Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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I would like us firstly to meditate for a while on the authority of Jesus, with the first reading from Deuteronomy as background, and how it differed according to the Gospels from that of the scribes and Pharisees, and how this authority might set us free from some of our own demons, and what we might need to do in order to bring our way of doing authority back into line with Jesus’ way of doing authority.

It was more than just the wisdom of his words, his sayings, his exposition of Scripture, and the power of his parables not just to talk about the kingdom but to draw us into it. Though this was part of it, this new teaching that people experienced. His words didn’t just describe the kingdom, they helped to make it happen among the people to whom he was speaking.

These words were an expression of who he was. As the unclean spirit recognized, this was not just someone mouthing holy words, this was a Holy One, there, in their presence. He didn’t just speak the Kingdom, and in such a way as to draw us into it: he incarnated it, he lived it out. This also, to some extent, ordinary people seemed to have clued into, adding to the authority of his words. This was someone who evidently stood behind, and whose whole life stood behind what he said, unlike the scribes and Pharisees.

More broadly speaking, in Jesus’ case there was overall consistency between Jesus’ words and actions, and between words and actions and the person that they expressed. Whether we like it or not, signs mean in relation to other signs, and our meaning production is eventually the whole of our lives, for individuals and community both. So also for Jesus as represented in the Gospels. Demons are cast out, also the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, as well as the poor having the gospel preached to them. Beyond this, and possibly more importantly, people across all boundaries and barriers suddenly find themselves being taken seriously, and one by one, not just as a crowd, being treated not as the riff-raff, the people of the land, but as if they were the intensely valued and intensely loved sons and daughters of the One Jesus called ‘Father’, the One who makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall. And they found this attractive and turned up in droves. This is all part of it.

In summary: he was a prophet like Moses (cf. first reading), rather than just someone sitting on the chair of Moses which is a description Jesus once gave to the scribes and Pharisees. He didn’t need a chair to sit on, a position of authority in that sense, because the authority was there in the words and in the works and in the person and the life lived, and the consistency of the whole, not like apparently with the scribes and Pharisees, and this authority was enough to cast out demons.

As we open ourselves to it, this authority still has power to set us free and to cast out some of our demons.

But also, it may be that reflecting on the authority of Jesus may help us to do something about our own way of doing authority, make it more like that of Jesus.

Our problem as church is to move so far as possible from ex cathedra style authority, thinking we should be taken seriously merely because we represent Christ or something like that; to this holistic self-consistent self-validating meaning production out of who we are which Christ seems to have exemplified.

In analogy with being the prophet like Moses rather than sitting on the chair of Moses, the challenge for us always is to move from sitting on the chair of Jesus, so to speak, to being more and more like Jesus, striving more and more as individuals and community to be the continuing holistic self-consistent compassionate beyond boundaries exemplification of Christ in the world. Then shall we also be able to teach with genuine authority in our troubled world, and maybe even, ourselves, to do something to cast out some of its demons.

Second Reading

Today’s second reading, for people who are unmarried, may come as a much needed, and all too rare affirmation of the persons that they are and of the lives that they are living. Unmarried people are very much the intensely valued and intensely loved sons and daughters and far from being second-class citizens. This affirmation is I think very much a part of the Good News.

For people who are married or are considering marriage, however, it is not likely to come across as particularly good news, as it seems to consign them to spiritual second-class citizenship.

While keeping the affirmation of unmarried people and the lives they live, which is I think part of the Gospel, I would like in the rest of this homily to do what I can to re-dress the balance.

(Insert here story of my cousin from Disciples of Jesus. Shouldn’t go on the web though.)

For people who are married or are choosing marriage, loving their wife or husband and loving their children and tending to them with all that this involves or will involve is not an obstacle or distraction to loving God with all our mind and heart and soul but a primary mode for such people by which they do or propose to do their love of God with all their mind and heart and soul. And that is what they a choosing, a certain way of doing this alongside other possible ways.

This is confirmed, among other things, by that fact that we consider marriage as a sacrament, a notion inspired by another text of St Paul’s about husbands loving their wives as Christ loved his Church. This is to say the relationship itself, with one another, but including the involvement with children, is a grace-filled sacred place, sometimes in spite of everything a space in which the Kingdom of God is to be found for the people in question. The wedding is not the sacrament, the relationship is. Also, it is not as if Christ loving his Church is distraction from his love for the Father. It’s an exemplification, demonstration or manifestation of it. And so also for husbands loving their wives and wives their husbands and both of them their children, with all that this involves.

This is the case generally for loving God and loving neighbour, the same pattern is repeated. To think of one as a distraction from the other is going to get us very quickly into a kind of self-contradiction. The trouble with this is that loving God is to do God’s will, and seven out of the ten divine commandments have to do with love of neighbour, and the second of the great commandments is love your neighbour as yourself; and as Jesus said, on his part, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, and the commandment I give you is to love one another as I have loved you. Loving one another as I have loved you, which is pretty intense, eh, is not an obstacle to or a distraction from loving Christ, it is one of the modes by which we love Christ, and indeed one of the key, primary modes. Loving our neighbour as ourselves, similarly, is not an obstacle or a distraction from loving God with all our mind and all our heart and all our strength and all our soul: it is one of the modes, one of the key modes by which we love God with all our heart and mind and strength and soul. It says, all, eh: if we think one is a distraction from the other, we are either into a straight contradiction or God is asking the impossible. Along the same lines, attending to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, is not some distraction from attending to Christ, it is a way of attending to Christ, and according to Matthew 25 if we don’t believe that we’ll find out to the contrary on the Last Day.

So literally interpreted out of context, a certain interpretation of the text is seriously confused. It makes an illegitimate separation between God and everything else, between sacred and secular, a separation unsustainable in the light of the gospels and indeed St Paul’s own writings. It manifests too weak a conception of who God really is, making God just part of the cosmic furniture. God is not part of the cosmic furniture but that which gives the cosmic furniture, that without which there is no cosmic furniture, and which affects all and is affected by all. As Jesus says, nothing falls to the ground without your father knowing. If this is the case, then not only is loving people and loving God’s creation consistent with loving God, the love of God in fact includes the love of all!

So what can we take away?

Firstly to put it back into context, which is last week’s reading about the world passing away, this is the very next paragraph. If the end of time is nigh, if the Second Coming is pretty soon, for these early Christians the sooner the better, maybe it doesn’t make much sense to get married or think about starting a family or indeed engaging in any long term commitment of any kind. Because the world as we know it is passing away. Fair enough.

Secondly, this is part of a push in New Testament texts whose end result is a re-valuing of people who don’t happen to be married, in a culture in which they tended to be second class citizens – particularly women who were not married. Part of the Good News is that it is not necessary to be married in order to live a valuable life, to be one of the sons and daughters, an intensely valued, worthwhile participant in the community of brothers and sisters and mothers gathered around Christ living an intensely valuable life.

Sometimes this is pushed to an exaggerated extent, sometimes on the basis of texts like today’s text taken out of context, that celibacy is actually better than marriage, that it is actually better to be unmarried, making marriage rather than not being married a species of second-class citizenship. I was brought up on that, it was part of the indoctrination we received in the old days in the seminary. I think that’s nonsense. I look back, and I compare myself to my married brother, and ask, who has had the easier life? I win hands down. I then ask, who has had the more valuable life? Well, it depends on how you count. But the bottom line is that we ought not to count: we are all the sons and daughters, with different styles and different modes of living that out, but all deeply and intensely valued, deeply and intensely loved, mapping that radical equality which seemed to characterize that initial group of brothers and sisters and mothers, coming from all kinds of places, living all kinds of life, gathered around Jesus..

Finally, there is the point last week about discipleship, and about how we are all called to make Christ and the Reign of God and living life according to the Spirit number one agenda items, engaging in more intense discipleship periods, for the sake of the transformation this brings, sometimes just for the sake of refreshment and care of soul, though also for the sake of the rest of our lives. Periods, if you like, of ‘giving undivided attention to the Lord’. As long as we don’t think that we are not attending to the Lord the rest of the time or in the rest of our lives. Otherwise we’ll probably come a cropper when Jesus asks us on the Last Day what we were doing when he was hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and in prison and all the rest.

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