SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

In today’s Gospel reading, from the beginning of Chapter 11 Luke presents the core of Jesus’ teaching on prayer. The disciples notice Jesus praying “in a certain place.” They ask him to teach them to pray just as John the Baptist had taught his disciples. Jesus teaches them a simple version of the most famous Christian prayer, the Our Father, or the Lord’s Prayer.

Having taught his disciples a simple, daily prayer, Jesus goes on to reassure them that God answers prayers. First, he tells a parable about a persistent neighbour who asks a friend for bread at midnight, because the neighbour is persistent, the sleeping man gets up and gives him all that he needs.

This teaching concludes with the reminder that if we seek, we will get a response. The parable and the concluding teaching in this section Jesus teaches prayer consists in recognizing God’s holiness and his rule over all things.

So, why do we pray? How does Jesus want us to pray? How can Jesus promise us that God will hear and respond to our prayers—that we will receive what we ask for, that doors once locked shut will be opened?

When Martin Luther King, Jr., was living and working in Montgomery, Alabama, he came home late one night, and the phone rang. He picked up and, on the line, there was a man threatening to kill King and his family if he didn’t stop leading in the struggle for civil rights. He couldn’t get back to sleep. So, he went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and he began to pray. He describes this moment as a moment of reckoning with his faith. He had never questioned before; he had never doubted. In this moment, he knew that he would either need to put his trust in God wholeheartedly, or he would be consumed by fear and despair. He prayed all night and eventually the spirit of God overwhelmed him, and he was filled with deep peace and conviction. Days later, his house was bombed.

If we can think of an example of someone for whom prayer informed his living, Martin Luther King is certainly among the most powerful. For him, prayer was not just a private practice of piety, it was the fuel and reassurance that inspired remarkable action in the world. It was the energy and life-force behind a movement of social change.

This is the kind of prayer that Jesus was talking about, prayer is not meant to stay just between us and God. Our prayers need to have feet and hands. Prayer is the practice of seeking God’s presence and guidance as we work toward creating a better world. Prayer is one way we know God is with us, even when the challenges ahead seem insurmountable.

Martin Luther King, Jr., faced the threat of bombing and death, but his connection to God through prayer gave him the courage to persist. His persistence ended segregation. Doors that had been sealed shut began to crack open. Questions that had gone unheard began to be answered. Needs that had neglected began to be met.

What is happening in our world today that requires our persistence in prayer? The persistence of our prayer, the raising of our minds and souls to God, reinforced our own commitment to each other and the world around us. Forgiveness and reconciliation, thanksgiving and praise, hopes and desires blend into continued and continuing prayer. As St. Paul VI said, “To live, it is necessary to pray.”

In prayer we can bargain with God as Abraham did in our First Reading, knowing our creator is mercy-filled. Through prayer we can recognize, as St. Paul did, that God is open to receive us whoever or wherever we are. In the familiar words of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that our Father gives “the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

And if we have moments when we feel like our prayers are weak, or like we don’t know what to say or do, we can be like the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray,” they asked him. Jesus stands ready not only to answer our prayers, but also to show us the way.

 

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

The story of Jesus in the home of Martha and Mary complements last Sunday’s story of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan is an example of how a disciple should see and act. Mary is an example of how a disciple should listen. As a woman, Mary would be expected, like Martha, to prepare hospitality for a guest. Just as a Samaritan would not be a model for neighbourliness, so a woman would not sit with the men around the feet of a teacher.

Both stories exemplify how a disciple is to fulfil the dual command which begins chapter 10—love of God (Mary) and love of neighbour (the Samaritan).

The Kingdom of God is a society without distinctions and boundaries between its members. It is a society that requires times for seeing and doing and also times for listening and learning at the feet of a teacher.

Martha welcomes Jesus and his disciples into her house with generous hospitality, preparing a meal and serving them. Martha makes what seems like a very reasonable request to Jesus, but instead of sending Mary to help, Jesus lectures Martha about being anxious and distracted.

Martha speaks only of herself. Martha doesn’t get the help she wants from Mary or the recognition she wants from Jesus. Instead, Jesus invites her to slow down. Busyness may be inevitable, but we can also use distraction as a way to avoid dealing with a problem; we can substitute busyness for real transformation. Maybe Martha didn’t really want to sit down and listen to what Jesus was saying. So often, Jesus said things that were challenging or difficult or annoying. Better to bide one’s time in the kitchen than have to re-think your opinions about Samaritans or tax-collectors. Whatever she really wanted; what Martha needed was to just stop. Sit down. Listen. Stop doing and start listening.

The world we live in is full of problems, problems we all want to fix. But sometimes we want to fix problems more than we want to understand them. The problems we are facing today don’t have easy fixes: how best to protect the environment? How to protect ourselves while staying open and welcoming? All of these issues require careful, prayerful discernment — at least, they do if we are going to respond from a place of love and not fear.

Jesus’ call is to seek out God’s presence, to set aside the distractions of the world before we can best hear God’s voice. If you’re having a hard time finding God, go to those places where you know God lives. Come to church, sing the hymns, go to Holy Communion. Go outside and say thank you, even if you aren’t feeling thankful. Act with love, even if you aren’t feeling the love. And love will come to you.

Finding God among the poor is perhaps not as easy as in the beauty of nature or the peace of worship. But finding God among the poor is certain: for we know that God is always alive in the struggle for justice. We know that God lives among the marginalized, that God fights for the poor and upholds the weak. Like St Francis be among the poor, not to fix them, but merely to listen. To live with one another. To build community. Keep your heart open, and you will hear God’s voice there.

Jesus is the true Son promised today by Abraham’s visitors (see Matthew 1:1). In Him, God has made an everlasting covenant for all time, made us blessed descendants of Abraham. The Church now offers us this covenant, bringing to completion the word of God, the promise of His plan of salvation, what Paul calls “the mystery hidden for ages.”

As once He came to Abraham, Mary, and Martha, Christ now comes to each of us in Word and Sacrament. As we say in this week’s Psalm: Lord who shall dwell on your holy mountain? He who walks without fault he who acts with justice and speaks the truth.

 

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

As Jesus continues his journey to Jerusalem, he is confronted by a scholar of the law who wants to test him, in Luke’s Gospel, the lawyer asks what we must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks the expert to answer this question, “What is written in the law?” The man is caught and responds with Deuteronomy 6:5. This verse is one of the most important prayers in Judaism, and it was said twice a day in Jesus’ time. Love of God and love of neighbour are what is required for eternal life. Jesus’ response is simple, “Do this and you will live.”

Having been shown up by Jesus, the lawyer tries another question: Who is my neighbour whom I must love like myself?

Like the people who would have heard today’s gospel story in Luke’s community, we have boundaries and rules that we live by. In the Jewish culture of that time, there were rules about how men should treat women, parents treat children, Jews treat foreigners, gentiles and Samaritans. Their society was not so different than ours is now over 2,000 years later. We have those systems in place, and they are difficult to escape or transcend.

Yet, this is precisely what Jesus was calling the people of his time to do, and it translates to ours.

Life or inheritance meant tangible goods back then – land, wealth, herds. It was the promised reward to Abraham and his descendants who belonged to God’s covenant. But Jesus has a different message Jesus turns the lawyer’s challenge around to show that God’s sovereignty is over one’s whole life. Reading and knowing the law is not enough. Loving God, your neighbour and yourself characterizes someone who is already living life in the kingdom. The promise of true life is now attached to a demand: “Go and do the same yourself.”

The lawyer told Jesus that the one who showed mercy was the injured man’s neighbour. How do we go about showing that kind of mercy in our own lives? The kind of mercy that does not expect any kind of reward or perk. The kind of mercy that has no boundaries, as Jesus so cleverly identifies in his parable. The kind of mercy that often has a steep price: being beaten for defending a defenceless person; losing money to help someone else get back on their feet; losing a job because you stood up for a colleague who was being treated unfairly; being the victim of vandalism after standing up to neighbourhood bullies on behalf of an elderly neighbour. The list can go on. We all know these types of stories and must ask if we are willing to pay the price of mercy or just walk on by. Being a true neighbour means that we are living actively and not passively in the kingdom of God. Our faith journeys take a lifetime.

We continue to ask Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” and Jesus continues to answer with results that should not surprise us, knowing how Jesus works, but they always do: the marginalized one, the different-coloured one, the one with a different culture, the old one, the young one.

What is surprising is how difficult it is to show mercy to those who do not fit in our boundaries, despite what we know Jesus is asking of us.

Living a merciful life is not defined as helping someone once. Instead, it is a life in which a person’s character is formed by the basic premise that they love God, love their neighbour, and love themselves. At the end of the parable, the lawyer understands that “the one who took pity om him” was a neighbour to the man who had been robbed. He recognizes that our actions are more important than an abstract definition of who is or is not a neighbour. Jesus then challenges him to act the same way. Through this parable he also challenges us to act like neighbours to those in need.

The call to go and do the same is challenging and transforming. Living out mercy changes us as a people. Who is my neighbour? is an important question for every Christian community. Stella Maris (Apostleship of the Sea) chaplains and ship visitors do this in ports around the world. We can do it where we live, by supporting Sea Sunday and Stella Maris.

On the local level though we may take pride in the history and traditions of our parish, we cannot exclude strangers or newcomers. Rather, we must recognize Christ in the stranger, as we heed Jesus’ command to “Go and do the same yourself.”

 

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

A key theme of today’s Gospel and last Sunday’s Gospel is discipleship—its challenges, its difficulties, and its rewards. Sharing in the mission of Jesus is difficult, but everyone is called to do it, not just some professionals trained for ministry. Even for us today, the harvest is plentiful. We should pray to the master of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest.

Today Jesus appoints 72 people to go ahead of him to every town and place he plans to visit, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He sends them in pairs. In the Law of Moses two witnesses were needed for a testimony to be credible. It was probably also a safer way to travel.

We say these were the first clergy. In this we are both right and wrong. We are right that among those called and sent were those who would be pastors, preachers, celebrants of the sacraments, those who led emerging Christian communities. We are wrong if we think that all those called and sent filled that description. Those called and sent today, as then, are not merely the ordained, but rather they are the baptized.

The gospel tells two things about every baptized Christian here today. The first is that the task of telling the Good News to others is given to us all. We may achieve that task in many different ways, quietly or spectacularly, verbally or by our loving care for others, but the task of showing Jesus to others is one of the chief reasons why we exist. That is not an exaggeration. We have to grasp the idea that each of us has been created, was born, for a purpose, and that purpose is in the mind of God and is more important than any other purpose we may take on.

The second truth the gospel tells us is that we have been “empowered” so to do. That’s an assurance and a challenge. We tend to absolve our passivity by muttering things like, “I’m an introvert,” “It’s not in my nature,” “I get embarrassed.”

The Gospel assures us – and Luke later stresses this at the beginning of Acts – that we are all empowered to witness in the world and that empowerment is not the same as natural talent.

Imagine that you find yourself by a sick bed. Everything in you tells you to cut and run. You are extremely uncomfortable, don’t know what to say, feeling inadequate and close to panic. Yet you stay, maybe holding a hand and just sitting there. That action comforts and cheers the sick person. You have used not your talent, but the power given to you in baptism and reinforced every time you receive Holy Communion.

Perhaps you are in line at a store; an irate customer is yelling at the sales assistant. It’s not her fault. She is close to tears. When you get to her, your notice her name, speak it to her, smile and offer her silent comfort. In so doing you use the grace given to you in baptism. Jesus, present among us today, continues to call us, send us, and empower us. We all have a vocation to ministry.

Reflecting on the teaching of Vatican 2 Lumen gentium and Gaudium et Spes, Pope Francis says those documents state that lay people “participate, in their own way, in the priestly, prophetic, and royal function of Christ himself. The Council, therefore, does not look at lay people as if they were ‘second class’ members, at the service of the hierarchy and only executors of orders from on high,” states the pope. “But as disciples of Christ who, by force of their baptism are called to animate every space, every activity, every human relation according to the spirit of the Gospel.”

We can take a cue as evangelizers in the world today from Christ as St. Francis did. Even if we’re not formal missionaries, we’re sent out from each Eucharist into the world. We carry a message of peace. Let’s seek the good wherever God has planted it.