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Exploring the word

19 Feb 2012 - Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

It’s helpful to take a map along when you read the New Testament. Most of the time in the gospel stories, Jesus moves forward. He goes from town to town, teaching and healing and being the “repo man” for souls ensnared by dark spirits. If you had to be possessed by someone, wouldn’t you rather it be Jesus, especially because belonging to him is the only real freedom the world has known? Rarely in the synoptic gospel storyline does Jesus retreat into territory he’s visited previously. Before we ascribe some spiritual significance to that, let’s consider a more practical reason: Look at what happens when he shows up in the same place twice! The return to Capernaum brought out the crowds to be sure, but some members of that same eager audience tore the roof off the house where he was staying. Do you suppose his hosts will want to show him hospitality again on his next visit? Architecturally speaking, the roof-removal incident was not the disaster it sounds like. Houses in the Near East had removable roofs for seasonal adjustments. But it would have been highly irregular for someone else to take your roof off. We get the sense that there was a little bit of “Jesus fever” that followed him around as his ministry became better known. It was the one fever he didn’t bother to cool. The Crucifixion would take care of that. Prophecy had long noted that something new was on the way. God had a purpose that wouldn’t be stopped: the rescue of a people who seemed particularly attracted to being in jeopardy. Through slavery in Egypt, exile in Babylon, and every other national calamity into which Israel descended, God found a way to throw them a lifeline. The community that had grown used to divinely commissioned kings and prophets, however, never saw Jesus coming. A savior who freed the nation from bondage to foreign powers? Sure. A savior who offered freedom from sin? Well, that was a little too new. Jesus crossed a line when he assured the paralytic he enjoyed the forgiveness of God. So long as it wasn’t the sabbath, no one would have raised an objection to another miraculous healing. Israel had had its healers before: Moses, Elijah, even Isaiah had summoned divine healing when necessary. The prophets, however, never dared to cover the sins of the people without some sort of quid pro quo: a season in sackcloth, fasting, and sacrifice. That, frankly, was blasphemy. Jesus was assuming an authority only God could have. Those who objected understood him quite well. Those who glorified God that day, though, understood Jesus even better. God’s enduring purpose—to rescue a people perennially in danger—had just found an astounding new fountainhead. Salvation would now and always be there for the asking. Related scripture links Sins of the fathers: Exod. 20:5-6; Jer. 31:29-30 New heart, new spirit: Ezek. 11:19 New creation: 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1 Forgiveness of sins: Psalm 130:4; Luke 1:77; 1 Col. 1:13-14 Catechism links Salvation: CCC 430; 1421; 1441; 1484; 1500-1502 Taking offense: CCC 574-576; 587-591 Newness: CCC 711-716

Authors Alice Camille

Salvation hospitality Prophecy savior maps

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The hopes and fears of all the year

28 Dec 2008 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Nearly two years ago, in April 2007, an undergraduate art student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago unveiled a papier-mache sculpture of Barack Obama as a messianic figure, titled "Blessing." David Cordero, 24, made the sculpture for his senior show after noticing all the attention Obama had received since first hinting he might run for the presidency. Run Obama did, and win he did, and his election was overwhelmingly voted the top news story of the year by U.S. editors and news directors polled by the Associated Press. But as we prepare to celebrate the Savior's birth, Obama must contend with the almost messianic-like hope that many people hold for his presidency. Artist Cordero's explanation for creating his sculpture may prove a healthy cautionary tale: "All of this is a response to what I've been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins. In a lot of ways it's about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped." As Obama prepares to take office in a few weeks, he inherits a number of daunting challenges not of his own creation, not least of which is the nation's financial meltdown-voted the number-two story of the year in the AP poll. Obama will also be handed the long-running war in Iraq, another top-ten story of the year, not to mention the even longer-running war in Afghanistan. If that were not enough, the U.S. as well as other nations face the ongoing threat of terrorism, as demonstrated by another top story, the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, India that killed 164 people. The historic political campaigns of two women-Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin-also made the list of top-ten news stories. Though their campaigns were not victorious, both women finished the year with their political futures intact-Clinton as Obama's choice for U.S. Secretary of State, and Palin as a leading light of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. China and Russia were home to top stories of the year as well. China made the list for a triumph, its largely successful hosting of the Beijing Olympics, as well as a tragedy, a powerful earthquake in May that left more than 70,000 dead and led to the collapse of about 7,000 classrooms in shoddily built schools. The five-day Russian-Georgian war in August rounds out the list, a further reminder that Obama will inherit a number of complex and potentially volatile foreign-relations concerns. Stories that almost made the top ten included Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 84,000 people in Myanmar; Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, which wreaked deadly damage in the Caribbean and on the U.S. Gulf Coast; and the seesaw fate of same-sex marriage in California, where a court ruling approving it was later overturned by a ballot measure. Several write-in votes were cast for two developments that occurred too late to be included on the AP ballot: the indictment of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the efforts of struggling U.S. automakers to get a federal bailout. The alleged financial scam involving Bernard Madoff also was revealed too late to make the ballot. Several of the editors who voted commented on how two transcendent developments dominated the news in 2008. "As far as I am concerned, there were only two stories this year," wrote Linda Grist Cunningham of the Rockford (Illinois) Register Star. "Global economy collapses (sending every country into financial, political, and personal chaos) and Obama elected U.S. president, changing the way the America does business-financial, political, and personal." Source: Articles by Joel Roberts and David Crary for the Associated Press

automakers russia beijing olympics georgia cyclone nargis myanmar hurricane gustav hurricane ike same-sex marriage california bailout bernard madoff china sarah palin hilary clinton rod blagojevich barack obama david cordero school of the art institute of chicago associated press savior iraq war afghanistan war top-ten news stories terrorism mumbai global economy
Exploring the word

05 Sep 2021 - Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

What does it mean to say, “Jesus saves"? Christianity is often reduced to this two-word sound bite, so we ought to consider what we intend by this statement. Ask a random handful of believers, and my fear is that the interpretation will be rendered: Jesus saves us from hell. Technically, there is nothing wrong with that summary. Now let’s define hell as something longer and deeper than the end-time fires of perdition, and we’ll be onto something. It might not be a bad idea to begin a discussion of soteriology with the question: Do we need to be saved, and from what? Salvation, a musty, churchy word that makes eyes glaze over at the mere mention, is one of the most fundamental concepts in the Bible. In Hebrew, it means, “to make wide or sufficient.” Salvation presumes that this sufficiency is something that comes from the outside; that an obstructed way won’t become wide enough without an intervention. We can’t save ourselves, in other words, so we have to look for rescue from another source. And when it comes to obstructions, death is a big one. So are the countless other human limitations that constrict us around the clock: strength, health, knowledge, vision, resources, imagination, control, and time, just to name a few of the more obvious ones. If we can’t throw ourselves a lifeline because we are the ones who are drowning, then who can save, and who wants to help? Biblical life preservers Happily, God is in the saving business. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say God gets into the saving business shortly after humanity gets into the sinning business. God is depicted as making clothes to cover Adam and Eve the hour they discover shame. Cain is protected with a mark after he commits the first murder so no one will target him for the second one. God warns Noah ahead of time about the approaching rainy season, and the beat of salvation goes on in story after story to its pinnacle, when Moses leads the enslaved nation out of Egypt. After the Exodus event, the God of Israel is known for all time as the “God who saves.” If you tend to fall into danger as readily as the Israelites do, this is precisely the kind of God you need. God’s saving power is trumpeted in the psalms and proclaimed by prophets and beseeched by priests and sought by kings from one side of the Babylonian exile to the other. When things go sour, as they frequently do, the nation puts its longing into the arrival of the next messiah, the anointed one who will serve—typically as a king or prophet—to restore the damaged relationship with their saving God and make that rescue viable again. The work of such a messiah is spelled out in prophetic texts such as our passage from Isaiah today: The blind will see, deaf ears will hear, the lame will walk, the mute will sing, and water will come to dry lands. The bottom line of messiah work is to restore what’s lost, bring life to what is barren. Would-be messiahs know the job description. But only real messiahs can fulfill it. A strange source of salvation The second-century Greek physician Galen preferred the term phlegma to spit. And he believed, as many ancients did, that saliva had healing properties for skin ailments like psoriasis and that it could also kill certain venomous creatures. The Roman naturalist Pliny, a near contemporary of Jesus, treated conjunctivitis with the “fasting spit” acquired in early morning. Even the emperor Vespasian who built the Coliseum was reputed to restore a man’s sight with his royal saliva. Yet the rabbis forbid this practice because of the magical rituals and presumptions that accompanied it—not to mention their usual suspicion of bodily fluids. So we can chalk up more law-breaking on the part of Jesus when we consider the three episodes (two in Mark, one in John) when he uses spit in conjunction with a healing. On the most basic level, Jesus is just doing messiah work when he heals folks of blindness or muteness by these means. He’s restoring what was lost and more: adding what had not been given to begin with. This could be one explanation of why Jesus used the saliva method on only three occasions, because two of them explicitly involve a congenital condition, not an illness or injury that requires restoration of a lost ability. It’s presumed that the man’s tongue was bound to the floor of his mouth from birth, but that he lost his hearing sometime after birth—because he spoke plainly once his tongue was loosed. So Jesus puts his fingers into the man’s ears for a simple restoration healing, and spits (possibly on his own finger) to touch the man’s tongue for the more profound work of transformation. The “exceeding astonishment” of the crowd attests to the idea that they thought Jesus did the frankly impossible. Perhaps Jesus didn’t want the healing discussed because he used rabbinically forbidden tactics in achieving it. Applying the word Saving signs No current debate is being waged in the medical world or the sacramental one about the use of saliva for healing ends. Although the Tridentine baptismal rite included an Ephphatha ritual (the priest touches the eyes, ears, and tongue of the child to evoke a spiritual opening), it is rarely used now (it’s still an optional rite, at the end of the ritual, and if you baptize during Mass this weekend, you could take advantage of it). Oil has outdistanced spit as the sign of healing for ritual use, not least because it’s a prettier action. But the signs of our salvation, however humble the materials in play—spit, oil, water, bread and wine, the human touch—still point to the richness of the connection between the physical reality and the spiritual one. God still throws us a life preserver because we still need saving from the thousand little daily deaths and the big one never far from where we are. Jesus, who does “all things well,” is that life preserver, which is why his name has become shorthand for Savior. Related scripture links Saliva healings: Mark 7:31-37, 8:22-26; John 9:1-41 Oil anointing: Mark 6:13; James 5:14 Messiah work foretold: Isa. 29:18-19; 35:4-7; 42:1-4; 61:1-3 Catechism links Salvation: CCC 55; 121-125; 161; 169; 489; 1092-1095; 1168 Messiah work: CCC 1716-1724

Authors Alice Camille

soteriology Salvation savior saliva spit

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Homily stories

07 July 2024 - Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

“The magazine looks great,” said one editor to another editor. “But it’s probably time for a new look. Maybe we should hire a design consultant to help us.” Those offhand remarks made the design editor’s blood boil. “Seriously,” she thought, “not only have our magazine layouts won numerous design awards, but people ask us to consult on design, for Pete’s sake.” The inner fuming went on for a while along with some outward venting with another co-worker. But in the end, she realized that a prophet is without honor in her hometown. Then she thought of the times she may have inadvertently made the same mistake. “Hmm … maybe we should get someone in to do this trim work,” she suggested to her carpenter husband. “Let’s find someone to help us with our taxes,” she mused, knowing full well her brother-in-law accountant was looking for business. We all hope for a savior to swoop in and solve all our problems. But invariably we’re disappointed because the person we thought would save us really wasn’t up to the task. In fact, there’s only one true savior, Jesus Christ, who is never farther away than your next breath. Put your faith in Jesus, and the rest will take care of itself.

Authors Patrice J. Tuohy

savior

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