Is life just a potluck dinner?

Homily

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

28 August 2022

+Augustine

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Is life just a potluck dinner?

As strange as it may seem, I think Jesus' answer is yes.

In Luke's Gospel alone, there are 10 meal stories.  10!  What did Jesus do all the time?  Well, he was accused of being a glutton and drunkard.  He ate and drank with people a lot.  What is more, we know He did so with great intentionality.  Jesus asks us to notice things at dinner.

More often than not, these dinner stories that Jesus uses to describe the Kingdom of Heaven are baffling.  They go against social convention.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but at the end of today's story, Jesus tells us to host a potluck, where you're never sure what you're gonna get!

People ask me often what priests do all day.  Well, we're just like you.  We gotta eat.  How we eat, especially how we do dinner, says a lot if not everything about us.  Jesus set it up that way, in case you're not keeping up.

Yesterday, I had four meals!  The first was pathetic.  I was running behind schedule, so I did a 'sinky!'  I ate breakfast standing up over the sink, wharfing down a few calories all alone without relationship or intention.  

First lunch was with my nephew, who came into town with his girlfriend to talk about how to navigate a relationship with different faith backgrounds.  We really got into it!  The poor server - we hadn't even look at the menus in the first 45 minutes.  I apologized profusely, though this happens to me all the time.  This lunch was like most meals.  It's not ultimately what's for dinner, but who's for dinner.  Our deepest hunger is for meaningful conversation.

Let me skip ahead to dinner, which was supposed to be drinks, but ended up as a four hour dinner.  Again, I had to apologize to the server.  We were 90 minutes in before we ordered anything.  Mark me down as the worst customer ever.  Though maybe not, since at the end of the four hour conversation with a friend the server complimented us for talking so intensely for four hours without looking at our phones.  She noticed.

Let's return now to my 2nd lunch, which was truly a potluck, with college students!  Last Thursday I did an open patio at SLC and told students to BYOB.  A lot of them showed up with no beverage. Their excuse was they didn't know the acronym, or they thought the night might be a scriptures study so Bring Your Own Bible!  But I digress.

Having college students do a potluck is pretty risky. My grandma was likely rolling over in her grave, since potluck for college students likely means just an assortment of chips.  We probably could have been more organized. A-F brings salads, G-L a starch, M-R a protein and S-Z a dessert.  We didn't have all 4 food groups covered.  But you know what, it didn't matter.

Jesus instructs us to get a motley crue of vulnerable people together over a meal to share faith.  He tells us to go potluck. The only four essential food groups are the poor, the blind, the lame and the crippled.  So you have to make sure you have someone who is lost, someone who is broke, someone who is stuck, and someone who is sick.  It's not that hard.

Jesus promises to show up and to join his suffering, death and resurrection to the conversation.  He promises that all of reality and salvation will pass through this potluck party.

Turns out, life indeed is just a dinner potluck.

+mj

am I an underdog?

Homily

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

21 August 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Am I an underdog?

You better believe it!  I'm not sure Jesus could make the answer any clearer in the Gospel.  When it comes to salvation, the odds are not in my favor!

Jesus exposes the question of the bystander as one of the worst questions one could ask. Will many be saved?   Jesus doesn't engage it at all, for it's a fearful question.  If I am worried about the score, I'm not fully engaged in the game.  If I am scared of losing, I've already lost.

How could any human person possibly be assured of his own salvation?  We are talking salvation here!  This is not a magic ticket to a vacation carpet ride that that God gives out willy-nilly.  No, Jesus talks about a narrow gate.  Jesus knows to be fully alive, to grow in the likeness of God, to be holy, to have a capacity to love as God does is the most impossible thing for me.  What makes me think I could bathe others in sacrifice, prayer, tears, compassion, patience, virtue and even my own blood?

If I have any chance of salvation, it will be the greatest of upsets, for when it comes to laying hold of eternal life, I couldn't possibly be ready or worthy by my own efforts.   

When it comes to salvation, I am the biggest of underdogs, and so are you.

Remember though that the 3 latest national championships for KU were huge upsets, miraculous comebacks.  In 1988, Danny and the Miracles came out of nowhere.  In the championship game, the announcers were screaming that KU wasn't good enough to keep pace with Oklahoma.  But we did!  In 2008, we were down 9 with 90 seconds left. Enter Mario's miracle!  Then in 2022 -yeah baby - the biggest 2nd half comeback in the history of the tournament.  Natty Champs baby!

What do I have going for me?  That God desires my salvation more than I am scared of it.  What more?  That Jesus is betting it all of me, even though I am the worst of bets.  It's who He is.  It's how He does things.  He doesn't want to know any different.

An underdog has to start a hero's journey and a great story by believing that anything is possible.  There's hope for salvation in that!

am I in anguish?

Homily

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

14 August 2022

AMDG

Am I in anguish?

I'm not.  Are you?  Jesus is.

You may have noticed that I'm experiencing a little discomfort. I wish I could tell you that this cut above my left eye was for a noble purpose.  The same for the apparent stigmata on my hands.  You all know me well enough to know I'm not holy enough for a stigmata.  I'm too cowardly to sustain these scars through defending the honor of a friend or the Church.  So I must have done something stupid.  Yes I did.

After three days in Colorado discussing with our students that if we dare to truly see and experience life in all its color and fullness, we need to put down our screens, I pulled my phone out while biking down Vail pass to get footage of one of our students who was screaming down the mountain in a KU Catholic shirt right next to a gorgeous rapid.  This was a very dumb move.  I must have hit the brake with my left hand and before I knew it I went flying over the front handlebars.  At 48, I'm too old for such a spill, but luckily like I always do, even though I'm rarely a safe or careful person, I got away with it.  Just a few scratches.  I landed on my head, but the helmet did its job.

We talked to the students about consequences as well.  Do I love consequences?  Well, I deserved much worse from my careless mistake than I got.  This is the norm for me.  I usually get away, get by and get along.  I always have.  Yet I'm not better for it.  One of our students on the trip said she loved consequences cause she loved getting better.  We all looked at her like she was crazy.

Am I in anguish?  That's the question I want to pivot to now.  Well, if Jesus is, and I'm his disciple, perhaps I should also be.  Not in a joyless or skeptical way, mind you, not in a way devoid of hope or the enjoyment of life.  But yes, in anguish as a default position, to share in Jesus's passion for a baptism of fire, to long to accomplish the great purpose of my life.

To be in anguish is not to be negative, but is to not hide or dampen my deepest desires.  It is to grow weary of tinkering with my life, and to have a great impatience not for the things of God, but for my petty excuses and procrastinations.  As St. Paul says, to be in anguish is to want to accomplish the holy purpose of my life to the point of shedding my blood.

As Jesus makes clear, to be in anguish is the opposite of getting away, getting by or getting along.  It's to be unsatisfied with anything less than the consequences that will lead the the conversion and purification of my soul, that I might have a heart of fire capable of great love.

To be in anguish means that nothing has to go my way today to have a great day, for the fiery baptism of Jesus is disgusted with micro-managed projects of self-improvement, but hungers for so much more, the fulfillment of all desire!  To be in anguish is to welcome the adversity that will purify the spiritual gifts of faith and courage!

Am I in anguish?  Ask yourself this pivotal question!

am I an alien?

Homily

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time C2

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

7 August 2022

AMDG

Am I an alien?

Well, I voted yes on the amendment Tuesday, which makes me quite athwart of almost all my neighbors.  My beloved Douglas County was #1 in the state in voting against Value them Both.  So I am an outlier, a stranger, an alien in my own community.

So be it.  In case you haven't noticed, things are changing fast.  Which makes these times great times for faith!  Questions that were perhaps once settled are up for grabs again.  When does life begin?  What is a human person?  What does it mean to be free?  What is man and woman?  What is marriage?  What is a human right, and does it entail responsibility.  I could go on.

One thing is for sure.  The Catholic Church and her great tradition of reason and faith is not in the driver's seat when it comes to defining what is true, good and meaningful.  To be Catholic in Lawrence for sure is to be an alien.

Abraham our father in faith was well attested as an alien.  Which means I have a chance right here, right now, to have a faith like his.  I may not recognize where I am or how I got here, nor where I am going or what difference it makes.  Yet before me is a chance to live a faith that goes beyond my doubts and fears, beyond what I can manage or figure out.  By faith I can keep going.  By faith I can refuse to hide or escape or settle, but can move forward into a wonderful future of exploring new and fuller dimension of life. 

Faith explores reality more deeply!  When speaking of faith, I never mean a naive, cowardly or reckless faith, one that is afraid to engage these times and tries to escape to a galaxy far, far away.  No, it's a faith that hates instead what I have settled for, and refuses a life that is nothing more than managing what I can control or figure out. It's a faith that is unafraid to desire more that what I can worry about! 

Best of all, faith is not something I have to pretend to manufacture.  No, it's a real gift I have already received.  Faith is a response to the revelation that God has bet it all on me.  Through the patience and compassion revealed in Jesus, God begs me not to be afraid to trust in the love that hope and believes and conquers all things.  By faith in me, God dares me to go on a hero's journey into the heart of reality and the true meaning of life.

For the kingdom of heaven is not built through a ballot box.  I can assure you that God is not discouraged by what happened Tuesday.  God is bigger than that.  His kingdom is built by prayer and martyrdom.  Which is to say it's built by faith.  His kingdom of more is built by you, who by faith are ready to give your life before it can be taken, and to die for what you believe in, before death can choose you.

All of this is to say.  It's a great week to be an alien.