4th. Sunday, Year (B)
(Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1st. Corinthians
7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28)
Moses had found it extremely hard
leading the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt and through the perils of
the desert: their self-confidence as individuals, and above all their
cohesiveness as one People of God, had still to be established; with the result
that throughout their travels they found it hard to maintain firm trust or sure
confidence in the Lord, let alone give steadfast obedience to His commands given
Moses for their guidance. So perhaps
there was some irony in Moses’ voice when -- referring to the ‘prophet to come’
promised by the Lord -- he warned them:
To him you
shall listen.
We then heard words from the Lord
Himself telling why it would be so very important for them to listen to the
promised prophet better than they had thus far listened to Moses:
If any man
will not listen to My words which he speaks in My name (and at My command), I
Myself will make him answer for it.
After Moses, the Lord did indeed
raise up a whole series of prophets: prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea,
Micah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others, whose inspired messages live on in the Bible
still proclaiming the goodness and glory of God to this very day. But even though they spoke faithfully in the
name of the Lord God of Israel, we find only too often that their words were
soon forgotten and His message largely ignored, as the Lord Himself averred
through the prophet Jeremiah (35:15s.):
I have sent to
you all My servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but you have
not inclined your ear, nor obeyed Me.
In Isaiah, indeed, His words are
most dramatic and much more reproachful:
Hear, you
deaf! And look, you blind, that you may see.
You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; your ears are
open, but none hears. (Isaiah
42:18-20)
A prophet was specially called and
sent to speak words entrusted to him by God; and should such a prophet betray
his calling by substituting his own words for those of God, -- which was always
a possibility because of human sinfulness and the attention, both flattering and
threatening, accorded to a recognized prophet -- God had warned:
If a prophet
presumes to speak in My name an oracle that I have not commanded him to speak,
or speaks in the name of other gods, he shall die.
And so, when the prophet Hananiah did presume to speak
falsely in the Lord’s name he had to die, as we hear from Jeremiah:
The prophet
Jeremiah said, "Hear now, Hananiah, the LORD has not sent you, but you make this
people trust in a lie. Therefore thus
says the LORD: 'Behold, I will cast you from the face of the earth. This year
you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the LORD.'" So Hananiah died the same year in the seventh
month. (Jeremiah 28:15-17)
The same thing happened in the time
of Ezekiel and the Babylonian exile:
“You say, 'The
LORD says,' but I have not spoken.”
Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: "Because you have spoken nonsense and
envisioned lies, therefore I am indeed against you," says the Lord GOD. “My hand will be against the prophets who
envision futility and who divine lies; they shall not be in the assembly of My
people, nor be written in the record of the house of Israel, nor shall they
enter into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord
GOD.” (Ezekiel 13:6-9)
And so, the Lord took great care to
have His word faithfully proclaimed and publicly appreciated in Israel; but, for
all that, His true prophets – despite their faithfully giving voice to His
authentic message – were routinely ignored by the people and frequently opposed
by leaders inclined to expect and listen only to what they wanted to hear, not
the authentic word of God:
O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to
her! (Matthew 23:37)
Nevertheless, despite such
indifference and resistance to true prophets and the authentic word of God, the
promise of the prophet to
come -- the ultimate prophet -- was not forgotten by faithful Israelites,
nor was there total ignorance concerning the supreme importance of the message
He would bring, about which the Lord Himself had said to Moses:
If any man
will not listen to My words which he speaks in My name, I Myself will make him
answer for it.
Now you are in a position to
appreciate the serious intent of those priests and Levites who, on behalf of the
Jews in Jerusalem, questioned John the Baptist:
Are you the
Prophet? (John 1:21)
Recall again what Moses said of
the prophet to
come:
To Him you
shall listen.
And recall also the voice of the
Father speaking from heaven to Peter, James and John on the Mount of
Transfiguration:
This is My
beloved Son. Listen to Him! (Mark 9:7)
We believers now know the reason why
the Prophet promised by God through Moses would speak with such authority
in God’s name: it is because the Prophet-to-come would be the very Word
of God Himself made flesh:
Jesus
answered, "My doctrine is not Mine but His Who sent Me. I and My Father are One." (John 7:16,
10:30)
It is, perhaps, a testimony to a
renewed sincerity of religious life in Israel in the times of the Messiah, that
those in the synagogue listening to Jesus’ words, recognized what they had not
encountered before:
The people
were astonished at his teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and
not as the scribes…. All were
amazed and asked one another, “What is this?
A teaching with authority!
It was not simply in His religious
teaching that Jesus’ authority was recognizable; His whole being and bearing
bespoke that aspect of His Person so compellingly that we have, in this regard,
the most beautiful and amazingly spontaneous testimony of one completely formed
by, responsive to, and appreciative of, authority in all its aspects; one who,
even though a pagan, used such authority as a suitable instrument for promoting
care and expressing reverence:
When Jesus
entered Capernaum a centurion came to Him pleading with Him saying, “Lord, my
servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal
him.” The centurion answered and said,
“Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But speak only a word and my servant will be
healed. For I also am a man under
authority and have soldiers under me …” (Matthew 8:5-9)
Now, People of God, that same Jesus
speaks to us in and through Mother Church today; indeed, He is speaking now, at
this very moment, as I proclaim His word to you, in His name. And we must always bear in mind that He was,
and still is, the Saviour of those -- and only those -- who want to be saved and are willing to acknowledge and accept His
authority. Many of the Jews to whom He
spoke would not accept His teaching-with-authority and did not appreciate His
Person; those He left to themselves, not seeking to force Himself upon
them:
I did not come to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance. (Mt. 9:13)
And so each of us must answer a
secret question arising from the depths of our heart: “Do I want to be left in
the peace of my own comfortable indifference or do I want to be rescued from my
sinfulness. Do I want Jesus to be my Saviour?” If you really want Jesus to be your
Saviour: a Rock of strength and security for you, a light to reveal the true
beauty of life and to guide you surely along the right way through life; if you
want Him to be your present joy and your eternal reward, your earthly wisdom and
your heavenly glory; in other words, if you want to become in Him a true child
of God and to share in His eternal blessedness in the Kingdom of the Father,
then you must accord Him authority in your life now, here on earth.
Listen to Our Lord Himself again
(John 7:16s.):
Jesus answered
them and said, "My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know
concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own
authority.
“If anyone wants to do God’s will, he shall know,
he will realize …” God has done His
work by giving us His Son Who died and rose again for us, and offering His
Spirit to guide and form us as His children; but we have to choose:
“If anyone
wants to do God’s will, Jesus said, he will know the truth of My
teaching.” (John
7:16-17)
People of God, if you want God to be
big in your life, if you desire to be His and to do His will, then make Him big
in your life and He will indeed become big for you. There is no chance that He will become big
in your life if you treat Him as someone of minor importance: if He is so
unimportant in your life that you don’t find it at all difficult to miss Sunday
Mass for even minor reasons; if you really can’t find time to pray because of
your many other jobs and more important duties; if whatever calls for your
worldly attention outweighs His claims on you; if He is always the one who can
be, and is, set aside, put off, to some other day, some other occasion… then He
will never become big in your life whatever words of prayer or praise you may
occasionally direct His way, or whatever excuses you may regularly proffer on
your own behalf.
Jesus never fails His People; the
fact is that too few of those who call themselves Christians and Catholics do in
fact acknowledge Him as Lord and
Saviour here and now in their daily
living and earthly aspirations: they may give Him the biblical and liturgical
titles of Lord and Saviour indeed, but not the present authority of Lord and Saviour in the
important decisions of their lives, the deepest longings of their hearts, and
the highest aspirations of their minds
And if He is not in that way
authoritative in your life, then, in fact, you are not close to Him; and perhaps
He is not purposefully in your life at all, perhaps all you are allowing
Him to do with you, for you, is to stand outside, knocking at your
door.
Authority is not a dirty word that
has to be submerged and forgotten in a flood of emotional goodness; nor is it
something embarrassing, to be avoided by jokes or ‘folksy’, popular talk; for
true love cannot be exercised without authority … that is why a world of
masculine authority without female caring, or a world of feminine caring without
masculine authority are both loveless worlds, where the chaos and hypocrisy of
selfishness reign, and where children, in their original simplicity, are
disadvantaged and harmed by physical or emotional oppression. People of God, the authority that God wills
for Himself and for His Church is wholly for our eternal salvation and, indeed,
for our earthly peace, joy, and fulfilment; we must, therefore, allow His true
love, His authoritative love, to
touch, inform, and gradually transform our lives.
