US CAPITOL STUNNED

US CAPITOL STUNNED

It sounds like a newspaper headline after 9/11 but it actually refers to a comment by a friend in Washington DC on Pope Francis’ visit to the nation’s Congress. The Speaker of the House was, according to the BBC, “close to tears.” Why such commotion, such strong feelings, after the visit of a religious leader who represents no political force? It seems that Francis found his way past all the calculations of political speeches and appealed directly to the goodness that resides somewhere in every human heart. He did not rant. He did not blame. He did not judge. He simply appealed to people’s better nature and asked them to listen to their own heart.

He cited four star Americans, two who were not Catholic and two who were. They had different aims but they were all fired by a desire for justice and what is right. If the four (Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton) were in a room together they would have all sang the same tune. We are moving away all the time from what divides us – politics, religion, colour, gender – and finding strength and solidarity in what we share together. Francis appealed to that and those who struggled to label him as right or left, traditional or radical, had a hard time.

There is a tiny sound bite in the Book of Numbers where Joshua tried to silence two characters – Eldad and Medad – who were prophesying without permission. “Stop them!” he told Moses. But Moses simply said let them be; “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” And in the gospel John tried to stop someone casting out devils because, “he was not one of us.” “Let him be,” said Jesus, “whoever is not against us is for us.”

The migrant crisis in Europe, the tortoise pace Colombian peace negotiations, the non-violent and not so non-violent efforts to rise above tribe in Africa – all these movements illustrate the desire to break down the barriers between people. The Catholic Church is moving away from telling people what to do and how to live – as though she possesses an insider’s clarity about how to proceed in every detail – to a way of proclaiming the gospel which is closer to how Jesus used parables. In other words, she is moving towards announcing the good news in a way that evokes a response at the deepest level from people, so that from within their hearts they recognise the way to proceed without feeling lectured at from the outside. Francis told the Americans to see the border jumpers from Mexico as people with individual faces and names and not just numbers. This doesn’t solve the problem but it touches it from another angle and appeals to something deeper than efficiency and fear of others.  

27 September 2015                             Sunday 26 B

Numbers 11:25-29                              James 5:1-6                            Mark 9:38…48