THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
4 November 2018
Homily
About fifteen years ago, I spent a couple of weeks in Door County.
One morning I got up early and sat on a dock to watch the sun rise.
It was a prayerful, reflective time.
As I sat there I focused on the horizon–somewhere way out there
where Lake Michigan met the sky.
I had a nearly irresistible urge to go out to that point.
There were a few problems of course.
The first being that I didn’t have a boat.
So I didn’t go, but I did spend some time thinking about it.
I knew in my head that that point way off was someplace I would never be at.
Even if I did sail straight for it, it would always elude me.
It would always move further out.
That horizon could pull me clear around the world.
That experience I believe is something like the summary that Jesus gives to the Scribe in today’s Gospel.
See the Scribe today in Mark’s Gospel is the last of the many questioners
who have come up to Jesus.
There have been the lawyers, the rich young man, the blind.
They all had questions for Jesus.
Today we get the last question.
We get the definitive answer from Jesus about our lives.
The answer to all our questions is: “Love–of God and neighbor.”
And that Love of God and neighbor will always pull us out further than we can reach.
Its perfection will always be just ahead of us, drawing us out of ourselves.
We will never master it.
For all of us seekers, questioners here today there are perhaps just a few words of advice on the insight that Jesus offers us:
“We are not required to complete the task,
but neither are we allowed to lay it down.”