Saturday, February 2, 2013

4th Sunday of Ordinary Time


            You may have heard this phrase before: “Excuses are like armpits…everyone has them and they stink.”
            I always like to bug my Dad about making excuses, especially with respect to hunting and fishing.  Frequently I will get a call from Dad.  “Yeah, Ben,” he says, “it was a great day of hunting.  I was three for four with pheasants today.”  He then gives me the play-by-play of all the birds he had a chance to get.  “The first one was perfect…Molly [our dog] set it up good and I knocked it down clean.  Then Molly got way out front and the hen got up.  It was a long ways a way so I missed.  Then one flew in front of the sun and I missed.  Another got behind some trees so I shot for the heck of it.”  By the end of the conversation I’m wondering about his math as his three out of four sounds more like three out of ten!
            We hear many excuses in the Bible.  Starting in the beginning, Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent for their sin.  Abraham is too old.  Moses can’t talk.  David is an adulterer and murderer.  Jeremiah is too young.  And on and on.
What are the excuses you make with respect to your faith journey?  Are you too old?  Or too young?  Too busy?  Too many young children?
            Our second reading checks in right after Jeremiah told the Lord, “I am too young.”  Listen again how God replies: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.”
Like the experience of Jeremiah, I would argue that each of the men I mentioned had one characteristic in common.  We heard about this in the second reading: love.  We often hear this reading at weddings, but Paul is not speaking strictly to men and women getting married.  In fact, the Greek word for love—agape—Paul uses means the sacrificial love that God gives us.  Specifically, the former excuse makers experienced the reality that “Love never fails.”  Their excuses melted in God’s all powerful and enduring love.
            And look what God did with these individuals.  Abraham became the father of faith.  Moses led his people out of 400 years of slavery to the brink of the Promised Land.  David established the kingdom and was the greatest king of Israel’s history.  While these men realized their inadequacies they all tasted the love of God for them and trusted that He could do what they could not.
            Would that we had the same trust in God’s love.  Would that our own excuses would melt in God’s love and that we would know that God does not choose the qualified but qualifies whom He has chosen. 
            I mentioned a few individuals from Scripture who dramatically altered salvation history.  These were a few ordinary people.  Imagine what God could do in our parish and society if the 650 families in our parish allowed their excuses to be melted in God’s love.

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