Third Sunday of Easter
I am sure that you have had heard enough about Donald Sterling, the owner of LA Clippers. I am also sure that you do not want to hear more about it from the pulpit. I promise you I am not going to torture you with Sterling’s racist comments. This is what baffles me, however. I just cannot comprehend that in this time and age, people have with such prejudiced, bigoted and myopic vision of humanity. Are we not civilized enough to know that color is only skin deep? How long before we look at a person’s color, nationality, religion or gender and assign that person basic human dignity and respect? When will we learn to look at humanity the way God sees us? How do people miss the big picture?
My homily today is about the “big picture.” I want to do this by focusing on today’s second reading from the letter of Peter. In merely five verses, Peter takes his readers from an old way of thinking to a completely new way of visioning life. I would like to paraphrase the reading this way:
“If you invoke as Father him who judges impartially….
conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning,
realizing that you were ransomed…, not with perishable things…
but with the precious blood of Christ….
…so that your faith and hope are in God.”
1. First, Peter is talking about life. He calls our life on earth “the time of our sojourning.”. In Catholic spirituality, human life is often compared to a pilgrimage, a sojourn, a journey. It is a journey… like the disciples journeying to Emmaus in today’s gospel reading. Along the way, there is a huge transition for these two disciples from seeing life with blinkers to a “big picture” vision. Recall that at the beginning of their journey the two disciples were downcast. They could not see beyond the death of Jesus. They got caught up in the moment. But the stranger in their midst opened their minds to the “big picture” by recounting the scriptures. Later, at the breaking of bread, they saw the Christ event and their own life in a completely new way. This was so significant that they changed the direction of their journey from Emmaus back to Jerusalem. Similarly, Peter is trying to tell us that if we think of life as a journey, if we constantly keep in mind where we come from and where we are heading, then even if life gets us downcast or if we face tragedies and uncertainties, the “big picture” will help us immensely. This week then, let us renew our perspective on life. Perhaps, vising our life as a pilgrimage, a sojourn, a journey, we think about where we have come from, about where we are headed, and where we are presently in our journey. Let us become aware of the “big picture.”
2. Second, Peter is suggesting that we conduct ourselves “with reverence during this time of our sojourning.” Peter is suggesting intentionality here. Peter is saying that we are free and intelligible beings who have within our power to think, talk and act a certain way. We can choose our behavior. We can choose how we conduct ourselves. We can determine our choices. More specifically, Peter is suggesting that our intentionality, our behavior, our conduct and our choices be focused toward reverence. In other words, think, talk, and act as if you and everything around you is holy. Again, the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus can help us. The central experience of the two disciples was the breaking of the bread. That was the precise moment in their journey that everything came together for them. The Church teaches us that the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life. In other words, our life must begin with the Eucharist and reach its highest point at the Eucharist. This means that the Eucharist is not another thing we do when we feel like it, but the signature event of the week. All things must flow from it and all things must lead to it. Each week our life must begin at the altar and end at the altar. If we can enter into this consciousness of the centrality of the Eucharist, then we will treat everything in between our weekly Eucharist as holy. If our work, our family life, our sports, our relationships, flows from the Eucharist and leads us to it – that is the meaning of conducting ourselves with reverence. This is the “big picture.”
3. And third, Peter gives us two reasons for conducting ourselves in this way: first, because we invoke God our Father who judges impartially; but more importantly because we have been ransomed with the precious blood of Christ. Peter was acutely aware of the Jewish – Gentile division in the church. His use of the term “impartial” in reference to God is not accidental. He was deliberately promoting a God who is not partial toward any race, nation, or people. On the contrary, according to Peter, God looks at the “big picture” – that the world has been redeemed by the blood of Christ. God, in Christ, has opened the door of heaven to anyone who is willing to accept God’s saving love. Donald Sterling is only a celebrity figure of increasing intolerance around the world. In Syria, in South Sudan, in Ukraine, in racism and reverse racism in our country, in anti-immigration and xenophobic sentiments, in gender, economic, religious and class discriminations, people miss the “big picture.” What does it mean for us to hear from Peter today that in Christ God opened the doors of eternity to anyone who is willing to accept God’s saving love? This is what the stranger also told the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. If God is impartial, then what does that mean for us? What would have happened if the two disciples did not invite the stranger into their home for dinner that evening? We have much to reflect on this week.
Here we are at the breaking of bread, just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We too are on a journey. As we go on this journey, let us conduct ourselves with reverence. After all, God who is impartial has redeemed us with the blood of Jesus.
- Fr. Satish Joseph