29th Sunday Year B - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2021

“I have a right to do what I like!” We have heard that said fairly regularly in recent weeks, especially in the context of mandatory vaccination. We also hear it asserted increasingly in relation to euthanasia, as we have heard it argued in favour of abortion: “I have a right to do what I like with my body”. Often when I hear claims like that, I feel like saying, “Hang on! Have you? Perhaps, it is not as simple as that… What if what you claim as your right contravenes what I believe is my right? And, if it does, how do we decide which one prevails?”

Do I have a right to travel as fast as I choose on the road? I’m a free person. But what if that endangers others’ lives? Whose right prevails? And how do we decide? and on what basis? And what do we do when we disagree?

Once we have agreed as citizens to live together peaceably in community, we accept that others have rights just as we have. Just as we have rights, we also have duties towards our neighbours. Who decides which rights prevail when one person’s or group’s rights contradict others’ rights? Over the years we have entrusted our governments to work out general laws to safeguard what we call the “Common Good”; and we rely on our police forces to ensure that laws are observed.

Some rights are absolute, springing from the simple fact of our human dignity — such as everyone’s right to life. However, even those rights or duties that we believe are absolute may not be seen as such by everyone, even by the majority. We may disagree with the government; but, if we wish to live in peace and harmony, we have no alternative but to obey the laws or to accept being punished some way. In the meantime, of course, we can try [we may need to try], non-violently, to have the laws in question changed.

To succeed in living in harmony with people who disagree with us requires deeper motivation than simple self-interest. For some, sadly, the sole effective motivation is the threat of punishment. Jesus suggested an alternative — an unfashionable one is his time, and equally unfashionable in our time. He said that any followers of his need to agree to try to move beyond self-interest and tribal or national interests, and to love even their enemies. Over the twenty centuries since he first spelt that out, we in the Church have hardly taken him seriously.

Human society has so far managed, imperfectly, to struggle along motivated by self-interest. But now that humanity has evolved to the stage where one man can wipe out whole nations by the press of a button, or the world’s delicately balanced ecological systems be destroyed simply by doing nothing, self-interest and the survival of the fittest are no longer working. Nations need urgently to learn to work together in mutual respect and even compassion. It sounds unrealistic, but we are reaching the stage where everyone needs seriously to learn “to love our enemies”. Jesus was prepared to live and even to die, that way himself. By accepting death, he hoped to show that such love is possible, and to motivate us to choose his way. As we heard in today’s Gospel, “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

May we, finally, take him seriously.