What More Were You Looking For? – Homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

A terrible storm came into a town
and local officials sent out an emergency warning
that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes.
They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.
There was a certain man in the town who heard the warning,
so he looked out his window at the gathering storm
and saw his next-door neighbors parked outside in front of his yard.
They were concerned about him
and so they had come by his house and said to him,
“We’re leaving and there’s room for you in our car, please come with us!”
But the man declined, saying, “God will save me.”
So they drove on.
As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps,
a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him,
“Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!”
But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.”
The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room
and the man had to retreat to the second floor.
A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window.
“We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted.
But the man waved them off saying,
“Use your time to save someone else!
I have faith that God will save me!”
The flood waters rose higher and higher
and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.
A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder.
A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man,
“Grab my hand and I will pull you up!”
But still the man refused, saying, “No thank you! God will save me!”
Shortly after, the house broke up
and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.
After he died, the man stood before God and asked,
“I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”
And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car.
I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat.
I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”

The man had his own expectations of how God was going to act.
He had put God into a box,
and had missed his chance to recognize God’s saving grace.

The same thing has happened in today’s Gospel.

After traveling around Galilee healing the sick,
driving out demons, and teaching,
Jesus has returned to his home town of Nazareth,
a small, fairly insignificant village
of not more than a few hundred people.
This is Jesus’ home town,
the place where he was raised.
Everybody knows him and his family.
And when he returns and begins teaching in the synagogue,
his neighbors don’t know what to make of him.
At first they’re astonished at what he says,
but then they’re offended by who he is.
To their minds, Jesus is just “one of the guys,”
someone they’ve known all their lives.
When he was younger
they never recognized anything significant about him.
He was the carpenter, the craftsman of the village.
“We know this guy, he fixed my roof, built a gate for my animals,
he’s the local handy-man.
Who does he think he is,
trying to teach us about the Kingdom of God?”

We can imagine one of these neighbors at the end of his life,
meeting God in heaven,
like the man who drowned in the flood.
and asking, “Where was the Messiah?
I put my faith in your promise of a Messiah.”
And God would reply, “I put him right next door to you!
It was the kid next door, your carpenter.
He cured the sick, drove out demons, taught about the Kingdom of God.
What more were you looking for?”
But they didn’t recognize him.

Just as the man in the flooded house didn’t recognize God
in the ordinary people in his life,
so the people of Nazareth didn’t recognize their handy-man Jesus
as the Son of God.
Jesus didn’t fit their preconceived ideas
about how God could and would act.
They had put God into a box,
and had missed their chance to encounter God’s saving grace.

Today we’re reminded that God is bigger
than the boxes we have made for him.

God is present in our lives each moment of each day,
but probably not in the ways we expect.
While God can and does work dramatic miracles,
God more often works through the humble, the lowly, the ordinary:
A poor young girl named Mary.
A fisherman named Peter.
The neighborhood handy-man named Jesus.

The key is to be able to recognize God in our life
so that we don’t miss his presence
like the man in the flood or the people of Nazareth did.
How do we do that?
By a collaboration between God’s grace and our commitment
to look for God’s presence each day.

One way to do this is to take time each day to prayerfully look over the past day,
asking for God to show us his presence*:

Sit comfortably in a chair.
Imagine yourself seated in front of a small television screen.
You are alone in the room.
The screen is blank.
When you turn on the TV you see yourself seated as you are.
It is as if you are outside yourself,
looking at yourself seated before the screen.
When the picture begins, it moves backwards
over the past twenty-four hours of your life.
You watch slowly, without judging,
just seeing the moments of your day
starting from the present moment,
up to a full day ago.
Remember carefully, in as much detail as you can,
what it was like,…
the people you saw, the meals you ate,
the activities you were engaged in.
Recall even the hours of sleep,…the peace, or lack of it,
your dreams, your mood upon awakening.
Take some time to slowly go over these hours…
again, not judging, just noticing, savoring, relishing, reliving.

God is intimately involved in this day.
The word is enfleshed here, or not at all.

Take a few moments now to pick out just one part of that day…
one conversation, one meal, one experience…
something significant, or problematic…
something delightful or painful.
Any moment, or piece with which you want to spend a few moments.
Go back and recall it as vividly and in as much detail as possible.
Is there anything for which you want to thank God?
Anything for which you are sorry?
Anything in which you want/need to ask for advice or help?
Take some time to do that now.

Is there anything God wants to say to you?
Take a moment, be still, and listen.
Spend about five more minutes just being with that part of your day,
praying in whatever way you are moved to.

If we try this exercise every day,
we will be surprised to find
that there is much more in any one twenty-four hour period of our lives
than we are inclined to realize.
There is often a richness, a joy, not noticed the first time through it.
There are some precious moments in every day…
no matter how ordinary they first appear,
where God speaks to us and gives us his grace.
And in doing this kind of prayer regularly,
we will be more likely to recognize Jesus
in the boy next door, in the people around us saving us from a flood,
or in all the other ordinary moments of our lives.

*This exercise comes from the book Where God May Be Found by L. Patrick Carroll, S.J. You can download a printable pdf of the exercise by clicking here.

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