Richard Bollman, S.J.
4th SUNDAY, C, 2007
Jeremiah 1:4-10; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30
ON SCRIPTURE.
All the Gospel writers need to deal with the fact
that Jesus was not easily accepted by those closest to him.
Luke sets this out in this opening scene,
continued this week from last week,
where he reads and teaches from the scripture
and then is thrown out of town.
This tension about acceptance, or rejection of Jesus,
is interpreted against the background of the Hebrew prophets:
they too were voices not easily accepted.
Jesus stands in that tradition.
He claims to be fulfilling the promises made through Isaiah.
He is compared also to Elijah and Elisha,
who were not able to work effectively in Israel,
but were powerful outside the national boundaries.
The Gospel is compared this morning to a section of Jeremiah
where God calls the young prophet but warns him
that the people will fight against what he has to say.
Ironically we arrive in Paul’s letter to Corinth
at the familiar passage describint the best gift of the Christian life
which is practical love,
more perfect even than prophetic gifts.
HOMILY. 4th Sunday C 2007
"Soul Stories"
So, as Luke tells it,
Jesus was able to make a beginning impression on his neighbors,
but he was not able to make a difference to them.
Not hard to identify with that problem, is it?
that Jesus might impress, but still not make a difference in any radical way.
I think of this Jesus in the synagogue
and his ambitions seem so far-reaching, good news to the poor,
liberty to captives. You know the phrases.
He intends to make a difference, but perhaps you get caught up
too close to home, too close to Nazareth, too familiar, Sunday again.
It’s true for myself, even as a member of the Society of Jesus!
We deal with our familiar patterns, truth gone a little cold.
So there it is for us: Nazareth on Sundays.
Jesus is able to make an impression, but not much of a difference.
I have to ask, do I want there to be a difference:
or am I happy with just a few adjustments.
"Adjustments" is what I’m trained to manage!
thinking my way through problems.
Management is what I’ve learned to do:
and management focuses on keeping things largely the same.
Personal management leads us to diets, self-help books,
just as we hope for doctors than can cure us,
but not ask too much of us, not really change us, heal us.
We hope for governments to keep us safe in neighborhoods,
keep the planes flying and the gas prices within reach.
When I’m caught up in that kind of effort myself,
I’m doing the worldly job of maintenance.
It’s the role of secular power: sometimes it takes military action,
but it’s all maintenance, wanting to keep things the same:
safe and profitable and clean.
But there’s something else even now moving in this world,
and that is the strange ambition of Jesus, living the prophetic story
and wanting to unleash differences, change, possibilities I can’t predict,
the discovery of love, generosity, vision, peace,
freedom of heart that lasts through the ups and downs;
healing rather than cures.
Yesterday in the bookstore I sat down to browse through some C.S.Lewis,
sat down on a bench, and looked up into four shelves of Jewish spirituality,
Jewish history, holocaust studies, ancient writers,
things I never browse through.
It was all there because of where I sat down at Joseph-Beth.
On a whim I picked up a small book with a title I liked:
"God Whispers, Stories of the Soul."
With the Gospel on my back burner, and C.S.Lewis now closed in my hand,
it occurred to me: "soul story."
Getting close to what Jesus might be up to, that’s a soul story.
It takes some getting used to, some willingness, some heart.
Though of course this writer was not Jesus centered.
She was a rabbi, the writer, Karyn Kedar, and her book is all short chapters,
small encounters and poems, big themes without a lot of extra words,
but it is, indeed, soul centered.
She talks about "learning her soul" as a rabbi,
by talking with people in synagogue after Sabbath service,
trying to teach, wrestling with the scriptures.
(I thought to myself, Jesus would have done this!)
She speaks of the rabbis who taught her through the years,
some of them also women, some men,
"many a lunch in Florida with Rabbi Toba August," for example,
"discussing our understanding of the spirit and God.
Rabbi August pushed and pulled at my thoughts and proved to me
that although life can be tragic, one can triumph."
There was just something about this young modern woman
learning from her rabbis through the years, how to be a rabbi.
These conversations and pushing and pulling,
this is where Jesus stands among us, helping us be who we are too.
It turned me to the soul place in myself, what I too often neglect.
"SOUL" is the part of ourselves
where we are truly who we are, but where the lights are often out,
a hidden room, a holy room, a frightening work in progress.
This is what Jesus in the synagogue means to reach out to,
the poor and the captive everywhere, where souls are in progress.
When we look toward Jesus from that place,
it is clear he intends to be one who makes a difference,
and you don’t want to kick him out.
Unfolding your story in his heart leads to more than adjustments, cures:
nothing will do but mercy.
Isn’t it strange, I always ask to be a better guy, a more authentic human being
when what I need is simply mercy, tenderness and mercy,
the gift of God in Jesus.
That is the liberation. Mercy and tenderness
toward the human struggle,
even as we are, not requiring our own pitiful efforts, not needing to hide,
but letting the soul’s wounds, the broken heart, the fearful mess of our world
letting it all be unmanageable, and letting it all become ground
for something new now, something that springs out of
mercy and tenderness toward our real selves.
Karyn, the rabbi whose book I held,
tells how she learned the difference between story and gossip
and became a lover of the story that instructs great truths.
These simple words stirred me
(by now I’ve bought the book and moved to the Cafe)
and I think how often my story, as I tell it before God,
is a gossipy skein of mistakes and embarrassments,
when all along something else goes on,
surviving goes on, meeting the right people happens again and again,
even the suffering of social differences in high school and graduate school
become the guideposts to where I needed to go.
Enough of the old gossip about myself and Jesus Christ,
I want to be acquainted with the truth of our connection,
a lover of that truth. Mercy happens again and again when I gain perspective.
I am convinced this familiar voice from the Gospel,
this human and divine lover of our souls
stands among us and we ought not to throw him over the cliff.
But of course, he won’t be thrown out. He’ll just meet us in the next town.
Whatever our timing, he is one who waits for us to see
that we really do have what we need for the journey,
and it shall take us again and again to himself,
to where it is all fulfilled.