November 1, 2021
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B) on October 31, 2021, at St. Austin Catholic Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Psalm 18; Hebrews 7:23-28; and Mark 12:28b-34.
[This homily was inspired by one preached by Sr. Simone Campbell, SSS for the series Catholic Women Preach.]
In these last few weeks of Ordinary Time, our gospel passages take us to the days in the life of Jesus between Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday. The conflicts between Jesus and the religious authorities have become tense and continual. And then, in today’s passage, one of the scribes asks Jesus a question about the Jewish Law of the Old Testament. Jesus responds in part by quoting a portion of our first reading today from the Book of Deuteronomy: a commandment that is still central to Judaism today, called the shema in Hebrew.
The scribe’s question and Jesus’ answer are familiar to most of us, but it’s a remarkable exchange in a time of great tension. In 2021, when there is deep disagreement both in our nation and in our church, the gospel passage reminds us that it is possible for us to find agreement and solidarity with those we think belong to the opposing “tribe”!
God showers mercy on all of us, not just on the people who think and act like us. Let’s celebrate that!
Lord Jesus, you were the Word through which God created us. Lord, have mercy.
Christ Jesus, you are the Father’s plan for reconciling the world. Christ…
Lord Jesus, your Holy Spirit continues to build bridges between us. Lord…
Today, both in the United States in general and in the U. S. Catholic Church in particular, it is a time of deep disagreement. Many people believe that the survival of both our nation and our Church is at stake, and some believe that the chances of survival will be based on our interpretation of the Bible.
Our readings – plus an anniversary today – give us the opportunity to consider four other times of disagreement in Judeo-Christian history, when many people believed that the survival of the nation and the religion were at stake. In each case, the fate of the people – whether they came through the crisis united or divided – depended on whether they lived out the Jewish shema, to love the Lord God with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their strength.
The first case of political and religious disagreement we’ll talk about occurred more than 3200 years ago. Approximately 40 years before our first reading, the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt, received the Law at Mt. Sinai, and were commanded by God to conquer the land of Canaan. But the military scouts were afraid. Victory looked unachievable. So, instead of leading the army, they threatened to depose Moses as their leader. (If you’re unfamiliar with this part of salvation history, it’s in chapters 13 and 14 of the Book of Numbers.) Because the people refused to trust God, let alone love God with all their heart, soul, and strength, God condemned the Israelites to wander the desert until the faithless generation died out.
A second time that the Judeo-Christian tradition questioned its survival was roughly 600 years later. In the intervening centuries, the Israelites had entered the land of Canaan and had become a prosperous nation, but that political greatness was short-lived. Now, the weakened nation was on the brink of collapse. Many people had turned away from God, and enemies surrounded the nation. This was when our first reading was actually written. In magnificent prose – much more stirring than what we find in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers – Deuteronomy presents the Israelites with a choice. If the people will love God with all their heart, soul, and strength all the days of their lives, Moses proclaims, they will grow and prosper. When the Book of Deuteronomy was written, it sparked a religious and political revival. People returned to God with all their hearts, souls, and strength, and the nation prospered.
Our gospel passage presents a third moment of great religious and political disagreement. There were at many factions fighting for dominance in Jewish society at the time of Jesus. People claiming to be the long-promised Messiah could be found on almost every street corner. When Jesus of Nazareth was hailed by the people of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as a Messiah who would lead a military revolution, most of the religious leaders understandably feared that the Romans would retaliate by obliterating the Jewish people. It is in this context, a day or two after Palm Sunday, that a scribe asks Jesus a question about his understanding of the Law. Although Jesus and the scribe probably have vastly different understandings of the context of Deuteronomy and the future of Judaism, they discover that they have a lot in common: they both love the Lord with all their heart, soul, and strength! Jesus indeed became the Messiah, in a way consistent with many principles of Judaism, yet contrary to many of the expectations of the various Jewish political factions.
A fourth time of political and religious division is one that we all studied in school. Martin Luther had valid concerns about some of the practices and teachings of the Catholic Church, and 504 years ago today, he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg.1 While the Catholic Church eventually agreed with roughly 80% of Luther’s ideas, the sweep of political, technological, and religious upheaval led both sides to focus on the areas of disagreement, rather than recognizing that everyone still wanted to love God with all their heart, soul, and strength. The resulting wars and schisms affect all of us to this very day.
Four moments of political and religious disagreement. Two led to division and death; two led to cooperation, prosperity, and new life. In our political and religious disagreements today, it is up to us to decide what will happen next. Will our competing interpretations of the Bible, like in the time of Martin Luther, lead to war and schism with long-ranging consequences for centuries to come? Will our disagreements over God’s commands, like in the Sinai Desert, lead to suffering for an entire generation? Will our disagreements over interpreting the Jewish scriptures, like when Deuteronomy was first written, lead to a short-lived return to peace and prosperity? Or will our disagreements over those same scriptures, like between Jesus and the scribe in the first century, be an opportunity for the opposing sides to realize that their common bonds are more important than their disagreements?
Our reading from Hebrews makes it clear: no mere human being is perfectly “holy, innocent, undefiled, [or] separated from sinners.” Unlike Jesus, all of us are sinners in need of God’s grace. And that’s a wonderfully deep bond that we all share. All of us are trying to love God with all our hearts, souls, and strength, even if we disagree on what God’s will may be!
In the noise of the political factions of our day, many of us are passionately concerned about what comes next. But we don’t have to decide the outcome by ourselves. As people of faith, we can only rely the Holy Spirit. However, we can only receive the Holy Spirit’s counsel if we discipline ourselves enough to listen – to continue to love the Lord God with all of our heart, and with all our soul, and with all of our strength.
Notes
- Based on my study of the canons of Session VI of the Council of Trent, held on 13 January 1547. ↩