and hurried him off to the nearest inn. (Lk.
10:34)
The Following of Jesus: Compassion
January 15, 2012, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Samuel. 3:3, 5-10, 19 1 Corinthians. 6:13-15, 17-20
1 Samuel. 3:3, 5-10, 19 1 Corinthians. 6:13-15, 17-20
John 1:35-42
1st reading from I Samuel
Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the LORD where
the ark of God was. The LORD called to Samuel, who answered, "Here I
am." Samuel ran to Eli and said, "Here I am. You called me." "I
did not call you,” Eli said. "Go back to sleep." So he went back to
sleep. Again the LORD called Samuel, who rose and went to Eli."Here I am, “he
said.”You called me." But Eli answered, "I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep." At that time Samuel was not familiar with the LORD, because
the LORD had not revealed anything to him as yet. The LORD called Samuel again,
for the third time. Getting up and going to Eli, he said, "Here I am. You
called me." Then Eli understood that the LORD was calling the youth. So he
said to Samuel, "Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply, Speak, LORD,
for your servant is listening." When Samuel
went to sleep in his place, the LORD came and revealed his presence, calling
out as before, "Samuel, Samuel!" Samuel answered, "Speak, for
your servant is listening." Samuel
grew up, and the LORD was with him, not permitting any word of his to be
without effect.
The word
of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Alleluia,
alleluia.
A reading
from the holy Gospel according to John
Glory
to you, Lord.
The next day John was standing there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, there is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard John say this and went to follow Jesus. Jesus turned, saw them following Him, and asked, “What do you want?” They answered, “Where do you live, Rabbi?” (This word, translated, means “Teacher.”) Jesus replied “Come and see.”So they went and saw where He lived, and spent the rest of the day with Him. (It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.) One of the two who heard John, and followed Jesus, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. At once Andrew found his brother Simon and told him, “We have found the Messiah.” (This word means “Christ.”)Then he took Simon to Jesus, Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon, the son of John. Your name will be Cephas. (This is the same as Peter, and it means “Rock.”)
The
Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord
Jesus Christ.
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Introduction
Discipleship – the opening theme
With last Sunday’s
feast of Epiphany the curtain came down on the Extraordinary Time of the
Advent/Christmas season, and we now return now to Ordinary Time. Then on Ash
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 we will enter into the Extraordinary Time of Lent in
preparation for Easter, April 8, 2012. As the curtain falls on the Christmas
drama, we are dismissed not to `business as usual’ but to the unusual business of following Him who came
to us on Christmas Day. Discipleship-the following of Jesus-is
always the opening theme of Ordinary Time
in all three liturgical cycles of A, B and C.
The
following of Jesus: not legalism but compassion
At
the end of the day, Jesus’ great parable about the Good Samaritan is all about
discipleship. Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and
was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest who
crossed the street and passed by the half-dead man. Along came a Levite, the
priest’s helper. He, too, crossed the street and passed by the half-dead man.
The two men couldn’t tell whether the man was dead or not. If he were dead and
if the two got too close to his corpse they would incur severe legal impurity.
(Num 5:2) That perhaps was why both men crossed to the other side of the
street. Then along came a Samaritan (considered a half breed and a heretic by Jews). This heretic, not worried about incurring legal impurity if the man were dead, stopped to size up the situation. He happily found the man not dead but only `half-dead.’ So he stopped and poured the oil of compassion into his wounds. Then he hoisted the poor man onto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn. There he dug deep into his pocket to pay the cost of the poor man’s care and cure. (Lk. 10:25-37) The following of Jesus is not about legalism but about compassion, and compassion at times can be very costly.
Cheap Legalism & costly compassion
Compassion, not animal
sacrifices
One day Jesus was dining at the home of tax collector Matthew.
Many tax collectors and “those known as sinners” came to join Jesus and his
disciples at table. When the self-righteous Pharisees saw this, they complained
to Jesus’ disciples, “How come your teacher eats with tax collectors and
sinners?” Hearing them complaining Jesus said, “People who are well do not need
a doctor, but sick people do. Go and learn the meaning of the Scripture, `It is compassion that I want from you people,
not your animal sacrifices.’” Jesus was quoting the prophet Hosea. (Mt 9: 9-13; Hosea 6:6)
That
quote from Hosea was a favorite one of Jesus. We find Him quoting it again in chapter
12. One Sabbath He and His disciples were walking through some cornfields, and
His disciples, feeling hungry, began to pluck off ears of corn and eat them.
The Pharisees noticed this and said to Jesus, “Look! Your disciples are doing
something that is forbidden on the Sabbath.” Plucking corn was a form of work,
and working on the Sabbath was forbidden by the Law. (Ex 34:21) Exasperated by
such legalism Jesus again quotes Hosea to the Pharisees: “Oh, if you
people only knew the meaning of the Scripture, `It is compassion I want from
you people, not your animal sacrifices,’ you would not be so quick to condemn
innocent people.” (Mt 12:1-7; Hosea 6:6)
A Compassionate Pastor
Legalism is an
eternal temptation for religion. Sometime ago a compassionate (and also innovative)
pastor took it upon himself to substitute rice for wheat in the Communion wafer
to accommodate a little girl making her first Holy Communion. She was afflicted
with celiac disease – a condition which can’t tolerate wheat and other grains. When
the bishop of the diocese heard about the rice substitution, he simply declared
the Communion to be”invalid” (!) because, he said, “We must follow Christ; we
must do what He did. At the Last Supper He did not consecrate rice wafers but bread.”
Yes, indeed, the
bishop was right; we must follow Christ. But we must follow the Christ, who was
very short on legalism but very long on compassion. We must follow the Christ
who liked to quote Hosea: “It’s
compassion I want from you people, not your animal sacrifices.” If that
bishop had known the meaning of that Scripture he would not have been so quick
to condemn that compassionate pastor. Instead he would have commended him for
his compassion which sought to feed a young girl who was afflicted with celiac disease
and who was at the same time hungering for the Bread of Life. He would have
commended that pastor for his faithful following of Christ who fed five
thousand hungry people, with no questions asked. (Mk 6:30-44)
Bonhoeffer: “Discipleship - a command to all Christians”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), a German Lutheran minister and theologian
was put to death by Hitler in 1945. His most noted work is The Cost
of Discipleship. It was written in the context of
the Evangelical Church of Germany in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. During that
Church’s watch, the inconceivable horrors of the Holocaust were spawned,
thrived and went unchallenged. In The
Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer’s bottom line is that `cheap discipleship’ (the stuff that
doesn’t make any great demands on the church institution or its members) is the deadly enemy of the Church. We are
fighting, he writes, for `costly discipleship’ (the stuff that makes
demands on the institution and ourselves).
In his book Bonhoeffer makes an interesting observation which gives us
Catholics pause. The Roman
Church, he writes, felt uneasy about dismissing the call to discipleship as
unrealistic, or about simply watering it down. So Rome came up with a creative
solution: it `farmed out’ the call to discipleship to a few chosen specialists in the Church -- monks and nuns!
To them the Roman Church could point and say, “Look at these heroes of mine! In
them I have obeyed Jesus’ call to discipleship.”But that creative solution,
Bonhoeffer contended, created a double standard in the Roman Church: a maximum
one for a few chosen monks and nuns, and a minimum one for the rest of God’s
people. Discipleship, he maintained, “is
not the achievement or merit of a
chosen few people but is a divine command to all Christians without
distinction.”
Vatican II catching up to Bonhoeffer
In
1964 Vatican II caught up to Lutheran Bonhoeffer’s contention that discipleship
is a divine command to all Christians. In its stellar document Lumen Gentium, the Council carved out a
special chapter (Chapter V) entitled The
Call of the Whole Church to Holiness (to discipleship). And the Council
purposely placed that chapter immediately before
the one entitled Religious (monks
and nuns). Chapter V reads,”The Lord Jesus, the divine Teacher and Model of all
perfection, preached holiness of life [discipleship] to each and every one of
His disciples, regardless of their situation. “
(Lumen Gentium, art. 40) That put an
end, at least on paper, to the Church’s `farming out’ discipleship and holiness
to a chosen few.
Legalism
and compassion at sunset
The sun finally
set on that busy day when the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan were on the
road from Jerusalem to Jericho. All finally made it back home in Jerusalem that
night. Their legalism that day had caused
them to fear coming close to a possibly dead man, and so they crossed the
street and passed right by the poor man. But as the sun set on that day, that legalism
unsettled the priest and Levite, as it clashed with a superior Law written down
deep in the depths of their hearts.
The Good
Samaritan, too, finally made it home at sunset. Yes, he had been late for his
business appointment in Jericho, because he had stopped to pour the oil of
compassion on one in great need. Yes, he was exhausted by the energy expended on
hoisting the poor man’s heavy weight onto his beast of burden and hurrying him
off to the nearest inn. And yes, he was minus a good amount money as he paid
the inn-keeper for the poor man’s care and cure. But as the sun was setting on
that day, there was a song singing in his heart; it was the song that sings in
the heart of all compassionate people.
Conclusion
Compassion’s twofold blessing
Compassion bears a twofold blessing. The
Samaritan’s compassion was indeed a great blessing for the man waylaid by
robbers on the road to Jericho; it bound up the poor man’s wounds and carried
him off to the nearest inn. But it was an even greater blessing for the
Samaritan himself: the priest and Levite are dead and
forgotten, but the Good Samaritan lives eternally on down through the
centuries. 
