The inside of il Duomo in Florence is painted in a beautiful, yet sobering fresco. If you’ve ever been close enough to bear the glorious force of it, you know that neither the majesty of Christ in all heavenly splendour, nor the bitter envy and hatred of the souls trapped in Hell, allow for complacency. I visited Florence as an atheist, but the impact of this vision stayed with me. It’s life or death, and Euthanasia is just another gamble…
Give up the game. Know that you are playing and quarreling while war rages around you. Allow yourself to be affected by the presence of spiritual outliers and ask for the desire to be drawn towards the purity and peace God has given them, for these are the weapons you need to truly find freedom.
Christians cannot support assisted suicide or abortion.
They are fundamentally contrary to the Gospel. While Gospel is Life, and they… are Death.
If you are told otherwise, you are being led astray, no matter how well-intentioned the speaker or preacher is. If you already believe otherwise, you already have been led astray, and I urge you to reconsider and turn back to Him through whom life came into the world.
Suffering and death can never be the solution to themselves.
The scriptures appeal to us out of the depths of history. They are the eternal voice of God whispering through eons.
The church whose appeal rests on modern ideas, marketed to a modern culture, finds itself shouting neon ravings above the tumult of a secular world, drowning out the soft, rich, and everlasting graces of Our Saviour. The Church is increasingly at risk of assimilation into the maddening crowd. That is, unless we shut the door to the clamour, make space for Christ, and sit in that resonant silence, listening for the whisper of God, reverberating through the ages, coming and going, nurturing and drawing out the desire for eternal rest in Him, which He planted in us.
Christ is most ancient, most true, but a church whose appeal rests on modern ideas is mere straw.
Below is the text of my first homily given at All Saints ANeW at the Saturday vigil service for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost.
St Alphonsus Rodriguez S.J. blessing St Peter Claver S.J.
THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST – YEAR A
Matthew 10:40-42
Good evening, how are you all?
I’m certainly blessed to be with you in the presence of God, to hear Jesus speaking to us.
In fact, if you look in a red-letter bible, you’ll see that almost the whole of chapter 10 of Matthew’s Gospel is red. It’s almost all Jesus speaking.
This evening, we heard only three short verses, but these three, short, verses are densely packed.
They come right at the very end of the chapter in which Jesus calls and commissions the 12 apostles. These are the final words he gives to the chosen disciples in preparation for the mission he will give them.
These 12 men were given the apostolic task of extending the Kingdom: which is still the task of the apostolic ministry, which has continued to this day.
Jesus said in the previous chapter that the harvest is great, but the workers are few.
He has said that some towns will accept them and others will not: that some won’t like the message that they bring, and those who reject Jesus will surely reject his disciples.
Jesus told them to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves,
and he promised that He is with them, even as he sends them out; and that God the Father knows each of them intimately.
Now in the Old Testament, God sent the prophets; in the New Testament, Jesus sends the disciples.
The prophets carried God’s message to the Nation of Israel. The disciples carry the message to the nations.
Jesus brought the revelation of God’s plan of salvation to the Earth; the disciples are now being prepared to carry it to the ends of the earth.
Jesus says:
40 “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
There is a story in the memoirs of St Alphonsus Rodriguez. Now I love this story.
When Alphonsus was 26, he married his love Maria, and they had three children. Five years after they were married, his wife and two of his children had died and in his grief he turned to the Lord and dedicated himself to prayer.
After his third child died, when he was 39, he decided to enter a religious order and so he joined the Jesuits. He wasn’t well-educated, he was never ordained as a priest, he never wrote a theological treatise, and never served as a missionary.
Instead, he was given a humble position as the porter; a position he held for 46 years until he died.
Alphonsus says that each time the bell rang, he looked at the door and imagined that it was Jesus standing on the other side. He said that each time he went to open the door, he went with the words ‘I’m coming, Lord’.
We often want to be the ones doing the welcoming, but being the ones who are welcoming means being the ones who are staying at home. Jesus didn’t ask the disciples to stay at home waiting for people to come along. He asked them to go out. He sent them on mission.
It would be natural and right and good for us to read these three verses and hear Jesus to asking us to be welcoming.
It would be true to the spirit of the Gospel and to our lives as Christians, and yes, we should welcome others as if we were welcoming God, but I don’t believe that is Jesus’ intention here.
If we listen a little more deeply as Jesus speaks to the disciples, I think that what we’ll hear is Jesus’ instructions to the disciples about how they can recognise true and reverent welcome, that honours God.
I’ll read the passage again, and when you listen this time, keep in mind that the ones who do the welcoming are those yet to receive the Gospel, and the ones who are being welcomed are those bringing the Gospel.
40 “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. 42 And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”
To hear what Jesus is saying here, it’s helpful if we can shift our focus away from seeing ourselves as ones welcoming, to seeing ourselves as the ones carrying the Gospel out and being welcomed, and we’ll see what difference that would make to the way we love God and love others.
What if we, as the church, as those called by Jesus Christ and commissioned by him to be his hands and feet in the world, what if we truly saw ourselves as the disciples?
Are we missionaries, or are we the ones receiving missionaries?
Our church supports a number of missionaries, and I don’t know about you, but I know that I often see missionaries as those who are able to drop everything and go serve somewhere else. I mean, I have a family and obligations. How can I be a missionary, but is this what a missionary is? Can we not also be missionaries in our daily lives?
How are we as a church family living out our calling to be a community of mission?
How are you living out your daily calling as a missionary?
God has given each of us a task, a specific way that God, being gracious, has invited us to exercise His ministry in service of the community. We Christians imbue the activities and institutions of society with moral values. If you have received the Gospel, Jesus is asking you to share it.
In going out, seeking to be welcomed and to share the Gospel, it is important that we also live in a way that is worthy of welcome. To be welcomed as a righteous person, we must indeed be righteous.
Without God’s grace and mercy, we find that it is very difficult to live in a way that shows others that God is Holy, Good and worthy of honour, and so we pray that God would send his Spirit to sanctify our lives.
Many people upon hearing the saving message of Jesus think it’s all too difficult, they question whether they are worthy and they are tempted to give up before they have begun. Sin skews our vision in this way so that we’re made blind to its effects, which are death. We can feel so caught in sin that we cannot be saved. Even if they are willing to receive the Gospel with faith, they may feel that they have nothing to give in return.
Jesus has given us the tools here to comfort and encourage those who are poor and poor in spirit. Jesus clearly says that being able to give nothing in return does not mean that you cannot receive the Gospel. Our Christian hope transcends unbelief, shame, and unworthiness.
At the time Jesus lived, those who were poor may not have even had fuel to spare to light a light and boil water, but Jesus says that “even a cup of cold water” is enough to receive his disciples, and so receive Him.
God sees you in your suffering, in your pain, and in your poverty of spirit, and he sends his disciples and thereby, his Son, to walk with you. We do not need to wait to be with Jesus: His Spirit is with us.
God bears with us, even when the work seems difficult, or even impossible.
He shows up again and again to walk with us, and I’m sure if we had a chat later on, you could tell me times where God has come alongside you. I would love to hear those stories if you’re willing to share.
But what of welcoming as we usually think of it? Well it might be helpful if we reframe the purpose of welcoming, in terms of inviting.
When we welcome people into our church services and activities, we are not welcoming them with our own authority. The gift of the Gospel and Church, as the body of Christ, is not ours to give on our own terms, but instead, we are called to lay ourselves aside, offer the Gospel in the love which which we received it and pray that they would welcome Jesus, who sends us.
So in welcoming others to church, we invite them to come with us and be welcomed by the God who embraces all of his children.
This passage is both an assurance of blessing and a call to action.
We are called to BE disciples: To be doers of the Word and not hearers only.
God humbly came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, taking on our human nature, and Jesus now asks that we would humble ourselves in imitation of Him, going outside of ourselves, and offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, allowing others to welcome us and the Gospel that we bring.
Yes, we will be despised and rejected by some, and welcomed by others, but we should not be afraid. God is in control, and we should set our eyes on Him with a love that greater than the love we have for anything else.
We have not been asked to do this work alone, but we are commanded to do it, and Jesus has shown us in these verses what true welcome looks like from those who have hearts open to him.
We are all missionaries in our God-given ways, called to serve God and one another in the capacities He has given us.
But to do so, we need to go out and be welcomed.
So as we finish this chapter of the Gospel, and as we come up this evening to receive communion with faith, we are assured of Jesus’ love for each one of us, of his welcoming presence with us, and we can have confidence to take the Gospel out into the world.
Intensity rages, confused chaos looms, Are we mad enough? Are we sad enough? Silence slams the door as she leaves To fend off our pain, through the tears, through the screams.
Violence surges on into the night, Lightning flashes and gas burns our eyes! Afront God’s own house, take your picture before us! You’ve fallen and still, We run from the Lawless.
Acid, turbulence. War, never-ending. Pray, turn to Christ Let the Devil not rise, With his mask and baton, See through him and find The man down there trapped Just like us, in his pride.
Warlord by nature The fault of the Fall Though not by Design, lest conspiracy call. Burst forth, Lord, from darkness, Awake from the night! Light up the world With Love; your true might.
I co-authored this article with Katrina Baldacchino. It will be published in the February/March 2019 edition of the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle’s magazine, Encounter, issues of which are hosted at Issuu.
Alex Grey GAIA 1989, 144 x 96 in. oil on linen.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above
proclaims his handiwork” (Ps 19:1)
At God’s Word, the universe exploded into being and all that exists was lovingly formed and illumined. Life was drawn forth to fill everypatch of land, every breath of air, every drop of ocean. Earth is intrinsically valuable to God. “God saw everything he had made, and indeed it was very good”(Gen 1:31). Take a moment to look heavenward, and stand in awe at the vast and intricate ways in which the natural universe works. God is constantly creating, fine-tuning Earth’s ecosystems, and endowing each living thing with dignity and purpose; drawing all into communion with Himself.
God has entrusted the sacred work of caring for His garden to us. We in the 21st century are struggling to fulfil our inherited responsibility. We have become starkly aware of our unintended power to change the Earth’s climate. We could easily push our world off-track. Perhaps we already have. So we might ask ourselves how we intend to respond to this power, in light of our ever-present responsibility to God.
It is often said that the future of the church, of our society, and of our world, rests on the shoulders of children. It is true thatchildren will inherit the world we leave them, yet they also participate inthat responsibility here and now. If a child asked you today what it means tofollow Jesus, what might you say? What could we say, knowing that we are calledin this era to follow Jesus through potential climatic upheaval, brought aboutby the hands of humankind? What example might we set our children to guide themin an ecologically uncertain future while honouring the great work of God?
To honour God is to ensure the ongoing flourishing of the earth and all that live on it. In his renowned encyclical Laudato Si, PopeFrancis reminds us that “The earth was here before us and it has been given to us. … Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.” Our ability to carry out our duty requires that we experience our interdependence with and reliance on nature. We cannot separate ourselves from the world created for us. Indeed, God becomingincarnate as a biological and sensate being emphasises the significance of thenatural. God, as a man, was reliant on the very world whose existence issimultaneously sustained by God!
The fruits of following Christ extend outwards from the continual renewing of the individual soul, to participation in the cultural, political and environmental context in which we live. As Mick Pope, an Australian ecotheologian, has written; “personal righteousness and public justice are on the same continuum…” The fulfilment of justice requires a spiritof ecological conversion; a turning away from the technologically saturated,consumer driven, chaotic and traumatised world, and towards a renewedexperience of the simplicity of God, seen through Creation.
Jesus, who is God, and is a revelation of God’s love for theworld, asked us to love one another. “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). In the 21stcentury, to love our neighbour means that we love the planet that sustains us,taking only what we need for life and worship. Followers of Jesus ought to be recognised for their love of the natural world, while they joyfully await the perfection of the world through Christ.
Our desires have had unintended consequences for the climate and the world’s ecosystems. What might we say to our children as they ask about climate change and Christian faith? Changing the course of human desire is difficult, but only if we rely on ourselves. Jesus continually offers us the means. As we share in communion regularly, we develop humility and experience God with us. We are reminded that God is present in the living world and in us.We need reminding. We need a theology that can heal the world. As Pope Francissays “Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop aspirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of theTrinity”. We need then to stop, close the books, and allow our children to leadus in looking heavenward, with all of their hope, enthusiasm, and life.
