Gospel Reflection For Sunday 9th July 2023

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Occasionally I read a Gospel that makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes the reason is obvious to me – a question Jesus asks, the response someone gives, how someone acts, a particular challenge Jesus sets before us. Other times the reason for my discomfort is not as clear – a kind of vague unease as if there is something there that I am not quite getting, a message that is just beyond me. These, I suppose, are the ways God speaks to us through his word. When, at the end of each reading, we say, “This is the word of the Lord.” we are acknowledging that when we listen honestly and openly God truly does speak to us.

So why, I asked myself this week, when I read today’s Gospel, did I have that same feeling of discomfort? There can be no words in the Gospels more comforting than Jesus saying to us, “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest”. To know that this is what God wants for us more than anything else is overwhelming. This is a Gospel I have read on many, many occasions. I have preached on it, used it in retreats, and prayed with it so often that I know it by heart. It has brought me comfort, given me support, encouraged me and, as Jesus himself prays, brought me to a place of rest.
Never, not once, did it leave me feeling uneasy or uncomfortable……. until now! Just my luck, I thought, that on the one occasion, I want to write a reflection on these words of supreme comfort, this is what happens!

Sitting with the Gospel a bit more and praying urgently and with a certain amount of anger that the Lord would give me something – anything! – to write about, I discovered that the uncomfortable feeling I had was one of disappointment. Not disappointment with myself or even with God. Just a disappointment, maybe a sadness, that after two thousand years of hearing Jesus say, “Come to me…and I will give you rest” our world is ‘rest-less’ to the point of tearing itself apart, our Christian Churches are no closer to ‘being one’ than they ever were, and even within our Church there are tensions and conflicts which make ‘rest’ an impossible dream.
What I felt when I read the Gospel was an empty sense of, ‘where have we gone wrong?’

Almost every week a new report is issued by the United Nations Environmental Programme, the World Meteorological Organisation, or some other group of experts, who warn us, with increasing urgency, that our climate is changing, our oceans warming, ice sheets melting, extreme weather conditions inevitable, all of them bringing famine, disease and natural disasters upon us. Yet the prophets within our society, those who shout and protest and demand change, are, like the prophets of the Old Testament, ridiculed, arrested and attacked!
Night after night our TV screens are filled with the utterly futile and senseless war in Ukraine. These scenes only replace similar scenes still perpetrated in Syria, Myanmar, Iran, Yemen and so many other countries. We can be sure that when Ukraine fades from our media some new disaster will replace it, not because the killing in Ukraine will have finished but because viewers and readers will have become bored with it, and our seemingly insatiable desire for blood and chaos will move to somewhere else.
“Come to me…and I will give you rest.” There are estimated to be 3.3 billion Christians in our world today – think about it, 3,300,000,000 – and somehow we seem to have missed these words of Jesus!

Two thousand years ago Jesus prayed that all of his followers would “be one”, just as the Father and the Son are one. In today’s Gospel Jesus echoes this prayer, “…no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to who the Son chooses to reveal him”.
Over the centuries Church leaders of every Christian tradition have spoken of the ‘scandal of disunity’ among Christians. Yet it is a scandal that continues to divide us. A scandal, perhaps, with which we have become too comfortable?
Within our own tradition (RC) we squabble and fight about who should receive the Eucharist, whether we should ordain women as priests, whether we should bless the marriages of those of the same sex, and so much else. More recently, different expressions of Christianity have affiliated themselves with political beliefs and even in some cases, political parties. Being a ‘true’ follower of Jesus can, for some, be as simple as being ‘right or left, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat.’
Within our Church the way we dress, the hymns we sign, the language we use, even the ways we pray can, and do, lead to silly and pointless divisions.
“Come to me…and I will give you rest.” Where have we gone wrong?

For some reason reading this Gospel, on this occasion, forced me, through a sense of internal discomfort, to acknowledge how I – and ‘we’ as a Christian family – have lost sight of the beauty and simplicity of Jesus’s message.

By way of excuse, I told myself that all of the issues we face as a Church and as a society are serious and complex and that disagreements are not just inevitable, but also good and healthy. After all, isn’t it total uniformity, excessive control and unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and values that define a ‘cult’?
I also said to myself that even Jesus disagreed with the religious leaders of his time. When he flouted some small details of the ‘fasting laws’ and called the Pharisees ‘a brood of vipers” he was almost inviting trouble upon himself.
I even tried to find comfort in the fact that from the very start of the Church disagreement and conflict have been part of its very growth and success. If Peter and Paul, the two first and great Apostles of the Risen Christ, fought to the point of almost splitting the Church in two, then why should I feel uncomfortable and disappointed that there are still divisions among us?

But these are all excuses and only excuses! They rationalise a reality that is wrong, and they seek to defend a scandal which is indefensible.

This Gospel has to be the most beautiful and comforting Gospel of the entire year.
It is Jesus telling us in a clear and simple way of his own unity with the Father – “everything has been entrusted to me by the Father….”. More than this, Jesus tells us that we, too, are united with the Father, and invited to share in the life of Father and Son, when we listen to and believe in Jesus.
And then…… comes the incredible invitation, “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened…” It is an invitation given to all of us because all of us labour and feel overburdened.
And what Jesus offers us is not peace, or solitude or even prayer. No, he offers us rest.
There is, I think, something very special about rest. I associate it with a sense of being ‘at home’ with someone in someplace. If I try to imagine myself being with God, it is impossible for me not to feel ‘claustrophobic’ in some way. God is so good, so loving, so great, so …everything, that it is almost impossible not to imagine being ‘suffocated’ in some way by his presence. But being invited to ‘rest’ is different. It combines relaxation with contentment, allowing plenty of space to ‘be at ease’ with whatever we are feeling. For me, inviting us to ‘find rest’ in God is about the greatest gift we can be given.

Isn’t it ironic that it was the invitation to ‘find rest’ in Jesus that began the discomfort I felt?
Now, as I conclude, I still feel a certain discomfort, but now, one I better understand. If I am to be at ‘rest’ – at home – with Jesus and God, then I cannot simply absolve myself of the responsibility to do what I can to bring about unity in our Church and among all Christian traditions. By doing this I move ever closer to Jesus, I “…come to him…”, knowing that in him, “…I will find rest.”

Without intending it, this reflection has been quite a journey for me. Truly, our God is a God of surprises!

Many thanks,
Brian

You have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children

Tags: gospel reflection, sunday reflection