TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
23 September 2018
Homily
As you all know my friend Mike was hospitalized with Guillian Barre for three months.
Especially at the beginning, things did not look good.
My friend Vicki and I who were caring for him began buying lottery tickets.
Our logic: It looked like Mike would need a lot of expensive care forever.
We calculated how much we would actually g
et if we won,
how we would apportion it, what we would be able to do for him with it.
These were noble things.
As Mike got better, and there was that point during the summer when the jackpot grew very large,
we decided there would probably be some left over monies which we could split
to make our own lives easier. Vicki wanted a new car.
Well, then the jackpot grew larger and larger and larger, and Mike got better and better.
We still bought the lottery tickets, but our conversations turned to fairly extravagant lifestyles.
In our last conversation before the Powerball was won and then went down to a pittance,
we each added in a charitable foundation to what we would do with the proceeds
–in case God was listening.
We never won the Powerball.
Did God overhear our conversations?
Did God judge our greed?
I’m not sure God had anything to do with Powerball winnings.
I’d like to believe that God is concerned with more important things.
James in the second reading is fairly straightforward about our covetous natures.
We’re always wanting something, someone.
Whatever we have, never seems enough, or exactly right.
And it’s not just that we should be satisfied with what we have.
The poor should not be satisfied with misery.
The sinner should not be satisfied with sin.
It’s a matter of settling on the right things to desire.
The apostles of course begin thinking that linking up with Jesus could be like winning the lottery.
They were playing the dreaming game
–what it was going to be like when their best friend became king.
These were not bad men, but even good people can want the wrong things.
This week, just for a week, maybe we can focus on winning a different kind of lottery.
If I had the power to become any kind of person I wanted to be,
to do any good, achieve any holiness, what would that look like,
what would I want?