When I Call on God's Name

Holy Name of Jesus

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Recently, Vince Gill, the country music star, was honored with the Country Music Association Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the 59th Annual CMA Awards.  Vince is known for his beautiful tenor voice, and numerous hits, including “Go Rest High On That Mountain.”
    But he also has another hit song entitled, “When I Call Your Name,” where the refrain sings: “Oh, the lonely sound of my voice calling / Is driving me insane. / And just like rain, the tears keep falling / But nobody answers when I call your name.”  As we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus, it struck me that we have a God who, when we call upon His Name, listens and responds.  It’s almost the antithesis of Vince Gill’s sad, country song.
    Indeed, the phrase “nobody answers” reminded me of the story of Elijah in 1 Kings, chapter 18, where Elijah, on Mount Carmel, had challenged the prophets of Baal, the pagan god, to consume the sacrifice they had created without lighting the fire.  The prophets of Baal called out from morning to noon.  They hopped around the altar, and even slashed themselves and caused their own blood to flow.  But the sacred author notes, pithily, “but there was no sound, no one answering, no one listening.”  
    God listens to us every time we call upon Him, especially when we call out with the Holy Name of His Son, Jesus Christ.  Our Lord promised in the Upper Room on the night of the Last Supper: “‘Whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in me.’”  God responds to His Name, like a loving parent responds when a child calls out.  We should not take this privilege lightly, and use God’s Holy Name in vain, but neither should we never call upon the Holy Name of God and miss out on opportunities where He wants to shower us with His love, grace, and gifts.
    Does this mean that when I go to Meijer, and buy a PowerBall ticket, as long as I pray in God’s Name for the numbers that I will win the jackpot?  Certainly not, not even if you plan to share a large chunk of money with St. Matthew parish (which you should, if you win the lottery, by the way).  God’s Name is not a magic word that forces God to do whatever we wish.  God always answers our prayers, but as another country song sings, “Sometimes the answer is no.”  
    Still, it can be tough when we have faith, when we call upon the name of the Lord, and we don’t get what we want.  It can feel like the lyrics, “nobody answers when I call your name.”  So what is going on?  Is our Lord not living up to His Word from the Last Supper discourse?
    If we are children of our loving Father, then we should only will what God wills.  The Savior spoke these words to the Apostles, His closest friends.  And while at that point, they weren’t all set on doing God’s will, and they would also struggle at times (St. Peter is a prime example of this), after they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they became more attentive to doing God’s will rather than their own.
    It is childish, not childlike to cry when God does not give us what we want every time we want it.  God calls us to childlike trust in Him, but not to childish temper tantrums if we do not get our way.  Ours should be the attitude of Job: “‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!’”  When we put on that mindset, we can better accept and understand when God does not give us exactly what we want, even when what we want is something good, like the life of a child, or the cure of a parent, or even basic financial stability.  
    But we also need to accept that sometimes God answers our prayers when we call on His Name, but we are not ready to hear His affirmative answer.  There is the parable about the drowning man who was on his roof, due to a flood.  A rowboat comes by to pick him up, but the man says, “No, I’ve prayed to God; He will save me.”  A few minutes later a motorboat comes by to pick him up, but the man says, “No, I’ve prayed to God; He will save me.”  A few minutes later a helicopter comes and lowers a rope, and the troopers shout down that they can take the man to safety, but he says, “No, I’ve prayed to God; He will save me.”  The helicopter leaves, and the man drowns.  When the man appears before God, the man complains, “I had faith in you, and prayed to you for safety, but you let me drown!”  God replies, “I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter.  What more could I have done?”  If we don’t have a familiarity with the way God works, we can miss out on how God answers our prayers.
    The Holy Name of Jesus is not only the name by which we are saved, it is the name that demonstrates the love of God.  When we call on the Holy Name with faith, we can be assured that God will listen to us, and that He will answer us, even if the answer is not always the one we want, in the way we want, or in the time we want.  
    Life can sometimes seem like a sad country song, where the house is empty, our loved ones have left us, and nobody answers when we call their name.  But for us, as disciples of Christ, “Our help is the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth”: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

It Would Have Been Enough

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ok; be honest: how many of you asked God to win the $1.5 billion Powerball prize?  You don’t have to raise your hand.  There were probably some people who were bargaining with God: if you give me the $1.5 billion, I’ll give 10% to the church.  I told a number of people: I’m not greedy; I only need about $10 million; the rest I can give away.  Maybe you didn’t want it.  But I bet we could all imagine what we would do with that much money.

And all of us were disappointed who wanted to win the jackpot.  No one won the jackpot from the State of Michigan.  It’s as if God wasn’t listening to us!!  How could he leave us in such a lurch.  Think of the good we could’ve done with $1.5 billion!!

It might lead us to think that God is a bit stingy.  After all, here we are in church, trying to do God’s will, and He won’t even give us a little financial reward for worshipping Him.  But, our readings today give us a different story.  They give us a different perspective, which is the truth, not our petty idea of what God is thinking.  And what our readings reveal is that God is generous.  He is not stingy.  His gifts overflow in abundance!

Think about the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah.  This part of the Book of Isaiah was written after the Babylonian Exile, where the Jews had lost everything.  Their unfaithfulness to God had meant the loss of the Promised Land and the loss of the Temple.  But God does not rub their noses in their past failures.  Instead, He promises that their new status, after they have turned back to Him, will be even better than the beginning.  No longer will people mock the Chosen People for what they don’t have, calling them, “Forsaken,” but will honor them as the spouse of the Lord, and call them “My delight,” and their land, “Espoused.”  They will be like a crown that adorns God’s brow.  That’s not stingy.

And St. Paul has a long list of the gifts that God pours out through the Spirit: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment of spirits, varieties of tongues.  All of these are gifts that God pours out upon His people.  And while there are a variety of gifts, it is the one God who gives them all, for some benefit for the church.  God is not holding back, but is pouring out gifts such that our cups overflow.

And the Gospel really talks about God’s generosity.  Jesus, through the intercession of His Mother, saves the poor couple of Cana from shame.  Imagine if you ran out of food at your wedding party, and some people didn’t get any.  That’s bad enough!  But if you ran out of wine, well that’s just downright degrading!!  But Jesus saves them from that degradation, and turns the water into wine.  And it’s not just any wine; it’s the best wine.  Jesus does not just save the day in a mediocre way; He saves the day and His generosity makes sure that His wedding gift of wine is the best wine there is.

Top of the façade of the church in Cana 

The temptation for us is to be stuck on water, and not want the wine.  Water is very basic, and we need it to survive.  Wine is not so basic, takes more work, and produces a better effect after drinking than water (once you’re old enough to legally drink it).  We are certainly called to assist each other with our gifts and talents and treasures so that everyone has the basic necessities.  We cannot ignore the poor.  But, at the same time, it can be an easy temptation to fall into to simply want more money, a bigger house, a better car, the newest phone.  Those are all water.  God wants to give us the best gifts, the gift of His love, the gift of His mercy, the gift of new life.  Money will run out; homes will eventually collapse; cars will stop running; phones will become obsolete.  But God’s love, mercy, and life are for eternity.  Those are the gifts we should be striving for.

God is never outdone in His generosity.  He does not simply give us water; He gives us wine.  During the Passover, the Jews have a song called Dayenu, and that word, Dayenu, literally means, “enough for us” or “it would have been enough.”  They recall God’s great deeds, and how that would have been enough: “If He had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against them–Dayenu!  If He had carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols–Dayenu!  If He had destroyed their idols and had not smitten their first-born–Dayenu!  If He had smitten their first-born, and had not given us their wealth–Dayenu!  If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us–Dayenu!  If He had taken us through the sea on dry land, and had not drowned our oppressors in it–Dayenu!  If He had drowned our oppressors in it, and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years–Dayenu!  If He had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna–Dayenu!  If He had fed us the manna, and had not given us the Shabbat [Sabbath]–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Shabbat, and had not brought us before Mount Sinai–Dayenu!  If He had brought us before Mount Sinia, and had not given us the Torah–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Torah, and had not brought us into the land of Israel–Dayenu!  If He had brought us into the land of Israel, and not built for us the Holy Temple–Dayenu!”  But that wasn’t enough for God.  He then sent His Only Begotten Son, to be one like us in all things but sin, and even to die for us so we could live.  

God didn’t give us the jackpot of the Powerball, but He did give us Jesus.  Is that enough for us?