24th Sunday Homily - What do we expect to happen?

Anger is an emotional reaction to an unfulfilled expectation. 

Anger is a reaction to when things do not go the way that we expect. Anger is an emotion when things do not go the way that we want.

Anger is an emotional reaction, but it is not a sin. The sin is when we choose to hold onto the anger and let it poison us.

When we have anger we have to work on letting it go, otherwise known as forgiveness. One important step in all of this is to understand our expectations.

What are our expectations? It is important to know these in ourselves. Our expectations influence the way that we act, consciously and unconsciously. Our expectations influence the way we see our world. When we expect people to fail us then that generally is what will happen. When we expect people to succeed then that is what will happen. What are our expectations?

This Parable that Jesus presents to us offers us a way to examine our lives, our expectations, our anger and how we choose to act. He offers us a way to experience our salvation.

The king in the parable seems he had high expectations of his people. Here is this servant who has not operated well. He has lots of debts. Yet the king listens to him. He sees the potential for good within his servant, and that is ultimately why he chose to forgive that man's debts. He wants him to be free to express that goodness.  The servant’s expectations are in opposition to the king’s. They are low expectations of others and really low expectations of himself. I believe he expected the bad in others and of himself. I don't think that he ever intended to repay the king, he just simply used his words to get out of a bad situation. That became evident when he chose to not forgive the lesser debts of the other servant. If he knew he would not pay back the debt, then he could not believe the fellow servant would either.  And so when he was re-arrested and brought before the king, the king could not have the servant in his household because he was not reflecting who he was as king. The servant did not reflect his own high expectations of people. The servant did not reflect his own virtues as a king.

What are our expectations of God? Who is God? Do we expect God to be a vengeful mean being who punishes us?  Clearly Jesus' expectations of the father are high. The father is compassionate, is kind, the Father believes in the goodness of humanity, believes in the goodness of all people. God's expectations of us is that we, created in the image of God, will be as God.

We know that God's will is that we be one with God. And to be one with God means that we have to be as God. So that we can be one with God and be as God, the Father sent his Son so that we can be God’s children. God expects us to be as God, God expects us to be as the Son.   

And of course we know the story, Humanity killed the Son of God, but God's desire for our Union is so great, God’s expectations of humanity could not be diminished, so God raised Jesus back to life.

God did not punish us for the sin; God forgave us.

The expectation of God is that since we have been forgiven by the Father for the death of his Son, so too we must go forth and forgive others and reflect the image of the forgiving Father. 

Part of forgiveness is to expect that the person in front of us is good. 

Part of forgiveness is to expect that the person in front of us can be a good person. 

Part of forgiveness is to expect that the person in front of us can change.

Part of forgiveness is to expect that as well, we can change.

So the challenge for us and the meditation for us is what do we truly expect of others, of humanity? 

In this day and age I think it's too easy to expect other person's to fail us, to somehow be lesser, to be bad. The news feeds us too much of this sensationalism, the failures. Yet for every failure in humanity, there are many many more untold stories of humans living up to goodness.

We Catholics, We Christians, we need to do better.  

Our Catholic faith believes that all persons are good. 

Our Catholic faith has the expectation that all people can do what is good. 

Our Catholic faith believes that all human persons are worthy. If the Son of Man became a human that you humanity is good.

Our Eucharist celebrates this goodness, this expectation. It inspires us to go forth to live out this expectation. Eucharist inspires us to go forth to forgive all others. Eucharist inspires us to go forth to help bring out the goodness in all other persons. 

This is our faith. This is the faith of the church. We are proud to profess it.

And if profess, then live it out.