Homily

This is a great little section in the gospel of Luke, Chapter 18. There are two parables, and four meetings with people, and in each of these stories things are not as they appear to be. There's the parable of the widow and the judge. The poor little widow has no chance of winning her case because the judge wants a bribe and she has no money. But she keeps pleading and begging and pleading and begging and he finally gives in because of her persistence. No one would have seen that coming.

Then Jesus tells the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee. It's the tax collector who leaves the Temple justified, not the Pharisee. No one would have seen that coming.

Next people are bringing their children and babies to Jesus to have Him touch and bless them. That seems pretty natural to us, but in that time and place, children out in public were to keep quiet and out of the way, and no politician would go around kissing babies because children in public were to be kept out of the way of adults. And yet, here is Jesus praising the innocent faith of children and welcoming them into His arms. No one would have seen that coming.

Then a rich young man comes to Jesus and asks Him what he must do to inherit eternal life, declaring that he has kept all the commandments and observed them since he was a child. And it's very likely that many people in the crowd, maybe most of them or even all of them, including the disciples, understood why this man was rich. Obviously God had blessed him with material goods as a reward for being so faithful to the Lord in keeping the commandments. And then, before you blink, it turns out that the man's riches are the one thing keeping him from drawing closer to God and, the one thing standing in the way of his eternal happiness. No one would have seen that coming.

Shortly after this is our Gospel reading of today, a blind man calling out because people tell him that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. What does this man know about Jesus and how did he come to believe that Jesus might do something for him, we do not know. But a blind beggar yelling out from the curbside just didn't seem to be a very proper way to behave in front of the Master, so some of the people in Jesus' party try to get him to shut up. The blind man calls out to Him even more loudly, calling Him the Son of David twice, and giving Him this messianic title. Certainly unexpected by the crowd this yelling is also unwelcome. If the man was begging, he had no one to look out for him, and of course was very poor. Being very poor and blind, he may have been very badly dressed in worn and dirty clothes, and not a very pretty sight to see. But when Jesus asks him what he wants, the man no longer calls Him Son of David. Instead he ups the ante, and he calls Jesus "Lord," not in the sense of simple respect, but with the force of a great faith in Jesus. Immediately, instantly, all of a sudden, in a flash, before you can blink, the beggar gets his eyesight back. Everyone is amazed and no one saw that coming except for the blind man. Ironic, no?

And this section of Luke's Gospel is book-ended by the story of the tax collector who climbed a tree to see Jesus. When Jesus calls him, all the crowd starts to complain. It would have been great if Jesus had told this little government agent a thing or two about his evil ways and humiliated him in front of the crowd. But instead Jesus says He wants to stay at Zacchaeus' house! Nobody saw that coming.

I think it is safe to say that a lot of the time we get stuck on our circumstances, on the events and situations and people that make up our daily lives. It could be issues of health, or money, or children, or parents, or emotions, or work, or living conditions, or politics, or school, or anxieties, or frustrations, or a search for pleasure, or feelings of hopelessness, or of love, or addiction, or in sports. It may be we are stuck upon events in the past, or stuck upon events we fear may happen in the future, or we hope will happen in the future, or we expect to happen in the future.

All of these things that we may get stuck on may also be very real, or at least very real to us. But the Lord asks us to put Him first and at the heart of our lives, above and beyond all these things we get stuck on, and to find Him there as the only real and lasting hope, as the only love Who will never fail us. The more and the more we do that the more we become people who can see what's coming. Because what's coming is, then, Christ our Life, and all the rest is secondary to Him. Every other person, every other event, good and bad, is seen and understood and handled as best we can by we who have put on Christ, and what we cannot do, what we cannot understand, what we cannot make better, we leave in His hands.

And like the widow, we will call out to Him day and night, the Just Judge. Like the Publican, we will ask for mercy and forgiveness. Imitating little children, we will strive for a child's strong faith, and unlike the Rich Young Man, we will know what Treasure will make us rich forever. Imitating the blind man, we will have the faith to believe the Lord will give us whatever we truly need, if, like Zacchaeus, we welcome Him into the home of our souls. There are plenty, plenty, plenty of things in life that lay ahead of us, things that we can't even see coming. They may be better, or worse, than what we can imagine today. But all of them, even the bad, will add up to the greatness of our lives, if as they come, we stand and face them with Christ -- until that day comes when all the rest is left behind and His is the only face we will see.