16th Sunday Year B - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2009

Ted Kenna's funeral during the week triggered off memories of my own, from the 1940s.  I remember, as a child in Primary School, that, with most other Australians during that time, I feared the Japanese. We were told of the atrocities they had committed, and I despised them - I hated them. I was just an unquestioning, loyal little schoolboy.

Ten years later, I was studying for the priesthood in Rome, and among my fellow students were some from Japan. They were intelligent fellows, serious-minded, and, along with the rest of us, wanting to know and love Jesus.  There were Chinese and Vietnamese students with us, too. Most of them had had harrowing experiences escaping from their oppressive Communist regimes.  In the 50s, the Communists had replaced the Japanese, in the common Catholic psyche, and we feared them; we despised them for their cruelties, we hated them.

In St Paul's day, it was Jews versus Gentiles. Jews despised Gentiles and their ways, and the Gentiles, likewise, didn't have much time for the Jews with their funny ways and their sense of superiority. Paul saw through that mutual opposition.  He rejoiced, as he wrote in today's Second Reading, that in Christ, you that used to be so far from us - you Gentiles who used to be so far from us Jews, have been brought very close, by the blood of Christ. He is the peace between us.  Mind you, though Paul rejoiced in the peace made possible by Christ between the opposing Jews and Gentiles, he struggled to think peacefully of his fellow Jews who didn't see things his way.

Our willingness to handle difference, to handle rivalry, is always a struggle.  It's almost as though we need difference and threat to tell us who we are and to give us a sense of identity, and of belonging. We need our enemies.  A sure-fire way to national unity, to get everyone pulling together, is to get us to feel under threat - whether it be from Muslims, or Al Quaida or the supposed hordes of asylum-seekers poised to invade our shores.

Tribalism, whatever shape it takes, (at least, as long as I see it out there, in others), deeply unsettles me.  When I see images of protesters mindlessly chanting their answers to the endlessly repeated questions: What do we want? When do we want it? it leads me to think of a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem, 2000 year ago, and to hear the Jerusalem crowd chanting: What do we want? Crucify him!  When do we want it? Now!

Well, they got what they wanted - they got blood. And it led Paul, some years later, to reflect: by the blood of Christ, you that used to be so far from us have been brought very close.

How come? Well, for me at least, his blood, his innocent death, his death that he chose, deliberately, not to run from, simply because he loved people, all people, and wouldn't pull back from that determination - his death led some to recognize the murderous hostility lurking in the hearts of us all, and, recognising it, to name it for what it is, and to see that it is not necessary.  We don't need enemies; we don't need scapegoats; we don't need victims for sacrifice, in order to feel comfortable with who we are.

We just have to let ourselves be loved – by anyone, but, best of all, by God, and, ultimately, by ourselves - and we become freed from seeing difference as threat, from seeing different views and disagreements as threat, and as spur and justification to take the offensive and to be offensive.  As Paul wrote: In his own person Christ killed the hostility. He overwhelmed it by the power of his love.  The way to personal inner peace, to peace in our world, starts by really letting God love us, by letting God even like us.  All we have to do is let it be and notice what begins to happen.