OWNING YOUR
OWN BIBLE
The title of my homily for this
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C - is, “Owning Your Own Bible.”
It’s a good topic and theme for
a day like today - we're home and outside the world is closed down because of the snow.
Moreover, the readings are about reading the sacred scriptures.
In the first reading from the Book of Nehemiah, Ezra the priest stands on a wooden platform -
that was constructed for the moment - and he reads from the sacred scrolls to the
whole assembly of the people.
They are back from the
Babylonian Captivity. They are rebuilding homes and walls. They are rebuilding
their lives as Jews. They are rebuilding their faith. So they better listen to
their words, their scriptures, their sacred words, words that can ground them better with their roots.
SCROLLS
The writings in both readings were on scrolls -
that were unrolled.
We read this in Nehemiah - and
also in today’s gospel.
If you have ever been to a Bar
or Bas Mitzvah - the young girl or young boy receives the scroll where the text
they have chosen is written. The Rabbi takes the scrolls from a box, a closet, a tabernacle, in center - like our tabernacle.
[Boca Raton,
Florida
synagogue -
welded brass
on copper -
10 feet high and
6 feet wide.]
The young person reads the
scrolls like Ezra and Jesus did, as well as give a commentary. Then their job
in life is to take the words they choose and put some flesh into them.
YOUR BIBLE
Question: where is your Bible? Do you have a Bible - with your name on it?
Many people are given a Bible at their Confirmation or Bar or Bas Mitzvah. Do
you still have yours - if you received such a gift?
Enshrine it. Treasure it. Reverence
it. Put it in a sacred place. Know where it is. Use it. Pray with it.
Favorite Story: one of my
favorite stories about a Bible - and I’ve told this story many times - goes
like this.
A couple were getting
married. An uncle gives the couple an expensive leather bound Bible in a big
box as a wedding present.
For the next 20 years every
time he sees them, he asks them about that wedding gift he gave them: the
leather bound Bible. They said, “Yes, wonderful, we use it all the time.” They
didn’t - but they didn’t want to upset their uncle - whom they wrote off as a
church goer.
When they received it, they had opened up the box slightly - saw what it was in it and said,
“Nice!” to themselves. It went onto the top shelf of a closet and into another closet if they
moved - never to be opened.
Then one evening, their daughter -
while doing her high school home work - asked her mom and dad, “Do we have a Bible?
I need one for an essay I have to write for home work.”
Mom said, “I think there is one in the top of
the closet over there. Uncle Jack gave us a nice one for our wedding.”
Their daughter got a chair -
stood on it - and got up into the top of the closet and sure enough found a
nice strong cardboard box. She opened it - said, "Good!" and brought the Bible to the dining
room table where she was doing her paper.
60 seconds later she came
running into the evening news which her mom and dad were watching and was
yelling, “Mom, dad, there’s money in here in this Bible. Lots of money - all 20 dollar
bills.”
Their Uncle had put a 20 dollar
bill at the beginning of every chapter of that bible. It was a Catholic Bible -
that’s 73 times 20 dollars.
Well, they were embarrassed -
but they called their uncle - and made their confession and their thanks.
I like that story. I heard another version. Instead of 20 dollar bills it was a gift car from daddy to son.
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
I also love the story about the Dead
Sea Scrolls. In 1947 a Bedouin Kid with kid goats had one get lost and perhaps
got into a cave.
Well, the kid climbed into the cave and the rest is history. By 1967 or so - 11 caves had been found and
cleaned up - with over 50,000 pieces of scrolls and scrolls of all sorts.
The oldest Old Testament complete texts
at the time were from the 900’s with some earlier fragments. In one great find and leap, the world now jumped back
almost 2000 years.
I like to say that everyone has
caves within them that contain the Bible - that is if we went to church - read
the readings, heard the readings - what have you - and they got embedded in our
memory.
They just have to be discovered
- unrolled - and read.
Cave in!
JOSEPH FITZMYER
One of the world’s top New
Testament Biblical Scholar is Joseph Fitzmyer - 95 years of age or so - from
Philadelphia - a Jesuit. I once took a
workshop in Chicago that he was giving on Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
At that workshop, I just happened to walk with him after lunch going back
to the place where we were staying. I asked him, “When it comes to the Bible, what was the most
interesting thing you ever experienced in your life?”
He stopped and told me about
the time he was doing some work on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
He was brought into a special room in Israel. There they had 50 some pieces of scraps from a Dead Sea Scroll Cave. Many
scrolls in the caves had been in jars - to preserve them, but some jars had broken - and
parts of the scrolls were broken off and were scattered on the floor of the caves.
He was to take a scrap of leather scroll, scape off
the dirt - which included bird droppings - and then study the piece and see
what was written on it. Then he would
write on an index card over here what he read. So that was scrap one - and
index card one - placed on the table and he would do all 50 scraps that way.
Yes - amazing. Who would have
thought someone would have a story like that as the most amazing thing they
ever did?
What I got out of that for this
sermon is the following.
Not only do many of us have a
Bible hidden in some cave or cellar or closet inside of us - but we also often don't take the time to dust off favorite texts that have become part of us - without us realizing it.
FAVORITE TEXT
In today’s gospel Jesus goes
into synagogue and the Scroll of Isaiah 61 is opened for him and he reads it -
and then says, “Today this text is fulfilled in your midst.”
Whenever I do a funeral, I ask
the family, “Did your husband or your father or mother or sister have a
favorite Bible text?”
The last funeral I had the
family said their dad didn’t do church - and if he went - he’d be in the back
bench.
We priests run into many a Catholic who is in that position.
Then the family added that it’s funny that their dad will be up front in the casket tomorrow for his funeral.
I said, “I love Luke 15.
Read those 3 stories in that chapter from Jesus and you’ll see where Pope Francis is getting
his material about forgiveness and mercy. This is where he got his open door
policy.”
I concluded. "Be at peace and let God be God to your father. Even though you said he rarely went to church, let God be good to your dad - as he was good to you."
The funeral I had just a few days before that one was for a man whose daughter said to me, “My dad loved the Beatitudes. Could
you read that as the gospel for his funeral Mass and could you explain why my dad loved them.”
I didn't know why he loved the beatitudes, but from what I heard about her dad, I did weave some thoughts of mercy for him as well.
St. Alphonsus Liguori, the
founding father of us Redemptorists, loved today’s gospel and chose it as his inaugural
address. It tells us what redemption and mercy are all about: opening up or unrolling the scriptures, hearing Good News brought to us who are poor, discovering freedom when feeling captive, having our eyes opened - from our blindness - and going free. [Cf. Luke 4: 16-19; Isaiah 61: 1-2]
CONCLUSION
My favorite text in the Bible is Galatians
6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens and in this way you’ll fulfill the Law of
Christ.”
I asked that Galatians 6:2 be
read at my funeral.
What is your text? What do you
want read at your funeral?
Better: Not what is your death
text, but what is your life text?
