FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (C) 21 April 2013

 Fr. Gerard Kelly

We are now at about the halfway point of the Easter season.  Today we have left behind those we met over the last few Sundays – those who were filled with surprise and eventually recognition as they encountered the risen Jesus.  The focus is now on living in the Spirit of the risen Jesus.  We see the community taking shape as it moves from surprise, through fear and persecution, to a deep sense of mission – going out of itself to the world.

For us, this Easter season is an opportunity to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ, and to embrace the life he offers.  He presents himself to us today as a shepherd, promising eternal life to those who listen to him.  I think that the gospel today is inviting us to see him in broader terms than simply protecting the sheep.  If we think a little more deeply about it, we recognise that the shepherd works hard.  The first thing he does is gather the flock.  The sheep are often inclined to wander away and to get lost, so the shepherd has a role of gathering the flock.  This tells us something about the meaning of eternal life that he offers us.  We can easily limit our understanding of eternal life to that life we are promised after death.  But the eternal life Jesus is speaking of is something that we already possess because we share in his resurrection through baptism.  It is a life that is shared with all those the shepherd has gathered into his flock.  The shepherd, then, leads the Christian community so that it might be a sign in the world of what sort of flock God is gathering.

This does not mean that the sheep of this flock should be seen as people who are huddled together in a sheep pen, afraid to move very far.  If we were that sort of church, we would quickly die.  That isn’t the image we see in the life of the early church, especially as we hear it recounted in the Acts of the Apostles in the first reading.  This is a church that takes the word of the Lord to ever wider groups of people.  With the true image of the shepherd and his flock the sheep wander far and wide, and are busy with what they are doing – but always under the watchful eye of the good shepherd.  It is in this sense that we speak of the shepherd protecting the sheep.  Let me use a different image to illustrate what the shepherd is doing.  Think of how a parent protects a child.  If the child was never allowed outside to play for fear that he or she might hurt themselves they would probably not grow to healthy adults.  But if the child can play with others, and maybe even sometimes fall over and hurt themselves, or even end up in a fight with other children, then the parent is there to patch up the wounds and to give the child the courage to go back out and play again.  The shepherd is like this: the shepherd bandages the sheep that have come to grief.  When people find that living the gospel brings them into conflict with those around them, then the shepherd gives them the courage to continue to seek out and live this eternal life that is already upon them.

The church itself is a model of this.  At times in history when the church has become more focused on itself rather than on taking its message to the world, it has moved into a decline.  In fact, the church has always been at its strongest when it has been under threat or facing difficulty.  It has become strong not because it retreated into itself, but because at precisely that moment it looked beyond itself and focused on the mission of God.  Apparently there is an old wisdom in monasteries: that if the monastery is having troubles then it sends some monks out to found a new monastery, to bring something new to birth.

So when we speak of the shepherd protecting the sheep and offering them eternal life, we need to see this as something that is bold and dynamic.  The shepherd is calling us to be bold in the way we live our faith.  I believe that this is perhaps the reason why the world has been fascinated by Pope Francis.  With all of the talk of a church in crisis before his election, he has shown that the best way to face a crisis is for the church not to focus on itself.  Surely the gesture on Holy Thursday of washing the feet of those juvenile prisoners said more about the good shepherd protecting the flock than all the lengthy analysis of the problems.  This is not to say that analysis of problems is not important.  Rather, it reminds us that our first priority is to live the gospel and to be a witness to that eternal life which we already share.

That, I believe, is why the shepherd also speaks of the sheep listening to his voice.  We listen to his voice so that we might know what eternal life looks like.  The gospels are full of his teaching and miracles to show us how to live eternal life even now.  His voice calls us back to that mission.  When we are inclined to settle back and think we are here and that is all that is necessary, he calls us to look beyond ourselves and to connect our faith to the rest of life.

Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  Today we need young people who can hear the voice of the shepherd – not so that they can become saviours of the church or the world, but so that they can be fired by the gospel and be excited by the eternal life that the shepherd offers and desire to be shepherds like the good shepherd.  Let us, as a vibrant community of faith, pray for vocations today.

5th SUNDAY LENT (C) 17 March 2013

 Fr. Gerard Kelly

As we were listening to the Gospel it struck me that we probably don’t fully appreciate what was going on with this attempt to stone the woman.  If we pause and think about it, stoning is an incredibly violent act.  It is not something that we are used to in our society, even if there are still some societies in the world where adulterers are punished by stoning.  We, of course, like to think of ourselves as being far more civilised than that.  Yet, while we don’t practise stoning, there are examples of violence and brutality inflicted on others, particularly women, in anger or even punishment.  There are cases regularly in our courts.  We hear of violence in our news broadcasts, and we even see images of violence in movies and TV shows – scenes of someone hitting another person or bashing them, or throwing objects.  Is throwing an object at someone much different than throwing stones at them?

What is it that makes this sort of response possible among people?  There are probably many ways to interpret this, but two things might be relevant for our reflections during Lent.  In the first place, there is a question of punishment for wrong-doing.  There are public debates around the issue of whether punishment should help a person reform their lives, or whether it is simply a matter of retribution on behalf of the person who has been wronged.  In the Gospel the desire of the crowd to stone the woman was clearly a case of retribution.  Stoning was meant to be final: the person was an embarrassment to her own family and to the community, so the best way to deal with this was to eliminate her from the community.  There was no option of being rehabilitated. 

The second thing that strikes me about violent responses is that they also point to a deep seated anger in those who carry out the violence.  These people lack a sense of peace in their lives.  Perhaps they are even using the victim of violence as a scapegoat for their own failures.  This too seems to be at play in the gospel.  Jesus says to the crowd, let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.  One by one they leave the scene.  As we think about it, Jesus has made them reflect on what they are doing by wanting to stone this woman.  He challenges them to change their focus away from the sin of this woman and to examine their own lives and recognise their own sin.  It is as though the desire of wanting to stone the woman was simply a mechanism for avoiding their own sin.  Perhaps they wanted her to bear the punishment for their own sin.  They are not people who are at peace with themselves or with others.

In the face of these types of responses, it is important to see what Jesus does.  The first thing we should notice is that Jesus – precisely because of his own goodness – exposes sin.  In the case of the crowds, he made them realise that they were not without sin.  In the case of the woman her sin was obvious to everyone.  But Jesus exposing sin is not a witch hunt; he doesn’t gloat and point the finger.  The second thing to note is how he deals with sin.  In this he differs from those around him.  He is not seeking revenge; he doesn’t act out of anger.  The crowd around him saw sin as a dead end; they saw the woman as being unredeemable, as having no future.  She probably even saw herself that way.  With all the embarrassment that she must have felt she would have wondered if she could ever walk down the street again without incurring the ridicule of others.  To recognise sin was to be in a hopeless place. 

Jesus deals with it differently.  He offered her a future with a respectable life.  Does no one condemn you, he asks.  Neither do I condemn you.  Condemnation wouldn’t change anything.  Jesus tells her to go and sin no more.  She encounters the mercy of God, raising her up to new life.  This is a new creation.  Jesus has given people a new image of God.  They saw in Jesus what the mercy of God looks like.  They were meant to learn that God desires life not death for all people.  Nothing need ultimately separate someone from the love of God.

We shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it is to hold on to this view of God.  At one level, there is not much in the modern social climate that gives room for the redemption of sinners.  Our society wants everyone and everything to be perfect.  There is shock if someone is exposed as a sinner.  Jesus is saying that these people – the sinners – have an opportunity to change because of the mercy of God.  At a more personal level: all of us, I am sure, like to put our best face on display.  Even when it comes to God, we might imagine ourselves entertaining God by putting out the best silverware or the best cups and saucers.  Yet the woman in the gospel today had no such treasures to put out when she encountered God.  Rather, she was wounded; the silver was tarnished.  The image of God, in which she was created, was hardly visible.  But what she learnt was that God is interested in polishing that image so that it might reveal God’s glory more clearly. 

And this is what we do during Lent!