Homily: 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
Friends, one of the things
that we who profess faith in God have to reckon with is that God is a choosing
God, an electing God, a God who, some might say, is discriminatory. Don’t believe me? Just look through the Old Testament. God chooses Able, not Cain. God chooses Noah and his family to be
saved. God chooses Abram to move from
his homeland to establish him as the great Father of his people. God chooses Jacob, not Esau. God chooses the Israelites—a particular race
of people—to be his specially-chosen people: to the exclusion of every other
race that existed at that time.
Perhaps in our culture of
hyper-awareness for any sign of bias based on race, this reminder that God
chose a whole race of people to be his specially-chosen people (set apart to be
his own) might rub us the wrong way. It
need not, however, because when we take a closer look at it, we see that there
is a noble purpose behind this choosing—this discrimination—that justifies it
and makes it (dare I say) holy.
Let’s look at the prophet
Isaiah, whom we heard from in the first reading. Now Isaiah is an Israelite through and
through, and God’s man, too, through and through. Yet what we hear him saying in this reading
is something that the Israelites (those, at least, who had allowed this notion
of being part of God’s chosen people go to their head) would have found
shocking and, perhaps, scandalous. Let’s
look at it again: “Thus says the Lord... The foreigners who join themselves to
the Lord, ministering to him, loving the name of the Lord, and becoming his
servants... them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house
of prayer...” “What?” the prideful Jew
might say, “We are the chosen people, not these dogs who are not Jews! Why
would God say that non-Jews could ‘join themselves to the Lord’? God is a
defense for us against the other races, not an instrument for joining with
them!” This proud Jew would have
forgotten the noble purpose for which God chose the Israelites in the first
place: He chose them to be precursors: those who would go before others to
prepare the way so that God’s salvation could be received by peoples of every
race.
If we look throughout
salvation history, we can see what God was doing when he chose the ancient
Israelites—the descendants of Abraham and Isaac: for what he was doing was
preparing a people to be an example to the world. God chose them, then he trained them in his
commandments and taught them all of his decrees. He taught them the consequences for ignoring
his commandments when he punished them with exile, yet also showed his great
mercy when he later restored them. He set
them strictly apart from other peoples so that they would see themselves (and
others would see them) as clearly distinct among races. Why? Precisely
so that peoples of every tribe or race in the world would see the distinct
righteousness of the Lord God and thus seek to follow his ways. In this way, the Israelites—God's chosen
people—would be a beacon to gather all people back to God. This God that we worship exercised seemingly
unjust discrimination (privileging a people solely based on their race), yet it
was not unjust since he chose them in order to prepare them for the mission of
sharing his benefits with all peoples of every tribe and race of every time and
place. God didn’t choose Israel for
itself, but rather for the world.
Jesus, of course, is the
fulfillment of God’s purpose in choosing the Israelites. Precisely through him, a Jew, the salvation
which would be for all people has come into the world. In today’s Gospel reading we see this
fulfillment in miniature. Jesus—the
fulfillment of salvation for the world—goes out from the land of the Jews into
a foreign land (the region of Tyre and Sidon).
There he is approached by a foreigner who asks him to heal her
daughter. At first, he resists (perhaps
to test her faith and to see, as Isaiah’s prophesy described as a condition of
salvation, if she would “join herself to the Lord”). When she does not get offended by his strong
words, however, but rather persists, in humility, in her request, Jesus grants
it and thus gives sign that God had chosen the Israelites so that his salvation
could go out through them into the world.
This matters for us, of
course, because by our baptism we, too, have been chosen by God and chosen for
a noble purpose. The grace of
baptism—that is, the grace of being incorporated into Jesus Christ and his death
and resurrection—was not something for which we were chosen for ourselves. Rather, we were chosen—for ourselves, yes—but,
like the ancient Israelites, for the world, also. By our baptism were given the grace of
salvation and also a mission to witness to that grace in the world and, thus,
to be a beacon that draws others to God and the saving waters of baptism
through which they, too, may receive the grace and mission of salvation.
Friends, I know that this will
be news to no one here that there is a lot more scattering going on in today’s
world than gathering. This is, of
course, very apparent here in the Church.
You’ll remember a couple of weeks ago, I reminded us that Jesus always
unites, he doesn’t separate, and that any force that seeks to separate people
from each other is diabolical in nature.
The result of this pandemic, in this sense, is diabolical: as it demands
us to stay separated from each other, instead of united. Even in the midst of this pandemic, however,
we are called, by the grace of our baptism, to be gatherers, not
scatterers. How do we do this? Well, just like the ancient Israelites did it:
by being precursors—those who learn to know and live by God’s commandments and
decrees so that others might see and be attracted to do the same. This is why, at the beginning of our reading
from the prophet Isaiah today, the Lord says this: “Observe what is right, do
what is just; for my salvation is about to come...” The condition, in other words, for foreigners
to join themselves to the Lord, is the holiness of those who are already joined
to the Lord.
This, my friends, is the
reason why Bishop Doherty has proposed Uniting in Heart. By focusing our personal and parish
activities around the three pillars of Mission, Community, and Witness, through
which we will grow in holiness and a renewed sense of mission, we will shine
more brightly in our community so as to draw our scattered brothers and sisters
into God’s Church, united in the Heart of Jesus. As we say our goodbyes this week and you
prepare to welcome Fr. Rowland, Fr. O’Keeffe, and Fr. Faker next week, let us
remember that no matter where we are, we are united in the Heart of Jesus and
so give ourselves to this good work that our world so desperately needs.
Let us also give thanks for
what we have shared together and, even more importantly, what God has shared
with us, as we approach this altar and offer the perfect sacrifice of
thanksgiving: offering back to the Father, what Jesus offered on our behalf:
his perfect love, the salvation offered for all people.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – August 16,
2020
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