A Homily for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
“It’s not fair!” How often do we hear those words? If you are parents of young children, I am sure that you have those words more than a few times — “Why can Susie go to the movies but I can’t? It’s not fair!” or “Why can Johnny stay up that late by I can’t? It’s not fair!” If we are honest with ourselves I am sure we can all remember times when we have uttered those words, or words just like them. I know that more than once, after finding out six months after being ordained a priest that I had cancer, I had those very thoughts. It just didn’t seem fair.
In today’s first reading we hear the Israelites, who are in exile, grumbling that God is not being fair. If you read the Old Testament a lot you will notice that the ancient Israelites seemed to grumble a lot against God. In today’s reading they complain that it is not fair that a person who had been virtuous most of their lives, but had then committed iniquity would then be punished, while a person who had lived a wicked life but had repented and did what was right would be given eternal life.
What is it that God wanted from them, and us today? In a word, God wants obedience. If we had to sum up the entire project of the spiritual life in a single word, other than love, that word would be obedience. Just look at Salvation History. God created us in His own Divine Image and Likeness, and wanted to share His eternal life with us. He promised all this to our first parents, but they disobeyed God’s simple command not to eat from the one tree, and as a result sin and death entered the world. Fortunately for us, God did not abandon us in our sin and death, rather He sent His only begotten Son into the world to save us and to redeem us. How did Jesus become our Savior and Redeemer? In today’s second reading St. Paul records for us one of the first Christian hymns which answers this question, “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). It was Christ’s perfect obedience that made up for our disobedience. As followers of Christ we are called to model our lives on his, which means that we must become obedient to our Heavenly Father, just as Jesus is.
What does it mean to be obedient? The word comes from a Latin word which means to listen, but there is much more to it than just hearing what is being said. We see that from today’s Gospel. The first son listened to what his father said to him, even intensely enough to realize that his father wanted him to say, “OK, I’ll go work in the field.” However he did not go. In the parable we see that it is not just hear what God says to us, but it is doing what He says. It is this openness to hear God’s will, His Good News, which led the tax collectors and prostitutes to give up their wicked ways at the preaching of John the Baptist so as to follow God. This is why Jesus said that they were being saved, whereas those who were only giving lip service to God, namely the Scribes and the Pharisees who only wanted God on their terms, were being condemned.
Obedience requires us to make an act of Faith. C.S. Lewis, in the second of his science fiction novels, notes that if we just do what makes sense to us then we are merely following our reason. Obedience requires us to do what we are told because of our faith in the one who tells us what to do; it takes us beyond the limits of our reason.
Love is essential to Christian obedience. Because we know that God loves us, and that He keeps His promises to us, we place our faith in Him. Our faith is our loving response to God’s love in our lives. In faith we trust in God’s plan for us, even when we do not fully understand the “what’s” and the “whys” and the “where-forths.”
“The practice of Christian obedience unites us to the mystery of the Cross and our Redemption. The person who sets limits on his obedience is consequently setting limits on his union with Christ” (Fernandez, In Conversation with God, Volume 5, p. 109). Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary, the model par excellance of Christian obedience, to assist us with her prayers so that we may imitate Christ through our humble obedience to our Heavenly Father.
