26th Sunday in Ordinary Time ( C )
INTRO:
Not sure if you all know, but I am a person of routine!
ANY of you people of ROUTINE????
As much as I can, I try and follow the same pattern of schedule…
(Don’t ask why…or try and figure me out….I just do!)
For example…when I go somewhere…..SAME ROUTE….someone can tell me “Oh try this shortcut… I DON’T DO IT!!!
I FEEL COMFORTABLE, SAFE, FOLLOWING MY PATTERNS AND ROUTINES!
Well a while ago, the routine did me dirty, so to speak!
Explain meeting for lunch downtown Cleveland…
Typically crowded…difficult to find a parking spot, but in this one area…I have always been pretty lucky. Lo and behold that famous day…WOW spots all over the place waiting for MY parked car!
I park.
Get into my lunch meeting.
Finish up and come out to come home and there it is …
A TOW truck with my car on it!!!!
Tell story: I NEGLECTED TO SEE THE NEWLY POSTED SIGNS!
I DIDN’T OBSERVE WHAT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME…my routine would have been “messed up”.
So how does that fit for TODAY’S Gospel of the RICH MAN and LAZARUS?
(A little activity:
-look around the church, can you see anybody with RED HAIR?
-look around the church, can you see someone who came to church ALONE?
Now try
-look around the church, can you see someone who is in need of some kind of help?
-look around the church, can you see someone who is sad?
The last two may be a bit difficult, but I believe Jesus had a mission to instruct us to break down the difficulty of seeing these kinds of people who may be needing some help or is sad…..and to get involved with some wonderful charitable ways to those we do not know that will who…. “Cross our paths and break our routines.”
Everybody wants to accuse the RICH MAN of BEING RICH and EVIL! The RICH man’s sin was not that he was rich, but that during his earthly life:
HE DID NOT SEE THE LAZARUS’S OF SOCIETY, RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM AND DO SOMETHING FOR THEM, just as I didn’t see the posted signs! I was in a hurry. I was in my routine doing MY thing!
I can almost hear Jesus say, as he is talking to the Pharisee’s:
“Hey everybody, walk with your heads UP…look around and see where you can get out of YOUR routine and get into someone else’s to be of HELP to them!!! There are people all around you who need YOU and who may be sad.”
Eyes up and out and on each other!
Many of you DO THIS Beautifully.
Many of you do PAY ATTENTION as to where you can HELP another.
That’s what this church is about.
CONCLUSION:
In a few moments I will hold up the consecrated host and wine and say BEHOLD the Lamb of God. You will look up and it is that posture of life, looking at the CHRIST and in in all our brothers and sisters that is salvific.