NewCreation

Homily for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Excuse the strange background. I'm in actually a lovely auditorium in a university in Bogota, and sneaking out of some meetings that I'm supposed to be in, in order to be able to record this, so please excuse the strange, less domestic than usual setting. Today we start the tenth chapter of St Luke's Gospel, and it's a direct continuation of last Sunday's Gospel, where he was giving instructions on following. You remember his face had turned towards Jerusalem. And at this stage, after he's turned towards Jerusalem, the Lord appoints seventy others. Some old texts say seventy-two. Most people think it's probably seventy because it's a reference to the nations — the angels that were put over all the nations, so seventy was the number of the nations. It's a symbolic way of referring to the wider world, the Gentiles, and it's in contrast to the twelve disciples, then apostles, whom Jesus had sent out earlier. So here we have seventy going out in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go, suggesting that he had quite a path on his way to Jerusalem — though it'd be curious, because at the end he upbraids a couple of local cities that were very close to where he was starting from in Galilee. Chorazin and Bethsaida are both very close to Capernaum where he started from. He rebukes Capernaum as well. So is he sending them into the area that he's just left? If it says the places where he himself intended to go, does that mean that he in some sense thinks that in sending them he himself is going there? It's not clear. The meaning may be more mysterious than it seems, or it may mean simply that he's getting people to prepare for him to come. But to judge by the tenor of this section, it's not so much that he's coming necessarily on a personal visit, but that he's coming as the crisis, as the judgment point, which will reveal what is really going on. But he starts by saying — he says to them: "The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few." In other words, people are really ripe for the understanding, for the good news that I am going to be bringing to you and that I am asking you, the preachers, to take. The understanding that the kingdom of God is near is something for which people have a hunger, have a thirst. To be able to understand that something has been done already, and that you're only going in, if you like, to reap the fruits of it — that should be a fairly attractive package. But of course, actually fairly few people want to go and reap the harvest even though someone else has planted it and made it all ready. The waves are ready for you to surf, as it were. So he says, "Therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest" — so the one who has made everything, brought it to this point — "to send out labourers into his harvest." Except that the Greek verb here translates "to send out" as ekbalo, which normally means "cast out," suggesting that actually the kind of labourers who might best affect the harvest, or might best surf the waves, are those who have some experience of being cast out. That's going to be their way of being able to inhabit that; it's going to be how they are able to bring the news. So it says, "Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves." So again, just in case you thought that the throwing out, or casting out — all the hostile, the violent language — was just my invention, here it is. He's sending them out like lambs in the midst of wolves. They're going to be very precarious during this mission. And it's their precariousness that is going to be essential to the acts of power that they're going to be able to operate. "Carry no purse" — so don't arrive with a bag of money. "No bag" — the kind of bag that was used to carry food — so that you will be dependent on people for your sustenance. "And greet no one on the road." This appears to be a quote from an account when the prophet Elisha sent his servant Gehazi to perform a miracle and told him not to meet anybody on the road. And why would meeting someone on the road matter? Well, maybe you'd be receiving gossip, knowledge, forewarning — it would darken your imagination as to what the place you're coming from or going to would be. Part of your precariousness is arriving there innocently, not full of gossip, not pre-prepared with caution of what's going on, and not to have any conspiracy theories about what you're going to find. So just go straight there. "Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house.' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that…" person. So there's no question here — this is what we would call a charismatic sense of a person's peace. It's understood that Jesus has enabled his disciples, those who he has chosen, to dwell in a certain peace, and that they are to extend that peace to someone; they're to indicate that they're not there as a threat. They arrive as people who are in need of hospitality, who are in need of help, and therefore their presence is only going to open up things starting from peace. And if anyone is there who shares in peace — that's to say, for whom the presence of an outsider is already not a threat but maybe something welcome — if anyone shares your peace, your peace will rest on that person. In other words, you will actually start sharing a way of being together and being at home, because there will have been no violence, no threat, no precaution, no conspiracy theory, no "is this a spy?" But if not, it will return to you. In other words, they will reject you. They will say, "No, not here. We don't want you. We're frightened of you." But you will be able to rest in the peace of knowing you have been completely innocent of whatever it is that they hold against you. So, imagine you're remaining in the house. "Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide." And this is one which — there's always some curiosity — why remain in the same house? I guess it's because if you're the guest there, you might be tempted to think, "Oh, this is going really quite well; maybe I can get better digs. Maybe there's a richer host somewhere in town, or maybe if I hear gossip about my host, I should move somewhere else." He says, "No, stay there." There's a certain stability that goes with peace that's refusing to be run by gossip, by rivalry, by ambition in the place you are. There's a certain peacefulness there that's to do with staying. "Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide. For the labourer deserves to be paid." In other words, you are doing something and they will provide for you. "Do not move from house to house." So, bringing out that point, there's a certain importance to stability. "Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you." So you don't make a fuss, not be a special person, just accept with delight and with pleasure the generosity of people. You're going to be utterly dependent on them. And it's as such a weak presence that you will be able to cure the sick who are there and say to them, "The kingdom of God has come near to you." If you are able to survive as this weak presence in the midst of potentially hostile situations, that will be a sign that they are close to the kingdom of God, because they have been able to recognise and receive you. "But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out onto the streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.'" In other words, the same message is either the announcement of a good thing for those who are able to recognize the peace, the vulnerability of the ones who are coming in, or it's an act of judgment. We'll hear that word – crisis, judgment, discernment. It's the act of judgment. The same reaction that they have to you will determine whether what they are undergoing is the arrival of the kingdom of God or their rejection of the kingdom of God. "I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town." And this indeed brings out something of what Jesus is doing. As in the Genesis story where God arrives with – or rather, God sends a couple of his messengers – so here we have the pairs to every town. So it is in a sense like the visitation: is this a town that is capable of receiving, or is it a town that is going to gang up and throw out? That was, after all, what happened at Sodom. God went down to visit, to see whether the cries that had risen up from the city were true or not. Were they receiving people? Were they treating vulnerable people, precarious people, well, or were they rejecting them? He sent out his messengers to Sodom. Lot took them in; the kingdom of God came close to him. And the others tried to expel them, tried to torture them. "I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town." And in fact, here he's using Sodom in the traditional Jewish prophetic sense of a kind of mirror of something from a mythical past that was something terrible – a terrible failure of hospitality, a terrible failure to respect God. But he's saying: you, it'll be worse for you, a small town in Galilee or a small town in the northern part of Israel… it will be worse for you than on the Day of Judgment. In other words, Sodom is a mirror by comparison with which you are worse. That's the standard use of Sodom in Jewish teaching. And then he goes to "woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida," two very small villages, not very far from Capernaum, which is where he'd been based. "For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes." So Tyre and Sidon, again two very powerful, very rich cities that in the prophetic literature, specifically Isaiah but also other prophets, are constantly being railed against as examples of everything that is wrong with pagan cities. So it's saying these tiny little villages, it's worse than Tyre and Sidon. In other words, what's he doing with all this, if you like, hyperbolic imagery of these terrible cities? He's saying the judgment arrives actually in very small things, very small domestic things, and it arrives through vulnerable people. But it's exactly the same judgment as the judgment of God that was made manifest against Sodom and against Tyre and Sidon. The presence, the weak presence, if you like, of God the vulnerable — that is the crisis of judgment. "But at the judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades." Then he backs up what he's been saying to the seventy: "Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me." So yet again, when it said before that he sent them to every place where he himself intended to go, perhaps this is more of the sense that they are, if you like, the sacramental presence of himself, and insofar as the local people receive them they are receiving him, and insofar as they are receiving him, they are receiving God, because God has made himself known in this weak presence, and will later reveal himself to be the crucified one. So, after they've had this trip to the local places, the seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name" — in other words, you being there in person — "even the demons submit to us." In other words, by entering these places with weak presence, actually they'd been able to undo some of the terrible fake forms of power that had possessed and bound people, some of the terrible forms of vibration. It only needed people to be able to be present and weak without fearing being run out, for demons and all the structures of possession — which depend on throwing out in order to make good — to submit to the power of God that comes in weakness. And then Jesus He says to them this wonderful, this wonderful line: "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning." This is a key verse in St. Luke which appears again in the book of the Apocalypse in a slightly different form. The notion that Jesus is present as weak in the world, as one about to occupy the place of shame, of death, of violence, the one who's about to be thrown out — his strong occupation of that is the same thing as the de-transcendentalizing of evil. Evil ceases to be a celestial form; it now becomes an anthropological form, wriggling about on the earth, whose structure and whose working is known. It can be defeated by people who are happy to remain weak, because they know they are held by God, who are not tempted to react with violence and anger and strength, thinking that that makes them better warriors against this thing. So evil has lost its transcendence. "See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy." And this may refer to actual snakes and scorpions, which do exist in that part of the world. It may also refer to the constellations, which had names of snakes and scorpions, and which were thought to be signs of the heavenly powers of these semi-demonic powers that control things, but in a closing-down way. So again Jesus is saying it's the actual — the whole power of transcendence, even the heavens, are being undone, because I can see that the power I have given you works. Jesus rejoices. They rejoice. Then he says: "Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you." In other words, it's not merely your achievements that are the key thing. "But rejoice that your names are written in heaven." And this is this wonderful sense proper to the Hebrew world, that who you really are is being given to you from on high. It's being, as it were, unfurled in your life. And if you are able to occupy this space of weakness, of precariousness, it's because you're being held in place by heaven. Your name has been written there; it is inscribed. This is part of the new reality that is coming in. You are going to be a sign of that new reality coming in. So the name being inscribed in heaven is not a reference to someone with a pen; it's a reference to the reality of your being, as it were, already held elsewhere and starting to unfold in this world, as you make witness to what it's really like — this weak presence that is at the same time a liberating force, but also, when it's rejected, a terrible sort of judgment. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.