22nd Sunday Year C - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2007

Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. That was a very Jewish way of putting things. Jesus meant: God will humble, and God will exalt. But out of their sense of the holiness of God, Jews generally preferred not to use God’s name directly, and substituted the passive voice instead:will be humbled, will be exalted.

In the prayer that Luke put on the lips of Mary on the occasion of her visiting Elizabeth, Luke showed Mary voicing the same sentiments as Jesus: He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly.

How does all this fit in with our Australian values? We would like to think that we’re really egalitarian: champions of the “fair go” for everyone. Yet, we do love our heroes and our heroines. We seem to need them. The English have/had their Princess Diana. We don’t go for royalty so much – we have our sporting heroes (and, sometimes, sporting heroines).  And we expect them, of course, to be role-models. Role-models for what? They are people with exceptional sporting talent - and then we spend enormous amounts of money on them, training them, keeping them fit, the best of coaches… But they haven’t necessarily got much between the ears. They mightn’t have learnt much wisdom. For some, their whole upbringing may have been quite dysfunctional.

And the media makes them role-models, and the public goes along with it.  Then, having exalted them and put them on their pedestals, the media, and people generally, seem to love nothing more than being able to humble them when, not unexpectedly, fame goes to the heads of some, and they fail to live up to the expectations put on them as role-models.  What does all this say about us? not about them, but about us? This need for heroes? and, then, this covert joy in their humiliation?

Jesus’ stories today were not moral lessons, like Aesop’s fables, illustrating how we should behave. Luke calls them parables. They were meant to tease us, to stimulate our imaginations. So, life is not about winning honour for ourselves: My friend, move up higher. Nor is life about the pay-off in the next life: Repayment will be made to you when the virtuous rise again.

But if not honour, or pay-off in eternity, what is life about? Ultimately, it’s about opening our eyes in wonder to the fact that, already, we are loved madly by God – everyone is loved madly by God.  Get hold of that, and everything else is distraction: who is the greatest? how am I going? what’s in it for me? will God pat me on the head, at least when I die, and say: “Good boy, John!” God wants us to see ourselves through God’s eyes – loved! God wants us to see our world through God’s eyes – loved!

But, it doesn’t come easily. Surprisingly, we’re frightened, and, perhaps, with reason.  To believe it is to become different, to change. It is to no longer be in control. It feels like dying – to ourselves. But it still fascinates us. It resonates with our deepest selves.  God made us that way. God wants us to let it be so. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if we could all see that we’re all madly loved? Then, who’d need heroes, fallen or otherwise – except, perhaps, the kids and those adults who have still to grow up?