HOMILY WEEK 14 03 – Year I
Go to the Peripheries as Missionary Disciples
(Gen 41:55-57; 42:5-24; Ps 33; Mt 10:1-7)
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“Go to the peripheries and to the marginalized.” “Reach out and touch the poor.” “Take on the smell of the sheep.” “I prefer a church that is messy.”
Many people would recognize these statements as typical of Pope Francis. They could just as easily have come from Jesus, who today tells his apostles to “go to the lost sheep of Israel.” Both basically are calling us to be missionary disciples in today’s world that is going through a famine of meaning and love.
In the first reading, there was a famine not just in Egypt, but also throughout the whole known world at that time. It was a universal worldwide crisis. At the same time, we hear the story of Joseph’s brothers who out of envy, jealousy and sibling rivalry, put him in a well then sold him to a band of travellers. That is symbolic of another worldwide human crisis – that of un-repented sin and denial of sinfulness (that which makes us sin – our painful emotions, negative attitudes and addictions).
The three days that Joseph puts his brothers into prison is not just a stark reminder to them of their dark, sinful past towards him, but also a prefiguring of the three days that Jesus, the Messiah and Saviour, would be placed in the tomb to liberate all of humanity from that greater famine of a lack of love, meaning and purpose.
In the Gospel, we see Jesus at work, laying the foundation of the apostles, giving them authority to deliver people from sin and heal them of their infirmities, and instructing them to proclaim that in him, the reign of God has come near. While it may not be part of a strict definition, an underlying meaning of the word “authority” should be to “author life,” far from a sense of control or domination.
The mandate Jesus gave his apostles is just as urgent as ever. At the time of Jesus, the Jewish religious system had become so corrupt and worldly that instead of helping the poor, it was actually oppressing them with unfair taxes and inflated prices for the sacrifices they were forced to buy from the Temple to assure purity, and not at a downtown market for a lower price. As we know, the court of the gentiles had become a market place, so noisy and full of commerce that the gentiles could not even pray. No wonder Jesus cleansed the temple with righteous anger when he saw how unjustly the poor were being treated, and in this passage sent his apostles out to minister to the lost sheep of Israel who were like sheep without a shepherd.
That action of Jesus should cause us to pause and question how we as a church today may also be letting people down and causing them to be like sheep without a shepherd. Many people are turning away from an institutional church that often seems more preoccupied with liturgical niceties, rules and regulations, rigid clericalism, power and control, who is in and who is out, then with truly listening to the wounded, journeying with them through their pain, and offering them compassion, genuine caring and hope. The pain triggered for so many Indigenous people by the recent revelation of hundreds of unmarked graves near former Indian Residential Schools is an urgent opportunity for precisely that – for Canadians to listen, understand and help carry that pain.
Our modern society has in many ways lost its way, not to mention its soul. Possessions and pleasure, prestige and fame, power and control seem to be the norm, with the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer. The lack of love and genuine caring in families leaves many wounded youth and adults at the mercy of drug dealers, merchants of sex and criminal gangs who make great promises but can provide only an illusion or a shallow life at best.
As St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta famously said, the poor are not really in India – they are in the First World, where people are dying not of physical hunger, but of a different kind of hunger and thirst, a famine of unconditional love that offers affirmation, recognition, dignity, discipline, moral values, acceptance, personal worth and belonging. Not knowing which way to turn, and lacking a broad horizon of faith, many medicate their pain with a plethora of addictive activity.
Robert was hitchhiking on a cold November night. Although hesitant, I could not pass him by, so I stopped and offered him a ride. Our conversation quickly revealed that he had just picked up some heavy drugs in the city, and was on his way to East Hastings in Vancouver to end his life there. As he shared his hurt at the hands of the staff at an Indian Residential School, I softly suggested that he should speak to a priest. When he did not respond negatively to that comment, I revealed that I was a priest, and we settled in for a heart-to-heart conversation about the soul pain in this traveler’s life. As we were passing by his home community, I suggested driving him there, where we sat in the car for another hour of profound conversation during which I encouraged him to reach out for help and go for treatment. As I left, I gave him my ministry card and contact information.
A year later, at 11:30 pm when I was in bed, I received a phone call. It was Robert. After our conversation that night, he decided to go for treatment instead of Vancouver, had sobered up and was now an addictions counselor on his home community. That phone call moved me to the depths of my being, as I realized that I had indeed gone to the periphery, reached out to the marginalized, taken on the smell of the sheep, and had been a missionary disciple of Jesus Christ.
The Eucharist is Jesus reaching out to us, taking on our pain and woundedness, and offering us life-giving forgiveness and healing balm for our souls.
May it not only mandate us to do the same for others, but also empower us to be missionary disciples, reaching out to the poor, as did Jesus and the apostles before us.
