Canada Day

HOMILY CANADA DAY 2023

An Irresistible Revolution

(Is 56:1,6-7; Ps 84; Mt 5:1-12a)

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The title of one of our contemporary prophets, Shayne Claiborne, The Irresistable Revolution, fits the special readings for this Canada Day liturgy.

We are invited to maintain justice and to live the revolutionary new way of life Jesus gave us in the Beatitudes.

Centuries earlier, the prophet Isaiah intuitively highlights one of the beatitudes, with his exhortation to always “maintain justice.” He then throws the doors of God’s love wide open to the whole world, to all who love the Lord and strive to do God’s will. And he predicts that someday God’s salvation and deliverance will be revealed.

That is precisely what is happening in the gospel for today. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up a mountain and sat down to teach with authority and solemnity, as the new Moses, effecting a new Mt. Sinai, bringing into being a new people of God, and proclaiming a unique law that goes beyond rules, laws, commandments and prescriptions, that reaches the heart, that offers us a whole new way of being in this world.

As Shane Claiborne puts it in another of his books, Rethinking Life, “Reading the Beatitudes shows how upside down and countercultural the revolution of Jesus really is. It reorients how we think about nearly everything – how we interact with evil, how we hold our possessions, how we respond to violence. The gospel confronts our human instincts; It is better to die than to kill. It is better to give than receive. If we want to be rich, we must give away our possessions. If we want to find our lives, we must first lose them. God blesses all the people this world has crushed – the meek, the merciful, the poor, the peacemakers. All those who are last will be first and the first last. The mighty will be cast down and the lowly lifted up. That’s the upside -down kingdom of God. (p. 42)

If everyone believed in Jesus and lived this teaching of his, all these new attitudes, the world would be transformed, racism would disappear, corruption would stop, crime would come to an end, the gap between rich and poor would be made much smaller, and addictions would be non-existent. An attitude is, to my mind, our habitual way of thinking, feeling and acting in this world. It is the way we are, or our Way of Being as the Returning To Spirit program puts it. Jesus is giving us a comprehensive new set of attitudes by which to live, and which, in essence, is the salvation and deliverance that Isaiah prophesied.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who are humble, who have made the inner journey and dealt with their inner child and family of origin issues, who have accepted themselves as they are – they are already in the kingdom of heaven!

Blessed are they who can be with others in the pain of their loss without trying to fix anything, and who have mourned and grieved their own losses, accepted them, given them back to God, and now can move on with their lives with some comfort in the knowledge that the Spirit is given them to make up for those losses.

Blessed are the gentle and meek, who can live and let live, who have let go of any need to dominate, who can respect others and accept them just as they are – they will inherit the earth and feel totally at home in their skin.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, to maintain justice as Isaiah proclaimed, who strive to bring about a healthy, right relationship with God, with all others, with themselves and with all of God’s creation – they will be satisfied and content.

Blessed are the pure of heart, those who are single-minded, who have truly made Jesus Christ a priority in their lives, who seek to do only the will of the Father, who never use the gift of their human sexuality in a selfish way – they will actually begin to see who our God truly is.

Blessed are the peace-makers, those who try to mediate opposing sides and lessen the polarization in our society and church, who invite all to dialogue, respectful communication, and strive to understand the other rather than manipulate or change the other.

And blessed are they who are persecuted for speaking truth to power, for standing for the values that Jesus teaches, for daring to correct others, who do not buy into the latest fad, ideology or craze, who go against the grain, who consistently try to discover the facts within the falsehood that so often abounds – these too already live in the kingdom of God.

Shane Claiborne continues to articulate the way of the world by contrast: The poor – our world blesses the rich and praises the productive. Those who mourn – mourning can feel like weakness, or like we are ashamed of the past. The meek – our culture scoffs at the weak, adores what it deems the bold, the strong and the ambitious. Those who hunger for justice – even among those of us who want justice it is hard to imagine feeling hungry or starved for it. The merciful – our society idolizes systems of law and order and scoffs at mercy. The pure in heart – to be pure in heart is to be without deceit or hypocrisy, a trait considered quaint at best in a culture that values acquiring affluence and influence by any means possible. The peacemakers – our world dismisses any talk of peace as naïve. Those who are persecuted – our culture is obsessed over comfort and safety and avoids persecution at any cost, even the cost of our integrity and convictions. (p. 156)

In many ways, our country has lost its way – given over to the false gods of an over-attachment to possessions and pleasure; prestige and fame, power and control. When we lose our faith in a God who truly loves us, we end up placing our trust in false gods that don’t love us, that will eventually entrap and destroy us. As a friend of mine put it, we are the most wealthy and privileged society ever, yet also the most addicted, obese and unhappy society. It is time to land solidly on the new way of life Jesus offers us as the best way out of our own sad dilemma.

The Eucharist we celebrate is our daily manna to support us in this new way of life – listening to God’s word, and experiencing his love through forgiveness and healing, even as we celebrate.

So let us listen to both Isaiah and Jesus, strive to maintain justice and to live the revolutionary new way of life Jesus gave us in the Beatitudes.