Sixth Sunday of the Year
This week’s readings are not very comforting as they speak of blessings and curses, threats, and punishments. They can seem blunt and jarring especially when he says, ‘Blessed are the poor.’ He must be mistaken. Surely the rich, the admired and satisfied are the blessed! Were not earthly rewards always a sign of God’s favour. Jesus’ proclamation of the Beatitudes is radically contradicting the status quo. God is impressed by faith, compassion, kindness, and love, not wealth and good fortune? Jesus shows us the vision of a world where no one is privileged at the expense of others – where no one is oppressed people, subjugated, excluded, or marginalised. But such a world of sharing threatens the beneficiaries of such imbalance resulting in attempts to neutralize Jesus and his ‘preferential option for the poor.’ It is also behind the attempts to neutralise the teachings of Pope Francis. Jesus pronounces a blessing on those who are insulted, ill-treated, hated, excluded, or suffer rejection for following his distributively just vision for humanity. He tells us to take courage.
Jesus’ use of the word blessed is specific and challenging. It exalts God’s value system. It recognises human suffering. Jesus proposes a society that eliminates all injustice - economic, racial, gendered, based on orientation, or whatever - especially for the marginalised and vulnerable. His use of blessings is to encourage and give hope to those who have every good reason to be discouraged and hopeless. Underneath these words, he is saying, ‘You are beloved’ and bear a sacred image even if the world does not see you this way.’ We might ask is the church speaks words that communicate that kind of hope. Where does it act to make these blessings come true? Oscar Romero said, ‘The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being… a defender of the rights of the poor [and] a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society ... that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.’ So, ‘when the church hears the cry of the oppressed, it cannot avoid denouncing the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.’ Do we hear that cry? What happens to our hearts? Do our hearts burn when we see Jesus crying out to us in the poor?
God’s heart pains at the brutality in the world. That brutality is often ignored with silence to hide cruel and inhuman injustices. The subversive, powerful, eye-opening message in the gospel speaks to the disparities and inequities many people face. In a world that has been crafted over generations to raise some to unfathomable wealth while billions more struggle to sustain themselves, we must open our eyes to the reality of the poor, the reality of injustice, the reality of neglect, the reality of inequality, the reality of people who are hungry, rendered voiceless and stripped of dignity. He is in touch with people who yearn to hear God’s word and receive healing and freedom. God’s passion is for people and God is pained by failure to notice or care.
Jesus today does not speak from a mountain top but on ‘level’ ground, to speak our hearts, into our ears and to our experience. Luke’s concern is with the real experience of poor, hungry and suffering people and those called ‘blessed’ are those who notice when people are bullied: women, young people, street people, street people indigenous people and gay people. Some are bullied in God’s name.
Jesus continues to live in poverty, hunger, and sorrow in solidarity with people with few options. He still heals the marginalised, the outcasts, the pariahs, and people rejected for a crime of being sick, living with a disability, being homosexual or transexual. We are called to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; to be hurt and sometimes taken for a ride. And it means we are probably on the right track. Dissatisfaction with the present order leaves them open to Jesus’ message. The status quo is of no use to them which the powerful and privileged find unbearable. They prefer a world that leaves the status quo as it is by focusing on the world to come. Jesus’ new world was to take place now and include radical sharing of food and resources. Jesus looks to feed this gaggle of street people and unemployed people, these youth and frail elderly people. It is about real listening and respect, real food, real jobs, real education and real health care. It is about including those who tend to be excluded: people with mental or physical disabilities, people who are different, odd or eccentric, gay and lesbian people who are presented as such a threat to our institutions.
Jesus, as well as Jeremiah, was pained by the inability of people ‘to notice’ and ‘be present’ which led to a failure to care for others around them. Those who try to live faithfully amid chaos, amid death, and amid injustice have allowed themselves to be touched by Jesus. They are in touch with their humanity. The gospel suggests that the rich, the well-fed, the happy or the popular risk not responding to this life-changing opportunity. The curse is that they have insulated and isolated themselves from much pain and suffering in the world, and in so doing miss the intensity of living fully into the common, risen life that God offers - a life that goes beyond any material circumstances. They are out of touch with their humanity and the humanity of others. We can hear today’s gospel with different ears depending where we sit. Those who follow Jesus will share the vision of God’s love and compassion and work for that new world in every way possible.
The blessed today are those who weep over the suffering of others. They share God’s concern for the poor and the hungry. They have broken with the dominant social code where market values take precedence over people and their needs and equality-based relationships. They will feel impelled to make a difference. They will understand that they are implicated by what is said in ‘Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home’ by Pope Francis: ‘Every effort to protect and improve our world entails profound changes in lifestyles, models of production and consumption, and the established structures of power which today govern societies’ (#5).
When others’ suffering leads people to work for change, they begin to belong to the list of those who will be hated, excluded, insulted and denounced on account of the Son of Man. There is often a cost in calling for conversion or protesting injustice. Their commitment may end up making them poor, but they will experience a blessedness that is priceless.
Jose A. Pagola, a Spanish theologian, says that we have not discovered the importance of poor people in Christian history (Following in the Footsteps of Jesus). They help to see more clearly our own reality. They disturb our consciences and call us to conversion. They can help us to restructure a church more in keeping with the gospels. Either we take people who are poor seriously or we forget the gospels. Jesus told the people that if they would really listen the world can change. Those who promote this vision will be hated, denounced and arrested as criminals, even killed. But the poor are blessed because they often first see the destructive path of faith in exclusion and exploitation. We tend to think about the poor in need of our help, but the deeper truth is the other way around. Throughout history, the poor have come to the aid of one-another, forming coalitions not only to lift the burden of their own poverty, but to rebuild their communities, their nations, the world itself on a more solid foundation of solidarity and cooperation rather than enmity and exclusion. The poor are not only blessed but are a blessing to others. We have much to learn from solidarity movements among the poor and marginalized. We are called to listen and dedicate our energy and understanding to learning from those whose perspective is from the underside of sacrifice. ‘Do this in memory of me’. ‘Remembering’ has nothing to do with nostalgia and not only loving the poor but defending them; pursuing justice for the crucified peoples of our world; and taking risks for peace and God’s reign.
Even when we don't ‘win,’ there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. To be hopeful in bad times is not being foolishly romantic. ‘It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of competition and cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness’ (Howard Zinn, US historian and peace activist).