NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 25 in Ordinary Time, Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Today's Gospel is short and sweet but only acquires something of its richness and density if we look at it in terms of the two chunks of the Gospel which we've jumped over since last time. If you remember, last time we had Jesus's question to his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter giving the right answer and then acting as if he didn't understand the answer. Jesus then beginning the road back to Jerusalem from the northernmost reach of Israelite territory back to Rome, telling the disciples that he must suffer and be killed and be raised again, and them not understanding it. That was the first announcement of the Passion. Now since then he has been on that journey with the disciples, walking back towards Jerusalem, but first he made a stop with three disciples for the Transfiguration. At the Transfiguration, to cut a long and very beautiful story short, he's accompanied by Elijah and Moses, who talk to him. Elijah is the one representing the resurrection, but also the one who would come shortly before the great and terrible day of the Lord. And we know that that's the sense in which he's being referred to, because Mark quotes the passage from Malachi about Elijah's robes being brighter than any fuller on earth could refine them, which is a straight quote from Malachi, who talks about Elijah coming before the end in order to turn the hearts of fathers to their sons and sons to their fathers. Moses is present as the one who talked about another prophet who would come, who would be able to perform the atonement, unlike Moses himself. So the two are there for a very specific purpose — Elijah first, he has priority, then Moses. And the voice which speaks says, "This is my Son, listen to what he says." In other words, this is all to do with the relationship between Father and Son, and it's one of the great moments where it becomes clear, as it has from the beginning, that there is to be no further paternal voice; the only voice that we will hear will be that of the Son. So how are we going to learn to hear the Father's voice? It's going to be through the Son and what he tells us. So it's this long, slow march back to Jerusalem which is going to give the apostolic group a chance to learn what Jesus has been talking about — this process of following and learning as they go along — what is going to be the way in which the Lord speaks. This is a very difficult learning. They keep on not getting it, as we'll see. Peter of course immediately wants to build a tabernacle. Jesus explains this is not the way and they head on down the hill. Now scarcely have they headed on down the hill when they come across the remaining disciples. This is probably at the foot of Mount Tabor, but it could be the mount on which Caesarea Philippi was built — it doesn't matter, they were at the bottom of this hill now. And they find the disciples engaged in conversation with some local people and some scribes concerning the disciples' inability to cast out the demon that was possessing a child. And the father was very concerned about this. The father recognized that there was something wrong in his relationship with his son, but the son kept on casting himself down, casting himself into fire, getting himself into all sorts of trouble. In fact, and this is what has become clear, the son is living out the relationship between people and idols that characterize the northern kingdom. This is the place where, according to Psalm 106, the Lord's punishments — the ones prophesied in Leviticus and Deuteronomy for those who were not faithful to the Lord, who did not do what he wanted — had come upon the people in the north because they had not got rid of all the foreign peoples. So they were possessed by their idols and tended to fall into these curses. So here we have this poor family set up: the father who doesn't really know what to do, the son who is casting himself around in hopeless ways, the scribes who are wondering why the disciples can't do anything about this when they have been able to cast out other sorts — and Jesus coming down the hill. And now he's going to demonstrate why it is that Elijah has come, the one who's going to reconcile fathers and sons, and why he is the definitive prophet, but also why this is going to lead to his being killed. Because in the same Psalm 106 it talks about the people in the north having been guilty of sacrificing their innocent sons' blood. So he's going to make a reference — this is going to be a reference to Jesus himself being the innocent son who is sacrificed. But what we have at the moment is this wonderful dialogue in which Jesus talks to the father and then faces down the son, and the son is left as one dead. And here we are carried back to the earlier scene with Jairus, the synagogue superintendent as it were, whose daughter appeared to be dead, and Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up. And again, once again, Jesus takes the son by the hand and lifts him up. So here he's fulfilling the promise of resurrection, which is part of what Elijah has said. And he's giving the father — the father is turning to the son, and the son is being returned to the father. And this is brought out by the dialogue between Jesus and the father. Jesus wants the father to believe; if the father believes, then the son is going to be better. "This sort can only be brought out by prayer" — in other words, by becoming and coming into the presence of the living God, and allowing all your relationships to be re-altered by your relationship with the living God. So very briefly and poignantly we have the relationship between father and son as prophesied by Elijah, the coming of the resurrection as prophesied by Elijah, the son appearing to die, the father not having faith, Jesus wanting him to have faith. And he says, "Help my unbelief." You remember where Jairus had had his unbelief helped by the lady with the flow of blood — he had seen her being healed, and that was what gave him enough strength to go and see his daughter being healed. So that's the parallel here: the synagogue superintendent within Jewish circumstances, and here the father, a human, with his son, a human. It doesn't say whether they're Jewish or not, in this mixed world where the demons and the curses are at work, which Jesus has also come to sort out. It's after this — this healing, this raising of the father's faith, the turning of the father to the son, the announcement of the resurrection that comes with Elijah — that Jesus moves on, and our Gospel from today starts. It says, "They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples." In other words, that's the point. What's going to happen from now on, with very rare little movements out towards the crowd, is attempting to make clear to his disciples what all these teachings mean. It's not a matter of simply understanding his words; it's a matter of completely altering their picture of what is possible. So he was teaching the disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands" — and of course by human hands here he refers to the hands of Gentiles, the man, if you like, is the Romans — "and they will kill him, and three days after being killed he will rise again." Again, "three days" is a short time afterwards; it's the Hebraism. But they did not understand what he was saying. Literally, they did not understand the rhēma — this is a mixture of the word and deed; they did not understand the saying, they did not understand the impact of this word-deed package that he was performing in front of them. It's rather a rich word. So it shows that what he was talking about was not simply that he was saying things straightforwardly, but he was unpacking a whole mystery to them: the mystery contained in Elijah, in Moses, in the promise of atonement, in the promise of resurrection, in what he had been doing, and how this was linked to Psalm 106. And then they come to Capernaum. So here at last he's back on home territory. You remember this was where he'd set up, if you like, his preaching base, in the house of Peter's mother-in-law. And it's probable that when he says "when he was in the house," it's probable that that's referring to Peter's mother-in-law's house. Otherwise, he's back here among friends and on home territory. And it's then sitting in the house that he asks them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" Of course they've been discussing amongst themselves what all these things imply. But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. Well, here's the point. If they were arguing with each other about who was the greatest, then in all probability it's because they'd understood the part about Jesus going to die, and so the question is: who's to succeed him? In other words, the question — who's going to be the boss, which of us is going to be the biggest — was provoked by a certain misunderstanding of what it meant by Jesus going to die. So then we have this very beautiful but very exact passage. He sat down. This is not simply mentioned as a little stage effect. This is the formal gesture of the rabbi about to teach. We have our phrase ex cathedra, teaching from the chair. When we talk about that, it's the bishops or the pope teaching ex cathedra, from the chair. For this was derived from the understanding that the rabbi sat when he was to teach something especially solemn. So he sits, calls the Twelve, and says to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." So he's beginning to teach them: the point of him going to his death is not, "I'm going to leave a vacuum and one of you is going to have to fill it — I wonder who's the greatest?" But: you're all going to have to undergo the way of death, dying to yourselves, so as to learn to be what I have been for others. And then he takes a little child — remember, a non-person. The ancient peoples did not have our sentimental ideas about childhood at all. Children were non-persons. He takes a child and stands him among them. So first of all he stands the child, which is the position of one who is going to speak, and then he embraces him, cuddles him in his arms before them. Now, if what you were was the one who wanted to be greatest, what you were particularly keen on is who was the master's favourite. So here Jesus is actually using mimetic desire to draw attention to his favourite. His favourite is a little child. It's not one of them — it's a little child. A non-person is his favourite. They are supposed to look at that and be very jealous that they are not being cuddled in Jesus's arms. And then he says to them, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me." It's by receiving a non-person that you receive me. "And whoever receives me receives not me, but the one who sent me." You want to receive the Father? Then receive this non-person. In other words, the whole dynamic of the relationship between Father and Son is now to be enacted between brother receiving non-person. That's how you enter into the life of the Father. And incidentally, he says that the one who must be first must be last of all and servant of all. The word is diakonos — in other words, this is going to be the place from which speaking is done. And this is tremendously important. The Father had said to the disciples at the transfiguration, "Listen to him." Part of the problem of the spirit that possessed the son in his relationship with his father was that he was dumb — he and his father could not speak. But Elijah had come in order to enable fathers to be turned to sons and sons to be turned to fathers, and this meant allowing the unimportant one, the demonized one, the possessed one, to speak. And here we have the unimportant one being placed before them in a position of speaking, and said that the one, if they want to be great, they have got to occupy that position and learn to speak from that position. This is how we are going to learn to listen to Jesus, and that means how we are going to learn to obey the Father. This is part of Jesus's teaching technique, attempting to produce a real change in the apostolic group's life, so that by the time they get to the cross they might have the first idea of what he's been talking about. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.