Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)
Of all the Old Testament prophets, the one whose writings most resemble a hallucination caused by LSD is probably Ezekiel. There’s a psychedelic temple; four-faced creatures that are part man, part lion, part eagle, part ox; apocalyptic battles; a bit of cannibalism; an army of dry bones that rattle back to life; and a few scenes that are definitely rated R. If you’re seeking entertainment, cancel your HBO subscription this month and just read the book of Ezekiel.
Now please don’t go home and tell people, “Father preached this morning about LSD. He was a Jesuit—you know how they are.” In order to appreciate this marvelous book of the Bible, I want to draw a contrast between hallucination, optimism, and the central theme of the book of Ezekiel—hope.
Ezekiel lived through what might be considered the most hopeless moment in the history of the Jewish people. The corruption of the Israelite monarchy had so weakened and divided Israelite society that the nation was easy prey first for the brutal Assyrian empire, which utterly destroyed ten of the twelve tribes of Israel, and then a few decades later for the even more ruthless Babylonians. Ezekiel was a priest, who along with the other educated members of Israelite society was carted off into forced exile in Babylon. It would have appeared to any observer at the time that Israel’s story was over. They had been favored by God; they had been given the Promised Land and a covenant, and they blew it. They broke the covenant, lost their land, and had only slavery and extinction to look forward to.
And at this moment in history, in exile in the heart of enemy territory, in Babylon itself, Ezekiel started receiving visions. Ezekiel’s visions were wild but not hallucinations. They pointed toward a better future but it would be difficult to call Ezekiel—or any of the Hebrew prophets—an optimist. Ezekiel’s vision was something else entirely—it was a vision of hope. What’s the difference, you ask.
The difference has to do with our relationship to reality. Hallucinations, such as those caused by LSD or other drugs, happen when we lose the ability to perceive reality accurately. They involve the destruction or loss of our mental capabilities. Not all drugs are chemical. The internet is full of illusions, of unreal visions. History is full of political, philosophical, and religious unrealities as well. When reality looks bleak, the false appeal of such drugs is obvious. But they always involve self-destruction.
Optimism is certainly not as harmful as hallucination; in most circumstances looking on the bright side is helpful. Optimism means we still look at reality, but we focus on only a certain part of it—the bright side—and ignore the darker part of reality. Probably better than pessimism, but still at root a narrowness of vision—looking at only part of reality.
Hope is very different because hope depends on God. Hope looks at all of reality, the good and the bad, and hope says, “There is more than what I see.” There is more to reality than what can be seen. The Jews in exile in Babylon could have looked at their political, economic, psychological, sociological reality and said, “It’s over.” Ezekiel doesn’t try to convince them that their situation is OK. But he reminds the Israelites that there is a power greater than politics, economics, psychology, or sociology: God. And God—our omnipotent creator—can simply expand what reality is.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Ezekiel’s treatment of life after death. Most people don’t realize that faith in the life to come played very little role in the religion of Israel throughout most of the Old Testament. The ancient Hebrews thought of existence after death as a kind of shadow world—a dimly lit waiting room without the magazines. Ezekiel, however, describes a vision of a vast valley filled with dry bones and those bones coming to life again as the prophet delivers God’s message: “O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel…I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord” (Ez 37:12, 14). Ezekiel’s vision is a turning point that prepares the way for the teachings of Jesus and our own faith in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.
Now, you might be wondering, where does today’s passage from Ezekiel fit into all of this history. Here’s where the realism of hope comes in. Because much of what Ezekiel and his followers did to save the religion of Israel was pragmatic, practical work. For starters, Ezekiel and his fellow exiles had to survive as a minority in Babylon. And for any minority religion to survive within a larger hostile culture, it needs to have a clear sense of who it is, where it has come from, why it is important to maintain its identity. Without these things, it will simply be absorbed into the larger culture and disappear. Many of the works of the Old Testament we have today survived because Ezekiel and the other editors at the time of the Babylonian exile realized the importance of writing down, copying, and preserving Israel’s tradition. If they hadn’t done so, it would have disappeared.
In the passage we read today, God asks Ezekiel to be a “watchman,” to warn the exiled Israelites to keep God’s law. This role of teaching and admonishing—saying this is right and that is wrong—was no doubt not the prophet’s most popular function; it is something the Church does today, and it’s not the Church’s most popular role either. It’s a difficult but necessary task—necessary because without a clear and specific sense of right and wrong no community can survive, especially as a minority in an unfriendly world. In the Gospel, the same issue is on Jesus’ mind, and he gives some very practical advice for how to admonish those who do wrong in a way that is tactful, respectful of their feelings, and tries to avoid causing unnecessary embarrassment.
In fact, Jesus knew that the Church—both in apostolic times and today—would find itself in the position of being a minority within a larger, often unfriendly world. And in order to survive—and not just to survive but to fulfill our mission of preaching a message of conversion to that world—we would need to have a clear sense of who we are, where we come from, and the way we are called to live. Both Ezekiel and Jesus are realistic about the difficulties. Both knew that human beings are endowed with free will, that we do not always listen to or follow the message God sends us through our “watchmen,” and that sin and conflict continue to be a part of the reality of our lives and the reality of the life of the Church. So God tells Ezekiel not to become discouraged once he has fulfilled his duty as a watchman even if people don’t seem to listen, and Jesus gives his disciples practical advice on conflict resolution.
Jesus adds something else, too, a reminder of where hope comes from. Jesus follows his acknowledgement of conflict between Christians with the encouragement to pray and the promise that God will remain with his Church: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” When conflict and division threaten the Church, God is the source of our hope. How many times in the Church’s history—the Roman persecutions, the Arian heresy, the Reformation, the French Revolution, contemporary secularism—did it seem like it might be better for the watchman to quietly pack his bags and fade into history? And every time hope—not hallucination, not optimism—proved more real than any of the world’s Babylons.
Readings: Ez 33:7-9; Rm 13:8-10; Mt 18:15-20
St. Charles Borromeo Church
St. Anthony, Minnesota
2017
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 