IMPERFECT

The title of my homily is, “Imperfect.”

Life is funny. Jesus is funny. He knows life. He knows us.

Nobody is perfect.

The person who thinks they are perfect slips on the banana skin.

There is always something missing.

We’re sitting around with family and someone suggests playing cards. We go searching for a deck – find one – but surprise one card, the Queen of Hearts, is missing and we can’t find her anywhere.

So we decide to do a jigsaw puzzle. Everyone works on it for hours and hours and hours. Surprise we get to the end and one piece is missing.

Nothing is perfect.

Theirs is always something or someone missing.

Life is funny that way.

People want to go through life without any mistakes – to get a perfect score. Surprise, we make mistakes. We get lost. We get found. We get lost again. We misspell – miss names – miss appointments.

There are divorces – fender benders – a sister-in-law who gets drunk at every wedding.

We decide to go sailing. We get there only to discover we forgot to bring the key to the boat. The round trip to get home to get the key is twenty five minutes. We get it and we’re about ten minutes to the boat and it starts to rain with thunder and lightning.

People get zits and pimples – rips and stains.

We spill red spaghetti sauce on the while blouse or on a white table cloth and we spill it right in at our spot on the table. We try to hide the mess with a plate. It works, that is, till the perfect hostess comes up from behind us, picks up our empty plate and whispers a shrill, “Oooh, aren’t we the messy one?”

The meal is perfectly set up. The hors d’oeuvres go perfect. Everyone sits down. Surprise. We forgot to put out the forks.

There is always something or someone missing. Sometimes it’s us. We sin. We say the wrong thing – and we wish we could sink into the floor.

Relax. Jesus knows all about this. He missed what was missing.

100 is the perfect number in some systems. Then again, sometimes it’s 10. Sometimes it’s 5. Sometimes it’s 3. Sometimes it’s 2. Whatever the perfect number is, there is always seems to be one missing. One son becomes prodigal. Then when he is found, the other son won’t come in the house.

A lady had ten coins and loses one.

A shepherd had a long day. He’s all set for a long sleep, so he starts counting his sheep. Surprise - as we heard in today's gospel - one sheep is missing. It always happens. It’s life.

The Pharisees wanted to be perfect. They didn't want to look at their imperfections - the underneath bad breath of death. Jesus wanted be to die - to be grave - to dig within till they experienced new resurrection and new life. [Check out Matthew 23:27-28 and Luke 11: 37-44.]

The disciple wanted to be better than the other disciple: more important – more wise – get a better seat. [Cf. Mark 9: 33-37.] So Jesus kept dropping these hints about lost sheep, lost coins, foolish virgins and scared gift getters who buried their talents in the ground.

Jesus noticed some saw little kids as testy and pesty - and like crowds who wanted food, the disciples wanted Jesus to get rid of them. Jesus saw them as advertisements to what the kingdom and he was all about. We hear this in the section in Matthew just before today’s gospel text [Matthew 18:12-14].

Jesus also says, it’s all right to get into heaven missing a hand or an eye or walking in with a limp. That's certainly better than going to hell perfect with two feet and two hands and two eyes - and not being lame. [Cf. Matthew 18:1-14]

You have to laugh – especially with oneself – when we sin or when we’re late or when we make a mistake or when we’re imperfect.

Relax. Jesus was born in a stable.

Relax! Jesus says his Father comes looking for us when we are lost – when we’re dumb sheep. In fact, when we’re imperfect, that’s when we’re the perfect candidate for a God search till we’re found. In fact, being imperfect, having a good fall or sin is often the perfect time for people to find God.

Homily for 2 Tuesday Advent,

December 9, 2008