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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