18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Saying Yes to an Intimate God

I start my homily with a personal witness. My wife Lois and I grew up in the same neighborhood, an industrial suburb of Milwaukee called West Allis. She was the girl across the alley. And from the time she was about six, she had a rather definite interest in your humble deacon. She used to go to the same Mass in the same Catholic Church that I did so she could steal stealthy looks at me in my altar server outfit. But as a young boy more interested in popping wheelies on my bicycle and trading baseball cards, I must confess I did not have a lot of interest in her.

When Lois was 12, her family departed for the town of Cedarburg, about 30 miles away from our neighborhood. I kind of lost track of her for several years. Then, seven years later, we saw each other again, this time at a wedding of one of the other kids in our neighborhood. She revealed to me recently that she only went to that wedding to see if I might now be interested in her. And it is a good thing. For to me she looked a lot more interesting when she was 19 than when she was 12. We dated for a while. But I was still not ready to make a commitment.

Then she decided to change jobs so she could be very close to me again. Now when it comes to romance, men, as women will tell you, can be a little dense. I went off to Washington, DC to take a job in the U.S. Congress. But I did not take her with me. Not to be denied, Lois took two weeks vacation shortly after I left and followed me to Washington, DC. It finally dawned on me what a good deal I was being offered. Her persistent and deeply abiding love led me to ask her to marry her. Now, just a few months short of 30 years later, it was the best decision of my life.

Now this might sound like an interesting story, but what does it have to do with all of you? Well, let me suggest that the readings for our Mass this weekend show that we really are born in the image and likeness of God. For the readings show God in a way that reminds me a little of my loving wife.

The readings provide rather clear examples of the generosity and love of God, even in the face of rather clueless human beings who often can’t accept what a good thing they are getting. In our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, the Lord God of Israel summons God’s people back from exile in Babylon. It is an offer filled with generosity; that God will answer all the needs of the people of Israel. God renews the covenant of love that has existed since the time of Abraham. All that is required of the Israelites is to say yes to God and live in a certain way. As we know, they often did not.

In our second reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Paul reminds us that no matter how much suffering or misfortune that will befall us in life, no matter how desperate our lives may have become, we are never separated from God. God loves us always. God never leaves us alone and in fact creates us to conquer sin and death.  No matter what happens to us, nothing can separate us from the love of God, who will deliver us from evil.

But do we want to be delivered from evil? Or do we like a little evil to go with the good? Do we really want to say yes to God?

Finally, we have in our Gospel according to Matthew the reality that God not only meets our spiritual needs but our physical needs as well. The miracle of the loaves and fishes reminds us that everything we have comes from God, a God who is generous who enables us to live life abundantly.

Given the kind of God we as Christians believe we have, and we say we want, it seems a little odd that like my wife’s love for me we are sometimes quite reluctant to accept and respond to God’s love for us. We really are not sure we want to say yes to God. Despite all that God has given us, God’s call to give back, to love God as God loves us and to love our neighbor as Jesus loved all humanity often goes unanswered. We are all too happy to pocket the benefits of a loving God, but when it comes to giving rather than receiving we can fall short. Better to treat God like a sort of delicious baking ingredient; throw in a little dash when we need it, but otherwise leave it on the shelf. Let me say that sometimes we even treat the people we love this way.

God asks us to do our best as a response for all that God has done for us. We cannot be genuine Christians otherwise. For if we want the intimacy of an all-loving, all merciful, all generous God, then we must return that intimacy to God and others. This is why Jesus instituted a Church to which all could be invited to live life in a certain way and spread that way across the world.  Jesus’ Church is inclusive. Its message is that God’s love is invincible to the end and that God would give us all that we need. When human beings show that kind of trust in God, wonderful things happen.

That is not the same thing as saying God gives us everything we want. Our greatest joys in life come from doing for others not for ourselves. It is a lesson that for all of us is hard to learn, but is nonetheless true. It is the joy of giving in order to receive, that in giving we will receive, perhaps not in the same way, perhaps not even in this life, but ultimately through everlasting union with God.

When we read the miracle of the loaves and fishes, as we did today, we are always struck by God’s generosity. But the miracle is not just about some kind of extraordinary transformation of food. God is the source of all good things to be sure. But notice how Jesus asks his disciples to distribute the food in this miracle. The miracle tells us two things. First, God’s generosity is to be shared with many, not kept for a few. Second, God relies on us to be partners in his generosity. What God provides can only be shared well if those who believe in God’s loving generosity are willing to work to share that generosity.

There are many ways we can show God’s generosity. Some of them involve service in our Church through service ministries and financial support. Some of them involve becoming socially and politically active in support of God’s loving message in everyday issues in our communities. I would invite all to prayerfully consider these ways of reflecting God’s generosity.

But even if you do not choose these kinds of service-based love, the very best way we can show God’s generosity is by the way we live. We can say no to God, just as your humble deacon tried to foolishly do to his wonderful wife. But for all that we have been given, let us say yes to God’s persistent love. Don’t put off a good thing as your deacon did. I finally learned to respond to intimacy with intimacy. In the same way, let all of us return God’s intimacy with an intimate love of God’s way of life. If we in fact place our trust in God by the way we live, nothing will separate us from the love of God. For God will indeed be in us.