All Saints

Homily 1 - 2009

I'm used to the Beatitudes. I've heard them; I've sung them; I've spoken about them so often that I no longer hear them - and they can pass over me, leaving me untouched and unchallenged. For most of my life, I have missed their point. I have domesticated and sanitised them. That worries me.

At the time of Jesus, (and numbered among his hearers), there was no shortage of people who were not only poor, but whose poverty had entered into their very souls, into their spirits - and who had become people without hope: poor in spirit.

They were people who, despite heartless oppression, had lost the will even to object; and, in their unresisting gentleness, they let themselves be pushed around. Mourning and suffering were their constant experience. They hungered and thirsted for justice, for change, but they had lost hope. For the well-to-do, they were people who were simply discounted - voiceless and ignored. They were invisible. They may have numbered over half of the population.

Endemic sickness and disability are factors of poverty. The sick and disabled populate every page of the Gospel, and, in fact, provide the context for the Beatitudes and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount that follows them.

Whatever about the general attitudes that simply accepted the status quo and took it for granted, Jesus asserted these “nobodies” had dignity. In the eyes of God, they mattered. They would not be overlooked in the coming Kingdom of heaven - they were part of it; it was theirs, too.

Indeed, God showed a preferential option towards them. They would be satisfied; they would be comforted; they would belong there: Theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven would radically destabilize and challenge the prevailing cultural status quo.

Things have not changed all that much, except that our world has become globalised. In this globalised world to which we belong and from which we benefit, about one in five people live on less than $1 a day; over 800 million go to bed hungry each night; eleven million children die every year, from easily preventable causes, before they reach the age of five; while the world's nations spend $1.23 million million, annually, on military expenditure.

But, as in Jesus' day, so in ours. Cultures don't change easily. Assumptions do not get questioned. We learn not to see; we get accustomed to little more than gestures - if we do anything.

It puzzles me that so many people in our nation react, almost with paranoia, to the fact that a handful of people, fleeing genuine repression and trauma, arrive on our doorstep in leaky boats. Why such panic? Why such automatic and widespread heartlessness?

Cultures need to be changed - and Jesus looked to his disciples to be the agents of change. He listed three non-negotiable requirements for the Kingdom of heaven to become real. As the Gospel put it: Blessed are the merciful; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the peacemakers.

Mercy – clear enough, and certainly reaching beyond justice, (and giving justice its human face). Without it, even justice can be careless about human dignity.

Purity of heart – essentially, absence of other agendas, simplicity - mercy without self-interest. Yet, how hard it is even to recognise our other agendas! The power of culture to blind us is amazing.

Makers of peace. We don't know what peace means. We'll fight wars in the name of peace. People, even disciples, don't trust Jesus, or the way of Jesus.

The last two beatitudes (or is it one) also challenge me.

Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of right ...

Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account ...

Abuse is not my experience - and I fear I know the reason. I pay lip-service to mercy, to purity of heart, and to peace-making ...

And the world goes on unchanged.

Still, here we are to celebrate Eucharist - to surrender ourselves into the mystery of the Christ who was not only persecuted in the cause of right, but officially executed for the stance he took.

May the power of that mystery transform our hearts.