DEACON ALAN LAYDEN’S HOMILIES

Third Sunday In Ordinary Time A

February 2, 2008

During the week, as I was working on this message, I got to thinking…. Now, isn’t that something dangerous to do? I kept coming back to two nagging questions. Each week, when we hear the first reading, we almost always hear from a prophet. What is a prophet? And for that mater, who is Zephaniah?

In religion, a prophet is a person who has directly encountered the Devine or God and serves as an intermediary with humanity. Traditionally, prophets are regarded as having a founding or galvanizing role in society due to their teachings and actions. Christians share the Jewish belief that a prophet is a person who speaks for God, in the name of God, and who carries God's message to others. In short, when our Jewish fathers strayed from God’s ways a prophet spoke to them about returning to a more Godly life. They ether listened and were rewarded or didn’t and were doomed. We Christians are called to a similar understanding. We also are rewarded …….or not.

Zephaniah lived during and after the rein of King Josiah. Josiah was the ruler of the Jewish kingdom of Judah and was one of the major reformer kings. Zephaniah was a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah and his stern denunciations of the sins of the people and his impassioned cries for repentance have given him the name of “puritan”. Artists of the middle ages regularly presented Zephaniah as the man with a lamp, searching Jerusalem for sinners to bring them to punishment, not repentance.

The prophet Zephaniah wrote during time like our own. Judah (the Southern kingdom) was experiencing prosperity. The people seemed unaffected by the Assyrian conquest of their northern neighbors in Israel. Yet the prophet saw the same conditions in Judah that brought about Israel’s collapse: immorality, superficial religious practices, shallow faith and a sense of satisfaction and pride brought on by prosperity. The people had become complacent and presumed God was on their side since they seemed so “blessed.” A common mistake many make when life seems to be going their way. Don’t you agree? 
 
A prior prophet, Amos, had preached of “The day of the Lord,” when God would deal with all nations for their infidelities and injustices. Zephaniah has taken up Amos’ message and warns the people that they too are in danger, because God is angry with them. “The day of the Lord” is coming! The people who had reason to worry were those who were self-congratulatory in their well being and who put the pursuit of right relations with God and neighbors below their craving for material possessions. Now, as we know, a prophet is a pretty “official” voice, one who speaks for God. So, the question is, who of us does God bless? If wealth and security are not sure signs of God’s favor and blessings, then what is? The prophets, Jesus and even Paul, have an answer to that question. 
 
Today, Zephaniah’s words continue to challenge us. Our nation can be complacent in our prosperity. We worry about the threat of inflation and a down-turn in the economy and its effects on our accustomed life style, more than we do about how we use our power, our self indulgence and our waste of resources—which most of the people in the world lack. While we have great access to knowledge and information we must ask ourselves if we use what we have wisely. We may be smart, but are we wise in God’s ways?  
 
Zephaniah places a stern warning before those who were indifferent to God and neighbor and he makes a promise to those he calls a “remnant” (or the “anawim”). It is these same people; we will read about in the gospel today. In a world that teaches happiness consists in wealth, power, youth, sexual license and independence from authority, Jesus proposes another perspective. Happiness (or being “blessed”) is found in sharing what we have with the poor, being faithful in our relationships and in serving the reign of God on earth. Jesus invites us, when moments of decision come, to listen to his voice and to receive the life his way of living offers us. They are “blessed” because they have placed their security into God’s hands and their main concern is doing God’s will. These “little ones” are the holy remnant that looks to God’s coming “day” with hope and longing. On that day they will take refuge in God and they will be safe from all harm. They will no longer lack and will see their fidelity rewarded by God. The Beatitudes carry forward the theme of the “remnant.” They describe what the new People of God will be: the faithful (poor in spirit, sorrowing, meek, merciful, etc.) who accept Jesus and follow his pattern of life.

Matthew sets Jesus on a mountain to depict him as a new Moses who renews the covenant with God, but when we reflect on the Beatitudes a caution is necessary. We do tend to treat them as Jesus’ version of the Ten Commandments. We look upon them as moral imperatives and we think that our responsibility is to act the way the Beatitudes direct us. Doesn’t that make us feel inadequate? We reason that in order to receive the reward Jesus offers his faithful servants we must be poor in spirit, meek, merciful, etc., so that God will show us mercy too. Jesus seems to have set the bar high and our job is to do our best to leap over it. But where is the “blessing” in that? If it sounds like the emphasis is on us, and what we can do to gain the reward?  
 
Try instead to look on the Beatitudes as words of encouragement to those who are in current difficult times. If we are poor in spirit, in mourning, hungry and thirsting for justice, then the Beatitudes are our assurance of God’s desire to bless us, renew our hope and strengthen us so we can persevere, despite the indifference or even hostility of the world. The Beatitudes reveal the heart of God. By describing “beatitude people,” Jesus is pointing to where God’s concern and blessing lie. God notices the poor in spirit, those who grieve and yearn for things to be set right in the world and God will not leave them on their own or expect them to accomplish the goals of the gospel by themselves. 
 
So, while the Beatitudes are not primarily a moral instruction or manual for behavior, they do point to what matters most to God and reveal to us God’s will. Thus, they invite us to partner with God and one another in order to tend to God’s concerns for humanity. They don’t just point to a future fulfillment, and while they don’t spell out specific ways to accomplish the conditions they describe. We are guided and inspired by them, and we pray for wisdom today to know the direction we must take to be a “beatitude people”.

This morning, perhaps there is a single beatitude in particular that speaks to us. So, we pray at this Eucharist for the Spirit to enable us to live that beatitude more fully and to practice it in our relations with others. In the Beatitudes the disciples are getting an early glimpse into what following Jesus will mean for them. They are learning about God’s concerns and what response they must make to follow in Jesus’ way. And, of course ultimately us too.

Today some of us get the message. Perhaps in Paul’s time the Corinthian’s did not and Paul thought he had to make it planner to them with this rather blunt statement: Reread:…… I prefer the beatitudes. Don’t you?

Ash Wednesday is just a few days away! It seems we just put away the Christmas decorations and already Lent is upon us. Now, I am not advocating a return to a former Lenten mentality or observances, because we did have some unusual attitudes about Lent—with a good dose of fear mixed in. But, I think we clearly heard Zephaniah speak about repentance although we seem to have lost a sense of Lent as a time of repentance, change and a preparation for Easter. We may have put aside some the seemingly strange former notions about a God angry at our sinfulness, a God who needed appeasing by our self-denying practices. But what has replaced our former thinking and motives? Is Lent going to be a season where we are only conscious of it when we come to church and notice the stripped-down sanctuary and altar and the purple vestments?  
 
In our world of self-indulgence, excess and waste, don’t we need to take another look at discipline and self-control? The poor and our very planet might be the beneficiaries if we approach this Lent as a time to grow in sensitivity to those with much less than we have and towards our planet that is rapidly wearing down.  
 
Lent offers us a season to make the Beatitudes our own, to learn them by putting them into practice. Our Lenten observance will help us examine our lives, free us from our dependence on what will pass away and fix our eyes on God and doing God’s will. We are called this season to acknowledge our deepest needs for God and for each other. No material good can satisfy that hunger and thirst. Guided by what the Beatitudes reveal about God’s concerns, we recommit ourselves this Lent to be with: the hungry, the cold, the poor and those who are treated unjustly. We stand with those who yearn for peace amid violence and rejection and are persecuted for the good they do.  
 
Truly, the prophet Zephaniah and Jesus work at opening our eyes so we can see the hand of blessing God extends to us. We are also reminded to accept that blessing and in turn, to extend that blessing to others. The Beatitudes are our “Bill of Rights,” in that they set out the foundations and give us a perspective on the life Christ is offering us. Another thought I have been working on this week. As Lent approaches, what special thing should I work on during this season of preparation? Usually we give up something, don’t we? Well, maybe this year I won’t give up chocolate or pizza. Maybe this year I will work on something harder, like seeing God’s blessing in others, as that “Bill of Rights” from God works in the lives of those around me. It also means that I have to involve myself, in work with the hungry, the cold, the poor and those who are treated unjustly. Maybe instead, I should share that chocolate or pizza with them. So, in all humbleness, what have I caused you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to think about doing instead of not doing this Lent?

Thanks to Jude