15th Sunday Year B - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2021

Today we bring Australia’s annual NAIDOC Week to an end. With the Dodson brothers having studied here at Monivae, Hamilton has reason to affirm the two brothers’ proud role over many years in their work for Reconciliation. There is still a distance to go, but slowly the social climate is changing for the better. My suspicion is that “corporate Australia” finds progress a challenge when their financial privilege is threatened in any way. Fortunately “big sport” seems finally to be coming on board.

And where do we stand as disciples of Jesus? Are we noticeably different from the general community? Sometimes I wonder whether on many moral matters, especially in matters of Social Justice rights and responsibilities, our party-political leanings are more significant than our faith. Nor has the Church’s record always been exemplary.

There is no doubt where God stands on racism and social entitlement. Nor where Jesus stood. Tactically, the limited human Jesus largely restricted his movements and teaching to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel”; but when Samaritans or pagan individuals were in need of healing, he mercifully reached out to them quite spontaneously. This was consistent with his tuning-in to God. Mutual understanding and love constitute the intrinsic essence of God. The Godhead exists as three Persons in relationship with each other.

Human persons, all made by God in the image and likeness of God, necessarily bear that divine mark of relationship. It is in our DNA [as it were]. We have an innate tendency to relationship — though it has been badly bruised by sin. This was God’s plan for humanity, even “before the world was made”, “from the beginning”, as Paul insisted in today’s Second Reading. We distort our essential humanity when we act self-centredly; when we close off from others.

Jesus himself was highly aware of relationship in his personal identity. The human Jesus was the Second Person of the Three Persons of God. It was this Second Person of God [the one whom John’s Gospel referred to as “The Word” and whom Paul preferred to refer to as the “Christ”], who became human as Jesus — born of Mary. He knew at first hand the beauty and the non-negotiable value of relationship.

With this in mind, again as we heard in today’s Reading, Paul consistently emphasised, “[God] let us know the mystery of his purpose … that he would bring everything together under Christ as head.” Elsewhere, in his Epistle to the Colossians, Paul wrote, “God wanted all things to be reconciled through [Christ] and for him.” In working for Reconciliation, together with our First Nations peoples, for instance, we work hand in hand with Christ. It is a sacred task.

And where does the Church stand? The Second Vatican Council spoke of the Church as the “sacrament of salvation” — sacrament in the sense of both symbol or sign of the community’s salvation and instrument or means of that salvation: as we live the gift of salvation together, our living in relationship as Church models for our secular community what reconciliation can look like; and our personal commitment as genuinely motivated and responsible disciples helps to bring it about.

Could this be one of the clear aims of the coming Plenary Council?