Importance of Context: Homily for Sunday, January 28, 2024

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To understand the readings is to understand the urgency of the coming Kingdom of God.

Importance of Context

I mentioned the importance of context, which is part of what we’re going to learn as we explore the Vatican II document of divine revelation, is that we can’t read the Scriptures only in one way. I can say that my experience in high school when kids encounter something from another culture or another time, I’m thinking Shakespeare for example, they don’t think it has much value because they don’t understand the culture. It’s written differently, the language is differently.

We can have the same temptation when it comes to reading the Bible. To read the Bible as if the only way to interpret it is through the eyes of the events of our current age. That is one way to read the Bible. But the document from the Second Vatican Council is very careful to say that that’s not the only way and quite frankly not the primary way to read the Bible.

It’s to understand what was going on at the time it was written first, to think about what the spiritual lesson is that God is trying to teach us, and then how to apply it first to ourselves and always first to ourselves and then to others. And we’ve got a couple of readings today that need that kind of context I think for us to understand what is being said.

And I’ll start with the second reading because it follows as they always do from what we heard last week, which was kind of interesting. I hope that husbands didn’t take the advice of last week’s gospel and say, “Live as if you’re not married.” Okay, that’s not good advice for marital success. And today we could easily get kind of sidetracked if we don’t understand the context when Paul does this contrast between the married and the unmarried person.

Because it could seem like Paul did not value marriage, which is not true. He did value marriage very much, but we have to understand the context. So what is it? Why does he make this kind of back and forth contrast between the married and the unmarried person? The husband living as if he doesn’t have a wife?

Because at the time of St. Paul, Jesus said, “I am coming soon.” And the common acceptance, the common belief was “soon” meant any second now. Like in the next five seconds Jesus could come, or in the next five minutes. And so what Paul is saying, because Jesus is going to come so quickly, so imminently, just don’t get your life complicated.

Focus on the final destination. Because you’re only going to have a few minutes, a few days, maybe a few weeks. And then Jesus is going to come again. And so in that context, what he writes is good. Now we get a sense, as you read his later writings, that he began to realize that maybe “soon” wasn’t being interpreted correctly, which is the caution the Second Vatican Council gives us in understanding the Word of God. Things are not always as they appear.

I’ll give you something that probably very few people here would say is the way we should understand what we read, and that’s in the book of Genesis. The Catholic Church has never issued a statement saying that the scientific theories of evolution are untrue. Not once. Quite frankly, if you want to know, the biggest opposition to Charles Darwin was from the Anglican Church. It wasn’t the Catholic Church.

Now the Anglican Church doesn’t have any problem with the theory of evolution today either, but when Darwin first proposed his theory, it was the Anglican Church, the English bishops, who were the most harsh that this could not possibly be true.

As a matter of fact, in 1947, there must have been some need to clarify it from the Catholic position because that’s when the Pope wrote the only document we have on the theories of evolution where he says we don’t have an issue with it, provided we maintain the belief that however creation happened, God was the Creator. This wasn’t a chance event. It wasn’t random. It was the direct desire of God.

But the how, we don’t care much about that. That’s another discipline. That’s science. We care about it in the sense of understanding our world and maybe by extension, God. Okay. So that’s the second reading. So when you hear this, the key is to make sure that we understand that the primacy that Paul is getting at is not this life.

It’s heaven. It’s our salvation when our brokenness will be completely healed, when we will forever be in the presence of God and see God as He is. That’s the final destination. We live in a world of brokenness. I hope this isn’t the final destination.

Look around at our world for a minute. It’s broken. People suffer. We still haven’t learned to share what we have with those in need. We have wars. We have violence. We have situations where people every day will die simply because they don’t have enough food. Hopefully this isn’t the final destination because while it’s good and I’m happy, I like my life, I ask, as Alfie did, for those of you of a certain generation, what’s it all about?

Because it can’t be this. It has to be more. The context is also important for us to understand what Moses is saying in the first reading. They’re getting ready to enter the Promised Land. Okay, the great promise that they were leaving slavery in Egypt and the Egyptians were horrible to the Israelites. Let’s make no mistake about it. They weren’t just slaves. They were treated brutally and badly by the Egyptians.

But they go into the Promised Land. Now Moses isn’t going to get to be in it, but he’s going to see it. And they’re given a caution which they never completely listen to. Don’t imitate the people you see in the Promised Land. Why? We don’t get the back story behind what happened before. Don’t imitate them because they believe the child sacrifice was a good thing. So don’t imitate them. Don’t marry them.

Not because God has an inherent problem with strangers, but you might come to want to do the things they do in order to fit in. And sadly, they do. King Solomon, for example, he liked child sacrifice. When he went astray, that’s what happens. So we have to read these things in a particular context because when we hear some of these things in the Bible, the Israelites are learning about justice and they don’t always get it right.

But what does Moses say then in the midst of this? God will continue to speak with you. God will continue to be in your presence. God will continue to love you, to move your hearts, to forgive your sins, to show for us to you the tremendous promise of his life.

And that’s where the document of the Second Vatican Council that we’re starting with is going to begin. Why do we need to care about God’s authority? Because we have a deep desire in our heart for a relationship with God. We may not be aware of it. We may not fully realize it. But we know it is there because in faith we say that is what God has planted in us.

And so, as we think of our day today, recognize that there are many ways that God is going to speak to you and does speak to you every day. Some, I would say in my life when God speaks to me, I hear. Most, I miss completely because I’m engaged in other things. But as we heard in the psalm, if today you hear the voice of God, harden not your heart.

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