The Unauthorized Homily

By Bill Dunn

A commentary on the Scripture readings from the Sunday Lectionary

(Scripture readings for Sunday, January 24th: Nehemiah 8:2-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21)

REDISCOVERING GOD’S WORD LEADS TO JOY

Imagine this scenario: the pastor of a suburban parish announces, “OK, listen up. Next Sunday we’re not going to have our usual 8:30 and 10:30 Masses. We need a special emergency gathering. So instead, I want every member of this parish to be here at 7:30 a.m., and then I am going to read from the Word of God for about five hours straight. Don’t be late.”

And then, imagine that most of the parish shows up the next Sunday at 7:30 a.m., and the pastor reads from the Word of God—selected readings from Genesis and Exodus, some Psalms, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the parables of the Good Samaritan and Prodigal Son, the Passion and Resurrection accounts, and key lessons from St. Paul’s epistles.

While the pastor reads and pauses to explain each passage, imagine the parishioners periodically raise their hands and shout, “Amen, amen!” Then they bow down and humble themselves before the Lord. Finally, at midday, when the pastor finishes reading, imagine that all the parishioners begin to weep and lament, convicted in their hearts that they have drifted far from God’s laws, and now vow to change their lives and walk in God’s light.

A far-fetched scenario, huh? If a pastor did make such an announcement, we all know what would really happen, don’t we? At 7:30 on the following Sunday, exactly eight people would be in the church—the same eight people who do all the volunteer work at the parish. After dutifully listening to the pastor read from the Bible for an hour or so, they would respectfully interrupt and say, “Um, Father, this is nice, but, uh, we have a lot of things to do today, so, uh, if you’re not gonna say a regular Mass, then we hafta leave now, OK?”

In the meantime, many other parishioners, the ones who never volunteer for anything, would fire off nasty anonymous letters to the Archbishop, claiming the pastor was “changing everything” and being “inconsiderate” to the very people “who built this parish.”

In this week’s first reading, from the book of Nehemiah, a copy of God’s law had been discovered. Ezra brought the scroll to an assembly of the people, who hadn’t heard the Word in years, and “from daybreak till midday” he “read plainly from the book of the law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read.”

The people did not get antsy, make excuses, and leave after an hour or so. Nor did they fire off nasty letters about Ezra. Instead they stayed there for the full five or six hours, listening intently to the Word of God. They were convicted by the power of God’s Word, and they wept and lamented upon realizing how far they had drifted from the Lord.

Ezra and the other key religious leader of that time, Nehemiah, told the people not to weep. They declared it was time for the people to hold a feast and rejoice. They had been reintroduced to the Word. They had repented. They had vowed once again to follow God’s ways. So it was not a time of sadness; it was a time of joy.

Thousands of years before the hymn “Amazing Grace” was written, the Israelites fully understood this line: “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

Fr. Jude Winkler writes a commentary in the handbook used by Lectors to prepare for Mass. For this particular reading, Fr. Winkler explains that in the history of Israel, the people periodically would drift away from the ways of the Lord and slowly adopt the pagan practices from nearby nations. Time and time again God would send a leader or prophet to bring the people back to full knowledge of God’s Law.

In Ezra’s time, the Israelites had forgotten all about God’s Word and as a result they had become decadent. Nehemiah and Ezra realized rampant sinfulness had caused the situation to become desperate, so they called for the emergency gathering of all the people.

In our day and age, is sinfulness and decadence rampant? Well, you decide for yourselves, but one look at the police blotter section of the daily newspaper tells me the answer is a resounding yes. (Of course, the police blotter section chronicles petty and small-scale criminal activity close to home. Turn to the business page and the stories about the latest doings in Congress for decadence and sin on a massive scale.)

In Ezra’s time, it was ignorance of God’s Word that led directly to their sinful behavior. In our day and age, it’s the exact same situation. Oh sure, nowadays we hear portions of the Bible proclaimed at every Mass—but do we really listen? We have a Bible on the bookshelf at home—but do we ever wipe off the dust and actually read it? We have Bible study classes offered in most parishes—but does anyone (beside those same eight people) ever show up?

Fr. Winkler writes: “The law is not a series of ordinances that robs people of their freedom. Rather, it is the Word of God. It teaches the people what God really wants from them.” Regarding the folks who listened to Ezra, Fr. Winkler explains, “This is liberating, for they could now be what God called them to be. They would no longer have to be slaves to their passions, but could do what was good and righteous.”

The same situation exists today. Even among relatively faithful parishioners who attend Mass each week, an ignorance of God’s Word is the root cause of wide-scale sinfulness, decadence, and slavery to our passions. And regrettably, many of us don’t even realize our attitudes and actions are so far removed from what God desires for our lives.

Since it’s unlikely any of our pastors will forego the regular Sunday schedule any time soon and hold a half-day Scripture reading marathon, we need to take responsibility for ourselves. We need to listen attentively at Mass; we need to crack open our dusty Bibles at home and read regularly; we need to sign up for the parish Bible study class.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly teaches: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” It’s time we stopped being Bible illiterates and started learning about God. And right now is a great time to get going.

©2010