Mark 14: 12-16, 22-26 (links validated 4/30/24a)

Apollo 11 landed on the moon on Sunday, July 20, 1969. Most remember astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped onto the moon’s surface: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” But few know about the first meal eaten on the moon. Dennis Fisher reports that Buzz Aldrin, the NASA Astronaut had taken aboard the spacecraft a tiny pyx provided by his Catholic pastor. Aldrin sent a radio broadcast to Earth asking listeners to contemplate the events of the day and give thanks. Then, blacking out the broadcast for privacy, Aldrin read, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit.” Then, silently, he gave thanks for their successful journey to the moon and received Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, surrendering moon to Jesus. Next, he descended on the moon and walked on it with Neil Armstrong. His actions remind us that in the Lord’s Supper, God’s children can share the life of Jesus from any place on Earth, and even from the moon! God is everywhere, and our worship should reflect this reality. In Psalm 139 we are told that wherever we go, God is intimately present with us. Buzz Aldrin celebrated that experience on the surface of the moon. Thousands of miles from earth, he took time to commune with the One who created, redeemed, and established fellowship with him.

Wars are often greeted with great optimism, and what was then known as “The Great War,” was no exception. It only became “The First World War” when a second, even worse war, erupted. No one, at least in the allied nations, greeted the latter with the naïve optimism they did with the first. Some thought the first would settle old grievances, strengthen degenerative youth and make the world safe for democracy. But looking toward a second war, the calamity and carnage of the first were too well remembered. Rupert Brooke was the first of the Great War poets. This young man made the upstairs folks of Downton Abbey look downright dowdy. Tall, handsome, with golden locks of hair, he was by everyone’s account a truly charming man. Brooke considered his boyhood days at Rugby School the happiest of his life. He then attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he was made, a member of the Cambridge Apostles, which is still one of the university’s storied and exclusive academic societies. But within its first year, the Great War claimed Rupert Brooke’s life before he and everyone else had been horribly disabused of the notion that war might be a good thing. If war has a noble side and you want to ponder it, you cannot do better than the poem that became an immediate success in the first months of the Great War: Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier.”...

There’s a story told of a young Jewish boy named Mortakai who refused to go to school. When he was six years old, his mother took him to school, but he cried and protested all the way and, immediately after she left, ran back home. She brought him back to school and this scenario played itself out for several days. He refused to stay in school. His parents tried to reason with him, arguing that he, like all children, must now go to school. To no avail. His parents then tried the age-old trick of applying an appropriate combination of bribes and threats. This too had no effect. Finally, in desperation they went to their Rabbi and explained the situation to him. For his part, the Rabbi simply said: “If the boy won’t listen to words, bring him to me.” They brought him into the Rabbi’s study. The Rabbi said not a word. He simply picked up the boy and held him to his heart for a long time. Then, still without a word, he set him down. What words couldn’t accomplish, a silent embrace did. Mortakai not only began willingly to go to school, he went on to become a great scholar and a Rabbi...

Around 1949, when the Communist party came to power in China, one of the first ways they began their campaign of fear and oppression on the people was with an assault on the Catholic Christians. On this one particular day, without warning, soldiers arrived at a local Catholic School where they announced to the shocked children (and adults) that drastic changes were being implemented immediately. They ripped crucifix’s off the wall, removed holy pictures and statues, and at gunpoint ordered the children to dump all of these religious articles in the toilets. The children tried to resist, but the intimidation forced them all to reluctantly give in. All except this one 13-year-old girl who sat in the back of her classroom, hands folded, lips tightly shut, unmoving. A guard shouted and cursed at her, shot off his gun shattering glass causing the children to scream as he demanded that this “renegade child” take one of the statues and desecrate it as they had ordered. She tried to remain silent and still, as a tear ran down her cheek. At that, the guard demanded that some of the other soldiers get the young girl’s father and the rest of the townspeople and bring them all into the Church – where they would address everyone, including the Pastor...

("A friend of mine from grammar school lamented once: 'After all the torture I endured in Mrs. Davies 6th grade science class about the solar system and having to do a thorough report on Pluto, I find out it's all been a lie... I don't know what is real anymore...")

("Once upon a time in a summer resort parish there was a deacon from the seminary who was assigned to help out during the summer rush. He was a nice enough young man, though a little shy and kind of conservative. On a very hot Sunday he lost his temper with the way people dressed...")

("Once upon a time a daddy took cooking lessons. He was the kind of a daddy who thought he was a renaissance man. He played golf and basketball, he sang, especially at weddings, even when he wasn’t invited...")

("An early missioner to Japan in the days of the shoguns is reported to have written back to his superiors in Europe, saying that the Japanese language must have been invented by the devil in order to prevent the Japanese people from ever hearing the Gospel. Anyone who has studied the intricacies of Japanese grammar would agree that it is a devilishly difficult language...")

when I was your age, I got a disease, a very funny disease. The doctors they could name it, but they couldn’t do anything. It’s osteomyelitis. It’s a bone disease, so I couldn’t move my arm. But in those days, this is about 1939, it was a very serious thing. So they took me to hospital, a hospital way far away from our little town of Hicksville, and they dumped me there. They wouldn’t let my parents come upstairs, they just took me and dressed me in some kind of a white garment and took me into the hospital and they said to my parents, “Now you can see him once a week for one hour.” And the rest of the time I was in this massive place with crying children and strict nurses and nothing at all. And I thought I was going to die. And I was just nine, eight, nine years old, you know. And then I said, “What am I going to do? I’m all alone.” And then a nurse came up in the evening and she brought a little package. And it was a little bag from my father. There was a comic book — you know comic books — and a candy bar, and an apple, and a little letter that said, “Dear Denis, Your favourite baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, won today, so you should be happy.” And I was. And every day I was in the hospital, that package arrived. Do you how long I was in there? Two months. Imagine, never seeing anybody…

("In the year 1263 a priest from Prague was on route to Rome making a pilgrimage asking God for help to strengthen his faith since he was having doubts about his vocation. Along the way he stopped in a Bolsena 70 miles north of Rome. While celebrating Mass there, as he raised the host during the consecration, the bread turned into flesh and began to bleed...")

There's a story told of a young Jewish boy named Mortakai who refused to go to school. When he was six years old, his mother took him to school, but he cried and protested all the way and, immediately after she left, ran back home. She brought him back to school and this scenario played itself out for several days. He refused to stay in school. His parents tried to reason with him, arguing that he, like all children, must now go to school. To no avail. His parents then tried the age-old trick of applying an appropriate combination of bribes and threats. This too had no effect. Finally, in desperation they went to their Rabbi and explained the situation to him. For his part, the Rabbi simply said: "If the boy won't listen to words, bring him to me." They brought him into the Rabbi's study. The Rabbi said not a word. He simply picked up the boy and held him to his heart for a long time. Then, still without a word, he set him down. What words couldn't accomplish, a silent embrace did. Mortakai not only began willingly to go to school, he went on to become a great scholar and a Rabbi. What that parable wonderfully expresses is how the Eucharist works. In it, God physically embraces us...

("Tonight, I am asking you to put your imagination to work. I would like you to imagine that an archeologist recently discovered a letter, well preserved, buried beneath the remnants of an ancient house in Jerusalem. The content of this letter reads as follows...")

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(Poetic Homily by Michael Kennedy)