THE LORD OF THE SABBATH

Homily for Sept. 5^th, 2020: Luke 6:1-5.

          “Remember to keep holy the sabbath day,” is the third of the Ten Commandments. We find them twice in the Old Testament: in the 20^th chapter of Exodus, and in the 5^th chapter of Deuteronomy. Both versions say that we keep the sabbath holy by refraining from work. Exodus says that the sabbath rest commemorates God resting on the seventh day after creating the world and everything in it in six days. Deuteronomy doesn’t mention God resting; but it spells out in greater detail what Exodus says more briefly: that the sabbath rest is for all, domestic animals as well as humans, masters and slaves alike: “for you were once slaves in Egypt.”

          By Jesus’ day there was an enormous collection of rabbinical interpretation of this commandment, distinguishing between forms of work that were lawful on the sabbath, and those which were unlawful. The controversy continues in Judaism today. Orthodox Jews walk to the synagogue because they consider it unlawful to drive a car on the sabbath. Reform Jews reject this rigorism.      

          In today’s gospel reading some rigorists criticize Jesus’ disciples for picking heads of grain on the Sabbath, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Jesus appeals to a precedent in the Jewish Scriptures, when David took bread offered to God, and which only Jewish priests might eat, and both eating it himself and offering it to his companions. The precedent was weak: David had not violated the sabbath rest, though what he had done was illegal according to the law.  

          Crucial is the final sentence of our reading: “The Son of Man [a title for Jesus himself] is lord of the sabbath.” Jesus never abrogated any of God’s laws. But he made charity the highest law of all. That is why he healed on the sabbath, for instance. And that is why Pope Francis, celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper in a prison on the first Holy Thursday after his election disregarded the liturgical law which says that only the feet of baptized men should be washed, in order to wash also the feet of some Muslim women. The highest law of all is charity.

GOD'S SERVANTS AND STEWARDS

Homily for Sept. 4^th, 2016: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5.

          “People should regard us,” Paul writes in our first reading, “as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” Living as servants and stewards is fundamental in Holy Scripture. We find it already in the second creation tale in Genesis, chapter two. The man whom God places in Eden is not its owner. The garden belongs to God. God places Adam in the garden “to till it and care for it.”  He is God’s agent, his steward, to tend the garden on behalf of its creator and owner. As long as Adam obeys the creator’s laws, he enjoys the garden’s abundant fruits. When he breaks God’s law, he is expelled from Eden – a symbol of the ordered, beautiful world of God’s making. In terms simple enough for a child to understand, the Genesis creation tale proclaims what the modern ecology movement has rediscovered: that there is a sacred order in nature. When we respect nature’s laws, we prosper. When we violate the natural order, we pay a price. We are creation’s stewards, not its owners, accountable to God, our creator.

          And we are stewards of all God’s gifts: our time, our talents, and treasure – the money and other possessions we have. These are gifts entrusted to us by God, for a limited time. One day we shall have to give an account to God of how we have used his gifts. Crucial to the right use of these gifts is gratitude to their giver, the Lord God. 

          Hebrew religion taught the offering of firstfruits.  The Jewish farmer and shepherd offered God the first fruits of field and flock, out of gratitude, in recognition that everything comes ultimately from God. Jesus, who learned this practice in childhood from his mother, from St. Joseph, and in the synagogue school at Nazareth, would be shocked to find many of his present-day followers offering God not the firstfruits but leavings: what is left over after they have provided themselves and their loved ones not only with necessities, and often with many luxuries besides.

          Show me someone who is deeply happy, and I’ll show you someone who puts God first -- in all areas of life: who gives the Lord God the first claim on his or her time, his or her talents (which means the skills and abilities we have developed by using the gifts God has given us). Such a person also puts God first financially, by giving Him not a tip but the first claim on his or her money and other possessions. There are such people here in our parish – and in every parish the world over. In a very special way, indeed in the best possible way, they are expressing their gratitude to God for all his bounty. And if a long life has taught me anything, it is this. Grateful people are happy people: no exceptions!

"PUT OUT INTO DEEP WATER."

“Homily for Sept. 3^rd, 2020: Luke 5:1-11.

After a discouraging night of toil on the lake, the net coming back empty time after time, until Peter and his companions were bone weary, Jesus tells Peter to try again in broad daylight. Peter knew that would be an exercise in futility: “Master, we have worked all night, and taken nothing.” But then, perhaps just to humor the Lord, Peter adds: “But at your command I will lower the nets.” Peter’s willingness to do the unthinkable enables him to experience the impossible. No sooner have they started to pull in the net, than they feel it heavy with fish.

Throwing himself at the feet of Jesus, with the fish flopping all around him in the boat, Peter can only blurt out: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” To which Jesus responds with words of reassurance: “Do not be afraid: from now on you will be catching men.” In that moment, Peter’s life is changed. “They brought their boats to shore,” Luke tells us, “they left everything and followed [Jesus].” Peter never forgot it.

“Put out into the deep water,” the Lord says to Peter. He is saying the same to each one of us right now. Do not abandon the quest, though it seems fruitless. Leave the shallow waters near shore. Forsake what is familiar and secure for the challenge of the unknown deep. Dare, like Peter, to do the unthinkable. Then, like him, you too will experience the impossible. 

                   As we travel life’s way, with all its twistings and turnings, its many small achievements and frequent defeats, we who in baptism have become sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ should be sharpening our spiritual vision. For it is only with the eyes of faith that we can perceive the unseen, spiritual world all round us: beneath, behind, above this world of sense and time. Faith assures us that God is watching over us always, in good times and in bad. The same Lord who challenged Peter, devastated by failure at the one thing he thought he knew something about – fishing -- to “put out into deep water.”

Glimpsing this mighty God, our loving heavenly Father, with the eyes of faith, we too join -- as in a moment we shall -- in the angels’ song: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!  All the earth is filled with his glory!”   

 

"HE WENT TO A DESERTED PLACE."

Homily for Sept. 2^nd, 2020: Luke 4:38-44.

          In Jesus’ world illness of various kinds was due, people thought, to possession by demons. Today’s gospel portrays Jesus as one who has power over these supernatural forces of evil. He “rebukes” them.  

Jesus too comes from the supernatural world. As God’s Son, however, Jesus has power over the evil forces in that world. That is why Luke, the gospel writer, tells us that Jesus “rebukes” the supernatural forces of evil. He rebukes the life-threatening fever which has laid Peter’s mother-in-law low. And he rebukes the demons in the many people who are brought to him for healing. Luke’s language shows that he is describing what we today call “exorcisms.” Freed from demonic possession, these people are healed at once. There is no period of convalescence. Peter’s mother-in-law, we heard, “got up immediately and waited on them.” Her healing helps explain Peter’s willingness, reported in the next chapter of Luke’s gospel, immediately to leave his work as a fisherman in order to follow Jesus.

          The demons leave the other people whom Jesus heals, shouting, “You are the Son of God.” Unlike the many who witnessed Jesus’ healing and refused to believe in him, these evil inhabitants of the supernatural world recognize Jesus as a fellow inhabitant of that world – though unlike them a good one. Jesus rebukes them and does not allow them to speak, we heard, “because they knew he was the Christ”: the long-awaited anointed servant and Son of God. Jesus did not want to acquire the reputation of a sensational wonder-worker. He was that, but he was so much more.

          Especially significant is the information that at daybreak, “Jesus went to a deserted place.” Why? He needed to be alone with his heavenly Father. If Jesus, whose inner resources were incomparably greater than ours, needed those times alone with the Lord, we are fools, and guilty fools, if we think we can make it in reliance on our own resources alone. That’s why we are here. To receive all the goodness, love, purity, and power of Jesus – our elder brother, our lover, and our best friend; but also, our divine savior and redeemer. And friends, when we have Him, we have everything. 

"THEY WERE ASTONISHED AT HIS TEACHING."

Homily for September 1^st, 2020: Luke 4:31-37.

          “Jesus taught them on the Sabbath,” we heard in the gospel, “and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority.” And a few verses later Luke, the gospel writer, tells us that following a dramatic healing, “they were all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.’”

          The people who hear Jesus realize that he speaks “with authority.” What does that mean? It means that he spoke differently from the other religious teachers they were accustomed to hearing. Those teachers interpreted God’s law. Jesus spoke not as an interpreter of God’s law, but as the law-giver. Read the last part of chapter 5 in Matthew’s gospel, for instance, and you will find Jesus citing one Commandment after another, and then saying: “But I say unto you.” After citing the Commandment which prohibits murder, for instance, Jesus says that it applies not only to killing another, but even to the emotion which leads to killing: anger (cf. Mt. 5:21-23). Citing the Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” Jesus says that it applies even to lustful thoughts. (Mt. 5:27f.)

          The people who hear Jesus are also amazed that he has power to heal people with a mere word. The man whom Jesus heals in today’s gospel is possessed, Luke tells us, “with the spirit of an unclean demon.” In a pre-scientific age without blood tests, microscopes, or X-rays, that was the normal way to explain illness. The demon throws the man down and at Jesus’ word comes out of him, “without doing him any harm.”

          Jesus still speaks to us today: in Holy Scripture, in the teaching of his divinely commissioned Church, and in the still, small voice of conscience. His word still has power to convict people of sin, changing their lives, and setting them on the right path – to Him. When people pray to Him and listen to his words, there are still miraculous healings which no doctor can explain.

“Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus says, “my words will never pass away” (Mt. 24:35 NEB). How better could we respond than with the familiar prayer: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

"ALL SPOKE HIGHLY OF HIM,"

Homily for August 31^st, 2020: Luke 4:16-30.

          “All spoke highly of him,” after Jesus reads in the synagogue from the prophet Isaiah and proclaims the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that God would send someone to comfort, heal, and liberate people. Only a few verses later, however, the same people who were “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth” are ready to hurl Jesus headlong from the brow of the hill on which Jesus’ home town, Nazareth, was built. What’s going on here? 

          The “year acceptable to the Lord” which Jesus says he was sent to proclaim is reminiscent of the jubilee years, celebrated by Jews in Jesus’ day every half-century. During a jubilee year the fields lay fallow, people returned to their homes, debts were forgiven, and slaves set free. Jubilee years also reminded people that God did not reserve his blessings for those he had called to be especially his own. God loves and blesses all people.

Jesus gives his Jewish hearers two examples of this universal love. During a prolonged famine, Jesus reminds them, God sent our great prophet Elijah not to a member of our own people, but to a Gentile widow living outside Israel. And Elijah’s successor, Elisha, never cured any lepers among our own people, only the Gentile Naaman, from Syria. Those were the words that changed the people’s admiration for Jesus to resentful anger. 

Within weeks of his election Pope Francis caused similar outrage in some quarters by saying, during his homily at a daily Mass: “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘But Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! Christ died for all, even for atheists.”

          He was repeating, in more colloquial language, the teaching of the Second Council: “Those also can attain salvation who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (LG 16).

          Being a member of God’s holy Catholic Church is a great privilege and a blessing. But it does not guarantee us a first-class ticket to heaven.