This Thanksgiving, I'm Reading Up on the American Buffalo and Trying to Love People Better
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
In a few days, everyone will head home for Thanksgiving break and soon, if you aren’t already, you’ll be anticipating the conversation topics that will be raised around the table on Thursday. If you’re smart, you’ll come to dinner with a few in your pocket to play at opportune times. It seems like everyone hates the new Jaguar logo, so that should be an easy win. Wicked is doing very well at the box office, but be careful, you might rustle some flying monkey feathers about the musical adaptation being split into two films. Of course, you can always play it safe and pre-game with a bit of SportsCenter to get up to speed on the drama regarding your family’s favorite teams.
What you’re not going to do, obviously, is bring up politics. I don’t mean that it’s wrong to talk about politics, but we all know the conversation is bound to go there anyway, so why help it get there any faster? If you have a long drive or flight home, you might download an audiobook on some niche topic of interest that you can save for a nuclear option. For example, I’ve got my eye on an 8-hour book on Audible about a guy who went hunting in Alaska for a rare American Buffalo, was lucky enough to get one, and had to bring it back while on the run from a pack of grizzly bears and fighting off hypothermia. I’ll be launching into a summary of that tale at the first mention of “cabinet appointments,” probably before I make it to the cranberry sauce.
Less than a month removed from an election, we know that talk about politics is unavoidable; and we know, imagining who will be sitting around our table, who will have what ‘takes’ about what’s going on. And while you’ve spent the past few weeks in an academic environment, learning principles for thinking about reality from your classes and debating these issues with your peers, the people you’re going to encounter this week, well, haven’t. They might be getting their opinions second-hand from some talking-head. Or they might be doing their own thinking, but it’s probably a different kind of thinking than what you’ve been doing. So, obviously, there’s going to be tension. Emotions are bound to be involved. And all that might spill over into an argument or twelve.
It's for that reason that this Sunday’s feast is all-important. As I said before the election, whoever holds political office is, ultimately, a steward of a throne that is not their own. All power, all honor, all glory, all kingship, belongs to Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Today’s liturgy is, in a special way, our act of homage and fealty to the one true King. And it is from here that we are sent out into the world—a world he has deigned in his providence to be managed by men and women—with the all-important mission of calling the world higher, to remember the King it has time and again forgotten.
About a year ago the coach of the Boston Celtics was asked if he had a chance to meet the members of the Royal Family who attended the game. Joe Mazzulla said the only Royal Family he knows about is “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Going into Thanksgiving with that attitude might be a little too strong; however, our witness to our faith in Christ the Lord is supposed to get people thinking. Jesus uses the image of yeast for his Church: it’s practically invisible, but what it does is unmistakable. Before it’s proofed, you can’t tell, but rather quickly, once the yeast begins to work, you know it’s there. It might not be advantageous to forcefully redirect every conversation about politics to Christ; but in every conversation we have about politics, our faith in Christ should be apparent and unmistakable.
The first lesson Christ the King teaches us about engaging in political affairs is that silence says more than words. The dialogue between Christ and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, in John’s Gospel articulates this well. Pilate asks Christ, “Are you the king of the Jews?” and instead of outright answering him, Christ responds, “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?” What silence allows is for the other person to come to the natural conclusions of their line of questioning, and, thus, Pilate is eventually led to have affixed to the Cross the inscription, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” When challenged to change it, Pilate stands behind it––perhaps, just perhaps, because Pilate came to believe it.
In any case, there is another principle drawn from Jesus’ life and ministry stated by St. Thomas Aquinas that is helpful with regard to what we say: Never deny, rarely affirm, always distinguish. When we see Jesus engaging with people who disagree with him, we never comes out saying someone is just plain wrong. Yet rarely do we see him automatically agreeing with what someone has said, because he’s the only one who knows all things. What we always see him do is making distinctions, asking questions, trying to get to the heart of the matter. A distinction requires us to identify both what is correct and what is incorrect about a position. So, when we listen to a point of view at odds with our own, we should first and foremost look for common ground. Then, once we’ve established agreement, move into the difference.
What this approach manifests is love for the other person. Love requires us first and foremost to accept the other where they are. By going to where they are, then we are better able to lead them to where God wants them to be. But we won’t ever convince them to leave where they are if we yell at them for being wrong and dismiss them right off the bat for the positions they hold.
But love is not merely a strategy to change people’s minds. Love is, fundamentally, the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. The book of Revelation tells us that by Jesus’ Blood he “has made us into a kingdom, priests for God our Father.” When we live in Christ, his Kingdom lives in us. We are the Kingdom because we are one with the King. His Kingdom, as he told Pilate, “does not belong to this world,” but his kingdom is in this world, because we’re in it. So, when we love, we proclaim Christ, which means we proclaim the truth that sets the world free.
The challenge this week—and, in fact, every week of our life—is to love those who we don’t want to love: those who disagree with us, those who the world would say are our enemies. The Gospel doesn’t allow us to see anyone as our enemies, but only as those who haven’t yet come to know the truth. It’s our mission, as those who carry Christ’s Kingdom within us, to proclaim it to them. But there is no authentic proclamation of the Kingdom without love, because there is no Kingdom without its King, and there is no King without the Cross he willingly accepted for our sake and for the salvation of the world.
Homily preached November 24, 2024 at Mount St. Mary’s University