A homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 20, 2026
Isaiah 55:6-9, Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a, Matthew 20:1-16a
We’re not always great at reading people’s minds. We miss the cues: the body language, the facial expressions, the eye contact or lack thereof, the tone of voice.
Sometimes someone has to flat-out say it: “Read my lips. No new taxes.” And even then, the message doesn’t always sink in.
All of us are unique, and that means each of us sees and understands life through a unique lens, a unique perspective, filtered through unique memories and experiences that shape that point of view. We may have much in common, but not everything.
Some of us have nothing in common. That’s a fact of life on this big blue marble we call Earth.
So we spend our lives trying to fathom everything around us and within us, and straining to help others to tune into what we see, feel, and think. Our success rates vary.
Then there’s the Mind of God.
The thoughts and feelings of the Divine are so big, so complex, so beyond what our three pounds of cranial oatmeal can grasp — did I mention big? — that we find ourselves faced with a mass and mess of options.
We can look for God’s body language. That’s not as difficult as it sounds, even though The Ultimate Reality transcends what we consider a corporeal creature.
No, we don’t scan to see if God’s arms or legs are crossed or if God is standing in a profile or three-quarters pose. We view Creation: in its beauty, its complexity, its fragility, its resilience. Creation reveals God’s attitude. Creation reveals God’s wisdom. Creation reveals God’s logic, plans, and laws. Creation reveals God’s love.
And God’s love is the answer to the biggest question we want to ask God, the question we started asking when we were about 3 years old and which we’ve never stopped asking about anything and everything: Why?
Why? Because God is Love, and God loves us. We believe that, we feel that, we know that, right down to our toenails.
The Mind of God and the Heart of God are interwoven, inseparable, essentially indistinguishable. Everything in this universe and all universes is intended for our own good, because God created only good stuff. God created far more of it than we’ve been able to measure yet, and far, far, far more than we’ve been able to comprehend yet.
“God is good, all the time,” is a wonderful answer to the 5Ws.
“God is good, all the time,” is a wonderful distillation of the Mind of God.
But we often want more than bumper-sticker theology. God built our minds that way. We ignore the warning about what curiosity did to the cat. We ask and ask and ask.
Not at our peril, it turns out.
God gave us science and math and philosophy, powerful tools to detect elements of the perfect Mind of God. Every time we understand whatever a quantum is (I have zero idea), we erase another nanospeck of human imperfection that Adam and Eve cursed us with. We strengthen our relationship with God, because God connects with every aspect of our lives. Every. Aspect.
Yes, God encourages us to wonder as we wander.
God also wishes we’d stay away from poison ivy.
And speaking of wandering, and speaking of speaking while wandering, we have a guide through our lives whose lips we can read, whose words we can hear, over and over.
Jesus, our Lord, the Son of God and Son of Man, uniquely (there’s that word again) shares the Mind of God as a full person in the Holy Trinity. His humanity — eating, sleeping, weeping, laughing, bleeding, and dying — translated God’s wisdom into a language all of humankind can understand. Yes, only bits and pieces, but always the essentials.
Jesus gave us, gives us enough insight to satisfy our questions and energize our actions to bring peace and justice to this world, avoiding the TMI that would make our brains explode. The human face and body language of Jesus the Christ — the body language of a tortured victim as he was executed for trumped-up political crimes he did not commit — those vivid human examples distilled God’s Mind for those of us who choose to embrace what we can.
The Mind of God freed Jesus from the grave and set his Light as our North Star. Jesus freed us from sin and fear. Jesus continues to fire our passion for learning.
Jesus freed us to continue to try to tap into the Mind of God, the source of all knowledge. The infinite, infinitely good, infinitely loving, infinitely wise and logical Mind of God.
