Homily for Ordinary Time 32
November 8, 2015
Trust in God
Opening
Day, 2005. Cleveland Browns rookie Eric Mahl took the field with all of his
teammates. But something was wrong. Oh, he was in the best of health – he could
still bench press 450 pounds…but something just felt out-of-place.
A very
devout Catholic, Eric had been drawing closer to the Lord over the past few
years, and he had been praying, “Lord, I will do whatever You want me to do.”
That’s a very dangerous prayer, my friends, because the Lord will take us up on
it. Even as Eric Mahl began his rookie season, taking down opponents on the
football field, he continued to ask the Lord to show him his path.
After
one year in the NFL, through prayer became clear that this was not where Eric
was meant to be. So he left the multi-million dollar contract, he left the
glitter and the cheerleaders and instead decided to spend some time alone to
figure out where the Lord was calling him. He spent three years as a hermit in
the Arizona desert, praying and discerning, and what he heard was quite
extraordinary.
God was
asking him to give up everything and follow Him, bringing His love to the poor
and homeless. Like a modern-day Saint Francis, Eric was willing to do it. He
gave away all of his possessions, moved back to Cleveland, and for a year lived
like a homeless man. He would be found ministering to the homeless as one of
them; sleeping in shelters, eating in soup kitchens, praying with the homeless,
the lonely, the poor.
I had
the privilege of meeting Eric a few years ago. Above all, he exudes a trust in
the Lord…possessing nothing, he has the Lord. And that is enough.
The
woman in today’s Gospel has a similar trust. She gave away everything – her last
two pennies – Jesus says it is her livelihood – literally, everything she
owned. And she walked out of that temple with a trust in God that puts us to
shame. And I guarantee that God provided for her.
On
almost every page of Scripture, God is asking His people that same question –
do you trust Me? Do you trust Me? And in almost every situation in our lives,
God is asking that same question of us – do you trust Him? Most of the time in
the Bible, people end up not trusting
God. They try to take matters into their own hands…and things end up a mess
because of it! However, when they trust God radically, He brings good out of
it.
I’m
reminded of a little-known story from the Bible, from Judges 7. There is a man
named Gideon whom God has called to lead His people. Gideon himself is
struggling to trust the Lord…he asks for several signs from God before he is
willing to lead the Israelites into battle. Finally, Gideon agrees to go, and
he gathers the troops to fight an invading tribe. He ends up assembling an army
of 32,000 men – not a bad showing! But God says, “That’s too many people – I want
you to see that I am fighting for you – so send some men home.” Gideon sends
home anyone who wants to go home, and he is left with 10,000. But God says
again, “That’s still too many. Cut it down to 300.” So Gideon is left to fight
this battle with 300 men…against thousands and thousands of the enemy army. God
is inviting him to trust.
It takes
a while but Gideon is willing to trust the Lord. He has his army carry torches
in the dead of night, silently, into the enemy camp. On cue, they all cried
aloud, waking up the enemy. In the confusion that resulted, the enemy ended up
fighting amongst themselves, destroying their whole army, while Gideon and his
300 men all survived. God brought them to the point where it seemed like
everything was a failure – and then, because of Gideon’s trust, the Lord came
through in an unexpected way.
So do YOU trust God? Trusting God means that
we believe, deeply, that God is our loving Father, Who only wants what’s best
for us. He desires that we become fully alive: spiritually, mentally,
emotionally, physically. He came that “we might have life, and have it most
abundantly.” (John 10:10). We can trust Him as a good Father, then! He made
many promises in the Scriptures that we can rely on: promises such as, “I will
never abandon you.” Or, “Happy are those who follow the law of the Lord.” Or, “All
things work for good for those who love God.” If God gives a promise, He will fulfill it, since He cannot
deceive. We can trust Him completely!
Even
when He asks us to give up control of a situation. Do you worry? Are you afraid
of the future, or concerned about finances or problems at work or school? The
antidote is trust. God has come through in the past, even when it seemed like
everything was lost. Just look at the Cross – when all hope was lost, God
brought great good out of the worst evil in history.
Sometimes
we struggle to trust God because we think that we know what’s best for us. A lot
of times we’re like a child who wants candy, but their parent wants them to eat
their vegetables instead. Is that parent mean, or uncaring? Of course not –
that parent wants what’s truly best for the child. Likewise, God gives us what
we need, not necessarily what we want. Perhaps we had our sights set on that
new job, and we didn’t get it – and perhaps we would have been miserable if we
got that new job. Perhaps our plans for the future just fell through – and maybe
God has a better plan for us. I can say that from talking to Eric Mahl, he is
much happier with God’s plan of serving the poorest of the poor than he ever
was playing in the NFL.
We
believe that God loves us, that He takes care of us like a good Father, and
that we can surrender everything to Him: our plans, our future, our worries…and
even our last two pennies.
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