BUT I SAY THIS TO YOU

BUT I SAY THIS TO YOU

There is a power in words and we have few orators today. We watch in alarm as the Speaker of the South African Parliament, gathered in Cape Town to listen to the President of the Republic, searches for words to respond to Mr Malema’s obstructive tactics.  Another person could have disarmed him with a few words but the Speaker could not find those words.

Jesus was the perfect speaker. He is the Word and ‘no one could think of anything to say in reply, and from that day no one dared to ask him any further questions’ (Matt 22:46).  Words are one of God’s great gifts to us. We use them all the time in daily life to express our needs, joys and pains.  But words are not limited to immediate descriptions.

‘Primordial words are always as though filled with the soft music of infinity.  No matter what it is they speak of, they always whisper something about everything.  If one tries to pace out their boundary, one always becomes lost in the infinite.  They are the children of God, who possess something of the luminous darkness of their Father.

Words like ‘blossom, night, star and day, root and source, wind and laughter, rose, blood and earth’ and so on are words in which a piece of reality is signified, a door is opened into the depths of true reality in general. ‘They are words of an endless crossing of borders, therefore words on which in some way our salvation depends’ (Karl Rahner). Through the word, spoken in powerful concentration, all realities are brought into the light of man, and redeemed from the imprisonment of their dumbness of reference to God’ (Michael Kirwan SJ, Letters and Notices 455, a Jesuit house journal).

The Sermon on the Mount is where Jesus ‘completes’ the message of the old dispensation.  He raises the bar on human behaviour, calling humanity to choose wisdom. If we are still haunted by the self-interest and fears of the old ways it is time now to become free and reach out for the new. Humanity can do better. ‘If you wish, you can keep the commandments’, Ben Sira told his hearers a century or so before the coming of the Messiah.  Jesus built on that and at the end of his sermon, Matthew tells us, ‘his teaching made a deep impression on the people because he taught them with authority’.

How much we need people who speak with authority!

16 February 2020                                Sunday 6 A

Ben Sir 15:15-20                 1 Cor. 2:6-10                        Matt 5:17-37  

    

YOUR LIGHT WILL SHINE

YOUR LIGHT WILL SHINE

The number of baptisms, ordinations and religious professions is growing in Africa but this is one sign only of the growth of the People of God.  We also look for a growth in the commitment of lay people to take their faith into the market place, the social field and the political arena. And, thirdly, we look to see what influence the Christian people are having in the world where so many have no explicit religious beliefs but they are searching for ways of being true to what they find deep within them.

A report in The Tablet this week describes how young people in Europe prefer to join small business enterprises rather than big companies. They believe that smaller companies have a sharper social sense and are more responsive to vital issues like global warming. The Tablet article traces this social consciousness in part back to a conference called by Pope Francis at the Vatican some years ago.  And there is reason to believe the pope’s letter on climate change, Laudato Si, has had considerable effect in feeding into the world’s focus on the climate crisis itself.

When Isaiah called on people to have a social conscience 2,500 years ago he said nothing explicit about keeping the Jewish law. And when Jesus took up his words and told his followers, ‘you are the light of the world’, he did not say you must be baptised in order to shine. Despite the undoubted growth of the Church in numbers in Africa, if this is not combined with an engagement in the struggles of people, which make the whole of society take notice, it will be no more than statistics – a numbers game.

Recently we remembered – 75 years ago - the discovery of the awful state of the survivors of the death camps the Nazis ran during World War Two. As the allies closed in on occupied Poland and Germany they were numbed by what they saw. One of the Jewish victims, rounded up for extermination, was a young Dutch woman called Etty Hillesum. Etty was a deeply reflective person and, instead of hiding in fear as the Nazi police closed in on her, she went about the streets trying to help people cope with the situation right up to the time of her arrest. When eventually they were herded into railway trucks for transportation to the death camps she threw a post card out the window on which she had written, ‘We left the station singing!’

Etty’s light has never ceased shining. But it is important to note she never closed her eyes to the suffering around her. She recognised that God was present in it all. Her God was a vulnerable tender Presence and she spoke to him, ‘You cannot help us … but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last’. Human beings have made a hell on earth but God does not abandon them.  He cannot force them to change but he can ‘dwell inside us’. He is the God who is with us and anyone who struggles for justice recognises, even if implicitly, that they are not alone.

9 February 2020          Sunday 5 A

Isaiah 58:7-10              I Cor 2:1-5                   Matt 5:13-16   

A MAN CALLED SIMEON

A MAN CALLED SIMEON

‘How much more important the divisions between people are than between countries’. So wrote Virginia Woolf in her preparatory notes for To the Lighthouse, one of her greatest novels.  The book is held together by a simple story of a promised family outing to a lighthouse but it is almost entirely a description of people’s feelings and thoughts about one another and the ‘divisions between people’.

In watching the US president unfolding his peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians this week it soon became clear he was completely ignoring the ‘divisions between people’. He came down on one side and ignored the other. As one commentator observed, he was conveniently accepting the ancient religious narrative about the patriarchs, prophets and kings who founded the Jewish people without paying any attention to the history, leave alone the theology, of the intervening period.

We cannot base modern political decisions on such sentiments as, ‘You have constituted your people Israel to be your own people for ever’ (2 Samuel 7:23). The name ‘Israel’ describes a people, a nation, formed by the experience of the desert and the covenant received through Moses.  This is the ‘national Israel’ which was the vehicle by which God would enter history in Jesus.  This Israel would give birth to the ‘true Israel’ of which the New Testament speaks, for example, in Galatians 3:7 where Paul says, ‘Don’t you see that it is those who rely on faith who are the children of Abraham?’

This Israel has nothing to do with physical descent which, for example, enables one to obtain a particular passport.  It has all to do with understanding that God wants to gather his people into one – not to scatter and divide them. The glee with which the prime minister of the nation, Israel, welcomed the words of the US president gouges a hole in one’s stomach. He seems unable to think beyond the narrow interests of the Israelis (a new word not found in the bible).

Simeon, on the other hand, who was a true Israelite, welcomed the Messiah with the words, ‘My eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared for all the nations’ (Luke 2:31). He understood that God was doing an inclusive thing in Jesus.  No one would be left out. How far this ‘peace plan’ is from that vision!   

2 February 2020          Presentation in the Temple

Malachi 3:1-4              Hebrews 2:14-8                      Luke 2:22-40      

GALILEE OF THE NATIONS

GALILEE OF THE NATIONS

‘It is a Saturday. There won’t be much traffic’. I set off walking to the small lighthouse on the strand and, turning a corner, ran into an army of runners – 2,400 of them I was told. They were young and old, men and women, black and white. They smiled or waved as I dodged them, their faces cheery, anxious or preoccupied. Going in the opposite direction was a procession of cyclists heading for the Cape. Vehicles were apologetic intruders snatching at the only spaces available on a road that was built for them.

Soon I was off the road, over the bridge which spanned the railway and onto the path that ran by the shore. Fishermen were hauling in a net that still stretched out to sea and I watched as they hauled in two dozen maceral. So much effort by so many for so few! ‘The seas are overfished’, said a bystander.

It is a month since Christmas but the Sunday readings are still hammering the simple message; the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. Have all those runners and cyclists seen it? All those fishers of fish? Yes and no. I passed 3,000 people this morning with 3,000 stories to tell – no two the same. Like the many colours of the rainbow each one would refract the light in their own way; some would be red hot, others a gentle yellow and yet others a vivid green or sky blue.

If Judea and Jerusalem were the focus of the Jewish faith, Galilee was a good deal fuzzier. It was Jewish, yes, but it was a crossroads of the trade routes of the ancient world and it seemed that all the nations of the world passed through it.  Isaiah gave it the title of ‘province of the nations’ and Matthew, following him, simply says ‘Galilee of the nations’. In those days it must have been the most cosmopolitan place on earth.

The world is full of Galilees today and I met one on my walk this morning. I found myself rejoicing in the variety that was visible and recognising that it was the outward appearance of a far richer variety that was hidden from the eye. Each of those people is seeking the light as best that can. It is the work of God to draw out from each what is best for them and for all.  We are building not just a province but a community of nations – and it is hard work.

26 January 2010          Sunday 3A

Isaiah 8:23-9:3             1 Cor 1:10-17              Matt 4:12-23        

THE LIGHT OF THE NATIONS

THE LIGHT OF THE NATIONS

The light, of course, doesn’t tell us what to do.  The light shines on the path, but it is up to the seer to choose to follow it. I belong to a religious community, the Society of Jesus, seared by history.  We had growing success in the early decades of our founding, but opposition soon arose.  There were times when the light grew dim and once it went out altogether, or so it seemed.  We were totally shut down by the pope and spent forty years in the desert. 

Everyone looks for a light in their life – some person or idea to guide them.  Often the person will disappear or the idea will no longer inspire.  We are restless people always in search of something that will satisfy us. The Carthusians, a religious community far older than the Jesuist, have a motto; Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, the cross stands while the earth goes round. The cross is the rock in a swirling sea.

Traditional societies and religious traditions can sustain us but they can fail to satisfy after a time. So what is this mysterious ‘light of the nations’ that Isaiah promises us? Jesus came and said ‘I am the light’ and at another time he said, ‘you are the light’. Simeon in the temple spoke of it and the wise men from the east saw it as a star.

It is the gift that is offered to all people; a light in our hearts that will always show us the way – even if it seems obscure for a while.  When that gift is welcomed and finds a home in us it sustains us and shows us the way, always and unfailingly. ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light’.  It is the gift of Christmas which stays with us.

If we have some knowledge of history we will be very aware of constant change over the centuries. However grim our own times may appear to us they are a great improvement on those of our ancestors. The task before us is to use the light to see our way through the complex influences constantly coming to meet us. So much of modern culture is trying to attract us and bind us to itself. Ours is the task of equally constantly shining our light on these movements to see if they help or hinder.     

19 January 2020          Sunday 2A

Isaiah 49:3-6                I Cor 1:3-6                   John 1:29-34

LIBERTY TO CAPTIVES

LIBERTY TO CAPTIVES

Stone walls do not a prison make,

nor iron bars a cage …

If I have freedom in my love

And in my soul am free,

angels alone, that soar above,

enjoy such liberty.

When Richard Lovelace wrote these words in prison – he backed the wrong side in the English Civil War – he was graphically expressing a truth we can easily understand: I can be free even though I am locked up.  Freedom does not ultimately depend on my physical circumstances, though of course to be in prison severely restricts my choices. There can be a freedom deep down in a person which no regime can touch.

Viktor Frankl was stumbling to work one icy morning in Auschwitz, the notorious prison camp run by the Nazis in World War II, when suddenly his wife (who was in another camp) entered his mind. He later wrote:

Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.  A thought transfixed me; for the first time on my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers; that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart; the salvation of man is through love and in love.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in the world may still know bliss … In utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way, man can achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory’.

I have met people in prison in Zambia and Zimbabwe who were freer than many outside who have wealth and power but are imprisoned by them.  This is the liberty of which Jesus speaks; to be free and not attached to what really fetters the spirit of a person.

We can choose to be free no matter what our circumstances are.  Freedom is a quality of the spirit of a person and a gift from the One who meets us in our search for it.  I try to understand, to be patient, kind and forgiving.  I try to be tolerant and respectful.  All this helps but freedom may still elude me because I am ultimately incomplete.  I cannot become free on my own.  I need to share in the life of the One who comes to meet me and set me free. Jesus plainly told them in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4) that he had come to do this.

12 January 2012          The Baptism of Jesus

Isaiah 42:1-7                Acts 10:34-38              Matt 3:13-17  

FORTY YEARS ON

FORTY YEARS ON

So 2020 has arrived! It has a ring about it.  Soon we will remember – I nearly wrote ‘celebrate’ - our fortieth birthday! Maybe we will celebrate. But as things are now it will be muted. Many struggle just to survive. What image can we choose for this New Year? One that comes to mind is the Prodigal Son.

That young man came to an age where he felt entitled. He went to his father and said, ‘Now I am grown up.  I want what is due to me.’  His father gave him what he asked for and we know what he did; he went and spent it all and sank into destitution.

Then comes the high point of the story, the high point of the whole gospel. ‘He came to his senses’.  He wakes up. He sees a different world is possible – and he acts!  ‘I will get up and go to my father and say I have messed up and I am sorry’.   

The father, incredibly respectful of his son’s independence, is looking out for his return and springs into action to prepare a welcome celebration.  He rises above any words of blame or judgement and allows full room for joy at his son’s return.  They begin to celebrate.

The son is now twice the person he was before.  He has sunk deep into the pit and come out of it.  He is now wise: his eyes are open and he sees life from a whole new angle.  He will now build a whole new life and will imitate the love and compassion of his father in his relations with others.  He is the new person Jesus came to call into being.

This simple parable, so easy to understand, so hard to apply, can be our fortieth birthday present.  The time has come for us to come to our senses.  I don’t say ‘for them to come to their senses’.  We cannot blame others.  We are all in this.  We have all messed up.  This is not just a soothing way of speaking.  We really have all messed up – each in our own way.

The good news is that we can become twice the society we vaguely hoped to be in 1980.  Now we are wiser, clearer, more responsible.  But we do have to get up and go.  We cannot leave it to others.  I think that is what Jesus is saying.  He wants to see a new community, a new society, but he is very clear that conversion has to be in each human heart.  It is an individual thing as well as something we do together.

Our ‘sin’ this past forty years is that we have waited for others to move.  We are good at waiting. But we can’t wait any longer.  The Israelites were forty years in the desert.  That was enough.  It had to end.  Maybe they were not ready for the promised land in the beginning when they first got free of Pharaoh.  They still had to be free of their own narrow vision and Moses had a hard time weaning them from it. But the time came when they entered the promised land, wiser, clearer and more responsible.  Even then they had a way to go …  So will we.            

5 January 2020                        The Epiphany

Is 60:1-6                      Eph 3:2-6                     Matt 2: 1 -12