St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church :. Homilies

Ordinary Time 30 - October 27, 2012

Ordinary Time 29 - October 21, 2012

I straighted a book shelf. I dusted the desk top. I cleaned out the top drawer of my desk, straightened two picutres, and desperatly checked email four times within an hour. Perhaps for the first time in my memory the “inbox” was empty: not even some spam! I studied nine commentaries, played the piano for fifteen minutes, and had a third cup of coffee. I prayed; but this complicated and perplexing Gospel does not go away. I learned a lot things in process about myself and Mark’s Gospel. I discovered that the older I get the more I feel what that man felt: there has to be something more. I want eternal life, and this isn’t it. Is there something yet I must do, or is perhaps something I must become. Is it really possible to “do” something (like earning points) to possess eternal life or is it not a gift for which I must become receptive. I discovered to my shame that the longer I live as a priest, the more I sometimes feel like the disciples sometimes in weariness and weakness wondering: “What’s in it for me?” How shameful those apostles must have felt when their thoughts were so exposed by Peter, that blabber-mouth! I suspect that as soon as it said it, he wished he hadn’t.About Mark’s Gospel I learned that no where does it say that this was a “young” man. For years I always thought it did. The only reason to think that he was “young” is probably that he was running. I don’t run much anymore. I learned to consider that this text invites us to think about two kinds of wealth: material and spiritual. I was reminded how the First or Old Testament  considered wealth a proof that one was righteous leaving the poor desperate for any salvation. If poverty then is a curse, why would Jesus demand it of the rich man? If it is necessary, then why give it to the poor making them more poor? The potential for conflict between material wealth and spiritual wealth cannnot be ignored. That man is both rich and poor: so spiritually poor in spite of his great wealth that he cannot do what is necessary. He cannot do what the master asks of him.Yet in spite of all the complexity both in our lives and in Mark’s Gospel, there are a couple of things that do not go away, and will not be avoided for long. They spring from the two questions raised in this story first by the rich man and then by the Apostles.“Is this all there is?” That is what the man is really asking as he lives with all his wealth and comforts knowing that those have not provided what he seeks nor satisfied his deepest hunger. He knows there must be more, so he goes to Jesus the man who feeds all hungers and satisfies all thirsts. There he discovers that he has failed to ask another very important question: “How much is enough?” The ability to answer that question is the first sign of spiritual wealth. Then there is that second question asked by Peter that reveals a shameful poverty of spirit: “What’s in it for me?” Mark puts questions before us today.They are good tools to measure our material and spiritual wealth and poverty.“What’s in it for me?”“Is this all there is?”Leading to the big question: “How much is enough?”I find it interesting that in his usual way, Mark does not give that rich man a name. Failing to do so allows us to stand in his place. I like to think that this rich man’s turning away is not the end of his story, and that years later he may have picked up some early manuscript of Mark’s Gospel and recognized himself in these verses, stood up right then and said: “Enough” and let go of all the things that held him bound and unable to follow Jesus to Jerusalem. It isn’t always material stuff like cars and clothing, homes, accessories and gadgets that we can’t let go of. Sometimes the attachments that hold us back are anger and revenge, pride and stubborness, grudges and forgiveness withheld.Perhaps today we can see ourselves in this Gospel holding on to that image of Jesus who looks at us with love, and finally say: “Enough” and then surrender reaching for the treasure of his friendship.

Ordinary Time 27 - October 6, 2012

Ordinary Time 26 - September 29, 2012

I am a people watcher. I can sit for hours and watch people coming and going, talking, laughing, reading the paper or their Kedalls. The other day I was having lunch and there was a mother sitting across the restaurant with her child - perhaps a 4 year old. It was a beautiful sight, but I could tell that mom was growing impatient with her son as he played with the silverware, the glass, the plate, the food, and finally with her cell phone which I think she handed to him for fear something was going to end up on the floor. His thumbs were lightening fast! I don’t know what he was doing, but he had not a care in the world. He was worried about nothing, focused on the moment, living in the present. That’s how it is with children, even the one’s I’ve watched down in Haiti who ought to have plenty to worry about. Even in that poverty they just play with whatever they can find leaving the adults to their big schemes of revenge and ambition. I think this is what Jesus was proposing in today’s verses from Mark’s Gospel when he talks about children.Those apostles have just embarressed themselves with their easy ambition: their plans about their future. They are not living in the present. They are not focused on where they are, who they are, and they have not been listening to Jesus. They are full of their plans and ambitions. Jealous of one another, they are looking at each other instead of looking at the master. He speaks of what will happen to the “Son of Man”, a title he has just used a few verses earlier for himself. The title means: “One who is living in solidarity with others.” So jealous, so individualized, so isolatd from each other, they cannot live in sollidarity with the one who has called them to be such a community. It’s all about them, their future, their power, their position in life. Instead of comfort for their friend and mastser, instead of compassion, or seeking some understanding, they are afraid and say nothing except to continue their arguing. Of course arguing is never about the issue that starts it. It is only about being right. They look at each other with a jealous eye wondering who sits where. In no time at all it’s an argument, and nothing matters after that except winning, being “right” while the other is wrong is all that matters. Where is the solidarity in that?They are not living in the present. There is no center to their lives. That is what it takes to live in the present: a center. A rock solid core, a focus that allows one to be in the moment, not pulled one way  by a past full of resentment or disappointment, or pulled into the future by cheap ambition or fear. Just a quiet center that can bring an extra ordinary kind of freedom.  This is what Jesus expects of his apostles who are  free, focused, and fearless. As James says in the second reading today, this is a kind of Wisdom that comes from on high. This is the kind of wisdom that is pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits. For that Wisdom today we must pray. For a solid centered life with Christ as the focus, we should live. For a desire to remain in solidarity with others and therefore in solidarity with the Son of Man, we must yearn.

Ordinary Time 24 - September 15, 2012

Ordinary Time 23 - September 9, 2012

As a child I often got into trouble because I would ask a certain question. I honestly think it is a phase everyone goes through in growing up. I would ask the question and then often end up sitting in my room for awhile to comtemplate the answer: “Because I said so.” It never seemed like a good answer to me until I started to need it, which is, I guess, the first stage of moving out of that phase. I asked the question in the seminary a lot, and it would draw looks of suspicion from those in charge. That has not changed either. The question of course, is “Why”.When it comes to this part of Mark’s Gospel, there is a little trouble brewing over the law and following the law, and the trouble reveals for us a real tension that exists not between the law and freedom, but between the outside and the inside - a tension that is experienced in the very living of the law and answering the question “why” in the face of the law.The Pharisees are a good example of that tension gone wrong. They were not typical of all Jews. I often call the Book of Deuteronomy from which we read first today a “Love Song to the Law”. The mood and the spirit in which it is written is almost a poem that would describe the love of God’s Law - a Love that generates and sustains the very Love that is God. Staying in a right relationship to the Law puts one in a postion of love. If you catch on to what the Book of Deuteronomy proposes you begin to get the idea that God’s love for God’s people is the source of the law because it leades to the Covenant. Our Love for God is expressed and lived in that covenant and the keeping of, loving of, and obsevance of the Law.Now, that is an entirely interior idea. I like to call it a matter of the heart, and so it is the heart that determins how one keeps the law, why, and what comes from keeping the law. A loving and pure heart makes keeping the law a joy. But a tension arises when the focus shifts from the interior to the exterior, and I think that is what Jesus is talking about to his disciples using the Pharasees as his example. The Pharasees were focused was on the external expression of the law rather than the internal loving and living of the law. For them it did not matter how you felt, or what was in your heart. All that concerned them was a following the rules. If anyone asked them, “Why should we wash our hands?” their answer would have been: “Because it says so.” leaving the one who asked the question cold and distant from the law. Had they made some connection between a clean heart and clean hands, and suggested that the cleaning of the hands be connected to a cleansing of the soul, the tension could have resolved into a wonderful moment of conversion.This tension still exists today and it has all the potential to turn us into Pharasees or lead us to deeper conversion, great joy, and love in our covenant with God.So, we have the Law of God. Why? Because it is God’s way of revealing God’s Will for us and leading us to be all that God wishes us and has imagined us to be.Why is there a law that says: Thou Shalt Not Kill?Now think with your heart, and don’t say because, “Because God said so.”That’s outside thinking.Inside thinking with the heart says: “Because where ever there is Life there is God, and the taking of any life diminishes the presence of God in this world. Becasue God is the creator of all life, destroying life destroys God’s last and best work of creation.”Why is there a rule that says: “Missing Mass on Sunday is wrong?”What do you say to a child that asks “Why do we have to go?”Think with your heart. Only say “Because I said so if it’s a contest of the will.” The real answer when you’re not in a power struggle is: “Because we have been invited, and Jesus asked us to come and do this in his memory; because it is how we stay together with the Risen Christ and with others who love us.” Or perhaps a shorter answer from the heart is: “Because we can, not because we have to.”Why do we have to share? The heart says: “Because that is why God gave us what we have....because nothing we have is our own ..... because it brings joy and happiness to others.”  This is heart talk - it is what come from within.The whole speach of Moses to the people as he delivered the Law to them was touched with joy and hope because he knew that God’s Law was the expression of God’s Love, and the keeping of that law would keep the Israelites within the embrace of God as no other nation or people could ever hope to experience. Rather than complain, avoid, and reluctantly keep the law, we might be tempted by the tension between right and wrong, obedience and disobedience, to ask why, and then from a heart filled with the Spirit of God begin follow the words of James today in the second reading: “Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word and not heaers only.”In the practice of our faith, the goal must be to internalize the law and the will of God for us so that we do not even think about the details of the law because we have so embraced it, so loved it, and so understood what the law is that we shall live the law, not keep the law or ever need to enforce the law. It has always seemed to me that enforcers of the law are the ones who have not yet themselves internalized the law. They are stuck on the outside fussing with the details while all the while never coming close to the God who is finally revealed within the Law within ones heart.

Now comes the end of the great Sermon at Capernaum. While the “Sermon on the Mount” may capture the imagination of many, and while it may have inaugurated the public ministry of Jesus; this sermon in John’s Gospel brings the whole mission of Jesus Christ to the point of decision, the point of no return, the point of entry into the very life of God. No one finds “Blessed are the meek or the pure of heart” troubling or challenigng. No one walks away at the words: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for Justice.” These are not hard sayings. But “My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” is a whole differnent matter. This is not symbolic language. He is not proposing some metophor. The REAL means REAL, not “sort-of-like” or “a symbol of”, or a “sign for”. He means, real! In some translations it says: “True.” In either case, the meaning is the same.When in today’s Gospel Jesus hears their murmuring, he knows that they are beginning to wonder, and perhaps even understand what he is saying. To make sure that they do, he says: “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.” What Jesus has to say here is a complete breakdown of the hard and fast distinction of heaven and earth, the spiritual and the material. It is the final and complete revelation of has happened by the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh. God is no longer off there unavailable, distant, and serparte from us. We are no longer confined to this time and space, to this life. The connection between what had been so distinctly seperated is Jesus himself, and our passage, our passover into the spirit and the divine is his flesh and blood. As he took on our flesh to be with us, we take on the divine life, by eating and drinking his flesh and pass into the life of God. Jesus was no symbol. Jesus was not “sort of” human. Jesus was not a “sign for” the divine and the human seperated. He was true. He was real from birth to death. If any of us has a chance to or wishes to become true and real, to make real what we are from the beginning, then we must eat and drink in order to become what Christ Jesus is, the life of God offered for us. This is a hard saying. What’s hard about it is that all the neat little categories fall apart. Heaven is no longer out there, a place we wait for until we die. Eternal life is no longer something you get when you die. We are no longer living here in exile unable and bound by humanity and sin to a life that is less than perfectly holy touched by and inspired by the Divine Holy Spirit. How is this so? Because we are becoming what we eat - we are eating the very real, true flesh and blood of the Son of Man who has been with the Father from the beginning, come here to unite with us, and take us back to the very life of the Father.This isn’t symoblic. It is as real as the bread and wine of this altar. What we do here is no “memorial service” that brings us together to act out the Last Supper like a group of actors gather in Gettysburg every year to act out a day in the life of this nation. What we do here is real. It is for now, not the past. It is to transport us in the very life of God so that we leave here not all warmed up and feeling good becasue we “remembered” the Lord’s Supper. We leave here transformed, transfigured, consecrated, into the very life of the Word Made Flesh. You can’t leave her the same as you came in.Now this is not talk for children. It is serious revelation of the Divine plan and the Will of God for us. Children cannot understand this. Perhaps that is why some  murmured and left. They prefered the life of an ingnorant child, preferred to avoid the demands of and the changes in their lives that this revelation would demand. Parents, if you believe what is said to us in this Gospel, you cannot now explain this to your children, but you can lead them into the mystery of this creating in them a desire, a thirst for, and a wonder for what they may someday want to know. You must do that by your reverence and example, your absolute and unwavering commitment to this sacramental gift making it the first priority of every week without fail. A couple of years ago, a child was sent to me by their parent because the child in preparation for First Communion had expressed some revulsion at the thought of drinking blood. I sat with that child for a long time talking about grapes and juice, wine, blood, the Passover meal, and the blood of the Passover Lamb on the door posts of the Israelites. When I was finished, the child just wrinkled up their nose and looked at me as though I was some alien from another planet. But, the child went away curious and knowing that there was something deeper here, something more special and profound because their parents brought them to me, and I sat on the floor and talked with them for a long time. Someday the hunger for truth and a desire for the real will awaken in that child a readiness to know more and to become more than a little child.Those of you leavng childhood and becoming adults must hear this gospel with profound wonder as you look at yourselves and ask: To whom shall we go?” That is what was happening to Peter and the Apostles, they were growing up in faith. No longer were they going to stay with Jesus because he worked signs and wonders that entertained them or made them seem important because they were “close to the man.” At that moment they began to understand that something about this Son of Man was going to change them, awaken in them the Spirit of Life, provide for them a food that would never leave them hungry, a food that would give them more than physical life.Don’t leave because you don’t understand. Stay until you do. There is nothing out there that will give you everlasting life. There is nothing out there that will bring you closer to God and draw you deeper into God’s Spirit. When you do, people may come to look at you and discover that you have become a Holy One of God.

Ordinary Time 20 - August 19, 2012

The earliest artistic representations of Mary show her as a figure far from human with a face that is frozen in an icon-like gaze. Gradually over time, under the influence of Greek and Roman art, and then the Renaissance with its veneration of the human form she takes on a more motherly and sometimes more regal appearance. In more modern times this woman favored by God is sometimes seen in art more realistically as a Palestinian girl, and even more boldly as a teen ager in jeans and a sweater. Artists often have a way of entering into the realm of theology, and certainly theologians have influenced the vision of artists. Of all the figures and women in human history, Mary, the Mother of God has certainly intrigued them both. In the first reading today, we hear of a mighty woman/warrior ready to do battle with a dragon. This image inspired by the author of the Book of Revelation provides a fresh new image of the Virgin Mary, and I wish some artists might take up the challenge. Mary as Warrior would be quite an image. Like so many other forward looking works of art, it might well be shunned by the pious and even condemned by puritanical self-appointed critics. But I wonder, if the Sacred Scriptures can write about it, why can’t we think about it and even paint it. Imagine, Mary as a warrior! She might look like Joan of Arc. It does cause some conflict with the meek and mild, the sweet gentle mother look so favored in some ages, but I don’t think that is what we need these days in the face of so much evil. The author of the Book of Revelation provides us with a woman who is armed and ready to do battle with evil. This dragon in the vision of John is a symbol of evil power in this world. It stands for all the oppression and abused power that holds people in poverty and in ignorance. It stands for all injustice that empowers greed and the evil that greed perpetuates. In John’s Revelation, it is this woman who comes from the New Jerusalem to defeat it. This woman in John’s vision is the Arc of the Covenant with which Israel was able to do battle with every enemy and emerge victorious. I like thinking of Mary as a Warrior. I propose that all of you consider what your image of this Virgin might be – so that again she might excite our imaginations and provide us with an example of what a woman can do. She has done so in the past. Her weapons are always prayer, fasting, and sacrifice. Time and time again these weapons have overcome the mighty and pulled them down from their thrones. I wonder how it is that the evil of an oppressive Communist empire finally collapsed on itself almost without one shot being fired by men. Could it not possibly be that countless prayers in her name were stronger than bombs and sabers, warheads and tanks? Behind all that fluffy lace and golden pillows, their hides the strength of mother, the strength of prayer, and the promise of victory from a loud voice in heaven that says: “Now have salvation and power come, the reign of our God and the authority of his Anointed One.” This is what we celebrate today: God’s affirmation of a woman, God’s affirmation that there is power in a mother’s love to defeat every evil and right every wrong, to pull down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. The Assumption is not just God’s exaltation of faithfulness and discipleship, but our own as well. Holy Mary, Mother of God, --- how does the rest of it go? Say it.

When you step forward before one of us distributing the Body of Christ, bow and extend you open hand for the gift of this Bread of Life that comes down from heaven, this living bread, flesh for the life of the world, you say: “Amen.”At that moment, something happens, and I’m not sure it is always the right thing.Our Eucharistic piety usually directs us to a momenet of solotude in private prayer before we are called to common prayer in a song of praise and thanksgiving. This shift in the movement of the liturgy is one that should reflect an internal movement as well, and I’m not sure it always works.While no one has yet responded to the words: “Body of Christ” with the words: “It’s all mine.” we may not be far from it. There is always a temptation, and it is a temptation, to think that this is some kind of personal, private experience or a priviledged experience of intimacy with Christ. This is why I often recoil a bit when someone mistakenly reaches out to grab the Body of Christ. This is not “mine” to grab and run. There is something being said in these verses from John’s Gospel that is essential to our common understanding not only of what has been given to us, but why.This gift, “my flesh for the life of the world” is given for the world. It is not my personal and private possession. “The Bread that I will give” is given for the life of the world, not just for me: for the world. So, how is it going to get to the world? The answer to that question is the essential message of this Gospel. Think deeply for moment: BREAD, FLESH, LIFE FOR THE WORLD. The Eucharist is not flesh, it is bread. That is the essential element. If it were not bread it could not become the Holy Eucharist. We are the Flesh. We enter into the mystery of the Incarnation when we receive and consume this Eucharistic Bread of Life, and in that awesome experience, it is our flesh that must give life to this world: our flesh nourished and strengthened, consecrated and commissioned to bring life to this world.The issue is: “Why do we get this gift?”  “What are we to do with it?” What are we to become becasue of it?” The answer is all revealed here in John 6. This Eucharist gift is not all mine - it is not mine to keep or simply to adore. Once I receive this gift, the Bread of Life, I am responsible for the life of the world; that bread becomes my flesh in union now with the Body of Christ which is given for the life of the world.But look at what happens when we fail to perceive and respond to what is revealed here. We turn the Eucharist into a private devotion that may or may not move us out of ourselves, our little world of wants and needs, pains and sorrows. This is not the intent of the one who has given us this gift. He left us this gift so that we might continue his work. It is not given to me and you to hold onto like some prize treasure we find and then hide in order to keep it all for ourselves. The life of the world depends upon our flesh doing something and becoming something because of the Bread of Life we share.This Mass is not just for us, it is for the world. The Word of God feeds us, the Bread of Life feeds us so that we can satisfy the deepest hunger of this world for forgiveness, for vision, leadership, hope, and joy. I am convinced that if we lived our faith this way, we would need Mass, and wait and long for next Sunday to be fed again, renewed, and encouraged with the Christ’s vision of the Kingdom of Heaven that has already come into the world. Likewise, I am beginning to suspect that the reason some are not here is that they spent the week preoccupied with themselves, their jobs, their worries and concerns. Instead of feeding the world, they are exhausted from their own little world and are too tired to find their way back into the life of the world.You try living the Gospel this week for the life of the world, and you will be hungry again in no time at all, and we will gather again around this table to encourage each other, lift up the discouraged, and heal the broken hearted; and Christ will come again to fill us with his life.

They ask for signs and wonders.He asks for faith.They want to be entertained.He wants them to work.They want to be fed.He wants to give them life.They want more bread.He says: “Here it is. It’s me.”In the end, the problem with those folks was that they lived to eatrather than eating to live. Fast forward from a scene at the Lake side town of Capernaum to Saint Mark Church in Norman, Oklahoma. When we pick up and proclaim these verses from John 6, the question is still being asked: “What do you want?” “What are you doing here?” If it’s entertainment, then you need to be down the street, up at the Warren Theater, or the ball park. If it’s signs and wonders, there will be one, but to get it, you have to do the work of believing. These are the themes woven into these verses. They are the themes which John uses to lead us into the awesome mystery of Jesus Christ, The Bread of Life. John does not want to tell us about Jesus, he wants to lead us into Jesus: that is believe, belief IN.This “believing” is not simply trusting or hoping that something will happen. It is work, hard work, a life-long work. The only way bread becomes sacrament on this altar, which is the only sign and wonder you will get today, is for us to do the work of faith: the work of conversion, of turning from sin and turning INto Christ. Surely I am not the only one in here who wonders why less than half of this parish will have been here at Mass weekend. Every once inawhile I wonder what it would be like if we announced that next week the Pope will be here to lead, or what would happen if word leaked out that the winning Powerball ticket was to be found taped under one of the pews! Imagine the crowd! What is it they want? What do you and I want? He asks us to work, and for that work he will give us food that endures for eternal life. And with those people at Caperneaum, we can ask: “What do you want us to do?”  He says: “This is the work I want from you: believe in me.”Paul insists that believing in Jesus results in the transformation of our lives so that we are no longer content to live with full bellies while our minds and hearts are empty. It means we step out of a life that is steeped in ignorance and self-interest, and into Christ. Having been fed on the bread from heaven, we are wonderfully transformed into it. The spirit of our minds is renewed that lanchs us into a way of living that is full of joy and gratitude, not greed and hunger for more.This is going to require some work. It is work to get here on time. It is work to remember a Holy Day coming up, it is work to get the children ready and feed them  on the Bread of Holy Communion rather than McDonalds’ French Fries. It is work to teach them and hand on to them the wisdom of faith and the truth of Jesus Christ; much more work than teaching them the rules of T-ball and Soccor. It is work to contribute something meaningful and sacrificial to the life of this church; but all this work is transforming, and it is ultimately the sign the rest of this world is looking for: a sign of hope, a sign of self-less service, a sign of joy in the face of every trouble and disaster.Full bellies do not make full lives, but somehow full lives seem able to satisfy every human hunger. Which do you want? That’s is what Jesus asked in Capernaum and asks again in Norman, Oklahoma. Do you want a full belly or a full life? When we make up our mind, we’ll be approaching this table full of faith, full of hope, and full of love because we will have come to believe in him.

We have set aside Mark’s Gospel now until September 2. For five more Sunday we shall explore with the whole church the 6th Chapter of John’s Gospel, and this openinig today is loaded with what I like to call “teasers”. Think back for a moment with the details you just heard. Each of them should spark your religious imagination if it has been fed. If they don’t, there is also a message here: “You have not studied the Word of God.”He crossed the Sea of Galilee. What does that crossing mean? Jesus went up on the mountain. This is no passing detail. He sat down in the posture of a Rabbi:  a message about his identity. Passover was near. Can you connect that to something? He raised his eyes. That happens often in John’s Gospel. It’s like clapping your hands! It gets attention. Something is about to be said that is important; and it is. “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?”  This is not a practical question for a picnic. This is a cry of desperation. It is the cry I hear from those who serve the poor all the time. I had an email while away last week from the leadership of St Vincent de Paul. “We’re of money. Where shall we send the poor?” was the message in the email. Then there is Philip and Andrew. When one of the named apostles speaks, there will be words worth remembering: a declaration that there isn’t enough. It sounds like doubt to me and it boraders on cynical scepticism....... And then, there is that boy.I have wondered where he came from and what was he doing there with five barely loaves and two fish. If you’ve ever had barley bread, you would not ask for seconds. It’s poor food for poor people. What was he doing there? Was he on his way home from a shop sent by his mother to get the evening meal? Was he an entrepreneur who knew he could make some money out there among that hungry crowd? If sent out by his mother to the shop, did he come home with more than she expected having been given one of the twelve baskets heaping full with the left-overs?Then there is that warning about gathering and waisting, and that significant number of baskets: those people understood all these details, these signs, these wonders, and they responded instantly knowing now who was in their midst. But it wasn’t time for that “king” stuff, so he withdrew alone.I want you to think about that boy this time around with John’s Gospel. I have been thinking about him for several days. John give him no name, so we can’t begin thinking he is someone else. With no name, he has our name. He is the unlikely one chosen to do the work, to supply what is needed, to feed a hungry crowd, and even more so, he is the one to awaken in us the message, the truth, and the wonder of what God can do with what God has given us.The issue of whether or not there is enough is swept away in a single verse: “Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks, and distributed.” These verses are not simply about Jesus. They are about us; and there is here a great image of what we bring to the kingdom, which is far too little; but also a reminder of what God ‘s grace does with our offerings.We are bombarded these days with messages that insist that there isn’t enough, and the consequences of that thinking are all around us raising doubts about God’s presence, God’s grace, God’s providence, mercy, and love. I don’t believe those messages, and I am not going to let you believe it either without a serious challenge. The consequence of thinking that there isn’t enough is hoarding what we have. The boy in that Gospel did not do that. He brought and gave what some considered too little, and the consequences were a sudden insight and experience of the Kingdom of God.There is enough, and we have what it takes to reveal the Kingdom of God and bring others to excitment about it, but too many do not believe it. Why did St Vincent de Paul run out of money this week? Where is the boy of this Gospel? Two weeks ago I finished a long and painful struggle with the new budget for this parish. For the first time in my entire life as a priest, I will present to the Finance Board a deficit budget. Doing so leaves me sad and discouraged. With an accountant advisor everything was cut, and still we could not match the projected income declining little by little over the past three years. Nothing on the expense side has declined. Insurance, utitilites, and maintenance of this building now old enough to begin falling apart makes it more and more difficult to meet our debt service obligations which continues to take nearly half of every month’s income.All I can do in my last year among you is look for the boy with the barley loaves, and I think this Gospel holds the answer to this challenge. You have what it takes to continue the work of Jesus Christ in revealing the Kingdom of God. That is the work of this church which you are day by day becoming. I will not be the voice of Philip complaing and doubting that there is enough. I want to be the voice of John who tells the story of what God can do with what God has given you when you offer it. I believe you will go home with a basket full, knowing that nothing is waisted.