Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B October 24, 2021

 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time   Cycle B      October 24, 2021

In our first reading today from the prophet Jeremiah we heard, “Thus says the Lord: Shout with joy for Jacob!”

And our Psalm Response today, I am sure you will recall:  “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”     We are filled with joy!

Are you filled with joy?   Not happiness, not just good feelings, but something a little different, a little deeper.  Filled with joy!

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a lot of joy around these days.  If you listen to the news, or follow tweets on social media, or pretty much listen to anything, you get a lot of divisiveness, a lot of stress, a lot of anger, a lot of unhappiness, lots of accusations and blaming, lots of dire warning and threats, lots of hand wringing and bemoaning the awful situation in the world: the economy, relations with China, the on-going pandemic, worries over inflation, supply chain snafus, political idiocy, a hopelessly degraded environment, stubbornness, obstinacy, and just plain mendacity and meanness.  //  Am I right?

What we are living in can spiritually be diagnosed as BLINDNESS.  Not physical blindness, but emotional, relational, and especially spiritual blindness.   People are blinded by their own self-interest, by fear of others who are different than themselves, by fear of losing what they have, by fear of change, by fear of losing control:   FEAR.   Fear causes spiritual blindness.

In the Gospel we just heard Jesus heals a blind man.  This guy, Bartimeaus, was physically blind.  But he was also emotionally and spiritually blind.  He is a stand-in, a representative, for each one of us.  Not so much in physical blindness, but in all the other ways we are blind: emotionally, psychologically, socially, and especially spiritually.  Blindness comes in many forms. 

This is why Jesus asks that odd, and seemingly otiose, question.  “What do you want me to do for you?”  The guy is blind, what does Jesus think, he wants a hot stock tip?  Of course he wants to be healed of his blindness.  But Jesus asks, I think, in order to make Bartimeaus face and own his blindness.  He cannot be healed until he realizes and admits that he is blind.

And for us, we cannot be healed of emotional, psychological, and spiritual blindness as long as we keep denying that we are wandering around in the dark like blind people.  We have to recognize our need and admit our need for salvation, for Jesus.  Jesus can’t heal us until we drop our pride, our false self-sufficiency, our attitude of “I can do it on my own” and don’t need help, don’t need saving. 

To be healed by Jesus we first of all have to admit, to Jesus and to ourselves, our own deficiency, our need for salvation, our spiritual blindness.

Notice that Mark gives us a peculiar detail in the story.  When the crowd said to the blind man, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.”  the Gospel says: “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up and came to him (i.e.., to Jesus). “

He threw aside his cloak.  What was this cloak?  Could it be Bartimeus’ “cloaking device” to hide his weakness, his needs, his fears, his deficiencies?  Do we not use anger and condemnation of others as our cloak to conceal our weaknesses, our fear, our deficiencies?  //   Can you say “projection”????

To come to Jesus and ask for healing, we have to throw aside the attitudes and beliefs and ways of thinking that we use to hide our weaknesses and fears.  We have to cast aside the anger, the blaming, the prejudices, the accusing others of being the problem.  Only by casting aside these can we come to Jesus honestly and freely, to admit our need, and so be healed.

In the Gospel today, Jesus asks you, yes you, “What do you want me to do for you?”  

Well, if you are just fine, and all together, and the problems are all the other people, not you, then Jesus can’t heal you.  But if you cast aside the anger, the blame, the accusations, the demeaning of others, and come to Jesus as you are in your need, then Jesus can heal you.  And Jesus wants to heal you.

And once healed, you can join in the Psalm response fully and joyfully and with gusto: “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.”

Jesus loves you and wants you to be filled with joy.  But to heal you, you must first throw off your cloak of excuses and blaming others, and come to Jesus as you really are, and ask to be healed. 

Then we can truly sing together the responsorial Psalm, and mean it for ourselves:  “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.” 

HOMILY Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B Sept 25/26, 2021 at Horseshoe Bay TX

 HOMILY    Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time   Cycle B  Sept 25/26, 2021   at Horseshoe Bay TX

{Show Box}   I  have here a BOX.  Anyone what to guess what is inside this box?   ???

          It is GOD.   I have God in a box.  Got is special on Amazon.  Just kidding.  Want to see??  Of course  you do!   (open the box – empty)     Awww.  It is empty.  Well, of course I don’t have God in a box.

          Everyone knows that you cannot put God in a box.  Except of course the people who keep trying to do that.

In our first reading God decides to give Moses some help, and appoints 70 elders to assist him.   68 of them show up at the appointed spot at the appointed time, at the meeting tent, fill out all the requisite forms, give proof of their Jewishness, etc, and the Spirit of God comes down on them. 

          But two of these elders, Eldad and Medad, perhaps with a touch of senility or the beginnings of Alzheimer’s, forgot to set their alarm clocks, forgot about the meeting, got intrigued in their favorite soap opera, whatever, and failed to show up at the meeting tent.

NONETHELESS, Eldad and Medad were on the list, and the Spirit of God came down on them too.  Even though they did not go to the meeting.

          Joshua, hearing of the and jealous of Moses’ prerogatives, tells Moses to stop them.  They haven’t done all the requirements.  They haven’t filled out the proper paperwork.  They haven’t taken all the required classes.  Spot them or this will get totally out of hand. 

          But Moses refuses to try and box God in. God is free to act.  And frankly, God doesn’t need all the paperwork. 

          In the Gospel we see something similar.  Some guy, NOT a part of the official disciples of Jesus, is driving out demons in the name of Jesus.  But he is not board certified.  He hasn’t completed EIM.  He belongs to some competing denomination.  And John tries to stop hi.  He tells Jesus, “we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.”   It is interesting that John does not say, “because h does not follow YOU, “ but rather, he does not follow US.”  John is taking this personally. 

          But Jesus does not get upset, and tells John to chill. 

“Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him.  There is o one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me.  For whoever is not against us is for us.”

Both Joshua in the Old Testament and John in the Gospel are trying to put God in a box.  They are trying to restrict how God acts.  But God just doesn’t fit. 

          There is a lesson here for us.  When we think we have God figured out, and know what God is going to d and what God is not going to do, we are in trouble.  St. Augustine of Hippo a long time ago said, “whatever you think God is, that is NOT God.”  You can not box Gid in with our categories and concepts.  

          She is way beyond that.   So don’t try to put God in the box labeled “He” or “Male”.   Don’t try to put God in the box of “old” or “White” or “long bearded”.  That is not God.

God is free to act in ways that we don’t foresee, that we don’t expect, and even that we don’t like. 

          God’s definitive act in Jesus Christ was not at all what anyone expected in a Messiah.  And how God has acted in my life was certainly a surprise.  I wanted to be a lawyer.  But that would not have been nearly as exciting, nor nearly as much fun, as being a priest has been. 

          It is hard not to put our expectations on God and prescribe how God is supposed to act.  All of us have some of Joshua and John in us, and want God to conform to our expectations.  But that is just setting us up for a fall, for disappointment.  God is always free.  We cannot control God.  We cannot even understand God.  God is always up to something new.  

          A much holier and better way to approach God is the way that Mary did.  She did not put her expectations on God, but opened herself to freely and graciously accept God’s Will for her.   She trusted that God would not want for her anything but the very best.  And she was right. 

          And so Mary prayed, “Here I am, the maidservant of the Lord.  Let it be with me according to your word.”   For Mary knew, and understood, that God loved her and wanted only the best for her, even if it sounded crazy and weird and not at all convenient. 

          Also for us, God wants only the best; the fullness of everlasting life.  But we cannot control that.  It is God’s free gift.  And god has possibilities we cannot even imagine. 

          So don’t hamper God.  Don’t restrict God.  Don’t try to put God in a box.  It never works.

AMEN. 

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B October 3, 2021

 Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time    Cycle B    October 3, 2021

 

Our Gospel today contains a strict prohibition of divorce.  We often think of divorce as a moral failure and surely there’s something of that in every divorce because there is moral failure running throughout all of life.  We never love as fully as we should.  We hear words in the Gospel like “adultery” and we cringe. But divorce is far more than something personal. It is a social reality in which people’s lives undergo massive and traumatic shift.

          The first reading from Genesis shows us that marriage is about much more than human attraction or even personal commitment.  It is saying that man and woman were created for each other, and that this relationship springs from creation itself.  Some medieval theologians, probably following the thought of Jewish rabbis, asked the question as why God created the woman from the man’s rib bone?   They reasoned that if God had created the woman from the man’s head bone then she would be above him and his superior, and if God had created the woman from the man’s footbone then she would be below him and his inferior.  But God created the woman from the man’s rib bone to show that her proper place is at his side, as his equal and partner. 

          The story about Adam’s rib helps set up the main idea: each is bone of the other’s bone, flesh of the other’s flesh, blood with the same life.  From this dimension of creation, all human beings will be shaped by their birth and their upbringing. Our commitments to each other uphold, in fact, our existence.

 

          There is also a justice component to Jesus’ prohibition of divorce.  Just think of what it would be like to be divorced back in ancient times,         

particularly for the woman.  Jesus’ prohibition of divorce speaks against the abandonment of women by their husbands, an abandonment that left them doomed to be poor and homeless.  In that patriarchal society, women lived with the ever-present risk of a failed marriage, stuck in a society that made no place for them.

          But even beyond the issue of simple justice, there is a deeply religious reason for avoiding divorce.  For if marriage is founded in creation, it is also founded in God’s unconditional love.  For Christians in an explicit way, and for all humans in an implicit way, the ultimate norm of love isn’t what movies or novels say, isn’t what society tolerates, and certainly isn’t the smallness of our human hearts.  The love that God shows by bringing us into existence, by sending his Son who binds himself to us so closely he calls us “brother and sisters” as the second reading says, and by filling our hearts with the Holy Spirit—this is the measure and standard of all love.

When we think about marriage, we certainly have to mourn the tragedy when it sometimes unfortunately fails.  But more than that, we have to uphold the ideal of love stamped upon us by our very existence and faith.  These are the ideals that hold us together in our commitments.  Even more, they show us the kind of love which we have received in God and in which we should live.  A married couple, in loving each other in good times and in bad, when it is beautiful and even when it is rough and difficult and not pretty, learn the experience of love, and so come to know in very real and concrete human terms God who IS love.  

 

    If we all lived steeped in this unconditional and generous love of God, maybe our marriages, and creation itself, would be better sustained.

The big heresy today is that each one lives for herself or himself, that we thrive when others leave us alone.  But everything about our lives, and everything about God’s Word and actions, keeps saying that the opposite is true.  Until we see how we are connected to each other, we are missing the fundamental starting point of life, the purpose of creation itself.  Our ultimate goal in not isolation, but eternal union with God, and in Christ Jesus, with every person and all creation.

AMEN.