Homily: To Be Held

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 17 / Thursday

Readings: Jeremiah 26.1-9 / Psalm 145. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6ab (R/v 5a) / Matthew 13.47-53

I believe we all strive to live God's call to holiness. We work hard at getting this right every day. We do this because we sincerely want to live as good Christians so that our hope of being saved can be accomplished.

Sometimes however we fall into sinfulness, and we feel unworthy to come before God. Yet God desires nothing more than to hold us again and make us anew.

We hear this truth in our first reading. It offers us the image of the imperfect vessel the potter still takes up. Instead of throwing it away, he holds it again in his hand. More significantly, he holds it to remould and remake it into a more perfect vessel.

This image of the potter and what he does -- never throwing away but seeking to salvage and make better -- reminds me of God. God who always looks at the good in us. God who values the good in us. God who seeks to discard the bad in us from the good in us, like the householder in today’s gospel who is sorting and cleaning out his storeroom.

Indeed, God appreciates the good in us as indeed good enough for God to love us and make us better, in spite of our sinfulness and imperfections. Like the potter, God sees beyond the imperfect vessels our lives are to the goodness of the clay, the holy desires we have in life, as worthy to remade, remoulded, and refashioned into something good and much better.

We can be confident that this is how God wants to work for our wellbeing and happiness because God, like the potter, always holds our imperfect lives in his hands. Nothing is more intimate and life-giving than to be held in someone's hands, especially, if it is God's hands that holds us.

This is why I am consoled by Hans von Balthasar's understanding that Jesus who descended into the dead will always catch us when we fall into sin*. For Balthasar, Jesus’ descend into the dead on Holy Saturday is God’s assurance that when we fall, Jesus, who has fallen even lower than us, through this act, will indeed be there to break our fall, catch us and lift us up into resurrected life, as God had raised him in the Resurrection from death into life. This should give us confident hope that you and I are indeed meant for salvation in Jesus.

Let us come to Jesus then as we are -- not so perfect at times but always good enough to God. Let us come to Jesus who wants to catch with his mercy when we sin, hold us in his love and remake us anew with his life. Yes, let us come to Jesus who desires nothing more than to lift us up to God, saved and made whole again.

*Hans von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale

Preached at Courage Ministry

photo: youtube (together in the harvest ministries)