4th Sunday Year A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2008 

Last Sunday’s Gospel passage had started with Jesus’ call: Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is close at hand.  And it concluded with Matthew’s comment: Jesus went all round Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom.  Well, most people did not repent, so the Kingdom did not get much closer – so hardly looked like Good News.  And that has been pretty much the story of the past two thousand years.

What did Jesus have in mind when he called people to repent?  In today’s Gospel passage, Matthew gives us his summary introduction to Jesus’ sense of the change of mindset, the change of heart needed for the Kingdom of heaven to be real.

No wonder not much happened.  Jesus’ view ran clean contrary to the prevailing wisdom that prioritised an ever greater level of economic prosperity and expanding power and influence, even if at the unfortunate price of suffering and injustice for others.  He said that blessedness, God’s blessing, favoured the poor in spirit, rather than those who sought ever increasing economic prosperity; it favoured the meek, the powerless, rather than those who prized expanding power and influence; it favoured those who mourn, who suffer, and who yearn for justice rather than those who saw the suffering of others as the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of their obsession with national economic interest and regional influence.

I was interested in some of the comments made during the week on the occasion of the death of the former President Soeharto of Indonesia.  During his presidency, Indonesia prospered economically, and its political influence and military power were consolidated.  During those many years, successive Australian governments judged it to be in Australia’s best economic and political interests to turn a blind eye to his passive violations of human rights and deaths in both Indonesia and East Timor.

Whatever about governments, and particular situations, do most Australians agree that the national interest overrides the human rights of others?  Perhaps, more pertinently, for followers of Jesus, are the Beatitudes relevant to international relationships?  Do “national interest” and the “common good mean” the same thing, after all?

In Jesus’ day, the dominant power players were the chief priests and aristocratic families who judged it expedient, and personally rewarding, to collaborate with their Roman overlords.  They saw Jesus as dangerously subversive.  Indeed, when justifying his decision to silence Jesus forever, the high priest commented: It is better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.  National interest overrode all other interests.  That sounds very like: It is better to turn a blind eye to large-scale deaths than for our economic and political interests to suffer.

What can be done when others’ lives, or human rights, are violated?  The next three beatitudes seem to rule out violent intervention, anyhow, as a solution: Other ways must be sought.  Jesus prioritises mercy and peace-making, on the one hand … And the transparency and honesty involved in purity of heart seem to rule out turning a blind eye to injustice and the violation of human rights, on the other: Blessed are the merciful… the pure of heart… and the peace-makers.

I wonder if Jesus thought that  his program for reform – his hope to baptise the world with the Spirit of God – would work?  Certainly, he didn’t seem to expect followers of his way to be really the flavour of the month.  In fact, he sought to encourage them even when, as he said, people revile you and persecute you, and speak all kinds of evil against you on my account.

As we heard in today’s Second Reading, St Paul had few illusions.  He defiantly categorised himself among those who are foolish by human reckoning, and are dismissed as weak by human reckoning.  Yet he was equally insistent that by God’s doing, Christ has become our wisdom, and our virtue, and our holiness, and our freedom.

Where does that leave the follower of Jesus in today’s world?  Does Jesus’ dream of God’s Kingdom – and of the possibilities of justice here on earth – at least inspire us, and fire us … even if it leaves us often confused and uncertain, and sometimes painfully vulnerable?