Homily – 6/30/02

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I’ve been on the road a lot lately. The first reading begins with Elijah on the road. The disciples experience a similar call themselves to be “on the road”. And what we have is a description of a wonderful complimentarity between those who are called to be on the road in order to minister God’s Kingdom, and those who are called to meet their needs that they may do that. Elisha keeps passing back and forth in front of this woman’s house as he goes on his various trips, and the woman is prompted by the Spirit to provide for him: a roof, a little room on the roof, the furniture that he needs, to take care of him. And Elisha is touched by her generosity and asks, “What can we do for her?”

His servant tells him that she has no son and as that narrative continues what we will see is that she fairly miraculously then conceives, gives birth to a son. But then the son dies, and she goes to Elijah and he comes and he raises the son from the dead.

The disciples, when they go out, they are told, “Do not bring anything extra with you. Do not bring extra money. Do not bring an extra change of clothes.” Etcetera. But He promises them that wherever they go, they will be taken care of. But the instrument through which they are taken care of is the generosity of the people of God. Like Elijah himself, Elisha’s great predecessor, during the beginning of the drought in Israel is sent to a widow, a widow who has just enough food left for one last meal for her and her son. And after that they expect to starve to death. And Elijah at the city gate tells her “Bring me a little water and a little scrap of bread in your hand.” She says, “All I have left is the food for one meal and after that we’ll starve.” And Elijah, the great prophet, prophesies to her that she will not run out of food until the drought is over and food has been restored to Israel. And he stays with her. And it happens. This “enough for one meal” supplies Elijah and the woman and her son for a long time because God’s Providence is always enough.

The disciples were sent out fully dependent on Jesus and His provision for them because He wanted to demonstrate to them with absolute clarity the wondrous gift of His Providence. He does not call them out the limb and then saw it off behind them. He provides for them. The One who holds the universe in the palm of His hand is perfectly capable of providing. And the promise to those who provide is what we heard in the conclusion of the Gospel. To do so much as to give a cup of cold water to a disciple because they are disciples, that person will not lose their reward. It is a great gift to be able to provide for those who are building the Kingdom. By doing so we build the Kingdom ourselves.

Sometimes Jesus does this in ways that are unexpected. There is a wonderful story that is told in the prayer community in Minneapolis of a father who was struggling with some hard times because of some difficulties that beset his family in his employment situation, and he needed four new tires for his car, because his tires were no longer safe to drive his family or him around. And while he was in prayer Jesus said to him, “Go to the tire store for I have provided for you.” So he goes to this tire store. He said, “Well, I guess if Jesus is providing for me, I may as well pick the best tires.” So he gets these four excellent tires, he brings them up to the front and, of course, he has no idea what’s going to happen next. The guy’s going to ask him “cash or charge” and he’s going to say, “No. Jesus.” And he gets to the front with the tires and just as he gets there, this other guy comes up and he says, “I don’t know you, but Jesus told me to pay for your tires. But did you have to pick the most expensive ones in the store?”

God’s provision. Unexpected ways.

Memorial Day weekend I was going up north to visit some friends in Torch Lake and I was about 30 miles south of Kalkaska on I-75 on Sunday evening when my bike stalled in one of the most desolate places in Michigan on one of the most nothing is open weekends of the entire year. As my bike is drifting to a stop and I’m pulling over to the side, I just had a sense that Jesus was behind this and to pay special attention to the needs of the one He would bring by. And within five minutes of me finally coming to a stop, this guy pulls up. He says, “You having trouble with your bike?” I said, “Yes.” “Well, I have a bike trailer at my house. Let’s go get it.” So we drove for an hour into Cadillac, an hour back to get the bike, an hour back to his house. By that time my friends from Torch Lake had arrived at his house to pick me up with their pick-up. But during that time I discovered something that I was able to address: this guy hadn’t been to church for 30 years. He was raised Catholic, he’d been a faithful Catholic, gone to Catholic schools. He was divorced and somebody had told him 30 years ago that when he got divorced he was excommunicated, and so he couldn’t go to the sacraments anymore. And so he figured, “If I can’t go to the sacraments, why should I bother to go to church?” So he stopped going. So I said to him, “Well, that’s wrong.”

And he said, “Well, how do you know that?”

“Well, I just happen to be your local traveling Roman Catholic priest and it’s my business to know that.”

“Oh!” he said, perking up.

“Look, you want to get back, all you gotta do is simply say ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I haven’t been to Mass for 30 years’ and whatever else may have occurred in the meantime.”

He wanted to think about it for a while. But I’m writing him this week to remind him if he hasn’t done anything yet, now’s a really good time.

But the interesting thing was in Torch Lake, where I was headed, it had been pouring all day long. When I called my friends to check on the weather as I took off from Ann Arbor I asked them what it was like, they said the weather was beautiful, and it’ll be a nice day. But this unexpected thunderstorm had moved in and was covering the area, and if my bike hadn’t broken down I would have been totally drowned in the last hour of the trip. Instead, my bike is getting drowned and I’m in a nice, warm pick-up praying for this guy that he would come back, and he had a hunger to come back. And his sister who lived next door was in exactly the same position. She was divorced, had left the Church because she, too, had been told that divorce alone excommunicates you. Neither of them were remarried. Neither of them had any other kind of difficulties like that.

The interesting thing, of course, is when I got back to town and I brought my bike to the Harley dealer they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Because if Jesus just stopped it, they’ll never find anything wrong with it. But they’re still working on it.

It was a wonderful opportunity. I’ve had opportunities like that before that I have just missed. But the more we believe that our lives are absolutely in Jesus’ hands, that His providence really guides what happens to us, the more we can start looking for when unusual things happen, what is He doing? Is He doing something because He wants to work on my heart? Or even more importantly, is He doing something because this set of unanticipated circumstances is going to put me in immediate proximity with somebody who needs to hear something that I can share with them? Something about the Gospel. Because it’s possible to blow that.

When I was in Minneapolis and my car broke down – different car – and I brought it in and they were able to fix it and all this kind of stuff, but I was in one of these kind of like “Well, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you don’t have more of them.” One of these whiney moods. You know, the “Jesus doesn’t love me because my car broke down” kind of ultimate human arrogance, stupidity kind of perspective.

I was praying later and I said to Jesus, “Why did that happen?” But it was more “Why did that happen!” And Jesus just simply said, “Well, there was a mechanic there that really needed to hear the Good News.” And He had sent me there for that. And I had completely blown it because I was looking at my own stupid circumstances rather than trying to be sensitive to what was Jesus of Nazareth doing at that point in time.

The guidance of God the Holy Spirit is never coercive. It is always a gentle invitation to respond. And lives depend on our response. Let us plead with Jesus that we would love Him so much that when things happen that we don’t expect or we don’t understand, our first move is to ask Jesus to give us hearts compliant to whatever He is doing in the situation because He always wills what is best for us.

The great saints had such a total surrender to His providential care. They witness to us about this gift. Sometimes it comes in packages that are hard to carry, but if we let the circumstances take our eyes off of Jesus, then we will miss the wonder of what He does. Let us plead with Him today that we would simply choose to trust Him more and more and more. That we would always look for what is His will in every situation we face. That we could live in a way that is pleasing to Him and truly build His Kingdom.