(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
How audacious is the Lord, to claim authority for himself alone, claiming that he forms the light and creates darkness, and that he creates the heavens and the earth! Once upon a time, a human challenged God’s superiority. The challenge was to create another human being as God had created Adam. Accordingly, the man went down to the riverbank to get some mud. God, however, caught him and told the man he could not use mud that God had made; he had to make his own mud. So much for challenging God’s creative power.
We share this creative power of God. We do this, not by making mudpies; we do it by being positive forces in the world for God. If God formed the light and let justice descend on the world, and if God built the world so that people could live in it, then when we imitate God’s way of doing things, we are sharing God’s creative power.
God’s way is “pro-life”, for creation, for animals, and for humans. God’s way is for justice as well as mercy. Our efforts to save the planet from pollution, to save animals from cruel deaths, to allow children to be born and criminals to be treated as human beings, all these efforts are ways we share in God’s creative energy. For God, pro-life is not a political slogan, but a lifetime of commitment to the existence and well-being of all creation, animate and inanimate, human and non-human.
The example of Jesus presented in the gospels is one of a person who would give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, life to the dead, waking to the lame and freedom from suffering to the distressed. Jesus could point these characteristics out to people who asked if he were the “One who was to come”. He shared the creative power of God.
The reading challenges us to move beyond slogans and politics to bring life to the dead and health to the diseased. We are called to be like God and share his creative concern for the whole of creation.
When this happens justice will rain down from heaven and the glory of the Lord will be revealed. We honor God the creator, not by making mudpies, but by honoring and respecting the whole of creation.