Concerning Hobbits

Third Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Over the last week or two I decided to rewatch the trilogy movies of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”  I’ve watched them countless times, but I find them very enjoyable and they have many connections to Catholicism, since J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the novels, practiced his Catholic faith devotedly.

    In “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell (an elven oasis) representatives from the major races of beings–dwarves, elves, and men–argue over who will take the One Ring, an evil talisman connected to the evil spirit, Sauron, to Mordor to destroy it by casting it back in the volcanic Mount Doom, thus also destroying Sauron.  As they argue, Frodo, a hobbit, steps up and says that he will take the ring to Mordor, though he does not know the way.  Frodo had brought the ring from his house (since his uncle, Bilbo had found it years ago while on his own quest) to Rivendell.  So he agrees to carry it even farther to its destruction.  Elves were very wise, dwarves were very crafty, and men were very strong.  But it was a hobbit, a small humanoid, who probably stood no more than 4 feet tall, who volunteered to take the ring to its destruction.  Frodo wasn’t the wisest, the craftiest, and certainly not the strongest, but he was the right one for this quest.

    The centurion from our Gospel today was as unlikely for a healing from our Lord as Frodo was to carry the ring to its destruction.  As a soldier, he likely worshiped false gods, and maybe even worshiped the Emperor Tiberius Augustus.  He represented the entire occupying force of Rome in the Promised Land, which had come in 63 BC to make it a client kingdom of Rome, but who took it over around 6 BC as simply a province of Rome.  The centurion did not belong to the Chosen People awaiting a Messiah, and in fact, he was part of the military machine the people expected the Messiah to wipe out.  And yet, Christ says of the centurion that he had not found faith like his in all of Israel.  This centurion was the right one to receive a healing.
    And he was the right one because he believed Christ could heal his servant, even without being present.  No doubt, there were healers that would pop up from time to time in the Promised Land, but they almost always had to be present to heal the suffering person.  The centurion knew that this rabbi from Nazareth was different, and trusted that if He said it would be done, it would be done, just as when the centurion gave orders the soldiers did them.
    The centurion is a great reminder that God often works with the unexpected, perhaps the same message Tolkien tried to convey by choosing a hobbit to carry and destroy the One Ring.  But the common factor that unites the unexpected comes from their reliance on God and not on their own power.  Abraham and Sarah were well past the childbearing age, and yet God made Abraham the father of many nations.  Hannah was barren and put up with ridicule from Penninah, Hannah’s husband’s other wife (apparently the rule on marrying only one wife wasn’t always followed closely), until God granted her request and gave her a son, Samuel.  Ruth, the grandmother of David, was a foreigner, and David was not the son of Jesse that Samuel thought at first glance God would choose as king.  Anne and Joachim were childless until they conceived the Blessed Mother immaculately in Anne’s womb.  Elizabeth and Zechariah were also too old to be though to be able to conceive.  The Blessed Mother was a quiet, young virgin without any real importance from a worldly point of view.  The Apostles, our Lord’s closest followers and the foundations of His Church, did not have the greatest education and the Gospels make clear that, more often than not, they didn’t get what He taught.  All of these people, and more, would never have been expected to do great things for God, or have such a major role in salvation history.  But here we are.
    I could list hundreds of saints whom no one expected to amount to anything, and yet we recall them each year in the canon, or list, of saints.  And that should give us hope.  If a poor friar, working in Detroit without faculties to preach or hear confessions, can be beatified, then we can become a saint.  God can work with us, small as we are, un-spectacular as we are, to accomplish His grand plan of salvation.  We don’t have to be the most powerful, the wisest, or the craftiest.  We simply need to acknowledge our nothingness, and rely on God to carry us through whatever mission He has for us.  Because when we acknowledge our nothingness, that leaves all the room for God and His power.  When we think we are somebody, or have some grand power or prestige, we block God out of our lives and lessen the space that He requires to do truly great things in our lives.

    “Hobbits…are quite content to ignore and be ignored by the world of the big folk….Hobbits must seem of little importance, being neither known as great warriors nor counted among the very wise….In fact, it has been remarked by some that hobbits’ only real passion is for food, a rather unfair observation, as [they] have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales and the smoking of pipe weed.”  This is not the likely description of the race to whom the great king of men, King Aragorn of Gondor, would say: “My friends, you bow to no one” because of their role in destroying evil.  Just so, God uses the most unlikely to accomplish His plan of increasing grace and destroying evil, be they young virgin, fisherman, a poor friar, or a man or woman from Genesee County.  May we leave space for God to work great things through us, unexpected as it might be.