Previous Weeks' Homilies
2002 2003
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time - C August 29,
2004
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29 Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a Luke 14:1, 7-14
Every day, at the beginning of his radio talk show,
Rush Limbaugh introduces himself with the line:
"Talent on loan from God."
Now, overall, I don’t think of Rush Limbaugh as a terribly humble guy,
but his tag line is a great thumbnail definition of humility:
an acknowledgment of the source of who I am and what I have.
I think the best definition of humility I've read is this:
"Humility is making a right estimate of one's self." (Charles Spurgeon)
Humility is taking an honest inventory of myself:
an accounting of my assets and liabilities.
Humility is making the effort to see myself as God sees me
and being grateful to God as the source of all my gifts.
Humility is certainly not some put-on, aw-shucks denial of my gifts,
but rather, an honest estimate of myself
that recognizes my talents and acknowledges that they are, indeed,
"on loan from God."
We fail at being humble in many ways.
I fail in humility:
when I neglect to inventory God in my self-estimation;
or when I take my gifts and talents for granted;
or when I’m not satisfied with my own abilities
and wish I had his gifts - or her talents;
or when I think or speak or act as if I am the source of my own gifts;
and I can even fail in humility by being almost TOO humble,
by thinking that I have no gifts and talents,
that for some reason God left me off the list.
In today’s gospel passage, Jesus is at a dinner party
and he notices the guests jockeying for the best seats
so he uses the image of the banquet table
as a way of speaking about humility.
It’s easy for us to look down our noses at the Pharisees
trying to grab the best seats in the house for themselves.
Their self-interest seems tacky and rude.
Who would care so much about where to sit?
Well, have you ever had to make out a seating plan
for a wedding reception?
Who will sit with whom?
Who won’t sit with whom?
Who will sit with some but not speak to them?
Or at a large function where there are no place cards,
have you ever found yourself scouting out particular folks
with whom you want to sit, and avoiding others
with whom you don't want to sit?
Finding and sharing places at a table
can bring out the best and the worst in us
and the choice is ours.
The image Jesus uses might be particularly apt for us
as we think about finding our places at a new table at our new parish.
Have you thought about where you’ll sit in the new place?
Are you among those who have decided
that they will never take a seat in the new parish?
Just as in the parable of the wedding banquet,
our move to a new table in a new place
can bring out the best and the worst in us.
And I’ve already seen some of the best and the worst
in myself and in the people of our two parishes.
Our grief and pain over the closing of our parish
are real and justified
but that gives us no license for pettiness or prejudice -- or pride.
In fact, the changes ahead of us call us to
"making a right estimate of ourselves,"
taking an honest inventory of ourselves -
and of the gifts and talents "on loan" to us from God.
Humility calls us, the people of Our Lady Parish,
to renew our commitment to use our gifts in our new parish
for the work of justice and peace, especially on behalf of the poor.
The poor!
Notice how quickly and smoothly Jesus moves
from the image of the wedding banquet
to a meal shared with those who are maligned and marginalized.
The people we should be most mindful of as we make this move
are the poor who depend on us for assistance - not ourselves.
That is exactly the point Jesus is making
when he speaks about making guest lists for dinners.
I ask no one not to be angry over the closing of our parish.
I only pray
that we not allow our anger to overwhelm and consume
the gifts and talents God has showered among us,
but rather that with praise and thanks,
we commit ourselves to faithfully and humbly sharing what we have
with the new parish, and especially with the poor.
For a long time, we have been wonderfully at home
in our seats at this table, the altar of Our Lady Parish.
It will be very painful to relinquish these seats
and find others in a new place.
Let’s not forget that it is the Lord who is the host
and who offers us a seat at his table,
that it is the same Lord, in the same bread and the same cup,
who gathers us at his table, wherever that table may be.
Rev. Austin Fleming
There are two simple gestures
that image our notions of God pretty well.
The first is the raised hand with the pointed finger,
moving up and down like a wind-up toy,
signaling “shame on you!”
The other gesture is larger:
two arms, extended, waiting to be filled by the beloved.
Although we sing the God of the outstretched arms,
I fear that our relationship with God is heavily influenced
by image of the accusing finger.
What a shame.
What a shame that our image of God should be so negative.
What a shame that our image of God
should render the Creator of the universe a scolding curmudgeon.
How puny and punitive
can become our image of the loving, merciful Father
whom Jesus revealed.
How did we come to this?
Perhaps it’s simply that the church has been afraid
to really announce, to preach, to teach
how sweeping, broad, deep and enveloping
are God’s love and understanding, God’s healing and forgiveness.
It’s so much easier to paint the picture of the restrictive God.
whom we can contain, manipulate, and manage for our own purposes,
while the loving God, the forgiving God -
constantly explodes all our categories and expectations.
I’m not suggesting here that God makes no demands of us.
Indeed, the whole life and death and rising of Jesus
enjoins a heavy law upon us: the law of merciful love.
The greatest expectation God has of us
is that we are to love and forgive one another
just as we are loved and forgiven by God.
That’s why Jesus speaks in the gospel today
of entering through the narrow gate.
Love’s demands upon us are great - even overwhelming -
and the demands of love are exceeded
only by the mercy that God offers us
when we fail to love as we should.
The last word in the dialogue between God and humankind
always belongs to God and
God's last word is forgiving, not accusing;
God's last word is invitation, not exclusion;
God's last word is mercy, not condemnation.
Jesus himself explodes his own category of the narrow gate
when in his next breath he reminds us
that people will come from every corner of the earth -
east and west, north and south -
to dine at his table in the kingdom
where a place has been reserved for EVERYone!
Our table of eucharist is intended by Christ
to offer us now a taste, a sip of the banquet he has prepared for us
in heaven.
It is here that we are meant to be nourished
to fulfill the law of love, to live the love Jesus enjoined on us, the love
of God.
And what do we do?
Often, too often lately,
we stand at the table and shake a disapproving finger,
warning off people deemed unworthy of joining us here.
Some American Catholic bishops have become a kind of “eucharist police,”
sealing off not a “crime scene” but the scene of the sacrament.
(Here I blocked off the sanctuary approach to the altar
with yellow, police , “crime scene” tape.)
Although a hallmark of Jesus’ ministry
was his welcome of the marginalized and maligned to join him at table,
still, the “eucharist police” cry, “Stay behind the line!”
“Sinners - stay behind the line!
“Gays and lesbians - stay behind the line!
“Particular politicians and you who vote for them - stay behind the line!
“You who disagree with anything the church says - stay behind the line!
“Divorced and remarried - stay behind the line!
“Christians of other churches - stay behind the line!
“Catholic women - stay behind the - - -
well, you can come close, but not TOO close -
and certainly not all the way!”
Please be assured that I’m not proposing some lawless church
where everything is up for grabs.
But I am proposing a church where we might allow Jesus,
whom we believe BROKE THE CHAINS OF DEATH,
to cut the tape, to break the line with which some exclude, or try to exclude
so many from our communion with Christ and with us.
(Here, I ripped the yellow tape in the middle,
once more opening the sanctuary approach to the table.)
We are not well served by an image of God as puny and punitive
because our God is extravagant,
prodigal in love, mercy, and welcome:
a God of outstretched arms waiting to be filled by the beloved.
Pray with me that beginning in our own hearts
we may break the tapes that exclude others
from our love and forgiveness
and share with them the nourishment Christ offers all of us -all of us!-
at his table from which we are about to be fed.
- Rev. Austin Fleming
On my flight home from vacation I was in a row of three seats
along with a young mother and her three year old daughter.
Little Emily was amazingly well behaved and mannered
and only fussed twice in a six hour flight:
on take off and landing - when she was buckled into her seat.
She didn’t like being tied down - not one bit!
Just keep that in image in the back pocket of your mind for a few minutes.
God’s first home among us was with the Jews
who recognized the presence of God
in the stone tablets of the Law Moses received on Mt. Sinai,
tablets the Jews kept in an ark, a chest,
which they housed not in a building but in a tent
so that wherever they went,
the presence of God went with them,
pitching a tent among the tents of the chosen people.
A chest... housing a sign of a covenant with God...
an ark of God’s presence...
What might we consider the ark of the covenant
in our Catholic Christian faith?
Right - the tabernacle: a chest containing the eucharist,
a sign of God’s covenant with us in the body and blood of Christ.
But of course, we don’t carry the tabernacle around with us.
The tabernacle is fixed, not to be moved.
We come to IT - but it does not go with us.
That is to say, the tabernacle does not go with us outside the church.
But the eucharist, the sign of the covenant the tabernacle contains,
DOES move about as it lives in us who have received it.
Jesus, however, seems almost to do away
with tents, tabernacles, temples, arks and churches.
Do you know that in the whole of the four gospels,
Jesus never once mentions a church building -
well, except for that one time
when he talks about tearing down the temple
so that it might be rebuilt - in his risen body.
According to the gospels, Jesus did most of his teaching
not in a temple or synagogue,
but in the streets, on mountain sides, at the seashore,
at weddings and supper tables.
Even in today’s gospel when a woman from the crowd cries out,
“Blest is the womb that carried you, and the breasts that nursed you!”
even here Jesus points us beyond the ark, the tabernacle
of his mother Mary’s body,
and leads us instead to understand that the divine presence dwells
in any who hear the word of God and keep it.
Remember Emily - my seat mate on the plane?
Seems to me that Jesus has something of Emily’s spirit in him.
Like Emily, Jesus resists being tied down,
tented, encased, tabernacled, housed, kept put.
Rather he delights in being broken into pieces of bread to be given away.
He wants to be poured out and shared
so that many might drink in his presence.
His chosen temple, so he tells us,
is the heart of anyone who hears his word and keeps it.
Were Jesus to come again and seek a place to live
you can be sure he wouldn’t settle in Concord:
he couldn’t afford to live here.
He certainly couldn’t afford to buy this church - or St. Bernard’s.
And even if he could,
I suspect he might not sign the purchase and sales
out of fear that we might want to put a seat belt on him
and keep him from “feeling free to move about the cabin” --
our tendency to fix the Lord’s presence in one place,
forgetting that the primary tabernacle is the human heart.
Mary understood what it meant for Jesus to take up a home
in the temple of her body
because first she heard the word of God in an angel’s message
and kept that word faithfully, in her heart.
Faithful to his word, the risen Jesus welcomed his mother
to the freedom of heaven at the time of her death,
not allowing death, even for a moment,
to hold her in its grasp.
May the eucharist we are about to share open our hearts
to the presence of Christ who invites receive his word
given for us to carry wherever our travels may bring us.
-Rev. Austin Fleming
Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
- C August 1, 2004
Ecclesiastes 11:2, 21-23 Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 Luke 12:13-21
When I was a youngster, my father and my uncle,
in addition to their regular jobs,
ran a small, part time, mail-order business together.
They collected and sold old editions of magazines,
primarily to collectors, libraries and binderies.
Their inventory was stored in a barn they rented,
about a half-mile from our home.
Any time my father was going to work on his magazine business,
he would say he was “going down to the barn.”
I hated “the barn”!
I would dread the times when my father would suggest
that I should “go down to the barn” to help him!
This all came to mind a few days ago when I began working on this homily.
After all these years - and for the first time -
the word BARN in this gospel story reminded me of my father’s barn.
Oh - and I should tell you this, too.
Like the man in the gospel,
as my father’s inventory expanded,
he and my uncle eventually moved their stock out of the barn
and began renting the basement of the local VFW hall
and a larger storage building in Salem.
But guess what we called the VFW basement and the Salem building?
Right!
The Danvers Barn and the Salem Barn!
How is it that such a reference in the gospel
didn’t set off bells and whistles for me?
What a great argument not to have to go down to the barn to help!
I could have told my dad that Jesus himself
warned against such business in barns!
I guess that I did not make the connection because I, like many,
didn’t always understand that the scriptures were speaking to me.
It’s easy for us to imagine that in this parable
Jesus is speaking to the greedy, to the very wealthy
- or to the Bill Gates of this world.
But Jesus’ audience is much wider than that.
His audience is as wide as any who hear him.
And one not need actually own a barn
to be the target of what Jesus teaches here.
It’s not about the building, or how much we have to stow away.
It’s about what we truly treasure,
and whether or not we keep what we treasure for ourselves - or share it.
And whether we become so preoccupied in storing up our own stuff
(our savings, our things, our toys...)
that we fail to store up the goods of the spirit.
Note that Jesus is not opposed here to productivity and success.
All he’s asking us to do is to take inventory
of what we have, what we treasure,
and how we share the treasures we possess.
It’s in another place that he counsels us to sell everything
and give to the poor.
Today’s scripture is less demanding:
take inventory - and keep and use and share your goods wisely,
all the time being careful to build your spiritual accounts
as carefully as you do your bank accounts.
A sign of what Jesus means here is found in the eucharist.
In the eucharist Jesus stores up nothing for himself.
And although what he offers us is tangible,
a morsel of bread, a sip from a cup,
it is primarily a spiritual gift he offers:
the body and blood of the One who is our greatest treasure.
Every time we celebrate the eucharist
Jesus liquidates the inventory of his life
and empties the barn of heaven into the simplest of meals.
May the treasure he offers us here
nourish us for taking inventory
of the gifts we truly need.
- Rev. Austin Fleming
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