16th Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 -  2006

When I see on the TV images of the bombing of Lebanon, the shelling of Haifa, I feel so powerless, so discouraged.  The leaders of the warring factions seem simply not to care about their killing, particularly of innocent civilians, provided that they can make their point. It seems to go unquestioned that violence will achieve their desired objectives.  I presume that the war-makers are themselves a minority – the Hizbollah leadership and their fighters, the Israeli high command and their soldiers.

Most people don’t get involved, don’t want to get involved, do not themselves fire the rockets, the small arms, do not have their fingers on the triggers that launch the bombs.  Indeed, significant minorities, both of Jews and of Arabs, actively campaign for peace. But the fighting goes on.  It was much the same during the open conflict in Northern Ireland. The murderers were a minority; the active peace campaigners were a minority.  The majority in the middle were like barrackers – not involved, but often one-eyed, perhaps even blind, incensed when their side got hurt, and instinctively tending to justify any damage done to the other side.. Remember the fighting in the Balkans. Hatreds went back 600 years!  I remember reading some time back that the ones who kept the memories alive were often the grand-mothers. Was that true?

I don’t know what we can do about the Middle East. To wish that our leaders might do something constructive can sometimes be a cop-out.  At the bottom of it all, we’re not dealing with problems specific to Arabs and Israelis, or to Sunnis and Shiites, or to Afghans, or to East Timorese. We’re dealing with human nature.  Reconciliation, coping with difference, preferring negotiation, open to compromise, ready to forgive, don’t come easily to any of us.  It happens in families; it happens between Christian denominations; it happens between Catholics.

In today’s Second Reading Paul was reflecting on the often bitter struggle going on in his day between Jews and Gentiles.  He rejoiced that Jesus had brought about reconciliation between the two. Perhaps he was too optimistic. Jesus had made reconciliation possible, but people had to make it happen.

The Gospel spoke about Jesus’ response to the needs of the oppressed, the hopeless, the powerless ones of his day. He tried to teach them! Teach them what? That they were loved by God, and had an inviolable dignity, whatever others thought about them or however others treated them. That everyone shared the same dignity.  But to get hold of it they had to convert, and keep on converting. You don’t learn it in one quick step. 

Thank God that we don’t bomb each other into oblivion, that we don’t shoot each other, that we don’t burn down each others’ houses.  But we are still, as a nation, not good at coping with difference. We want things on our terms; we don’t want others on our turf, whatever about their needs or their dignity.  We can be prickly, defensive, protective of our own patch. It is not easy to stand in the shoes of another.

As St Paul said, even of Jesus, that what made reconciliation possible was the Cross.  He restored peace through the cross... In his own person he killed the hostility – he absorbed it, he showed its futility, he modelled another way – but it cost him his life.  That sort of teaching is hard to take seriously in a world distorted by sin. But we do share, all of us, the desire for peace. The price of it is what is hard to take on board. We may not be able to do anything for the Middle East; but the sorts of things that escalate into full-scale war, or terrorism, begin in families and local communities. They begin in our human hearts.

The good news is that God wants to help us. That’s precisely why he sent Jesus. But outcomes will not be magic.

We need to listen to him. We need to change.