Homily for July 5, 2009

Today’s first reading describes the call of the prophet Ezekiel. I want to set it in its historical time frame. It's in Babylon, modern day Iraq. The people have been driven into exile. All of their cherished beliefs and securities have been dashed to the ground. Their temple has been destroyed. They are trying to figure out, "What do you make of all this? Is God faithful or not? And where is God in all this?"
So Ezekiel comes on the scene, and at the risk of oversimplifying, he tells them two things. God is faithful. God will make a new covenant with you. God will restore you. Ezekiel is the one who has the famous vision of the valley of the dry bones, the dry bones that come together and get flesh and blood and sinew and live again. Ezekiel has the image of God giving you a new heart and a new covenant.
But he also says, "It's your own fault. You were warned that this was going to happen, and you didn't listen. There were prophets sent to you, and you ignored them."
God says to Ezekiel, "I'm sending you to a stiff necked, rebellious people, obstinate in spirit and hard of heart. Whether they listen or not, speak my words, and they will know that a prophet has been among them.
In the Gospel, we hear those famous words: A prophet is not without honor except --  where?  In his hometown, his own family, and his own house.
As I read about these, I thought of our economic times today, the crisis that we experience in our society, and increasingly I read things that say this started 30 years ago, and we should have seen it. The signs were all there. I wonder, who were the prophets 30 years ago whom we should have listened to?
I'm not going to name them. I have my opinion about who they are, but that's my opinion, and if you want to ask me after Mass I'll tell you who they were, or at least who I think they were. But you might have a different vision of who they were, and I don't want to degenerate into an argument about that.
The question I want to ask you is, among the many voices you hear, how do you know which ones are prophetic and which ones aren't? My goal is not to answer the question for you, but to encourage you to ask it for yourself and come up with your own answers. I'll suggest some answers that I think come from the Bible.
I had a history professor at the Catholic University of America who one day said something in class that I've never forgotten. It probably was a throwaway comment on his part, but it made a lasting impression on me.
This is what he said. He said, "Jesus was rejected, and the prophets were rejected, and when you are ordained and get out there in ministry, there will be moments when you feel rejected. And you will be tempted to think it's because you're like Jesus and the prophets. Don't think that at all. Just ask what dumb, stupid thing you did." Then he went on to say, "But never be afraid to speak the truth for fear of rejection."
Well, over my years in ministry  and I'm sure all of you have, too  I've met people who thought they were prophets who were just plain ineffective and did dumb things. And I've met people who were rejected who really were prophets. Can you think of some in your own memory, an example of both, people who thought they were prophets but were just really behaving in unenlightened ways? Mind you, I'm not going to say anybody is enlightened or

unenlightened, but there are enlightened behaviors. I've also met people who were genuine prophets.
If we read the Bible, what criteria might we find? Criteria number one, the genuine prophets were always concerned about the poor. The impact of whatever was being done on the poor was uppermost in their mind. If you took the Bible and, with a knife, cut out every reference to injustice or lack of compassion for the poor, and every condemnation of government and leaders and people for being insensitive to the poor, if you cut out every reference to that, what do you think you'd have?
[inaudible response] Right, you'd have very unconnected pieces of paper that would look like a paper cutout doll. You wouldn't have much at all. Correspondingly, by the way, there are passages in the Bible that are very clear in their teaching about sexual matters, but if you cut them out, what would you have left? You wouldn't even miss them, because they are very few in number. I don't want to start an argument there, but I just want to say that the difference between biblical concern, genuine biblical concern, and the concern of some religious leaders is day and night. The prophets are always concerned about the poor.
And the prophets condemn empty religion. They condemn the religion that is correct according to all of the forms, but empty of compassion and empty of spirit.
Thirdly the prophets always call us to repentance, to a change of heart, and to look at our own life. The prophets never promise false security or prosperity. They never promise prosperity without sacrifice and fidelity.
By the way, I listen to satellite radio in my car a lot, and my favorite satellite station is The Decade of the 40s. That's when I grew up. On that satellite radio you will often hear the news of that day from one of the years in the 40s. I haven't heard it today. Yesterday was the news broadcast from July 4, 1942. One of the things I'm struck by as I listen to news reports from the forties is that our leaders asked us to sacrifice.
I remember as a child going to the grocery store on east New York Street by Jefferson and New York with the little red stamps that were --  anybody know what they were?-- meat stamps, food stamps. Meat was rationed, gasoline was rationed, and we were asked to make sacrifices.
Do you know how they financed the war? Bonds. They sold war bonds. They didn't just print more money. They sold war bonds and asked us to sacrifice. I think the true prophets will always ask us to sacrifice.
And now a comment on Jesus going to his hometown. What was behind their rejection of him? According to their custom, Jesus was acting in a shameful way. He was the son of a carpenter. He was supposed to be a carpenter, and he was supposed to stay home and take care of his mother, and he wasn't doing that. Instead he was running off doing mighty deeds in other towns. So they said, "Where did he get all this? Isn't this the carpenter?"
Let me ask you, how many of you have ever felt put into a box? What's it feel like to be put into a box?



You have no control of a situation. You're completely void of any creativity whatsoever, and you become very hapless and corporate like, maybe become a corporate soldier in work, for instance.
Okay. So you become very uncreative, you have no control.
When you've been put into a box, how many of you have ever been put into a box that you think doesn't fit, that takes away the mystery of who you are? "Oh, yeah, I know who you are. I know your personality type." People today are big into personality type tests. "I know what you are. You're this on that scale and you're that on this scale, and so I know who you are." And it never fits.
"I know who you are, you're a liberal," or "You're a conservative," and there are people who, if something is said by a liberal will find it very hard to believe it. I'm not one of those. There are other people who will find it very hard to believe something said by a conservative. I probably am closer to one of those, but neither is close to the truth. The prophetic voice might always come from somebody who refuses to fit into the box that you put them into.
These are just some reflections I have on how you would go about answering the question, "Who are the prophetic voices among us, and what would they call us to? What direction would their voice lead us into?" I just encourage you to ask the question for yourself. What criteria would you use to judge whether a voice really comes from God or whether it comes from somewhere else? And how would you justify that voice and that judgment from the whole history of our biblical and our faith tradition?