Homily: An Amen for Teachers

A Homily for Teachers’ Day (preached at St Joseph's Institution,Singapore)

Readings: Jeremiah 1.4-10  / Psalm 34. 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9. (R/v 9a) / Matthew 5.13-16

What word did you first speak? Probably “Mama,” “Papa,” uttered clumsily as babes to our parents, our first teachers.

As we grew up, other teachers taught us. Kindergarten teachers taught us “A is for apple,” “B is for boy,” and “C is for cat.” Primary school teachers provided us skills and knowledge to read and write and to do arithmetic.

Here, in St Joseph's Institution (SJI), teachers help us to understand the whats, whys and hows of life. The whats that are facts and figures for us to make sense of the world. The whys that answer our curious questions about the mysteries of life and faith. The hows to explain things as they are in our lives and how else we can improve on them.

It is therefore right to thank our teachers, particularly, our SJI teachers, today. I believe our thanks isn’t limited to the knowledge, values and skills they impart to us. They extend and include such life-giving lessons they have taught us as: every person is inherently good; every one deserves a second chance; everybody can succeed. And in SJI, that every student best lives out his Josephian education by wasting it on another in greater need, like Jesus did, and not by hoarding it selfishly.

And don’t you and I see the goodness of what wasting oneself for others can do in our prodigal SJI teachers? Prodigal in that sense of freely and extravagantly giving to another what is most precious, one’s life. Consider how one or two or more of our teachers have been prodigal to you, for you, with you? If we are honest to them, to ourselves and to God, our thanks must also and always embrace the priceless gift of themselves to us.

These are all very good reasons for our thanksgiving to God today. But what more can we, as people of faith, celebrate about our teachers and their teaching? Our readings offer us three more reasons.

First, that God created teachers, empowered their teaching and sent them to teach.

Ask our teachers why they teach, and many will say, “It’s my vocation.” Vocations are about listening to God and following God’s lead. Vocations do not come out of the blue; they have always been God’s design for each of us.

Our first reading is about the gift of vocation. In Jeremiah we see how God had always meant for him to be God’s prophet, that he was to prophesize and that God’s words would be his prophetic words.

The teaching vocation is no different. Seen with eyes of faith, it originates in God’s Word that each teacher experiences as God’s goodness. And this goodness cannot be contained or bottled up; it transforms itself into a prodigious enthusiasm that sweeps a teacher on that wild, wild tide of selfless sharing to others. Teachers know that they sometimes cannot help but want to give away this goodness, again and again, through the knowledge, values and care they impart. 

And as we teachers share in this manner I’d like to think that we, like Jeremiah, are constantly humbled by a God who keeps anointing and transforming our limited, youthful vocabulary into wise, life-giving words for our students. Seeing this, how can we who are teachers not marvel at how God transforms the seeming scarcity of our limitations into the rich giftedness that allows us to teach, to minister, to love?

Through these acts of self-giving, all of us, students and teachers alike, will keep discovering that the call to teach is nothing less than to do what Jesus does -– to welcome, to embrace and to bless every child and person a teacher encounters to feel the love of God.

Second, that teaching is a prophetic ministry.

When teaching is truly focused on the child, done with compassion and directed towards him resembling more and more God’s likeness, it is, I believe, as God wishes it to always be: hope-filled.

This is what God sends Jeremiah to do. He is to proclaim God’s work amongst the people. He is not only to correct and change, but to build and to plant. That is, he is to reveal to them new life in God. New life that our responsorial psalm reminds us is not in a distant future to come, but already present: we can indeed taste and see God’s goodness in our midst.

Prophesizing is about helping others appreciate hope as God’s presence in our midst. Teaching can do this when it inspires, challenges and leads students to live the fullness of life that is God in the here and now.

This is why hope-filled teaching is especially relevant as many of us struggle to understand a world soiled by painful suffering, stained by confusion and uncertainty, and pockmarked by doubt and despair in many parts.

As teachers, you and I, and even you dear parents, have a responsibility to help our students experience more fully the hope that is the reign of God already amongst us. Let us ask for the grace to do this daily. Perhaps, this will enable more of us to savour that foretaste of God’s reign and its goodness on earth.

Third, that teaching is for lighting up the world.

Transforming students and sending them into the world to make a difference, especially, for the lost, least and forgotten, has always been a goal of Lasallian education.

In today’s gospel passage, we hear the foundation of this goal. It is Jesus. Jesus’ mission is to light up the world with God’s love. Teaching is one way he did this.

To teach, then, in a Catholic school, must be to do as Jesus did: to light up the world. It begins by teachers lighting up their students’ imaginations, igniting their passions, and enflaming their lives. Then, with hearts on fire they can go and enlighten the world. We Jesuits also speak of mission in terms of a fire that kindles other fires.

Today, we also celebrate that to teach and to be taught is to be part of Jesus’ mission. But what does teaching to light up the world look like? How can it be a fire that kindles other fires?

It is the kind of teaching the risen Jesus did as he accompanied the two despairing disciples on the road to Emmaus. His words clarified and answered their questions. His words renewed and refreshed their spirit. His words gave them life anew and empowered them to go forth and proclaim the very good news that Jesus Christ is risen, Alleluia.

The infectious fire of Jesus’ teaching excited these disciples and the apostles, sent them forth to baptize in his name and gathered the faithful round a table to break bread.

We too are gathered around a similar altar to celebrate Eucharist together. We do this in the name of Jesus who is not only Saviour but also Teacher. His teachings help us learn why we live and move and have our being in God: to be loved and to love.

The disciples at Emmaus said: “Were not our hearts burning within us while Jesus was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”

What can you say as students when you come alive because a teacher walks with you to know and live your Christian faith better? What will we say as teachers when we experience God’s presence working through us as we teach?

Perhaps, in such moments, as today’s mass also is, it is a word, not a phrase, that can best voice our thanksgiving for our teachers and their teaching.

And there can be no better word than this: “Amen” (So be it.)

photo: from the internet (www.evergreen.edu)