Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

Jer 1.4-5, 17-19; Ps 70; II Cor 12.31-13.13; Lk 4.21-30

1. One of the things which the Jewish people of Our Lord’s day found so hard to swallow was the implication in much of His teaching that His message was for all mankind, not just the ‘chosen race’. This seemed to contradict their most cherished beliefs, that Israel was God’s favourite nation, the chosen race, superior to all other peoples. This sense of superiority was certainly justified. Again and again the Old Testament shows how God favoured the Jews, often at the expense of all other nations upon earth. He nourished them, cherished them, forgave them, times without number. They were undoubtedly His special favourites. They had a unique place in His plans.

2. This sense of being so special is why the Israelites found Our Lord’s references to faith being found outside Israel so infuriating. His teaching that Samaritans, Syrians, and all gentiles could be pleasing to God without becoming Jewish – this sounded like heresy: “in the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.” This is what enraged everyone in the synagogue. This is why they hustled Him out of the town, intending to throw Him over a cliff. This angry reaction was a way of reaffirming their belief in the uniqueness of Israel, their privileged ‘special relationship’ with the Almighty.

3. Perhaps we Christians sometimes experience in ourselves a similar reaction, when we hear it suggested, as it so often is nowadays, that all religions are really the same, that all paths lead to the same place, that Christianity is just one way among many. Or we hear it said that all churches are the same. A preacher was once heard to say that the various ‘versions’ of Christianity in the different denominations were like so many tins of beans. The beans inside the various tins were all exactly the same. Only the labels on the outside of the tins were different. The well-meaning but misguided preacher was nearly lynched after the service. He was lucky not to have been thrown over a cliff! Perhaps he himself believed what he was suggesting, but most of the Christians present took a very dim view of his message.

4. Why does that kind of sloppy thinking make us feel so uncomfortable? Are we putting limits on God’s grace? I hope not. It has always been Catholic teaching that God’s grace works outside the visible boundaries of the Church. We in the Church are certainly bound by the sacramental system, but God is not. He gives His grace to whomsoever he pleases, when and how He pleases. This must be so. Clearly His grace can be given to those outside the Church. If it were not, nobody would ever be converted. The Holy Spirit blows and acts where He chooses. All this is true. Yet it does not, cannot, change the basic facts of Christian faith, that Christ Our Lord is, in His own words, ‘the truth, the life and the way’, and that His truth is found in its fullness in the Catholic Church, the Church He founded.

5. To understand the uniqueness of the Redeemer and His Church, we should remember that Judaism was God’s preferred way of preparing the world for Christ. God’s plans for the human race were not something extempore, cobbled together on the spur of the moment. God’s loving plans were slowly and painstakingly enacted, century after century, for thousands upon thousands of years. The entire history of the chosen race is central to that grand design. Through the long and often painful lessons which Israel had to learn about fidelity and repentance, God taught mankind to hope for salvation. Judaism was the stage built by God for Christ to make His entrance in. Under divine providence, no other stage, no other setting, no other background was possible. For this reason, and for many other reasons, there is absolutely no place for any kind of anti-Semitism in the Christian life. Spiritually speaking, we Christians are all descendants of the chosen race, and we should take a proper pride in this part of our ancestry, grateful to have been grafted into so noble a family.

6. When the long-expected Messiah finally came, the Father of Israel was not offering the world simply another option alongside any already existing options. The birth of Christ, His life, death and resurrection, all this was something new, unique and unrepeatable. Options and variables were now over, for ever. Certainties and absolutes had replaced them. The new and everlasting covenant inaugurated at the Last Supper and on Calvary fulfilled and replaced all that had gone before, as the means of approaching God, being put right with Him. It wasn’t that God changed His mind, or withdrew His earlier gifts. He did something better. He fulfilled His earlier promises by playing what we might call His final card. Jesus Christ is God’s final and unalterable statement. Beyond Jesus, there is nothing more to be said, either by God to us, or by us to God. Since the coming of Christ, salvation is found through Him, and Him alone. There is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved.

7. The uniqueness of Christ, not one way but the way, must always be understood in an inclusive sense, otherwise we have seriously missed the point. Christ is the light of all nations. All human creatures ever born, past, present and to come, are called to salvation, in Christ. This applies even to those who through no fault of their own have not yet heard or properly understood the good news about Jesus. So our task is always to encourage and assist those who have not yet come to that fullness.( My lips will tell of your help). We do this by inviting them in, never by keeping them out. It should rejoice our hearts when we see, as we often do, the unmistakable signs of holiness in the lives of so many who are still outside the visible boundaries of the Church. By God’s grace, they, like us, are on the way to salvation. We must hope and pray for them to find the true context of that call to holiness, by entering the one true fold of the Redeemer, the Catholic Church, the home of the Spirit.

Osho