What a great group they are, aren’t they?  Please be seated, relax, okay? I think that you know that what I always like to do is to meet ahead of time with the candidates just to get to know them a little bit.

I was back in my home parish - I grew up outside of White Plains - I was back in my home parish doing Confirmation in May. So, I was sitting there and one of the candidates was sitting there with his brother, who was his sponsor. And, we’re talking. And I had been thinking about what homily I was going to use. I have one on scouting or another one, and I wasn’t sure which one I was going to use. So, these two boys sat down and one of them told me that he was in Scouts. And I said, “Ah, maybe that’s the one I should use.” So, we’re talking, and he said he was in Troop 1, Purchase. And I said, “Oh, I was in Troop 1, Silver Lake.” And his brother looks at me and says, “We know.” I said, “How do you know?” And he pulled out this old scout handbook, and I looked at it and said, “Wow, I haven’t seen something like that for years.” He said, “Open it up.” I opened it up and on the next page was Troop 1, Silver Lake, and my name.  It was my handbook. This was sixty years later. I have no idea how he got the handbook. It was given to him as a gift when he became an Eagle Scout. Well, that decided it. I said, “Okay, it’s the Scout homily tonight.” And guess what? You’re getting the Scout homily, too.

For over a dozen years, part of my assignment in the Archdiocese was to work for the Office of Communications in the Chancery Building and that assignment would find me every other week at 1330 Avenue of the Americas. That is the headquarters of the ABC Network, and it’s a very beautiful part of Sixth Avenue. The building has a large outside plaza. You walk up two stone steps from the sidewalk and then there’s a big open area with two sets of stone benches, and in between the stone benches, beautiful plantings. Whenever I would arrive, there was a guy sitting or standing among the benches. His name was Moondog. At least that’s what they called him. Moondog. He was dressed in a leather tunic with a leather belt around his waist, no pants, and buskins for his shoes, and a Viking hat with the big horns, the whole thing, and a staff in his hand. And he would harangue passersby, especially those coming in and out of the building. Now, that building housed the corporate offices of one of the most powerful media networks in the country, the facilities of WABC local radio, ABC national radio and WPLJ, among other things. So, some of the most famous, and some of the wealthiest people in the country came in and out of that building every day. It always struck me as odd that they never had the cops remove Moondog. I often wondered about that. I suspect that some of those people going in and out of the building might have occasionally slipped Moondog a ten or a twenty to keep him from starving.

The song Now and Then There’s a Fool Such As I was a standard in country music long before Elvis Presley got hold of it. But it’s interesting to look at the sheet music or at a record label with the name on it because the way it is printed is this: [parenthesis] (Now and Then There’s) [close parenthesis] A Fool Such As I. And that parenthesis is very interesting. Now and then. For most of us, most of the time, that expression means pretty much the same thing as occasionally. Now and then. But, in the song, it means all the time. Back then and even now. Now and then.

Back in the 1950’s, the Coasters sang a story song about Sweet Sue and Salty Sam and Lonely Lanky Jones. And Salty Sam was always trying to do dastardly things to Sweet Sue but, just as the crisis was about to strike, who would come along but Lonely Lanky Jones. And, in order to build up the suspense in each of their little stories, the Coasters would go, “And then…, and then…, and then….”  In that song, the “then” is very interesting.  It’s not a “then” of “back then.” It’s a “then” of right now.

I am sure lots of you know where and what Touchdown Jesus is.  If you’ve ever watched a Notre Dame football game, you got a couple of really good shots of it.  It stands about three stories high, it’s a beautiful mosaic.  In his touring days, Elvis once booked out the Notre Dame stadium for a concert.  And as fans are wont to do, they were screaming to him, close enough to the stage that you could hear some of them. One girl kept screaming, “Elvis you are the King!” He stopped and looked in her direction and he said, “No honey, I’m only a singer. He’s the King.” And he pointed to Touchdown Jesus.

We have a great fascination with royalty.  It came out again at all the beautiful ceremonies surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth.  She truly was a noble lady. Like all of us, she had her faults and blind spots, but she was an amazing image of what kingship and queenship might be.

You know that I don’t like to talk about money, but that’s not a personal feeling of mine. The fact is that the time for the Homily should not be commandeered to talk about money.  So, I always hope that when I have to, the scripture readings will help me, and today they did.  There’s three terrific lines in today’s Gospel that make a lot of sense for our situation. “Troubles will come.” “But it is not yet the end.” And “I will give you words and a wisdom.”

So, if you were to compare the life of a parish to the life of a human being, I would say that our Parish is in late middle age.  That’s where we are right now, late middle age.  How did we get there?  Well, it all started back in 2008 with the bank collapse.  A lot of people in our area were seasonal parishioners.  They had a home here and a home someplace else. And they discovered that, finally, they could not afford to maintain both places, to pay two sets of taxes and everything else, and they stopped coming.

Mackerel snappers. Mackerel snappers. That’s the term of derision, very much like other terms of derision that we all know well, that was used against Catholics starting in the nineteenth century because the hordes of immigrants to America, who were despised partly because they were immigrants and partly because they were Catholic, kept the Friday fast. Not eating meat on Friday and substituting fish, especially cheap fish, available easily in the marketplace. It is 55 years since Pope Paul VI abolished that custom of meatless Fridays among Catholics, and yet, in many households, the custom still holds sway now.

Before I became your pastor here, I served under seven pastors in my lifetime. Four of the seven required their housekeepers and cooks never to serve meat on Friday despite the fact that the Pope, in one sense their boss, had said that they didn’t have to do that anymore. Certain customs cling and they die hard.

I’m sure you caught the verb. It was the word see. In one form or another, it’s repeated seven times in that very short paragraph and it’s the key to the story. At the very beginning, Luke tells us that Zacchaeus sought to see. He looked to see. Using the same word twice in the same sentence. He was looking to see. And then, it says he climbed a sycamore tree to see who Jesus was. Then Jesus looked up and saw Zacchaeus. But when the people saw what Jesus was doing, they were angry. At end of the story, Luke says that Jesus said, “I have come to seek. I have come to seek out the lost and save them.”

In October of 1964, a pope came to the United States for the very first time and it was a big honkin’ deal for several reasons. First of all, because in 1964 the United States had no diplomatic ties to the Vatican and so there was no diplomatic channel through which the Pope could be invited to America. And so, the American bishops could not invite the bishop of Rome to come to America. So, they found a work around. The United Nations invited Pope Paul VI to speak there on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October the 4th, about peace in the world. And it was arranged through the Secret Service, the Vatican Diplomatic Corp, the Archdiocese of New York and the New York City Police Department that just by accident, the Pope’s limousine would leave the East Side at the United Nations and wander through Harlem to bless a housing complex built in a certain parish through the cooperation of the pastor and parishioners. And just accidentally happen to cross the East River and wind up, somehow or other, in Yankee Stadium where, just by coincidence, 30,000 people would be waiting for the Pope to say Mass. That’s how they did it.

Jesus doesn’t need any help from me this morning to explain what he was trying to say. So, I thought maybe we would focus on the second reading.

Last week, if you were at Mass, you remember that I talked about playing the long game. Last weekend, all three of our readings were about playing the long game. Being faithful to the end. And that’s what today’s second reading is about, again.

I asked you to listen carefully to the metaphor and the simile that St. Paul uses at the beginning of his letter. “I have been poured out like a libation.” That metaphor comes from the worship customs of all ancient peoples, both Jewish and non-Jewish. When they wanted to make a sacrifice of some sort to God or to the Gods, they tried to render it useless for anyone else. And so, if you had a jug of expensive wine or freshly produced olive oil, you took it and poured it all over the altar. It could never be used again. A libation. That’s how the writer says his life is. He’s simply being poured out, never to be used again in fidelity and in service to God. And right after that he says, “I have finished the race.” That image is too simple to even need an explanation or description. But both of them describe a person who is in it for the long game.

Last night, when I began my homily, that whole row of pews over there was completely empty. Now, this whole row of pews is completely empty. There must be, like, a rolling disease going across the pews or something.

Very strange readings we had this morning, you know. After listening to the stories of the Amaleks and Moses, you gotta ask yourself why? Why do they put that reading here for us on Sunday. Who cares about this ancient battle? And the Gospel reading. It’s very difficult to understand how Jesus makes a corrupt judge the hero of his story. A sinful character.

That is why I asked you to listen carefully for what St. Paul says to Timothy are the circumstances under which to be persistent. He says, “Preach the gospel …” - and our translation said – “… when it is convenient or inconvenient.” Other translations say, “… in good times and in bad.”  Now those are two different notions. One has to do with something outside of you. You don’t have any control over whether times are good or bad. But you do have control over whether things are convenient or inconvenient for you.

So, I said, before the first reading, to pay close attention to the strange behavior of both Naaman and Elisha at the end of the story. Naaman. in genuine gratitude for being healed of his leprosy, wants to give Elisha a big gift and Elisha refuses. Why does he refuse? Then, as a result of Elisha’s refusal, Naaman asks to take a couple buckets of dirt back to Syria with him. Why would he want some dirt? The reason why Elisha refuses to accept the monetary gift is because Elisha is God’s minister and he has not cured Naaman, God has cured Naaman. Elisha does not feel himself entitled to take a gift for what God has done. Elisha is only God’s emissary.

The stranger thing is the buckets of dirt. The belief in the ancient world was that you worshipped the God of the place. When you moved to another place, there was a different God. Since Naaman is a Syrian, he is a Pagan. He does not believe in Yahweh God. He has crossed from his own territory to the territory of another God. Once he realizes that its Elisha’s God who has saved him, he wants to bring back dirt from Israel so that he can worship the God of Israel back in his own home. Pour the dirt on the ground, stand on it and then pray to Yahweh God because he cannot pray to Yahweh God in the area of some other God. It is a very strange thing that we could not possibly comprehend in our time. But what the story is all about is the way in which God works among those whom others reject.

Did you pick up on the three gifts? It said power, love, and self-control. About 35 years ago a priest named Robert Hovda wrote a book on how to say Mass and he called it Strong, Loving and Wise. Those were supposed to be the three qualities of a good celebrant, a good presider at Mass - strong, loving and wise. He turned the three nouns in our reading into three adjectives.

So, I looked up the original Greek and I looked up the original Latin and, as it turns out, the three words have multiple meanings. The first one can mean physically strong or it can mean virtuous or it can be someone with a strong sense of duty, someone who is resolute. It means all those different things. The second word, in Greek, is one of five different Greek words for love, one or two of which we cannot discuss in polite company. But the one that the writer chose was agape, which means fellowship. It means having good purpose with the other people in community. It is what the early Christians called the gatherings for Eucharist that they held in their homes. They were agape meals, where everyone had fellowship, one with another. And the last word also is tricky. Our translation this morning, I think, is a biased translation – self-control. It has to do with keeping your id on a leash. That’s not quite what the word means. It means something more like wisdom gained through experience. Not book knowledge, not smarts. But rather, hard fought, painfully learned wisdom.

Show of hands, how many of you remember your Baptism? Yeah, I didn’t think so, but there could be some adult converts in our congregation. There were last night. How many of you remember the day of your Confirmation? A lot more. Now, those of you who are of a certain age, you were confirmed before the changes that were made in the sacramental liturgies of both Baptism and Confirmation. When you and I were baptized, and even when some of the younger people in the congregation were baptized, godparents came, and at a certain point in the Latin ceremony, the godparents recited the Apostle’s Creed in English at the prompting of the priest who was doing the Baptism. Now that is gone from the baptismal ceremony and, in its place, the priest asks the parents and the godparents six questions. The answer to each one is the same. I do.

The translation we used to have for that last line was, “You cannot serve both God and money.” The word mammon was in the older, older translation and now they switched back to using mammon again because there is a subtlety there that kind of slips by if you use the word money. Of course, Jesus is referring - the whole context is - use of wealth.  But the mammon was some sort of little idol that some people around the area of Israel used to worship. And so, the suggestion is that, somehow or other, money is a god.

In order to understand why the Church presents these readings in this way on this Sunday, we have to go back and take a little closer look at who Amos is. King David did the almost impossible. He united two factions of Jewish people who never got along. The people in the northern part of Israel - Samaria and Galilee, where Jesus was born and raised - and the people down in the southern kingdom - around the capital city of Jerusalem - always contested with each other as to who was in control. And after Solomon, King David’s son, the kingdoms broke part again, and there were two different Kings, one in the north and one in the south.

This parable is probably Jesus’ masterpiece. Certainly, it’s Luke’s. And it doesn’t need any help from me. It stands on its own. But there are some things we need to talk about.

First of all, we know why Jesus told this story. Luke tells us at the very beginning. It’s because the righteous people, the Scribes and the Pharisees, complained that Jesus spent too much time and gave too much attention to the tax collectors and sinners, those people on the margins who were not respectable and who were not accepted in Jewish society.

Luke writes this Gospel about forty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. And so, Luke is telling Jesus’ story to an entirely different crowd. Who are they?

Now, please welcome [guest speaker] Fr. [Mrutyunjaya] Joy Bira.

My dear sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus, we are celebrating today, the twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. And the central theme is about that true Christian discipleship. So we are reflecting upon today about true Christian discipleship. Personally, we may ask a few questions to ourselves. How can I become a true disciple of Jesus Christ? How can I commit and dedicate myself to the will of the Father, to the will of the Son, and to the will of the Holy Spirit? Because that is how we can become truly disciples of Jesus Christ.

This is kind of a strange Gospel, isn’t it? The first parable just seems like a humorous story told at the expense of a few people at the dinner. The second parable seems like a needless poking of someone in the eye who was just invited to dinner. In order to understand what it is all about, let's talk about something else for a couple minutes.

Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, has been made into a movie or a television program at least twelve times in the twentieth century and twice since the beginning of the twenty-first century. They call it a comedy of manners. It was written in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. You have to wonder why it remains so popular. It may be because of its main characters and its main themes. The star of the show is a very plucky young girl named Elizabeth Bennett.  Her family are peers of the land.  That is to say that they have a land holding that entitles them to a seat in Parliament. But there is a very strange attachment to that parcel of land. The deed says that it can only be passed on to a male heir. If there are no male heirs, the land returns to the state. And that law goes back in English law to the thirteenth century and is unbreakable. So, the Bennett family is faced with the problem that they have all daughters and the parents are getting older. And so, the challenge is for them to get all the girls married off to someone else who has land so that they can maintain their exalted status in English society. And Elizabeth is a kind of a thorn in their side because she is not the most attractive of the girls and she is a very independent spirit. And she rejects all of her suitors. Until along comes a very strange man, named Mr. Darcy, who enters their lives in a very unwelcome way and completely turns Elizabeth off. For three-quarters of the novel, she and Darcy go at it head-to-head and she despises him. There are two other main male suitors - a Mr. Bingley and a Mr. Collins. And both of them have the same attitude as Mr. Darcy. They have an unconscious patriarchalism about them. But one of the three suitors also kind of leans toward misogyny. That’s a very dangerous thing. Of course, all’s well that ends well. Finally, Darcy and Elizabeth find each other and fall in love, and all the girls get married off, and everybody lives happily ever after.

So, religion and politics.  A very thorny issue.

Back in the 1970’s Paul Simon had a big hit record called Me and Julio Down in the Schoolyard. And there is one stand-out line from that song. “When the radical priests come to get us released, then we all on the cover of Newsweek.” What was that all about? All of a sudden, in the 1960’s and early 70’s, priests and sisters appeared in public championing various political causes, marching with Martin Luther King for civil rights, and opposing the Vietnam War. Two very famous priests, one a Jesuit and one a member of another religious order’s brothers, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, took a leading role in opposing the war in Vietnam, and one of the Berrigan brothers actually became a part of the Catonsville Gang. They burst into a local Selective Service office one morning and poured pigs blood over all of the Selective Service records, were arrested, tried and convicted and spent time in jail. This was a scandal to many Catholic people who never envisioned their leaders taking part in the public fray.

For many years I was friends with a family. The mother and father were estranged from their son because their son had married someone of another faith, actually converted to that faith himself for the sake of his wife.  And so, for years, they had little, if any, contact with their only grandson. Only after many long years, did the ice begin to melt just a little bit and every now and then in some public place, like a big restaurant, they would meet for a brief moment of reconciliation.

Religion can be very divisive. That’s why I said to pay attention to the group that wears white hats in one reading and black hats in the other. The Letter to the Hebrews is not really a letter so much as it is an essay, an explanation. In the year 68, the Roman Legions surrounded Jerusalem and laid siege to it for two years. Jerusalem was able to hold out for a long while because it had a wonderful water source and abundant food, but eventually the inhabitants began to weaken, and the Legions were able to break through the walls and they set the great Holy City of the Jewish people on fire. Both Jews and Jewish Christians ran for their lives.

I saw a cartoon recently. The picture is of Noah’s Ark drifting off from the shore. And all the animals on the ark are looking back toward the shore with distressed looks upon their faces. They’re looking at two dinosaurs who are left on the shore. And one dinosaur is saying to the other, “Oh rats! Was that today?” (They didn’t actually say, “Oh, rats,” but that’s the only word I can use here in church.)

We all know what the scientists say about how the first dinosaurs were destroyed. A huge meteor struck the earth and destroyed them. But it didn’t destroy all living things. By a process of evolution, a whole new type of living beings emerged after that destruction. But the cartoon is based on the popular belief that the world will be destroyed by fire. There was a very important book that came out in the 1950s by James Baldwin called “The Fire Next Time.” It was basically two long letters that he wrote about the legacy of slavery and segregation, and the challenges of integration at his moment in time. But the title he chose came from an old gospel hymn – a black gospel hymn – called “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep. Don’t You Moan.” And, in the gospel song, the singer contrasts the flood that killed Pharaoh’s army and saved the Israelites with - not another flood, ‘cause God promised, after the Noah’s Ark thing, He’d never destroy the world by water again - but the next time, by fire.

Those of you who grew up in my generation and the generation just after mine, probably were prejudiced in our lives and experienced prejudice in our lives. We referred to other people with expressions that are no longer acceptable in public discourse, and we were called those kinds of names ourselves. And, to a certain extent, those things rolled off our back and nobody took all that much umbrage in what was being said by us or to us. But now we live in a binary culture. Partly because of the wonderful gift of computers and infinite technology, we tend to think in on/off, yes/no, good/bad, white/black. And the spaces in between are beginning to disappear from our public discourse.

If you paid close attention to the second reading, it sounded very much like Paul was trying to convince the people of Colossae not to be prejudiced. But is that really what was going on? First of all, you have to understand the context of much of the New Testament writing. Both the gospel of Luke, which we just heard, and most of the letters of St. Paul, the writer’s presumption is that the world is going to end. Jesus is coming back in their lifetime. And those who are baptized are an exclusive group, the ones who will be saved. The rest of the world is going to hell in a handbag. And so it was very much a binary attitude toward the world. It’s us and all those other people. So, when St. Paul talks to the Colossians, he’s talking about people within the Christian group who are very disparate, one from another. That’s why I asked you to pay close attention to the dichotomies he expresses - Jew/Greek, circumcised/uncircumcised, slave/free, Barbarian/Scythian. In another letter he says exactly the same thing, including in those dichotomies male/female. He’s saying all of us are one because we all follow Christ.