A homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 29, 2024
Nm 11:25-29, Jas 5:1-6, Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
The other day, I stumbled across a pack of Magic Birthday Candles. You know, the ones that relight themselves every time you blow them out. I actually was looking for the gizmo that helps me open the jar of bread-and-butter pickles, but I found the three magic candles first.
I of course was rooting around in the kitchen junk drawer. It’s right next to the dishwasher in our house, and it holds a big screwdriver, a set of those tiny jeweler’s screwdrivers, scissors, pliers, measuring tapes — big and little — Scotch tapes, double-sticky-stuff, a Ziploc of glitter, and birthday candles, mostly half-burned.
All that and much more. Much, much more. Including three lonely little magic candles.
And everything in that drawer — which nobody in my family can close fully — everything in that drawer is absolutely essential for us to live a complete and meaningful life.
So is everything in our basement.
Absolutely essential.
Yours too, I bet.
The longer we live, and especially, the longer we live in one place, the more we accumulate.
We stash away clothes that will fit us again someday, or which definitely will be back in fashion any day now. Platform shoes, anyone?
We keep baby clothes with spit-up stains and our kids’ first shoes.
We keep outdated textbooks and encyclopedias.
We keep all the fondue pots we got as wedding presents 40 or 50 years ago, along with the wooden salad bowls — minus the spoons — and the sterling silver wine-drip stopper.
We keep good memories, which is why it’s impossible for us to give away or toss things that have no practical value anymore. And there’s nothing wrong with storing up treasures with sentimental value, because sentimental value comes from love.
But our dark basements and our overstuffed junk drawers and, yes, our hearts and minds sometimes keep items that evoke bad memories and cause worse feelings toward other people.
Disappointments. Betrayed trusts. Jealousy. Phobias and -isms. God forbid, even hatred.
The very definition of junk.
A pile of trash. Stinking garbage.
And the longer we live, the longer we experience life’s ups and downs, the bigger the chance that we’ll have a few of these trashy items stashed away. Physical items, emotional baggage or spiritual weights.
These, however, can stop us from leading a complete and meaningful life.
These, without a doubt, must be thrown out. Cleaned out. Eighty-sixed. Tossed and forgotten.
And it can be just as hard to purge ourselves of the bad stuff as it is to say farewell to the threadbare teddy bear. This trash doesn’t always slide neatly into a Hefty bag, especially if it’s been part of our lives for a long time.
Today’s Scripture passages shine a light on how easy it is for people to slip into darker emotions. We see jealousy, for example, among people even when they’re supposedly acting as God wants them to.
Both the selection from the Book of Numbers and the one from Mark’s Gospel mention how some believers got all tribal and tried to close ranks when they saw unfamiliar people doing the same good work they were.
Moses in the first reading and Jesus in the Gospel told the believers they didn’t have exclusive rights to a franchise or territory. They weren’t the only ice cream truck in town.
So what, they said, if the people prophesying and healing and uplifting the poor in the name and spirit of the Almighty hadn’t been welcomed into the official group and taught the secret handshake or whatever. They should be applauded and thanked, not scolded and shunned.
Done in God’s name, all good works are good. Period.
Pope Francis himself recently reaffirmed that anyone from any faith tradition who seeks the divine can communicate with our loving God.
Remember: We all have the same Creator, who created every one of us in his image, and that divine source of love wants us to care for each other and all of Creation.
So how do we do that?
Well, we’ve all heard of spring cleaning, and no doubt we’ve all put on work gloves when the days became longer and warmer.
Interestingly, though, many HGTV-type experts say the fall is the best time for deep cleaning. This way, we’re not locked inside with nasty stuff that accumulated all year … or over many years.
Half-burned birthday candles.
Half-baked beliefs about those people.
It’s the first full weekend of Autumn 2024, so now is the best time for deep cleaning of our hearts and minds. Let’s take a minute or three to sort through our spiritual and social junk drawers and finally toss any resentments, any prejudices, any silent treatments we’ve stuffed in there.
If we’re keeping any items in our spiritual not-so-junky junk drawer, let them be beautiful treasures we can take to Heaven when it’s time, even as right now we keep them close at hand and close to our hearts.
