5th Sunday of Lent, Year C (2004)
24/03/07 22:18
Lent 5-C 2004Look on the TV. What do you see? Right, clips from the evening news.
Is the news usually good or bad? Right. Bad. But today, on this fifth Sunday of Lent, we gather together here in this church NOT to hear bad news, but to hear GOOD NEWS. So fasten your seatbelts and get ready for some Good News from the Lord today.
On your sheet, it says, “Advice for Experiencing Something New in Your Life.” God wants to do something new in our lives. Something better. Something good. Something truly stupendous and marvelous. But first, we need to get rid of some of the old.
In our gospel today, there is a lot of old baggage – what I would call bad news, just like there is a lot of bad news in our world and on the evening news. It would be easy today to talk about some of the different bad news themes in our gospel and that still affect us today. For example:
• We could talk about adultery, sexual unfaithfulness. It’s a big problem in our gospel today. And it’s a big problem in our world today.
• We could talk about capital punishment. In our gospel, the Jewish leaders want to stone this woman to death for having committed adultery. In our society today, there are many people on death row. Is capital punishment allowed? In recent years, our church and its leaders, including the Pope, have spoken out against capital punishment, saying that there is no real need for it in modern society because life imprisonment is sufficient. The church leaders say that the only motive for capital punishment today is revenge – and for Christians, revenge can never be a justifiable motive.
• We could talk about discrimination, especially against women. Where is the man in this story? After all, it takes two to commit adultery. Where is the man? Is there a double standard here? Is there still a double standard in our world today?
Finally, our gospel today talks about forgiveness and second chances – and so, finally, we arrive at some good news. And that, I believe, is really what our gospel is all about today.
Let me illustrate with a $20 bill. Anyone here like to have this crisp, new $20 bill? Of course your would! Now let we crumple it up in my hand, so that it is no longer crisp and new. Now, does anyone still want this $20 bill? Now let me stomp on it and spit on it. Anyone still want it? It’s now ugly and not at all new looking, so why do you still want it? Because it still is valuable and can be used to buy things?
Think about our lives as that $20 bill. We’ve all had our ups and downs, made our mistakes, been crumpled up by the trials of life. We may look a bit like that beaten down $20 bill. But we are still valuable, especially in the sight of God, who loves us, no matter what. And that’s the good news of this gospel of forgiveness and of second chances.
Look on your handout. In our first reading, Isaiah tells us not to think on things of the past, but to focus on the future, because God wants to do something new in our lives. What is that something new that you want God to do in your life? Think about that for a moment – and offer it up to God.
Second, Isaiah tells us that we are to proclaimers of God’s good news. We’re not to keep it to ourselves or to horde it. We are to share. What is the proclamation of my life? Is my life speaking in crystal clear tones the good news of Jesus? Or is my life a contradiction and a scandal?
In the book of Revelation, Jesus tells us that he does not want lukewarm Christians. He tells us that he would rather that we be cold spiritually than lukewarm. But of course, the best is if we are red hot for God. If we are just lukewarm, he says he will spit us out, vomit us out from his mouth. Those are strong words.
I heard a funny story last week of a woman who got caught in traffic behind this slow poke driver. When the traffic light turned green, he just sat there, unmoving. She was behind him, angry as could be. But the light turned red and he still had not moved. So she started screaming and yelling, and honking her horn. You can imagine the ruckus. Eventually, a policeman came and stopped her. She was fuming mad by now and said to the officer, “I’m not the guilty party! It’s that moron in front of me who won’t drive or move his car!” The policeman then explained, “You’re bumper sticker says, ‘I love Jesus,’ so I figured that by the way you were behaving, you must’ve stolen this car from its real Christian owner, because now Christian would act like you are acting.” We get into ruts, all of us, don’t we?
So how can we become red-hot spiritually so that we can experience the newness of life that God wants to give to us? On your sheet are three action steps:
1. We should focus on the future, not the past. Leave the past behind. We can’t change it anyway. It is so sad when people get stuck in the rut of the past – unable to overcome a past hurt or to forgive someone who has offended them, or to bury an anger or a bitterness. They are enslaved in the past. (Read Isaiah 43:18-19; Philippians 3:12-14; and John 8:11 – all focusing on the future, not the past)
2. Second, we should trust in the promises and the help of God. Isaiah says God will open up a river in the dry desert.
3. Third, we must learn to imitate Jesus and forgive others, just as God has forgiven us. Notice on your handout the artist rendition of the woman caught in adultery (by Russian artist Lucas Cranach the Younger), and how Jesus is affectionately and gently holding the hand of the woman caught in adultery.
Forgiveness is not always easy. But that is the good news from the gospel – just as a pencil eraser wipes away and erases our mistakes, Jesus wipes away our past mistakes with his love and forgiveness.
I remember a story of a nun who went to the bishop and said she had experienced a vision from Jesus. The sly bishop told the nun, “Go back, and if Jesus appears to you again, ask him, ‘What is the greatest sin that the bishop ever committed?’ Only I know the answer to that question, unless Jesus really reveals it to you.” A few days later, the nun reappeared and again told the bishop that she had experienced a vision of Jesus. The bishop asked, “Did you do as I said and ask Jesus about my greatest sin?” “O yes,” replied the nun. The bishop then asked, “What did Jesus tell you?” and the nun gently replied, “He told me that he doesn’t remember anymore.”
On your sheet are some important points about forgiveness:
First, God’s forgiveness is instant, it is free and it is without limit.
Second, we are called to imitate God because (1) God has forgiven us; (2) when we refuse to forgive, our lives will be miserable; and (3) I will need God’s forgiveness in the future, so I should be merciful now so that God will be merciful to me in the future when I need his mercy.
Third, real true forgiveness is a decision, not a feeling or an emotion. Forgiveness does not depend on the other person nor on how they respond, or even if they respond. And real forgiveness does not mean that we have to return to an abusive or unhealthy situation or that we have to be a doormat for someone else’s bad behavior.
Now that we know what forgiveness is, and what it isn’t – on your sheets is a blank space, and I want you to fill it out, at least in your mind, if not physically: Who do I need to forgive?
Finally on your sheet are a few simple action steps to help us experience God’s newness in our lives:
1. Decide to follow Jesus Christ, not the false path of this world.
2. Confess.
3. Commit your life to Jesus Christ.
4. Expect God to help you.
5. Follow Jesus, not the crowd.
6. Get involved actively in spiritual things – this will help strengthen you so that you do not fall prey to the temptations of the world again.
7. Leave the old life behind,
Final question on your sheet: What must you leave behind? What must you do to experience God’s newness in your life?
At the bottom of your handout is a drawing. Some people are trapped in a deep hole of their past hurts and pains. Others are lukewarm, on the plain, not doing anything terribly bad in their lives, but also, not doing anything profoundly good. And finally, some people are climbing the mountain and seeking after something new.
Which part of that drawing is you? If we want to experience God’s newness of life, we need to move beyond getting stuck in the hole of the past, and we need to move beyond contentment with mediocrity and being lukewarm spiritually.
God wants to help us climb the mountain so that we can experience the heights of his great love for his, and his great plan for our lives.
4th Sunday of Lent, Year C (2007)
18/03/07 13:40
Homily – 4th Sunday of Lent, Year C (March 18, 2007)
Lost and Found
An 85-year-old man was sitting on a park bench, weeping uncontrollably. A passerby offered some help: “I don’t mean to intrude, but is there anything I can do for you? Why are you crying? Are you having problems at home?” Between sobs, the man replied, “No, everything is fine at home. I have a big house, two cars, a swimming pool, a wonderful wife who is a bit younger than me, beautiful, a fabulous cook, and treats me like a king.” “Then, what’s the problem?” asked the passerby. The older man replied, “I can’t remember where I live!”
That gentleman is not the only one who was lost. All of us get lost from time to time, spiritually if not physically. And that’s what our gospel today is all about: Lost and found.
Anyone here ever gotten lost? Maybe when you were little – at the mall, or when you wandered away from your parents at the fair or at the park? Or maybe you lost something important – your car keys, your cell phone, your purse or wallet. Anyone here ever lost a child? Remember that movie, “Home Alone”? I once lost my car at the parking lot of the mall, and had to ask security to drive me around, trying to find it. I thought it had been stolen. Really, what had happened was that I had parked the car at sunset, but before it got dark, and when I went out to find the car, the fluorescent lights in the parking lot had come on and made the car look like a different color under the lights. Did I ever feel stupid!
Let’s read what Saint Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23, NIV) Spiritually, all of us are lost, in one way or another, whether we admit it or not. In fact, if we say that we are not lost, that’s just proof that we are lost – so lost, in fact, that we don’t even realize that we are lost!
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest and famous Catholic spiritual writer, spent many years working among handicapped people in Canada in a house for the disabled, called the L’Arche Community, and he once said: “We are all handicapped. Some are more visibly handicapped than others.” I believe Nouwen hit the nail right smack on the head – all of us are essentially in the same boat, but some of us just show it more!
We can be lost individually – wandering far from God, lost in the world of addictions or materialism or hedonistic pleasure. And, maybe less noticeably, but perhaps more profoundly, we can become lost and adrift as a nation, as a culture, as a society. Some would say today that we, as a nation, are in danger of losing our moral compass, falling into a false mentality that “ends justify the means,” losing all respect for the sacredness of life through war and violence, abortion and assisted suicide, our embrace of the death penalty and the use of torture – all signs of a society in moral decline, lost and in danger of losing its soul.
But today, our gospel focuses our attention NOT on our “lost-ness,” but on being found.
There’s a new movie out, “Amazing Grace.” You have probably heard the song: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” It was written in 1779 by a guy named John Newton, who was a slave trader. He literally traveled to Africa where he kidnapped people, forced them onto boats and transported them as slaves to the New World. Most died before they ever reached America. And then, one day, Mr. Newton met Jesus Christ, and the change in him was profound. At first, he felt completely like nothing more than a dirty rag, his life a moral swamp and wasteland. But then, he discovered God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness – and he was cleansed, healed, renewed. The movie is mostly about how one of his disciples, a politician in England named William Wilburforce, fought valiantly in the English Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.
Lost and, then, found. Jesus tells us a story, a parable. It is meant to help us find our way back home when we become lost. It is the story of the prodigal son. The problem with the story is that we have heard it so much, it tends to go stale, in one ear and out the other. The challenge is to hear it afresh, as if for the very first time.
It is a story of comparison and contrast. First, the context: Jesus is in a dispute with the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day. Let’s read the beginning of the story together: “Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such despicable people – even eating with them!” (Luke 15:1-2, NLT)
Now, compare and contrast. The Pharisees think Jesus is the bad guy, cavorting with sinners and the unseemly. They are the good guys, the righteous ones, the holy and spiritual folk. But who, really, is doing God’s will? You see, from the get go, this gospel invites us to look at ourselves and ask: Who are we more like? Jesus or the Pharisees? There are people in churches today who think the church should be a temple for saints, not a hospital for sinners. But our gospel tells us, “All have sinned,” and all of us need a rescuer, a savior who will reach out to find us when we are lost.
The second comparison and contrast: The younger son and the older son. Most of us can relate to the younger son – the one who was rebellious, took all his dad’s money and squandered it. Anyone here a parent of a teenager? You know that most teens (not all!) tend to be a bit rebellious when it comes to their parents. They are like the younger son, the prodigal son, in our gospel story today.
Just for laughs, here is one of the Zit’s cartoons from last week. Jeremy here is the prodigal son. Can you relate? Or watch this short clip from a movie called “The Egg-Plant Lady,” about a prodigal daughter. Does this ring home with anyone? And teens, don’t despair – your parents were just like this when they were your age!
But the younger son grows up and discovers something important. Read with me the reflection on the screen: “Money can buy you a bed, but it can’t buy you sleep. It can buy you books but not brains. It can buy you food but not an appetite. It can buy a house but not a home. It can buy medicine but not health. It can buy all kinds of amusements, but it can’t buy happiness. Money can buy a fine dog, but only love will make the dog wag its tail.” The younger son learned this lesson and came home, repentant and ready to change.
The older son is the one who fascinates me. A story is told of a child at catechism class, learning for the first time about this story of the Prodigal Son. The teacher asks the children, “Who was really sad when his younger brother returned home?” One little child raised her hand and shouted, “The fatted calf!” True! But so, also, the older brother – filled with jealousy and resentment toward his brother. He even tells the dad – “This son of yours!” – not, “My brother” – “has squandered all your wealth, and now, you give him a party, you kill the fatted calf for him, but nothing for me!”
He is like the Pharisees. He goes through the motions, does everything his father asks, is faithful and responsible – but inside, he seethes with resentment against his younger brother. He is motivated by duty, not love. He does all the right things, but for all the wrong reasons. His heart is small and cold – not like the large heart of love of his father.
Mother Teresa says, “If we judge people, we have no time to love them.”
The church is filled with people like that. My first parish was in an inner city neighborhood. Years before, it had been populated by Polish and Hungarian immigrants, but now, the neighborhood was mostly black and Hispanic. Across the street from the church lived a little old lady, Polish or Hungarian. She prayed the rosary and went to Mass every day, and was convinced she was the holiest woman in the world. But she hated the blacks and Hispanics who were moving into her neighborhood. And she was always quick to judge and point fingers at everyone, including the priests. No one was beyond her scorn or her ability to judge and criticize. One time, I visited in her house and she had a giant picture of John F. Kennedy on her wall. JFK was her hero – for he was, after all, the first Catholic president of the U.S. But then she said to me, “I can’t stand that Martin Luther King fellow. He’s just a big trouble maker. And he was unfaithful to his wife!” I pointed out that Kennedy also had been unfaithful to his wife, and she said, very self-righteously and indignantly, “But that’s different! He was Catholic!” How easily we can become like the older brother – bitter, resentful, judgmental, doing our duty and going through the motions, but without love.
I read last week of a devout Catholic who complained to her pastor: “There is one thing I don’t like about the gospels – it’s those 11th hour people who get into heaven at the last second, but don’t follow God until the very end.” It seems so unfair, doesn’t it? And that’s how the older brother felt – he had done everything right, and his younger brother had done everything wrong, but at the end, at the 11th hour, the younger son gets the big party. Jesus invites us to overlook this seeming sense of unfairness, and simply rejoice at the gratuitous goodness of God.
Our third and final comparison is between the exploiters and the loving Father. We often overlook the exploiters, but they are the ones who took advantage of the younger son when he was down and out, just to back a quick buck. They didn’t really care about him or try to help him. And our world is filled with people who exploit others. They may go to church on Sunday, but from Monday through Friday, they take advantage of others and don’t put their faith into action. Maybe that’s why there are so many problems and conflicts in the world: blacks against whites, Jews versus Arabs, Sunnis versus Shiites, Catholics versus Protestants, immigrants versus non-immigrants – and the list goes on and on! Oscar Wilde once said: “Always forgive your enemies – it will drive them crazy!” Right answer, but wrong motive!
Compare and contrast this with the Father, the one who loves unconditionally and forgives and welcomes back. This is not necessarily a good way for parents to raise their kids! How many parents would give their teenage son the keys to the car, all the money in the family bank account, and say, “Go, run off to Vegas, spend all the money at the casinos and on wild parties, live it up!” Sounds sort of irresponsible, doesn’t it? I heard a story of a deacon who was telling the story of the Prodigal Son, and as he was acting out the story, he raised his arms wide, pretending to be the father, and he said, “The younger son returned, and the Father started to speak and said in a loud voice…” – but at that moment, the deacon’s son, sitting next to him, blurted out spontaneously, “You’re grounded!” That’s how we would react. But the story is not about human parenting – it’s about God, who loves us with no strings attached.
Alternative: Dear Abby letter: “My 19-year-old son got into trouble with the law, drinking and stealing. He’s in jail, and it serves him right. Every day he calls up his daddy and puts in his order. It’s always two cartoons of cigarettes a week. Yesterday he asked for Tang breakfast drink, a big bag of chocolate chip cookies, a quart of milk, two Big Macs and a large order of fries. His daddy takes him whatever he asks for, and I keep fighting him about it. I say he put himself in jail, let him live on what they feed him there. Am I wrong to feel the way I do, Abby? Please send me your advice. – Fed-up mamma.
So now, let’s apply this story to our own lives. This is “the rest of the story,” so to speak, quoting Paul Harvey – Finding the way home, part 2. And here, we are invited to see ourselves as God sees us, and to see others as God sees them.
Activity with $20 bill: Anyone like to have this $20 bill? What if I crumple it, spit on it, stomp on it with my foot? It’s still valuable, right? Same with us. Even when we fall away from God through sin, God still sees us as valuable.
Optional alternative: Anyone know how much a person is worth, chemically? Your body has enough iron for one nail, enough sugar for a small bowl of sugar, enough phosphorous for about 2,200 matches, enough fat for maybe seven bars of soap – altogether, worth about $3.50. Not much, right! But your body also produces exotic chemicals that cannot easily be produced in a lab, that are valued at more than $6 million! God sees our real value!
Let’s read together these three parts of today’s second reading, from Paul’s 2nd Letter to the Corinthians:
• “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” God is making us new!
• “And all this is from God.” Amazing grace. Not through our own efforts. We don’t save ourselves. God saves us and finds us when we are lost.
• “So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us.” (1 Corinthians 5:17-20, NAB) Sometimes we read this passage as a call to live lives that reflect Jesus Christ to others, and of course, we should do that. But as I read this, I thought: Governments don’t just pick anyone to be their ambassadors. They pick people whom they trust will represent them wisely and faithfully. And that’s how God things of us! We are so highly esteemed by the Lord that he has made us his representatives, his ambassadors, his elite foreign service.
It’s not about doing – not about how many Masses we attend, how many prayers we recite, how many duties we complete in the service of the Lord. In the final analysis, it’s about being – letting God change us at the heart level, letting God find us and rescue us from being lost. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”
One quick aside: This is a true story, just told to me yesterday. One of our families is going through a tragedy here in the parish and needs our prayers. Maybe you heard about the fatal car accident on Highway 86, three people killed by a drunk driver on Thursday night. One of those killed was a mother from our parish, with four kids. She was on her way home from work when the drunk driver hit her car. Her youngest son is in the RCIA program and will get baptized in a few weeks at Easter. Her sister was married here yesterday, and it was a wedding mixed with joy and sadness. I was talking with the family yesterday, and one of them told me that another son had been killed in a car accident maybe 10 years ago. And he told me this story. He was getting ready to visit the family, and this was before the car accident, and he felt prompted in his spirit to take with him a Bible. He didn’t know why he felt that prompting, but he put the Bible in his car anyway. After visiting the family, and as he was about to leave, the young man who later would be killed in the car accident asked him if he knew anything about the Bible. He said yes, pulled out the Bible and the two of them started to read it together. The young man started crying and explained: “Yesterday, I prayed for God to show me if he was real. I asked God to send someone the next day to me who could read and explain the Bible. And then you came, and I knew that God was real.” A few weeks later, the young man was killed in a car accident – but we can celebrate that he gave his life to Jesus and is with the Lord! And all because one person listened to the promptings of the spirit, took his Bible with him, and was willing to serve as an ambassador for the Lord.
Let’s finish, with two quick stories. The first happened to me when I worked in Phoenix. A young man came to me and confessed that he had messed up his life through drugs and gangs. He had fallen into a deep depression and attempted suicide. He shot himself in the bathroom of his parent’s house, but his dad heard the gunshots and he was not killed. This young man told me, “My dad came into the bathroom, so me bleeding from the gunshot wound, and do you know what he did? He kicked me and said, ‘You’re a disgrace to this family!’ ”
Second story. Similar situation. Young man ran away from home, got involved in drugs, gangs, life on the streets. After a while, he wrote home, begging forgiveness. He didn’t know if his family would accept him back. He had burned all his bridges. In his letter, he wrote to his parents: “If you will accept me back, tie a yellow ribbon on the tree in the front of the house, and I’ll pass by, and if I see the ribbon, I know you will take me back. And if there is no ribbon, I will understand – I know I’ve messed up – and I will just keep on going and won’t bother you anymore.” He drove by his house. Do you know what he found? No yellow ribbon – rather, hundreds of yellow ribbons, tied to all the trees in the font yard of his parent’s house.
That’s the comparison, that’s the contrast. Are we like the loving Father or the exploiters? Are we like Jesus or the Pharisees? Are we repentant like the younger son, or still stuck with anger and resentment like the older son?
As you listen to this closing song, close your eyes, mediate, and think as you go home today: How can you show love to someone else, like the father in the story showed love to his two sons? Hug your kids. Kids, hug your parents. Spouses, love and treasure one another. We’ve all been lost, but now we’ve been found!
[Play “Amazing Love” by the Newsboys]