Homily Ordinary 6C: Who do you trust? God or the world?

 Homily for 6^th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C 2022

Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12,16-20; Luke 6: 17,20-26

Introduction

Whom do you trust?  This question has been brought into sharp relief in the past two years as we have navigated our way through the COVID pandemic.  We live in a world where competing interests claim our trust.  Do we listen to institutional authority like the department public health and established scholars or to the voices opposing them?  Do we listen to our priests, bishops and the Holy Father, or do we listen to other voices that have set themselves up as alternative holders of tradition?  Whom do we trust?

If this question is important where our material welfare on earth is concerned, it is even more important where our spiritual welfare is concerned.

Scripture and Theology

Fortunately, we can turn to the Scriptures, to our reading from Jeremiah for a good answer.  Jeremiah says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD.”  And then he adds: “Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.”  Is Jeremiah saying we cannot trust our parents, our teachers, our priests, our leaders?  No.  What he is warning us against is placing our trust in human beings in those things where we should trust God.  Where do we find our inner strength, our ultimate fulfilment?  For both Jeremiah one's ultimate trust, strength and fulfilment cannot come from human things, from worldly things, but from God.  Trust in human things like riches, satisfaction, laughter and praise cannot satisfy us.  What satisfies us truly comes from God, even if trusting in God means suffering through poverty, hunger, tears and persecution.

Jeremiah goes on to explain the difference between these two approaches using two examples.  Those who trust in human beings and human things are “like a barren bush in the desert” that does not get any nutrients.  There is no nourishment from that arid ground.  But those who trust in the Lord are “like a tree planted beside the waters” whose roots go into the water and receive nourishment, receive what gives them life, even during a drought.

It is the same trust in God as opposed to trust in human beings, that allows us to understand what Jesus taught in the sermon on the Beatitudes that we just heard.  Jesus reversed the fortunes of those who experience these four forms of suffering:

• Poverty: "Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours."
• Hunger: "Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied."
• Tears: "Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh."
• Persecution: "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven."

Jesus is inviting us to trust in God, who turns what human beings see as curses, into blessings.  And just in case, they did not understand his message, in this version of the Beatitudes from the gospel of Luke, he takes four things that human beings would normally consider to be blessings and calls them woes or curses.

• Riches: "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation."
• Satisfaction: "Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry."
• Laughter: "Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep."
• Praise: "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way."

Jesus is turning things upside down, by saying that poverty, hunger, tears and persecution bring about blessings, happiness and a reward in heaven.  Jesus is Jesus reversing the fortunes of those who possess riches, satisfaction, laughter and praise and turning them into woes or curses.  These reversals can only be understood and accepted by those who trust in the Lord and not in human things.

This teaching was strange not just for us, but perhaps even for the Jewish people to whom Jesus preached.  For when Moses taught them from a mountain like Jesus was doing here, had given the people of Israel a different set of values.  In Deuteronomy he had essentially told them that if they obeyed the Lord, they would receive material blessings:

Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your beasts, the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading-trough. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out (Deut. 28:3-6).

But now Jesus, the new Moses, if you like, the new Sheriff in town is saying that what brings you blessing are not these material successes, but reliance on God.

And so, Jesus is not condemning riches, satisfaction, laughter and praise in themselves; nor is he extolling poverty, hunger, weeping and persecution in themselves.  That would not make sense.  What he is condemning is the complete reliance on passing things of the flesh, and the complete avoidance, at all costs, of those sufferings that come about because of being his disciples.

Christian Life

This reversal of values preached to the people of his time is also particularly relevant for us today.  In the past two to three hundred years especially, man has achieved some great things: discovered penicillin and other medicines that have cured many diseases, flight technology that makes it possible to travel from New Orleans to Los Angeles without people trying to shoot at you, computers that have changed the way we communicate and the amount of knowledge at our disposal.  But perhaps this material success has come at a cost; for like Jeremiah warned, we trust, we find strength only in human efforts, not in God.

That is why even today we must try to seek our blessing from Jesus' four beatitudes of poverty, hunger, weeping and persecution rather than from the four corresponding curses of riches, satisfaction, laughter and praise.

For while possession of material riches can console us on this side of heaven, it is a willingness to do without that assures us that "the kingdom of God is yours." A businessperson or employee, for example, who because they treasure the values of God rather than the values of the world, will take a smaller profit or a smaller pay-check, when they could take a bigger one but an immoral one.

In the second beatitude and its corresponding curse, the Lord also invites us to substitute present satisfaction with present hunger, so that in the future, we can be satisfied.  We must not settle for passing things, but must seek our fulfilment in the higher things of God.  The Catholic practices of fasting and abstinence are examples of present hunger that will bring future satisfaction in the Kingdom.

The third beatitude about weeping and its corresponding curse about laughing remind us that our current state of sadness or joy is not permanent and in fact will be reversed.  Many Christians undergoes suffering of all kinds, in the sure hope after the example of Jesus' own suffering and death, they will be blessed.

And the final beatitude and curse about personal reputation reminds us that it is better to have a bad name among people because of being and doing good, rather than a good name because of being and doing bad.  I have found the recent popes, especially Benedict XVI and Francis, as perfect models of this beatitude; for rather than run in a popularity contest, they simply do God's work, and are reviled for it.

Conclusion

Finally, as with all things, Jesus did not teach, what he himself did not undergo.  He was poor, having nowhere to lay his head.  He was hungry, fasting for 40 days in the desert.  He wept not only for Lazarus his friend, but especially during the Passion.  And he was called names.  And now he sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.  May we follow his example so as to have his destiny.