Tag: Parable

Fair’s fair

A homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 20, 2020

Is 55:6-9, Phil 1:20C-24, 27A, Mt 20:1-16A

For some people steeped in timeclocks, hourly wages, collective bargaining and labor law, this Gospel has always been a head-scratcher.

If the worker who was employed from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. gets, let’s say, 75 bucks but then the worker who started at 6 a.m. also gets 75 bucks, how is that remotely fair? The late-starter is getting $75 an hour while the guy from the Dawn Patrol is getting $6.25. What should the hourly rate be? Shouldn’t it be the same for everybody?

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A cup of sugar

A homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug. 16, 2020

Is 56:1, 6-7, Rom 11:13-15, 29-32 , Mt 15:21-28

When we embrace The Way that Jesus blazed, we recognize that almost everything he preached was countercultural. Then and now.

Dining and bunking in with tax collectors and prostitutes, and forgiving their sins when they repented and promised to go and sin no more: Jesus was able to reconcile these dregs of society with the God of mercy, even if First Century Hebrew society left them at the margins.

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Turf wars

A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 19, 2020

Wis 12:13, 16-19, Rom 8:26-27, Mt 13:24-43

Crabgrass. Goosegrass. Chickweed. Dandelions. Clover. Those tall spiky things with the leaves every two inches up the stem: Whatever they are.

For those of us with lawns, keeping weeds under control can be a never-ending struggle. Because, at best, we control weeds. We never defeat them. They’re stubborn and invasive and pervasive.

One weed becomes two becomes four becomes 16 becomes 256 becomes a math problem and that’s less fun than the weeds themselves. If only we can rid our lawns of that first one, we’ll be spared the outbreak. But how often does that happen?

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