21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32; John 6:60-69

Today’s readings seem almost tailor-made
for this moment in the Church’s life.
In the Gospel, many of those hearing Jesus’ words
are offended and walk away:
“many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer accompanied him.”
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians
we hear of Christ’s love for the Church,
“cleansing her by the bath of water with the word…
that she might be holy and without blemish.”
In our first reading, Joshua challenges the Israelites:
“decide today whom you will serve,”
and we hear them reaffirm their commitment to God:
“Far be it from us to forsake the Lord
for the service of other gods.”
It might seem that the obvious message today would be
an exhortation to stay committed to the Church,
to not walk away and return to your former way of life,
to not lose hope in the face of past and present scandals
but to trust in God’s power to cleanse and purify the Church
who despite all the sin and betrayal
remains Christ’s beloved bride.

That would be a pretty good homily.
In fact, that was more or less
the homily I preached two weeks ago.
And I would stand by all of what I said then,
even in light of the tidal wave of evidence
of misdeeds by priests and bishops
that crashed over the Church last week
with the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report.
I still feel that I must say with the apostles in today’s Gospel
“Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”

But I don’t think that this
is what the Spirit is saying to the Church
in today’s scriptures.
I believe that today the Spirit
is exhorting all of us to speak truthfully.
Because in today’s scriptures
it is not any misdeed that offends people,
it is not any scandal or sin that sends them away,
but it is the life-giving words of Jesus—
words that are Spirit and life—
at which they take offense.
It is one thing to be scandalized by the sins
of those who claim to speak in Jesus’ name
and choose to follow another path;
it is something else to be scandalized
by Jesus’ words of Spirit and life
and choose to remain
in your untransformed way of life.
On the whole, I would say
that people today are not walking away from the Church
because they are offended by Jesus’ words.
That would be refreshing.
I think they leave because they have come
asking for the bread of life
and have been given a stone or a snake instead.
They come looking for the life-changing challenge
of being a disciple of the crucified and risen Jesus
and are all too often told to just sit there quietly
and not make too much noise.
They come looking for the community of the Spirit
and find an institution more concerned
with saving face than saving souls.

Our leaders bear much responsibility for this.
They bear responsibility because of the unspeakable acts
committed by a relatively small percentage of the clergy,
often against the weakest and most vulnerable
of Christ’s little ones.
They bear responsibility because of the cover-ups
perpetrated by a relatively large percentage of bishops,
who thought that the souls of these little ones
were worth sacrificing for the sake of the Church’s reputation.
They bear responsibility because they too often
have heard Jesus’s words of Spirit and life
and turned back to worship the gods of this world,
gods of pleasure and wealth and pretense,
gods who thrive on secrecy and lies.

Our leaders bear much responsibility.
But, in a different sense, we too bear a responsibility.
If we want a Church
that welcomes people into the adventure of discipleship,
that values truth over reputation,
that speaks words of Spirit and life,
then those words must come from our mouths.
This is the burden of our prophetic call
that we received at our baptisms.
I think of the victims of clerical abuse
and of their families,
who, when the powerful in the Church
told them to just sit there quietly,
raised their voices in divine outrage
and bore the cross of rejection and dismissal.
They bore that burden in hope
that speaking words of truth,
words of Spirit and life,
is more healing than suffering silence
and more powerful than face-saving lies.
They bore that burden
not only for themselves
but for all of us,
because only words of Spirit and life
can save us now.
But they should no longer bear that burden alone.
Let us take upon our own shoulders
the burden of truthful speaking,
by acknowledging the failings of the Church,
by working for a Church that can hear the truth,
by hoping for a Church that can truly be
“the church in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing…
holy and without blemish.”
Let us speak Jesus' words of Spirit and life,
and let those who reject those words
turn away to serve other gods.

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Ephesians 5:21-32; John 6:60-69

Perhaps out of concern for the safety of preachers
the Church allows for the omission
of the first part of our second reading—
that is, the part about wives
submitting to their husbands as to the Lord.
While I appreciate the Church’s concern for my well being,
I think that we should be hesitant
to skip over such difficult parts of Scripture,
because in our struggle to hear such passages
as the word of God and as good news
we join in the struggle of Christians down through time who,
like the disciples in our Gospel reading,
have said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”

The problems with what Paul says probably seem obvious:
not only does it run counter
to our own modern, egalitarian ideas of marriage,
but this verse has historically been used to keep women
in emotionally and physically abusive relationships.
Yet these are also the words of sacred Scripture.

In our struggle to hear these words as good news,
we might begin by putting it into historical context:
Paul lived in the first century,
and what he says about husbands and wives
presumes the conventional Greco-Roman
household structure of that time,
including the patriarchal preeminence of the man.
In other words, Paul was a man of his day
and we should not expect him
to reflect all of our modern values;
but we can still listen to his words
in order to discern
what is simply a reflection
of his particular culture and time
and what is of universal and enduring value.
Some have argued that we ought to emphasize the first line
as the key to understanding everything else that Paul says:
“Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
Pope John Paul II wrote concerning this passage:

The husband and the wife are in fact ‘subject to one another,’
and are mutually subordinated to one another.…
Love excludes every kind of subjection whereby the wife
might become a servant or a slave of the husband,
an object of unilateral domination.
Love makes the husband simultaneously subject to the wife,
and thereby subject to the Lord himself,
just as the wife to the husband
(John Paul II, General Audience, 8/11/82).

Interpreted in this way, we can see that,
working within his historical context,
Paul is reinterpreting the patriarchal family structure
in a way that subtly (perhaps too subtly?)
shifts the focus from the wife’s submission to the husband
to their mutual submission to each other
as a way of submitting to God.
So perhaps through understanding the historical context
and careful interpretation
we can find a way to hear Paul’s words
as the word of God and as good news.

Yet it’s not really that easy, is it?
Attention to historical context and careful interpretation
might simply become ways of evading truths we find difficult.
And even if attention to historical context
and careful interpretation
do offer ways of better understanding Paul’s words,
as I think they do,
I suspect that some, perhaps many, of you
are still no happier with Paul now
than you were when I began this homily.
Whether we are dealing with the words of Paul or,
as with the disciples in today’s Gospel,
the words of Jesus,
there are no quick fixes
for the difficult passages of Scripture.

But here is where I believe our Gospel reading
can shed some light
on how we deal with Scriptures
that are hard and difficult to accept.

At the end of everything Jesus has been saying
about being the bread of life that has come down from heaven
and the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking his blood
in order to have life
the disciples split into two groups.
But the division is not between
those who find his words difficult to accept
and those who find them easy to accept.
Rather, it is between those who,
finding his words difficult to accept,
leave him and the company of his disciples
and go back to their former lives,
and the Twelve who,
finding his words no less difficult to accept,
hang in there with him, and with each other,
seeking to understand his words
because, as Peter says,
“Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”
Both groups find his words difficult,
but for some this difficulty
leads them to walk away
from the task of understanding Jesus,
while the Twelve stay with him
and continue to struggle with his words,
because they know that it is only in their fellowship
with him and with each other
that they can ever hope to hear his words
as words of everlasting life.

So too for us,
when we are confronted with Scriptural words
that are difficult and hard to accept,
we can either simply walk away
and go back to life as usual,
investing our Sunday mornings in brunch
or soccer leagues
or reading the newspaper
or binge-watching something on Netflix,
or, like the Twelve, we can hang in there with Jesus
and with our fellow Christians,
in the faith that the only way to hear these words
as words of everlasting life
is to struggle with them together,
as a community that gathers at Christ’s altar
to receive the bread of life.

In the face of difficult Scripture we should not seek
an explanation that will make them palatable,
but rather hear an invitation to struggle together:
to struggle together with a tradition
that is deeply embedded in history,
yet continues to be made and remade in our own day;
to struggle together with texts that can shock and annoy
yet can nourish us still if we read closely and carefully;
to struggle together to hear the words of everlasting life.