The reading from the Book of Nehemiah describes a somewhat odd scene. Just about the entire Israelite nation had just spent a morning—apparently with their faces to the ground—listening to a recitation and interpretation of the book of God’s Law.

The cardinal sin of the homilist is to be boring. While we often labor to be right, or at least to be smart, we’re missing the mark if we’re not also or even moreso compelling. Really: The message can be long or short, catechetical or exegetical or storytelling, exhortatory or consoling, humorous or deeply moving, and it still qualifies as spreading the good news, but if we’re boring the assembly to tears, it can’t possibly be gospel we’re proclaiming.

"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.” That line, delivered by the character of Reverend Sykes in To Kill a Mockingbird, is one of the most moving passages in a novel filled with affecting moments.

We are baptized into Christ. Let us ask the Lord for forgiveness for when we have not kept our baptismal promises.

How about the teachers? In the Book of Nehemiah the priests scrambled to change the people’s reaction. Despite Saint Paul’s talk about the equal necessity of different roles, some are more equal than others; he even numbers them so we notice, and they were the teachers.

Humans are afflicted with the desire to make lists, to categorize, to arrange according to significance—and we especially like to assign importance, particularly among people.

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser. —Plato