April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
WORD OF FAITH
Open your ears this week
'He took a loaf of bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me"...' -- Luke 22:19
It's either ironic or somehow divinely planned that the Passion Narrative proclaimed on Palm Sunday during this official Church Year of Mercy and forgiveness is from Luke's Gospel (Luke 22:14-23:56). Lucan scholars constantly remind us that his Gospel, more than the other three combined, zero in on the merciful Jesus.
Nowhere is this part of his personality more stressed than in Luke's passion narrative. For instance, only Luke mentions Jesus miraculously replacing the severed ear of the high priest's servant in Gethsemane. Only Luke has Jesus pray, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do," as His enemies pound nails into His wrists. And Luke's Jesus alone assures the repentant thief, "This day you will be with me in paradise."
Luke employs Jesus' mother Mary is the example of the perfect "other Christ." She fulfills the evangelist's definition of a perfect Christian: She hears God's word and carries it out. That's why Sunday's Deutero-Isaiah reading (Isaiah 50:4-7) fits perfectly into Luke's theology: In his third song of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh, the prophet supplies us with the most precise definition of a disciple of Yahweh.
Listen up
"Morning after morning," he writes, "Yahweh opens my ear that I may hear, and I have not rebelled, have not turned back."
Biblical scholar Rev. Carroll Stuhlmueller, CP, always reminded us that God's perfect disciples hit the floor every morning listening: listening today for what they missed in God's Word yesterday; listening for something God hadn't even mentioned yesterday. True discipleship always revolves around listening.
Though Luke would agree, he zeroed in on listening to how God wishes us to show mercy on any given day, in any place and to any individual. This is certainly the Word of God which he presumed followers of Jesus would not only hear, but actually carry out.
This was also the "emptying out" of which Paul speaks in his letter to the Philippians (Phil 2:6-11). In the Apostle's theology, before Jesus could be proclaimed as Yahweh, the Lord, He had to completely empty Himself, taking the form of a slave. He had to identify with the lowest caste of humans.
Jesus and the Word
In some sense, that's what Luke also has his Gospel Jesus do. Throughout his Gospel, Jesus constantly identifies with those on the fringes of first-century-CE society: sinners, women, Samaritans. In the passion narrative, He hears God's Word about identifying with those carrying out His death sentence, even becoming one with the criminals sharing His fate. His mercy and forgiveness seem to be the way He carries through on having heard that Word.
We all know dogs can hear sound waves our human ears can't pick up. In a parallel way, our sacred authors tried to enable their readers to hear voices people around them either couldn't pick up or refused to pick up. From experience, they knew this wasn't an easy task.
For instance, the Hebrew word which Deutero-Isaiah employs for Yahweh opening his ear every morning is the same word that, in other places of Scripture, is used to describe drilling out a well. The prophet is obviously convinced that hearing God's Word takes a lot of effort.
Perhaps one of the best ways to celebrate this week of holiness -- besides participating in liturgical celebrations -- would be to work on our hearing. It might make mercy easier to practice.[[In-content Ad]]
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