Sermons
(G&P 939)
I presume that the first reading (Exodus 17 8-13) either shocked you or bored you. It may be boring because of the many Hebrew names, and it is certainly shocking because of the war and the violence and the fights it tells. A shocking, a displeasing story read on a Sunday in Church. On a Sunday!
Wouldn’t it be good to leave the difficulties and quarrels and conflicts out of the church? Wouldn’t it be good to be left in peace at least on a Sunday? Well, the opposite is the message of our first reading: Leave out conflicts from church would be like living in an ivory-tower. No, no realm of our life must be excluded from our service to God, everything needs to be brought before God, before his healing presence. Everything – and certainly our reality as it is needs to be brought before God. Our reality that is marked by crises and wars and violence.
Isn’t it amazing what the Jewish people wrote down in their holy book? They did not keep quiet about anything that happened to them. We heard today about the battle of Amalek – was this just out of an historical interest that it was written down? No, I think that the people of Israel experienced God’s presence in their misery, God helped them, God was with them. And they kept this experience alive for the future generations by writing it down in their holy book. Only if you recall the past you can help the future generations.
The German people has been trying to live up to this: never forget the Nazi terror, the Shoah so that the future generations are not caught by the same trap in the future. In 1985, Richard von Weizsäcker, then president of the Federal Republic said: „Das Geheimnis der Erlösung heißt Erinnerung“ – “the secret of redemption lies in remembrance“ - – by this he quoted Jewish writings.
Weizsäcker continued: “This oft quoted Jewish adage surely expresses the idea that faith in God is faith in the work of God in history. Remembrance is experience of the work of God in history. It is the source of faith in redemption. This experience creates hope, creates faith in redemption, in reunification of the divided, in reconciliation. Whoever forgets this experience loses his faith.” This is what Weizsäcker said 34 years ago. So, our story wants to help future generations.
But isn’t our story from the Book of Exodus a glorification of war? No, certainly not. The battle is not decided by the men who fight, but by the presence of Moses on a mountain. This presence of Moses obtains God’s help. Moses is a holy man – but nevertheless he needs help, he needs the solidarity of others to persevere in his effort. The victory comes from God, from Yahwe. This is what Israel should retain from this story. New attacks, new difficulties, new dangers are to be expected – but yet, behind this reality there is the promise God made, the promise that he would be near and true to his people. The promise that his people will thus survive.
So the story we heard is a story of encouragement: remembering the misery and distress of the past the people can put their hopes in God. And – what is more practical for us today – remembering the misery of the past shows how necessary solidarity is: be at the sides of the ones whose hands begin to sink, support the ones whose strength vanishes, whose courage decreases. Then our story becomes a story of perseverance by lifting up your heart and hand so as to never lose faith and courage - because of the experiences made with God.
Wolfgang Felber SJ
(G&P N° 936, Luke 17,11-19)
I would like to talk about the experience Jesus makes with the ten lepers. Usually the text is presented so that the one leper who comes back to Jesus understands Jesus, thanks Jesus, is the only one really healed. The other nine are unthankful and do not understand anything. I don’t like this way of presenting the story.
Why? Because Jesus never puts people down. I would like to point to a different topic: ten lepers come to Jesus, the ten are healed, but only one remains with Jesus. Nine to one – this relation is still valid – generously calculated. I speak of the part of the population still remaining with the traditional Church and its message. Only ten percent may share the religious nearness to Jesus by continuing to go to Church (in Berlin the percentage is much smaller: 12% of the population are baptized protestant, 3% catholic – but the number attending services in churches is much smaller).
All the lepers have been touched, have been healed by Jesus. The ten are not so different from each other: they all have been healed, but only one remains with Jesus. It is the difference in reaction to the healing that makes them different. So many studies show that religiosity does no longer have this close link to the Church, to the community of believers. To be far from the Church does not mean to be far from religiosity. The ways to experience God’s nearness do not necessarily lead through the church doors. Those who come to church on Sunday, like you, live a special form of religiosity, marked by the communion of the Church, marked by the wish to experience God’s nearness in the space of a church building, of a Church community.
But there are many other forms where people are experiencing the nearness of God, the Church is seen as just one of these places. What does this mean for the Church?
One way of dealing with the phenomenon is to continue as usual: tradition, dogmas, doctrine, neither looking to the right nor to the left, not perceiving the world that surrounds the Church. Then the Church, then we as a community, may become a ghetto in which people with the same ideas and ideals gather, a ghetto on the edge of society. Uniformity instead of diversity reigns.
The second way would be to be totally open to everything we see in the modern world, to limit ourselves to the realm of giving good advices of how to succeed in life and in its crises. But here the Christian message would lose its specificity. The Church would not be more than a giver of good advices like so many other gurus. Perhaps: “Diversity without unity”?
Thus – on one hand you find church leaders worried about what Rome says, worried about correct liturgies, worried about the quality and the catholicity of the men and women coming to church – I mean catholicity in the sense of being conform to catholic rules and orders and requests and demands. A church occupied with herself, forgetting what happens around her. Uniformity without diversity?
On the other hand you would find committed Christians asking themselves: “How do we go down well, how can we be well received? How to have fuller churches and how to have attractive events? How to produce and trigger good articles about the church in the news?”
This is a real dilemma – a dilemma that keeps the church alive. The tension is a fruitful tension if the two sides approach each other, if ideas and visions are shared. In this process, there is not one side in the possession of the full truth, not one side has a monopoly for salvation. “Unity in diversity” would be the objective. The ten lepers make it clear: The story is not about the one single follower of Jesus and the nine renegades. No! They have all been touched and healed, but each one of them has his or her own way of dealing with it. It was the task of Jesus to handle this, Jesus had to live with this. It is our task today to handle this same phenomenon – we who are following Jesus, we who are the descendants of the ten lepers
Wolfgang Felber SJ
Isn’t today’s gospel (Luke 16 19-31) frightening? The description of the afterlife is quite comfortable for Lazarus, but it is horrible for the other one, the rich person. We may not be among the very rich, but nevertheless we may fear that we might endure the same fate as the rich person in the gospel. Fear… - fear never brings freedom. Fear does not really incite us to change our lives.
Did Jesus really want to inspire fear by talking about the otherworldly reward or the otherworldly punishment? Was talking about the afterlife his objective? I do not think so: Jesus has the human being in mind, not a theory about the afterlife.
The first who comes to our mind is Lazarus. He has a name. The name means “God helps”. His everyday life is ruled by illness and need and misery and hunger. He cannot even reach the “the scraps that fell from the rich man's table”.
The rich person has no name. He does not even act in a malicious manner – he just does not notice Lazarus and his needs. The rich man is focused on his comfortable life. He has no eye and no ear to what happens around him. He has no eye and no ear for the human beings in his neighborhood.
And this is the point where Jesus starts his story: Lazarus has a name: “God helps”, and God is concerned with Lazarus. With Lazarus who lies in front of the door, whose body is covered with sores, and who has less value than a dog. God is concerned with exactly this Lazarus, this “underdog”.
And this is the message of today’s gospel for me: Do see Lazarus! Do see him in spite of all our activities and business! Do see him in spite of all our prejudices, in spite of all our limitations! Our limitations show us that we cannot help every person who needs our help. But let us see them and not forget them in spite of our festivities and parties – festivities and parties are OK, they are not bad. Let us see the needs of others in spite of our love of life, our lust for life.
Let us become attentive – other persons need our attentiveness; maybe we ourselves need their attentiveness for ourselves, and we need to be attentive to our own needs. As Christians we have the possibility and invitation to be open for changes, we have the possibility to practice a helping community. A helping community believes that our attentiveness gives change a chance. Then we do experience God as the one who sees us with loving attentiveness just like he sees Lazarus.
Fr. Wolfgang Felber SJ