Proclaiming God’s love and goodness

Homily for January 24, 2016 (3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, C)
Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 15; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21

This past week we celebrated the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Had he not been felled by an assassin’s bullet in 1968 and instead lived to the present, he would be 87 years old.  One of the hallmarks of Dr. King’s ministry was his powerful preaching; and another was his passionate and erudite writing.  Whether it was his stirring “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963; his testimony to an audience in Memphis shortly before he was killed that he had “been to the mountaintop” and had “seen the Promised Land” or his teaching, pleading and sometimes chastising Letter from Birmingham City Jail, Dr. King had a gift for moving hearts and minds.

I thought of Dr. King as I reflected on two others whose proclamations enthralled and also disturbed people: Ezra and Jesus.   When we encounter Ezra in our first reading, the people of Israel have returned to Jerusalem from decades of exile; and they have rebuilt the Temple, which had been razed by the Babylonians.  Ezra recites the law, the foundation of the people’s covenant with God, to a people who have rarely if ever heard it proclaimed to them.  How he does it—standing on a platform, raising the book so all can see it, reading plainly, and explaining it so all can understand—should remind us of the Liturgy of the Word and particularly the proclamation of the Gospel and homily at Mass.

While they’re excited to hear God’s word, the people who stand before Ezra are also deeply saddened.  As they measure their own lives against God’s mercy, grace and wisdom they find themselves coming up short.  They are “convicted by the word.”  Instead of allowing them to become overwhelmed with sadness, however, Ezra encourages the people to rejoice in God’s grace and to rely on it:  “Do not be sad, and do not weep….”

In our gospel passage from Luke 4, Jesus returns to a synagogue in his hometown and proclaims passages from the Book of Isaiah that speak of one anointed by the Spirit to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and to announce “a year acceptable to the Lord.”  While further details are not part of today’s gospel, we also know from reading the Bible that the people gathered initially receive his words with joy: “all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth” (Luke 4:22).

Their mood changes suddenly and violently, however, when Jesus reminds them that God’s plan for salvation and saving grace are not limited to Jews.  In fact, even their own history and scriptures demonstrate that God sometimes chooses gentiles like the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, as special objects of his mercy (cf. Luke 4:23-27).  This isn’t what they want to hear; for it calls for them to let go of their prejudices and the sense of privilege they feel as God’s chosen people.  Extolling Jesus only moments before, they now want to throw him down a hill!

Decades later, St. Paul would both affirm and confound the church at Corinth, which was dealing with its own struggles over status, factionalism and the privileging of certain ministries.  Using the familiar image of the body, Paul reminds them in 1 Corinthians 12 that such divisions and controversies are signs of a spiritual sickness.   The cure, Paul admonishes them, is in remembering that just as a human body “is one and has many members” so it is with the church. Each member is important, and sometimes the ones who are seem to be the least are the most essential and worthy of honor and care.  In the end, it is God who calls people to serve in various ways.  It is also God who gives us different gifts and talents, asking only that we use them for the good of his body and its members, as well as the world around us.  Dr. King, Ezra, Paul and Jesus proclaimed God’s love and goodness with their lives.  We are called to do the same, here and now. +