2 Timothy 1:1-8 or Titus 1:1-5

Psalm 112:1-9

John 10:1-10

"Rekindle the gift of God that is within you."

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

As I was preparing for today’s homily, several things struck me. One were the words of Jesus in today’s gospel, "I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly." For some perverse reason these very familiar words brought to mind that old Chinese curse disguised as a blessing: "May you live in interesting times." Having abundant life can mean many things, and not all of them are necessarily pleasant.

The words of Paul to Timothy in today’s Epistle also struck me: "Rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands." It is not clear from the text of the Epistle exactly what this gift was. But I know from my own experience, as I’m sure most of you know from yours, that gifts from God can often feel like tremendous burdens, at least until we learn how to be obedient to God’s call to use them.

And then I looked at Timothy and Titus, and the thing that struck me most forcefully about them is that they were both outsiders. They were part of two different cultures but they weren’t at home in either. But as outsiders, they were called to act as bridges between Jews and Gentiles. The image that came into my head was one of those old Roman aqueducts, striding across chasms and gorges to bring water to dry places. Timothy was a Jew, the son of a Jewish mother, who was also a devout Christian. But his father was Greek, and the Acts of the Apostles strongly implies that Timothy was not raised as an observant Jew. Any observant Jewish man would have been circumcised, yet Paul had to circumcise Timothy before having him accompany him on his journeys because he didn’t want to scandalize the Jews they would encounter in their travels. Titus, on the other hand, was Greek, and he accompanied Paul to the Council of Jerusalem, which was about as Jewish an environment as one could imagine. It could not have been comfortable for Titus when he arrived in Jerusalem, and many of Paul’s friends and acquaintances probably looked at him with suspicion and disdain. I suspect Paul asked Titus to come with him for this very reason, because he wanted to show James and the other apostles in Jerusalem what God was doing among the Gentiles not just by word but by example.

The Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters give us very little information about these guys. But this quality of being an outsider – this quality of somehow being in two worlds at once but not fully a part of either one of them – resonates with me. I suspect that it probably resonates with most of the people in this room. Most people I have met who are called to the religious life – in fact most people I’ve met who are called to any serious religious vocation in this day and age – tend to be people who don’t fit in, who don’t conform to the status quo. In other words, my brothers and sisters, we are not normal.

I can only speak from my own experience, but I know many of you can identify with me. I inhabit two worlds without being completely at home in either one. I was raised in an intellectual tradition that placed a high premium on the finest education possible, on cultivating the mind and heart in the culture and values of the western European liberal tradition, with a heavy dose of traditional Anglo-Catholic Christianity thrown into the mix. I am grateful for this. My upbringing inculcated me with knowledge and values that I hold dear to this day. But I always felt like an outsider. I felt I never really fit in. Before I even knew how to express this, I found myself uneasy with the paternalism, the snobbishness, and the gentle assumption that somehow "we" were better than anybody else, even when we humbly protested that we were not. I tried so hard to fit in by being exactly the type of person I was expected to be, by doing exactly what I was expected to do, by being "good," but that never really worked. A part of me – a big part of me – wanted to be "bad." I was strongly attracted by the rough and tumble of urban street life – by its excitement, danger and sexual tension – and when I was old enough to work up the courage, I dove into that life, and I was bad – really bad. It was exciting. It was intense. It was dangerous. And it was a secret, which made it all the more exciting. I was being a "bad boy" and nobody knew. However, even though I wanted so much to connect with all that excitement and intensity and the people who were part of that secret world, I never really could. It seemed that no matter where I went and who I was with, I was an outsider – a visitor – a tourist. I wasn’t at home. A wall separated me from the people I was most drawn to, and I couldn’t tear it down. At the time this felt like a curse rather than a blessing. What I didn’t realize then was that this was the gift God had given me. This sense of being between two worlds but a part of neither was the abundant life to which I had been called. Being an outsider was not a curse but the greatest blessing imaginable.

This past summer I got in touch with an old high-school classmate of mine, Sam, who is now a priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Last week I wrote Sam a long-overdue letter bringing him up-to-date on my life over the past twenty-five years, and the letter turned out to be something of a spiritual autobiography. I told him about my college and graduate school experiences, my attraction to the religious life, and my decision to enter the Brotherhood and what that was all about. But I didn’t confine this autobiography to the "polite" aspects of my life. I also told him about my sex and drug addiction and all the craziness that engendered, and how I led a kind of Jekyll and Hyde existence for so many years.

In one passage I wrote, "One of the reasons my sex and drug addiction had such a powerful hold on me for so long was that I was suppressing important parts of my personality in a misguided attempt to be ‘good.’ That was doomed to failure, of course, because the parts of my personality I was suppressing – my loneliness, my desire to connect with God and with other people on a deep level, my desire to let go of my inhibitions, my love of excitement, my desire to be included, and even my anger and rage – all expressed themselves in disordered ways through my sexual acting out and drug use. In trying to be good all the time I was actually smothering all those parts of my personality that had the most potential for drawing me closer to God and to other people."

I finished the letter by telling him about Fessenden House and the impact it and the men who live there has had on me, and how it relates to my vows as a religious. [Note: Fessenden House is a group home for men in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction.] I concluded with these words:

"As for [the vow of] obedience, besides the obedience to the community required by our Rule, I find, for the first time in my life, that I have a sense that I am being obedient to God’s call to me to draw closer to him.…[and this is being accomplished] through this house and through the men who live here with me. I have a sense that I am doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing and, more importantly, being exactly who I am supposed to be. Now in all honesty I wouldn’t be where I am – I couldn’t be where I am – unless I had gone through everything else in my life that brought me to this point, including the sex and drug addiction, so in a weird sense I was being obedient all along I suppose. But now all of that craziness in bearing fruit in a wonderful way. My own brokenness has become a vehicle for healing both for me and for the men I live with."

I often find that when I’m preparing a sermon or homily, the person who most needs to hear what I have to say is me, and that was certainly the case in this letter I wrote to Sam. " I was being obedient all along." That was a real revelation to me.

This community is filled with immensely skilled and talented people. We have gifted artists and musicians; superb administrators; men with brilliant minds that have been cultivated and refined by the finest education; liturgists; preachers; pastors; teachers; medical professionals; social workers; and men with a host of other skills and talents. These all have been given to each of us and to this community by the grace of God, and we are called to use these gifts to the greater glory of God and for the benefit of the Church and the world.

But my brothers, I would submit to you that the greatest gift that we have been given is our own brokenness, our own weakness, our own need of healing. For it is in our woundedness, it is in the places where we ourselves are in need healing, that God’s healing love and power can pour forth through the walls that we erect around ourselves. It is through our brokenness that God’s healing love flows freely like the blood and water pouring forth from the spear wound in the crucified body of our Lord. This is the abundant life that Jesus is calling us to. It is not a life filled with unending pleasure and joy. But that old Chinese saying is not a curse disguised as a blessing, but a blessing disguised as a curse. We are interesting people, and we live in interesting times, and we have been given an interesting gift – the gift of our own brokenness.

So like Timothy and Titus, let us rekindle the gift that has been given us, and let us use this gift of brokenness for the glory of God and the welfare of his people and the world. Let us stand in the breach, like aqueducts carrying living water from heaven to earth – as bridges between God and this broken world. And let us be mediators of that healing love, a healing love that he offers to all people, a healing love that flows through our own brokenness. Let us channel that healing love through those wonderful skills and talents that have been given to us, as pastors, teachers, artists, musicians, healers and the whole host of skills and talents that God has given us by his grace. But let us never forget that it is not those skills and talents that are God’s greatest gift. The greatest gifts is Jesus Christ himself and his healing love flowing in us and through us, and it is by allowing God’s healing power to flow through us unimpeded that we ourselves are healed.

"Rekindle the gift of God that is within you."

+In the Name