27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
INTRO:
Dum, dum, da dum….
Dum, dum, da dum
Tell story of the NEW PRIEST…
-all excited for his FIRST wedding
-not sure how many of you know the details of the ROMAN MISSAL, but this new priest was “still” fumbling a bit with the pages/ritual
HE WANTED TO GET EVERYTHING JUST RIGHT
-he was asking his PASTOR if he had any “tips” to make sure all would go well….
PASTOR SAID….”Oh you’ll do a great job; you are getting so good at daily Mass. It shouldn’t be a problem, but, If you forget something….a good rule of thumb
QUOTE SCRIPTURE…IT ALWAYS WORKS!!
-On the BIG day of the wedding…..all was going well until the very end and he has his arms outstretched to give the solemn blessing and his mind goes BLANK.
He froze and then remembered the PASTOR’s advice to quote Scripture. He took a deep breath and spoke the very words of Scripture that IMMEDIATELY came to his mind
“FATHER, FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO!”
There really is NO JOKE about the words of Jesus in our worship today. Two become one!
OUR SUNDAY is about LOVE between husband and wife THAT IS EQUAL and about the love between ALL PEOPLE!
We have in the GOSPEL – husband and wife,
Spoken of as ONE…equals, in the bond and sacrament of holy matrimony.
There is also an added feature that MARK brings to our attention… AGAIN….showing that HUSBAND AND WIFE are “possibly” seen as INCLUSIVE of each other……accepting each other………….
Thus, the image of the child, as we have heard about in the past few weeks…….. JESUS talking about the CHILD:
LET THE CHILDREN COME TO ME
DO NOT HINDER THEM
ACCEPT THE CHILDREN
Jesus is really talking about us as the people of God NOT JUST HUSBAND and WIFE….who need to be INCLUSIVE of everyone in our embrace….in our thoughts….words….deeds….actions!!!
We cannot be prejudiced…..we cannot divorce ourselves from this group or that group of people whose mindset is alternative from ours. That’s NOT CHURCH as Jesus intended.
If you recall, Jesus wants a UNIFIED CHURCH…he is following His father’s will.
He wants MAN and WOMAN to be unified
He wants BLACKS and WHITES to be UNIFIED
He wants PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT RACES to be unified
IN WHAT??? In charity. It’s about CHARITY, KINDNESS, ACCEPTANCE, FORGIVENESS if necessary, that’s His CHURCH.
How do we get there?????
Tell story:
There is an OLD Islamic fable, when God created the world, the earth was so smooth and the DEVIL was incredibly jealous of the beautiful smooth earth that GOD created, and so in his great jealousy he SCRATCHED THE FACE OF THE EARTH with HIS CLAWS and he did so VERY DEEPLY that the scars he made on the smooth earth created DEEP RIVERS and RAVINES that divided one place from the other, keeping people apart, not unified…..preventing them from travelling the earth to be united with one another.
God was very sad when he saw what the evil one had done. God decided to send his angels into the world to help the people. The angels saw how the people could not travel those deep gorges and ravines and so the angels bent low and spread their wings across those ravines and gorges so that people could regain UNITY and travel to be with each other.
From this action of the ANGELS…………man and woman LEARNED HOW TO BUILD BRIDGES!!!
and to this day the greatest blessing is to build a bridge for all people to be united with each other……… not segregated.
CONCLUSION:
If Jesus’ mission is for UNITY…it involves each of us with that same MINDSET to develop the great skill of being BRIDGE BUILDERS within us.
It’s all about CHARITY, KINDNESS, ACCEPTANCE in our lives.