28th Sunday Year B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2006

What must I do to inherit eternal life? The question obviously expressed a longing – but a longing for what?  Eternal life was the expression the man used. I wonder what he had in mind. Was his question: What must I do to be deliriously happy and to be ultimately safe, secure? Perhaps it was both, perhaps neither.  Certainly Jesus’ answer caught him totally off-guard: sell everything, give it to the poor, stay close to me and observe – follow me! Jesus lost him altogether.

And then Jesus’ next comment nearly lost the disciples: How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! Jesus repeated what he said. And after an incredulous questioning from them, Jesus went on to say it was not only hard but impossible – not just for the rich but for everyone!  For you it is impossible – but not for God. It’s pure gift of God – totally beyond our control.

Still, Peter felt reasonably confident: What about us? We’ve left everything and followed you. And Jesus went along with that. But had Peter and the others in fact left everything?  Judas would later deliberately betray Jesus in cold blood. His initial enthusiastic response to Jesus somehow turned sour. What was more important to him? What did the following of Jesus ask that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, surrender?  And Peter himself – Under pressure from a servant girl, he denied that he ever knew Jesus. And the other ten, who had shared Eucharist with him a few hours earlier, once he was arrested, abandoned him and fled.  What was more important to them than their solidarity with Jesus? What did they fear losing? What could they not give up?

All of us at some stage have personally aligned ourselves with Jesus – freely deliberately and (hopefully) enthusiastically.  Why do we sin? What do we consider more important than consistently and radically following his way? What matters so much to us that we can’t let it go?  As we look at ourselves as a nation, we could well ask: What matters so much to us that we are prepared to ignore the clear vision of Jesus?  Why don’t we respond more generously as a nation to the two-thirds of the world’s population struggling with incredible hardship? Why don’t we courteously welcome to our shores those fleeing persecution and probable death? Why do we sometimes and selectively follow the path of violent resistance to enemies and evil doers despite the clear example of Jesus that resistance be non-violent? Why do we knowingly risk wrecking the planet, leaving much of it possibly uninhabitable for future generations?  What is more important to us, the need to be in control, the need to survive physically even at the price of our dying morally, the need to live comfortably, the need not to have to change our ways?

Perhaps it’s easy to criticise at the macro level. It is not so really demanding, or so personally practical. Besides, we share those responsibilities with others who do not share our sense of the centrality of Jesus.  So what about the micro level, the level of our ordinary day-to-day interactions? Why do we sin? Why do we criticise? abuse? waste? cover up?  What are we afraid of losing? Why do we struggle to give up our image, our comfort, our sense of superiority and self-righteousness, our need to feel somehow in control?

As Jesus said: For us it is impossible - unless we know that someone else is in control, and that we can unconditionally trust that other. To know that, we need to have encountered God. That was the source of Jesus’ freedom. It can be the source also of ours.