This is my homily for yesterday, the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A. Sunday's readings are here.
When I grew up in the 1960s, we had a television in our house; most families owned a television. But in those days, most of the televisions in American households were not color TVs. They were black and white TVs, and that’s what we had. Color televisions were on the market by the early 1960s, although they cost as much as a new car; and a few television shows were starting to be produced and broadcast in color, but of course my family had to watch them in black and white. Black and white was all we knew.
In those days, The Wizard of Oz was telecast yearly – it was a big event for families with kids. The movie industry had figured out color production a generation earlier – the Wizard of Oz was released in 1939. You may recall that the first part of the film, showing Dorothy on her uncle’s Kansas farm, is black and white; and then, after the twister sweeps her up and deposits her farmhouse in Munchkin land, it switches to Technicolor. For viewers in theaters in 1939, that must have been an ooh/aah moment, when Dorothy steps out of her house. Even on a color television, it’s striking. But because, television-wise, we lived in a black-and-white world, I never experienced that moment when I was a kid. We watched the Wizard of Oz every year, but the whole thing was black and white.
If you didn’t experience the replacement of black and white televisions with color televisions, it’s hard to appreciate what an improvement it was. It was a revelation. No family who graduated to a color television, as our family eventually did by 1970 or so, would willingly have gone back to a black and white TV. Once you saw the Monkees or the Beverly Hillbillies in living color, you knew it was way better than the alternative. You’d never want to go back to your former black and white world.
I’m suggesting that Jesus coming into our lives is like seeing the world in color for the first time. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus offers better metaphors: he said, “You are the salt of the earth”, and “You are the light of the world”. Jesus is like salt: his coming into our lives is as though he had sprinkled salt on our French fries or our popcorn for the first time. Once you’ve tasted it with salt, you realize it’s better, and you don’t want to go back to the old way. Food that is flat and dull becomes tasty and delicious when you add salt.
Likewise with the metaphor of the light of the world: it’s as though we had been stumbling about in the dark and then Jesus turned on the lights for the first time. And then we can see things as they really are – see what’s really true: that God made us; and he loves us; and he forgives us; and he wants us to live with him forever.
The various episodes and anecdotes that make up the Gospels give us other similes to describe Jesus coming into our lives. It’s like having been blind and now being able to see for the first time. It’s like having been deaf and now suddenly being able to hear the birds singing, or beautiful music. It’s like having been lame our whole lives, and then suddenly being able to run and leap. It’s like having been starving and then being fed the bread of life. It’s like having died and then been brought back to life. It’s a transformative experience. Jesus being in our lives introduces an entirely new dimension of being to us; we may not even have known it existed before, but once we’ve lived in it, we don’t want to relinquish it.
But today’s Gospel pushes it even farther: once Jesus has transformed our lives, it then becomes our vocation to transform the world around us. We’re to be salt for the earth; we’re to be the light of the world. The world is full of people living a black and white existence. We have the gift of color; shouldn’t we share it?
Being salt for the earth and light for the world doesn’t mean we have to drop everything in our lives. We don’t stop being spouses or parents or workers or students because Jesus has helped us to see the world in living color. On the contrary: it is precisely in those daily roles and daily settings of our lives where we are to be the salt for the earth and the light of the world. In my work life, I can be salt and light by being kind and truthful to everyone and treating everyone decently. In my marriage, I can be salt and light by prioritizing my wife’s needs over my own preferences and comfort. And I can really attend to her when she talks to me. In our local community, I can be salt and light by serving those in need, just as we do here at St. Edna.
Let our prayer today be that Jesus will help us see how we can be the salt for the earth and the light of the world to the people in our daily lives.
Jim, I remember when most people had black and white tv sets. My grandma got a tv before we did. We would go over to her place on Monday night to watch Danny Thomas and I Love Lucy. People got their news and weather reports on their radios. You had to have a tall antenna on the roof to pick up a tv station, and there were only two of them. Of course there was no "on demand", if you missed a show, you missed it. My family got a tv fairly soon after. The sets were little screens in big wooden cabinets.
ReplyDeleteI saw Wizard of Oz for the first time in the theater. In the 50s and 60s it still came to theaters once in awhile. The contrast between the black and white Kansas and colorful Oz was dramatic.
I like your analogy of meeting Jesus being like the contrast between color and black and white.
The people who recount near death experiences often say that the colors of the hereafter make the colors of earth look like black and white.
Yesterday was my choir's Sunday to sing at our sister parish, St. Stanislaus. The celebrant was a retired priest. He spoke on salt and light, and how salt can lose its savor. He compared it to consolation and desolation, saying that both occur in the spiritual life.
Katherine, thanks. We lived in the country during most of my grade school years. We had an antenna on a tower standing next to our house. We kids were under strict instructions not to climb the antenna tower :-) We were able to pull in the three main networks, as well as Channel 50 in Detroit, which was/is a UHF station. That was our source for all the old black-and-white reruns that came on during the daytime like I Love Lucy and The Munsters. And then, at some point during my grade school or middle school years, PBS came along.
DeleteIt was interesting that my grandma had a stash of Child Life magazines in her basement. They had subscribed to that for Dad when he was a boy. I would sometimes go over and read them, usually when I was supposed to be doing some chores at home in the summer. Anyway, there was an issue from 1939 with an interview with Judy Garland about her role playing Dorothy in Wizard of Oz.
DeleteOf course this interview was cheerful and upbeat. I only found out a lot later that playing Dorothy hadn't been all fun and games for Judy Garland. She was older at the time than 12 year old Dorothy, and was pressured to stay thin and look younger. But she had a beautiful voice, and everyone can remember her singing "Over the Rainbow" which is probably why she was cast as Dorothy instead of a younger girl.
This column brings back a lot of memories. Our reception in the mountains depended on weather. We received three network stations when the weather was clear. Bad weather and mountain peaks disrupted the signals. Then we saw only snow on the screen even though we could hear. Black and white of course when we could see the picture. Cable came fairly early to our mountain because it was much more reliable than the antenna. Same three stations but generally we could see as well as hear.
DeleteMy husband and I married in 1972. When we were dating he spent a fair amount of time at the apartment I shared with a friend. He didn’t have a TV at all in his apartment and he is a big sports fan. He and my flat- mate’s boyfriend watched games at our apartment a lot. He isn’t a candy- flowers sort. Gifts were generally practical. So before we married on one occasion he came in with a huge box for me - containing a color tv. Suzanne and I were thrilled, even though I suspected he also bought it for himself.
Opinions on Bad Bunny? The rap- music isn’t to my taste, but I loved the joy, love and hope his performance embodied. Only very subtle criticisms of trumpism. The emphasis was love not hate. I think it was far more powerful than open criticism of this administration, which, from the first speeches in 2026, reeked of hate and now has gone far beyond just words.
DeleteJim - “I’m suggesting that Jesus coming into our lives is like seeing the world in color for the first time… with the metaphor of the light of the world: it’s as though we had been stumbling about in the dark and then Jesus turned on the lights …And then we can see … that God made us; and he loves us; and he forgives us; and he wants us to live with him forever. “.
ReplyDeleteActually my cataract surgery did that - colors were shockingly bright after that!
I would say that this doesn’t always happen, nor does it happen for everyone, and definitely not in the same way for everyone. So maybe Jesus doesn’t come into everyone’s life like a burst of light or a switch from black and white to color. .
One of my favorite spiritual writers is Barbara Brown Taylor. She is an Episcopal priest, known for her outstanding homilies. She was pastor of a parish for several years before having a spiritual crisis. She now teaches religion at a college. I have several of her books. Her book, .Leaving Church” ( when she made the decision to leave parish work and teach) was a powerful testimony for me as I was struggling not only with Catholicism, but with Christianity itself. I still do, but my struggles have evolved. In the last few years another of her books also affected me strongly. It’s called “Learning to Walk in the Dark”. She employs many physical metaphors such as walking in a cave etc, but the book is about spirituality of course. She discovered that there are powerful spiritual insights that come only from walking in the dark. She knows, as I have also learned, that there are truths we learn in the dark that are not easily seen in bright “light”.
I was surprised that Tom Blackburn was a fan of hers also. He always seemed so fiercely orthodox - he was frequently upset with me and my heresies - and she is not at all orthodox. I miss his contributions to NewGathering.
The television analogy did not work for me. Nor did the rest of the homily. For many reasons.
ReplyDeleteI don’t remember the transition between black and white TV and color TV although I am sure that it must have happened to me perhaps several times as my family and grandparents got TVs.
Perhaps it has something to do with giving up TV for Lent (except for Bishop Sheen) probably about when I was sixteen. After I gave it up for Lent I never went back to much watching TV and did not buy a TV when I got my apartment after graduate school. Eventually my parents gave me a TV so that they could watch it when they came to visit me (they came a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas and another month in the Spring from Easter until they went to the cabin). They needed something to entertain them when I was out working, other than the many projects they usually did for me. When I visited them at our home in PA, my bedroom and office with its music was upstairs, kind of a separate apartment from the TV downstairs.
I pulled the plug on my cable TV at the beginning of the Trump first administration. I think the vast amount of time Americans waste on TV is a tragedy far greater than Trump. And I think Trump could never have become president except for his skills as a TV personality. TV entertainment, low taxes and many government benefits are our version of the “Bread and circuses” that led to the downfall of Rome.
My relationship to God is Trinitarian which one might expect from someone who has prayed the Hours since childhood. God for me is the God of the psalms. Jesus is my friend and teacher (many of my teachers also became my best friends). Jesus like David prays the psalms with me. Of course, the Holy Spirit is everywhere because like Merton I experience the stream of life as seeds of contemplation.
My experience of Christ is more likely to be that of encountering other people in my friendships with family, teachers, colleagues and the people whom I have served rather than some mental images and conversations going on in my head in color rather than black and white.
I guess I am just a different person who has inhabited the culture of the Hours far more than that of Television. Deo Gratias. Alleluia.