Nineteenth Sunday in Course 2024
Hard Sayings
There’s a very popular opinion about religion, and I think you may be already aware of it. Folks often think that religion ought to be “nice.” In other words, religion should make you feel good about yourself, first, and then, if possible, about other people. Avoid conflict at any cost, right?
The problem with “nice” religion is that it isn’t religion at all, and today’s three Scriptural passages are proof of that reality. Even the psalm, which ordinarily is kind of consoling to the listener, says “The face of the LORD is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” Our faith, which is continuous with the faith that stretches all the way back to before Joshua and the Israelites of his day, is not some romantic pie in the sky belief. We are profoundly realistic in our understanding of humanity and of God’s loving purpose for humanity and every one of us as individuals. The first thing we should say is “I am a sinner.” And the next thing out of our mouths should be “You are also a sinner, like every human on earth.” The result of living in a world full of sinners? Conflict. Satan, the adversary, has a field day with that.
But the other side of that reality is God’s loving purpose. God loves us, even though we are sinful, and sometimes very seriously sinful. He wants to live in a community of love with all of us, so the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, became son of Mary, and He lived and died and rose again to provide us with a means of forgiveness, salvation, and even Resurrection. We attain that through faith and sacramental life. That’s the way out of our sinners’ jungle, and it is the ONLY WAY OUT, and into the kingdom of God. We must repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
The Israelites faced down by Joshua long ago at Shechem were offered another way, they thought. Sheer willpower would save them, it appeared. Joshua presented to them the Law given by God through Moses, and they mouthed the right words: "Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD, to serve other gods; for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and who did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land; therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God." Then the Book of Judges chronicles just how far willpower goes. They almost immediately began to worship the old gods of fertility, committing adultery and fornication and theft and every other possible crime. God then let them be oppressed by those remaining pagans, and they cried out to God for help. He would raise up a judge who would rally them against the oppressors, defeat the bad guys and then they would go back to their false worship and other sins.
Willpower, confronted by temptation, easily becomes “won’t-power” and leads us 180 degrees from the right path.
Bring your mind forward to this day. What did you think when you heard the words, “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.”? Sexist malarkey, did you think? That’s because we naturally miss the reciprocity involved in the beginning words: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Especially in those things involving threats to the family, like some politicians and all criminals, the husband must be strong and protective and everyone else must rally behind him. But in those things involving the growth and nurturing of the family, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." Yes, every husband married for long knows when he needs to defer to his wife's wisdom.
All respect everyone else in a good family, but the love they bear toward one another allows each to assume his or her proper role, and not try to take over someone else’s. So some of the hard sayings of St. Paul are really great advice, and we ignore them at our peril.
For the past six weeks we have been hearing about the Bread of Life, offered in our Eucharist by Jesus Christ Himself. The Jews who heard Him did not realize that in His mercy, Christ was offering His true Body and Blood, His very self, under sacramental signs of bread and wine. They thought they were being invited to cannibalism, like some second-grader hearing these words for the first time. The words of Jesus, just as they had multiplied loaves and fishes a few hours earlier, would be used by the Church to elevate the reality of mere loaves and chalices of wine. The power of the Holy Spirit would make the change real, even if the appearances did not change.
So many of them walked away, even though they had seen the signs Jesus worked. Without faith, without submission to Christ, which the Church is constantly challenged to accept, we can be just like the Israelites of Joshua’s day. Let’s pray for the grace to accept all of Jesus’s teachings, not just the nice ones, but especially the ones that are especially challenging.
