4th Sunday of the Year A

Sometimes the fact that I am a priest at all amazes me. Like the folk who lived around the docks in Corinth, the ones to whom St Paul addresses today’s second reading, the people from whom I came were not influential or came from noble families. Over the years I’ve become very familiar with the look on people’s faces when, I answer the question. ‘And where do you come from, Joe?’ ‘Oh aye’ they usually say, ‘I think I’ve passed through it.’ And even then it often turns out that, on closer examination, they’re actually thinking of Muirend or Laurencekirk or some other place with a similar name. As a child, I thought Muirkirk was the centre of the universe, only to discover, long before I was ordained, that many priests in the diocese considered being sent there as the equivalent of a stretch in Barlinnie. One of my earliest memories is of Muirkirk Juniors driving past our house on the top of a bus carrying what for me could have been the World Cup, only to discover from my Dad, as recently as in the last ten years, what had really happened. Muirkirk had reached the final. But they had lost. That year, however, there was a new cup and so the losers were given the old one, and that was what was being carried so triumphantly through the village.

And then I think of my grandparents, especially my mother’s Dad to whom I was very close. He died when I was only six, but I remember so well the stories he told me. Like the rest of his generation he left school at nine or ten and worked all his life in the blast furnaces and in the pits before finally dying of sillicosis or, to give it its more modern name, pneumonionicosis. In the pit he worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week with one unpaid holiday a year on New Year’s Day and, like thousands of others, went on strike in 1926 because his wages were being cut for the third time. And as I think of all this – like the huge unfulfilled potentail in so many people in those days due to lack of proper education - a massive question comes into my mind. How come I am so lucky? Why did God choose me to be a priest, to proclaim his word and celebrate the Eucharist? Because he most certianly did in the spring of 1957 when, as I have explained before, I walked in our back door to hear my mother say words which I will never forget, ‘Father Conway was here to see if you do want to go to Blairs,’ at which point I had the single most powerful experience of God in my whole life, an experience which has brought me here today.

And I say all this to you because what is true of me is true of every single one of us here this morning. How many of you came from influential people or noble families? Kilmarnock is a lot bigger than Muirkirk, but go into England and people still have that same look on their faces when you tell them you come from Kilmarnock. I am always amazed by how many folk have never heard of it despite the name appearing every week in the football results. But go a bit further still and many don’t even know where Scotland is. My friend Fr Eddie McGhee tells the story of one man he met in America who spoke at length about how much he had enjoyed his visit to Scotland, except that it turned out it was Lebanon he had been to. And even within the tiny little world that is Kilmarnock itself, the posh folk in the town, with due respect to everyone here, don’t really come to St Matthew’s or St Kentigern’s across the road. They go to places like St Joseph’s or the Henderson or Holy Trinity. And so, in a very profound sense, the words of St Paul in that second reading are addressed directly to us. In our own way, we are the modern incarnation of the people who lived in the dock area of Corinth and, like them, we are called by God, called to be the peacemakers, the men and women who hunger and thirst for what is right, the people who show the world what it is to be merciful and gentle and suffer persecution in the cause of right. God, as St Paul says today, has always chosen the weak to confound the strong, and at every level of society whether local, national or international, he continues to do that, not least, in our case, at the homeless lunch this afternoon where, for those who have eyes to see, the face of Jesus shines out of our guests and challenges us to the very depth of our being.

But it’s very important to understand why God works like this and has done so all through history since the day he chose David, the youngest and most insignificant of Jesse’s sons, to be King of Israel or Mary, a slip of a girl from Nazareth to be the mother of the saviour, or Peter, the most volatile and unreliable of men to be the ‘rock’ on which the Church was built. And it’s all about grace. ‘The human race’ Paul told us this morning, ‘has nothing to boast about before God.’ Being called by God has nothing whatsoever to do with our own strengths. ‘It was to shame the wise’ we heard him say, ‘that God chose what is foolish my human reckoning and to shame what is strong that he chose what is weak by human reckoning; those whom the world thinks common and contemptible are the ones God has chosen – those who are nothing at all to shame those who are everything.’ Our weakness is no problem to God. He thrives on it and turns it into strength through grace. What really beats him is pride, the most subtle form of which is to tell ourselves that, because I am too ordinary, because I am too shy, because I am too old or too young or too busy or too afraid or too stupid or too anything, God cannot possibly be calling ME. It’s the oldest excuse in the book, the oldest way of keeping God at a distance known to man and its not true. I don’t care who you are or what your circumstances are. God is calling you and with his help you can respond.

I began with my home village and I’ll end there. Did you know that, of the three parish priests in Kilmarnock at the moment, not just one, but two, are from Muirkirk? The God who can do that that do anything.



BIDDING PRAYERS



The world today desperately needs to hear again the Good News of the Gospel and we are called by God to be his instruments in the great task of proclaiming it. And yet so often we turn away from this call and refuse to embrace it. We tell ourselves that we cannot do it, that God cannot be calling us, that we are not good enough, that it is too difficult or not possible. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to hear the words of St Paul in the second reading spoken to ourselves…….………..Lord hear us

We have a standard of living today and access to things like education and healthcare unimagined in previous generations. And so we pray for a deep sense of the the privilege that is ours so that we can use to the full the opportunities we have and put them, in some way, at the service of others. We ask God, too, to stir in us a deep sense of gratitude towards those who went before us and, by their own struggles made possible what we enjoy today…….………………………………...Lord hear us

As a result of under-development in so many parts of the world, the potential which lies in millions of human beings still remains unfulfilled. And so we pray that humanity will have the commitment needed to change this situation so that the full potential of every human being is realised and we finally put to an end the tragedy whereby every day the world loses potential Mozarts, Leonardo di Vincis, Einsteins and Zidanes to poverty, hunger and violence…………………………….Lord hear us

If the development we speak of is to become a reality, then the world needs peacemakers. And so we ask God to raise up many such individuals throughout the world. We pray, too, for those who are already engaged in the process of peacemaking in conflicy situations around the world and for the grace to be peacemakers rather than war or conflict-makers in the ordinary circumstances of our own daily lives, especially within our families……………………….…..Lord hear us

Jesus speaks of those who hunger and thirst for what is right, indicating that those who do so will often be persecuted. Then in the first reading the prophet Zephaniah encourages us to seek integrity, defined by the dictionary as the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. And so we pray for the courage we need to live lives of integrity in the midst of the world, always seeking what is right and, when necessary, being willing to suffer the consequences……………….Lord hear us

Wednesday of this comimg week is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. And so we pray for the grace we need to embrace with openness and generosity this ancient season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving designed to help us enter deeply into mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And we pray in a particular way for Gavin, who will be baptized this Easter, and for Dawn and Gayle who, since they are already baptized, will be received into full communion with the Church…….Lord hear us