2022-Jul-03: Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

 

Opening prayer

Heavenly Father, send forth your Spirit to enlighten our minds
and dispose our hearts to accept your truth.
Help us to listen to one another with openness and honesty,
eager to learn from the talents and intuitions that you have given each of us. Never let differences of opinion diminish our mutual esteem and love.
May we leave this meeting with more knowledge and love for you and your Son.
In the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Theme of the liturgy 

When God decides to call on someone to be a disciple - one has to be ready to leave it all and follow the one true living God

Isaiah 66:10-14

Today's reading are from the final chapters in the book of Isaiah reinforcing 3 themes: Call to rejoice, Jerusalem as a mother and God comforting the children of Jerusalem.
The "Third Isaiah” (chapters 56–66) was written in the years following the return of Judean exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem in 538 BCE.  The people had suffered through the exile, cut off from their land and from their God. Then, when some were allowed to return in anticipation of the great blessings they had been promised, they found only further suffering. The small groups of exiles who returned to Judah after Persia’s defeat of Babylon in 539 faced hardship, famine, political in-fighting, and economic oppression. Their weariness, after generations of oppression and humiliation, must have been unbearable - these passages does not deny these painful realities but rather calls the people to rejoice, providing heart-stirring images of Jerusalem and God as nurturing mothers.
In fact, more feminine images for God appear in Isaiah than anywhere else in the Bible. In Isaiah 42:14, God’s strength is like that of a woman in labor. Isaiah 46:3 and 49:15 compare God’s compassion to a mother’s. Earlier in chapter 66, God acts as a midwife while Jerusalem gives birth, “open[ing] the womb” and “deliver[ing]” (verse 9). Then, in verse 13, the image of Jerusalem as mother merges with that of God as mother: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” Isaiah 66:13 forms a bookend with Isaiah 40:1. “Comfort, oh comfort my people, says your God.” In a sense this whole part of the book of Isaiah is enveloped in divine comfort, with recurrent themes point forward to a new, God-given future. God’s promises in today's passage, Isaiah 66:10-14, bring the old world of ruin to an end, and in its wake, create a new world, one in which Jerusalem is a joy. In this new world, Zion is no longer a place of scarcity and collapse; its life and destiny are marked by gladness, love, joy, and consolation.

Psalm 66

Chosen for a Sunday toward the end of the liturgical season of Ordinary Time, Psalm 66 blows in fresh air with its jubilant call for joy — a common thread that all scripture lessons for this Sunday share.

Most commentators believe that Psalm 66 was penned by Hezekiah, king of Judah, after the Lord delivered the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the attack of the Assyrian army. Although the city was surrounded by 185,000 Assyrians, Isaiah had prophesied that not a single arrow from an Assyrian bow would make its way into Jerusalem (37:33). Indeed, that night, an angel of the Lord came and slaughtered the entire army (2 Kings). It seems Hezekiah wrote this psalm in celebration of this event.

One can make a case that there are three psalms within a psalm: a hymn (66:1–4), a community psalm of thanksgiving (66:5–12), and an individual psalm of thanksgiving (66:13–20).
Likewise this psalm  can be divided into two parts. The first half, verses 1 through 12, would be sung by a choir. The second half, verses 13 through 20, would be sung by a soloist, perhaps by Hezekiah himself.

Galatians 6:14-18

Paul founded the churches in Galatia. He spent time among them as the Galatians nursed him back to health while he recovered from an injury. Paul preached among them that both Jews and Gentiles, and all other nations conquered by Rome, bringing them into right relationship with the Holy Spirit, through faith in Jesus the Anointed One. Paul then leaves them to continue his calling to preach the gospel to the nations elsewhere. After Paul leaves, other teachers arrive among the churches in Galatia preaching a different gospel, which Paul derides as not even a gospel. These other teachers tell the Galatians that to be in right relationship with God they must be circumcised.
Paul learns what these other teachers are preaching, thinks they are absolutely wrong, and fires off this letter to the churches in Galatia to explain why. He argues through the letter that it’s not “works of the law” like circumcision that bring the believer into right relationship with God. Paul says, on the contrary, come as you are. The only thing needed to be in right relationship with God is faith in Jesus the Anointed in doing good and righteous works. This passing reference to “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision” is shorthand for this conflict that inspired the writing of the letter. Paul’s primary concern throughout this letter is not so much for the individual but for how groups of people can be in right and just relationship with one another within the church. 
Paul offers his personal witness or testimony to Christian faith. He does so by way of the image of crucifixion and the cross of Christ, saying that he and the world have been crucified to each other. 

Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

In today's passage, Luke envisions the mission of preaching the kingdom is carried out by many of Jesus’ followers - 72 to be precise. 
Jesus adds a more disquieting metaphor—he is sending them out “like lambs among wolves” indicating the opposition that the seventy-two will experience (as Jesus himself has), in addition to welcoming responses.
Jesus’ metaphor of his mission as a harvest sets the tone for a sense of urgency, prohibiting against taking purse, bag, or sandals, or greeting anyone along the way. These instructions communicate a hurriedness to preparation and travel, especially when heard in light of an echo from 2 Kings 4, where the prophet Elisha gives somewhat similar instructions to his servant to make haste and go ahead of him on a mission: “Don’t greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, do not answer” (2 Kings 4:29).  
In verses 5-6 Jesus sends out disciples with the first proclamation that sounds deceptively simple: “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’” (verse 5). This word of peace is the first word, the opening word, the announcing word. Notice that Jesus does not tell them to do any sort of assessment or judgement before making this proclamation of shalom (wellbeing and restoration). He doesn’t ask them to determine whether this house follows the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or whether this house has kept the law or whether this house is likely to receive the good news. Jesus doesn’t ask them to do a risk assessment or pre-judge whether this house will be worth their time.
Jesus goes on to instruct them in the dynamic of sharing peace: “if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you” (verse 6). Not just any random generic peace but 'your peace' meaning the salvic redemptive peace that the world cannot give.
Here again, Jesus does not instruct them to argue, convince, or threaten if they are not welcomed. He does advise them to signal their moving on by shaking dust off their shoes (verse 11). In this way, they are not weighed down by rejection, or paralyzed with trying to figure out what they did wrong or could have done differently to produce a different outcome. Instead, Jesus invites them to move forward in the confidence of these two proclamations, “Peace to this house!” and “The kingdom of God has come near.”
This prayer from St. Teresa of Avila’, reminding us that each of us now carries on the ministry that Jesus gave the 72:
Christ has no body on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. 
Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out to the world. 
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. 
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless others now.

Closing prayer

We now raise in prayer the following in our community who need prayers including Jean's daughter-in-law Lynn, Lou Ryan, Tom Smith, Loran Courpet, Elinor Stetson, Maria Gallo, Suzanne's brother Raymond ...

Heavenly Father we praise and thank you for the gift of life.

Heavenly Father we call on you right now in a special way.

It was through your power that they were created. 

Every breath they take, every morning they wake and every moment of every hour they live under your power.

Father, we ask you now to touch them with that same power.

For if you created them from nothing, you can certainly recreate them anew.

Fill them with the healing power of your Spirit.

Cast out anything that should not be in them.

Mend what is broken, root out any unproductive cells.

Open any blocked arteries and veins.

And rebuild any damaged areas of their body and brain.

Remove all inflammation and cleanse any infection.

Let the warmth of your healing love pass through their body to make new any unhealthy areas so that their body will function the way that you created it to function.

And Father, restore them to full health in mind and body so that they may serve you the rest of their life 

We ask this through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen.