Fresh or frozen?

Bishop Scott Bullock
The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 7, 2025

In 1958, my father began a career with Chevrolet Motor Company in a then most prosperous Detroit. A career then considered with the guarantee of financial security for oneself and one’s family. Flush with profits, the company promised a share in its wealth with its very loyal workforce. What followed was his marriage to my mother in 1960, the arrival in quick succession of three beautiful children — especially that youngest! — the purchasing of a two-bedroom home on North Alexander Avenue in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, and a bright future ahead. But larger national and international events set our family on a much different course than could have been anticipated in these early years of the family.

At the end of July 1967, when that youngest son was just three years old, race riots broke out across Detroit.  Across five violent days, 43 persons were killed, over 1,000 were injured, 7,200 people were arrested after the National Guard called into the city, and more than 2,000 buildings were destroyed. Less than ten miles from the maelstrom, that three-year old watched with fear as men in the neighborhood walked the streets with shotguns, ready to protect their families from the quickly spreading chaos. In less than a year, our family joined what was later called “white flight” from Detroit, moving some 50 miles away into central Michigan, to begin a new seemingly more secure life.

Within five years, the stability of the family’s life was again challenged. In October of 1973, half a world away, a coalition of Arab nations led by Syria and Egypt, invaded Israeli-controlled lands on the Sinai Peninsula, igniting what later was called the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In punishment for the Western nations that supported Israel in this war, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) proclaimed an embargo of oil on these countries, causing oil prices to spike four times the pre-embargo cost and lasting for five painful months, leading to long-lines at American pumps and, more significantly, a general loss in confidence in the security of life. An epicenter of this shock was Detroit, whose prosperity was based on oil-dependent machines — we call them cars. Car sales plummeted, and Chevrolet had to quickly reassess its business plan. The company accelerated its downsizing, combining and closing of operations it could no longer sustain. Massive layoffs ensued and that security that had been an implicit promise to anyone who gave their life to the company no longer held. We were no longer an economically insular as a nation. We were connected to a most unsteady and uncertain world.

Just after the New Year of 1974, Dad was told that he would either transfer and relocate or he would lose his job and we moved to the East Coast of Delaware. Maybe such upheavals are not a part of your family history, but I suspect it would be the rare family that did not have some of this in its history. From the promise of security for so many that seemed de rigueur and the mid 20th century, now most realize that these promises were at best provisional. 

What does our faith have to say about these changes in life, small and large, that can leave us uncertain and even bewildered? Jesus has much to say about this in today’s Gospel. At first, he seems to be asking us to be careful planners, to ensure success and security of our life. Two quick parables roll off his tongue, each seeming to espouse careful long-range planning. First, he offers the example of a person building a tower, requiring the constructor of the plan to first calculate the cost and see if there is enough to begin the construction and then make a careful cost analysis before the building begins. Second, he offers the example of a king going off to battle, who makes a careful military analysis as to whether his ten thousand troops can oppose twenty in the enemy.

The message seems to be plan ahead to secure future success, right? Well, not so fast. For while Jesus does teach us the need for planning, he offers, as he always does, a planning that confounds human logic. In order to plan the course of one’s life, he teaches two essential principles to direct our decisions. He says, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” and “Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

In a nutshell, our security, our peace, our joy, will not rest in our carefully-laid plans! Instead, our life’s security comes from renouncing the false Gods of possessions and taking up the sacrificial love of the cross, following closely after Jesus’ pattern of a life of love. In this way, we avoid the trauma of the false security that our efforts and our possessions will always fail to deliver. 

Let’s be honest — when have our plans ever guaranteed security? At this stage in my life I can see that all my plans have never, ever once how things actually turned out. Ultimately, peace and security reside not in our plans or in our piled-up treasure, but instead by following Jesus’ path to eternal security — renouncing the false gods that are our things and instead laying down our lives in sacrificial love for others that joins us to God’s path, not of self-preservation, but rather sacrificial love that is the sure and secure way to full life.

On the merely human level, this seems like a scary path. But, Good News, we are not alone on the path. In his way of the cross, and not in our things, we’re provided that secure path which will never be wrested from the caring, protecting hands of our good God. Any temporary setbacks then find their place along this long vision of the eternal plans of a most merciful and loving God will never ultimately succeed. 

So, let us come again to him, lay down our plans, pick up his cross of love, and follow His sure way to the peace and security that this Eucharistic feast provides and foreshadows — abundant life and security in God and in God alone. Give us the faith, Lord, to be more and more ready to make your plans ours!