Homily 25th Sunday OT 22nd September 2024

One of the scriptural themes that is most difficult to accept is the theme of the cross as a part of Christian living. The fact that Christ first offered himself to the world as a victim, rather than presented himself as king. There seems to be something in us that demands that if we must indeed carry a cross, we should at least have character enough to do so angrily, bitterly, resisting every inch of the way.

Certainly not, as the Old Testament prophet Isaiah put it, like a lamb led to the slaughter.

Christ could have refused that cross. He could have destroyed his persecutors. But he didn’t. Because if Christ had accepted the terms of his persecutors acted toward them as they did toward him, there would really have been no difference between the saviour and the persecutor, the builder and the destroyer. So perhaps, Christ’s victimhood lies not so much in a choice of the cross, but rather in a choice not to avoid it, not to counter it in kind.

For the heart of the Christian vocation is a call to forthrightly place oneself at the disposal first of the Father, and then of his creatures. And that demands that we take a very particular stance toward the good of other. It demands that we determine as honestly as we can, what is truly good for those around us and then do what we can to provide it, even at the expense of our own comfort.

Well, the simple fact is that if we do that, there will be a cross. Because sooner or later, we will come into contact with people who choose otherwise, people who find our attitude offensive or weak. People whose values, like the first instinct of the apostles in today’s Gospel, are centred on power, control over others rather than harmony. People who see in other not someone to love, but something to be used, people whose concern is not relationships of peace but rather personal gain.

When we do come in contact with such people we must choose again. We can choose either to react to them in the same way, to defend ourselves, perhaps even to do them one better, and in the process become them.

Or we can choose to continue in the attitude of Christ, the stance of loving harmony. And if we do that, we may be victimised at the hands of those who don’t.

But for a Christian that is nothing to fear. Nothing to run from. It is simply a part of life lived faithfully in all of its aspects, a believer accepts life, blesses it. We may not always understand it. But we always call it good.

Fr Andrew