6th Sunday Reflection: Choosing Joy
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage
Sixth Sunday In Ordinary Time Year C – (Luke 6:17-26)
Fatigue and burnout; all around us we are experiencing anger, fear, sadness, conflict, loss, and loneliness. A constant stream of news feeds this negative energy, the grey well of pessimism.
In such an environment, we may turn to trite pious gospel interpretations that suck all the joy off the bone of the good news. Don’t you know there’s evil in the world; hunger, death, disease, global warming, financial disorder; all the results of greed and corruption! They may be laughing now with their fast cars, big houses, and expensive toys, but the time is coming when they will weep. And so we see the glum faces with jaws like flint set stoically on enduring this time in this evil age, awaiting the great escape, our final destination to a better place for those who have endured and won the crown of eternal life. This is the teaching of Jesus, or is it?
The texts of Holy Scripture may remain unchanged, yet our understanding of these texts develops and changes. Slavery through the ages has always been an aberration of the strong subjugating the weak, and the underlying philosophy that some lives are more important than other lives. There are many passages in the Bible that, if interpreted literally, support the keeping slaves and their obedience to their masters. These passages literally held up the Bible as supporting slavery. In order to abolish slavery, we needed a new way of reading Holy Scripture. Instead of focusing on the literal interpretation of biblical passages, we emphasised the larger principles and general arc of the Bible. Our new lenses focused on liberation, freedom, equality, equity, and care for everyone and for all of creation.
When we take only one particular pronouncement in isolation it is so easy to misread the Beatitudes of Luke to say what you want it to say about poverty and wealth, hunger and plenty, joy and mourning. This passage inspires the penitential spirituality of Contemptus Mundi, Contempt for the world, contempt, and moral disdain for the world and creation that is passing away. But our Franciscan Saint Bonaventure and Doctor of the Church reminded us that when we disdain the gift of the beloved, we disdain the beloved. When we hold the gift of higher value than the beloved, we commit idolatry.
So let us begin looking with new eyes on these Beatitudes of Luke. The disciples are with a large crowd on a piece of level ground, as opposed to the Beatitudes of Matthew set on a hillside. Jesus is not addressing the crowds on this occasion, rather Jesus turns his eyes to his disciples and talks to them in the context of Jesus’ mission that will become the disciple’s mission also.
These disciples are travelling bands of mendicant healers, exorcists, and evangelists. Jesus tells his disciples the conditions they will encounter on their mission; dependent always on the generosity and hospitality of others. The message of Jesus will not always be welcome so his disciples will go hungry they will weep and they will be hated.
The message that they will carry will contradict the dominant culture of power, esteem, and money. These are good things in themselves, but when they get in the way of our relationship with God, with each other, and with the world, they lead us away from our goal, lead us away from love, and ultimately away from happiness.
There are two ways in which we can live our lives; closed off by the seemingly more comfortable route of power wealth and reputation, or escaping from the illusion, and the trap of entitlement. When we reason with the arguments of the world, our hearts are tied up with possessions and our good name, so that whether rich or not, our hope for happiness depends on these and we are un-free, unable to love, not yet blessed.
In our Christian lives, we are not called to seek suffering and destitution; our calling as disciples is to proclaim the kingdom of God in which we are all brothers and sisters given the good things of this world to share.
Let us return to the practice of serenity, meeting the sacred in awe in the song of creation, in the beauty of open trust, love, and rebirth. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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