what happens next?

Homily

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time A

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

19 July 2020

Do I know what's gonna happen next?

Yet bet I do.

Nobody has greater insight into sports than me.

I feel like I always know what's gonna happen.

It's like I have a crystal ball.

Which makes it so frustrating, 

that when I bet on sports,

I usually lose.

Still I know I'm right.

I still think I can manage the Royals better than Ned Yost did.

He is the weed.

I am the wheat.

Never mind that the dummy won the World Series.  

Do I know how COVID will play out? 

Of course you can trust me.  I got this.  I've been paying attention.

A bunch more people will get the virus no matter what.

The death rate will be lower than many other evils that we have learned to live with or ignore.

Fear will win out, and the ultimate cost of the cure - quarantining healthy people - 

will be worse than the disease.

Take it from me - I know.

Except that I don't.

Today's parable forces me to say I don't know.

I need to say it more often.

For when I rush to judgment,

the parable of the weeds and the wheat shows that I do great damage.

Rash judgment is bad - and there's too much of it!  It takes the modern forms of fake news, liar's politics and the cancel culture.  

I am wrong about many things if not most.

You are too.

Why is it so hard to admit that?

Judgment is for the angels, not for us.

The parable nails it.

Still I'm called to be a prophet.

There's a word I must speak into the world,

and woe to me if I don't say it.

But it's not a word of prediction and judgment.

I don't know who's right, who's wrong

and how to predict the future.  

I stink at those things.

But I can learn history.

I can try to think deeply about the times we're in.

I can listen to somebody not like me,

That enemy whom I am sure is a weed,

but knows something I need to learn.

Most of all, I can prepare to see

the ways our sneaky and surprising God

is planting mustard seeds,

and sprinkling new leaven into the dough.

I can't predict the rapture,

but I'm sure it won't be late.

But being a prophet is less about guessing what happens next -

who's right, who's wrong,

who will win, who will lose,

Being a prophet is more about the apocalypse

of seeing the little things everyone else misses.

My my prophecy be less about prediction,

and more about preparation.

I don't know how things will end.

But do I know what happens next?

Of course I do.

This time you can believe me.

I am excited for how the kingdom of God,

is about to be born anew in you.