Fifth Sunday of the Year
(points only)
· I suppose most of us, at one time or another, have been in situations where we could mouth the words of Job in today’s first reading, and understand only too well what he was going on about.
· The First Reading, is, of course, from the Book of Job, the longest single treatment of the Problem of Suffering and the more widely embracing Problem of Evil in the Bible, the Problem of Suffering in its theoretical aspect being a central part of the Problem of Evil. We all have the practical problem, the struggle with suffering and evil in our lives and that of others. In our reflective moments some of us have the theoretical problem also: why did God do this to me, why does God allow this to happen to us? Naturally, in my role as philosopher, I’ve been involved with this problem on the theoretical level for most of my working life. Indeed, it has done a lot to determine my own limited and halting attempts to understand who God is and what God is about.
· If anything, on the purely theoretical level, modern and contemporary scientific understanding, in fields like ecology and the earth sciences and biology, has probably made the job of us theologians and theistic philosophers meditating on this problem a bit easier:
o We no longer blame God for ‘tsunamis and earthquakes. ‘Tsunamis and earthquakes are caused by movement of tectonic plates, though some tsunamis are caused also by undersea landslides and occasionally by meteorites. Tectonic plates are involved in the construction of continents and generally in the renewal of the earth. Without tectonic plates no continents, without continents no dry land, without dry land no dry land life-forms, without dry land life forms no us.
o Similarly for cyclones and earthquakes: they are part of what it is to live on a planet with real weather capable of giving rise to creatures like ourselves.
o Such arguments complement what is sometimes called the argument from the constancy of natural laws – as in we need gravity to walk, but given gravity it is also going to be possible to fall down steps and break your neck.
o Beyond all this, we have now come to appreciate, also from the hard work of concerned scientists, that a lot of so called natural evil has elements of human causal agency in its background – like the connection between landslides and deforestation.
o On the human level itself, we don’t blame God for terrorism, or for planes firing rockets into crowded streets or dropping bombs on villages, or for the myriad of other things people do to each other in this troubled world of ours. This is sometimes called the Free Will Defence, that it is better to have persons who can know and love, creatures endowed with free will – like us – around the place, even if sometimes they mess up and sometimes mess up badly; and even if this sometimes affects the future, following generations, getting deeply engrained in the social and cultural processes by which life is handed on across generations, deeply contextualizing the decisions of future generations, making it sometimes so very difficult to do and to be good, even when we want to, what the theologians call ‘original sin’.
· This kind of consideration is all very well. It is just that for the most part, in spite of all the logic, it doesn’t cut too much ice for people involved in the thick of life, parents whose children have died, children whose mother or father have died, people whose relatives or friends have been blown up or taken by some natural disaster, or even wives or husbands whose partners have gone off with someone else, and other problems in life of greater or lesser degree. All kinds of people, possibly including most of us some time or other, will probably in such situations know only too well what Job in the first reading was talking about.
· On the other hand, and probably just as well in the circumstances, nor would it seem to be God’s preferred mode of approach to the problem anyway, this theoretical stuff, confined to the level of understanding. While there may be some further and deeper understanding of where it all comes from given in the course of God’s involvement with us in Christ, and while this may help a bit, God’s own approach, as revealed in Christ Jesus, and his life and ministry and mission and his death and resurrection and the coming of the Spirit, God’s preferred strategy or strategies would seem to be much more practical and real life involved than theoretical and abstract in orientation.
· I’d like to mention at least three such strategies, all having something to do with today’s readings, psalm and gospel acclamation, or in the case of the second strategy also the central act of the liturgy itself::
I read something very interesting during the week on Mark’s particular slant on the miracles of Jesus. In Mark’s gospel the miracles are not signs out there, meant to make Jesus famous or prove that he was God or something. In fact, in Mark Jesus does his best to stop them being broadcast around and even takes pains to downgrade what he is doing.
In Mark, they are rather more like practical deeds of God’s love, meant for the persons’ involved, practical no nonsense no fuss deeds of God’s love for individual people. In this Jesus is the expression of the God of today’s psalm, who heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.
We also, as the continuation of Christ in the world, are meant to participate in this strategy, to engage ourselves in such practical, no nonsense deeds of God’s love, also to do our best to heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds. That’s fair enough, we know that.
Note on the Casting Out of Demons:
o But what is this stuff about the casting out of demons? This is such a pervasive feature of the Synoptic Jesus and the mission he gives his disciples that at least something needs to be said about it.
o The most helpful thing I’ve come across about it is that, while the category of being possessed by an evil or unclean spirit or demon or devil is wider in the gospels than would be with us, including much mental illness of the more disturbing and overt kind, there is still a genuine phenomenon here. And that this genuine phenomenon tends to be especially correlated with times of chaos and disorder, for example a war or an occupation going on for a long time and strongly affecting the lives of ordinary people. Some of the more vulnerable people in such societies tend to internalize this chaos and disorder and lack of control, rendering them prey to what we call or what manifests as ‘possession’ by foreign or evil spirit or spirits. Such people are not evil, in fact they are very much victims, almost the supreme example of ‘collateral damage’, and very much needful of being set free and restored to wholeness and integrity of person.
o (This would mean that the response of the Gerasene or Gaderene demoniac to the question, What is your name? My name is Legion, because there are many of us, was not entirely co-incidental, Legion as in Roman legions, the occupying power.)
o Whatever the case, these represent people who are really hurt and really hurting, the most vulnerable of victims, the most vulnerable of God’s children, and it seems in the Galilee of his time Jesus and his disciples really had their work cut out for them.
o We can take it, in turn, as a call to tend in Jesus’ name to the most deeply vulnerable and the most deeply hurt in our society, whoever they may be in our place and time: these people who represent in our time the ultimate ‘collateral damage’ of all the other things that are happening.
o But this is only the first strategy.
This is not some un-involved God, some absentee landlord Deistic unmoved mover spectator from afar on the drama of human misery. To use our two categories from before, in Jesus, it is as if God submits God-Self to the rule of natural law, not just ordinary human ills and worries but through pain and suffering even unto death. And beyond that he submits to the excesses of human evil will, to the powers of this world, to the traitors and torturers and murderers, even to death on a cross. And that this is not just a one-off: it’s an expression of something deep about God and about God’s involvement and presence even in the midst of the worst of our misery. This is a God who not only affects all but is affected by all.
Some people are invited to participate also in this strategy, to show this God in a manner like Jesus, to take up our cross and follow Jesus. But we need to be careful to note here who is being directly invited. It is not first of all the needy, those who labour and are heavily burdened, people in need of liberation or of being made whole: though they also can utilize the strategy if they want as a way of making themselves strong, as a way of getting on top of, showing themselves superior to, otherwise impossible suffering, like as with turning the other cheek or going the extra mile. But Jesus didn’t say, come to me all you who labour and are heavily burdened and I will load you up with a dirty big cross and make your life even more difficult! He said, come to me all you who labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.
No, the people
who are directly invited to take up the cross are the full-fledged, mature, liberated
adult core-group disciples, people who have already had their own burdens
lifted. The heroes.
Like
This in turn exemplifies something about God’s involvement with us and presence with us: it is also freely undertaken, not something God has to do, but kind of the ultimate practical deed of God’s love, manifested and demonstrated in body broken for us, blood shed for us.
We, then, become part of all three of these
strategies, this community of faith gathered together to remember and celebrate
and communicate in God’s ultimate practical Deed of Love, body broken and blood
shed, going out
afterwards, among other things, to do our own practical no nonsense deeds of
God’s love in response in all the little situations of our lives.