HOMILY FOR THE 21ST
SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
On one of my days off a year or so ago, my daughter, Meg,
and my granddaughters, Alyssa and Sydney, walked into the family room with a
DVD. Meg told me that Alyssa and Sydney wanted me to watch a movie. Of course,
I agreed, thinking to myself, “here we go, another chick flick, hope it’s not
another ‘Steel Magnolias’.” The movie they wanted me to watch was “Pitch
Perfect.” It turned out to be a great movie about competing college a capella
singing groups. There is one scene in the movie, where there is a school
opening night mixer for all the competing a capella groups of the college, and,
beer, was one of the beverages being served. One of the girls, Chloe, a
redhead, goes up to Beca, the major character in the film, and says, “This
ginger needs some jiggle juice!” As Chloe was leaving to get a beer, Beca
shouts after her, “Make good choices!”
In the first reading today and in the gospel, we hear about
groups of people making choices. In the first reading, the Israelites have
reached the promised land and Joshua addresses the people and tells them it is
time for them to make a decision. Will they choose to follow the gods of their
former Egyptian slave masters, the gods of the Amorites, or the LORD, the God
of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Joshua announces that as for himself and
his family, they will serve only the LORD, for it has been the LORD that freed
them from their slave masters, and brought them safely to the land of Canaan.
In the gospel, Jesus has just given to the people his
teaching on the Eucharist. He has performed the great miracle of the feeding of
the 5000, and all these people who wanted him to be their king just a day
earlier, leave him the following day because they could not follow his teaching.
Jesus does not try to coerce them into believing. They freely choose to not
believe and they leave.
And so, it is with you and with me. Not a one of us here is
coerced into belief. We are freely given a choice by God to believe or to not
believe. We are not asked to understand the teaching about the Eucharist, the
how it can be so? The Eucharist is a mystery, and unlike mystery novels that
resolve into an understanding at the end, the Eucharist defies understanding.
Jesus just asks us to take him at his word and believe that what he says is
true.
If we choose to take Jesus at his word and believe in his
real presence in the Eucharist, the Eucharist will influence the other choices
we make on a daily basis in life. In choosing to believe Jesus, we choose to
alter how we see the world and how we act in the world. Through the grace of
the Eucharist, you and I are empowered to be people of thanksgiving, and
through this lens of thanksgiving begin to see all the events of our lives as
gift, the good events and even the events that are not all that pleasant.
Within all the unpleasant surprises of life, an inner grace lays hidden waiting
to be revealed. When confronted with tough times in my life, the power of the
Eucharist has given me the ability to ask the questions, “What am I to learn
from this?” or “In what way am I able to grow from this?” Or, as Fr Steve
Ulrick once asked me, “Where is the grace in this?” We take the grace we
receive in the Eucharist into the world, and illuminated with this grace make
choices in life that are consistent with our faith.
My dad grew in the mountains that surrounded the city of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He would tell the story of two mountain women,
spinster sisters, Bible raised and considered themselves good, God-fearing
Christians. They had one weakness. They were overly fond of chewing tobacco.
One Sunday a visiting preacher came to their little church and begun to preach
about the evils plaguing humankind. He first spoke strongly against the evils
of alcohol. One sister turned to the other, “He really is giving it good to
those drunken sinners, ain’t he.” Then, he began to preach strongly against
dancing, “My,” said the other sister, “that’s telling them, preacher! HE is a
really good preacher.” Then, the preacher began to preach about the evils of
tobacco, particularly, chewing tobacco. The one sister turned to the other and
said, “Well now he’s just meddling!” If we allow the grace of the Eucharist to
flow freely in our lives, it will begin to “meddle” in our lives affecting the
choices we will make. In the end, the Eucharist will bring us to our personal
cross roads and we will be confronted with the same choices that the people in
the gospel faced. Will we choose to follow Jesus, or not?
Beca, in the movie
“Pitch Perfect” shouts after Chloe, “Make good choices!” Joshua announces to
the Israelites, “As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” As Jesus
did to his disciples in the gospel, he asks us as well today, “Do you also want
to leave?” May we answer Jesus in the words of St. Peter, “Lord, to whom shall
we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are
convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
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