Homily for Sunday, 3 July 2016

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 66:10-14c; Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How many of us have ever been on a great journey or pilgrimage? Especially during my time as a Basilian and as a priest, I have had many opportunities to travel; to visit; to serve around the world. Since last September I have been a doctoral student in theology at the Catholic University of Paris. In the last eight years I have lived in Paris, in Toronto, in Windsor, in Cali, Colombia, in Madrid, and in Rochester, New York. There have been a few pilgrimages during this time, from the Holy Land to the Andean Highlands of southwestern Colombia and Ecuador, to a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary at over 3 000 metres above sea level!

But is there not a point, for anybody here who has traveled frequently or long distances, when you just want to return home and stay put for a while? For this and several other reasons, I’m grateful to be back here, in Edmonton, the city in which I grew up, and at St. Joseph’s College where my journey as a Basilian began. Here, I’ll be teaching a course beginning this week, Teaching as a Vocation: International Perspectives.

We hear in our readings today of people with more “international perspectives”; more experience of travel; of pilgrimage than any course could have provided them. The prophet Isaiah speaks to us of the people of Israel of his time who had plenty of experience of living in foreign nations, and not by choice. In Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel were in exile. Their home, Israel, and its centre, Jerusalem, had been conquered and laid waste. And Isaiah calls them in the midst of this devastation to return to their homeland and to rebuild it.

How would the people of Israel react to Isaiah’s call to return to Israel; to Jerusalem? Most considered Isaiah’s call to set out on this journey home to be foolish. Most of them had become comfortable after years in Babylon, even though they had lost their nation’s autonomy and their faith in the one God. Only a small (but significant) group took up Isaiah’s call to return and to rebuild their homeland. They remembered God’s care for them through Isaiah’s comforting, maternal imagery of Jerusalem, although it would take time, hard work, and renewed faith for the people of Israel once again to build the city over which the LORD would “extend prosperity… like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream.”

And if Isaiah calls the people of Israel to return home; to rebuild Jerusalem as the city of God, in Luke’s Gospel from which we hear today Jesus, too, calls seventy of his disciples to set out on a difficult journey. The journey to which Jesus calls the seventy, and the message of peace Jesus sends them to speak to the households of “every town and place where he… intended to go,” are just as demanding as Isaiah’s call to the exiled people of Israel to return and rebuild Jerusalem.

While Isaiah’s call had been to return home to Jerusalem, Jesus’ call to the seventy is to set out from the comfort of home and the certainty of being at Jesus’ side. They are to leave behind not only added comforts but what would seem to be necessities, too: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.”

Now, how many of us would be more inclined to set out on a long journey away from home without these basic necessities: Cash in the right currency and in a hidden pouch (to avoid the occasional pickpocket); one of those new ultra-lightweight luggage sets; sturdy footwear; good company and conversation along the way? I do not think many of us would want to set out without at least the bare necessities. Yet this is what Jesus seems to expect of his seventy disciples: “I am sending you like lambs into the midst of wolves”; shake the dust off your feet as witness against the towns who “do not welcome you.” Some journey that is!

But the seventy disciples Jesus sends out ahead of him are undeterred. In fact, they return to Jesus brimming with confidence: “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us.” These disciples, though, have forgotten an important detail: This success they had as traveling preachers in Jesus’ name was not the end of their journey. Heaven is the endpoint of their journey; the goal of our journey. And so the seventy disciples draw a sharp caution from Jesus: “Do not rejoice… that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Imagine ourselves for a moment among Jesus’ seventy disciples who hear this. Might we ask ourselves: “Is it so wrong of us to rejoice”? We have just returned from a long difficult journey; a mission to spread Jesus’ message, the Gospel, “to every town and place” ahead of him. Our mission has been more successful than we would ever have dreamed possible. Spiritual beings, let alone people whom we might have thought to be skeptical of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, have submitted to us; have opened themselves to our message. Why not throw a great celebration of our unexpected success upon our return? But wait, Jesus says…

Jesus does not say that we should not rejoice over our more significant successes in this world. But he invites us to keep our eyes and our hearts focused on the ultimate goal of our journey; our mission; our earthly pilgrimage: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Keep your eyes and hearts focused on our journey’s goal that is pure gift, since it is God who has written our names in heaven before any of us ever existed except in God’s own loving imagination.

As pure gift, God has created us as uniquely capable of loving one another as God loves; as uniquely capable of setting out on this journey to which God calls us, a journey that leads us right back to God; to heaven, where God has written our names. And God has provided us with guideposts; signs along our journey to keep us focused and on the right path to heaven.

But these guideposts; these signs are just that: Signs. Jesus cautions us not to become focused on these as if they are the endpoint of the journey. Otherwise we become vulnerable to distractions; to false paths like greed; pride; careerism; boasting, as St. Paul cautions against in his Letter to the Galatians, in anything but the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Our earthly pilgrimage, even for the most successful of Christian disciples, will have its challenges; its crosses. I am not speaking here of the small (but still significant, in some areas of the world) proportion of Christians who are martyred; killed out of hatred toward our faith. Life on earth, for all of us, has a beginning and an end. Death may seem for us something more to be feared than in which to rejoice. But a holy death is the Christian disciple’s last major earthly sign, marking the last exit to heaven, where our names are written: Faithful servant; disciple of Jesus Christ.

Before we reach this sign; this guidepost, there will be other signs perhaps as fearsome that we are nevertheless on the right path to heaven; that our focus is right. Even at our most successful, for a Christian disciple a sense of exile must precede our arrival home to rebuild Jerusalem as God’s city as in Isaiah’s time. This sense of exile may be our price to pay for living as countersigns to evils in our world and our culture: Ideological polarization and attacks; militarism; lack of reverence for creation and human life, especially at its beginning and its end, to name a few. We are, after all, “lambs in the midst of wolves.” But, even so, rejoice! Rejoice, so long as our rejoicing itself becomes a sign of the greatest joy we will ever know, the joy promised to us at the ultimate goal of our journey: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”