28th Sunday of the Year
God of peace and life,
speak to the hearts of those responsible
for the fate of peoples,
stop the `logic' of revenge and retaliation,
with your Spirit suggest new solutions,
generous and honorable gestures,
room for dialogue and patient waiting
which are more fruitful than
the hurried deadlines of war.
John Paul II [adapted for gender sensitivity]
Last week, the disciples were preventing people from bringing their children to Jesus so that he might touch them. His action of embrace said more than any sermon to call us to reach out and touch another (and the other-than-human) and discover that ourselves are touched. Today, we cannot escape the challenge to our attachment to our possessions, our status, our roles and relationships, our ideas and preferences, our desires. Ultimately, we are being challenged and reminded by Jesus that we invited, called, and made for a bigger and broader belonging than what we usually see or even imagine. God’s reign is much bigger, deeper, more inclusive, more abundant than our small possessions and certainties can ever imagine.
A young man asks Jesus, ‘Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus does not directly answer because it is the wrong question. The young man asks about eternal life and how he can succeed in his spiritual life as well as maintain his present lifestyle.
Rather than give the usual response to repent and to establish a personal relationship with Jesus, the young man is told to keep the commandments which includes selling his possessions and distributing them to the poor. This would also include a critique of, and need to dismantle, any system or institution that causes people to be impoverished. We are reminded that all is gift. We are presented with a view of God’s reign as an expansive and inclusive community. Jesus includes as we have seen in recent weeks, gender equality, children’s dignity, servants and the enslaved, those with illness, and those who are poor. Whenever Jesus is approached about how these fit into God’s plan, he responds by expanding the notion of God’s reign to include people that others presume will be excluded because of their identity, social status, or behaviour. Where men had all power in relationships, Jesus acknowledges women’s equal agency in God’s original design. Where children were no recognised as people with dignity in society, he values their presence. In the face of entitlement, Jesus prioritises those who tend toward patience and generosity. When illness was understood as punishment for sin, a healing from Jesus marks one as blessed. When poverty indicated unworthiness before God, Jesus says a simple life lived for others is all it takes to exist in God’s loving embrace. Ultimately, we are reminded of a God of abundance. There are no qualifications to meet. There is room for everyone. There is no place for fear of scarcity. When people in power try to trick Jesus into mandating exclusion, he affirms the expansive inclusivity of a loving God who created an interconnected world and filled it with good things.
The important message is how we interact with the poor; how we respond to the poor. It is about always going to the edges. It has nothing to do with power and privilege, nothing to do with machismo, whiteness, or economic class, or benefiting from oppressive structures. Jesus wants to move us from an abstract belief (obeying rules) to a material and practical response of loving justice by responding to people who are hungry, thirsty, naked, alien, sick and in prison. Worship and belief that is separated from a commitment to those called ‘the least’ amounts to complicity with the overarching structures of oppression that exist along gender, race and class lines.
The Buddhist peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, ‘Once people become awake and begin to experience their own suffering, they begin to experience the sufferings of others. This is the normal definition of compassion.’ Our world is full of ‘shadow people’ – unseen sufferers who struggle daily with poverty, dread and infectious diseases, lack of clean water and sanitation, few resources, and fewer opportunities. For many, these people remain unseen or are ‘out of mind’ even when they live close to us. The healing work of justice is to notice the ‘shadow people,’ to acknowledge their humanity by responding in friendship and solidarity. We can only experience traces of God in our lives, but this God shows up explicitly and concretely in one specific place – the ‘other,’ the friend, the neighbour, the stranger, whom we encounter daily, and whose needs impinge upon us.
Anti-Poverty Week begins today (October 13-19) and again we are reminded of increasing inequality in this country and around the world. The children are hungry, people are homeless, more and more miss out on crucial medical care and vaccinations around the world. These are not statistics but human beings, each with a face, relationships, and dreams that are continually being dashed as countries close their borders, communities erect walls, deprived of social care and welfare because we spend more on weapons of war, and suffer neglect people affected by climate change. All these add to people living in poverty.
Today’s Gospel contains an ‘inconvenient truth’ if we listen. Jesus told the man who wanted to inherit eternal life: ‘Go sell what you have and give to the poor.’ Before he died, Father Bob Maguire, at Melbourne’s Sacred Heart Mission, was accused of using resources on behalf of the poor and needy rather than handing them over to ‘head office.’ Jesus constantly calls us through today’s story, to be people focused. People like Maguire, point to the real treasures – the people - within the community and possessions be at the service of people - especially the poor. This has been Pope Francis’ constant call. It is their voices, their cries, their suffering that we need to listen to. Possessions, status, power and need for recognition can isolate us from who we really are: interconnected with all creation. These can hide the faces of people from us. They can isolate us from the suffering of others. They can cause people to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the cries of the poor and the cry of the earth. They can steer us inwards rather than outwards. Our ability to hear the pain of others correlates to the ability to experience God’s goodness. The young man focussed on himself, his eternal life, without concern for that of others. Experiencing ‘eternal life’ was not about piety points but the commandments that impact on our neighbour. Anti-Poverty Week also calls us to reflect on Aboriginal dispossession; how we close our eyes to the trafficking of people around the world and in this country; how we push free trade rather than fair trade; support cutbacks in health and other social benefits; support a war industry rather than welfare; downsizing at the cost of unemployment; cuts to wages from people in very vulnerable sectors of the community; forcing people into insecure work arrangements or casualisation. This is the cry of the poor. And our Earth cries out to us as well. Reflecting also on our poor Earth, the 15th century priest Erasmus words still challenge, ‘Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed.’
The call to be people focused and Earth focused includes all of us. No wealth or power can fill the void within the human heart. This was the emptiness and sadness experienced by the young man. Jesus loved this man. The sadness in Jesus’ heart may be how we let things/stuff isolate us from other people. When hurting, poor people come to church, do they find God present in the welcome they receive? How many young people, how many homeless and hungry people, how many people living with a disability or mental illness, how many gay and lesbian people, how many unemployed and unemployable people find God there? How many single parents, unwed mothers and fathers can find God? Every community has suffering people and standing with them and acknowledging them is often a powerful gift. It is only as we walk through suffering together that we can really experience and reflect the mercy and compassion of God.
We are expected to notice others and be in solidarity with people where there is enough for all. It means working together to overturn the tables of control and divisive systems. Today’s gospel story is not just about individual responses but an invitation, where together we work to transform systems and structures that create wealth and poverty, that maintain privilege within our own society or in our world.
May we have the wisdom to see more clearly what our true treasures are. Encountering a stranger, community, the biodiversity of nature; clean water; making music and dancing; enjoying nature; writing poetry; and friendship. Today, Jesus is looking at each one of us with eyes of love, and he is inviting us to follow him. Can we let the Word of God seep into our hearts each day where we are gradually transformed to embrace the Gospel way of being and acting?