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Ben Durskin is nine years old. For almost four years, he has been treated for acute lympho | blastic leukemia. During a punishing protocol of chemotherapy, he passed the time with his Game Boy and Play Station. Last summer, Ben came up with his own videogame, designed especially for kids with cancer. In Ben’s Game, a boy (modeled after Ben) zooms around a screen on a skateboard, blasting cancer cells in order to collect “shields” that protect against the usual side effect of chemo: fever, chicken pox, colds, vomiting, hair loss. A player can’t lose – “you just keep fighting,” explains Ben.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation and software engineer Eric Johnston of LucasFilms worked with Ben to create the game. Ben’s Game has won raves from the 200,000 children who have found the game, available free on line. Not only is the game fun but children learn about the “monsters” attacking their bodies and how they can best beat them.
For eight years, 15-year-old Sasha Bowers and her family were homeless. Sasha, her little sister and her mother spent most nights in Columbus, Ohio, shelter, fighting hunger and bugs and kept awake by snores and screaming. Two years ago, Sasha’s mom landed a job with a cleaning company and the family was able to move into an apartment.
But Sasha hasn’t forgotten where she came from. She’s been the driving force behind a summer day-camp program for 175 homeless kids in Columbus. “When I was in shelters, there were no safe places to play,” Sasha explains. “I wanted to create a place that was fun, where kids could stay out of trouble while parents find jobs and housing.”
When Ryan Hreljac was in the first grade, he was shocked to learn about African children having to walk five miles to get a bucket of clean water. Ryan did odd jobs around the house and for neighbors for four months to raise $70, the cost of digging a well.
That was six years ago. Since then the Canadian teen’s foundation, Ryan’s Well, has raised $750,000 to build wells in seven African nations. Relief and development agencies in Canada say of Ryan: “He’s such a regular kid – that’s what makes him so powerful… He believes everyone should have water, and he’s not going to stop until they do.”
These remarkable young people, Ben, Sasha, and Ryan possess the faith of the mustard see: they have taken their own “Mustard seeds” – seeds of creativity, empathy and dedication – and have done the hard work of planting and nurturing those seeds until each one has realized an enduring and rooted harvest of hope, of compassion, of life itself. Christ calls us to embrace “mustard seed” faith – to believe that even the slightest act of goodness, done in faith and trust in God’s presence, has meaning in the reign of God. The mustard seed challenges us to grab hold of the opportunities we have for planting and reaping a harvest of justice, compassion and reconciliation in our own piece of the earth.
Ben, Sasha and Ryan – remarkable young people – they planted their tiny mustard seed, worked hard, and God did the rest.
You, you, you, all of you, remarkable people. Plant your tiny mustard seeds wherever you find yourself in life, work hard and let God do the rest. Mustard seed faith – to believe that even the smallest act of goodness, kindness, done in faith and trust in God’s power, can have an unbelievable effect on many, many people. Please, don’t sell yourself short – don’t sell the power of God short!

Ever wonder what a difference one person can make? George Bailey knows. Remember him? From Bedford Falls? It’s A Wonderful Life?

George found out, in a very powerful way, what a difference one person can make in the life of a community. George ran the town savings and loan, and he helped many people. He was honest, fair and compassionate. He understood when people had hard times, and gave them more time to pay off their loans.

But you know how the story goes. One day, the evil Mr. Potter takes advantage of things and steals the banks money. George thinks the bank will have to close, and that Mr. Potter will end up owning the whole town. George falls into deep despair, and wishes he had never been born.

God sends an angel, Clarence, to show George what Bedford Falls would have been like if, indeed, he had never been born. It’s a terrible, dark place called Pottersville, because Mr. Potter does own the whole town. George gets to see how important he was to his community, even if he makes mistakes sometimes. He’s able to return to his family and his life with renewed appreciation and gratitude. George Bailey, with his gifts and talents, and, yes, his imperfections, was an essential part of his community. It just wouldn’t have been the same without him.

How about you? Do you think you make a difference in this community? Would we be worse off without you? Of course!

You may think that you’re not really important, and, if you’ve made mistakes, you may even be tempted to think, like George Bailey, that the world would be better off without you.

Well, I’m not an angel named Clarence, but God has sent me here today to tell you that the world and our parish in particular would actually be worse off without you.

You are an essential part of God’s plan of blessing for this community. You are God’s gift to us, and we need you!

This is an important moment in the life of our faith community. As Fr. Ron and I have been mentioning over the past month or so, it’s time for us to once again discern the path that God has for us as a parish. We know that God is always calling us to grow, to strengthen and expand existing ministries, and to grow new ones.

How do we do this? Well, God gave us two ears and we have to use both of them. One ear we have to the ground. We have to listen to one another, hear one another’s needs, ideas and dreams. We have to listen to the needs of the world around us. And the other ear we have to the heavens, listening to the Holy Spirit guiding us how to respond to God and to the needs of the world around us.

This is the work of pastoral planning, and Fr. Ron and the Parish Pastoral Council want all of us to participate in it. We’ve designed a listening process for this year, and the first stage of the process is having house meetings this month and next. A house meeting is a gathering of 6-8 parishioners in someone’s home where you’ll have a chance to share what you need your parish to do for you and what you can do for your parish, and what our parish can do for the larger community. The meeting, which will be facilitated by a specially-trained parishioner, will follow a specific format and will only last one hour.

This weekend at all the masses we’ll be asking you to sign up for one house meeting. If you won’t be at mass this weekend, or if you just can’t make it to a house meeting at this time please let me know and I’ll get back in touch with you.

Whatever way you choose to participate, we can all pray that God will guide each of us to use our time, talent and treasure according to God’s plan for our parish.

Remember, just as one person made the difference between Bedford Falls and Pottersville, you, with your gifts, needs, faithfulness and imperfections, make the difference the Resurrection parish God wants us to be and the parish we’d be without you.

We need you! God needs you! God is counting on you, and so are we!

If an alien was to walk in to our church today and say, “Ok you Church people, describe God to me.”
I wonder what our answer would be. I believe one of the most powerful descriptions of God is contained in the 2 stories we just heard in Luke’s Gospel.
A. These images of God, too many people, don’t make any sense. When the sinner is found. Mercy, love and forgiveness are freely offered. No charge; no strings attached; no, “I told you so;” no finger pointing. Just, “Welcome Home.”
B. No matter how far we wonder or stray from God, and we all do it at times, no matter how terrible our sins might be, God’s arms are always open to us. Jesus never approves of the sin, but he always embraces the sinner.
C. I could just hear a few of the people, when Jesus was telling his stories, making a few side comments like:
i. These stories are crazy!
ii. This God is ridiculous!
iii. Leave 99 good sheep to go after one stupid stray?
iv. That’s not very good business sense.
v. If I were the father I would stick it to that son.
vi. I would make him crawl back.
vii. This God doesn’t make any sense.
These people were right; our God doesn’t make any sense when it comes to loving us.
D. A final point, very important, comes from a quote by the director of Covenant House, a shelter for runaway kids in many large cities in the U.S. She says, “The kids we work with have a lot of questions…
‘Can I have something to eat? I haven’t had a good thing to eat in days,’ a 17-year-old boy asked me last night. ‘Can I sleep here? Where can I sleep?’ another kid asked an hour later. I think she may have been twelve. These questions come easy to them. They are the questions that a street kid asks every day, minute to minute. But what gets to me is the question they don’t ask. The one that hides deep in the eyes they turn away from you, the one that shows in nervous fingers. This is the question that comes from living a lifetime of days when you can’t seem to do anything right. It is, ‘Does God still love me? – Will God forgive me?’ The kids would never say that out loud. Very few of them ever talk about God. They don’t know enough yet, and their minds and mouths are too preoccupied with the other questions: ‘Is it safe here?’ ‘Can I have something to eat?’ ‘Where can I sleep?’ But their hearts have only one question: ‘Does God still love me? – Will God forgive me?’ And their hearts look to me and to other adults at Covenant House for the answer to that question. I don’t think the kids think much about the theological idea that God lives in every one of us. With them it’s more instinctive. All I know is that when they look at me and I see that question, I feel the incredible burden of standing in for our Lord. And I know our Lord is counting on me to say, ‘Yes! Heavens, yes! I love you!’ to those scraggly, hungry, angry children of the streets.”
I Close:
God is counting on all of us to be “Stand In’s” for the Lord, with each other. To make real Isaiah 55:7, “Turn to the Lord for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.”