26th Sunday Year A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005

I have been listening to the readings this week against the backdrop of Social Justice Sunday that we are marking today.  I shall begin by reflecting on the Second Reading, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.  Paul was writing with the wonderfully developing insight that Jesus, ignominiously crucified in the backblocks of the Empire, was really the exemplar of all that humanity is called to be.  He based his reflection on a hymn he had learnt and had himself then taught to the little community in Philippi.

Though Adam was not explicitly mentioned, the hymn compared Jesus to Adam, whom it saw as the original and quintessential human person, the archetype of humanity.  According to the Book of Genesis, Adam was made in the image of God; Adam had access to the Tree of Life and so was destined to immortality.  But Adam was uncomfortable with his dependant state, subject to what he felt as the  constricting directions of God. He wanted instead to stand in the shoes of God: He fell for the serpent’s temptation to be like gods, knowing good and evil.  He wanted to vaunt his specialness, his uniqueness, his difference. He would be the one deciding for himself what to do and what not to do.

Unlike Adam, Jesus accepted his total dependence on, and orientation to, the will of God.  Rather than choosing to stand in the shoes of God, he chose to stand in the shoes of the common man: he accepted mortality, even the totally demeaning and dehumanising death by crucifixion; he chose vulnerability, indeed he aligned himself with the weakest and most marginalised and oppressed.

The outcome of Adam’s choice was that he lost access to the Tree of Life, and from being hero, he became vulnerable to death, to struggle and to suffering.  The outcome of Jesus’ choice was that God vindicated him, making him Lord, and showing him to be the true and only exemplar of fulfilled humanity.  Paul urged the Philippians to imitate Jesus – to stand in the shoes of the least, the vulnerable.

The Social Justice Statement this year speaks of Jesus as the Light of the World.  Jesus became Light of the World precisely through his readiness to stand in the shoes of the least and to see life through their eyes.  During this year of reflection on Matthew’s Gospel, we have seen Jesus as the one who, consistently, in both deed and word, and in distinction from some of the Pharisees, was the lifter of burdens: Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.

The Church today (that is, you and I), following in the footsteps of Jesus, is sent, too, to be Light of the World.  We will do this by choosing to stand like Jesus in the shoes of the least, the marginalised, and to see life from their perspective: where, as Paul put it, everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead.  That calls for quite a change of mindset, and happens only with time and deliberate effort – to think of other people’s interests, especially those with no voice of their own.  It is this mindset that is the basis of the Church’s commitment to social justice.  It is a concern far too important to be left solely to the concern of political parties and governments.

But it is a commitment expressed not through clout but through humility (or the power of truth).  The Church’s temptation over the centuries has been to use power (or to align itself with those who had the power) to build the Kingdom of God, as it were, by legislation.  Perhaps we are fortunate today to be a minority in a pluralistic world where we don’t have the sanction of the law to back us.  Our influence will be drawn solely from the truth of our message.  Our task is not to impose but to convince, because God’s Kingdom comes into being only by people opting for the truth in freedom.  Anything else is a caricature.  A morality enforced by the sanctions of law, whilst sometimes it may help a voiceless minority, is still a long way from the kingdom of God.

However, for our words to lead to conviction, we must be living the truth we proclaim.  That is what today’s Gospel was essentially about.  The Church is called to be the sacrament of the Kingdom – we are called to mirror in the way we live both as individuals and as Church community, the values, the truth and the joy of the Kingdom.  In our world today, words are cheap; we are awash in a sea of words and images.  Our deeds and example carry conviction.