Skip to main content

21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

By

Do you have what it takes to follow the Lord?  Our readings this week give us a challenge… do we follow society or do we follow the Lord.  Not everything God says is easy to follow.  Not everything Jesus said or taught was easy for his disciples to accept. 

The Word for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time
Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b
Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21
Ephesians 5:21-32 or 5:2a, 25-32
John 6:60-69

Our first reading comes from the book of Joshua.  Joshua stood beside Moses and Aaron as they marched out of Egypt, from slavery to freedom, and now has taken over from Moses to lead the Israelites into the promised land.  Unfortunately, as the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, there were others already living there, forcing them into some military engagements.  After winning a series of successful struggles, Joshua has now gathered all the people together to give them a choice… to follow the gods of their ancestors, or to follow the Lord.

Our Gospel from John offers a similar challenge from Jesus to his disciples.  Continuing from where we left off last week, Jesus has concluded his “bread of life” discourse.  He has revealed what he knows to be true about himself and his Father.  He then turns to his disciples, who were all murmuring about what he had said, and ask them, “does this shock you?”  What Jesus has said if difficult for many to follow, and as the passage tells us, many of his disciples left.  Turning to the 12, Jesus asks them if they also want to leave, whereupon Peter says, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”

Our second reading continues with our study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  Like our passages from Joshua and John, this passage from the letter to the Ephesians is seen by many to be equally challenging.  It is the passage where Paul instructs us to “be subordinate to one another out of reverence to Christ.”  It then continues, however, to one of the more contentious passages  in modern times where Paul says, “wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.”  While this might seem like a slap in the face to all the Christian women of the world who have fought long and hard for parity with men, I would point out that Paul immediately follow this line with “Husbands, love your wives.”  In the light of our post-modern society, this particular reading from Paul is perhaps one of the most troubling when taken out of context.  When reading this passage, we not only need to consider the context of the text itself (that is, the entire passage, not just this line), and the context of Paul’s life and times (the first century middle east where women and children were viewed as property).  So even though our modern ears consider this passage to be insensitive to women, it is, in the context of Paul’s life and times, extraordinarily progressive by raising the status of the wife as more than just mere property, but to that of a cherished partner in life and salvation.  Even so, the Church does recognize the sensitivity of the language, and in most parishes you will likely hear the shortened version of the reading… not only because it saves the homilist from having to explain the passage, but it can also divert our focus from the themes of the first reading and the Gospel.  Remember however, that the key to understand Paul’s teaching in the opening lines… be subordinate to one another.  All other social context aside, this line itself is challenging for our age.

Final Thoughts:
To follow the Lord is to follow a path that runs counter to our social culture.  In a society that places an emphasis on self, the Lord calls us to serve others.  For as much as we like to think we’ve grown as a culture, Moses, Joshua, Jesus, and all the prophets both ancient and contemporary are still reminding us that to follow the Lord is to give of ourselves.  To borrow a sporting metaphor, “to leave it all out on the field.”  To use a phrase that my high school sophomore ethics teacher drilled into us, “sacrifice is the language of love.”  Love isn’t an act of feeling good, it’s an act of giving… an act of sacrifice.  That it can feel good is a perk, but that alone is not why we should give of ourselves.  We owe it to those we serve to do as God taught us, to reflect what Christ did for us.  It’s not an easy choice, as scripture shows us time and again.  Sometimes we will falter, and thankfully, our Lord has the infinite mercy to forgive us and take us back.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Cycle A

By
For anyone who is a parent, or anyone who’s had to mediate a dispute among children, you likely have confronted the phrase “But that’s not fair!”  How many times in your life have you uttered that phrase?  Even as adults we have a tendency to equate “justice” with “fairness.”  But here’s the thing – what is “just” may not always be “fair,” and what is “fair” to one person may not always be “fair” to the other.  Our readings this week deal with just that problem, the difference between what we think is fair and what God thinks is both fair and just. The Word for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time Isaiah 55:6-9 Psalm 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18 Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a Matthew 20-1-16a We open with a reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, in this case from the closing chapter of Deutero or “second” Isaiah.  This comes from a point in Israelite history where the people have been released from their Exile in Babylon.  The Lord has shown them great mercy and forgiveness by freeing them from th
Post a Comment
Read more

3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time - Cycle B

By
Our readings this week focus on a core theme that runs through Jesus’ ministry – repentance.  There is no sin so grave that cannot be forgiven with true contrition and a return to God.  This was the message that John the Baptist proclaimed, and the message Jesus continued to proclaim as he took up his own ministry.  This theme not only runs through the gospels but is one of the major themes that binds the entire Bible into a cohesive volume.   The Word for the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalm 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20 Our first reading comes from the book of Jonah.  The story of Jonah is well known in both Jewish and Christian circles, yet for all its popularity, we only hear it in the Sunday Liturgy this once.  For this reason, many Catholics only have a passing familiarity with Jonah’s story.  They know his name and that he was swallowed by a large fish (or whale), but that’s about it.  In our passage this week, God asks Jonah to go through
Post a Comment
Read more

2nd Sunday of Lent - Cycle B

By
Lent is a season where, scripturally, we revisit the story of our salvation history.  It’s the story of where our great patriarchs and prophets met the Lord God, and how our relationship with God as a people continues to grow and evolve.  We also know from our review of the readings last week that our overarching theme for Cycle B is covenant .  After God’s covenant with Noah last week, we now visit the next great covenant, that between God and Abraham: The Word for the 2nd Sunday of Lent Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 Psalm 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19 Romans 8:31b-34 Mark 9:2-10 Our first reading, from the book of Genesis, is one of the great stories about Abraham.   By this point in the narrative God has already made a covenant with Abraham, but now God is putting that covenant to the test.  God asks Abraham to make a sacrifice of his young son Isaac.  Isaac, as we know, is the only child born by Abraham’s wife, Sarah (a birth promised by God).  By challenging Abraham to kill his son,
Post a Comment
Read more