This weekend, let us joyfully unite ourselves with all people of good will and remember the special bond of love we have with our sisters and brothers in the Diocese of Bamenda.
If we are doing something that makes us miserable, we need to stop doing it. Finding joy in ourselves and in our lives, is the first call of the Gospel. We have to know that the ‘yoke’ of the Gospel is easy. Its burden light. In Hinduism there is a saying “Some carry Scripture the way a donkey carries sandalwood. They know the burden but not the fragrance”. Some people, religious and otherwise, love making rules for everyone else to live by. Along the way, they can be inclined to make exceptions for themselves. Those who make laws often think they are above them!
Their ambition, of course, is to have increased status. In today’s Gospel, the poor old Pharisees parade their piety to promote themselves. If you didn’t know, Phylacteries are long boxes containing sacred texts. Although these sacred texts are meant to be written on the heart, to become their eyes of the heart, they carefully keep the word of God at arm’s length. They abandon love of God and of their neighbour in favour of Love for themselves and the honours they can manipulate others into giving them.
Jesus offers His disciples a new vision of community, freed from this oppressive hierarchical structure. The new humanity will have only one Father and one Teacher or Master and will abandon the use of these titles for one another. The vision is of a new community where everyone is first. A community that thrives on the flow of Grace where all are receiving from God and giving to one another. In the flow of abundance, the striving for status, recognition and exemption will have less power. This is the exact opposite of their experience with the Pharisees. But the question still remains if the disciples of Jesus have ever actually done anything better than the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. Given the history of the Church, and our own personal experience, it looks as if we are doomed to repeat the old mistakes unless we try something new.
No one practices what they preach. We can have a clear vision of what is possible. But when we try to live it out, we bump into ourselves, our old habits, our egos and secular social pressures. The Sufi teacher, Pir Vilayat Khan has pointed out that the holiest teacher can fall from Grace when doing their annual tax return! So, practising what we preach involves what Joh Sobrino has called, ‘an endless openness to conversion’. This need for conversion does not mean we are failing. It comes with the territory of following something large enough for us to betray. So, when we speak of a new vision for community and a new humanity to serve that vision, we should be wise enough to keep the sackcloth and ashes within reach and our eye on the nearest confessional.
