These readings remind me of a conversation I was having with a woman recently about something that she was doing. She asked me if something she was doing was wrong in the eyes of God and I confirmed that it was, and her response was, “well, if it is so wrong, why hasn’t God just killed me for it?”
One of the most difficult jobs I’ve ever had was detasseling. In central Iowa this is a very common job for high schoolers, basically we would get up early, and pretty much at sunrise we were out in the field, walking rows of corn, pulling the tassels, the very top piece of the corn, we would pull that out of the female stalks of corn so that the male ears would pollinate the corn, basically making the hybrids for the seed corn.
A central theme in today’s readings is perseverance in our prayer and our worship. The first reading might have been unthinkable to the faithful Israelites at the time it was written, it said, “The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, ministering to him, loving the name of the LORD, and becoming his servants—all who keep the sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant,”
In our first reading we have one of the characters and situations I was referring to last weekend, Elijah in the presence of God, the prophet hid his face so he did not see God, so in the Transfiguration which we celebrated last weekend, Elijah finally got to see God face to face.
The Transfiguration reveals the relationship between the “humanity” and the “divinity” of Jesus. One of the reasons it’s such an important feast is because it is the one time in the Gospels that Jesus’ divine nature - which is normally hidden under His human nature - His divine appearance is made visible to Peter, James and John.
This weekend is the last of our three weeks of parables describing the Kingdom of Heaven, and as before we will continue looking at the twists found in these parables. The twists or the unexpected aspects can help us understand what Jesus is trying to tell us about the Kingdom.
As promised we have more parables this week, three more focused on the Kingdom of Heaven, and as I said last week, by looking for the twist, or the unexpected part of the parable, we can come to better understand the point that Jesus is trying to make.
Today’s Gospel is the first of a series of Parables that we will hear over the next few weeks. Parables are more than just analogies or comparison stories, they are more like riddles, they contain some sort of twist or surprise in them. As we heard today, parables are often hard to understand, but usually if you can spot the twist then you can understand the meaning of the parable.
Again this weekend we have another reading that is typically used for funerals. The Gospel from Matthew we just heard is often used because of this line in the middle, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11:28) Many people work so hard throughout their lives so the family members planning the funeral interpret this passage to mean, “come now, you hard worker, and finally take your rest in Heaven.”
It’s an exciting weekend here at Nativity, a lot going on. First, July 2nd is Nativity’s 100 year anniversary of being a parish. The first Mass wasn’t held until December 23rd, 1923, but the parish was created or incorporated by the Archbishop on this date, with the cornerstone being dedicated on July 4th, so we are one hundred, pretty cool. We will be doing some great stuff to celebrate our 100th, stay tuned for that. One thing I’m hoping for is to get the Bishop here to celebrate an anniversary Mass…