June 14, 2024

Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Having finished our readings from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, the Lectionary for Sunday Mass designates St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as the second reading for the rest of the month of July and all of the month of August. The Letter to the Ephesians is the great Pauline letter about the church. It deals, however, not so much with a congregation in the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor as with the worldwide church, the head of which is Christ and the purpose of which is to be the instrument for making God’s plan of salvation known throughout the universe. St. Paul’s ecclesiology is anchored in God’s saving love, displayed in the life of Jesus Christ, and effected through God’s plan of salvation. The language is often that of doxology or praise as well as that of prayer, indeed of liturgy and hymns.

Today’s reading opens with a hymn of praise which might be described as a hymn of all creation, and more accurately as a hymn of redeemed creation. It seems to be a recital of blessings linking creation and redemption in the remembrance of the joys that God has offered.

Like the hymn that our Jewish brothers and sisters recite at their Passover supper, this hymn recalls a whole series of wonderful events in our history as a people. Their prayer begins with the words, “it would have been enough,” as in, “it would have been enough for God simply to create us, but then God saved us from the taskmasters of Egypt; it would have been enough that God saved us from the taskmasters of Egypt, but then God led us try shod through the sea; it would’ve been enough if God had simply led us try shod through the sea, but then God made a covenant with us at the foot of Mount Sinai, etc.” St. Paul’s hymn sings of our association with Jesus through which our possibilities are transformed. It sings of our redemption by the death of Jesus; our sharing in God’s wisdom by which we can know and appreciate God’s plan of redemption; it sings of the call of Israel and the call of the Gentiles.

If this enumeration of blessings seems to us to be rather odd and based upon an obscure kind of logical sequence, that is, of course, in part because of the great cultural and experiential gap between the setting of this early Christian community and our own culture. However, it may also be in part due to our general failure to appreciate the gifts of our own history. What this hymn really invites us to do is to reflect on how it would have been, or might have been, had each event not happened. It invites us to imagine ourselves living in an unredeemed world, allowed to fall apart from the effects of sin, and then to realize by contrast that in the face of all the tragedies and horrors of our own contemporary world, God’s redemptive plan is still at work by the hidden purpose of God, revealed to us so that we might become cooperating partners in that work of redemption.

It is in that context that we consider the call of Amos to be a prophet in Israel. Amos is rebuked by Amaziah the priest and told to go preach in Judah because his message is not appreciated in the court of King Uzziah. The message he brings is too dire, too dark, too depressing. Amos answers this rebuke by telling Amaziah that he did not choose to be a prophet nor did he choose the message he brings. He was perfectly happy as a shepherd and as a dresser of sycamores (a tree surgeon, if you will). However, God had called him to bring God’s word to this king who had forsaken the covenant relationship that was essential to the identity of the Jewish people.

We look at the mission of the Twelve who are to take nothing with them on their journey. This strange condition is invoked by Jesus because he does not wish his apostles to be mistaken about the power that they have been given. However, it is also addressed to us because so often we fail to bring God’s word to bear on our situation because we think we lack the provisions necessary. There can be no excuse for our failure to bring God’s word to the situation of our lives. We depend not upon our own resources, but upon the resources that God provides.

Consequently, it becomes clear that the theme that underlies all the readings in today’s liturgy is one of our vocation, our call. We are reminded of the demanding character of God’s calling, the unpredictable and unlikely selection God makes of divine emissaries, and the conditions for authentic witnessing to God’s Word. Because we have all been blessed by God in Christ with every spiritual blessing, because God chose us before the foundation of the world to be God’s holy people, it is now our responsibility to remind everyone of the many blessings with which we have been blessed. It is now our responsibility to continue to praise God as St. Paul did in a world that sometimes forgets to be grateful for what God has done for us. Yes, it would have been enough for God simply to create us and place us in this world. However, God not only created us, God also redeemed us so that we can look forward to a future with God for all eternity. In the words of St. John, “God so loved the world that God’s Son was sent into the world to save us.”