Walking in the Valley of Darkness

The news this week has of course been dominated by the awful outbreak of violence be- tween Hamas and Israel. I fear that in writing anything about these events, I lay myself open to the criticism of doing so from a viewpoint of ignorance and misunderstanding. Yes, it is true I have no expertise in the history of this enduring conflict, so these thoughts are de facto, made from a standpoint distant from any experience of what it is like to live in such conditions. This I accept, may or may not disqualify them from being relevant, but witnessing the suffering and horror of what is happening, when one feels totally helpless, calls on us to do what we can, even if it may seem to many irrelevant. So, what can we do?

We are gathered around a table. What is it that we are here for? Can we expand our minds to see that today, just as at every eucharist, we have come to share our hopes, our joys, our pain, our sorrows and our sadness. It should not escape our thoughts. We are here to experience a moment that foreshadows and brings into our present lives, an encounter which encapsulates the very essence of what we are about. It is the making present of a memory which illuminates our minds with a mystery that ignites the flame of faith in a God of love within us. The psalm from today’s Mass is perhaps judicious at this time. It speaks about a good shepherd, one who can lead and comfort people even in the harshness of a turmoil that to us seems insoluble. When the two disciples on the road to Emmaus were walking through their own valley of darkness, they experienced the presence of the Risen Lord. They found their consolation in what they had witnessed. Where though did Jesus go when he vanished before their eyes? The theologian Hans von Balthasar says that Jesus vanished so as to be made present in the Church; in you and in me and in all who believe in him. Today in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem, the church built over the site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the eucharist will be celebrated, the bread will be broken and shared, and the presence of Christ will be made real in the people gathered there, just as he is made real for us as we gather here in Wollaton, Aspley and Bilborough. This is our koinonia, our communion, our solidarity as children made in the image and likeness of God, with the people of Gaza and Israel, with the people of Ukraine and Russia, and with all who are suffering the turmoil of war as they walk through the dark valley.

It may not sound enough. But I remember a former parish priest of these parts, who when asked in the light of an outbreak of violence and warfare, what his contribution to peace would be responded without hesitation: the celebration of the eucharist. We may feel that sounds strange, but it moves our hearts and minds towards a response we can all participate in and become engaged with. We pray and hope for peace and reconciliation.

The Vineyard turns dark

This will be the third week in which the image of the vineyard takes a central place in the gospel account. Two weeks ago, we heard the story of the labourers who were contracted to work in the vineyard. The first group of workers who were picked early in the morning, felt hard done to by the landowner when he chose to pay them the same amount of money as those who had worked for less time and in much more comfortable conditions. Jesus told the story to emphasise the generosity of the landowner as he provided for the all the daily needs of each of his workers. Last week we listened to the story of the father who asked his two sons to go and work in the vineyard and of how one said “yes” but didn’t go, and the other who said “no” but then did go. The point that Jesus wanted to emphasise here was that the call to act which he gives to each of us, is a moral choice, to be made in a positive and life enhancing way. Today however, we read a very different story, an altogether darker tale in which the vineyard itself becomes a place of danger and violence. It is a story which ends with the death of the son of the landowner. What are these three parables telling us about the vineyard and what it represents?

Each of these stories take place in the vineyard, which by correlation, becomes the landscape in which we all live and move and have our being. God calls us all to be generous with our love, and to be challenged by our calling so that we think deeply about our response. We are to see the vineyard and its environment, which we shape and mould, as being defined by how we carry out our tasks. Am I as generous as I can be with my gifts and talents? Does my commitment to my calling, my moral compass, swing this way and that way, with different emphases, depending on how I feel at any particular time? Do I treat the vineyard as my own possession, to do with as I please. Or do I see the vineyard as a shared and precious resource not to be abused, but to be cherished and cared for?

These are important considerations which will inform how we continue to build and grow in our vocation as disciples. In our coming to knowledge about the identity of the foundation on which our faith is built, the radical approach that Jesus offers reveals something fundamental to us. It is the stone rejected by the builders which becomes the keystone. Just as Jesus pointed out to Peter, as followers of Jesus, we must stop thinking like man and begin to think like God, because God’s ways are not our ways. Jesus shows us a way that is more compelling, more radical. Only when we have worked out and understood the meaning of this and have begun to put it into effect, will the vineyard become the place where a majestic vintage will be harvested.

There is a choice to be made

One could say that the overarching theme which runs through the whole of the New Testament is an answer to the question: Who do you say I am? We have it clearly enunciated by Jesus himself when he gathers his disciples together at Caesarea Phillipi and puts it quite bluntly to them. The rest of the gospels and the remaining books of the NT are in one sense a pathway directing our minds and hearts towards answering the question for ourselves. In other words, it all comes down to a choice. He is who he says he is, or he isn’t. The answer we give is the hinge on which our Christian life turns.

In the gospel today, the father in the story essentially asks his two sons that very same question. Will you go and work in my vineyard, is as we know very well, a euphemism to ask if we are prepared to live out the Christian life in the light of the teachings and deeds of Jesus Christ, our saviour and redeemer. To profess such a belief and to live it is not an easy thing to do, especially in our modern society where so much of the ambiance in which we live no longer appreciates or relates to the gospel message. Think of all the alternative lifestyle choices and wellbeing manuals that are on offer today and you realise how saturated the marketplace is with new age thinking. But that isn’t what the gospel is about. Jesus isn’t just one ethical teacher amongst so many others, and the followers of Jesus knew this. You only have to read that passage from today’s second reading to grasp the immensity of what is on offer. Those words were written down barley a decade and a half after the experience of the cross and Easter. They express a clear understanding of Jesus, of who he was, and of what he had achieved. This shows how, from the earliest years of the Church, Jesus was viewed as being vital and integral to what it means to be human. In our complex and diverse society, I believe his place in the heart of it remains central to its right ordering.

We all must ponder the question and make our choice and we will perhaps prevaricate and toss and turn over our answer, because that’s human nature at work. What we need to be able to articulate, is why we say “yes” to the question the father in today’s gospel asks, and why we continue to say “yes” even if life would be much easier if we said “no”. We say “yes” because deep down, in our hearts, we all recognise the truth of the gospel and find in that truth the very purpose of what we are to be; workers in the vineyard as disciples of Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

From the heart of the matter (part 2)

Last week’s parable of the mean hearted steward told us a great deal about our own lack of mercy and forgiveness. Of how in the face of the overwhelming love of God towards us we in our own dealings with each other can often be so callous and cruel. It’s a sobering lesson for us to learn. Well, now the lectionary has leapfrogged along to Chapter 20 in which we read the story of the labourers in the vineyard and of their workplace grievance at the action of their landowner. In the interim between the two parables, we have Jesus’ teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, the story of the rich young man, and the danger of riches, all of which prompt Peter to raise his voice once more in question: “What about us”, he says –“we’ve left everything and followed you from day one, what’s in it for us?”. Typical Peter you might well say and Jesus in his wisdom has this story for him, but it’s not just for him, it’s for us too.

We may at times all feel a bit like Peter, in that we too have been giving our all to the job at hand, working hard and making sacrifices and all for what? Is our society listening or paying any attention? By the look of it not particularly. The divorce rates seem as high as ever and the attraction of riches and wealth as the prime motivator of people’s ambitions still abounds. Furthermore, the statistics continue to record a declining trend in affiliation to the Christian Church’s message of love of God and love of neighbour, to a degree that the outlook seems bleak. What does this parable tell us about the current situation we are facing and of how to respond to it?

The landowner’s actions are key. Of course, we are to understand the landowner as Jesus, and we find him in both the marketplace and the workplace, the very centre of a society’s activity; the heart of all that goes on in a community. It is here that he meets us and calls us and so it is in these places that we must continue to proclaim him. Jesus revolutionises these spaces by his offering of not a contract but a covenant to the workers. A contract is a finite agreement which will ultimately end with each party going their separate ways. Jesus however repudiates that by offering us something much more potent. What he offers is an everlasting covenant which is predicated on God’s all-embracing love and will last into eternity, no matter how late in the day we accept it. This is the message we need to announce in our marketplaces and work environments. The Gospel needs us to bring it to life.

From the heart of the matter

Last week’s gospel passage ended with that lovely saying of Jesus: where two or three are gathered in my name I shall be there with them. These are such consoling words that it made Peter think hard about the significance of what he had heard Jesus telling them. Having thought he perceived something truly mind blowing. That in their dealings with each other they should always understand that they are not alone. That in the very heart of all they do and say within their relationships they must realise and grasp the reality of Jesus’ presence. That is such a startling, eye opening realisation, that it changes everything and most significantly it changes the way we respond to the concept of forgiveness and once more we are presented with that difference between God’s way and man’s way.

Peter can envisage it up to a certain degree but not beyond. Jesus however once more gently reprimands him - not seven but seventy-seven (or as some translations say seven times seventy-seven). In other words, if your forgives comes from the heart then it is limitless in its effect. You only have to go back to the Sermon on the Mount to see where these thoughts originate. Blessed are the merciful for they shall have mercy shown them; no limits attached. Remember too in the prayer which Jesus teaches us, we are to pray forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, again no limits attached. The parable which Jesus relates in today’s gospel points out the great gulf between they way we live out our lives with all its limits and restrictions, and the way which the limitless God calls us to live out our lives. The vast difference between what the man in the parable owed and was forgiven, and what he was owed and refused to forgive is phenomenal and yet this is the deficit of love which we often fail to comprehend. The love of God for us is vast and available to us yet we can be so callous in our reception of it, refusing to acknowledge its capacity to warm and open our own hardened frozen hearts.

It is in our reception of Jesus that the thaw can begin to change our attitude. In him coming to us in word and sacrament we begin to find within ourselves and those around us the basis for what our lives are about. To understand that we are loved so overwhelmingly must make us change. In seeing the world as his dwelling and in finding him in all things and all persons around us, we are moved from an inward, selfish and limited motivation towards an outward and selfless manifestation in which what matters is the presence of his limitless love, as the life giving and life endorsing reality. 

Responsibility and Action

What is the relationship between responsibility and action? We hear a lot these days about individual rights and of how it seems that everyone can claim a right to something at some stage, and of how if that right is denied, then watch out that person who caused the breach. From its very outset, the Church has always held to the concept of the “common good” as being essential to its teaching.? The gospel today gives us three important paragraphs each one of which offers an insight into the subject of social morality, social cohesion and social justice, and our duty to act thereon.

If your brother does something wrong...What generates a moral imperative has to be an accepted norm for it to work, and if we witness actions or words which disregard and abuse these norms, then as responsible Christians we should make our views known and felt. We should not simply allow such abuses to go unopposed or unquestioned. The great moral debates which challenge and confront our society today of euthanasia, assisted dying and abortion are ones which require the Catholic view to be articulated clearly and robustly since failure to do so will render society morally the poorer for such failure.

Whatever you bind on earth...Unless a society knows how to apply limits on its desires and sees what is good and valuable in what it has created, and knows when to draw a line, its cohesion or its structure will begin to collapse. If we just allow our own rights to become inviolable and unchallengeable, then the basic norms of our society will begin to disintegrate.
For where two or three are gathered...How we recognise the call to justice and how we implement it requires a great commitment both on behalf of our Christian communities and more immediately upon us as individuals. Again to return to the early Church, Acts tells us that the baptised remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, the breaking of bread and to prayer. Here are we today, gathered in this place and can we claim still to be faithful to those words? Perhaps the best way for us to understand this call to responsibility and action, to morality, cohesion and justice, is to place before our thoughts the great parable of Jesus of the Last Judgement and to recall his words which we will read later this year on the feast of Christ the King...I tell you solemnly, in so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me... Here is responsibility and action defining a society which is clear about its morals, sure of its cohesion and actively applying its justice. Is it however one which we recognise around us today?

God's Way

Having been so highly praised last week, Peter is now brought right back down to earth. It must have come as an enormous shock, stunning him into silence and no doubt deep confusion. The next time he speaks to Jesus following this rebuttal is when he is with him on the mountain of the transfiguration. Having heard Jesus speak to him and the other disciples about how he was to suffer and be put to death, Peter along with James and John find themselves in the midst of an extraordinary experience. Perhaps this was Jesus offering Peter an insight into God’s way of thinking and not man’s.

I’m sure Peter was deeply affected by these two moments and surely he carried them with him in his head for the rest of his life. It’s impossible not to have been changed by the impact they made. Let’s face it, on the one hand being compared to Satan, and then being part of a divine vision of the transfigured Jesus are not easily forgotten. How was he meant to work them out?

I think, through his prayer and his contemplation and in his coming to understand Jesus, he must have pondered on the immensity of what he was living through. He must have begun to look at Jesus and seen in him something extraordinary. Maybe his understanding was helped by his reading of the Prophet Isaiah where in Chapter 53 he read that Song of the Suffering Servant which so resonates the passion which Jesus underwent and in Chapter 54, the aftermath of that suffering which speaks of a renewed and restored Jerusalem and of the invitation in Chapter 55 to come to the water all who are thirsty, just as Jesus himself invited all who laboured and were overburdened to come to him for their rest. How just, that immediately after, Isaiah writes for as the heavens are a high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts, Peter may have found consolation in those words and have realised that his profession of faith was somehow both necessary and part of the very mystery of that faith. Peter’s struggles would of course continue to the shedding of tears of shame at his denial of Jesus, but ultimately even that shame was taken away by his post resurrection encounter with the Risen Lord on the beach.

We all have difficulties and struggles with coming to understand the mystery of our faith, the ups and downs of our lives teach us that in following the way of Jesus we all come to an encounter with the cross. This draws us into a relationship with God which is profound for it opens our minds, however fleetingly, to experience his way, which is a love that overcomes all obstacles even death, and in doing so brings us to new life.