Gospel Reflection for Sunday 18th June 2023

11th Sunday Ordinary Time – by Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection for Sunday June 18th 2023

For anyone who longs to walk, with Jesus, the tracks and trails of Israel and come to meet him face-to-face, today’s Gospel is wonderfully rich, and maybe a little surprising.

So many of us carry in our heads what I sometimes call the ‘plaster cast’ image of Jesus, brought to us by the artists and sculptors of the Renaissance. It is a Jesus who is shiny haired, white, European, wearing a spotless tunic and often with a silver halo. In this representation we have the classic case of making Jesus into our own image and likeness.

Many of us go a step further than this and imagine that the God Jesus believed in was exactly the same as the God we believe in; a kind of “Christian” God, long before the term ‘Christian’ was even concocted! Yes, we can say with our heads that Jesus was born, lived and died a practising Jew, and that his Jewish faith was important to him throughout his life, without this reality ever reaching our hearts. By doing this, ‘our God’ becomes ‘my God’ – created in my own image. All other God’s become ‘fake Gods’ that can be ignored or rejected. We become harsh judges, intolerant preachers and ever more narrow-minded believers.

Even a cursory glance at today’s Gospel shows us the folly of doing this. Jesus was a man of his time and a man of his culture. It is impossible to read today’s Gospel in any other way. Indeed, we might be forgiven for thinking that Jesus himself displays a fairly narrow view of his own message. “Do not turn your steps to pagan territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town; go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Are we to believe that Jesus intended his message to be only for “the House of Israel?”

Like it or not, this is what he seems to say. And if this is what he says, isn’t it narrow, closed, elitist and exclusive? – everything we claim Christianity is not!

The problem, I think, is that we feel we must squeeze Jesus into our ‘two-thousand-year-later’ categories and expect to find in his teachings answers to every question and every issue we face today. It is, I suggest, both unfair and dangerous to do this.

When I first went to work in a High School in Australia, I noticed that the younger classes wrote the letters ‘WWJD’ at the top of every page in their exercise books. Call me naïve, but I had no idea what it meant. When I asked a colleague to enlighten me, I was told the letters stood for ‘What Would Jesus Do?’

An interesting thing to do, and I can fully understand why a teacher would want children to do it. However, at another level, it is an unreal, and possibly unwise, question to ask.

The truth is that we do not, and cannot, know what Jesus would do in every single situation our lives throw at us. The question is not “What would Jesus do”, but… “what will I do, based on the life and message left to us by Jesus?”

It is good to ask ourselves “what would Jesus do?” It is a question that will challenge and stretch us. I will admit that when I do it, I often find myself wondering if I would recognise Jesus at all if he was here and active among us.

For instance, would Jesus, a friend of lepers and outcasts, allow immigrants forced to flee terror and injustice  in their own countries, to be sent to Rwanda, not because it is a good place to live, but because we want to make things so awful for them that they might stop trying to come here?

Or…would Jesus, who so frequently used nature and creation in teaching us of God’s love, say and do nothing in face of the obvious and dangerous changes in world climate? Rather, might we not see him gluing himself to roads and runways, protesting our wanton destruction of God’s glorious creation?

For every single Christian who shouts, “This is what Jesus would do”, there will be another, equally committed Christian, who will shout, “Jesus would never do this?” The simple truth is that we do not know what Jesus would do or not do in any of these situations.

Would Jesus agree with Capital Punishment (an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” morality)? Would he openly support the LGBTQI+ Community? Would he be sympathetic to a terminally ill and suffering person asking a loved one to help him/her end their life in dignity and peace?

Once again, ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” and the answer has to be, “We do not know!”

Certainly, we can surmise and suggest what he might do based on Gospel values, his message and the Religious tradition to which we belong, but can we ever know what he would do? No, we can’t!

All of these are questions for us and our world. They are incredibly complex, many of them probably don’t have a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. They are questions Jesus would never have even imagined in his life.

I often feel sorry for Jesus when I see placards and signs saying, “Jesus condemns this….” or “Jesus wants that….” In his life Jesus surprised and astounded his friends and followers again and again by the things he did and said. So frequently we find them, “not knowing, not understanding, confused and uncertain.” If this is true of those who walked with him every day, how can we dare say what he would definitively ‘do’ if he were here today?

The Jesus we meet in today’s Gospel was very much a man of his times. It does not belittle him or disrespect him to simply accept this.

He is a Jew, very much a Jew, and he is very proud of his Jewish heritage. He believed, as every Jewish person believed, that he was part of God’s Chosen People. He believed that the Kingdom of God was coming…was close…and that this Kingdom was intended for the “Chosen People of Israel”. He was saddened that his people seemed lost and without the leadership to recognise the Kingdom among them, and he wanted – felt called – to go to his own people, leading them back to the Kingdom of God which was very close.

There were twelve Tribes of Israel chosen by God to be his people. Jesus chose twelve Apostles. The image of shepherd and sheep was used throughout the Old Testament to describe God’s relationship with his chosen people. Jesus uses exactly the same image to describe his people, “harassed and dejected…” lacking the leadership they need to recognise the Kingdom of God in their midst.

We all come to God in our own way, and while our paths may be different our destination is the same – God.

For me, today’s Gospel and stories like this one, (for instance, Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well), bring me close to the Jesus who walked those roads of Israel two thousand years ago.

They show us a man of his time and of his culture, just as we are all people of our time and people of our cultures. We don’t need a Jesus to have all the answers to all the problems of our world. Isn’t it enough, and isn’t it simply awesome, that he came among us, as one of us, to show us God’s Love and invite us to share in God’s own life.

Imagine! The incarnate Word of God, walking the dusty trails of Israel. Simply awe inspiring!

It was the great mystic of the Middle Ages, Teresa of Avila, who said, “Christ is a very good friend because we behold him as man and see him with weaknesses and trials, and he is company for us.”   

And he is……a very good friend…

And he is……company for us.

Many thanks,

Brian.

The harvest is rich but the labourers are few

The Gospel of the Lord.

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie