Ordinary Time Year c - Third Week

The letter to the Corinthians, the second reading this weekend, expresses very clearly our normal human experience: I do not have all of the gifts of faith but when I relate with others, when we share our gifts and talents together we form a certain kind of wholeness. This is so important to remember today, when there are pressures to see ourselves as individuals who merely exist within a society…   St Paul calls us to a vision of Christ’s good news which sees us as integrally and essentially united in such a way that we are one body… and not just any old body… one body IN christ…….    (as john’s gospel says elsewhere, Christ is in us, and we are in Christ as Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in the son… perfect communion… perfect unity………  one body.... one heart……(adapted from homily from Christ in the Desert Monastry website).

 

In the gospel today we hear probably the greatest, most dramatic and stunning of all hoimilies ever given……  it was Jesus inaugural speech…….   here…..    only just dawning on the people…   was god’s messiah… the anointed one, the Christ…… Jesus….  God’s beloved son……    about to tell people what he was here for, what his prorities would be and what he was going to do…………

 

one commentary asks a very good question at this point…….    what might YOU have expected from God’s first speech ….. and what surprises you about what God’s first speech, in Jesus’ words, actually says…..

 

For myself…..    I suppose I might have expected beforehand, what I suspect the people of jesus day were expecting,,,.. something like John the Baptist’s preaching…..   intense, passionate, an indictment on the many injustices and wrongs that the world has wrought… a calling to order…. a reckoning perhaps……..  

 

what is most surprising.. and it really shouldn’t be, but it is a reminder of just how much humans can underestimate God’s ways……  it is filled with the most moving graciousness, freshness,  hope,  lightness, forgiveness…….    no harshness…. no condemnation……..    a declaration of good news for the poor…….    for people who are experiencing in their loves enmeshment  and imprisonment in some way…..   freedom…….   for …. those who had lost their way, and lost their sense of direction and clarity…….. a return to vision… a re-direction………for for those who had done wrong…. who were outcasts and sinners…….    forgiveness…….   burdens lifted…..    debts cancelled….   guilt and “beholdenness” erased…..………..   and for all…. a time of God’s favour………..…. Amazing… unexpected….. better than we could have imagined……..   

 

the other stunning thing is how Jesus takes a well know text and fires one final shot hope that floors them all…….  this is not just some old text… it is being brought to fulfillment right here, right now… as I speak……… 

 

and of course….. its not just Jesus’ words…..  his actions, his life confirm the truth of what he has just announced…. he not only read this passage out, he then immediately began practicsing what he preached….. and doing what he said…….. and it brought hope to the world…. joy to many…. and sadly hatred out from those who felt threatened and undermined by what Jesus had come to foster….

 

 The readings this weekend show examples of great preachers, who are excellent because they practise what they preach… they live their message…..   there are many people who, have never preached a word in public..  but their whole lives are an inspiration……  their lives, their actions and their whole way of being and relating in the world is a great wordless homily…. I think not only of the holy women and men throughout history, but also the everyday people who have inspired us in our daily lives…..   their lives are an excellent homily in action…….   and as such deeply inspiring and persuasive…. 

 

What then do we do…. we don’t always live up to the standards of these inspiring holy women and men, when we, at times, all fall short of the ‘fullness of the good news of Jesus’  by not always living as we proclaim……     there is an interesting quote by a 7^th Century ascetical writer…. in the famous book “The Ladder of Divine Descent”   “If some are still dominated by their former bad habits, and yet are still able to teach and inspire by mere words, let them teach and inspire with words still…..For, perhaps, being put to shame by their own words, challenged by how their actions are falling short of their words, they will eventually begin to practice what they teach.”    This is a refreshing and interesting new angle on the (at times) high and mighty angle that one usually takes on demanding we be consistent in word and action… naturally we all strive and are challenged to live out the faith we proclaim, to have our actions match our words, the words of Jesus good news…. but we also acknowledge that none of us is perfect, but here still there is hope………. (taken from 365 days with the Lord, 2007).

 

let us allow Jesus words, his good news, his invitation into a new and heroic way of living draw us deeper into the way of living that matches these words……    and if we look inside our lives and see ourselves falling short in this aspect of the Word or that, Jesus invites us to not lose hope, but to continue to proclaim his word, allowing his word to draw any gaps or inconsistencies ever smaller until, with God’s grace, there is little or no inconsistency…… This of course, is a journey of a lifetime, but in faith, we allow Jesus to take us along this unfamiliar path.       

 

And again, on this Sunday, we give praise to Jesus, our first and greatest teacher and preacher, whose gracious words matched so perfectly with his life and his actions… and whose words continue to be fulfilled in 2007 in our hearing.

 

Epiphany

On this feast of the Epiphany, we celebrate that God’s glory has been reveled to all the nations….  not just the chosen people of Israel but people from every corner of the earth…  of every nation and race…..    generations of people….God’s revelation, God’s invitation is for all people of all times and places….

 

Saint Paul puts it so nicely….   “god had a secret plan…  formed before all ages… and that plan is now revealed and it is this…..’ in Christ Jesus, the Gentiles, people from other religious and cultural backgrounds and nations, are now CO-HEIRS with the Chosen people of Israel, members of one and the same body….  sharers in the promise of God, through the proclamation of the good news…” 

 

Are we becoming one human family, (one commentary (365 Days with the Lord) asks rather relevantly)?    hard to answer….   in some ways, yes., technology, communication, transport, aid to needy nations, multinationals, globalization (which means so much – good and bad)   we are part of something much bigger than the local…. and yet.. in other areas….    nations breaking up into factions, social, ethnic groups, wars, strife…… poverty and starvation in poor developing nations……    the jury is out on how far God’s dream for the world is being fulfilled, so far… but it is not for want of God’s desire, God’s work, God’s calling…..

 

I was given this poem to read the other day….  and it is so very topical to this feast….  it’s the poem by TS eliot….  entitled the “journey of the Magi”…. the commentary says of this poem, but the famous writer, best known perhaps for his poems which formed the inspiration for the musical by Andrew Llyody webber, Cats,  but the commentary says …..  This poem is not one of Eliots most famous….  but it is a very good example of plain and direct language… and very well illustrates the complex and mixed emotions and issues going on for the author prior to his conversion to Christianity …….(“80 Great Poems, From Chaucer to Now”   Geoff Page. UNSW PRESS. Sydney, 2006).

 

in this poem, the Journey of the Magi, he writes..

 

T. S. Eliot's "Journey of The Magi"

 

'A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.'

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

 

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

…………………………..And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

 

…..Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

 

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: “were we led all that way for

Birth or Death?” There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But, had thought they were different;

this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death,// our death. //

We returned to our places,// these Kingdoms, //

But no longer at ease here,// in the old dispensation, //

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

   

This poet, Eliot, captures something about the journey of the wise men… it is our journey… its out journey of life… its our religious pilgrimage through life….  its our journey to conversion and beyond…..

 

our journey of faith is not an easy one……    it is filled with challenges and obstacles….. and how many faith journeys have we heard where the critical, negative voices, the voices of doom, the critics, the people who make fun of the direction another needs to take……..     need to be ignored, endured….   moved beyond……….

 

the journey to conversion, the complete commitment of heart and head to Jesus good news..  is a real odyssey… like the journey of the Magi…….   it is like a death…. and a rising to new life…… and we, like the Magi, return to where we came, but by a new way…(in the bible…  a change of path symbolizes conversion……     and how can .. and everything looks different, because jesus invites us to see it all though his eyes.. the eyes of the good news.. the lense of care for those most in need….. ..with the vision for inclusion of all…… how true it turns out to be in every sense…. “behtlehem…   by no means the least of all the cities…..  “like bethlehem….  at first glance.. seemingly slight and insignificant…   lesser…..  yet…  here is Jesus….    humble, vulnerable, poor…..   the poor and the forgotten, may appear insignificant in Jesus time and even our own time, but it is through them that the Lord is coming.”   (from Gustavo Gutierezz, Sharing the word through the Liturgical year).  The Magi realized this and it changed everything.