_{Holy Spirit Catholic Church
Homilies}

_{Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (c) 2010
 January 23, 2010}

It isn't just the criminals on Law and Order, CSI, Monk and other cop shows who break the law. Have you ever driven above 70 mph? Have you ever sped through a yellow light? Or ignored a red light? Tax time will be here shortly. Have you ever taken a few liberties in reporting income or claiming deductions? Can anyone in this church say that he or she has not broken one of the Ten Commandments? Probably not! We Americans do not like the restrictions of law. Law rubs our individualism the wrong way.

The Israelite people were not known for their observance of God's law either. As a result they had been dragged into Babylon, into exile and into slavery. In today's reading a small group of them are back in Palestine, and Ezra is reading out the law of God to them. They weep as they listen, because they realize how badly they had broken the law and why they had to endure the misery of exile.

But law is a tricky thing. Where there is law, there is interpretation. That is why we have so many lawyers. Writing a law is difficult; it is hard to get all the wording precise, accurate, and un-ambivalent. And it isn't just the lawyers who are good at finding the cracks and exploiting them. We all do it!

That is why we hear another reader today on a platform in the synagogue in Galilee. Jesus reads out the Scripture and tells us it is fulfilled in him.

The law is now the person of Jesus. Clearly words have not been enough. "Thou shall not" has not been persuasive and convincing. God has sent his Son, the Eternal Word, not just to teach us the law, but in his own earthly life to interpret it for us.

There is now one law, Jesus Christ. There is now one interpreter of law, Jesus Christ. What you see and hear and touch in Jesus is now the law for all of us. All law is subsumed into the person of Jesus Christ. Whatever the source of law, its validity is tested against the person of Jesus.

This has been the case now for two thousand years, yet we continue to place our hope in constitutions, laws, and decrees from both state and church. Perhaps it is an admission of our weakness: we simply cannot measure up to the person of Christ. Perhaps it is just that old thing called sin that makes us unwilling and unable to try.

There is another reality about the person of Jesus that Paul calls our attention to. The flesh-and-blood Jesus has not only become the embodiment of God's law. He has not only taken all the entanglement of legality and united them into his own person. Paul tells us that by his dying and rising, and by our baptism into him, Jesus has taken all of us into his own body. We are now part of Christ, the Mystical Body of Christ.

We come here every Saturday evening or Sunday morning to confirm our membership in that Body. We take into ourselves once more His Body and His Blood, melding ourselves into him more completely. That is why Paul says in another place, it is impossible for us to take each other into court to be judged by some human law. Our law is the person of Jesus.

Is that not clear enough? We are all members of that one body, Jesus Christ. Does the eye complain about the hand, or the foot make claims against the nose? The Body is one! Live in peace in that Body. The law is one. Live with each other according to that law, Jesus Christ!

We do not like comparing ourselves to the Pharisees, and yet we might hear ourselves agreeing with them: "These are hard sayings. Who can listen to them?" That is another reason we come here every Saturday night or Sunday morning.

We come to renew our life in his one Body. We come to freely recognize our oneness in that Body with all the others who are here. We pledge our unity in Christ here and our peace with each other. We do as Ezra says today: We eat the rich food of Christ's Body and drink of his Blood, and rejoice together that we are one in his law and one in his life!