Don't be a fool! "Fool! This night your soul is required of you". Luke 12:20

An elderly man confided to a friend that he was planning to live to be one hundred. The friend replied, "I too would like to be one hundred. But how do you plan it?" "It's quite simple," the other man said, "all you need to do is live until you're ninety-nine, and from then on be very careful."

Well, as we all know, it's not that simple. Some of us may have started being careful years ago, but we're still vulnerable at any age. Every second of our lives we're vulnerable. Most of us won't reach ninety-nine, much less one hundred. And yet we carry on as though we're going to live forever.

In today's Gospel Lesson, Jesus tells a parable about a man who carried on in this manner, a man who planned ahead as though he were going to live forever. A wealthy man, he looked forward to a financially secure, worry-free future while ignoring his human situation of vulnerability: his mortality. He says to himself, in effect, "I've got it made. I'm rich. I've got more than I'll ever need. From now on the living is easy -- eat, drink and be merry. I'll just live it up!"

A little girl in Bible Class had listened to the story of the prodigal son who squandered his father's estate on "riotous living." "Do you know what 'riotous living' means?" the teacher asked. "I think so," the little girl answered, "it means spending all your money on bubble gum."

In Jesus' parable, after announcing his plans for years of riotous living, the wealthy man hears the voice of God address him as "Fool!" God says to him, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" In other words, "You're not going to live to be one-hundred or even ninety-nine. You're not even going to make it through the night. And you can't take it with you either. Because all of your planning was for the 'here," and none for the 'hereafter,' you have been living the life of a fool."

A pastor was visiting a ninety-nine year old woman, the oldest person in the parish. He said to her, "At your age, you should start thinking of the hereafter." She replied, "Oh, I do that all day long, wherever I go. I go into the kitchen or the living room or the bedroom or the basement and I say to myself, 'Now let me think. What am I here after?"

The New Testament writers want us to understand that the questions, "What about the hereafter?" and "What am I 'here after'?" are not unrelated. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says to His disciples, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?" (Mt. 16:24-26). Jesus is asking the vital "here and now" question. He is asking us to be serious about our here-and-now priorities. He is asking us to ask ourselves, "What are we 'here after'?"

But, praise God, in searching for the answer to that question, we are not left on our own. "I am the way, the truth and the life...follow Me," Jesus says to us. "If you want to discover the truth about your here and now life, I'll show you the way ... follow Me! ... I am the way."

Jesus left no doubt about His answer to the question, "What am I here after?":

..."My food is to do the Will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His Work," He said (Jn. 4:33).

..."I have come not to be served but to serve," He said (Mt. 20;28).

..."I do as the Father has commanded Me, so that the world may know that I love the Father," He said (Jn. 14:31).

..."I am the Good Shepherd ... and I lay down My life for the sheep," He said (Jn. 10:14,15).

And when He said, "love one another as I have loved you," Jesus left not doubt about our correct answer to the question, "What are we here after?":

...to do the Father's Will -- that's what we're "here after"!

...to express our love for God in and through our love for one another -- that's what we're "here after"!

...to follow Jesus in a lifetime ministry of loving service -- that's what we're "here after"!

"Follow Me!" When we accept Jesus' invitation, when we embrace His formula for life in the here and now, something remarkable takes place. We simultaneously receive an answer to the question, "What about the hereafter?"

When we follow Jesus in the here and now, we experience a glimpse of the hereafter -- the only glimpse that God in His Wisdom, has chosen to give to us.

When we follow Jesus in the here and now, we enter into the experience of eternal life which, in Jesus' own words, is to know God, to be in union with God, to share in God's own life -- for God is Love.

When we follow Jesus n the here and now, the joy, and the harmony, and the peace of mind and heart and soul, and the ecstasy we experience in our expressions of unconditional love for one another provide us with little hints, little glimpses, little clues in our search for answers to the questions about life in the hereafter.

A British short-story writer has written a modern-day version of the parable in today's Gospel,

A mysterious figure visits a prominent English lawyer on New Year's Eve and grants him the choice of one wish for the New Year.

"I wish for a complete set of the 'London Times' for the coming year," said the man. And immediately his wish was granted. there before him was a neat stack of three hundred sixty-five future newspapers. He quickly understood the power that he now possessed, and he began planning how to use it. He would know horse race results before the races were run and every bet he made would be a guaranteed money maker. He also began making plans on how he would profit from his foreknowledge of stock market prices. Whereupon, he took the 'London Times' for the second of January from the stack and as he was turning to the Financial Section, the headline on the Obituaries caught his eye: "Prominent Lawyer Dies Suddenly On New Year's Day." Then he read the name of the deceased. It was his own.

In today's Gospel, God uses the word "fool" to address the self-centered, short-sighted, wealthy man who planned a long life of ease with no thought of his human condition of mortality.

In planning and living out your own individual answer to the question, "What am I 'here after?"" don't be a fool! Rather, acknowledge your human condition of mortality and rejoice in the promise of your ultimate fulfillment -- in the hereafter!

Four Letter Word "God gave me wings!" "Lord, teach us to pray" Luke 11:1

2nd homily

Do you know how the pretzel came into being? Many years ago, there was a pious monk who was pastor of a Church in Italy. At one point in his ministry, the parish children seemed rather slow at learning their prayers. Consequently, he rewarded those who showed improvement by giving them a "pretiola," which means "little gift." The little gift was a biscuit shaped like a pair of hands clasped in prayer. Travelers would often take the pretiola over the Alps into Germany. The Germans glazed and salted them and they became a popular German snack. Eventually, pretzels were introduced and remain popular in many other parts of the world.

Now, the next time you see or eat a pretzel, it might well be a timely, welcome reminder to pray to God.

We talk a lot about prayer -- about the importance of prayer, the efficacy of prayer, the necessity of prayer, the different kinds of prayer. And many of us do a lot of praying -- morning and evening, and sometimes in between. Once a week, we come to Church to pray some more, together. Our trust and hope in prayer as the ultimate problem-solver is deep-rooted and profound. Yet, it is true, that for many of us, prayer itself is one of our problems. Sometimes we become perplexed about prayer, and we find ourselves praying for guidance on how to pray.

One reason we become confused about prayer is that we have been taught to expect so much from our prayers. Jesus himself says in the Eleventh Chapter of Luke, Verse Nine, "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you." And when we ask and God doesn't seem to be answering, we begin to wonder and to doubt. Today's Gospel Lesson tells us where to begin our approach to this problem.

In today's Gospel, Luke tells us that Jesus "was in a certain place praying, and when He had finished, one of the disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Lk. 11:1). Jesus answered, "Say this when you pray: "Father, hallowed be Your Name" and then He continued to recite the remaining four petitions in Luke's version of what we now call "The Lord's Prayer" (Lk. 11:2-4).

Now, what the Biblical writers want us to realize is that on the first petition depend all the others. You can just forget everything that follows if you have missed the point of the first petition: "Hallowed be Your Name...may Your Name be held holy."

When we pray this first petition, we are not praying for God to become hallowed; God is and always was, and always will be the "Holy One" whose name is "hallowed." Rather, we are praying that God may be acknowledged by us and by all people everywhere as the Holy One: The God of Love. We are praying that all people everywhere will revere God as God: the Almighty Creator of all that is; the very Source of all of life. And when we refuse to hallow our Gracious, Loving God in every area of life, we cut ourselves off from the one and only Source of the fulfillment we seek.

Just before Leonard Bernstein's birthday, the late, great composer, conductor and musician was asked by the New York Times to write an article. He responded with a poem:

When I die, I pray there may be heard an all-embracing, brave four-letter word.

I blush to name it, so often do we abuse it,

But the letters speak; and by-and-by we may no longer hesitate to use it.

The four letters he then used were L-O-V-E. Then he closed by calling on people everywhere "to take the four-letter word and make it live, by learning to give, to give, to give!"

When we are anxious, when we grieve, time seems to drag cruelly. When we are joyful, content, delighted, time seems to whiz by. And we shall never be able to come to grips with time until we have learned to love.

Time is too slow for those who wait. Time is too fast for those who fear. Time is too long for those who mourn. Time is too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love, Time is eternity.1

To hallow God's Holy Name, to praise the Lord, is to love all His children -- all of them -- and suffer with them, and rejoice with them and never count the cost.

Will I surrender to the downs and despairs, or will I place my trust in the New Testament revelation of a loving God who is for me -- no matter what?

True story:

A young woman named Mary dreamed as a young girl of becoming an obstetrician. She completed her studies and graduated from a medical college in her native country of India. With several other celebrating young graduates she jumped into a station wagon to go on a picnic. Then an accident happened: the driver lost control and the vehicle rolled over three times. Three days later, Mary regained consciousness. She knew that she was paralyzed from the waist down.

She wept as she saw her dreams evaporate forever. "Oh God, I'll never feel warm, squirming babies in my hands." Then, like a miracle of God's Mercy, she heard the first petition of the Lord's Prayer resonating deep within her. And she whispered the words of praise: "Our Father who are in Heaven, hallowed be Your Name." It was a remarkable statement of complete trust in God's Love -- no matter what!

Into her room came one of India's leading surgeons, who said, "Mary I think you could be my assistant in surgery. We could build a ramp and you could operate from your chair." That was many years ago. Today, Mary is one of the most skillful, expert surgeons in transplanting tendons in deformed lepers' hands. Her two hands have become the ten fingers of God!

Thousands of people are happier because of her. As she says it, "I asked God for legs and God gave me wings."2

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your Name!

A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH God is the God of all of life. Let God be God "He said to them, 'When you pray, say: Father, Hallowed be Your Name, You

There once was a small Kentucky town that had two Churches and one whiskey distillery. Members of both Churches complained that the distillery gave the community a bad image. "Besides," they said, "the owner is an atheist." They tried many times to close the place down, but were unsuccessful. At last, they decided to hold a joint Saturday-night-prayer-meeting. They would petition God to intervene. Saturday night came and all through the prayer-meeting a terrible electrical storm raged. To the delight of the Church members, lightning struck the distillery and it burned to the ground. Next morning, the sermons in both Churches were on "The Power of Prayer." Fire insurance adjusters promptly notified the distillery owner they would not pay for his damages. The fire was caused by an "act of God," they said, and coverage for "acts of God" was excluded in the policy. Whereupon, the distillery owner sued all the Church members, claiming they had conspired with God to destroy his building. The defendants denied absolutely that they had done anything to cause the fire. The trial judge observed: "I find one thing about this case that is very perplexing. We have a situation where the plaintiff--an atheist--is professing his belief in the power of prayer, and the defendants--all Church members--are denying the power of prayer.

Many of us can identify with that judge's feelings. We talk a lot about prayer--about the importance of prayer, the efficacy of prayer, the necessity of prayer, the different kinds of prayer. And we do a lot of praying--morning and evening, and sometimes in between. Once a week we come to Church to pray some more, together. Our trust and hope in prayer as the ultimate problem-solver is deep-rooted and profound. Yet, it is true, that for many of us, prayer itself is one of our problems. Sometimes we do become perplexed about prayer, and find ourselves praying for guidance on how to pray.

One reason we become confused about prayer is that we have been taught to expect so much from our prayers. Jesus himself says in the Eleventh Chapter of Luke, Verse Nine, "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you." And when we ask and God doesn't seem to be answering, we begin to wonder and to doubt. We can begin our approach to this problem by going back to the First Verse in Chapter Eleven, where we find one of the first disciples asking Jesus for guidance in prayer. "One day Jesus was praying in a certain place," St. Luke writes. "When he had finished, one of His disciples asked Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray' ... He said to them, 'When you pray, say, FATHER, HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME, GIVE US EACH DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. FORGIVE US OUR SINS FOR WE TOO FORGIVE ALL WHO DO US WRONG; AND SUBJECT US NOT TO THE TRIAL" (Lk.11:1-4).

You may have noticed that in Luke's Gospel, the Lord's Prayer is made up of five petitions to the Father. You may not have realized, however, that on the first depend all the others. You can just forget about everything that follows if you have missed the point of the first petition: "Hallowed be Your Name." It has been said that the manner in which we offer the first petition of the Lord's Prayer is "a matter of life or death."

For the Hebrew people, a person's name had far greater significance than it does for us. We say, "What's in a name?" And shrug it off. But, for the Hebrews, everything was in the name. The name, literally, was the person himself, and if you knew a person's name you knew that person at the core of his being. What we really mean when we pray "hallowed be Your Name" is "hallowed be God." When we pray "hallowed be Your Name" we pray that God Himself, in His essential being, be "hallowed." Moreover, we are not praying for God to become hallowed; God already is the "Holy One." We are praying that God may be acknowledged by us and by all men everywhere as the Holy One; that we and all men everywhere will revere God as God; that we and all men everywhere will let God be God.

When we set this in the context of the Bible, we find that all the Biblical writers were in agreement on this point: that the one unconditional requirement that God makes of all human life is that we acknowledge God as God; that we acknowledge the fact that He is God and that we are not God. At the very beginning of the Bible, in the Adam and Eve story, we are told that if we want to be alive, if we want to realize our humanity's true potential, all we need do is let God be God, acknowledge that God is God and that we are not God. When we do this the life of Grace begins to flow into us and, through us, to other people. But when we refuse to let God be God, we cut ourselves off from the Source of Life Itself, our humanity is diminished and ultimately we are destroyed. We are dead spiritually. Until we understand this first petition correctly, until we pray it and mean it, there is no point in praying for anything else. It all depends on this.

There is the story of a little girl who went to Summer Camp for the first time. She was seated on the edge of her bunk, crying. Her counsellor came in and said to her, "What's the matter, are you homesick?" "No," the little girl replied, "I'm here-sick." We are being told, and perhaps we would agree, that most of us these days are both homesick and here-sick. And some of us are getting sick of hearing how sick we are and how sick the world is. We're sick of hearing about rising crime rates. We're sick of hearing about violence. We're sick of hearing young people complain about the older generation's lack of understanding. We're sick of hearing the older people complain about the younger generation's failure to act responsibly. And yet, we seem to just fiddle around on the surface of things and wonder why things aren't getting any better. What Jesus and the Biblical writers are making clear to us is that at the heart of the matter is our unwillingness to acknowledge that God is the God of all of life and we are not God. And, because the world has been unwilling to do this, it is being drained and diminished and destroyed. When we refuse to hallow God in every area of life, both individually and corporately, we cut ourselves off from the only Source of the fulfillment we seek.

All of us have disaster-areas in our lives in which we are not hallowing God's Name. It may be a relationship with a brother or sister or parent or husband or wife or child or neighbor. It's an area in which we demand to have it our way and refuse to let God have it His way. And because of this we cut off this relationship from the Source of Life Itself. And the diminishment and the destruction and the death of our humanity is right there--in the marriage, in the home, in the market-place, in the neighborhood, and even in the Church.

There is the true story of a pastor who played a round of golf with a perfect stranger one Saturday morning. When they came to the eighteenth hole, the stranger said, "I enjoyed playing with you. Would you like to join me for another round tomorrow morning?" The pastor replied, "I'm afraid I cannot. I work on Sunday mornings." Still unaware that his golfing partner that day was a clergyman, the stranger asked, "What in h--- do you do on Sunday mornings?" To which the pastor replied, "I've been asking myself that question for many years!" I think there are many clergymen who are asking themselves that question these days. And that is precisely the question all Church members should be asking themselves these days. What are we doing? Are we here today ready to submit our individual lives to God's scrutiny? Are we ready to submit our corporate life, as Christian Community, to God's scrutiny--knowing that whatever we do or do not do either hallows God or profanes God?

I want to persuade you to make the opening petition in the Lord's Prayer an important part of your life this week. Just this one petition! Write it down and with your pen still in hand begin to meditate--on the Name, on the hallowing of the Name. And put down on the paper, or at least in your own mind before God, your whole life--everything you think and believe and do and dream and hope for. Then, ask yourself, "Am I hallowing or profaning God through this?" And then, pray for the Church and for your involvement in the Church. Pray that everything we do will be a hallowing of God. Pray that nothing we do will be a profaning of God. Make this your prayer in the coming week so that together we may feel God's loving presence, together we may feel the healing, together we may feel the Life of Grace flow through us. For God is God of all of life! "Our Father--hallowed be Your Name!" Say it because you mean it. It's a matter of life or death!"