Homily for 13th Sunday of the Year 2010

The political events of the past week have really stirred the nation! As I reflected on the change in Prime Minister it struck me how politicians are human beings too! We may not hold our political leaders up as some kind of demi-god as we observe in some cultures. But we sometimes hold a secret hope that they might be what we are not. Yet they are so much like the rest of us. In them, in the public arena, we see all the foibles and fears, the weakness, the greatness, the deceptions, the honesty, the fidelity and betrayals, the stubbornness and generosity, that all of us possess in different degrees. In our politicians our humanity is spelt out in capital letters for all to see.

We all make decisions we cannot undo. We witness people self destruct and are unable to touch them. We have to live with the consequences. It is suggested that the most difficult moral choices we make are not those between good and evil, but between what is good and what is the better thing to do. To do the best, we sometimes have to let go of some very good things. The cross of doing that is the consequence of the choices we make.

We see this in action in both the stories of Elijah and Elisha as well as in the Gospel. Elisha was to be a prophet in to replace Elijah. He had to leave his family and his employment to do so. He went home to farewell his parents. Having done so he killed his twelve yoke of oxen and cooked them and gave the meat to the people to eat. He was really burning his bridges. He could not go back now. That symbolic act of destroying his means of employment showed his willingness to follow Elijah and his commitment to be a prophet for the people.

Jesus seems to demand even more of his disciples than Elijah. To those who he encountered he said they need to be prepared to have no secure home. Even commitments to family must take second place to God. Discipleship is also something that we cannot play with when we feel like it. It is a lifelong vocation.

In all this God leaves us free to make our choices. When Elijah threw his cloak over Elisha indicating his choice of him he said to Elisha, "Go back. What have I done to you?" But once the commitment is made the responsibilities follow.

Yet, our commitments made in our youth are tested with time. What was begun with enthusiasm and love can become a daily struggle. We can take our hand off the plough and look back to what was, or what could have been. Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem. It is with a determination, that nothing will tempt him to turn away, that he undertakes this journey. Such for him is the urgency of his mission for the Kingdom of God. So too it must be for the disciple.

But the obstacles which might tempt Jesus to seek an easier path, such as the inhospitality of the Samaritans, are not to be met with anger. He rebukes the disciples for suggesting their destruction. It is for just such as the Samaritans that he goes to Jerusalem which had rejected them and their worship. It is also for those who will reject and condemn him in Jerusalem that he risks his life. "Father forgive them", he will say from the cross.

We see here in Jesus someone who is strikingly free in what he does. He is not driven by ambition nor fear for his future, neither by fear of what others might think. His are not the actions of someone who is living a fantasy. He is very realistic about what he is doing. He is clear sighted about his mission. He is free of all that baggage of mixed motives that we so often carry. He is no slave to the internal and external forces that surround him. His one goal was to do the will of the Father.

This is why can St Paul say to us, "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" Galatians 5:1,13-18)?

Jesus has one motive. Jesus does it all because of the love he has for the Father and the love for all those who suffer. It is this love that makes it possible to bear the crosses that come his way, and ours.

Fr Graham