Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 20th, 2019)

The Bible is literally a book of battles.

Conflict and war are a persistent preoccupation of the biblical authors and the inspired authors even go so far as to assert that God, who is an active agent in all of human affairs and history, also concerns himself with our violence. God is not only present in the temple, but also on the field of battle.

This upsets many of us and has upset many believers in the Biblical revelation for centuries. In fact, centuries ago, a Christian by the name of Marcion was so upset that he advocated that the warlike texts of the Bible be excised from the canon of Church’s scripture and that the God of these battles and wars be understood, not as the true God, but as a false god, a pretender, a mistake, a fraud.

Marcion’s insistence was identified by the Church as heresy, false teaching.

The conflict and violence of the Bible gesture towards the truth of the human condition. We might be more comfortable with stories that excise the hard facts of what it means to be human, leaving only that which idealizes us and provides comforting emotional reassurance, but while these kinds of stories might delight us, they are dealing in half-truths, and as such, are deceptive.

The Bible intends to tell the truth and its unflinching presentation of our conflicts and violence is the telling of our truth.

I say all this to you because the first scripture for today, an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Exodus presents a scene of conflict and violence- it is God’s revelation situated on the battlefield.

Moses, God’s chosen leader of the Israelites, presides over this battle, and the strength of his presence and charisma inspires those who fight to victory. Yet, as the strength of Moses falters, so also does the strength of the Israelites. And so Moses, God’s chosen one, is supported to the priest Aaron and the warlord Joshua. And thus, the victory of the Israelites is assured.

What does this mean?

Think of Moses as a symbol of the Church, a Church that battles all the time against all those dark powers in ourselves and in our world that place themselves in opposition to Christ. This battle is waged in our world, yes, but more importantly in ourselves.

In each of us there is a no to Christ, a preference to reject his presence and his power. This refusal (our refusal) is manifested in our opposition to do what he asks of us, a refusal to serve and honor his Lordship over our lives. Our stark confrontation against our refusals of Christ is the battle we all face. And the heat of that battle in all of us is lightning hot.

Within the heat of this battle we must be supported in our efforts or we will fail. Thus, we require the priests who give us the Sacraments and the saints who show us the right strategy. These are represented in today’s Scripture by Aaron and Joshua. Left on our own, the battle will be lost. Supported by the Sacraments and Saints, victory is made possible.

Remember, the battle here is not simply external- it is a battle within ourselves, in our desires, in our choices and in our decisions. The conflict happens because of our refusals of Christ. All else is a distraction. The field of battle external to ourselves is secondary to the conflict that rages within and the external battle is lost if we fail to accept this truth. If the Church is losing the external battle with a culture that holds us with contempt or indifference, it is because we Christians are failing to fight against the refusals of Christ in our own hearts and minds. We have made the Church weak through our refusals, our qualifications, our equivocations.

The great enemy is not just the world, or the flesh, or the devil- it is ourselves.

The enemy is our own refusals of Christ. The means toward victory have been given to us in the Sacraments and in the Saints, but will we call upon their power and accept their help? The answer to this question for far too many Christians is no. But what is your answer? Your own “yes” or “no” to Christ can turn the tide towards victory or towards defeat.

Our second scripture for today is an excerpt from St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy. In this text the apostle Paul insists that we look to the Bible, to the Scriptures for wisdom and that the wisdom that we receive from the Bible is not merely human insight, but it is the revelation of God. St. Paul further insists that this divine revelation, this holy wisdom from the Scriptures must be interpreted by the Church, and that our interest in the Bible must be “persistent, whether it is convenient or inconvenient”.

For most Catholics and for many Christians, their experience of the revelation of God in the Scriptures is limited to the liturgy, to a formal worship service. The experience of the Scriptures in this context is appropriate and good, but it is meant to be foundational, not the whole structure. What good is a foundation without walls and a roof? In other words, we should desire more and seek opportunities to receive the wisdom of God’s revelation in the Bible outside of Mass and worship. And further, within the Mass and worship we should want more than brevity and clichés in the preaching and teaching of the Church’s ministers. The Bible is not a children’s storybook and it places a demand on us to listen, to think, and to pray. If we expect the wisdom of God reduced to sound bites for our convenience, it is not the wisdom of God that we will receive.

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. One day we will all come face to face with Christ, and we all have to ask ourselves right now whether we will meet in him a stranger or a friend. Christ wants to be our friend, but for many Christians, this offer of friendship is refused. You cannot truly be friends with someone you do not know and the opportunity for getting to know Christ is there for you in Holy Scriptures.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus presents a parable to us, a story in which a woman’s persistence wins over an unjust judge so that he settles a case in her favor.

Many preachers present the meaning of this parable as the woman representing us in our persistent appeals and petitions to God and God as the judge.

This is one way of looking at the story, but another is to see the woman as God and ourselves as the unjust judge.

God in Christ is persistent in his overtures to us, unrelenting in his insistence that we accept the gifts he wants to offer. Most often he is met with our refusals, but even in the face of our refusals, he persists and his persistence is such that he can utterly wear us down until he gets what he wants.

This is reason for us to have hope. God can do for us what we cannot or will not do for ourselves. Our will is not the absolute obstacle we often make it out to be- our will is not more powerful than God. We often fall under the devilish delusions that our refusals of Christ are the final word. But ours is never the final word, the last word belongs to God in Christ. And God in Christ reveals his final word to us in the revelation of his cross.

God in Christ demonstrates that not even the cross or even death are insurmountable obstacles to his persistent willingness to love us and to save us. He will always keep trying and even run ahead of us into the horrific limits of godforsakeness so that he can get what he wants- our salvation. He will not coerce us to receive this gift, but he has the unlimited capacity to overcome our refusals through his persistent, unyielding, utterly relentless offer of grace.

 

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 18th, 2019)

The Church’s first scripture for today is an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of the Prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah spoke the Lord’s word of truth in the dark days that preceded the catastrophe of 587 BC.

Remember, it was in the year 587 BC that the last remnant of the once mighty Kingdom of David came to a tragic end. The armies of Babylon invaded the Israelite territories and sacked the city of Jerusalem, executed the royal family (the descendants of King David) desecrated the holy temple, enslaved the city’s inhabitants and leveled the city. Jerusalem was no more and in the eyes of the world the God of Israel had been defeated.

Jeremiah warned the Israelites of this impending tragedy and his words stung their egos and cut into their hearts. This was, Jeremiah testified, no accident of history, but the direct result of the Israelite’s indifference and opposition to God and the mission he had given his chosen people. While the elites of Israel scrambled to find some political solution to what was essentially a spiritual predicament, Jeremiah spoke the Lord’s word of truth.

Political solutions could not hold the inevitable at bay. The only hope for the Israelites was conversion, a change of hearts and minds, and a willingness to endure what was to come, understanding that stripped of all the worldliness they had valued, a new kind of Israel would emerge.

Jeremiah’s truth telling provoked opposition and today’s scripture describes the suffering that the prophet endured. Cast into a deep pit to die. Essentially buried alive, let him preach to the dark and speak his truth into his grave.

The mission of a prophet is one of formidable risk and this mission has passed into the Church. The teaching authority that the Lord Jesus has given to his Church, particularly to his Magisterium (the Holy Father and the Bishops in communion with him) is not merely to explicate doctrines, establish procedures or enact legislation, but to speak the truth of God. To remind us and the world that God is sovereign, he is the Lord, and his will for our lives is no small matter.

This prophetic mission will have consequences, engender opposition, not just from the world, but even from the baptized. The natural inclination of humanity is to hear what we want to hear, to be confirmed in our ideologies and prejudices, to be told that God is on our side. How often we use religion to justify our actions! We recoil when the Church tells us what we don’t want to hear!

It is inevitable that the Church, at times, will find itself with Jeremiah in the pit!

The ancient sages of the Church also saw in this particular scripture a foreshadowing of Christ, an anticipation of what he would accomplish.

Christ, like Jeremiah, speaks the truth, and is cast into a pit- in his case, it is the pit of death, and like Jeremiah, he is pulled out of the pit by the will of the king, not a worldly king, but God himself- who did not abandon him to the pit of death, but raised him up.

In this we Christians place our hope- Christ reveals in his descent into the pit of death that God will not abandon us, and that though we suffer, he remains with us and will draw us from death to a new kind of life.

This is the meaning and message of the Letter to the Hebrews (the Church’s second scripture).

In this scripture we are told that Christ endured suffering and death and did so that we “might not grow weary or lose heart”. The worldliness that opposed Christ will inevitably oppose those who follow him. Suffering and death will afflict us in this world. But Christian faith in not in worldliness and our hope is not in the world, but our faith is in God in Christ and our hope is in his passage into suffering and death on the cross.

It is in the cross that we see and understand what God is doing and what God will do for us.

Christian faith is at its heart, not just about ethics or social service. Nor is Christian faith merely an expression of culture or ethnicity. These things are important, but they are positioned by a revelation far greater and more important. They are positioned by a deep mysticism that is revealed in the cross of the Lord Jesus. It is only in this mysticism that the meaning and purpose of Christian faith delivers its light.

This deep mysticism is given to us in the Mass, in our worship, in the Blessed Sacrament. For in this Blessed Sacrament, we participate, not just in a ritual, but in cross of the Lord Jesus. What Christ revealed in his cross he reveals to us in the Mass. What Christ gives on the cross, he gives to us in the Mass.

It is for this reason the Mass is proclaimed by the Church to be the “source and summit of the Christian life” and the Eucharist is proclaimed to be, not just a symbol of Christ, but his very own and very real life and presence. It is in our participation in this deep mysticism that the meaning and purpose of our Christian faith is revealed.

Christ in his Gospel testifies that he has come to set the earth on fire! This seems a frightening prospect and we all know the destructive power of fire. Yet the fire Christ speaks of here is not just a force for destruction, but it is the passion that we know in this world as love or what the Church calls charity. This fire is the Holy Spirit, which is the love of God the Father for God the Son, a love that Christ gives to us and it is this love that expresses itself in the mission of Church.

The love of God in Christ inspires at times conflict and division because it compels us to love that which the world despises. The world holds before us as most valuable and most lovable, things like wealth, power, pleasure and honors. These are what we are supposed to love, and in contrast and contradiction to these worldly passions, the love of God in Christ insists that we “seek what is above” and this means that pursuit of wealth, power, pleasure and honors is not the priority for a Christian.

Instead our priority is love- it is charity. To live in imitation of Christ, offering our gifts, our talents, our resources, even our very lives, to love and serve what God loves- and doing this even if our efforts to love are refused or thwarted, or even if our willingness to love is exploited and refused.

The world struggles against the love that I have just described and so do we. Wealth, pleasure, power and honors seem more straightforward and rewarding, so we tend to love these, to be passionate in our pursuit of these things and make them the meaning and purpose of our existence. Our attachment to these things is such that it drives us to oppose Christ.

Or our love for these things is such that it means that we often try to give ourselves to Christ with a divided heart, our gift of self to him is half not whole. If only Christ would give us the wealth, pleasure, power and honors we deserve, then we will serve, only then will we follow.

Thus, the fire that Christ casts into us, into our world, is something we tend to reduce to a mere flicker, rather than flame, cooling embers rather than radiant heat.

The saints defy this cooling and allow themselves to burn hot with the love of God in Christ.

Christ’s desire for us is that we were all his saints, that we would be for a world grown cold a blazing fire of his love.