Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So I was reading the Bible recently and there's the Book of Daniel.
People of Israel were taken into exile in Babylon.
So what happened is the Kingdom of Israel, the united twelve tribes
become the northern tribe of Israel
and the southern tribe of Judah—or a kingdom of Judah, which was made of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin.
Anyways, at one point the northern tribes, Northern Kingdom Israel is dispersed.
It's destroyed essentially but the southern kingdom of Judah,
the Babylonians come in and they basically exile a majority of the population.
They bring them up to Babylon and that's where you have Daniel in the lion's den.
That's when we have the story of the three young men, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael.
So at one point, if you know the story, King Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
he has an image of himself and the three young men, they don't bow down before it
and so they're thrown into the fiery furnace.
Now, just pause.
Imagine being in their situation.
Imagine saying, "OK, so I'm part of the Kingdom of Israel. I'm part of God's chosen people,"
which is true, the Jews are God's chosen people.
But (laughs) there's a lot of pain and there's a lot of disappointment
and "Wait a second, God. If we're your chosen people, why are we in exile right now?
I'm faithful to you. I'm not going to bow down before a statue of Nebuchadnezzar.
I'm going to be faithful to you and now they're gonna kill us.
Thanks a lot, God."
And I point this out because I think that a lot of times,
we can feel exactly the same way.
A lot of people I have talked to and I know in my heart too, there can be this sense of like,
OK, God. So you've brought me into the covenant, right? You've made me a Catholic Christian
and so, you call me to live a certain kind of life. You give me this dignity but I experience great tension.
I experience great pain and I thought that serving you would be—
I would get more back from this kind of a thing.
We can be tempted to think in the midst of this, God owes us something
and yet, here's Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael in the fiery furnace.
At one point, it says that Azariah gets up and he prays and his prayer, it's remarkable.
It shows the kind of heart that I think you and I are made to have.
He says, "We are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation.
We are brought low everywhere in the world this day because of our sins."
God, you called us for greatness but we haven't had this.
He says, "We have in our day no prince, no profit, nor leader,
we have no holocaust, we have no sacrifice, no oblation, or incense, we have no place to offer first fruits to you."
Basically, Azariah's main issue in the middle of a fiery furnace, when they're trying to kill him,
the king is trying to kill him,
is God, in our day, we don't have a priest to offer worship to you.
God, in our day, we don't have a place, we don't have the temple right now
and so we can't bring our first fruits before you.
His main concern is God, I wish I could worship you better.
How is that even possible?!?
He says, so "with contrite heart and humble spirit, let us be received;
as though it were holocaust of rams or bullocks or thousands of fat lambs."
Let us be received.
Azariah's chief concern in the midst of a fiery furnace, in exile, under oppression,
as a dispersed, displaced person
when they're trying to kill him is,
God, I don't have anything to offer you, so at least, at least let my sacrifice be a contrite spirit.
At least, the very least, accept my heart.
Now, here is the key. The key in all of this is at that moment in his life,
maybe the worst moment in Azariah's life,
he did not look at God and say, God, you owe me.
God, you owe me.
You know, I think one of the harder truths for us to acknowledge,
maybe it's hard for you, maybe it's not, is that God does not owe you anything.
God doesn't owe me anything.
That no matter what I go through, no matter what I experience—
and it could be really serious, it can be really significant, it can be incredibly severe—
that God will never owe me anything.
He will never be in my debt.
OK, so saying that God doesn't owe me anything, what should I do?
Should I just shuffle off into the corner, with my head hanging low?
Absolutely not.
In fact, it's the opposite.
Instead of that causing a sadness, it should cause us incredible joy and thanksgiving. Why?
Because look at your life.
Many of you who are watching this, you have eyes because you're watching it
or you have ears and you're listening to it.
When was the last time you actually got up in the morning, opened your eyes, looked around and said,
"God, thank you"?
When was the last time you were ecstatically grateful that you could see?
You were ecstatically grateful, ecstatically thankful that you could hear?
Many of you can walk. This morning, when you got up out of bed, stood up on your own two feet
realizing, "Wait a second. I didn't—God didn't owe me eyes, he didn't owe me ears, he didn't owe me legs—"
—even if your legs don't work like you wish they would—
I didn't do anything to deserve this life in the sense of the goodness of being alive.
So often, we focus on what we do not have.
So often, we focus on the fact that, "Oh yeah, I have ears but I don't hear as well as I used to."
"Sure I have eyes, but I have contact lenses or I have glasses to wear."
"Yep, sure I have legs but they do not work like they ought to."
Fine. OK, God, you owe me.
No.
I didn't do anything to deserve my hands, my arms, my eyes.
I didn't do anything to deserve the gift of life
and if we were to try to count up all of the gifts in our own lives, in your own life that you have
that you did nothing to deserve, they would vastly outweigh what we don't have.
This big truth that God does not owe you anything
is the truth that Azariah knew here in the fiery furnace.
And we can look at all the things we don't have.
We can look at all the pains in our life and they're probably real.
My invitation though, if you want to live a life of joy
is to look at all the things, all the good things in your life that you did nothing to deserve
and to be ecstatically grateful, Intentionally grateful for all the things, all the good things in your life
that God didn't owe you
but he gave you anyways.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.