Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - July 27, 2003 - Story/Homilies

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Story/Homilies

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 27, 2003

Homily Code: AS-7

2 Kings 4:42-44
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:15

The effort to feed people has modern scientists hard at work, trying to develop grains that ripen faster and produce bigger crops. Their best efforts can't produce the results Elisha and Jesus get in today's readings.

Did you notice that both of them used barley loaves to feed the crowds? That's something most of us have never tasted. You can't buy it in any bakery today. A little bit of the barley crop finds its way into soups, but most of it feeds livestock. It just doesn't make as good a flour as wheat does.

It didn't in biblical times, either. Barley loaves, according to scripture scholars, were what people who didn't have much money could afford. It was the food of the poor even through the middle ages. Since the poor have never been is short supply, it was easy for Elisha to get his hands on 20 loaves. With a bit of help from God, he managed to feed 200 men with that amount. Jesus, of course, did him one better. He fed an enormous crowd with five loaves.

The Eucharistic bread isn't the finest product around, either. It's hard to imagine making a satisfactory peanut butter sandwich with it. Yet, this is the bread Jesus feeds us. It too is the bread of the poor, for we are in want. And it too multiplies miraculously, for when we eat it, we become the Body of Christ.

We don't think of ourselves as a warm and crusty loaf whose aroma makes the mouths of other people water. We normally think of ourselves as ordinary and common. Yet Jesus still works wonders with the bread of the poor. He can make us nourishing food for anyone we come in contact with if, like the boy in the gospel, we offer the bread we are to his use.

We must remember that as Jesus works with us, we become more tasty and beautiful to everyone we come in contact with. He can and does change us everyday, but, sometimes it's so slow we don't even notice it.

A stranger came by the other day with an offer that set me to thinking. He wanted to buy the old barn that sits out by the highway. I told him he was crazy. He was a city type, you could tell by his clothes, his car, his hands, and the way he talked. He said he was driving by and saw that beautiful barn sitting out in the tall grass and wanted to know if it was for sale.

I told him he had a funny idea of beauty. Sure, it was a handsome building in its day. But then, there's been a lot of winters pass with their snow and ice and howling wind. The summer's sun beat down on that old barn till all the paint's gone, and the wood has turned silver gray. Now the old building leans a good deal, looking kind of tired. Yet, that fellow called it beautiful.

That set me to thinking. I walked out to the field and just stood there, gazing at that old barn. The stranger said he planned to use the lumber to line the walls of his den in a new country home he's building down the road. He said you couldn't get paint that beautiful. Only years of standing in the weather, bearing the storms and scorching sun, only that can produce beautiful barn wood.

It came to me then. We're a lot like that, you and I. only it's on the inside that the beauty grows with us. Sure we turn silver gray too-- and lean a bit more than we did when we were young and full of sap. But the Good Lord knows what He's doing. And as the years pass He's busy using the hard wealth of our lives, the dry spells and the stormy seasons, to do a job of beautifying our souls that nothing else can produce. And to think how often folks holler because they want life easy!

They took the old barn down yesterday and hauled it away to beautify a rich man's house. And I reckon someday you and I'll be hauled off to heaven to take on whatever chores the Good Lord has for us. And I suspect we'll be more beautiful then for the seasons we've been through here-- and just maybe even add a bit of beauty to our Father's house.

Author of barn story is anonymous