HOMILY – 19^TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA CATHOLIC CHURCH

AUGUST 13, 2006 – 8 & 11AM MASSES

May the Lord give us His peace.

Get off your broom honey,  You’re grieving the Holy Spirit,  murmuring like that.

Get off your broom honey.  Elijah sits under a broom tree praying for death.  It’s a bad day.   No matter though, angels show up and encourage him, get off this broom.

There are days, there are days.  We have enough and want to quit, or let somebody have it!  This reading is all about the times we get in despair.  Losing hope stinks, it feels like the end, but often it isn’t.  That’s why the angel came to Elijah, “get up!”

God has plans to love, or forgive, or companion, or console through you, how can you sit under the broom?

There is a tradition from slave days on a wedding day where you jump the broom.

There were no clergy for them, no place, or ritual for marriage, so they laid down a broom and jumped over it signaling the change.  And that was that.  But you have to get off it to jump over it.  I have to get the heck up to move in the direction of the love that is calling me.  Sadly, I can choose to remain seated.  Get off your  broom honey.  Love is calling, the angels are here.  You’re needed.

You’re grieving the Holy Spirit.  Paul, writing to the people in Ephesus asks the people to snap out of it.  They are living against the very Spirit of God they received in the Sacraments.  It is as if a swan was acting like a buzzard.  Some of you are looking down the pew thinking, buzzard!  Yes that sums it up.  But be careful it may be you!   Buzzard head.  Buzzard lips.  Buzzard!

It is so strange that we can receive so much and yet live with malice, fury, shouting.

On whose dime as they say?  Did God give us a mouth for that?  A brain, to judge and condemn?  Remember “the Son of Man did not come into the world to be it’s judge, but rather that the world might be saved through him.”  Jesus Himself said that.  If Jesus, who was God, decided to love instead of judge, who am I to judge?

Pretty nervy, sitting in that throne not made for me.  I grieve the Holy Spirit.

But I don’t want to.  When I remember how patient God is with me, how many times He has let me back in His grace, I melt.  Then the Holy Spirit stands a chance.

Murmuring.  Jesus has had enough of the murmuring.  “Stop murmuring among yourselves” he says.  The people were very slow to accept God in flesh, God showing up, even though they prayed for the messiah to come all their lives.  Jesus was too familiar.  He was a neighborhood person.  It was all too much, murmur.

Isn’t that the way though?  You are too close for me to respect you.  Familiarity breeds contempt.  You always hurt the ones you love?  I know her/him too well, God is not likely to use him/her.  Really?  So you have decided who God will work through?  Did you know God has famously picked the twits of this world?  Just look up here.  Seriously, now look down the pew, perhaps buzzard boy is God’s next pick – unless he thinks so.  Perhaps gizzard girl, Heh, heh.

It’s wake up call weekend.  Get off your broom, jump over it and get loving,  It’s time for the Holy Spirit to stop grieving over you, time to welcome it and live! And for God’s sake, if you want to murmur, says this…

Can you believe God picked me?  Can you believe it?  To show Himself?  To love for Him?  Can you believe God picked me?  How weird is that?  Can you believe God picked me?