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.
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