Mass readings for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Jeremiah 23.1-6 Psalm 23 Ephesians 2.13-18 Mark 6.30-34
It’s alarming to know that many people look out at the world and its people, the innumerable crowd that is the nations, the population here and abroad, and seethe with hatred toward many who they see. It’s not the majority, it used to be a small number, it’s now becoming too many. And we don’t need them to be the majority for our civilization to fail – so, we as the Church have our work cut out for us. But where to start?
I made some reference to this last week, particularly on Sunday morning as it was in the aftermath of the assassination attempt against former U.S. president Trump. But I hardly regarded that tragic event as the sole evidence of a problem for which there is ample proof within the western world, what was once Christendom and its daughter nations. People have grown vicious in their politics; that isn’t most of us; but it’s enough of us that it is destabilizing our society with consequences that touch us all. And we’ve been here before, not too distant history teaches us about this, we ought to know the repercussions both domestically and internationally of encouraging disdain for our fellow human beings.
Today, in our gospel reading we have someone looking at the people around him – he’s our Lord, Jesus. Then as now, that crowd will be a mixed lot in terms of their opinions and prejudices, their beliefs and their preoccupations. Yet, he does not look out at them with contempt; rather in his mind there is compassion and concern. He sees people as lost as sheep scattered across the countryside, without a shepherd, vulnerable to many dangers as they wander looking to carry on their lives.
Of course, this ought to be our perspective. As maddening as people are, and they are at times, the divine perspective is not one of judgement but of love. God does not look upon us and go: sinner, sinner, sinner, righteous, sinner, sinner, righteous…” He looks at us and sees beloved children, many of whom have walked away from him believing they can make it without him; many who have pointedly rejected him in how they live their lives, either denying his existence, or perhaps more insidiously, reimagining him as approving of them as they redefine what is virtuous, claiming evils are now goods.
So, judgement comes later, for God is patient with us. He sent us his prophets, he sent us the Son, the Christ, his word continues to resound throughout the Earth, calling us, warning us. These all precede the bitter consequences we bring upon ourselves when perfect justice comes.
Our Lord’s prohibition against judging others stems from this – the obstinate sinner we see is someone we must refrain from judging even as we can discern that their behavior is not good for them or others, and that they certainly shouldn’t be emulated. Our mission then is to rescue them, turn them from the darkness, bring them back to light of Christ. The Church often speaks of “spiritual warfare” and there is an element of our work that is a battle against evil. But we’re also on a rescue mission – those captivated by evil are captives indeed, and we need to free them from the ideas that are distorting and destroying lives. And that can only be done through an encounter with Christ who is the truth and love they desperately need.
The temptation to judge involves the pronouncement of sentence; and as many heard, either in following the recent elections in the UK, or France, or, indeed, in the commentary following the attempt on Trump’s life, many indulged in this; that their political enemies deserved to suffer, to be harmed, even to be killed. Some used humor as a thin veneer covering their hateful remarks, but I believe decent folks were revolted by it all, and knew that these were more than just ill-timed jokes. Others employed false equivalencies, and the old “what about the other guy” defense – as if we don’t know that responding evil for evil leads to nothing but greater evil; Jesus warned us against such “eye for an eye” thinking.
But what are we to do in the face of an existential threat, if that is how we perceive things? This is the justification offered by both those of the right and the left: it’s been deployed in Germany to ban news publications; we see it here in censorship laws with regard to the internet. It’s all framed as a defense of democracy even as it requires us to undermine the principles and practices that make such a system, whether republican or that of constitutional monarchy, possible.
We need to remember that Jesus was faced with similar challenges: people said the survival of God’s people was at stake, it was directly threatened by the Roman Empire. There were attempts to trap him into a position of either collaboration with the hated Romans, or rebellion against them. Either would have marked him for death, either at the hands of the Roman authorities, or by religious zealots from among his own people. Yet time and time again, he turned away from this framing of the problem and called for what we must say was a spiritual revolution, and the making of a new and eternal covenant with God, a “new deal”, a “reset” that would actually accomplish what so many desired: a change that would bring human flourishing in justice and peace.
Now, we would be right to say that God’s kingdom, that place of perfect justice, peace, love and truth has yet to be realized; that there have been many times when ostensibly Christian nations put this aside as their highest aspiration, sometimes out of necessity as in times of war and other disaster, but also in times of peace and material abundance when the temptation to indulge in our vices overwhelmed us, and silenced our better angels.
The matter for us is to persist in the holy virtues of faith, hope and love that undergird and sustain our need to be people of justice, self-control, kindness, good judgment and moral fortitude.
As the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, we will not be forgotten by God, even being a remnant of a civilization that was once constituted around the idea of virtue and the pursuit of heaven. The remnant then as now is vouchsafed, and will become the source of renewal, like the Irish monks who saved the heritage of the ancient world which included the Holy Scriptures, and helped build the glorious civilization that was Christendom.
Last week, we were asked to contemplate the image of the Apostles being sent out two-by-two on the hot and dusty roads of the Galilee to evangelize, and to minister to the suffering. Those men went with a sense of final victory owing to their confidence in Jesus, but as I said then, likely with only a vague notion as to what that victory actually would be, and when it would be.
We know that we are engaged in a long struggle, but a glorious one. C.S. Lewis, the Christian writer, once offered out of his wartime experience the analogy of the Christian soldier engaged in spiritual warfare as being like the British Tommy of the trenches who knew that his side was going to win, but that he might not live to see the day of victory. For us, however, by faithfulness to our God, we will live in his presence eternally, and indeed, we will see that triumph as we stand among the saints.
So, in these times, we cannot look out at the world as if we’re in a trench scanning no-man’s land, and contemplating a bloody end for our enemies in the opposing trenches. No, we are all, in our own modest way to be good shepherds, to look out at those around us as part of the greater flock, a portion of which we then tend (be that our children, our grandchildren, our neighbours, our co-workers, etc.), even as we ourselves are members of the greater flock, who heed even greater shepherds.
We are all both sheep and shepherd. I may hold the ecclesiastical title of “pastor” – literally, shepherd; but even as I try to goad this community in one direction, and with my staff hold it back from error, I remember that I am a fellow sheep, an old ram I suppose, as stubborn as any is apt to be, and I too am to be goaded by a shepherd who stands above me: our bishop, our pope; ultimately, Christ is the Good Shepherd of all.
He holds us back from hate, he nudges us toward the kingdom, he leads us beside still waters where we might be refreshed and have some peace, and then we set off again on the right paths that lead to God’s kingdom, our dwelling place forever.
Amen.