Homily – 14^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 4-5, 2015

“These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

These words were written by Thomas Paine in 1776, some two hundred and thirty-nine years ago. The colonies were in a struggle for their independence, and many of the leaders of the revolution knew that they could pay the ultimate price for their rebellion. There is an apocryphal story told about the Declaration of Independence.  The leaders, John Adams, George Washington, John Hancock, among many others, knew that they would be tried for treason, a capital crime, if they failed in war.  The story goes that John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, signed the declaration in bold fashion, so that King George could read his name without using spectacles. Luckily for Mr. Hancock, that wasn’t an issue. I bring this up not only because this is the weekend that we celebrate we celebrate our Independence, but, more importantly, to illustrate that when we dare to challenge the prevailing culture, we can do so, but at a price.

Our first reading today tells us of the prophet Ezekiel, being sent to the Israelites who were, as usual, stubborn of heart, having rebelled against the Lord God. The Lord is sending Ezekiel to the people, not knowing whether they will listen to him or put him to death.

In today’s Gospel reading, we see Mark’s telling of Jesus going home to Nazareth with his disciples, teaching in the synagogue.  Everyone knew Jesus as a boy, and refused to open their eyes and ears to what he was trying to do and say. They were astonished when the words came out of his mouth, but they were unable to open their hearts because they were too familiar with Jesus.  They wanted, like so many other generations of Hebrews, wanted what they wanted. They wished to be like their neighbors, worldly, wealthy. They had already turned their backs on the Lord, and couldn’t be bothered to believe.  Jesus could do no great works there, due to their disbelief, other than heal a few sick people by the laying on of hands. 

This sounds a lot like our present day and age, doesn’t it?  Our culture has been shown clearly what the Lord wants from us, but, we as a people, in turn, have said that we will determine what we want of the Lord, what we want the Lord to be and say to us. 

We as a culture, have compromised the truth.  Jesus, speaking to Pontius Pilate, states that he has come to testify to the truth, to which Pilate responds, “What is truth?”  Today, society has declared that we must redefine the sacred institution of Marriage. Men must now be allowed to live with men and women with women and call it marriage.  We know, in our hearts, that this is a lie. Every single time that a law was voted upon to limit marriage to one man and one woman, it passed by large majorities. The cultural elite, the media, the entertainment industry, academia, they all know that if you repeat a lie often enough, it will be believed. We are told that gender is a social construct, gender is meaningless, that if a man feels that he should be a woman, then it is so. He can dress like a woman, and even get an operation to make himself look like a woman.  But this is also a lie. No operation can remove the male chromosome, that inconvenient 23^rd pair of chromosomes. With a female, the pair is “xx”, with a male, it is “xy”. We hear so much about the triumph of science, about the unraveling of the human genome, but we choose to ignore the very nature of our being, and say that what we want is more important than what we are or who we are. This attitude of I want what I want when I want it is tearing our society apart, and in the end, it is the same sin, the same lack of faith that stymied our Lord’s efforts to bring forth the Kingdom in his hometown.

What, then, will become of us, when we are called to give testimony?  Will we, as the saying goes, “go along to get along”, keeping silent for the sake of convention and self-preservation, or will we speak the truth, like the bakers who challenged a faulty judicial system and had to pay a huge fine, close their business, and were ordered to keep silent about the matter by the court. What price will we be required to pay in order to speak the truth…  Will the courts attempt to force our Church to make similar choices? When they knock on your door, what price will you be willing to pay?