HOMILY – 4^TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

FURMAN UNIVERSITY  -  DANIEL CHAPEL

JANUARY 28, 2007  -  8:30PM

May the Lord give us His peace.

George Clooney,  A wedding,  The neighborhood.

George Clooney.  You may have heard that George Clooney has been spotted in Greenville while searching for places to film his new movie.  He is well known, his face is nearly universally recognized.  They say I resemble him.  We share the salt and the pepper.  Stars are like that.  But as recognizable as they all are, even as many people know them look up to them, they universally fail in marriage, in any length of career, in the moral life.

That is because it is not fame, or how many know you that counts.  It is a matter if how many wise people are interested in you, how many holy people would read about you, watch a movie you were in.  Who knows you?  Everybody?  Big whup.

Who knows you?  The poor?  Those seeking peace?  Advocates for fair housing?

Have the learned and the wise any interest in you at all?  In me?

Seems even THAT doesn’t matter really.  What matter is what we hear from a prophet – Jeremiah tonight.  He speaks for God and says, “Before I former you in the womb I knew you.”  It seems God has spotted us more than people have spotted Clooney, knows us more deeply, seems truly, profoundly interested in you, in me.

So what?  So What!  We must be missing something then, right?  I mean we look in the mirror and say um-hmm, but not often “Wow!” 

Well it appears we have been appointed prophets ourselves.  God seems genuinely interested from before our beginnings at that possibility in us.  Clooney actually tries to make more justice oriented films, it’s why we look alike.  But you?  Appointed.

Weddings.  You’ll hear the 2^nd reading tonight at almost every wedding you’ll attend.  The bride usually picks it out with little input from the groom.  Love is this, love is that, it is never this, it is never that.  Wah, wah, wah.  It is poetic instruction time during the wedding.  The bride wants to make sure the groom gets it right.

They are without question the higher gifts – patience, faith, truth, perseverance.

But the trick is not to focus on what you can do or what he can do.  You’ll topple every time.  The trick is to focus in the marriage on what GOD is doing.  Yes, God is being patient with you for crying out loud, how about a return.  God is faithful to you – even when he/she isn’t,  how about a return?  God is not quick-tempered, how about a return.  The trick is the marriage, not the wedding.  How about living from God loving instead of your spouse?  No human being can bear the weight of a marriage.

The neighborhood.  At St. Anthony’s I frequently talk about the houses in our neighborhood, or about West End development, or about the poor deserving a house instead of high rise, fire trap cement holes to live in.  But not tonight.  Tonight I speak about YOUR neighborhood.  If your neighbors know you well, if you grew up there, if your family still lives near there and you went to run for office, would they elect you?  Isn’t that Meghan, Josh, Kris, Sarah, Steve, T?  I once saw them barf in their desk at school!  Josh used to go knuckle deep with his nose.  Remember?

Jesus encounters people too familiar with him to elect him “someone we ought to listen to.”  Our society has done the same thing with some world leaders, some religious leaders, some institutional and business leaders.  If ANYONE should be open to the truth coming from an unusual place it ought to be Christians.  Jesus was driven out to be thrown off a hill.  Watch for the truth, it may be on the edge of something.  On the edge here in your neighborhood.  Watch.

I’ll know you by your life and so will God.  Will you live as the appointed?

Perhaps you are appointed to religious life, marriage, priesthood, will you take your strength from God or the roller-coaster of life?  Either way, be watching for whatever rings in your heart, mind, eyes or ears and adhere to it, serve it, with all your heart.  Let them flash cameras, put THAT on the red carpet.