A Good Dowser: The Second Sunday of Advent
[For those of you who checked in earlier this week, I made a mistake. The upcoming youth ministry discussion on "The Truman Show" is slated for the Third Sunday of Advent, not the Second. My apologies. Below you'll find the first draft of a homily that has nothing to do with Truman, but a lot to do with water. E-mail me your comments at jms48@fuse.net net. Thanks!]
HOMILY FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT (first draft)
A few months ago I attended the funeral
of an elderly farmer in Texas.
As most of you know,
water is scarce out West
and rain is minimal.
It’s not uncommon, for instance,
to stand at the door of the church after Mass
and hear farmers ask one another
how many “hundreds of an inch” of rain
did they get from a passing shower.
Well, the farmer whose funeral I attended
had a job on the side.
People far and wide sought out Mr. Birkenfeld
to perform a valuable service for them.
He was born with a special gift, you see.
He was what they call a dowser, that is,
he had the ability to locate underground veins of water.
You’ve probably heard of people who could detect water
with the use of a green branch from a willow tree.
In Texas, where aren’t many trees,
Mr. Birkenfeld discovered he could detect water
with the use of some baling wire.
He was good at finding water.
He had “the gift.”
I thought of him as I read about John the Baptist
in today’s gospel
going out into the broken country,
and locating a stream of water.
For John the Baptist also had “a gift.”
A gift for detecting a valuable resource
that lay hidden beneath the broken surface
of parched souls:
the desire of every soul
to drink deeply from the well of God’s grace
and gulp the cool mercy of God
when life turns into a desert and your fields and your dreams
blow away like dust in the wind.
When our lives get desperate for God,
we go looking for someone with “the gift,”
we ask around; we try to locate someone
who might know the name
of a good dowser.
So, who do you go to?
Let’s say you’re retired and you’ve lost your spouse.
Maybe you play a little golf. Maybe you belong to a card club.
But you worry about the cost of your prescriptions.
You wonder how long you’ll be able to manage on your own.
You can’t bring yourself to talk to your kids about this.
So, where do you go?
You’re moving into a desert of broken land and rough terrain.
Where do you go to find a dowser?
Or what this:
Let’s say you’re a student in college.
You’re racking up a huge debt in tuition payments.
You’ve been going to too many parties on the weekends
and during the week.
You’ve become sexually active,
you can’t afford the insurance on your car,
nothing in life holds any meaning
and you have no idea of what you want to be when you grow up.
You what the Bible calls a messed up apartment
with a refrigerator empty except for a case of Bud Light
and two cups of yogurt?
The Bible designates that sort of climate
as a desert climate,
even though your landlord
might still be paying the water bill,
you’re living in spiritual desert.
When you don’t wipe the steam off the bathroom mirror
in the morning
because you can’t look yourself in the eye,
what do you do?
Where do you go?
We all have experiences with deserts of one sort or another.
What’s truly troublesome, however,
is when you can’t locate a dowser.
Try as you might,
you look around at the dry land, the blowing dust
and you have absolutely no idea
where to sink a well.
In fact, there’s a little voice inside your head
trying to convince you that there is no water beneath this broken land.
You might as well give up
and get used to getting by on nothing but beer and yogurt.
Yep, that’s right.
The rest of your life you’ll be drinking warm beer
and licking Dannon containers.
When you start thinking like this,
it’s called despair.
And giving in to despair is a serious sin.
It’s a sin against the Holy Spirit
which was given to you on the day of your baptism.
That’s when you need a dowser.
It doesn’t matter if you 22 or 82.
If you’ve been trudging along
in a spiritual desert for any length of time,
the sin of despairt,
that is the act of giving in and giving up hope,
is fatal.
It stalks the elderly
when they start to feel as though no one gives a rip about them
and they have no idea
how to make it through a desert in a wheelchair.
The horizon is a waving mirage
of medicine bottles on a kitchen counter
and air is filled, not with the buzzing sound of locust,
but the constant barrage of a TV turned up loud.
Has anyone seen John the Baptist around?
We hear he’s a good dowser.
He can lead us to water.
Do you have any idea how to contact him?
Well, it’s not that hard.
Just open the Book.
Their house numbers of listed right there in front of you.
Open up that misselette in front of you.
The numbers of written in italics just off to the side:
Mark 1:1-18.
That’s where you can find the dowser named John.
If he’s not home, try Isaiah 20:20:
Isaiah is another experienced dowser
and he’ll tell you to buck up and don’t…
whatever you do…
don’t lose hope.
In the desert, prepare the way of the Lord!
In the wasteland, make a highway for our God.
These prophets, you see, had a knack for finding water.
And on the day that you yourself were baptized with water,
you too were anointed with the gift of the prophecy.
Now, that’s has nothing to do with forecasting the future.
That’s a perversion of what the Bible means by prophecy.
Prophecy has nothing to do with guesswork.
It has everything to do with accuracy…
like the gift of the dowser, prophecy give us hope
because it is able to pinpoint the deep veins of grace in our life.
That’s also the reason that prophets are good at pointing out the sin in our life.
Because it is the build up of sin…
like a retired person’s indulgence in self-pity
or a the college kid’s indulgences in self-centeredness…
it’s plain ol’ sin
that keeps us from locating the cool, refreshing water of God’s life.
So, if you’re thirsty…
if you’re thirsty and want to drink deeply of love and joy and happiness
this Christmas…where do go to find that kind of water?
You can’t buy it at the mall.
You won’t find it under the Christmas tree.
You find it here, right here
in the hearing of God’s Word
and in the life of this parish.
You find in the experience of being Catholic…
and discover it in the Sacrament of Confession.
It’s called forgiveness. It’s called grace. It’s called a new start.
And you get a taste of it
every time you receive Holy Communion.
These aren’t just actions we go through,
they are sacraments bringing you relief in your desert.
They are the underground veins of a rushing river.
For a Texas farmer, it’s like cool water
gurgling up from an irrigation pipe
Comfort, speak comfort to my people!
For an elderly woman in a lonely apartment,
for a college student in a crowded dorm,
it’s like someone finally getting through to them
that their life is worthwhile:
Like a shepherd he leads his flock,
gathers them up and holds them close to his chest!
These are just words, they are God’s words
and they are meant for you!
And this Mass isn’t just some action we’re going through.
It’s telling us we don’t have to live in a desert;
it’s proof that we don’t need to settle the rest of our life
for locusts or yogurt or warm beer.
Because this altar is God’s table.
And if have the courage to approach this alter
and leave your self-centeredness behind
and actually begin to place your life in God’s hand,
well then,
things are going to change.
Big time!
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
This isn’t wishful thinking.
It’s God’s promise we’re hearing!
That means that when God has his way,
the arid regions of our world…
from Texas to Mexico to Iran and Iraq
will be watered with compassion
and flood over with peace.
And it means your own life is going to change too.
That broken land you call your soul,
that broken heart, your broken dreams…
they’re going to bloom.
And that rough road you’re traveling?
It’s going to get paved!
Ask any Texas farmer,
he’ll tell that a lot depends on a good dowser.
I’m sending my messenger ahead of you, says the Lord.
Did you hear that?
God has sent us a good dowser who knows where good water lies.
Listen to the Prophet John,
and let the word of God get through to you!
Let the Sacraments of your church get you back on your feet!
Do this, and you’re bound to strike a strong well.
Don’t lose hope…
you’ll get the water you need.
HOMILY FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT (first draft)
A few months ago I attended the funeral
of an elderly farmer in Texas.
As most of you know,
water is scarce out West
and rain is minimal.
It’s not uncommon, for instance,
to stand at the door of the church after Mass
and hear farmers ask one another
how many “hundreds of an inch” of rain
did they get from a passing shower.
Well, the farmer whose funeral I attended
had a job on the side.
People far and wide sought out Mr. Birkenfeld
to perform a valuable service for them.
He was born with a special gift, you see.
He was what they call a dowser, that is,
he had the ability to locate underground veins of water.
You’ve probably heard of people who could detect water
with the use of a green branch from a willow tree.
In Texas, where aren’t many trees,
Mr. Birkenfeld discovered he could detect water
with the use of some baling wire.
He was good at finding water.
He had “the gift.”
I thought of him as I read about John the Baptist
in today’s gospel
going out into the broken country,
and locating a stream of water.
For John the Baptist also had “a gift.”
A gift for detecting a valuable resource
that lay hidden beneath the broken surface
of parched souls:
the desire of every soul
to drink deeply from the well of God’s grace
and gulp the cool mercy of God
when life turns into a desert and your fields and your dreams
blow away like dust in the wind.
When our lives get desperate for God,
we go looking for someone with “the gift,”
we ask around; we try to locate someone
who might know the name
of a good dowser.
So, who do you go to?
Let’s say you’re retired and you’ve lost your spouse.
Maybe you play a little golf. Maybe you belong to a card club.
But you worry about the cost of your prescriptions.
You wonder how long you’ll be able to manage on your own.
You can’t bring yourself to talk to your kids about this.
So, where do you go?
You’re moving into a desert of broken land and rough terrain.
Where do you go to find a dowser?
Or what this:
Let’s say you’re a student in college.
You’re racking up a huge debt in tuition payments.
You’ve been going to too many parties on the weekends
and during the week.
You’ve become sexually active,
you can’t afford the insurance on your car,
nothing in life holds any meaning
and you have no idea of what you want to be when you grow up.
You what the Bible calls a messed up apartment
with a refrigerator empty except for a case of Bud Light
and two cups of yogurt?
The Bible designates that sort of climate
as a desert climate,
even though your landlord
might still be paying the water bill,
you’re living in spiritual desert.
When you don’t wipe the steam off the bathroom mirror
in the morning
because you can’t look yourself in the eye,
what do you do?
Where do you go?
We all have experiences with deserts of one sort or another.
What’s truly troublesome, however,
is when you can’t locate a dowser.
Try as you might,
you look around at the dry land, the blowing dust
and you have absolutely no idea
where to sink a well.
In fact, there’s a little voice inside your head
trying to convince you that there is no water beneath this broken land.
You might as well give up
and get used to getting by on nothing but beer and yogurt.
Yep, that’s right.
The rest of your life you’ll be drinking warm beer
and licking Dannon containers.
When you start thinking like this,
it’s called despair.
And giving in to despair is a serious sin.
It’s a sin against the Holy Spirit
which was given to you on the day of your baptism.
That’s when you need a dowser.
It doesn’t matter if you 22 or 82.
If you’ve been trudging along
in a spiritual desert for any length of time,
the sin of despairt,
that is the act of giving in and giving up hope,
is fatal.
It stalks the elderly
when they start to feel as though no one gives a rip about them
and they have no idea
how to make it through a desert in a wheelchair.
The horizon is a waving mirage
of medicine bottles on a kitchen counter
and air is filled, not with the buzzing sound of locust,
but the constant barrage of a TV turned up loud.
Has anyone seen John the Baptist around?
We hear he’s a good dowser.
He can lead us to water.
Do you have any idea how to contact him?
Well, it’s not that hard.
Just open the Book.
Their house numbers of listed right there in front of you.
Open up that misselette in front of you.
The numbers of written in italics just off to the side:
Mark 1:1-18.
That’s where you can find the dowser named John.
If he’s not home, try Isaiah 20:20:
Isaiah is another experienced dowser
and he’ll tell you to buck up and don’t…
whatever you do…
don’t lose hope.
In the desert, prepare the way of the Lord!
In the wasteland, make a highway for our God.
These prophets, you see, had a knack for finding water.
And on the day that you yourself were baptized with water,
you too were anointed with the gift of the prophecy.
Now, that’s has nothing to do with forecasting the future.
That’s a perversion of what the Bible means by prophecy.
Prophecy has nothing to do with guesswork.
It has everything to do with accuracy…
like the gift of the dowser, prophecy give us hope
because it is able to pinpoint the deep veins of grace in our life.
That’s also the reason that prophets are good at pointing out the sin in our life.
Because it is the build up of sin…
like a retired person’s indulgence in self-pity
or a the college kid’s indulgences in self-centeredness…
it’s plain ol’ sin
that keeps us from locating the cool, refreshing water of God’s life.
So, if you’re thirsty…
if you’re thirsty and want to drink deeply of love and joy and happiness
this Christmas…where do go to find that kind of water?
You can’t buy it at the mall.
You won’t find it under the Christmas tree.
You find it here, right here
in the hearing of God’s Word
and in the life of this parish.
You find in the experience of being Catholic…
and discover it in the Sacrament of Confession.
It’s called forgiveness. It’s called grace. It’s called a new start.
And you get a taste of it
every time you receive Holy Communion.
These aren’t just actions we go through,
they are sacraments bringing you relief in your desert.
They are the underground veins of a rushing river.
For a Texas farmer, it’s like cool water
gurgling up from an irrigation pipe
Comfort, speak comfort to my people!
For an elderly woman in a lonely apartment,
for a college student in a crowded dorm,
it’s like someone finally getting through to them
that their life is worthwhile:
Like a shepherd he leads his flock,
gathers them up and holds them close to his chest!
These are just words, they are God’s words
and they are meant for you!
And this Mass isn’t just some action we’re going through.
It’s telling us we don’t have to live in a desert;
it’s proof that we don’t need to settle the rest of our life
for locusts or yogurt or warm beer.
Because this altar is God’s table.
And if have the courage to approach this alter
and leave your self-centeredness behind
and actually begin to place your life in God’s hand,
well then,
things are going to change.
Big time!
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
This isn’t wishful thinking.
It’s God’s promise we’re hearing!
That means that when God has his way,
the arid regions of our world…
from Texas to Mexico to Iran and Iraq
will be watered with compassion
and flood over with peace.
And it means your own life is going to change too.
That broken land you call your soul,
that broken heart, your broken dreams…
they’re going to bloom.
And that rough road you’re traveling?
It’s going to get paved!
Ask any Texas farmer,
he’ll tell that a lot depends on a good dowser.
I’m sending my messenger ahead of you, says the Lord.
Did you hear that?
God has sent us a good dowser who knows where good water lies.
Listen to the Prophet John,
and let the word of God get through to you!
Let the Sacraments of your church get you back on your feet!
Do this, and you’re bound to strike a strong well.
Don’t lose hope…
you’ll get the water you need.
posted by BlueCollarPreacher at 11:21 AM
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