A homily for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 20, 2022
1 Sm 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23, 1 Cor 15:45-49, Lk 6:27-38
According to legend, Lord Cornwallis, the British general whose troops lost to George Washington and his forces at the Battle of Yorktown, ordered his regimental musicians to play a satirical song during the formal surrender ceremony, and not a tune honoring the Colonists’ victory.
Instead of an American melody like “Yankee Doodle” or some military march long since lost to history, the Redcoats played “The World Turned Upside Down.”
Though the song — composed in England originally as a protest against bans on making merry at Christmas — was written in the 1640s, it could have been written by or for Jesus in the First Century.
Because it’s clear the Messiah’s ministry came from the Land of Topsy-Turvy.
Whether in his hometown or on the road, Jesus wasn’t always greeted with hosannas, and we know how Palm Sunday’s purported hosannafest ended. Any songs the people may have played might well have ended up being mockeries.
That’s because The Christ was victorious in totally the opposite way from what the people wanted or expected. What he destroyed were not the walls and barricades and garrisons of Roman occupiers or even the arrogant self-declared kings of Israel who installed themselves on the throne and then oppressed their own kinspeople.
What he destroyed was fealty to base instincts: larcenous selfishness, violent xenophobia that enslaves, lust that depersonalizes. Jesus and his disciples won many battles against the status quo, but he and they sacrificed their Earthly lives in the process.
Which means the struggle — I prefer to not say war, though others might — the struggle goes on. And we must lead the charge, with the risen Christ as the tip of the spear.
Luke’s chronicling of Jesus’ words is precise and understandable, so there’s no need to repeat the essential elements of the Law of Love. Jesus’ instructions are clear and straightforward, no-brainers, even, if you’ll pardon the term.
What is a head-scratcher is how human instincts, hard-wired into all of us, veer toward vicious and animalistic and not pacific, cooperative and spiritual. Are we truly beasts that proceed primarily from self-preservation and preservation of the species? Over tens of thousands of years, did homo sapiens evolve in brain and body but not mind, heart and soul?
Are we pack animals?
Or are we a human family?
The answer does seem to come down to instincts: instincts, and whether we choose to follow them or rise above them when appropriate.
Our passages from Scripture today give us great examples.
The prophet Samuel tells us that the warriors advising David saw an opportunity for Jesus’ ancestor to kill King Saul, who himself was out to get David. But David heeded the advice of the Spirit instead.
David rose above bloodlust.
Paul tells the Corinthians — and us — how humans first were creatures of the Earth and then were elevated to children of the Spirit through the mission of Jesus.
Jesus rose and we rise with him.
All over the world, for centuries long before the Incarnation, people who could see and feel the Divine Spark crafted their own version of the Golden Rule. Every culture, Occidental or Oriental, Germanic or Bush, every culture and every spiritual and religious tradition has come to know that cooperation and compassion are the true guarantors of the preservation of our species and of all life on our fragile planet.
Humankind knows it, but all too often — as we are seeing in Eastern Europe this very day — the roar of base instincts drowns out the tiny voice of conscience, the faint fluttering of our better angels’ wings.
Or does it, over the long haul?
Every advance in weaponry, every massing of troops, every tick of the Doomsday Clock seems to bring humanity closer to self-annihilation, and yet here we still are.
No, it’s not dumb luck. The children of God choose the higher path.
The path Jesus blazed.
Emmanuel — God With Us — spoke the Truth-With-A-Capital-T, challenging the status quo that sprung from animalistic behaviors. His words inspired generations; the words from The Word continue to transform billions.
And he himself was an inspiration to those who knew this itinerant rabbi in the flesh. Yes, there was just something about this peacemaker that changed people for the better.
Two millennia later, the light of Christ continues to shine as a beacon of hope and calm in dark days when it’s all too easy to react instinctively, to react only for ourselves.
When we turn the other cheek, when we share our clothes and food and homes, when we choose “we” over “me,” we become fully human and deeply enlightened because we have tapped into the Divine.
And we realize that we’re actually turning a topsy-turvy world right-side up.
