This post continues the Obsculta Preaching Series, sponsored by the Obsculta Preaching Initiative at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. In these posts, our authors engage a variety of ways in which scripture, preaching, and liturgical worship interact with the life of the faithful.
The U.S. context in which the Sunday homilist preaches has, over recent years, become increasingly fraught with divisiveness, even animosity, in the overlapping spheres of political, social, and ecclesial life. Preparing and preaching the Sunday homily toward the end of the current presidential election season cannot but entail awareness of this tense environment. And the environment certainly matters, since the preacher’s responsibility, as I concluded in my previous essay, is to the actual assembled people of God in their celebration of word and sacrament.
The Homilist in Service to the Assembly
I have in mind here the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ instruction, “Fulfilled in Your Hearing” (1982), in its assertion that the Sunday homilists’ primary consideration must be the assembly. This is so for two reasons. First, sound communication theory demonstrates that the speaker’s message can only be effective by taking account of not only what (in the speaker’s judgment) the audience needs to hear but also what they want and what they are able to hear. Failing awareness of those latter two factors offers little promise of the message really being heard. The second reason adds theological specificity to the first: The Sunday assembly is the church, “the mystery of God’s saving will, given concrete historical expression in the people with whom he has entered into a covenant. This church is the visible sacrament of the saving unity to which God calls all people.”
That vision of the people, the liturgical assembly, as church draws, as does all theology, fundamentally on scripture—in this case, various epistles/letters of the New Testament. The church’s sacramental nature in the world grounds its members’ evangelical mission. The preacher’s work serves the upbuilding of that people, that mission, which is to say, their very lives, as a participation in the paschal mystery. This is what constitutes the homily as liturgical preaching, the joining of the proclaimed biblical word to the lives of “the members of [God’s] son, in whose Body and Blood they have communion” (epiclesis, Eucharistic Prayer for Use in Masses for Various Needs).
The Biblical Word on the Cusp of Election Day
Let us consider, then, the biblical word proclaimed in the Roman Lectionary (likewise in the Revised Common Lectionary) for the present, Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, on the cusp of Election Day. Within the confines of this brief essay, which does not purport to be a commentary for preaching the full set of readings, I limit myself to considering the gospel passage.
For this Sunday, the Gospel of Mark has reached the twelfth chapter, verses 28b-34, wherein Jesus teaches an inquiring scribe that the first of all the commandments is singular love for God with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength. He is quoting of the Shema (Deut. 6:4-6), to which he adds: “The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:31, see Lev. 19:18). The scribe agrees with Jesus’ answer, commenting that such love for God and neighbor “is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (v. 33). This profound appropriation of the word of God prompts Jesus to reply, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (v. 34).
Mark’s typically compact story exemplifies the very purpose of the liturgy of the word: proclamation of the coming kingdom of God, met through love of God and neighbor. Homilist and assembly recognize accordingly their live’s mission therein. The man’s dialogue with Jesus––now Jesus’ dialogue with the assembly––bespeaks an utterly sacramental life. This is a life wherein the unseen God can only be known and loved through loving the tangible neighbor (see 1 John 4:20).
Neighbor: A Word Needing to Be Heard
Neighbor. The term bears an unsettled, even volatile quality in U.S. society this early November. News stories describe divisive tensions, if not outright divisions, between neighbors and family members due to their respective political positions and preferred candidates. What word can the preacher deliver accordingly?
Neighbor. All the more, the term confronts politicians’ blanket vilifications of foreigners, immigrants. The preacher may turn to Luke’s parallel account of Jesus’ dialogue with the scribe, wherein agreement on the command to love God and neighbor prompts the scribe’s further question: “And who is my neighbor?” (Lk. 10:29).
The preacher does well, indeed, to consider what the assembly may want to hear in comparison and contrast with what they need to hear. One homiletic possibility would be to challenge temptations to narrow self-interest in discerning one’s vote for candidates and on referenda––and perhaps this in relation to the Christ whom preacher and assembly profess in sharing communion as a sacramental sign of the kingdom, a bodily enactment of God’s vision for the world.
The third and final essay for this contribution to the Obsculata Preaching Series will post in the week of November 18th, in anticipation of the Feast of Christ the King.
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