Homily for Sunday Ordinary 3 C (Sunday of the Word of God)

I was reading about Handel’s famous “Largo” from the Opera, “Xerxes.” I found the music, sat down at the piano and played it. Reading music is a lot like reading the Word of God. Living the Word of God is like playing the notes. The music only comes alive when played, otherwise it is just black dots on lines on a page.  When the melody of God’s Word becomes the song in our lives, we become doers, and not mere hearers of the word. The Word becomes flesh in us.

I have Mass on Sunday, January 26 at St. Isidore @ 9:30/11:30 am

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Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. 
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all. He came to Nazareth where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. 
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." 
Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." 
The Gospel of the Lord. 

On Christmas Day, we read in the Gospel of John, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Today, Jesus came to Nazareth where he had grown up." 
So first, God makes his home with us. The Word is made flesh in a first-century Palestinian Jew raised in the customs and traditions of his people. For thirty silent years, God dwelt in Nazareth, an unimportant backwater. And Nathaniel exclaimed in disgust, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip just replies, "Come and see." 
All of our homes are Nazareth where God dwells. St. Charles de Focold said, "Let Nazareth be your model, in all its simplicity and breadth. The life of Nazareth can be lived anywhere. Live it where it is most useful for your neighbor."
Wherever we are, and whatever we have done, God comes to stay. In Revelation chapter 3 verse 20, Christ calls to us, "Listen, I am standing at the door knocking. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me." 
It is true that God speaks to us in the scriptures, but that's only half the story. The notion of scripture speaking for itself is like having one half of a conversation. Revelation is an act in two parts. God speaks, and we respond. 
Dominican Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe said, "Children grow up listening to the words of their parents. We do not talk to children to communicate information, but to open a space in which they might flourish and become human." The child learns that it is loved and can love. Taking part in conversation is more transformative than informative. 
To attend to the word of God, Radcliffe says, is to enter conversation with God that transforms us into God's friends. At least half the Jewish and Christian Bible is not God speaking to us, but God's friends, talking to God, arguing with God, getting angry with God, asking God for things, grousing, praising God. To listen to the word of God, remakes us as friends of God and each other. 
When Nehemiah read the word of God, all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Ezra said to them, "Today is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep." 
It is our teaching that when the word of God is proclaimed at liturgy, we are not remembering something God once said. God is speaking to us live, now, through these graced words. For sure, God speaks something to each of us in every liturgy. 
The Second Vatican Council uses a beautiful image for this. The Father, who is in heaven, meets his children with great love and speaks with them. 
In the Watergate of our baptism, we join the company of the Church, the Body of Christ, on this continuing mission of our God. Christ calls his Church out of its present-day captivity in all its myriad forms to remember who we are, as Paul so well reminds us. You are a people who have need of one another. You are a people that share the joy and suffering of one another and the world. You are a people gifted individually and arranged together by God for God's purposes. 
The Gospel is always about people. God's story is always related to human need. For example, if a woman is dying of cancer, the Gospel is God's strong word of resurrection. If a person is permeated with guilt, the Gospel is God's assurance of forgiveness. If people experience extreme suffering, the Gospel is the prayer. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. For the starving, the Gospel may be bred. For a homeless refugee, the Gospel may be freedom in a new homeland. For others, the Gospel may be freedom from political tyranny. 
The Gospel is God's truth, God's action, aimed at a particular human need. 
I've been reading Every Valley by Charles King. It's the untold story about George Frederick Handel's oratorio, Messiah. Anyone alive in the early 18th century Britain would have experienced a world awashed in war, disease, children abandoned to their fate, brutalized women, and, of course, an economy entangled with empire and human enslavement. The Messiah is written when humankind was yearning for a word of hope and assurance. That's why every performance of the Messiah since 1742 has begun with the sung words, "Comfort ye." 
One day this week I read about Handel's famous Largo from the opera Xerxes. I found the music and sat down at the piano and played it. Reading music is a lot like reading the Word of God. Living the Word of God is like playing the notes. The music only comes alive when played, otherwise it's just black dots on lines on a page. When the melody of God's Word becomes the song in our lives, we become doers and not mere hearers of the Word. The Word becomes flesh in us. 
In the words of Isaiah that Handel set to music, "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things."