8th Sunday Year A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2014 

Today’s Gospel can read like a page from some popular self-improvement manual or a piece of advice from mother: "Don’t worry, dear!" Jesus was not interested in platitudes. He was about something much more radical – drawing our world back from its lethal fascination with violence and death to the possibility of life to the full. He set the context of today’s remarks quite clearly: You cannot be slave both of God and of money. Can’t you? There are a lot who try!

We can re-phrase Jesus’ statement: "You can’t guide your life according to the values of life to the full, love, genuine peace, justice, solidarity... and at the same time cling to the ways of self-interest, covetous envy, competitiveness... [that lead ultimately to violence in some shape or other]". We need to choose.  What is it to be?

The catch is that we are born inherently self-interested. Just look at children before they are socialised. Lots of adults never grow much beyond that, except perhaps to enlightened self-interest. ["After all, you can’t totally ignore others. You have to compromise and learn to get on for a modicum of peace and quiet."]

It is important to remember that Jesus was generally addressing the crowds; and the Galilean crowds were generally the unemployed and underemployed, or poor peasant farmers crippled by taxation and debt – and often hungry. He didn’t say: "Don’t worry! Leave it to God! Put up with what you’ve got!" He did say – "Trust God! Trust God’s way for human interacting. Set your hearts on his kingdom first, on his vision of justice, and there will be enough for everyone." That is an enormous challenge. It was then, is now and always will be… because it will never just happen. It has to be quite deliberately chosen; and it will be resisted bitterly.

Jesus was talking to those he called the poor in spirit – spirits crushed, non-persons, pushed around without a whimper, put in their place and kept in their place by those in power – with neither vision nor hope. To start them moving, Jesus offered them vision and hope. 

He offered them a vision of their dignity – "You have a value, a worth, given by God. You are worth more than any of the birds of the air. You have a beauty, immeasurably greater than Solomon’s artificial regalia, greater even than the most beautiful wild flowers. Believe it!  Get in touch with it!"

He offered them hope. "God knows your need.  God loves you. And God, after all, is the energy that moves the universe. Trust God! Don’t worry about what you can’t control… But that still leaves room to move. Undermine the unquestioned ways of power. Trust God’s way of love, even though, at first sight, it looks nonsense, impractical. Turning the other cheek is not a timid acceptance of submission but an act of assertion by persons who stand tall, calmly in possession of their true dignity."

Jesus says the same to us today: "Know your dignity! Trust God and the way of love." But we lack imagination. We lose the power to dream - men [and women] of little faith. Or we go about things the wrong way – simply trying to replace power with different power, the self-interest of others with the self-interest of ours. Self-interest will never go away of itself. It is instinctive. The way of love has to be chosen; and it has a price. Set your hearts on the kingdom of God… We begin by believing and owning our true human dignity, and by recognising that that true human dignity of ours is shared equally by everyone else – with no exceptions.

Jesus meant what he said – and was prepared to die rather than to back off from it. He wasn’t wrong.  His way did lead to life. He was raised by his Father on the third day. That is what we remember every time we gather for Eucharist. More than remember, we recommit with him to his project of changing our world - a commitment we first undertook on that wonderful day when we were baptised.