Death is not a Problem for God (13th Sunday, Year B)

 To listen to this homily, click here.

I want to offer an analogy for today’s gospel that sounds utterly ridiculous and seemingly trite. I promise I am not making light of the profound mysteries of suffering and death presented in the Scriptures. But for my simple mind, it makes perfect sense and I hope it will for you as well! So here is my great theological statement: God sees suffering and death like I see broken lawn mowers. Hold on! Put down your tomatoes! What do I mean? Over the past couple of years I have offered the Lazurus Small Engine Repair Service because I was amazed at how many folks threw away perfectly viable lawn equipment because of some small problem. To them it was ruined, good for nothing, never-gonna-run again trash. In nearly every case it was actually only a dirty carburetor, minor repair, or missing part. If you understand how a small engine works, then almost any problem can be fixed, most of them quickly and easily. If you don’t understand these engines, even the simplest problem seems catastrophic, unfixable and overwhelming. In two years, I have been able to keep almost 100 pieces of law equipment from getting unnecessarily trashed, much to the relief of their owners. Of course this analogy could be used for any area of expertise. Each of you has something you excel in and understand while the rest of us flounder. You see solutions and fixes where others simply see confusion and hopelessness. For example, I am utterly paralyzed when it comes to sewing. When a button falls off a shirt, my first impulse is to buy another one. When pants aren’t the right length, the idea of altering them seems only slightly less daunting than attempting open heart surgery.  

Does this rambling make sense? I suppose what I am trying to say is that what seems mysterious or impossible for one person is no problem for another. It’s a matter of training, experience, and perspective. But what about the topic of today’s scriptures? Does anyone have an answer for death, which one day will claim all of us? How do we make sense of suffering which often afflicts the innocent and helpless? How do we square these very real and often painful experiences with what we believe about God, who is revealed as all-powerful and all-good? 

The first truth given to us from the author of Wisdom is that death does not come from God. It was not part of his plan for the world and he does not rejoice in our suffering and loss. In fact, it hurts him even more than it hurts us! Let's face it, most of us cannot understand death, so we put it all on God's shoulders. "It's God's will”, we say when a person dies. No it isn't. To say that God wanted someone to die is to say that God does evil things. If God is All Good (and He is), how can He do evil things? Did God have a bad day? God does not have bad days. So how can we understand the existence of sickness and death? How can we understand why good people and innocent children become terribly sick and even die? 

Some of these questions cannot be completely understood this side of heaven but we certainly are wrong when we pass the blame off to God. He made everything wholesome and good. He formed man to be imperishable, made in His own image. But through the envy of the devil, death entered into the world. This is something else we don't like to think about. Sickness and death are the result of sin. Most often this is not the result of the sins of the person who gets sick or dies, but is due to the consequences of sin in the world and generational sin that has been gathering momentum over the course of thousands of years of humans hurting each other. It’s also tempting to blame Adam and Eve, but that takes us out of the picture. We are not that innocent. Within every human heart rages a battle between good and evil and the choices we make impact many others, for good or ill.

But as powerful as the tragedies of sin and death truly are, there is something far more mighty and lasting. God did not make death but he knows how to overcome it. God mysteriously allows suffering to continue in our world but he offers a solution to give it meaning. In the person of Jesus, God himself experienced suffering and death so he could rise above it and offer us a path to eternal life. 

God has a solution for every problem that affects humanity. However, God’s wisdom doesn’t always line up with human logic. There are things and people we see as completely hopeless, totally broken, and dead forever. God looks at those same problems and says, “I can fix that”, “fear is useless, what is needed here is faith.” What looks like death is only sleep! I can make you new, alive, and beautiful! 

Our problems of seemingly impossible suffering and irreversible death are nothing compared to God’s loving power and compassionate heart. He can raise the dead as simply as we wake a child from a nap. He can heal the sick as effortlessly as we get a mower running or a seamstress sews on a button! So what is the primary thing God needs from us to unleash his power in our lives? It is humble faith. In each of the healings in the gospel, we find someone trusting God. Their hearts are open to Jesus and willing to do whatever he asks them. There is a holy boldness that moves the woman to fight through the crowd and touch the Lord. There is an urgency and decisiveness that moves Jairus to ask Jesus to stop what he is doing and come to his house to help his daughter. 

Are we like these holy and courageous characters? Or are we like the crowd that jostles Jesus mindlessly? Are we the ones telling the woman there is nothing Jesus can do and certainly touching his garment won’t fix anything? Is it possible we are more like the mourners at Jairus’ house who mock Jesus when he says the girl is not dead but asleep? We become those people every time we put our wisdom before God’s, every time we think we know better and seek to change his laws and ways with our own. We risk dismissing the Lord of life and Solver of sadness whenever we judge a person or problem to be beyond hope and healing, as completely dead and lost. 

May God fill us with humble faith and holy boldness that we may go to him first with our problems, sufferings, and losses. Let us trust that he has power over it all and his solutions will always be what is best for us and our loved ones!

The Kingdom Requires Patience (11th Sunday, Year B)

 To listen to this homily, click here.

Take a moment and think about one or two things or people that really make you lose your patience…Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to say them out loud, this isn’t confession! Maybe its the driving of someone in front of you on the road or maybe the person you are riding with? Perhaps it's a sibling who “borrows” your clothes or takes things out of your room? Maybe it’s a family member who chews louder than a wood chipper or snores like a Category 5 hurricane? Could it be your spouse who takes forever to get ready, uses all the hot water, or never seems to be on time? Is it a friend who tells the same jokes or stories, a priest who never stops talking, or maybe even the white-hot anger I feel towards myself when a mistake is made or I do something less than perfect.

Even if I didn’t name your number one trigger for impatience, it probably wasn’t hard to think of one that gets you every time. We are not patient people and the world we live in is always pushing us to be faster, smarter, and more efficient. Wasting time and energy is seen as public enemy #1. We are encouraged to make use of smartphones, smart cars, smart homes and every other technology to give us more time and make life easier. But all these improvements and innovations haven’t really delivered on this promise. As Americans living in the 21st century, we have more leisure and free time than any other generation before us. Most of us will never have to worry about growing our own food, finding safe lodging, or discovering clean water to sustain us. We have everything we need for survival and the majority of our time is free to be used as we please. We are used to taking charge and making things happen on our terms and at our pace. 

Because of our modern mindset, the two parables in the gospel contain truths that farmers would easily understand, but which drive city slickers and suburbanites like us nuts. The first is the parable of the seed.  The farmer plants the seed and goes about his routine day, day after day.  Eventually the seed grows, not because the farmer does something special, but because nature took its course.  For the people of Jesus’ time every field of wheat, every flower, every season and new birth, was a miracle of God's hand.  The second parable is that of the mustard seed which seems insignificant, but with the growth God gives, it becomes a plant, probably 10 to 12 feet tall, large enough to shelter the birds of the sky. These two parables of the Kingdom of God tell us that we have to trust in God to give growth to the Kingdom. Furthermore, the growth He gives will be greater than we could ever imagine or make happen. The kingdom that we trust God to give growth to could be the Kingdom of the Church in the world, the Kingdom at work in our parish, or, even the Kingdom of God lived in our homes.

     

There are many times we expect too much of ourselves and others or we expect humans to do the work that belongs to God alone. To make matters worse, we demand too much to happen too soon.  Sometimes parents expect their 8-year olds to act like college grads or their little-leaguers to be pro athletes. Often we have an expectation that people should get things right the first time, every time with regards to their learning, working, and living out their faith. Sometimes we experience extreme disappointment in ourselves because we are not the perfect people we like to imagine ourselves being.  Sometimes we are impatient with how we or others are progressing in life. We may be upset with our home situations, our marriages, our families, our jobs, or our relationship with God. What we need to understand is that none of us are self-made men and women. If we trust in God, He will give growth.  This growth might be very subtle, something so subtle that it’s hard to notice day-to-day. In fact, others may see it before we do! But after a while it suddenly occurs to us or is pointed out to us: God has brought us a long way. Something that used to derail us or discourage us has lost it’s power over us. If we trust in God and go to Him for all that we need, the growth He gives us will be more than we could ever imagine or accomplish on our own. We are all small seeds, but God can make us great trees.  However, if we think that we can do everything ourselves and we don't rely on God, we won't get anywhere. In fact we will become exhausted, irritable, and frustrated. None of us can make ourselves or others grow.

 

The people of the ancient world were often a step ahead of us when it came to openness to the kingdom of God. They constantly came into contact with their helplessness and knew how much they depended on God for their basic, daily needs. The parables of the farmer and the mustard seed would have described a way of life that many experienced each and every day: It is God who plants the seed and God who makes it grow. We can cooperate with his grace but ultimately it is God who controls everything. We have to be patient, acknowledging that things happen in God’s time and according to his plan.

It is good for us to reflect on God’s patience with mankind and how patience is built into a true understanding of the kingdom of God. Imagine how easy it would have been for God to make us the way he wanted right away, to make us perfect instantly. Instead, God is patient with us, he gives us many opportunities to grow, and forgives our failures whenever we are truly sorry. Truly, God’s patience is one of the great gifts he shares with us and one we certainly don’t earn. 

So let us reflect today on the richness of God’s patience and how it is meant to be lived out in our own lives. Let us pray for this gift each and every day so that we might live the truth taught to us in the parables. May we embrace the opportunities that come our way to exercise patience, even if it means suffering, knowing that they come from God and are born out of a wisdom and power much greater than ours.

Sing about Love (Corpus Christi, 2021)

To listen to this homily, click here.

What would you do for love? This question has been asked by people of every age. Philosophers, theologians, artists, and poets are just a few of the groups that have wrestled with this topic. For our purposes, I want to borrow the wisdom of musicians, some new, some old, to find an answer of what people would do for love. If you ask Bruno Mars, he’d 'd catch a grenade for ya / throw his hand on a blade for ya / jump in front of a train for ya. Bryan Adams has a slightly different answer. He says when you love someone, you'll do anything / You’ll do all the crazy things that you can't explain / You'll shoot the moon, put out the sun / When you love someone, You'll deny the truth, believe a lie / There'll be times that you'll believe, that you can really fly. Prince takes it up a notch when he lets the world know that “I would—-Die for—— you. Not to be outdone, the Proclaimers boast that they would-walk-500-miles / And they would walk 500 more / To be the man who walked 1, 000 miles / To fall down at your door. But perhaps the most ambiguous of all is from our friend, Meatloaf, who croons that I would do anything for love / but I won't do that, no I won't do that.

Part of what makes these songs and many others so memorable, is that they describe a universal human desire; the desire to be loved. Every human person wants to be wanted, valued, and cherished.  The idea of someone loving us so much that they would catch a grenade for ya or walk 1,000 miles, or do anything for you; well, that’s incredible. Who wouldn’t want that?! It is one thing to sing about this sort of love but it’s another thing to make good on your promise. As far as I know, Bruno Mars has avoided trains, grenades, and blades, the Proclaimers haven’t walked 500 miles and 500 more to collapse at someone’s door, and Meatloaf hasn’t done much for love or anything else for quite some time.

The feast we celebrate today, the solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi, acknowledges the fact that in the history of the world there has been one person who has embodied the total love described in these and countless other songs. This Sunday, our Church invites us to take a moment and remember the priceless gift we have in the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist is God’s ultimate sign of love: he gives himself, body and blood, soul and divinity, to his people for all time. He holds nothing back, he gives everything. To put it in the words of the songs I just mentioned, Jesus has hung on a cross for ya, wore of crown of thorns for ya, been stripped, beaten, and humiliated for ya. He has walked countless miles to spread the Good News and He offers to walk countless more with us on our life’s journey, if we invite him. He would, he has died for you, for me. Finally, he would do and has done anything and everything for love of us but he won’t make us love him back.   

Every time we walk into this church, anytime we step into a catholic church with the Eucharist present, each time we attend Mass and receive Holy Communion in a worthy manner, we share in the love of a lifetime. Hidden under the humble appearance of bread and wine, God loves us perfectly and personally. He doesn’t do it because he has to, he doesn’t do it because somehow we have earned it or deserved it. He loves us for who we are, out of the goodness of his infinitely perfect heart!

This kind of love might make people nervous. Honestly, sometimes, I find it a little overwhelming. What does God expect of me in return for this great gift of the Eucharist? How does he expect me to repay such kindness? The answer is simple and profound: God gives us himself completely in Holy Communion, every day if we want, and all he asks is that we go and share that love in the same generous manner we received it. 

Imagine the transformation that would take place in this parish, in our Church, in our families, and in our world if Catholics realized the love that was being given to them every time they went to Mass and received Holy Communion. What sort of incredible things will happen if we leave church today, thankful to the Lord for the love he gives us and looking for opportunities to share that love with others? 

One of the hidden blessings of the pandemic has been the realization by Catholics of how special the Eucharist is. When the lockdown closed churches, people realized no amount of streaming or virtual prayer could provide what Holy Communion offers. For so many of us, absence really did make the heart grow fonder and the desire to receive the Eucharist once again has been the number one reason parishioners tell us they couldn’t wait to return to Mass. Which means we are spiritually ready to look at the Eucharist with new eyes of gratitude and appreciation. Our souls are primed to enter into an even greater friendship with our Lord and receive more of the love and blessings he wants to share!

You and I are so blessed to be loved completely by God, who has and who will continue to do anything for us so that we can be eternally happy. Take a moment today to thank him, to love him, and to honor him by going out and sharing that Eucharistic love, freely and generously. This is the song your heart needs to hear; this is the song that will change the world.