Being Christ's worthy spouse

Homily: 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

          Perhaps many of us have read the books, or seen the films, of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.  Many readers have concluded that his stories fall into the category of “Christian allegory.”  Now, an allegory is a literary device—a tool of communication—in which metaphors are used to explain an abstract idea through storytelling.  In the case of Lewis’ books, the fantasy world of Narnia is used to illustrate some of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith: most notably, the battle between good and evil that rages within and around each one of us, and the presence of a powerful king—Aslan—who leads us and inspires in us the faith to persevere in the battle.  Parables are very similar to allegories in that they use metaphorical images in storytelling as a way of imparting certain ideas.  The difference is that parables are usually much shorter and focused, perhaps, on a particular moral lesson that the author is trying to impart.  In a sense, parables are “Allegory Lite.”

          In the Gospel reading today (and, for that matter, the last couple of weeks), Jesus tells his disciples a parable.  Most of us, I would guess, are quite familiar with this parable and so the meaning of the metaphors the parable utilizes probably shine through.  The Master—who is Jesus—is going on a journey to be seated at the Father’s right hand and so needs to entrust his possessions—which is the Gospel—to his servants—otherwise known as his disciples—to care for them until he returns. After a long time—perhaps 2000 years or more—the master will return and call in his servants to see if they’ve been profitable with what they were entrusted.  Those who return with a profit proportional to what they were given—perhaps a number of converts to the faith or a faithful family or works that have helped the poor—those will be blessed for their faithfulness.  Those who failed to be profitable with what they were given—perhaps out of fear, indifference, or even spite—they will be punished for their unfaithfulness.

          For the disciples to whom this parable was first addressed, I suspect the allegory was obvious and the meaning clear: “We better get out and spread the Gospel so we aren’t caught having done nothing when Jesus returns.”  And I suppose that it’s not much of a stretch for us to interpret the allegory in the same way: “Jesus, it seems, is long delayed, but the fact of the matter is that he could still return at anytime, so we better ‘make hay while the sun shines,’” and that’s easy enough.  Well, perhaps it’s a bit too easy.

          I think, perhaps, that it is too easy to see God as “master” and ourselves as “servants.”  When we look at it this way, it’s kind of easy to fall into a “just do the minimum” mindset exemplified by such “bumper sticker wisdom” as: “Jesus is coming, look busy.”  Such “wisdom” plays on our very natural inclination—which, in fact, is a disordered inclination—to do only what’s minimally necessary so that when our “master” returns we look like we’ve done something when really we’ve done nothing at all.  It’s the mindset that thinks that we can somehow “pull the wool” over the eyes of Jesus to make him believe that we were faithful even when we haven’t been (which, in itself, is a nice piece of irony considering that Jesus is the Lamb of God).

          This “just follow the rules” mindset, of course, is not what God has called us to.  Saint Paul is adamant about this, stating repeatedly in his letters that if being a follower of Christ is just about the rules, then forget about it, it’s useless.  Saint Paul knew that when Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, but friends,” he was inviting us to a relationship beyond that of a master and his servant: a much deeper relationship that brings with it greater responsibilities.

          In our first reading today, we hear a description from the book of Proverbs—an Old Testament “wisdom” book—of a woman described as a “worthy wife.”  I suppose it would be easy to look at this reading and dismiss it as an outdated description of an “ancient middle-eastern housewife” that has no relevance for us today.  Our Catholic faith, however, tells us that Sacred Scripture is God’s living Word—Jesus Christ—speaking to us and revealing himself to us, and so perhaps if we feel inclined to think that a piece of the Scriptures has no relevance for us we need to think again, and maybe become a little curious about why these words were preserved for us to read and ponder here today.  What I would challenge all of us here today to see in this reading is another allegory—one a little less obvious, perhaps, but no less profound.

          The reading tells us that when a man finds a worthy wife, he entrusts his heart to her, and that the worthy wife responds to this trust by working with loving hands to bring him good and not evil.  How often we forget that Jesus is not just our master and we his servants, but that Jesus is also the bridegroom and we—his Church—are his bride.  This is a much more intimate image.  Thus this reading becomes very relevant to our lives today and shows us how we, entrusted with the heart of Jesus, ought to respond so as to be a worthy spouse of so great a husband.  In fact, it shows us the only way, really, that we can respond, given our human limitations: that is, by bringing him good and not evil in our daily actions and by working with loving hands to serve him and each other.

          My brothers and sisters, Jesus has found a worthy spouse—his Church, that is, all of us—and he has entrusted to her his heart—his very Self—here in the Eucharist.  No doubt, it is a fearful thing to be entrusted with so great a gift.  We need not be fearful, however, as if our Master seeks only to catch us off guard in order to punish us.  Rather, we can be hopeful, trusting that the one who has entrusted his heart to us seeks only our own good and to find us faithful.  It is this hopeful trust, then, that leads us to a faithful, fruitful, and joy-filled living of the mystery that God has given to us—a living that can begin here today.  May this mysterious love overflow in our hearts and touch the lives of all those around us.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – November 19, 2017

To each according to his ability

          A great (and exhausting) weekend here at All Saints.  45 teens participated in the Antioch retreat, Start a Fire, and we really saw how our faithfulness in using our talents made a profit in the lives of these youth and contributed to the building of God's kingdom in preparation for our Master's return.

Closing of Antioch 2014 - Start a Fire

          Fear of failure is the enemy of faithfulness, because it makes us bury our talents instead of using them.  God doesn't condemn us for our failures, but for our lack of faithfulness.  Thus, there is nothing to fear and everything to gain, so go and make a difference in the world!

          Happy feast day of St. Elizabeth of Hungary!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Homily: 33^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle A

          Ready or not, secular Christmas has descended upon us.  Much like this winter weather hi-jacked fall and arrived before its time, secular Christmas is already in full-swing.  This is not unexpected, though.  Retailers hoping to profit off of this “season of giving” risk starting earlier and earlier each year in hopes of catching an extra share of gift-givers’ money.  “Christmas only comes once a year”, they say, and so they know that they cannot waste any time.

          My older sister has long been possessed by this “spirit of Christmas”.  It begins on Thanksgiving Day where we not only ingest turkey and dressing, but also the sounds Christmas music already playing on the radio in order to “prime the pump” for what follows next.  For on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a coordinated onslaught by Christmas décor completely obliterates any sign of fall harvest motif.  It’s as if Christmas Day was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and so no man, woman, or child could be left to rest until this transformation is complete.

          What my sister and retailers both demonstrate is that when we know the day and the time that something important is going to happen we have no problem making preparations; even to the point of putting aside everything else so as to ensure that the preparations are complete.  As Christians, however, we often fall far short of these expectations.  We know that Jesus has come to save us and we believe that he desires a personal relationship with us, which is why we celebrate events like the day of his birth—Christmas—because they invite us to know him more deeply and so consider him like a dear friend or family member, but when it comes to preparing for his coming again in glory, we often miss the mark.  We go along with our lives like Jesus’ coming won’t be during our lifetimes and we put off the work of building his kingdom in preparation of his coming.

          This, however, is exactly what Jesus is warning us about in the parable of the talents.  In biblical terms, a talent was a unit of weight and it was not a small unit.  A talent of silver, according to some historians, was worth nearly 15 years of daily wages in Jesus’ time.  Therefore, the amount of money that the master is entrusting to each of the three servants—even in its smallest quantity—is incredibly large.  Even though our modern sensibilities cringe at the idea that one man seemed to do something very risky when he buried the money instead of investing it, his action would have been seen as an acceptable way of protecting the money he was entrusted with: because if you buried it and it was stolen, you wouldn’t be responsible; but if you invested it and lost it through bad investments, you would be responsible.

          As Jesus often does in these parables, however, he takes the expected outcome and he flips it.  In this parable, the servants who were risky with their master’s money were rewarded, but the one who avoided any risk was punished.  Perhaps it’s too easy, however, to conclude that it is because of the profit that the servants made that they were rewarded and that because the one servant didn’t make any profit that he was punished.  I think that there’s something more to this parable.

          If we look at the part where the money is distributed, we see that the master distributed the talents “to each according to his ability”.  In other words, the master knew the responsibility that he was giving to his servants, and he knew his servants well and so also knew how capable they were (or weren’t) to handle his money, and so he calculated how much to give to each servant so as to ensure that his money would be safe while he was away on his journey.  Two of his servants trusted their master’s assessment of them and went and traded with his money, each according to his abilities, and each made a profit.  The third servant, however, failed to trust his master—in fact, he was afraid of him—and so he washed his hands of the responsibility that his master had given him by burying the money until his master returned.

          It is for this failure of trust that the third servant is punished.  When the master returned and saw the profit from the work of the first two servants he said to each of them, “since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities.”  In other words, they were rewarded for their faithfulness, not for their profit.  When the third showed his complete lack of faith in his master, fueled by fear, he was punished: not because he didn’t make a profit (he did what was accepted to be the safest way to protect money), but rather because he failed to trust his master and his master’s assessment of his ability to make a profit.  Perhaps he wasn’t even a bad person (I want to believe that he was a nice guy), but he had no faith and so he was punished.

          This is why this parable is such a valuable lesson for us.  God has given to each of us faith according to our ability to make a profit from it for the building of his kingdom.  We, therefore, are called to trust in his assessment of our ability and to go out and trade with it.  Our trading is the building up of God’s kingdom of justice and peace in the world.  And when the master returns—that is, when Jesus comes again in glory—we will each be rewarded or punished on account of our faithfulness: that is, whether in faith we went out and worked for God’s kingdom, even at the risk of failure, or in fear we buried our talent in the earth, preserving what we had been given, but preventing it from growing and producing fruit.

          My brothers and sisters, as we approach the end of the liturgical year, our liturgy reminds us that Jesus’ coming is still close at hand and, therefore, that we must be vigilant in our work to prepare for his coming.  Just as each of us will prepare our homes to celebrate the remembrance of Christ’s birth, so too we must remain committed to preparing our world for his second coming as if the day were as close at hand as Christmas Day is to today.  And there is no reason to fear, because our Good God knows us and he knows our abilities.  Thus, he gives each of us faith to accomplish some work for the building of his kingdom according to our abilities.  Blessed John Henry Newman, a brilliant theologian from the 19^th century in England, summed it up perfectly when he said:

“God has created me to do some definite service.  God has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another.  I have my mission—I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  I have not been created for naught.  I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep the commandments.  Therefore, I will trust in God.  Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away.  If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve God; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve God; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve God.  God does nothing in vain, but knows what all is about.”

Let us, then, be about the work that God has committed to each of us, so that when Jesus, our master, returns, we may receive the reward that faith has won for us.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – November 16^th, 2014