Homily for the 4th Sunday
– Cycle A –
30 January 2011
Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13
Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 146:6-10
1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Matthew 5:1-12a
Did you ever notice that sometimes a series of Scripture readings just does not say what you want it to say? Sometimes the words seem to speak to us – to you and to me – in different and distant languages. Sometimes we know there is another message hidden beneath the words but we just don’t seem to be able to find it. That is how it is with today’s readings. Oh, most of us are quite familiar with Matthew’s beatitudes. Most of us even know the corollaries found in other parts of Scripture. Hidden behind the Christian (or human!) mandates of the gospel we also see the second reading, the reading from 1 Corinthians. This is an extremely powerful passage! This is a reading about our callings – the callings that each of us has in Christ Jesus. “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” The way this is worded we know that if we do happen to be wise or powerful or noble, we are not excluded. That is a good thing. But, most of us simply do not fit that description. As a matter of fact, most of us would not really fit our own description of what a follower of Christ should be. Imagine that! We would not meet our own standards! Have you ever thought about the criteria that you personally would set down if you were looking for someone to be called to follow Christ? Would you be chosen – based on your own expectations? Most of us would not! We have an idealized concept of what our call to follow Jesus is all about. But, somehow that does not matter to our God! Our foolishness, weakness, and ignobility are not important. As a matter of fact, that seems to be why so many of us are chosen. God chooses the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong. In other words, God chooses us with all of our warts and weaknesses to do what we are called to do. That call does not depend on us. And the qualifications for the job do not have to meet our standards. They only have to meet God’s standards, those standards that do not meet our guidelines. It is not our doing that gives us this strength in our calling. As the reading tells us, “It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption….” And what is it we can do if we accept that calling? Well, for one thing, we can live out the beatitudes, as listed in the gospel. We can be poor in spirit. In other words, we will not be attached to our worldly goods. We will use our goods properly. We will not deny our goods – regardless of how many or how few we have – but we will use them for the betterment of the world. We can mourn. In other words, we can feel. We can experience the feelings of the children of God everywhere. We can be one with them in what we do and in what we say. And this goes along with hungering and thirsting for righteousness. If we feel for our neighbor, whether near or far, we will work to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness. That is feeling and that is a beatitude toward our neighbor. We can be merciful to all. We do not have the right to judge the hearts of others. But, we can be clean of heart. We can be peacemakers. We may be persecuted for doing right. But that is a part of our calling. It is our calling because God has called us – despite our foolishness, despite our foibles. We have been called to do God’s will. And in doing God’s will with our neighbor in mind, we are living the beatitudes. It is interesting that the Revised Common Lectionary used by most mainline Protestant churches has, instead of the reading from Zephaniah, the reading from Malachi 6:1-8. This reading ends with the beautiful line, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Is it not true that to walk humbly with our God is following our call – whatever that call might be – and at the same time, living the beatitudes? Answering our call is not always easy! As a matter of fact, answering our call is rarely easy. Often it is difficult to determine how the beatitudes should be followed. We may not all agree on how to be peacemakers; we may not all agree on what constitutes mercy; we may not all agree on how to be poor in spirit. None of that matters. Our individual discernments become irrelevant. All that matters is that we are following the call of God and we are doing so with an open mind and an open heart. And somehow all of this comes down to the basic message of the gospel – Love! God’s love for us – despite our weaknesses and shortcomings, despite our failure to meet our own expectations – and our love for God and our love for the rest of humanity. If we only understood love, our call would be clear. And our beatitude answer would also be clear! And this message of love is that message so powerfully spoken but written in other words and other languages. The message of love permeates 1 Corinthians and ties it to the love story told in the beatitudes. It is not the message we start out looking for – but it is the eternal message hidden in the bold face type of the Good News.
-- Roberta M. Meehan RCWP
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