I hope you noticed the problem we face today with what Jesus says at the end of the Gospel that we have just heard (Luke 9:51-62) You can see and hear me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4uzC58NH4c
Jesus says, that “No one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”, and yet at the heart of our faith we are asked to look back to the life of Jesus 2000 years ago, and especially to look back to his death. So what’s the answer? Well, first of all, Jesus wasn’t referring to the way we celebrate what God has done for us in the past. He did it every time he celebrated the Passover, and he explicitly asked us to do it when he said “Do this in memory of me.” What he was surely getting at was our stupid human tendency to look back and long for the imagined old days, especially on what life was like when we were children, or even some fantasy of what life was like for our grandparents, when there were none of the demands of modern life, no computers, no climate change and definitely no COVID!
This tendency to look back in this way is fairly common isn’t it, especially for us who are slightly older than the average, although I also know of some younger people, who make the same mistake, and think that somewhere in the past there was a glorious age when everyone went to Church and prayed together, and loved one another, and life was much more simple. One thing is certain, people who think like that have never really read the Bible have they, and heard how often the first Christians failed to live up to the call of Jesus. We had a glimpse of it today when Paul writes in our 2nd Reading in his Letter to the Galatians (5:1.13-18) “If you go snapping at each other and tearing each other to pieces, you had better watch out, or you will destroy the whole community.” Actually, I think it is a relief to know that we and they are not that different, and that loving others is always a hard challenge.
Now, we normally call give this way of looking back on a supposed golden age by the name nostalgia, and that is surely what Jesus is warning us against. He is asking us to follow him, and we follow him not by dwelling on what we should have done yesterday, or should have done last year, but by following him into the future; but he warns us that a future with him will not always be easy. We are rather like the disciples, who feared for the future of Jesus if he went up to Jerusalem; and they were right, that future was not easy for them, and certainly not for Jesus, so there is no reason why the future with Jesus will be easy for us. Remember, if people tell you they have stopped coming to Mass because they don’t “Get anything out of it”, ask them where they have got the idea that following Jesus will be an easy road!
But now I want to cheer you up. You see our 2nd Reading can give us the idea that life with Jesus will be a hard slog and no comforts, especially with St Paul’s warning against “self-indulgence.” Actually, St Paul never wrote that, because it’s a wrong translation from his original Greek. He was not warning people against self-indulgence, but against relying on what he called things of the “flesh”, in other words on outward observances; because there were some Christians who were saying that the only way you could be a real Christian was by undergoing the outward ceremony of circumcision, and all the other outward observances of the Jews of that time.
We are further misled by the phrase “Serve one another in works of love”, for what St Paul actually wrote was “Serve one another in (or through) love.” You see all too often there is a tendency to think that following Jesus is simply about doing good things, and avoiding doing bad things; when actually following Jesus is about doing all things in love. Let me give you an example. I am going on holiday in a couple of weeks time, and I will almost certainly treat myself to an Ice-Cream. Now when I eat that Ice Cream, I would argue that you would not be able to tell from looking at me eating that Ice Cream, and really enjoying it, whether I am doing God’s will or not. To find out if I am doing God’s will as I eat that Ice Cream, you would need to know what is going on in my heart. You would need to know if I am the sort of person who spends all my money on treats for myself, from Ice Cream to fancy Cars and other luxuries, and never thinks of giving some of my money to help others, either through the Church or through other Charities, or by giving or even helping at a Food Bank. If I am like that, if I am all selfishness, then eating that Ice Cream would NOT be doing God’s will. It would not be following Jesus. But if I am not like that, then when I eat that Ice Cream I am doing Gods will.
Think of it another way. If I appear to be a very generous person, if I am at Mass every Sunday, and say my prayers every day, and give lots of money to others, am I doing God’s will? Well, it depends doesn’t it. If all that were just outward show, if I was doing it to look good in the eyes of others, then I wouldn’t be doing God’s will, would I? Jesus makes this point very forcibly when he praises a widow for putting her tiny coin in the collection, while he condemns a rich man who puts in a large amount; or in his story of the two people praying in the Temple where it is the despised tax-collector simply praying “God be merciful to me a sinner” whose prayer is accepted by God.(Luke 18:9-14)
So when Jesus says “Follow me” in the Gospel, he does not mean that we should be seeking more and more good things to do to help other people; because if we did that we might be doing it for the wrong reasons. We might be some ghastly do-gooding show off. No! What Jesus surely means is that we should follow him in our hearts, or as St Paul says we should be “Guided by the Spirit.” In other words, we should seek to do all things within our genuine love of God. Some of these may be hard things, whilst others will be simply part of our everyday life, including things that are fun, like Ice -Cream! So remember : My first point. No looking back, no longing after an imagined past. And for my second point, well it is summed up well in the words of a song, which repeats the message three times to make sure the message sinks in. “It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it. (x3) That’s how to get things done.”
תגובות