GALILEE OF THE NATIONS

Why do Matthew and Mark speak so much about Galilee? And why does Jesus say, in reference to his rising from the dead, ‘I shall go before you into Galilee?’ It seems a distraction when we are talking of Easter and the Resurrection. Haven’t we left Galilee behind?

There is a clue, perhaps, in John’s gospel where Jesus tells Mary, ‘Do not hold on to me’, as she was clearly hugging him, ‘but go and tell my brothers and sisters I am going to my Father and your Father’. In other words, he seems to be saying, I am now able to build this relationship with the Father but you have to go and tell people about it and I will be with you. In fact, I go before you.

But go where? Galilee is the place where Jesus laboured. And we know it was a crossing place for trade. ‘All’ the nations passed by. Geographically it was a good place to start. But even more so, theologically it was the place to begin. ‘Recall all the things I did and said in Galilee,’ he seems to be saying, ‘but this time do so with rinsed eyes!’ In other words, let the reality of who I am, which you have now at last learnt in the resurrection, sink in as you remember all those things.

Understand the meaning. Realise that what I was doing was reaching out to all the nations, starting with the Jews, and opening for them the way to the fulness of life. When we read the history of the world, we realise that this work has been going on ever since. Every nation, every culture, is straining forward towards something. Often, they are on the wrong track and they end up in disaster. But overall, if we take a hard look at what is happening in the world today, we see people ‘groaning in one great act of giving birth’ to use the imagery of St Paul.

We are trying, for example, to make sense of this invasion of Ukraine by the Russians. We can find no reason, no justification, for deliberately killing thousands of people and destroying their homes and places of work.

Galilee, if you like, is the workshop of the nations where the carpenter is working away day after to day to carve a people presentable to the Father. Time and again the work turns out wrong and the carving has to be discarded. But each time something is learnt and progress is made. The destruction, waste and loss of life is terrible. Sometimes it is unbearable and seemingly senseless – like Calvary. But the great work goes on. No one can stop it. They can only delay it for a moment. The momentum, from the beginning of time is inexorable. Deep down, this gives joy to the human spirit. ‘Doubt no longer, but believe’, Jesus says to Thomas.    

24 April 2022, Easter Sunday 2, ‘Thomas’ Sunday.

THE DOORS WERE CLOSED

 

THE DOORS WERE CLOSED

‘The sun rises; the sun sets. The wind turns and turns again. The rivers flow into the sea but it is never filled.’ Qoheleth finds the repetition of days and years futile and ‘chasing the wind’. ‘All things are wearisome. There is nothing new under the sun.’

So, it is Holy Week again. So it is Easter again. So what is new? We have heard it all before. Perhaps some weariness comes to us as we see the same things repeated. Nothing seems to be new.

It takes attention on our part to stop and ask; ‘Is this really so? Is it really all weariness and repetition?’ Each Easter, each day, each moment is something new that we can explore, attend to, rise to. Everything is alive with freshness if we look hard. Easter is a door that opens on a new world if we can be explorers. ‘Unless you become like children …,’ says Jesus. Children are explorers. Everything is new to them. Can we be explorers this Easter?

Can we explore, for instance, what Jesus has just done in his Passion? We are told by Isaiah that ‘He made no resistance.’ This does not mean he was passive, like a ball, kicked this way and that, by opposing players. He submitted, yes, to his captors but we quickly sense that he is always in charge. His words to Caiphas, to Pilate, to the women, to Peter, are always the words of the Master. Everyone is silenced by him. There is a great strength about hum. He shows this by submitting. But all the time he is pushing back against lies, hypocrisy, fear, darkness, sin and death. He fights them to his last breath. And, although his body dies, his spirit triumphs. The person we call Jesus triumphs.

This is something new, staring us in the face: we can pass through the closed doors of sin, darkness, lies, hypocrisy. We can burst them open, discover our true selves, our new selves. If we are to follow him, we do not resist in one sense but we fight vigorously in another. Easter means we become new people. We don’t achieve it in one Easter alone. We have to return, Easter after Easter, each time coming closer to our goal. Each time opening the door wider and wider

It is a task far from chasing the wind. We have a goal, an end to which we are striving. We have a longing within us straining to be fulfilled, ‘striving towards the goal’ (Phil 3:11). ‘You are fighting the same battle which you saw me fighting’ (Phil 1:30). Each Easter brings us closer to our destiny.   

17 April 2022, Easter Sunday.

DESPISÉD, REJECTED

 

DESPISÉD, REJECTED

Once more we ‘go up’ to Jerusalem with the Jews of old to celebrate ‘the Pasch’. We do not go by foot or bus or plane and it is not for that ancient Passover. But we are invited to make the journey nonetheless. Once again, we will see him, in George Handel’s words in the Messiah, ‘despiséd, rejected’, (there are three syllables in both sung words of the aria) as he goes to his Passion, but this time in his people; mothers and children sheltering underground in Ukraine – or some girls in Zimbabwe schools.

Fr Lawrence Daka has cited a witness in a collection of essays on child protection whose report makes for disturbing reading.

         'On 15 March 2019, 145 secondary school girls from a renowned nun- owned Catholic girls’ mission boarding school in Zimbabwe, mobilised    themselves as early as 4am and walked seven kilometres to a nearby   police station to report rampant girlchild abuse in the school. … the story         sent shockwaves … some were shocked at the girls’ courageous action.         Others condemned the girls who they accused of tarnishing the image of       the school and the Church. … The local Church responded with silence     … symptomatic of the ills and challenges that have bedevilled what is       desirable of responsible, transparent and accountable leadership in the     Church and in society.

In another case of a school principal being convicted of raping a nine-year-old girl, the local faith and civil community was angry and said the girl, the police and the health professional were all lying and the women in the community were more aggressive than the men in condemning the girl.'

Abuse and cover-up. The words ring around the world but there is still resistance to responding to the pain and ruin caused to so many young or vulnerable lives. Victims still have to live their lives as best they can while carrying their untended wounds. Too many of us are not prepared to change our way of thinking.

The Passion of Jesus is not ‘something out there’ – a painful event that we remember for a while each year and then pass on. It is a searing reality of our human condition today which we can find hard to accept. It touches, if we allow it, the limits of our daily consciousness and invites us to reach further, beyond our comfort and security, to that unchartered territory where our own fragility is exposed.  Then we are really in the Passion, sharing with Jesus and our wounded sisters and brothers, the experience of being despised and rejected.     3 April 2020