November 12, 2023 – Do Not Wait!

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings

Previous Years:

Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA

Recording

https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/do-not-wait-1699838830/

Transcript

Now this is our annual tithing homily, but I’ll leave you in suspense as to where I’m going to fit that in.

The letter to the Thessalonians is, we believe, the earliest writing in the New Testament. We think Saint Paul wrote it somewhere between 48 and 52 AD. Now, some perspective: that’s 15 to 19 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. 9/11 was 22 years ago. We are further from that event than these people were from the death and resurrection of Jesus. So, keep that in mind. Now he’s writing to the first generation of Christians, and they have a lot of questions, particularly around death. Jesus came, He died, He rose, and He ascended. And there’s this expectation that He is going to come back, but nobody knows when.  Jesus, in fact told them, you know neither the day nor the hour, but there’s an expectation that it would be soon. And yet, it has been 18 years, and some of the earliest believers are beginning to die off. The Thessalonians have questions about what that means: Lord, what does it mean that these people have believed in You and yet You haven’t come back? Does it mean that they are lost? Do we have to be alive and waiting for You, for us to be saved? What happens to those who die before You are back?  So, Saint Paul writes to them and reassures them. He says they will certainly be caught up with the Lord when He comes again. In fact, Saint Paul says that they will be brought out first before even those of us who are living. He is really trying to reassure them here. Now, it’s interesting that this reading should show up on the same weekend as this Gospel. Again, the Church didn’t plan this. We are just going through Thessalonians right now, and this is the Gospel we are going through. But they have lined up, because what image does Saint Paul use? He uses a euphemism for death: We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep. This is a common euphemism for death; we see it in the Gospels as well. 

But there is an interesting detail in our Gospel. It said that as these ten virgins were waiting for the bridegroom—I don’t know exactly what ceremonial purpose they played except somehow, they were supposed to recognize the bridegroom and celebrate him as he rode into the party on his white horse—and he’s so long delayed. This is the concern of the Thessalonians about Jesus. He’s so long delayed that they become drowsy and fall asleep. Now, as is typical in the Gospels, there can be layers and layers of meaning here. I don’t know if it is the majority view that Jesus is talking specifically about death, but thinking about this in terms of death is still very helpful. These women are going out in pursuit of the bridegroom, which is to say, all of us are going in pursuit of Jesus. The bridegroom is delayed. They and we fall asleep on our journey to follow the Lord; we will die. They bring with them in this journey to Jesus—into this death—a certain amount of oil. Some of them come prepared, some of them don’t. And this is where the analogy begins to break down, because those without oil are sent to the merchants, and there is no real analogy to that in the Christian afterlife. Even so, there is a powerful image of us Christians being prepared for our own death. What are we bringing with us to our meeting with the Lord? And the Lord does double down a little bit on this meaning at the end, where He says, Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.  The day, nor the hour of what? Well, the day, nor the hour of the Lord’s coming. For most of us, we will meet the Lord first at our own death. Maybe the world will end while we are living. Maybe we will meet the Lord in a different way than all of our ancestors. Maybe we will see Him when He comes again and we are still in this life. But for the vast majority of us, probably all of us, we will meet the Lord at our death. And so, when we are contemplating the day nor the hour, we have no idea when we will die. Are we prepared? Are we ready? Have we brought with us into this pursuit of the Lord what we need for a successful meeting?

Here comes the tithe. As you walked into Church, only about half of you even saw the prompt, and few of you actually took the papers.  I pulled the table out a little late, so many of you are going to have to take it on your way out. The paper on the front is my letter, and it lays out all the principles of tithing I’ve been talking about since I got here four and a half years ago. A couple of things I want to highlight to you, though.

Before we talk anything about money, what is most important is discipleship. So, the first thing after my letter is the Annual Discipleship Commitment. I talked about it last year, and kind of alluded to it two years ago. This is incredibly important to me because I’m supposed to get up every year—and it is best practices, and I’m happy to do it—and get us to take seriously our tithing obligation so that this parish can continue to live out its mission.  I want us to take seriously our Discipleship Commitment, because if we are not ardently and zealously following the Lord, then nothing else we do is going to matter. We put a lot of work into this with a previous iteration of the Pastoral Council and before them, the Commission on Engaged Church and Missionary Discipleship. This is a list of what the Christian life looks like. It’s based off of a pastoral plan that the Archdiocese put out about four years ago, and I think it’s brilliant. The first thing we have to do as Christians is encounter and have a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the most important thing. After that, we need to be contributing members of the Christian community. We need to look after our brothers and sisters in the faith. And then after that, we need to go out into the world, into the highways and the byways with an invitation to follow the Lord Jesus and a helping hand for those who struggle. And so, this Discipleship Commitment is in an order. Start at the top and commit yourself this year to the first thing you’re not good at. There is attend Mass every weekend unless prevented by sickness or travel. All right, if you are not coming to Mass every weekend, spend the next year working on that.  Nothing else on this sheet matters. Work on that. That’s the most important thing.  After that is sacramental confession, after that daily prayer, after that faith study, trying to learn about the faith. Read a Christian book from time to time.

Only then do we get to the obligation to take care of each other, and this is where I’ve put tithing on this sheet—our financial obligation to our parish and our community. It is important and it matters. But it doesn’t matter as much as you coming to Mass and praying every day. So, if that’s what you’ve got to work on, that’s what you’ve got to work on. But if you’re coming to Mass on Sunday, if you’ve got a confession schedule, if you’re praying and learning your faith, then now we have to talk about money.

In the letter, I lay out four principles. This will not be new if you have been to our Church in the last couple of years. If you’re new to the Church, here they are. Principle number one, it’s part of discipleship. That’s why we have the discipleship commitment.

Principle number two, this is a spiritual practice. All of us are tempted to make money our God. All of us are tempted to believe that money is the source of happiness—I have to work for my own salvation by being constantly working for my money, holding on to my money, being very tight with my money. It is a temptation away from the Lord. And the only way to break that temptation is to give your money away. The same is true with the other three temptations against God.  Power. How do you break the temptation of power? Through true humility, giving other people the lead and the recognition. Pleasure. How do you break the temptation to pleasure? Through repentance, and voluntarily giving up an opportunity for pleasure. How do you break the temptation to fame? Well, that’s also humility, but a different kind—not trying to be in the limelight, just trying to be a silent servant. With money, it’s giving it away.

And so, once you decide to give it away it’s helpful if it is proportional (the third principle). At some point, one of your priests is going to touch your heart with a tithing homily and you’ll be like, oh, I got to do better. Okay, fine. Then you set an amount, and you’re really happy with that amount. But as I mentioned in the letter, if you started giving $10 a week in 2003, well, $10 buys a lot fewer things today than it did in 2003. Percentage based giving is very important for yourself and for the Church because it maintains a standard level of sacrifice. Let’s say you are sacrificing at 5% of your income, and your income goes up with inflation or your income goes down or maybe you’ve retired, and you’re on more of a fixed income—that sacrifice remains the same because it is percentage based. You commit that 5% of my money is going away. Great. Whatever the Lord does—whatever blessings, struggles, whatever—5% is your level of sacrifice and praise God for that.

And then the last principle I added this year is that tithing should constantly be re-evaluated. We should always be asking: Is the Lord calling me to a greater or a different level of sacrifice?  If I decided ten years ago that I should be at the 5% sacrifice—again great, praise God for that—but maybe over the last ten years, the Lord has blessed you more and more and more. And you decided, you know what, I could sacrifice a little more. I could be at the 7% level of sacrifice. Or maybe the Lord has called a much deeper sacrifice from you. Somebody in your family has had to deal with cancer or a major medical scare. Maybe one of your kids is really going through something, and a lot of your sacrifice is with prayer and with emotion, and some of your money has to go toward dealing with that sacrifice. Okay. That’s part of reevaluation. Sometimes the Lord wants us to sacrifice somewhere else, and the money sacrifice is a little less important. I give this homily annually so that you have a prompt to do that reevaluation. Do I feel like I am giving back to the Lord in a way that is proportional and a way that is appropriate? Do I feel like I am answering the call of the Lord in my life for that kind of monetary sacrifice?

Finally, to that end, we have the worksheet. I love the worksheet.  But I also love doing my taxes, so your mileage may vary. I love the worksheet because it is percentage based. You put in what your income is, you pick a percentage, and it spits out a number. And what’s freeing about that is you’ve already made the commitment. You’ve said I want to give 7% of my income away this year, and then you put in the numbers, it gives you the amount you’ve already made a commitment to. It doesn’t feel like somebody is affronting you. It doesn’t feel like you’re constantly burdened by asks for money, because you have already made the commitment to the amount that worksheet says to give away. Let’s just say $2,000 this year. Well, great. Now it’s just like the most fun you’ve ever had because you’re like, well, you get some money and you get some money and you get some money. It’s not a burden because you’ve already made the commitment. Now it’s a joy. Oh, somebody is in need. Well, I’ve already put aside money for people in need, so I don’t have to worry about whether I can help them or not. I’ve already made a commitment to help others. This is the person the Lord has placed in my life. It’s not a burden. It’s an opportunity. And it’s beautiful. We have listed as best as we can on this worksheet, all of the different people who are going to ask you for money over the next year. The parish right on top because I’m preaching the homily. But we also have things like the Outreach envelope, which supports worthy causes chosen by our Life, Justice and Peace Commission. So, you can don’t even have to worry about finding your own charities; we find them for you. You give to the Outreach envelope. We’ve got Assumption Catholic School. We’ve got all of the different second collections. And then at the bottom we’ve got personal causes. I have a couple of charities that are just personally meaningful to me, and so I fill those in and I know what amount I want to give to them. Then I add it up. It’s the amount that the percentage spit out. And so now when these collections come up or when these asks come up, I can say I already made that commitment back in November. I don’t have to worry about it. I pull out my sheet. I say, yep, I committed to that second collection, here’s the envelope. This makes your life easier and your giving joyful so that it’s not always a burden.

My friends, I started with the wise and foolish virgins. I started with this question of what we are bringing into the afterlife, because I really want to encourage us not to wait. Both with discipleship and with tithing. The temptation is always, well, I have to wait for this thing to happen before I can start a spiritual practice. Please, God, nobody says this, but, “I have to wait for my kids to get out of the house before I can start coming to Mass on Sunday.” Bring your kids. “I have to wait until I reach this level of income before I can start giving money to the Church.”  “We don’t have the time—or an hour—to begin a good and helpful spiritual practice.”  Do what you can now. Bring what you can with you.

If you’ve never tithed before, start by giving $10 a week. See how that works out for you. See where that goes, and then turn it into a percentage and then reevaluate that percentage. If you have been tithing but you’ve never done the percentage base giving, do it.  It’s so freeing, and it is so wonderful. And if you have been percentage based, but the Lord is putting something on your heart tonight that you should reevaluate that level of sacrifice, go for it. Don’t ignore that prompting.  The same is true on an even more profound level with these discipleship practices. If you haven’t gone to confession in a long time and the Lord is putting that on your heart, don’t wait. We do not know the time or the hour. If you’ve been waiting to download the Bible in a Year app—the Ascension app—don’t wait. Start the spiritual practice. If you feel a prompt to reach out to those around you, to get involved in a parish program or to help those in need—maybe at Hope House—don’t wait. Do it now. We know neither the time nor the hour.

The wise virgins made provision. They brought with them what they needed. They didn’t delay. The foolish virgins figured it’s good enough. I’ll be fine. Don’t wait. If the Lord is calling you to something deeper, He’s calling you to something deeper now. I hope that these commitments, I hope that these worksheets help you pray to the Lord about His call in your life. I hope they make it obvious and easy for you to bring these to the Lord in prayer, so that He can guide your life, and He can bring you into that eternal wedding banquet.

Published by Fr. Moore