Homily: 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

Readings Gn 18:1-10a; Ps 15; Col 1:24-28; Lk 10:38-42

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Over 21 years ago, shortly after we moved to The Villages, my wife, Diane, decided it would be good to help out at the Wildwood Soup Kitchen. And like a good deacon’s wife, she volunteered me along with herself. Yes, I was volunteered.

We ended up serving there for well over 15 years, with Diane as the Thursday cook and I doing whatever she told me. I also stumbled onto the board of directors where I served for a bunch of years. But with the onset of COVID, abetted by some physical issues and limitations, Diane and I decided to step away from the Soup Kitchen and let others continue running this ministry.

I used to say, only partly in jest, that on Monday I could lose all 200 of those who served at the Soup Kitchen and replace them all by Friday -- perhaps an exaggeration, but barely.

The Soup Kitchen is really a wonderful ministry, a true ecumenical ministry in which those in real need are served by dozens of volunteers representing upwards of 30 local churches.

Among the many things I learned from this experience is that people serve there for all kinds of reasons. I’d occasionally ask them: "Why are you here?" and was amazed by the variety of answers.

Some just loved being in the kitchen, and the opportunity to help cook a few hundred meals. While others were bored in all the free time retirement brought, and came just to stay busy.

Some were lonely. The soup kitchen was a kind of social event, a chance to form friendships. And a few felt guilty. Their affluence was a burden to them, and they hoped to ease that burden by helping those in need.

Some simply want to serve others, and the soup kitchen is a wonderful way to satisfy that need. They’d inevitably say, "It makes me feel good." 

But there were always some who told me they served out of love. They saw Jesus Christ in every person who walked in the door and were overwhelmed by a love for God and neighbor. These are the folks who follow the Gospel mandate to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger. Indeed, that was our guiding principle at the soup kitchen: 

“We don’t serve meals; we serve Jesus Christ.”

When it comes right down to it, it’s really a ministry of hospitality; and yet those who exercise this ministry are driven by so many different motives, often by multiple motives.

I couldn’t help but think of all this as I reread today’s Gospel passage from Luke. Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, the fullness of life and truth, walked into the home of a pair of sisters named Martha and Mary.

Both women immediately recognized the privilege of having Jesus in their home and set to work fulfilling the sacred duty of hospitality. But the two sisters had conflicting ideas of what that duty entailed.

Martha’s response is very recognizable, typical of how most of us would probably react. Open the best wine, the expensive stuff, or brew some good coffee. Get out the good china and silver. Use whatever food you have in the pantry to whip up your best assortment of hot and cold dishes. And pray He won’t want a dessert.

My mother’s name was Martha. When I was about 16, I asked her if she’d be like Martha in the Gospel if Jesus came to our house for dinner. Without a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Oh, no, I’d call a caterer.”

But while Martha was busying herself in the kitchen, Mary took a different approach to hospitality. For her, the greatest compliment she could pay, greater even than the best of foods, was to give Jesus her full attention. 

It’s interesting that we hear nothing from Mary in this passage, but we sense she somehow knew that Jesus, the fullness of truth, had come to her home to nourish, enlighten, and transform her. She saw Jesus as a gift, and not to receive and unwrap this wonderful gift was an insult to the giver.

And so, Mary listened.

She listened to the Word as He spoke the Word. Mary became to Jesus what no rabbi at the time would probably let any woman become…Mary became His disciple. 

This was pretty radical stuff back then. Women were expected to prepare and serve the meals, and wouldn’t be encouraged to take part in the discussions. But Luke, throughout his Gospel, stresses that Jesus takes women seriously, that He came for everyone, men and women, and that salvation comes to all who listen to His Word and act on it.

Luke doesn’t relate this incident to endorse laziness, just as Martha isn’t criticized because she simply did what was expected. In our first reading from Genesis, when God, in the form of three travelers, visits Abraham, it’s considered good that Abraham and Sara spare no expense serving them.

No, Martha’s hospitality isn’t the problem. The problem? She placed physical hospitality above discipleship. Her attempts at hospitality became an end in itself, a distraction. It turned Martha into what my mom would have called a fussbudget, so much so she actually got angry because her sister hadn’t joined her.

You can almost feel the tension and pressure building up until it boils over and Martha vents her frustration…but notice she vents it on the wrong person. Martha doesn’t attack Mary; she attacks Jesus Himself:

“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone…”

How authentically human of Martha – to work out her frustrations on the wrong person, what Freud would have called displaced aggression.

Now, had I been in Jesus’ place, I probably would have said, “Hey, Martha, why are you blaming me?” But not Jesus. He turns to her, and repeating her name -- “Martha, Martha…” – and He calms her down. Then He quietly reminded her that she was “anxious and worried about many things.”

Jesus didn't rebuke Martha her for serving Him – not at all. He simply tells her there’s something better. He turns her to the truth: those who hear the Word of God and keep it are blessed.

I’m suspect more than a few of you out there have a history with the old Baltimore Catechism. Do you remember the answer to the question, “Why did God make you?”

Remember? “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.”

It’s still a very good answer. Before we can serve God, we must first know Him and love Him. After all, how can you love someone you don’t even know? If our lives are spent solely in activity – only in the serving – we can’t take the time to know our God through prayer and attentiveness to His Word.

It’s through prayer, listening to His Word, and through the grace of the sacraments, that we can come to know God, and develop the kind of personal relationship Jesus wants with us. Only through that relationship can we continue to deepen our love for God.

How did St. Paul put it in our second reading?

"It is Christ in you, the hope for glory" (Col 1:27).

You see, it’s through Christ in us that we come to see Him in others, and can accept the call to serve Him by serving them.

Our service, then, must be grounded in love; for it is love, and only love, that calls the Christian to serve others:

"…whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me" (Mt 25:40)

For Christians, then, the two great commandments – loving God and loving our neighbor – merge into one, a single, inseparable commandment of love. Yes, hearing and reflecting on the Word of God in prayer is a condition for the selfless, loving service of the Body of Christ.

Of course, Martha didn’t appreciate this…at least, not at first. And like so many of us, she worried. How human and how easy it is for you and me, just as it was for Martha, to become obsessed with busyness, to move those things – those accidental parts of our lives – to move them to the center of our lives. And in doing so to send the true center to the sidelines.

Brothers and sisters, this just cannot be.

The fullness of truth, the fullness of life, the fullness of grace deserves our full attention. Jesus can’t be merely a part of our lives. He must be the focus, always at the very center. 

In our excessively busy lives today, too often, like Martha, “we are anxious and worried about many things,” and ignore the quiet call of Our Lord. Every day He knocks on your door and my door, calling us to Himself through the lives of others.

Recall how Abraham pleaded with God Himself: “Please do not go on, past your servant.” In the same way, we must not let these others just pass by unserved.

We must let them into our lives, so that Christ too will be in us, and as St. Paul promised, give us “the hope for glory.”

Healing Service Homily: Tuesday, 15th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ex 2:1-15a; Ps: 69; Mt 11:20-24

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Good evening, everyone…and praise God – praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s wonderful to see so many here tonight; all of you, open to God’s healing presence in your lives. Praise God, too, for this.

We’re gathered here in Jesus’ name, so we know He’s with us. Present not only in our presence, but here especially in His Eucharistic Presence. And where Jesus is, so too is the Father, for they are One, One with the Holy Spirit.

When we turn to Scripture, we find the Holy Spirit inspiring, revealing, anointing, and counseling. He does it all. As we proclaim in the Creed: He’s the “Lord and giver of life.” He is the fount of Truth and Wisdom, the sanctifier, the source of sacramental grace, the manifestation of God’s power in the world.

When Jesus rejoiced, He rejoiced in the Spirit. When He prayed, He prayed filled with the Spirit. And when he healed, the Spirit acted through Him. And so, tonight, confident that the Holy Spirit is here among us, present in His power and glory, we turn to Him, the Divine Healer, for healing is among the Spirit’s greatest works.

God knows how much we all need healing – healing of body, mind, and spirit; so He sends His Spirit into the world to heal all who come to Him.

Sacred Scripture, especially in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, is filled with healings, but they’re all so very different. All kinds of people come to Jesus – men and women; young and old; Jews and Gentiles – all seeking His healing touch. He heals them all. Some come on their own, some are brought to Him by others, by family or friends, and some are healed at a distance. But for all of them it was through the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus healed.

St. Peter confirmed this when preaching to the centurion Cornelius and his household, he said:

“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all…” (Acts 10:38)

Where Jesus is, so too is the Holy Spirit. And together they heal us all. What does this mean to us? Does Jesus offer healing to all of us? Well, yes, He does. But we must understand He offers us multiple kinds of healing.

We humans are pretty complex creatures. God gave us bodies, but as many of us here have figured out, these bodies just don’t last that long. So, He also gave us an immortal soul, that divine piece of our humanity that goes on forever, and carries us into eternity.

And from that we have an intellect and a will, so we can learn what God wants for us and of us, why we’re here, and then decide what to do about it.

It’s all pretty fantastic, isn’t it? Well, yes, it is, except when we decide to misuse our intellects by ignoring all that He teaches us; or misuse our wills by making incredibly wrong decisions. It’s really what Jesus faced in our passage from Matthew’s Gospel. Our Lord uses some pretty harsh words, doesn’t He?

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!”

Yes, indeed, Jesus was upset! There’s no mistaking it – Jesus was definitely upset. You see, is wasn’t some impersonal, detached judgment on Jesus’ part. In fact, I think it was truly personal.

Matthew, writing this Gospel, uses the Greek word for “woe.” It’s an interesting word. In Greek it’s one of those onomatopoeic words – words like bark, or cough, or hiss – that sound like the things they mean. The Greek word for “woe” is οὐαί, a word that sounds like a lament, a cry of sorrow. And that was intentional. Matthew uses this word to show us that Jesus, in His humanity, is speaking out of grief.

Chorazin! Bethsaida! Capernaum! These were places Jesus had stayed, places He’d visited, where He’s ministered to their people – where He healed, taught, loved – and still, the people didn’t respond.

Yes, Jesus is divine, but He’s also human, and that kind of rejection surely hurt. It’s hard not to feel the sting of it all – how Jesus must have felt.

Of course, our initial reaction is to recall times when it’s happened to us – when we spoke the truth but were summarily rejected.

I’ll tell you a story. Years ago, I was director of customer satisfaction and focus for a high-tech firm. It was an engineering-driven firm, and at a key meeting, the product engineers introduced a major change to a major product. I realized immediately that our customers would not be happy. But I was unable to convince our management. One sales engineer had the courage to agree with me, but his concerns were also rejected. I’ll never forget what the head of engineering said, “Our customers will like it because we like it.” Of course, the customers hated it. But no one ever said, “You know, you were right.” No, they just dug in deeper trying to show our customers how wrong they were. It didn’t have a happy ending.

About that time, I decided retirement at 59 sounded pretty good, so Diane and I soon headed south to The Villages.

Did you notice, the example that came to my mind was a situation where I’d been rejected. I never even considered the times I’d rejected others, or worse, rejected God Himself. The Gospel should lead us to wonder about ourselves, about our actions, our thoughts and words, and their impact on others.

Today I find myself asking: Where has Christ already been present in my own life, and yet I’ve failed even to notice, or perhaps worse, I noticed but failed to respond? You know that our God does that. He places others, those in need, in our path, or inserts little slices of grace into our lives, begging us to recognize and respond.

And when I didn’t respond…maybe in someone I overlooked – just didn’t consider them all that important, or worthy of my time? Or perhaps it was a moment of grace I was too busy to recognize, too self-absorbed, too worried about my own problems, my own suffering, my own need for healing?

How often and why do we fail even to notice these Godly gifts? Usually we’re just too busy, so tightly wrapped up in our own human issues, that we pay little attention to others and what God is calling us to do. In the grip of suffering, and in our humanity, we turn inward, toward our suffering, hoping, somehow, for healing and relief.

And so we hear this Gospel passage, and mistakenly think it’s all about judgment. But it’s about much more than that. You see, in truth, it’s really an invitation. Jesus, in that paradoxical, counter-intuitive way of His calls us to turn outward, to look beyond ourselves, to turn to Him in faith and to others in love.

Remember the four men in Capernaum who carried the paralytic to Jesus and lowered him through the roof…You can read about it in Mark, chapter 2. How did Mark put it?

“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Child, your sins are forgiven.’” [Mk 2:5]

Throughout the entire event, he paralytic never said a word. And after healing the young man’s soul, Jesus goes on to heal his paralysis, all because of the faith of others.

And so, to those here tonight who brought someone you love for healing, believe me, God thanks and blesses you. Your faith may well lead to healing. Take a moment. Look to the person sitting in front of you, beside you, behind you – they’re all here for healing too. Have you looked to them? Have you prayed for them? After all, if the power of prayer is so great; should we not be praying for each other, and not simply for ourselves?

Remember, the faithlessness and selfishness of so many people in those three cities didn’t stop Jesus. He continued His work, in the Gospel, throughout the ages, and He continues it here today. He still shows up, doesn’t He? He’s still present in our lives, in our work, in our families, in our conversations – yes, even in our sinfulness. He’s present in all those moments of chaos and fear…and in the moments of stillness, the moments when we open our minds and hearts to Him.

God knows exactly what we need, but do we know? What kind of healing do you need? What do I need? We’re so sure we know, aren’t we?

But like the young paralytic, we likely need spiritual healing first. So, seek the Lord and His amazing grace in the sacraments. Let your soul be healed in Reconciliation, receive the gift of salvation through the Eucharist.

Or as St. Paul said, “It is Christ in you, the hope for glory.” (Col 1:27)