Most Reverend Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv DD STL, Bishop of Parramatta
The 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
Readings: Zephaniah 2:3,3:12-13; 1Cor1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12a
Discipleship nurtured by a spirituality of vulnerability and trust
Dear sisters and brothers,
Some of you might have heard of a strand in Christianity called the prosperity Gospel. This movement started in the United States and spread across the globe. Basically, the prosperity Gospel preaches that material blessings such as a healthy bank account, a successful career, a thriving business, an able body, a good life … are all signs that you are being blessed by God. Conversely, if you are poor, struggling and failing, then you are lacking faith or you are not at rights with God.
While we might not subscribe to this version -or some would call it a perversion of Christianity- we still feel demoralised and discouraged when we find ourselves in difficulty, hardship and crisis. We are even inclined to question our faith and what it means to be the follower of Jesus in times of trouble.
Scriptures at the beginning of Ordinary Time are concerned with these questions. In last Sunday’s Gospel, we heard how Jesus began his messianic ministry in Galilee and called his first disciples. They were to minister with him in the thresholds and crossroads of human vulnerability. Even at the get go, the disciples were taken from a place of security to engage with people at the periphery of life.
This week, the lesson on Christian discipleship moves to another level. To be a disciple is to choose an alternative mode of thinking and living quite contrary to our default position of safety, security and comfort. The true disciple is like the faithful remnants who put their trust in God despite their trials and tribulations. In the world where individualism and self-interest prevail, we are called to be witnesses to solidarity, justice and compassion.
In the first reading, the prophet Zephaniah speaks to the dispossessed in the wake of the great dispersion and exhorts them to remain faithful to the covenant despite their suffering. The exile was at best an enigma because it exploded the idea that only the wicked merited punishment. Israel could no longer equate material prosperity with divine blessing. It was in this context that Zephania comforts his people. He reassures them that their predicament is not divine vengeance but divine renovation. God is refashioning his people through the crucible of the exile. “In your midst, I will leave a humble and lowly people”. These are words that cultivate a new spirituality for Israel. It is a spirituality of powerlessness, vulnerability and trust which is far removed from the prosperity theology of old.
In the Gospel, Jesus also speaks to the crowd who have followed him and witnessed his ministry of healing, mercy and compassion. He puts to them an alternative vision of life, which is polar opposite to what the dominant system has to offer. In God’s eyes, the blessed are not the powerful, the rich and those who have everything at their disposal. Instead, they are the servants of God’s life, love and justice. They are those who suffer for the cause of the Kingdom. They exchange the security of wealth, privilege and status for the insecurity of trust in God, that is, faith without sight, strength without violence and love without counting the cost.
The Beatitudes identify those who God has a special concern for. They are the hungry, the sorrowful and persecuted. Jesus echoes a world turned upside down that Mary sings in the Magnificat: the lowly raised and the mighty cast down, the hungry filled and the rich empty-handed. These are the people God notices and blesses. Jesus invites us to find happiness through a life of witness, service and solidarity with the suffering.
Dear friends,
The value system of Jesus upsets and turns upside down the value system of the world. St Paul understood what it meant to have his life turned upside down by living the Beatitudes. He went from being a leading Jew and a Roman citizen to being hated, persecuted and imprisoned for the sake of the Gospel. He became “weak, foolish and contemptible” by human reckoning because he had embraced the value system of Jesus.
Blessedness does not reside in power, possessions, successes or achievements. Rather, it is to be found in a heart open to love, to give, to care, to enhance the lives of others even to the point of dying for the ones we love. Jesus invites us to find this kind of happiness through a life of witness, service and solidarity. That is fundamentally the meaning of the beatitudes.
Jesus is also clear that wealth and privilege are real dangers that have the power to separate one from God and from the human community. The kingdom of God belongs to those who put their trust in God despite their trials and tribulations. Impelled by the God who identifies with the oppressed and lifts up the downtrodden, let us walk with the least of our brothers and sisters, and empower them to be the stakeholders of the new heaven and the new earth. Let us live and witness to the Beatitudes, which is the spirituality of staking everything we own and everything we are on the promise of the God in whom alone we trust.
