(Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
There is a theory about what is called the Axial Period in human history that took place about 500 years before the birth of Jesus, what we call the Common Era. It’s a period when some scholars think that a great shift in human consciousness took place in several different places on the globe at the same time. The major things that get listed are, for example, in Asia it was marked by the birth of the scriptures of India known as the Upanishads, and the period when Buddhism broke away from Hinduism, and the birth of Taoism in China. A little more to the west, it was the age of the rise of Greek philosophy; and in the Jewish tradition it was the period of the great prophets.
What is the shift in
consciousness that is taking place in Judaism at this time? The Jewish
tradition seems to be coming out of a period of mythology and historical
accounts, and moving into a period of an accent on greater individual moral
responsibility. In the earlier scriptures of Judaism the image of God that is
presented to us is a little confusing at times: God seems to be a little
capricious, sometimes even warlike. Sometimes God seems to be appeased by
sacrifice, as if we could manipulate and coerce God into doing things, or that
we could change God’s mind. But in the period of the prophets, there seems to
be a shift. In the very first chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, for
instance, God asks, ‘What to me is the
multitude of your sacrifices? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and
the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls…’ And then in
chapter 58 he says:
Is not
this the fast I choose:
loose
the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke,
let
the oppressed go free, break every yoke,
share
your bread with the hungry,
bring
the homeless poor into your house;
when
you see the naked, cover them.
Remove
the yoke from among you,
the
pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
That’s the kind of fast
God wants––justice. And the prophet Amos who we hear in the 1st
reading today, stands at the very beginning of this great tradition of the
prophets speaking of and calling for social justice in the name of the Lord
God, teaching that concern for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the needy is
at the very heart of the Law.
We ought to see Jesus in
this lineage, this prophetic lineage, always maintaining that the greatest
commandment is actually two: not only ‘Love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind’ but
there is a second too that is like it: ‘Love
your neighbor as yourself.’ These two things are inextricably linked
together. Twice in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus puts himself firmly in this new
prophetic Axial consciousness when he quotes Hosea 6: ‘Go and learn what this means: “It is love that I desire not sacrifice;
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”’
So in some way there is no
hidden message here: Our love of God must resolve itself in also caring for
those around us, in ever widening circles of involvement. Our spiritual life
demands of us a moral, ethical response, and urges us to build a world of
justice and peace. And I think we will be judged as a society especially by how
we take care of the neediest, the poorest and the weakest in our midst. ‘Anything you did for the least of these,’
Jesus says, ‘you did for me.’
That also leads us to
another layer of meaning of this beautiful story. I was taught that we’re
always supposed to be looking for Christ hidden in stories in the Scriptures.
This is especially true when Christians read the Hebrew Scriptures, so we try
to find Christ hidden in the story of Noah’s ark, to find Christ hidden in the
story of the Exodus, in the story of the 40 years’ journey across the desert,
even in the story of Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho. But we should also
look for the Christ in Jesus’ own parables. Jesus is often speaking in veiled
reference about himself. And of course in this very story of Lazarus and the
rich man too, Jesus is speaking about himself. This Lazarus is a type of Christ,
a Christ figure. Jesus is not afraid to be the poor one, the humble one, the
one who is cast out, even the defeated one.
There was an old country
gospel song that was redone by several folk singers in America, called “Tramp
on the Street.” What is interesting about the song is that whoever wrote it was
actually a pretty good theologian. They really got it right, not just the moral
imperative that is implied in the song––that we cannot ignore the plight of the
poor in our midst––but also that Lazarus himself is an image of Christ. In the
first verses we sing about Lazarus:
Only
a tramp was Lazarus’ sad fate,
he
who lay down at the rich man's gate.
He
begged for the crumbs from the rich man to eat.
He
was only a tramp found dead on the street.
(I love this part…)
He
was some mother’s darlin’;
he
was some mother's son.
Once
he was fair and once he was young.
And
some mother rocked him, her darlin’ to sleep,
but
they left him to die like a tramp on the street.
And then he sings about Jesus!
Jesus,
he died on Calvary’s tree.
He
shed his life’s blood for you and for me.
They
pierced his side, his hands and his feet,
and
they left him to die like a tramp on the street.
He
was Mary’s own darlin’; he was God’s chosen son.
Once
he was fair and once he was young.
Mary,
she rocked him, her little darlin’ to sleep,
but
they left him to die like a tramp on the street.
So when we encounter the
poor––and Jesus was quite specific about this––we ought to see the face of
Christ; we ought to see Jesus who, as St. Paul says, though he was rich he became poor so as to make us rich out of his
poverty. In another place Paul
calls it kenosis, the Greek word
meaning “emptying.” Though he was in the
form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at.
Rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave... Jesus emptied
himself, became poor, and washed his disciples’ feet. He emptied himself, and
gave his life over in a ministry of bringing good news to the poor and healing
bodies and supplying banquets of abundance to hungry crowds because he had
compassion on them for they were like
sheep without a shepherd. Ultimately he emptied himself and became poor
even to the point of accepting death, death on a cross, so as to be filled with
the glorious power of resurrection. As the poet Christian Wiman put it, Jesus
risked “complete erasure” of
himself “for the sake of something greater.”
But Paul says you too––we too!––should have this mind of Christ. What does that mean? I think it
means two different things. First of all: I don’t want to romanticize
poverty, obviously, but when we encounter someone who is poor we are supposed
to see ourselves, recognize our own
poverty in some way. Maybe that’s why the poor are at times repulsive to
us: we can’t stand to think of ourselves in that condition. But there is
something worse than physical poverty: there is spiritual poverty. There’s something
even worse than a hungry stomach––a starving, famished, depressed, tormented
soul. And that’s what I see when I walk around shopping malls and watch
people’s faces as they drive by in rush hour traffic. Mother Teresa said when
she visited America that the wealthy were a lot poorer than the homeless in our
country.
Secondly, a deeper
spiritual message: I remember visiting a monastery of Poor Clare nuns some
years ago. (They are the cloistered women descendants of St. Francis of Assisi
and St. Clare.) There was a plaque hanging on the wall next to my chair in
their dining hall that had a beautiful quote from St. Clare to her sister Agnes
in Italian: Ne sono sicurissima––il regno dei cieli il Signore lo
promette e lo dona solo ai poveri––“Of
this I am absolutely sure, that the Lord promises and grants the reign of
heaven only to the poor.” A variation on that might be, the Lord promises and
grants divinization only to the poor in spirit, as Jesus teaches in his
beatitudes, only to those who have died in some way, those who have emptied
themselves of themselves.
There is a piece of universal wisdom here, and I think that
the Christian tradition articulates this as beautifully if not more beautifully
than any other religious tradition, though it may be a piece of universal
wisdom that is really only understood in mature spirituality in any tradition. In his famous book The Perennial Philosophy Aldous Huxley points
out that in all authentic traditions Ultimate Reality is only clearly
understood by those who are loving, by those who are pure in heart and poor in
spirit. “[It] is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly
experienced,” he says, “except by souls… who have fulfilled certain
conditions.” And he goes on to point mostly to the life of Jesus and to many
Christian saints, and he quotes the famous phrase of St. Augustine: Ama et fac quod vis––“Love and do what
you will.” But, he says, you can only do this “when you have learnt the
infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart”; and we
can only love and do what we will when we have learned that infinitely
difficult art of loving our neighbor as ourselves. We can only love and do what we will when we have emptied ourselves of all
other loves and attachments and desires. That is the baptismal death we have to
undergo and the baptismal pledge by which we live, and the demand of our
participation at the Eucharistic Table––that we ourselves agree now to be
broken like the bread and passed out, crushed like the grapes and poured out
for the sake of the world.
These are good
questions to ask ourselves today in response to today’s gospel: Are we willing
to be poor like Jesus? Are we willing to experience complete erasure for the
sake of something greater than ourselves––for the sake of the reign of God? Are
we willing to shed our blood for the sake of Christ? Are we willing to lay down
our lives for our friends? Are we willing to suffer persecution for the sake of
justice? These are all simply the demands of the gospel. In our monastic
tradition we follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, and he has some very annoying, demanding
chapters toward the end of his rule. It’s not a great exalted thing we’re after
as Benedict teaches it; it’s on a much more mundane and immediate level: he
asks if we are simply willing to support one another’s weaknesses of body or
behavior with patience, in community, in our family, in our workplace; and are
we earnestly willing to compete in obedience to one another, are we willing to
judge not what seems best for ourselves, but always what we judge best for
someone else? This too is the poverty of spirit to which the gospel calls us.
It’s not enough to dress in fine robes, or have good posture or even a still
mind from yoga class, or memorize and quote scripture passages and say the
right prayers in the right language. We’re not going to be able to buy our way
into heaven nor manipulate God. We must at some point empty ourselves
completely, and sit waiting, and make ourselves totally available to the Spirit
of God.
God promises and gives the reign of God––a share in divinity––only
to the poor in spirit. Of this I am, and we can be, absolutely sure, sure that
it is only given to the poor, but sure that it will be given to us if we empty ourselves completely as Jesus did, and
wait in joyful hope for the coming of the reign of God.
