Sixteenth Sunday of the Year

The only thing worth globalising is dissent. - Arundhati Roy

‘During these times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act’ - George Orwell.

The gospel shows Jesus going out and seeing a great multitude, and his compassion for them, and teaching them about peace and love. He extended that compassion to his disciples by calling them to come away to rest and learn about peace and love. It was for refreshment and learning, for dialogue and listening. It was not for permanent residence. It is not to avoid people or everyday realities but to come to a new consciousness. The Gospel is ‘good news’ but not necessarily good to hear. The truth can hurt as it speaks to the heart and hits a spot. 

Gloria Steinem says, ‘The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.’ It influences how we see the world, how we see people’s needs, and respond. His compassion suggests that our commitment to the poor is incomplete when we are not at home among the marginalised. In Jesus’ time, state power, as always, was based on a hierarchal power structure whereas his compassion horizontal. This is what brought him close to people.  He was able to see what many others did not or refused to. He looked out from the ‘sanctuary’ of the boat and saw people uncared for and made a home among strangers. It is like Pope Francis stepping off a plane and seeing people crying out for recognition to tell them God hears their cry. Jesus has come amongst a community in pain, wounded, and hurting, in need of healing and reconciliation. They experienced a indifference from their leaders and suggests that they can, together, bring about change and establish God’s reign. Institutions and synagogue did not offer peace or healing.  As we heard, Jeremiah challenges those who push people away but also offers his listeners hope: God will step in and reverse the downward spiral. God will step into their lives and take care of the people, and gather the scattered and lost. There will be a new form of encounter. This poor leadership is nothing new. We have seen it in the churches and our country. Among businesspeople, military leaders, politicians, bishops, ayatollahs and muftis, and strategists, but few strive to bring people together, offer hope through their solidarity, strive to be peacemakers and remind people of their interconnectedness.  

Jesus moved freely among people of all classes and genders: touched the sick, talked with sinners, empathised with people rendered voiceless. These people were oppressed and victimised; discounted and dominated by the Roman occupiers and considered unclean by the religious elite.

We tend to make separations in our daily life. We point to 'those people', 'their kind', terrorists, those good for nothings, those ‘bludgers’. We point out the strangers among us: from another country, different accents, different shades of skin, different customs, religion and food, different ways of doing things and different ways of being family. Whoever 'they' are, they are different, they are strangers to us – and we do not like them because they threaten our status, our way of thinking and our way of life. It need not be a world of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Ephesians turns everything on its head by saying we all have the same access to God regardless of who are or where we are from. There is a new creation; there is one humanity.

We can build tangible and intangible walls. Jesus’ followers must bring down those walls rather than build them by refusing to endorse the vilification of people, violence, racism, sexism or homophobia. In Australia we have many psychological and social barriers - domination, paternalism, suspicion, hostility and blame directed towards the first peoples of this land and the most recent to arrive. These barriers are as high and deep and wide as any other physical wall.  Munther Isaac, Lutheran Pastor in Bethlehem, writing of the Jerusalem Wall, says ‘In the long run, the wall will only make things worse. When we do not engage one another, we will never be able to humanize one another. Further, this kind of forced separation reinforces the binary opposition of Israelis and Palestinians and perpetuates flattened images of these groups as “Arab terrorists” versus religious Jews." (The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope).  Isaac continues, “It’s a wall that says, ‘You stay there; we are here.’ Yet the wall is only a reflection of a deeper and harsher reality. In Palestine today, those who are different than us (racially, religiously, etc.) are not considered our neighbours. Walls cannot bring peace! Dehumanizing those on the other side of the wall and spreading fear of the other will only increase the hostility that exists among us.…….. Walls communicate fear and shape perceptions of the “other.” They prevent the ordinary people of both sides from meeting one another, and as such, images are created of the other—often false and negative ones. Walls convey the message that those behind the wall are to be feared and not to be trusted. They insist that the ordinary people of both sides of the divide cannot coexist. This is a false premise that must be rejected and challenged.”

We are called to be shepherds. We become disciples by doing the work of being a disciple of Jesus: peace-making, love, healing, and justice. We are called to work to care for the least and ensure that the mighty do not get to bully their way to achieving their goals.  Paul’s vision was of a diverse, inclusive community where all people are cared for.  Often God’s name can be used to justify lives and attitudes at odds with this vision: men bullying women and children in God’s name; pastors manipulating and controlling their congregations in God’s name; parents bullying and controlling their children in God’s name; Christians rejecting and abusing people of other faiths or no faith, or people of different theological perspectives or sexual orientations, or people of different in race, language, or gender in God’s name. Rather than celebrate the house of God where all can find a home, we draw dividing lines and become door-keepers by choosing legalism, pointing fingers, and self-righteousness rather than embracing the diversity of the community of faith that cares and protects the least and the most vulnerable among us. Megan McKenna, in Prophets: Words of Fire writes of prophets and no doubt so-called ‘shepherds’ carry, or should carry, a painful burden. As they ached over injustice, they pay the price. They were truth-tellers and were ignored. And it is our vocation to cry out – even if the shepherds do not - on behalf of the victims of social inequity and every form of violence, when it seems as only God is listening.

One way to define a prophet is a person who sees so clearly what is happening in the present moment that he or she can tell us what is going to happen if we don’t change immediately and radically. McKenna says, that the prophet uses every resource at his or her disposal. Weeping, raging, crying out, criticism, blessings and curses, storytelling, singing, dramas acted out, possessions and even cities destroyed, food eaten or left to rot, ingenious set-ups and insults—all serve only one purpose: the conversion of heart and the doing of restitution to rebalance and heal the world again. However, prophets may prophesy, their integrity is shown by the way in which they give up their very lives as testimony and witness as they side with the forgotten and the lost ones and loudly proclaim that God, who is aware of their pain and feels their suffering as [God’s] own, will not allow that pain and suffering to continue. God is not indifferent to or far from anyone’s life, but rather draws near to those who know pain because of the sin and indifference of others. The prophet loudly insists that God is not impartial, and that God will not allow anyone who professes belief in the Holy to harm another.

As the disciples saw how Jesus identified with the needs that appeared before him, we too have to feel the real needs of the people and respond to them. Pope Francis puts it like this when he says that an evangelizing community gets involved in people’s daily lives, it bridges difference and is even willing to abase itself if necessary (Joy of the Gospel #24). How will we live and respond? Will it be ego-driven, walking over dead bodies to achieve what we want and interested in having power over others, or will it be self-denying, loving everyone and sharing power. It is only with the latter that we will allow the pain of the world to move us in the core of our being.