Homily: Look Again

Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 8 / Sunday
Readings: Sirach 27:4-7 / Psalm 92:2-3, 13-14, 15-16 (R/v cf 2a) / 1 Corinthians 15:54-58 / Luke 6:39-45

Sisters and brothers, don’t we all want to be known for our goodness, especially when we have passed on and others speak about us and the life we’ve led? Who doesn’t want others to judge our actions good, value our good character, and praise our good self?

When we experience these positive ways others value us in life, I believe we celebrate the goodness of our being human. I hope you’ve counted your blessings each time this has happened in your lives.

However there are times when we are less than human in our interactions with others. Like these. When we judge another unworthy, we deny his personhood. When we judge another’s actions to be suspect, we reject her goodness. When we judge others for their faults, failings and sins, we condemn them as inhuman.

Many of us are familiar with the message of today’s Gospel reading; we associate it with Jesus’ teaching his disciples about hypocrisy. About how we judge others for their sins, when we ourselves are sinners. This is because we hear Jesus’ call to stop seeing the splinters in another’s eye while ignoring the wooden beams in ours. 

His message is also for us to hear. Many are uncomfortable when we hear this because we know Jesus is calling us out. But let’s stop and consider the grace Jesus is offering us when He does this – for us to also see the truth that the other whom we judge is as good as we are in our sinfulness. 

Here is Jesus teaching us to value each other as the sum of all our parts, that is, the humanness of my brothers and sisters and the humanness of myself. Let me explain: when we look at another  and judge him bad, deviant, or sinful, we fixate ourselves on individual moments of difference, of contradiction, of dismay, of disappointment, not the person who is more than that fault, failing or sin.

Today Jesus is calling, even challenging, us to remember that each of us is a complex mix. Of good and bad. Of words that inspire another and mouths that put down one we dislike. Of hearts that uplift another and hands that tear down the other’s dignity.

Isn’t this the ironic beauty of who someone else is, even more, who you and I really are? This is the same beauty God sees in us; even more, He still values us for and delights in us as we are.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus teaches us that God does not just see the flawed, the weak and the sinful selves that we are. He also sees the goodness, the kindness and the graciousness that we are too. More significantly, God sees the hopeful promise in each of us to become better.  Isn't it true that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future?

This is the glint in our humanity that seizes God’s gaze, and captures, maybe even, captivates, His attention. What God sees and values is the human potential to transcend our lesser selves. Isn’t this why Jesus reached out to save the adulterous woman, to include Matthew the tax collector among his disciples, and to forgive Peter for his betrayal?

With each of these persons, and in so many more examples of Jesus in the Gospels, we see how God is so enchanted with humankind that He cannot help but to seek out and recover, forgive and reconcile with, uplift and save.

I think God’s enchantment has everything to do with our goodness, even more, with that innate capacity in us to become a better version of ourselves, if we want to. And God loves us when we do. 

And so, we might want to reflect today not only on Jesus' call that we stop being hypocrites but also on the saving grace that everyone of us can be better. So look again. We will do this well when we are prepared to appreciate that who my brother and sister are is nothing less than the totality of their being fully human, that is, the tapestry of lights and shadows, good and bad, saintliness and sinfulness each of us is. 

If we dare do this, then we might better understand what Jesus means when he says at the end of the gospel reading: “A good man draws from what is good from the store of goodness in his heart; a bad man draws from what is bad from the store of badness.”

Truly how we look, judge but most of all, value each other, whether in our speech or deed, flows from what fills our hearts. 

Sisters and brothers, what fills your heart? 

Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash