Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A

"So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." (Matthew 10:32)

I have Mass on Sunday, June 21 

at St. Isidore @ 7:30/9:30 am (7:30 am live stream here)

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Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. 

Jesus said to the Twelve: "Fear no one. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.

Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

Jesus said to the twelve, "Fear no one." A second time, "Do not fear." And a little later, "Do not be afraid." What prompted this threefold command? Last Sunday, Jesus sent the twelve on mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In between last Sunday and this Sunday, Jesus said to his disciples, I'm sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues. The Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe said, "If you love, you will be hurt and even killed. If you don't love, you are already dead."

 Matthew's community of largely Jewish Christians were struggling to find their place in the Jewish community after the destruction of the temple around the year 70 CE. Like the prophet Jeremiah, the disciples may have begun to question their mission and wonder whether the Lord was with them or not. As the late Jesuit priest and poet Dan Berrigan once said, "If you want to follow Jesus, you better look good on wood."

In his book, How Not to Be Afraid, Gareth Higgins writes, "Fear doesn't go away, nor should it." Higgins writes from the experience of having learned to just embrace the fear, to make friends with it, and then to do the things that go with any good friendship, to check in with it regularly, accept it for what it is, and use it as a helpful support. "Instead of fighting it or denying it, I've learned to put fear on my side." "Most of our fears," Higgins writes, "are not true at all. All of them depend on a story we tell ourselves. 90% of our fears are exaggerated and/or made up altogether."

500 years ago, Michel de Montaigne said, "My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened." Some 12-step programs use an acronym of the word FEAR, Future Events Appear Real. Higgins asks, "is it possible that what we hold dear and wish to protect, in other words, what lies behind our fear, is just a story? And if it's a story, can it be rewritten?" James Hillman reminds us that "the best wines have to be aged in cracked old barrels, and so too the human soul. It mellows, takes on character, and comes to compassion only when there are real cracks, painful ones, in the body and life of the one who carries it." "If we are honest," Hillman argues, "we will have to admit that what made us deep were not our successes or achievements. They brought us glory, but not depth or character. Depth comes out of our inferiorities and failures."

"Do not be afraid," Jesus said. "Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed." What will be brought to light is not our hidden sin, "files on the road," as Leonard Cohen says, but our hidden story, our hidden significance, our hidden specialness, our hidden dignity. We need not make an assertion of our lives and our talents so as to try to prove anything, because God will prove it for us. Paul reminds the Christian community in Rome of one of his most compelling beliefs. "If by the transgression of the one, the many died. How much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many?" If Jesus is convinced we're significant, how can we disagree? 

Faith doesn't have you believe that you'll have no worries or that you will not make mistakes or betray, or that you and your loved ones won't sometimes too fall victim to accident, sickness, or tragedy. What faith gives you is the assurance that God is good, that God can be trusted, and that God hasn't forgotten you. As Jeremiah proclaimed, "But the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion." 

Faith assures us that there really is nothing to fear. We are in safe hands. "Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from your father. Even the hairs of your head are all counted, so do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows." 

"Whoever falls from God's right hand is caught in God's left hand, is how the poet Edwin Markham puts it. 

God is at the center of each of us, giving us existence. As St. Augustine wrote, "God is closer to me than I am to myself."

"In God we live and move and have our being," is how the book of Acts put it in words that are attributed to St. Paul. 

"Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me," are the words of the breastplate of St. Patrick. 

This is how John O'Donohue, the Irish poet and mystic, imagined it. "I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."