August 31, 2025 at Saint Peter and Saint William Catholic Churches in Naples, FL

Sirach 3: 17-18, 20, 28-9 + Psalm 68 + Hebrews 12: 18-19,22-24 + Luke 14: 1, 7-14

I don’t know if any of you have ever had to sit at a “Head Table” at some big important dinner, but I have found it very unpleasant. At most of those occasions, everyone else is seated at round tables, but the
“Head Table” is usually a long one with certain people sitting on one side facing out into the room. If you have to sit at the head table, there is no one to talk to except the two people on either side of you. If you have nothing in common to talk about, you’re stuck, and it makes for a long evening of boring chatter. Having learned from experience, I was back home several months ago, invited to a big event that I had been part of. As soon as I arrived, ahead of most everyone else, I saw that dreaded “Head Table.”  I ran up and took my name card and swapped it with someone else at one of the round tables. That caused a bit of confusion that got even more so when it was time for me to make some remarks. I began my remarks quoting this parable.

The whole scene in this parable takes me back to Junior High School when everyone was jockeying for a seat at the “cool table.” I don’t care how old you may be, I am sure most of you remember that. You were either in or you were out. Those of us in the out group usually remember it well. One of the things about privilege is that it is usually invisible to those who have it, and with privilege usually comes a sense of “entitlement” that usually leaves one thinking that they are protected from criticism or challenge. And so it goes with this parable, because when it comes to these things in life, not much has changed since Jesus watched human behavior at that dinner to which he was invited.

He observed two things, one with regard to the guests and the other regard to the host. What he addresses to all of us and to the guests that evening is far more than behavior at that banquet. He is addressing something that is tears at the very fabric of social and communal life, “competition.” You know, competition is a zero-sum game. It undermines cooperation and solidarity. It marginalizes and excludes the vulnerable. It makes losers when there none in God’s sight. Competition has captured our way of life, and there is no place better to see what it does than the after-school and weekend events that control family life. Parents are running all over the place the moment school is out taking one child to this practice or game, and God forbid there are two children in two different leagues. The consequence is that too many children hardly know how to have fun. They are constantly comparing themselves to someone else. It there are winners, there will then be losers. We are trapped in this competitive system that is about far more than games. It affects our economy and our relationships with the whole world. It breeds resentment, and it’s dangerous.

The second observation that Jesus makes is spoken to the host as much as it is to us. It concerns the ethic of reciprocity. It was the basis of the Greek/Roman patronage system. We would like to think that it was over with the fall of that empire, but the first time we catch ourselves wondering or even daring to say out loud: “What am I going to get out it?” We know this attitude is still alive and well.

What Jesus advocates is a pattern of relationships where respect springs out of the knowledge and recognition that everyone is a child of God, looking at each other with the eyes of a loving parent who has no favorites. At the same time, Jesus puts an end to reciprocity because what we all get is another chance to give. If Jesus was correct in announcing that the Kingdom of God is at hand, then we are already living in that Kingdom where God’s gracious hospitality has made a place for us not because we deserve it or earned it, but because we have come to realize how far we still are from that banquet in heaven.

August 24, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

Isaiah 66: 18-21 + Psalm 117 + Hebrews 12: 5-7, 11-13 + Luke 13: 22-30

There are some folks who are quick to say that they are saved. You may know some of them. They are also heard to say that if you just accept Jesus as your personal savior, you’re saved. Many of them are comfortable saying: “When we all get to heaven” as if salvation is all and only about the afterlife. These words of Jesus spoken to all of us should call that thinking into question. In fact, those who feel really sure and confident that they are saved have skipped Luke 13.

A question begins this pause on the journey to Jerusalem, and Jesus makes fun of it. Those standing around at the time would have laughed at his answer. He makes fun of it because it’s the wrong question. That man should have asked: “How do you get to be saved.” To that question, Jesus responds with three points:

1) it’s not easy.

2) Don’t waste time, seize the moment.

3) No one should be too sure about salvation.

There has been some bad thinking about this in the past and some of it lingers today. The idea that Baptism or religious heritage (like being Catholic) is a sure ticket. The other is the delusion that we can earn salvation by some kind of spiritual exercise alone. One thing is certain from what Jesus has to say today: no one is just going to slide on in.

He makes it clear that the time will come when the door is shut and it will be too late. No excuse will be accepted, and it makes no difference how well you think you know Jesus or how much you know about him. Being familiar with God means nothing. The basis of a relationship with our God as Jesus has revealed him is not how well we claim to know God, but how well God knows us. The more we think, speak, and act like his Son, the more God may recognize us as his own.

Those of us who are here, who are faithful in prayer, and practice our faith must be very careful lest we begin to think of ourselves as insiders. What Jesus makes clear is that when we stand at the door we may be quite surprised to discover who got there first. We need to begin to think about what we are saved from and what we are saved for. When we ask that second part, we begin to realize that salvation is a long and difficult journey filled with opportunities. It is hard work. Salvation is the work of the Kingdom, creating a new reality in which we all become friends.

Binding the spiritual, physical, and emotional wounds of individuals and communities is the role of God’s people. Salvation is not just a spiritual idea or experience. It is a real-life experience that happens in the real world everywhere and every day. There is here a call for inclusivity. There can be no insiders or outsiders in God’s eyes. Think of it this way and reflect upon the meaning and consequence of the language being used these days. When someone is called and “illegal alien” they are describing someone as being without a human core. It’s as though they are not human. We talk of “aliens” from other galaxies who are not human. We imply some detachment from the human race, and so they don’t have to treated like humans. When lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons are denied the right to equal employment or persons with disabilities are not provided access we are building walls of alienation. When poor people, older adults, women and children have no opportunity to live as community residents with dignity we violate the call of Jesus for inclusivity. Those may well be the very people looking at us from the inside as the door gets closed. We need to think about this wondering if they will welcome us in because the salvation Jesus proclaims is going to turn things upside down.

Remember the words from the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. The Beatitudes continue to reveal the great reversal that may catch us all by surprise. In the salvation of God, no one has more than they need until all have enough.

August 17, 2025 This homily was not delivered as I have been in Oklahoma

Jeremiah 38: 4-6, 8-10 + Psalm 40 + Hebrews 12: 1-4 + Luke 12: 49-53

The words of Jesus in this week’s Gospel sound harsh and are far from welcome to people trying their best to cultivate family life in world that does everything to tear us apart. There is no reason to think that what Jesus describes is what he wants. In fact, it is best to hear this as a lament. He did not come to cause strife or with a plan to cause the pain that comes when parents and children find themselves set against each other. Yet, making sure that families always live together joyfully was not the goal of his life either.

He came with a greater purpose, to create a new family. His concern goes beyond the nuclear family not fix, repair, or leave it as it is. He was not out to destroy the family of Israel, but neither did he want to fix a few broken pieces. His whole life and mission was the creation of a new family. There is a great sense of urgency in his words encouraging us all to look closely and see what is really happening. He would have us see that something new is happening that is not yet finished making this time, our time, crucial.

All around us rising nationalism, individualism, latent and denied racism, fear of others, and just simple human brokenness is a devastating challenge to the creation of the new family he has entrusted to us. There is an invitation not to be missed here. It is a call to move beyond biological descriptions of family to our baptismal family. When we do so, we will provide hope to those without their nuclear family, single people, divorced people, widows and those whose families are filled with internal strife, and anyone who may gather with us around the Word and this Altar alone. If creation of a new family was the work of Jesus Christ, then it is our work as well, and the urgency with which he addressed goal ought to motivate and encourage us.

We face a constant barrage of rhetoric these days that divides us and pushes us away from each other under the pretext of keeping us safe. Some of those use the Sacred Scriptures to justify their agenda twisting the words of Jesus with their own ideas about greatness, and today it is this very political agenda dividing families and turning family members against each other. In this environment, loyalty to the “Party” is more important that loyalty to the human family.

The words of Jesus challenge us to grow beyond our fears and our narrow-mindedness asking for courage, compassion and humility. There is here an invitation to imagine and create a new family where loyalty to Christ comes first no matter the cost. There is here an invitation to risk power, prestige and even acceptance to stand up for the equality, justice, compassion and reconciliation that every one of us deserves for one great reason. We belong to a family of faith as children of God.

August 10, 2025 – Not delivered. I am in Oklahoma at this time

Wisdom 18: 6-9 + Psalm 33 + Hebrews 11: 1-2, 8-19 + Luke 12: 32-48

Last week, I boarded a plane and flew up to Oklahoma City. As always, before we left the ground, an invisible flight attendant said: “We’d like your attention for a few moments while we show you some of the safety features of this aircraft.” Then, as though we had no idea how to fasten a safety belt, we got a demonstration followed by the number and location of emergency exits. There was the usual demonstration of how to use an oxygen mask and where the life vest was located and how to blow it up. Of course, the whole idea is to help us passengers be prepared for the unexpected. That is exactly what Jesus is doing in these verses from Luke’s Gospel.

Being prepared for the unexpected is the message, and no matter how often we hear it, like the message on the plane, most of ignore it which might well lead to some unwelcome consequences. There are a lot of people, it seems to me, who might be heard to say: “When your number is up, your number is up” suggesting that it doesn’t matter how you live. There are so many days in each life, and there isn’t anything to be done about it. To some extent that might be true, but it does not mean that it is all predetermined. To a frightening extent, it is really in our hands. How we live may very well determine how long we live.

The final verses that sum up the text for today ought to give us some clue about how to live, how to be prepared, and what to expect. “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” In the middle of a hot summer day, the warning of this Gospel may just be more than we want to hear, so like the passengers on that plane, we can easily drift off to more pleasant thoughts about where we are going and who we will see. There is a great risk in that.

We know that the master is coming. Yet, as a people we are not showing much by way of preparation. We have shown ourselves to be like the slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted. The “severe beating” may well come in the form of rising seas, failing crops, surging temperature, droughts, floods an ever-more violent storms. While we eat, drink, and make merry God’s creation is abused and neglected.

As this text ends with that explicit warning there is also an implicit hope. Sacrifices and changes are required from those who have invested so much in systems that do such damage. Then, hope comes from faith’s assurance that God comes to bless those who are faithful, careful, respectful, and have been found waiting. Why would we not want to be counted among them?

August 3, 2025 at Saint William Parish in Naples, FL

Ecclesiastes 1: 2; 2:21-23 + Psalm 90 + Colossians 3: 1-5, 9-11 + Luke 12: 13-21

One Sunday, years ago when I was having trouble paying the bills at the parish, I finally took the matter to the pulpit. After Mass, a clearly angry man walked up to me and said: “All you ever talk about is money” and then stormed off. I said to myself if that were true, we probably would not be in the shape we’re in. Later, remembering that incident, I did some research to discover something that surprised me. Nearly one third of the parables deal with money one way or another. If there is one thing we humans need and care about, it is money. It is the most frequent cause of human conflict in one way or another, and at the root of most divorces.

On the surface, it might seem that Jesus is telling us that money ought to have no importance for us at all. After all, God takes care of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Why worry? Quit work, spend it all now, and stop passing that basket at Mass? God will provide. Right? If we stay on the surface with this matter, we’re all going to be hungry and homeless. God is not suggesting that we should live as though money had no importance. He just reminds us that where your treasure is, there will be your heart.

The parable we hear today puts before us a man who is very successful in the eyes of this world. He is not a criminal. He has good land that he has used wisely making him wealthy. He is not wasteful or careless. He builds good and better barns to save and care for what he has. There is no suggestion that he is unjust, but Jesus says he is a fool, and the reason is that he lives completely in and for himself. Listen to his conversation! He talks to himself all the time. He never seems to talk to God or to anyone else. He congratulates himself. He plans for himself, and all it gets him is loneliness.

I often hear people whose lives are comfortable say how “blessed” they are without a thought about the fact that what they have is not a “blessing,” it is an obligation. With every, so called, blessing, comes a duty. This man failed to realize that making him a fool thinking it was all his. “I earned it” is the way he thinks. “I deserve it.”  That’s a fool talking. We are all in danger of being fools if we fail to realize that there is a duty that comes with every blessing. What we deserve is an opportunity to do something for the glory of God with what we have while we can.

How we use our money and our time is a clue to our identity. One look at a check book or a calendar says a lot. Defining ourselves by a salary, material possessions, or by accomplishments is really sad. I have sat through more eulogies than any of you could ever count listening to survivors stand up and memorialize the deceased by how they played golf or bridge, or traveled, and I would think to myself: “Really? Is that the sum of life?” We don’t build bigger barns anymore, but we do build bigger homes, drive bigger cars, have bigger TV screens. Those of us trying live our lives as a people chosen by God, Baptized, and filled with the Holy Spirit must choose a different set of values. Instead of getting, we think of giving. Our privilege is serving. Instead of avenging, we think of forgiving. Grateful for the life and the time we have in this life, we treasure friends with whom we can share always remembering that love is the greatest treasure. The man in this Gospel had no friends.

It is possible to spend less and enjoy more and to live simply so that other might simply live rejecting greed in order to grow right in God. The fool of this Gospel discovered too late that material wealth is not a permanent possession. He was really very poor and had nothing he could really call his own. When we are at the end of this life, all we ought to count on is what we have become.

July 27, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle in Naples, FL

Genesis 18: 20-32 + Psalm 138 + Colossians 2: 12-14 + Luke 11: 1-13

Jesus says to us and those disciples: “Ask and you shall receive.” It would be good notice that he does not say: “Ask and shall receive what you ask for.” You can take the advice of this old priest or not, but I’m standing here to tell you that you can ask all you want, and you had better to prepared for what happens. You will get something, but it may not be what you wanted or expected, and that’s where the second part of the directive hits home. This is not just an instruction about asking. It is also about receiving.

There is always some assumption that if what we ask for is not granted, we are either not praying hard enough or saying the right prayers. There is also the terrible possibility that someone may think God doesn’t love them or that they are not good enough in God’s sight. Bad thinking. To be quite honest with ourselves, there is something a little childish about trying to change God’s plan. How can we do that and then say: “Thy will be done?” That is not to say that we shouldn’t ask for what we feel we need, but how that asking is expressed says a lot about our faith and our relationship with God. We really don’t pray to change God’s mind but for God to change ours.

What Matthew records as the response of Jesus to the request of the disciples to teach them to pray does not really match Luke’s version, which ought to suggest to us that the exact words are not all that important. What we might discover is that in both versions, there are three common elements.

There is an acknowledgement of the goodness and love of God as Jesus teaches to call God, “Father.”  There is no cosmic tyrant who requires humiliating pleas in order to get gifts. This is a loving eternal Parent who takes delight in providing for their children.

Then there is the acceptance of God’s will. A prayer worthy of God is asking for the grace to do God’s work – fulfill God’s will by works of forgiveness, reconciliation, and by becoming the brothers and sisters God calls us to become.

Finally, there is an expression of our hope and our trust in God’s providence. We must always come before God confident that our prayers are heard and that we will be given whatever we need and even more. Even if it seems our prayers are unanswered, we live with the confidence that God is always present to us.

What receive in today’s Gospel is not some magic formula, but an instruction about the Father to whom Jesus prayed. He not only reveals how he prays, but, with these two parables, he affirms what should be the quality of our prayer. It’s not about persistence but about believing and living with assurance. It is with that assurance that Jesus, God’s only Son, went to a garden knowing that he was in grave danger. The writers tell us that he prayed that “This cup may pass from me.” It did not. He was condemned to a cruel death within hours. Instead of rescue he received something else, resurrection, which is better. So, it shall always be for us. We may not get exactly what we have asked for, but we have and we always shall receive the Holy Spirit which, in the end, is probably all we really need.

July 20, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL

Genesis 18:1-10 + Psalm 15 + Colossians 1: 24-28 + Luke 10: 28-42

At some point in my childhood I began to listen to the Gospel at Mass. It could have been because it was the first thing spoken in English. Everything else was in Latin. I remember hearing this story and on the way home from Mass asking my parents why Jesus didn’t go into the kitchen and help Martha. There was silence from the front seat leaving me to wonder about that even today. But of course, maybe he did and Luke just didn’t mention it or maybe their brother Lazarus who never has anything to say jumped up to help keeping the sisters apart. Whatever the human side to this story, there is no missing the point that Jesus thinks listening is very important, and Martha wasn’t doing that. Her problem was that she was fixated on her work. 

This whole scene is filled with contradictions. Luke, who tells us more about woman than any other Gospel writer must have thrilled to record this incident. He puts Martha in charge of things in spite of the fact that in that Patriarchal society women were in charge of nothing. Hospitality was a man’s responsibility. Yet, Luke has no male figure in this story at all. Teaching and conversing with a woman was strictly forbidden by the religious rules of the time. Only men engaged in teaching man, and conversation was between men. So, with this story, Luke is giving us some insight into how things should be in the Kingdom of God, and perhaps instructing the early Christian Community that is to receive this Gospel.

Yet, even with all of that there is more to think about. Listening and Hospitality are the issues here. A listener is being praised, and the who is too busy to listen is being reminded that there is something more than busy work when it comes to living life in the presence of Jesus Christ. Mary is the model being put before us today. Listening is really an act of love, and it is hard work. Many people do not listen well. It is a skill that come out of a loving heart. Too many these days listen selectively, listening for what they want to hear, or just waiting for their turn to talk. When not hearing what they want to hear, they begin to end the conversation as quickly as possible, maybe so that they can go back to work.

There is a great saying in our Christian tradition, “When a guest comes, Christ comes.” This idea was deep in the conscience of early America. It was a rare day when some stranger did not sit at the family table. My own mother always set an extra place at our table just in case I brought someone home from school, or my sister did the same, or my father might invite someone. George Washington recorded that his family didn’t once sit-down dinner alone for twenty years.

Many folk tales tell of gods and kings who travel in disguise and reward people who show them hospitality. If you listened, you just heard something like that in the first reading today. God dropped in on Abraham unannounced and anonymously. And, Abraham almost blew the opportunity by fussing, but he recovered and fulfilled his duty. It was only when listening that Abraham heard the leading visitor promise a miraculous birth of a son to his aged wife Sarah Then he realized that somehow it was the Lord. He listened!

At some point, this country has lost what it had early on. Hospitality to strangers is in short supply, and it might be because we have not listened to them, not heard of their need, their fear, their suffering. It might be that when we recover our ability to listen with love even when we do not like what we hear that we may once again recognize that we have been visited by God who wants to make a home among us. The risk is always that we may not make room for God.

It is Jesus who teaches us today lessons that the one thing necessary in our lives is love that we must show in action, in hospitality, and in listening not just to God’s Word, but to each other.

July 13, 2025 at Saint Agnes Church in Naples, FL

Deuteronomy 30: 10-14 + Psalm 69 + Colossians 1: 15-20 + Luke 10: 25-37

The day that Jesus spoke those words to that man who came to him asking a question is a date to be remembered in all the history of humanity. What Jesus said that day was something that no other religion in history ever said: that everyone in the world, without exception, is our neighbor. In those days, and even for some today, there is always a “them and us” attitude that is incompatible with a faith rooted and springing out of the words and actions of Jesus Christ.

There is here even a new definition of neighbor. In the book of Leviticus quoted by this scholar of the law a neighbor is one who is to be loved. What emerges from this exchange with Jesus is that a neighbor is one who loves. Jesus is answering a question that should have been asked and is being asked today as he speaks to us: “Who is capable of becoming a neighbor?” This is the deeper question being asked of us today. We don’t need to ask “Who is my neighbor?” That question is already settled. Now we have to ask, “Am I a neighbor?”

There is a terrible risk confronting all of us today in the world and in this nation. It comes from seeing, day in and day out, the suffering of others either in real life or on TV, the homeless, the victims of violence, famine, and injustice. The risk is a hardened heart or a surrender to helplessness. A religion that is totally vertical that is focused only on my going up to God and God coming down to me is not a religion inspired by Jesus Christ. It must also be a horizontal religion that embraces broken humanity through whom we might find God. How is it possible to see the Divine in a suffering and crucified Jesus unjustly condemned and not see the Divine in the sufferings of anyone else? This is the critical issue raised by this story and the words of this Gospel.

Feeling sorry will not do. Those who passed by that victim certainly saw him and, no doubt, felt sorry for him. They had their excuses, and because of them, nothing changed. When reflecting on this story, it is easy to focus on the Samaritan, thinking that we should all be “good Samaritans” and that’s all very nice thinking, but where is the action?

It might help if instead of focusing on the good Samaritan we focused on the man in the ditch and with some empathy and compassion beginning to realize what it’s like to lie there watching people look away and walk on by. In truth, that man in the ditch and the Samaritan had a lot in common, and that might be why the Samaritan rose to the occasion. They were both looked upon as outsiders by the world in which they lived. Samaritans were despised by Jews at the time who would have nothing to do with them. It would make them unclean just as having something to do with that victim would make them unclean. Suddenly on that road, the Samaritan and that man discovered that they had something in common, and they both ended up being the better for it.

When we realize that we have something in common with the suffering people in this world, we will all be better for it. We have humanity in common. We are neighbors. We both share the image of our creator and a place in God’s creation. We all have a right to dignity. All of us were saved by that man on a cross. When someone is vilified, deaminized, imprisoned, and treated like an animal put in a cage, all humanity is degraded, and we all suffer this indignity. 

As long as we perpetuate the false belief in individual independence, we will never relate to those who are suffering. We will continue to see them as a burden. That Samaritan did not see that man as a burden. The more deeply we become related to one another, the more we shall truly live in the image of the Holy Trinity, ultimate Divine community.

July 6, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle and the Naples Maronite Mission

Isaiah 66: 10-14 + Psalm 66 + Galatians 6: 14-18 + Luke 10- 1-12, 17-20

None of the great Scripture Scholars seem clear about what Luke had in mind with the number of disciples sent out on this mission. Early Hebrew manuscripts say 72 and early Greek copies say 70. In the Book of Genesis 70 is the number of Gentile tribes, and in the Book of Numbers, Moses chooses 70 elders to be his helpers.  In either case, what we can be sure of is that Luke is making a point that the Gospel is for everyone, and Jesus expects everyone to share in the mission. There is no doubt that we are today’s 70 or 72 no more professional or prepared than the first wave of disciples sent by Jesus.

Those who have gone before us drew people by the example of their lives, not be rational proofs and arguments. They didn’t carry around a Catechism spouting memorized verses or citing church documents. It was their love, their compassion, and their service that attracted people to their faith. We need nothing more than our experience of the joy that comes from living the message of Jesus Christ, with its peace and its hope.

What we have to share is what we have experienced in communion with God and with others. I believe that this is why those who were first sent went out two by two, in pairs. This is no solo mission. No single person can accomplish the work Jesus sees needs to be done. This is a communal effort that springs from relationships that know the healing power of forgiveness, sharing and supporting each other through the sorrows and joys that life in communion will bring.

There is a warning that the Word of God will not always be welcomed by those who resist its message of justice. Those who are sent cannot be people pleasers. They must be God pleasures. Yet, we go, as Jesus says, “like sheep among wolves.” We have wolves to threaten us as much as did those who first took up the mission. The powerful violent Romans and the comfortable elite resisted, ridiculed, imprisoned, and killed those who brought the Good News. Those Jesus called “wolves” are still among us sewing fear, spewing hatred, bigotry, division, violence and lies every day and every hour. So, when the message was refused, they were to move on peacefully, because what God offers can never be imposed. The instruction was to “move on” not quit, not be silenced, but simply to continue in another place at a different time.

Our message is simple. It is Peace, and I think the best meaning of that word is oneness with God’s will. Peace is not something given. I must be worked for and worked at. With that in mind, we must be free from discouragement, impatience, and anger in failure in our efforts for peace. We must remain sincere, humble, and wise in our peace seeking and peace making. 

This is the highest calling within civilization. We are the ones called to this noble task. Peace is the one undeniable sign of God’s presence and God’s Kingdom. We are not there yet perhaps because we have not counted ourselves among the 70 thinking someone else should do it.

July 6, 2025 with the Naples Maronite Mission at St Agnes Chapel in Naples, FL

Matthew 10: 1-7

Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, the son of Zabedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This Gospel passage invites us to reflect on two details. The first detail is these twelve. Some of them are identified by their family/father’s name which may be Matthew’s way of distinguishing them from others with the same name. Then there is Matthew who is identified by his occupation. The Gospel makes an important point about the role of one’s past in one’s ministry. When we follow Jesus, what matters is what we become, not what we have been. Notice how that works with Judas. What matters is what he becomes. Then there is Simon, the Cananean. This is not Simon Peter. This Simon is identified by his political activity. Cananeans were radical revolutionaries.

Reflecting on these details lets us see that the Twelve represent some diversity with several things in common: they are all men, they are Palestinian Jews, they are all working- or lower-class men. There is not a single person from the elite class of people here, no great leaders, nor foreigners. The fact is, that probably not one of these twelve could pass a test or succeed through an interview for some top post in a big corporation. They are so ordinary and simple, that no one would think to call them together to undertake a great task. But, God does.

The other detail concerns their instructions, where to go and what to do.  What is clear from Matthew’s report is that basically, these twelve are being sent to do what Jesus has been doing, and we ought to always see what he does through the words of the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus tells them “to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he is telling them to stay home. I think he is suggesting that they need to clean up their own lives – their own communities or families before running all over the place fixing others. They are going to need some creditability, and it will come from their own lives, families, and villages. They are to do what Jesus does. He invites them into his very life. They are to bring the power of the Gospel to bear against every force, public, private, political or social that diminishes human life.

If the Kingdom of God is at hand, then we are living in it. If we look around and what we see does not match what Jesus said it would be like, then the mission of those twelve is incomplete. When I look around here, it seems to me that we are just the sort of people Jesus would summon if we had been there at the beginning. It is still the beginning. To have any credibility or the kind of authority Jesus had to attract, invite, and set people free, our deeds must match our words. It was so for him. Our lives must match the life of Jesus Christ. Our courage can be no less than his when it comes to speaking up, acting up, and standing up against any force that diminishes human life.

Our past is of no interest to Jesus Christ. What we have done has no bearing at all on what we must become. There is no test to pass, no interview to survive when summoned. All God has to work with is you and me, and we would not be here if people just like us had believed for one minute that they were not up to the task of discipleship. We are summoned, we are gifted with everything we need which is the power of grace, the power of faith, and maybe most of all, the power of hope.