5th Sunday Year A

See Commentary on Matthew 5:13-16


Homily 1 – 2005 

Jesus is quite clear: You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.  He calls us not simply to personal conversion but to a life-style that has a life-giving effect on others.  We have a purpose, then, a goal beyond ourselves.  That goal, as Jesus would indicate, is to help fashion a world where people respect themselves and profoundly respect each other – where, in line with that dignity, they grow in wisdom, and their actions proceed from within, in freedom, without compulsion.  Our way of bringing it about is to be consistent with that goal.

We reflect today on the message of Jesus against the background, among other things, of renewed discussion at the national level of the issue of abortion.  It is important to remember that Jesus was not primarily interested in people simply refraining from, or being prevented from, doing the wrong thing – not even in their simply doing the right thing, either.  The Kingdom is not an army of robots, even well-behaved robots.

Jesus was primarily interested in people freely choosing to do the right thing, from a true inner desire for that right thing.  In that light, we are not simply interested in preventing other people, for example, from having abortions.  That is not the Kingdom.  What we are interested in is ourselves, and others, acting because we and they appreciate from deep within the dignity of each human person, whether still within the womb, or well and truly beyond it.  Our way of being light of the world and salt of the earth must involve, therefore, deep respect for people’s dignity, and strict avoidance of coercion or violence.

I find it interesting to notice the stance of St Paul on the issue of freedom.  Before his conversion Paul was a Pharisee.  Instinctively he was motivated by concern for the law and for doing the right thing.  But he was converted beyond that ... Paul saw that simply to do the right thing, as commanded by the law, was useless, if it was not done from inner conviction and free choice.  We would be, as he called it, slaves.

However, Paul was realistic enough to know the power of the culture in which people lived – firstly to blind them to value, and secondly to make it impossible to choose from their deepest convictions.  His response was to insist on the importance of providing an alternative community: a community where people truly respected themselves and each other – and genuinely supported each other – and could see with their own eyes the possibility to live from love by seeing it actually lived out in the flesh.  Paul was never content to tell his converts to imitate Jesus.  He had to say: Imitate me, whom they could actually see.

Where does that leave us in the present discussion about the legitimacy of abortion? Our experience of the past few decades seems to show that proclaiming what we believe has successfully made our position quite clear, but otherwise has achieved very little.  Perhaps the wider community will never listen to us, will never think of changing, until they see us as a Church/community trying to learned from each other the attractiveness of the good lived in a life-giving way, and hoping to be tangibly empowered by love to move beyond our self-interest, our fears and our inertia, to choose consistently what is truly life-giving and attractive.

Simply to proclaim what is right may call for some courage when we feel ourselves largely unsupported, but often it has only served to arouse not conversion, but opposition.  Why the resistance?  It may be because people have never experienced, and so cannot hope for or even imagine, a world where women are consistently and concretely respected, and where that respect has taken shape in cultural attitudes, economic arrangements and social supports.  To want an unplanned child in the present cultural, economic and social set-up may seem genuinely impossible to some women.  It would help to have more information on the whole scene.  That is part, surely, of listening and dialogu

Likewise to pray for people to change may never be enough unless we are at the same time trying to empower change by providing what is seen to be, not a judging, but a welcoming and supportive environment.

When Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery: Go now and sin no more, could she hear him?  Perhaps, because of his deep respect and sensitivity, she was ready to listen to him.  Could she succeed? Perhaps, through the love expressed in Jesus’ respect and sensitivity, in the short term she did feel herself empowered to try... And in the long term, did she succeed in loving responsibly, not just from fear of further reprisal, but from within?  Perhaps that may have depended on whether she found the support of a genuinely loving community.  I wonder if she later joined the community of disciples...


Homily 2 – 2011 

Today’s Gospel takes up from last week’s Beatitudes and provides context for the rest of the Sermon on the Mount that will follow.  

It picks up a theme from the prophet Isaiah.  As we heard in today’s First Reading, Isaiah had spelt out a destiny for the exiles recently returned to their homeland from Babylon.  They were to have a universal role, a responsibility to the rest of the world.  To the extent that they learnt to live justly, they were to be a light rising in the midst of the world’s darkness.  Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the homeless poor; clothe the one you see to be naked.. Then will your light shine like the dawn…

Against this rich background, Jesus now said to his disciples: You are the light of the world.  Like Isaiah, Jesus was not speaking simply to individual disciples.  Isaiah addressed the nation.  Jesus had in mind the Christian community.

What the world needs is not simply good individuals.  The world needs to see communities of people who can live together, not threatened by difference, who can profoundly respect each other in their difference and search together for truth and justice.  That is the witness that the world needs.  That is what gives hope.  It is much too easy for individuals to do their own thing, even to do their bit for God.  It is harder to live together in respect and love, and to act on shared goals, arrived at by consensus.

That, to me, is the Church’s challenge.  That is the challenge facing our parishes.  I don’t think that it the parish’s work simply to encourage and to support members to be upright individuals.  The parish’s challenge is to become a genuine community, where people care for each other, listen to each other … more that that, search together to find ways together to be salt of the earth and light to the world.  We are not used to thinking this way.

From my vantage point outside the circle, I find it encouraging to see how this parish community has chosen, in a very concrete way, by putting its money where its mouth is, to give priority to community building.  You have chosen to finance two very competent people and given them the clearly pastoral task, with the parish priest, to develop and to empower the community.

It is not enough, of course, for the parish to finance them.  Everyone needs to think beyond personal interests and to move beyond individual comfort zones – to work and to grow – together.  Church, parish, is not just good individuals, but lively community.  Then it becomes truly a light to the world.


Homily 3 - 2014

I would not be surprised if most of you knew today’s Gospel almost by heart. But, if you are like me, as you listened to me reading it, did you really hear it? Perhaps, better, Did you really hear him? Did you hear Jesus saying it to you, today? You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.

The passage comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Back then, he was talking to his disciples and to the crowds. He was sharing his vision of what could be, what our world could be, what you and I could be. In fact, what you and I would need to be if the world is ever to become what it could be. Jesus was wonderfully hopeful. He had a dream, a dream of a different, wonderful world, a world redeemed. But he knew it would never be without our wholehearted cooperation. He wanted so much to share his dream with us, to give us hope, not in ourselves but in God’s powerful, creative, redemptive love.

He wanted us, firstly, to get to know him, to become familiar with him; and from that familiar contact, to know our dignity and the dignity of every human person. He realised that getting the world on side would be a mammoth task. But it would be worth it, even though it would take time and would meet deeply entrenched inertia and fear of change. He would take the first steps. He would set things up and start the process. He would pay the price. But it would need the wholehearted cooperation of anyone who would listen, catch his enthusiasm, and have a go – with him.

He looked at his disciples. He looked at the crowd.  And he said to them, …You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world. No previous qualifications needed! You – just as you are – not all that special, and probably feeling busy enough already. All you need is to stay close, share the dream, feel the joy, have a go, make your inevitable mistakes, learn from them, start again, and leave outcomes to God.

I think that, when our Catholic sub-culture was pretty strong, probably up to the early 70s, the Church floated along; and we Catholics, by and large, were happy to be carried along for the ride. Perhaps we grew complacent, comfortably self-centered, focused on saving our souls [as though we could do that without the struggle to reach out in love to the world we lived in]. Things have changed; and people have either opted out or been forced to realise that the Church is us; and that 99.5% of that “us” is laity. Essentially the Church is laity – and always has been.

You are the Catholic community of Ballan. If Jesus is to get to work, practically, in Ballan, it will largely be through you – even though God’s Spirit breathes where it wills. Can you hear Jesus saying to you: You are the salt of the earth .. You are the light of the world.. ? He is saying it to you not just as isolated individuals but as believing community, needing each other, supporting each other, relying on each other, serving each other – not just for your own sakes but in order, with him, to make of our world a place more like what he yearns that it be.

Let me finish with a quotation from a recent statement of Pope Francis:

"… Let us recover and deepen our enthusiasm, that delightful and comforting joy of spreading the Good News, even when it is in tears that we must sow… And may the world of our time, which is searching, sometimes with anguish, sometimes with hope, be enabled to receive the good news not from messengers who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives glow with fervour, who have first received the joy of Christ."


Homily 4 - 2017

I was walking down the street yesterday, having just been to the hairdressers, and I met one of our parishioners. “Oh! You’ve had a haircut”, she said. ‘Yes”, I answered. “I hope I don’t look like Nick Kyrgios”. She said something to me, that I did not quite hear; and we kept on walking our different directions. I was wondering to myself what she said. It sounded like, “Oh, don’t be so negative!” I hope it was. I know I am so often spontaneously critical, even hostile. And I wish I weren’t. But I do not want to be simply more careful about what I say. I would love to be a different sort of person, who is not spontaneously critical. I would like to feel differently. I would like to be naturally joyful, positive, respectful, at home in the world.

I do not think that being salt of the earth and light of the world are moral issues, behavioural issues. I think it is Jesus’ challenge to all of us to be a different kind of person. He had already spoken in the beatitudes about the importance of being merciful, pure of heart, and peace-makers. That is more than behaving differently. That, it seems to me, is being different. Being very different, in fact. It means seeing differently – the ability to see the God-spark in each one. And I am not sure whether that is the consequence of being different or the way to becoming different. In either case, I suspect that it is the gift of God. But to ask for it honestly, to want it genuinely, I think that we need at least to suspect that we are much better at seeing the speck in our neighbour’s eye than the log in our own. From what I read from within the Church’s tradition, that radical personal change, that growth in authentic maturity, is the fruit of Mary’s habit of treasuring experience and pondering it in her heart, or in other words, of a commitment to meditate regularly.

The back page of today’s parish Bulletin has a helpful warning about the on-going work of the Royal Commission. This month will be devoted to examining closely the Church’s response to the sexual abuse that has occurred, and particularly why, and its plans for the future. It will be tough going. I apologise to you in advance because it is largely yourselves out in the broader community who are exposed to the ordinary person’s anger and criticism.

I am afraid that we priests and bishops have been anything but salt of the earth or light of the world. To the contrary. We have lost most if not all credibility. But 99.5% of the Church are you. You can be and need to be, in your wonderful and different ways [like Sr Anne Gardiner, this year’s Senior Australian of the Year], giving taste to the earth and lighting up the world.

The world needs you. It seems to be a very angry world at the moment – a confused and angry world. It is not enough to address the symptoms of so much anger, even though it is necessary to protect the community. If we do not better identify the anger and address it; if we do not seek its causes and search for plausible ways to tackle them, then, fuelled by our own anger, we can keep on shouting, “Lock them up!” We may build more and better [whatever that means] prisons, and succeed only in making their inmates angrier and more violent.

Salt of the earth! Light of the world! How? Jesus listed mercy, singleness of heart and peace-making. Later on, he simply said, Love. But the love required asks for more than improvement. It asks for change, radical personal change, a new way of seeing the world – where everything becomes different.


 Homily 5 - 2020

I was captivated to hear Ash Barty interviewed two weeks ago after she was nominated “Young Australian of the Year”. Quite calmly she promised, “I’m going to stay true to my values all throughout the year, all throughout my life. Every single day I want to be kind, I want to be honest, I want to be humble, I want to give the best that I can. That’s all that matters for me.” I was also edified when I heard Leila Abdallah, the grieving mother of three of the children run over and killed in a car accident in Sydney early this week. When asked how she felt about the driver of the car that killed her children, she answered, “I think in my heart I forgive him, but I want the court to be fair, right? It’s all about fairness. So I’m not going to hate him because that’s not who we are. And that’s not what our religion tells us. I forgive him, but I want it to be fair.”

For me both women were wonderful examples of what Jesus was talking about in today’s Gospel passage: "You are the light of the world… Your light must shine in the sight of [others], so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.” However, in view of a few commentaries I have read, I think that the last few phrases might be better translated, “… noticing the fine things you do, they may give glory to your Father in heaven”.

I don’t think “good works” does justice to what Jesus was saying. For one thing, it has become a hackneyed phrase, and can be as much off-putting as attractive. The original word translated as “good” carries the possible meaning of “beautiful” or “splendid” [or a little less dramatic], “fine”. I think that “fine” suggests another dimension simply than “good”, and refers not only to the things done but to the way they are done.

Things done with an air of superiority or from the moral high ground can be demeaning and offensive. Things done with a degree of personal warmth or respect, on the other hand, can somehow engage with their recipients or observers, and be more easily appreciated. They can generate more attractive, more constructive, “vibes”. They can give life. The Gospels give the impression that that was the effect of the things that Jesus said and did and that led so many to comment on his unusually life-giving “inner authority”. They certainly occasioned significant responses from people. It would be things done by disciples with that added personal dimension that Jesus was referring to when challenging them to be “the light of the world”.

There is another noteworthy point made by Jesus – the matter of “giving praise to your Father”. The original word can be translated "praise"or "glory" A saint from way back in the second century, St Irenaeus, is often remembered for his quotable “one-liner”, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive”. I think that that is what Jesus was talking about here. He was not talking about a God obsessively hungering for "praise." Any consideration of praise would automatically kill any genuine engagement in a truly charitable, truly life-giving, interaction between people.

However, “fine things done” with genuine care, respect and real connecting can be truly life-giving for all involved. Through such interactions, doers become more alive, more truly human; and those on the receiving end, or even who merely observe, can be helped to recognise, to rejoice in and to take firmer hold of their true human dignity. Even though no one may be thinking explicitly of God, as both parties take a deeper hold on their humanity, God is glorified.

Ash Barty’s simplicity and Leila Abdallah’s generous determination to begin her journey into ever deeper forgiveness helped them both to become more authentically human and gave to many of their hearers a gentle boost to grow similarly. Both have brought “light to the world”; and God has been glorified.


 

Homily 6 -2023

What struck me at the moment in today’s Gospel passage was Jesus' comment: “Your light must shine in the sight of everyone, so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.”

In our present world, where many people in many ways show little or no interest in God, we could be pardoned for thinking that that is a most unlikely outcome. Many of our contemporaries may not even be attracted much or at all by seeing anyone’s “good works” and therefore likely to “praise” neither God nor those who do the “good works”. So, why do good works at all?

It is possible, of course, to do them for all sorts of crass reasons. A little later in the “Sermon on the Mount” Matthew recorded how Jesus warned his disciples not to be like those Pharisees who do things “to win everyone’s admiration”. Rather, said Jesus,“When you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right hand is doing; your almsgiving must be secret”. He said something similar in relation to praying and going without things. Don’t try to look holy and impress people; for example: “When you pray, go to your private room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father…”.

Of course, while we are still apprentices, as it were, in the life-long call to maturity, we fairly naturally do perform “good works” in the hope that God will notice and be impressed. The hope of building up merit with God and thus saving our souls, can be very powerful motivations to get us started on the move to maturity. And Jesus takes us where we are at. Particularly, early in his ministry, Jesus indicated how our “good works” would earn “points” with God. The Sermon on the Mount, however, was also full of calls to move beyond mere observance of commandments to the untiring development of the virtues that enable us to keep commandments — and to experience over time how those virtues lead on to true inner peace and social harmony.

Later in the Gospels we see how Jesus focused particularly on the disciples and their on-going growth — inviting them to move beyond self-interest to growth in love, respect and care for each other, and for others beyond their own group; and to discover and to discover and respond eagerly to the love of God, which would take them beyond any concern about merit; and is joyfully expressed God's unconditional, constant, infinite forgiveness and acceptance.

The Gospels finish with Jesus commissioning the disciples to shape the world, beyond the present experience of hopeless loneliness, competitiveness and so often even of violence, and instead to give everyone a foretaste of heaven. Jesus’ hope was that the body of disciples, the Church, would reveal to the world how it is possible for people to live and to work together, with all their uniqueness and personal differences, in profound respect for everyone. May those be the “good works” that Jesus was referring to? After two thousand years that task still lies before us. It will remain purely a pipe-dream until each one of us allows our loving God to set us free.

When we allow ourselves to engage ever more in trusting the amazing love of our amazing God, we find ourselves changing. We let go more and more of self-interest. We discover rather how our deepest desires come to mirror the concerns listed in the Lord’s Prayer. They are enough for us. We become content to move forward in the direction of the “poverty of spirit” celebrated by Jesus in the Beatitudes. Our lives simplify. Whatever about others “giving the praise to God”, that will sum up where we at least have allowed life to lead us.