6th Sunday Year C - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2022

It would be a pity if we put today’s Gospel into the “too hard basket” yet again — as we have probably done with it when we have heard it before. I have been thinking about it this past week and deciding whether to take it seriously this time, at last, and give it the attention it deserves.

You may have noticed that Luke prefaced Jesus’ sermon by clarifying that Jesus was talking to “his disciples” — not to ‘those others out there’. Today’s message is for me, for us, not for those who are not his disciples.

He began: “How happy are you who are poor”, and balanced it with its companion, “Alas for you who are rich”. What was Jesus talking about?

Poverty is different from hunger. It is more an on-going condition, but rarely fatal. And there is no obvious dividing line between the poor and the rich. Poverty and wealth seem to be elastic states of life and usually define themselves in relation to each other. And there are poor who very much want to be rich, and perhaps are angry that they aren’t. Yet nuns and monks take a vow of poverty as a kind of stepping-stone to something — and don’t seek to be rich.

How on earth does poverty constitute the experience of God’s Kingdom “now”? … and Jesus was talking about now, since his comment was, “Yours is the kingdom of God” — not “will be”. What ever did he have in mind? Could he have been talking about an enviable inner experience of some kind, indeed, of happiness now? I think he was. But if he was, poverty is not inevitably satisfying. I think its blessedness, its happiness, is a factor of how we approach poverty.

I think that Jesus was talking about the maturity that is able to be content with enough, with what is already ours, that is in touch with our true human dignity and is able to appreciate and to savour it, that shares a friendship with God, the God who loves us and is the source of our dignity — a maturity that is sensitive to the beauty of the world and the people around us. These things cannot be bought; nor do they need to be — they are already there, and they cannot be taken from us. All we need to do in order to be nourished and thrilled by them is to open our eyes and our ears, and especially our hearts, and, like the olympic athletes currently filling our TV screens, to practise regularly.

What about Jesus’ “Alas for you who are rich: you are having your consolation now”? It is no secret that so many of the wealthy, especially the super-rich whom we are more likely to hear about, are not happy people. Would you say that the royal family seems to be a happy family? or Gina Reinhart with her yacht and her iron-ore mines and her cattle stations? But even ourselves and our neighbours [remember, Jesus was talking to “his disciples”], can we get drawn, if only to some extent, into the rat race, mesmerised by the advertising industry: and, if we are honest and stop kidding ourselves, find ourselves sometimes restless and unsatisfied, no matter what the other so-called “consolations” may be like?

We haven’t reflected on the “hungry”, those “mourning” [for whatever reason], and those experiencing public “criticism” or contempt. I simply invite you to reflect how real and mutually supportive is your little Christian community here? Don’t you look after each other, care for each other, support each other pretty well, such that no one needs to fall between the cracks?

There is plenty of homework there to keep us all pondering for the week — and beyond.