14th Sunday of the Year C.

I celebrated the thirty eighth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood on Thursday, an annual opportunity to reflect on all that has happened to me since that hot July Saturday in Muirkirk in 1969. As the day itself approached, the main feelings I had were ones of amazement and gratitude; amazement at where the years had gone – a feeling I know many of you are familiar with - and gratitude for the way God has been at work in everything that has happened to me over those years. But there was another feeling, too, which I found difficult to pin down It wasn’t a strong feeling, but it was definitely there, mixed in with the amazement and gratitude. It had an element of sadness and diappointment to it, tiredness even, and as I felt it and reflected on it I knew what it was about. I knew, too, that it had started several days earlier when I had first read today’s second reading in preparation for this week’s homily.

‘It does not matter whether a person is circumcised or not’ I had heard Paul say, ‘What matters is for him ( or her) to become an altogether new creature.’ And even as I typed those words on Friday evening while preparing this homily, I felt the sadness again, a sadness at what I experience as our general failure to accept and take on board the full significance of what St Paul is saying here and so become the new creatures he speaks of. I remembered again those words of my old friend. ‘Ah ken whit yer tryin’ tae dae. Yer tryin’ tae take religion oot ae a Sunday and pit it into the rest of the week, and ah don’t want it.’ And as I pictured him, living not far from here, and heard him, in my imagination, speak those words, I saw very clearly that he had spoken them, not because he did not understand St Paul’s words, but because he did understand them and, like the rest of us, wanted to keep them at a safe distance. He knew that taking religion out of a Sunday and puting it into the rest of the week would have huge long-term implications and he didnae want it. He knew, as we all do deep within ourselves, that taking the Gospel seriously and becoming altogether new creatures would mean radical conversion and change. And, like the rest of us, he was not ready for it. It scared the wits out of him, as it does most of us, and so he preferred to paddle about in the safe, shallow waters of religion, with its superstition and mumbo-jumbo, rather than launch out into the deep waters of faith. And what I was feeling this week along with the amazement and gratitude was sadness and disappointment at this as well as tiredness after thirty eight years of confronting this resistance in myself and others. I realised that my friend’s words had made such a lasting impression on me - why else would I have quoted him so often – not because he was some kind of maverick, the exception to the rule, but because he spoke to one degree or another for each one of us.

I am aware, of course, that this reaction in me is partly because I am just a week away from my summer holidays and ready for a break. But there is more to it than that. Trained in the sixties during the Second Vatican Council I am, as I have explained before, part of a generation of priests who were filled with hope and optimism as a result of those years. I came back to Scotland from Spain in 1969 filled with enthusiasm and convinced we we were on the threshold of a new age in the life of the Church. And, of course, we are. But it is taking longer than we thought it would then. The resistance is deep-rooted, the conservatism hard to break down, the ignorance and superstition widespread and more and more I and my generation – one of whom I had the joy of meeting last Sunday for the first time in over thirty years - are having to face what I have always believed anyway was the vital question at the heart of our ministry. ‘Can we live with the fact that our dreams will be fulfilled fifty years after we are dead?’

But while I still believe that, in the long run, God is doing great things in the world and in the Church, in the short term another possibility has to be faced. In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the seventy two that whenever they enter a town and the people do not welcome them, they are to shake the dust from their feet and move on. Several times in other parts of the Gospel he warns the people of his own day that, if they do not produce fruit, the kingdom will be taken from them and given to others who will produce its fruit. In parable after parable he makes this same point and it is true in every age. There is nothing inevitable about history. Each generation creates its own history. It is what we choose to make it and the danger we have to face is the possibility that, having lived through a time of potentially historic change after Vatican II, our generation will also fail to produce fruit, causing history itself to shake the dust from its feet and move on, offering to future generations as yet unborn the chance to make a better job of things than we have done. And at the heart of the sadness I have felt this week has been the thought that this could well happen.

It’s all to do with the freedom St Paul has been speaking about for the last two weeks in that letter to the Galatians. God is calling us to be altogether new creatures, not to make life difficult for us but so that we may have life and have it to the full. It is precisely by living according to the Gospel that humanity will become all that it is capable of being. But having made us free, God will never force us. And so we have to choose the way of the Gospel rather than what Paul called last week the way of self-indulgence. And this is a life-long process. We do not become the new creatures Paul speaks of overnight. It means conversion on a daily basis. It means letting God into the centre of our lives, taking him out of a Sunday and putting him into the rest of the week.

But there is still time.Thankfully, history has not yet shaken the dust of our time from its feet. We can still do it.


BIDDING PRAYERS



The first reading today was taken from the prophet Isaiah, a man whose confidence in God’s promises is always expressed in lavishly optimistic language and imagery. He speaks today of peace flowing like a river and describes God as a mother carrying her baby at her breast and fondling him on her knee. He must have sounded over the top to many people in his own day time, and yet his prophecies were fulfilled in ways not even he could imagine. And so we pray for some of his vision…….Lord hear us

When Paul says that it does not matter if a person is circumcised or not and that what matters is that we become altogether new creatures, he is speaking of the movement from religion to faith. Christianity means the death of religion and the birth of something radically new for the world. And so we pray for the people of our time that we will be open to this altogether new thing Paul is speaking of…....Lord hear us

In the Gospel today Jesus speaks of how the harvest is rich but the labourers few. He then tells his disciples to ask God, the Lord of the harvest, to send labourers to his harvest. But we are those labourers. Through our baptism, we are called to be the ones who go out into the world proclaiming, by the way we live, the Good News that the kingdom of God is close at hand. And so we ask God to give us the strength we need to do this in the context of our individual lives……………………..Lord hear us

Jesus sends his disciples out like lambs among wolves. They are to carry no purse, no haversack, no sandals, all of which symbolizes the fact that they can only succeed if they put their complete trust in God rather than their own human resources. And so we pray for the Church at this moment in its history, that, in the midst of an often hostile world, we will never lose trust in God or in the power of the Gospel to change people’s hearts in ways that surprise us………….Lord hear us

There is always the danger that we will fail to produce fruit, causing the kingdom to be taken from us and given to others who will produce its fruit. And so we pray for a profound openness to the movement of God in history at this time. We pray, especially, that we will nor betray the Second Vatican Council and all it represents, even although it happened a generation ago now………….Lord hear us

At this time of the year, many people are on holiday. And so we pray for all those who worship here each week but who are currently in other places. We pray that they will, in due course, return to us safe and refreshed and that while they are away they will have the grace they need to enjoy to the full the many gifts of creation, appreciating, not only the beauty of nature, but the culture, history and people of the places they visit.....Lord hear us