Homily for July 13, 2008

The Gospel for this Sunday was the parable, "A sower went out to sow." Part fell by the road. Part on rocky ground. Part among the weeds, which choked it. Part fell on good soil and bore fruit.

Before Mass, we read a litany on Sabbath. Six days we work. Today we rest. Six days we manage and control. Today we look at the mystery of life.

At the beginning, I asked you to pay attention to how you feel in response to the Gospel parable. So as you listened to it, what part of it captured your feeling or emotion? [Inaudible] You liked the part about the sun rising and scorching it.
Did it leave you feeling sad? Yes.
[Inaudible] So you could think of this as a modern parable about teaching. Some children grow, and some don't, and how do they grow.
[Inaudible] It seems out of your control where the seed is dropped.
Did it leave you feeling hopeful or sad?
[Inaudible] If it falls on the rocks, you don't know if there's any chance.
[Inaudible] So the setting, Jesus sitting down by the lake with his family and friends.
Let me ask in another way. How many of you felt that this is a hopeful parable?   The hope is that, in spite of it all, there's a good crop. There is a certain inevitability that some seed is going to fall on good ground and bear fruit. You can't stop it.
Reminds me, by the way, of the old saying about,the optimist and pessimist. The pessimist says the glass is half empty, and the optimist says it's half full. Do you know what the realist says? That glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
So, in this Gospel there's a mixture of success and failure. Some scholars argue about the yield. It is 30, 60, or a hundredfold? Is that a good yield, or a quite ordinary yield? Some say, "Wow, it's miraculous," and others say, "No, it's pretty ordinary."
I like the interpretation that says it's pretty ordinary. It tells me that my life navigates between the coordinates of success, failure, and ordinariness, and there's a certain hopefulness in that.
Now, let me tell you the second half of the Gospel.
The disciples came to Jesus and said, "Why do you speak to them in parables?"
And he answered, "The knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God has been given to you, but it has not been given to them. To everyone who has, more will be given, until they grow rich. And everyone who has not will lose even what little they have.
"I speak to them in parables because they look but do not see; they hear but do not listen or understand. Isaiah's prophesy is fulfilled in them, which says, ‘Hear as you will, you will not understand. Look as you will, you will not see. Gross is this people's heart. They have hardly heard with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and be converted, and I will heal them.’ Hear, then, the parable.
"The sower is sowing the word of God. The seed by the path is the one who hears the word without understanding it, and the evil one comes and takes it away. The seed on rocky ground is the one who hears it and takes it in with joy, but has no depth, so when some hardship involving the word takes place, he falls away. The seed among thorns are those who hear the word, but then worldly anxieties and the lure of riches choke it off. And the seed on good soil are those who hear the word and understand and bear fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold."
It seems to me that Jesus is talking about a mystery of how it is that we sometimes hear and don't understand, and look without really seeing. And he invites us to ask what kind of soil are we. I think it's our job to help each other become good soil. One of the ways we do that  and I want to connect with what we read at the beginning of the Mass  one of the ways we do that is Sabbath.
Six days a week we can be so busy, so preoccupied, so engaged in trying to figure everything out, and control everything, and manage everything, that we don't really have time to look, or to listen, or to let anything take root within us. So I just want to commend to you that Sabbath practice.
Take the piece on Sabbath that we did at the beginning of Mass home with you. Read it. Reflect on it. Be aware of the need to step back, allow space in your life.
And let's pray for that gift of space, and realize that in the Hebrew Scriptures, Sabbath is the way to imitate God. Think of the implications of that. How do we imitate God? By resting, by stepping back, by allowing space in our lives.

Homily for July 6, 2008

I want to explore the Gospel today using the experience of people in recovery. It’s often said that you can be too smart to get the program, you can be too educated, you can be too clever, but you can't be too dumb, you can't be too uneducated, you can't be too unsophisticated. That seems to echoe the words of Jesus praising God, who has hidden faith from the learned and the clever and the wise and revealed it to the little ones.
If you want faith and you're looking for faith, the last thing in the world I would do is give you a theology book. If you want to find faith, the last thing in the world I'd tell you to do would be to read a Scripture scholar or go to a university class on theology.
If you have faith and want to test it and want to explore it, then you can take the class on theology, and I guarantee you it would be tested and you would have to explore it.
If you want to find faith, go to places where people are hurting. Go where there's suffering, go to the ghetto, go where people are finding hope and strength in the midst of suffering. And I think it's universally held in circles of spirituality that you don't find the relationship with God and with spirituality through intellectual means. They can be very important, and I'm not discouraging doing that, but you don't find faith in that way.
Virtually everybody talks about the importance of having the mind of a child, or in Buddhist circles they talk about the importance of having a beginner's mind, a mind that is not defensive, a mind that isn't cluttered with opinions that it's trying to protect or hold onto, a mind that is open to learning new things. So Jesus says that what God has hidden from the wise and the learned, he has revealed to the little ones.
In virtually every circle of spirituality, the mind of a little one is also a relational mind. The truth is always found through a relationship with a parent, with a teacher, with a mentor, with a sponsor, or with an accountability group. So we see in the Gospel that what Jesus is talking about is that the theologians didn't get his message, the scholars of the law didn't get his message, those who had an agenda for the Messiah to fulfill, didn't get his message. It was the little ones who related to him with trust who “got it.” If we want to find faith, we enter into that path.
The other thing  and I'm going to use a word that is not popular today  the path is also marked by obedience to something or to someone. It's always marked by a surrender of our own will, a surrender of our own ability to figure things out and to think things through, and becoming obedient.
I was reading a commentary on this Gospel, and one of the commentators, in commenting on the phrase "Come to me and I will refresh you and your souls will find rest," he mentions somebody who came to him who looked just absolutely exhausted and wiped out and stressed out, and he sent this person to a counselor. And the counselor, with the person's permission, reported back to him.
After listening to the diagnosis, he said, "Well, What about the obvious thing, that they're not sleeping?"
He said, "Well, you know the answer to that."
"Well, What is it?
"God never sleeps. This person is so busy playing God that they can't sleep, because they can't let go of things."
Anyway, I think if you hear the Gospel in those terms today, it says some things that are challenging. It invites us to enter the place of the little ones; it invites us to enter a place of surrender and obedience; and it invites us to enter a place where we find rest.
And of course, that is the experience of countless people that, when they finally stop trying to figure out everything on their own, when they finally stop trying to fit everything into their preconceived notions, when they finally are able to have a beginner's mind and to learn, then they find rest and serenity.
Let's pray today that we might be among those.