28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Preached at Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Part of our series on the Next Step program from the Evangelical Catholic. Information can be found here: https://www.ecnextstep.com/
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/discover-your-story/
Transcript
Thanks to a Whatcom Catholic parishioner for her help in editing this transcription.
This first reading needs a little bit of context to make sense out of it. Naaman was a general. I believe he was a Syrian general, and so he was the guy who was going into Israel on raids. Israel was constantly being attacked and persecuted by its neighbors, and Naaman was one of the ones leading those attacks. Then, when he needs healing, a little Israelite girl that he captured in one of these raids tells him that if he would just go to the prophet in Israel he would be healed. So, he goes, and he is healed. And then in this reading that we have he is saying, give me two mule-loads of earth. Just a weird request. The reason is that at the time gods were seen as territorial, literally related to the earth. So, in order to worship the God of Israel, you needed to do so in Israel. And if this guy was going to go back to Syria and worship the God of Israel, he needed some “Israel” with him. He needed to worship that God in Israel. So, he brought Israel with him so that he could continue that worship. But we might think of this in a more general term. Yes, taking the two mule-loads of earth was because that was just a requirement of religion at the time. But in a sense, it’s also a reminder to him of his salvation. This moment of healing, this moment of salvation, is going to stick with him always. And not salvation in the religious sense. Salvation in the literal, physical sense. This guy has been saved from leprosy, not just a debilitating, grave mortal disease, but also his status was quickly going to be taken away from him if he didn’t get this leprosy dealt with. And so, he was saved by the God of Israel. And this is a reminder of his salvation.
I think all of us probably have some equivalent, or I hope we do, of these two mule-loads of earth. Myself, I have a few but the one that comes to mind is in my office. I have a small award and it’s clear, so it’s actually hard to read if you’re in my office. It is a small award on the top of my desk from the Archdiocese of Boston. It was given to me because of the work that I did as an undergraduate trying to spread the gospel among college students. Now, I’m proud of the work that I did in the Archdiocese of Boston, but I keep that award mostly because it reminds me of one of the most blessed and happy times of my life. Those four years, and particularly the two where I was doing this work, were so full of life and full of the Holy Spirit. And I just felt like I was operating in my life on all cylinders, that I was very close to the Lord, and I was growing closer to him. I felt a call in my life, and I was with friends, and we were preaching the gospel, and it was just a beautiful time in my life. Well that award was necessary because the next seven years of my life, really six because there was one year after college that was pretty good, the next six years of my life were very, very difficult for me. Getting through seminary was hard because all the things that I loved my junior and senior years of college (preaching the gospel, being with friends, just living life most fully) was taken away from me because there’s still this idea that seminarians should be shuttered away from the world. And so, I was put on a hill with some Benedictines; closed off from the world; forced to sit and pray and study for my entire life. I did that for two years with Benedictines and then four years, which was only a little bit better, in Chicago. But that seminary was also intentionally out in the boonies kind of away from ministry, where you’re supposed to just sit and pray and study. And so, that reminder got me through the difficult times. The reminder of what I was called to, and where my zeal was found, and where I experienced the Holy Spirit. Just looking at that award from time to time very much helped me get through a difficult period.
I give you all of this because taking stock of our story and where we find God, or where we felt distant from God is incredibly important. What’s the difference between the Samaritan leper and the other nine? The difference is that the Samaritan leper stopped and took note of his blessings. It is an absolute dogma of the faith. It is philosophically required, based on what we know about God, that God is always with us. As our creator he sustains us in being, and so we can never be apart from God. He is walking with us at every moment in every situation, but we rarely stop and take stock of his presence. We rarely stop and realize all of the many blessings we have been given. Or we rarely realize when we’re going through a difficult time how God might be using that time to make us better Christians; to help us grow in the spirit. I am certainly a better priest because I went to seminary even if it was difficult. The Lord used that time in my life. And to look back on a difficult time and to notice how God used that time, even that time to bless me, is a necessary move for the Christian disciple. We have to be able to tell our story and not just for ourselves but tell our story in relation to God. If we know that we have this line: I feel good, I feel bad, this was a good time in my life, this is a bad time in my life, where is the God line? Where is God in all of that? If we stop and notice and think about it and pray about it, it helps us grow closer to the Lord because we can see how he is guiding us, how he is loving us, how he is walking with us at every moment. Noting that will cause us, like the Samaritan leper, to return to God in thanks to say, “Lord, I know how you were with me and are with me, and I give you thanks for that. I come back to you, and I bring that back to you, and I give you that thanks.” It also helps us grow in trust of the Lord. If we can look at our past and say, well even in my worst times the Lord was with me and certainly he has blessed me in all of these ways. Will it cause us to trust that he wasn’t just with us then but is with us now and will be with us in the future. I deal with people regularly who say they doubt the existence of God, and I tell them most of the time people don’t doubt the existence of God. They doubt the goodness of God. They doubt that God actually loves them or is with them or notices them. Well, to grow in the trust that God notices us and loves us, we have to see how he’s done it before.
Every single one of us in this room, in this church, could say God has blessed me. We have all seen those blessings, but we need to keep them in front of our minds so that if we ever feel that doubt, we can go back to it. Like my award from Boston, we can go back to it and say no, you know what? God does bless me. And even if I’m struggling, I know that he has been with me and will be with me again. That’s why we have this card today that hopefully you received on the way in. If you didn’t, you can get it on the way out. This is the Discover your Story card. We’ve been talking about these habits of discipleship. Well, why is discovering your story a habit of discipleship? Because a disciple is always trying to grow closer to Jesus. And in order for that disciple to grow closer to Jesus, we have to know the ways in which God is present in our lives. And we learn those ways by knowing our story. We learn those ways by saying, this is where God has shown up or this is where God caused me to grow even if I felt distant from him. By naming those ways, we can recognize them in the future. We can recognize more clearly the blessings that God continues to pour down upon us.
We can recognize, even in the difficult times, the ways in which God is helping us to grow so that we don’t feel despondent. But we say, “You know what Lord? This is a trial I will endure because you know better than me.” I’ve seen you do it in the past, and I know you will do it in the future. Sitting down, telling our story, knowing where God was in every moment of that story will always cause us to return to Jesus like the Samaritan leper and give thanks. Now it is my hope that we are actually doing this. These steps are intentionally concrete things, concrete activities that we can set down. On the front of the card, it’s called Next Step because there are steps on this card. We can do the steps. It’s just following a recipe. And if we follow those steps, it will have an effect on our relationship with Jesus and on our discipleship. So, it is my hope that everybody in our parish is doing these steps when we present them. We intentionally space them two weeks apart so that we have two weeks to do them. Now be reconciled. The first step we talked about we’re doing that from five weeks ago until Christmas so that step might take a little bit longer and that’s fine. But meditate on God’s Word. We’ve had three weeks to think about that, and my hope is that you have practiced that, tried it, seen how it’s gone.
And my hope with this is: that you will practice it, go through the steps, try it, see how it goes, trust me, and trust that this program will have an effect on you. And if you want to take it to the next step of the next step, do it with a buddy. Do it with your spouse or with your children or with your friends or with your prayer group or with somebody you introduce yourself to after mass today. Being able to know your story and then talk that story out with somebody else elevates that experience even higher; makes it even more powerful. We should know. As I said, Naaman the Syrian found physical salvation, his healing from leprosy, and hopefully by worshipping the God of Israel for the rest of his life, as he did, he found eternal salvation. It’s interesting in the gospel ten were cleansed, and yet Jesus did not refer to them as saved. All of the blessings that God gives us are for our salvation and we understand that those blessings bring us salvation. The one who is saved is the one who came back to Jesus. If we can look at our story and go back to the Lord; bring him that story; thank him for it, then he can look upon us like he looked upon the Samaritan leper, and he can say, “Your faith has saved you.”
Fr. Moore 