Homily for October 21, 2007. Twenty-ninth Sunday of the Year, Cycle C
The Gospel is Luke 18:1-8. The Parable of the Widow and the unjust judge.
I read an interesting take on this Gospel that I want to share briefly, and then we have some other things to move on today.
When I was growing up, this Gospel was always presented to me as if, by my prayers, I was going to wear down God and God would intervene to give me justice. The take I read on it recently, that I really liked and will share with you is this. In the story God doesn't cause the crooked judge to wear out; the widow does. What God does is give the widow the courage and the energy to hang in there so she wears down the judge.
So the take I read on this story is that our prayers will not wear down God. Our prayers will give us the energy and the courage to hang in there while we wear down the opposition. Does that make sense to you? I like version, that we're going to wear down our opponents through the energy and the grace we get with our prayers.
I was not here last week, but two weeks ago we commissioned a faith care team to do an exciting new enterprise in working with people coming out of prison, and today I want to share with you two more initiatives that we're undertaking.
It is a Life Together program, which is a strategic planning initiative we're undertaking with the Center for Congregations. And the other is a program not really a program, but a reflection called Faith, Money and Giving, that some of our people have participated in, that is a reflection about the role of faith and money and giving in our life. I'm going to invite some of the people who have participated in these to share them with you, and I'm going to ask for your input.
How would I introduce the idea of planning? Frankly, I'm not big on it. We haven't been big on it at Holy Cross over the years. But, I went to a workshop last week that talked about health, and it made an interesting point. Health is not something we possess. We're either maintaining it or repairing it. So when we think of the health of our congregation, it's not a steady thing. Either we're maintaining it or we're repairing it, and I think we need to do that in conversation with each other.
While I'm not excited about strategic planning, I am excited about our having a conversation together about what we want our future to look like. And I'm excited about having a conversation together about a very important topic, money.
How many of you think about money a lot in your life? We all do, don't we? And we have to. And I want to talk about it, not in terms of the church's need for money, but in terms of the role that it plays in our life. And I want to talk about our future in the same way.
I think, back when I came to Holy Cross 11 years ago, I think people were feeling big-time powerless about the future of the parish. I hope we're not feeling that way now. And over those 11 years we've done a lot of things. So I think it's ready to move now towards the next step of asking: How do we envision our future, and what do we need to do that?
I'm going to ask three people to share with us on that today: Melba Hopper, who is our codirector of the planning process for Life Together, John Kirby, and Therese Reckley. And they can either come up or stand up where they are and use this.
Melba: Yes, Fr. Larry can talk you into anything, I've decided. I agreed to cochair this with Nancy McNiece, and I would like to introduce the other members of our team who will be working on the strategic planning with all of you.
And Therese Reckley is one. Therese? I think people know her, but just in case. Lena Hackett -- is she in here? Okay. And Nancy McNiece, and Jackie Ahlborn. Is Jackie here? Okay. And John Kirby.
So, as Fr. Larry said, what we see this as, is a process of conversation with everybody, to find out what people here think is important, what people would like to see happen, and what's working, what isn't working that kind of thing. I think I can speak for the team and say that we would like to make this a keystone to how this whole thing works, that there's lots of twoway conversation, communication going on the whole time; and that we would like to come out with a good result, good for the whole church, that fits within the mission of this church; and that we want to come out with something that isn't just put on a shelf, but that we actually can and do put into action.
So the project that is being funded will be in three phases. There's the organizational phase, which we've been going through, and it was just exactly that. We got together, we organized ourselves, we did some preliminary things, initial brainstorming, and we met some of the initial conditions of the grant. We expect that to be finished probably sometime in midNovember.
And then the second phase, which is the planning and thinking phase, will happen, and that will be about we're thinking about a 10month long process.
And then the final phase will be where we implement whatever comes out of that second phase. We don't know how long that will take at least a year, probably longer.
The second phase in the second phase we will be looking at three things: We will be looking at our history, the history of our parish, the history of our parish community, and other things and people who are related, who are related in different ways to us. We'll probably actually kick that off with some demographics very quickly then, and then continually carry on these conversations that Fr. Larry and I referred to.
One of the things we're thinking about doing in that phase is having something sometime in the spring, an allparish retreat not here at the church where people will have plenty of opportunity to talk about what's important to them here and what they'd like to see happening. And we'd kind of like to kick that off today.
At either end of the pews there are some index cards with pencils. And we'd like to ask you a question and I've written it down just in case I might forget it, exactly what we're wanting to ask you -- so if people on the ends could just pass those down. And then after I ask the question, you fill it out, and when the collection basket comes around just drop that in the basket. And what we will do this week is to compile that information, and in next Sunday's bulletin we will let you know what results we've found, and particularly if we're finding any common themes.
So this is the way we want this to work. We want there to be input from you all, feedback from us, input from us, feedback from you all. And we are hoping that this is going to go on, as I said, the entire time.
So, our question is: What concerns or issues do you want us to keep in mind? What is important to you for us to keep in mind as we all go through trying to envision a future for Holy Cross? And it doesn't matter how big, how little everything matters to us, everything that you're thinking. And even if you're new here and don't know what's going on here, there are reasons you came, and there may be things you're looking for, something that would be important to you. So put that down; we want to know what it is. And, as I said, we'll try to get the results back to you by next Sunday.
So we're looking forward to this, looking forward to having a lot of fun with everybody with it. There's going to be a lot of work involved, and I just invite you to participate fully. Thank you very much.
Fr. Larry: Put it in the collection basket.
John: Well, I feel really privileged to be part of this, and I think it's going to be neat as we share with all of you and grow in our vision.
A couple things that struck me from the giving program: One lady told the story, when they announced the collection in her church, everybody applauds, and visitors are usually shocked by that. But what I think is unique about her story is that most of the time we're reluctant about talking, rather than welcoming the possibility we have to control our future. And that's what I see is the best thing about this planning, is that as we come to understand ourselves better, we will attract resources to ourselves.
If you remember back the last time you were selling your house, perhaps, you notice how many other realty signs are out there. Or when you buy a new car, you notice how many other smart people have chosen the same kind of good car that you did. And I think something about planning that is really powerful is that you begin to attract resources, and you begin to see the world in some new ways, and we begin to tell our story more actively. And I think that's what this is about.
I agree with Fr. Larry that most real strategic planning is pretty boring, and it usually winds up in a big binder that sticks on a shelf. But community planning and thinking together, and knowing that we build our own destiny in so many ways, I think is a wonderful thing. So I'm really excited about being part of this, and I hope you are, too, as we dialogue about all the possibilities.
And being a Holy Cross member now for well over 20 years, I've certainly seen wonderful things happen here, which says that God's blessing is truly abundant and flowing our way more and more.
Therese: The seminar that we all went to a couple weeks ago was given by the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving. And it wasn't about fundraising and stewardship. The seminar focused on conversations about what we believe about giving and how our beliefs shape our behavior.
People of faith are among the most generous people. However money is a taboo topic in the Catholic religion. They talked about many reasons why the clergy didn't like to talk about money. It was interesting to hear that a lot of clergy are afraid of talking about money in their sermons because they are afraid of alienating people from their congregations.
Do you know that Jesus had more to say about money than any other topic when he spoke? Did you know that the Bible has seven times more to say about money than prayer? Money was not evil. It was not to be hoarded.
It was interesting to listen to others at the seminar and hear them speak about their congregations, and giving money was such a joyous occasion, as John has said. They have rituals in giving money. This is a witness to their love of God. We must remember that everything we have is given to us by God. We must enjoy it, use it, and share it.
In studies done, Catholics are among the least generous of all religious givers. Why is this? Probably because we don't engage money into our conversations. Remember, it is a taboo word in the Catholic religion.
I leave you with this question: How do we change the mindset surrounding talking about money in the Catholic religion? I believe that Fr. Larry would be open to any suggestions that you might have on how we can talk about money without making people feel very uncomfortable. So, let's not wait until a crisis occurs until we have to talk about money. Thank you.
Fr. Larry: Thank you. Those two topics will intertwine as we plan, because obviously, you never have a plan until you have in place what you're going to do with it. I want to share with you, in closing, a funny story.
One of the little planning tools we learned at this seminar was called "appreciative inquiry." Think of a story about when you were at your best. So I asked the parish council to think of a time when Holy Cross was at its best, and make it a story.
Well, one of the people said, "We were at our best when you were in the hospital for a year." Sounds bad, at first, but what she meant was, when I was away for a year, we had a constant stream of other priests who were coming in trying to change things.
And you were very good in saying, "No, that's not who we are, and that's not the way we do things here." And that's a real strength. And also, you were very good at pulling together. So I think that's a real goal for me, continuing. Because, you see, I don't see this as my parish. I see it as really belonging to the people, and therefore it's very important for the people to know who we are and what we want to be.
The other story that I thought of was the time when we did all of this beautiful church renovation. When we were first thinking about it, we didn't have the money, and we approached the Archdiocese. We could not do a capital campaign at the time, because it wasn't time yet.
Well, Ron Frazee was like the widow in the Gospel today, who kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and finally I got tired of saying “no.” So, I said, "Well, we can't do a capital campaign, but if you want to write a letter, go ahead, and I'll mail it for you." Well, we did. And lo and behold, the money came in, and we were able to do all of this.
Those are just two stories of, I think, when Holy Cross was at its best. You can probably think of many others.
Anyway, I'm excited about the prospects for our future and I hope you are too, and this whole thing, conversation, will unfold in many more ways as we go through the coming months.
I read an interesting take on this Gospel that I want to share briefly, and then we have some other things to move on today.
When I was growing up, this Gospel was always presented to me as if, by my prayers, I was going to wear down God and God would intervene to give me justice. The take I read on it recently, that I really liked and will share with you is this. In the story God doesn't cause the crooked judge to wear out; the widow does. What God does is give the widow the courage and the energy to hang in there so she wears down the judge.
So the take I read on this story is that our prayers will not wear down God. Our prayers will give us the energy and the courage to hang in there while we wear down the opposition. Does that make sense to you? I like version, that we're going to wear down our opponents through the energy and the grace we get with our prayers.
I was not here last week, but two weeks ago we commissioned a faith care team to do an exciting new enterprise in working with people coming out of prison, and today I want to share with you two more initiatives that we're undertaking.
It is a Life Together program, which is a strategic planning initiative we're undertaking with the Center for Congregations. And the other is a program not really a program, but a reflection called Faith, Money and Giving, that some of our people have participated in, that is a reflection about the role of faith and money and giving in our life. I'm going to invite some of the people who have participated in these to share them with you, and I'm going to ask for your input.
How would I introduce the idea of planning? Frankly, I'm not big on it. We haven't been big on it at Holy Cross over the years. But, I went to a workshop last week that talked about health, and it made an interesting point. Health is not something we possess. We're either maintaining it or repairing it. So when we think of the health of our congregation, it's not a steady thing. Either we're maintaining it or we're repairing it, and I think we need to do that in conversation with each other.
While I'm not excited about strategic planning, I am excited about our having a conversation together about what we want our future to look like. And I'm excited about having a conversation together about a very important topic, money.
How many of you think about money a lot in your life? We all do, don't we? And we have to. And I want to talk about it, not in terms of the church's need for money, but in terms of the role that it plays in our life. And I want to talk about our future in the same way.
I think, back when I came to Holy Cross 11 years ago, I think people were feeling big-time powerless about the future of the parish. I hope we're not feeling that way now. And over those 11 years we've done a lot of things. So I think it's ready to move now towards the next step of asking: How do we envision our future, and what do we need to do that?
I'm going to ask three people to share with us on that today: Melba Hopper, who is our codirector of the planning process for Life Together, John Kirby, and Therese Reckley. And they can either come up or stand up where they are and use this.
Melba: Yes, Fr. Larry can talk you into anything, I've decided. I agreed to cochair this with Nancy McNiece, and I would like to introduce the other members of our team who will be working on the strategic planning with all of you.
And Therese Reckley is one. Therese? I think people know her, but just in case. Lena Hackett -- is she in here? Okay. And Nancy McNiece, and Jackie Ahlborn. Is Jackie here? Okay. And John Kirby.
So, as Fr. Larry said, what we see this as, is a process of conversation with everybody, to find out what people here think is important, what people would like to see happen, and what's working, what isn't working that kind of thing. I think I can speak for the team and say that we would like to make this a keystone to how this whole thing works, that there's lots of twoway conversation, communication going on the whole time; and that we would like to come out with a good result, good for the whole church, that fits within the mission of this church; and that we want to come out with something that isn't just put on a shelf, but that we actually can and do put into action.
So the project that is being funded will be in three phases. There's the organizational phase, which we've been going through, and it was just exactly that. We got together, we organized ourselves, we did some preliminary things, initial brainstorming, and we met some of the initial conditions of the grant. We expect that to be finished probably sometime in midNovember.
And then the second phase, which is the planning and thinking phase, will happen, and that will be about we're thinking about a 10month long process.
And then the final phase will be where we implement whatever comes out of that second phase. We don't know how long that will take at least a year, probably longer.
The second phase in the second phase we will be looking at three things: We will be looking at our history, the history of our parish, the history of our parish community, and other things and people who are related, who are related in different ways to us. We'll probably actually kick that off with some demographics very quickly then, and then continually carry on these conversations that Fr. Larry and I referred to.
One of the things we're thinking about doing in that phase is having something sometime in the spring, an allparish retreat not here at the church where people will have plenty of opportunity to talk about what's important to them here and what they'd like to see happening. And we'd kind of like to kick that off today.
At either end of the pews there are some index cards with pencils. And we'd like to ask you a question and I've written it down just in case I might forget it, exactly what we're wanting to ask you -- so if people on the ends could just pass those down. And then after I ask the question, you fill it out, and when the collection basket comes around just drop that in the basket. And what we will do this week is to compile that information, and in next Sunday's bulletin we will let you know what results we've found, and particularly if we're finding any common themes.
So this is the way we want this to work. We want there to be input from you all, feedback from us, input from us, feedback from you all. And we are hoping that this is going to go on, as I said, the entire time.
So, our question is: What concerns or issues do you want us to keep in mind? What is important to you for us to keep in mind as we all go through trying to envision a future for Holy Cross? And it doesn't matter how big, how little everything matters to us, everything that you're thinking. And even if you're new here and don't know what's going on here, there are reasons you came, and there may be things you're looking for, something that would be important to you. So put that down; we want to know what it is. And, as I said, we'll try to get the results back to you by next Sunday.
So we're looking forward to this, looking forward to having a lot of fun with everybody with it. There's going to be a lot of work involved, and I just invite you to participate fully. Thank you very much.
Fr. Larry: Put it in the collection basket.
John: Well, I feel really privileged to be part of this, and I think it's going to be neat as we share with all of you and grow in our vision.
A couple things that struck me from the giving program: One lady told the story, when they announced the collection in her church, everybody applauds, and visitors are usually shocked by that. But what I think is unique about her story is that most of the time we're reluctant about talking, rather than welcoming the possibility we have to control our future. And that's what I see is the best thing about this planning, is that as we come to understand ourselves better, we will attract resources to ourselves.
If you remember back the last time you were selling your house, perhaps, you notice how many other realty signs are out there. Or when you buy a new car, you notice how many other smart people have chosen the same kind of good car that you did. And I think something about planning that is really powerful is that you begin to attract resources, and you begin to see the world in some new ways, and we begin to tell our story more actively. And I think that's what this is about.
I agree with Fr. Larry that most real strategic planning is pretty boring, and it usually winds up in a big binder that sticks on a shelf. But community planning and thinking together, and knowing that we build our own destiny in so many ways, I think is a wonderful thing. So I'm really excited about being part of this, and I hope you are, too, as we dialogue about all the possibilities.
And being a Holy Cross member now for well over 20 years, I've certainly seen wonderful things happen here, which says that God's blessing is truly abundant and flowing our way more and more.
Therese: The seminar that we all went to a couple weeks ago was given by the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving. And it wasn't about fundraising and stewardship. The seminar focused on conversations about what we believe about giving and how our beliefs shape our behavior.
People of faith are among the most generous people. However money is a taboo topic in the Catholic religion. They talked about many reasons why the clergy didn't like to talk about money. It was interesting to hear that a lot of clergy are afraid of talking about money in their sermons because they are afraid of alienating people from their congregations.
Do you know that Jesus had more to say about money than any other topic when he spoke? Did you know that the Bible has seven times more to say about money than prayer? Money was not evil. It was not to be hoarded.
It was interesting to listen to others at the seminar and hear them speak about their congregations, and giving money was such a joyous occasion, as John has said. They have rituals in giving money. This is a witness to their love of God. We must remember that everything we have is given to us by God. We must enjoy it, use it, and share it.
In studies done, Catholics are among the least generous of all religious givers. Why is this? Probably because we don't engage money into our conversations. Remember, it is a taboo word in the Catholic religion.
I leave you with this question: How do we change the mindset surrounding talking about money in the Catholic religion? I believe that Fr. Larry would be open to any suggestions that you might have on how we can talk about money without making people feel very uncomfortable. So, let's not wait until a crisis occurs until we have to talk about money. Thank you.
Fr. Larry: Thank you. Those two topics will intertwine as we plan, because obviously, you never have a plan until you have in place what you're going to do with it. I want to share with you, in closing, a funny story.
One of the little planning tools we learned at this seminar was called "appreciative inquiry." Think of a story about when you were at your best. So I asked the parish council to think of a time when Holy Cross was at its best, and make it a story.
Well, one of the people said, "We were at our best when you were in the hospital for a year." Sounds bad, at first, but what she meant was, when I was away for a year, we had a constant stream of other priests who were coming in trying to change things.
And you were very good in saying, "No, that's not who we are, and that's not the way we do things here." And that's a real strength. And also, you were very good at pulling together. So I think that's a real goal for me, continuing. Because, you see, I don't see this as my parish. I see it as really belonging to the people, and therefore it's very important for the people to know who we are and what we want to be.
The other story that I thought of was the time when we did all of this beautiful church renovation. When we were first thinking about it, we didn't have the money, and we approached the Archdiocese. We could not do a capital campaign at the time, because it wasn't time yet.
Well, Ron Frazee was like the widow in the Gospel today, who kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and finally I got tired of saying “no.” So, I said, "Well, we can't do a capital campaign, but if you want to write a letter, go ahead, and I'll mail it for you." Well, we did. And lo and behold, the money came in, and we were able to do all of this.
Those are just two stories of, I think, when Holy Cross was at its best. You can probably think of many others.
Anyway, I'm excited about the prospects for our future and I hope you are too, and this whole thing, conversation, will unfold in many more ways as we go through the coming months.
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