26th Sunday Year A

See Commentary on Matthew 21:28-32


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.


 

Homily 2 – 2008 

Jesus was talking to those at the top: to the chief priests and the senior men (the elders) of the people.  He brought it right up to them: The tax-collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you.  That’s fascinating, isn’t it!  The tax-collectors – the ones who administered the taxes that crushed the poor, and the prostitutes…  I suppose some tax-collectors and prostitutes struggled with their behaviour, and didn’t always sleep soundly at night.  Yet, as Jesus said, they were able to approach God, and to believe him.  And they could do that, perhaps, because they hoped that God is a God who knows where they come from, who knows the pressures they live under … and also perhaps, because Jesus had helped them see that God is also the God who forgives, who forgives the guilty (No one else needs it).

Because they believed in forgiveness, they were able to face the prospect of change, to change the way they saw themselves… to change their minds (like the son in today’s story).  They were able to face the destructiveness of their behaviour – because they had come to see that their sin did not in the least block their access to God.  They no longer needed to deny their sin, to soften it, or to call it something else (where previously they may have been tempted to do so).  They could see the pressures on them not as justifying reasons or excuses, but as they were: factors confusing, even rattling, them, and lessening their freedom.  They could be real before God, and, because they were real, God could touch them.

I have been thinking a lot these past few weeks about women who have abortions.  We tread a difficult line.  On the one hand, as we look at things objectively, in a detached way, we can’t but see abortion as destructive of human life.  The issues are, though, more complicated.  The culture, and the media, muddy the waters.  So many articles in the paper of late keep speaking of the child in the womb as though it is not a child.  They say it’s just another part of the mother’s body, with which she can do what she wants.  They deny that abortion is the destruction of a human life.

More pertinently, perhaps, many unwillingly pregnant women, without necessarily thinking things through clearly, simply see their situation as impossibly messy.  They are anything but detached – indeed, they feel under enormous pressure.  Do they necessarily, cold-bloodedly, turn their backs on God?  Or might they think that God, somehow, understands?  It is hard to know what goes on in human minds under pressure.  Only when the pressures have gone, as they look back, may they see clearly what in fact they have done – and that their choice was at too great a price.

People who know forgiveness can front the destructiveness of what they have done.  They do not have to run from the truth or from themselves.  Those who know the forgiving God find the beautiful freedom to change their minds, to be genuinely sorry and to seek forgiveness.  It is truly tragic that so many never meet the forgiving God.  They have to go it alone.  They never discover the heart of God.  They never find the deepest inner peace.

Let’s be slow to judge anyone.  Perhaps, we in the Church make it hard for women, too, because we are not as good as we could be at witnessing to the God who is love.  Perhaps, we get across a God who points the finger.  Like the chief priests and elders of Jesus’ day, none of us is all that good at recognising and naming our sin, because half the time we mistake it for virtue – it’s our way to impress God.  Sometimes, sadly, the energy that fuels the loudest condemnations comes from an uneasiness that stirs within, stemming from our unconscious struggles with our deeper, unrecognised sins.  We are all vulnerable.


Homily 3 - 2014 

When a young couple front up to get married, there is no way they can anticipate what they are undertaking when they pledge, “I will love you and honour you all the days of my life”. Growing in love leads inevitably to ecstatic experiences of happiness but also at times to excruciating suffering.

It is that ambivalence of love that we celebrate sacramentally at every Eucharist, as  we bring our life experiences of past and present, and say “Yes” to what awaits us in the future. We trust that assertion before Communion,  “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb”, yet we know, too, that the menu of that supper is “My body given up for you”, and “the cup of my blood poured out for you … for forgiveness”. We are prepared to share both.

Despite the old song, love is more than “Doing what comes naturally”. It involves a constant dying to self – which wonderfully leads to an ever deeper and more joyful lived experience of life. We cannot have one without the other.

In today’s Second Reading, Paul was speaking about precisely that. He put it this way, In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus. The word translated ‘minds’ means more like “every fibre of your being”. He saw that expressed in practice this way, No competition among you, no conceit [no big-noting ourselves]”. He went on say, nobody thinking of their own interests first, but everybody thinking of other people’s interests. That is what married love is in practice - Putting your spouse’s, your children’s, needs before your own. And you do it – and sometimes it is at enormous cost.

Paul saw that sort of love happening not just in the family, but extending beyond that into the Christian community. Baptism, our initiation into the community, is a commitment to belong, along with other strugglers also trying to put on the mind of Christ. And is that not, “I will love you and honour you [all of you!] all the days of my life”?

Jesus saw that commitment to love extending out beyond the community of disciples to the broader community. For him Church is simply where we practise loving, and keep reminding ourselves that love is ultimately what it is all about. Loving is the only way to make the world an exciting place to live in; loving is the only way to joy to the full. He invited us in fact to love our enemies – as the only way ultimately to change our world, to save our world, and to enjoy it.

It is particularly important for us to take this to heart right now. It is hard to “Be alert!”, and at the same time not to over-react or generalise, not to slip into condemnation, not to scapegoat, not to hate. Unhappily so much of our public media, and the general social media, are pushing in the direction of hatred. And hatred, unfortunately, is contagious. In the present climate we need quite consciously, quite deliberately, to choose the way of love. It does not come naturally.

There is no do doubt that St Paul saw love as our only option if our life in Christ means anything to us, if it is important, if it is real, if we share the Spirit in common, if we have, deep within us, what he calls tenderness and sympathy. They change the way we see things – if we let them, if we want them to.

It is too easy, like the son in today’s parable, to say, Certainly, sir! I’ll go into the vineyard, and not go. Too easy to say, “Lord! Lord!”, but not to take seriously what he says to us, not to think better and believe in him. We prefer the ways of comfort and familiarity to the way of love. Yet they do not work in family. They do not work within our Christian community. They will not work, either, in our world.


Homily 4 - 2020

Today’s Gospel passage is the second of three interactions, grouped together by Matthew, between Jesus and the Jerusalem priests in the sacred precincts of the Temple, their home-ground. They directly challenged him about his authority, which they saw as a threat to theirs.

Jesus’ short story was directed pointedly at them, “Which son did the will of his Father?” The answer was obvious — though they fell for the bait.

What might we learn from the incident? Personally, I find it very easy to criticise the Jewish priests. For one thing, we share similar turf. If criticise them is all do, I learn nothing — and simply confirm my sense of my personal superiority. Perhaps, your reaction on hearing Jesus’ story may not be all that different from mine.

Way back in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned against the danger of getting worked up about the speck in another’s eye, while not noticing the much more dangerous, and perhaps even obvious, log in our own. His point was basically that, whenever we feel emotionally involved in any criticising, it is a pretty sure indication that we have a similar or worse fault, and are just as blind as the individuals or group that we criticise. So second thoughts may prove helpful for all of us.

What is it precisely that annoys me [and perhaps you, too?] about the Jewish priests? They would not accept Jesus’ obvious inner truth and his sense of authority that flowed from it. Perhaps, they were not really open to God, not really searching for him, not loving him. They knew the answers; they had done it all before; their whole lives were ostensibly God-centred. But it was all formality; all for show; it entitled them to feel superior. Their energy centred on themselves, not on God; they used God to confirm their own status.

Might I be blithely guilty of the same fault? Might clericalism be biting away at my own heart, much as it was at theirs? Might even you be complicit in the clericalism scandalising so many people both inside the Church itself as well as outside? The more difficult it is to see, the more likely it is to be operating. The power of our culture and sub-cultures to blind us to ourselves is truly formidable.

Whenever we feel indignation, it can be an invitation to pause and critically examine ourselves before we open our mouths to criticise others.


 

Homily 5 - 2023

In today’s Second Reading, taken from his Letter to the Philippians, Paul revealed himself remarkably personally to his disciples in the small vulnerable community at Philippi. He was particularly insistent that they realise the non-negotiable importance of aiming always to be, as he put it, “united in your love, with a common purpose and a common mind”. He went so far as to tell them that that would be “the one thing that would make me completely happy.” Behind his plea was his conviction that such sensitivity to each other flowed from their basic awareness of the nature of the Christ on whom their faith was anchored. Central to this faith was that, as he worded it, “In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus”.

As we heard today, Paul saw “Christ’s mind” summed up in a short Christian hymn that his converts were obviously familiar with too. The Christ they believed in was no less than the Second Person of the Trinity. As the hymn clearly put it, “His state was divine”. The hymn then went on to contrast Christ’s mind with that of Adam. In contrast to Adam who could not resist the temptation “to be like God”, Christ, the Second Person of God, “did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself … and became as humans are” [conceived in the womb of Mary and born in Bethlehem.] The hymn proceeded: “… and being as all humans are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death...” [which Adam had sought with such tragic consequences to avoid], “...death on a cross”.

What the hymn didn’t say, but that the early Christians so gratefully appreciated, was that Jesus prioritised humanity’s need for redemption over his dignity as Christ.

Along the way to that“death on a cross”, as we learn elsewhere in the Gospels, that same “mind” determined the shape of his life’s mission: “to bring the good news to the poor; …liberty to captives; …to the blind new sight; …to set the downtrodden free”. He did not ask who was to blame. He simply saw the need and acted, irrespective of its price to himself.

“In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus…”.

During the past week, I have been reviewing what my core insight into the mind of Christ really is, how I see it applying in my life, and asking myself what sort of priority I give it. My pondering has been taking place against the background of the approaching referendum: how does my sense of the “mind of Christ” suggest I vote?

It seems clear to me that the proposition of a Voice to Parliament for First Nations Peoples is a cry of hope on their part — a desperate cry of hope from some of them. Indigenous people are three times worse off than non-indigenous people in Australia in areas of health, education, life expectancy, income, quality of life, juvenile incarceration [and more]. One in three indigenous households lives below the poverty line.

It is hard for people to energise themselves if they do not have hope. It is hard to dream of a future without hope. And it is hard to hope without a sense of dignity. I wonder how I would feel if my childhood had been an on-going experience of being neglected, discounted and rejected.

I feel saddened that the issue has become largely and unnecessarily politicised. But that seems to have become the default option for much national discourse.

As adults it is appropriate that each of us makes up our own mind how to vote. But as a disciple of Jesus, I firmly believe that what God asks of me is to approach the question from as close as I can get to “the mind of Christ”; and consequently to keep hope alive in the hearts of First Nations Peoples by voting a clear “Yes” to the Referendum.