Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 4/17/25 The God Who Makes Himself Vulnerable

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Homily from Holy Thursday, Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper He loved them to the end. One of the characteristics that marks modern man is that we find ourselves angry at God. In fact, we are so angry that we would be willing to hurt God if we could. Yet, God is invulnerable. He cannot be hurt. Still, God chose to step into this world and love us...while making Himself vulnerable. Mass Readings from April, 17, 2025: Isaiah 61:1-3a, 6a, 8b-9 Psalm 116:12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18.1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz. I am so excited to be joining the Courage Under Fire Gala on May 23rd in Nashville, Tennessee, and I would love for you to be there too. I believe that this world needs people of faith who are willing to live with clarity, conviction, and compassion. That's what this night is all about, standing in truth, rooted in Christ and unshaken by the storms around us. You know this. We weren't made for comfort. We were made for courage. So go to the Courage Underfire Gala by grabbing your ticket at courage underfiregala.org. That's courage under firegala.org. And God bless.

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Chapter 13 verses 1 through 15. Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world, and he loved them to the end. The devil had already induced. Judas, son of Simon the Ascariate, to hand him over, so during supper, fully aware that the

father had put everything into his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God. He rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet and dry them with the towel around his waist. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Master, are you going to wash my feet? Jesus answered and said to him, what I am doing you do not understand now, but you will understand later. Peter said to him, you will never wash my feet. Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.

Simon Peter said to him, Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and my head is well. Jesus said to him, whoever has bathed has no need to have his feet washed, no need to accept to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over. So you are clean. but not all. For he knew who would betray him. For this reason, he said, not all of you are clean. So, when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at tables, again, he said to them, do you realize what I have done for you?

You call me teacher and master, and so I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you, you should also do. The gospel of the Lord. I should have a seat. So one of the things I just was struck by

is how, when I was a kid, when I was growing up, I often, one of my main vices was anger. I would be fine, fine, fine, and then I would just lose it. And I remember even just, again, as a kid, I have older siblings. And they all knew, they all knew, like, the sign.

They're like, yeah, Mikey was so, like, laid back, so easy going, but when he did this, and when it happened was I'd bite my lips like this, kind of like make this face, like, well, we knew to clear out because once they got me to a certain point, there was just this rage, right? This rage of just like, I will do whatever I can to hurt whoever's making me mad, right? Because they would just pick at these three older siblings, and they would just pick and pick and pick and at some point it was just like, that's it. And, you know, you feel so helpless, right? You just feel so like, I just want to hurt you so badly. but my older siblings, they're pretty tough and they were pretty big at the time,

and I couldn't hurt them. They were basically invulnerable to me. And so no matter, I mean, I could sit there and they could even just, I got to a certain age where they ran away. But before that, before that, like, I would like swing, swing, swing, and just be like, whatever, my sister Amy was just laugh. And she had her laugh with this. Like, this was her laugh.

It was three hees and two haas. It was he-he-h-h-ha-ha. It was this every time because I'd be like, you know, hitting and swinging as much as I could. And she just like glance. It was like a gnat. I was nothing to her. She was basically invulnerable to anything I tried, and I was completely powerless.

You know, it was so mad. And I grew out of that. Thanks to God. Actually, one of the great miracles in my life is that God has relieved me, freed me from anger as one of my principal vices. But I remember what it was like. I remember what it was like to be so mad.

It feels so powerless. And then in that, I'm just like, this has happened to all of us, right? We get to the place where we're so frustrated just like, I just want to like do something or I'm so powerless, I just want to, or we get so angry, I just want to hurt whoever is causing this pain.

And for a lot of us, the object of our anger, the object of our frustration, the one we feel powerless in front of, sometimes can be God himself. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, experience that like where you butt your lips like that. I just, God, I'm so frustrated with what I'm going through.

Or I'm so angry at you for making me go through this. I just, I'm going to hurt you. If you ever been to that place of just, yeah, that frustration, that powerlessness, that anger of God, I just want to, I want to hurt you. The problem in many ways is God is invulnerable, right? God is invincible. God is untouchable. You say, God, I want to hurt you, but God is unhurtable.

You know, I found this a lot when it comes to people who are atheists. A lot of times atheists are, they're not strict atheists, right, in the sense of I don't believe God exists. They're not atheists. I think a lot of times they're just angry. Seas Lewis at one point was a pretty famous atheist before he became a pretty famous Christian. And after he had converted, after he had countered Jesus and his life was changed, he wrote about this and he said he was a contradiction. Essentially, he said his whole life was a contradiction. He said, I maintained that God did not exist.

I was also very angry at him for not existing. I was also equally angry at him for creating a world because that's how we feel sometimes. I'm so frustrated. God, why did you... I'm not going to believe you exist. I'm not going to trust you because I don't want you to exist because I feel powerless.

You're invincible. You're invulnerable, and I can't do anything about this. But you put me here. In fact, I don't know if you go online at all and watch like college debates sometimes. You know, street preachers or street evangelists apologists talking to college students, and one of the big questions is not, is not, it starts out typically like, okay, God doesn't exist, prove to me that God exists, but it almost always

comes to this place. And this is the main question of young adults right now. It's not the question of, does God exist? The atheist question, it's, is God good? It's the anger question. Because if you've ever found yourself in a place of frustration or a place of suffering or a place of anger, it's just, I want to know the answer to the question. does is God good and even before that it's the question is is is is is in the midst of my anger I just want to hurt him so we have this we have we have we have this what does God do with that you can be so frustrated in such pain and with such anger I just want to hurt God but he's invulnerable so what does God do this is this is remarkable I think this is incredible

into a world where there's people who are so frustrated and so suffering and in such pain and so angry at God, what does he do? He makes himself vulnerable. That's what God did. This is the whole story of Christianity. This is what we're entering into, right? So into a world where we are angry at God and want to hurt him, there's the incarnation. He makes himself a baby who is eminently hurtable.

He enters into a life of poverty. He takes off any kind of sense of influence. He's not powerful. Jesus was not powerful. He wasn't known. He wasn't wealthy. He allowed himself to be misunderstood and rejected. And that's why tonight, you heard this line in John's gospel.

I would say there's a line in tonight's gospel that is the heart of the gospel. I would say, this is a line in the gospel that is everything that we need to know. We've asked the question, okay, is God real? he good? And it's the line in John chapter 13 where John writes about Jesus. Having loved his own who are in the world he loved them to the end. That line is the heart of the gospel. That line

is the radical reality of the gospel. Having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the end. And to the end doesn't just mean all the way to the finish line. It doesn't just mean the whole time, doesn't mean duration. The Greek is iced telos, which means basically to the fullest extent. having loved his own who are in the world,

he loved them to the fullest extent. He loved them to the end. So the question is, the question is this, can I trust this God? I'm so angry at this God, I'm so mad at this God, is this God good? Having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the fullest extent.

What's his next movement? This is remarkable to me. His next movement is this, fully knowing, fully knowing, from God is going back to God, fully knowing he's about to be portrayed, fully knowing he's at a place of danger. What does he do?

He takes off his outer garments. And now I've been praying about this for so long. He rises, he takes off his outer garments. What is that? It reminds me of this. It reminds me in Genesis chapter 2 and chapter 3. So in Genesis chapter 2, here's Adam and Eve. And they can be in front of God, they're in front of each other, and they're completely

naked. In fact, it says, the man and his wife were both naked, it felt no shame. The moment sin enters the world, they clothed themselves, right? The moment sin enters the world, they cover themselves. Why? Because at that moment, they realize I'm vulnerable. At that moment, Adam and Eve realized they look at that moment, they look at each other and realize, oh, you could hurt me and you actually might hurt me. And so they cover

themselves. In this moment, here is Jesus with his disciples, with his apostles, with his best friends, and also with his betrayer, and also with his denier, and also with those who would abandon him. And what does he do? In so many ways, he removed the very last degree of self-protection. That's what you and I do. In this world where it's dangerous in this world where people can mad at us in this world where people might want to hurt us, we do everything we can to protect ourselves. And here is Jesus. God, who's invulnerable, who at this very last moment, what's he do? He makes himself vulnerable. He puts down, he puts aside the very last layer of self-protection in the midst of his foes, in the midst of his betrayer, in the midst of his denier, in the

midst of those who would abandon him. Because why? Because having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the end. He loved them to the fullest extent. And what do we do? I don't know if you've noticed this. But with our frustration, with our suffering, with our pain, with our anger at God, he makes himself vulnerable. And what does God do? What do we do every time God makes himself vulnerable? I think this is worth praying about every time Jesus makes himself vulnerable, we try to hurt him. Right? At the incarnation, at the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. What happens? Well, Harriet sends out his soldiers to kill him. When Jesus goes to Nazareth and reveals himself, he makes himself vulnerable. And what do they do? They try to throw him off a cliff.

That Jesus is teaching and he's saying, okay, this is actually my heart. What do people do? They twist his words, they almost intentionally misunderstand him. When Jesus actually even reveals his identity, He says before Abraham was, I am. There's something so vulnerable about saying who you truly are. And Jesus, when he says who he truly is, they pick up stones to kill him. And in this moment, tonight, on this Last Supper moment, having loved his own who are in the world, he loved them to the end, and he rooses out our garments. And what happens?

He washes Judas's feet. And afterwards, Judas gets up and hands him over. It's whole time. God makes himself vulnerable. This whole time we tried to hurt him, and this whole time, what is he doing? Having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the end, to the fullest extent.

No, I think this is interest. This is just actually, I would say this, knowing our own hearts, it's not remarkable. It's not remarkable to maintain that we want to hurt him, that we want to hurt God. Here's what's unbelievable.

The unbelievable thing is. Not that we want to hurt him. The unbelievable thing is that he lets us. Just pause on this for a second. Here's God who's good, who loved his own in the world and loved them to the end. And yet here we are with our broken hearts. Here are with our suspicions and our frustrations and our suffering and our pain, our anger directed against God. It is not remarkable that we want to hurt him. What's unbelievable is that he lets us. And why would he do this? You know that for the first bunch of hundreds of years of Christianity, one of the ways in which the gospel is proclaimed was by describing a courtroom scene. And the courtroom scene is that here we are, here is humanity, and we're guilty. Here I am,

and I'm guilty, here you are, and we're guilty, we're guilty, we're on the stand, right? And so we're guilty of our sins, we're guilty of not loving each other, we're guilty of hurting each other, we're guilty of doing evil against God, breaking his commandments. And what's God's answer to our guilt? The Christian answer is, God's answer to our guilt is the cross, right? that Jesus on the cross bore the weight of our sin. So here I am, I'm guilty. God's answer is, then I'll take your guilt upon me. God's answer is the cross.

That it's by his wounds were healed, by his stripes were made righteous. By taking the cross up, he bore the weight of our sins. Right? So when I'm guilty, when we're guilty, God's answer is the cross. But something happened in the last 100 to 150 years. There was a shift.

There's a shift of humanity. And the shift of humanity is not, hey, I'm guilty of sin. The shift is, God, you know what? You're the one who made this world. You're guilty. It's that anger we have. It's that frustration we have.

It's that suffering we have. And so what's happened is the scene is the same. It's a courtroom scene. But instead of us being on trial, we have put God on trial. Instead of us being, like, I'm guilty. What we do as modern people is we say, God, you're guilty. Because you made this world with all this suffering, you made this world, you put me in this place where I'm so frustrated, I'm so hurting, I'm so angry.

And so you're guilty. The remarkable thing, again, is that when we were guilty, God's answer is the cross. When we say, God, you're guilty. I can't trust you. I feel so much pain and so much suffering, so much loss. I can't trust you, God, you're guilty. What's God's answer? It's the same answer.

God's answer for our guilt is the cross. And God's answer for our lack of trust is the cross. Why? Why? Because not only does the cross, Jesus in the cross, expiate our sins, right? He took our sins upon himself. It also is the solution. It's also the answer. It's also God's response to our anger, his response to our frustration, our response to our feeling powerless.

It's our response to our not trusting him. God says, okay, this is how much you can trust me. Not only this is how much I love you. He stretches out his arms and dies on the cross. it's this is how much you can trust me and he stretches out his arms and dies on the cross. We can experience so much frustration and so much pain and so much anger that we just want to hurt God. The remarkable, unbelievable thing is that he lets us. He lets us so that he can deal with our sin and he lets us so that he can heal our broken hearts.

And he did this. Why? Because he loved you. You are his own, and he loves you to the end.