A homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 31, 2025
Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29, Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a, Luke 14:1, 7-14
The older folks among us will remember when the most-watched shows on TV were Westerns. “Gunsmoke.” “Bonanza.” “Wagon Train.” And even these days, they’re getting a pretty decent ride on rerun channels like MeTV.
I don’t remember which Western this happened on, but I do remember a scene in which some tenderfoot came up to a gunslinger, and their conversation went something like this:
“Some people say you’re the fastest gun in these parts. True?”
“It’s true. I can outdraw any man.”
“That’s some pretty serious bragging, mister.”
“No brag. Just fact.”
Said gently, done properly, “No brag. Just fact,” can be considered the essence of humility. Not putting yourself down. Not denying the God-given skills or talents in which you excel. Just simply admitting that you’re good at something, and maybe better at it than a lot of other people.
And, ideally, only mentioning it when somebody else brings it up.
It’s when people start to believe they somehow deserve the spotlight 24/7 that they run afoul of what Jesus and the prophet Sirach were telling us today.
Back in 1968, the artist Andy Warhol received worldwide fame for supposedly saying, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
And ever since then, a lot of people have been trying to achieve that.
Fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen hours. Fifteen years.
We’ve even invented the notion of being famous for being famous. How ’bout those Kardashians?
Now, there’s nothing wrong with being good or great. God has been generous to all of us, and each of us — created in God’s image — carries a unique version of God’s divine spark deep in our souls.
Each of us has the divine light that God forbids us to hide under a bushel basket.
And because God Who Is Love is also God Who Loves, we must remember that the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is all about action. About loving. About being kind. About working for true peace. About doing what’s right and good.
About doing.
And if we use our gifts to leave the Earth a better place than we found it, if we thank God for each new day and each new person who comes into our lives by using those gifts as God intended, then we are in tune with Jesus and the prophets.
In today’s culture of extreme fame and hero-worship, there’s a bit of slang that gets thrown around a lot: GOAT, G-O-A-T, Greatest of all Time.
But if those world-renowned GOATs aren’t using their 15 minutes of fame properly, if those GOATs aren’t working to heal our broken world and uplift the least among us, then maybe — as Matthew explains in Chapter 25 of his Gospel — Jesus as judge will banish them.
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. … [And the king will say to the goats], what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me. And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
So if we want to be the greatest at something, maybe even the greatest of all time, if that’s God’s plan for us, then let’s be the best sheep following our Good Shepherd, finding Christ in everyone we meet. And if we get a little attention for whatever good we do, we can say, “Thank you. It’s what God wants.”
And, God willing, Jesus will put us in the group on his right.
