THE BABY IN THE RUBBLE

 

THE BABY IN THE RUBBLE

CHRISTMAS is a time of celebration. Families come together and share food and drink and enjoy being together. It is the overflow of the one great event in history when the invisible God became visible. He became one of us and lived a life like ours, facing the same joys and hardships and even more: he faced the full force of sin even to the point of death by execution.

This year in Bethlehem, one nativity set (a crib) is a heap of rubble and when you look hard you see a baby child hidden in its midst of it. Simple and startling. The crib becomes a focus of all the pain human beings have brought on themselves. Gazing at it you see the failure of people to live together in peace.

You ask why? And the only answer is because they are afraid on one another. Each is a threat to the other: Palestinian to Jew, Ukrainian to Russian, one Sudanese force and another. Fear has driven people apart.

This is all out there: in the news faraway beyond our ability to do anything.

But there is a fear closer to hand: our personal fears. What am I afraid of? What are you afraid of? It can often be something in my story, something in my life that shaped me in a way that holds me back from being free. It can be something unfortunate in my family, something out of my control. There are things that mark us and prevent our freedom from flourishing.

The psalmist talks of a tree planted in the desert and one planted by the water side. One has no chance to flourish while the other can blossom.

But we are not trees and we can do something about our fears. And the whole point of Christmas is that God has come to free us. If we can face the truth, it will make us free.

This is the hope, the joy, of Christmas. We can do something about our situation – what ever it is. Despite all our limitations we can be happy. But this happiness only comes when we face the truth and do not turn away.

Jesus was the most free human being who ever lived. He was also the most fearless. Even as a child of twelve he could get up and address his elders. Later, as an adult, he spoke boldly to the synagogue leaders and the Pharisees. When eventually he was led before Pilate, the conversation was such that it was really Pilate who was on trial, not Jesus.

Freedom from fear is the biggest gift we can receive at Christmas. And it is offered to everyone; male or female, Jew or gentile – whatever our race or belief. This is what the little baby in the rubble promises.     

Christmas    25 December 2023          Is 9:2-7       Tit 2:11-14 Lk 2:1-14

 

HOPE AND HISTORY RHYME

 

HOPE AND HISTORY RHYME

A two-meter tall crucifix dominates the wall behind the altar in Arrupe University College chapel in Harare. I have always thought it odd the arms are bent, as if the body is not hanging on the cross. It is as though the figure is standing on a foot rest with arms out stretched to enfold the gazer in a hug. The thorns are there with the bruises and the nails but it is as though he says, ‘Now, at last, I have done what I came to do: to gather you in my arms and present you to my Father and your Father.’

Advent comes to us in many moods. We speak of joyful anticipation but the priest dresses in purple, a symbol of suffering as well as imperial power. We speak of the lamb lying down with the lion and a little child playing at the hole of a python. These images of peace come to us with the rejection of John the Baptist and the child born in a stable because ‘there is no room’. And then we have this image: of Jesus on the cross coming towards us with open arms.

As this year closes, the bad news abounds seemingly on every continent. There are so many stressed with insecurity, hunger and oppression. Yet we need to remind each other that there is One who knows our pain and suffers with us. He does not come down from his cross but invites us to find our place on our cross. Then our hope and our poetry of peace will blossom. Listen to Seamus Heaney:

          Human beings suffer,

          They torture one another …

History says, don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

 And hope and history rhyme.

The Cure at Troy

In the midst of distress it is hard to receive the message of hope. Yet the very distress itself is the ore from which hope can be refined. The One who comes to meet us is still on the Cross. And it is on that cross that we will find our life.

17 December 2023      Advent 3B                   Is 61:1…11     1 Th 5:16-24     Jn 1: 6…28

PREPARE A WAY

 

PREPARE A WAY

I met a man this week who had never heard of The Beatles. There was an event in a hotel in Harare where the band played one of their songs, Let it be, and it brought a rush of nostalgia to the likes of me. It struck me how short our memories are. The majority of people in this country have no experience of the songs of the sixties or of life in Rhodesia and seemingly most don’t even ask what it was like.

A book on the history of South Africa, by Leonard Thompson, opens with the statement: ‘Modern Western Culture is inordinately present-minded. Politicians are ignorant of the past … People lack a sense of their location in time and fail to perceive that contemporary society is constrained by its cultural as well as its biological inheritance.’

How different the Israel/Palestine situation might be if leaders there paid attention to history.

If we are ignorant of the past, we can be even more so of the future. Yet Scripture plies us with reminders of what will happen even if it does so in poetic language which both hides – and reveals – the future: ‘The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all humankind shall see it. …Go up on a high mountain …Shout with a loud voice … Here is the Lord coming with power, his arm subduing all things. The prize of his victory is with him …’

The message is one of extraordinary joy, consolation and comfort. This is the first message of what the Church calls Advent, the season of ‘Coming’. The second message, the one John the Baptiser was so forceful about, is preparation. The coming will not just happen, like The Beatles turning up to perform at a concert. The coming will only happen when we are prepared and we are taking our time at doing it; two thousand years so far. We are so slow to learn how to prepare despite the gospels being full of instructive guidelines.

The basic one is ‘losing your life in order to find it’ (Mk 8:35). Jesus said this repeatedly and then did it himself. And his is ‘the Way’. So the practice of ‘losing my life’ in every event of every day is the key to the future. Sport, art, politics and religion all shout this at us ‘from a high mountain.’ Advent is the time to hear this message.

If we could find our way to do so, we could bring justice and development to the nation and not just this nation but countries everywhere. OK, it’s a dream. But dreams have a habit of coming true. Martin Luther King’s, for instance.

10 December 2023          Advent 2B     Is 40:1…11      2 Pt 3:8-14      Mk 1:1-8

THE DEVIL OF DELVILLE WOOD

 

THE DEVIL OF DELVILLE WOOD

Advent is the season of hope, of looking forward. The wise men from the east looked forward to … what? They were not sure. But it was worth journeying through deserts and ‘cities hostile and towns unfriendly.’ There are times when hope grows dim. The people of Gaza today are hemmed in on every side. They have no food, no water, no medicine, no shelter, no future.

That is today. But there were times even more terrible. Little more than a hundred years ago, South African soldiers fought against the German army at Delville Wood in France. A German officer described the scene afterwards as a ‘wasteland of shattered trees, charred and burnt stumps, craters thick with mud and blood, and corpses, corpses everywhere. In places they were piled four deep. Worst of all was the lowing of the wounded. It sounded like cattle in a fair….’  

One man who survived Delville Wood died only in 1998 at the age of 101. He was Joe Samuels and he told his story a year before he died. ‘All I can say is the whole thing was terrible; there still aren’t words for it, even now. I know what happened to some of my own pals, I saw it. I felt as if some of my life was gone too then. That’s how I felt I can’t say I’ve ever really got over it, even up to now… It’s too painful, it’s too bad to think about, even now.’

How can you speak of hope to the men of Delville Wood? Isaiah puts it this way; ‘We were all like people unclean, all that integrity of ours like filthy clothing. We have all withered like leaves and our sins blew us away like the wind. No one invoked your name our roused himself to catch hold of you … And yet, Lord you are our Father; we the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hand.’

There are moments of intense suffering which expose the raw withered awfulness some of our fellow brothers and sisters suffer. And we must call to mind they have done no wrong that would deserve their calamity. They are suffering for us. They experience Gaza, Delville Wood or Golgotha for us. I cannot say, ‘I am glad I was not, or am not, there.’ I am there - if I have an ounce of feeling. No one lives, or dies, for themselves alone. We live and die as members of each other – our own family, which we feel intensely, and the whole human family.

In the depths of the worst that life can throw at us, we can still ‘rouse ourselves’ to catch hold of the One who said in his worst moment, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        3 December 2023                    Advent Sunday 1B                  Is 63:16 …64:8       1 Cor 1:3-9       Mk13:33-37

 

FOR A BETTER WORLD

 

FOR A BETTER WORLD

I knew a man who had a farm and towards the end of his life we were talking about what he had achieved. ‘I want to leave the place better than I found it,’ he said. I have often thought of that simple ambition. He had no desire to make excessive money or make a name for himself in the locality. He just wanted to make improvements on the farm before handing it on to the next generation.

Jesus had a story about people with a variety of talents or gifts. They react differently. Two of them – though one more gifted than the other – used their opportunities fully and were rewarded for their efforts. A third fellow panicked and made no effort to use his gifts. He just sat on his hands and did nothing and gained nothing.

As in all Jesus’ stories, the teaching is obvious: use the abilities you have – whatever they are. Easily said, but still true. ‘Unless I am qualified, I cannot do anything!’ Not true. There is always something people can do. Even the most severely wounded can do something. Once, in the Ivory Coast, I met 20-year-old Innocente who lived with severe intellectual and physical disabilities and just lay on a mat on the floor all day.

But everyone in the house knew, if you wanted cheering-up, all you had to do was sit with Innocente for a while. You would speak a few words to her but she could not say anything. Then she would look at you and a huge smile would come over her and light up her face. People tried to describe the experience and one person called it a ‘window opening briefly into heaven.’

Innocente did not live long – perhaps until she was 25 – but she ‘left the place better than she found it.’ These are two examples – one strong man with a farm and another a young girl with nothing but her heart – but there are so many people who can neither work not smile. They are broken by the poverty that surrounds them every day.

How can you talk about using your talents when people are frustrated by a tsunami of blocked opportunities where ever they turn? A few days ago I met wave after wave of girls walking home from school in their blue and yellow uniforms. They were laughing and joking in the joy of being alive but I could not avoid thinking of their future. How will it be for them?

Yet people are amazingly resourceful. Despite all the obstacles in their path, most people do manage to use their talents as best they can. They leave this place better than they found it.

19 Nov 2023    Sunday 33A                 Prov 31:10…31            1 Thes 5:1-6           Mt 25:14-30

 

TEN BRIDESMAIDS

 

TEN BRIDESMAIDS

The parables describe obvious situations which are not difficult to interpret and most people are either encouraged by them to keep going or shocked into questioning their own lives. But it can happen that they are twisted to fit a current way of thinking that is not obvious and which can distort them.

The story of the ten bridesmaids or virgins is an example. The obvious interpretation is that the wise ones were ready for the bridegroom when he came while the foolish ones had not thought he might come at an unexpected hour and were not ready. This story can be twisted to mean the foolish ones were the poor and marginalised and the wise were selfish in not sharing what they had. To interpret the parable in this way is to avoid the glaringly obvious intention of Jesus.

The parable is about being ready, being alert and not putting off what I need to do now. Jesus is not here talking about compassion and social justice. There may be all sorts of reasons why I postpone taking steps but at least I can acknowledge that I am avoiding doing what I know I should do. That’s a start. I can look at myself, gently, and ask why I am ‘in denial’ as the saying goes.

The ‘oil’ in my lamp then becomes my agenda. What do I need to do? Well, to begin with, I might see myself sitting with Jesus and the disciples on the Mount of Olives – the setting for this parable. They were obviously looking at him. Romano Guardini asked in one of his sermons: ‘What does it mean – to look at Jesus?’ All religions search for God. We Christians say God has revealed himself to us - in Jesus. So what do we see when we look at him? Because he is the revelation of God. His words and stories mean nothing if they do not tell us about God. We cannot analyse them apart from him.

And we cannot analyse them apart from the community he founded. I can give my opinion but I have to test it in the stream of the interpretative tradition of the Church. I have my beliefs but I want them to be in harmony with the tradition I have inherited. I can come up with fresh insights into a text and so can you. So can anyone. We have to look at Jesus and ask what he, in the community he founded, says.

This ‘looking at Jesus’ is the heart of the matter. ‘We would like to see Jesus’ (John 12:21). It is encouraging for us to watch the disciples with Jesus, day in and day out, and yet – for a long time - they did not really ‘see’ him. Maybe we too are in a bit of ‘a daze’ (Mark 10:32) about him at times. We are to be alert, awake, ready to see him any time – maybe when and where we least expect.                                                                                                                                                                                                   12 November 2023

   

SAINTS AND SINNERS

 

SAINTS AND SINNERS

Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy has written a marvellous book on the history of the popes called Saints and Sinners. It touches the lives of significant figures among the 263 ‘servants of the servants of God’ in the past two thousand years. All were sinners. Some were saints.

This week we celebrate All Saints, the commemoration of all the sinners who became saints and enjoy the fullness of life with God. We also tack on All Souls, the remembrance of all those who, in a way unknown to us, are still on the journey and we pray for them.

In the Mass for All Souls we read, ‘what proves God’s love for us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners’. To be human is to be a sinner. In a way that the Church strives to explain since the day the Book of Genesis was written, the human family appeared on the planet incomplete, unfulfilled, and the word chosen to describe this was ‘sinful’.

Yet, like every plant and animal, a human being spends its life groping, searching, for fulfilment. Think of a street vendor in Harare or a famous comedian like Matthew Perry who has just died as a result of drugs. Whoever we are, we are – mostly – trying our best to make a go of things. We are on the move from being sinners to being saints.   

We are celebrating the feast of All Saints, a moment to rejoice with all those who have made it to the fulfilment of our home in the Blessed Kingdom. We remember the famous ones, Peter and Paul, Teresa and Catherine and all the ones we recall in the litany of the saints. We also remember all the great people, many we have known, who do not have St before their names.

And we are not just remembering them. We know that we are on the way following them and where they are is where Jesus told his disciples he wanted us to be too.  ‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am’ (John 17:24). That is where we are going. We have a little time here, a time of personal preparation but also of communal concern for others. The two are one as we saw in last Sunday’s gospel

All Saints is a feast of the gathering of the people of God in every place and time. We imagine ourselves in the presence of God and the whole gathering of heaven. It is a moment of consolation. But we cannot remain ‘standing there looking into the sky’ (Acts 1:11). We have work to do. We have less happy gatherings to sort out, like the people of Gaza crowded into a confine space without food, water or care, almost without hope.

 

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF OURSELVES

 

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF OURSELVES

How quickly we have forgotten the lessons of lockdown. Planes no longer flew and we could hear the song of the bird. It was a war without weapons but with the soldiers on duty day and night spending themselves for the casualties with the same intensity and risk. Those closest to us became precious for we never knew; would they be next? Would I? Travel became a brief walk to the shops and entry there was spaced out as we kept our distance, measured in meters.

That year seemed like a long time and when it ended, we rejoiced to ‘get back’ to normal. But had we changed? Did we learn something?  Author Monica Furlong introduces us to an account of a prisoner of war camp, called The Cage. The men are in each other’s presence day and night with little to do. It was an unusual opportunity for them to get to know one another. But were they willing to do so? They prepared their isolation.

Opening ourselves to one another, she says, ‘is hopelessly entangled with feelings of danger. We dream of love and yearn for relief from isolation but run away when the moment arrives. What is it that is so dangerous about loving? I think we sense it asks of us something exceedingly painful. Sooner or later it demands a going out from ourselves, a vulnerability to other people, a carelessness about guarding our psychic boundaries.’

Furlong quotes Michael Quoist who says religion is all about ‘crossing the threshold of ourselves’. It not only means opening the door to the stranger but also dropping the defences we carry with us. How firmly we hold on to ourselves and do not allow another approach. When that ‘other’ is God, we are doubly afraid. Letting God approach fills us with terror. What might it mean?

And yet in our hearts, we sense it is the only true path to freedom. There are two sayings in the gospels which are really only one: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart’ and ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ Opening my door to the stranger is opening my door to God. John, in one of his letters, tells us we cannot go straight to God. We go through other people. ‘How can you say you love God, whom you have never seen, while you ignore your neighbour whom you see every day?’

‘How can you molest a stranger or oppress him? You lived as a stranger yourself in Egypt.’ (Exodus). Self, the other and God. We are all entangled - not hopelessly – but in a life-giving way.

29 Oct 2023                Sunday 30A        Exod 22:20-26        Thess 1:5-10        Mt 22:34-40

CAESAR AND GOD

 

CAESAR AND GOD

‘Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’ Simple! Well, maybe? But what actually belongs to Caesar? We have a reading from Isaiah that seems to resist an easy answer. God says to Cyrus, king of Persia, ‘I have called you though you do not know me. … I arm you that people may know that, apart from me, all is nothing.’

God is calling a pagan king to serve his purpose. The immediate aim is to restore Israel after the Babylonian exile but the implication is that ‘all things work together for good for those who love God’ (Rom 8:28). God is at work, not just in the Church, but everywhere and through all people. ‘I have called you though you do not know me’ applies to those people we meet each day who are doing the best they can in their circumstances even if they never raise their minds to breathe a prayer.

This is true of small everyday things but it also holds good for the bigger issues. We completely mess up in Darfur, Palestine or Ukraine and God cannot save us from our folly because he has given us freedom and if we misuse it, we have to bear the consequences. But God works so that, even if there are terrible consequences now, in the future there will be a good outcome. We have seen this time and time again as nations gradually see the futility of war and the exhilaration of working for peace.

And there are prophets continually stepping forward, often at great personal cost. Alexei Navalny is serving a long prison term in Russia for doing just this and an Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, has just spoken of the senselessness of Israel always resorting to force and never pausing to think of the rights of the Palestinians and listening to them. And we can turn our eyes to Zimbabwe and also see people ignored and persecuted because they speak for peace.

There is a lot that belongs to Caesar but we cannot rely on him for everything. This is not his world, his creation. If we ignore God, and rely totally on Caesar, we will not succeed because ‘the world cannot give’ the peace we seek (Jn 14:27). It is a gift that comes to those who seek it; it comes to crown our efforts not to substitute for them. So we need both: to ‘give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’   

22 October 2023   Sunday 29A          Is 45:1…6   Thess 1:1-6     Mt 22: 15-21

AN INVITATION

 

AN INVITATION

A little girl was excited about her First Communion. A pretty white frock was made for her and there would be a party for all her friends afterwards. Being a little girl conscious of her appearance, she took ages dressing and her mother fussed that they would be late for church. The little girl suggested skipping ‘the church bit’ and going straight to the party.

Such honesty! She had her priorities and ‘the church bit’ was not one of them. When the scriptures attempt to describe the ‘exultation and joy of all peoples’, they fall back on the image of a party. ‘There will be rich food and choice wines’, Isaiah tells us. It is virtually impossible to describe the joy of heaven. Even Paul was at a loss; ‘the human heart cannot conceive what God has prepared for those who love him’ (1 Cor 2:9).

As we approach the closing weeks of the Church’s year (end of November), we are introduced to the message of completion and fulfilment. Life may be extremely messy – wars on the international level, frustrations on the personal – but it will all be ‘fulfilled’, done, completed – the word of Jesus as he died on the cross (Jn 19:30).

Tomorrow (16 October), we will bury Jesuit Fr Oskar Wermter, a prolific writer who was involved in organisations too numerous to mention. He was also a pastoral priest who served in urban and rural parishes throughout his more than fifty years in Zimbabwe. But his early life was traumatic, messy, starting with having to leave home and flee three times before he was six years old. His last years too were painful as he suffered from a succession of illnesses that left him discomforted and frustrated.

Oskar did not skip ‘the church bit’ but embraced it fully with all its lights and shadows. Isaiah’s banquet is now his and we ‘cannot conceive’ what it is like. Matthew takes up Isaiah’s banquet and emphasises it goes with an invitation. But he tells us, ‘Those who had been invited’ ignored it. In fact, they repeatedly turned on the messengers who brought the invitations, beat them up and even killed some.   

The invitation stands. It runs through the whole Old Testament and is renewed in the words of John the Baptiser at the Jordan. It is repeated again and again by Jesus. Yet people just turned away – and they continue to do so. They want to skip ‘the church bit’ which involves commitment and frustration. Yet it is the only way, acknowledged or not, of getting to the party.

15 October 2023         Sunday 28A                Is 25:6-10        Phil 4:12…20      Mt 22:1-14

 

DISCOVERING SOLIDARITY

It took two world wars to get people to sit down and fix the world economic order. As Britain, America and Russia struggled to overcome Hitler in the early 1940s, they faced the awful conclusion that they had created a mess in the peace arrangements in 1919 which had much to do with provoking the 1939-45 conflict. As a result and taking a deep breath, around 730 delegates from 44 countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA, in July 1944 with the aim of ‘creating an efficient foreign exchange system, preventing competitive devaluations of currencies, and promoting international economic growth’ (Google). Two of the instruments created for these goals are still with us: the International Monetary Fund and the Word Bank.

We celebrate the founding, a few years later, of the United Nations and the organs it created, like the World Health Organisation whose president was on our screens nearly every night of the Covid crisis, and rightly so. But the Bretton Woods agreements have had an unsung beneficial leaven effect on the living standards of vast numbers of citizens of the planet in the past eighty years. They did not solve all the problems – the poor are still poor and there are more of them – but they did prevent the sort of financial crisis and depression we experienced in the early 1930s.   

It is striking that 44 countries could do something like that. Coming to the present and our own corner of the globe in Southern Africa, we had, a month ago, an orchestrated renewal of our government’s mandate to rule. At first there was resigned acquiescence, but now it seems some governments in our region are reacting and possibly moving in a new direction – searching for ways in which to create and shape the solidarity to proclaim that if one country is failing, all are affected. States in the region have, only relatively recently, won their independence and there is an understandable bias towards building national ‘sovereignty’. It is an alluring concept but it carries a ‘best before’ date that is rapidly approaching. The sort of ‘give and take’ that marked the tough negotiations in New Hampshire eighty years ago, is earnestly needed.

The workers in the vineyard, in the gospel story, thought they could grab the land for themselves. They could not think beyond their noses. They rejected all the promptings of history and ended up losing everything. The 730 delegates at Bretton Woods dug deep into their individual and collective memory and came up with policies that, though far from perfect, brought peace and development to many for decades.

8 October 2023     Sunday 27A          Is 5:1-7       Ph 4:6-9      Mt 21:33-43

 

 

 

‘RESENTMENT IS A FOUL THING’

 

‘RESENTMENT IS A FOUL THING’

It is not difficult to think of actual cases of resentment that we have known but it is not helpful. What is really beautiful – and healing – is to think of cases of forgiveness. After the bitter war of liberation, Robert Mugabe began his tenure of office with a magnanimous expression of forgiveness which was sincerely meant at the time. We were inspired and looked forward to the creation of a new society where all the ills of the past would be addressed. That was 1980.

The twentieth century saw other instances of reconciliation in Germany, Ireland, South Africa and elsewhere. Forgiveness, whether between people or nations, frees us and opens doors. Resentments lock us into ourselves and block any kind of growth. The story of the unforgiving debtor in Matthew 18 is both cruel and ludicrous. The practice of selling a person’s wife and children to pay a debt sounds heinous to our ears. And the act of cancelling a debt of the equivalent of millions of dollars without a moment’s hesitation sounds just funny. But neither of these are the point of the story. The man was forgiven but he could not forgive.

Resentment and forgiveness seem direct opposites but they have one thing in common: passion. People can be passionate and obstinate about their resentments, but if they are touched by God, as Paul was, they can be even more passionate about the new life that opens up for them. ‘I am living in faith, faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20). He goes on to boast about his troubles – ‘dangers at sea, from rivers, from brigands, from my own people …’ He is full of life and energy and makes light of his troubles because of the forgiveness he has experienced.

A person living with resentments is like a caged dog whining the day away while other dogs cavort in the sun. The person’s energies and capabilities lie thwarted and unfulfilled. Yet they are only a step away from new life and freedom if they could only see it.

The other sad reflection is that resentment has a social impact; it contaminates relationships in the family, the community and the state. The attitude of the resentful person is contagious and blocks those around him or her from doing what they could do.

No wonder Ben Sirah, writing more than two thousand years ago, could say, ‘Resentment and anger, these are foul things…’

17 Sept 2023         Sunday 24A          Sir 27:30ff   Rom 14:7-9   Mt 18:21-35

I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT I TAME

 

I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT I TAME

This Sunday, we do not have a story about what Jesus did; it is simply what he says. His words are introduced by Ezekiel’s idea of the prophet as a watchman. Many houses and institutions in Harare have watchmen or watch women. It is a lonely – even dangerous task. It is akin to the shepherd who guards his flock by night. It is also a responsible task. The physical welfare of the people and their property is in the hands of the one who watches. Jesus extends this to their spiritual welfare and here we see the prophet moving beyond just watching and warning. He tells his disciples they are responsible for the welfare of others.

This has political consequences. Anyone in a leadership role – parent, teacher, councillor, president – has the task of caring for all in his or her care. Everyone, at the level at which they find themselves, is duty bound to care for those for whom they are responsible.

A hundred years ago the pope came up with the clumsy word, subsidiarity. It was the time when states were claiming total power over their citizens, making choices for them that it was none of their business to make. Pius IX insisted that responsibility should be shared out according to the level at which one finds oneself. It is none of the state’s business, normally, to tell me what to plant in my garden, (unless, of course, I am growing that will be harmful to others!)

Similarly, local people are most likely to know where to put a bore-hole, (unless, again, they have no idea and some expert knowledge is required). But, to return to our watchman, the point we come to is: we are responsible for each other at whatever level we find ourselves.   Yet, we hate taking that responsibility. We fear we will be rebuffed or we will be accused of poking our nose in another person’s business. It is much easier to just say nothing. Perhaps, too, we feel young people especially are exploring life, trying to find their place, and the last thing they want to be told by some fuzzy adult is that they may be on the wrong track.

Yet experience also shows that, when someone in a responsible position – an aunt/uncle, a teacher or a friend – and does make the effort to share his concern, it is often deeply appreciated. In the story of The Little Prince, the fox says to him, ‘You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.’ We need to remind ourselves; relationship always carries responsibility. Our age is often characterised as one of ‘individualism.’ People feel free of custom, tradition and religion and want to make up their own minds. This is good in a way but we also need the balance and wisdom that listening to the experience of others can teach us. 

A SHOCKING CONFRONTATION

 A SHOCKING CONFRONTATION

Just after ‘an election win’, when Peter is confirmed as leader of the little group

of disciples, there is a strong exchange of words between him and Jesus. Having

identified himself to them as indeed the Messiah, Jesus explains what he will

have to endure in order to achieve his goal: ‘… to suffer grievously … and be

put to death’. Peter is horrified and vehemently advises against it.

But this is the heart of the matter and Jesus tells him bluntly; ‘you are a scandal,

an obstacle in my path.’ How often that confrontation takes place! Not only

between people but within the heart of a person? The war in Ukraine gets far

more coverage than the war in Sudan but the same dynamic is at work. We hear

of young men, on the cusp of life, opting to stay and fight, knowing that they

may not live to see their wives and children again.

Matthew, Chapter 16, right in the heart of the gospel is the heart of the gospel. It

is decision time. Am I going to choose the ‘better part’, the ‘road less

travelled’? Or am I going to take ‘the easy way out’? The question comes all the

time. There was a banker in Zambia who was doing well, ‘climbing the ladder’,

‘upwardly mobile’! But she knew in her heart she was not satisfied. The work

brought her a comfortable life but no peace. She gave up her career and studied

psychology and became a psychotherapist helping countless people. She ‘lost’

her life and found it.

There are many people who make this good and generous choice each day and

let us celebrate them. Much of the time we can include ourselves! But the

yawning question remains. It goes on beckoning us. It is there in the elections

we have just endured. Do we settle back into our normal ways which disturb no

one, least of all ourselves? Or do we keep up the reaching, the searching, the

straining for something better. There is no authenticity without the cross. It

leaves a mark on every decision we make. We either choose the cross and find

‘life’ or avoid it and settle for a half-life.

A hundred years ago, James Joyce gave a terrifying description of a priest’s

sermon on judgement and hell to boys in a secondary school in his Portrait of

the Artist as a Young Man. I hope no priest would do the same today! But I

suppose many of us have sometimes wondered about what our final exam will

be like! Will we get a warm welcome, a ‘well-done’, a Summa cum Laude, or

just a pass?! It will be a warm welcome but we still have to keep the question

always before our eyes: ‘can I lose my life each day and so find it?’

3 Sept 2023 Sunday 22A Jer 20:7-9 Rom 12:1-2 Mt 16:21-27

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

 

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

On the 18^th of April, 1506, Pope Julius II laid the foundation stone for the present St Peter’s Basilica in Rome: it would take 150 years to complete. Round the inside of the dome above the high altar are the words, in six-foot high letters: You are Peter and, on this rock, I will build my Church and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  These words, which we read in today’s gospel, echo those of Isaiah in the first reading where they amount to a job description for the new administrator, Eliakim, of king Hezekiah’s palace.

There had been much squabbling about who Jesus was; a new prophet like Elijah? John the Baptist risen from the dead? The leaders of the people were no help. Jesus wanted his closest followers to know and drew from Peter the emphatic revelation: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus immediately gives Peter his task: ‘You are Peter and, on this rock, …’ But then, Jesus tells them on no account are they to tell anyone he is the Christ, the Messiah.

So there are two questions:

          Who are you, Jesus?

          What do you want?

We have our answer to the first: he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. But did they understand what this meant? From our own experience, we often find ourselves saying of someone we have met but never spent time with, ‘I am delighted to have this chance to get to know you better.’ The disciples ‘knew’ Jesus as some kind of special prophet and charismatic leader. That is all. They did not know him ‘better’. He knows this and tells them not to talk about him for now. He is not the kind of Christ the people – or the disciples – think he should be. And we know this scene in the gospel is followed by a sharp rebuke: ‘Get behind me, Satan, your thoughts are not the thoughts of God, but of man.’ So, even Peter hadn’t a clue what kind of Christ Jesus was.

Are we much better? This leads us into the second question.  

We are so inclined to ‘tame’ Jesus and fit him into our own frame of reference. He is kind, forgiving, patient and the rest. He is all these but he is also demanding. Like a parent or a school teacher, he wants us to grow up. He wants us to stretch ourselves beyond the ‘comfortable’ and the ‘manageable’. He talks about the cross. This is the only identity and description of Jesus that counts. But they don’t get it. Though they will later. Where are we in this?   

While Peter may be ‘the rock’, early commentators did not see him as the only founder of the Church in Rome. Irenaeus, writing around 100 years after Peter’s death, tells us the Church in Rome – ‘the most illustrious church to which every church must resort’ – was founded by ‘Peter and Paul’. So it was not a one-man show and these two giants of the early church did not always agree. They had quite a sharp exchange on the conditions for gentile admission to the Church.

We can carry away two thoughts from this Sunday’s readings. Jesus left his Church in the hands of one person who was to be the anchor of unity. But that did not mean the one person had all the answers. The Church was to be in the hands of shepherds who might often differ. That is OK as long as they travel together (synodically) and hold to their unity with the rock.

And second, they will find a deeper unity in ‘losing their life’, that is, in listening to one another and being prepared to shift their position as they open themselves, step by step, to what is greater than any one of them. This can be hard.

27 August 2023           Sunday 21 A        Is 22:19-23       Rom 11:33-36            Mt 16:13-20

MARY

 

MARY

Jesuit Brother Bvukumbgwe, who died in 2002, was a composer whose songs are widely used in Church liturgies in Zimbabwe. One who knew him wrote:

Many of his songs come to him in his dreams at night. He would rise from his bed, sing or hum them into a cassette and go back to sleep. In the morning he played the cassette to his singers who then produce the song. While driving me to his village, he would be lost in his musical thoughts and his fingers and hands on the steering wheel would sometimes keep time with his thoughts. … The rhythm … improvises on the theme carrying it to new depths of meaning and experience.

Bvukumbgwe experienced the music first in his mind and then shared it with others and it finally became a song captured on a cassette. Mary, also, first experienced something beyond words and immediately went ‘in haste’ to share it with Elizabeth and finally the news became something written down and shared with the world. 

But it was not quite so simple. They fought over how to put it into words for centuries until finally, in 431, they agreed, in a place that is now a ruined city in western Turkey (Ephesus), that she could be called Theotokos, God bearer, that is, Mother of God.

First comes the experience. Then the putting it into words. People were drawn to Mary, over the centuries, as a way to God, a mother who longed to bring her children to know their need for her Son. The Franciscans, in the fourteenth century, grounded her in human experience by setting up Christmas cribs where children and grown-up children came and contemplated in wonder.

Some five hundred years later (in 1854), the Church tried again to put into words the experience of how Mary must have begun her existence by describing her as ‘Immaculately Conceived’. Many good Christians baulked at this and accused the Catholic Church of inventing something that wasn’t in scripture. But the Church was only trying to express her experience of Mary. Given who she was and what she became, it is not beyond our imagination that, by a special gift of God, she could have experienced the perfection we all long for from the moment she began to live.

And a hundred years later (in 1950) there was yet another attempt to put into words something that the Church, especially the Eastern Church, had experienced from the earliest centuries: that, at the moment of her death, Mary achieved the completion we all instinctively long for. It was expressed in terms of her being ‘assumed’ – bodily - into heaven. Anyone who believes the earliest creeds of the Church, holds ‘the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.’ But the Church, drawing again on experience, declared that in the unique case of Mary, her ‘Assumption’ was immediate. She shared in the first fruits (1 Cor 15:23). Even if we knew where she died, which we don’t, we would never find any of her remains.

An Italian artist, Francesco Botticini, painted The Assumption of the Virgin in 1475. Prominent in the foreground is an empty tomb, reminiscent of the empty tomb of Jesus in the gospels. There is no body and the earthly onlookers are puzzled. Botticini then has our eyes rise to a scene above, representing heaven, where Mary is in glory kneeling before her Son with the whole court of heaven in attendance.  

The importance of Mary, especially in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, is that she became the first person to receive the completion of life which was promised by God to all of us from the beginning. This, again, sounds like a lot of words but it is really the experience of love received and given in its fullness.   

We celebrate the feast of the Assumption this Sunday, 20 August. I am grateful to Fr James Hanvey SJ, for his thoughts on this great event in ‘Thinking Faith’.

Rev 11:19, 12:1-10                    1 Cor 15:20-27                      Luke 1:39-56

TRUST THE PEOPLE

 

TRUST THE PEOPLE

So it is election time. Someone threw a flyer over our gate. His priorities are water, roads and refuse collection. Nothing very revolutionary there. Basic needs. But basic needs not yet met. After all these years. Is the candidate ‘blowing in the wind’? Is there any prospect of these basic things being done? Are we just ritually marking up one more election? We go through the motions but nothing changes. The focus of the world will be briefly on us. Then they will move away to something else.

What we yearn for, year after year, is subsidiarity. Long ago (in 1931) it was defined by Pius XI as a principle by which every unit in the nation – family, local council, district, province and central government – performs the tasks which it can do at its own level. ‘The true aim of all social activity should be to help individual members of the social body, but never to destroy or absorb them.’ In other words, no higher body in the state should take to itself powers which lower bodies can do.

Paul VI commented: ‘To take politics seriously at its different levels – local, regional, national and worldwide - is to affirm the duty of every person to recognise the concrete reality and the value of freedom of choice that is offered to them to seek to bring about both the good of the city and of the nation and of all people. Politics are a demanding manner – but not the only one – of living the Christian commitment to the service of others.’ 

So there we have it. There are jobs to be done - providing water, mending roads, collecting rubbish – and no shortage of people willing to work. But no one, at the local level, to say nothing of the national level, is able to exercise their freedom to organise and carry out these works. So they are not done. Our social fabric is gridlocked, paralysed. And we are faced with five more years of inaction while the people languish in poverty and frustration.

It would surely be a simple matter to allow people to develop their social and economic activity at the level where they are able to do it. But there seems to be a terrible fear that if the people organise themselves on the local level – and succeed – it will somehow reflect badly on those at a higher level. And yet is it not obvious that if people succeed at the local level, it will redound positively on those at a high level? Parents take delight in the achievements of their children.

Do the people in the higher levels trust the ordinary people? 

15 August 2023

TWO VOICES

 

TWO VOICES

First voice: ‘It was so unfortunate for me when I got arrested by plain clothes police after taking some photos of the government party giving maize to poor people. I resisted arrest at first, but they handcuffed me and produced their IDs. It was around 11am when they threw me into the cells without taking any statement. My mobile and shoes had been surrendered in the charge office. They deleted the photos I took and confiscated my SIM card.

I spent the whole day and night in the cells which were stinking due to a toilet in the corner of the cell room which was only flushed once a day – it has to be done by someone outside the cell. We were 14 in the cell and were joined by another 7 at around 9pm – all 21 cooped up in an area around 16ft x 16ft. There was no view with a barred window near roof level.

I braved the cold night with no blankets. At 6am I heard the noise of the cell door being unlocked. We were told to come out for counting. After some 30 minutes, we were locked up again with no food or water. During the afternoon when I peeped through a keyhole, I saw a cop putting some food onto the big lid of a rubbish bin. The food stayed uncovered for almost half an hour when some pigeons took turns to feed.

Come 3 pm, they unlocked the gate of the fence surrounding the cells and told the inmates to come and eat. The food was sadza, not properly cooked with half cooked beans and no salt. I only had a pinch and couldn't continue feeding as I felt like vomiting. At 3.15pm we were locked up again until the next day. There were now 13 of us left as some relatives had paid fines for some inmates.

It was extremely cold during the night, and we shared one blanket among five people and tried to sleep on the cold hard rough concrete floor. The blankets were infested with lice which were biting. They were unbearably harsh conditions.

On the third day my uncle borrowed US$160 and paid the fine as he was worried that I was not taking my medication; I suffer badly from various ailments. I was released at around 5pm on Day 3, without being charged, feeling ill and afraid.’

Second voice: ‘He was still speaking when suddenly a bright cloud covered them with shadow, and from the cloud there came a voice which said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour.”’

We need to relate the two voices to each another. They both speak to us from ‘a cloud’. Failure to listen to them only sinks us deeper in the mud.

NEXT YEAR IN MOSCOW

 

NEXT YEAR IN MOSCOW

Pages have been written on two brief statements in the gospel about surprise finds and the reaction of the finders. So excited are they, they sell everything to buy what they have seen. They are seized by a desire to possess them. Everything else is put aside. Nelson Mandela could perhaps have left prison earlier if he had compromised. But he didn’t. He had discovered a vision for South Africa and he was prepared to die for it.

Alexei Navalny is Russian and, like Mandela was, he has been sentenced, in practice, to life in prison in his own country. His health is failing from undernourishment and the conditions in his cell are much worse than those endured by Mandela. He is in solitary confinement, caged in a six square meter cell and his mattress is taken away at 5.00 a.m. The only furniture is an iron stool fixed to the floor. The light is never switch off and there is no ventilation.

His crime is that he speaks the truth about Russia and his message is that those who have the truth have the power. It may take a long time but one day Russia will be free and there will be no more war. From his prison cell, he says Russia should withdraw from every inch of Ukraine and use its oil revenues to rebuild the country. He believes Russia, like Ukraine, is gaining a new sense of national identity, from this war. ‘Change is possible’, he says, and a new generation of younger, poorer and angrier Russians is listening.  

‘Prison exists only in your mind’, Navalny says, ‘I am in a space capsule traveling to a new world.’ He knows he may not live to see it - Mandela would have thought in the same way – but the important thing is that it will happen. Navalny is a Christian but he also draws on the Jewish Torah, the epic journey of the Jews to the promised land. He borrows their saying – ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ -and makes it, ‘Next year in Moscow’.

Navalny has found the treasure, as Mandela did before him and as the two in the gospel did. They ‘sold everything’, risked everything, to gain what they discovered. They had found the truth and it was so attractive they were prepared to die for it. Truth is beautiful. The ancient Greeks knew this and the poets added, ‘beauty is truth’. When the world is seized by this, there will be no more war. There will be perfect peace.   

(The above draws on a series of nine astonishing podcasts from The Economist: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/next-year-in-moscow/id16707).

30 July 2023    Sunday 17 A     1 Kgs 3:5-12    Rom 8:28-30    Mt 13:44-46

THE WHEAT AND THE WEEDS

 

THE WHEAT AND THE WEEDS

There used to be a cartoon in The Herald featuring a delightful rogue called Andy Capp. One day he eyes a smartly dressed young lady and the local vicar happens to be passing and notices. He feels bound to remonstrate but before he can open his mouth, Andy says, “I know, Vicar, there’s so much good in the worst of us, an’ so much bad in the best of us, it is difficult to tell which of us ought to reform the rest of us, Eh?”

Jesus’ story of the wheat and the weeds makes the same point: ‘do not remove the weed now in case you pull up the wheat at the same time. Let them grow till the harvest; then the reapers will separate the good from the bad.’ We live a mixed reality. We would love everyone to obey traffic rules but they don’t: they cut in ahead of you, they over take on the left, etc. Louis Armstrong wrote a song ‘Oh! What a wonderful world.’ Well, it is not that wonderful. It is very messy.  

We find it in ourselves. We have many gifts and do well. But we are aware of our darker side: our selfishness, our avoidance of challenge, our judgement of others, etc. In this we are no different from famous people – even saints. In a recent short study of St John Henry Newman, Eamon Duffy, the Cambridge historian wrote; ‘Newman strove all his life for holiness but he had more than his share of human frailties. He could be tyrannical in friendship, he was thin-skinned and easily offended, slow to forgive, even at time implacable.’

It has been said that we have the ‘weaknesses of our strengths’. I used to work under the leadership of a Jesuit who had been a British officer in India during the war. He was a strong leader in the sense that he was focused on getting the job done. But he could trample on many toes in the process; leaving people angry, frustrated and with a feeling of being used.

In conclusion, we can say the wheat needs the weeds! In some mysterious way, opposition – even from within ourselves – brings out the best in us. Our journey to holiness calls us to make friends – not enemies – of our spontaneous negative reactions.

Christian asceticism today is no longer about flagellating ourselves but in integrating our passions into our personality in a way that reflects the values of the Beatitudes. Yesterday, we celebrated St Mary Magdalene. She was a shining example of this. It can be even harder to do than carrying out the exterior penances we were encouraged to practice in an earlier age.

23 July 2023   Sunday 16 A      Wis 12:13-19          Rom 8:26-27                Mt 13:24-30

WELCOMING A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE

 

WELCOMING A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE

I visited a farmer who employs upwards from 60 to 450 workers depending on the seasons. He is not the owner but a manager employed by another manager of several farms who works for the owner, a war veteran of the Zimbabwe war of Liberation. The farmer, who once owned his own farm before Robert Mugabe’s Land Reform, has accepted his new situation, not grudgingly but with all his heart. He is back in his own country doing a job he loves with people he knows. His wife helps in countless ways, not least in being manager, that is funds supplier, of the farm football team.

What struck me was the lack of bitterness, the absence of talk of ‘the old days’. The farmer and his wife had no security – just a short contract - but this did not prevent them building a house, installing infrastructure on the farm and rejuvenating the fields and taking good care of their employees. It did not mean they were ignoring the precariousness of their situation, they just wanted to ‘get on with life’. And it is a tough life. I was there on the coldest day of the year and I noticed the farmer rose before dawn to begin his day.

I thought it was a wonderful example of someone grasping an opportunity – even if it was hard and without a secure tomorrow – and just becoming engaged. The story of the Sower in the gospels tells us of a man whose project first fell by the wayside and others picked up the pieces. When he tried again, he didn’t have the resources to keep it going. When he was able to provide these, the whole thing got entangled in bureaucracy. Finally things started to come right for him and he had good crops – some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty.

There are many people living by the wisdom of the Gospel even if they would not put it in those words. They are actually living the ‘poverty of spirit’ described by Jesus as the essence of the kingdom of God here and now. That kingdom is not some fairytale in the skies but the breaking forth of authentic values in our world; values which have the power to change our world permanently for the better.

I describe here something on a local level but it is also true on the global level. In reflecting on the war in Ukraine, Grigory Sverdlin, a Russian who loves his country says, ‘The war is not popular in Russia and Putin’s days are numbered. After he goes, there will be dark days in Russia for ten years.’ Then, be believes, Russia will revive into something new and beautiful. ‘That’, he says, ‘is my optimistic view.’

16 July 2023         Sunday 15 A         Is 55:10-11  Rom 8:18-23      Mt 13:1-9

THE FUTILITY OF ‘FALLING OUT’

 

THE FUTILITY OF ‘FALLING OUT’

The budget was $20 million to make The Banshees of Inisherin. The film made $49.3 million. What was the attraction?  I felt uncomfortable with it from the beginning. It fitted no categories. There was no plot, no adventure, no romance. None of the characters were ‘attractive’ except maybe Siobhan who fled the community. What was it all about and why did 80% of viewers approve of it?

It is the story of two friends living on a small island off the west coast of Ireland during the civil war in the 1920s, who fall out. Colm finds Padraic dull and meeting him every day for a drink numbs his creative spirit. He refuses to join Padraic at the pub. He is trying to compose a new song for the fiddle. Padraic becomes obsessed with a desire to mend the relationship and go back to where they were before. Colm becomes more and more irritated and threatens to cut off the very fingers he plays the fiddle with. Padraic doesn’t believe him and the whole issue escalates.

I was glad when it was over. It was a horror film and I could see nothing attractive in it. Then I consulted Mr Google:

‘As a study of male loneliness and swallowed anger it is weirdly compelling and often very funny’.

‘What begins as a doleful, anecdotal narrative becomes something closer to mythic in its rage and resonance: McDonagh (the director) has long fixated on the most visceral, vengeful extremes of human behaviour, but never has he formed something this sorely heartbroken from that fascination.’

I realised I had missed the point. The film is a glimpse into the deeper darker horror of which human beings are capable.  A friend wrote, ‘I LOVED the movie.... I found it funny, moving and thought provoking by turns. I thought it was beautifully shot, superbly acted and captured the LACK of romance in a tiny island community... starved of news... bored... with an intense familiarity among the islanders to the point of claustrophobic desperation... loneliness. But the main thing I got from it was the futility of “falling out” over perceived differences ... drawing huge parallels with brother fighting brother on the mainland.’

I should stop here but am tempted to underline that phrase, ‘the futility of “falling out” over perceived differences.’ This is an apt comment in our civic environment as we approach elections.

9 July 2023    Sunday 14 A     Zech 9:9-10    Rom 8:9-13          Mt 11;25-30

 

 

 

A LEAP OF IMAGINATION

 

A LEAP OF IMAGINATION

For those of us whose daily tool is no longer a badza or an axe but a laptop, the first word that pops up when we turn it on is ‘Welcome’! There is a wide spectrum in which that word occurs. At one extreme, like with the laptop, it is a function of a business relationship – the equivalent of saying, ‘thank you for buying our product. Come again!’ But it is the other extreme that we can explore.

When does saying ‘welcome’ pass from being a pleasant thing to being one which is extremely demanding? In holiday time, it is a joy to welcome family and friends to our home. We prepare a nice room, design pleasant meals and plan some entertainment for our visitor. We enjoy their enjoyment of our efforts.

There are, inevitably, some visitors we would rather not receive as they are prickly or difficult in some way and demand huge patience from us. But still, we rouse ourselves to make the best of it and hope they do not notice our irritation. But let us get to the point; there are people who come into our lives who are going to upset us, not just for a few days, but permanently.

Immigrants in the past have often been welcomed as they provided labour and initiative. The United States of America was built on welcoming people fleeing hardship and persecution in their own countries. Britain’s railways and bridges were often built by Irish people fleeing hunger and poverty in their own land. It is a sensitive thing to say, but Zimbabwe too benefited economically for a while from the ‘know-how’ of people from Europe.

But all these examples carried a downside where the immigrant could be oppressed – or become an oppressor – in their new country. That was the past. Now we have a new situation where immigrants the world over are by and large unwelcome. Countries claim they cannot absorb them and some go to extraordinary lengths to discourage them. Britain wants to export ‘illegal’ immigrants to Rwanda.

The crisis points to the huge disparity between rich countries and poor.  It also calls for a leap in imagination and an open heart; a recognition that to welcome another may change my whole life AND the recognition that this change will benefit ALL of us in the end. How? It is not obvious. The gospels do not go into details. They simply say, ‘anyone who looses his life for my sake will find it.’

The rest is up to us. My own little experience was when I was led to understand that people living with mental disabilities had desires just like all of us and had their own gifts to share with any one who would welcome them.                                                                                    2 July 2023            Sunday 14 A          Zech 9:9-10            Rom 8:9-13           Mt 11: 25-30

 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

‘Mistrust him, Meg, I will not though I should feel my fear even at point to overthrow me too, yet will I remember how St Peter with a blast of wind began to sink for his faint faith, shall do as he did, call up on Christ and pray him for help.’ With these words, Thomas More expressed his trust in God to his daughter, Margaret. He was writing from the Tower of London in 1535 when he was indicted for treason for refusing to take the oath recognising the king, Henry VIII of England, as head of the Church in England, and faced execution.

Thomas More was afraid just like anyone else would in his situation. There are many cases of people expressing their fear in the Scriptures. Esther felt the same fear in ‘her mortal peril’ (4:17) and Jeremiah speaks of ‘terror from every side’ (20:10). Jesus himself in Gethsemane, felt ‘terror and anguish’.

When we think of Thomas More or John the Baptist or Jesus, we see the end product, as it were, when people have come through their fear and we celebrate their courage. But we know that moving from fear to courage is not an easy thing - something that just happens, like becoming an adult. It is a process we painfully grapple with. And we are introduced early to this process. We leave home to go to school. We leave home again years later to live the life we have chosen.

We know it is a stage we go through, a ‘game changer’, but it can be scary. Shakespeare’s Hamlet faced it with the immortal words, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ If we read on in his speech, we find him saying when we face a crisis, we think of all sorts of reasons for avoiding a decision!

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,

If we think about what we have to do too much we will end up running away as Jeremiah was tempted to do (20:9).

But in fact what Jeremiah did was reach out to God in trust.

The Lord is at my side, a mighty hero;

my opponents will stumble, mastered,

confounded by their failure…

Even though he was pilloried and placed in a dungeon he was triumphant. Someone counted how many times the words, ‘Do not be afraid’, come in the Scriptures; 350! One for each day of the year! A daily reminder!

25 June 2023   Sunday 12 A   Jer 20:10-13   Rom 5:12-15   Mt 10:26-33

DEATH IN NOTTINGHAM

 

DEATH IN NOTTINGHAM

A huge crowd gathered in Nottingham city centre on Thursday, June 15. What was the event? Had Forest won the cup? On a closer look, everyone was sombre, silent and thoughtful. They had come to share the grief of three families who had each lost a member in a seemingly senseless murder spree on Tuesday morning. Two were students and the third was a retired caretaker.

Civic representatives, spokespeople for the police, the students’ university and the different faiths of the city were all given three minutes to express their feelings and at the stroke of six there was a moment of silence. The camaras roved over the people, each one lost in their own thoughts.  The city was in shock.

As each speaker delivered their brief message – the most powerful one came from the Muslim Iman – it struck me how everyone had come together in shared grief. The gathering went beyond party, faith, class; it was an event of humanity at one for a moment. It was not a political event, a religious event or a sporting celebration. All the barriers that divide us were down.

Watching from 6,000 miles away, I was much moved by the different faces; young, middle aged, old. All were looking straight ahead, nominally at the speaker, but actually probing deep inside, wondering how this was possible. Were there any answers? The absolute stillness when the clock struck six was like the bending of the knee at the moment on Good Friday when Jesus dies.

But let me not reduce it to a religious event as though I want to claim it as an anonymous expression of my own beliefs. Rather it was like a post-religious visceral experience of numbness. Our society has come to this: where a man can wantonly stab three people, steal a car and run into three more. How is this possible?

As the pictures died on the screen, I found myself encouraged by the unity shown by the people of Nottingham; by their generous attendance to the grief of the families, by their silent witness to the fact that when one is hurt, all are hurt and by the kindness that welled up in their hearts setting off ripples in the community and around the world in all those who shared their sorrow.

The deaths in Nottingham, for all their bitter grief, brought us all together a little for a while.  Do they also sow seeds for a new, more compassionate, world, coming to birth?

18 June 2023    Sunday 11A    Ex 19:2-6    Rom 5:6-11   Mt 9:36-10:8