Sunday 21 March 2010

Homily for 24 January 2010

Homily for Third Sunday of Year C 24 January 2010

I want to this morning to look at our Old Testament reading – so often we just let that first reading pass us by, don’t we, perhaps we half expect the Old Testament to be dull and boring, or even not to make sense – this is by no means an uncommon view! In fact in the first century of the Church’s history there was even a suggestion, made by the heretic Marcion, that the Church should ditch the Old Testament and leave it to the Jews- what had it got to do with us? And for several years, even in St Augustine’s time in the fourth century, there were many people who found the Old Testament so off-putting that it effectively stopped them becoming Christians at all, and our pagan opponents were very scornful of the way the Old Testament was written- so unlike all the accounts of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses written in beautiful poetry, and with all its bloodthirsty stories of war and conquest so unlike the deep thoughts, so calmly expressed, of the great philosophers like Plato. They would laugh at their Christian friends “Do you mean to tell me you actually believe all that rubbish, how can you? Just a load of Bedouins killing each other!” In fact, St Augustine himself couldn’t bring himself to become a Catholic until he heard the sermons in Milan of St Ambrose, explaining just how to approach and understand the Old Testament. So let’s look at today’s reading.
It is set in the middle of the fourth century BC when the Jews had returned from their long captivity in Babylon and were gradually rebuilding their national life and their identity as God’s holy people. Ezra was the man in charge, and he was particularly anxious that the people should reacquaint themselves with the scriptures, and with God’s Law which they contained- how else would they ever get the country off to a good start again? His right hand man in all this was Nehemiah, and today’s reading comes from his memoirs. It describes the scene at one of the great gatherings of the people that Ezra and the clergy would organise, at which all the scriptures were read. Look how the people react- they know that the scriptures are the presence of God in their midst, they know that they are hearing the Word of God addressed to them, that is why they immediately take up the posture of worship – they cry out “Amen, amen!” and they “bowed down….and prostrated themselves before the Lord”. And as well as just reading it out, we see that Ezra preaches on the Word of God, “translating and giving the sense so that the people understood what was read”. This is what we have to do at Mass every Sunday isn’t it- clergy and readers, we have to read you the scriptures so that it makes sense and you understand! A most important task, because let’s face it, how many of us have a Bible at home, and if we do how many of us open it? And of course opening it is a daunting thing in itself, it’s a bit like opening a phone book or an encyclopaedia- you’ve got to know what you are looking for and where to go. (I recommend as a user-friendly way of becoming familiar with the word of God to use one of the monthly booklets of daily readings that we have in our shop!)
Of course as they sat there –or lay there- hearing the scriptures, it didn’t make such comfortable reading to these newly returned Jews –as the demands that God was making of them sank in, as they began to grasp all the implications of the high expectations that God had of them, they felt a bit crestfallen- “they were in tears as they listened to the words of the Law”. Well, that’s not entirely a bad thing, you know- at least it meant they were taking it seriously, not just shrugging it all off as beyond them, the unrealistic demands of religion. You know what I mean! But Nehemiah encourages them and tells them that actually, although it is always an awesome, rather sobering experience to put ourselves in the presence of God and to reflect on the shortcomings of our lives contrasted to the hopes he has for each of us, nevertheless putting ourselves in this closeness to God is and can only be a source of joy. Nehemiah tells them to enjoy life- hey, it’s party time! “Go eat the fat, drink the sweet wine!” – and to share their happiness with the less fortunate- “send a portion to the man who has nothing”. It’s all there, isn’t it, our understanding not only of the presence of God in the scriptures, but even a hint of the eucharist to come in the distant future. We who come to church today, we are not unlike those Jews of Nehemiah’s time: they were returning to their faith, trying to pick up their old ways of religious practice, wanting to get it right, and in a way we are always returning aren’t we? We come to mass and as we recollect ourselves in a moment’s prayer we know our feet have strayed a bit since we were last in our pew, there have been a few things we’re uneasy about, a few moments we’d rather not dwell on – we are all always returning! We return, we show up again Sunday by Sunday, and we put ourselves once more in the presence of God- in the Tabernacle, in the Scriptures- and it is, of course it is, partly a source of sadness to us, as our conscience gives us a bit of a kick, that is why every Mass commences with the Confiteor, I confess… But the joy is greater than the sorrow, isn’t it, the joy that invades our hearts as we recognise Our Lord in our midst and know that we are in the right place, where we should be, close to the One who looks on us with eyes of welcome, of understanding and of love- he will put things right for us if we let him, for as Nehemiah knew well “the joy of the Lord is (y)our stronghold”.
Let us follow the advice in this ancient text this morning- we reverence the Word of God that we hear, for it is the living communication of the living God, addressed to us today; we take its message to our hearts; we are honest enough with ourselves to know that there is much in our lives to regret, but such is our trust in God and his love for us we rejoice. Let us go from this Mass refreshed by the presence of the Lord in his Word and in his Sacred Body – let us “eat the fat and drink the sweet wine” and let our joy in the Lord overflow into care for those we see around us who are in need- let us “send a portion to the man who has nothing prepared ready”, “for this day is sacred to our Lord”. Amen.

Homily for Lent V 2010

Homily for Fifth Sunday in Lent 21 March 2010

This Gospel we have just heard is one of the most moving of all the stories of Jesus, and yet it may surprise you to know that for at least three hundred years it was not officially in the Gospels at all, and it exists in none of the most ancient manuscripts. This is not to say that it didn’t exist, but it had an existence of its own, in a sort of free-fall; it was well known but was outside the official Scriptures of the Church. We know that Christians were aware of this story because already in the early 2nd century a Bishop, Papias, who was the first person to start researching into the background of the gospels and letters that would eventually come to be recognised as what we now call the New Testament, writes that, as well as the four Gospels, there is “another story of a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord” and there are references to it in the writings of Syrian Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. It was really only thanks to St Ambrose and St Augustine that this wonderful story of Our Lord’s forbearance and gentleness was finally inserted by St Jerome into St John’s Gospel, where we find it today. Perhaps it seemed a good place to add it, because only a few verses later on in this same chapter John reports Jesus as saying (in verse 15) “You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one” and later (in verse 46) Jesus challenges the Pharisees by asking them “Which of you convicts me of sin?”
Why were those first Christians so uneasy about this story that they hesitated to include it in the Gospels? Well, I think it was paradoxically for the very same reason that we like it so much: it showed Our Lord being very lenient with someone accused of serious sexual sin. In the first centuries of the Church (a fact often overlooked by those who say we must go back to the ways of the primitive Church, by the way) it was regarded as extremely serious for believers to fall back into the ways of sin and there were many harsh and often public penances involved before such a person could hope to be accepted again into the Christian community. But as time progressed and the sacrament of Confession became better understood and more widely and frequently practised, a more compassionate approach took hold in the Church, an approach that took into account our human nature and all its weaknesses, an approach that understood that Our Lord was, in his unconditional love, always ready to give us a second chance- a second, a third, a hundredth chance. And so in the fullness of time this beautiful story came into its own.
Let us look at our Gospel reading a bit more closely. What is the motivation of the accusers who have dragged this unfortunate woman before Our Lord? First of all, it takes two to tango, doesn’t it, so where is the man who had slept with her? Moses in fact didn’t just say the woman involved had to be stoned, but the man too – he has, typically I hear you say, got off scot free, the accusers don’t seem to be bothered about him. They have caught the woman, and that is enough- but do they really care about justice being done? So often behind all the bluster of outraged so-called good and upright citizens when they are complaining loudly about the misdeeds of their neighbours, and demanding that something must be done, lies a whole mixture of dubious motives. Here they are really only interested in baiting Jesus- what will he say? Will they be able to use whatever he comes out with as ammunition against him with the authorities? But Jesus is silent, he just sits there doodling in the sand. The Fathers of the ancient Church compared this to that verse in Isaiah where God delays his judgement of Israel, saying “For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself…” (Is 42:14) and some imagined that he was writing down the sins or perhaps the names of the accusers, because the prophet Jeremiah says “those who turn away from thee shall be written in the earth”. (Jer 17:13) The eagerly expected condemnation does not come, and famously Our Lord- perhaps with a half-smile on his lips, who knows?- suggests that if there is anyone there who has never done anything wrong, then perhaps they should be the one to cast the first stone, and so the crowd in some embarrassment we can imagine and possibly with a certain reluctance begins to melt away.
And now comes what is for me the most important point in the story- “Jesus was left alone with the woman, who remained standing there”. St Augustine loved this bit, he says “now there were only two: the wretched woman and the merciful one- misera et misericordia” That is what we have to bear in mind: when it will really matter, when we come to the end of our life, there will only be two people- me and Jesus. All the people who fill my life won’t be there any more, my loved ones won’t be around, and neither will be all the people who clutter up my life with their criticisms, their disapproval, their gossiping about me, their opinions about me, right or wrong! There will only be me and Jesus, no one else – the miserable sinner meeting the personification of the Divine Mercy. And that is the encounter we should be preparing for, especially in these last days of Lent that we now enter on, when we have so many opportunities for devotion and for the sacraments. How we hope and pray that we will find Our Lord in this loving mood of gentleness, that he will just be silent in front of all our misdoings, the goings on of our youth and all the sexual nonsense that so easily comes to the forefront of our minds and so easily sidetracks us and clouds our vision- that finally he will soothe our anguish –for we will be only too keenly aware of what we have got up to, we won’t need a crowd of accusers, our conscience will be doing a grand job on its own – he will look up at us and please God we will hear those words of all-comprehending mercy “Neither do I condemn you”. He will say those words, we hope, because he will look into our hearts and see what it was that was our true motivation in life, however obscured from time to time it may have been. Our present Holy Father in a book on death he wrote twenty years ago which I hope to share with you some insights from on Good Friday, says that the only question worth asking of ourselves will be, what did I give people? When I spoke to them, in my dealings with them, what did I give them? The answer that Pope Benedict thinks is the only answer, is Hope. Not condemnation, but hope. The Gospels show us Our Lord at work, doing precisely that- giving people hope, in whatever situation they might be, and most clearly of all, he gives hope in his response to the woman in today’s reading. Let us be people who offer each other as well as the sign of peace at this Mass, a thousand signs of hope in our daily converse with each other, hope, not condemnation, but hope. And dear Jesus, when the day comes when we stand together you and I alone may each one of us hear you say “Neither do I condemn you” as you look up and rest your loving gaze upon us your wayward friends. Say to us “Neither do I condemn you!” Amen.