Fr. Bob - Survival of the Fittest
I heard Fr. Bill Murtough who took the masses las weekend said that he was my twin brother. He may be my evil twin but he’s not my twin brother. Good to be back to celebrate with you Sunset Fest. As we say, the only Sunset Fest in all of Carver County, quite possible the world.
We’ve heard of the “survival of the fittest”. Darwin once did a study to determine who was more likely to survive as the fittest. You’d think it be the strongest, or the swiftest, or the most intelligent. It was none of these. It was those who had the greatest capacity to adapt.
And so, for us, whether we know it or not we humans are adapting all the time. Like for me, two years ago I was bounding upstairs two at a time and then a bad hip comes along and the next thing I know, I’m getting a hip replacement. That was two weeks ago.
Now when it comes to going up stars, I’m not bounding two steps at a time. I’ve had to adapt to taking one step at a time. Going up lead with the good leg, going down lead with the bad leg. They told “Think of it, good goes up (to heaven) and bad goes down. Not great theology but a good way to remember it.
Now at this point in my homily I have a confession to make. I prepared today’s homily off the parable in Luke 12 the Gospel from two weeks ago. No excuse but that was the weekend I had my surgery, and I was heavily sedated with drugs. But no excuse.
Anyhow, I went off the parable, rom two weeks ago from Luke 12. (By the way, anyone remember it?) It was the parable about the rich farmer who kept building more barns to store his wealth. But then that night his very life was demanded of him. He lost out because he wasn’t willing to adapt his focus from storing up wealth to the things that matter to God.
So, whether you’re young or older, we continually need to adapt if we’re going to survive in life. The rich farmer who built more barns wasn’t willing to adapt his focus and so lost out. But we can do it differently, we can learn to adapt. The Sunset Fest team knows how to adapt. If it had rained, they, were ready to adapt to plan B. And so, for us, we adapt with our plan B.
So, how is your life going these days? What challenges are you having to adapt to? What letting go is that asking of you? In all of that, the challenge is to adapt in a way that aligns our lives with what matters to God.
Darwin’s theory on survival of the fittest is interesting. But we have something even more interesting. We call on the strength of God’s Spirit to help us to adapt as we need to. It’s the survival tactic God gives us when faced with adversity. And it is adversity that can make us into the person God calls us to be today.