(Homily 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Yr. C)
The human experience reveals so far, that
the world is in a constant existential antithesis of the poor and the rich, the
happy and the sad, the impressed and the depressed, the list can continue on
and on, but they are in any case, facts of human existence. In the quest to
overcome this antithesis, many a times, we allow ourselves to be enticed by the
false promises, illusions and deceptions of the world, which pull us down from
the standard that Jesus has given to us through his outstanding teachings. The standard of Jesus leads to true and
lasting happiness, for his are standards of trust in God, beatitudes and hope.
The existential antithesis is adequately expressed in the readings of today,
where the blessing of those who trust in God is opposed to the curse of those
who trust in man (first reading), in the Gospel St. Luke presents the
antithesis between the beatitudes of the poor, the hungry, of those who mourn
and those hated by people, and the woes of the rich, the satisfied, of those
who laugh and are praised by men. And lastly, St. Paul reveals the
contraposition between those who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead
(some Corinthians) and those who believe in it (Christians).
The first reading (Jer. 17:5-8) is a poem of
two stanzas made up of the pronouncement of woe on those who trust in man and the
beatitudes on those who trust in Yahweh. Alongside the woe and the
beatitudes are two corresponding comparisons of the man who trusts in man, “accursed
be anyone who trusts in human beings, who relies on human strength and whose
heart turns from Yahweh. Such a person is like a scrub in the wastelands” (vv.5-6a) and the man who trusts in the
Lord, “Blessed is anyone who trusts in Yahweh, with Yahweh to rely on. Such a
person is like a tree by the waterside” (vv.7-8a).
In the first category, the man who trusts in man, is said to be cursed, How?
Not certainly in the sense that God punishes him nor because God will send him
misfortune, but in the sense that this man is on the way to his ruin. Why is
the man who trusts in man on the wrong road, on the road to disappointment and
failure? It is not as if it is
prohibited to trust in man, but in the biblical sense, the verb stands to
indicate putting all of one’s trust in man, thus making man an absolute, the
end and foundation of one’s life. And the result will be nothing but
delusion and failure. It is in this sense that the prophet says “cursed is the
man that trusts in man”. On the other hand, “the man who trusts in the Lord is
blessed” (v.7). Here “to trust in the Lord” does not entail folding one’s alms and wait
passively for God to do all, rather it entails having God as the foundation and
end of your existence, to trust in his Word, to allow oneself to be led by Him.
We can trust in God for he is faithful. In the words of the prophet, he who
trusts and entrusts himself to God will be like a tree planted by water (v.8). The psalmist captures vividly
well the theme of Jeremiah’s poem, for Psalm 1 reaffirmed that the man who
hopes in the Lord is like a tree planted near the streams while the wicked are
like a chaff blown around by the wind (Ps.
1:3.4). This passage overlaps into the Gospel for the pronouncement of woes
and blessings to different categories of people.
The Gospel periscope (Lk. 6:17.20-26) presents the Lukan account of the Sermon on the
Mount or the beatitudes. This must have been a disconcerting message to the
listeners of Jesus, for in the common Jewish mentality of that time, richness
was considered a blessing, a sign of friendship with God, while poverty was
seen as a curse. In fact, the discourse
of Jesus on the Mount still presents the disconcerting aspect till today.
Similarly, the widespread opinion is that richness and power are the things
that matter, and people can go to any length to have them. This of course is
contrary to the teaching of Jesus. The discourse of Jesus is programmatic, and
has to be understood as such.
In
Luke unlike in Mathew (5:1-12) this great sermon was delivered on a plain
ground and not on a Mount. In Luke’s parlance therefore, the sermon on the
plain or level ground took place where crowds gathered with the quest for
hearing Jesus’ words and be healed of their diseases. In that bid, verse 17: “He then came down with them
and stopped at a piece of level ground where there was a large gathering of his
disciples, with a great crowd of people from all parts of Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon”, provides
the Lukan setting or context of the Great Sermon. It is interesting, Luke’s
choice of a plain ground, probably to emphasize that in the human search for
meaning, we find ourselves in the same place and in the same level. It is
from this common background that Jesus speaks to his followers and to us today.
The Sermon however, was addressed to the disciples and not to the crowds,
though it took place in the presence of the crowd, “Then fixing his eyes on his
disciples he said: How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is
yours” (v.20). This entails that the ethics of the Sermon was not meant for all, but
for the followers of Christ.
In both Mathew and Luke, the Sermon begins
with series of beatitudes; they are eight in Mathew and four in Luke. In Luke
each beatitude has a corresponding woe; the rich and the poor, hungry and full,
weeping and laughing, hated (prophets) and spoken well of (false prophets). In Luke’s account the Sermon has some
sociological dimension, for the poor and the hungry include the less
privileged of the society. Once again, making reference to Mathew’s account,
the later seem to be more correct when he talks not just about the poor, but
the poor in spirit, and not just about hungry, but those who hunger for
righteousness. As a matter of fact, care
must be taken in order not to analyze the Sermon only from the sociological
view point, for it basically has to do with one’s relationship with God, and
not necessarily on one’s social status.
In the Beatitudes Jesus proclaimed the
nearness of God’s Kingdom, that it is already present in Him, Autobasileia.
He affirms that the promises of the prophets find fulfillment in him, and he in
turn promises salvation to the poor. We cannot but remember all the prophecies
of Isaiah, who announced the future Messiah as a Consoler, the hope of those
suffering, and he indicated as one of the characteristic signs of his coming,
the proclamation of the good news to the poor. And precisely to them, to the
poor, the hungry, to those who mourn, Jesus promises salvation. On the other
hand, the rich are not only those who
possess a lot, but also those who selfishly enjoy and massacre their wealth.
The poor instead are not only those who
lack material wealth, but also the persecuted, the suffering and the simple
hearted. In his programmatic discourse Jesus proclaimed the poor blessed (v.20) and woe to the rich (v.24). The poor in material and
economic sense are those that lack the basic necessities of life, those who
struggle to survive; and in the spiritual sense (the most important) the poor
instead are those their hearts are detached from earthly things, and they do
not put their trust or derive their happiness from them. Those poor in the
spiritual sense are those proclaimed blessed by Jesus, because they are
‘simple’, ‘humble’ and ‘dependent’, they recognize their nothingness before
God.
However, it is interesting to note that for
St. Luke unlike St. Mathew, it is not about spiritual poverty, for instance St.
Mathew would say: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, but for St. Luke it has a realistic significance, it has to do
really with the poor, those who lack the basic necessities, it is about those
who are hungry, the persecuted, the marginalized etc. They are proclaimed blessed
not in the future, in the eternal life to come, but at the present, here and
now, because at the present a supreme good is offered to them: the Kingdom of
God, the proposal for salvation and encounter with Christ. The beatitudes are not doctrines or thesis for social reform, they
are not proposal for class struggle, nor a call for the destruction of
injustice and inequality (though a Christian has to be adequately involved in
this). They are a promise of salvation that God offers in Christ to those who
listen to his word, place their trust in Him and recognize their need of Him.
And many a times, the poor and not the rich are well disposed to welcome this
offer.
In his account, St. Luke added his
famous word “woe” or “alas”, addressed to the rich. Be that as it may, we could
ask some pertinent questions thus: Are
the rich excluded from the kingdom of God? Is the Good news not for them also?
The answer is emphatic No! Jesus does not intend to exclude anyone, his
message of salvation is not discriminatory, and it is not as if Jesus wanted to
attack the rich, far be it! It seems instead that he intended to reawaken in
them the consciousness that their riches can lead them astray. In concrete
terms, Jesus maintains that in relation to the supreme good of man, which is
salvation, and the gift of the Kingdom of God offered to man, riches can be a
big obstacle. This is because he who
possesses riches runs the risk of being closed in self-sufficiency, and thus
can grow deaf to God’s appeal for salvation. He risks trusting in himself
and his riches. He risks losing the precious treasure, that inestimable pearl
as announced in the parable, that worth selling all that one possesses in order
to purchase it. This is why the “woe” to
the rich is a sort of warning, and not an attack. Jesus invites them and us
today to guide against the attitude of making money and riches an absolute
value. It is not as if money and riches are bad or evil in themselves, but what
matters is our attachment or detachment from them. Therefore, it is good to acquire wealth, but we need
to guide against the temptation of being possessed by wealth and riches. What
matters is to have a heart detached from earthly things, to have that sense of
dependency and nothingness before God. We need to ask the Lord for the spirit
of poverty or poverty in the spirit. Let the rich not attach his heart to his
riches and let the poor not be jealous, too ambitious and greed.
As St. Paul evidenced, in the second
reading (1Cor.15:12.16-20) we can
see the most evident proof of trusting in God, in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from death. St. Paul affirmed that God raised him from the dead as the
“first fruits” of those who have fallen asleep (v.20). Therefore, the reality of his resurrection is a guarantee that
also one day we shall resurrect. After the proclamation of the Lord’s
Resurrection, Paul reproached the Corinthians for their inconsistency. For if
they accepted the proclamation of Christ’s resurrection, how come they deny the
resurrection of the dead? They do not
believe because they trust more on human intelligence and knowledge than in
God. In verses 17-20 St. Paul
advances an existential argument to drive home his point, because the denial of
the resurrection of the dead, undermines the reality of our present Christian
existence, in his words: “your faith is futile and you are yet in your sins” (v.17). As a matter of fact, the
Christian hope of resurrection is by no means a mere philosophical opinion, but
a realism on which hinges our hope. Indeed, “If our hope in Christ has been for
this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people” (1Cor. 15:19). By means of
Christ resurrection, we have become forgiven sinners, Christ has introduced us
into a new relationship with God, which goes beyond this present existence.
Oratio: Lord Jesus may your transforming words
irrigate our sterile souls and lead us to the path of the Beatitudes, the path
of lasting happiness. Amen!
(Fr.
Vitus M.C. Unegbu, SC)
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