A homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 4, 2022
Wis 9:13-18b, Phmn 9-10, 12-17, Lk 14:25-33
The late great George Carlin had a bit in which he lampooned Americans’ obsessive materialism. Everything, he would say, was about stuff.
We go to work to make money to buy stuff. We buy houses to keep our stuff in. When we’ve bought more stuff than our houses can hold, we buy bigger houses.
And then someone invented storage units.
Meanwhile, the bumper sticker reminds us: Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live.
That’s where I start when I ponder the heavy, heavy, heavy messages in this week’s Scripture passages. Because I really jam on the notion of hating my parents and relatives. I jam on the command to dump everything I own and switch to sackcloth and ashes while living in a tent in the desert.
Really, Jesus? Really??
Love you, and only you?
Focus on you, and only you?
Then why did the Almighty create … Creation?
Why are there so many fascinating people? Why are there so many amazing animals? Why is there so much beauty?
Why do we ourselves have life and breath and bodies and souls and minds, with intellect and curiosity and creativity?
Why do we have such deep emotions, especially the expansive capacity to love?
Why do we have the free will to question or challenge the words of Jesus as chronicled by Luke?
Didn’t our gracious Creator give us everything out of infinite, unending love?
So on its face value, this passage from Luke’s Gospel is a tough sell.
Hate everyone except Jesus? Ditch everything we ostensibly worked for, all of our stuff? That’s over the top.
Hmmm … then again…
Maybe Jesus had to go over the top to move the complacent center.
Maybe the answer really is the Live Simply bumper sticker.
Maybe the answer lies in our taking a moment or two — regularly — to list what matters to us.
God should be at the top, with a few spaces afterward for emphasis.
Then comes humankind, the people directly in our lives and the other people in our lives whom we haven’t met but who desperately need whatever help we can give them. There are billions of sisters and brothers who qualify (Matthew 25:40, which should be on a bumper sticker). Because Christ is in all of them, and because they are carrying crosses too.
Thus, loving them is loving Christ.
Yes, it’s OK to own stuff and have a comfortable and healthy life, as long as it’s not at the expense of others. When we have more than enough, when we have our fair share of Creation’s bounty, then we are absolutely required to pay forward our abundance, any time of the day, any day of the year.
People’s suffering doesn’t take a holiday. Christmas truces don’t hold. Flooding and disease and droughts don’t pay any attention to the calendar.
The Sabbath is not a day of rest for the oppressed.
God gave us eyes to see, ears to hear and skills to alleviate the trials of others. Fellow children of God. Our sisters and brothers. The least among us.
Christ among us.
