Homily
for November 14, 2004
Year C - Cycle II
33rd Week in Ordinary Time
by
Dcn. Ray Alcouffe
Topic: The
New Creation
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Gospel:
Luke 21: 5-19
While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned
with costly
stones and votive offerings, he said, "All that you see here--the days
will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that
will not
be thrown down."
Then they asked him, "Teacher, when will this happen? And what
sign will
there be when all these things are about to happen?" He answered,
"See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying,
'I
am he,' and 'The time has come.' Do not follow them! When you
hear of
wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must
happen first,
but it will not immediately be the end." Then he said to them,
"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There
will
be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and
awesome
sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.
"Before all this happens, however, they will seize and persecute
you,
they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will
have
you led before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to
your
giving testimony. Remember, you are not to prepare your defense
beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that
all
your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. You will even
be handed
over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put
some of
you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a
hair on
your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your
lives.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”
The readings for today do not seem to
present anything we
would call good news. They are about destruction, trials and
tribulations, and all sorts of calamities that are to befall us,
leading us
finally to the end of the world. Jesus begins this by noting the
destruction of the temple - the most holy of places for the people of
God since
it signified the presence of God among God’s people. Thus, its
destruction meant that God was not to be present and all sorts of
calamities
would be unleashed until the end of time which would follow
quickly. We
associate a great deal of fear with the end-of-the-world events.
It sounds like all is lost but of course that is not Jesus’
point. In the
midst of this description of destruction, he says that by your
perseverance you
will secure your lives. This is salvation – so there is good news
amidst
all the desolation. To see what the good news means in this
context, we
need to get a handle on the big picture. In a sense, to see what
God sees
and what God intends by all this. It’s kind of like a project
that a
little boy was starting when he sat down at the kitchen table with his
crayons
and big sheet of blank paper getting ready to draw something. The
boy’s
Father, noticing his son hard at work at the table, stopped to
look.
“What are you doing, son?” “I’m drawing a picture of God.” “But
son, you
can’t draw a picture of God. Nobody knows what God looks
like.” The
little boy thought for a moment and said, “Well –they will when I get
through!”
So, in the same way let’s hope that we have a picture of what God
is
doing when we get through here.
We start with the question, “What energized the first
Christians
to be Christians?” It was not an easy step to take as Jesus alludes to
in
today’s gospel. The first Christians came from the religious
convictions
that there is but one God and there could be no Gods besides the one
God.
God is all-powerful - the creator of heaven and earth and thus the
uncreated
one. Yet these Christians were convinced that Jesus was God, God
incarnate, God
come to earth but still the one God, nonetheless. What convinced
them of
this was Jesus’ resurrection witnessed by at least 500 of there number.
Convinced of who Jesus was did not mean they were to keep that to
themselves –
they were to spread the message that the kingdom of God was at hand;
they were
to spread it to everyone - Jew and Gentile alike. This was the
commission
that Jesus gave them and here is what energized them to do it – they
were
convinced they were participating in a new creation where God is
completing his
plan of salvation for all God’s people to life eternal. Thus,
Christians
are not just people who believe in the saving act of Jesus by his death
and
resurrection – they are new creation people - participant in bringing
about
God’s plan for the people of God
What does this mean? First of all, some of the first
Christians (and even
some Christians today) thought that this new creation, like the first
creation,
was to be God’s work only. They were thinking that God is going
to say,
"Enough, already - time to destroy what I have made and make it
anew." These Christians got it into their heads that this was
going
to happen soon. So, they gave up on their daily living saying,
“The end
of the world is coming”. With their baptism into Christ, they
figured
that when the time came, they would go to the hills and observe God’s
work,
saying in effect, “Let the destruction begin”. We see this in
Paul’s
letter to the Thessalonians where he tells these people to get back to
work.
Quit being busybodies and quit expecting the others to feed you.
Work for
your own food to eat. In other words, get active in what God
wants you to
do.
In this way, the church is saying to us that in the actualizing of
the new
creation, God has assigned us a crucial part and we can’t give up – it
won’t
happen without our participation and cooperation. We can see this
in our
daily lives. What we’re calling the end of the world is a natural
extension
of what we experience, each of us, as all the worlds that come to an
end in the
natural and spiritual evolutions of our life. The natural endings
are
like the end of our time in the womb, the end of childhood, the end of
our
youth, the end of our lives – things that we have no control over but
all of
which can be positives for us. Other things, like an end to a
relationship due to a crises in our lives, seem to be much more
destructive and
may even look like the devastation Jesus is talking about. But as
Thomas
Keating has written, “A crises in our lives is not a reason to run
away(or to
despair); it is the voice of Christ inviting us to accept more of the
diving
light. More of the divine light means more of what the divine
light
reveals, which is divine life. The more divine life we receive, the
more we
perceive that divine life is pure love.” This is new life for us.
Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit scientist, writing in the first
half of the
last century, has a similar message for the human race. He has
examined
the evolutionary energy evident in God’s creation and sees not just
random
movement but progress towards higher and higher consciousness. We, in
the
natural order, stand at the pinnacle of this evolutionary progress and
are in
the process of taking the next step. He says, “We, hold Earth’s
future in
our hands.” We, as humans, can progress only by uniting as an
inward
coming together and in complete freedom. To create this unanimity we
need the
bond of a favoring influence. This bonding influence cannot be
just a
common vision or a common action to be effective, it needs to be the
common
attraction exercised by a single being. This force of attraction is
universal,
mutual love - because the only way for individuals to make this love
actual is
by knowing themselves to be centered upon a single, super-center of
love, that
which we call God.
Thus Chardin’s meditation on the nature of progress brings us to the
principle
of the new creation – the law of love. You shall love the Lord your God
with
all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your
strength;
you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That is the force of
progress
that brings the new creation into being. And what is this new
creation?
It is our final destiny as individual and as the human race. It
is the
fulfillment of the promises from scripture, which the book of
revelations
describes as: God will dwell with them and they will be God’s
people and
God himself will always be with them. He will wipe away every
tear from
their eyes and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or
pain for
the old order has passed away. Behold, I make all things new.
Thus, the end of the world comes in love where we participate with
God to make
it happen. And when the time comes we will hear:
“Yes, I am coming soon. Amen, Come Lord Jesus."