Reflection on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Five hundred years before Jesus was born, Zechariah, a prophet in his time, wrote about how Jerusalem and Zion would be saved. He was living in a time when the Jews were under the control of the Persian Empire. I don’t know how fierce the battles were to resist the occupying force when the Persians first arrived, but the Persian Empire prevailed.

Now the current Persian leader was encouraging the Jews to rebuild their holy city of Jerusalem. That encouragement was viewed as a gift from God and a source of hope for the Jewish people. Zechariah then reminds the people that their hope and their freedom will be secured by a just and meek person who will lead them. The answer for them is not to fight power with power or to take up arms against the oppressor. This is a call to a very different source of hope and freedom, a just and meek person rather than a fierce warrior.

This, I imagine, is something that we humans have struggled with throughout history and still struggle with today. Today we see internal violent power struggles within countries, violent attempts to take over other countries and violence at new levels in our own country aimed at people who disagree with each other.

So the Gospel gives us a similar reminder from Jesus when he tells the people in his time that those who were thought to be the leaders, the learned ones, will not be the ones to whom all is revealed by God. Like the leader that Zechariah speaks of, Jesus is meek and humble and without the usual civil power. Again, Jesus is offering a very different source of hope and salvation to people in his day and to all of us today.

It is a reminder to each of us to remain open to God’s message in all circumstances. We do not know who God’s witness will be to bring God’s revelation to us. Many of us can acknowledge how much we have learned from the poor, the less educated and the people society dismisses as not valuable. If we want to understand faith, trust, perseverance and hope, it is often best understood through experiences and relationships with the marginalized and the suffering.

As I wrote this, I found myself going back to the second reading which I wanted to simply skip over. It is a hard reading at first glance because I believe in the unity of all things in creation. I have no need for dualism, or to separate body and soul, spirit and flesh. But I know that there are other parts of Paul’s letter to the Romans that I love, so I thought perhaps there is some meaning here to discern. I think it is similar to the other calls in today’s readings. It is a call to find meaning and joy through another source, a life centered in God and the Spirit, rather than the fleeting happiness that the Roman culture or our culture today emphasize.

The Gospel may say that Jesus’ yoke is easy and the burden is light, but it does not always feel that way. Paul was trying to strengthen the Romans as they struggled with conversion to Christianity in the midst of a very pleasure-oriented Roman culture. Perhaps this is also a support to us as we try to live our faith in a society that has twisted the Christian faith into some unrecognizable forms, that promotes excessive economic consumption as good, devalues human beings that are different and seeks to consolidate power over people in many ways. 

We don’t want to be a part of some of what our current culture promotes. That requires us to be truly spirit-centered or faith-centered in this current climate of individualism and exclusion. We find comfort in our faith and in community; not in buying things, building walls or being part of homogenous power bases that want to harm those who differ from them.

We do want to be a visible witness to a real alternative to some of what our country promotes today. We live strengthened by the spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead and calls us to continue to love as Jesus loved in ways that are real and meaningful. We want people to see the joy in this life we live and the choices we make, even when we may not feel like we are making much progress.