Homily for the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Last week Jesus fed well over 5,000 people including women and children.  The people wanted to haul Him off and make Him a king; and why not - He’d be a very useful king to have, especially on a journey.  When traveling we like things just so, useful things, useful people

I love road trips, I mean really long one like up into British Columbia, Yukon Territory — Alaska.  Thankfully I don’t have any kids because, as I understand it, the cry goes out a couple of hours into a trip “Are we there yet?”  What seemed like a good idea at the time becomes something else altogether.  At airports, it can happen even before you board the plane.

We get disgruntled when things or persons become useless.  We’ve all had the experience of being asked to sign our name to some document and our pen won’t work.  Drats.  If something as insignificant as a pen can upset us, what about the larger issues?  Larger issues like not being able to connect with wifi.  Having to get up to change channels on the TV.  Rebooting a computer or an iPad.  Disgruntledness comes in so many forms, and we aren’t even out of the house yet.

If everything and everyone isn’t working at peak efficiency, according to our standards we remain happy, if not— we quickly get disgruntled.  Moses says to the people, “let’s go on a road trip; we’ll get out of this slavish work, enter a promised land and begin a new life.  Even God thinks this is a good idea.  So far Moses has been useful.  The parting of the Red Sea, that was spectacular, they decided Moses is a good leader, good to have around.  Aaron too, water right out of a flinty rock.  We’ll keep him.  But now, the cry is going out “are we there yet?”  Well, Moses knows they aren’t anywhere close to THERE yet.  They aren’t happy, the trip’s too long, lousy accommodations, lousy food and not enough of it.

God steps in.  God’s goodness, God’s compassionate caring is described as quail falling from the sky in the evening, and as hoarfrost covering the ground in the morning.  That may or may not be exactly what happened but that isn’t the point of the story.  The point of the store is that Moses, Aaron, and the people pull themselves together, they tap into an inner life and wisdom that allows them to carry on.  That they were fed is certain, just how, we probably don’t really know.

There was a young man here, a Berkeley student, at mass two Sundays ago.  He had been paralyzed last year playing rugby.  He was here in town attending the first ever rugby tournament held in the United States at ATT stadium.  I first saw him bounding up the hill of California street, in his wheelchair.  When he got to the top of the hill I said “WOW.”  Impressive.  He laughed and told me his story.  He was particularly excited because just that Wednesday, he told me he could move a couple of his toes for the first time and was actually standing up for the first time in almost a year.

Robert is on a road trip of sorts.  I am sure he has been disgruntled many times and he has every right to be but there was no self-pity on his face or in his attitude.  It was clear he had tapped into a life-giving wisdom and a power that even he didn’t know he had.  I think too of the kids trapped in a totally dark cave for almost two weeks, how does one deal with situations like this?  We are told their leader taught them how to meditate; they tapped into life-giving Wisdom.  This is the Wisdom Moses tapped into, what the Israelites were tapping into, and what Jesus is asking his followers to tap into.  This is what we are invited to tap into so that we can continue the journey, and so we can feed and help others, those others who are discouraged, disgruntled, maybe even hopeless; so we can all continue the journey forward to more abundant life, not only in some distant future but right now.