November 13, 2014
The following is a homily based on the Scripture readings for Sunday, Nov. 16.
I had a professor in grad school who said something that has seemed all the more true as I’ve gotten older. “Reality is so deep,” he said, “that whatever kind of question you ask of it, you will get a response.” So ask a scientific question, or a philosophical question, or look at things poetically, or engage in mathematics, or look for social patterns … or ask a religious question … these are all ways of approaching the depth of reality, even though they may appear contradictory.
Which makes me wonder if sometimes we can ask questions that blunt or distort reality rather than opening it up. If our biases, or our greed or our fear can shape the way we see things – and misshape the answer we get back.
The parable we have as we approach the end of the liturgical cycle shows clear differences. The master gives three different sums for his servants to invest, “each according to his ability,” as the Gospel says. Makes no difference how much you think you have, in God’s eyes we always have enough. Two of the servants please the master. But the third one is clearly a loser. What went wrong?
Look at how the third servant sees his master. “I knew you were hard, sowing where you did not reap.” He sees the master as a harsh and demanding boss. That’s why he’s afraid. His fear leads him to see the master in a certain way, and his reading of the master leads him to fear. The question is: Did he misread the master? Did his fear distort things? Did his fear cause him to miss the whole point?
Clearly it did because the whole parable is about the generosity of the master, and therefore about the abundance of gifts that God gives each one of us. And it’s about the way generosity multiplies itself, five getting five and becoming ten, two getting two and becoming four, and one should have gotten one to become two. Our fear of God, which some people preach as the way to make people religious, actually diminishes what God would do, rather than increase and deepen what God would do.
Paul talks about fearsome things in the second reading. Like many today, Christians in ancient times saw the end of the world as something fearful. But note Paul’s particular message: Christians are the ones not to be afraid of what happens in the night; we already live in the day. Christ has become our day. Christ has shown us what God is like, his mercy, his peace, his life, his love. Once we know God, then God multiplies the abundance of our lives by joining them with divine life.
The Scriptures suggest, too, that various ways of life help us see God, in particular marriage. The passages from Proverbs on the faithful wife suggest the ways in which we support each other by the simple goodness and generosity of our lives. Beyond the “charm” and “beauty” which offer only superficial readings of human life – as we see so clearly from Hollywood—the faithful presence of another helps ground our lives, and helps us see how God is bound up in our daily lives. Surely husbands and wives help each other see God, and see God’s love; this enriched seeing only multiplies the experience of love and life.
What blocks us from seeing God, especially the God of Jesus? Who helps us see God better? Do I let my spouse enrich what I see of God? Do I, by my way of life, enrich the vision of others? Do I turn the gifts I have into multipliers of God’s Kingdom? Or do I let my narrow fears actually diminish God’s action in my life, and in my world?
All of us have all the gifts we need. Engaging in God’s love makes our gifts grow, in our own hearts and in our relationships with others, far more than Wall Street makes money grow. At Mass today we once again receive the gift of his Body and Blood. How can we feel poor and fearful when we see how God has answered the deepest longings of our hearts in Jesus?