Homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A: What are you?

Audio Recording:

Text:

Many of us will have experienced at some point what is best described as a corporate icebreaker. The sort of affair where a group of people have gathered, usually in a circle, and to begin to get to know one another each person is asked to speak in turn, with some generally innocuous details about themselves and their lives. Some people hate these tasks, some don’t mind them; I’ve never met anyone who admitted to actually liking them!

You’ll be please to know that I’m not going to go around asking anyone, but I would like you to try one of the common icebreakers in your own mind. Sometimes people are asked to try and describe who they are in five words; not a sentence – they can be unrelated words. But I am going to change one part. I would like you to think for just a few moments not about who you are, but about what you are. So let’s take a few seconds of silence: In no more than five words – how would you describe what you are.

—

Whatever words came to you in those few seconds, try to hold on to them in your minds.

I had a bit of time to reflect on that question in preparing for this homily, so I’m going to take myself as an example. The words I settled with are : I am a Christian, a Husband, a Teacher, a Father, and a Deacon. Of course, once we have our words in mind, if we are to share them then we have to settle on the order that we’re going to say them in. Perhaps just the order they popped into our heads? I gave mine in chronological order – I was baptised as a Christian as a baby; I got married when I was twenty; became a teacher straight out of university; a Father a couple of years later; and a deacon just under a year ago.

But what if we try to put our words into an order according to their importance to us? Try it in your minds with some of your own words. It’s difficult. It’s very difficult. In fact it’s so difficult that we may not ever be able to find an answer we are happy with. Is it more important to me to be a deacon or a teacher? A father or a husband? My wife and children heard this homily on Sunday morning and it led to a few interesting questions when I got home!

What we are presented with in today’s Gospel seems at first glance to be a very difficult teaching of Jesus’. He says “anyone who prefers father or mother… son or daughter to me is not worthy of me.” Wow. What he’s saying is that whatever else we are, and whatever order of importance we might settle on for the other things, being his disciple, being a Christian, must come first.

What he’s not saying of course, is that we should not love being the other things too; but he does insist on our belonging to him first.

To understand these difficult lines we must remember that this person speaking, this man, Jesus, is the Word of God in the flesh. This is what we acknowledge in the Creed. We say also that “through him, all things were made.” All things, not just the concrete nouns, if you’ll pardon the grammatical term; not just the rocks and the air and the trees and the squirrels. All things – including ourselves; including our nature to procreate and raise children; to teach one another; to undertake marriage or to receive holy orders. All of that comes from him. In fact, there can be no word in your mind that cannot be traced back to him, because everything that you are, you are because of him and his plan for you.

So being his first is not a bad thing. Being his first makes us better at everything else. If you recognised yourself as an artist, you will be a better artist if you appreciate that the things you paint are his handiwork; if you are a nurse, you will be a better nurse if you see him in the face of every patient; if you are a scientist, you will be a better scientist if you realise that it is his creation that you seek to reveal.

For my part, I truly believe that I am a better husband, because I am his; I am a better father, because I am his; I am a better teacher, because I am his; and, frankly, I would be a pretty useless deacon if I was anything but entirely his.

In short, if the person of Jesus is anything at all to us, he must be everything to us.