25th Sunday

Year B

25th Sunday Year B

See Commentary on Mark 9:30-32 & Mark 9:33-37

Homily 1 - 2006

As a nation, we love the celebrities – particularly, it seems, when they die. Last week gave us a couple of cases to illustrate the point. But as we seem to need our celebrities whom we can all love, we also seem to need our scapegoats whom we can hate. Make them larger than life, or lower than scum, and we don’t have to take a look at ourselves – very convenient!

A fascinating thing is that God loves us all - the celebrities, the scapegoats, and those of us who are neither. How come? Well, it says something about the infinite freedom of God, about love, and about the radical dignity - and fragility - of all of us. God sees our virtue, and our sin, and God also sees the unique reflection that each of us is of God’s own infinite beauty and wonder. And what counts with God is neither our sin, nor our virtue, but our radical beauty.

In Jesus’ world, right at the bottom of the pecking order was the child (particularly the child who would later grow into a woman). Jesus’ attitude was to explode all cultural pecking orders, all focus on the irrelevant - all media ratings - and to encourage us to move towards the freedom, the vision and the choice for love that are God’s – to discover the God-given dignity of every person, including ourselves, and to live from there.

That was the basis of what Jesus was on about in today’s Gospel: his bringing a little child into the centre, and putting his arms around him or her, and telling his audience of disciples that, unless they were happy to accept that really they were without clout, (and didn’t need to have it anyway, and were wasting their time trying to get it), they would miss out on the Kingdom experience of freedom, wonder and “at-homeness” with all.

That was also the basis of his consistent reaching out to the marginalised, the despised, the sinners, the powerless, the leaderless and the oppressed. All the beneficiaries of his miracle cures came under one or other of those categories. And a lot of people didn’t like him for that. They didn’t appreciate his stance, indeed, they saw him as a dangerous threat to society, to established values - to traditional Jewish values (as we might say today, to Aussie values).

Jesus’ stance is the basis of the Church’s stance for Social Justice. Concern for Social Justice springs straight from the heart of God. This year on the annual Social Justice Sunday, the Church invites us to tune in again to what Pope John Paul said, twenty years ago when he was out here in Australia, about the place of Aboriginal culture and of Aboriginal people within the broader Australian scene.

To find solutions to problems can often present problems. But to seek actively and insistently for solutions is, for the Catholic, not negotiable. That active, insistent search is a factor of our own closeness to the heart of God. And the search needs to be made not from a sense of superiority or benevolence, but from a sense of equal dignity. That means that the search needs to be a shared search. It is not a question of doing things for Aboriginal people - as though they were not smart or motivated enough to do things for themselves - but of being prepared to do things with them.

Given their state of chronic dispossession, and their being so far behind the eight-ball, it not simply a case, either, of their being given equal treatment. It is not a level playing field. Government needs to make a preferential option in their favour. It is quite saddening, when re-reading what the Pope had to say twenty years ago, that so little progress has been made. We were better at cheering the Pope than listening to him.

Homily 2 - 2009

About six glossy advertising brochures came with the Hamilton Spectator this week-end - all urging us to get more things, or to upgrade and get better things. I presume that such brochures work - they say that advertising sells. Sometimes, I know, it works on me, over time persuading me by promising greater efficiency, or greater convenience. It can make me restless. And the more it works on others - the more people get “this or that” - the more “this or that” becomes desirable for me.

But the ads also promise more than increased efficiency or comfort. They promise prestige, or acceptance, or the possibility of a bit of one-up-manship, or a more beautiful body (that will never be beautiful enough, though), all geared to making me feel someone, and to making others envious of me, one way or another. It can be dangerous; but it is so much part of the culture - so much taken for granted - that we don't necessarily notice it.

As St James said in today's Second Reading: ‘Wherever you find jealousy or ambition, you find disharmony ...’ And he went on: ‘Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Isn't it precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?’ I don't know about wars and battles, but there is a lot of anger floating around in our world - domestic violence, street fights, mindless vandalism, endless litigation (it's always someone else's fault!), violent verbal attacks on internet discussion boards. Our nightly news bulletins are filled with endless conflicts, arguments and confrontations. It would appear that so many people must live lives of ceaseless envy, relentless rivalry, constant resentment and simmering anger.

So much for St James. Then we had the Gospel. Perhaps the disciples' Who is the greatest? reflected something of the same mindset. By contrast, the Gospel also gave us Jesus, tranquilly able to say: ‘The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men; they will put him to death ...’ You can almost hear him saying: So what? What incredible composure, detachment and inner freedom! How come? Where did he get it from? Certainly not from the competitive, rivalrous, and insecure people who filled his world. Jesus didn't shape his sense of identity by working out how he compared with others. He got it by believing that he was loved, loved by God: ‘You are my Son, my beloved; my favour rests on you.’

Most people in our world don't believe they are loved; don't believe they are loved unconditionally. Perhaps, they aren't, most of them. There's not much consistent, unconditional love in our world, anywhere. Except by God, and most haven't heard that, or haven't been interested enough to listen, or haven't been able to believe it. Personally, I don't think any of us believe it easily. For me, personally, it has been a lifelong journey - not there yet - but the journey keeps on getting better.

St James spoke of wisdom as something that makes for peace, and is kindly and considerate; it is full of compassion and shows itself by doing good; nor is there any trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it... St James spoke of wisdom. I think that the same can be said about the creative effect of God's love.

This can all sound a bit like motherhood. But finding ourselves increasingly able to be that way consistently and inclusively is a whole other way of experiencing life. Jesus believed that it was the only way to a radically re-formed, and radically life-giving world.

Homily 3 - 2015

Who is the greatest? The past week in politics was caught up precisely in trying to work that out. Tony Abbot or Malcolm Turnbull? It is easy to take potshots at politicians – but we all get trapped in similar interpersonal dynamics. Inevitably, we are constantly assessing our relative status. We yearn to be taken seriously and respected. "I am the greatest", of course, and everyone else is potential threat, unless they see and accept my worth. As St James warned us in the Second Reading, the question is unfortunately regularly clouded by hostility; and hostility undermines peace of mind and drains much of the joy out of life. Being on guard is so much part of our life, and has been for so long, that usually we fail to notice it – yet it leaves us feeling vaguely dissatisfied with life. That is not the experience of God’s Kingdom.

Is there an answer? a way out of our pervasive, low-level but consistent dissatisfaction with our lives as they are? I believe that today’s Gospel passage is quite relevant. The catch is that it calls us to change. Business as usual, commonsense, will not do. Jesus consistently invites us to conversion, and his message is inevitably counter-intuitive.

The answer begins by unseating ourselves as god, no longer seeing ourselves and our personal self-interest as the centre of the world. Jesus invites us to welcome the real God, the one who sent him; and he sees us welcoming the real God by firstly welcoming him. What a beautiful word – welcoming! Welcoming God! It talks of warmth, readiness and anticipation – without any trace of reluctance or competition. Jesus was disturbingly down-to-earth, however. He used a child as an example – and it wasn’t his child. He put his arms around the child, in warm, perhaps enthusiastic, welcome. That was a self-demeaning gesture in Jesus’ world – because other people’s children were totally insignificant, unimportant, and overlooked in their powerlessness. Things have changed over the centuries.

As a nation, we do not like to welcome strangers. Yet, interestingly, we are not a notably happily satisfied nation. Our need to own ever more, ever better, things seems insatiable. Perhaps, if we learnt once more to welcome strangers, particularly, as Jesus did, the insignificant, unimportant and overlooked, we might experience a deeper peace and more real contentment in our hearts.

Before he put his arms around the young child, Jesus had said something else interesting to his disciples, to those men who all saw themselves, and intensely wanted others to regard them, as somehow “first”. He invited them to consider themselves “last of all and servants of all”, indeed, not even “servants of some, some of the time” but simply as “servants of all”. It does not come naturally. How can anyone honestly see themselves as “last of all and servant of all”? Yet, in his seriously counter-intuitive style, Jesus saw the choice not as burden but, when undertaken voluntarily and whole-heartedly, as liberation – and as the way to a life worth living.

He knew what he was talking about. It would not be long before he would be paraded as “last of all” and, in the words of the Book of Wisdom in the First Reading, “… tested with cruelty and torture, … and condemned to a shameful death”. That was his way of being “servant of all” – and he managed it! He explored the extreme reaches of loving, which he had been practising all his life. As another scriptural author put it, “He became perfect through suffering”; and in the process showed us that such love was possible; and clearly in his case, that such love climaxed in rising to life. I believe, however, that Jesus did not have to wait for the third day to experience life, but that he was experiencing it with ever-growing intensity right across his life as gradually he “grew in wisdom and age and grace”.

Filled with hope, he invites us to follow.

Homily 4 - 2021

[The Twelve] had been arguing which of them was the greatest, so [Jesus] said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all”.

How do you do that? The very fact of trying to be last can be motivated precisely by the desire to become more perfect. In the meantime, do you pretend you are?and act as though you were?

Jesus took a little child, set him in front of them, put his arms around him - and said to them, “Anyone who welcomes one of these little ones …, welcomes me.” Genuinely welcome a little child… I suppose there are not too many hidden agendas lurking there… [though recent experience has shown that with some people, priests sadly included, even that can have a terribly dark and devastating purpose.]

Jesus was simply using examples that meant something in his day. The important issue is, as always: What was he really getting at?

Jesus was talking, of course, about pride, and encouraging humility. But trying to be humble is problematic. I remember my first parish priest referring to what he used to call: “Humility with a hook!”

I have been thinking over this the last few days, and wondering… and then, the story we had at weekday Mass on Thursday morning came to mind. There, Luke wrote of a woman who, according to a Pharisee also in the story, had a “bad name in the town”. She came in uninvited to a meal that Jesus was having at the house of the Pharisee. She approached Jesus, knelt at his feet, and began to weep, crying uncontrollably. The host was utterly embarrassed. She just stayed there, crying… and crying — oblivious to everything else. Her tears fell on Jesus’ feet, and continued to fall. Eventually, she let down her hair, in public, and began to wipe his feet with her hair… in public. And then, Luke said, she “covered his feet with kisses”. Finally, she produced from somewhere an expensive alabaster jar of ointment and extravagantly set about anointing his feet with it. She just stayed there. Jesus seemed perfectly at peace with it all. The host was speechless.

What was going on? Well … the woman certainly was not concerned about whether she was “the greatest”,… about what impression she was making.

Jesus concluded that she must have just experienced, somehow, for the first time in her life, the unconditional forgiveness of God — and nothing else mattered for her, certainly not what others might be thinking of her. She was only too conscious that she deserved nothing. But for the first time in her life, she knew, deep down, that she was deeply loved — simply for who she was. Though she had had endless clients, she may never have known anyone who genuinely loved her — until then.

She had no problem whether others saw her, or with seeing herself, “last of all and servant of all”. She knew the overwhelming, utterly liberating, experience that she was forgiven. Everything else flowed from there. Humility with no hook!

The wonderful fourteenth century English mystic, Julian of Norwich, once wrote: “… We need to fall… By the simple fact that we fall, we shall gain a deep and wonderful knowledge of what God’s love means. Love that cannot, will not, be broken by sin, is rock-like, and quite astonishing. It is a good thing to know this. Another benefit is the sense of insignificance and humbling that we get by seeing ourselves fall… We have got to see this.”