February 01, 2009 Fourth Ordinary Sunday of the Year Deut 18:15-20; 1 Cor. 7:32-35; Mk. 1:21-28 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________   Readings: http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/020109.shtml           ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________     In Mark's gospel Jesus himself is the content of the teaching. The authority is not in particular speeches, but in this particular life. We see Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners; we see Jesus healing on the Sabbath day, silencing the scribes' objection not with an answer but a question: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?" We see Jesus moved by the faith of a Syro-Phoenician woman who dared to argue with him for the healing of her daughter.   The authority of Jesus moves us toward inclusion rather than exclusion. More specifically, this authority includes precisely persons who had been excluded before. Those invited into Jesus' rabbinic school included tax collectors and sinners, poor widows and prostitutes, little children as models of the reign of God and foreigners as models of faith. We must, therefore, be suspicious of religious authority which moves toward exclusion, whose aim is to keep certain people out by written rule or daily practice. We must judge ourselves and our churches by Jesus' move toward inclusion. Jesus' authority also values persons over rules or traditions. "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to save life or to kill?" At another point, Jesus turned to the leaders and said, "You are making void the word of God through your tradition which you hand on." Does Jesus turn to us with the same accusation? In our longing for greater certainty and clearer religious authority, it is often persons who suffer. We must judge ourselves and our churches by Jesus' insistence in valuing persons more than laws.   What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? The powers that exploit men and women and children insist that profits are sacred, and protest that the teachings of Jesus have no jurisdiction over them. To this cry of the evil spirit Jesus answered, Be silent, and come out of him! He makes the same answer today. Jesus has to do with everything that affects people. Nothing human is foreign to him. He is concerned with every burden that rests heavily on human shoulders and cuts cruelly into them, all that concerns the welfare of God’s children - the hours and conditions and wages of labour; housing, law, civil rights, amusements.     <<   Previous: Third Ordinary Sunday of the Year  | Next: Fifth Ordinary Sunday of the Year >>   Go Back to SERMONS (Year B)