You may remember the story of the Johnstown flood; we read the book by David McCullough in the refectory some years ago. It had been raining for days in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in the spring of 1889. A poorly constructed damn has broken above the town; and water is rising rapidly, higher and higher, in the town below. All is pandemonium, utter chaos. But one well-to-do family residing on the hillside in a lovely Victorian home is trying to let life go on as usual. (Denial, I think is what we’d call it today.) Their lawn and garden are submerged, and water is moving up their front steps, as they calmly finish their formal luncheon, seemingly oblivious. The maid clears the dessert dishes. And finally, the father of the family puts down his napkin, rises, and declares that they must all leave the house immediately and walk up the hill outside their home to higher ground. Everyone departs. The father has his little daughter’s hand. After a few steps his wife, walking arm in arm with her sister and the maid, disgusted at all the mud and slop and chaos, declares: “I prefer to return to the house.” “I will follow you,” says her sister. They pull the little girl away from her father, and the women reenter the house. Water is rapidly filling the first floor. They climb to the second with water at their feet. Moments later they hurry up the narrow stairway to the attic. The water rushes on. There are no more steps. The women are trapped and drowned. Miraculously the little girl is thrust out of the attic window by the force of the water, and she lands on a mattress floating by! After a harrowing journey, she is eventually reunited with her widowed father.
Something was happening right under their noses. And tragically they weren’t getting it. It had after all been raining for days. “They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away,” says Jesus. “Therefore, stay awake. For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Perhaps something is happening right under our noses too. There’s always that possibility that God in Christ is doing something, asking something of us, making a move in our direction and we’re just not getting it. There could be a flood of mercy and divine presence right at our door.
There is a wonderful twist in this passage, for as Jesus puts it this morning we have to stay awake- not to keep our house, our very selves locked tight to keep a thief out but vigilant instead to do the opposite– to leave our door unlocked for the Son of Man is very near; keep our hearts open, for Jesus the divine Thief, hidden in the dark of night, is looking for a way in.
Now the first question of course is this: What does a thief do? Well, he breaks in to take what does not belong to him. A second question follows. What is ours that a divine Thief would want? The answer? Our very selves, our sinful selves, our flesh, the mess we find ourselves in right now. He wants it all; He wants us. He is sneaking in to take it, to take us to himself now, to become with us, to become us at every moment- at every moment bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh; in an endless, relentless incarnation that is at the heart of His desire. For nothing that we are puts Him off. Our weakness draws Him; He wants to get in and take it all.
The Lord’s approach is so often unremarkable, so quiet that we need to keep awake or we’ll miss out. Aren’t we all still learning His way of doing things, how He moves in silence and obscurity? Hidden first of all in the warm womb of a very young, virgin mother, He then lives a sheltered small-town life as a carpenter and wandering preacher. Then in the excruciating hour of his death on the cross, all his beauty and divinity will be smeared, obscured by the blood and spittle of his passion. And finally, after His resurrection as He returns to his disciples; He will sneak in through locked doors and whisper, “Peace” and ask quietly for something to eat. The divine Thief is back, wounded and resurrected. And this is perhaps the best news of all, for this time He has come in through locked doors. Apparently, nothing can really keep Him out. The fear and need, the love and desire of His disciples for His presence, all of it absolutely magnetize Jesus’ heart and draw Him in. He can’t stay away.
So, in the end, our life of faith is always like that journey of the two disciples back from Emmaus as they reflect on their mysterious encounter with the Stranger. “It was the Lord,” they say. “It was He all the time who was speaking to us, feeding us though we did not realize.” It is the Lord accompanying us, longing to enflesh himself in our ordinariness over and over though we may not always realize it. There is so much we just do not understand. It’s got to be that way. We believe, but we never get it all. How could we? God is Mystery. But rest assured it is our love and desire that give us a clear vision. Love is knowledge and assurance, because if we want to be with Him; He wants it more than we do.
God in Christ is hidden and yet revealing himself over and over, doing anything at all to get our attention, “playing in ten thousand places,” in nature and grace, over and over, all day long. Vigilance is essential, a willingness to be surprised at every corner of the cloister, as St. Bernard would say, because angels will be there- heavenly messengers- reminding us, as one did our Blessed Lady, that Someone is here. Someone is coming, stealing in; Someone wants to be our flesh now. Someone we love has seen our sad predicament and has come down to be with us now; always eager to turn things upside-down, He makes opportunities for mercy out of the disasters of our sinfulness.
Finally, perhaps His call to us this morning may be not so much, “Stay awake. Watch out,” with a threat of impending doom and divine retribution. Maybe it is a bit like the, “Watch this” of a kid just back from the field, from gymnastics or a dance class with a new play, a new move, a leap, or a twirl that she can’t wait to show off. “Look. Watch this. See what I can do.” Quiet as a thief on tiptoe, Christ Jesus is coming, present in a morsel of broken bread; the God of tiny violets and of tall, tall trees, too tremendous for us to grasp fully but also astoundingly, disarmingly ordinary. Let us open to this Thief; open the doors of our hearts to the flood. There is no need to seek higher ground; let us stay low instead so that we will be overwhelmed by mystery and mercy.
Homily by one of our monks.
