Homily: The God of Small Details

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 19 – Sunday (Singapore’s National Day)

Readings: 1 Kings 19.9a, 11-13. / Psalm 85 (R/v 8) / Romans 9.1-5 / Matthew 14.22-33

“Emily: ‘There is no one I’d rather sit beside. Will you marry me?’ Tom.”

“Celebrating Phoebe’s Favorite Playground. Love Mom, Dad and Carter.”

“…and baby makes three. Katherine Anne, born 2 August 2013.”

“For Greg Myers on his retirement. With gratitude from Greenbridge Partners.”

These lines—and many others like these—are engraved onto countless brass plates on numerous benches throughout Central Park in New York City. Over several visits to Central Park, I’ve learnt to pay attention to these inscriptions. They give me a glimpse into the lives and stories of countless New Yorkers.

Reading about Central Park in a National Geographic spread as a teenager and watching movies that featured it as a backdrop gave me an idealized picture of this space. But these inscriptions have taught me that the real story of Central Park lies in the details these engravings carry. They speak of how New Yorkers relate to this space and, more significantly, to one another. And, I’ve also learnt that I don’t really know a space or a person until I look out for the small details that make up this place or are part of another's life. And paying attention is the way to do this.

This lesson of paying attention to small details is what our first reading teaches us. God instructs Elijah to listen for God’s word. Like many of us, Elijah is expecting to hear God in a way that loudly and clearly proclaims, “I am here.” But Elijah doesn’t find God in the wind, earthquake, and fire. Instead, God comes to him in “a tiny whispering sound,” in this smallest of details.

Elijah’s experience should challenge you and me to pay more attention to finding God in the small details of our everyday life that we deem ordinary and we often overlook. Like finding ourselves alive each morning. Like having health to go about our daily chores at home, at school and at work. Like coming home safe at day’s end to family and friends.

A couple of years ago, I accompanied an elderly widower regularly in spiritual direction. He was grieving his wife who had just died. And he was struggling to find God who seemed absent in his loss.

One Saturday afternoon, he was preparing a fruit salad to bring to his neighborhood luncheon. He cut up watermelon and rockmelon. He threw them into his wife’s favourite blue glass bowl. He added strawberries and blueberries, pineapple and oranges. He sprinkled some sugar and nutmeg, and added a dash of Kahlua. Then, as he tossed the fruit, he sensed God standing next to him. Very present; every real.

He was surprised yet assured. He looked up; the kitchen seemed brighter. Life suddenly felt better. He took a deep breath. Then, he carried on, tossing the fruit, God’s earthly food for daily sustenance, for daily joy. And he smiled.

God met this gentle widower in the small detail of preparing a fruit salad, in the very ordinary details of his kitchen and in the everyday detail of going about his life.

Can you recall an incident when God met you amidst the details of your life, no matter how messy they were, and labored for your wellbeing? Perhaps, it was your spouse’s forgiveness for a disappointment made. Or, your doctor’s assurance that the medical checkup went well. Or, as one of our SJI students experienced after completing the cross-country run yesterday morning, yes, life does indeed get better, as his teacher promised him, after he and his team lost at a competition on Thursday night.

Indeed, paying attention to God’s goodness in the small details of our lives can help us to know the depth of God’s fidelity in the larger details of our lives. Like discerning a significant life decision such as marriage or migrating elsewhere. Like making a moral decision when someone we love nears death. Like reconciling your conscience with the judgment others have made that you are bad for disagreeing with the Church. In such moments, God who is faithful to us in small things will always be ever more faithful to us in the bigger details of life, I believe. 

Our gospel reading offers us this assuring hope too. The disciples on the boat, battered by the wind and tossed about by the storm, learn that Jesus does come to rescue them into God’s safe embrace. And he comes to them on the same stormy waters that are besieging them. Such is Jesus who promises to be with us to the end of time; he will come to us in the very struggles we have. He will save us as he saved Peter: by lifting us up because he does not just see fear and doubt in us; he sees more. He sees our earnest desire, like Peter, to want to be with him so that we can follow him to know God and to be with God eternally.

Christian faith is to help us live this life well. The proper form it must have is the hope-filled discipleship we ought to have with Jesus. It is indeed hope-filled because we learn from Jesus how to find God in the details of our life, like he taught his disciples through his preaching and he showed them through his miracles.

Paying attention to the small details in our everyday life. Finding God’s goodness in these small, even ordinary, details. Knowing that God is faithful both in the small and big details of our lives through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus.

These are three lessons our readings providentially offer us on National Day. I would like to suggest that they can empower us to better live the Christian faith as nationals and guests in Singapore in the following ways.

First, by remembering how God is always present in our midst. Whether we call Singapore ‘nation’ as citizens or ‘work space’ as friends working here, Singapore is home. And it is home not only because we share it with family and friends but because God resides here with you and me. This land is God’s space; and God has graced it with God’s goodness. We need to ask ourselves now and again, “Do I believe that God is equally present in secular Singapore society, as I am told God is in the Christian spaces we call church, mission schools, families?”

Second, by celebrating God’s goodness in the many details of Singaporean life. Today, we can give thanks for communal happiness and peace, economic prosperity, and progress in so many areas. But our celebrations will be more delightful if we can acknowledge gratefully God’s goodness in the Singaporean way we live. Like being friends with people from other races and religion. Like having ample, cheap hawker food to eat. Like not worrying about portable water, internet connection, electricity. It is good then for us to ask ourselves everyday, “How am I responding to God’s goodness that I encounter daily as I live the Singapore way?”

Third, by believing in God’s faithfulness as we continue to evolve as a Singaporean society. In recent years, we have been asking ourselves important questions about government and the opposition, about inclusivity and xenophobia, about fairness and non-discrimination, about family values and individual rights. We participate in this dialogue not only as citizens but also and always as Christians. For us, God and God’s way of loving as Jesus did, especially to the poor and the enemy, must be for reconciliation and fellowship among each and every Singaporean, and not for division that some of us who advocate religious self-righteousness can cause. We must always and honesty ask ourselves, “Can I let God lead and show us how Singapore is to evolve as God wishes in ways that are democratic, just and egalitarian?”

Perhaps, when we can answer these questions—honestly and gratefully—for ourselves and for each other, we will begin to inscribe into our hearts—not onto brass plates on park benches—the loving details of God who is always present in the small details of our everyday lives. Then, we can share generously with one another, whether citizen or guest, the good news that God is indeed with us and loving us into fullness of life on this little red dot we call Singapore.

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

Photo: Internet