33rd Sunday Year B - Homily 4

 Homily 4 - 2018

At the time of Jesus and of the next generation or two afterwards, Palestine had been, and still was, an occupied country under the rule of the Roman Empire. The lives of ordinary Jews in their homeland were tough. Most of them faced alarming levels of poverty. An armed revolution had taken place during Jesus’ childhood, only to be brutally suppressed by Roman legionaries. Most Jews yearned for liberation. Some still dreamt of armed revolution; most, particularly pious Jews, hoped that God would intervene on their behalf, destroy their enemies and usher in the glorious end times. And they had the Book of Daniel, one of their sacred books written during an earlier foreign occupation a century or so earlier, to confirm that hope.

Jesus and the disciples had arrived in Jerusalem. Jesus had commented that the magnificent Jewish temple there in the city would face destruction. For disciples, the destruction of the temple was virtually unthinkable. It was the abode of God, where God became accessible. In their minds, the destruction of the temple would be the equivalent of the end of the world. Totally confused, they asked Jesus when it would happen.

Jesus’ answer referred specifically to the coming destruction of the temple, which in fact happened about forty years after Jesus’ death. Effectively Jesus made the point, in richly imaginative language, that life would go on as expected. Today’s Gospel passage gives us the conclusion of Jesus’ reflection, where he pulls aside the veil, as it were, to include a reflection on the deeper meaning of history in general.

The language about the sun being darkened, etc., made the point that the deeper meaning would be crucially important, metaphorically world-shattering. Ordinary human behaviour is never ordinary, never insignificant. How we behave, how we respond to what is going on, affects our experience of life in society now and into eternity.

As far as Mark was concerned, the Son of Man came in power and great glory when Jesus deliberately faced his murder out of his love for humanity. His death expressed his judgment on the world – his unshaken commitment to the dignity of every human person and his universal, unconditional forgiveness of sin.

But that initial coming of the Son of Man continues, unnoticed, generation after generation. The deeper meaning of our behaviour now is that, through it, whether we consciously realise it or not, we express either our acceptance or our rejection of Jesus’ forgiveness and of his way of love. Across history, God is gathering his chosen from the four winds. The generation that personally witnessed the human life of Jesus has passed away, but history goes on. Heaven and earth pass away, but Jesus’ words do not pass away – they remain as relevant today as they were when he first uttered them.

When we remove the veil, as it were, what is really going on? Nothing in our lives is insignificant. Our interactions with each other matter. Our choices to love matter. Our practical respect for the human dignity of everyone matters. Opening our hearts and minds to understand and respond to the nation’s First Inhabitants matters. Our cruelty to those desperate people who arrive unannounced on our shores matters. How we respond to victims of all kinds of abuse matters. Our response to those who are homeless matters. How protective we are to those still within the wombs of their mothers matters. How we treat our environment, whether we hand it over enhanced to the generations following us, matters.How we cast our votes – whether motivated by self-interest [what’s in it for me?] or whether we have in mind the common good – matters.

We do not see the Son of Man. But he is near, at the very gates. He is here because he loves our world, and wants to motivate us, to empower us, to choose the ways of love and of mutual respect – consistently, enthusiastically, energetically and courageously.