Homily for August 12, 2007 19th Sunday of the Year

Over the past several weeks, our readings have been a lot about the anxiety and the tension of providing for our everyday needs, and arranging the details of our life, and invitations to trust, and to seek what is most important in our life. Today's readings kind of fit at the end of a very long section, where Jesus is teaching us about anxiety and worry and trust. When I first read the readings today, I thought of stewardship, because of that thing at the end where Jesus says, "When much has been given, much will be expected, and when even more has been given, more will be expected." Then I thought, "Well, that sounds like a 'you ought to' sermon, you know, stressing the obligations.'" I want to talk more about a freedom sermon. When I first started praying over these readings, I was reminded of one time when I was a child and money was very tight in our family. And I went to the store with my father. And there was something he really wanted to buy, but he knew we couldn't afford it. And finally he said, "Oh, what the heck. If we're going to the poor house, let's go in style." And so he bought it. Now, I'd like to think that that was a moment of grace. Do you know what I mean? Can you identify moments of grace like that in your own life, when somehow in the midst of worry and anxiety and all of the pressures, you reach a point of freedom and lightness, and you're able to say, "What the heck." And so you act. I guess my question is how would we go about having more moments like that in our life? How would we go about being more open to those moments happening? I remember when we had the Gospel story of Martha and Mary, the example I used was a movie I had seen of a young mother trying to cook dinner, and a child being pouty and impatient, and her husband came and handed her another child because he had more important things to do. And there was this picture of her with all of this tension. And she stopped, and she sang a song to her children and let the dinner boiled over on the stove and left the mess. Well, that was a moment of freedom and of grace. I'm convinced that when God comes into our life, and when God's grace is there, it always feels light, and it feels spacious, and it's a moment of freedom. And yet I realize also that it's hard for those moments of freedom to come in our life. Another little interesting fact that came to me as I was reflecting on these readings: Do you know how giving varies with the amount of money we have? If you had to graph it, what would it look like? Imagine for a minute -- what I was surprised to discover -- imagine I'm drawing a J in the air. Can you see the J? The very poor are very generous and give a lot. And then, as people get more and more money, they become less and less generous, until they become very rich, and then they become generous. I think most of us are caught in the dip of that J. Does that make sense, where the struggle to get ahead and to get more and more, the anxiety about that begins to dominate our life? How many of you have ever said, "If I won the lottery, then I would give?" Or, "When I get more, then I will give." And we spend so much of our time trying to get the better job, the better position, to better our selves, that that dominates our activity. The Gospel today gives a simple remedy for that: Give alms, give something away. Have you ever felt that freedom that we have when you give something to somebody who needs it? What does it feel like? It feels light, and it feels free. Sometimes people's priorities change due to those moments of grace. A lot of times a tragedy, a serious illness, or a near tragedy, or a loss will make people reassess what is important in their life. We all know people like that, don't we, to whom something has happened that made them realize that their priorities were out of kilter, and they got them back in? The Gospel today also gives us another remedy: Be watchful; be alert; pay attention to what is happening in our life. As I look back at my schedule -- not as I look ahead, because my days seldom unfold the way I've scheduled them, something always get in the way -- but as I look back, I realize that I consistently let some things interrupt my plans, and there are other things that I don't let interrupt my plans. Can you relate to that in your life? It's very interesting, the things that we allow to intrude in our life. The cell phone is a biggie, isn't it? I mean it's amazing the things that people will interrupt to answer a cell phone. The most dramatic story I heard recently was, on the west side there was a prayer service for victims of violent crime. And somebody said, "Let's all pause for a moment of silence to remember the people who were killed." And somebody's cell phone rang, and they answered it. The other thing I thought when I was thinking of this, the biggest lie -- one of the most frequently told lies that I encounter -- is a recorded message that says, "Your call is important to us." How many of you have heard that? If you look back on your calendar, if you look at your budget, those are moral documents. They tell us more than anything where our treasure lies and where our heart is. So it's good for us from time to time to say, if somebody followed me around for a month, and at the end of that month wrote a two or three page summary and said, "This is what Father Larry really cares about; this is what's really important to him; this is where his treasure lies and where his heart is," I wonder if I would be happy with what was written. Do you know the question? Think about it for yourself. If someone followed you around, would you be pleased with what they wrote, or would you want to make some changes? And of course, I've been talking about our personal life. It also applies to our culture and our society. There are things that our government is willing to go into debt for and to ask us to make great sacrifices for. There are other things that it is not willing to ask us to sacrifice for. What does that say about us? No judgment, just an observation, a fact, and a question, and are we pleased with that? And then, finally, I think today's readings remind us, we are not in charge. We are not the owners -- we're not the owners of the earth, we're not the owners of our own possessions -- they belong to someone else, and we will be asked someday what use we have made of those things.