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A friend of mine who lives in Tulsa is a urological surgeon and, decades past when I lived in Tulsa, I used to love being invited each year to Thanksgiving dinner at his home with his family and friends. What I enjoyed best of all wasn’t the food—sumptuous as it was, for his wife is an absolutely tremendous cook—but having the opportunity to watch him, first, suture up the turkey’s cavity by manipulating a needle holder, scissors, threaded needle, and pickup in preparing the turkey for roasting, and second, to watch him butcher and carve the turkey after it was done being cooked. Most amazing to behold about the carving was how my friend “worked” the knife as if it was a surgical scalpel. He was very good at amputating the wings, legs, and thighs, describing as he did how best to deal with tendons and the like. But, when it came to slicing the turkey, each slice—whether white or dark meat, it didn’t matter—was sliced to absolute perfection. Thin but not too thin. N’ere a chunk, nick, or dent to be observed on any slice. Then, my friend would array all of the turkey slices and amputated extremities on a platter so that each piece could be removed without breaking any slice or causing other slices to break apart. The overall presentation was a culinary masterpiece, a chez d’oeuvre. I once told my friend how truly amazed I was at his well-honed dexterity and precision. In response, he provided me more detail than I needed to know about his training during his residency at the University of Iowa, demonstrating and explaining all of that while deboning the turkey. Yes, it was all pretty amazing stuff…the stuff of a personal vocation. I can’t conceive myself ever being able to do what he does so effortlessly and elegantly, as that evidenced itself in the way my friend carved and sliced the turkey each and every Thanksgiving. Yet, as amazing to behold as that was, as my friend completed putting the platter together one Thanksgiving, I once told him that I could do him one better based on my personal vocation. “What’s that?” he asked. Playing on the word “turkey,” I said: “Well, in my residency, I was taught how to put the turkeys back together as if they had never been carved and sliced up. The more hacked up, the better. Your challenge is nothing compared to mine.” In the context of this story and Jesus’ response to the Pharisees, the question today’s gospel raises for our consideration is: “Which is harder, to slice a turkey into pieces or to put one that has been sliced into pieces back together again?” One of the more interesting yet frequently overlooked elements of today’s gospel is that Jesus was “at home” in Capernaum when he cured the paralytic man. Let’s not overlook that fact in these reflections today. Have you ever considered that one of the primary places where Jesus’ disciples—that’s you and me—do their residency program in discipleship is “at home”? That is, the place where we learn how to put back together all of the turkeys who have been carved and sliced into pieces is at home? “At home” is the place where we undergo the training program called the “residency of discipleship.” It’s pretty easy to look outward at the world and to see the ravages of sin destroying what otherwise might be a Garden of Eden and, then, to complain about everything that everyone else needs to do to put the slices back together. But, it’s much harder to look inward—into our homes—to see the ravages of sin destroying what might otherwise be a wonderful family and, then, to make the determination to do something about it. And that has to do with forgiveness of sin. Yes, a family is a community of people, to be sure, but one that is different from other communities of people in that, in this particular community, each member knows all about every other member’s weaknesses, frailties, and Achilles’ heels. Sometimes, this knowledge and how we give voice to it makes being at home one of the most difficult of all places to be, because it is here where all of these people bump up against one another and sometimes unrelentlessly so, get in the way of one other’s plans and projects, deflate pompous illusions, and ground imaginative flights of fancy in life’s harsh, cold realities. Perhaps all of this bumping and grinding of imperfect individuals against one another yet bound by blood explains why most murders occur at home. But, it is at home—precisely because it is so challenging to live in the community of the family—that discipleship is most keenly shaped and proved, like unpolished gemstones in a rock grinder. At home, personal sin provides the opportunity to bring each family member back down to earth, teaching Moms and Dads and brothers and sisters not so much about how wonderful they are but more oftentimes about their lowliness. But, it is at home in the community of a family whose members seek to be disciples that each member is brought low not for the purpose of being left low like road kill but that, as disciples, each member will learn to perform the one miracle that human beings are capable of performing—the miracle of forgiveness—by extending this healing gift to one another. When we talk about God being present in the home, we oftentimes talk about that happening as if God is somehow going to magically transform our homes into something that exists only in the stuff of fanciful dreams. Click our heels together and hope all we want, this isn’t how God normally works. In contrast to this image, God normally works through human beings and today’s gospel teaches us that when Jesus was at home, God worked through him to effect the miracle of healing the paralytic man by forgiving him of his sin. Think about it: The home may very provide the ultimate residency of discipleship because it is at home that God gives to us the most immediate opportunities for learn how to forgive and to be forgiven so that we might learn to listen, to care, to encourage, and to serve one another. At home is where we learn to live as Jesus did. Then, too, none of us is perfect. We have sinned which, in turn, has slice each of us into pieces. We all stand in need of being put back together. Although home may be the most difficult place in which to live, it is the place where God provides multiple opportunities to put the pieces of one another’s lives back together so we will be able to do so in the world beyond our homes. It is “at home” that we face perhaps both the greatest challenges to our living as disciples as well as the greatest opportunities for doing so. It is at home—in the residency of discipleship—that God teaches us how to “put the turkeys that have been sliced into pieces back together.
A brief
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HOMILY
