4th Sunday Year C - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2007

In today’s Gospel Luke gives a mightily telescoped account of what happened in Nazareth. Why did the mood turn sour, from original approval to hostility to their eventual  effort to lynch Jesus? It seems to have been offended honour, small-town provincialism, perhaps the tall-poppy syndrome: This is Joseph’s son surely? Who does he think he is?

With Jeremiah in today’s First Reading things were a bit different. It was what he had to say that was the problem. He didn’t preach the message they wanted to hear.

What happened to Jesus and what happened to Jeremiah both highlight how hard it can be to recognise and to hear the truth, especially when the truth is unfamiliar, unwanted, or calls for growth and change. I’ll listen more readily to the person I like. I’ll read more easily the article that I agree with, and that confirm me in the judgments I have already made. Not so bad in themselves, but the converse can be dangerous: I don’t listen to the person I don’t like; and I don’t read those things that challenge my prejudices.

Some of the Mass readings during the week centred on Jesus’ parables, leading Mark to comment: they see and see again, but do not perceive; hear and hear again, but not understand; otherwise they might be converted and be forgiven.

Each Saturday the Age newspaper lists the week’s 10-best sellers in the book market: what people are buying and presumably reading. In the non-fiction list this week four were about food, two about keeping clean – your clothes or your house, and on a revisit of the 1914-18 War in Europe. Of the other three, one was by Richard Dawkins, an English biologist, ridiculing the whole idea of believing in God. The change from week to week is often minimal. Over quite a long period about a year ago, Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code was at the top of the list.

Four about food, and two about keeping clean in a world where millions struggle to find food and lack decent houses to keep clean; one revisiting a war fought in Europe ninety year ago while real people today in real time are being slaughtered in Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and elsewhere.

What’s going on?

With regard to Richard Dawkins's book on atheism and to Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code, are people seeking truth? or might some be hoping to find justification for what they want to be true? I think that what we want to believe is more powerful than the reasons we give to support what we believe.

In today’s Second Reading, St Paul made the insightful comment: love delights in the truth. Love  ..  it removes the rigidity, the fear; it loosens us up. The capacity to love unconditionally enables us to see and to accept what is. The converse is more worrying: lack of love can close me to the truth, even when unconscious and indeliberate – insecurity, pride, hostility, fear.

It seems that there is no substitute for learning to grow in love. If we can love anyone, we can hear anyone. If we are ready to pay the price of love, we are ready to hear anything: good starting points to hear and to discern the truth.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul had prayed: that your love for each other may increase, improving your knowledge and deepening your perception, so that you can always recognise what is best. There is nothing else like love to help us to know, to perceive and to recognise truth.