***Due to a technical error, the May 21 Homily is only partially recorded. Please read the message in its entirety below.
OK, I want all of you to stick out your right arm. Now, while keeping your back against the pew, stretch out your hand. Can you feel it? Now try the same thing with your left arm. Good. Now try pivoting your head back and forth, just slightly. Now keep doing it as I keep talking.
You know, I think that I am a fairly healthy person. I try my best to stay balanced. You know, running, eating right, getting enough sleep . . . just as many of you do. Now try reaching up your right hand as far as you can. Now try reaching across your head. People will ask me how I can stay so fit. And you want to know my secret? It’s stretching. Ok now reach up your left hand as high as you can. Now reach across your head.
Now try this one, keeping your hips in place rotate your upper body to the right, as if you are trying to look behind you. Hold that. Can you feel the stretch? Now try it to the left side.
Stretching can be done by everyone here. I prefer to sit on the floor and do my stretching, but it can be done anywhere . . . sitting, standing . . . at your desk, on your couch. The important is not so much what you are doing, simply DO something. As the word suggests . . . stretch! Stretch yourself. As the saying goes “use it or lose it.” Do something more than what you would usually do.
This applies not only to us physically, but also emotionally and spiritually. For example, as the writer of the second reading implies . . . be of hope. It says, “Give them a reason for your hope.”
Which implies that they (and you) have hope. Hope is not wishful thinking, or trying to be lucky. Hope is putting our confidence in God. But it is not just making God do everything.
It is like that old story of the man, who complained to God “Dear God, I have been asking this of you for the last 10 years. Please just let me win the Powerball lottery.” Then a voice came from heaven saying, “Well, you’ve got to buy a ticket first!”
Hope is putting our affairs/lives in order . . . and then streeeeeetching ourselves to trust God.
You graduates from High School, we have high hopes for you. Which means . . . after you graduate, get your affairs in order. I mean, once athletics has ended for you, if you start eating like a pig next year . . . you’ll end up looking like a pig. And you know all those things that your parents have been nagging you about for the past 18 years? Well . . . do them. Not because someone is making you do them. Do them because they are good things to do . . . . for example,
floss, write thank you notes, pick up your clothes, check the oil. All that is important but I say to you . . . stretch yourself. Don’t just keep eating the same foods. Don’t just hang out with people you think like you.
And expand your spirituality. Try different ways of praying. For example, if you have been doing memorized prayers for a while now. Great. But try just talking to God. If you are one to do lots of talking to God, how about NOT talking and just sit with God. Get it? Stretch yourself, for you have no idea what God has in store for you.
The early disciples stretched themselves in the first reading because they thought that salvation was only going to come to Jews who became Christian. And then, as you just heard, wow God’s love has come to those non-Jews and to those awful people from Samaria. Wow it is amazing what God can do.
The gospel has Jesus inviting us to rely on the Holy Spirit, who is to come after Jesus ascends into heaven. That is to stretch ourselves in trusting God.
Well here at Christ Our Light we are invited to do some stretching. This past Tuesday, we had the leadership groups of the parish get together and discuss what to do with the future of our parish. After they got done, the Pastoral Council met. And from many people throughout the night . . . came a very challenging message. LET US BUILD A NEW CHURCH. Not everybody said this, because there are some who are hesitant for good reason . . . for we have not sold either property (and it looks like we will have to go back to ground zero, for the Elk River School District NOW says that they are not interested).
But still, our goal as a parish has always been to become one. And there were many voices saying that if that is really what God wants us to do (and we’ve had so many signs and indications as such) . . . then let us get things in order, stretch ourselves and put our trust and hope in God.
This is a big deal. Because it will affect all of us. And we will all need to help out and invest our time and treasure.
But you know [as I begin doing the splits] when you work at something little by little, it is amazing what you can do. It is amazing what God can do. Let’s give them a reason for our hope.