FULFILLED IN OUR HEARING
3rd Sunday Year C
January 27, 2013
FULFILLED IN OUR HEARING!
The people during Nehemiah’s time had a compelling reason to
be emotional. The first reading says they were weeping as they listened to
Nehemiah’s reading with attention and deep interest. Nehemiah, of course, was
reading for hours on end the completed Book of the Law, known to Jews as the
Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.
When was the last time, you and I wept over an attentive and
rapt reading of Scripture? Was there ever a time when the words we read or
heard so convicted us or so convinced us, and by their power, moved us in the
same way as Nehemiah’s listeners were moved?
Today, I stand before you and I start with a little
confession. I confess that preaching has become of late an even harder task to
do. It never was, in the first place. While Nehemiah read for hours, and people
were moved by what he read, people now are moved by something else – by
entertainment brought by a mass media crazed culture of entertainment and
showbiz. People cry “Amen, Alleluia” after every line from a media savvy
preacher who, more often than not, end up merely entertaining, and not
preaching the Word!
It is hard now to reach out to young people who come to
Church armed to the teeth with their powerful smartphones. It is hard now to
preach on the Word of God to a “hooked-up” generation who are always connected,
but never seemingly attached; perpetually wired, but never attuned.
But this is precisely why I need to preach. This is
precisely why we priests need to do a Nehemiah and “preach in season and out of
season.” This is precisely the reason why we need to become what God has called
us to – evangelizers who bring to people, not just pleasant and saccharine
news, but the Good News of salvation.
But I would like you to know that I pine for the hearers and
listeners of Nehemiah. They were humble … “they bowed down and prostrated
themselves before the Lord.” They were attentive … “all the people listened
attentively to the book of the law.” They were malleable and formable … “all
the people were weeping as they heard the words.”
They had, in a few words, what we call “audience sympathy” –
that welcoming attitude of openness that is essential for the two-way dialogue
of faith communication to happen.
Maybe we all need to be reminded of this. Faith is a two-way
traffic. Salvation is a give-and-take. For salvation to happen, there ought to
be two parties: God who redeems, and man (or woman, or child) who works out his
or her own salvation “in fear and trembling.” This, among others, is what we
hear Paul say in the second reading .. that the Church is one body with many
parts, and every part has to feel and show that it belongs to the body.
Rejection does not make for salvation. Refusal is not the language of openness
and openness is what acceptance of the Word is all about. “The eye cannot say
to the hand, ‘I do not need you,’ nor again, the head to the feet, ‘I do not
need you.’”
We all have experienced being rejected. We all have suffered
due to some level of non-acceptance and rejection. But we all know how good it
feels to be welcomed, to be received with open arms, and to be accepted as we are.
Even the Lord Jesus knew what it was to rejected, right in
his own hometown … “What good can come
from Nazareth?” “Isn’t he the carpenter’s son?”
But rejected or not, the Lord came with a message and a
gift. He came as light, even when men preferred to live in the darkness. The
gospel passage we just heard tells us he went even to Nazareth. And there, he
entered a synagogue and, there, too, he stood up to read … proclaim is more
like it …
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Even here. Even now. Also here, also now. And I am a humble
unworthy instrument of this proclamation. But I beg you, dear brothers and
sisters … you need to help me here. I find it harder and harder to preach, for
the reasons (and more besides!) that I said above. You’ve got to help us help
you. You’ve got to have the right attitude, even as we need to preach better
and more intelligibly. It takes two to tango. Redemption is a task and a gift
given to us by God, in and through Christ. But salvation is a task and a
responsibility that is incumbent upon us all to do.
You and I. We all. Together. We need to journey together to
get there … and we need to help each other “bring the good news to the poor; to
proclaim liberty to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind.”
But we need to “let the oppressed go free.” And among the
oppressed is us … oppressed by a culture that is hooked up, and always
connected without being attached, aware of everything, but never really attuned
– to God, to others, to the One Body that is His Church!
Let the oppressed, beginning with us go free! And today, our
faith tells us, this is being fulfilled in your hearing!
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