14th Sunday of Ordinary Time - July 3, 2021

One of the most interesting lines of our Gospel today I believe reads like this:
They found these things to be stumbling blocks……
What things?
The fact that Jesus was the son of a carpenter?
The fact that Jesus had brothers and sisters?
The fact that Mary was his mother?
The fact that his hands were dirty just like theirs?
The fact that he lived among them…just down the block….the next tent over?
We almost can’t handle a God who looks, thinks, lives, believes, struggles or gets dirty just like us.
We seem to want to believe that God is above,
Removed/yet present
Beyond yet here,
other,
beautiful yet untouchable,
superhuman,
superman or
wonder woman…
You see my friends we profess with pride a God who is Incarnational…a God who became one with us…one of us…..
And then we spend our lives looking for God somewhere beyond us.
We sing and pray “Emmanuel”
And we love the little baby in the manger….
And we sigh with romantic notions of this little God
And we rarely give ourselves permission to think dirty diapers,
Crying for breast milk, stubbed toes, cut knees or scraped elbows
And so we go from a little baby to a God who is so far beyond
We almost can not touch,
And
We search for God anywhere but here!
How paradoxical is that?
Within the past few weeks there was on Americas Got Talent, an absolutely amazing female artist, who goes by the name: Nightbirde…
I would encourage you to listen deeply to her story sometime…it will be an internet search that will well be worth your time….
In her blog of May 3^rd 2021 titled: Room for Air-she wrote:
“I don’t think it’s meaningless, the story that says God sculpted us from clay!  I don’t think it is meaningless that the first time humanity looked up at the eyes of God, God’s hands were dirty and God was close!”
You see my friends, I am absolutely convinced,
That maybe the biggest challenge we face each and every day of our lives, is the challenge to believe that life,
This moment,
This place,
This pain,
This joy,
This disappointment,
This tragedy,
This triumph,
This is holy…
          This is where God is found!
God is no more present in this time together, or in this bread and this wine, than at any other time, or any other place in our lives…..it is simply the fact that we, are more present to God, in these moments, in these gifts and in these prayers.
We pray…not to change God
          We pray….to change ourselves…
We pray in order to remind ourselves that God has been here all along,           
that God never left,
We have just gone looking for God somewhere else, while God just waited for us to come home!