Practice what you teach: Homily for Tuesday, February 27, 2024

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‘Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. Practice what you teach.’

Practice what you teach

When I was president of our high school in Oak Park, Illinois, outside of Chicago, Fenwick, I met an awful lot of very famous people. I won’t go through them because it’s going to defeat the whole purpose of my homily, so I won’t mention. But I had a lot of experiences, and I was in a lot of locations, and I was in a lot of places, that this little boy who grew up in the middle of rural Vermont really could never have imagined being in.

And it’s tempting to let that go to your head. See, if I’m really close to very powerful people, then that makes me very powerful, right? Or if I am very close to very wealthy people, and I mean very wealthy people, well, then I have a little bit more in my life, too.

And in our own ways, I suspect that each of us has a little bit of that inside of us. I’ve seen it in almost every school that I’ve worked in, where you have an alum who is very successful at something, and the teacher says, “I had him in class.” Like somehow, that was the reason they had all of their success. And maybe it was.

So, it’s easy to understand the Pharisees and their temptations to be seen, to be noticed, to have places of honor. What might be a little bit more interesting to us as we dig into this gospel a bit is the reaction of Jesus.

You know, yesterday I mentioned that Jesus did not spend a lot of time being politically active. In many ways, with a couple of exceptions, he also wasn’t a religious reformer either. It may seem that he was, but when we look at what he said about the Pharisees today, he said this, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you.” That’s not the language of a reformer. That’s the language of someone who is searching for an authentic expression of the faith.

That just because they’re tempted to do all kinds of other things does not mean that everything they’ve done, said, taught, is necessarily wrong. It’s a very fine line, however, because we do know that when we look at the lives of the Pharisees and the interaction of Jesus, there are instances where he takes them to task in very dramatic ways, probably none more so than the episode in the temple. The point, I think, that he’s trying to emphasize is that teaching is one thing, and it’s really important.

But Isaiah, in the first reading, reminds us that our words ring hollow if there are certain things we’re not attentive to. Redressing the wrong, hearing the orphan’s plea, defending the widow. What that really means is looking out for those who are on the margins, who aren’t very powerful, who don’t get places of honor, who have a lot of burdens already in their life. They certainly don’t need more, and if they have them, they deserve our help.

The tension of our life is always one between our deep and abiding love of God and our necessity to live out that love by the way in which we treat those people made in God’s image and likeness. The ways in which Lent helps us to do that, I’ve said more than once. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Let us ask the Lord that those three great pillars of our life may help us to love God more and to love our neighbor as ourselves. love God more and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

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