You’ve made a fortunate decision to come to this Mass today because
Fr. Joyce was scheduled to preach. He preached at all the other
Masses. But then on Friday evening he suddenly realized that, if he
preached at this Mass, he would miss the first quarter of the Raiders
game. And so, he asked me if I would preach. But, normally, I take a
week to prepare. I read up commentaries and so on. So, at twenty-four
hours.... You are fortunate because I have just a few very, very
brief thoughts. You are going to get away with a very short homily
today.

Our first reading from the prophet Amos... He lived about seven
hundred fifty years before Jesus and there has never been a more
powerful voice in condemnation of injustice and the exploitation of
the poor and of the vulnerable in society. But I really urge you to
read the whole book. It’s very short, only I think about nine
chapters, maybe ten, twelve pages all together. But it’s a very, very
powerful writing indeed. And I think one thing will be very clear to
you, that Amos places God at the very center of his world. For him,
any injustice towards the poor or those least able to help
themselves, anything like that, is an affront to God, is a sin
against God. In other words, every human endeavor, every human
action, every human institution can be and should be judged from a
moral point of view. Nothing human can be excluded from examination
in the light of scripture, since everything should be subject to
God’s law. That would be Amos’es point of view. And so, for him, if
Congress or the Supreme Court or the President said that something is
lawful, for him that would not necessarily make it moral. He would
say you have to look at these things and judge them from the point of
view of God, not from the point of view of man. You cannot love both
God and Mammon. “Mammon” was the God of Wealth, the God of Prosperity, the
God of this world. And so, if Amos were alive today, I would venture
to say that his voice would be very loud and clear on all the great
issues of this day, for example, health care or the war in Iraq, or
business practices, or abortion, or homelessness, or the abuse of
wealth, or the bribery and the corruption that we read about every
day in our papers. The voice of Amos would be very, very powerful and
very clear indeed. He was absolutely fearless in his condemnation of
all the social evils of his own day, even though that eventually led
him to be driven out into exile.

Now, Jesus of course, being a good Jew of his day, would have been
very, very familiar with the writings of Amos, and probably learned a
great deal from them. He too was fearless in his teaching, as we all
know, and it led to his death. But he was very, very clear in asking
his followers to make some very hard choices at times, counter-
cultural choices. And so, we hear him say today, “You cannot serve
both God and Mammon,” .... Mammon, the God of Wealth. Well, to us
that sounds pretty radical, and indeed, unrealistic because, we say,
“Well, we all need money.” If we have to live in this world, we need
money. And it can certainly make life a lot more pleasant. Well,
Jesus was not an economist, of course. He was, however, a very keen
observer of the human condition. And he observed, in his own day,
that excessive wealth, or the excessive pursuit of wealth might
result in a lack of concern for others, or even lead to injustices
towards the poor and those who are least able to help themselves or
to have recourse to the law or whatever. He knew that excessive
wealth could have (COULD have) a very corrupting influence upon
people and the human spirit. And so he is always asking us to have a
right balance in our lives, and, indeed, to have that balance tipped
a little bit towards God. God and God’s law, God’s word, should be at
the center of everything we do and say. And so, I think the message
of his life and all of his teaching, if we kind of put it together,
would be that, if God has blessed us with the things of this world
and not just stuff, you know garages filled with just stuff, but if
he has blessed us in this world, we should be ready and willing to
share those blessings with other people because, of course, money
does not necessarily lead to corruption. It does not necessarily lead
to selfishness. In fact, some of the wealthiest people here in the
United States are among the greatest philanthropists in the whole
world, giving away millions and millions and millions of dollars
because they recognize that this is a gift from God, and it’s gift
that should be shared.

Here in our own parish, you people here at Christ the King, have
shown yourselves outstandingly generous in your response to appeals
to help those in need. Most recently, every month of course is a
tremendous collection for St. Vincent dePaul, but most recently, if
you remember, when there was that appeal for the Home of Hope in
India, an appeal made by Paul Wilkes, the result was, I think,
somewhere around (just for one Sunday collection), something like
$22,000. That’s amazing. It’s outstanding! You are to be really
commended for your own grasp of that fact, that all is gift from God.
All we have is gift from God, and we should be willing, ready to
share those gifts with other people. I hope and pray that you can
continue to recognize that the use of money and material things is
always, always related to the values of God’s kingdom. And those
values are, I think, best summed up by Jesus when he said, “Whatever
you do, WHATEVER you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you
do for me.” Amen.