Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 14, 2022
Jeremiah 17: 5-8
Thus says the LORD:
Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings,
who seeks his strength in flesh,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He is like a barren bush in the desert
that enjoys no change of season,
but stands in a lava waste,
a salt and empty earth.
Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose hope is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted beside the waters
that stretches out its roots to the stream:
it fears not the heat when it comes;
its leaves stay green;
in the year of drought it shows no distress,
but still bears fruit.
Psalm 1
R (40:5a) Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked,
nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
but delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
that yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20
Brothers and sisters:
If Christ is preached as raised from the dead,
how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
If the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised,
and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain;
you are still in your sins.
Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are the most pitiable people of all.
But now Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Luke 6:16, 17-26
Jesus came down with the Twelve
and stood on a stretch of level ground
with a great crowd of his disciples
and a large number of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon.
And raising his eyes toward his disciples he said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for the kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.
Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.
For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.
But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are filled now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will grieve and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.”
[img]http://www.catholica.com.au/sunday/images/Y-not_an_640x166.gif[/img]
[b]You're on track [i]when[/i] you're poor[/b]
Luke re-worked Matthew's "Beatitudes" to suit his purpose. Perhaps he was writing for an audience already less interested in the Moses allusion but wondering what impact Christians were expected to make on their world. We still wonder.
It is extremely disappointing that the Beatitudes, which Matthew set like a banner at the head of the page introducing the new law, have lost their flavour. Like a cluster of balloons tied to the flagpole in the front garden on Grand Final day they now droop sad and forlorn, deflated and no longer inspiring. 'The party's over.'
It's a standing joke: "Blessed are the poor - oh yeah! Well I'll bet the bloke who said that was never down to his last dollar, and a family to feed." In fact the gospels do not suggest Jeshua or his followers were in any way destitute, or starving. (The Greek word ptochos means the cowering, beggarly poor, the destitute.)
Matthew has Jeshua as another Moses teaching from a mountain top - except that the new turns out to be not new laws but lessons in how to live the old ones with integrity and so become as honest as God.
Both have the blressings spoken to the newly chosen apostles while crowds waited. For Matthew the first four look to me like four fundamentals of a good life. Luke gives them a different tone and, to leave no doubt that these are not general theoretical principles but practical injunctions that must be implemented, he adds four negative 'curses' with a directness that drives the nail right home.
After some weeks trying to show how the blessings are relevant for us, I happened to ask myself why Jeshua addressed them to his newly-chosen group of close associates, the twelve future leaders. The crowds are waiting below - in Matthew, or pressing in to touch him in Luke. What do these blessings mean as addressed specifically to the newly chosen apostles?
There is no reason to think the choice excludes everyone else but I find that, if we listen as apostles, seeing ourselves communicating Jeshua's teaching by example and word, the picture becomes much clearer. Actually Luke shows that Jeshua intends the lesson to be for the twelve when he sets aside Matthew's very general 'Blessed are the poor', and writes pointedly 'Blessed are you who are poor'.
Luke has no qualms about changing an accepted text to make a different point - or was it to make Matthew's point more clear? To put the blessings into a modern idiom might be just as easy! What happens if we insert one more word, when, to change the statement of fact into a conditional one? 'Blessed are you when you are poor.' Now that would make me sit up and take notice because, from being four nice sayings about people God seems to favour, the four become prescriptions or standards I have to measure up to as a leader and apostle.
The idea is reinforced by the negatives, the curses, that follow. It's not all the wealthy who are cursed, or the well-fed or the party-goers, but apostles - leaders - when they get rich and show off by hob-nobbing with the wealthy and powerful and enjoying rich banquets. They are not up to standard. They are 'cursed'.
The much-loved but little understood 'Beatitudes' become very challenging. Did Luke see problems already among leaders of the communities who were full of their own importance instead of emptying themselves as Christ had done to be one with their flock?
1. You're on track when you keep yourself poor. You don't have to be a grasping social-climber to have a problem with money. Leaders of church communities, bishops for example, have the intelligence and talent to be captains of industry if they had so chosen. With the prestige leadership gives them money occasionally flows their way unbidden. The gospel challenge is to resist that wealth that would set them apart from their people. The good shepherd knows his sheep, he has the smell of the sheep on his clothes and he leads them, going ahead through the rough places, and they follow because they trust him. The poor will not feel patronised by one like themselves.
Jeshua chose to be poor, and he sets this as the standard: that his apostles should not only choose to be poor but should keep themselves poor if they are to remain effective ministers of the gospel.
The ramifications of this are enormous. The idea that the poor are blessed for being poor has never sat well with people working for their living and trying to give their children a better chance in life than they had. And the really destitute feel insulted to be told they are blessed, or as some translations have it today, 'happy'! But if the injunction is addressed to the aposltes, to bishops and other leaders as ambassadors of Christ, it is by having no wealth and no social standing that they will be able to identify with the struggles of the weak and destitute, and on occasion to offer an honest critique to those among the powerful who knowlingly keep large sectors of the populatiion poor for the sake of the economy and their personal gain.
Is it feasible for today's leaders/bishops to become poor? Not only individuals but the institution itself, for the more magnificent The Church is the more people are alienated from it. I believe it is imperative! What would it take?
Restructuring of the finances and dispersing excessive wealth and reserves could be easily done. But what change of attitude, what metanoia, is required?
The best thing about being poor is that you learn eventually that you are in fact dependent for everything, and with that you learn what it means to depend on God. The poor know what it is to trust that 'something will turn up', and when it doesn't, provided they are not crushed, they learn another degree of toughness to put more energy into just living.
The gospels, in fact the whole story from Abraham on, is about trust in God, as in today's first reading and psalm. One example in the gospel is the story about Peter trusting enough to step out of the boat in a storm, but his trust was not enough to keep him from sinking. Churches that put their trust in money, holding it in reserves far more than necessary and splashing it on monumental buildings and pageants, may find it very hard to put their trust in God when things turn bad let alone when the institution is flourishing. The option Jeshua offered the rich young man was to sell his possessions, give to the poor, and simply 'follow' the mendicant preacher from Nazareth. Is there a problem?
A number of items come with the idea of being poor. Being poor in spiirt, for example, i.e., having a humble opinion of oneself, not imagining that you know everything but, therefore, being a willing listener. Leading with a gentle care, never bullying or bossy - Matthew's 'meek'. Trusting in God for your efforts to be fruitful, and in difficult situations to take no path that would show you rely more on human ways and means than on the Lord.
2. When you're hungry: Matthew makes it clear that this refers to being hungry for justice. Luke probably means the same, a hunger that will work to relieve the poverty and hunger of the destitute. It will be more than a wish; better expressed as 'enthusiastic'. Prophets in earlier times and Paul spoke of being on fire with their mission. Jeshua too.
Casual, careless indifference, the shrugging off 'old ways' that can't be changed in spite of being unproductive, unfair or even unjust - with these attitudes the apostle is a useless tree that bears no fruit.
3. When you're weeping. I think a modern expression would be 'those who feel for others, who have empathy and compassion.'
There are people all over the world, christian and other, religious and not, who shed secret tears for the plight of refugees, slaves of human trafficking, sex slaves, ethnic minorities and so on and on.
4. When you're being got at, maligned, disparaged, despised and tortured 'for my name's sake'. In Luke's time were there leaders/bishops cosying up to the rich and powerful to avoid falling out of favour?
We are fortunate in our times to see many people who witness to the truth in all sorts of situations. Many of them are persecuted and even convicted of spurious 'crimes' and jailed. But there is a groundswell of support for whistleblowers and the necessary job they do. May their numbers increase and may we christians learn how to back them up.