(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
When I was very young, we used to have to walk past a public school to get to our Catholic school. For some reason we thought of it as a Protestant school. For some reason we also had the idea that those kids would not get to heaven. Imagine our surprise when we learned later that those Protestant kids were really our separated brothers and sisters and that they could get to heaven!
The question is not why some people won’t get to heaven, but why does God keeps sending prophets to call the believers back to God when the believers constantly keep rejecting God’s messengers.
The Syrian leper and the widow in Zarephath were not Israelites, not people of God’s covenant. Why did God provide them healing and not people of the Chosen race? Why did Jesus work signs and wonders among pagan people and not among his own people? Why was God concerned about pagan lepers and pagan widows? Why was God concerned about those kids in the non-Catholic school? Why do we tell God what we think God ought to do?
The role of the prophet is to call people back into God’s word and God’s way of thinking. It is not the role of the prophet to cater to our whims and fancies or to pursue our agenda. It is to advance God’s agenda and to bring God’s saving word to all peoples, those within our sub-groups and those beyond our sub-groups.
We accept that the pagan leper and the pagan widow both listened to the word of God and both found salvation. We must also accept that the people of Nazareth eventually listened and found salvation. We must also accept fellow Christians, fellow non-Christians, fellow citizens and fellow non-citizens, fellow members of our favorite political party, fellow members of the other political parties, fellow people of our country and fellow people of all the other countries as people whom God loves, to whom God sends his servants the prophets, and who can listen as we have listened and find salvation as we hope to have found salvation.
It is not the time to point fingers but to open arms and welcome all as God welcomes all. The people in the synagogue at Nazareth had a hard time understanding this, but we also, at times and often times, have as much difficulty understanding the universality of God’s love for all people.