Homily Outline for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
God loves you perfectly! He doesn’t love you because you’re here at Mass today, although that is good! He doesn’t love you because you’re struggling to forgive your mother or your brother or your boss, although it is good that you’re struggling to do what’s right. He doesn’t love you because you’re beautiful or handsome, or because you work hard, or because your yard is properly mown! In this world we are rewarded to some extent on the basis of results, to some extent on the basis of luck, to some extent on the basis of connections… if you work hard, if you’re lucky, if you know the right people (not necessarily in that order!) you get ahead! That is the world we live in, and we have to deal with that world as honestly and effectively as possible.
But the reality of this broken world, this fallen world, is not by itself a very good indicator of how things are with God. He doesn’t love us because of what we’ve achieved… nor does He love us less when we fail. He doesn’t love us less when we are unkind, or when we hold grudges, or when we use pornography, or when we cheat on our spouses, or when we steal. God doesn’t hold our faults and failings against us, however small or large, however public or private. It’s not that He doesn’t care… He cares far more than we do, and He sees ALL the repercussions of our sin and falsehood. But He doesn’t love us any less, because of who He is. God is Love… and He loves perfectly, with perfect faithfulness, perfectly steadfast. Even if we acknowledge that this is true in our minds, I believe that most of us struggle mightily to live out of this truth.
In our first reading, King David has behaved in an utterly despicable manner. He has lusted after Bathsheba, He has committed adultery with her, taking advantage of his power as king. He has conspired to kill her husband in battle, using Uriah’s honesty, bravery, and loyalty against him. It is hard to imagine a less kingly, a less Godly man. Nathan the prophet comes before him and he tells him the truth… all that David has is a gift from God. David comes face to face with his sin, with his own darkness. He says to the prophet, “I have sinned against the LORD.” We said it all together during the penitential rite, “I have greatly sinned.” We do not come to Mass as a club of the perfect… we do not come before God as those people who have it all together… we do not gather here to gloat about all those people “out there” who don’t go to church. Uproot those lies from your heart! We gather here, like David, in the only true hospital for the unclean, the sick, the wounded, the diseased… we can only honestly be here because we know, at least in some small way, how desperately we need God’s help.
Perhaps none of us here have been involved in such drama, perhaps some of us have… but do you recognize that place where David finds himself? He is face to face with failure, brokenness, his own utter poverty and ingratitude in the face of God’s manifold blessings. The psalm, traditionally attributed to King David, gives words to this place, “I acknowledged my sin to you, my guilt I covered not. I said, ‘I confess my faults to the LORD,’ and you took away the guilt of my sin.”
Perhaps surprisingly, this grim place of self knowledge, of looking in the mirror and noticing the wounds, this place can also be a place of profound grace. God’s love is completely free… His desire is always and only to save us, to heal us, to bring us deep peace and joy. Out of that perfect love, God respects our freedom… He does not force us to love Him, to follow His true and beautiful law. He does not force us to accept His mercy. God does not save us without us… He does not redeem us without our accepting and embracing that gift. We are not objects to be snatched out of the fire by force… we are His adopted sons and daughters, welcomed back into the fold.
Our 2nd reading from Galatians finds St. Paul grappling with the teaching of the Judaizers: a group of Jewish-Christians who believed that a Gentile, a non-Jew, had to become a Jew by begin circumcised and by following the whole dietary and purity law, in order to be saved. St. Paul rejects this out of hand; it is by baptism, by being incorporated into Christ by faith that we are saved. He says more, though: this gift is not merely theoretical, but it necessarily involves us in a journey of transformation. God’s grace and redemption is offered freely, but it’s not cheap! God does not save us without us:
“I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”Christ desires to live in and through us, to fill us with His grace and power, so that we may, like St. Paul, live in and through and by Him.
This brings us to our dramatic Gospel. Jesus is with a Pharisee, Simon, part of a Jewish group that dedicated itself to scrupulous faithfulness to the Law. The Pharisees looked out at a world gone mad, not unlike ours… the Romans were in power, and many Jews were abandoning their faith. But in this very rigor there was a potential trap, one into which Simon fell, one into which perhaps we ourselves have fallen at times! A woman walks in, a notorious woman, very likely a prostitute of some sort… she approaches Jesus directly and exhibits the three marks of hospitality, signs of respect that Simon had NOT shown Jesus: she bathed his feet, she kissed them, and she anointed them with ointment… and she does this in profound
humility, weeping for her sins. If we truly look with honesty upon the ways we have failed God, ways we have failed to respond to His perfect love, this is how we should approach God: sorry for our sins, but also confident, not in our own strength, but confident in His love. She does not hesitate, she must have guessed how Simon would perceive her, but she approached Jesus without hesitation, knowing that He could give her what she needed, perhaps what she had sought in sinful ways: peace, joy, forgiveness. As the Gospel passage ends, Jesus continues to seek the lost, going from town to town, and he is accompanied by the twelve, and by som4e women who had been cured. In time the Twelve also would be cured… forgiven of their weakness and cowardice and rejection, forgiven for having abandoned Christ in His time of need.
From that time until now, the Church has journeyed from town to town, offering Jesus Christ: His preaching, His forgiveness, His Body and Blood. Do we want to accompany Christ? Do we want to accompany the Church? The authentic foundation for joining this motley crew is an awareness of our own radical poverty, our deep need for God’s mercy… and along with this, a deep confidence, not in our strength, but in God’s perfect strength, His perfect love. He offers us Himself now on this altar… may we receive Him aware of our deep need.
+ A. M. D. G. +
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