Sunday Homily - 33rd Sunday - C

33rd Sunday of the Year – C
Malachi 4:1-2 2 Thes 3:7-12 Luke 21:5-19

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I heard a story once that reminded me of today’s readings – especially our first reading. A man was living in the Canadian prairie with his daughter, and one of the great problems about living on the prairie was the fear of prairie fires which rage through and destroy everything in its path. Well, their fears became real when a huge prairie fire broke out, and the father realized that there was nowhere that they could run because they were surrounded by fire. So the father started his own fire with his frightened daughter, and watched as the area burned, and then he took his daughter into the centre of the area that had been burned already. He knew that the approaching fire would not touch this area because there was nothing left to be burned. He spoke gently to his very frightened daughter and told her not to be frightened, that the flames could not get to them because everything combustible had already been burned.

If we look at the first reading today, it is a lot like this story.

“See, the day is coming, burning like an oven when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up.” Malachi sees what the father had seen and warns the Jewish people about the impending fire. But then Malachi, like the father, tells the Hebrews that they have nothing to fear: “For you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” By their faithfulness to the Lord God, the Hebrews would be protected from the fire.
We, too, as followers of Jesus, are burning our field, protecting ourselves from the larger disaster which is to come. We will have nothing to fear.

Unfortunately, these readings today have, of course, inspired fear for many people as well. Protestant churches have tended to preach about the Second Coming and the end of the world far more than it has been stressed in Catholic churches, but even so, each year as we approach the end of the church year, our readings always reflect the end of time, the second coming of Christ, and always with the imagery of fire and destruction.

What we need to know about Luke’s Gospel, however, is that when Luke wrote, all of the predictions of Jesus had already come true. When Luke was writing his Gospel, he portrayed Jesus most often as a prophet, and this section is one of the times when Jesus is most strongly seen in his prophetic guise. A prophet is someone who has been given sight by God to see things in the future, and the only way we can know if one is a true prophet is to wait for the prophecy to come true. Luke wrote this Gospel after the destruction of the Temple, and so the words he puts in Jesus’ mouth, which may or may not have come from Jesus’ mouth originally, are there to show that Jesus is a true prophet since the things he prophesied have come true.

We have tended to look at these words and apply them to our own time, and I think that is probably easy to do in any time period. In our own recent times we have had incredible physical disasters – earthquakes, tsunami’s, cities lost to water, the September 11th attack. When we read the prophecy of the end of time, it is easy to fill in the blanks and see what is happening in our own time as the approach of the end of things. The same thing was true in the 1930’s with the stock market crash, the World Wars, and so on. I suspect that each age has its disasters aplenty which can be applied to Jesus’ prophecies. But for Luke, these had already happened. Even more, Christians were being put to death for their faith. Families were broken apart by the beliefs of the Christians. Christians were hated by many. All this was true in Luke’s time, and all this is true in our own time.

But these readings are not here to inspire fear. Like the father who calmed his daughter by saying the fire couldn’t touch her in the burned area, Jesus tells his disciples: “Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” This is a positive message; this is a message to inspire Christians to stay steadfast; this is a message that brings peace to people! What a shame that it has been turned around, and by using guilt, has made people fearful of the end of time coming – fearful that they will be judged by Christ in the Second Coming, and will be burnt in the everlasting fire.

We must always remember when we hear these words, when we hear people frightening us with the hell and damnation, when we interpret signs that the end may be near, that Jesus ends his prophecy with an incredibly optimistic vision of our salvation because we have been true to him.

So, what is the message for us today? You notice there are two important contrasting images in the Gospel today, one at the beginning - the Temple, and the other, at the end - the hair on your head.

This is an interesting contrast. One will be completely destroyed, the other, not a single one will be lost. Ultimately God doesn’t care too much for buildings and ‘things’; God is more into people, his children. God is not too much concerned with the preservation and restoration of Church buildings; he is more concerned with us – the living Church, built of living stones. He wants his people to be living truly. He wants us to live the Catholic faith truly. He wants us to live the gospel virtues and His teachings truly. Only then we can be called as living people.

St. Paul in the second reading today exhorts all the people who are living in idleness, mere busybodies, and not doing any work to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. He clearly says that living here on earth is temporary one; whereas living in the Kingdom of God is the permanent one. So, we need to work in this world to earn the living in God’s Kingdom. Let us not forget St. Paul’s words, “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”; which means, “Anyone unwilling to work in this world to earn the everlasting life in God’s Kingdom will never, ever receive everlasting life”.

Yes, there will be an end of time. Everything passes away. I suspect that most of us will have passed away before that end of the world ever comes, anyway. But Jesus came to bring us peace, take away our worries, let us experience the kingdom here and now, not to make us panicky or frightened. We need, however, not to live in idleness, as Paul suggests to us today, but to go about our own work quietly, earn our own living and trust in Jesus. If we do this, we will be like the girl and the father surrounded by fire, but untouched by it, because there is nothing there to be burned. We have already burned away the things that can cause us to burn, and can relax in Christ Jesus who came to show us a new way, no matter what is going on around us in the world.

And this is the peace we find in the Good news today!

AMEN.

Fr. A. Christopher, HGN