Homily from the Parish Priest for the Third Sunday in Lent
Readings for Year B: Exodus 20:1-17; I Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25
The post-pandemic world. What will it be like? What are we learning from this time? You may be fed up of talk about COVID and what will be the ‘new normal’. It seems there has been nothing else in the news over these last twelve months. I can’t avoid talking about it because I’m involved in a number of groups in the Church where we reflect on what we might be learning from this dreadful time. Pope Francis is giving me the lead here in his recent writings as he advises us as brothers and sisters in Christ to dream together of the future and to take the reins of Christ-filed hope into our lives.
For me one thing that is clear from the scriptures is that we are constantly being called back to listen carefully to what we hear in the Bible. In the midst of a crisis, for me at least, the inspired Word of God in both Old and New Testament, is radical. It is a call to come back to the God who constantly calls his people back to him and the values of his Kingdom. It is a call from Jesus to us personally, disciples in this contemporary world at a time of great change, to turn away from what leads us away from him and the values of his Kingdom, and to embrace the fullness of the Gospel. It is, in a word which sums up the Lenten message to all people of good will, a call to ongoing conversion.
And the Word of God the Church gives us this third Sunday of Lent is indeed truly radical. No difficult concepts to interpret; no parables to explain. Rather a call to follow the Commandments given to God’s people at the very beginning. And a call to stop turning my house into a market place and to rebuild it as the house of God and all that he calls us to be in the world.
Now I realise it’s so easy for the preacher to fall into hypocrisy here. After all we ask for money in church; and yet of course we have to pay the bills and do our work as, unlike in some countries around the world, we receive no financial support from the state. And, after all, we are all sinners, so how dare we tell anyone what to do and what not to do. But that attitude can also be a way to put us off track, it can be a temptation from the bad spirit, it can dent our confidence, the confidence of all of us, in proclaiming the Gospel. What is true is that what we do and what we say need to go together. They cannot be in contradiction in a Church which demands a new honesty, a new transparency, a new call to conversion, a new radicality, back to the basics that are given to us here today in the inspired Word of God.
Right at the moment Pope Francis is visiting the nation of Iraq. It is a daring visit, demanding much security and careful planning. He is visiting the holy city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham. Abraham is the father of all three great religions of the world, revered by Jews, Moslems and us Christians. He has met the Shiite Grand Ayotollah Al-Sistanyi, expressing his desire that people of all religions and none work for peace and reconciliation in a troubled world. On behalf of us Catholics the Holy Father goes as a penitent pilgrim. He is conscious of our being criticised for hypocrisy, of our sinfulness, of turning our Church into a market place, of breaking God’s sacred commandments given by our creator God to our forefathers as a lasting covenant, he is conscious as we all are of how we are perceived by many in the media, in the world as a whole, and how our hypocrisy has driven many away from God. He is calling us all to conversion and to be reconciled to each other. In going to Ur, and on to the Plain of Nineveh where the prophet Jonah called us to conversion, to the city of Mosul where religion has been tainted with the evil of a misplaced bloodied radicalism, he is bringing us back to basics. Back to the Commandments. Back to what the Temple is about. The Temple which for us Christians finds its fulfilment in the God incarnate in our world and his Kingdom of peace and justice for all.
But is it really livable? The Gospel as a whole gives a very full account of the values of the Kingdom Jesus presents to us - which becomes the blueprint for living out the Christian vocation in the world – but the point throughout is just how opposed they are to the values of the world. A complete reversal of earthly values are the values of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s these values which, in seeing in our weakness our strength, St Paul knew is at the heart of the spirituality, the whole identity of the Christian, and of our calling to be missionary disciples. In the new Temple which is the Body of Christ we are called to embrace a counter-ethic of success, of wealth, of abuse of power and of human dignity.
But is it really livable today? Well, we can argue about models of society which could better serve such a vision. And all that is very important and valid. In our society today how do we serve the weakest? You don’t have to look very far from where we sit in this church to see the divide between rich and poor here in this city – and it is getting worse and worse. I had this week an excellent meeting along with two other leaders of Church communities in central London with our MP here in Cities of Westminster and London. In addition to discussing homelessness and housing and being so encouraged and promised support to do all we can to end rough sleeping we agreed that this pandemic is having a huge knock-on effect of economic breakdown. Our post-pandemic world as we move into a new period of recovery will be bleak for so many. You only have to walk around the streets here in Mayfair, Soho, Covent Garden, to realise that. Premises boarded up, ‘to let’ signs on every street. Many businesses around here are finished.
This makes the Gospel message all the more pressing, all the more real. The Word of God is addressed to us also personally and very directly. We are called to reflect on how Christianity is a radical call to shun success and place the weakest in the place of honour through how we conceive society. The Gospel is a call to action on the part of each of us gathered here, coming from disparate places but each with a personal call to live out this Gospel. For us who mainly lead ordinary lives – who aren’t leaders, whose everyday lives are perhaps humdrum – where the tensions between the values of the world and those of the Kingdom seem to be on a smaller this Gospel is for us. Where in my life do I see these Gospel values in stark confrontation with those of the world? Am I generous in what I give to those who are without or am I sometimes selfish, greedy, self-serving? Am I satisfied with what I do for others who are less fortunate than me– in my family, among my colleagues at work or wherever? Do I compromise the values of the Kingdom to keep others happy or to win approval so I can succeed in what I do? Am I driven by ambition or am I driven by making a difference to the everyday world in which I live? Do I understand why the Lord is so angry in the Temple?
The dream of living out the Gospel in all its radicality – where human success in a culture of self-reliance is turned on its head. That’s why we come here on Sunday as Church – because that Kingdom is a reality, not just a dream. And that dream we celebrate as the Eucharist, Our Lord’s sacrifice of himself in broken body and blood poured out for the world – and that is real – because Jesus is real – and calls us to be ambassadors of that Kingdom in the here and now.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ