A Homily
2016.03.24 – (The Third
Sunday of Lent) C
First Reading – Exodus
3:1-8,13-15 ©
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm
102(103):1-4,6-8,11 ©
Second Reading – 1
Corinthians 10:1-6,10-12 ©
Gospel Acclamation – Matthew
4:17
The Gospel According to Luke
13:1-9 ©
(NJB)
Listen!
The rereading from today from the Book of Exodus presents a story of Moses.
It presents an image of God who would turn one nation against another, tribe
against tribe, family against family. It presents an image of God who prefers
one group over another making promises to them of conquest, and the intervention
of the almighty on behalf of that selected people.
This story depicts the punishment of the
people of Egypt for the sins of Pharaoh, who, if you read the story correctly
only did the things he did against the Israelites because God intervened and
hardened his heart, time and time again, God determined the course of action Pharaoh
would take, and then punished the entire nation for those deeds.
Be mindful.
These stories are not worthy of the sacred
text. They make the creator of the universe out to be a hack, a mean spirited
and capricious fool, a bully, a murderer, and a thief.
When
you read the sacred text remember this; God is not a king, God is not a lord.
God does not favor one group over another. God does not intervene in the
affairs of human beings. Remember this always.
Do
not fall into the pitfalls of the psalmist.
Give
thanks to God, the creator of the universe. Give thanks in the peace of God’s
blessing, the blessing of life, of freedom, of self-determination, and every
other aspect of our being that allows us to be persons.
God
gave us our personhood, it is a gift we are meant to cherish. The spirit of God
is reflected in our personhood, and in that reflection God is present fully.
God is present in us, and present in every other person we encounter, the
mighty and the meek, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.
Give
thanks to God and give thanks to those who do God’s work, to those who are
loving, to the peacemakers, bless them as you are able.
Bless
all of God’s children, as God does, love them all; the helpful and the harmful,
the just and the unjust.
Listen!
Be mindful of what the apostle says, like all
of the other disciples, he commonly allows his fear to blind him to the teachings
of Christ, faith and hope in the way Jesus preached.
Remember.
God, the creator of the universe, God loves
you. God loves all of us.
God does not lay traps for us to test our
faith. That is not the way. God does not visit suffering on one generation for
the purpose of teaching a lesson to another, as the apostle suggested. That
would be unjust.
God does not intervene in human affairs, as
such, we know that God did not guide the Israelites through the desert.
They found their own way, and they suffered terribly
on their journey. They did not suffer because they were are sinful people, they
suffered because life is hard. Many people died, many were killed in the wars they
fought, they visited violence and anguish and sorrow on their enemies, not
because God willed it, but because they were led into those endeavors according
to their own human ambitions.
God wills that we love our enemies, and that
we pray for those who persecute us. That is the way of Jesus and the sum of our
faith.
The Israelites committed terrible crimes, but
despite their crimes, they did many things that were good. They put some
communities to the sword, they also bonded with one another and strengthened
their own. They made a place for themselves in the world according to the ways
of the world.
This is the way of sin, we human beings
perpetrate it, leaving God to make some good out of it.
They can be forgiven of their sins, in the
same way that we forgive everyone who has sinned, in the same way that we seek
forgiveness for our own.
Do not be confused by the apostle, resist the
appeal to authority and the desire to follow him into hi errors.
When he uses allegory to relate images and
tropes from the exodus to his audience and to the future church, as fore-shadowings
of Christ and the rites of baptism, his interpretations and interpolations of
meaning cannot be viewed as having been written with those intentions a
thousand years prior to the birth of Jesus and the foundation of the Church
It is poetry not fact.
We are encouraged to read the sacred texts as
a poet would, finding meaning in the fictions that were written there.
Understand this; Moses never lived, everything we read about him is myth and
metaphor.
Reading the text as a poet would, honors the
spirit within which it was written.
This is how we keep the text alive from age to
age, by not falling into the trap of believing that we have discovered the
meaning, the truth of it for all time.
Use the sacred texts to promote the teaching
of the way; the way of Jesus, the way which is rooted in love, and mercy and
compassion.
Reject fear, because God is the bringer of
hope, not terror.
Do this, and you are doing the work God has
called us to.
Be wary of the Scriptures, when the authors attempt
to fit their narrative of Jesus into a picture that makes it look as if he is
fulfilling a prediction made by a prophet from the past.
This is always a falsehood.
Even if a prediction was made, and even if
Jesus did the thing that was predicted, it is a false narrative to suggest that
Jesus’ actions were in fulfillment of prophecy.
Prophets only speak of the future for two
reasons: 1) to engender hope, 2) to warn of danger.
The words of a prophet are always addressed to
the people in their own time, in their own place. Prophecy is never meant to
guide the lives of future generations, except in the cases when the prophet is
addressing an issue of universal truth, such as the nature of justice, a truth which
is itself unchanging.
The Gospel writers were propagandists. They
fabricated many of the details of Jesus’ life. They fabricated those details to
suit the narrative they preferred about who Jesus was, why his life and death were
necessary, and what his life and death meant for the early church.
In this narrative the Gospel writers place
Jesus directly in the tradition of John the Baptist, with the words “Repent,
for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
This is a continuation of John’s narrative,
meant to harness the energy of John’s movement, after his arrest and murder,
contextualizing Jesus’ arrest and murder as a part of the same sequence of
injustices visited upon the people.
The
gospel of the day is plain spoken text.
It
acknowledges the overwhelming reality of suffering in the world, of suffering
caused by human beings, suffering caused by the random nature of events in the
world; the suffering inflicted on the people by the Roman prelate, Pilate, who
brutalized the people of Palestine, for political and religious purposes (which
to the Romans were one and the same.
The
message the Jesus has for his people is that they proceed with care, be mindful
and watchful, and considerate of the secular powers. He encourages the people
to take care of one another unless they two are caught up in the aegis of
Pilate’s authority and subjected to the whims of Roman cruelty.
The
people who suffered and died under Pilate did not suffer and die because they
deserved it more than any others, they were not more-guilty of crimes than he
was, or his followers were, but they were careless, and due to their
carelessness they were caught up in the grip of Roman power.
In
this parable Jesus stresses the power of intention. The farmer is the Roman
State, he has the power of life and death over the people, if the people do not
fulfill his expectations, he will destroy them.
This
is what Jesus wants them to remember, to keep this in front of them at all
times.
The
man looking after the vineyard is the Church. The Church pleads for mercy on
behalf of the people, so that through mindfulness and care, the people are
brought along safely into the next year, preserving themselves and their
families in the face of the oppressive Roman State.
It
is a tenuous arrangement, but a necessary political arrangement if the people
who make up the church are going to survive in a time of persecution.
First Reading – Exodus
3:1-8,13-15 ©
'I AM has sent me to you'
Moses was looking after the flock of
Jethro, his father-in-law priest of Midian. He led his flock to the far side of
the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the
Lord appeared to him in the shape of a flame of fire, coming from the middle of
a bush. Moses looked; there was the bush blazing but it was not being burnt up.
‘I must go and look at this strange sight,’ Moses said, ‘and see why the bush
is not burnt.’ Now the Lord saw him go forward to look, and God called to him
from the middle of the bush. ‘Moses, Moses!’ he said. ‘Here I am,’ Moses
answered. ‘Come no nearer,’ he said. ‘Take off your shoes, for the place on
which you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your fathers,’ he said, ‘the
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ At this Moses covered
his face, afraid to look at God.
And the Lord said, ‘I have seen the
miserable state of my people in Egypt. I have heard their appeal to be free of
their slave-drivers. Yes, I am well aware of their sufferings. I mean to
deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that
land to a land rich and broad, a land where milk and honey flow, the home of
the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the
Jebusites.’
Then Moses said to God, ‘I am to go, then,
to the sons of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to
you.” But if they ask me what his name is, what am I to tell them?’ And God
said to Moses, ‘I Am who I Am. This’ he added ‘is what you must say to the sons
of Israel: “I Am has sent me to you.”’ And God also said to Moses, ‘You are to
say to the sons of Israel: “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is
my name for all time; by this name I shall be invoked for all generations to
come.’
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm
102(103):1-4,6-8,11 ©
The Lord is compassion
and love.
My
soul, give thanks to the Lord
all my being, bless his holy name.
My
soul, give thanks to the Lord
and never forget all his blessings.
The Lord is compassion
and love.
It
is he who forgives all your guilt,
who heals every one of your ills,
who
redeems your life from the grave,
who crowns you with love and compassion,
The Lord is compassion
and love.
The
Lord does deeds of justice,
gives judgement for all who are oppressed.
He
made known his ways to Moses
and his deeds to Israel’s sons.
The Lord is compassion
and love.
The
Lord is compassion and love,
slow to anger and rich in mercy.
For
as the heavens are high above the earth
so strong is his love for those who fear him.
The Lord is compassion
and love.
Second Reading – 1
Corinthians 10:1-6,10-12 ©
The Life of the People Under
Moses in the Desert Was Written Down to be a Lesson For Us
I want to remind you, brothers, how our
fathers were all guided by a cloud above them and how they all passed through
the sea. They were all baptised into Moses in this cloud and in this sea; all
ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, since they
all drank from the spiritual rock that followed them as they went, and that
rock was Christ. In spite of this, most of them failed to please God and their
corpses littered the desert.
These things all happened as warnings for
us, not to have the wicked lusts for forbidden things that they had. You must
never complain: some of them did, and they were killed by the Destroyer.
All this happened to them as a warning,
and it was written down to be a lesson for us who are living at the end of the
age. The man who thinks he is safe must be careful that he does not fall.
Gospel Acclamation – Matthew
4:17
Glory to you, O Christ,
you are the Word of God!
Repent,
says the Lord,
for
the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.
Glory to you, O Christ,
you are the Word of God!
The Gospel According to Luke
13:1-9 ©
'Leave the fig tree one
more year'
Some people arrived and told Jesus about
the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with that of their sacrifices. At
this he said to them, ‘Do you suppose these Galileans who suffered like that
were greater sinners than any other Galileans? They were not, I tell you. No;
but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen on
whom the tower at Siloam fell and killed them? Do you suppose that they were
more guilty than all the other people living in Jerusalem? They were not, I
tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did.’
He told this parable: ‘A man had a fig
tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it but found
none. He said to the man who looked after the vineyard, “Look here, for three
years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and finding
none. Cut it down: why should it be taking up the ground?” “Sir,” the man
replied “leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it:
it may bear fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.”’
2nd Sunday of Lent
(Year C)
