Foolish Wishes – Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B

There was once a fool who rubbed a magic lamp.
The genie materialized and said,
“And your third wish?”
The fool, who had never seen a genie before, said
“Why are you offering me a third wish
when I haven’t had a first wish yet?”
The genie said, “Oh, but you have.
You don’t remember it, of course.
Your second wish was to have everything restored
exactly as it was before I offered you three wishes.”
“In other words, I only get one wish,”
said the fool, feeling cheated.
“A lot of people never get any wishes, so hurry it up,” said the genie.
“Alright,” said the fool, “I wish I were irresistible to women.”
“Funny,” said the genie, vanishing with his lamp,
“that was your first wish, too.”*

We’d like to think that there are fools in the world,
and then there are the rest of us.
But the truth of the matter is that we are all fools
at one point or another.
We all do foolish things from time to time.

Today’s readings are all about foolishness and wisdom,
and the choice between the two.

St. Paul tells us to “watch carefully how you live,
not as foolish persons but as wise.”

Today’s first reading from the book of Proverbs
is actually part one of a two-part poem comparing Wisdom and Folly.
In part one, which we heard today,
the image is of Wisdom preparing a banquet.
She builds a magnificent house with seven columns
and prepares the meat and wine.
She makes an attractive feast to draw in the simple
and then she calls from the heights to everyone in the city.

“Leave foolish ways behind,” she says, “and embrace wisdom.”

But the second part of the poem is a shadow image of the first.
In the second part someone is also preparing a banquet
and calling people from the heights,
but this second person is Folly, the opposite of Wisdom.

This part of the poem begins by saying,
Folly is raucous, utterly foolish;
she knows nothing.
She sits at the door of her house
upon a seat on the city heights,
Calling to passersby as they go on their way straight ahead:
“Let those who are naive turn in here,
to those who lack sense I say,
Stolen water is sweet,
and bread taken secretly is pleasing!”
Little do they know that the shades are there,
that her guests are in the depths of Sheol!

Folly’s banquet is of stolen water, and bread taken secretly.
Folly’s banquet leads to death.

Where Wisdom invites guests in to make them wise,
Folly invites them in to trap them.

Wisdom welcomes those who lack understanding
and wants to help them grow.
Folly welcomes those who lack understanding
in order to take advantage of them.
One is helpful.
The other is destructive.

But the point of the poem is
they’re both attractive.
They both host parties and try to draw people in.
They both offer food and drink,
they both call out to the crowds, inviting them to enter.

And so today we are confronted with a choice,
the choice between attending the banquet of Wisdom
or the banquet of Folly.

Both choices seem attractive.
No one becomes foolish intentionally.
We make foolish decisions because we think they’re good,
or we’re caught up in an attraction
that leads us down a path of foolishness.

But this is not a one-time choice.
This is a choice we face every day,
in minor ways and in more significant ways.
How am I going to spend my time today?
What should I decide?

And if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit
that we often choose the banquet of the foolish,
in our personal lives,
in our professional lives,
in our culture,
and even in our Church.

Like the fool who wasted his three wishes,
we often waste our time at the banquet of Folly,
failing to choose the life that God has invited us to live.
We fail at living out the commandments,
we fail at living out the Beatitudes.
We’ve convinced ourselves that we don’t really need to
turn the other cheek this time,
or love these enemies,
or forgive each other seventy times seven times.
There are so many ways that we choose Folly over Wisdom.
And as we’ve seen from the news out of Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
no one is exempt from choosing folly,
not even those at the highest levels of Church.

We are often tragically, destructively foolish.

But there is one of Jesus’ commands
to which we have, for the most part, stayed faithful.
There is one action that we as a people
have remained true to over the centuries:
“Do this in memory of me.”

The one thing that we as a Church have continued to do
year in and year out
week in and week out
day in and day out,
despite our folly,
is celebrate the Eucharist.

It is presided over by sometimes foolish priests, bishops, and archbishops,
it is attended by sometimes foolish people,
and it is assisted at by foolish deacons like me.

And yet, somehow, for some reason, we still come here week after week
to gather and receive the Body and Blood of Jesus,
truly Jesus, truly present among us.

Among all the foolish things that we do
amid all the mistakes, all the selfishness,
we have remained true, if nothing else, to that one action.

There are countless books published about the miracles of the Eucharist,
but maybe the most amazing Eucharistic miracle of all
is that among all the foolishness and follies of our lives,
this one wise practice continues.

It is the one place where we can be faithful.
We can’t always control how we feel or think,
and we can’t always measure up morally and spiritually,
but within our inadequacy, doubt, and confusion,
within our foolishness,
we can be faithful in this one deep way:
We can go to Eucharist regularly.

We don’t have to understand it.
We can’t ever fully comprehend it.
And that’s ok.
When the Jews complained about Jesus and asked
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus didn’t answer them with a lesson in Eucharistic theology.
He simply repeated himself:
“Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood
you do not have life within you.”
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.”
“…the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”

We do not need to understand it.
We simply need to trust in the one who said it.

The more we come to the Eucharistic banquet,
the banquet of Wisdom,
the closer we draw to Jesus,
and the more we will understand it.
This is the promise of Wisdom,
who sets out the banquet and says,
“You the simple, you the naive,
come in that you may grow in understanding.
Come in that you may live.”

Understanding is not a prerequisite to enjoying the banquet.
Understanding is a blessing we receive by attending the banquet,
by answering the invitation.

The fool with three wishes spent those wishes foolishly,
going after Folly, not Wisdom.
What will we use our wishes for?
What will use our God-given freedom for?
To hold on to anger or to forgive seventy times seven times?
To increase division and polarization, or to love our enemies?
To continue the cycle of violence, or to turn the other cheek?
To choose Folly or to choose Wisdom?

*From a short story by Rick Norwood