Homily for June 22, 2008 12th Sunday of the Year

This homily cost me $200. Now, if I got your attention, I'll explain how that came about.
In the Gospel today there are many levels of motivation to be good, or to withstand evil, or to speak to power. The first is in the phrase, "There's nothing hidden that will not be revealed, nor anything secret that will not be made known." If you read the newspapers with any regularity, you will find recounts of many people who have fallen from grace and power, because things that they thought were hidden were brought to light. I don't think I need to give you any examples. You all know what I mean.
I was listening to a song on a CD the other day that said, "Don't push 'send,’” and it was about the many mishaps that happen when we push the send button on our emails without thinking. That's one level of motivation to do good, probably not enough, because if that by itself were motivation, the newspapers wouldn't have too much to report.
A second level of motivation is fear: "Don't be afraid of the one who can kill you. Be afraid of the one who can destroy your soul."  I'll tell you what to really be afraid of. That doesn't motivate us too much, either, because we can all say that the final reckoning is far off.
Another level of motivation is, "Whoever acknowledges me I will acknowledge, and whoever denies me I will deny." All of us would like to be acknowledged by the Lord as part of it.
The motivation I want to explore is in that phrase, "Are not two sparrows sold for next to nothing? Yet, not a single one falls without my Father's knowledge."
In the newspaper today there's a very good article on the near east side. It talks about the complex that will be built at Tech. It talks about the abandoned houses. Think of our neighborhood for a while. There isn't a single abandoned house that God doesn't care about. There isn't a single homeless person walking our street whom God doesn't care about. There isn't a single stray animal that God doesn't care about.
You read in the newspaper of the millions of people suffering from hunger, poverty, all of people in our state and elsewhere suffering from flood damage, from earthquakes. Every single one of them is important to God. "And as for you, every hair on your head"  now for some of you, it's easier than for others "every single hair on your head is known to God." Every single victim of abuse is important to God.
Now, why did that cost me $200? After I finished reflecting and praying this morning, I was going through the mail I had discarded yesterday, and in it was an appeal letter from Catholic Relief Services. Well, I've already given to them three times this year. You know how it is. You give once and you keep getting letters again and again.
So the letter was headed for the waste basket, but I always shred any mail that has anything that can personally identify me on it. So I opened the letter, because it was too thick to put through the shredder all at once. I opened it so I could put it through my mail shredder piece by piece, and there was a picture of a hungry child that said, "Your contribution can help this child."
Had I not spent all that time preparing this homily, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. It would have gone through the shredder. But I suddenly thought, "Every single hungry child is important, and there isn't a single appeal that is without God's knowledge." So I sat down and wrote a check for $200. That's the box that they had checked for me already, based on previous levels of giving. That's how this homily came to cost me $200.
Now, mind you, I wasn't planning on talking about giving today, but it's a segue into that. I'm not talking about giving to the church, now. I went, a couple weeks ago, to a breakfast with the president of an international Jewish organization. I was very impressed with what I heard. One, they came into being because they said it's important for Jewish people to give to causes that are not Jewish. So they wanted to give to causes with a broad range of interest, just as I think it's important for Catholics to be concerned about things that aren't Catholic and to be interested in a broader range of things.
Second, they give only to things where the request is coming from the grassroots, and they have somebody to partner with at the grassroots level.
The third learning is what I wanted to stress. Somebody asked her, "Well, how do you answer people who say they can't give to you because there are all these local needs?" I liked her answer.
She said, "If somebody says to me, 'There are all these local needs that I'm giving to, and they are exhausting my giving capacity,’ I say, 'God bless you. Keep on doing what you're doing.' And I don't ask them to change." Then she said, "But you know and I know that a lot of people will say that and they're not really giving to anything. It's just an excuse not to give." Do you know what I mean?
By the way, I went to a seminar several months ago about giving, and it was written by a researcher who wrote a book. He did research on which groups of people give the most and the results surprised him. So he wrote a book called Who Really Cares. Would you want to guess what the single most reliable indicator of charitable giving to all causes, secular and religious, is? How often you go to church. Among church people, the Evangelicals and conservatives are far more generous than Catholics. So the most generous group of people in the country is religious conservatives.
(Another important variable is that people give less to hierachical churches than to congregational churches. We’re about as hierarchical as they come.)
Do you know the least generous group of people in the country? The opposite of that: Liberals who don't go to church. This man found that interesting, and so he wrote a book, Who Really Cares.
Well, anyway, as I thought of all of that, I thought we are all bombarded with so many appeals to our generosity and our charity. There are so many needs that surround us, there are so many demands on our time. You can't possibly respond to all of them. I can't help every homeless person in the city, but I can help the one in front of me who's asking me for help. I can't help everybody, but I can help those who ask.
So I just want to invite your reflection on all the needs that surround you. Are you among the ones who use the impossibility of responding to all of them as an excuse for not doing anything? Or could you say, "Yes, I am responding, and I'm responding to the best of my ability"? If you are, God bless you. I don't feel any need or desire to change your priorities.
If you aren't, maybe think of that Gospel message: Every single need, every single person in need is important to God, so much so that he's counted every hair on their head.