Homily for Sunday, 7 July 2019

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, 16-20

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How many of us have heard or are aware that, normally in Ordinary Time, the Old Testament reading and the Gospel reading at Sunday Mass share a more-or-less common theme, and that the New Testament reading usually does not share this common theme with the other readings on Sundays?

Today, it may be more difficult for us to find this common thread between our reading from the prophet Isaiah and our reading from Luke’s Gospel. Toward the end of Isaiah, in the text we hear today, the prophet calls the people of Israel home from a roughly seventy-year exile in Babylon. The Babylonians have been defeated by their enemies, the Persians, and the Persians have allowed the people of Israel in exile in Babylon to return to their homeland.

Today we hear one of a few of the more magnificent expressions of maternal imagery for either Jerusalem, or God, or both, in Isaiah. The last third or so of the Book of Isaiah alternates between two types of addresses by God through Isaiah to the people of Israel: One type of address is to Israel or Jacob, always masculine, and tends to depict God as a stern judge of Israel for Israel’s sins that led its people into exile and its continued stubbornness in returning home from exile. The other type of address from Isaiah, which we hear today, is to Jerusalem or Zion, always feminine, and tends to feature God and God’s prophet Isaiah as more merciful and consoling.

It may also be helpful for us to remember the social conditions of the people Isaiah was addressing in his time. Isaiah was calling the social elites of Israel, who had spent up to about seventy years (several generations) in exile in Babylon, to return to their homeland. It is appropriate that a prophet like Isaiah would make the case for return from exile to a people who had never known their homeland in the most consoling and inviting terms possible. So Isaiah presents Jerusalem as a motherly figure, in the image of a motherly God, nourishing and comforting her child: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her… that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast… As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”

In Isaiah’s time, on the one hand, not only had the generation of exiles at the end of the Babylonian Exile never seen their homeland, but many were quite comfortable and wealthy in Babylon. On the other hand, Jerusalem had been sacked by the Babylonians and other invaders. It was what we might call “a fixer-upper.” Anybody who had an ancestor who had seen the destruction of Jerusalem and been deported to Babylon may have questioned the soundness of somebody like Isaiah: “This imagery of ‘mother Jerusalem’ ready to receive and comfort her children home from Babylon must be some kind of awful joke,” we could imagine the Israelites saying to Isaiah with contempt. Many of these Israelites would have turned on God, too: After all, what kind of God—surely not a consoling, merciful, maternal God—would have allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed? These Israelites could not have been blamed, in one sense, for thinking that they were better off under Babylon than under God, in a ruined homeland most of them had never known.

In contrast, in Luke’s Gospel today Jesus calls a more expansive group of “seventy others” to be his disciples, immediately after he had called his first Twelve Apostles to follow him. Unlike the first Twelve Apostles, Luke’s Gospel does not even give us the names, let alone any information whatsoever, about these “seventy others.” We might imagine that maybe most of these “seventy others” became excellent disciples of Jesus. Luke says to us today that this group of seventy enjoyed some early success in the mission to which Jesus appointed them; that they “returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us’”!

One of my favourite Eastern Orthodox icons is of the calling together, or “Synaxis,” of the Seventy Apostles. In the halos of each of the seventy in this icon is a name, drawn from the names of Jesus’ disciples throughout the New Testament. But the reality is that we do not and cannot know the names of these “seventy others” whom Jesus called to follow him. We might imagine that most if not all of them were holy people. We might imagine the same of hopefully most of the billions of Christian disciples in our world today, most of whom are unknown to us and who certainly do not have visible halos with their names written in them (although quite possibly, and hopefully, many of their “names are written in heaven”)! Yet, much like we experience today, is it too far-fetched to presume that some of these “seventy others” whom Jesus called followed him out of a misplaced desire to secure their own comfort, status, pride, or prestige? Could a few of these “seventy others” have agreed to follow Jesus because, to them, Jesus was the latest fad; the latest celebrity, this astounding preacher and healer from Nazareth and not much more?

It is not too far-fetched, I think, to imagine that (hopefully only) a few of these “seventy others” may have agreed to follow Jesus for less-than-noble reasons. Even among the first Twelve Apostles was one who used his comfort, status, pride, and prestige to betray Jesus. Among the billions of Jesus’ disciples today, there are (hopefully only) a few who draw scandal to the name Christian by abusing their comfort, status, pride, and prestige, placing themselves and their worldly priorities above the priority of discipleship. This happens today, as it happened among the Twelve and realistically among the Seventy, because we are subject to the effects of the Fall; the effects of our sin.

This is why the Gospel of Luke, especially during Jesus’ and his disciples’ long journey to Jerusalem, which takes up about a third of Luke’s Gospel, includes several moments of what we might call “fraternal correction” of Jesus’ disciples, lest they place their comfort, status, pride, and prestige above following Jesus faithfully. At the very beginning of the journey of the “seventy others” with Jesus, we hear one of these moments of fraternal correction. Jesus says this to the seventy before they even set out: “See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.”

“See, I am sending you out” like prophets “into the midst” of a people in exile, the heavenly mother Jerusalem a distant reality for many who will not want to hear, no matter how gently we speak the message, how “exiled” they are (and perhaps we may be, insofar as our consciences will tell us) captive to comfort, status, pride, and prestige, without even realizing it, much like many Israelites in Babylon in Isaiah’s time.

“‘See, I am sending you out’ on a journey whose destination is Jerusalem,” Jesus might say to us today. Our destination, the same destination as that of Jesus, is indeed the heavenly Jerusalem. But, in order to reach the heavenly Jerusalem; in order to allow God to save us, we, like Jesus and like the people of Israel called home from exile by Isaiah, must enter and experience the Jerusalem in ruins, the destination that is at first glance a homeland strange and unknown to us.

“See, I am sending you out” toward a destination that is eternal salvation, but must pass by way of the cross. We will, without a doubt, do great works in this world, perhaps cure the sick, preach the immediate presence of God’s reign on earth, or have “the demons submit to us.” But more often, as God expects of us, we will work small but still significant acts of kindness and love toward one another. Yet all this will mean nothing if our discipleship does not place Jesus before ourselves and our comfort, status, pride, and prestige; if we boast, as St. Paul says to the Galatians, “of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“See, I am sending you out.” Our destination, and the destination of Jesus Christ, is eternal comfort in our God, like the comfort provided by the most tender of mothers, but more profound than we could ever imagine: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her… that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast… As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” But our consolation; our true comfort; our eternal salvation pass by the way affliction; anonymity; the cross; the ruined and the unknown. This is the only way by which we may be saved, because this is the only way by which we journey with the Lord, who goes before us by the same way to open for us the gates to the heavenly Jerusalem.