Journey's Weekly Homilies

HOMILY BY SAM G.

TWELFTH SUNDAY, YEAR A
JUNE 23, 2002
‘LESSONS I LEARNED FROM HUMMINGBIRDS’

JEREMIAH 20:10-13
ROMANS 5:12-15
MATTHEW 9:36-10:8

Esther and her husband Dale live in an apartment.  They are pursuing their dream of coordinating retreats to help people examine their lives in the light of the gospel.  Not your standard retreat fare.  These focus on living simply and in solidarity with the poor.  Esther and Dale lead ‘trips of perspective’ where participants pray and work with the poorest people around the world.  They call their organization, "Journey Into Freedom’.

One day Esther watched the hummingbirds on her balcony for hours.  At the end she wrote a the following list:  ‘Ten Lessons I Learned From Hummingbirds’.

#1 Travel light.
#2 Clothe yourself in simple beauty
#3 Eat small portions at a time
#4 Feed the hungry
#5 Nurture the young
#6 Keep your sermons short (O.K., Let’s skip that one)
#7 Sing throughout the day
#8 Join the choir
#9 Form community
#10 Risk flying when you would rather walk

These simple lessons echo the instructions, the new commandments given by Jesus to his followers in Matthew’s sermon on the Mount.  So I want to look more closely at a few of these challenges.

Travel light.  Clothe yourself in simple beauty.  Can we live simply so that we can do more meaningful work?  Can we reduce our commitments so that we are available to do justice whenever the need presents itself?  Eat small portions at a time.  Feed the hungry. Eight million Americans are worth more than a million dollars.  Two hundred seventy five  thousand of us are worth more than ten million.

Yet our country is in it’s fifth year of "welfare reform".  Most those who have found jobs continue to live in poverty or lose these jobs. Those who remain on assistance are about to exhaust their five-year lifetime limit on benefits.  Food pantries and soup kitchens are busier than ever.  Oregon is one of the hungriest states in the nation with the highest unemployment rate in the country.  In Portland there are three thousand homeless and only four hundred shelter beds.

Yet the Gospel today speaks of sparrows who are precious to God.  ‘Sparrow’ is a general term for small birds.  They could be had so cheaply they were the primary source of meat for the poor of Jesus’ day.  In other words God counts as sacred every morsel from a poor man’s plate.  Today we are challenged to care just as deeply.

Form community.  Risk the flight.  Community, in the Gospel of Matthew, is not family or friends.  Community is those who encourage and support us to live more simply and advocate for justice more firmly.

When we live and preach God’s solidarity with the most destitute and wounded people we will face opposition.  When we search our consciences to understand what we will do in light of oppression and poverty, friends and family will say we are guilt-tripping."

Jeremiah met his share of opposition.  He denounced his country’s reliance on military might instead of justice.  Because of this he was tried, villified, and mocked.  Eventually he would be thrown into a well and left for dead.  Today he mourns his fate and longs to know that God has not abandoned him.

The community of Matthew, hearing the words of this Gospel know that Jesus will be hated and killed.  They are told that when they live the reign of God they will receive the same kind of treatment.  For such is the fate of prophets.

In the Gospel we are not called to be reasonable, nice people.  We are not called to be comfortable.  We are not called to be liked.  We are called to live the reign of God more authentically, more publicly than we than we think we are able to.

Many of us have devoted our lives to works of peace and justice, making all of the sacrifices that involves.  I could point out right here in this room people who have lost jobs, family, friends, and financial security because of the reign of God.

But what do we do as a community?  What prophetic stance do we make, what advocacy do we engage in, what risk do we take for the poor and the marginalized?  We can have great liturgy and go our separate ways.  We can form deep and enduring relationships in the community and the reign of God will happen without us.  We can save our life and lose our soul.

We meet next month to talk about the direction of our community.  To me the main question is how we can become a more public and more prophetic.  In fact I don’t think there is anything else to talk about.

Today we are called to live lives of simplicity, justice, and community in a self-absorbed world.  Following Jesus is a flight into the tomb of uncertainty.

"All who are hounded by peace, children and those poor in spirit, hear his name sound in their hearts, shoulder the word in their flesh."