SEEDS AND SOILS

Homily for September 22^nd, 2018: Luke 8:4-15.

          Jesus’ favorite form of teaching was through stories. We call them parables. Most of them are so simple that they can be understood even by children; yet so profound that scholars are still writing books about them. The parable of the sower and his seed occurs in three of the four gospels. At the most basic level, the story is encouragement in the face of failure. It is Jesus’ answer to the rising tide of opposition which his teaching and ministry provoked. Most of the seed which the farmer sows is wasted. Despite this waste, the story promises a “hundredfold” harvest. A modern commentator writes: “A 20-to-1 ratio would have been considered an extraordinary harvest. Jesus’ strikingly large figures are intended to underscore the prodigious quality of God’s glorious kingdom still to come.”

          Today’s gospel reading gives the story another interpretation. By speaking about the different kinds of soil on which the farmer’s seed falls, Jesus directs our attention to our role in the harvest. It comes from God, yes. But it requires our cooperation.

          The different kinds of soil symbolize the many kinds of people who heard Jesus’ message: in his lifetime, and still today. “Those on the path are the ones who have heard,” Jesus says, “but the Devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts that they may not believe and be saved.” There are people like that in every parish, the world over.  

So also for those on rocky ground. They receive Jesus’ words with joy. But they have no root, so in times of temptation, they fall away. The seed falling among thorns represent people unable to bring any fruit to fruition, because they are so busy with other things: anxiety, and the pursuit of the false gods of pleasure, possessions, power, and honor.  

The super-abundant harvest of which the story speaks comes only for those who internalize Jesus’ words, praying over them, and making them the foundation of their lives. In response, then, we pray: “Take hold of me, Lord. Help me to know that you are always with me; that I can find happiness only by fulfilling the purpose for which you fashioned me in my mother’s womb: to praise, serve, and glorify you here on earth; and so to be happy with you forever in heaven. Amen.”

THE CALL OF MATTHEW

Homily for Sept. 21^st, 2018: Matthew 9:9-13.

          “As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.” Matthew was a tax collector. He was not the kind of tax collector we know today, a civil servant. In the Palestine of Jesus’ day the Roman government of occupation entrusted the collection of taxes to tax farmers, as they are sometimes called, who bid for the right to collect taxes. In doing so, they enriched themselves by extorting more than the government required. They were hated, therefore, for two reasons: for preying on people financially; and for serving the despised Roman rulers of the land. 

          Jesus speaks just two words to Matthew: “Follow me.” Without hesitation, Matthew gets up and follows Jesus. Other disciples of Jesus have already done the same, when, at Jesus’ command, they abandoned the tools of their trade as fishermen, their boats and nets, to follow Jesus. What motivated this immediate obedience? I think that if we could have questioned any of them, Matthew included, they would have replied: “There was something about this man, Jesus, which made it impossible to say no.” 

          As a parting gesture Matthew invites his friends to dinner at his house, with Jesus as the honored guest. As we would expect, many of those friends were Matthew’s fellow tax collectors. Others were simply “sinners,” as the gospel reading calls them: Jews, like Matthew, who did not bother to keep all of God’s law.

Observing these disreputable guests, the Pharisees, proud of their exact observance of God’s law, ask Jesus’ other disciples how their Master can associate with such ruffians. Jesus supplies the answer himself: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. … I did not come to call the righteous [by which Jesus means ‘people like you Pharisees’]. ‘I came to call sinners.’

What is the message for us? If we want Jesus’ loving care, we need first to recognize and confess our need. And the first thing we need from Jesus is forgiveness.

A SINFUL WOMAN'S GRATITUDE

Homily for Sept. 20^th, 2018: Luke 7:36-50.

          Let’s get one thing straight right away. The “sinful woman in the city” whom we have just heard about in the gospel is not Mary Magdalene. Luke will mention Mary Magdalene just 2 verses after the close of today’s gospel reading; yet he says nothing to suggest that she is the same woman whose over the top behavior he has just described. Nor is there any convincing evidence that this “sinful woman,” as she is called, is a prostitute. There are plenty of serious sins which are not sexual. 

          Jesus is dining in the house of a Pharisee, a man proud of his meticulous observance of all the details of God’s law. “If this man were a prophet,” Jesus’ host says to himself, “he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”

With his unique ability to read the human mind and heart, Jesus perceives at once what his host is thinking. Jesus is a prophet. He has already read his host’s unspoken thoughts. He responds by telling the story of two debtors. One owes a sum equal to 18 months’ daily wages; the other’s debt equals a worker’s pay for just 50 days. When both men tell their creditor they cannot pay their debts, he says, ‘Forget about it.’ Which would love the creditor more? Jesus asks. The answer is obvious. We can see the Pharisee’s resentment at having to give this answer by the frigid words he speaks: “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.”   

Jesus then contrasts the formally correct welcome he has received from his host with the extravagant welcome of the sinful woman. Her behavior is the response, Jesus says, to my forgiveness of her sins. This causes the other guests to ask: “Who is this who even forgives sins?” To which Jesus responds by telling the sinful and now forgiven woman: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Without claiming in words to be divine, Jesus acts as only God can act.

The story reminds us of something which Pope Francis never tires of telling us: God never grows tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness. And the story challenges us with an insistent question: Are we even half as grateful for God’s merciful forgiveness as this sinful woman?

"IF ANYONE WISHES TO BE FIRST, HE SHALL BE LAST."

Homily for Sept.23rd, 2018: 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. Mark 9:30-37

AIM: To encourage the hearers to find Christ in serving others.

 

AWhat were you arguing about on the way?@ Jesus asks his disciples in today=s gospel. He probably knew already (Jesus always did). But he wanted an admission from their own mouths that they had been discussing Awho was the greatest.@ Mark will repeat the phrase, Aon the way,@ in the very next sentence C and four more times in his short gospel (10:17, 32, 52; 11:8). There was a reason. It was not just any way. Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem where, as he says in today=s gospel, AThe Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him ...@

       That way was not inevitable. Jesus chose it, at great personal cost. And the cost grew greater, not less, as Jesus approached the end of his self-chosen way. We get a glimpse of the cost in Mark=s description of Jesus= agonized prayer in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his death, when Jesus falls on the ground and prays that the cup of suffering might be taken from him. (Mk 14:32-36)

       There are, in every life, times when the way we must walk is steep, and difficult. As a help to persevere, many people join a support group. There are support groups for just about everyone today, priests included. Jesus too had a support group: his twelve apostles. One of the reasons he chose them, Mark tells us, was Ato be with him@ (3:14).

       The Twelve did not really give Jesus much support, however. Those dozen men who accompanied Jesus Aon the way@ were miles removed from their Master in spirit. While he Aset his face resolutely toward Jerusalem@ (Lk 9:51), knowing what awaited him there, his closest friends were discussing Awho was the greatest.@ Their behavior illustrates perfectly what Mark has already told us: that these hand-picked friends of Jesus, his support group, Adid not understand@ what he was facing. This failure, and the resulting inability of the Twelve to give Jesus the support he needed, were themselves part of Jesus= suffering. His passion had already begun before he reached Jerusalem, while he was still Aon the way.@

       Our gospel shows how Jesus responded: not with a complaint, but with a fresh bid for understanding. Seated C the accepted posture for the religious teacher Jesus= day C Jesus tells his friends that ordinary standards of importance cannot apply for them. AIf anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.@ This teaching was so crucial for the early Christian community that it is recorded, with variations, five more times in the gospels. (Mt 18:3f, Mk 10:43f, Lk 9:46ff & 22:26, Jn.13:14f)

       To drive home his point Jesus places a small child in their midst and says: AWhoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me ...@ The child does not symbolize innocence. That is a sentimental modern idea which would have been foreign to Jesus and his hearers. Richard Gaillardetz, a teacher of theology at Boston College and himself a married man and father, is more realistic when he writes: AWhatever Jesus meant when he suggested we must imitate the children, it had nothing to do with angelic innocence! I love my children in ways that can never be put into words, but there is no hiding the fact that they are imperfect creatures, capable of the same pettiness, resentment, and mean-spiritedness that sets us adults to warring.@ [Richard R. Gaillardetz, ALearning from marriage,@ in: Commonweal, Sept. 8, 2000, 18f]

       In Jesus= world, therefore, children symbolized not innocence, but insignificance. It is as if Jesus were saying to these friends of his: >You are concerned about who shall be most important. If you want to be my disciples, you must become like this child, the least important. If you want to find me, look for me in people who are as insignificant as this child, and as easily overlooked.=

       Jesus= words overturn all normal worldly standards based on Alooking after Number One.@ Yet Jesus had no interest in promoting a revolution that would sweep away earthly rulers. What he wanted was to create a new way of living that would reflect God=s rule, as Jesus reflected it in his own life. God exercises his rule through his merciful love; and Jesus exercises the power he has from his heavenly Father by being the servant of all and at the disposal of all.

       Who lives like that today, you ask? More people than you might think. We have such people here in our parish. There are parents who live like that. A father of three asked members of his support group: AWho ever said children were supposed to bring us together?@ To which his wife added: ASince we started having children, we have had less time for ourselves than we ever expected. We can hardly wait for the kids to grow up, so that we can get together again.@ A newspaper article quoted a Catholic bishop saying something similar. Asked to describe his life, he answered: AYou can never do what you like.@

        Would those harassed parents, or the busy bishop, exchange their lives with others who have greater leisure? They might talk about it. Deep in their hearts, however, they know they would not change, even if they could. In their commitment to serving others they are living out Jesus= teaching in today=s gospel: AIf anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.@ In putting themselves at the disposal even of those whom many would consider a nuisance or insignificant, they encounter the One who had time for everyone: who was so little concerned with his own importance that he was willing Ato be handed over to men [who] will kill him;@ and who was raised from death the third day, never more to die.

       So if you want to encounter Jesus Christ, look for him in those everyone else ignores. There, in the overlooked, the insignificant, the neediest and the most forsaken, Jesus is waiting for you.

 

"THEY ARE LIKE CHILDREN."

Homily for Sept. 19^th, 2018: Luke 7:31-35.

          Jesus speaks often of children in the gospels, usually in a positive sense. He tells us, for instance, that we cannot enter the kingdom of God unless we “become like little children” (Mt. 18:3; cf. Mk. 9:36, Lk 9:47). When his disciples try to keep children away from Jesus, he rebukes them, saying that anyone who welcomes a little child “welcomes me” (Lk 9:48). In these and similar passages Jesus is recommending the sense of dependence that children have. It never occurs to small children that they can make it on their own. He is also recommending children’s ability to wonder – something that most of us lose, as we grow up, though artists and great saints retain their sense of wonder at God’s creation into old age.

          In today’s gospel Jesus speaks about a negative aspect of childhood. Grieved that too few of his own people have responded either to his cousin, John the Baptist, or to himself, Jesus compares them to children who reject every approach of those who reach out to them in loving concern. ‘You complained that John was too strict and ascetic,’ Jesus says in effect. ‘Me you find too laid back and merciful. What do you want?’ Jesus asks them.

          Children can be like that. I experienced it myself, in my own childhood. I might have been ten years old, or even younger, with a sister eight, and a brother six. I remember my father saying to another grownup, in a tone of resigned frustration: “My children are contra-suggestive.” I no longer know what occasioned this remark, but I can easily imagine it. Whatever my father suggested, by way of a leisure activity – whether it was a walk, a drive in the country, or a visit to a museum – we said: “Oh, no -- we don’t want to do that.”

          Most of us carry over this childhood stubbornness into adult life. We’d like to determine our own agenda, thank you. But of course we can’t. God set the agenda for us before we were even born. “My yoke is easy”, Jesus says, “and my burden light” (Mt. 11:30). Jesus’ yoke is easy, however, only if we accept it. Otherwise it chafes. How better could we respond to Jesus’ words in today’s gospel than to pray: “Not what I want, Lord, but what you want.”

"YOUNG MAN, ARISE."

Homily for Sept. 18^th, 2018: Luke 7:11-17.

          Can there be anything more tragic than parents having to bury a son or daughter? The tragedy is deepened in the story we have just heard by the fact that the mother who must bury her son is the only child he has, and she is a widow. It was a man’s world. Women were the property of men in Jesus’ day: the property of their fathers until they married, then the property of their husbands. The Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” lists a man’s wife among the things one must not covet. With her husband already dead, and now her son as well, this widow of Nain has no man to speak for her or protect her.

          This tragedy has parallels even in an age of women’s liberation. I remember as if it were yesterday standing as a young priest in a bleak and rocky cemetery in Arizona, where I had just laid to rest beside his long deceased father the only son of a widow named Nellie. Her deep Christian faith strengthened my faith then, and I continue to pray for her today. “There are my two men-folk,” Nellie told me when the prayers of committal were over.

          How could Jesus be indifferent to such grief? We heard in yesterday’s gospel about Jesus healing the gravely ill slave of a Roman military officer, to whom the sick slave was “very dear.” The young man being carried to burial at Nain is no less dear to his mother. Disregarding the Jewish law of ritual purity which said that one must not touch a corpse, Jesus unhesitatingly reaches out to touch the coffin saying: “Young man, I tell you, arise!” Whereupon, Luke tells us, the young man “sat up.” The Scripture commentators tell us that the Greek word which Luke uses for “sit up” is a medical term – hardly surprising when we know that Luke was what passed in those days for a medical doctor. The people who witnessed this miracle respond with the simple but powerful words: “God has visited his people.”

          What better response could we make to this moving story than to pray the words of an old evangelical hymn: “What a friend we have in Jesus / All our sins and griefs to bear! / What a privilege to carry / Everything to God in prayer. / Are we weak and heavy laden, / Burdened with a load of care? / Precious Savior, still our refuge / Take it to the Lord in prayer.”

"LORD, I AM NOT WORTHY."

Homily for Sept. 17^th, 2018: Luke 7:1-10.

          The centurion who asks Jesus to heal his serving boy is a Roman military officer, something like a colonel today. This is clear from his response when Jesus sets off at once to heal the boy. The officer shows both courtesy to Jesus and respect for the Jewish law by saying: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you under my roof.” The officer’s Jewish friends have already told Jesus this Roman officer has taken a genuine interest in their religion, and has even built a synagogue. The officer knows, therefore, that in entering a Gentile house Jesus could become ritually unclean. Hence, Luke tells us, the officer suggests an alternative: “Just give an order and my boy will be healed.” I do that all the time, he says. I give orders to those under my authority, and they do what I command.

          Upon hearing these words, Luke tells us, Jesus “showed amazement.” Normally it is the witnesses of Jesus’ healings who are amazed. Here it is the Lord himself who shows amazement. I have not found faith like this from my own people, Jesus says. This outsider, who has neither our divine law, nor our prophets, he tells the people, shows greater faith than you do.

          The centurion’s words continue to resound two millennia later. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,” we say before we approach the Lord’s table to receive his Body and Blood, “but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” Even after a good confession, we are still unworthy of the Lord’s gift. He gives himself to us for one reason: not because we are good enough; but because he is so good that he longs to share his love with us.  

          How do we respond? By gratitude! By walking before the Lord in holiness and righteousness all our days, trusting that when the Lord calls us home to himself, we shall hear him saying to us, very personally and with tender love: “Well done. … Come and share your master’s joy.” (Matt. 25:21).