The homily is a two-way street (3C)

I was looking for a funny quotation with which to begin my homily on Sunday, and I found one without any trouble. Lord Hawkins, a 19th century judge in England, once said “It was a divine sermon. For it was like the peace of God—which passes all understanding. And like his mercy, it seemed to endure forever.”

Homilies are the subject of my homily today. There’s a simple reason for that: both the first reading and the Gospel today are about homilies.

And homilies are important. Pope Francis has written that “The homily can actually be an intense and happy experience of the Spirit, a consoling encounter with God’s word, a constant source of renewal and growth.” (Evangelii Gaudium, 135)

But homilies can be disappointing. A study of parish life in the US conducted more than thirty years ago concluded that active Catholics “find homilies inspiring and interesting, but uninformative and not helpful to the growth of their faith. (The Emerging Parish: the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Life, 134.)

I’d be surprised if much has changed since.

One expert says the problem is that many preachers seem to have no idea about the homily is supposed to do. They “believe that their task is to interpret the readings rather than interpret our world through the readings and our contemplation of life.” (“The Homily Fulfilled in Our Hearing,” Richard P. Wazniak, Worship, January 1991.)

I can put that even simpler: often, the preacher tries to interpret the readings rather than apply the readings.

Today, I want to apply the readings—especially the first reading—to us, gathered here this Sunday morning. It’s not difficult. The assembly that Ezra leads in the town square is a model for our Liturgy of the Word, and helps us understand at least one crucial thing: the homily is not a monologue by the priest, but an invitation to a dialogue—a dialogue not with the preacher, but with God himself.

Look how this event unfolds. First of all, the gathering is inclusive; everyone over the age of reason is there—just like Sunday. Second, the people are attentive. How many times have we—priests included—allowed the readings to sail over our heads because we let ourselves be distracted and failed to focus?

There’s still more to learn. The Word of God—the Torah, the Law—leads the community to worship. They signify their eagerness to listen by standing up, just like we do at the reading of the Gospel, and then they show their assent by bowing their heads in worship. Listening is an activity, not a passive intellectual thing.

So obviously hearing the Word was powerful. The Letter to the Hebrews—a Christian document written to Jews—tells us that the Word of God is living and active, able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Yet the Word needs to be explained and interpreted. This is what the Levites, the Jewish priests, did for this great assembly. “They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”

This is what the Christian preacher must do also, but not in some abstract way. Ezra and his assistant priests were preaching for a purpose, the restoration of the people in Jerusalem.

Israel has slowly returned from exile, and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Now that reconstruction is well underway, the community needs to rebuild its understanding of God’s Word. They’re hungry for spiritual pillars to uphold them while they rebuild the Temple.

What amazing power is unleashed when the Word, the preacher, and the hearers are combined as God intends! It’s hardly surprising that the people wept when they heard the words of the Law. It was answering a deep longing in their hearts, completing spiritually their return from exile in Babylon.

It responded to what we call nowadays, “a felt need”.

Things are very different in today’s Gospel. Jesus preaches a very short homily on Isaiah in his hometown synagogue. He’s announcing the best news that congregation has ever heard. However, the response couldn’t be more different from what happened at the Water Gate in Jerusalem 500 years earlier.

Our Gospel passage ends with our Lord’s powerful words “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” But that’s not the end of the story. Next week, our Gospel on Sunday tells the story of what follows: everyone likes the homily until Jesus declines to work the miracles they want, at which point everyone in the synagogue is outraged and they try to throw him over a cliff.

I’m doing a lot of thinking about homilies these days. Certainly I need to spend more time on them, and to consider more carefully what preaching is for, what it’s supposed to accomplish.

But while I do that, I’d invite all of you to think and pray about your part in the Liturgy of the Word—why and how you listen to the readings, and what you do during the homily itself.