23rd Sunday of the year

 

Kathleen Fitzsimons, OP                                                                                                                                                                                                         Noreen Christian, OP

In the Gospel of Mark, part of which we read for the twenty third Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear that Jesus was journeying through the Region of Decapolis when he came upon a man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. He cures him in a very tactile way and tells him not to tell anybody what has happened. The latter directive may allude to the fact that this took place in Gentile territory. Even his being in the company of such a person would have surprised many and scandalised some depending on where they lay in relation to their understanding of ‘the other’. It comes as no surprise that there would be uncertainty around this topic. The Jews clearly thought that Jesus had come for them and them only, and this is backed up by other texts. They were exposed both to very clear ideas like, “I have come for the house of Israel” and “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

And to the opposite in the actions of Jesus who eats with tax collectors, and allows a woman to wash his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair. And not only does he do this but he verbalises it. The Samaritans are praised for their goodness both in the parables of the Good Samaritan and of the Ten Lepers. He also recommends loving your neighbour as yourself. In truth it seems that he is expecting the Jews to move from their familial ownership of Jesus to the ‘other’ end of the spectrum. It seems that this stretch was challenging even in the early years of the church and indeed to this day. As I am writing, a banner from Belfast Live pops up on my screen, Ballyclare Road restaurant fire treated as racially-motivated arson attack!

You don’t need me to present other examples of our difficulty in relating to the ‘other’ in our war torn-world and polarised societies. Indeed, we need only look at ourselves and our own attitudes both expressed and not to the ‘other’ in our lives. We may have thought that we were miles away from the Jews in their early struggles with embracing the ‘other’ but we may not be.

I’ll finish with a poem of R.S. Thomas.

The Kingdom

It’s a long way off but inside it

There are quite different things going on

Festivals at which the poor man

Is King and the consumptive is

Healed; mirrors in which the blind look

At themselves and love looks at them

Back; and industry is for mending

The bent bones and the minds fractured

By life. It’s a long way off but to get

There takes no time and admission

Is free, if you will purge yourself

Of desire, and present yourself with

Your need only and the simple offering

Of your faith, green as a leaf.