Homily 602 – 3 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
July 14, 2024
Epistle:  (88) Romans 5:1-10 and (334) Hebrews 13: 7-16
Gospel:  (18) Matthew 6:22-33 and (56) John 17:1-13

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God.

The message of the Gospel is quite significant to me personally.  I have told others this, and counseled this, but this is part of what I repeated to myself daily, morning and evening, to overcome my fear of the future.

There is a separate passage in Luke that says the same thing – and I would recite, aloud, Matthew in the morning and Luke in the evening.

Because I was crippled by anxiety.  Worry, about the future, about the present, about pretty much everything.  Anxiety that I wouldn’t find work, anxiety that when I did have work I would get terminated or laid off.

The anxiety was because I had been programmed that my responsibility was to care for my family – and so it is.  But society also told me a different message, reinforced by the Church – that I was responsible for taking care of me as well.

With responsibility comes, at times, fear.  And with fear, anxiety.  Not just because I worked for others, either.  Farmers know this anxiety.  Small business owners know this anxiety.  We all know that we are one disaster, one drought, one flood, away from hunger and homelessness.

Here, though, Christ tells us something vastly different.

We can’t do anything – about anything.  We can’t control the behavior of others, or the behavior of nature.  And we shouldn’t try.  Anxiety comes from trying to control things that cannot be controlled, or are out of our control.

Christ is very specific.  Nothing in nature controls anything.  What we eat, what we drink, what we wear.  God controls it all.  For us as well as the rest of creation.

We have been given this narrative that to have more is to be rewarded by God and to have less is to be punished by God, but nothing – absolutely nothing – is further from the truth.  We are, all of us, loved by God.  Some do have more, and some do have less – but even that is for our benefit.  More is to share with less.

When those with more share with those with less, several things happen.  First and foremost, God is pleased.  That in and of itself should be sufficient for us to act.  If we want to be a bit more, well, self-centered about it, then when we share with those who have less, we experience the joy and fulfillment that comes from relationship.

Nearly 25 years ago, Candy and I went to Albania.  The purpose of the trip was to see if God was calling us to become missionaries there.  In 2000, Albania had been out from under the communists and atheists for about 10 years.  And it showed.  The streets of the capital city were barely paved.  There were vehicles, but most were in pretty shabby shape.  Air conditioning was non-existent, and electricity, and water, existed for maybe three or four hours a day.

In the capital of Tirana, there were three buildings – a grocery store, a movie theater, and an expat café – that had air conditioning.  In the entire city.  The European soccer championships were going on, and if someone had a television, typically a very small one, 13-inch screen, it would be on a chair in the middle of the street, and the whole neighborhood would gather to watch.  There was a screen in the middle of town where people could watch as well.

So, by our standards, the people of Albania had nothing.  And yet – I left Albania with the understanding that in the midst of having nothing, they had everything.  They had each other.  They had family and friends.  Every evening the entire city would go for a walk.  They would meet and greet neighbors and family, and enjoy a series of chats.

Sometimes they would retire to each other’s homes, never more than a three or four room flat, really, for more conversation, perhaps some games or singing, and likely a healthy amount of homemade alcohol, called raki.

It was hot – 95 degrees at times – and when a storm came through and cooled off the city, everyone went to the park.  Smiles everywhere.  Kids playing, couples arm in arm, enjoying their company and their children, again conversing with neighbors.  Even for me, an outsider, it was glorious.

Just an afternoon with no heat, lots of sunshine, and the sounds of relief, and of laughter, and of joy, and of love.

In those moments – those 10 days in Albania – my understanding of the world began to change.  What used to be important wasn’t so important anymore.  I began to see that having things, having stuff, being comfortable – it wasn’t the goal of life.  It wasn’t even important.

What was important was having family, and friends, and neighbors, and fellowship.  What was important was experiencing God through those relationships.  Because that truly is how we experience God.

We tend to pursue the necessities of life as the goal.  But we don’t have to.  God provides.  We have to be open to accepting it.  That was the part that was difficult for me.  I was, as most of you know, a healthcare executive in a prior life.  I had to finally understand that the life of being a healthcare executive consumed me – perhaps not everyone, but it did me.  I took a very substantial pay cut to work at a place that allows me to also serve here as a priest.  A job that perhaps formerly I would have said was – quote – beneath me.

I say that not to get sympathy, but rather to illustrate that we have lacked nothing.  Our family has lacked nothing.  In the midst of everything, God has provided.  Combined with repeating this passage, morning and evening, for literally years, my priorities are transformed.  And my life is better.

I’m not wealthy, I don’t have money in savings, I will likely never be able to retire.

But I have my family.  I have my friends.  I have you, my brothers and sisters.  And at the end of it all, I have God with us – all of us – and I have joy.  That joy is what I try to share with you all.

Let the troubles of this world fade away with the mantra that God knows our needs and will provide for our needs.  And we can focus on experiencing life.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ.