, my blind friend, Heharasan, who was one of the patients, a leper there, as she was reading about Takashi and about the fact that at his dead end, his dead end plus Jesus changed his life. here's what Harri San said. He said, that's right, that's right. He said, I was an unthinking young man with a beautiful wife and daughter

when I contracted leprosy. Society disowned me, ostracized me for my wife and daughter, and banished me to a leper colony guarded by a moat. He said, I despaired and attempted suicide. And yet, when he heard about Nagai, he said, yet here was Nagai, who had lost everything, was dying, and was at peace with himself and with the world. He said, the nurse kept reading us about Nagai.

And he began writing to us, Takashi Nagai led me to Jesus. And to the faith that discovers everything in life is a gift and a grace. And he said, it's now 50 years since I became a leper. And I can say, thank God for my leprosy. And thank God for Nagai. Can you imagine this man whose life was a dead end? Life was done. And then Jesus.

So much so that he could say, I thank God for the dead end. What was the dead end? The dead end was his leprosy. He lost everything. I thank God for the dead end. Why? Because the dead end is the place of the way if we get to that dead end and then Jesus.

I was talking with a student recently and she shared a little bit about this. She was talking with a local priest, a great young priest here in our diocese. And at one point, she was kind of expressing some of the, she couldn't get out in her words the pain she was experiencing in her heart. And so at one point he said,

is it okay if I just utter a word of prophecy for you? And she said, sure, I don't know what that means. And he said, okay, here's what I see. I said, I see you. And he described a room. And he also described what was happening. He described this room that she was in when it was. It was late at night.

And I see you taking the steps to take your own life. And she heard this. Her eyes filled with tears because not too long before this, that was her story. He described the room. He described her there. He described how late at her. it was. He described what she was doing. And he said, and I also see, I see this. This is a dead end, right? Dead end moment. And I also see God there with you. I also see Jesus there in that room

with you. That moment, that night was a dead end for this young woman. And then Jesus. And there's my friend, the priest, saying, you need to know the whole truth. Because you look back in that moment and you either want to say, well, I was dumb. I was so stupid. I can't believe I was doing that excuse it. Or you look back in that moment and say, I can't believe, I was so stupid, I can't believe, I was so bad, I can't believe. And you condemn yourself because that's the only two options, right? When we hit that dead end, we either excuse it or we condemn ourselves, and he said, but here's the truth. Jesus was there. If you're willing to embrace the whole truth, that this was the dead end, this was the worst moment, the darkest moment of your life. And then Jesus,

for her, that knowledge of letting Jesus be part of that dark moment, transforms that moment to something else. And this is what confession is. Confession is the reality that, yes, this brokenness is part of my story. Right? The confession is, yep, I've been caught. Whatever the thing is.

I've been caught in this sin. I've been caught in this shame. I've been caught in this brokenness. This is my dead end. And without Jesus, I am stuck. That's just telling the truth. But confession is saying, God, I'm willing to bring this part of my story that's true.

And if I surrender it to, if I give it to you, you transform this broken part of my story to something whole. You can transform this dead end that I'm experiencing, and you can make a way. This is the miracle that happens every time we go to confession. We bring God our dead ends, and what's He do? He does what he always does. He makes a way.

He takes what's broken and makes it even better. This is the last thing. Speaking of everything Japanese with this series with the Kashy Nagai and the incredible hidden Christians of Nagasaki, you might have heard of a Japanese art form called Kinsugi. Maybe I've talked about it before, but what Kinsugi is is this, is that, of course, you know, that in Japan,

they have these incredible, incredible, you know, pottery. Just beautiful bowls and beautiful dishes, cups. The tea ceremony is massively important in Japanese culture. And so they have this incredibly beautiful and virtually perfect kettles. bowls and cups and tea paraphernalia. It used to be the case that when these things got broken, they're done. That's what happens, right?

When you have something made of clay, you have something made pottery and it breaks, it's just, that's done. Or maybe it gets kind of stapled together. They have this ability to staple together until someone invented Kinsugi. And Kinsugi is where you take all the broken. broken pieces with gold resin. And you put back this bowl, you put back this cup, you put this kettle back, you don't hide the cracks.

But you use that gold resin to fuse the pieces together so that the cracks become accentuated. But they don't just become accentuated in the sense of the highlighting shame. They're accentuated with gold, so the cracks become the beauty. In fact, it's the wounds that become the things. your eyes are drawn to. In fact, it's the imperfections that have been transformed by the gold that becomes the new art. And this is the reality for our lives. It's true that part of our story involves brokenness and part of our story involves those moments of shame and those moments of sin. Part of our story involves those dead ends. And we can't just ignore them or dismiss them,

can't excuse them or be condemned by them. But if we give them to Jesus, he can take them and transform them so that that part of our story that we want to excuse or condemn ourselves or the part of our story becomes points to his glory that part of our story becomes the part of our lives that other people can see and say wait that's god he goes why because the the break is real in our lives the break is real and sin is real and shame and guilt is real and the dead end is real. The dead end is real. And so is the way.

And so is grace. And so is forgiveness. And so is Jesus. It's as real as the cave in which Jesus was placed as a baby. It's as real as the cave where Jesus' body was laid to rest after the crucifixion. It's as real as the dead end of his death. But we know this. that God does some of his best work in caves.

God does some of his best work when things are broken. God does some of his best work when we reach the dead end. Because the dead end is the place of the way.