Homily for 23 Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 4 September 2011
Today’s Gospel seems to me to be describing the Christian Community, the Church, in all its main aspects and functions. Here we see the Church as what it ought to be, as what it should be- what we should be at our best. A community of love, of prayer and of forgiveness. And when we live as the Church in this way, in faithfulness to God, there is Our Lord in our midst.
Let’s look at how this passage unfolds. It begins with Jesus telling us that if our brother does something wrong, we are to “go and have it out with him”. Does it matter what our brother does? Do we care? One of the first results of the Fall, as we read in Genesis 4 ix, is that we lose interest in our fellow human beings, we cease to care even to the point of killing them- you remember Cain’s great lie when God says to him “Where is Abel your brother?” – “I do not know, am I my brother’s keeper?” Here Jesus tells us yes, we should care, we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. Our love for them must be such that we feel able to speak frankly to them when we see them going wrong. And even, maybe, we might need reinforcements- this isn’t supposed to be a kind of ganging up, bullying tactic, this bit about “take one or two others along with you”, or “take it to the whole community”, this isn’t grassing somebody up, this is partly asking us to check our take on things against the opinions of others, thinking with the mind of the Church as we might say today, making sure that we are not getting into anything too personal, too much of our own agenda and so on, and partly because in Jewish law, to make a case stick you needed two or three witnesses (Deut 19 xv says “a single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime….only on the evidence of two witnesses….shall a charge be sustained”. (Incidentally, this is why Mary Magdalene rushes off to get Peter and John to come to the empty tomb, she knows they will need two or three witnesses to be believed.) And Our Lord does not expect we will always succeed in correcting our fellow human beings- we all have free will after all, and some of us can be very stubborn when it comes to going our own way. If someone just can’t be reasoned with, well, “treat him like a pagan or a tax collector”. Now that obviously means, if someone has deliberately put themselves outside the mainstream of the Christian community, so be it, they will have to be outsiders – but please I beg of you notice that it is the person himself who has put himself out of the community, not the community which has turned its back on him – the decision has come from the person concerned, to be on the outside. And please notice one more thing- a pagan or a gentile, and a tax collector are the examples Jesus gives of outsiders – and yet, earlier in this Gospel Matthew gives us examples of gentiles and tax collectors who actually become people of great faith- you remember the centurion in chapter 8 who wants his servant healed- his words to Jesus are newly restored to our Mass this very day with the new translation- Our Lord says to him “Not even in Israel have I seen such faith” (Mt 8 x) and the gentile woman from Tyre who asked Jesus to heal her daughter (Mt 15 xxviii) makes him say “O woman , great is your faith!” while I am sure you are already thinking of the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee in the Temple, in Luke’s Gospel where it is the humble tax collector who can only bring himself to stand at the back and say ”God be merciful to me a sinner” who receives Our Lord’s approval, “this man went down to his house justified” (Lk 18 xiii-xiv). So, people who have put themselves outside the community for whatever reason may still be capable of great faith- we are not to dismiss them even if they have dismissed themselves.
Part of this love for our brothers and sisters, part of our concern for each other is of course the need we all have to forgive and be forgiven, to let bygones be bygones, to move on, not to be forever shackled to the past. We want our brothers and sisters, however far they may be wandering from the Church, to know that nevertheless they are still in the orbit of God’s infinite mercy- the same unconditional mercy that we are rather hoping will naturally be coming our way! We need to ensure that we are the channels of pardon, not the harsh critics, for these people too. The pardon, of course, that can be fully operational for them, as for all of us, in the sacrament of confession, where the priest hearing our true contrition will loose on earth and loose in heaven our burden of guilt and free us to move on.
So we have had love and we have had pardon. Finally we have prayer, the hall mark of the Church above all- we have to be, to want to be, people of prayer, people who talk to God and let him talk to us, we need our lives to be a long unending conversation we are engaged in with God. Bur personal prayer is not enough, is it, we need to come together with our brothers and sisters in the Faith, as we are here this morning at this Mass, because here we know we can meet Our Lord in the fullest possible sense- when the priest says those words of consecration over the bread and wine, we know indeed that “where two or three meet in my name I shall be with them”. This phrase is –like the stuff about getting witnesses earlier on- also from Jewish law. The Talmud says (‘Abot 3 ii) “If two sit together and words of the Law pass between them, the divine presence abides with them”.
Dear Jesus you show us in this gospel the hallmarks of an authentic Christian community; we ask you to make us at St Saviour’s into a people who see all men and women as our brothers and sisters, worthy of our love, make us channels of forgiveness to each other and as we come together to turn our minds to the things of God, and recognise you in the Host at this Mass may your divine presence abide with us. Amen.
Sunday 4 September 2011
19th sunday in ordinary time 2011
Homily for 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time 7 August 2011
Today’s gospel is from that crowded chapter 14 of Matthew’s Gospel, the same chapter that gave us last week’s reading about the Feeding of the 5000. Both that episode and today’s account of Jesus walking on the water are telling us the same thing in different ways- they are revealing to the disciples and to us the divinity of our Lord, they are showing to us that Jesus is divine because we can see him doing god-like things, things that only God can do. Last week miraculously feeding his followers in the desert, conjuring up food out of nowhere for them, like God fed the Israelites with the manna from Heaven; this week walking on the water and ignoring the wind and the waves, as the Old Testament shows God doing again and again, controlling the elements, from that first setting of the waters behind their boundaries that allows the dry land to emerge and the world to get started in Genesis, on through the parting of the Red Sea – I’m sure loads of examples are springing to mind! A verse in Isaiah (43 xvi) speaks of “the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” and that is exactly what Matthew shows Jesus doing here.
But there is more in this passage to show us that Jesus is God. When they see Jesus walking towards them, the disciples are panic-stricken and think he’s a ghost. So to reassure them Our Lord calls out to them- and what does he say? In this translation, he says “it is I”, but in the Greek original he just says “I am” – ego eimi – “I am”. This of course is the name of God, “I am”. Do you remember when God first manifests himself to Moses in the burning bush, Moses asks God to tell him his name- (Exod 3 xiii-xv) and “God said to Moses ‘I am who I am’ and he said ‘say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you’….’this is my name for ever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations’.” So God’s name is I am- funny sort of name, you may be thinking, but I think it means existence, life, being – God is all of that, isn’t he? The force that maintains all of life in being? But we digress. Here Jesus uses the divine name of himself- we get this a lot in John’s gospel more than in the others, lots of “I am” quotes from Jesus, you can think of plenty of them I know: I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world, I am the way, the truth and the life. Here in Matthew just on its own “I am”. Another proof of his divinity- and there is one more to come.
Peter gets in a mess in this story doesn’t he, he loses his nerve and starts to sink in the water. He cries out “Lord, save me!” And we read “Jesus put out his hand at once and held him”. This too is a godlike moment, because God saves his people, and the favourite way the Jews had of describing this was to use the phrase “God stretched out his hand”, and the usual image they used of being in trouble was being in the water. For instance, Psalm 144 (vii) asks God to “stretch forth thy hand from on high, rescue me and deliver me from the many waters….” Psalm 18 (xvi) says God “reached me from on high, he took me, he drew me out of many waters” and another psalm, 107 (xxviii-ix), has “they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed”. So in this reading today we see Matthew determined to show us Jesus in his divinity- we have a Jesus who is in control of the forces of nature, and a Jesus who is always ready to save us.
And now I think we must look for a moment at Peter in this story. We are so used to thinking of Mark’s gospel as the place where we have all the little extras about Peter- after all, long tradition assures us that Mark was the confidant of Peter and that Peter’s memoirs underlie Mark’s Gospel- it is a bit of a surprise for us to realise that this episode, so typical of the rash and impetuous Peter and all the scrapes his enthusiasm got him into, is unique to Matthew. I think- I go out on my own here- that Peter is in this story standing for every Christian, he is here as an example of the typical follower of Our Lord, he is here as a representative of ordinary Christians like you and me. He is as Jesus calls him the “man of little faith”. We blow hot and cold, don’t we; we want to be good and loyal followers of Our Lord, we want to be good catholics, we want to do our bit for the Kingdom of Heaven and its advancement, but that’s on a good day! There are other days when we are not so keen on the whole damn business of the Christian life, when we feel we’ve had enough of the Church thank you, when our lives are not serene and calm but there’s a few storms brewing up and the cares of the world or the lure of its easy pleasures seem suddenly very strong and likely to blow us off course once and for all. Had any of those days? I get them quite often I must say! But here’s the important thing: we are like Peter in that we want to jump in and follow Our Lord right now, of course we do and here we go, but we are like him in that once we have set out on the Christian life, we feel the force of the wind, and we take fright and like him we start to sink. When we get that sinking feeling, we must be like Peter too- we must not hesitate but cry out “Lord, save me!” because Our Lord is there, isn’t he, always waiting to catch us!
Dear Jesus, we recognise you in all your humanity and in all your divinity. We know that shortly you will come upon this altar and be truly present to us in your body and blood, soul and divinity. You know we are people of little faith, we often feel the force of the wind, we often begin to sink. Come to us, dear Jesus, when we call upon you! Come to us, put out your hand at once and hold us! In St Saviour’s we are in the boat with Peter, the boat that is your Catholic Church, and here we bow down before you and say with those first disciples “Truly you are the Son of God”. Amen.
Today’s gospel is from that crowded chapter 14 of Matthew’s Gospel, the same chapter that gave us last week’s reading about the Feeding of the 5000. Both that episode and today’s account of Jesus walking on the water are telling us the same thing in different ways- they are revealing to the disciples and to us the divinity of our Lord, they are showing to us that Jesus is divine because we can see him doing god-like things, things that only God can do. Last week miraculously feeding his followers in the desert, conjuring up food out of nowhere for them, like God fed the Israelites with the manna from Heaven; this week walking on the water and ignoring the wind and the waves, as the Old Testament shows God doing again and again, controlling the elements, from that first setting of the waters behind their boundaries that allows the dry land to emerge and the world to get started in Genesis, on through the parting of the Red Sea – I’m sure loads of examples are springing to mind! A verse in Isaiah (43 xvi) speaks of “the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” and that is exactly what Matthew shows Jesus doing here.
But there is more in this passage to show us that Jesus is God. When they see Jesus walking towards them, the disciples are panic-stricken and think he’s a ghost. So to reassure them Our Lord calls out to them- and what does he say? In this translation, he says “it is I”, but in the Greek original he just says “I am” – ego eimi – “I am”. This of course is the name of God, “I am”. Do you remember when God first manifests himself to Moses in the burning bush, Moses asks God to tell him his name- (Exod 3 xiii-xv) and “God said to Moses ‘I am who I am’ and he said ‘say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you’….’this is my name for ever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations’.” So God’s name is I am- funny sort of name, you may be thinking, but I think it means existence, life, being – God is all of that, isn’t he? The force that maintains all of life in being? But we digress. Here Jesus uses the divine name of himself- we get this a lot in John’s gospel more than in the others, lots of “I am” quotes from Jesus, you can think of plenty of them I know: I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world, I am the way, the truth and the life. Here in Matthew just on its own “I am”. Another proof of his divinity- and there is one more to come.
Peter gets in a mess in this story doesn’t he, he loses his nerve and starts to sink in the water. He cries out “Lord, save me!” And we read “Jesus put out his hand at once and held him”. This too is a godlike moment, because God saves his people, and the favourite way the Jews had of describing this was to use the phrase “God stretched out his hand”, and the usual image they used of being in trouble was being in the water. For instance, Psalm 144 (vii) asks God to “stretch forth thy hand from on high, rescue me and deliver me from the many waters….” Psalm 18 (xvi) says God “reached me from on high, he took me, he drew me out of many waters” and another psalm, 107 (xxviii-ix), has “they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed”. So in this reading today we see Matthew determined to show us Jesus in his divinity- we have a Jesus who is in control of the forces of nature, and a Jesus who is always ready to save us.
And now I think we must look for a moment at Peter in this story. We are so used to thinking of Mark’s gospel as the place where we have all the little extras about Peter- after all, long tradition assures us that Mark was the confidant of Peter and that Peter’s memoirs underlie Mark’s Gospel- it is a bit of a surprise for us to realise that this episode, so typical of the rash and impetuous Peter and all the scrapes his enthusiasm got him into, is unique to Matthew. I think- I go out on my own here- that Peter is in this story standing for every Christian, he is here as an example of the typical follower of Our Lord, he is here as a representative of ordinary Christians like you and me. He is as Jesus calls him the “man of little faith”. We blow hot and cold, don’t we; we want to be good and loyal followers of Our Lord, we want to be good catholics, we want to do our bit for the Kingdom of Heaven and its advancement, but that’s on a good day! There are other days when we are not so keen on the whole damn business of the Christian life, when we feel we’ve had enough of the Church thank you, when our lives are not serene and calm but there’s a few storms brewing up and the cares of the world or the lure of its easy pleasures seem suddenly very strong and likely to blow us off course once and for all. Had any of those days? I get them quite often I must say! But here’s the important thing: we are like Peter in that we want to jump in and follow Our Lord right now, of course we do and here we go, but we are like him in that once we have set out on the Christian life, we feel the force of the wind, and we take fright and like him we start to sink. When we get that sinking feeling, we must be like Peter too- we must not hesitate but cry out “Lord, save me!” because Our Lord is there, isn’t he, always waiting to catch us!
Dear Jesus, we recognise you in all your humanity and in all your divinity. We know that shortly you will come upon this altar and be truly present to us in your body and blood, soul and divinity. You know we are people of little faith, we often feel the force of the wind, we often begin to sink. Come to us, dear Jesus, when we call upon you! Come to us, put out your hand at once and hold us! In St Saviour’s we are in the boat with Peter, the boat that is your Catholic Church, and here we bow down before you and say with those first disciples “Truly you are the Son of God”. Amen.
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