4TH SUNDAY OF LENT (B)

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT (B)                                                                 18 March 2012

You have to wonder what Jesus was speaking about when he said to Nicodemus that the Son of Man was going to be lifted up like Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert.  In order to understand what he meant I think we have to deal with two other stories.  In the first place there is the incident with Moses in the desert, when there was an infestation of snakes and people were being bitten.  Moses used some iron to make an image of a snake and attached it to a post.  The people who had been bitten would come near the image of the snake and look at it and would be healed.  The second story we need to think about is the story of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden.  We remember that the snake was lurking around and tempted them.  From that incident the serpent has become a universal sign of the sin of the world. 

So when Jesus speaks about the serpent he is probably expecting Nicodemus to think about all that alienates people from God, and all that destroys human freedom.  He is thinking of what, in a shorthand way, we refer to as the sin of the world.  Nicodemus seems caught between the attractiveness of Jesus and his fear of the religious authorities.  He lurks around in the dark and only visits Jesus by night.  The references to light and to darkness suggest that there may have been something shadowy about Nicodemus’ life.  He was probably confused and not even sure of himself.  By the end of the conversation we sense that the light is overpowering the darkness of Nicodemus’ life.  Of course, the light is Jesus himself.  All Nicodemus has to do is to look upon Jesus and believe in him, and he will be saved.

But Jesus’ message is not just addressed to Nicodemus; it addressed to all people.  So, what is he saying about the Son of Man being lifted up?  Quite clearly, he is likening himself to the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the desert.  Just as the bronze serpent cured those who looked upon it, so all who approach Jesus and trust in him will be saved.

However, there is something that doesn’t quite seem to work.  If Jesus is like the bronze serpent, might that also mean that he is like the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve in the garden?  Now we know that this can’t be right.  But something important is happening here.  Jesus is suggesting that in his death the sin of the world is exposed – it is held up high.  We shouldn’t understand this in the sense that Jesus is a sinner, but rather that he takes on the sin of the world so that it can be healed. 

In the ancient world there was a common practice whereby the people would symbolically load onto a goat all the sin of the village.  They would then drive the goat out of the village and throw it off a cliff so that it died and all the sins of the people with it.  This was the scape goat.  Once the sin and guilt had been destroyed right relations were restored in the village among the people.  The idea still persists even in our own day, when often a single person is forced to bear the brunt of the guilt or misdeeds of others, for the sake of harmony of the group, which can now put the past behind it.  Jesus is like the scape goat and is innocently accused.  In his death he carries all of the sin and alienation that humans experience, and he redeems it; he sets us right with God and with each other.

What does all this mean for our Lenten journey?  I think the message is that Lent is a time to gaze on Jesus in order to find the healing and light that he brings.  At Easter we will renew the profession of faith that was made at our baptism.  Put simply, this profession of faith is our belief in Jesus and his power to make a difference in our lives and to save us.  The profession of faith is about our trust in him and our reliance on him.  Remember what happened in the desert: all those who had been bitten by the snake had to look at the bronze serpent.  All we have to do is to stand before Jesus.  Our Lenten penance assists us in doing this.  It will make us free to receive the salvation God offers as a gift.  During Lent we make our hearts ready to recognise and receive this gift.

In a world like ours one of the hardest things we all have to deal with is to accept God’s graciousness in our lives.  How many people, I wonder, live in such a way that their sense of their own worth and dignity is measured by their success or their wealth or their fame or prominence?  We see it played out in our newspapers almost every day.  The gospel tells us something different.  It tells us to gaze on the one who was lifted up, to trust him, and to allow him to put us in right relationship with God.  During this Lent let us see ourselves as God sees us.

 Fr. Gerard Kelly

7TH SUNDAY YEAR (B)

The story in today’s gospel captures our imagination because of the effort that the friends went to in order to get the paralysed man to Jesus.  We can picture it: Jesus inside the house, crowds milling around the doors and the windows, a small group of people trying to lift a stretcher up onto the roof and then removing some of the roof-covering so that they can lower the man.  I wonder why they did this?  What did they expect of Jesus?  Up to this point in the Gospel Jesus had been preaching about the coming kingdom of God and of a new relationship with God.  He had been preaching that God was transforming the world.  People came to him because he offered a message that promised a new situation, a better situation.  He promised a new intervention of God into the world.

Despite this, I am certain that they were not expecting Jesus to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven”.  The scribes were quick to challenge him, arguing that he is blaspheming because he has no authority to forgive sins.  Their point was that only God has authority to forgive sins.  And the crowds knew this too!  Jesus takes up the challenge and makes his point by turning to the man and telling him to pick up his stretcher and walk.  The significance of what happens here can easily be lost on us because we know who Jesus is.  But for those around him he was challenging all of their ideas about what God was like.  For at least some among them, a light must have shone in their minds, and they would have begun to think that if only God can forgive sin then Jesus must be a man of God.  They were astounded by Jesus’ action and his authority, and they praised God.

What is the point of the story?  For those who had eyes to recognise what was happening they might have seen a link between what Jesus had been preaching earlier and what had happened here.  He had been preaching the coming of the kingdom of God and calling on people to repent and believe the good news.  This could all have sounded very abstract and hard to define.  But here, before their eyes, they saw what the kingdom looks like.  In the first place they would have noticed the lengths to which the man and his friends went to meet Jesus.  This surely was what repenting and believing the good news looked like.  Here was a man who had the sort of faith that Jesus had been calling for.  It was only right that Jesus could declare the man’s sins forgiven.  The second thing they would have seen was that something happened to the paralysed man: he picked up his mat and walked away.  This surely was what the kingdom of God looks like.  When they see the man pick up the stretcher and leave the house they see someone who has clearly been transformed and has a new life – we might even say a new lease on life.

But how are we to interpret this incident for ourselves in our time?  I would like to suggest that this incident can be seen as a parable for all of life.  The paralysed man represents everyone.  He calls us to recognise and acknowledge the paralysis of our lives, of our world, of our communities.  The sort of paralysis I am thinking of is probably best called a spiritual paralysis.  It is all that limits us, hinders us, and keeps us from achieving what we are capable of.  It is our failure to reach our potential.  It is all that holds our communities back and keeps them isolated.  It is all that burdens a society and holds it captive so that it is more inclined to bring out the worst rather than the best in people. 

If the gospel helps us to recognise this, it has begun to do its work.  Now we are ready to hear the message of Jesus about the coming kingdom of God.  But we don’t hear it as an abstract message.  It has to take concrete shape in our lives, in the life of our communities and in our world.  It will take shape as these are transformed.  The gospel of the paralysed man reminds us what it will look like.  It is like being given your legs so that you are free to move without the things that would have been holding you back.  You can do what you couldn’t do before.  But more importantly, you can do what you were created to do.  In other words there is a genuine harmony in your life.  If we apply this to our communities and our world we can speak similarly about a proper harmony, so that the community is the place where people flourish.

But the gospel tells us one other very important thing about all of this.  It has to do with the paralysed man seeking out Jesus; it has to do with what Jesus calls repenting and believing.  The sense of harmony and fulfilment is connected to harmony with God.  We will have achieved our potential when we are truly living in the image and likeness of God.  Jesus is the only one who shows us what the image of God looks like in human flesh and blood.  The paralysed man – and the crowd – came to recognise him as divine because he showed he had the power to forgive sins.  The paralysed man shows us that believing in Jesus is the first step to opening ourselves to the kingdom of God and to living more authentically in the image of God.

Fr Gerard Kelly

4TH SUNDAY ADVENT (B) 18 December 2011

We have now arrived at the fourth Sunday of Advent and are getting closer to the celebration of Christmas.  For the first time in Advent we meet Mary in the readings.  The angel visits her and announces that she is to be the mother of Jesus.  Advent is a time of preparation and hope.  Today the focus shifts more squarely to the birth of Jesus at Christmas.  But we should not forget the bigger picture that we have been seeing over the last three weeks.  Mary is also part of that picture.  She is one of the People of God who lived their lives in expectation that God would visit them and change their lives and their world.  As our eyes are drawn to the birth of Jesus we too must allow him to shine a light on the bigger picture of what God is doing in our world.  Mary will help us do this.

The gospel reading we heard suggests that Mary was troubled by the angel’s visit.  Let’s notice why Mary might have been troubled – and I think she was troubled by several things.  We all quickly recognise that the first thing to trouble her was the news that she was to be the mother of Jesus.  She is astonished at the angle’s greeting because she is a virgin and not yet married.  It doesn’t take much thinking to realise why she would have been troubled.  It wasn’t just because there were so many things unexplained; perhaps more troubling was the prospect of where this would leave her in her family and community.  She was about to find herself in an embarrassing situation, and could well end up being shunned and excluded from the family.  In those days this was a terrible thing to happen to a young woman, because it meant she no longer had any place to live or any means of support.  In her case it may have been even worse, because Joseph might have decided to divorce her.  So, we can understand why she was troubled.

But the angel says something else that troubles her.  He tells her that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and the power of God will overshadow her.  Perhaps we don’t give enough attention to how troubling this news must have been.  We have probably never much thought about what this means.  I’m sure that Mary was a young woman who had grown up in the faith of her people, that she would have followed all the usual religious practices and worshipped God in the same way as everyone else.  She probably had a sense of the dignity of every human being, remembering the words of the Book of Genesis that we are made in the image and likeness of God.  But she had probably never considered that the power of God would come to her in any unique or particular way.  So she had to think about herself and what God was doing in her life.  It wasn’t just that she would be a mother, but that God was calling her to something special.  Not just that – God was giving her all that she would need to live out the plan he had.  She now had to decide to cooperate with God.

There was one other thing in the angel’s greeting that would have troubled her.  And this was about the child, who was to be called the Son of the Most High.  Even she would have recognised that this meant that the child would have a unique relationship with God.  She wouldn’t have fully understood what this was about, but the angel made it clear that the child was going to have an impact far greater than just the local family or village.  Jesus would eventually bring about God’s reign and would be more powerful than any of the kings of the earth.  So, Mary was being drawn into something that was changing the world.  We could say that she received earth-shattering news.

We can understand now why Mary was troubled.  It wasn’t just that Jesus was going to be born.  It probably had more to do with his identity as the Son of God.  It probably also had to do with the dawning realisation that her son was going to change the world.  Mary would have understood all this as bringing to fulfilment what she had heard from the prophets as they were read in the synagogue.  God’s plan was unfolding in her life and in the world.  But God also gives her the freedom to respond to the invitation.  As we know, Mary’s response has become famous: “Let what you have said, be done to me”.

What are we to make of all this?  I think that this scene with Mary invites us to ponder what happened.  But in remembering what happened back then we should also consider what God is still doing in the world.  During Advent we have been hearing about and pondering the promise God made about the future.  Advent invites us to have hope, and to allow the present to be shaped by our hope about the future.  In this way we are a lot like Mary: we are being called to become part of God’s plan as it unfolds in our world.  Like Mary, we may find this troubling.  Maybe it is what is unknown that troubles us; maybe it is the seeming enormity of being involved in God’s plan for the world; or maybe we don’t think of ourselves as so close to God that God would use us to bring about a new world.  But if we think about it, Mary was asked to have a baby.  She could manage that.  The Holy Spirit worked through her to bring about God’s will.  I think we are asked today, as Christmas approaches, to prepare a dwelling place for God in our hearts, and to allow them to be so transformed that we live out of the love that God has poured into our hearts.

Rev Dr Gerard Kelly

25th SUNDAY(A) 18 September

On most occasions when people talk about the gospel we have heard today they say that they have difficulty with it. The images in the parable are things everyone easily identifies with: work, unemployment, wages, and the urgency to get a job finished on time. But it is what happens at the end, when the wages are being distributed, that upsets people. Their immediate reaction is that the situation is unjust. We shouldn’t underestimate just how uncomfortable the parable can make us.

The scene opens in the market square where the unemployed would gather each morning and hope that someone would come along and hire them for the day. If they were lucky, and the harvest was big, they might even get work for a few days or a few weeks. We can imagine that they would have gone to the vineyard happy and eager to work and earn their wage. Many of these people knew they were hardly likely to get the good jobs, so they were happy for whatever might come their way. As for the landowner, it seems that he had grapes that needed to be picked in a hurry; if they weren’t picked that day they would become too ripe to yield good quality fruit or wine. This is why he keeps returning to the market place to get more workers. Those hired late in the day were obviously the ones who were not at all keen on work, but just turned up later in the day on the off-chance that there may be some small jobs available for them.

The parable takes a twist when it comes to paying the workers. As I said, this is the part that upsets the listeners, and prompts us to ask if the landowner was being fair. He starts with the last arrivals, who have probably only worked for about an hour, and gives them what he had agreed to, namely a full day’s wage. The workers who started early in the morning grumble when they only receive the same wage – the wage, by the way, that they had agreed to. The reply of the landowner to their complaints makes the point of the parable very clear: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

Jesus is teaching those who listen to him about God. He wants to purify their image of God. The point he wants to make is that to welcome the God who comes is to open yourself for a big surprise. They are about to learn that the way they have thought about God is not necessarily the way God is. They had probably been only too aware of God’s justice, now they were about to learn of God’s mercy and generosity. The Prophet Isaiah, who we heard in the first reading, alerted us to the surprise that comes when God is encountered: “my thoughts are not your thoughts; my ways are not your ways”, he says. This is the shock that the parable delivered to those listening to Jesus, and that it still delivers to us. God is like the landowner who seeks out the poorest and the weakest and gives them an equal place in the kingdom. The parable is not about fairness; it is about mercy and generosity.

That is why there is a reminder here that people are drawn into the kingdom because of God’s graciousness. It is not just those whose lives appear to be untroubled or without failures who are drawn into the embrace of God. God is like the landowner who actually goes out to find those who no one else would welcome, and he offers them the opportunity to participate. This is important for the disciples of Jesus to hear – and he addresses the parable to them. Perhaps he wants to warn them not to become too arrogant about their position. They should remember that in the kingdom the first will be last and the last first. All disciples of Jesus need to be ready to welcome even the late-comer into the realm of God.

What does the parable say to the church today? It calls on us all to be witnesses to the mercy of God revealed in the parable. The biggest danger a society like ours faces is that it becomes complacent and thinks that all is well. We are a very prosperous people, with a high standard of living – and yes, all does seem to be well. One effect of this is that people end up putting all their energies into maintaining what they have – keeping it safe. Ultimately, this happens at the expense of other people. The result is a selfish society, where there is no room for the poor or those who are different. Often the poorest people are not even noticed or they are labelled in such a way that we become comfortable ignoring them. In today’s gospel, these are the people that God notices. So we, as the church, should remind society that the salvation of the human community is built on generosity – the generosity of God in the People of God.

In this way we give authentic witness to the Gospel Jesus inaugurated. Our God is the creator of the human community, and he sustains it through his mercy. To know God is to be in communion with God and with each other. The church thus gives witness to an image of God that is far bigger than what many in the society have of him. By our own life, perhaps more than by our words, we give witness to the generosity of God, and hence to what God has planned for the whole of humanity.

Fr. Gerard Kelly

21st SUNDAY (A) 21 August 2011

When I was a child I used often to hear stories about people who were asked to stand up for their faith in far off mission lands. These might be situations where the church and the faith were being persecuted, or where people had suffered some severe tragedy which made believing in God very difficult. The purpose of these stories, even though they were of far away situations, was to make us more confident in our own belief. We knew that we had it easy and that believing in God was a normal thing to do in the world I was growing up in. The idea of choosing to believe in God became more real for me when I got to know people who had made a conscious decision to be baptised and become part of the community of faith, a member of the church. These are people who really had to face up to the question that Jesus put to Peter in today’s gospel: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

I have also met people who were baptised at a young age, grew up in the faith and then had to face a crisis about what they believed. It is seen often, for example, in the lives of young people who in their teenage years move away from the church and often want to explore what it is that they believe. These people too are trying to answer the question that Jesus put to Peter. However, for them it is a deeply personal question: “Who do you say that Jesus is?” Often these people return to the church later on in their life with a renewed faith and a deeper conviction that this Jesus they believe in is truly one who has made a difference to the world and who offers them a way of life which will lead to happiness. They develop a deep conviction that God loves them and will be a “rock” of security for them in their lives.

This gospel incident has the power to encourage people when they feel they need to explore the question as to who Jesus is. In fact, I suspect that most of us at various times in our lives must ask ourselves the same question; or, perhaps more correctly, we must allow God to ask that question of us. It is important that we face up to it so that Jesus does not become an idol of our own making.

Peter answers Jesus by saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”. In other words, Peter is saying that he now knows Jesus as the one who is God’s anointed, the one who does God’s will, and the one who shows the way to life in God. Peter is thus gradually coming to the conviction that Jesus is the one who is the saviour, that his message is so powerful that it can turn people’s lives around. Peter is also saying that he wants to remain as a true disciple of Jesus. It has taken Peter a long time to be able to say these things about Jesus. We know too that there will be other times when he will have to face up to the same question about Jesus. Even after the day he makes the profession of faith, when he seems so confident about Jesus, we know that just before the crucifixion he will deny that he even knew Jesus. Peter, like all of us, had to keep facing up to the question of who Jesus was and what difference that made to his life.

It is Jesus’ response to Peter’s words, however, which is most interesting. Peter is able to say what he has said because Jesus’ Father in heaven has revealed it to him. This is an important reminder to us that we can really only ever know about Jesus because of a revelation to us. In other words, to ask the question about who Jesus is is to find ourselves at an important moment where God will now reveal to us something more about Jesus and his significance in our lives. It is as though the way that God chooses to reveal himself to us is by our facing up to the questions, doubts and challenges that confront us at certain moments of our lives.

I suspect that Jesus knew that this process of coming to know him more clearly and more fully could be a painful process for many people. That is why he likened Peter to a rock which can give some sort of security in the midst of a lot of confusion. That is why he spoke of the church as a place where our faith could be nurtured, nourished, and encouraged. The role of Peter in the early church very quickly became one of strengthening others in their faith. I believe it is a role that belongs to every Christian community, especially when its members are facing up to Jesus’ question about who he is.

So perhaps there is a lot of encouragement that our community can take from today’s gospel. It is an important gospel especially for those of you who are the youth of the community. Don’t be afraid to face up to the question of who Jesus is and of what faith in him means to you. If you face up to it honestly God will reveal to you the truth about his Son and will help you to allow him to shape and guide your lives. God wants your faith to develop and mature in such a way that you become leaders not only in this community but also in the Australian society at large. It is through you that Jesus’ message of wholeness and holiness, of unity and reconciliation will be seen by our society. It is you who will help shape the future for us all. May your faith guide you in that task!

Fr. Gerard Kelly