8th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Cycle C

As with last week’s readings, our readings for the 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time are usually passed over for other feast days, but since Easter is somewhat late this year, we get to finish out this stretch of Ordinary Time with some readings we rarely get to hear during Sunday Mass:

The Word for the 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sirach 27:4-7
Psalm 92:2-3, 13-14, 15-16
1 Corinthians 15:54-58
Luke 6:39-45

Our first reading comes from the book of Sirach, also known as the Wisdom of Ben Sira, a great sage from Jerusalem who embraced the Wisdom tradition.  The work was originally finished around 175 BCE and was later translated into Greek by the author’s grandson sometime after 117 BCE during the Jewish diaspora that flourished in the later Ancient Greek Empire.  Since our earliest manuscripts for this book were found in Greek, it does not hold the same canonical status for Jews and Protestants, but more recent archeological finds have verified its Hebrew origins.  Like all Wisdom literature in the Bible, Sirach serves as a kind of ancient catechism.  In fact, one to the names for this book, Liber Ecclesiasticus translates as “church book.”  Given its date and origin, it would have been widely known to Jews during the time of Jesus.  Like a lot of Wisdom literature, it uses common sense lessons and phrases as a way to teach us how to live out God’s Law.  In our short passage for this week, we are taught that a person’s speech and actions can teach us about what is in their minds and hearts.  In other words, when tested, one’s true nature is reveled.  One such test is seen through our responsorial Psalm as we sing, “Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.”  Those who give thanks to the Lord are those whose hearts know what is right.

Jesus takes up this same topic in our Gospel from Luke.  Picking up from where we left off last week (love your enemies, stop judging and you will not be judged), Jesus concludes his “Sermon on the Plain” by giving us a parable.  Jesus asks, “Can a blind person guide a blind person?”  He uses the example of trying to remove a splinter from your brother’s eye when you can’t see past the wooden beam in your own eye.  In other words, one cannot preach justice if one is biased.  He concludes the parable by teaching us that we cannot get good fruit from a rotten tree, a lesson also found in Sirach when he says, “the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”  That is, when we speak, our true nature will always come out.

Our second reading takes us toward the close of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  In our study of this letter over the past several weeks, Paul has been teaching us how, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we all share in his salvation.  In his conclusion to this discussion, he teaches that Jesus’ resurrection is the victory over death.  That those who believe in the Lord and follow Jesus will, in the end, also concur death.

Final Thoughts:
We’ve only just begun our journey through Jesus’ ministry, and he has already revealed some of his most important, and some would say most difficult, teachings – To bless those who curse you; To turn the other cheek; To give your tunic to the person who steals your cloak; To judge not least we be judged; and in this week’s gospel, to remove our own biases before we speak of the biases of others.  If we had to find a common thread through these teachings, it would be that Jesus expects us to practice what we preach – as the old song says, “they will know we are Christians by our love.”  But Jesus also teaches that we can’t just follow these teachings, we need to let them form our hearts and our being.

The hypocrisy of the Temple leadership showed Jesus how the people of God had gone astray – how those charged with the care of God’s people were failing to live up to their calling.  There is nothing new in these teachings – the prophets have been calling us to this kind of selfless love since the beginning.  The only thing that is new is the source of that teaching.  Unlike the others, Jesus is no ordinary prophet, and while the people are beginning to figure this out, they don’t yet understand how this story will ultimately unfold.  We, of course, do know how this story plays out – a journey which we will now be turning our focus on as we enter the season of Lent next week.