topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
 Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)
03 August 03


 

Have you ever received a bill, fully expecting the total amount due to fall within a certain range, only to discover that you owe almost double what you had budgeted?  I had that experience happen to me a couple of weeks ago and it sure isn’t pleasant.

For some people, this experience comes when the electric bill arrives after having enjoyed loads of cool air conditioning during the hot, humid, and hazy days of July or August.  Or, the experience comes after enjoying a nice, warm and toasty home during the cold and chilly days of December or January.  Stunned by the total amount of dollars owed, you suddenly wish that you owned a sizable block of stock in Excelon.

For others, the experience comes when the telephone bill arrives.  Suddenly, a parent finds out that one’s teenager has secretly been placing long distance telephone calls to his or her Juliet or Romeo from 10:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. ...on school nights!  Now it makes sense why mid-term grades have plummeted.  But, as far as the teenager is concerning, “everything is fine.”

The exact same experience strikes others when the cable television bill arrives in the mail.  One quickly discovers that “Video on demand” isn’t free.  It’s hard to believe how fast all of those movies can add up!  And now, you find yourself wondering whether the cost was worth it.

Then, there’s the sometimes difficult and embarrassing experience of inadvertently stumbling upon a child’s secret stash of contraband or web surfing history.  All of a sudden, your parental instincts have been verified beyond the shadow of a doubt.  “This is normal,” we tell ourselves nervously as we try to get a grip on things.  But, our gut tells us that we have to do something about it.

When we stumble upon these disconcerting things, the first three words that pop out of our mouths more often times than not are stated in the form of a question, namely: “What is this?”  Now, if we discovered any of these things and we just happened to speak Hebrew, only one word would flow from our lips.  Can you guess what that word is?  (The answer can be found at the end of the homily.)

After one month of freedom from the life of slavery they knew in Egypt, the Israelites now found themselves somewhere in the middle of the Desert of Sina place I think was aptly namedwhere they did not know what lay ahead.  God had answered their prayers by rescuing the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt.  God vowed that He would lead them into the Promised Land.

But, the Desert of Sin didn’t fit the bill of Israelite expectations.  It was hot and the Israelites were thirsty and hungry.  It seemed as if there no relief was anywhere in sight.  In the midst of these challenges, slavery in Egypt looked much better in comparison to wandering around in the hot desert and dealing with parched lips and growling stomachs.  Compounding matters further was the Israelites’ doubt and uncertainty about what lay in the future.

Only one month earlier, God had demonstrated His power and love by delivering the Israelites from slavery.  How quickly they had forgotten how God had answered their prayers by blessing them with the precious gift of freedom!  Instead of remembering and being grateful for this gift, the Israelites were now demanding that God provide them water.  Despite their forgetfulness and lack of gratitude, God once again demonstrate his power and love.  He answered all of the Israelites’ grumbling and prayers by providing them with water at Meribah and Massah.  However, instead of seeing God manifesting His love for them, the Israelites forgot about God and ran for the water, only to discover, once they sipped it, that the water was too bitter for drinking.

The Israelites received what they wanted, but not in the form they expected!  Would that they had only recognized the lesson that God was teaching them in the midst of their languishing in the Desert of Sin.

Then, in their hunger, the Israelites demand food.  Again, God demonstrates his power and love by providing the Israelites food.   But, when the Israelites saw this food spread before them across the desert sands like a fresh snowfall on a prairie in Nebraska, instead of thanking God for this gift, the Israelites saidin that distinctive tone reminiscent of a kid who is being served liver and onions for dinnerManna,” that is, “What is this?”

The Israelites received what they wanted, but not it the form they expected.  Would that they had only recognized in this experience the lesson they hadn’t learned when God provided them with water from the rock.

The lesson is obvious: God does provide for our needs, but we shouldn’t be surprised that what we get doesn’t come in the form we wanted.

Consider once again those situations where we blurt out, just like the Israelites, “What is this?”

When an exorbitant electric or heating bill arrives, we suddenly are thrust into a test where we have to decide between what we really want and what we truly need.  In this test, we must re-evaluate just how much air conditioning or heating we really need.  Believe it or not, God is in the middle of this, reminding us that passing creaturely comforts come at a price and that we really can live quite comfortably without many of those things.  The bill wasn’t how we expected God to remind us about according first priority to what is truly important in our lives.  But, the bill sure makes the point, especially when it affected something we worry about very much, namely, our pocketbooks.

When that long-distance telephone bill comes, we are tested about how we might teach our teenagers about responsibility for the choices we make.  Believe it or not, God is in the middle of this, reminding those of us who are parents that we must teach our children that loveeven if it is a teenager’s infatuationand bearing responsibility for one’s actions are intimately linked.  It’s not an “either/or” but a “both/and” proposition.  The telephone bill wasn’t how we expected God to remind us about our responsibility to be the best of teachers of our children.  But, once again, when it comes to something we care about, we realize that we must act.

That video-on-demand television bill also tests us.  As we survey the titles of all of the movies that we’ve watched, we are tested to ask ourselves, “Forget the money, was the time spent watching those movies really time well invested?”  Believe it or not, God is in the middle of this, reminding us about how we waste precious hours on trivial amusements.  We didn’t expect God to remind us in this way about how we oftentimes fail to use the limited amount of time we have as human beings in doing loving things for and with others.  But, it is truly amazing how such realizations can push “couch potatoes” to recognizes that they really don’t live life and time is quickly passing them by.

And, yes, God is present, even when a parent inadvertently stumbles upon a child’s secret stash of contraband or web surfing history.  Like Adam and Eve, we’ve all thought the fig leaves would cover up what we thought only we knew about ourselves.  But, God is truly present here, testing parents to balance the strict requirements of justice with the loving dictates of mercy.  As parents and as kids, too, we didn’t expect that God would manifest His power and love in quite that way.  But, unless we become more transparent about our true motives, we’re not “Dancing with Wolves.”  No, we’re “tap dancing on the trap door of temptation,” as one of my brother Augustinians expresses this concept.

As Jesus’ disciples, when we discover something that surpasses our range of expectations, we need to restate the question “What is this?” as “Where is God in all of this?”  These moments provide the opportunity to learn that there is something more substantive to feeds souls, something more than any water and bread, more than any air conditioning and heating, more than all of those long distance telephone calls, video on demand, stashed away contraband, or web surfing.   Each of these situations, spurred by the question “What is this?” provides a test as well as an opportunity to recognize how God manifests His power and love in our lives by providing for our needs.

At the same time, however, we have to remember, like the Israelites, that what we demand may not be what we get if only because God’s goal is to help us recognize that He alone supplies for our true needs.

John S. Dunne wrote about this experience of emptiness and spiritual longingthe thirst and hunger experienced by the Israelites in the Desert of Sin and those of us wandering around in our own Desert of Sinwhat Dunne called “languishing.”  Dunne compared this languishing to the “exhausted blood that flows through the veins back to the heart.” Only when the exhausted blood flows through the heart (that is, through God), can blood be renewed and return to the body to bring it what the body needs.  Dunne likens that renewed blood to love, observing, “The discovery of God takes place when languishing becomes love...when the exhausted life is renewed in the heart.”  For Dunne, God’s presence in the heart is where our languishing is transformed into love and our emptiness becomes plentitude.

From the Israelites through all of those nameless people who sought out Jesus at the lakeside and to this community of disciples today, people demand many things from God, forgetting all that God has already given to them.  And, when God provides for our needs, the first words typically to cross our lips are “What is this?”  Today’s scripture reminds us that holiness becomes evident when we recognize God’s power and love transforming our languishing into love and filling our emptiness with exactly what we need…even when it comes packaged somewhat differently than we had estimated!

Such holiness, however, may prove to be quite discomforting and even frightening when we would rather be comfortable and cozy.  Why?  Because the gift of God’s power and love challenges us to surrender those values and habits we’ve grown accustomed to and which we use to define our day-to-day existence as human beings.  These choices have made us forgetful and ungrateful for the gift of God’s power and love.

The columnist, David Mazel, once recounted an exchange he had with his rabbi.  When the rabbi asked Mazel how things were going, the columnist innocently replied, “Things are going all right.  But, it wouldn’t hurt if things went a little better.”  Raising his eyebrows in a stern glance, the rabbi responded, “And just how do you know it wouldn’t hurt?”

We believe that God’s blessings will bring us endless bliss and rapture.  But, instead, they may well bring pain and require conversion of us.

This is what St. Paul was telling the Ephesians when he wrote: “You should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires….”  St. Paul told the Ephesiansand is telling us todaythat, in baptism, we gave up something old for something new, a life of languishing for a life of plentitude, a life of wandering in a vain search for happiness for a life of stability that found its roots and nourishment in God.  “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds,” St. Paul wrote, “and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

Even though we oftentimes confuse what we want with what we need, God does not abandon us, even when we find ourselves, like the Israelites of old, wandering around in the middle of the Desert of Sin and making all sorts of demands of God.  God not only sees and understands our languishing but, through His beloved Son, provides an inexhaustible means to satisfy all of our needs.  To those who were testing him in his Desert of Sin, Jesus said:

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Today’s scriptures remind us that the pursuit of Godwho alone fills our languishingis the most important pursuit of our lives.  Surrendering our comfortable values and habits is difficult indeed.  But, as God manifests His power and love by providing for our needs, it is through this bitter water and unusual bread that God provides the substantive nourishment our souls truly need.

Are we willing to drink that bitter water and eat that unusual bread?

 

 

(Answer: The Hebrew word is manna.”)

 

 

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