4th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle C 21-22
FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19 | 1 Corinthians 12:31—13:13 | Luke 4:21-30
Grant us, Lord our God, that we may honor you with all our mind and love everyone in truth of heart. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
The beautiful thing about this opening prayer I just prayed is the way it focuses on two very, very essential things that we are called to do, and one of the things we are called to do, first and foremost, is to be reflective, to live a reflective life, to not just allow things to be what they are on the surface but to take some time to look deeply into what is going on in the world around us, in ourselves, in the people that we love. Pay attention. Pay attention.
It was about 11 years ago that I stepped away from my active ministry. I’d been at it for a very long time, over 40 years, and I remember those years were years of wonderfully — they were wonderfully filled with memories and events and celebrations and struggles with my own self and with the work that I had before me, but there was something about that time where I was moving so quickly from one thing to another to another to another. And there was just one sort of focus I had in my head, and that was, “How can I take care of this thing right now that’s before me?” And that may be like your life, some of us that are still so caught up in things that are happening, and there’s nothing — and we have to be in a sense. But the wisdom that we’re called to have, the wisdom that’s found in this opening prayer, when it says so simply that there are two things that we need to do, to honor God and to love with our hearts, and that seems so very simple and so very easy. But it’s to ask ourselves at times to reflect on who God is and what’s going on in the world and how do we imagine God being some force in the world that we need to understand and be in touch with. How do understand what it means to love each other? What’s our responsibility to each other? Those are things that are not easy questions, and unless we sit with them and reflect on them, we can’t develop the spiritual life that is our inheritance. So we start the reflection on this set of readings with that understanding. There are two very simple things. Who is God, and what are we to do in this world in relationship to our brothers and sisters?
And the first reading is so beautiful, from Jeremiah, because it starts off with a phrase that is so wonderful to ponder. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I dedicated you. I appointed you to the role, to the task that I want you to have.” And this is directed to a prophet, and prophets seem to be those unique people that God calls to be his voice. But we have to understand there’s a prophetic role that every believer, every human being carries by their very human nature. We are proclaiming what we believe and how we see the world without ever having to use a word about describing it, our very actions. Actions make clear to another person who we are and what we see our role in this world to be. If we’re filled with anxiety, if we’re filled with worry, it’s pretty clear that we don’t believe in a God who is there to take care of us and protect us. If we’re constantly competing with each other, if we’re threatened by each other’s successes or take pride in being better than someone else, we’re really not loving like we should. So these are the two things that I think we are, again, focusing on. So the first reading gives us Jeremiah, and he’s basically saying unless we look at this God for who he is, we’ll miss one very essential role that he has, and that’s to make us a pillar of iron, a wall of brass to be able to endure anything that comes to us.
I don't know if you’re like me, but most of the time, when I get overwhelmed, like I feel like I am during this pandemic at times, confused as to what it is, what I should do to protect myself, how I should do that, whether I’ll get it or not — and the truth is, last Christmas I did get it, but I had no symptoms, because I’d been vaccinated and boosted, but whatever. The point is, when those moments come, do I believe in my heart that I have this strength inside of me that is divine. And that begins with a reflection on what is divinity, and if divinity isn’t for you some kind of sense of God’s indwelling presence — he lives inside of you. That’s the whole message of Jesus. Jesus is the incarnation of God in human beings, and Jesus remained mysteriously a fully human being and a fully divine figure in the world. And that is our destiny, to live in divinity, and if you try to say, “Well, what does that mean?” Then what you need to do again is to reflect on what does it mean that God dwells in me, and where does he dwell. He dwells in our hearts, and so that opening prayer, the truth of the heart, the reality of God living inside of you, guiding you, directing you, being the strength you need — and if you look for signs of that, if you look for them, that’s not where you start. You start with the conviction that it’s true. Why? Because the story, the salvation history story is all about that one mysterious union of divinity and humanity. So one of the ways in which we imagine this divinity inside of us is the ability that it gives us to withstand that which might throw us into darkness and depression. And it was never fully there until Jesus, until that mysterious thing called salvation, God in Jesus saving the world from sin and from darkness.
So we see the image in this first reading, that we need to look very carefully at who God is and what he’s doing within us, and it’s about giving us strength, a strength that is then empowering us. And one would think that one would want that. “Gosh, I would love to have this strength inside of me, doing what I long to do on my own but I can’t.” If you look at this gospel passage, which is fascinating, about Jesus going back to his hometown as a prophet, as one who carries this message in his very being that divinity now dwells in human beings, and he proclaims it to his friends and his family in his hometown — and his reputation there might have been, as many say, not so perfect. He wasn’t the perfect man in the image of the people in the village, because they knew about this marriage thing with his parents. It’s pretty clear that they believe that Jesus might be illegitimate and born out of wedlock, and if that were the case, of course, that would mean that he was the outcast. So let’s just imagine, if not an outcast, he was just one of the ordinary people. And he stands up in the synagogue, but he had been — that’s something he did. It wasn’t like he was a layman, just got up and started talking at the microphone, and they say, “Who is this guy?” No, he had done this many times, stood up and taught, but his message, his message was so astounding and so amazing that it, even though it sound — the way he said it and the beauty of the way he put things was so obvious that he was an extraordinary teacher and preacher. And yet they heard something very, very, very different, and that was the part of them that felt judged, I believe, because what Jesus was reading from was the prophet Isaiah. Last week we heard that reading, and basically what he was saying was, “Look, I’m here, because you don’t really see that much. You need to see more, so I’ve come to open your eyes.” And he’s also said, “Many of you are living in darkness, a darkness of self-centeredness, a darkness of using people, a darkness of sin, whatever, or depression. I’ve come to free you from that.” So here’s a buddy that they grew up with coming in to say, “I’m the one that is going to be the voice of God, and I am going to open your eyes and help you to see things and help you to be aware of your faults. And I’m there for you.” And all of a sudden, they took it in the wrong way. I think they took it as here’s an ordinary person who has his own faults and his own darkness, and he’s telling us that we need help and that we’re dark. And they were enraged, and I thought to myself, “What is it in someone that is that visceral in their response to being told they need help?” It’s a person living in a world of control and of fear and of hidden shame and of repressed anger, and it was triggered in that moment. And instead of saying, “I don’t really think this guy has too much to say. He’s too ordinary, and let’s just walk away,” no, they wanted to kill him. They wanted to kill him. The message that you are not enough on your own can trigger in a human being an action. If they are frightened that that is true and they’re living as if they can handle everything on their own and they’re very autonomous and don’t think they need anyone’s help, you’re going to get a reaction like that. And so what is that saying to us? The importance of being in union with your humanity. It’s natural not to see. It’s natural not to be aware of the darkness that’s in you and not aware of the help that God longs to give you. And when someone points it out, you should say, “My God, you’re right. Help me. Show me.”
And then the middle reading is so beautiful. It says, “Okay, you want to know what it is that I’ve come —” Jesus is saying, “If you want to know what I’m coming to do is I’m asking you not so much to be judged, because I’m going to do something for you where I’m going to forgive you of all your sins.” But you haven’t — you can’t — he couldn’t fully say that in that first homily in the synagogue in his hometown, but the point is, that I want to make, is that the thing that God has come to say in Jesus is not a condemning voice but rather an encouraging voice that says, “There’s one core thing you need to do beyond honoring me, God the Father, for giving you a destiny, for guiding you and making you exactly who you are and placing you in the world exactly when you need to be there. And the only thing I want you to do for me is ask me to help you, but don’t ask so much for spectacular gifts and powers and to be able to give the perfect homily on a Sunday morning.” I’m kidding. It’s not to empower us to be great, but the beauty of this message is to empower you to treat each other with dignity and with an intention. And the intention is, “I have been loved. I have been given something from God that gives me, for the first time, insight, awareness. I feel safe, because I have his strength inside of me. I feel empowered, because he’s giving me the ability to do the essential thing, which is to be there for my brothers and sisters. I have all that.” And so that’s this incredible invitation in the part of this beautiful passage. It’s probably one of the most famous passages of St. Paul when he’s saying, “Look, don’t strive to be extraordinary. Don’t strive to be better than your brothers and sisters in anything, much less the spiritual world, but do this: pay attention to the simplest of things, love.” Love is the essential core of what it means to carry divinity through you. If you have it inside of you, it passes through you to another person, and it’s not going to be through healing them of cancer or doing — giving them some insight that they look at you and say, “You’re the smartest, most wonderful person in the world.” No, it’s going to come from the ordinariness of being in their presence with an intention flowing out of your heart that says, “You are valuable. You are loved. You are beautiful. I want to be there for you.” And that’s something that, when you begin to feel it and do it, it is so satisfying. And when you think, “Well, what am I being strengthened to do? How am I going to see God’s strength working through me? I want to do something spectacular so that everybody says, ‘Oh my God, God is real. He did this miracle.’” No, God is real in people’s lives, because the people that are claiming to be his followers, knowing him, realizing he’s inside of you, are a constant flow of energy and light that lifts us out of darkness, a light that gives us a sense of our value. What greater gift could we have? It’s so simple, because it’s a mindset that, “I’m here to treat everyone as I would like to be treated.” Is that that hard to do when you think about it? How many people will tell you about customer service and somebody that treats them badly and how offensive it is? And yet we do that to other people without even realizing it. So the key and the heart of this whole thing is love.
Father, your strength is so beyond ours. It’s hard for us to imagine that you would share your strength with us, but that’s your will. That’s your desire, to dwell in our hearts and empower us to be who you want to be in the lives of the people in our circle, our family, our friends. So bless us with a conviction of faith in that gift so that our hearts are never frightened or never struggling to find something that gives us a sense of value. We have a value in being the most simple, loving, ordinary people. So give us that strength. Give us that joy. Give us that peace. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.