Homily for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A 2014

Homily for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A  2014

I think it is always difficult to understand the concept of sovereignty in a place like the United States where they originally rebelled against kingship and have not known the concept of sovereignty since. I come from Canada and maybe have a little better sense of it, though the concept has changed greatly there over the years as well.

In Wisdom today we get a little essay on God as sovereign. To be a sovereign means that you are in complete control of everyone and everything in the country. The buck really does start and stop there.  We do understand a little elf that kind of power when we look at the rich who have great influence in this land, but nothing like sovereignty. 

In its original form,  sovereign can do anything he or she wants. The sovereigns word is law, his desires are what is given him and what she despises disappears. 

But the book of Wisdom gives us the picture of a different sovereign, one who has that same power, but who uses it in such a way that the power is not abused. In fact, the scale is tipped on the merciful and loving side. Wisdom tells us that God cares for all people – not just the Jews or the believers in one God, but also the Gentiles and the atheists, the foreigner and the outcast. To all people God shows righteousness and he is willing to look for ways to spare all people. God is patient with those who have doubts, and shows impatience to those who are insolent, who do not respect others who may not yet know God.

God is strength, but shows only mildness and forbearance, another word for tolerance, in the way he governs the world. He is a role model for the way we should behave – as Jesus said, “Be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect”. We, too, Wisdom says, must be kind, and must fill our children with hope, the hope that is given when repentance for our sins is accepted and granted.

What a beautiful description of God. I know that some people say the God of the Old Testament is a fire-breathing, vindictive God, but God is certainly not in Wisdom! Our Psalm today reiterates Wisdom as it reminds us over and over that God is good and forgiving, abounding in love and always staying true to us.

The description of God the Spirit in Paul’s letter to the Romans today lets us see those beautiful qualities of God at work. The Spirit is God’s gift of himself to us, to inspire, to help us pray, to intercede for us so that justice can be blended with mercy on our behalf. 

Ironically, in contrast to all of these inspiring and beautiful words of God, we have a group of parables by Jesus that ends with Jesus seeming like the fire-breathing vindictive one: The Son of Man will send his Angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and and gnashing of teeth.”

While that does sound a little fire and brimstone-like, if we examine the passage closer we can see that it does fit in with the sovereign concept of God. The first parable basically tells us that God allows everyone to be cared for – just and unjust. The weeds grow up in the field along with the grain. But justice demands a sorting – God is indeed just. Hopefully though, that justice will be tempered with mercy and only at the very end will there be judgement. Until then there is forgiveness, and those who have remained righteous will be highly rewarded. All three parables show this concept of mixing – good seed and weed seed, yeast and unleavened bread, small seed and large tree. All of us have a chance to be saved, and so we need respect all people and their potential, and let the judging come from the merciful One. Our own judgments are sometimes not so merciful!

Again this week, i have chosen to concentrate on one of readings other than the Gospel, though i hope i have shown how they work together. We need to simply remember that to be like God, we need to be kind, compassionate, accepting, loving and non-judgmental.  I am not sure those are all easy qualities to have, but that is what is being asked of us today. The more we strive to be like God in those areas, the more chance we have that we will not be seen to be the weeds at the very end. Let us try this week to put into practice these virtues, make one specific attempt to show mercy to someone, to show love to someone, to accept someone, to be kind to someone. Besides, it might bring you a little happiness as well, and we can all use lots of that!

This is the Good News brought to you by Wisdom, Paul and Jesus today. Make it your own!

Bishop Ron Stephens 

Pastor of St. Andrew’s Parish in Warrenton, VA

The Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (CACINA)

[You can purchase a complete Cycle A of Bishop Ron’s homilies, 75 of them, from amazon.com for $9.99 – “Teaching the Church Year”]