23rd Sunday Year A - Homily 6

Homily 6 - 2023

I find today’s Gospel quite relevant and hopefully helpful in our current political mood.

Jesus considered a case where two members of the discipleship community were in disagreement with, possibly even hostile towards, each other. What do you think might have been Jesus’ alternative hope or vision that led him to speak as he did?

Today’s short passage does not quite give enough information to arrive at a totally satisfactory conclusion — but it raises a few helpful points for consideration. Firstly, Jesus referred to the two disciples as “brothers”, inferring that their engagement should be based on a deliberate respect and care for each other. Where one or both did not start with that attitude, Jesus suggested a further step where one, in the hope of not escalating the disagreement further, would seek one or two other community members to help convince the other to change. Where that did not work, it became obvious that a further more radical step would become necessary.

Jesus considered that harmony within every discipleship community belonged to the very definition of community and therefore had to be preserved however possible. No hostile argument could be allowed to divide a community of disciples. The disciples would need to face the issues squarely and to discuss together the practical outcome — keeping in mind always the divinely-given dignity of both protagonists.

Jesus had had to face this dilemma himself. In his case, tax-collectors, prostitutes, pagans, lepers and others who were regarded in the broader community as public sinners, regularly came seeking his company. Jesus did not repel them but enthusiastically received and even shared meals with them. Most do not seem to have stayed with the groups of disciples who followed Jesus. But Jesus did not dissociate himself from their company. As far as Jesus was concerned, every disciple was sinful in some way or other — and some well-known ones were spectacularly so. Jesus was constantly calling disciples to deeper and deeper conversion. Suffice for him that they sought, however successfully or unsuccessfully, to leave sin behind.

Inevitably, disciples disagree, rightly or wrongly, with aspects of others’ behaviour. What is not-acceptable is that disagreements lead to hostility or other withdrawals of love. That was the pharisees’ problem. Wrapped-up in their own perfection, they excluded themselves from membership of Jesus’ discipleship communities.

Christian communities are communities of disciples trying harder [but always unsuccessfully], to love God, to love each other, to love themselves, and to love all God’s world.

For us to love like this requires that we learn to listen carefully to each other, that we be open to accept each other even when we disagree, that we be open and honest enough to change when appropriate, that we seek not to impose our own wills, but learn to discern what “we” can freely and respectfully agree to accept as the best that “we” can commit to together in the present situation. This calls for real and deliberate effort, and for constant practice.

Sadly political ideologies these days seem to be listened to more eagerly than the mind and heart of Jesus, even for many of us Catholics. To win and to impose our wills seem more important than to cooperate. Unlike Jesus, we have not explored how to work with “pagans, tax-collectors and sinners”.

That is why I am particularly grateful, at this time as the Referendum on the Voice to Parliament approaches, for the Social Justice Statement recently issued by the Bishops’ Commission for Justice and Peace. Its title, “Listen, Learn and Love”, sums up its contents admirably. I find it very much worth reading and prayerfully pondering— and I heartily recommend that you also make a point to do the same.