| December 29, 2000 Sirach 3:2-6,12-4 + Colossians 3:12-21 + Luke 2:41-52 |
| If the Old Testament could guide us through the four Sundays of Advent, I think it might be worth-while to stick with that First Testament right on through the Christmas Season, and as I looked ahead, I think we will not be disappointed at what we find in the Old Testament readings as they provide commentary and insight into the Gospel for these next Sundays until we return to Ordinruy Time. |
| Sirach is our guide today Successors of Alexander the Great are pressing the Greek culture onto the Hebrew people, and the consequence is not just the loss of identity and religion, values and traditions, but the collapse of the family unit and with it, a loss of connection or the covenant with God. All of this, in Sirach’s eyes is beginning to wear away at the ultimate value, life itself: that fundamental element of creation through which God reveals the divine plan, the divine presence, and the divine call to oneness and holiness. |
| It’s not far from the experience of our own times. We can’t exactly call what is happening to us as Hellenization, and we don’t identify the culture that is sweeping across this world as Greek, but it is certainly pagan, foreign to our Judea/Christian roots and values, and disruptive of relationships and life itself. What we face is not different by anything other than time from what the Hebrews faced when Ben Sirach wrote his works. For them and for us, life is cheap, convenient, and expendable. If it isn’t convenient, comfortable, and immediately pleasing, it goes. If it isn’t pretty, young, slim, and sexy, it is of no worth. What ever does not produce pleasure, comfort, or profit immediately is to be replaced by what ever does. This is the Greek or Hellenistic system that such a challenge to the Hebrew people who found in their faithfulness to the Torah value in life, value in service, value in fidelity |
| Sirach writes in this third chapter a reflection upon the fourth command of God for those who keep the covenant. We know it as. “Honor Your Father and your Mother ” He saw as something bigger than that, and he saw it as a first defense against the destructive, selfish influence of the Greek culture. He counseled his readers to strengthen their family ties, for he saw the breaking of one’s ties with parents as a breaking of one’s relationship with God. He speaks to a culture that glorifies youth, strength, beauty and fitness with a profound wisdom inspired by God’s own voice and God’s own plan. |
| Honor, reverence, obedience, kindness, and consideration are the terms he uses to describe the behavior of those who will not be overcome by the sweeping tide of selfish death choosing values and the me-first attitude that so threatens the life giving and redeeming values of their traditions in covenant with God. |
| In touching detail that makes many of us who have and who are caring for aging parents breath deeply and sigh with concern. With frail body and failing mind, the once powerful care givers are now the dependent ones looking for care, comfort, respect, and kindness. The experience of it all, growing so much more common in these years calls us to look again at the gift of life and to affirm that all moments of life are equally sacred. birth and death, youth and age, strength and frailty |
| Luke roots the beginnings of salvation’s story in a home where honor, reverence, obedience, kindness and consideration are the elements of growth, holiness, and wisdom. The treasure Sirach has left us, the precious inheritance we Christian people have received from our Hebrew ancestors says that every effort, legal, social, and medical must be used to preserve the dignity of life for those who face death. |
| The challenge the Hebrew people faced a century and a half before Christ is still being faced three thousand years later We face it with the same wisdom, the same grace, and the same courage, but more than that, we face it with the faith of Easter and with the gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit. The birth of Jesus Christ is the ultimate and divine affirmation of life itself which we are given to preserve, to protect, to nurture; never to take. That is God’s will. If we are to remain faithful and in relationship to God, we shall on this earth as a human family with respect, with honor, with reverence, obedience, kindness, and consideration . |