Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
Lectionary: 353

Tobit 1:3; 2:1a-8
Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6
Mark 12:1-12

Today’s readings are difficult ones. There’s no easy way to find a word of hope without doing a disservice to the reality of life which while certainly beautiful, is also fragile and broken.

Not all stories have a happy ending, not every cloud a silver lining.

We cannot gloss over the the realities of poverty, racism or the willful destruction of Earth. We cannot give a passing glance to oppression of LGBTQ+ people. In fact this month of June, we remember particularly the Stonewall Riots of June, 28, 1969, when the queer community broke out in spontaneous protests to a police raid targeting their community at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village of New York City.

We humans are no stranger to the harshness of life. Sometimes we are its victims, and sometimes we are its aggressors.

In our readings today we hear from both classic antiquity and the time of Jesus about the  struggle we have to live justly and in right relationship with one another.

In our first reading, Tobit shares with us about his desire to share a meal with “a poor person from among our kin exiled here in Nineveh” only to receive word from his son Tobiah that one from among the poor had been murdered and left lying in the marketplace.

And in the gospel, Jesus shares a parable with the chief priests, scribes, and elders about how a vineyard owner’s servants, and even his own son, were abused and killed out of a sense of disrespect, entitlement and greed. The parable of course is a way for Jesus to point out the hardness of heart that some people had toward Jesus’ message of the radical inclusivity of God’s love.

Far from happy endings, these stories hold only tragedy and heartbreak. There is no dramatic turn of events that saves the day.

“But hope is on the way!” we might cry out in protest. “Jesus does save the day!”

Yes.

But not on that day in Nineveh. Not on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Riots, and not on March 13, 2020, when a Black woman, Breonna Taylor, was murdered by police in her Louisville apartment.

That these stories do not end on a hopeful note does not mean that there is no hope. Rather they are an invitation for us to stay present in the moment, in the here and now, tending in a very personal way to one another in the hour of our greatest sorrow and hopelessness. This we must do, even while at the same time we long for and work on behalf of a new creation, “a new heaven and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:13).

Tobit models for us what this might look like. Let’s go back to what happened in Nineveh that day. Upon hearing of the murder of his kin, Tobit says:

I sprang to my feet, leaving the dinner untouched;
and I carried the dead man from the street
and put him in one of the rooms,
so that I might bury him after sunset.
Returning to my own quarters, I washed myself
and ate my food in sorrow….

And I wept.
Then at sunset I went out, dug a grave, and buried him.

Looking at Tobit’s response symbolically, we might ask ourselves:

• what experiences urge us to “spring to our feet”?
• what rooms in our home can we open up for others?
• when are we called to accompany others – or give permission to ourselves – to lament and to weep?
• what actions are we compelled to take that emerge out of our heartbreak and our deep faith and commitment to God?

Perhaps in the absence of finding a word of hope within these stories, we might instead follow Jesus and become a cornerstone, a foundation of the new heaven and new earth that all of creation longs for.

Image Credit: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons