Homily from Fr Paul Nicholson SJ for Racial Justice Sunday
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
One of the extraordinary happenings of the last year – a year which has not been short of extraordinary happenings – is the emergence, in the middle of a global pandemic, of the Black Lives Matter movement, first in the USA, and a little later here in Britain. The killing of George Floyd produced not just protests, but widespread reflection on why racial injustice persists. Why is it, for example, that in the United Kingdom people from minority ethnic backgrounds suffer disproportionately from the effects of the COVID virus? There are no easy answers to such questions, but the current situation makes Racial Justice Sunday this year particularly relevant, as is its theme, “A Time to Act”.
The first reading and the gospel of today’s Mass both reflect on how it is that God communicates his message to human beings. God no longer reaches us by engraving on stone tablets, as he did in giving the 10 Commandments, or speaking out of burning bushes as he did to Moses, but rather by using the voices of human beings to speak to human beings. This is the essence of prophecy. In every age, we are promised, there will be some who are able to see more clearly what God’s message is for those particular times and places. Their words carry a kind of authority that is recognisable by others, the kind of impression that Jesus made in the gospel.
We are not told in today’s gospel what the teaching was that Jesus gave that day in Capernaum’s synagogue. But this passage follows on from last Sunday’s gospel, where he proclaims: “The time has come, and the kingdom of God is close at hand, repent and believe the good news”. Jesus was saying that this was a time to act, a time when God’s message could be heard more clearly that it had been earlier. And many did act, and became his disciples, and changed their lives, and so started a movement that continues to this day, the movement that gathers us together today. Even though his words also stirred up fierce opposition, as can also as seen in today’s gospel.
What is true of the gospel good news in general is also true of different aspects of the Christian response to that gospel. The time comes when one or other implication of Jesus’s teaching comes more clearly into focus. The classic example is slavery – it took centuries for Christians to agree that this is unacceptable. Initially the prophetic voices arguing this had to face great opposition from many who saw slavery as simply part of the established universal social order. But what started with a few prophetic voices gradually became generally agreed morality. We can perhaps see a similar situation today with issues such as capital punishment, our care for creation, or whether there can ever be such a thing as a truly just war.
Racial Justice Sunday and the Black Lives Matter movement suggest that the implications of the gospel message for this area of life are in the process of clarifying now. Prophetic voices tell us that racism is much more deeply embedded in our society (which means in us) than we had thought. They call us to do all that we can to change this, precisely as one of ways in which we respond to Jesus’s teaching; that this is “a time to act”, in ways in which it wasn’t a century, or even a generation, ago. In today’s gospel, the synagogue congregation leave wondering what this means for their lives – may we celebrate this Racial Justice Sunday by doing likewise.
Fr Paul Nicholson SJ