A homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 6, 2025
Isaiah 66:10-14c, Galatians 6:14-18, Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
This steamy, sultry time of the year, two things are clear (even if thunderstorm-laden skies are not):
Shorter homilies are preferable, depending on the nearest HVAC system, and we pay more attention to summertime events and holidays than to theology. Especially those of us who live in tourist-y locales.
So how ’bout we try mixing church and state briefly but sincerely…
We just hours ago celebrated the 249th birthday of our beloved United States of America.
America is, and has been for nearly a quarter of a millennium, a land of promise, a land of charity, a land of welcoming, a land of many successes, a land of many dismal mistakes and outright failures. A land that reflects every part of our human existence, good and bad, glorious and fetid.
A land of the free and the brave. A land of the free because of the brave.
Brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in Jesus’s footsteps. Brave women and men who dared — still dare — to challenge tyrants and speak truth to power, especially whenever power is abused and wielded for the enrichment of the few at the expense of the vast majority. As Jesus did. As he empowers all of us to do. As his Spirit encourages and energizes us to do.
Our freedom comes in two overall forms.
We have freedoms to: to do certain things, to be who we are, to go where we want or need to, to love whom we do, to worship as we are called and inspired to do, and to do and to be an almost innumerable list of other things.
We have freedoms from: from fear, from want, from persecution, from wrongful prosecution and imprisonment, from illness, and from an almost innumerable list of other things.
Or, at least we’re supposed to.
That’s why our Creator gives us hearts and minds and voices. That’s why the Father sent his only begotten Son to show us how, and command us to, rise against injustice. That’s why the two of them send their Spirit to lead us on right paths and toss some divine sustenance our way whenever we start to slow down.
When God shed grace on America — and, yes, so, so many other lands across this fragile Earth — that grace, those freedoms were wrapped less in shiny foil or even swaddling clothes and more in the responsibility for us to use them.
To preserve them.
To enlarge them.
To share them with every one of our sisters and brothers in this nation and in this world.
We have the freedom to spread the Good News, to live and to share the Gospel.
We have the responsibility to spread the Good News, to live and to share the Gospel.
The time is now.
AMEN