Homily for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A

Francis Thompson calls God, "The Hound of Heaven." It's a hunting metaphor, that God comes hounding after you before the thought ever dawns. God seeks after lost sheep, lost coins, lost sons. It begins with God, always the pursuer. 

I have Mass on Sunday, June 14th at St. Isidore @ 7:30 am. The Mass will be live-streamed https://stisidore.church/isidore-online/

frjoedailey@gmail.com

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Transcript

a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. 

At the sight of the crowds, Jesus' heart was moved with pity for them, because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. So ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest. Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. 

The names of the twelve apostles are these. First, Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James, son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go, rather, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this prediction. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost, you have received. Without cost, you are to give. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

Jesus sees the crowd and is moved with compassion. The people are troubled and abandoned. They're worn out by powers that were supposed to protect them. They are sheep without a shepherd, which means they have plenty of leaders and not enough care. Then Jesus does something surprising. He turns to his disciples and says, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, and they should pray for workers to be sent into the harvest. It sounds like a prayer request. Ask God to handle it. Ask God to send the right people. Matthew barely pauses. Jesus tells them to pray for workers, gathers them together, and then sends them. 

I imagine the disciples were as surprised as anyone. This is not a group of spiritual giants. This list is a mess. There's a tax collector in the group. There's a zealot. There are people who misunderstand him, people who will run, and one who will betray him. As creatures, we are incomplete within ourselves. All of us have a role to play in forming each other. We cannot become who we are meant to be without the mediation of others. Jesus is sending the apostles to restore people's humanity, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Only those who have faced their own wounds are able to stand with the wounded in compassion and solidarity. 

You know, we're not the ones who go looking for God. God comes looking for us. In Genesis, after eating the forbidden fruit, the man and his wife hid from God, but the Lord called to them, where are you? And later in the gospel, Jesus says, you did not choose me, but I chose you. The poet writes in Psalm 139, Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? Francis Thompson calls God the hound of heaven. It's a hunting metaphor that God comes hounding after you before the thought ever dawns. God seeks after lost sheep, lost coins, lost sons. It begins with God, always the pursuer. 

This is the story of the sons of Jacob. Before God asks anything of them, God reminds them, I carried you. You've seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. The aim of their liberation, it seems, is not the land of promise or Sinai. The destination has been to myself. These former slaves have been headed from the outset to a defining rendezvous with God. They did not know this. It was eagles' wings that had transported them from Pharaoh and on to Yahweh. That company that was not a people became God's people. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. It's not about being right, but being in right relationship. 

The aggressive grace agent is God. St. Augustine wrote in his book, The Retractions, in loving me, you made me lovely. Now notice that. He didn't say, I was lovely, so you loved me. No. It's in loving me, you made me lovely. God's love is redemptive. We become lovable, both in the sense of being able to love and able to be loved. 

Romans takes us deeper. Christ died for us while we were still helpless. God's love meets us before we know how to stand, before we know how to fix what is broken, before we know how to explain our own contradictions. Love heals. Love puts us back together. 

In the Eastern Christian tradition, Christ is called the Great Physician. A physician moves toward wounds. A physician pays attention to places others would rather not look. Again, St. Augustine wrote that God's descent into human flesh was itself the medicine, that Christ came not from above the suffering but into it, and that this was the cure, not a distant remedy handed down, a physician who enters the sick room. 

And then Christ invites you and I into that same work, not because we've become experts, but because we've begun to feel what Jesus feels when he looks at a suffering world. That's what forms us into disciples, not a method or a program. but a way of seeing. 

The American Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr gives a helpful framework for the scope of our mission. Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime. Therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history. Therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.