14th Sunday Year A - Homily 7

Homily 7 - 2023

Today’s is an interesting little passage in Matthew’s Gospel — quite unique. Let’s look at it more closely.

This past week I have been wondering about the violence dished up on our TV screens. In addition to the continuing war in Ukraine, there have been the protests happening all around France. Then there was the deliberate insulting of the Muslim religion and life-style by a man in Sweden who ostentatiously burnt a copy of the Qur’an as what he called an appropriate expression of personal freedom. Not so emphasised was the deliberate inactivity of the Hindu authorities who have stood back while feuding tribes in Manipur in Northern India have focussed their hatred on their Christian neighbours by burning thousands of their buildings and even killing a number of them. Sadly there is so much violence causing so much pain all around our world.

Among other things I was struck by Jesus’ comment about himself in today’s Gospel: “Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father”. Jesus had learned to accept the world gratefully. He saw life as total gift. Jesus knew his Father so well. He knew God to be a God who loved, unconditionally and universally — a God who constantly and readily forgave, not condemned. For Jesus, consequently, the world was “friend”, not hidden threat. His spontaneous attitude to life was not criticism but peaceful appreciation. There was no hidden anger in Jesus’ heart.

Accordingly, he was able freely and joyfully to give the invitation: “Come to me, all you who labour and are over-burdened, and I will give you rest”. To that he added something that I find quite profound, “Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls”. Jesus obviously carried a “yoke”. Jesus could feel pain, and at the end of his life particularly, he freely and voluntarily accepted horrendous pain. Indeed, he was no stranger to pain right through his life.

As we realise, so much of the raw pain of our word is a direct effect of the destructive, sinful behaviour of us humans. It is the chaos we all know only too well, and to which we all contribute. Sadly, we seem to accept the state as inevitable, normal. The Scriptures often refer to it. They name it metaphorically as “Gehenna”, “hell”, even “God’s anger”. We have taken it for granted to be God’s revenge for sin, awaiting us mainly in the next life. But there is no vengeance in God. The world’s pain and suffering are the inevitable outcome here on earth of human sinfulness.

So what does Jesus want us to learn from him? Jesus himself had learnt to accept the inevitability of pain in a broken, sin-scarred world. His solution to the world’s chaos was to call people to a radical change of heart. He modelled for them through his own life the alternative way of love. He never tired of urging people to love. That was what he was referring to when he called those who “labour and are overburdened” to “learn from me”, and to share with him his yoke of living differently.

Unfortunately, the common translation that has Jesus describing himself as “gentle and humble of heart” creates, I think, an unfortunate sense of Jesus. Something like “non-violent” would be a more appropriate and relevant translation for “gentle”… while the word “humble” could be more helpfully understood as “quietly authentic” and ready to adjust and respond peacefully to however reality presents itself — even when not agreeing with it and seeking respectfully to change it.

Might something akin to this approach to life be what Jesus’ Father still “reveals to mere children”, and what the sophisticated “learned and clever” persist in missing out on?