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I seem to remember that when I was little and just learning enough to read, but not always understanding what I was reading, I saw the sign, “Beware. Men at work.” and it made me nervous. Now, a little later, I read better and understand better and the sign has become gender neutral, and it reads, “Danger. Work in Progress.” Why do we have to put up a Beware! sign and a Danger! sign? It’s because there are changes being made and if we don’t change, we get into trouble. If I keep driving at the same speed or in the same direction, I may end up in an accident. Or, down the line, they are reconstructing and rebuilding things, and if I follow the same path, the same walk, the same driveway, the same usage of a building, I had better plan for some disruptions or I may even have to change what I am used to doing. I mention this because I think, the gospels as a whole, the message of Jesus, should have a sign on it that says “Beware! Danger! Work in progress.”

Now, this particular passage that I just read almost has a red light built into it. It has a label and a warning right at the beginning because you hear it and you say, “Wait a minute.” There is at least a “Danger” and a “Beware,” if not a “Work in Progress” label on this. The gospel says “If you don’t love me more than your father and mother you are not worthy of me.” The warm glow of Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day is long behind us. And then it talks about taking up your cross and losing your life. That’s a tough text. That’s a scary idea. And then it comes down to the core of the message, which is at least unsettling, and I think for most of us most of the time, unacceptable. That is “Those who welcome a prophet receive a prophet’s reward.” We are called to welcome prophets and receive the prophets’ reward. We tend not to welcome prophets. We tend not to want to listen to prophets.

When it comes to a prophet’s reward, well, look at some of the prophets we have known. Last week we heard about Jeremiah. You know Jeremiah the Prophet ended up with all his friends becoming enemies, thrown into a cistern, up to his neck in doodoo. That was the prophet’s reward. Jesus gets crucified and later-day prophets like Gandhi and Martin Luther King don’t fare much better. So, my first reaction is, first of all, I don’t want to welcome a prophet. Secondly, I certainly don’t want to become a prophet. And thirdly, you can keep your prophet’s reward. I want nothing to do with that. A little footnote: When we say a “prophet” we don’t mean a fortune-teller. The prophets were the conscience of Israel. A prophet is a conscience of the nation, a conscience of the Church, and prophets serve as conscience for our world. And if we are called to be prophets, God help us, it means we have to have conscience that is well-formed and well-informed and outspoken and consistent and courageous.

So how do we go about welcoming prophets, when it’s all so difficult, when it should be labeled “Beware, Danger, Work in Progress?” I think, for us who try to follow Jesus, when we say we are to welcome a prophet, it means we listen to the gospel messages and we allow them to change us. Now, that’s not easy. We don’t change easily, none of us do.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in New York and visited with that close priest friend of mine, Fr. Frank McNulty. It reminded me that, about ten years ago when he was going to give a parish mission, which he does all the time, he went down to Florida, and they had a retired member of the parish come and meet him at the airport and drive him to the parish. (They have a lot of retired people in Florida. I don’t know if you know that.) This man turned out to be a retired golf pro. So, Frank figured he would get some free lessons on the way. He said to the golf pro, “You know, I grew up playing baseball all the time and I have this inside out swing, and that’s how I swing when I use a golf club. I am always slicing.” And the only thing the old golf pro said to him was, “Father, if you keep doing what you’re doing, you are going to keep gettin’ what you’re gettin’.” We don’t change easily.

Vacation time, summer months. That ‘s the time for change. We go away. We change the setting. We do something different. We’re supposed to be changing. I saw a New Yorker cartoon the other day. It showed a family of four on vacation. They are sitting on the beach, on vacation (changing everything, right?) The father is working at his laptop. The mother is on the cell phone. The son has a pocket electronic video game he is playing. And the daughter is gyrating to music from her head phones. .... They haven’t changed a bit!

We do not change easily. And yet, if we are to welcome prophets, it means we are a people who listen to the gospel, not so that it would entertain us or even bring us peace of mind, but so that everytime somewhere it challenges us and if necessary, it changes our views, or our ways, or our hearts. Now, the gospel is a lot of words. And what we can do is, every Sunday, listen for a message that touches us and our lives. We can look in the missalettes or the Bible itself and listen for sections of the gospel that touch us.

But, I was thinking yesterday, overall, what are the big values and challenges that come from the gospel? I see three of them. One, and it is very clear in today’s gospel readings, is we are called to hospitality, to welcome those who are different, who are other and different from us. Secondly, we are called to forgiveness, and that means to forgive, let go of anger, forgive those who have hurt us. A lot of people say, “I am into forgiveness. I forgive people, except the ones who hurt me.” Well, the name of the game is the ones who hurt us! And so, we are called to hospitality, to forgiveness and to care, caring where there is need, whether it’s people or places or our earth. Caring.... Once you do that, you get a whole list of concerns that, as Christian people, we have to treat with hospitality and with forgiveness and with care.

The amazing thing to me is when we list those concerns, here we all are, millions of Christians, millions of Catholics, millions of church-goers, and we look at them differently.I will give you a list of things, and don’t you think we have some differences? For example, these are different concerns.What about immigrants and immigration? What about their welfare? What about their being legalized? What about their use of drivers’ licenses? What about capital punishment, and opposition to it? What about nuclear weapons and where they should be? What about the war in Iraq? What about the School of the Americas that has continued to be supported by our taxes? What about how do we protect the unborn? Or how do we deal with the homeless? How do we deal with the poor? How do we deal with healthcare and the healthcare systems? How do we support the dying? How do we take care of our planet Earth?

This may come as a surprise, but I think when we struggle with those issues we may not all end up in the same place. And yet we are all Christian, all church-goers. I am reminded of the divisive Sixties, where they used to say, “Wasn’t it amazing that William F. Buckley, the conservative, and Dorothy Day, the pacifist, could celebrate Eucharist and go to Communion at the same table and greet each other at the Greeting of Peace?” Today we have parishoners who love listening to Michael Savage and the Savage Nation and other parishoners who love listening to Bernie Ward and God Talk. How can we welcome the prophet and be good followers of the gospel and come out so different?

This is what I think has to hold us together. This is what I think we have to do. We have to be people, though even though we may end up in different places on some issues, at the heart of it, we are willing again and again, week after week, maybe day after day, to listen to the gospel and to look at the way we look at things..... to listen to the gospel and to look at the way we look at things. And then we are always challenged, and sometimes changed.

I remember an episode of “All in the Family,” with Archie Bunker and Edith. They go to a high school class reunion for Edith. They run into an old classmate, Buck. One thing about Buck you spot right away is that he has not taken care of himself. He is way, way overweight. He is obese. And Edith meets Buck, has a delightful conversation with him, reminisces about their growing up, going to high school, their memories, what’s happened to them, doesn’t even seem to notice that he is overweight. Later on, in another scene, Archie and Edith are talking and Edith says, “Archie, ain’t Buck a beautiful person?” And Archie says, “Edith, I’ll never figure you out. You and I can look at the same guy and you see a beautiful person and I see a blimp.” There is a moment of quiet and Edith replies, “Yeah. Ain’t that too bad?” ....Yeah. Ain’t that too bad?

We are called to listen to the gospel, to look at how we look at things, how we look at people and how we look at life and how we look at the earth. That is what we are called to do together. But beware. Beware. There’s a work in progress. WE are the work in progress. And Danger! Men at work. Actually, it is Jesus at work, because if we let him in, there should be a sign, “Danger. Jesus is at work!” Amen.