Readings
for
11 July 2004
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
6th Sunday after Pentecost
MP3
recording of this sermon
Today's First Reading is from The Book of Deuteronomy, beginning at
the 30th Chapter and the 10th Verse (Deut 30:10-14)
If you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep
his commandments
and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn
to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
"For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for
you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should
say, `Who will go up for us to
heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?'
Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, `Who will go over
the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do
it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in
your heart, so that you can do it.
La Primera Lectura es del libro del Deuteronomio empezando en
el 30mo Capitulo, y el 10mo Verso (Deut 30:10-14)
-- Escucha la voz del
Señor, tu Dios, guardando sus preceptos y mandatos, lo que
está escrito en el Código de esta ley; conviértete
al Señor, tu Dios, con todo el corazón y con toda el
alma. Porque el precepto que yo te mando hoy no es cosa que te exceda,
ni inalcanzable; no está en el cielo, no vale decir:
"¿quién de nosotros subirá al cielo y nos lo
traerá y nos lo proclamará para que lo cumplamos? "; ni
está más allá del mar, no vale decir:
"¿quién de nosotros cruzará el mar y nos lo
traerá y nos lo proclamará, para que lo cumplamos?" El
mandamiento está muy cerca de ti: en tu corazón y en tu
boca. Cúmplelo.
Today's Song of Praise is taken from Psalm 69: (Ps 69:14,
17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37)
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
I pray to you, O LORD,
for the time of your favor, O God!
In your great kindness answer me
with your constant help.
Answer me, O LORD, for bounteous is your kindness:
in your great mercy turn toward me.
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
I am afflicted and in pain;
let your saving help, O God, protect me.
I will praise the name of God in song,
and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
"See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds he spurns not."
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
For God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
The descendants of his servants shall inherit it,
and those who love his name shall inhabit it.
R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.
El Salmo Responsorial se toma del Salmo 68 (Sal 68:14,
17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37)
R.- HUMILDES, BUSCAD AL SEÑOR, Y REVIVIRÁ VUESTRO
CORAZÓN.
Mi oración se dirige a ti,
Dios mío, el día de tu favor;
que me escuche tu gran bondad,
que tu fidelidad me ayude.
Respóndeme, Señor, con la bondad de tu gracia;
por tu gran compasión, vuélvete hacia mí.
R.- HUMILDES, BUSCAD AL SEÑOR, Y REVIVIRÁ VUESTRO
CORAZÓN.
Yo soy un pobre malherido;
Dios
mío, tu salvación me levante.
Alabaré el nombre de Dios con cantos,
proclamaré su grandeza con acción de gracias.
R.- HUMILDES, BUSCAD AL SEÑOR, Y REVIVIRÁ VUESTRO
CORAZÓN.
Miradlo, los humildes, y alegraos,
buscad al Señor, y vivirá vuestro corazón.
Que el Señor escucha a sus pobres,
no desprecia a sus cautivos.
R.- HUMILDES, BUSCAD AL SEÑOR, Y REVIVIRÁ VUESTRO
CORAZÓN.
El Señor salvará a Sión,
reconstruirá las ciudades de Judá.
La estirpe de sus siervos la heredará,
los que aman su nombre vivirán en ella.
R.- HUMILDES, BUSCAD AL SEÑOR, Y REVIVIRÁ VUESTRO
CORAZÓN.
Today's Epistle is from Paul's Letter to the Colossians,
beginning at the 1st Chapter, and the 15th Verse (Col 1:15-20)
He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born
of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven
and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or
authorities -- all things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He
is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the
first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be
pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to
dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Epistolo de la Carta de San Pablo a los Colosenses, empezando
en el Capitulo 1mo, y el Verso 15mo (Col 1:15-20)
Cristo
Jesús es imagen de Dios invisible, primogénito de toda
criatura; porque por medio de él fueron creadas todas las cosas:
celestes y terrestres, visibles e invisibles. Tronos, Dominaciones,
Principados, Potestades; todo fue creado por él y para
él. Él es anterior a todo, y todo se mantiene en
él.
Él es
también la cabeza del cuerpo: de la Iglesia. Él es el
principio, el primogénito de entre los muertos, y así es
el primero en todo. Porque en él quiso Dios que residiera toda
la plenitud. Y por él quiso reconciliar consigo todos los seres:
los del cielo y los de la tierra, haciendo la paz por la sangre de su
cruz.
+A Reading from the Gospel of Luke, beginning at the 10th Chapter,
and the 25 Verse (Luke 10:25-37)
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the
test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"
He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read?" And he
answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your
mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You
have answered right; do this, and you will live." But he,
desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he
fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed,
leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that
road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So
likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on
the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where
he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him
and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then
he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of
him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave
them to the innkeeper, saying, `Take care of him; and whatever more you
spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three,
do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the
robbers?" He said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus
said to him, "Go and do likewise."
+Lectura de Santo Evangelio según San Lucas, empezando en el
10mo Capitulo, y el 25mo Verso (Lucas 10:25-37)
En aquel tiempo, se presentó un maestro de la Ley y le
preguntó a Jesús para ponerlo a prueba:
-- Maestro,
¿qué tengo que hacer para heredar la vida eterna?
Él le dijo:
--
¿Qué está escrito en la Ley? ¿Qué
lees en ella?
Él letrado
contestó:
-- Amarás al
Señor, tu Dios, con todo tu corazón y con toda tu alma y
con todas tus fuerzas y con todo tu ser. Y al prójimo como a ti
mismo.
Él le dijo:
-- Bien dicho. Haz
esto y tendrás la vida.
Pero el letrado,
queriendo aparecer como justo, preguntó a Jesús:
-- ¿Y
quién es mi prójimo?
Jesús dijo:
-- Un hombre bajaba
de Jerusalén a Jericó, cayó en manos de unos
bandidos, que lo desnudaron, lo molieron a palos y se marcharon,
dejándolo medio muerto. Por casualidad, un sacerdote bajaba por
aquel camino y, al verlo, dio un rodeo y pasó de largo. Y lo
mismo hizo un levita que llegó a aquel sitio: al verlo dio un
rodeo y pasó de largo. Pero un samaritano que iba de viaje,
llegó a donde estaba él y, al verlo, le dio
lástima, se le acercó, le vendó las heridas,
echándoles aceite y vino, y, montándolo en su propia
cabalgadura, lo llevó a una posada y lo cuidó. Al
día siguiente, sacó dos denarios y, dándoselos al
posadero, le dijo: "Cuida de él, y lo que gastes de más
yo te lo pagaré a la vuelta." ¿Cuál de estos tres
te parece que se portó como prójimo del que cayó
en manos de los bandidos?
Él
contestó:
-- El que
practicó la misericordia con él.
Díjole
Jesús:
-- Anda, haz tú lo mismo.
Sermon
for
11 July 2004
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
6th Sunday After Pentecost
As often happens, today's readings in the Lectionary
are split between two subjects. The First Reading and the Gospel
are on a common theme, but the Epistle is way off in a quite different
direction.
The Orthodox, who have an unvarying cycle of
readings -- the same Epistle and Gospel are read on the same Sunday
every year -- would call this "Good Samaritan Sunday", since the Gospel
today tells that story. I doubt that there is a Christian alive
on the planet who had not heard the story.
We in the 20th and 21st Centuries tend to think of
Samaritans as good guys -- precisely because of this parable. In
Jesus' time, it was quite the opposite, however -- the Samaritans were
a despised people, and to associate with them was to become ritually
unclean.
And it was likely the ritual uncleanliness, as well
as
snobbery, which kept the Priest and the Levite from helping the man
beset by robbers. There was an intricate set of taboos involved
in being a Priest or a Levite -- one of the chief of which was that
from touching a dead body. If the robber's victim was not moving,
the Levite could honestly say that he thought the man might be dead,
and
thus refuse to incur the ritual uncleanliness associated with that.
The other reason, of course, that Jesus uses the
Priest and Levite as counter-examples is that He was constantly
preaching agains the pecksniffian literalness of Jewish observance of
the Law. We tend to take the Two Great Commandments:
"..love the Lord...'; "...love thy neighbor..." as something that Jesus
said, because that is where we hear it most often.
But Jesus was quoting out of Deuteronomy
6:4-7:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. (in HEbr.: Shema
Yisroel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai echod!) Love the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength." And He also quotes from Leviticus 19:18: "Do not seek
revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love
your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD."
The Old Testament Prophets -- Elijah, Amos,
Jeremiah, Isaiah, and others -- had railed against the sins of Israel,
the indifference to the poor, the exploitation of the weak. This
-- when Israel and Judah were independent kingdoms, with their own laws
and aristocracies.
With the Babylonian Captivity, all of the
aristocracy and royalty were swept away, and when Israel returned to
Jersualem after Cyrus the Great permitted Jewish settlements in and
near Jerusalem
once again, the monarchy -- the House of David -- returned with them --
briefly -- and then silently vanished. The Temple and the
priesthood
became the center of Jewish life, and the Priesthood and the Temple
bureaucracy became ever more elaborate. Without a king to rally
around, the mark of cultural solidarity became the Bible and the Temple
ritual, endlessly elaborated.
By Jesus' time, the High Priest no longer led Israel
politically -- kings and governors were appointed from outside,
first by the Ptolemies and Seleucids, then by the Romans. Caught
in the Temple ritual, and at the mercy of temporal rulers, the
Priesthood did not really serve the needs of the ordinary Jew.
Jesus dedicated himself to doing something about
that. He rocked the boat so successfully -- with parables and
sayings like this one -- that the powers that were finally killed Him
for it.
The joke is on them, however, for this carpenter's
son from Galilee, whom they crucified, has made a larger mark on the
world, over a longer time, than did even Alexander the Great, the great
hero of antiquity. We
have developed an intricate hierarchy, too, but at the same time,
Christianity has done as the Samaritan did, in serving the poor and
downtrodden. Hospitals, orphanages, and hospices have been every
bit as characteristic of Christian lands as wars and Inquisitions.
The "Rational Humanists" who nowadays so decry the
influence of Christianity get their "rational" codes of ethics -- from
Christianity. Not from Rome, who treated everyone as the property
of the State; not from Greece, who treated the hoi polloi as
slaves and servants, reserving their concern for the "excellent" and
the
"noble".
"From each, according to his ability; to each,
according to his need." -- good Marxist phrase -- has deep Christian
roots -- the concern for
others, regardless of their station in life, does not exist in
non-Christians cultures. Thopugh we did inherit it fro Judaism,
and they make a creditable try at it. Mohammedanismmakes lip
service -- their record with their poor is abominable -- Christianity's
is rather good.
This selection of the Gospel (with its
parallels in the other Synoptic Gospels) is the heart of Jesus' social
message
-- his blueprint for doing the will of the Father who sent Him.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Epistle speaks directly to just who Jesus
was -- over and above merely a 1st Century radical reformer of
Judaism. Paul makes a powerful statement of Christology --
who Jesus is, and how he fits into God's plan to redeem the world and
humanity.
In the first sentence: "He is the image of the
invisible God, the first-born
of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven
and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or
authorities -- all things were created through him and for him.", we
hear echoes of the First Chapter of the Gospel of John -- or perhaps
the other way around, for Colossians is dated to about 62 AD, and
John's Gospel much closer to the end of the Century -- Church tradition
has it that
John died about 100 A.D., and that Gospel was written not much earlier.
As to why Paul makes this explicit claim of Jesus'
divinity and priority over all creation -- he was facing the first wave
of Gnosticism, which had taken root among the people of Colossae.
Christianity came to Collossae, which is some little distance inland
from Ephesus, via one of Paul's converts from that city -- named
Epaphras.
It is thought that one of the Persian kings moved a
colony of Jews from Babylon to Colossae about the time of the return
from Exile, and that they prospered there in the textile industires
that the city was known for. In Babylon, the Jews had been
exposed to the syncretic Babylonian religion, which was full of spirits
and demons and powers, as well as to the radical dualism of
Zoroastrianism
-- where the Good God, Ahura Mazda, is in eternal battle with the Evil
God, Ahriman.
We see clear evidence of the Zoroastrian influence
on Judaism in the Dead Sea Scrolls produced by the Qumran community --
several of
their apocalyptic works depict battles of good and evil. The
Apostle John's book of Revelations shows this influence, too.
While much of what we know about Gnosticism is from
the Christian-flavored Gnosticism of the 2nd and later centuries, good
evidence exists of pre-Christian gnosticism, too, and generally in the
area where Colossae lay, and to the East. This is on one of the
chief trade routes of the Hellenistic near East -- from the great port
of Ephesus inland to the Anatolian plateau, and thence down the
Euphrates to Babylon and Persia (modern Iran).
The Colossians had been led astray by these
proto-Gnostics, who insisted that to gain immortality and
salvation, one needed to know all of the names of the angels who
guarded the steps on the spiritual path from this grossly
heavy material world to the pleroma (fullness) of heaven. We see
here too, echoes of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and popular funereal
practices there.
We have echoes of this hierarchical view of heaven
even today -- the introduction to the Sanctus in my Liturgy, right
after the Proper
Preface is read: "And therefore, with Angels & Archangels,
with Thrones, Powers, Dominations, Cherubim and Seraphim, and with the
whole company of Heaven, we laud and magnify Your Glorious Name,
evermore praising You and saying:..." This list is taken
from the work of Dionysius the Pseudo-Aeropagite (fl, ca. 500 A.D.),
who introduced much neo-Platonism into Christianity, along with a
complex angelology.
Paul, however, in his Epistle insists that, while
the choirs of angels and intermediaries may indeed exist, they are
without meaning -- Jesus is the direct and primary link directly to
God, without any intervening bureaucracy, and anyway, those "...thrones
or dominions or principalities or
authorities -- all things were created through him and for him."
Jesus is the Man, folks -- God and Man. It is
through Jesus Christ that we are saved, and through the Church which he
created, not through some secret series of initiations and secret names
of Archons, and secret passwords and secret handshakes. In Christ
Jesus,
and in the Gospels which tell His story, all things are made open to
all men, and all secrets abolished.
Let us then, lowly and ordinary as we are, without
esoteric secrets, cry with the Psalmist:
"See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds he spurns not."
In the
Name of
the Father +
And of the Son
+
And of the
Holy Spirit +
Amen.
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