Sunday Homily June 16, 2013, 11th Ordinary Time C
Readings:
2 Samuel 12, 1-14, The verses of this reading are expanded because of the excellence of the story, King David and Bathsheba.
Psalm 32, Lord, forgive the wrong I have done.
Galatians 2, 16-21, If justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
Luke 7, 36-8, 3, She stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Another beautiful reading.
Relief Work
in OK City
This morning I would like to talk with you about the trip I made to OK
City a week ago. Three aspects, the time
and the geography of the tornadoes, gratitude, and the three teams.
You might not know it, but three tornadoes hit the area. The third and second were E5’s, the kind with
winds over 250 miles per hour. The third
was also the tornado with the diameter of about 2 & a half miles. 20 people were killed, including the 3
professional tornado watchers, but it mostly roamed the countryside, not living
areas.
The middle tornado was the Moore tornado, Moore being a suburb of OK
City. You drive north on I-35. On the right you see devastation—of houses
like in Plano or Richardson. On the left
you see devastation–of a large strip shopping complex like Collin Creek
Mall.
The first tornado, a day or two before Moore, hit Little Axe, a small
village of maybe 50 houses. 35 were
destroyed. I would conjecture the
majority of the residences were portables, trailer homes. This tornado spent 14 seconds on the ground
and you will see the result.
We were sent to Little Axe because it had been neglected and forgotten
after Moore. Moore was urban and middle
class. Little Axe was rural and
relatively poor. The roads were not paved,
just gravel and dirt. Moore sucked up
all the press coverage and attention. We
were sent to redress this neglect.
Secondly, the gratitude. The
first thing I noticed, after the shock of seeing Moore from I-35 as I drove
north, was the gratitude of people. We
wore our Bona Responds brown T shirts as we visited stores like Home
Depot. Customers and staff all thanked
us for coming to help out. At the Stihl
outlet where we went to buy chain saw parts, the staff comes out with Stihl T
shirts for all of us. Jim gave them Bona
Responds T shirts. It was humbling. See the two types of T shirts.
Thirdly, the teams. Obviously, we
were the team from St. Bonaventure, the Catholic university. Besides Jim, who is a finance professor,
there was Jerry, a chemistry professor.
The second team was Israeli. The
first morning I’m standing outside our barracks style quarters at this generic
church. I hear these kids talking a language
I don’t recognize. I look more closely
at them and see the obvious Israeli blue & white flag on their white T
shirts. I ask them who they are and what
are they doing. They say they have come
from Israel to help. I am stunned.
A footnote on these kids. When I
am driving to our site in Little Axe later that morning, the two girls in my
Prius see the Israeli kids and are all excited because they had worked together
at another site. Guess where: New York
after Sandy. They were like old friends
meeting.
The third group was a group of, get this, Muslim kids. Marvelous young people. Acting and looking just like us except they
were dark, the guys I talked with said they were from St. Louis.
Both the Muslim and the Israeli groups obviously have organizations behind them on the ground in the U.S.
They both had more equipment than we.
Like, the Muslims had a generator with which they ran a saw that cut I
beams.
In fact, during the afternoon I worked a lot with the Muslims. They were cutting up I beams and I and some
others were carrying 6-9 foot sections up out of a valley to the edge of the
road where we had 3 piles, metal, wood, and trash.
At one point I trip over some debris on the ground and fall. Fortunately for sports in my early years I
learned how to fall. Not hurt at all,
just rolling into ground. Guess who the
first person to reach out to me was: not one of those Catholic kids, not even
an Israeli, a Muslim. The others were not near anyway. They did not even know I fell. Check the pictures of
the teams and equipment.
I told you all how proud I am to be part of you, of this little community
which is so generous and makes such a positive difference. You
people not only helped the people of Little Axe, but you helped these kids from
St. Bonaventure have a marvelous ecumenical and international experience.
Thanks.