Homily for Remembrance Sunday 8 November 2009
Since we commemorated Armistice Day last year, the last three survivors of the First World War have gone to their rest in their extreme old age, and so that war, which older generations called the Great War, has now finally passed out of living memory. It was a war that cost ten thousand men’s lives a day and when it was over all over the United Kingdom every town or village, every college, every school, every church- even railway stations like Waterloo - put up its war memorial with those long sad lists of names, the names of all those young men whose lives had been sacrificed. How poignant it is to read the inscriptions on those memorials, how optimistic, how naïve they sound to us now- this was “the War to end War”, the final conflict for the triumph of Liberty, of Justice and Peace- the survivors and the bereaved families just couldn’t believe that sacrifice and slaughter on that vast scale could have been in vain. They so wanted to believe that the words of the Apocalypse we have just heard were to come true in their time: “There will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone”. Alas, they were wrong- within the lifetimes of many of those who inscribed such sentiments on the memorials, Europe – and with it, the whole world - was once again convulsed with the horrors of war. And so it is, isn’t it- when one war ends, another starts up so that war just goes on, doesn’t it, somewhere in the world, all the time – the bazaars of Rawalpindi last week have shown us that, and we can’t ever lose sight of the whole ferment of violence that continues along what we used to call The North West Frontier, or the endemic hatred that simmers away in the Middle East. Genocide, which we associate for ever with what the Nazi regime did sixty years ago, has happened in our lifetime in places such as the former Yugoslavia and in Africa –one thinks of Ruanda, of Sierra Leone. We are forced to admit that the words of the Apocalypse have not yet come to pass.
Why is that? Well, one place to look for an answer is the Book of Genesis, whose first eleven chapters preserve for us the many ancient traditions of the Jewish people that explain in the style of myths and legends the nature of God and the nature of human beings. Human beings, destined by their loving Creator for a constant, easy friendship with God, are shown in the Adam and Eve story to be determined to be gods themselves, not content to live by the moral absolutes that are divinely appointed, but determined to make up their own minds about what is right and what is wrong – “if I want to do it, it’s OK!” The story of Cain and Abel that follows immediately after the story of the Fall shows us at once what human nature is capable of: we see the rivalry between two brothers, a resentment of what one brother seems to enjoy and the other thinks should be his, and this envy and bitterness spilling over into violence, and murder. That terrible reply that Cain gives to God when he asks where Abel is- “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer of course should be yes, we should have always before our eyes the common humanity we share with all our fellow human beings of whatever race or background, and consequently all members of the one human family should be our cause for concern. But Cain has impersonalised the whole issue, he has repudiated the common bond between him and his brother- how often that happens in our world- the prelude to atrocities perpetrated against people we resent and dislike is always the distancing of ourselves from them, by the demonising of propaganda and the irresponsibility of generalisations. We are somehow “Us” and they are “Them”. And we see how from this legend of the two brothers that violence and war have entered our world and will never leave it. Genesis shows the descendents of Cain contrasted against the descendents of the third brother Seth. Seth’s offspring stand for that part of the human race that is trying always for a closer union with God, that is open to the Divine- Seth’s son Enosh we are told “was the first to invoke the name of the Lord” in prayer and of one of his descendants Enoch it is said “he walked with God” and did not see death but was assumed into Heaven. But Cain has a descendant Lamech, who sings proudly of his violent behaviour: “I killed a man for wounding me, a boy for striking me” and claims that “sevenfold vengeance is taken for Cain, but seventy-sevenfold for Lamech”. We see that although one side of the human race is forever aspiring to heavenly things, to peace and concord at one with God, the other side is caught up in a momentum of evil- a violence that is for ever increasing as it goes from one generation to the next, because of the deadly power of bitterness within us and its demand for retaliation and revenge.
And of course the really terrifying thing is, that this relentless violence is in fact a warfare that takes place not only on our TV screens in faraway places but inside each and every one of us- the struggle between Good and Evil, which must go on its weary way till the end of time, is a daily combat in our own souls, where we must take up our arms every day. But is this therefore a cause for despair, that human nature is so fatally corrupt that war and violence must always have their sway? Will the promises of the Apocalypse never come true? The answer lies in our reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “this hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”. This endless tension within us between impulses to do the right thing by God and by others and urges to have our selfish way no matter what can be reconciled, has been reconciled if we will only allow ourselves to co-operate with God’s endless grace- we must trust in “Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have already gained our reconciliation”. The first step towards peace, the peace of the world we all long for – and every Mass after all is explicitly offered “to advance the peace and salvation of all the world” as Canon III has it – is peace within ourselves, peace between me and God. Only then is there a chance that there may come peace on a larger scale, and we will experience rather than just glimpse the true and lasting peace, “the peace that the world cannot give” only Jesus, whose words we hear at every Mass “I leave you peace, my peace I give you.” On this day when we recall with sorrow the appalling loss of life in the two world wars of the last century let us pray that such sacrifices were not in vain, and that the human race will learn its sobering lesson from them, and as our small part let us renew our own commitment to peace- peace in our hearts, peace with our neighbours, peace in the world, but first of all, peace with God. Amen.
Sunday 8 November 2009
Homily for 25 Oct 2009
Homily for 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 25 October 2009
Today’s Gospel reading about the encounter of Bartimaeus with Jesus can only be properly understood if we put it in its context in Mark’s Gospel – it comes at the very end of Jesus’s ministry of preaching and healing, as he leaves Galilee, which has been the scene of his ministry so far, and heads for Jerusalem, where events will have their momentum and bring him to the climax of his earthly career, his Passion and Resurrection. This is the end of chapter 10, and chapter 11 begins with Jesus preparing to enter the Holy City, sending two disciples to find the ass he will ride on. So this meeting with Bartimaeus is the occasion of the last miracle that Jesus performs before he enters into his final days on earth, when he is caught up in the Passion that he had been predicting all along to the disciples.
The same chapter, chapter 10 has two other important stories, which we have heard the last two Sundays at Mass. First of all there was a man with every advantage in life- youth and wealth-who approached Our Lord and was thinking of joining him, and our Lord was attracted to him and was ready to welcome him into his band of followers – but, do you remember, the young man couldn’t make the kind of radical change that would be necessary in his life, there were just too many things that he was attached to, things that got in the way, things that he was not prepared to give up, and so he didn’t take up Our Lord’s offer and went his own way. And then we saw last week how even the people who have made a real commitment to Our Lord and who are among his closest friends- James and John- still get things wrong, still fail to understand what Our Lord is really about, what his message really is, what following him will really involve. Do you remember, they say, when you start running the show, when your regime really takes off, can we have the top jobs? And Jesus, shaking his head wearily as he realises that no one seems to be getting the point of what he’s been saying at all, says “You do not know what you are asking”.
But this final story today is quite different, a refreshing note to end the ministry on for Our Lord. Bartimaeus is someone who hasn’t got much going for him –he hasn’t had much of a start in life, he has gone blind and scrapes a precarious living begging by the roadside. He may be blind, but he is certainly intelligent and has the eye of faith- because when the crowd tell him that this passer-by that all the fuss is about is Jesus of Nazareth, notice that he does not then shout out “Jesus of Nazareth!” but “Son of David, Jesus!” He does not just repeat what he has been told, by the people around him who think that this Jesus is just another wandering prophet, another healer grabbing the headlines, or another political activist on his way to stage some great demo, no- he realises that this person is none other than the promised Messiah-“Son of David!” he calls out, the first person apart from Peter so far to give Our Lord this title, to recognise the divine nature of Our Lord. People try to shut him up, but he calls all the louder- how pleasing for Our Lord, after all the hesitations of the rich young man with his cautious questions, that here at last is someone showing a bit of eagerness, someone actually keen! And Our Lord stops and responds- “Call him here!” And look at the reaction of Bartimaeus when the call comes, when Jesus extends the possibility of meeting him- “throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and went to Jesus”. Now what is this cloak? Scholars tell us that this wasn’t really something he wore, but something he used to beg, it was usual in those times (what am I saying, I saw it on tube the other day!) for someone begging to lay their coat down in front of the, with the coins on it that people had given them, to encourage others to give. What Bartimaeus is throwing away without a second’s thought is his livelihood, the way he lives, the whole apparatus of his way of life up to that point. How unlike the young man who couldn’t take his mind off his current way of life. For Bartimaeus, he has met the Lord, the Lord is calling him, and he lets go of everything. What faith he must have had! No wonder that Our Lord, in giving him back his sight, exclaims “Your faith has saved you”. And now there is the further reaction of Bartimaeus to consider. He doesn’t go back and pick up the cloak with its coins, he doesn’t go off as other people have done in the Gospel who have been healed to run and show off to loads of people, he no longer seems to have thought of anything other than being with Our Lord- “he followed him along the road”, in other words he gave himself up from that moment on to leading the Christian life, the “way” as already by the time Mark wrote this, our Faith was being called.
The Fathers of the Church in the early centuries loved this Gospel and many of them have left us their homilies on it. Among them I want to end with quoting from St Cyril, the fifth century bishop of Alexandria, one of the great theologians of his day, who draws the contrast between the crowd around Jesus who could see him but didn’t realise who he was, and Bartimaeus who “felt his presence, and laid hold of him with his heart whom his eye could not see”. That is a great phrase isn’t it and one for us- we are not living during the time that Jesus walked the earth and our eyes cannot see him. But we have our Faith and by it we recognise Our Lord, as the disciples did in Emmaus, in the breaking of Bread. In the Blessed Sacrament we can feel his presence. Soon the bread and wine offered on our altar will become for us the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He will be supernaturally among us, he will be passing by Lewisham just as he passed in this story by Jericho. There will be that moment, at communion time, when Our Lord will be passing along our altar rails to meet us. The priest will say “Behold the Lamb of God” but underneath those words we may hear other words, the words of this Gospel :“Courage, get up, he is calling you!” Let us examine our lives afresh and ask ourselves if we have a cloak that we need to throw off, if there is something, some attitude, some attachment, that is holding us back, that is preventing us from accepting the invitation of Our Lord to follow him, that is hindering us from making the wholehearted response we know we should. Does it seem daunting, we may like that old cloak, it is so familiar. We are so used to it, we can hardly imagine doing without it. But what are those words again “Courage, get up, he is calling you!” May we come in answer to Our Lord’s appeal, and, like Bartimaeus, let us, in St Cyril’s words, lay hold on him with our hearts whom our eyes cannot see. Amen.
Today’s Gospel reading about the encounter of Bartimaeus with Jesus can only be properly understood if we put it in its context in Mark’s Gospel – it comes at the very end of Jesus’s ministry of preaching and healing, as he leaves Galilee, which has been the scene of his ministry so far, and heads for Jerusalem, where events will have their momentum and bring him to the climax of his earthly career, his Passion and Resurrection. This is the end of chapter 10, and chapter 11 begins with Jesus preparing to enter the Holy City, sending two disciples to find the ass he will ride on. So this meeting with Bartimaeus is the occasion of the last miracle that Jesus performs before he enters into his final days on earth, when he is caught up in the Passion that he had been predicting all along to the disciples.
The same chapter, chapter 10 has two other important stories, which we have heard the last two Sundays at Mass. First of all there was a man with every advantage in life- youth and wealth-who approached Our Lord and was thinking of joining him, and our Lord was attracted to him and was ready to welcome him into his band of followers – but, do you remember, the young man couldn’t make the kind of radical change that would be necessary in his life, there were just too many things that he was attached to, things that got in the way, things that he was not prepared to give up, and so he didn’t take up Our Lord’s offer and went his own way. And then we saw last week how even the people who have made a real commitment to Our Lord and who are among his closest friends- James and John- still get things wrong, still fail to understand what Our Lord is really about, what his message really is, what following him will really involve. Do you remember, they say, when you start running the show, when your regime really takes off, can we have the top jobs? And Jesus, shaking his head wearily as he realises that no one seems to be getting the point of what he’s been saying at all, says “You do not know what you are asking”.
But this final story today is quite different, a refreshing note to end the ministry on for Our Lord. Bartimaeus is someone who hasn’t got much going for him –he hasn’t had much of a start in life, he has gone blind and scrapes a precarious living begging by the roadside. He may be blind, but he is certainly intelligent and has the eye of faith- because when the crowd tell him that this passer-by that all the fuss is about is Jesus of Nazareth, notice that he does not then shout out “Jesus of Nazareth!” but “Son of David, Jesus!” He does not just repeat what he has been told, by the people around him who think that this Jesus is just another wandering prophet, another healer grabbing the headlines, or another political activist on his way to stage some great demo, no- he realises that this person is none other than the promised Messiah-“Son of David!” he calls out, the first person apart from Peter so far to give Our Lord this title, to recognise the divine nature of Our Lord. People try to shut him up, but he calls all the louder- how pleasing for Our Lord, after all the hesitations of the rich young man with his cautious questions, that here at last is someone showing a bit of eagerness, someone actually keen! And Our Lord stops and responds- “Call him here!” And look at the reaction of Bartimaeus when the call comes, when Jesus extends the possibility of meeting him- “throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and went to Jesus”. Now what is this cloak? Scholars tell us that this wasn’t really something he wore, but something he used to beg, it was usual in those times (what am I saying, I saw it on tube the other day!) for someone begging to lay their coat down in front of the, with the coins on it that people had given them, to encourage others to give. What Bartimaeus is throwing away without a second’s thought is his livelihood, the way he lives, the whole apparatus of his way of life up to that point. How unlike the young man who couldn’t take his mind off his current way of life. For Bartimaeus, he has met the Lord, the Lord is calling him, and he lets go of everything. What faith he must have had! No wonder that Our Lord, in giving him back his sight, exclaims “Your faith has saved you”. And now there is the further reaction of Bartimaeus to consider. He doesn’t go back and pick up the cloak with its coins, he doesn’t go off as other people have done in the Gospel who have been healed to run and show off to loads of people, he no longer seems to have thought of anything other than being with Our Lord- “he followed him along the road”, in other words he gave himself up from that moment on to leading the Christian life, the “way” as already by the time Mark wrote this, our Faith was being called.
The Fathers of the Church in the early centuries loved this Gospel and many of them have left us their homilies on it. Among them I want to end with quoting from St Cyril, the fifth century bishop of Alexandria, one of the great theologians of his day, who draws the contrast between the crowd around Jesus who could see him but didn’t realise who he was, and Bartimaeus who “felt his presence, and laid hold of him with his heart whom his eye could not see”. That is a great phrase isn’t it and one for us- we are not living during the time that Jesus walked the earth and our eyes cannot see him. But we have our Faith and by it we recognise Our Lord, as the disciples did in Emmaus, in the breaking of Bread. In the Blessed Sacrament we can feel his presence. Soon the bread and wine offered on our altar will become for us the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He will be supernaturally among us, he will be passing by Lewisham just as he passed in this story by Jericho. There will be that moment, at communion time, when Our Lord will be passing along our altar rails to meet us. The priest will say “Behold the Lamb of God” but underneath those words we may hear other words, the words of this Gospel :“Courage, get up, he is calling you!” Let us examine our lives afresh and ask ourselves if we have a cloak that we need to throw off, if there is something, some attitude, some attachment, that is holding us back, that is preventing us from accepting the invitation of Our Lord to follow him, that is hindering us from making the wholehearted response we know we should. Does it seem daunting, we may like that old cloak, it is so familiar. We are so used to it, we can hardly imagine doing without it. But what are those words again “Courage, get up, he is calling you!” May we come in answer to Our Lord’s appeal, and, like Bartimaeus, let us, in St Cyril’s words, lay hold on him with our hearts whom our eyes cannot see. Amen.
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