Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/25/21 Look Up

Episode Date: December 25, 2021

Homily from the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas Mass). God is with you on the bathroom floor. We are so distracted by so many things that we need to look up. But sometimes we need to look lower in order to see where God is in our lives. Mass Readings from December 25, 2021: Isaiah 62:11-12 Psalm 97:1, 6, 11-12Titus 3:4-7 Luke 2:14

And just Merry Christmas. This is, what incredible gospel. I just love it. It's the best thing ever. So I wasn't trying to start. I was like, Merry Christmas. But how to begin? I want to talk about distracted driving. Which I know it's not funny. It is a serious issue. Obviously, it's completely a serious issue. It's nothing to joke about. So I'm not joking about that because it's real and it's serious. Avoid it. Don't do it. But did you know that while there are more serious injuries because of distracted driving, there are more numerous injuries because of distracted walking, which is actually a legit thing. In fact, distracted walking is a pandemic.

I don't know. That's a bad word now. But distracted walking is all over the place. In fact, it was so bad, it's gotten so bad, that the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons actually commissioned a study about six years ago, and they had 2,500 subjects in major cities all over America, and they studied basically the effects of distracted walking. And, okay, I know as I go into this,

that you believe that this distracted walking, is a serious issue as well. Because part of the study revealed that 78% of US adults consider distracted walking to be a serious issue. So I know that you believe this too. But it's interesting because that same study revealed that only 28% of American adults claim that they do it themselves,

which is interesting. 80% of us more or less think it's a big serious issue, but 30% are only willing to say that I do this. There's this doctor, he's named Dr. Alan Hillebrand, and he was recorded this saying about this. He said, today, more and more people are falling downstairs, tripping over curbs and other streetscapes,

and in many interests, stepping instances, stepping into traffic, causing cuts, bruises, sprains, and fractures. In fact, he says, the number of injuries to pedestrians using their phones has more than doubled since 2004, and surveys show that 60% of pedestrians are distracted by other activities while walking. So, researchers, here's some of the stats. They've figured out that millennials, they're not to blame, but they're the worst.

I mean, they're not the worst, but when it comes to this, So adults 18 to 34 are most likely to be injured in distracting, distracted walking incidents, but women over 55 are most likely to suffer serious injuries. So all of us, in fact, University of Ohio said every year there's at least 1,500 pedestrians who are treated in emergency rooms every year. And it's growing every year because of distracted walking. They're using their cell phones. And what you probably think is they're using their cell phones and texting.

Interestingly, 69% of those injuries happened while they were talking on their phone. Only 9% of the injuries happened while they're texting on the phone, which is completely backwards for me. So it's a big deal. So the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons said, here are some tips. I want to share with you some of the tips for what to do with this. Number one, when you're talking on the phone, keep the volume low. Okay.

Number two, if you're on the phone, remove yourself from the flow of pedestrian traffic and step away from people while you're distracted. Number three, don't jaywalk, which is a good rule anyways. Number four, stay alert. Okay. The fifth tip is my favorite tip. The fifth tip is look up, which I think is, who would have thought? So simple, but so elegant a solution.

And again, there's a sense of, I don't want to make light of all this, but I kind of do. Because 50% of those who were interviewed about this, 50% say that while it is, yes, distracted walking is potentially dangerous or embarrassing. distracted walking is also quote unquote kind of funny. So, but that last tip, that last tip of look up, I think is my favorite tip. That last tip of look up is just so good. And if there ever was a season, for that piece of advice, I think it would be Christmas time. Why? We even have a song that says, what did they do?

They looked up and saw a star shining in the east beyond them far. In fact, bone to pick, it doesn't say they looked up. They look it up. You ever noticed that in the song? It's like, they look it up. Like, when do you ever say look it? You never say look it. But if it's syllables, anyways, back to our story.

They looked up, what did they see? They looked up and they saw a star. And this is the most incredible thing. They saw a star. It was clear, it was obvious, and it meant something. They looked up and they saw a star, and they knew that that star meant something. And it meant this. It meant God basically saying, I'm God.

I'm good. I'm here. I'm with you. that's what it meant when they looked up. And this is even the first time. Go back to the Old Testament and here are the people of Israel. They've been slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years. What's God do?

He sets them free from slavery, leads them into the wilderness. And he guides them by what? He guides them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night. You can imagine, you're wandering in the wilderness for 40 years and you imagine how tired you would get, how discouraged you would get, how just worn out and beaten up,

how easily, how easy it would be to believe that you were abandoned. Imagine all you had to do in those moments, the worst moments, just look up. You see that pillar of fire and you realize, no, God has declared, I am God, I'm good, I'm here, I'm with you. Later on, they go into the Promised Land, right? And they go to Jerusalem and they build the temple

and scripture attests again and again that the glory of the Lord resided over the temple. Sheckina cloud, right? The glory of the Lord was over the temple. So again, no matter where you were, in all the times when Israel was being besieged, all the times when Israel was being fought against, all the time when Israel was even falling into sin, if you were in the city or even out just outside the city, you could look towards the direction of the temple and you'd be able to see over the temple that glory of the Lord. And you know, no matter how bad it got, God was continuing to say, I'm God and I'm good, I'm here, and I'm with you.

which is why Ezekiel is such a tragic story. You know, in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, he describes the sins of Israel got so bad that he describes in chapter 10 and chapter 11, he said that glory cloud, the glory of the Lord, actually drifted away from the temple and drifted out of the city. And the glory of the Lord, the presence of God, departed from the temple.

So those people who had grown up knowing that, I just have to look up and I'll see the glory of the Lord, it was gone. Completely tragic. And then we get to today, right? We get to Christmas Day where even Luke's Gospel, Luke chapter 2, what's it say?

It says that the angels of the Lord appeared to the shepherds. And then it said this. It said, and the glory of the Lord shown about them. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory because the glory of the Lord

had not been seen since Ezekiel's time. Hundreds of years before this, they had been without this thing. They looked up and they saw nothing. Until this moment, Christmas night, Christmas Day, the shepherds, the angel of the Lord,

Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord had come back. It's shown about them. Shepherds just look up. Shepherds look up and what do you see? You see, I'm God and I'm good and I'm here and I'm with you. They looked up and saw a star. Which we know is a miracle. I mean this isn't like a normal star.

I went to a thing in high school that was a kind of making a natural argument, a scientific argument for the star of Bethlehem that the constellations were such, that year that it was unique, which maybe is the case. I don't know. But whatever the wise men followed, it was not a normal star. Because scripture says it came to rest over the place where Jesus lay in the manger, in the stable, in the cave. And if it was a normal star, it would be within a 3,000 square mile radius.

So this is a supernatural star, right? This is the kind of thing that's so obvious, so obviously different. It's so clearly different that is basically that star look up and what do you know? What do you know? That here in this cave, right, in this stable where Jesus is born, is this declaration, once again, for the first time in hundreds of years, I'm God and I'm good, I'm here, and I'm with you.

That's what stars do. That's what this star did. So, kind of speaking of stars, I recently came across this story of a young woman from Ohio named Jane, and Jane was raised as a Christian, and she went to a Christian university in Virginia, and when she got to this university, She'd always sang in her life, and she kind of had the idea, maybe I'll be a star someday.

She got to this university and some teachers really encouraged her to pursue music. And so she tried out for a number of different singing groups and was almost good enough, was almost good enough to make it, but never quite made the top level. But still she kept trying and she kept fighting, kept grinding away. And she actually had some relative success in the Virginia area in that region around there. She had to develop the following, cut some albums and was kind of on her way to be a special. star. At one point after doing this for a couple years, she moved back home to Ohio, just kind of regroup. And while she was there, she met this man who's also a musician and fell in love, they got married. And they started pursuing music, pursuing this idea of like being a star to get,

in fact, she said this, she said what she wanted to do with her life. And she said in like that classic artist way was so good. She says, I want to be a truth teller. I want to be a hope holder. I want to be a strength shareer. And she was on her way to being that star. When in 2017, she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, and she was given six months to live. But she fought and within a year, the doctors declared her cancer-free. She's like, okay, here we go. Let's get back at this and it'll be a star.

Just a few months after that, they did a scan and they found cancer head penetrated her lungs and her spine. and the doctors then gave her a 2% chance of living. A couple days after she got this diagnosis, her husband of five years left her. And so she went to California, she heard about this experimental treatment out there. And after a number of weeks, number of months, it worked.

It was incredible. She got better. But what happened was the process of this whole thing just destroyed her. In fact, she wrote like this, she said, she said, after the doctor told me I was, this is Jane's words. after the doctor told me I was dying, and after the man that I'd married said he didn't love me anymore. I chased a miracle in California,

and 16 weeks later, I got it. The cancer was gone, but when my brain finally caught up with it all, something broke, and I found out that all the tragedy at once had caused a physical head trauma, and my brain was sending false signals of excruciating pain and panic, and so she said I spent three months then after this propped up against the wall. On nights that I could not sleep, I laid in the tub bathtub like an insect.

staring at my reflection in the shower knob. I vomited until I was hollow. I rolled up under my robe on the tile. The bathroom floor became my place to hide. The bathroom floor became the place where I could scream and be ugly. The bathroom floor became the place where I could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep, even with my head on the toilet.

So what's this have to do with Christmas? Very little. That has very little to do with Christmas. If by Christmas we mean, you know, 85% of the holiday songs we've been hearing for the last month and a half. This has nothing to do with Christmas. If by Christmas, we mean holiday parties. This has nothing to do with Christmas. If by Christmas we mean Santa Claus.

And if by Christmas we mean a perfectly manicured and arranged nativity set in a perfectly arranged and manicured house. And a perfectly arranged manicured life. And a perfectly manicured and arranged family. If that's what we mean by Christmas, has nothing to do with Christmas, but if what we mean by Christmas is the actual story of Christmas, the story of this young couple alone in a strange place, if what we mean by Christmas is the story of them not being able to find a place to give birth, much less even rest for a bit,

if we mean by Christmas, the story of being rejected, the story from the first moment of Christ's life on this earth, From the first moment he opened his mouth and cried, he was hunted by Herod. If we mean, by Christmas, that all of the uncertainty and the fear and the danger of this world, all the ugliness of this world, all the mess of this world, if we mean by Christmas that God stepped right into the middle of that.

If that's what we mean by Christmas, then this story has everything to do with Christmas. If we mean God himself entered into a stable, if God himself entered into a cave, that God himself entered into a broken world, then Jane the story has everything to do with Christmas. Remember, Ezekiel said, the glory of the Lord left the temple. But Isaiah in the first reading today, he prophesied it would return and God would give comfort to his people.

And what he would ultimately say is he would remind them of the fact that, no, I am God and I'm good and I'm here and I'm with you. And so what do we hear in the gospel today? The first chapter of John, in beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God. At the end of that verse it says, and the word became flesh and he made his dwelling among us. And we saw his glory as of a father's only son. That in a cave, in a stable, in the midst of mess, what does God declare?

He declares, I am God here, and I'm good and I am here and I am with you. Where? where in brokenness, where in the mess, where in his giving his everything for us and getting killed for it. Where is God? He's in a cave in Bethlehem. He's on a cross in Jerusalem. And he's on a bathroom floor in California.

Jane said this. She said, maybe we missed it. Maybe we missed it. What God showed us when he first introduced himself, that he will crawl into the into the dirt to be near us. Maybe we are looking up. Maybe we are looking up, and maybe that's the problem. Maybe Carl Jung was right when he said that the reason

modern man cannot find God is because he won't look low enough. Because maybe he's in the dirt. Maybe he's in the cave, maybe he's in the stable, maybe he's in the agony. Jane wrote, she said, I've had cancer three times now, and I barely passed 30 years old. She said, there are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story,

I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that he will say I disappointed him, or offended him, or failed him. Maybe he'll say that I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn't grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this. He can never say that he did not know me. Yes, she said, because I'm God's downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick.

I show up at his door every single day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses, Sometimes with apologies or gifts or questions or demands. Sometimes I use the key under the mat to let myself in and sometimes I sulk outside until he opens the door to me himself. Sometimes you don't look at all enough. But Jane, she did and she found him there, even in pain. So last summer, I don't know if you know this, last summer Jane, the singer,

that wanted to be a star, she was on, America's Got Talent. She goes by the name, her song, her stage name is Nightbird, which I don't like, but she got it from a dream. She had this dream three nights in her own, where she was, there were these birds singing in the darkness. And she woke up on the third night, and she looked outside, and there were birds that were singing in darkness

before the light had even appeared on the horizon. And she said, I want to be like that. Able to sing in the darkness. Before there was the first sign of light, before the first sign of hope. So she was on America's Got Talent, and she told a little bit of her story, and she sang her song.

And at one point, the people on the stage where this overwhelmed. And Simon Cowell said, I'm not going to give you a yes. And he leaned over and said, I'm going to give you a pass. and he hit the golden buzzer. It was this huge thing, incredible thing.

The next day, her song that she had sang went number one on iTunes, and it was just amazing. And millions of people now know her talent. Millions of people now know her gift. Millions of people now know her story. And she is in so many ways. She's a truth teller.

She's a hope holder. She's a strength sharer. But she said this. She said about being a star like this. She said, I thought it would be sparklier than this. I didn't imagine standing before the world with so many bruises. I didn't imagine that in my shining moment I'd be suffering in front of an audience. I've always expected miracles.

I thought the miracle would be that I could skip to the end, spirit of pain. I thought the miracle would make me scar-free and brand new. I did get a miracle, but just not the one I wanted. I get to look for light and I get to find it. I get to see how much love can endure. I get to walk the journey with thousands of people like me who can't stop hoping no matter how hard. they try. She gets to stay on the bathroom floor. She gets to stay in the cave.

And the reality of course is maybe you're in a cave. Maybe that's what life is like this Christmas. Being in a cave, being in a stable, being on the cross. And maybe you hate it. And if you're anything like me, you hate your cave. You hate your stable. You hate your cross. But Christmas declares this. The real Christmas declares this. That's where he's closest. in your cave, in your stable, and on your cross, and on your bathroom floor. We have to look.

But sometimes with Jesus, it's not about looking up. Sometimes with Jesus, it might be about looking low enough. And finding God there, saying, I'm God. I'm here. I'm with you. I'm with you on the bathroom floor.