Today’s homily was conceived in a little tea-room in Muirkirk where my Dad and I sometimes go for lunch on a Monday. We always eat exactly the same thing. He has lentil soup followed by a toasted Sandwich and I have potato soup and two rolls, one in scrambled egg and the other in bacon, although I have been known on very rare occasions to change the bacon to sliced sausage and onions. We both enjoy it very much and it was while doing so last Monday that I read something from the previous week’s Tablet. We always read when we are out for lunch my Dad and I, occasionally commenting on what we have read, the thing that caught my attention that day being an article entitled, ‘The Most Difficult Leap.’ Its starting point was that it is only by completely trusting at least one other person that we can become psychologically healthy, familiar stuff to anyone who knows anything at all about modern psychology. But it was when the author related it to God that I made the connection with today’s readings and this homily began to take shape in my head.
He quotes a well-known theologian, Matthew Fox, who says that: ‘What God does first and best and most is to trust people with their moment in history. He trusts them to do what must be done for the sake of the whole community.’ adding that this, of course is ‘a huge gamble on God’s part. There is no safe way to trust. Control must be lost or, more accurately, given up.’ To trust is to be both exposed and vulnerable, helpless even in the face of how the other person chooses to respond, which is as true of God as it is of any human being who has the courage to trust. And it is on this aspect of God that I invite you to reflect today.
To have some understanding of the vulnerability and helplessness of God resulting from the fact that he has trusted us with our particular moment in history, depending on us to do what must be done for the sake of the world. is absolutely vital today. Millions of our contemporaries, working out of a totally inadequate image of God, have looked at what is happening around them and concluded that there is no God on the basis that, if there were, he would not allow evil to flourish the way it seems to in places like Croxteth where young Rhys Jones was shot and killed the other day. But this fundamentally infantile way of thinking misses the point entirely. What God has is the most amazing dream for us. Jesus calls it the kingdom and deep within everything that happens the Spirit is labouring to bring that dream about. But because God has taken this most amazing risk, trusting us with the gift of freedom, gambling, if you like, on us using his gift well, he can do nothing without us. He has trusted each one of us here with our own individual lives and together he has trusted humanity with the moment in history we are all living through. It’s not enough to say. ‘We ate in your company, you walked in our streets,’ the equivalent of, ‘We went to Church and called ourselves christians.’ There is so much more to it than that. Trusted by God to do what must be done at this moment in history, we are called to respond to the challenges of our time.The boys who killed Rhys Jones did not do so in isolation. They are products of a society which in its turn is the product of how we all choose to live our lives, and although God is labouring deep within it all and in the end his kingdom is coming, the whole process is hindered by the choices we make every day. And in response to this the words of Jesus ring out: ‘Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.’
But what is the narrow door and how do we pass through it? And if there’s a narrow door, is there a wide one too? Well, there is a wide door and it is the one our society is currently pouring through. Herded like cattle towards it by consumerism and the forces of the market-place, it is the door of narrow self interest, whether it be personal self-interest or national self-interest. The narrow door is the one that calls us beyond that to new ways of living and relating to others. ‘The Lord says this,’ we heard in the first reading, ‘I am coming to gather the nations of every language,’ and the response to the psalm was. ‘Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News.’ And in this we have the thing that ‘must be done’ in the world of the 21st century ‘for the sake of the community’. This is the task God has entrusted to us at this moment in history and which he is helpless to bring about without us. As individuals or as nation we either look inwards towards self or outwards towards the world. Whether it be the environment, the world economy, international relations, immigration and the movement of peoples, the challenge is the same. It is to move beyond self interest, national boundaries, the limitations of race and nation and embrace a whole new way of living. At which point, I would like to tell you about Marcus.
He has just spent two weeks in Kilmarnock prison for breaching security at Prestwick airport last year as part of a protest against the use of Prestwick by the CIA for what is known as the ‘rendering’ of prisoners; moving them to prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere where they are subjected to interrogation and, allegedly, torture. It was not his first time in jail. He has been in Greenock Prison twice for protesting at Faslane and spends several months a year in the Middle East as one of those peace campaigners who from time to time get shot by the Israelis. As a younger man he was a computer consultant who made lots of money. A visit to Africa, however, made him realise that, in his own words, ‘something had to be done.’ And so, to the horror of his friends and family, he gave everything up to do what he does now. And he does it is a committed christian.
Now I’m not suggesting for one second that we should all do what Marcus does. Even he would recognize that, mixed in with the Gospel, there are elements to what he does that are obsessive and compulsive. But I leave you today with one simple question:
What are you doing?
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin our prayer today by asking God to lead us to deeper and more mature ways of thinking about who he is and how he relates to us. Inadequate, childish, fundamentally pagan ways of thinking have led, in modern times, to a massive loss of faith and we pray that more mature ways of thinking and believing will, in time, lead humanity back to the God who created us…….Lord hear us
As we reflect today on a God who has trusted us so much as to become vulnerable in the face of our freedom, we ask that same God to stir in us, through the power of the Spirit, a deep sense of wonder at the privilege and responsibility which are ours. Trusted to do what needs to be done at this moment in history for the sake of the men and women of our time we ask God to pour into our lives the graces and blessings we need so that we will not fail them………..Lord hear us
In the first reading, Isaiah dreamed of the day when the nations of the earth would flock to Jerusalem. His vision, of course, was limited and he could not have foreseen how God would fulfil his own prophecy. The Church is the New Jerusalem and, rather than the nations flock to it, The Church is sent out into the world to touch and embrace people of every nation. We do not come to God.God comes to us, and we pray that the Church will become a more and more effective instrument in his hands…………………Lord hear us
Every few days we seem to be shocked by yet another story of teenage murder and violence. And so we pray for all who are caught up in it. We pray, too, for the wisdom we need to understand what is happening so that, as a country, we can address it. Every time it happens we are being confronted by the fact that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we are living and we pray for the courage to recognize it and face up to its implications for ourselves………………...Lord hear us
In the second reading, the letter to the Hebrews speaks of how God trains us the way a father trains his children. How this happens, of course, varies from age to age and the author of Hebrews is simple reflecting the way it was done in his day. Then, the atttitude was, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ a way of thinking which is no longer fashionable. And so we pray for parents that they will have the wisdom they need to bringsup a family in the midst of the world as it is today……….Lord hear us
Faced with the many challenges confronting humanity today, many very committed people see protest, sometimes violent and sometimes non-violent, as an appropriate response to what is going on. And so we pray for them, that their anger will be tempered when necessary by wisdom and insight. And we pray, too, for the grace to see the prophetic nature of much that they do so that we can learn from them and imitate them in ways appropriate to our own lives….……………………Lord hear us
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