Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Church’s first scripture for today is from the Old Testament book of the prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah spoke the Lord’s word of truth in the dark days before the destruction of Jerusalem and fall of the Kingdom of David in 587 BC.

A true and authentic prophet does not proclaim his own truth or flatter people with words that confirm their biases or comfort them with pleasing unrealities. A true and authentic prophet speaks what God commands the prophet to speak and when God bids his prophets to speak it is usually because his people (that means us) have lost our way.

Jeremiah did precisely this and paid a heavy price.  In this respect, the prophet Jeremiah has for centuries been understood as a foreshadowing or anticipation of Christ, who, as the Gospel of John reminds us, “came to us and we did not know him”, meaning- we would not heed his words and change our lives.

Instead we lashed out at him, frustrated that he would not just tell us what we wanted to hear.

Prophecy has not faded into the past, but it is truly alive in the Church.  At our baptism we are all declared to be “priest, prophet and king”.  And this is not merely decorative language meant to flatter, but a statement about who Christ has made us to be.

Our role as prophets is to bear witness to Christ, not only by telling people the truth about who Christ is, but living in such a way that it is obvious to others that we not only know about Christ, but that we seek to live like him and to imitate him.

We do this out of love and because of our love for Christ we will suffer much- for wherever love is true there is a willingness to suffer and the intensity of our love brings with it the willingness to endure much for the sake of those whom we love.

Thus, the greatest suffering of a true prophet is not the pains of persecution, but the pain of a love that is unrequited and refused.  As Christian prophets, this is the risk that we must prepare ourselves for and the risk that we all must make.

The great Apostle Paul has much to say about love in today’s excerpt from his First Letter to the Corinthians.

This scripture passage, one of the most memorable in the New Testament is often proclaimed at weddings, and therefore might become associated with romance and sentimentality.

It is only romantic inasmuch as it speaks of the kind of love with which Christ loves us, love his Church, loves all those he draws to himself.

But sentimental?  It is nothing of the sort.

Try loving in the manner St. Paul describes and you will understand.

When a Christian speaks of love our reference is not a concept or idea or even a feeling, but instead love is for us Christians a revelation, it is a divine person who show us in himself what love actually is.

We all have ideas and desires about love, but these are always inadequate for us Christians, however helpful they might be. 

The thick description of love for us Christians is Christ himself and it is given to us not just in his teachings, but in what he reveals about himself.  In particular, what he reveals in his suffering and death.  One way to think about St. Paul’s testimony about love is that it is a commentary about Christ, a description of him.

St. Paul provides this testimony because far too often we prefer descriptions and definitions of love that although emotionally satisfying, are really just selfish and self-interested.  Consider then this beautiful text of St. Paul as a correction and an invitation to know what true love is, perhaps even for the first time.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus faces furious opposition.  Why?

Because he reminds the people that God loves the people that they deem unworthy of love- outsiders, outcasts, sinners. 

The opponents of the Lord Jesus, bound in self-imposed chains of moral indignation and self-righteousness have taken it upon themselves to tell others that they are less worthy of God then they are. 

Confronted with this truth, they become violent and the recipient of their violence is Christ, who is God himself!

Moral indignation and self-righteousness are signs of a grave spiritual crisis and throughout the New Testament, particularly in the Gospels, Christ presents himself as particularly attentive to these vices.

Rather than evading these vices in our own lives, we must confront the tendency of both in our own lives.  In other words, we are meant to come to terms with the opponents of the Lord Jesus as being none other than ourselves.

There is in each of a refusal of Christ, a refusal of love.  This “no” to Christ will subvert us if we are unwilling to contend with it and acknowledge its reality.

If we do not attend to it, our “no” to Christ it will manifest itself in subversive and destructive ways.  In the devout or pious, it appears in a religious outlook deformed by moral indignation and self-righteousness.  God’s love for those we deem unworthy will drive us to a frenzy and God’s mercy for sinners will be received by us as an attack on our own virtue.  

Christ can rescue us from this, but we must let him.  If not, we will ultimately turn on him and risk losing him.  We can avoid this, but not without conversion, not without change, not without repentance.

There is much at stake in our refusals of Christ. 

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 10th, 2020)

The Church presents as our first scripture for today an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Kings.  The Book of Kings is a historical book, a chronology of the many kings and queens of the Israelites and it details how over time the Kingdom of David came to an end.  There were many factors that contributed to the decline and fall to the Kingdom of David- political, economic, cultural, but we learn from the Book of Kings that the most important factor was idolatry, a worship of false gods that manifested itself in a preoccupation with wealth, pleasure, power and honors.

The singular pursuit of these worldly attainments, attending to them with a religious devotion that should have belonged properly to God, left the Israelites vulnerable to dark powers assaulting them from within and worldly powers assaulting them from without.  In the end these spiritual and worldly powers would bring the people to ruin and the Kingdom of David would come to an end.

It’s important to know this backstory to today’s first scripture or you will lose its plot.  Elijah, one of the greatest of the Israelite prophets, has fled into the wilderness.  He has just confronted and killed the priests of a false god named Baal and the rulers of the Israelites, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel are after him.

It is in the midst of his exile in the wilderness that the Lord God manifests his presence to the prophet, but he does so in a manner that the prophet does not expect- not in displays of violent upheaval, in the terrors of winds, earthquakes and in fire, but in what the scriptures describe as a still, small voice.

This is one of the most acute lessons in all the scriptures.  It is not, as some preachers have imagined, an appeal to find God in small things.  We must do this, but that is not the lesson of this scripture.

This scripture is a kind of judgement on the prophet and all those who in their pursuit of justice and righteousness would take up violent force so as to accomplish God’s purposes and destroy God’s enemies.

These efforts might lend to us a sense of satisfaction, but they escalate destruction, preventing genuine repentance and conversion.  In the wake of such violence the truly faithful come to discover, as Elijah did (with a heavy heart), that God did not speak in these raw displays of violent power, but he spoke in the still, small voice, that as a result of our violence in speech and in actions, we did not hear.

Today’s scripture does not take us to the end of this particular story but what happens next is significant- the Lord informs Elijah that his mission has come to an end.  The mission of Elijah was filled with signs and wonders and as he railed against the sins of the Israelites and those of the corrupt King and Queen all of Israel trembled.  But in the end, his efforts did not save the people from ruin and bring the King and Queen to repent.  And there is a hard lesson in this for all the righteous, for all those who burn with zeal to settle scores with their enemies and set a world gone wrong right.

The still, small voice, would eventually speak to the Israelites, indeed all people.  This is the voice of God in Christ and we can only hear his voice if we are attentive and willing to listen.  The still, small voice of God in Christ is at its most profound as he speaks to us from the cross.  Have we ever really listened?

The Gospel we listen to during Mass and in our devotional prayer speaks to us with the still, small voice of Christ as well.

His word is God’s Word and what he says to us is often drowned out by our expectations.  How many times have we wanted harsh words from God!  Threats of wrath and violence against our enemies!  How many times do we employ the Word of Lord as a weapon that serves our ego driven needs and worldly agendas.  How many times in our pronounced sense of self-justifying righteousness do we shout and scream at those who offend us, those who disagree with us?  Our words are words of condemnation and we care not if any truly repent and are saved.  The point is just to let them have it.

In all these instances the still, small voice of Christ judges us.

In our second scripture, an excerpt from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, the Apostle testifies that the Old and New Testaments are meant to stand together as one.  Both reveal God in Christ and we should not position them over against the other.

One of the great tasks of discipleship, a work through which we come to maturity as a disciple is to learn how to read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament.  The great story, the true story, of God’s revelation in Christ in embedded in both the Old and New Testament, but we must learn how that story unfolds and what it means for us and for the world.

Ignorance of the scriptures is truly ignorance of Christ and this ignorance is a great risk for we cannot truly love and serve Christ if we do not know him.  This is why God in Christ gives to us the Scriptures- so that we might know him, and in knowing him, come to love him, and in loving him learn to love and serve what he loves.

The Bible is not a literary art piece or a sacred object we dare not touch.  The Bible is our route of access to Christ.  We Christians must learn to know Christ through the Old and New Testaments.  Not doing so is a great risk, the risk of one day meeting the Lord and not having a clue as to who he really and truly is.

Finally, in his Gospel, the disciples of the Lord Jesus find themselves in peril.  They are in a boat that is being overcome by a storm at sea.  Christ comes to them in a display of his divine power- walking towards them on the waters of the storm- tossed sea!  They think he is a ghost!  Peter, seized with what must have appeared to the others as reckless abandon, leaves the boat and finds himself walking on the waves towards Christ- but he is afraid and he falters, finding himself overcome by the wind and the waves!  Christ saves him.

What does all this mean?

The boat is the Church which must always venture out into the world, a world that is tumultuous, overwhelming and frightening- like the sea. So often the world is against the Church like the storms and waves that threaten to overtake the boat of the disciples.

Too many of us Christian languish in fear, for we have reduced Christ to a ghost.  Despite the language of our profession of faith in him, we treat him like a phantom rather than a living, divine person.  There is no substance to him, no density, no reality- he is to too many Christians like a ghost.

Thus, when the Church ventures into storms our faith is shaken, we hunker down within the Church instead of doing what Peter did, venturing forth into the world with all its terrors.  But if our faith in Christ is faith in a ghost we will be overcome by fear and we will falter and fail.

Christ is not a ghost- he is the one whom the wind and seas obey- the Lord God, a living, divine person.  The hand he stretched out to Peter is a real hand, not the illusion of a phantom and his hand will save if we but take it and grasp it and hold on!

The great storm that afflicts the Church right now is not scandal or secularism but our own fear.  This fear in us generates a storm of chaos in the world and in us that paralyzes us.  At the heart of this storm of chaos is our lack of faith in Christ- a lack of faith that manifests itself in inaction, in defensiveness, and in fear.  It is a lack of faith that has happened because we no longer believe Christ is real.  We permit him the status of a ghost and the consequences of this infidelity manifest themselves in all the terrors that beset the Church and the world.

And while the storm rages, Christ still calls to us- take courage!  It is I!  Do not be afraid!

Fear is useless and only makes the storms worse.

Christians, it’s time to take his hand, get out of the boat.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (January 27th, 2019)

I have spoken repeatedly from this pulpit regarding the significance of the year 587 BC. This is the year when the once mighty Kingdom of David came to a horrific end and it seemed that the God of Israel had been utterly defeated and the Israelites were no more.

This year is a watershed date in the history of the Israelites, but also, it is the key to understanding, not only the Old Testament, but also the New Testament. Without knowledge or understanding of what happened in the year 587 BC we lose a critical reference point that enables us to interpret the Scriptures. In fact, without knowledge or understanding of 587 BC the Bible becomes opaque to us- what happened that terrible year is that important.

In 587 BC, the Babylonian Empire invaded the territories of the Israelites and laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. Once the Israelite defenses had been overcome, the ransacked the holy city. The royal family, the ancestors of King David, were killed. The last king, Zedekiah, was made to witness these executions, and was then blinded and taken as a captive by the Babylonians. The Temple built by Solomon as the house of God on earth was pillaged, desecrated and destroyed, with its sacred vessels hauled off to Babylon where they would be publically profaned for the amusement of the royal elites of Babylon. The walls of the city were torn down and the city was burned to the ground. The city’s inhabitants were enslaved and exiled. In the eyes of the world, the Israelites ceased to exist and the God of the Israelites was no more.

The terrors of 587 BC could not be forgotten. The scars of such horrors would ache for generations. The shattering of the Israelite’s faith was catastrophic. Had God been defeated? Were his promises empty? Did he care? Did he even exist?

This is the context from which prophets preach and from which arises the cry for a deliverer, a Messiah, one who would come with the power of God to restore what was lost, and bring about a new Kingdom, not of merely of man, but of God. The Israelites knew that only God could set things right and they longed for him to do precisely this. All this sets the stage for the revelation of God in Christ- as I said it is the privileged reference point, and without it, knowing and understanding the Scriptures, Old and New, becomes merely a literary exercise, rather than an illumination of God’s revelation.

Without knowing about and understanding 587 BC, our interpretation of the Scriptures turns into clichés and preaching into faith-based entertainment.

Today we heard proclaimed as our first scripture an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah the prophet spoke the Lord’s word of truth to the Israelites in the year 538 BC, the year that the Israelites finally returned to their ancestral lands after long years of suffering and exile. What they found there was mere ruins, the “land flowing with milk and honey” had become a desolate disappointment. The exultation that accompanied the end of exile was dampened by the harsh reality of rebuilding an entire civilization from the ground up.

In the midst of this, the priest, Ezra, comes forward and begins to teach. He proclaims and interprets the histories, the laws, the prophets of the Scriptures to the people and for many, this is the first time they learn who they are. From this proclamation and teaching a renewed sense of mission and purpose arises. The Israelites, knowing now who they are, who God has declared them to be, now know what they are supposed to do. It was with this revelation, that the exile of the Israelites began to come to an end.

And there is the lesson: knowing who you are, you know what to do.

Without knowing who we are as Christians we do not know what to do.

Knowledge of who we as Christians does not come from the ambient culture, or from intuitions or opinions we might have. It does not come simply from feelings or from our own ideas. Knowing who we are as Christians comes from the revelation of God in Christ, a revelation that seizes us, cuts into our hearts, tells us what needs to be done and often takes us where we don’t want to go.

We don’t make up the Christian faith for ourselves. Like the Israelites listening to Ezra the priest, we receive the Faith, and once having received it, we must decide what we will do. Will we accept it or reject it?

A Christian faith we make up for ourselves out of our ideas, feelings or opinions is easier for us to take, especially in a culture like ours, that believes that the best religion is the religion that we make up to suit our desires, our ideologies, and our preferences. But this is not a religion that comes from God and it is not a religion that will truly reveal who we are and what it is that God wants for us to do. Bereft of this true revelation and true religion, there will be no mission and no real purpose. The result will be that we will remain in an exile without end.

Our second scripture is an excerpt from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In this passage, the Apostle Paul insists we accept and understand that there is a dynamic differentiation of gifts in the Church, and these gifts are intended by God for the Church’s mission in the world. St. Paul was well aware how fractious we Christians often are, are how often we receive the gifts of the Church in a dark spirit of envy or we try to use the Church’s gifts as a means to leverage our ideologies and causes. These attitudes tear the Body of the Church apart and subvert the power of the gifts Christ imparts to his people.

Not all in the Church will have the same gifts, but all the gifts are necessary. The gifts we are given are not for our own benefit, but for the Church’s mission. Seeking out of envy or scheming or ideology to leverage gifts for a purpose other than the mission Christ gives us, makes the Church sick, and can even kill the Church.

Also, St. Paul identifies the Church in a way that should shock and provoke us- he calls the Church “Christ’s Body” and he means this literally, not figuratively. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world, the extension of his Incarnation in space and time. The Church is not our faith-based clubhouse, a religious themed corporation, a discussion club, or ethnic pageant. The Church is not an extension of our political and ideological concerns, something we use to promote our agendas and causes. The Church is Christ’s Body and as Christ’s Body his mission and purpose is extended into time through us. Simply put- the Church manifests knowledge of who we are when we know who Christ is, and knowing who Christ is, then we know what we are to do.

If we don’t know Christ, or if the Christ we know is merely a projection of our own ideas, feelings and opinions, then the mission and purpose of the Church will evade our understanding. If know who Christ is, we will know who we are. If we Christians know who we are in Christ, then we will know what Christ wants us to do.

Finally, we listened today to the opening of the Gospel of Luke and heard of Christ announcing the beginning of his mission, citing as the reference point of understanding a passage from the Old Testament Book of the prophet Isaiah.

This passage is meant to signal that God is acting in Christ to set a world gone wrong back right. God has entered history in Christ and has, to the utter and complete surprise of everyone, entered history as a man. God has accepted a human nature and now lives, in Christ, a real, human life. The purpose of this revelation can be referenced in the terrible events and aftermath of 587 BC, and all the great catastrophes that have engulfed humanity in sin and death and forced us into the exile of believing that God does not care or does not exist.

In Christ, God is with us, not just in some things, or in pleasant things, but in all the events and circumstances of life. God in Christ will speak to us, as Ezra the priest spoke to the Israelites, and from him (from God!) we will learn who we are and what we are to do, and through his life and presence, we will be given a mission and purpose for our lives. And from his life and presence, given to us even now in the Church, in his revelation, in his holy sacraments, we will discover that even in the midst of the challenges and sufferings of life, our long exile is now coming to an end.

 

Saturday of the Third Week of Advent (December 19th, 2015)

 

For many, the Bible is read and studied from its beginning in the Book of Genesis to the end with the Book of Revelation. God’s revelation is positioned historically and chronologically in a succession of events that occur in time beginning with the creation of the world with everything coming to its fulfillment with the end of the world. This method of reading and studying is not incorrect, but it can also be limiting and can often miss the peculiar and interesting way the Church reads and studies the Bible, which is not simply from beginning to end, but really, from the end backwards to the beginning, with the “end” not being, as some think, the destruction of the planet, but the revelation of God in Christ coming to its absolute fulfillment.

In order to understand the Bible one must have the means by which the Bible can be understood and this means is the means that God gives to us and the means is the revelation of God in Christ, and without this revelation of God in Christ in mind the Bible will not yield up its purpose or its meaning.

Thus it is knowing Christ that we come to know the Bible- it is the end of the Bible that makes sense of its beginning, and indeed, everything that is in between.

I know this might sound perplexing, but consider, for example, the manner in which the Church reads and interprets the Old Testament, which she considers, not just to be a history book which recounts events from long ago, but a kind of description of Christ and the Church.

The Church understands the Old Testament as presenting types and forms that help us to understand Christ and his Church. Today’s reading from the Old Testament is an example. The Church presents to us the story of Samson, the legendary hero, strongman and defender of the Israelites. The description of the circumstances of Samson’s birth are interesting and the story of his life that follows is one of the most memorable in the Bible, but its significance for the Church is that Samson prefigures or foreshadows a man integral to the revelation of God in Christ- John the Baptist.

In a sense, Samson prepares the way for John the Baptist as John would prepare the way for Christ.

Both Samson and John, consecrated to God from even before their birth, were men of strength and action who would live and die in opposition to the enemies of the Israelites. God created in Samson an outline and then in John he filled in that outline with all the details.

Thus the Church recalls the story of Samson, not just because it’s a compelling story, but also because it directs our attention to the story of John the Baptist, who directs our attention to Christ.

For the Christian, the Bible is not just an interesting historical and literary text of important cultural significance, it is the story of the Lord Jesus, a story that begins with creation, that is expressed in the story of the Israelites, and continues in the Church. All the great persons of the Bible- Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and all the great events described in the Bible, the creation, the exodus from Egypt, the story of the temple and the kingdom, are all parts of the story of the Lord Jesus and the Church recalls all this so that we can better understand him.

Christ who is revealed at the end of the Bible is the means by which to understand the beginning of the Bible and everything in between.

Many Christians don’t get this. Impatient to find meaning in the Bible that is first and foremost directly related to their own particular concerns, the Bible becomes tiresome and irrelevant. Sadly, they do not accept that in terms of the Bible, first and foremost, you must discover how the Bible is directly related to Christ, and then and only then, will you come to understand how what the Bible has to tell you about Christ is directly related to you.

The season of Advent is rapidly drawing to its conclusion. The prayers and scriptural readings of Advent have all in their own unique ways been about the Lord Jesus.  Christ desires a relationship with us, but this relationship will not be what Christ intends for it to be if we know little or nothing about him.

Advent is intended to prepare the faithful for the revelation of God in Christ, so that when Christ comes to us we will know him as he wants to be known through the means which he gives to us and the Bible is a privileged means that the Church has for coming to know Christ.

If we turn our attention away from ourselves and towards his revelation and come to know Christ as the fulfillment of the scriptures then we can know him as his disciples and he will know us as his friends.