Week 05 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 12.26-32; 13.33-34; Psalm105; Mark 8.1-10

Which is more powerful, the reality of what is unreal or the unreality of what is real? Strange question. Students of religion and of cultural traditions generally are accustomed to dealing with myth and its power. Let us say that a myth is not real in a literal sense but that it carries a truth about human life and experience that is very real. Often that truth is more effectively communicated through myth than if it were to be simply articulated in words. Think of Adam and Eve, Hamlet, and the Prodigal Son as 'myths', taking the term in a general sense. Think of their power, their reality, the truth they convey.

Worrying though is what seems to be a sense of unreality attached to what is real. For example, as I write these words (mid February 2022) it is as if the world is waiting for some kind of video game to begin as it looks towards Ukraine and Russia. Have we become so habituated to scenes of war, violence, and death, along with the many other forms of virtual reality that flicker on our screens, that our sense of what is really real has become numbed?

'Poor human bodies, howsoever stricken' were the concern of Jesus all through his public ministry. To heal the sick, to calm the agitated, to exorcise demons, to teach the ignorant, to feed the hungry, to raise the dead - to attend to whatever can cause pain and suffering to human beings: this was his occupation.

In today's gospel we see him in action. Is it myth, this feeding of four thousand people with seven loaves and a few small fish? It is certainly carrying a deep truth for us, and its power continues to touch people, turning hearts, minds and actions to the care of the hungry, to the fact that we share a common humanity with common needs and desires.

The first reading today seems like the kind of reality unfolding before our eyes in Russia. Jeroboam looks with envy at Rehoboam, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah are falling away from each other, the kingdom Solomon inherited from the political and military genius of David does not last even into a third generation. The realities of power, political and military, fed by the realities of fear, anxiety, envy, humiliation, desire for possession and control - all of this is underway in the human race from the beginning: Cain and Abel, Jeroboam and Rehoboam, Russia (and China?) and Ukraine (and the US? the West?). Ukraine is the latest theatre in which, it is feared, the realities of war will be played out. It is of greater concern than wars that have been underway for years - Yemen, Syria - because it seems as if it will bring the super-powers into more open and direct conflict with each than has been the case for decades.

And all for what? It will be the latest chapter in blood-drenched histories that will destroy many lives. Far from resolving anything it will simply deepen the sadness and anger which gives energy to those histories. Only by numbing themselves to the reality of war can human beings engage in it. Only by numbing its soldiers to the reality can human beings engage in it, through  intoxication of some kind, dehumanising the enemy, stoking the fires of anxiety, humiliation, fear, envy, feeding some myth.

On the other hand is the work of Jesus, recalled in the gospel and in the life of the Church. He establishes an alternative arrangement in human relationships in which there is no longer any enemy and in which what seems incredible and impossible becomes possible: fear, anxiety and humiliation are all acknowledged and understood, envy and desire are managed and calmed, the madness of war is recognised and human beings are invited to sit at a common table and resolve their differences peacefully.

Is it a fantasy compared with what people like to call 'the real world'? Or is that real world the fantasy, offering the illusion of solutions, a fantastic monster eating young men and women, whose appetite is all too real and infinitely extended the more it is satisfied? Put alongside it the kingdom of Christ where everybody is fed, all needs met, every desire satisfied, and still there is so much left over.

Fantasy? Reality? Which kingdom deserves our energy, our loyalty, our endurance? Which kingdom should we strive to build in our thoughts, words and actions, and in our relationships today?