11th Sunday Year A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005

Jesus felt sorry for the crowds because they were harassed and dejected – like sheep without a shepherd.  He was deeply concerned.  Their needs were beyond his own capacity to reach.  So he commissioned a group of his followers to join him and empowered them to address the needs: to cure the sick, to raise the dead, to cleanse the lepers and to cast out devils.

In the final scene of Matthew’s gospel, at the end of their time of apprenticeship with him, the already risen Christ told the same disciples to move out beyond Israel and to baptise the nations of the world into the mystery of the living God, and this time to teach them all that he had shared with them.  Why teach?  So that, knowing now more tangibly what God was like, and knowing who they were, they might continue to deepen the world’s liberation by helping people to recognise and to live from their own dignity and to stand on their own two feet.

The world’s needs have not substantially changed.  Our world of 2005 is the world of people that God loves – and here we are instead, a world where nations are more inclined to see each other as threats than as potential brothers and sisters.  To me that speaks of a debilitating insecurity! and of a paralysing absorption with self!

Jesus continued: The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest.  The labour force is there, but it needs to engage with the need.  And the successors of the twelve as apostles – as ones sent to a lacerated and lacerating world – are you, the laity.  (Jesus is not talking here about more priests, however much the text has been used as if he were.  Certainly a church of apostles has need for animators and formators, of ones who can preside at and lead our sacramental celebrations: but that is a separate issue.  Priests will be recruited from apostles.  They are hardly likely to materialise from an uninterested, disorientated and inactive laity.)

So what the world needs is people with vision, with insight, with compassion, with energy to engage, deeply plugged into God and responsive to the spirit of Jesus.  The world needs apostles, and Jesus trusts you.  You don’t need airline tickets to travel to far away places.  You are already immersed in the world: your family,  the ones you work with, the ones you relax with, your neighbour on the other side of the fence, your local community organisations.  They need you: your vision, your values, your insights, your compassion, your energy, your Christlikeness.  The best apostles of the young are the young themselves; the best apostles of farmers, farmers; the best apostles of professionals, professionals; of parents, parents.  The list is endless.  You speak the same language; you’ve got credibility.

So, as Paul pleads in the second reading of today’s mass: Be reconciled to God.  Trust God, surrender to God.  Come to terms with the fact that the mystery at the heart of the world’s being, the world’s life, is personal, is love.  God’s love is hardwired into our world.  Do we believe that?  

Then, since it is so, the only way that humanity can be what it is meant to be is if we trust that the divine energy, the ultimate law of the universe, is not market forces, free trade, competition, military might, national security or self-protection.  It is love!  Without that, the world is out of sync.  No wonder the nations of the world are fearful of each other, that there is such crushing poverty, such massive inequity and  such ominous violence.  So many are not reconciled to God; they simply do not know that God – the creative and pervading energy sustaining the cosmos – is love.

So Jesus sends you.  The Jesus who sends you is the Jesus who trusts you, who is with you.  You can’t bring about change.  But Jesus and you together have unsuspected potential.  You just need to be truly and authentically yourself.  Some people will respond; some won’t.  That is not essentially your problem – it’s his.

Remember the Gospel of two weeks ago, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ?  As I myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me – It is saying that whoever eats the Eucharist that we share together today draws life from Christ – not any life, but Christ’s life: his vision, his passion, the fire that burns in his heart and that he in turn draws from the God who is love.