HOMILY LENT SUNDAY 04-B
Back to the Future
(2 Chronicles 36:14-17; 19-23; Ps 137; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21)
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In the not too recent past, a movie came out called Back to the Future, in which the main character experiences a time warp into another period of history.
The readings today come together to form a kind of time warp for us and invite us to deepen our faith in Jesus and our love for others so that we can experience eternal life here and now.
To grasp what this future already present is all about, we first go back to the past. In the gospel, Nicodemus, a leading Pharisee, comes to Jesus by night, fearful to be discovered by his peers, yet driven to try to understand this mystery of being “born from above.” Jesus mentions that he as the Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and that those who believe in him as the only-begotten Son of God will have eternal life.
The serpent in the wilderness that Jesus mentioned to Nicodemus, takes us back to the time when the Israelites were being bitten by poisonous scorpions and asked Moses to plead with God to free them from this danger. Interestingly, God does not do away with the scorpions. Instead, as a response to Moses’ prayer, God instructed Moses to fashion a bronze serpent that had no poison in it, put it on a standard, raise it up, have the people look at it when bitten and they would live. Already in the desert period, thousands of years before Christ, God was preparing God’s chosen people to look towards a saviour on a standard who would have no poison, no sin within him.
We now fast forward to the Book of Chronicles in the first reading, and the temple period. Here we are told that despite all God’s marvellous deeds freeing the people from Egypt and bringing them into the Promised Land, “all the leading priests and the people” were exceedingly unfaithful to the covenant and that they followed the abominations of the pagan nations around them, to the point that the temple that was consecrated in Jerusalem was polluted. Worse than that, we are told that they mocked, scoffed at and rejected the prophets that God sent them out of compassion, trying to get them to change their ways. The consequence of this infidelity, sin and sinfulness was the destruction of the temple when Jerusalem was ransacked, and the people were enslaved to foreign rulers.
Mercifully, the reading ends by presenting us with a God of second chances. God uses a pagan, King Cyrus, to give the people the opportunity to go back to their homeland and rebuild the temple. When we fast-forward to the gospel and the time of Jesus, we find that this second chance proved no better than the first. As Jesus put it, the people still loved darkness and evil rather than goodness and light. We know that the greatest sin for Jesus was not anything to do with morality, but rather the hypocrisy and unbelief of the religious leaders of his day. They refused to believe in the Son of Man, the only-begotten Son, and in their turn, polluted the temple with a corrupt sacrificial system of religion that excluded the Gentiles and gouged the poor. Nothing had changed from the time of the Book of Chronicles.
But for those who would believe in the only-begotten Son of Man who would be raised up on the Cross and who would rise from the dead, everything changed. St. Paul in the second reading to the Ephesians puts it best: “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” What a scenario Paul is presenting! Through faith and love, we can already experience the eternal life that will be ours in fullness when Jesus comes again.
It is important to note that this will happen through faith and love – not faith alone as some think and believe. A closer look at the text shows that Paul is careful to balance faith and works. Yes, it is by grace through faith that we have been saved as a gift from God. But Paul adds that we were created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand to be our way of life in this new creation.
Someone who understood this well was Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. A left-leaning Marxist and an atheist in her youth, she eventually came to believe in Jesus Christ and was received into the Church. As she read the New Testament, the more her faith in Jesus Christ grew. As her faith grew stronger, the more her inner drive to express her faith developed within her. Finally, becoming more aware of the plight of the poor on the streets of New York City who were voiceless, destitute and marginalized, she understood that God was calling her to see Christ and serve him in the faces of the poor. This she did so fearlessly that she was able to withstand even pressure from some within the Church who were disturbed by her radical servant leadership. In a very real way, she comforted the disturbed, and disturbed the comfortable.
The Eucharist that we share today is a double-edged sword. First, we are forgiven, nourished and healed by the merciful love of God in God’s Word and Sacrament. Second, however, we are not meant to stay there. We are commissioned, sent out to express our faith and love by serving our brothers and sisters like Dorothy Day.
So, as we celebrate today, let us pray for a strong faith in Jesus that will express itself in loving service so that we may experience the eternal life that Jesus came to give us, not only in eternity, but here and now.
