Journey's Weekly Homilies

JOURNEY CATHOLIC COMMUNITY
HOMILY BY SAM
FOURTH SUNDAY, YEAR A
FEBRUARY 3, 2002
‘WHY AM I HERE?’

ZEPHANIAH 2:3; 3:12-13
I CORINTHIANS 1:26-31
MATTHEW 5:1-12a

"Why am I here?"  Laurie asked that question a few weeks ago.  I’d like to amend that: Why am I here of all places on Super Bowl Sunday?

Why am I here?  Am I here to see my friends?  Am I here for the Missy Bread?  Am I here because I get to sing in the choir or preach?  There’s some truth in each of these although none of them would lead me to be here while the rest of the country watches football.  Why am I here?

Studying today’s readings I realize that I am here for three reasons and they all have to do with "the reign of God".  Those reasons are:  hope; God’s love for the poor; and community.

First of all there’s hope.  Hope allows me to confront the grim realities of oppression in our world without getting discouraged.  Because of hope I can to work for justice, mercy, freedom, and abundance for all people even when the cause seems impossible.

Hope enabled someone to scrawl these words on the walls of a Nazi concentration camp:  "I believe in the sun even when it is not shining; I believe in love even when I am alone; I believe in God even when he is silent."  Hope.

The Jewish scriptures gave the people hope through the image of the promised land.  A place where "mountains bear sheaves of peace and the hillsides a harvest of righteousness; wheat in full flood and fields of gold, a city rising from a sea of green".

Zephaniah promises "the day of the Lord" when the poor will be welcomed into this promised land.  There they will "pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid any more".

Matthew continues this vision which and calls it the "reign of God" or the "kingdom of heaven".  It is promised to the poor, the meek, and so forth.

This is the second thing which brings me here every week:  the reminder of God’s unique and special love for the poor.

I was riding the Portland street car just a few blocks away from here last month.  A young man and woman began discussing utility shutoffs of all things.  They debated which utility payment to skip if you didn’t have enough money at the end of the month.  They talked about which would cost the most to have reconnected.  Finally this young man, about twenty-five years old, sighed and said, "I guess everything you could have shut off, I’ve had shut off at least twice."

Listening to this conversation I wondered, "Where else in my life would I hear a something like this".  And I realized that I, like most people, insulate myself from the life of the poor through that steel skin called the "automobile".

Yet today’s Gospel says, "To such as these belongs the kingdom of heaven".  Somehow the readings we hear every week, the songs we sing, and the work that many of you do with different shades of poverty, all of these things encourage me to seek the reign of God for all people rather than insulating myself in comfort and security.

Today’s Gospel says the poor are blessed.  This means that they are God’s family,  protected and loved as God’s own.  Of course to say the poor are blessed is ironic, even cruelly so.  When I pass a man sleeping in the doorway of this Church he doesn’t seem particularly blessed, chosen by God.  In fact he seems forsaken.

"Blessed are the poor" is not congratulations on something already accomplished.  I don’t presume this man’s troubles are over or that he is better than any of the rest of us.  Today’s Gospel reminds me that God intends his plight to change and will not be satisfied until it does change through your efforts and mine.  None of us will enter the reign of God before this man in the doorway.  So what do we do about that?

Today’s Gospel reminds me of the small signs of that change.  Oregon Food Bank through donations and volunteer efforts distributes thousands of tons of food.  Oregon Food Bank is for me a poem on the wall of a concentration camp.

Who are the poor so close to God’s heart?  Our translation today is a little stilted, so let me freshen it up with some help from the commentaries I consulted.

"Blessed are the outcast, the ill, the indigent, those who cannot defend themselves—they will live in the reign of God.

"Blessed are those who grieve and protest every injustice—God will satisfy them.

"Blessed are those who have been ripped off by the powerful and expect God’s justice—they will find abundance in the land of promise.

"Blessed are those who live justly—they will find justice overflowing.

"Blessed are those who are generous to the needy and forgive those who have offended them—they will receive as they have given.

"Blessed are those who love fully without reserve—their desire will be filled.

"Blessed are those who seek the fullness of life (shalom) for all people—for they will be God’s people.

"Blessed are those who encounter any hardship in their advocacy for the poor—the reign of God is theirs.

We have among us teachers, nurses, social workers, and others who make all kinds of sacrifices, face adversity in many forms in your advocacy for the poor.  And I say blessed are you.  You give me hope.

Third, I am here because of community.  All of our readings today teach us that God’s people are the poor and those who stand in solidarity with them.  In the reign of God none are rich except in justice, love, and mercy and in that God will make us great.

Corinth was a new city founded a hundred years earlier on the ruins of an earlier city the Romans had destroyed.  It probably had no inherited wealth or entrenched aristocracy, like other places in the empire.  So Paul is speaking literally when he says, "Not many of you were wise, not many were powerful, not many of noble birth."

Paul writes to Corinth because members of the community had forgotten their humble status.  They began to insulate themselves through privilege and power.  They reveled in special knowledge and gifts which set them apart from their brothers and sisters.  Paul reminds them that God blessed them because they were weak, low, and foolish.

In this letter to the Corinthians Paul develops a teaching that we call "koinonia", faith in community.  A community of faith is different, he says, because it is a community of the poor.  And when we live koinonia there are no experts among us, none who are entitled to tell others what to do.  When we are true to this,  justice, love, and mercy abound and the reign of God is here.

We are no closer to the reign of God than the Corinthians.  We approach it herky-jerky.  Moments of profound openness and invitation followed by times when we are amazingly calloused with each other.  Still every week we hold the image of the promised land, the reign of God, ever before us.  It confronts us, challenges us to our core.  It is a mission barely begun.  There are poor to be fed and community members to be reconciled with, work which we must do together.

That is why I am here.  I seek the reign of God not in some future place but here, in our midst, where we say that poverty and vulnerability are honored and protected.  Here, where the rich and poor mingle, as together we build a more just world.  Here, where the meek and the plain-spoken may become our prophets, where leaders serve rather than rule.  Here, where all feed and are fed from a common loaf regardless of gender, marital status, sexual orientation, or baptism.