Do you think you can get an elephant through the front door of your house? Impossible, right? Unless the elephant can be shrunk to the size of a small pony.
Today the Church has us think about impossibilities.
In the first reading (Ezekiel 28:1-10) Ezekiel prophesies against the wise and mighty prince of Tyre. This shrewd man amassed a fortune of treasures and was sitting on top of the world. For him nothing was impossible. He was proved wrong.
“Because you thought yourself to have the mind of a god, therefore I will bring against you foreigners…they shall draw their swords against your beauteous wisdom…they shall thrust you down into the pit.”
In his pride, this prince of Tyre thought it was impossible for him to fall. God proved him wrong by bringing the swords against his fragile wisdom, and he ended up at the bottom of the pit.
We then read from the Book of Deuteronomy (32:26ff). Moses reminded the Israelites of the impossible things God could do.
“How could one man rout a thousand or two men put ten thousand o flight, unless it was because their Rock sold them, and the Lord delivered them up?”
What? One man defeats a thousand, two men scare away ten thousand? Were they that powerful? Or course not. It was their Rock, the Lord, who is mightier than ten thousands of ten thousands, who stepped in and protected them.
Then Jesus talks about an impossibility (Matthew 19:23-30). He didn’t talk about elephants fitting through doorways, but camels fitting through the eye of a needle. Then he talked about something even more impossible—a rich man entering the Kingdom of God—coming through God’s front door. His disciples were shocked. They believed that the wealthy people were the ones most favored by God, the ones who would be first to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus said that the little ones who left all to follow him were the ones who qualified for the Kingdom. The rich were “too big” to fit in.
Then after having made his point, Jesus talked about possibilities.
“For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
Yes God can, with the help of two men, send an army of thousands to flight. He can shrink a camel so to fit through a needle’s eye, and find a way of getting an elephant through our front doors. By the power of grace he can shrink the ego of a rich man so that he can become as a child and enter the door of God’s Kingdom. The prince of Tyre did not understand this.
We live in an age of unprecedented possibilities—the miracles of technology, the power of machines, the ingenuity of medical scientists, the power to break away from earth into the vast expanses of space. Nothing is impossible in our proud age—except we can’t eliminate a tiny invisible virus, pump up a fragile economy, maintain order in our streets, or stop the shedding of innocent blood. Faced with this tsunami of impossibilities, where do we turn? We are up against something more powerful than all the wisdom and technical know-how of the talented people of our age.
Are we ready to let go of our pride and admit our desperate need for God’s intervention? Will our age continue to factor God out of the picture and pursue the futility of its own ways? Will it fight blindly against the foes of impossibility?
“It I I who deal life and death” (antiphon for today’s reading response).”
