NOW  THAT  WAS DUMB!

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Fourth Sunday in Lent [B] is, “Now That Was Dumb.”

How many times in our lifetime have we said to ourselves, “Now that was dumb.”

We said the wrong thing. We did the wrong thing. We thought  the wrong thing. And when that’s our pattern, we continue doing the wrong thing over and over again.

That’s dumb - but we still do dumb things.

We could have got gas at that last exit - but we didn’t - and we run out of gas on this next  ramp on the New Jersey Turnpike. I’ve done that two times. I thought I learned from the first time I did that.

I did learn from the second time - so I could only say, “Dumb…. Dumber…”  but not “Dumbest.”

But in other things, I can be a repeat performer of dumb things.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel triggers these thoughts.  Jesus said to a guy named Nicodemus that when Moses was in the desert people were being bitten by poisonous snakes, so he grabbed a poisonous snake - nailed it to a pole - gathered the people - pointed to the snake and said, “This is what is killing you. Avoid these creatures.  They bite. They’re poisonous”

That’s my basic message for this mass: “Don’t do dumb!”

Yet we do dumb many times.

Name your poison.

Anger - procrastination - laziness - booze - not practicing - not thinking - jealousy - comparisons - not getting enough sleep - eating too much junk food or sugary,  sugary drinks - etc. etc. etc.

Name your poison.

Know the 7 Capital Sins.

St. Paul in his letter to the Romans talks about the same thing.  I say to myself, “I’ll never do that again.”  Or “I am going to do this” and then I go out and do just the opposite.

Now that is dumb.

St. Augustine read St. Paul and said the same thing in his classic book, The Confessions.

Before you die you better read that book every 10 years - and each time you’ll hear something new.

St. Augustine said, “I tell my right hand I’m going to do this and then I do the opposite with my left hand.”

In today’s gospel Jesus says that we do this. We prefer darkness to the light.

Listen to Jesus again: “And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.”

It’s dumb when we overeat dessert. There on the table is endless ice cream and cake and we take too much. Then we can’t sleep  because we’re having a sugar high.

It’s difficult to turn off the TV - get enough sleep - especially when it’s late and we have a busy day in the morning.

And funny - sometimes we remember the dumb - for the rest of our lives.

For example, I’m around 32 years of age. I’m in Connecticut. It’s early Sunday afternoon. Some guys asked me to join in a pickup basketball game - 3 against 3 - and I say, “I gotta get back to New Jersey - and finish a paper for school Monday morning.” I was going part time to Princeton Theological at the time working on another Master’s Degree.

“Okay,” I said - and one game ran into a second game - into a third game.

Dumb me. I don’t know if we won or lost.  I’m sure we had a good time. But Sunday traffic and a long trip from Suffield Connecticut - above Hartford - to Long Branch, New Jersey - had me home around 11 P.M.

The result was a C-Paper - staying up late - half asleep - and being very tired the whole next day.

Now that was dumb.

But I’ve been doing that my whole life: Dumb, dumber, dumbest.

I say it every time, “Now that was dumb.”

How about you?

EGGS  AND A GUITAR

We can also do smart.

It’s work.

It’s difficult.

But we can do smart.

It takes practice, practice, practice.

I remember a baseball player, Howard Johnson, who played for the Detroit Tigers.  They moved him from the outfield to third base in Spring Training.

The manager, I think it was Jim Leyland, who had him catch fresh eggs.

The first few dozens broke - but once he learned now to go with the flow and the throw - he was soon a very smooth catcher of hits to third base.

Practice, practice, practice.

The result was a good third baseman.

Eggs - practicing with eggs…. Someone might have said, “That’s dumb. That’s stupid, stupid, stupid” and never become a regular third baseman.

That’s sports. Let me switch over to music.  I remember a guy I met in my first parish on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  He practiced his guitar 6 or 7 hours a day - and eventually he got a good job in a record recording company in New York City. The practice paid off - and this became his life - getting better and better and better. Practice. Practice. Practice.

LIGHT OR DARKNESS, SMART OR DUMB

 So we have a choice.

We can walk in the light or crawl in the dark.

There are 2 kinds of people: smart or dumb.

The dumb person when things go wrong,  they start blaming others, blaming parents, blaming teachers, blaming coaches, blaming the wind or the grass for an errors or a  mistake.

It’s called scapegoating. It’s called killing the messenger.

CONCLUSION

We’re moving through Lent now.  the major sign and symbol for Lent and for Christians is the cross.

Jesus got blamed by others - for challenging others.

He was scapegoated.

He was killed for s0peaking up and out on how to do life lovingly..

He spoke up on what is right and wrong.

He was crucified on a cross.

On one side was the Good Thief and the Bad Thief on the other side

The bad thief starting making bad comments to Jesus instead of taking responsibility for his crimes.  Now that was dumb.

The other guy, the so called Good Thief, said, “Hey knock it off. We’re here because we know what we did wrong. but this man did nothing wrong. He is innocent.”

So Jesus then said to the Good Thief. Today, you’ll be with me in paradise.”

Translation:  honesty, admitting we made a mistake is the key to paradise. Now that’s being smart.