This is the homily prepared for Sunday, March 24, 2019,
given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“BRIDGES”
(Homily texts: Exodus
3: 1-15 & Luke 13: 1-9)
Let’s
talk about bridges this morning.
As I
consider our Old Testament reading, the account of God’s appearing to Moses in
the form of the burning bush, and our Gospel text, conveying to us Jesus’
Parable of the Fig Tree, bridges come to mind.
Bridges
are wonderful things. Consider, for example, the world’s oldest masonry
railroad bridge, known as the Thomas Viaduct. It was built by the Baltimore and
Ohio RR, and sits a little southwest of Baltimore, spanning the Patapsco River.
It is 612 feet long, 59 feet high, 26 feet wide, and has eight spans of granite
stone, the largest span of which is 58 feet. It was constructed between 1833
and 1835. It is still in use today, carrying trains that weigh more than ten
times what those early trains in the 1830s did. It is a marvelous piece of
engineering, because the bridge itself is built on a curve.
As
wonderful an example of engineering and hard work the Thomas Viaduct is, its
worth isn’t to be found in its engineering or in its workmanship. Its worth is
to be found in the fact that it spans a barrier (the Patapsco River), making
possible forward movement, and connecting one side of the valley to the other.
A
bridge is meant to do just that, allow for things to move from one place to
another. Bridges don’t exist for their own value alone, no matter how
magnificent they might be.
With
this thought in mind, then, let’s turn our attention to our Old Testament
reading, where we find Moses at the burning bush.
What
God is doing in appearing to Moses in the way He chose to is to span a gulf
with Moses. God has a mission in mind for Moses, and, of course, that mission
is to lead God’s people out of bondage in Egypt. It is God who has taken the
initiative, God who has laid the foundations for this bridge to His servant
Moses, God who has begun construction of the bridge, and God who has shown
Moses the blueprint for His plan.
In a
similar way, Jesus’ Parable of the Fig Tree describes a bridge. Jesus tells His
original audience (and us), that if we are going to be a part of God’s plan,
God’s mission, then we’d better allow God to use us as building blocks to build
a bridge so that God’s work can move forward, across the gulf of sin that
permeates the world.
Like
the massive stone blocks of the Thomas Viaduct, we must allow God to fashion us
into useable material for the building of His bridge into the world. Unlike a
block of granite, which has no ability to change its makeup and nature, we have
the ability – with God’s help – to allow God to fit us as useable parts of a bridge
for His purposes in the world. We can cooperate with God and be fruitful parts
of God’s overall plan, or we can choose to be useless material which God must
reject for His purposes.
God
begins the construction process, reaching out to us to construct an arch to
bridge the gap between His holiness and our condition, in Baptism. As we go
through life, learning just what it means to live into our new relationship
with God, begun in baptism, the construction process continues, arch by arch,
so that God’s purposes for us and for others can move forward.
Moses
was faithful in carrying out God’s purposes. God had to work to chisel out the
useless parts of Moses’ character in order to be able to fit him into the
bridge that God had designed.
The
choice before us is quite similar to the one Moses was confronted with: We can
say “yes” to God’s plan and God’s design for our lives and for the part that we
will play in the building of a bridge into the world around us, or we can
choose not to cooperate.
May
we, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, allow God to form and fashion us
into worthwhile building blocks for His purposes, spanning the gulf which
separates the people in the world from the God who created them.
AMEN.
