Homily Help Ninth Week of Pentecost

30 July – Ninth Week of Pentecost: THE MISSION OF GOD’S MESSENGER
Book of Offering page 425 or 492

Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 Gospel: Luke 4:14-21

Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10
So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: “In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We cause no one to stumble in anything, in order that no fault may be found with our ministry; on the contrary, in everything we commend ourselves as ministers of God, through much endurance, in afflictions, hardships, constraints, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, vigils, fasts; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in a holy spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left; through glory and dishonor, insult and praise. We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful; as unrecognized and yet acknowledged; as dying and behold we live; as chastised and yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing and yet possessing all things.

I. Biblical Exegesis
[5:18–21] Paul attempts to explain the meaning of God’s action by a variety of different categories; his attention keeps moving rapidly back and forth from God’s act to his own ministry as well. Who has reconciled us to himself: i.e., he has brought all into oneness. Not counting their trespasses: the reconciliation is described as an act of justification (cf. “righteousness,” 2 Cor 5:21); this contrasts with the covenant that condemned (2 Cor 3:8). The ministry of reconciliation: Paul’s role in the wider picture is described: entrusted with the message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19), he is Christ’s ambassador, through whom God appeals (2 Cor 5:20a). In verse 20b Paul acts in the capacity just described.

[5:21] This is a statement of God’s purpose, expressed paradoxically in terms of sharing and exchange of attributes. As Christ became our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30), we become God’s righteousness (cf. 2 Cor 5:14–15).

[6:1–10] This paragraph is a single long sentence in the Greek, interrupted by the parenthesis of 2 Cor 5:2. The one main verb is “we appeal.” In this paragraph Paul both exercises his ministry of reconciliation (cf. 2 Cor 5:20) and describes how his ministry is exercised: the “message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19) is lived existentially in his apostolic experience.

[6:1] Not to receive…in vain: i.e., conform to the gift of justification and new creation. The context indicates how this can be done concretely: become God’s righteousness (2 Cor 5:21), not live for oneself (2 Cor 5:15) be reconciled with Paul (2 Cor 6:11–13; 7:2–3).

[6:2] In an acceptable time: Paul cites the Septuagint text of Is 49:8; the Hebrew reads “in a time of favor”; it is parallel to “on the day of salvation.” Now: God is bestowing favor and salvation at this very moment, as Paul is addressing his letter to them.

[6:3] Cause no one to stumble: the language echoes that of 1 Cor 8–10 as does the expression “no longer live for themselves” in “ 2 Cor 5:15. That no fault may be found: i.e., at the eschatological judgment (cf. 1 Cor 4:2–5).

[6:4a] This is the central assertion, the topic statement for the catalogue that follows. We commend ourselves: Paul’s self-commendation is ironical (with an eye on the charges mentioned in 2 Cor 3:1–3) and paradoxical (pointing mostly to experiences that would not normally be considered points of pride but are perceived as such by faith). Cf. also the self-commendation in 2 Cor 11:23–29. As ministers of God: the same Greek word, diakonos, means “minister” and “servant”; cf. 2 Cor 11:23, the central assertion in a similar context, and 1 Cor 3:5.

[6:4b–5] Through much endurance: this phrase functions as a subtitle; it is followed by an enumeration of nine specific types of trials endured.

[6:6–7a] A list of virtuous qualities in two groups of four, the second fuller than the first.

[6:8b–10] A series of seven rhetorically effective antitheses, contrasting negative external impressions with positive inner reality. Paul perceives his existence as a reflection of Jesus’ own and affirms an inner reversal that escapes outward observation. The final two members illustrate two distinct kinds of paradox or apparent contradiction that are characteristic of apostolic experience.

II. Old Testament References
[5:21] Is 53:6–9

[6:2] Is 49:8

Gospel: Luke 4:14-21
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all. He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

I. Biblical Exegesis
[4:14] News of him spread: a Lucan theme; see Lk 4:37; 5:15; 7:17.

[4:16–30] Luke has transposed to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry an incident from his Marcan source, which situated it near the end of the Galilean ministry (Mk 6:1–6a). In doing so, Luke turns the initial admiration (Lk 4:22) and subsequent rejection of Jesus (Lk 4:28–29) into a foreshadowing of the whole future ministry of Jesus. Moreover, the rejection of Jesus in his own hometown hints at the greater rejection of him by Israel (Acts 13:46).

[4:16] According to his custom: Jesus’ practice of regularly attending synagogue is carried on by the early Christians’ practice of meeting in the temple (Acts 2:46; 3:1; 5:12).

[4:18] The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me: see note on Lk 3:21–22. As this incident develops, Jesus is portrayed as a prophet whose ministry is compared to that of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Prophetic anointings are known in first-century Palestinian Judaism from the Qumran literature that speaks of prophets as God’s anointed ones. To bring glad tidings to the poor: more than any other gospel writer Luke is concerned with Jesus’ attitude toward the economically and socially poor (see Lk 6:20, 24; 12:16–21; 14:12–14; 16:19–26; 19:8). At times, the poor in Luke’s gospel are associated with the downtrodden, the oppressed and afflicted, the forgotten and the neglected (Lk 4:18; 6:20–22; 7:22; 14:12–14), and it is they who accept Jesus’ message of salvation.

[4:21] Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing: this sermon inaugurates the time of fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Luke presents the ministry of Jesus as fulfilling Old Testament hopes and expectations (Lk 7:22); for Luke, even Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection are done in fulfillment of the scriptures (Lk 24:25–27, 44–46; Acts 3:18).

II. Old Testament References
[4:4] Dt 8:3

[4:6] Jer 27:5

[4:8] Dt 6:13

[4:10] Ps 91:11

[4:11] Ps 91:12

[4:12] Dt 6:16
[4:18–19] Is 61:1–2; 58:6

Sample Homily:

Quoting the Prophet Isaiah, Saint Paul says to the Corinthians that God proclaims to them and all people of faith that, “In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.” He goes on to explain to them the paradoxes that he endures, that bring sufferings and persecutions, in bringing the Good News of salvation to them.
Paul especially reminds those who have been called to evangelize as their life’s vocation, that the Word they preach is not their own, and that the price of evangelizing involves a full and total commitment of the whole person – in other words if there is not conversion on the part of the preacher how can there conversion on the part of the hearers. Recall that the conversion of Paul was total and complete in that his encounter on the road to Damascus of the Risen Lord, opened the eyes and heart of the Pharisee Saul to see and understand the Scriptures that he thought he knew so well; to understand them in a new way and to realize that they were not about slavish fulfiling of The Mosaic Law, but accepting the love and salvation of God given to him in Jesus the Risen Lord. It is conversion to this “acceptable time” of the Lord that Paul wishes to set on fire the hearts of the Corinthians.
In Luke’s Gospel Jesus enters the synagogue and reads from the Isaiah scroll, “”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Here Jesus explains to all men and women of faith what the acceptible time of the Lord is; it is a time in which God calls the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed to freedom, liberty, and health.
We might enquire who are the poor, the blind, the captive, and the oppressed that Isaiah wrote of and Jesus now liberates – the answer is “us.” All of us who have been enslaved and blinded by sin, who have been oppressed by our own shortcomings and lack of love. For us Jesus is the “acceptible time”, the day of liberation, the day of salvation.