WHERE ARE THE OTHER NINE?

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time               Year C     2013        Holy Spirit Parish            13 October 2013

Deacon John William McMullen

Here are the readings for the day: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/101313.cfm

photo courtesy of the internetmonk

 

Where Are The Other Nine?

 

In the first reading from Kings, Elisha the prophet tells Naaman the leprous Syrian to do something very common: go wash in the muddy Jordan River. Naaman was shocked by the simplicity of Elisha’s cure.

Naaman wanted to see some of the famous Lord God YHWH action – lightning, fire, smoke, the pizzazz of the almighty, omnipotent! Instead, he is told to go wash in the muddy Jordan River. He did as Elisha had said AND FULLY IMMERSED HIMSELF in the water and was cured. Very simple.

This simple act of being immersed, plunged into the water calls to mind our own baptism. Think of the ordinariness of baptism piercing our way into the life of the Holy Trinity. A simple act brings us into union with Christ! The ordinariness of water conveys God’s abundant grace. And it is in the ordinariness of life where we experience God’s grace; down in the ordinary muddiness of daily life.

In today’s gospel, Jesus travels through Samaria, and is met by ten lepers. These ten lepers were a community based upon their disease and their low social status. It was a community of outsiders, based on their brokenness, based on their disease!

 

Our world praises the beautiful and perfect, while it condemns the needy, sick and suffering, and holds the less fortunate in contempt.

But we are all poor before the throne of God’s Grace! 

And in reality we are all poor, blind, and lame, covered with leprosy of some sort. And no matter how many possessions we have, we are still poor and in need of something – or rather, someone greater than ourselves.

We are all lepers before God. We have the leprosy of sin. And Jesus encounters us in the midst of our lives, sin and all.

Jesus was willing to CLEANSE all ten lepers, yet it was the lone Samaritan who realized he had been healed and returned to Jesus, glorifying God; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. But Jesus asked “Where are the other nine?”

Christ cleanses us all, but how many of us allow Christ to truly heal, restore us to true faith and relationship with one another? And do we return to Christ to give thanks and praise?

But where are the other nine?

The Samaritan is the example for a true disciple. He risks everything by returning to Jesus and worshiping him. But what gave this Samaritan the guts to join Jesus and join his community?! Jesus says it is his faith!

Whereas before the Samaritan was defined by his lack of acceptability and marked by his irreversible illness, he is now recognized for his faith – his abundance of life!

He returns to Jesus to give thanks for he is restored to a relationship of faith in God and Christ and the community!

In a way, this is exactly what we do here week after week! We join the community of Christ and His church!  We come sick, with our leprosy of sin; we acknowledge our sin and pray, Lord, have mercy! And at the same time we are overwhelmed with his love, and say, “Lord, have mercy!”

Christ encounters us right where we are, sins and all! We encounter Christ in the Confessional; in Word of God proclaimed, and the bread and wine transformed into the very body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord!

Jesus says: “Go, your faith has saved you!”

At the end of Mass the deacon or priest says: “Go in peace, announce the gospel of the Lord, glorifying the Lord by your life.” We are sent forth in faith to love and serve the Lord. And we respond: “Thanks be to God.” But what does it mean? Where should we go? What should we do?

We have a task.  And it has a lot to do with Jesus’ question:

“Where are the other nine?”  

You will notice that his question is not answered in the gospel.

Each one of us is like the healed Samaritan. But for each one of us here, there are nine others who are missing.  

 In a way, our community is incomplete, as we can tell by too many empty pews. For every one of us here, where are the other nine? 

All of us have the task of restoring others to Christ and bringing them into the Church. We are sent out on mission—this is the task of evangelization that Christ calls us to, and which Pope Francis has been modeling for us.

Pope Francis’ message for today is: “If we keep our faith only to ourselves, we will become isolated and sick Christians. The proclamation of the Gospel is part of being disciples of Christ… missionary outreach is a clear sign of a mature church community.” (Pope Francis quoting Pope Benedict XVI).

To evangelize others is to invite them into friendship and relationship with Jesus Christ.

There is a simplicity in it. It begins with a smile. We begin by being a friend. We welcome them into our lives. We pray for them. We can invite them to Mass.

But first we ourselves must be in relationship with Jesus; we cannot give to another what we ourselves do not have.  

Like the cleansed leper we first fall at Jesus’ feet and call him Lord. Therefore, as we go, recognizing that we are cleansed and healed, we seek out the other nine who are not with us and bring them back to Christ, caring for them, especially the needy and most vulnerable, the spiritually sick and dying, welcoming them into our community of faith in Jesus Christ so that they too can be cleansed and healed.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone one us invited just one person back to church?

And if any of you want to invite nine, then, please, by all means, do so!

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful testimony to the faith of this parish family?! Can we imagine the joy?  

 

What are we waiting for?

"Go, your faith has saved you.”

 

Jeremiah and Jesus - Prophets of Truth: The Well and the Cross and our Baptismal Call

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time    Year C            18 August 2013

Here are the readings for the day:  

http://usccb.org/bible/readings/081813.cfm

Jeremiah and Jesus - Prophets of Truth:

The Well and the Cross and our Baptismal Call

Imagine a young patriot, who loves his nation, and watches as political and economic powers come to ensnare his nation in a web of lies and secrecy and military alliances and covert operations. And then imagine that very disturbing truths are revealed to this young patriot that the average citizen has no information. So this young patriot dares speak the truth aloud, exposing the realities.

But because this young man tells the truth, he is then arrested and undergoes torture for what he knows to be wrong. He stands up to the powers of his day and dares speak the truth – a terribly inconvenient truth – that the powerful and complacent do NOT want to hear.  

This is what Jeremiah did in the first reading today.

King Zedekiah of Jerusalem was a puppet king of the King of Babylon who had seized control of Jerusalem and all of Judea.

Jeremiah was a true patriot who loved Israel and Jerusalem and saw how the people had broken their covenant with God.

The Lord revealed to the prophet Jeremiah that the people of Judea should not put their trust in a military empire.

Jeremiah fulfilled his role as prophet and spoke the Word of the Lord despite those who said he was “undermining their national security.”

King Zedekiah and his officials and the people would NOT listen to the word of the LORD from Jeremiah. And because the people trusted in war and political alliances rather than trusting in the LORD, Jeremiah declared that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon. 

That’s where we find ourselves in today’s first reading where the princes said to the king, “Jeremiah ought to be put to death; he is demoralizing our soldiers and all the people; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin.” 

They wanted to kill Jeremiah because he spoke the truth. He was despised as an unpatriotic false prophet and declared guilty of treason.

So Zedekiah handed Jeremiah over to his cronies and they threw Jeremiah down a well.

But Jeremiah’s preaching was not merely a political attack on the state; it was a call to individuals to decide to serve either the Kingdom of God or the Empire of Men. Jeremiah’s cry was a call to conversion, repentance and reliance upon God.

Jeremiah was addressing a critical issue of his day – one that we also face: the idea of building a society cut off from God, cut off from the influence of faith, and trusting only in ourselves, our wealth, our power.

Yet we each have our own private alliances with sin. We all make deals with evil. We try to bargain with the devil. We play games with our demons, our sinfulness. We succumb to temptation and rationalize our sins away. We often want the easy way out, but spiritual formation and discipleship takes practice and discipline.

For instance, it’s easier to watch TV or get on Facebook than pray, go to Mass, pray our rosary, or volunteer somewhere. We often don’t want to fight that inner battle of placing ourselves in the hands of God.  

How many things take the place of God in our lives each day?

And so many of us, myself included, often engage in half-hearted worship and a lack-luster faithfulness to God and neighbor.

Jeremiah challenged false worship and the social policy of his day; reliance upon the empire rather than upon God.

The message is the same today.

Yet to proclaim this truth will cause us pain. Division. A sword. 

The Cross.

Jesus certainly disturbed the phony peace of the Roman Empire and the status quo of the religious establishment of his day.

Jesus spoke truth to power. And he, like Jeremiah, was arrested for his prophetic voice in the face of power and religious intolerance. Both Jeremiah and Jesus illustrate for us the personal cost that a decision for God can bring about.

Being a disciple of the Lord is not easy. Yet in our faithfulness the Lord will be with us; and though we may lose some friends, we will gain others, brothers and sisters in the Lord.

In the divine mystery, we will suffer. But if we suffer in our faith, and persevere in running the race, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, we will not lose heart in our struggle against sin.

* But as Jesus’ prophetic peacemakers, we will likely stir up trouble advancing the kingdom of God.

Yet we are called to bring peace. But to the world it will not look like peace. It is a peace that the world cannot give – or receive.

The world offers us a false peace without justice. But without justice there can be no true peace. So as prophets we must continue to resist our culture of violence, a culture of death, and war.

But when we fulfill our role as prophet, and stand up for what is right, we may suffer martyrdom. [None of us here in the U.S. have to fear for our lives in attending Mass like some of our brothers and sisters in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. We are not standing in a burnt out church this morning either].

Yet some of us may suffer a form of martyrdom by being ridiculed by our peers, even by our family members and fellow Catholics for our enthusiasm in taking Jesus at his word, whether it is in our defending the poor, taking a stand for justice, questioning American foreign policy or domestic policies, or even remaining true to our faith. 

We may be put to death socially. We may suffer a bloodless martyrdom of gossip. We may not be invited to any more of the social soirees.

We may be chastised for praying for or ministering to a man condemned for murder. We may be ridiculed for ministering to the marginalized and welcoming the immigrant [how dehumanizing is it to declare a human person an alien?] and embracing the unwanted, those considered less than human.

We may be judged by some believers because we continue to love a gay son or daughter, or continue to show compassion to the prodigals in our midst.

We may be ignored because we passed up a cocktail party to work the soup kitchen or attend a justice rally. We may be scorned because we choose mercy over judgment. 

Or we may be snubbed because of our defense of the unborn child, or our insistence that the death penalty ought to be abolished, or that war should be a last resort-if ever. 

The irony in this is that when we speak to these issues, and seek mercy and peace, we will likely be called disturbers of the peace.

And in our world, that’s enough to make you an enemy of the state.

And, sometimes, it’s enough to make you an outlaw in your own family.

May the grace of our baptismal call set us on fire as joyful prophets of the Lord!