26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
READING 1:
Amos 6:1a, 4-7 Psalm
146 READING 2: 1 Timothy 6:11-16 GOSPEL: Luke 16:19-31
About a week or so ago, there was a picture with an article in the newspaper about a young professor at Carnegie-Mellon. He was a handsome man standing to the side of the lectern. The story said he was a brilliant and popular guy who invented several video games that helped make computers friendlier to new users. He told the audience that he feels great and dropped down and did a set of push-ups. Then he said that this was his last lecture. Although he had the finest of physicians and the most advanced care, his pancreatic cancer would kill him within weeks. He would not see his little children grow up and his wife would be left with the total responsibility for them. He went on to say that when he was a child it was his dream to play in the NFL, but the furthest he got was his high school team. But that was enough for him to pick up one of the best lessons for his life. One day at practice the coach really ripped him, it was brutal and he was discouraged. Then one of the assistant coaches spoke to him after practice and said, “The coach only rips guys like that when he hasn’t given up on them.” I tried all this week to find some way to avoid the challenge in today’s readings. But, my friends, it is impossible to get past the prophet Amos telling us the Lord God says: Woe to you complacent ones sitting on your couches and watching your plasma TVs. Well, he says, “ivory beds.” And the second reading reminds us that Christians need to be righteous. Finally, Jesus tells a story in the Gospel about a comfortable man who never raised his eyes to notice until the tables were turned and he was suffering and the poor man was celebrating for eternity. Woe to you complacent ones; lift up your eyes and see. Please don’t think I claim I have all the answers here. It seems to me American businesses are being crippled by health care costs. Moreover, many hard working small business owners and people who work for businesses that can’t afford to pay for health care insurance for families are without insurance. There is a bill in Congress to extend a very successful program to help these hard working people cover their children’s healthcare, but it is stalled. Woe to you complacent ones; lift your eyes and see. We’ve been fighting a war against drugs in our country for over 30 years. We have had one “Drug Czar” after another after another, and they all keep doing the same things. Our tax dollars keep building more jails to hold the users but we haven’t budged the percentage of usage even one percent in all these years. It seems we are losing this war and no one even suggests there might be a different strategy to fight the war on drugs so we win it. Woe to you complacent ones; lift up your eyes. There are 4,000 abortions every day. No one is looking for a better way to stop them than criminalization. We’ve spent well over $500,000 and countless lives on a war and run up record deficits no one is paying on now but somebody (like us) is going to have to pay back. And nobody can even define what a victory would be let alone a viable strategy to win or get out. Time magazine has a cover story this week about a new troop carrier. It says: “It’s unsafe. It can’t shoot straight. It’s already cost 30 lives and $20 billion. And now it’s headed for Iraq .” Our Marines are going to be climbing aboard these things. Woe to you complacent ones; lift up your eyes. God loves the world. He loves the world so much that he sent his only son not to condemn the world but to save it. God hasn’t given up on us. God is just trying to “coach us up.” The young professor knows the number of his days. Most of us will not know the day or the hour. Our time will come. Then there will be accountability in God’s terms. Will we hear Jesus say, “well done good and faithful servant, come and share my Father’s joy”? Or will we be on the wrong side of the great abyss with Dives? I pray the answer is “good news!” Fr. Jeff McGowan |
