Homily for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, July 1, 2021. Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Gospel of St. Mark 6:1-6. Theme: Prophets One and All
In today’s gospel, we drop in on Jesus as he visits his hometown and teaches in the synagogue of Nazareth. At first the people are impressed by his words, but then they begin to reminisce about how he grew up with them and was just like them. By recalling his ordinariness, they refuse to believe he could be a messenger sent by God. I think many of us can relate to this experience of Jesus. Our good intentions and sincere efforts to live the Gospel can be misunderstood or even rejected by those who know us best - perhaps because in our ordinariness they have seen us at our worst. But rejection didn’t deter Jesus from carrying out His mission as prophet. And it shouldn’t stop us from carrying out ours, either.
You do know that you are a bonafide God-anointed prophet, don’t you? By virtue of our Baptismal-washing and Confirmation-anointing, each one of us shares intimately in the mission of Jesus as prophet. And so, it’s incumbent upon us to know what it means to be a prophet and what we can expect once we consciously take up our part in this mission. Contrary to popular thought, a prophet is not primarily someone who predicts the future! Rather, a prophet is a person called and chosen by God to communicate his message to others. Sometimes this might indeed entail foretelling a future event, but by and large it is a matter of delivering God’s message for the here-and-now, both by word and by action.
If we look to the Sacred Scriptures we see that prophets are meant to be the conscience of a nation, to point out the evils that others are willing to ignore. They are called to alert the community to the spiritual and moral sickness that is all around them and is threatening to infect them. They speak out about the abuse of the poor by the rich and point out the negligence of political leaders in seeking the common good.
Prophets called and recalled the leaders and the people to acknowledge and worship God, upon whom all depend for life, liberty and happiness. They advocate for the building of a truly human society rooted in acknowledging God’s sovereignty and they warn of the impending consequences to be faced in ignoring to do so. To sum it all up, we can say that prophets in every era and in every part of the world are the moral doctors of a country, diagnosticians of the national soul. They offer a divinely constructed path to social healing for those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see what is really going on around them.
As Christians, we have a vitally important and utterly necessary prophetic mission in our nation today. It needs to hear the voice of Jesus, through our voices, calling all the repentance of heart and conversion of life; to love of God and love for neighbor if we hope to be a real service to our country. We need to remind people that the further a nation drifts from God, the further away it floats from safety and security, from truth, goodness, justice, mercy and compassion for all people. As prophets, we need to point out that when humans alienate ourselves, our education, our social lives and our politics from God, from what is good and true, then we are left with nothing but a fallen human nature, still in the grips of slavery to Satan and sin. And once this happens we are destined to denigrate into the pagan barbarism of the Vikings of old or the inhumanity and bloodthirst of the Nazis of yesteryear.
It is so very easy to bemoan the state of things in both our nation and our church today, but whining and doing nothing about it is not the way of the prophets! Instead each of us, in our own way and within our own particular slices of life, must never be timid about speaking God’ Word, his truth, and carry out our mission as…
• Prophets of racial harmony, calling all to see the person beneath the color, neither discriminating not privileging on account of one’s skin or ethnicity;
• Prophets of human nature, recalling the creation of male and female, while offering compassion and mercy to those who struggle;
• Prophets of truth and freedom, demanding honesty, integrity and the right to speak our minds from our media, our corporations and our politicians;
• Prophets of peace and justice, speaking out against violence and disregard for life whether it be from abortion, unchecked urban crime or the trafficking of the vulnerable.
This is a tremendous task and a courageous challenge. But it is ours and we can indeed accomplish it because of our faith relationship with Jesus Christ. It requires that we, each and every one of us, be deeply rooted in a right relationship with God through prayer and reflection on his Word. We must be fed frequently with the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist and become emboldened by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. We will not be judged on if we were successful in this mission but only if we have been faithful. Fidelity to God and not the approval of others must be our motivation. This was the spirit of Ezekiel in our first reading. It was the spirt of St. Paul in our second reading. And it is the spirit of Jesus Christ, prophet and Son of God.
Jesus teaching in the synagogue of Nazareth
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