Week 19 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Joshua 3:7-10a,11,13-17; Psalm 113(114); Matthew 18:21-19:1

It is often said that most of the miracles that take place at Lourdes are never recorded. This is because they are changes within people, in their hearts and minds. We are of course more conscious of things happening in the external world. Where the Red Sea divides or the waters of the Jordan pile up to allow God's people to cross over on dry ground: that seems like a proper miracle, a wonder, an amazing thing, a clear sign of God's power at work.

What about the end of apartheid in South Africa, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, or a peace agreement achieved in Northern Ireland? These were wonders of another kind, in our lifetime, and involving changes that it was thought we would never see. How could such things come about? How could the obstacles preventing them be dissolved or removed? How could hurt and fear of such depth, seemingly immovable objects, be dissolved and their energy transformed into a new work of justice-making and reconciliation?

Of course there were many human contributions to those events that can be studied and recorded by historians. But in each case there were moments of conversion within individual minds and hearts. People who did not trust, decided to trust. People who could not forgive, agreed to move forward with the ones they could not forgive. People who fronted their political ideas and decisions with what was less than true found the courage to face realities hitherto ignored or denied.

The parable in today's gospel reading tells of a rich man who waives the debt of a servant. But the same servant refuses to do the same for one indebted to him. What can seem reasonable, obvious, sensible, prudent, self-protecting, in one light can, in the light of a greater generosity and a deeper compassion, come to seem irrational, stubborn, vindictive, unjust, stupid.  The light of grace transforms the landscape, somehow changes everything.

There are waters to be divided, tombs to be opened, links to be re-established, mountains to be shifted. Such things happening within people - opening hearts, healing wounds, letting resentments go - are also proper miracles, wonders, amazing things, clear signs of the power of God's grace at work.

We should never lose confidence in the power of that grace to do such things in human hearts and minds. Often we do not see the outcome of such miracles even when they do occur. But those who experience them know, and in their family circle and among their friends it becomes known also. To pray for the gift of conversion where it is needed is far more sensible than simply continuing to torture ourselves with whatever it is that holds us down and that we will not let go.

Week 19 Wednesday (Year 1)

Readings: Deuteronomy34:1-12; Psalm ; Matthew 18:15-20

It is a constant temptation to ‘cherry pick’ the Bible, picking out the texts and stories that we like. Sometimes we edit the texts and stories for the bits we like, removing anything we find awkward or difficult.

A sentence in today’s gospel reading is a good example. How often have we heard it quoted, ‘where two or three gather in my name, there am I in the midst of them’. It is a beautiful thought. The immediate context is that of praying, asking the Lord for something that we want and for which we ask together. But pull back the focus even further and we see that the full context is the fraught one of church discipline. If a brother sins … firstly have it out with him in private. If that makes no difference bring two or three others with you. And if it still does not work then bring the matter before the church. If the person is still recalcitrant expel him from the community. For where two or three are gathered in my name …

Our first thought might be that ‘Jesus could never have said that’. It must have come from the early Church community, a voice suggests, as it began to struggle with the realities of human nature, as the novelty began to wear off and the real world began to bite within the group of believers. But to listen to that voice may simply be because we have ‘cherry picked’ our way to a particular image of Jesus that omits all the difficult sayings and sharp edges, that keeps only the texts more easily accepted, that fit our picture of a Jesus who thereby becomes just a bit too nice, just a bit unreal.

Some of the issues facing Jesus, and the apostles, as they began to establish the new Israel are those that faced Moses as he sought to build the first Israel. In one case as in the other there are difficulties in the community, in human relations, questions of justice and injustice, the influence of the deadly sins of pride and envy, lust and anger, and all the rest. How is one person to judge all these things? We know that Moses asked for help from God with precisely this problem and was given elders or assistant judges to help him in his leadership of God’s people (Exodus 18). In matters of justice particularly it is better protected where decisions are made by more than one person and wiser where responsibility for them is carried by more than one person.

Nevertheless Moses died alone. There is a deep poignancy in the account of his death which we hear in today’s first reading. From Mount Nebo he is allowed to survey the whole of the promised land but is not allowed to cross over. He dies, buried in a tomb whose location is quickly forgotten (how could it happen: perhaps like Elijah he was taken up into heaven?), and his spirit passed to Joshua. No death in the Old Testament can compare, no eulogy comes close. There has been no prophet like Moses, nobody whose works compare with what he did.

Until now, that is. Now Jesus, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth, has been revealed as ‘the prophet like Moses’ (Deuteronomy 18) and as a prophet even greater than Moses. Many texts in the gospels show this. Returning to today’s gospel reading, for example, and the comparison between the first Moses and the new Moses, it is immediately clear that Jesus makes claims that would have sounded exaggerated even on the lips of Moses. Where two or three are gathered ‘in my name’, he says, there am I in the midst of them. We cannot imagine Moses, the guardian of the holiness of God’s name, making any such statement. Likewise we cannot imagine Moses describing the authority and power delegated to the people in the way Jesus does: ‘whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’. God and God’s people have been brought closer than ever through the teaching and work of Jesus, into a sharing of life beyond anything Moses could have imagined.

On the face of it today’s gospel reading speaks of the authority of the community. But through it we also see the face of Jesus more clearly. He is the one who delegates this authority to them – ‘who is this’,  we might say, ‘who not only forgives sins himself but feels entitled to delegate this power to a human community’? He is the one who encourages his followers to pray to God ‘in his name’. ‘What need have we of further witnesses’, we might be tempted to say, ‘when we hear such blasphemy from his own lips’?

Rather than cherry picking the treasury of the Bible it is far better to engage with the texts as the Church presents them to us in the liturgy each day. There is always something to be seen, something to be learned, even if it is not immediately obvious. Often what is to be seen and learned is gained not just by looking at the text, or part of it, but by remembering the context and by struggling with its difficult aspects. And often so much more is learned where the Bible text is thought about and prayed over by two or three gathered in His name. For each of us has received His Spirit who teaches us everything and leads us into the fulness of the truth Jesus came to reveal.

Week 19 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Deuteronomy 31:1-8; Deuteronomy 32:3-4,7-9,12 ; Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

I do not know anything about the behaviour of sheep but wonder whether a lamb is more likely to stray than an adult sheep? It often happens with animals, including the human animal, that the young ones can easily go wandering. They do not understand danger and need to be guided, and sometimes restrained, by the adults who do know where dangers lie.

If this is true also of sheep it might explain why, in Matthew’s gospel, we find the parable of the lost sheep coming immediately after Jesus’ praise of children, an association of ideas. In Luke’s gospel it comes just before the parable of the prodigal son, as another example of ‘almost unbelievable (and foolish) compassion’, a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep where they are in order to go searching for one stray.

If the Lord’s care for His people is at least as strong and tender as that of human parents – and we believe it to be infinitely stronger and infinitely more tender – then it is not difficult to believe that He keeps all His flock in view and that He does this at all times. It is what Moses says to the people in the moment in which he takes leave of them – do not fear, the Lord is with you. It is what he says to Joshua a moment later – fear not for the Lord is with you. It is how God had defined Himself when He revealed His name to Moses – I am who I am, I am the One who will be with you.

The Lord is with His people at all times just as He attends to His creation at all times. It is not just the leaders of the people that win his attention but each individual member of it, even the ones we would regard as the least, the ones we would overlook (the child) or allow to wander off (cut our losses to be happy with ninety-nine sheep).

The characteristic of the child to which Jesus points is humility, precisely the characteristic that could lead to it being overlooked and even to getting lost. Jesus teaches us that the heavenly Father is not susceptible to such inattention but His care reaches everywhere and to everyone. He had spoken of it earlier in Matthew’s gospel, ‘every hair on your head has been counted’ (Matthew 10:30).

The Father’s care and attention reach even the ones we are inclined to ignore. Held in this way in God’s gaze, these little ones are great, perhaps even the greatest, radiant in the joyful early morning sunlight of the Father’s love.

Week 19 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Deuteronomy10:12-22; Psalm 147; Matthew 17:22-27

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes did not invent the phrase ‘homo homini lupus’ – human beings are wolves to each other – but he did help to make it well known. To say that human beings are ‘foreigners’ to each other is both less misanthropic and more obviously true. To think of ourselves as wolves is not easy but to think of others as foreigners is a universal reflex in human experience. Each of us is an alien for many other groups, each of us a foreigner to any nation other than our own.

That we are ourselves aliens and foreigners is one of the motives to which Moses appeals in calling the people of Israel to treat aliens well. Remember that you were aliens in another place and at another time even if you now regard yourselves as being at home in this place and at this time.

It is not the only motive he gives for faithful observance of the covenant. Nor does it always work: witness the parable of the unjust steward who quickly forgets the mercy he receives when he is asked to be merciful to a fellow servant. But in many circumstances it is an effective motive: our own experiences of injustice, exclusion or oppression move us to work to ensure that others do not experience the same things.

The point returns in the gospel reading today, where Jesus is asked about paying the Temple tax. ‘Who pays this’, he asks Peter, ‘subjects of the kingdom or foreigners’? ‘Foreigners’, says Peter. So the children of the homeland do not, says Jesus. Nevertheless … there follows the strange magical miracle of a fish turning up which has enough money in its mouth to pay the tax for both Jesus and Peter!

Jesus is not thereby expressing a view within the complex political dynamics of Roman-occupied Palestine nor on the rights and wrongs of the Temple system. As always His response lifts the conversation to a much higher level. Where is our true home? Where is our true citizenship? In what kingdom is nobody a foreigner? To what kingdom does Jesus himself belong, his patria or fatherland? We know from other events recorded in the gospels that his homeland is the Father, from whom he comes and to whom he returns.

Can the homeland of Jesus, his fatherland, be our true homeland also? It is the whole point of his mission, to establish within human history the kingdom of God for whose advent we pray every day and to open for us even now the path that will lead us to the eternal kingdom. It is a universal kingdom, intended for all men and women, of which the chosen people of Israel is the harbinger and the Church, the new Israel, is the sacrament. Not only are there no foreigners or aliens in that kingdom, by another magical miracle every human being is a first-born child there, with the rights and privileges to which the first-born is entitled.

Homo homini lupus is a recipe for Hell and who can deny that there are many human situations and experiences that are already hellish. Love God with all your heart and soul, and your neighbour as yourself is the recipe for the Kingdom of Heaven. We are already children of that Kingdom. We are simply asked, for the love of God, to live up to who we are and to receive others as brothers and sisters in the one family of God.

Week 19 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Wisdom18:6-9; Psalm 33; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

‘Nothing is impossible to God’ is a statement we hear so often in the liturgy that it might have become a bit cliched. Besides that, there are still many things for which we pray that do not happen. And there are many things which we would prefer did not exist and yet God allows them. So true as it is what difference does it make?

The liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt was a moment in which God visited His people. It must have been experienced by many of them as God bringing about what seemed impossible. Likewise the conception of Isaac spoken of in the second reading, was a sign of God’s power which helped Abraham to participate as he did in the sacrifice of Isaac. If God had brought new life from a man as good as dead then perhaps God was able even to raise from the dead.

It makes us think of resurrection, specifically the Resurrection of Jesus, which is the foundation stone of our faith. It is an unexpected fulfilment of Abraham’s faith as well as illustrating the principle from which we began: nothing is impossible to God.

The first part of the gospel reading speaks about the resurrected life of the heavenly kingdom, the place where our treasure is to be built up. ‘Our life is hid with Christ in God’, saint Paul says, and we are to think of our life there even more than we think of our life here.

But the second part of the gospel reading is a reminder that this does not mean giving up on life in this world. As servants of the Lord we are to be busy with the tasks the Lord has set for us. God sent angels at the Ascension to remind the disciples that they could not remain forever looking up into the sky. Similarly, the parable of the good servant reminds us of our responsibilities to each other here and now.

It is wonderful to think of our Lord coming, having us sit at table and insisting on serving us. But in the meantime we are to be at the service of our brothers and sisters, have them sit at table, insist on serving them. The more we have received, the more is expected of us. And if at times it seems beyond our ability, we have the assurance of the constant presence with us of God for whom nothing is impossible and whose will for our lives is always and only informed by His love.