My friends, parts of this homily I shared 6 years ago, and now, with some updates for 2023, hopefully, it is still meaningful.  Today, the Christian Church Universal celebrates Jesus Christ as King.  The trouble is, Jesus never proclaimed that he was a “king,” at least not in the way that people wanted a king. 

   It would seem, according to Ezekiel that Jesus came as a servant and a shepherd.   Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was out among the people tending to their needs, calling the powers-that-be to justice—challenging them to stop filling their coffers with the hard-earned money of the people, and making sure that everyone, especially the least among them, had what was needed to simply live—a clarion call to each of us today.

   We hear this in the face of the bishops in this country, and especially, Bishop Barron, in our own diocese of Winona, preparing to celebrate in 2024 an Eucharistic Congress, uplifting the elements of bread and wine on the altar—emphasizing the “true presence” in “flesh and blood” of our brother Jesus, with no apparent, real connection to his “body and blood” present in all of humanity, especially that we see this presence in the poor and down-trodden in our world.  

   Our seeming need to proclaim Jesus as king goes back to Old or First Testament times when the people then begged God to give them a king and God acquiesced because they were, as Scripture says, “a stiff-necked people.”  They constantly wanted, as we do, to make God into their own image rather than allowing God to be who God is. Even up until the crucifixion, the apostles, those who probably knew Jesus best, outside of his earthly parents perhaps, thought of him and wanted him, in fact, to be a king who would put down the Romans. They were thinking as humans think, not as God thinks, as Jesus once told Peter, but Jesus was calling them to so much more.

    The gospel chosen for today from Matthew describing the last judgment is a good place to start in describing Jesus’ true presence on this earth. Exegetes tell us that our task as commanded by Jesus is not to simply do humanitarian service, but to work at getting to the heart of why people are hungry, thirsty, homeless, in prison, lost and alone.

    I believe many of us do the humanitarian work as is evidenced in the outreach activities of this parish and that is good, but Jesus, who was not a king in worldly terms, but a shepherd, servant, brother, and friend, encourages us to indeed, get to the heart of the above problems—to see the faces of the people that go along with the statistics—searching out every lost one.  It is too bad that all the thousands of dollars being spent on the Eucharistic Congress this next year can’t instead be used for the “more present” body and blood of our brother Jesus in our world.

   If we get caught up in celebrating Jesus as king that puts the focus on him to save us from whatever danger is out there, and then the attention is shifted from our need to be engaged with our world, as he was with his. As you recall from last weekend’s gospel; we are called to risk, which will sometimes bring discomfort, even be messy at times.

   In a present-day news piece this past week, a man by the name of Jonathan McCory had this to say about “taking risks.”  “Live in the discomfort of your growth, or change.” This is akin to saying, as others have, “Be the change you want to see!” Even though this risky behavior is “messy,”  it is the way of Jesus, it is the way to peace wherein fear of judgment, in the end, is not a worry—in other words, if we walk in Jesus’ footsteps, judgment should not be something we have to be concerned about.  Jesus came to show us the way by being a servant and the example he took for himself often was that of a humble shepherd, one who cared for sheep who would often wander off, like us, get lost and need to be found.  

    Even though most of us aren’t familiar with what it means to be a shepherd as none of us takes care of sheep, the tenets of such work can be carried forward—that of selflessness, patience, understanding and love. We know that shepherds, men, and women were all about caring for their sheep, the ones worthy of the name, bringing them to good sources of pasture and water, binding their wounds when they wandered off, when they were lost, the good shepherds would seek them out, basically keeping them safe.

   This weekend calls us to see Jesus as our Brother and Friend—through the shepherd stories and the beautiful 23^rd psalm. We learn that our God doesn’t want to lord it over us, as a king might, but to be among us, that our God, as the Good Shepherd, will go any distance to find us when we are lost and will always listen, will always understand, will always love us. 

   This is why, the reluctance of Robert Barron, bishop of Winona, to meet with us, even answer our attempts to contact him is so disconcerting, and especially if it is true that when he was appointed by Pope Francis to serve as our bishop, he was quoted as saying, basically, that he wanted to get down and among the sheep!

   Therefore, it is good for us to reflect on this most comforting message of our loving God as a follow-up to last weekend’s parable of the talents wherein some of us found the harsh words of the master in that story, hard to take—that the rich will be given more and that “the more” will be taken from those who have the least.  This is definitely a Scripture message that we don’t want to take literally, as it seems to fly in the face of what we believe Jesus usually preached—in fact, today’s gospel would seem a contradiction to that.  Again, the context is so important. 

   In last week’s gospel, Jesus was trying to prepare his followers for the End Times and the harsh language was to impress upon them the importance of doing the right thing, now! Don’t wait, he was saying, in order to catch their attention. 

   A better way to look at the statement that the rich will be given more and the little the poor have, will be taken from them, is to get beyond the surface story told here.  Reflecting on what Jesus is saying in Matthew’s account of the Last Judgment, we have to believe he means more than the idea given at first glance in the seemingly, “offending” statement of the rich having more at the expense of the poor.

   When we do the right thing—that is, care for those with less and the other Corporal Works of Mercy, when we risk our safety at times for the good of others, when we use the gifts given to us, multiply “the master’s good” (as in last week’s story) in the world, we become richer as persons.  When we “bury the master’s good,” our gifts, and refuse to share in order to take care of ourselves, we become poorer, and the gifts given to us, do, in effect get “taken away.”

   That friends, is the beauty, perhaps the frustration of Scripture—the Spirit of Jesus is always, “alive and well,” so to speak, calling us to be open to more, to stretch ourselves beyond what comes to us at first glance.  Jesus, our brother, and friend certainly doesn’t promise that it will be easy, it will in fact be messy, but in the end, it will be life-giving, as all will be cared for.  We will have created a world worthy of the God who created us in love, gave us Jesus in love and has called each of us to do the same.

   So friends, today let us celebrate Jesus as our brother and friend, one of us, not one apart from us, which the title “king” seems to suggest. When we get familiar with Jesus as brother and friend and see, truly see how he was with others, it is much less easy to discount him or to not recognize him in the suffering humanity of our world.  We move forward friends, as we complete the liturgical year this week and prepare for another with the beginning of Advent next Sunday. May each of us be blessed as we share our gifts, our love, with our world. Amen? Amen!

My friends, being that today we are following our liturgy with a pre-Thanksgiving meal, I thought it might be good to address the virtue of gratitude.  Many times, being “thankful,” saying “thanks” for a good bestowed on us is thought to be the same as gratitude, and we may hear the two words, “thanks” and “gratitude” interchanged.  I would like to suggest that they are different.  Webster’s Dictionary seems to agree.

   “Thanks” the dictionary says, is “an expression of gratitude.”  “Gratitude” is described as “the quality of being thankful,” along with, the readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” From those definitions, I would say, being “grateful,” is the “grownup” expression of merely being thankful.  We all were raised to say, “thank you” when someone does something good for us.  Now, while we as children, may have said the words to appease our parents or others who thought we should say those words, it is probably true to say that we weren’t “grateful,” at least at that point. 

   The virtue of gratitude, it seems to me, only comes to us humans with lived experience, and the maturity to realize that so much of what I am as an individual is due to others, and what I have been gifted with in life, in order that I can then go on to become the person that I was called to be.

   Some of you may be familiar with Michael Perry, national author, and speaker.  He began his career as a registered nurse and recently was invited to his alma mater in Eau Claire, Wisconsin to give a key-note address. Part of what he had to say, was sharing a piece on gratitude that he had previously written, and the university requested him to include.

   One of the things that perked up my ears and heart in his address, was the word, “privilege.” Michael is aware that from the “get-go,” he was privileged above many others in this world, due to his “whiteness,” the place he had on the economic ladder—not rich, but certainly not poor, which afforded him, shelter, food and so much more, every day.  Many, if not most of us could say the same for our own lives. 

   The gospel for this liturgy might have given some of us reason to pause and think that the employer was a bit cruel.  Again, as with much of Scripture, we shouldn’t take Jesus’ story literally, but remember that he is always trying to teach us something deeper than the words might at first suggest. 

   The story tells us that the “employer” (think God) “entrusted” individual employees (think us) with a gift. I believe that “to entrust” someone with something is different than “simply giving” someone something.  Again, Webster’s would seem to agree.  The “big book of words,” and now I am dating myself, (smile) tells us that “entrusting” means, “assigning a responsibility.” 

   So, my friends, let’s go back to what we always say within these walls, quoting a wise person, “We are spiritual people here, having a human experience.  Our God, who loves us beyond all imagining, as Jesus shared in his earthly life, through stories like the Prodigal, and the Good Shepherd, and the Woman who turned her house upside down in search of a lost coin, gave each of us the wonderful gift of life— “entrusting us” with the responsibility of living out our potential, not just for ourselves, but for others. 

   We might look at the seeming “cruelness” depicted in the Gospel story as God’s “disappointment” in us for not living up to our potential.  And, even if that is the case, God never stops “chasing after us,” as the Scripture translation, The Message says so beautifully in the 23^rd Psalm, or stops loving us, wanting to be in relationship with us, again depicted so beautifully in the story of the Prodigal.

   So friends, this journey of life as Christian followers of our brother Jesus, is about in part, giving back, “paying it forward,” as it were, a bit of what we have been so “graciously” given.

    A piece on the nightly news this past week caught my attention as a couple were lamenting to the newscaster, about struggling financially, comparing themselves to immigrants coming into this country and wondering why, “these people are given so much, and we get so little.” 

   Now, while I am sure there is more to the story than was presented, I can say from experience in working with immigrants coming into our country, that they are mainly given, “entrance” if that, and then temporary helps until they can make it on their own.  Additionally, unlike the light-skinned woman interviewed, all the immigrants coming across our southern border, live every day with the fact that “they are different,” –no small task, which I think we can’t ourselves truly understand.    

   Looking at the first reading then from Proverbs, we get a good road map on how to show our gratitude in being “entrusted” with the gift of our “one wonderful life” –again as someone else said.  This reading was always entitled, The Virtuous Woman, and the Priests for Equality Group, whose version of the Scriptures that we use, saw fit to make this reading, “gender-less” as the virtues depicted here are ones that we can and should all adhere to. 

   Therefore, we should hear in this reading that we are called to, strive after perfect love, instill confidence equally in each other, bring advantage, not hurt, doing our work for the benefit of each other and holding out our hands to the poor.

   Paul tells his converts in Thessaloniki that they are people “of the light” and hopefully, we hear the same for ourselves.  He is telling them that when our God comes, they will be ready because they are trying to be their best selves, sharing what they have with each other, showing their gratitude for all that they have been “entrusted” with.

   As we come to the end of another Year of Grace, it’s good to look at how each of us faces our world—what have we done well, what could we do better? May God bless us all in our discernment. Amen? Amen!