10th Sunday of Ordinary Time (2024)

"You’ve got to be crazy!"

Attacking someone’s mental competency and stability is an all too common invective used to marginalize opponents and adversaries. Such a charge states that, in the accuser’s opinion, their opponents have lost their grasp of reality. It implies their enemies have attitudes and viewpoints that endanger the community. It insinuates they should be marginalized or even locked away for the protection of the rest of society. Challenging the mental health of someone to hurt them and cause them to be ridiculed was as common in Jesus’ day as in ours. Accusing someone who was challenging the status quo of being crazy was a common and easy way of disregarding and rebuffing their arguments and holding them up to scorn.

Jesus was doing strange and perplexing things as he began his public ministry. He was leaving behind his social safety net of family and community ties. Jesus abandoned the safety of his occupation as a carpenter and became an itinerate preacher. He moved from place to place and depended on the generosity of strangers. He gathered a group of followers, including some eccentric people, four fishermen, a former tax collector, a nationalist revolutionary, and a few others with questionable backgrounds. Jesus challenged the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, civil authorities, and all other centers of power to abandon themselves and center on the poor and needy. Most unsetting of all, Jesus alleged he and God the Father had a special relationship. It was a close connection like that of a father and son, and Jesus encouraged everyone to develop a similar relationship.

Such activities aroused the suspicions of those in power both civilly and religiously. Jesus’ preaching was radical and revolutionary and would upset the balance of power in society. The authorities had to investigate and disparage Jesus by attacking his mental competency. Calling Jesus a nut-case who was obviously off the rails was his opponents’ first line of offense. They alleged his preaching, healing, and sharing of God’s mercy made him the tool of evil as opposed to good. Jesus’ own extended family joined in questioning his psychological competency out of fear for his well-being. They hoped blaming Jesus’ actions and words on his mental health would defuse the conflict and save Jesus from harm.

When the religious authorities claimed Jesus was the instrument of evil, he challenged them with today’s parable, illustrating how ludicrous it is to believe a house divided against itself could survive. Jesus points out that Satan, in conflict with himself, cannot stand. In the parable, Jesus claims to be the new strong man who has come to confront Satan and tie Satan up. Jesus tells the crowds he has come to share his methods of resisting evil and doing God’s will with them. He will empower them also to confront evil and do good. Jesus tells those assembled he has come to share with them the opportunity to have a loving relationship with a merciful God.

Jesus confronts the religious authorities, accusing them of sinning against the spirit as they try to humiliate and disparage his preaching of God’s mercy. He attacks the religious authorities’ contention that God’s mercy was only available to a select group of people and the notion that to have a relationship of love with God depended on being born into a chosen ethnic group and on meticulously following the Mosaic Law and all its precepts. Rather than a God generous with mercy and love, the religious authorities preached a God who is parsimonious with compassion, exacting, and fault-finding with God’s people. Jesus introduced the people to another image of God, one of forgiveness, which shares healing and mercy.

Jesus turns to the crowd to explain the purpose of this preaching is to unite and not divide. He has come to restore order to humanity’s relationship with God, fractured by the sinfulness of Adam and Eve spoken of in today’s first reading. Jesus has come to foster unity. He wants to establish a new sort of family. This family is based on true faith and an essential relationship with Him. It will be one established on acceptance and love. It comprises members who listen, hear, and act on his word and the will of God. This new family is a messianic family not based on shared DNA or bloodlines but on faithfulness to a loving relationship with God. This group will share a kinship through their relationship with Jesus, a desire to imitate Jesus, and a willingness to invite others to do the same.

Establishing this new family is risky, as shown by Jesus’s conflict with the powers of the world, but Jesus is willing to take that risk right up to offering his life on the cross. Are you willing to take the risk of membership in Jesus’ family? Are you willing to go deeper into your faith than just showing up here at Mass, sitting around waiting for it to come to an end so you can punch your card, and getting on with your weekend activities? Are you willing to risk being considered crazy by your family, co-workers, schoolmates, or neighbors by really committing yourself to a deep relationship with the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit?

I urge you to commit to a deeper relationship with Jesus today. Do it by becoming more faithful to prayer. If daily prayer isn’t part of your routine, make it. You can begin by setting aside as little as ten minutes every day at a place and time that is most convenient for you. Choose a place that is quiet and conducive to setting aside distractions. Consider using a prayer aid like the publication The Word Among Us. Every month, we set a couple of dozen copies of it out on the table at the back of the church. They are all gone now, but that shows parishioners find them helpful. You can buy your own subscription. You can use dozens of other Catholic publications, websites, and cell phone apps to help stimulate prayer. Don’t just read the reflection or commentary, but take the time to ask yourself, “What is God telling me?” or “What do I have to speak to Jesus about today?” Add a few minutes to your prayer time each day. You can rest with the Lord as long as you like. Just take the time to abide with God every day. 

Holy Redeemer instituted small faith-sharing groups this winter to foster parishioners’ prayer lives and spiritual growth. In the middle of winter, approximately eighty members attended a Day of Reflection and Faith Sharing. From that experience, over fifty people began participating in small groups every week. They have been using material from the National Eucharistic Revival to guide their time together. That series ends this Wednesday. The groups will take a few weeks off over the Fourth of July but will pick up meeting again in July.

Our objective here at Holy Redeemer is to become not a parish with small groups but a parish of small groups. We believe they will help deepen the faith of the people of the parish regardless of their age or state in life. They will help us realize our vision for Holy Redeemer to become a welcoming, Christ-centered parish with excellent worship that shares our gifts of time, talent, and treasure with our community. We feel small groups will help more members begin to evangelize their families and communities willingly. They will empower all of us to engage in works of social justice and community outreach.

Maybe you were away during the winter and missed our organization of small groups. We don’t want you to be left out. We’ll be organizing more groups. We anticipate organizing groups to try to meet different needs and circumstances. What are your circumstances? We’ll have a group for that. Realizing that many parishioners are only seasonal members, we don’t want to leave you out. We anticipate developing groups that will meet in person during the summer and maybe continue with Zoom or other online tools at other times of the year. If you think of it, we will try to bring it to reality.

Maybe you are a permanent parishioner but aren’t participating in a small group yet. Please consider doing so. Some people claim to have had a bad experience with a small group. How about giving it another shot? Things are different, and you can help prevent those circumstances of your past experience from developing again. Others might feel you’re not the group-joining type or are uncomfortable discussing something as personal as faith with strangers. Group members will tell you you won’t be a stranger for long. No one is forced or made uncomfortable about sharing either. Why not give it a shot? Joining a group isn’t a life sentence. If small groups don’t work for you after giving it a shot, you can “unsubscribe.” It won’t be held against you.

If you have been part of a small faith-sharing group, start thinking of a couple of people you want to invite to join. Your fellow parishioners will listen to you before they listen to me. Your testimonial is more likely than anything else to help them decide to join a group.

Jesus came to found a new family. It is to be a family of concern, welcome, and love that shares compassion and healing. Like every family, we can be dysfunctional at times. Not every member is at the same level of faith. Some of us are more with the program than others. Sometimes, we are more reflective of our society’s ills than transformative of them. Still, every one of us here today feels the need for God’s grace in our lives somewhere in our deepest souls. We know we can only experience the fullness of life with others who also want to follow Jesus. We innately feel we need to be part of God’s family. Let’s become more active in sharing that understanding with all our brothers and sisters.