I
still don't know what I was waiting for
And
my time was running wild
A
million dead-end streets
Every
time I thought I'd got it made
It
seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I
turned myself to face me
But
I've never caught a glimpse
Of
how the others must see the faker
I'm
much too fast to take that test.
Believe it or not those lyrics were pretty much where I
found myself as a young man in my late twenties. I was chasing my career thinking that the
goal of life was to die with the most toys.
But every time I achieved, or got that “toy”, the victory seemed hollow. My thinking at the time that the answer was
that I needed more and more and more. A
“crowning achievement” of mine, or so I thought, was when I got a big raise and
a promotion and got to work and live in the mega-metropolis of Philadelphia. I was going big and my future was so bright I
had to wear shades. But things don’t
always go as planned do they. I thought
so much of myself that my arrogance took over and I wasn’t treating people very
well. In reality, most of the people I
met while working I was really using to further my own ends. I wound up not having very many friends and
quite a few enemies. I fell. Not a rock bottom kind of thing, but my pride
took a big hit. In fact, I was falling
for quite some time, I just didn’t know it.
A very wise man once said to me, “While we’re falling, our faces are
pointed downward, but finally when we hit, we can change our direction and find
God.” That’s exactly what happened to
me. When I finally took a big hit, my
direction changed, and behold, there was God.
That trip to Philadelphia very much served as an Exodus for me, Joanne,
and our family, because it really was our journey through a spiritual desert,
where we could see things differently and come to truth of our faith in God.
Today’s Gospel is that same kind of wakeup call. (Btw Christmas and Easter) John the Baptist
is telling his followers “Hey! Him! Over there!
That’s the guy I was talking about!
Now it begins!” But there’s
really something interesting here in our Gospel as John the Baptist says “I did
not know Him”. At this point you may be
saying “Wait a minute Deacon, I remember from my CCD classes that Jesus and
John the Baptist were related, so how can John say he didn’t know Him?” Some scholars believe John says that he did
not know Jesus because his father and mother (Zachariah and Elizabeth) were
advanced in years and couldn’t travel much.
It was around 90 miles between Judea, where John the Baptist lived and
Galilee, where the Holy Family lived and things back then weren’t like they are
now, travel was very difficult. Other
scholars suggest that John the Baptist didn’t quite grow up like a typical
young Jewish man, as the Gospels suggest John grew up in the desert and scholars
trace him to living in the community of the Essenes, kind of like a monk
(certainly not like a Benedictine though).
Those theories may hold some truth, but it begs the question why St.
John (the author of this Gospel) would mention it. The more theological scholars contend that St.
John brings this up in the Gospel because it was more of a case where John the
Baptist was surprised to find that it was his cousin, Jesus, who was the
Messiah. Some of the Bible translations
actually use the word “recognize.” To
translate into modern day English, John probably would’ve said something like
“we used to hang out together at family picnics and all kinds of other things,
I had no clue that Jesus was going to become the Messiah.” Things changed for John the Baptist. The reason they changed is because John fully
devoted himself to living a life of faith, to living a life in a communal
relationship with God. It was through that
relationship that God was able to help John the Baptist change, see through the
eyes of faith, see God in the unexpected, and recognize his own cousin as the
Messiah. This Gospel is very much a
continuation of the same theme we heard over Advent and Christmas. Jesus has come, the world, our world, has
been changed.
Collectively as a Diocese we’re about to embark on a
program of change in the On Mission For The Church Alive. A little over a year from now, we will be
members of a new and different parish. One
possibility is that we may be attending Mass in another location. Then the changes will be obvious. But another possibility is that in the summer
of 2018 we’re still sitting right here, I may very well be preaching (so you’ve
been warned) and nothing will necessarily seem different on the surface. But it will be. And even if our surroundings don’t change,
we’ll still need to have faith and see beyond and embrace and welcome those
whose worlds have been changed. A subtle
message of our Gospel today is to open our hearts and minds in love and to
welcome change, because we understand it as coming from God and being an
integral part of our journey home to Him.
We may not like it and maybe we try not to think about it,
but things are constantly changing for us whether we’re conscious of it or
not. When we stop and think about it,
we’ll come to the realization that we change to get better, to become that
“Best Version of Ourselves,” we certainly don’t change with the goal of getting
worse. You’ll leave this Church this
morning a different person. Hopefully
this liturgy will move you closer to God.
Hopefully this homily didn’t totally confuse you and move you further
away from God. But, we never stay in the
same place. We’ll also be different
tomorrow, it never stops. This year,
I’ll hit some milestone changes. I’ll
turn 50 and I’ll have worked 30 years for the federal government. Please don’t congratulate me, I’m just
getting older. By no means are either of
those things an achievement, I’ve mostly just shown up. But, to be really honest, if it weren’t for
my faith in God, I’d probably be going nuts and having a crazy midlife crisis
of some sort. Because without God, this
just ends. What a hopeless thought. But with God, and with a relationship with
the Lord and Savior of the World, there’s always a future, there’s always hope
and we know that the best day we’ve had here on earth doesn’t even scratch the
surface of what heaven will be like. But
to get there, we need to change. I’d
like to leave you with a little saying I came across: “There are 3 C’s of life; Choices, Chances,
Changes. You must make a choice, to take
a chance, to make a better life through change.”
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