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28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Fr. Tom Wilson October 14, 2018

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For just a minute or so as we enter into the homily we're going to give everybody a chance to close your eyes for 60 seconds. And just ask God to bring somebody in your life who has been a generous person, somebody who’s been a good example of generosity for you, and think about where that person encountered you and your life and maybe a couple of characteristics that made them generous. So on the trusty newly fixed Seiko watch we’ll take 60 seconds. Close your eyes beginning now. Okay you can open your eyes. All right. I just have to mention it at 7:30 there were a couple of grumblers that said Father how can you ask us to close our eyes at 7:30 in the morning? We're going to fall asleep. Alright okay but the truth is as God brought up those memories of generous people I suspect the kinds of things that we normally sort of divide people out and categorize them, things like a profession, where they live, their ethnicity, personality types, all those sorts of things probably had actually very little to do with identifying somebody who is generous. Because we know generosity crosses all those sorts of boundaries and dividers that we tend to categorize people in. And the truth is we also know that generosity is a hallmark. It is a hallmark of Christian discipleship, it's a hallmark of somebody who follows Jesus, to be a generous person and when we thought about these people I suspect there were some characteristics and things like that. And one of them one of them, I think that probably in our culture especially, that we tend to make a connection with generosity, which isn't necessarily the case, is how much the world's goods and stuff that people have. 
Often times I think we can connect the reality of generosity with people who have been blessed with an awful lot of stuff, but I suspect if we took a show of hands of the people in your life who have been generous a lot of us probably would have identified people maybe who didn't have a lot of stuff. Because generosity is not necessarily an automatic byproduct of having a lot of stuff and people who don't have a lot of stuff have been wonderful examples of generosity I suspect to a lot of us in in our lives. But as we reflect on this hallmark of generosity we know that Jesus calls us to that life. That life of commitment and generosity. Father Chad did a great job last week of making that analogy towards the married life and the call to self-donating love and commitment that requires. People do not have successful marriages without being generous to each other, that's obvious and that's clear. And I think as we look at the readings today they’re a window into the call for generosity. To generosity for all of us and particularly in the Gospel reading when Jesus talks very, very directly about worldly wealth. It should give us reason to stand back and to pause and to pray and to discern and to seriously think about what He's saying. Particularly at our place in history, in our place in the world right now, because we are in a place in which we are wealthier than people have ever been in the history of the world. I suspect most of us even looking back a generation or two in our own families can look and see that we have been blessed materially with so much more stuff and economic efficiency and all that stuff that make that possible.
So when we hear Jesus reflecting on this and talking to the rich young man about the place of wealth it can be very unnerving. It can be very, very unnerving when we hear something like Jesus saying it is difficult for someone who is rich in the world's goods to get into heaven. Because as we divide it up and do our percentages in the world, most of us are in that category. All right most of us are in that category and so when Jesus is having this conversation with the young man, Matthew calls him rich, Mark doesn't use that qualifier of rich, but when He has a conversation, the young man is responding to something deep in his heart that desires eternal life. He desires eternal life, he wants to have it so he's asking the question. He is asking the questions I suspect that probably all of us have asked in some form in our life, How do I do it? What must I do? 
And Jesus says, okay the Commandments, great I've done it. Then He says, oh by the way, oh by the way take everything you have, sell it, give to the poor and then it can begin by following Me. Those are difficult words. Those are very, very difficult words and the young man who hears it can't respond. He can't respond, not because he has a lot of stuff. The scriptures are quite clear that the stuff in and of itself is stuff of the world, materially and otherwise. That the things that we spend a lot of energy on trying to accumulate and desire and so to bring worldly satisfaction and all that. Whether they are material or not we know that those things in and of themselves do not prevent eternal life. The scriptures are very, very clear. But it is our attachment to them, is our attachment to them that give them a place above God in our lives, that make them a barrier to eternal life. When we take those things more importantly than we take God and I suspect most of us at certain points in our life can probably look back and say you know what I did. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough, I was afraid I wasn't going to get a job after I finish college, whatever those things are that get us worked up and anxious about the things of the world. Those then can become more important than God.
So what Jesus is doing in this interaction with the young man is saying you've got to break the attachments and so the call to generosity is a gift to us and a reminder to us to not be attached to the things of the world. And when we recall and if people who are generous come from all walks of life and all that, we know that, but I think we can boil down a handful of characteristics of people that we know and have been good examples of generosity in our own lives. One of them is that they recognize immediately that what they have is a gift, a blessing from God. It comes straight from God. They recognize it and realize that and because they understand that they are quick to understand and know that it is given to them to be shared. It is to be shared with others. It is to be shared to give glory to God and in that sharing they recognize their call to give to other people. 
They also recognize that their generosity is not a system of rewards and punishments. It's not. They don't divvy out their generosity based on rewards and punishments. It is not that way. They do it because they are called. And finally, people who are generous are detached. They’re detached from the stuff, they’re detached from their egos and so it becomes easy then for them to let that stuff go and say you know what? There's more important things. There's more important things in life than the stuff I'm accumulating and all the other things that the world tells us is supposed to make us happy. We talked a lot over the last several weeks about the desire for meaning. Human beings want to have meaning in their life and where does that come from? Where does it come from? It comes from self-gift, it comes from generosity, it comes from self-donating love. When we give ourselves then we find meaning and I suspect most of the examples of the generous people that came up in our prayer for a minute of the beginning of the homily are people that most of us would probably describe as happy. They're happy because they're detached from the stuff and they're able to generously give it away. There's a very direct link. There's a very, very direct link. The young man went away sad because he was attached to his stuff.  The generous person walks away happy because he is able to be detached from the stuff and say, you know what? There's more important things in my life. I can live with it, I can live without it and I'm called to do something with it. Generosity is a hallmark. it is a hallmark of our lives as Christians and we have been preparing since the early part of September for us to make our annual commitment of generosity to our Parish Community and to the people around us. And we do this precisely so that we can have this annual opportunity to pray and to think about how God is calling me. How is God calling me to be generous in my life. Of course we’re called to be generous in all aspects of our life not just inside these walls but this is a place. One of the things we like to believe that we do as a Parish Community is to give people the opportunity to be generous and to respond to God's call.
To respond to God's call and when we do it here, it becomes easier to do it in other places in our lives. And so over the last several weeks we've been preparing and I know a lot of people already filled out their cards and sent them in. We are very, very grateful to do that and obviously we have a lot of needs within our community. Financial is probably the easiest one to describe and demonstrate the need for and we know that. There's things that we are able to do because people are generous with financial blessings that God has given to them. There's things that we can't do because we don't have enough, that we would like to do, that's just the reality of the life that we live in a community. But like Father Chad said last weekend in a marriage the financial part is it's real, it's critical, but it may not be the most important. It may not be the most important. What God is calling us to do is a complete gift of self, a complete gift of self. So we have the opportunity to do that. And if you got your cards today and you're ready to put them in the basket that's great, we've also got some in the pews if you want to take a couple of minutes to fill them out. But we are just asking  you to make the annual commitment of generosity; financially, with time and in prayer and commitment.  By taking the things that God has given us and say you know what Lord, they're yours, they're yours and this is the way I believe that you are calling me to use them in the context of this community at All Saints. It's a wonderful thing, it's an excellent exercise because we are called to generosity. And we're blessed to have people in our life who have modeled it and the truth is that generosity and I suspect as we as we called to mind those people their hopefully they're people that also taught us to be generous in our lives as well. Because it doesn't come naturally. It just doesn't. 
It is a learned reality in our lives and so part of the reason that we do this; and these cards are for adults. They're not for kids all right. Our youth will do these separately in their classes in school and in formation. If you are homeschooling kids you can get the cards and then do them on your own. But it's an exercise to teach them how to be generous and to evaluate their gifts and how they're going to going to use them. And so at the end of the homily we’ll give you a couple of minutes to fill it out, walk forward and place them in the baskets at the foot of the altar. But as we reflect on the reality of the blessings in the abundance of God has given to us and we reflect on the deepest desire of our heart, like the young man, to get to eternal life. It goes straight through the heart of being generous with the blessings that God has given to us and as we think about and are reminded by God of those people in our lives who have been generous, it's time not just to admire their generosity but also to imitate it.

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