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Homily
May 18, 2008 Trinity Sunday (A) Deacon David J. Shea
Exod 34:4-6, 8-9 X 2 Cor 13:11-13 X John 3:16-18
The mother of the Marine corporal faced the cameras and the reporters for the first time after her son’s burial. There was a hush in the large crowd that marked both the respect and the grief that everyone was experiencing. The young soldier was but one of the many who had done the dying for the rest of us. She softly and courageously explained that, “He could have done a lot with his life. But he gave it to the nation.” The giving of your life for a nation, a cause, or another person is always represented as the ultimate price that anyone can pay. Yet it is being done with regularity and we mark the progress with a daily death count. Those closest to deceased can never forget and the rest of us are reminded in newscasts and headlines so that we won’t forget. Twenty-year-old Staff Sergeant Matt Maupin was captured on April 9, 2004 when his fuel convoy came under attack near the Baghdad International Airport. A week later, the Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles. Weeks later, on June 28, a video purporting to show his execution was released, but Army officials said the quality was so poor that it could not be verified. Matt's parents refused to believe it was their son and the Army had listed him as missing-captured. For three years and eleven months, the young soldier was listed as missing, and the little remaining hope that his family had clung to disintegrated when DNA analysis confirmed that human remains found in an unspecified region of Iraq were those of missing Army Staff Sergeant Matt Maupin. The once honor roll student and football player, who had enrolled in the service to earn money for college, was being wheeled to his gravesite at Gate of Heaven Cemetery. And one more time a family and a community said good-bye to someone who had paid the ultimate price. It was just after 6 a.m. on Friday when firefighters from a local fire department were called to a house fire. Crews arrived at the home and immediately rushed in to rescue anyone believed to still be inside. Two residents were rescued safely from the home, but communication was lost with two of their fellow firefighters who had not made it out. The two were killed in the line of duty in the basement of the home. In the days that followed, an entire community mourned the loss while thanking all firefighters for putting their lives on the line to save those of everyone else. They had done everything for their daughter. Beth had gone to the best schools, participated in team sports, took horse-riding lessons, and was given everything she could ask for. She was attractive and popular and she had her whole life in front of her. But life took a few unexpected and cruel turns and the almost fairy tale story of a young girl became the stuff of police files. Beth was overtaken by a heroin addiction, and a helpless family struggled to take her problems away just as they had done when she was a child. But nothing worked. Her mother had often said that she would willingly give her life for Beth’s, if she knew that she’d be healed from her awful illness. A soldier, a firefighter, and a parent, each in different circumstances, each given a choice, each deciding to give his or her life for someone else, and each deciding to pay the ultimate price. Incredible, courageous, selfless, life-giving, hard to believe, and even harder to do. How can you love someone so much that you’re ready to give up your life for them? Our Gospel today only gives us part of a conversation that took place between Nicodemus and Jesus. It is an answer to a question from the troubled Nicodemus who was bothered by Jesus’ claim that he came from God. He was a man of significant reputation so he chose to come by night to face this newcomer who had created such a ruckus in the temple—was this Jesus a prophet or just a troublemaker? As much as he wanted an answer to his question, it’s clear that Nicodemus didn’t want to be seen with Jesus. And in hearing Jesus’ answer—“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”—Nicodemus falters, professes doubt, and responds in disbelief, “How can this be?” How could God love this world so much? The world as it was and the world as it still is; the world that rejected Jesus and the world that still rejects him. How could God love such a world? Salvation was very costly for God—it cost him his Son. Wouldn’t it have been far less costly for God to ignore the world’s sins and allow it to remain in darkness? But God decided that the world was in need of saving and that it was worth saving so He paid that ultimate price. Just as a parent loves a child; a soldier his country; a firefighter a stranger, God loves all of those created in His image. And His love is on such a grand scale that it defies human comprehension. And in some strange way, no one is excluded from His loving embrace in Christ. He loves not only a single nation but every nation. He loves not only those who are good and those who love Him, but everyone. In creation, in a manger, on a cross, and in resurrection; in the height and depth of all things. God spared nothing in giving the Son into our hands. God so loved and still loves this world, even if we were stiff-necked and are still stiff-necked; even when we rebuff His love and are incapable of loving Him back. Jesus is the only proof we need that such a love is real—a rich in mercy, graciousness, slow to anger, rich in fidelity, willing to die for us kind of love. That love was sent to everyone whoever was and everyone who will ever be, and whatever experience we have of human love gives us a mere glimpse of what can only be found in the God who existed before the world began, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, the God of Jesus with outstretched arms on the cross, and the God of the Spirit who helps us to discover the many ways in which the love of God is experienced in our lives.
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