Love your enemies

Second Sunday of Easter 7.4.2024

(John 20: 19-29)

Dr Izzeldin Abueleish was born in poverty in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. His family somehow enabled him to study medicine at Cairo, London and Harvard, and to become the first Palestinian doctor to work in Israeli hospitals.

His wife died of leukemia 2008, leaving him to raise their eight children. In 2009, when Israel was attacking Gaza yet again, a tank fired two shells into the Abuleish apartment, slaughtering three of Izzeldin’s young daughters and a niece. Despite his extreme grief, Izzeldin wrote the book I shall not hate.

Dr Abueleish is a Muslim, but like the Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi, he teaches and lives Jesus’ central teaching, as contained in the gospels: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

He describes one way he learned why we should not hate: when we see newborn babies lying side by side in their hospital cribs – Palestinian, Jewish, Chinese or African – they have absolutely nothing within them which make them hostile to each other. All later hostilities come from human choices, distorted by our selfishness and anger.

In the emotional final scene in John’s gospel, we see Jesus’ disciples locking themselves into their meeting room, terrified that they too might be caught and tortured to death as he was. But when Jesus appears among them, they are filled with limitless joy. He then breathes God’s Spirit into them and sends them out on mission. But his instructions are puzzling. Why does he tell them to forgive people’s sins, and possibly sometimes to retain them? Surely he wasn’t giving instructions to priests about how to “hear confessions”, as some have piously thought! That custom – like ordained clergy – did not begin until many centuries later!

Jesus was summing up his whole teaching in a few words. Isn’t this the same command as “love one another as I have loved you”? (John 5:14) and “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”? (Matthew 5:44) Wasn’t he giving every disciple the immense power to transform our world, the power to forgive, and to “contain” sin with creative love? Like Dr Abueleish, countless good people have shown us the way to be peaceful to each other, rather than hostile: St Benedict, St Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Gandhi, Mandela, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, etc etc.

Our “Christian” nations – USA, Australia, UK, Germany and others – are still providing Israel with terrible weapons, enabling it to continue its genocide. Isn’t it up to us, now, to point out their gross sin? The world knows that for seventy-five years Israel’s leaders have been expressing their intention to remove all Palestinians from the whole land, of which in 1947 the United Nations gave Israel 56%.

In the same passage in John’s gospel, Thomas has difficulty believing that Jesus is alive. This challenges us too, but it is an even greater challenge to believe that we have the power to bring peace, as Jesus calls us to.

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In November 2023, Izzeldin Abueleish, now living in Canada, learned that an Israeli bomb had killed twenty-two more members of his extended family.

Did Jesus separate politics from religion?

Sunday 29A 22^nd October 2023

[Matthew 22:15-21]

When two opposing teams compete on the football field, we enjoy an exciting afternoon. It’s a game. But what happens when we divide the world, or our local part of it, into two competing sides? The world we are born into is divided like this: our family may be Christian – either Catholic or Protestant; or maybe Muslim – either Sunni or Shia; or perhaps Jewish – orthodox or liberal – or then again, Hindu or Sikh… or anything else.

One of the harshest and most destructive divisions is between a colonising power and the people it has conquered, when the newcomers profit from the resources, land and labour of the original inhabitants. Jesus was born into such a conquered land. For nearly a century the Roman empire had controlled Palestine by allowing puppet kings and Jewish religious leaders to manage and tax the population.

But Jesus did not teach people to rise up in revolt against the Roman oppressors. He invited the burdened peasants – and the Romans and us later generations – to “Repent, get a new mind, see the bigger picture and believe the Good News.” This News is that every person is loved by the Infinite One who created us. We are all equally valuable to this mysterious Parent/God, who calls us to love our enemies. If we can do this, we no longer need to find our identity, dignity or pride in belonging to any nation or group.

But Jesus’ teaching, then and now, hugely threatens leaders who exercise power by dominating a majority. So the leaders of Jesus’ own religion joined with the State to murder him. Matthew’s gospel shows the build-up to his death: Jesus challenging the religious leaders by symbolically cleansing the House of Prayer by driving out commercial and financial interests; then warning them in parables that they would be stripped of their leadership and excluded from the coming Reign of God.

Then the priests and King Herod’s agents tried to trap Jesus into speaking against the Emperor: “Should we pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” If Jesus agrees to pay taxes, he will lose credibility with the populace whom Rome is oppressing. If he refuses, he will show himself a rebel against Rome. But Jesus refuses to divide the world into either-or. He sees it as profoundly one. Caesar’s power is real enough, so give him what his violent conquest lets him demand, for now. But Caesar is only a tiny part of God’s empire – the whole world and every person – so “…give to God what belongs to God”.

Jesus is not teaching: “keep your religion separate from politics”. The task of politics is to run states justly, to be fair to everyone, to negotiate peace… how different from our dominant capitalist system, based largely on arms-dealing and the profits of war!

Don’t we need, urgently, to bring prayer and Christian/Muslim/Jewish action into the heart of politics, and to see all war’s’ victims – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine and Israel as images of the living God?

Jesus skilfully avoided dualism, “us” against “them”, Jews against Romans. Can we follow him by refusing to oppose Arabs against Jews, Russians against Ukrainians? Can we each help to bring peace to the present terrible conflicts by prayer, by emptying ourselves of anger and thoughts of revenge for long-standing injustices, and in helpless waiting allow God to work from within us? “Blessed are the poor”.

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“The last shall be first…”

Sunday 21C 21^st August 2022

[Isaiah 66:18-21, Luke 13:22-30]

As a child, I did not have many books, for our family’s limited income was needed for more urgent things. But I delighted in a treasured Christmas present: a picture book of Aesop’s Fables.

Each fable was summed up in a one-line “moral”. In the story of the fox and the stork, it was: “the one who laughs last, laughs longest.” I carried this wisdom to school, but the teacher’s unequal distribution of favours, and a bully’s torments soon taught me that the moral did not work in my life. Like a juvenile Job, I lamented that rosy formulas about how the world worked, did not always apply.

But we can learn from Aesop, and other people of every culture, long before our bible was written, that everyone asks how life works: “Who set this up?” “Are there Gods? What are they like? Will they reward or punish us after we die?”

When we ponder the Bible’s writers’ rich thoughts and emotions, and listen to the best scholars’ interpretations, we see that its wide range of stories and poems is telling us that oppressed peoples – the majority of earth’s population – will “laugh last”, because there is a Transcendent Reality who described itself to the Hebrews as YHWH, the One Who Is. And this Source of all creatures, including us whom it has helped to evolve into consciousness, is on our side.

Jesus came from this Source, telling us the Good News that God’s Reign had begun; that the promises glimpsed by Isaiah – today’s First Reading – and other prophets were true: that one day all peoples will come together in peace, to see and share God’s glory. And the Infinite One is infinitely good, so we are safe… saved.

In today’s reading from Luke, an anonymous “someone” asks Jesus: “…will there be only a few saved?” Jesus doesn’t answer, but instead points out that our life is always a struggle, a narrow path. But in the Beatitudes he had said that whether we struggle against unjust rulers, or famine, or the climate crisis, or loss of our family or home through the madness of war, all our travail is temporary and limited, and can be solved through team-work and the love of others, and of God.

Many of us do not handle the struggle well, living mainly for ourselves, and failing to love others enough. So the gospels are full of warning stories which end in the “good” being separated from the “bad”. But these stories describe our efforts: they don’t necessarily include God’s. God is not detached from our struggle, like the impartial judge of a sporting contest, with no stake in our success or failure. Jesus shows God to be the devoted shepherd; the woman who searches desperately for the small, lost coin; the loving father who forgives his child’s outrageous rudeness and folly. God is the fragile, human Jesus who speaks the truth to the unjust leaders of his religion and of the state, until they torture him to death.

Jesus’ scary fables about punishment warn us what our own selfishness will produce, not what God is capable of. Jesus’ own life shows us God’s infinite love, inextricably involved in our struggle: God living within us, our intimate partner.

According to Isaiah, Jesus and other prophets, the final outcome will be a great feast, to which all are invited. Unlike Aesop’s fable, in which the stork punishes the fox by preventing him from sharing the food, God invites everyone. But Jesus also warned his Jewish contemporaries that the privileges they treasured as the Chosen People did not guarantee them priority. Those who imagine themselves to be first may well come last. The moral? We are not saved by our appearance or religious performance, but only by love. Many will be saved by their love for others, even if they never go near a temple or a church.

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Why do we gather at Easter?

Easter Sunday 17^th April 2022

[Isaiah 52:13–53:12]

Why do people still come to church in large numbers on Good Friday and to the Easter Vigil? Looking at the large crowds in our local church, I thought our reasons must be complex and varied. They would include a deep sense of gratitude to the man Jesus who “died for us,” – as the gospel stories say. So it’s something like gathering on Anzac Day to remember those who died in war?

There is also, in each of us, a desire to escape from the evils that might happen in our own lives, and that threaten our world: the sufferings caused by cruel wars in Yemen, Ethiopia and Ukraine; the terror suffered continuously by Palestinians and people in Afghanistan. Children starving in famines; and especially the grave crisis that global warming will bring on our world in the near future.

For thousands of years people of every race and religion have gathered, trying to connect with their gods or God, but on Good Friday there is a deeper dimension. We know that the death of Jesus was somehow linked to the mystery of God freeing us from the evil in our world. We who follow Jesus know that Jesus’ death and Resurrection is the answer to our searching. The gospel writers – and especially our own experience of Christ – tell us that here we are in touch with Infinite Life.

But in seeking God, we need to be careful not to fall into some ancient errors. One common error about Good Friday can come from this reading from the prophet Isaiah. About 700 years before Jesus, he wrote about a “servant of God” who underwent terrible sufferings: “He was pierced through for our faults… The Lord burdened him with the sins of us all.” We even hear the terrible words: “the Lord has been pleased to crush him with suffering.” What can all this mean?

Those ancient people did not think of God in the same way that we do. They knew God as creator, the origin of everything, so they would say that God caused all the evil that happens to us. That’s true, in a sense, but it does not include all the other complex causes, especially our freedom. So when Isaiah described a person who endured great agony, he could say: “the Lord has crushed him with suffering.” The Scriptures also said about a tyrant’s cruelty: “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart”; and even that God sent the plagues or famines that killed many people.

Much later, Jesus showed us that God is our loving parent, in his story of the father who loves and forgives his wastrel son to the point of foolishness. Jesus’ Good News is that God goes to extreme lengths to find us when we “stray”; and does not condemn an adulterous woman; that God lives in our hearts as the Holy Spirit, helping us to love and forgive each other, as God does.

Those ancient peoples also imagined that God got angry or jealous, as we do. The ancient Psalm 38, that we used on Good Friday, said “God, do not rebuke me in your anger”. But if we believe that God is a petty tyrant who gets annoyed and will lash out at us, then we have completely misunderstood the gospels, and Jesus. So what can it mean, this talk of a suffering servant, who “atones for our sins”? Perhaps Isaiah was glimpsing, far in the future, a Messiah who was not the warrior-king that people longed for, but was Jesus, the nonviolent “Beloved son”, who would be murdered for challenging the cruelty of the state and the injustice of religious leaders?

It was not God who crushed Jesus, but greedy and unjust leaders, who can be found in every society. All the evil in our world comes from our self-centred and unloving choices, which hurt others, especially when made by people with power. After doing evil, the powerful then punish “whistle-blowers” who try to expose them. This happened recently to the brave people who exposed the war-crimes of the SAS in Afghanistan and East Timor; and to the two men who told how the Australian government cheated to steal oil and gas from East Timor, one of the poorest countries on earth. Look also at how some of our Catholic church leaders are still fighting strenuous legal battles against victims of priests’ sexual abuse.

Jesus did not die as a “sacrifice” to placate an angry God. He came among us as God, to share deeply in our pain, grief and despair. State and religious leaders falsely accused and murdered him. His death teaches us some astonishing truths: first, how much God loves us, and second, that God’s power can shine through our worst human failures, even our death.

When we call Jesus’ death a ‘sacrifice’ we mean something “made holy”; a gift of love to God or to other people. Isn’t this why we gather to celebrate this deep mystery? God with us; God showing us the way to life without end. Happy Easter! Alleluia!

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What’s the use of laws?

SUNDAY 3C January 23 2022

[Nehemiah 8:2-10, 1 Corinthians 12:12-30, Luke 1:1-21]

Around the year 450 BCE the Jewish community had not long returned from exile in Babylon. They were very discouraged, and their community was divided, but the temple priests made a big deal of calling them all together and reading the Book of the Law of Moses. This provided a framework to hold the community together during their difficult time.

Every society needs laws to hold it together. There are different customs in different cultures, and people express their own diverse opinions, so we might be tempted to think that there is no right or wrong way to live. But there are universal principles of right and wrong, which all peoples can agree on. Every religion has a version of the rule ‘Don’t do to other people what you would not want them to do to you’. A simple way to define wrongdoing or sin is: ‘any action – or failure to act – which damages other people’. Avoiding such actions, and seeking to help each other is the only true way to live, and as Jesus said,the truth will make you free.

Our second reading today tells us that every community is like a living body. We are one body. Just as all the parts in our physical body are connected, so everyone in a community/city/nation is connected. Look what happens when we have not enough truck-drivers – or nurses and doctors! And look what happens when even a few people don’t take precautions about covid! Sin damages this unity. Our sinful actions are like a virus in the body.

But we have to be realistic. The laws that human being write can never give perfect justice, for every human situation of conflict is unique, while law is general. This sometimes leads us to say: ‘the law is an ass!’ Lawyers, judges and courts are fallible, and quite often innocent people are convicted and the guilty go free. The law itself is often biased, because it has been written by the people who have wealth and power.

The way the law treats victims of sexual assault is particularly imperfect, and many victim/survivors say that going to court was worse than the crime that originally damaged them. The victim is often disbelieved and re-victimised. As a result, only a tiny number of criminals who commit sexual assault are ever brought to justice. Good efforts are being made to improve the laws and to treat people more justly, but we have not come near solving the sexual abuse problem in the church, despite what some bishops say.

The daily news is full of crimes. We are told about people, even children, being raped or murdered. We see people who have been hurt in their childhood, going on to hurt others. And the greatest crime of all is war. Today, war is destroying people/families/ homes in Yemen, Myanmar, Palestine, and on our doorstep in West Papua. Yet we allow those who contribute to war to make huge profits. Companies in Australia – like Raytheon and Honeywell – make huge profits from the very weapons and components of weapons that destroy people in these wars. Weapon-making companies regularly hold arms fairs to promote their deadly products. Arms fairs, as if war was a picnic or a fun day for the children. Just supplying weapons is a monstrous crime, yet the law allows it.

It is horrible how politicians tend to glorify war, and expect our young people to go into war again, as if it has ever solved international problems. It never has. After the cities have been smashed and the women, old people and children murdered, we always have to sit down and work out how to live together again. Why not do that before we kill people? War is the greatest crime of all. Can we each set our hearts wills on outlawing war, as nuclear weapons are being outlawed in more and more countries?

In today’s gospel, in his first preaching at Nazareth, Jesus said he had come to fulfil the Law, and gave specific ways he was going to do it: to bring good news to various kinds of poor people; to give liberty to captives; sight to the blind; to free those who are downtrodden. These things fulfil the basic law, and It is the core of our Catholic Christian faith to try to make the world more just and peaceful in these ways.

Jesus is no longer here physically, but he gives his Spirit to each of us, as individuals and as a community. Only by doing this can we make others happy and be truly happy ourselves. When we try to make our community a more just place, are we loving, serving and worshipping God.

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One child among many

Christmas Day 25^th December 2021

[Isaiah 52:7-10, John 1:1-14]

We are rightly proud of the kindergartens, schools, and health care we provide for our children. But it is important to recall that a huge number – perhaps even half – of the world’s little ones cannot get the care, education and even the food that they need. They would get all they needed, if we spent on them just a fraction of the money we spend on weapons and war. These days it is painful even to look briefly at video footage coming out of Afghanistan, Yemen and Ethiopia. Children starving to death are surely one of the most heart-breaking sights we could ever see.

It have had the privilege of visiting extremely poor people in the slums of Manila and cities in India and Pakistan. Those people have always impressed me by their warm and generous hospitality, and particularly by their love for their children. But I am told, and sometimes have seen myself, that once a new baby has grown a bit, becoming mobile and partly independent, the parents simply cannot give it the loving attention it deserves and needs. Those parents work for long hours, but have little money and don’t even have a secure living space, so their children often roam the streets, and some become involved with drugs and crime.

Today is Christmas! Quite rightly we celebrate with great joy and hope, for it is the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth. But again, it is important to recall that he too was born in poverty; he was a homeless refugee, and after a short life was to die in total poverty, without dignity and abandoned by his friends. Yet his birth, which we rejoice in today, puts us in touch with the greatest beauty and the deepest meaning that we human beings can know.

Today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah told us, poetically, that the news Isaiah is offering us is so good that even the feet of those who bring this news are beautiful. What news could be that good? Isaiah had glimpsed something of God, and seen that God is not threatening, but will comfort us, bring us peace, make us happy and completely safe: our Saviour. These are final, absolute promises. It doesn’t seem as if we can achieve these things in this lifetime, but in fact we can. When we know and trust God deeply enough, none of life’s pains and troubles will overwhelm us, but we can see them as preparing us, making us deeper and stronger.

Human beings have always wondered about how we came to be here… what is the source of our being; what mind could have created all the life-forms we see on earth, and our human mind, and love? If we are be honest, we know that there are dimensions beyond our senses, which people enter when they die.

The first chapter of John’s gospel goes much deeper into this than Isaiah could. God, the Infinite Mystery, who has no beginning, God has come among us. John tells us that God’s ‘Word’ – God’s Eternal Wisdom; which we can properly call God’s Son – has become flesh: has been born as a weak little baby, in a shed for animals!

Here we are at the limits of our understanding. It reminds me that just last night a big new telescope was to be launched into orbit around the earth – much bigger than the Hubble telescope. It will peer at the furthest edges of the trillion galaxies that we so far know about. John’s gospel is a bit like this new telescope. When we speak of the Son of God becoming human, we are way out of our depth. But we can believe this Christian author from the first century. He had thought deeply about Jesus who was murdered on a cross, but had passed through death, and gave us his Holy Spirit. John and the early Christians were sure that God had entered our human family.

This does not explain the mystery for us: God is totally indescribable. But John tries, using metaphors: He says: Christ is our Life, and Christ is our Light. But again, the scientists do not even know exactly what is the physical light that comes from the sun, or from a light bulb. But we believe that this baby, Jesus the Christ, is the light for all people.

Christ is our Light, the Meaning of our lives. In a certain number of days, we are each going to meet him. We will be in that light, in peace, infinite happiness, in God forever. Without end. Eternally. Let’s all wish Jesus a happy birthday, and have a wonderful Christmas ourselves!

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What do the prophets promise our world?

Advent 2C 5^th December 2021

[Baruch 5:1-9, Philippians 1:4-11, Luke 3:1-6]

In Advent we read from the prophets: Baruch, Isaiah, Jeremiah, who glimpsed the wonderful future that is possible for our world. In today’s reading, Baruch describes it like the happy re-gathering of family; like people throwing off their mourning clothes and dressing up in brighter garments; putting on beauty, integrity, honesty, and honour. No matter how bad are the things that we see happening around the world; no matter how corrupt our politicians, or how terrible the suffering of exploited people, we still remember these values. We know what brings us joy; and how to replace hatred and hostility with peace.

The prophets promise a wonderful future forever. We hardly dare imagine the profound happiness this will mean, but that is what God promises through these prophets whom we read to prepare for Christ’s birth. Might it be true that if humans can dream this dream, the same deep Source that gives us the dream must be capable of helping us bring it to fulfilment?

This is not the same as saying that anything we dream must be achievable. It seems unlikely, for instance, that our dream of building machines to move us faster than light will ever come true – but I’m not betting against it! Also, no matter how many James Bond films are made about some evil person dreaming of conquering and enslaving the world for his own profit and pleasure, this does not mean that such a mad and selfish dream could come about.

But if we, the human race, can dream of world peace brought about by our increased love for each other, then that dream certainly can be realised. Ask any two people who have loved each other, and overcome even huge quarrels and conflicts by forgiving and loving. Ask the many people in South Africa who suffered the fearful evils of their apartheid regime, but were afterwards able to forgive their oppressors via the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Evil dreams are not necessarily achievable, but we can trust the hopeful glimpses of the Reign of God that the prophets share with us. These Advent prophets tell us that the Infinite Good that made the trillion galaxies is on our side. The God who created us, has control of the realm that extends infinitely before and after our short journey on earth. God is eternity!

The prophets use metaphors: the path before us will be levelled; valleys will be filled and hills smoothed down; the hot, weary road will be shaded by trees. We might suspect that the prophets chose these metaphors because they themselves had reached a point in their life when they had serious mobility problems, whether by old age or the injuries they had suffered from the opponents who did not believe them.

John the Baptist, the greatest prophet, told us how we can reach God’s dream for humanity. This chapter three in Luke’s gospel was originally the beginning of his story. Chapters 1 to 3 were added some time later: those Infancy Stories, which tell us about the birth of John and of Jesus himself.

But here, in the original beginning of the gospel, Luke dramatically sets the scene for John’s preaching by listing seven civil and religious rulers of that time, from of the emperor Tiberius in Rome to the local ruler in a tin-pot place in Syria called Abilene. Perhaps Luke was born there? We can know from these names, that John the Baptist must have preached between the years 28-29 CE, and Jesus soon afterwards.

Luke introduces John as a preacher emerging from the desert, wandering up and down the Jordan valley, warning people what they must do to prepare for the turning point of human history. ‘All humankind shall see the salvation of God’. We and our world are going to be healed! This is our real reason for getting excited about Christmas!

A few lines after today’s reading, when people ask John ‘What must we do?’, he gives detailed instructions, how we ordinary people can prepare for God’s kingdom: simply be just and loving in our everyday life! His central message is: make yourself ready to be forgiven all the wrong you have ever done, by changing your heart, your mind! The Greek word is metanoia. It can mean ‘see the bigger picture!’ Look beyond your immediate surroundings, your own little affairs. Think of others! Keep in mind the full stretch of our life, and the endless eternity after our death.

From the prophets we learn that we are foolish to imagine that God is ungenerous or punishing. God is not small-minded as we tend to be. There are no limits to God’s goodness!

They show us that we are all involved in bringing about ultimate world peace. Each of us, for instance, can use our voice to speak against the colossal profits that Australian and US companies make from selling weapons around the world. Each of us can join one of the very effective networks that campaign against future wars. St Paul sums it up in today’s reading from Philippians: ‘Love one another more and more’. He is simply repeating Jesus’ words: ‘Love one another, as I have loved you’. It all hangs together: our God of Infinite Intelligence and Infinite Love offers us all the help we need to bring about our salvation, to make our human family whole.

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