Dialogue With Scripture
Today, this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.
Not too long ago, I had an opportunity to visit Las Vegas
and the bright lights of Las Vegas never seem to dull.
It is so bright and it blocks out everything.
Even during the daytime, the lights are bright.
I also had the opportunity to spend some time in the Nevadan Desert
and it was such an amazing contrast.
We look up in the sky and the lights of Vegas are long gone,
we look up into the sky and there is nothing
but the magnificence of billions of stars.
It is completely transfixing
when we see so many bright, luminous stars,
and some so bright that they seem to be the north star!
It was just captivating and transfixing.
It is not hard in that moment to realize
how we are just a group of people on one planet
in the midst of billions of other galaxies and planets,
and not to be humbled by the context of the cosmos.
Yet God has chosen us.
That is our belief that God has chosen this planet for us
and has given us life that we can know him.
What I find fascinating about the lights of those stars
is that they do not go away in Las Vegas.
They just get drowned out.
We have the same problem here in Los Altos,
maybe not as severe as Las Vegas, but it is hard to see the stars.
We are better here than in San Jose.
But they are there.
All those lights as the stars are burning brightly for all to see.
We have to take the time to remove ourseleves
from all the bright lights of distraction to see them.
They remain there for us to see all day, every day.
The reason I bring that up is today
we celebrate the third Sunday of Ordinary time and
Pope Francis has designated this third Sunday of Ordinary Time
to be dedicated as the Word of God Sunday.
As Catholics need to renew ourselves in the word of God
or in Holy scriptures, as we have known it.
Today’s selection of readings are spectacular
and they emphasize this need to listen to the word of God.
The first reading from the prophet Nehemiah,
the word of God is spoken to the community;
they read for 4-6 hours!
I am not going to have you all stand for six hours
while I read scriptures to you
but that is what they did from early morning and until noon.
They read nonstop so they would hear the word of God spoken to them.
Then we have this beautiful letter from Paul to the Corinthians,
the divided community, reminding them how
God works through all people in the community,
not just any one group.
They are all members of just one body.
But the most spectacular of all is Luke’s gospel.
We hear from the very beginning of Luke’s gospel,
and then we jump four chapters.
This splicing very rarely happens in our church.
We rarely do that.
We rarely take it out of context.
But the church has made a point that
this was written anew and here is what he is.
Jesus is the fulfillment of the scripture.
Jesus is the bright light that leads us to see all other lights.
He is the one who enables us to see
what God is fulfilling in our lives.
So Jesus, in a sense, God becomes our north star, if you would,
that we look to seek in this sky of lights.
But here is the challenge for us,
our life is so full of other bright lights
that it is so hard to hear the word of God.
In our life there are so many other voices,
so many other written words,
so many other spoken words,
so much noise that is hard to hear the voice of God.
Now you all know how much I pound away at
how important prayer is in our life.
But today it emphasizes that not only is listening to God important,
but listening to God particularly through scripture is important
because it is God’s spoken word for us to hear and to to dialogue with.
I want to break that open just a little bit
because you hear me talk about how important prayer is.
But I want to talk about how important prayer is together
and together listening to scripture
because it has something powerful to say to us.
But we have to be very careful.
Scripture on its own does not speak to us.
Rather we dialogue with it.
If we believe that it speaks to us like a piece of paper
and this is what I am told to do,
then we are missing how scripture works.
It is a love letter written to us as a dialogue.
And at any given time, we will read the same scripture one day
and then 10 years later we read the exact same scripture
and we get a completely different message.
Why? Because the scripture is alive.
It is a dialogical document that is meant to engage us.
And if we refuse to acknowledge that it is a dialogue,
then we become fundamentalists
because what scripture says, and we beat people up with it.
We have to be very careful.
It requires great honesty and humility to come to scripture
and to allow the word of God to speak to us in our current condition.
So we have to be honest with where we are in our life,
what is going on in my heart.
Then we talk and allow God to speak to us in this moment.
What is he saying to me today?
And what is he saying to us today?
Because it is, as St. Paul says, a communal practice,
one in which we do together, we need each other.
And there becomes the church, the Catholic church’s contribution.
It is not just between me and God,
but me, God and the community.
We need each other to interpret the scriptures
validly and in a healthy way.
So what does that all do for us?
I am asking of us all is to make an effort to read scripture.
To take some time out, to read from the word of God,
to put away all the other lights and all the other distractions
and take up the word of God and
allow God to have this conversation with us
because he has something to say to us in our world.
And if we are willing to be humble enough
and enter into that dialogue,
then we will find that God has something
powerful and beautiful to say to us.
And it will happen for us each and every day.
So number one, we have to cut out some time,
put aside all distractions and read the scriptures.
That is why we give away those “Give Us This Day” prayer books.
To encourage you to read and to do this on a daily basis.
It takes discipline and it takes practice
to hear the voice of God in and through scripture.
The second thing we, we need is to do it together.
And that is why we come together on Sunday.
Why is that so important?
Because our lives are never singular.
We do not live alone in this world.
We are part of a community.
And a community has a reality, it has a need
and it too has a dialogue that is necessary.
And that is what Paul’s letter to the Corinthian says.
If one person in the household says,
“No, I want this.” then everybody else is going to suffer.
And if that other person thinks they will not suffer, they will.
Because the body is one whole.
We are one whole body of Christ.
And when one side suffers, the other side suffers.
When our immigrants are being persecuted, my friends, we will suffer.
We may not think we will suffer.
But we will.
They pick our crops.
They are the ones who grow it and they do so much work.
We can say what we want.
A stroke of somebody’s pen is not going to take
that reality away from us.
That is the reality of our lives.
That we are one community.
We have to be very faithful to God’s word,
which is one of mercy and love.
And we do this together.
No one person has a right to change that including one of us.
We do it together.
We do this together.
We listen to God in our heart together
and we respond and call to action together
in kindness, in gentleness and in love.
Today, Jesus promises that he comes to bring liberty to the captives.
He tells us that he comes to set people free.
That is what we call a jubilee year.
And that is what we celebrate in 2025.
And the Pope was invited us all to go on this journey of hope and joy
and to be part of this year of hope this year
in which we will be more merciful,
be kinder, be gentler, and more loving.
So I plead with all of us to take time to listen to God’s word in our hearts
and to be humble enough to dialogue with it
and see what is God calling me to.
And then what God is calling us to do.
But he calls us to one community in mercy and love to all.
Today, this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.