24th Sunday Year C - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2007

Pharisees classified certain behaviours as sinful, and those who did them, they judged as sinners. They criticised Jesus for eating with sinners. Whether the ones Jesus ate with were real sinners, of course, was a moot point.

Since we have certain standards, we do judge certain actions to be wrong. If we were to do them knowingly and freely, we would be sinning. But we can never say that others who do them are sinners; because who knows another person’s heart?

If Jesus was not prepared to eat with sinners, he would have had to eat by himself. In fact, Jesus ate frequently with tax collectors, with Pharisees, and with disciples. His last meal was sandwiched between the betrayal of one, denial by another, and abandonment by the rest.

I wonder if he ever felt awkward or compromised with some of the company he kept? How do you mix easily with people whose behaviour you strongly disagree with? who constantly criticise you, at least behind your back? It can be a cop out to say: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” and especially, “You can love people without liking them.” Would you be satisfied to know that God loved you, but didn’t really like you?

I believe that God likes me, though sometimes I catch myself out feeling uncertain. Equally hard is to believe that God actually likes those people I definitely don’t like.

How does God manage to like everyone? For a start, I think that, when God sees us, God sees into our depths. It is not that God necessarily sees there in our depths a sincerity that we don’t. Sometimes, there is no sincerity there. But I do believe that God sees our deepest sense of being ultimately no good, our insecurity, our deep loneliness, our deepest pain.

Though our instinct is to cover up our weaknesses,strangely, our sharing of our weaknesses can be surprisingly unifying. If we could see more clearly into the hearts of those we dislike or judge, we might find ourselves being more open to them, even, perhaps, increasingly drawn to them. They might never become our bosom friends, but they would not upset us so much.

The problem is that something often gets in the way of our seeing behind their annoying behaviours. What that something is is often our own unrecognised pain, loneliness and insecurity – and the addictions and compulsions they give birth to - and it is these that their differences challenge or needle.

Remember Jesus’ colourful comment in his Sermon on the Mount: Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye, and never notice the plank in your own? Learning to recognise, accept and make peace with the plank in our own eye – is an ongoing task and seems to take a life-time. It is a lot easier to condemn, to avoid, to ridicule those whom we don’t like, than it is to work at learning to like them.

But isn’t it wonderful when you think about it! God likes me. God likes you. God likes even those we particularly dislike. We are all sinners - but that just emphasises our neediness and draws God closer to us. According to Jesus, it gives God great joy when we believe, accept and let it be that God likes us.

God is like the woman who found her lost coin, and then put on  a party for her neighbours; or like the shepherd who found his lost sheep and rejoiced with his friends.