Christ The Servant
Catholic Church
Cold Springs, Ontario
Homily Selections
Homily for May 9, 2010
As hard as it was for the people of Jesus' native place to accept, the fact is that he was a prophet, no less a prophet than Jeremiah. Just as Jeremiah had been warned that they will fight against you, but not prevail over you, so the people rose up and expelled Jesus from the town. But he went straight through their midst and walked away. The message of Jesus and the prophets before him was to love all men as God loves them. The reason why they ran into problems is that so many people do not want to hear about love for one another even as God has loved us. The love that Jesus preached is not snobbish, so it includes the filthy poor and the stinking homeless. It does not brood over injuries, so it asks not how we can get even with this criminal but how we can help restore this human being. It does not rejoice in what is wrong, so it causes us to react strongly against all forms of injustice and oppression. This is revolutionary love.
Fr. John Dear gives usw a great explanation of revolutionary love. It would be as if Jesus said to us today, "You North Americans think you are so holy, that God is always blessing you, that you are such faithful people, that God is on your side--but God is not visiting you! God is helping some poor widow in Baghdad whose families were killed from by bombs, or some poor child in Afghanistan who lost her family from your bombs, or some poor Palestinian family whose house was bulldozed because of your military aid to Israel and its occupation." How would we respond to that?
Why did Jesus talk like this? I think he was trying to wake them up, to shock them into awareness. How would we feel? We'd probably be insulted too, but the challenge today is not to reject Jesus, not to kick him out like they did, not to try to kill him or anyone, but to have the humility to accept his judgment, to repent and follow him, to say "Jesus, you're right. Help us to turn back to God, to repent, to reach out in love to everyone, including our enemies." We need Jesus to tell us the truth, to call us to justice and liberation, to summon us to his way of loving nonviolence. We need Jesus to shake us up, to wake us up, and if we dare let him do that, and if we dare do what he says, not only will all our personal and global problems be resolved but we will become like him, people of unconditional, nonviolent, compassionate, universal love.
The good news today is that God loves us, each one of us, and God calls us to love one another. St. Paul reminds us in this famous reading that love is patient, love is kind, love rejoices in the truth, love never fails. We're called to be people of great love, to practice universal love, to treat every human being as our beloved brother and sister with an all inclusive, forgiving, compassionate love. Jesus embodied this universal love and though he showed perfect love, everyone rejected him and tried to kill him Prophecies will cease. One day the talk about love will end, and the kingdom of love will become a reality. Of that there is no doubt. The only question is about who, in the meantime, will be filled with indignation at the prophet of love, and who will be walking with the prophet through the midst of the crowd.
This is revolutionary love.
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