22nd Sunday Year A - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2014

All three readings this evening agree on a number of points. The most obvious is that a truly personal option for the ways of God and a determined commitment to them means running counter to public opinion.

Paul expressed it clearly enough. Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you. He went further. He insisted that Christian disciples offer themselves and their lives in community as sacrifices truly pleasing to God. In using this language, he was well aware of Israel’s great prophetic tradition that refused to separate worship and sacrifice from mercy and solidarity with the powerless and marginalised.

Centuries before Paul, Jeremiah recognised only too clearly that his summoning his fellow citizens to life according to God’s will for them meant for him insult and derision all day long. God’s will is rarely the flavour of the month.

Jesus was hardly different. He knew that his relentless insistence on the way of respect, forgiveness and non-violence would mean that he would suffer grievously at the hands of the establishment and quite simply be put to death. He then challenged his disciples to be ready to do the same – to take up their cross and follow him. He had foreshadowed as much in the Beatitudes and in the rest of his Sermon on the Mount [which we have generally domesticated beyond recognition].

Yet Jeremiah found that the alternative to keep his head down and be silent was not worth living – indeed, was even worse. He felt what he called a fire burning in my heart. I could not bear it. And Jesus flatly stated that those who want to save their lives would lose them – in this world whatever about eternity. Celebrity, acceptance, even the low profile, do not satisfy our deepest yearnings.

And yet, despite years of exposure to the message of Jesus, Catholics’ attitudes are little different from those of the general community – as politicians have come to learn. Our values simply reflect the culture around us, except when it comes to our own self-interest. So much for Paul’s hope that our new mind, as disciples of Jesus, would inspire and enable us to discover the will of God.

Today is Refugee and Migrant Sunday, an invitation, again as St Paul wrote, to seek what is good and what God wants. Current world tensions are creating an increasing flood of refugees fleeing persecution and death. Official estimates number them at over fifty million. Most of these remain within their national borders, hoping to return home when conflicts are resolved. But there remain eighteen million others who have had to flee their countries. Only about one-tenth of these have been accepted by the world’s developed countries. The other nine out of ten have been received by nations struggling even to feed their own populations. Yet each of these is a human person, no different essentially from you or me.

Are we our brothers’ keepers? Can we be our brothers’ keepers? Does the fact that we cannot resolve the whole problem absolve us from all responsibility to respond within our limits? Do we help only up to the point where we feel the impact on our standard of living or our familiar life-style expectations? Are our standard of living and familiar life style sacrosanct? Can we carry on changing nothing, and effectively ignoring the existence of our brothers and sisters, perhaps hoping that someone else, other nations, might do it all?

The issues surrounding refugees, asylum seekers and migration are complex. Yet an appropriate response is important and urgent. The problems are too pressing to be party-political issues, opportunities to score points or to exploit the populations’ basest instincts. A realistic national response calls for the harnessing of the best minds and hearts, and for genuine statesmanship. In this common search people need to respect each other, genuinely listen and live with difference. Can we find ways to insist that our political representatives step up and face the challenge?