First Reading - Jeremiah
1:4-5,17-19 ©
Responsorial Psalm - Psalm
70(71):1-6,15,17 ©
Second Reading - 1
Corinthians 12:31-13:13 ©
Alternative Second Reading
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 ©
Gospel Acclamation – John
14:6
Gospel Acclamation – Luke
4:18
The Gospel of Luke 4:21-30
©
(NJB)
Consider
the words of the prophet Jeremiah and know this: it is always a theological
mistake to weave nationalism into the fabric of our myths. God, the creator of
the universe, God is not the god of this nation or that, God does not favor one
people over another. God is the God of all people, the just and the unjust, the
good and the bad.
Allow
the prophet to speak to us through his error.
There
are errors throughout the scriptures, do not be surprised that I say this. The
disciples themselves did not hesitate to include the record of their errors in
the sacred text; consider the error of Adam, in the Garden, or Abraham with
Isaac; consider the many faults of Israel, both the Patriarch and the people, consider
the denial of Saint Peter.
Consider
that and know this:
The
psalmist is wrong today. It is an exercise in pure vanity to assume that God
has anything to do with the things we suffer on earth.
It
is not in God’s plan, or in God’s way of being to intervene in our lives at
all.
Punishment
does not come from God, neither should we look to God for rescue.
The
joys and sorrows of the world, the things we experience are altogether of our
own making. Our successes are not rewards for having lived a good life, our
failures and setbacks are not retributions and punishments for leading a bad
one.
Your
enemies are only your enemies if you believe them to be so. God loves them as
much as God loves you.
If
you forgive them in your heart you will cease to be their enemy. Pray that they
will see this, and they may forgive you as well, thereby ceasing to be yours.
This
is the truth, and truth is best expressed by itself, without regard to any
other concern.
Do
not preach about the chosen people or the covenant, about the church and the
temple, do not preach on the law, the liturgy or the sacred rites, do not even
preach on the crucifixion and the resurrection, if your preaching is not
distilled through the lens of love.
Speak
about love, do it in a loving way. Love is the law, and it is the content of our
faith.
Remember this, and be mindful of it always:
Love is the way to God, there is no other path
to the creator of the universe; God is love, and the opposite is true; we experience
the absence of love as alienation from God.
There be loving, and those who you care for
will find God through the expression of love in your faith and hope for them.
Listen to the Apostle, follow him in this:
Be patient with your sisters and brothers, be
kind to the stranger, love, as Jesus did, even your enemy, and forgive them;
whatever it is you have held against them, forgive it.
Let go.
There is no conceit, no jealously, no boasting
in loving, we are not rude or selfish, in love we are not uncompromising.
Do not take offence, and do not be resentful
if you have failed at loving, if you have been jealous and boasting, conceited
or impatient in any way; if you feel inadequate now, be at peace, forgive yourself.
Know this:
Everyone falls short and loves imperfectly, but
do this; desire what is true and walk away from the lie; be ready to trust,
even in the face of adversity, because trust is faith, it is an act of the
will, and when we have made the decision to trust, we have prepared the way for
hope to flourish, and hope will allows us to endure what comes.
Hope in its turn frees us to love, and love
returns us to the place of faith, strengthening it.
This is a cycle of empowerment, chose it for
yourselves.
Listen to the wisdom of the Saint Paul,
reflect back on our reflection on Jeremiah and psalmist:
The role of the prophet is not to predict the
future, it is to point out injustice.
The role of the prophet is to teach us, if we
do not know how or why injustice is taking place.
If we lack the language or the voice to
express our understanding, the prophet will be our voice, and point out our
duty to reach out to our sisters and brothers in love, so that when they are suffering
see it, understand it, and comfort them.
Remember
this:
The
Gospels are replete with stories that depict the ignorance of Jesus’ twelve
male disciples.
They
were human beings and like all of us they were flawed, confused, and ignorant.
Jesus
even refers to Saint Peter as “Satan,” the enemy, and on the night of Jesus’
arrest Peter denies having known him.
In
the generations that followed the death of Jesus, the early Christians did not
gain any more clarity, as John’s Gospel shows us.
Jesus
is not “The Way,” but the manner of his life demonstrated the way, not the “way
to” God, but the “way of God,” as Saint Paul taught us, the way of love, and
hope, and trust.
Know
this when you go out to preach on the Gospel:
The
good news is not that God has prepared a place for you and yours, for the
Jewish people that were the brothers and sisters of Jesus or for the Christians
who came later. The good news is that God has prepared a place for everyone.
This
is the really good news, no one is left out of God’s plan.
Following
the “way” of Jesus does not require you to believe or know anything about him,
it requires only that you to live a life of kindness, and loving service to
your fellow human beings.
This
is the beauty of God’s plan.
The purpose of the gospel is to give comfort
to the poor, and to free those who are in bondage. If you are a teacher of the
faith and your ministry is not pointed to this end, then you are failing in
your duty.
Do not quit, repent!
Listen!
If you use the words of Jesus to shame the
poor or to justify ignoring them, if you mistreat the prisoner, or anyone who
is in captivity, the man or woman in bondage,
than you are doing the work of someone else, and you have abandoned Christ.
If
you have done these things do not give up your ministry, ask for forgiveness,
and reform yourself.
Consider
how the gospel for today illustrates the very same theme we have encountered
since the beginning of the reading with Jeremiah.
There
is a pattern in the gospel narrative that plays itself out through all four of
the books.
The
pattern is this; the people who purportedly know Jesus best, understand his
mission least. He is best understood by the marginalized, the stranger, the
outcast and the voiceless.
Those
who are best acquainted with Jesus, the people of his home town, the disciples,
Saint Peter--chief among them; they were quick and eager to accept him, but were
confounded and left bewildered when Jesus did or said something unexpected.
The
reading for today comes to us near the beginning of Luke’s narrative and it
highlights this dilemma. In the first paragraph the disciples are delighted by
Jesus and love the things he says, but Jesus discerns something in them that
causes him to change his tone, he cautions them; he gives them a warning.
He
reminds them of how quick people are to turn against the ones they love and
revere, to turn against their leaders and prophets as they did in the past with
Elijah and Elisha.
The
warning is stern, the blessings of God will not flow if you are only looking
after your own interests, and if you are uncaring about the interests of your
neighbor, of the alien, the out cast and the stranger.
Jesus
teaches us that justice and mercy, love and hope, these things flow from God
only insofar as they flow from the human heart, we are God’s agents in the
world, the divine relies on us to carry out this work, and without us the work
will not get done.
This
is not quid pro quo.
God
is not in the business of matching our contribution, our gifts of compassion
are God’s gifts of compassion; human agency is the only path by which God
enters the lives of other human beings.
If
we are not doing the good work of God, the good work will not get done.
The
people of Jesus’ village mistook the power that Jesus had; the power to heal
and restore and the fame that was gathering around him, as something belonging
to them, something they had a right to, something to use for themselves, and
because of this self-interest they were not able to receive it at that time.
In
the same way, Jesus’ disciples continuously misunderstood Jesus’ ministry. They
chastised him for talking to women, for eating with outsiders, and they
abandoned him on the night he was arrested. Saint Peter, the rock of the
Church, denied him publicly. They all fled, all except a handful of women who
remained by his side until the very end, and past the end point for days they
waited for him.
They
waited until the tomb was opened.
Most
Christians today are in the same position as the townsfolk of Nazareth were at
the time Jesus delivered this teaching, believing that being a Christian gives
them some special status in the world, as if God loves them more than God loves
any of God’s other children.
They
believe that God will reach down and save them, just because they baptized (or
some such nonsense) while letting billions of others drop off into the lake of
fire.
People
who believe this could not be more wrong.
The
only thing you receive from being a follower of Christ is the burden of
responsibility to love your neighbor as God loves them, to love them as you
love God.
This
is the way of Jesus, in the tradition of Isaiah and carried on by the Apostle
in his ministry to the gentiles. It is the true mission of the Church and it is
the duty of all Christians to proclaim it.
Love
one another.
First Reading - Jeremiah
1:4-5,17-19 ©
'I have appointed you
prophet to the nations'
In
the days of Josiah, the word of the Lord was addressed to me, saying:
‘Before
I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated
you; I have appointed you as prophet to the nations.
‘So
now brace yourself for action.
Stand
up and tell them all I command you.
Do
not be dismayed at their presence, or in their presence I will make you
dismayed.
‘I,
for my part, today will make you into a fortified city, a pillar of iron, and a
wall of bronze to confront all this land:
the
kings of Judah, its princes, its priests and the country people.
They
will fight against you but shall not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver
you – it is the Lord who speaks.’
Responsorial Psalm - Psalm
70(71):1-6,15,17 ©
My lips will tell of your
help.
In
you, O Lord, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In
your justice rescue me, free me:
pay heed to me and save me.
My lips will tell of your
help.
Be
a rock where I can take refuge,
a mighty stronghold to save me;
for you are my rock, my stronghold.
Free
me from the hand of the wicked.
My lips will tell of your
help.
It
is you, O Lord, who are my hope,
my trust, O Lord, since my youth.
On
you I have leaned from my birth,
from my mother’s womb you have been my help.
My lips will tell of your
help.
My
lips will tell of your justice
and day by day of your help.
O
God, you have taught me from my youth
and I proclaim your wonders still.
My lips will tell of your
help.
Second Reading - 1
Corinthians 12:31-13:13 ©
The Supremacy of Charity
Be
ambitious for the higher gifts. And I am going to show you a way that is better
than any of them.
If
I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am
simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy,
understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I
have faith in all its fullness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am
nothing at all. If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece, and if I
even let them take my body to burn it, but am without love, it will do me no
good whatever.
Love
is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or
conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not
resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the
truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever
comes.
Love
does not come to an end. But if there are gifts of prophecy, the time will come
when they must fail; or the gift of languages, it will not continue for ever;
and knowledge – for this, too, the time will come when it must fail. For our
knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect; but once perfection
comes, all imperfect things will disappear. When I was a child, I used to talk
like a child, and think like a child, and argue like a child, but now I am a
man, all childish ways are put behind me. Now we are seeing a dim reflection in
a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now
is imperfect; but then I shall know as fully as I am known.
In
short, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest
of these is love.
Alternative Second Reading
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 ©
Three Things Last: Faith,
Hope and Love; and the Greatest of These is Love
Love
is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or
conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not
resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the
truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever
comes.
Love does not come to an end. But if there are
gifts of prophecy, the time will come when they must fail; or the gift of
languages, it will not continue for ever; and knowledge – for this, too, the
time will come when it must fail. For our knowledge is imperfect and our
prophesying is imperfect; but once perfection comes, all imperfect things will
disappear. When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a
child, and argue like a child, but now I am a man, all childish ways are put
behind me. Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be
seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect; but then I
shall know as fully as I am known.
In
short, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest
of these is love.
Gospel Acclamation – John
14:6
Alleluia, alleluia!
I
am the Way, the Truth and the Life, says the Lord;
No
one can come to the Father except through me.
Alleluia!
Gospel Acclamation – Luke
4:18
Alleluia, alleluia!
The
Lord has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,
to
proclaim liberty to captives.
Alleluia!
Gospel - Luke 4:21-30 ©
No Prophet is Ever Accepted
in His Own Country
Jesus began to speak in
the synagogue: ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.’ And he
won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that
came from his lips They said, ‘This is Joseph’s son, surely?’
But he replied, ‘No doubt you will quote me
the saying, “Physician, heal yourself” and tell me, “We have heard all that
happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your own countryside.”’ And he went
on, ‘I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.
‘There were many widows in Israel, I can
assure you, in Elijah’s day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six
months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to
any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in
the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these
was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.’
When they heard this everyone in the
synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the
town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on,
intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and
walked away. (NJB)
4th Sunday in
Ordinary Time
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