A homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 28, 2024
Dt 18:15-20, 1 Cor 7:32-35, Mk 1:21-28
In a few hours, we’ll know if the Kansas City Swifties … I mean, the Kansas City Kelces … I mean, the Kansas City Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl.
It’s a telling sign of the times that most of us know more about who’s dating whom than we know about a football team’s rushing and passing statistics. Media of all sorts have made sure we know all about how one player’s brother watched the game without his shirt and then hoisted a cute little girl into the box seats to meet her pop star idol.
Ohhhh, the things we seem to care about…
Now, I’m not bashing social media. I rely on it pretty extensively to stay in touch with friends and acquaintances all over the world. And I don’t see anything wrong with being a fan of a talented sports team or player or musician or actor. My huge collection of records and CDs and videos attests to that.
But there is something wrong when people are famous simply for being famous, especially if they revel in fame that’s more like infamy. It’s just not right if they and their families go viral for what they say or do despite their lack of actual talent or contributions to humankind.
These days, somebody with millions of followers — I have no idea why — can post something goofy and it goes worldwide in seconds.
So how did Jesus’s fame spread?
Remember: More than once, he ordered witnesses to a healing or an exorcism not to tell anyone what they saw.
So how, then, did Jesus’s fame spread?
Judas wondered the exact same thing in “Jesus Christ Superstar”:
Why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land? If you’d come today, you would have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.
Yeah, those were some big hurdles for Jesus to get past.
But Jesus had a message. A radical message, an uplifting message, a message full of words no one had even spoken before.
Jesus had a message of hope, hope in a better world, hope in a better world to come, hope in the rewards of salvation, of conquering death, of eternal life.
Jesus had a message of love, a message that all humankind is one family.
Jesus had a message of peace.
And Jesus made his actions speak louder than words. He dined with tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers and beggars. He healed the sick. He comforted those who mourned.
Despite his innocence and goodness, he suffered torture and a criminal’s violent execution, forgiving those who abused him. Then he rose from the dead, never again to die, opening the gates of Heaven for everyone who ever lived or ever would live.
And the people of Israel saw and believed.
And they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on.
That’s how the much-deserved fame of Jesus spread throughout the world.
That’s how the earth-shattering message of Jesus spread throughout the world.
The Israelites and the Gentiles told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on. They made the fame of Jesus go viral every day of their lives.
The Apostles made the Good News of Jesus go viral every day of their lives.
Jesus calls us to be Apostles.
