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Richard Bollman, S.J.
HOMILY: 6th Sunday of Easter, 2008
"Listening for Opportunity in the Struggle for Faith"
1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21
This last month I’ve been learning about young people and their faith.
It’s been second hand learning, but has validity I think.
Some studies have been done about teens, well over three thousand teens,**
surveyed, interviewed, sometimes through conversations of several hours,
to come up with what faith feels like, sounds like, in their lives.
816 of the young people were Catholic, only one in five,
and it turns out these kids ranked rather low
in their ability to speak about what they believe
and in their regular practice of what you’d call
religious worship or customs, valuing them, knowing what they mean.
Not a lot of them went to Catholic high schools, but when this material
has been shown to Catholic educators, they sense it’s very accurate too.
These teen aged youth are not in a bad mood about religion.
Most speak about being Catholic
as an important and unchangeable part of their lives:
but it’s an odd list of Catholic features they name,
that might include something like "reincarnation"
along with Christmas or the pope.
One of these commentators coined the term "a religion of whateverism,"
very oddly inclusive and accepting of nearly anything.
and it makes you sort of wonder, and worry, if you’re my age.
Are we losing the importance of differences, distinctions?
In all of this, parents have a special concern, because in a real way,
parents are most closely involved in what kids pick up, and believe, and do.
Religion does help kids, that the good news.
When it works, when it promotes prayer,
conversation about values, trust in God,
actually kids make better decisions, do better with their goals.
But overall, religion is a kind of consumer item,
or part of the furniture for most youngsters.
Then I look at this letter of Peter to the various churches
up around Ephesus or Sardis, all through present-day Turkey.
If teens and their parents were being interviewed then
it would have been because they were seen to be a danger to society,
not in harmony with the state gods,
not a part of the more protected Jewish community–
and they might suffer for it, or be arrested or thrown out of town.
So Peter encouraged families of this time and space
to "speak clearly about the hope they lived by."
Not to be vague or mince words.
And the center of that hope was Jesus.
This Jesus you and I have met too,
the one who was critical of the temple,
who spoke harsh words about public officials,
while at the same time forgiving people like prostitutes or tax collectors,
this annoying religious figure
who is now alive again and among us,
even now as we wonder about our 21st century teens.
Here he is today telling his followers that
we who know him shall also know the Spirit of Truth:
this is something to take in!
That spirit lives in us, and Jesus has brought it about,
and it remains in us, and Jesus too, abides in us.
That’s the kind of people we are.
You’d think we might be more confident of ourselves
and a little more dangerous to the world.
So I take this interest in kids’ faith these days
as a kind of wake-up call given us,
this little report about the future of faith in our families.
It has come to us in the form of a two hour report, twice this month,
and about twenty families have been listening in,
and more besides through later conversations.
I keep thinking, all of us who are listening to the story of teen faith,
we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, just as they have been,
and maybe it’s a new moment for us to trust the spirit of Truth
given through what we believe.
It’s we who form the established church under this roof,
we are called to express what is the hope we live by,
how we know it, where the Bible touches us,
the truth of what we sing about,
the changes that happen to us through body and blood of Christ,
taken by us each week at the table.
Right now in the parish we’re not finding a great desire
for the start-up of small faith communities this season,
along the older lines that have sustained a lot of people so far.
It seems that some of our newer members, though,
who are young families, are very much concerned now
for a very specific kind of pulling together, networking
to support one another in knowing our tradition,
the Bible, the presence of Jesus, the life of prayer, moral decision-making,
and what’s non-negotiable
when we long to transmit all of this to a new generation.
When I think of this happening,
and of myself too having some kind of role to play in it,
I feel a lot of new life, something of a shift in horizon or priorities,
which is always an energizing thing.
You have to be careful not to jump to conclusions.
You can listen to reports about the decline of faith
and it can feel discouraging.
But that happens because at first we listen just with the ears of the world.
I take this to be a non-negotiable in the faith we profess,
that there is a counter-pull, a dark force that works against our own good.
It’s the world that has no grasp of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus says.
It suggests that we should be in charge of our own spiritual growth,
and we look for who to blame if things go wrong.
And this leads us to feel guilty and ashamed, and to think of ourselves
as in charge of everything that has to happen,
and so a spiritual issue we want to solve
feels like more work, just impossible and sad burdens.
This leads to a life without trust, and without gratitude.
Hey, I know this temptation all the time.
But when we start to see through the eyes of the Spirit we have received,
remembering that the spirit given to the baptized
is a spirit of good judgment and wisdom and courage,
and a free gift, grace upon grace,
then a moment of potential discouragement is really a time
to be thankful and to wake up to a desire for something more.
And to allow for the power of our new Advocate to help us deeply.
So whatever your place in the story of Church these days,
whatever your fear as you look at our crumbling potential as a nation
or just in your own personal struggles,
I think we are being called to give an account of the hope that is in us.
That’s what I take from today’s scripture.
Just to place that hope, that person of the Christ, before us.
To acknowledge him as compass and guide within us.
We’re being encouraged that Jesus does not leave us orphans.
Not the Jesus of history books, centuries ago,
but the energetic Advocate given to us personally
for the sake of living in this century.
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**The National Study of Youth and Religion, conducted by Dr. Christian Smith, Univ of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001-2005. Reported in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Oxford 2005.