Homily
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
12/13 October 2013
Christ the King Topeka
Daily Readings
Life kicks all of us around, sooner or later, one way or another. Even the best looking and the richest among us have thorns in our side. Every human person is in constant need of healing. It is part of the human condition. We all get beat up, we all get sick, we all find ourselves in danger. Then there is the hurt from relationships. We've all been been judged, used, misunderstood and hurt deeply by others. And we are not just the victims of all these things. We are sinners who do these things to others.
The result is that the need for healing is universal, experienced by every human person, no matter what. Being a joyful and fulfilled person means that all of this brokenness that makes up a human life must be healed. We need healing yesterday. We need healing today. We will need healing tomorrow. Healing is a process that is never complete. So it should be the easiest thing in the world for us to relate to the plight of Naaman and the 10 lepers in need of healing in today's scriptures. We should see ourselves in them readily. Yet do we?
Rather than seeking the healing we really need, we can spend more time trying to mask the brokenness that we experience as persons, and trying to anesthesize the human condition. If that is what we are doing, then we won't see ourselves in the lepers, and the dramatic healings that we hear in the Gospels will not cut us to the quick, nor move our hearts. If we are interested more in masking our brokenness than in healing it, then the Gospel stories will not be personal for us; to the contrary, they will seem like a broken record. Heard that before. There's nothing new.
We can find ourselves in an I'm ok, you're ok, we're ok culture where the pain and loneliness and brokenness, and the reality of the human condition, is not confronted, but anesthesized, where everyone is just a pill away from being cured and being happy. In this culture, people are responsible for healing themselves, not seeking healing through relationships with others. The pill becomes more important than the person when we seek healing. A further result is that we not only become numb to our own need for deep inner healing, but what is more, we become annoyed when others ask for healing from us that we are unready or unwilling to give them.
It takes a lot of work to admit that I need the kind of healing everyday that I can't get from a pill, a healing that comes from the mercy and grace of God. It's easier to pretend that we're ok, or to rely on pills, that to put ourselves in the position of the lepers, who were completely dependent upon the mercy of Jesus, and on his power to heal them. Out of fear and laziness we can settle for a false healing, a healing only from the outside in, rather than having the courage to ask someone to heal us from the inside out. Yet the truth of the human condition is that unless we are healed by relationship, not by a pill, then we are not fully healed.
We see in the Gospel then how rare is the person who gets that ultimate human healing comes from relationship. For the one leper, and only one, the person was more important than the pill. The other nine got their miracle and headed on their merry way. The one leper realized that his relationship with Jesus was more important than the outer cure, and he returned to personally give thanks.
The Greek word Eucharist means thanksgiving. The Eucharist, our giving thanks to God, is the source and summit of our Christian life. We come here most of all to count our blessings, to praise God and to thank him for the imcomparable gift that is our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we receive intimately and perfectly in the Holy Eucharist. We give thanks not just because we have come to make sure we're ok, and certainly not to grab the medicine of eternal life like we take a pill in the morning. No, we come to personally and deeply thank Jesus, who is offering us above all not a pill, but his very self. He offers to us the deepest, and most personal and most powerful relationship of our lives, an encounter with one who alone can bring us the healing that is definitive and forever, a healing from the inside out, a healing that sets us free and makes all things new, a healing that is stronger than the power of sin and death, a healing that takes place at our weakest and most vulnerable and most sinful point, where we could never heal or change ourselves. This incomparable relationship with have with Christ, a relationship that we are afraid is too good to be true, is the reason we come here to celebrate the Eucharist, and to give thanks. Our readiness to return to give thanks to God shows how deeply we have been healed by him. Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed. Amen.
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
12/13 October 2013
Christ the King Topeka
Daily Readings
Life kicks all of us around, sooner or later, one way or another. Even the best looking and the richest among us have thorns in our side. Every human person is in constant need of healing. It is part of the human condition. We all get beat up, we all get sick, we all find ourselves in danger. Then there is the hurt from relationships. We've all been been judged, used, misunderstood and hurt deeply by others. And we are not just the victims of all these things. We are sinners who do these things to others.
The result is that the need for healing is universal, experienced by every human person, no matter what. Being a joyful and fulfilled person means that all of this brokenness that makes up a human life must be healed. We need healing yesterday. We need healing today. We will need healing tomorrow. Healing is a process that is never complete. So it should be the easiest thing in the world for us to relate to the plight of Naaman and the 10 lepers in need of healing in today's scriptures. We should see ourselves in them readily. Yet do we?
Rather than seeking the healing we really need, we can spend more time trying to mask the brokenness that we experience as persons, and trying to anesthesize the human condition. If that is what we are doing, then we won't see ourselves in the lepers, and the dramatic healings that we hear in the Gospels will not cut us to the quick, nor move our hearts. If we are interested more in masking our brokenness than in healing it, then the Gospel stories will not be personal for us; to the contrary, they will seem like a broken record. Heard that before. There's nothing new.
We can find ourselves in an I'm ok, you're ok, we're ok culture where the pain and loneliness and brokenness, and the reality of the human condition, is not confronted, but anesthesized, where everyone is just a pill away from being cured and being happy. In this culture, people are responsible for healing themselves, not seeking healing through relationships with others. The pill becomes more important than the person when we seek healing. A further result is that we not only become numb to our own need for deep inner healing, but what is more, we become annoyed when others ask for healing from us that we are unready or unwilling to give them.
It takes a lot of work to admit that I need the kind of healing everyday that I can't get from a pill, a healing that comes from the mercy and grace of God. It's easier to pretend that we're ok, or to rely on pills, that to put ourselves in the position of the lepers, who were completely dependent upon the mercy of Jesus, and on his power to heal them. Out of fear and laziness we can settle for a false healing, a healing only from the outside in, rather than having the courage to ask someone to heal us from the inside out. Yet the truth of the human condition is that unless we are healed by relationship, not by a pill, then we are not fully healed.
We see in the Gospel then how rare is the person who gets that ultimate human healing comes from relationship. For the one leper, and only one, the person was more important than the pill. The other nine got their miracle and headed on their merry way. The one leper realized that his relationship with Jesus was more important than the outer cure, and he returned to personally give thanks.
The Greek word Eucharist means thanksgiving. The Eucharist, our giving thanks to God, is the source and summit of our Christian life. We come here most of all to count our blessings, to praise God and to thank him for the imcomparable gift that is our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we receive intimately and perfectly in the Holy Eucharist. We give thanks not just because we have come to make sure we're ok, and certainly not to grab the medicine of eternal life like we take a pill in the morning. No, we come to personally and deeply thank Jesus, who is offering us above all not a pill, but his very self. He offers to us the deepest, and most personal and most powerful relationship of our lives, an encounter with one who alone can bring us the healing that is definitive and forever, a healing from the inside out, a healing that sets us free and makes all things new, a healing that is stronger than the power of sin and death, a healing that takes place at our weakest and most vulnerable and most sinful point, where we could never heal or change ourselves. This incomparable relationship with have with Christ, a relationship that we are afraid is too good to be true, is the reason we come here to celebrate the Eucharist, and to give thanks. Our readiness to return to give thanks to God shows how deeply we have been healed by him. Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed. Amen.
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