2 nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Transcription

1 "John was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said,' Behold, the Lamb of God.'" (Gospel) Painting: The Lamb of God, Church of Santa Pudenziana, Rome 2 nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B January 15, 2012

2 First Reading: 1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19 3 the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the Lord called, Samuel! Samuel! and he said, Here I am! 5 and ran to Eli, and said, Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call; lie down again. So he went and lay down. 6 The Lord called again, Samuel! Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call, my son; lie down again. 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8 The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, Here I am, for you called me. Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10 Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, Samuel! Samuel! And Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. 15 Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. 16 But Eli called Samuel and said, Samuel, my son. He said, Here I am. 17 Eli said, What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you. 18 So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him. 19 As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. Responsorial Psalm: 40:2,4,7-8, 8-9, 10 2 He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord. 4 Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods. 5 You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us;

3 none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted. 6 Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt-offering and sin-offering you have not required. 7 Then I said, Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. 8 I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart. 9 I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord. 10 I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. Second Reading II: 1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, The two shall be one flesh. 17 But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

4 Gospel Reading: John 1: The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, Look, here is the Lamb of God! 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, What are you looking for? They said to him, Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are you staying? 39 He said to them, Come and see. They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o clock in the afternoon. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter s brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah (which is translated Anointed). 42 He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas (which is translated Peter). Homily I have struggled for days to try to find a commonality, a theme that ties all three of the readings together this week, but it is a challenge. Adding to that difficulty are the huge controversies around how to interpret Paul s Epistle regarding sexual morality. Of course, here at St. Junia s House, our young adults are most keenly interested in those passages that pertain to sex, so I would be amiss to ignore this important aspect of what does scripture say about how we live as sexual beings and as Christians in our world today. Is scripture still relevant to how we make choices in our sexual relationships today? Some would say no, that it is archaic, based on another world that no longer exists. But, yes, I strongly believe that scripture is still very relevant. But, we have lost the cultural context in which Paul wrote, and some of the words meant something much different than the English words we have before us. As difficult as it is, I will try to do what I can in a short homily, realizing that a woman s reach probably exceeds her grasp. In the First Reading from the prophet, Samuel, we have one of the most beautiful stories of the calling into spiritual awareness and being called to follow God in the entire Bible. The youthful Samuel receives a call from God, which he repeatedly does not recognize, but his mentor, the priest, Eli, directs him to respond. He learns to open himself up to God s message: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. In the Gospel Reading, two followers of John the Baptist understand that they are to follow Jesus. Jesus inquires of them, What are you looking for? They ask him where he was staying and he tells them to Come and see, an invitation to follow him. To ask where one is staying was a term reflecting seeking a rabbi, a teacher, to know where he is centered, where he abides, and what he is about. The two new

5 disciples came with him about 4 PM that day, a Friday, the Sabbath evening so they stayed with Jesus through the Sabbath day. The young Samuel was given instruction to open himself to God s instruction, to listen, and John s disciples were also given an invitation. We see in the Gospel a chain of events where one person is converted, who, in turn, brings another to follow Jesus. When the seeker listens and finds Jesus, others in turn are then invited to join the journey. There is a community building and growing. We will come back to this idea. So, how in the world does the Second Reading, a passage from Paul to the Corinthians figure into the idea of seeking and recognizing God s calling? The context of the passage had to do with concerns about sexual morality in their community where Christians were a tiny minority compared to the local pagan religions. The local pagan temple boasted a thousand female priestesses who, in essence, offered worship of the gods through sexual intercourse for a fee. Just as eating of meat that had been sacrificed in the pagan temple was forbidden to Christians, prostituting one s self sexually was viewed as a loss of integrity and an unacceptable violation of boundary with unbelievers. Adultery, that is, the violation of a marital relationship with a third party was prohibited in the laws of Moses. The previously established bond between two people would be violated in adultery. It is clear in other contexts that Paul advised Christians to be in a committed relationship with one person, and to be faithful in that relationship rather than to engage in promiscuous sexual behavior. The word used in the English translation of what Paul wrote in I Corinthians is fornication, which today we take to mean having sex with another single consenting adult to whom we are not married. But the word being translated as fornication, is much broader and in fact may not necessarily include what we think of as fornication today. But it seems to imply a physical union when a spiritual bond is lacking. What is the boundary for us? Where is the line between respecting the boundary and needs of another and selfishly using them? Is such a thing that today we term as friends with benefits acceptable for a Christian or not? What do you think? The Greek word in question in the Epistle of I Corinthians is porneia, 1 which is a term used for acts condemned under the Law of Moses, adultery, vice, and idolatry. There is no equivalent English term. Our English word, pornography is derived from this Greek term and in some ways it actually comes closer to what was being proscribed than fornication. In some sense, we might think of pornography as a form of idolatry, 1 Porneia: Leviticus 18 states You must not do the deeds of the land of Canaan in which I am about to bring you. These included incest, sex with in-laws, sex with a woman as a rival to her sister, sex with animals, child offerings to Molech, sex during menstruation, cult male and female prostitution, exchanging sexual favors for material gain, ritually unclean sexual acts. Leviticus 20 refers to males having sex with other males as lying with a woman, but various sources of exegesis that I have studied seem to indicate this condemnation was because the act had to do with extortion, force, rape, and cultic prostitution. If you are interested in detailed sources, please ask me.

6 focusing on and overvaluing one aspect of a person, and accepting this as a substitute for fully knowing and being known. The same term was used by Jesus himself. It should be noted that while in the I Corinthians reading, porneia is translated narrowly as fornication, when used by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, it is translated more broadly as unchastity. When Jesus disciples were being criticized for lack of ritual washing of their hands, he tells his listeners that it is what comes from one s mind that is polluting. Don t you have a clue yet! Jesus exclaimed. Out of the mind come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, porneia, thefts, telling lies about people, and blasphemies. These are the things that pollute a person! [Matthew 15:16, 18-20] 2 Paul says that the body is not for porneia but for the Lord and the Lord is for the body, soma in the Greek. Paul uses soma in several ways. The reference is not just to an individual s body, but to humanity as a whole, and a figurative meaning of body as referring to the church we are the body of Christ, the church. So the giving over of one s self, of one s body-person as in prostitution when it should be conserved and committed to God s purposes is to disrespect the other person as well as one s self. 3 Another implication of the passage in Paul is maintaining the integrity of the Christian community, the church, and giving full respect to our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we behave only as individuals, that is individualistically, and do not take into account the well-being of our community, which is holy as we are holy, we have compromised and polluted ourselves and others. For Paul s opponents, who said All things are lawful, he said, Yes, but not all things are needful and not all things are helpful in our community. In other passages, Paul speaks of not doing some things if they cause another to stumble. When we are called as followers of Jesus, we are called to a higher value of our own worth and that of others, and to honor and respect the boundaries of others not to demean, compromise, or abuse another, nor to cause another to stumble. Treating another as simply an object, whether we are taking advantage of them financially, socially, or sexually: this is not consistent with answering God s call, the call of Samuel, and the call that Jesus himself received at his baptism, and the invitation he made to those who sought him out. Notice that the laundry list of prohibited behaviors that 2 The Source New Testament with Extensive Notes on Greek Word Meaning: Translated with notes by Dr. A. Nyland.(2004). Smith and Stirling Publishing, Australia. It should be noted that Dr. Nyland s work was well received by many evangelical Christians until recently she came out with another volume with exegesis and notes intended for the gay and lesbian community. Then, her work was no longer supported. 3 Gerard S. Sloyan (2004). Preaching from the Lectionary: An Exegetical Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, pages

7 Jesus mentions in the Matthew passage quoted above are all some form of violation of the boundaries and needs of another, using and disrespecting them in some way. In closing, let us consider today s Psalm, which in the lectionary is used as a response to Samuel s call. Samuel hears God s call and responds, Speak, Lord, for your servant hears. In the Gospel of John, the Son of God is frequently spoken of as hearing his Father s words. The Epistle of Hebrews refers to Christ as also having said, Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will when he came into the world which could mean not just his birth, or at his baptism, or when beginning his mission he came to do God s will at every point in time in which he interacted in the world. He goes out to share the Good News, the Gospel, and his followers did the same. The Psalmist says: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart. (v. 8). I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord. I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation (v. 9-10). This is the natural flow of the Holy Spirit through us to others when we have heard God s voice. The Good News is that God has delivered us from ourselves, from misusing one another, and he has invited us -- not forced us, threatened us, manipulated us -- and he has given us complete choice to choose relationship with him -- and he has loved us unconditionally. As we experience God s grace and love in our own lives, we extend it and offer it to others around us. We can joyfully celebrate our call into increasing awareness of who God is, and respect for others as he has taught us to love others as he loves us and as we love ourselves. Did you get that? We must love ourselves before we can truly love and respect others. I believe that our relationships will fall in place if we have our priorities right in answering God s call. If we as believers are called into partnership with another, we will be safe, we will honor and treasure the one to whom we are called to share love and intimacy, and we will be at one with him or her spiritually and physically.

8 Jesus asked them, What are you looking for? Something. They weren t sure what. So they answered with a question: Where are you staying? Come and see. They went. The place was run of the mill. But they stayed with him And they found all they had been seeking. Christ, take us to that place. We want to spend time with you. Make the dullness of our lives shine. *** Three times the Lord called Samuel. Three times he missed the call Lord, when you call us out of our sleepiness, out of the midst of our turmoil, let us know you well and let us reply,

9 Here I am, Lord! O Holy Spirit, Gratias. Christ did not leave us; he made you a home within our hearts. Allow us to see the light you create in us, in others. Amen. Copyright 2012, The Center for Liturgy at Saint Louis University. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.