HOW ARE YOU?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this First Sunday in Advent is, “How Are You?”

That’s one of life’s most basic questions - especially when we meet another. “How are you?” One translation: “How’s it going?”

For some reason as I began thinking of a homily for this First Sunday in Advent - that question - that title - that theme for a homily - hit me.

“How Are You?”

THANKSGIVING

We just celebrated Thanksgiving - and I’m sure that was the first question a lot of people asked a lot of people.

“How are you?”

It’s the same question we ask when we see someone at work or at a meeting or a party or coming into Mass.

At Thanksgiving - if we haven’t seen a family member or someone in quite a while - we might be expecting an actual answer to the, “How are you?” question.

“How are you?”

How are you today? It’s less than a month to go to Christmas. We’re headed for December and winter - and a New Year. For Christians it’s the First Sunday of Advent. For Catholics in the United States it’s the beginning of a new translation of words in the liturgy and its prayers.

How will these changes work? How will it turn out? My plan is to keep an open mind and find out from doing it - how it will work out.

Yesterday morning I heard a very positive piece on NPR radio about this change in the Catholic Liturgy - while driving back here from a great week of seeing most of my family - for Thanksgiving. How will we experience this change in our Mass? How will it go? Time will tell.

HOW ARE YOU?

As I drove to see my brother’s family last Sunday afternoon - they came from all over the country - for a week in a rented house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware - I was wondering about “how” each was doing. Then early on Thanksgiving morning I drove from Rehoboth to see my two sisters and another side of the family - in Pennsylvania and then New Jersey and then back to Pennsylvania, and then back here yesterday. I hadn’t seen some of these people in a year or so. We talked about family - about jobs - and what’s happening - on how things were going.

It’s Thanksgiving - and I heard someone say Thanksgiving is the biggest time of the year for families visiting family.

I’m assuming this trip helped trigger this “How are you?” question.

How has to do with the practical. How to books and CD’s tell us what steps to take when we want to make something happen.

So I guess when we ask a relative or friend or someone we work with, “How are you?” we’re asking, “What steps have you taken since the last time I saw you?" So sometimes we really are expecting an answer to the “How are you?” question.

How about the reverse? What do we answer when someone asks us: “How are you?” - and they really mean it? Do we answer with health answers - work answers - relationship answers - or what?

GOD!

Then it hit me: what a great Morning Prayer or anytime in the day prayer: “God: how are you?”

Some people might skip the “how” and ask at or to God, “Are You?”

Some people who believe in a God might ask, “How could you?”

Thinking these questions, I thought, “This could be a homily. This could be a homily for the First Sunday in Advent.”

Do we ever picture God as a You - a You in my life?

Is God a “You” to me?

The person in the other car is a “you”. The person next to us in the elevator - or in front of us on the escalator at the mall - or in our home - or at work - is a “you”. Is God a You to me?

We spend a good bit of our lives thinking about the you’s in our life.

When we spend time with God - here at church - or at a funeral - or in the dark night - or on a beautiful morning - or waiting for tests from a medical procedure or blood work - how do our thoughts about God go? Is God a “You” in that 3rd word in the “How are You” question?

As I thought about this while driving and then while putting together this first draft of a homily - wondering if this homily might be a bomb - the next how thought that hit me was: people differ on how they see or think God works.

Isn’t that one of life’s biggest lessons: to learn that we all don’t see the same thing the same way - especially life? Isn’t that why they have 12 people in a jury? Isn’t that what happens when we’re listening to someone describe a movie that we also saw - and they thought it was great - and we thought that too was a bomb?

My two sisters went shopping on Friday - and asked if I wanted to go. I didn’t say, “Are you crazy?” - but I did get the thought to shoot up to the local library in Doylestown, Pennsylvania - and maybe get an inspiration or two for a homily - for this Sunday.

The library was nice and quiet. I guess a lot of people were shopping. I spent two hours going through an interesting book by Dr. Renita Weems, an ordained elder of the African Methodist Church. The book is entitled, “Listening For God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt.”

While teaching first year students at Vanderbilt University, she said that she announces every year to first year students who enrolled in her introductory course in the Old Testament: “This is not a course on what God said…. This is a course on what the ancient Hebrews said God said.” She adds, “This was my pronouncement the first day of class every semester.”

I wrote that down. That is a very profound and provocative statement.

I wonder how students reacted to that. Did hands go up? Did minds open up? Did minds close down? Did reactions set in?

I sat there in that library and gave that some thought - knowing that I will continue to think about that one: how God works - stress on how.

If all of us here in church today were in a big discussion group and the question was: “How do you see God working?” Or “How is God?” would we get our hands on a wide spectrum of answers?

Does God zap people? Does God cry when people get zapped with cancer or a family disaster? Does God care about the starving?

I know I read the Good Samaritan story in the New Testament and I read that Jesus talked about the man who is beaten up and two people walk by him - and the third person, the Good Samaritan - stops and helps the man who was beaten up by the robbers. I sometimes ask God, “Why don’t you stop and help the guy?” “Why don’t you prevent the man from being beaten up in the first place?”

These questions bring us face to face with the “How are you?” question if we ask it to God. How does God work?

Does God ever intervene? Does God ever come to our rescue? Does God ever help? Does God expect us to be his helpers - that we do the stopping to help our neighbor who is stranded and hurting?

This woman minister, Dr. Renita Weems, in that book talked about her doubts and her questions. She said that a preacher once wrote to her, “The difference between you and me is that you preach your questions, whereas I preach my answers.”

That caused a pause in me? How do I preach? I have well over 3000 homilies on my computer that I have preached - and I laughed because I don’t know how to answer that question.

Is that how life works? Others know us. We don’t know ourselves.

CONCLUSION

I do know I’m on page 5 of this particular homily and that means I have to come up with a conclusion.

The title of this homily is: “How are you?”

I said I’m aware that we ask this question of others as well as ourselves at times. I’m preaching this morning that we ask that question to God: “How are You?”

I think I hold the following. Answers to the “How are you God?” question can be found in the Scriptures and in the lives of people who live a life with God - especially people who have questions and struggles with God - people like you and me and this preacher, Renita Weems. So - yes - we have answers to that question and we have questions to some answers. I’m pushing in this homily to spend time in our God space - with the prayer question to God: “How are you God?”

Then it hit me that the Advent Season and the Advent Readings - as well as this upcoming Christmas Season and Christmas Rush - that has already started - has many messages - and they deal with this question.

For example, there are a whole series of W words for Advent: watching, waiting, wondering, wandering, waking. Advent in the Northern Hemisphere - I don’t know how they do this in the Southern Hemisphere - is all about moving towards darkness - December 21st being the darkest day of the year - and then we move towards more and more light. That’s life. We are in the dark - some more than others. Sometimes we have sparks of light - one, two, three, four, like the Advent Candles - where we have answers - but sometimes the light goes out - and needs to be re-lit - over and over again. But like Christmas shoppers - like the Magi or Wise men - like the servants in Advent gospels - we keep searching and watching - and surprise God comes as a little baby. Only God could come up with that one. Isn’t that how God of Surprises works all the time - coming up with answers that we - we never expected? Amen.