NB. Composed most of this one in 2010 in Rome. Never preached it before tonight. . .
4th
Sunday OT
Fr.
Philip Neri Powell, OP
Our
Lady of the Rosary, NOLA
So,
Jesus is busy making friends again! Like prophets before him, he
tells people what they don't want to hear. By proclaiming that
Isaiah's prophecy of the coming of the Messiah has been fulfilled in
their hearing, Jesus challenges those gathered in the temple to
believe that he is the Messiah. Instead, after he insults them, the
crowd tries to lynch him and then runs him out of town. He walks
unharmed through the riot and goes away. Why do these people reject
Jesus' claim to be the fulfillment of God's promise to send a
Messiah? Two reasons: 1) Jesus is a local boy, and we all know that
“no prophet is accepted in his native place;” and 2) Jesus' use
of proverb, “Physician, cure yourself,” indicates his refusal to
perform a showy miracle to confirm his identity. What does he do
instead? He throws down a challenge and a rebuke. In essence, he
says, “God's own people have always rejected His prophets, and look
at the results. He graces Gentiles before Jews and you people never
learn.” Ouch. BUT Jesus is a uniter not a divider; he's a
peace-bringer not a trouble-maker He's all about harmony and
consensus and living within the tensions of difference. Well, tell
that to the screaming lynch mob. They might disagree. So, should we
look to him and his prophetic style as a model for our own witness of
the gospel?
Confrontation
has its place in speaking the truth. The prophets of the Old
Testament were known and feared for their unwavering commitment to
speaking God's message even in the face of torture and execution.
Kings dodged them when possible, summoning them to court to answer
for their alleged treason only when necessary. Prophets were
notoriously stubborn and seemingly self-righteous. Add to this the
fact that prophets tended to be well-known local boys and you have
the makings of a good sitcom. Is it any wonder then that the prophets
of old resorted to confrontation when dealing with the cold-hearts
and closed-minds of a nation's rulers? Sometimes the shock of
hearing the truth spoken aloud is enough to cure the deafness of the
worst sinner. And sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you have to smash
through a wall when the door is barred. On these occasions, it's wise
to get as far away from the condemned nation as possible. Why?
Because quite possibly the scariest thing a prophet can say is:
“Behold, you will suffer the consequences of your hard heart!”
It's time to run.
Unfortunately,
these days, it seems that every corner, every cable channel, every
church/mosque/temple has its own prophet proclaiming the coming
apocalypse. Like a flock of squawking crows, these folks fly around
the world squeaking and squealing warning us of imminent local
destruction and the inevitability of global disaster if we don't
change our ways. They have adopted the confrontational rhetoric of
the wildest biblical prophet. Do we listen? Some certainly do. Most
don't. Confrontation oft repeated quickly becomes annoying
harassment. Those ominous crows start to look and sound like Chicken
Little's. What's missing from their squealy prophesying is Godly
love, a sincere concern for the common good. What's missing is the
divine authority that Jesus himself uses in the temple to announce
his arrival as the Messiah. His authority is the power and glory of
the most excellent way, the way of sacrificial love.
This
leads us to the big question: can sacrificial love be
confrontational? Take an example. Anyone who has ever marched in a
pro-life demonstration or prayed outside an abortion clinic will tell
you that the counter-protesters and the escorts can be vicious. For
them this isn't just about freedom of choice and left/right politics.
They hate us. Passionately hate us. You can expect that groups on
opposite ends of the political spectrum to get feisty, maybe even a
little rowdy, in the midst of a march. But the bile and venom spewed
by pro-abortion activists at pro-life folks goes well beyond the kind
of anger that normal politics generates. Why? The choice to have an
abortion is intensely personal; it goes to the very core what most
Americans think of us their untouchable autonomy in deciding what's
best for them. An unwanted pregnancy attaches unwanted
responsibilities and necessarily limits a woman's choice of options.
But even more than this, pregnancy places a woman in the natural mode
of motherhood and all that that implies. At the very core of
motherhood is sacrificial love, giving oneself wholly to another.
When pro-life marchers remind abortion advocates that the fetus is a
person, a being deserving of love, those who would call the killing
of this person a moral good react with unadulterated rage. They know
the Church is right. And they must cultivate a self-righteous wrath
in order to drown out their guilt. The gospel message of love used by
the pro-life movement to stubbornly resist compromising with the
culture of death shames them into hatred. Denied a convenient salve
for their seared consciences, the venom flows and they fall more
securely into the Enemy's hands.
It
should be shockingly clear to the Church by now that our best witness
to the culture of death is sacrificial love. Paul writes, “Love is
patient, love is kind. . .it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but
rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.” With some we can reason.
With others we can demonstrate. But some we must simply love. Bearing
up under the burden of hatred, believing solely in the power of
mercy, hoping in the promises of the Father, and enduring insult,
persecution, and trial, we must not be satisfied with merely
presenting the truth of the gospel, flashing cue cards and murmuring
sound bites. What will heal a seared conscience cannot be logically
deduced and crammed onto a bumper sticker. Slogans on placards are
easily refuted by other slogans on placards. What cannot be refuted
is an act of love done in sacrifice, a willing act of surrender done
so that another might be see the truth. Paul reminds us what we know
by faith, “Love never fails.” Even as the prophet feels the sword
cut into his flesh, he knows that he has succeeded in touching a
conscience burned by hatred and malice. His persistence in telling
the truth is not ended by death but rather vindicated by it, shown to
be the undeniably divine power it truly is.
When
he proclaims to the people in the temple that Isaiah's messanic
prophecy has been fulfilled in their hearing and subsequently
chastises the crowd for their unbelief, Jesus causes a riot. He holds
up before the people their dishonesty, their faithlessness, their
charred consciences. He shows them that they know he is telling the
truth and yet still refuse to hear it spoken. For them to believe
such a proclamation changes everything – uproots centuries of
tradition and belief, revolutionizes everyday life, forces them to
make a choice and live by it. Rather than surrender, they riot and
pour out the hatred and malice of those who have seen the corrupted
state of their souls. How does Jesus respond? He dies on the cross
for them. If we will be his Church, we must be prepared to do nothing
less. The march for life is a march to the cross, not for ourselves
but for those who will not see, will not hear.
*Before I entered the Church in 1996, I volunteered as an abortion clinic escort. I can tell you -- they HATE us.
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