Being Incomplete--Original Restlessness: Homily for 27th Sunday in OT

One of the great blessings of being a missionary priest is that you get to be involved in highly academic, intensely theological ministries such as putting together a TV cart for the church.  Well, this was one of my tasks earlier this week.  Now I am a little OCD, and so love embarking on a task of putting things together.  However, when I am unable to finish the project I can get a little frustrated.  Now I was about half way done with said project and realized that the company simply did not send all of the pieces.  So, if you want to glory in father’s unfinished work, go on over to the office after mass and take a look at the almost finished TV stand.  It remains next to my desk, sadly, incomplete.  Regardless of our efforts, sometimes our experiences in life are simply left incomplete.

 

Hopefully we all had an opportunity to watch some of the debate on Wednesday.  Now, I know that many people’s heart pressure goes off the charts when we watch these things.  But I think watching them can be a helpful experience for us all.  I did not walk away from the debate overly concerned with who won.  Enough political pundits spend time dissecting these kinds of things.  I did, however, walk away with this feeling:  we have a lot to be proud of here in America.  However, the work which was begun over two-hundred years ago is still far from done.  We still have people in need of work, the poor continue to fall through the cracks, and there is a steady decline in the values we hold true as Catholics.  Unfortunately, just like my TV stand, our work as a country is still incomplete.

 

Whether it is putting a TV stand together, or assessing the progress of our country, this feeling of incompleteness seems to be something that part of human experience. 

 

We see in our first reading today that this was also the case in the beginning.  The first human being was created without a suitable partner.  Adam was incomplete.  Alone.  Out of love, God did not desire him to be alone.  So God created many things around the first human being.  Yet, as the scripture says, none proved to be suitable partners.  Often in our own search for being complete, we too find ourselves with unsuitable partners.

 

 

Johnny Lee, a country singer, could not have said it better with the title of his song:  “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places” This seems to highlight our efforts as human being to be complete.  To be whole.  To find someone or something that will ease the restlessness we feel inside.  For we too, spend a lifetime looking for love.  We have a great desire inside to be connected, to feel whole, to not be alone.  And yet in our misguided ways we search in the wrong places.  Our obsession in this area with alcohol and drugs is indicative of the human person’s attempt to drown the loneliness we experience inside.  We go shopping and fill our houses with stuff hoping that it fills the gap.  We move from one relationship to the next and the incompleteness remains.  We give ourselves over to another in ways that leave us feeling emptier inside.  We look for love in all the wrong places and find just as the first human being did:  there is not a suitable partner.

 

 

But God’s word to us is full of hope.  God created the suitable partner for the first human.  And in so doing man and woman, Adam and Eve, found each other.  And they were joined together.  They experienced being whole.  There was an interconnectedness that existed between them that could not be denied.  One could not exist without the other.  Both were needed to feel complete. 

In the movie Jerry McGuire, Tom Cruise is a sports agent who has fallen in love with Renee Zelweger, a co-worker.  However, their work seems to be driving them apart.   Tom Cruise finally comes to the point where he must be with Renee.  He rushes to her home to express his love.  In front of her seemingly anti-male support group, he cries:  I love you!   You complete me. He begins to ramble and lose his words.  She then tells him to hush up, for he had her at hello. As cheesy as this may be, I think this movie touches on our very experience of being incomplete.  We date and look for a partner for the very reason of wanting to be whole.  The other person fills a part of our heart that longs to be connected, longs to be loved, and longs to be complete.  Just like the case with Adam and Eve.

 

Unfortunately, as we know, this is not the entire story.  God had created a perfect plan for human beings to be complete.  But the selfishness of human beings distorted that plan.  Sin entered the picture.  And with sin, a greater sense of being incomplete actually entered our experience.  Now we not only experience our original incompleteness.  But more, there is the feeling of still being incomplete in the very presence of the other person whom we love.  There is the separation of Adam and Eve.   And there is also the separation with God.

 

I had the chance to speak with a friend of mine and his wife, and they talked very honestly about their marriage.  They are still deeply in love.  They are both happy with work and with caring for the kids.  Yet they both honestly told me:  they still experience moments of terrible loneliness and incompleteness.  Some of their loneliest experiences are the nights after they have had a fight with one another.  They lay in bed together unable to talk or hold the other person.  The few feet between them on the bed is like a vast canyon waiting to swallow them both.  Lying next to the one whom they are joined in love, they still feel incomplete. 

Fortunately for us, the reality of Jesus Christ has changed everything.  Only in Christ can we find the answer to our incompleteness.  Only in Christ can we be made whole. 

 

 

In Jesus, we are able to make friends with our incompleteness.  Most of us are so afraid of our being incomplete.  It shows forth in our inability to sit quietly for just a few minutes.  It shows forth in our constantly having the TV on, our constant use of our phones, or our desires to always be active.  Yet our incompleteness is a real gift.  Becoming friends with it, we can harness it as the very source that drives us to love others more deeply. Still more, it can motivate us to love God more deeply.  It can propel us to fall in the arms of Christ to find the wholeness we seek.

 

 

Still more, without Jesus, we find that no created thing, even our best friends, children or spouses will make us complete.  Jesus allows us to give more fully of ourselves to others, and to also love and accept them.  We do not have the capacity to love each other in this way without the grace of Jesus.  We cannot be friends without Jesus.  We cannot be spouses without Jesus.  We cannot be HUMAN without Jesus.  That is why marriage must be a sacrament.  It cannot be just a civil issue.  The two cannot become one without Christ and his grace.  The two cannot bridge the gap between each other without the one who bridged the gap between our humanity and God’s divinity.

 

 

 

Finally, we must accept that this place is not our home.  The earth, our families, even our experience of God here will always leave us longing for more.  We should enjoy and love and care for the beautiful things around us, but they are passing away.  For this very reason, during the Mass, we actually pray for Christ to come again.  For only in his coming again, will our hearts find the peace and wholeness they seek. 

 

 

 

I know it was cheesy when Tom Cruise said it to Renee Zelweger.  I know country songs can be a little melodramatic.  But in a real sense, we can say to Jesus:  We have looked for love in all the wrong places.  But finally we have found the one who completes us.  Jesus, you complete us.