Hi everyone! Here’s my homily for the FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT – APRIL 3, 2011 given at Newman Catholic at Montclair State University. The readings for today can be found here https://www.usccb.org/nab/040311.shtml . Thanks as always for reading and your feedback. Fr Jim
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HOMILY:
How many of you have heard of a guy by the name of Biz Stone?
OK – now how many of you have heard of “Twitter?”
More than likely few knew Biz Strong, but everyone knows what Twitter is. I know what it is, but I still don’t exactly “get” it. Which is kind of frustrating since I’ve prided myself at being able to master Facebook a few years ago when it was just starting to take off (actually, I shouldn’t really be proud of that fact – I should hang my head in shame…) But the twitter – I have it, I’ve “tweeted” I’ve subscribed or “follow” people on there. Overall though, I’m not quite sure I know how to use it. I don’t know how to message people when they write something – does everybody get to see what I’m writing. How do I send messages to everyone. There’s people I’m following but I don’t get their messages. It’s all very confusing.
But it is another cultural phenomenon growing at some crazy rates. Celebrities use it to connect to their fans. Charlie Sheen uses it to remind us he’s still alive and encourage us to tune into his self-destruction. Politically it’s been credited with helping organize the protests in Iran, and Egypt. As a media tool, it can effectively reach thousands of people in seconds to warn of natural disasters or other important information. I for one enjoyed following the Bronx Snake who escaped from the zoo for most of the week “tweeting” asking among other things “Does anyone know if the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle sells organic mice?”
Biz Stone and two of his friends back in 2006 looked at the fact that the number of people who have cell-phones has skyrocketed beyond anyone’s imaginations – and thought “imagine if we can create a social networking thing that people could use on their cell phones through text messaging. That’s why it’s only 140 character messages so that you can send it over text message. Well you
guys know the rest of the story (and are helping to write it) The phenomenon of it is only growing. Reportedly, there was talks that Twitter was offered $500 million for the company by Facebook and that Twitter turned it down thinking the company is worth a lot more than that…
Listening to interviews where he shared some of his life story, it’s hard to imagine him being in this position. He grew up in a very poor area of Boston. His father abandoned his family when he was 10, has battled substance abuse, and that has fathered brothers and sisters that Biz doesn’t even know. (In one sad example, Biz shared how a year ago when he saw his dad, the man didn’t realize that Biz was his son) Biz dropped out of two universities after attending each of them for a year each. He said that he was amazed that he was even able to land a job a few years ago at Google. He said he was hired more because a good friend who worked there advocated for him than because of his background or qualifications. After rising to a high-executive position he left that company with two buddies to create Twitter.
With all the obstacles, all the challenges, all the problems, it’s hard to imagine that Biz Stone’s story would turn into out the way it did – many of his family and friends seem pretty surprised to this day… Because often times when we hear the background, when we hear what all of that brokenness, we fall into the same trap that a majority of the people in today’s Gospel have. Not daring to see things could be beyond the small little box we have ourselves, we have one another, we have even God confined to.
In this Gospel, we hear a miracle story – this man who has been blind from birth is blessed with the gift of sight after this encounter with Jesus. But the bulk of the story is about all the outside characters who put the blind man, each other, and God in a box.
Look at how the conversations go – “Why is he blind?” – Well he must’ve sinned or his parents did. Well now he’s cured – that’s not really the blind man, is it? No it just looks like him. NO IT IS HIM. Really? I don’t believe that, get his parents – ask them… The parents arrive and confirm he’s their son, but even they don’t know what to make of it “we don’t know how he sees nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he is of age, he can speak for himself.” Even the blind guy now seeing is a bit cautious at first. When he’s questioned he gives the very basic facts “that guy Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, said go wash up in that pool and I did…” Why all the hesitation? Well the Pharisees had already had been frustrated with Jesus and for reasons like this, that he cured this guy on the Sabbath. Doing such a thing as curing on the Sabbath was seen as against the commandments, so then the Pharisees argue he can’t be from God. After all this back and forth the blind man argues – look I can’t say that he’s a sinner, I can’t say he’s not from God… [HOWS THAT FOR A RINGING ENDORSEMENT? JESUS HEALS THE GUY AND THAT’S THE BEST HE CAN SAY– HE’S NOT A SINNER?] The guy goes on All I can say is that I was blind, now I can see. It’s almost like the guy doesn’t want to be bothered anymore, he basically asks his interrogators Why are you hassling me as he asks them – Do you want to follow him?
At that the Pharisees are done. They are know what they know: God spoke to Moses… They learned to keep holy the Sabbath from Him, Jesus is doing stuff he shouldn’t be doing on the Sabbath – so we don’t know where Jesus is from. Because He did this on the Sabbath, he must be a sinner and God doesn’t listen to sinners…
A nice little box they have there.
It’s easy for us to be critical of the characters in the Gospel – But how limited is our visions? Often times we don’t even realize how narrow our views have become we’ve gotten into such a narrow view of who we are, who God is, or what’s possible when we let Jesus into our lives. Like the people in the Gospel, we allow ourselves to be trapped into these diminished roles that we find ourselves into. The guy who’s been blind since birth, probably thought he’s supposed to remain that way… that’s all he’s known, so nothing is going to change that. People had assumed that he or his parent’s did something wrong, so the whole family has been living with this cloud of shame for years. When Jesus Christ is able to do something incredibly miraculous, something that should have brought rejoicing and wonder and awe, look what happens. The parent’s who had already felt someone in their house must have done something wrong that caused their son to be blind – a messed up thought in the first place, thanks to some of these people from the temple – are now scared they might be thrown out and rejected from that very temple. Because Jesus didn’t do things the way “He was supposed to,” because He didn’t conform to their understanding or expectations,- they go for broke, they say he must not be of God. What’s so sad is that with these reactions, only one man’s sight is restored. The rest of this man’s family, the rest of this town miss the opportunity to have their lives changed by having their vision corrected by Jesus Christ.
We live In a world that is overly cynical, distrustful of anyone or anything. Biz Stone could have easily allowed all the negatives in his life to be an excuse to opt out of even trying to do something meaningful with his life and blame his father, his surroundings, everything around him for a limited and diminished existence rather than becoming the founder of something that has changed our culture yet again…
For you and I we might not even realize how blind we’ve become – to who we are…to what it is that blinds us, to what it is that diminishes us… blind to the sins that cripple us… to the lies that we’ve believed about ourselves because of those sins that trap us into thinking there’s nothing we can do – nothing’s going to change… Blind to how Jesus is among us, how he wants to save us – not just for eternity, but here and now. How Jesus wants us to experience miracles… unexplained, unexpected, life altering miracles where God blesses us with a new vision, a new perspective that helps us see past the limited existence we experience now into a life we could have never imagined or conceived of. You can tweet this (and it’s under 140 characters so it will fit:) God never stops trying, we do… If we continue to have a limited vision of God, then his activity in our lives will remain limited.
