Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 30 September 2018

Persecution, Chagall

26 Sunday in Ordinary Time - 30 September 2018, 'For whoever is not against us is for us.' (Mk 9:40)

I am struck by two small phrases of Jesus in this Sunday's gospel, doing something great 'in my name' (Mk 9:39) and giving a cup of water to somebody because they 'belong to Christ' (Mk 9:40). Both these phrases resonate with me in terms of being a good disciple for if I truly follow Christ then I want to do great things in his name, because I, you, are promised that when we do things in this way, what we do will be blessed by God. Then if others are generous towards me because I belong to Christ, they are also blessed no matter who or what they are. The simplicity and power of that generosity of Christ is immense, it's also mind blowing if you think it through.

For the Christ is NOT partisan, unlike the many hardened religious people who cause resentment and division in society by defining God's love in terms of exclusion not inclusion. No, Christ lets anybody, yes anybody, do something in his name or for his followers and blesses them, counts them as his friends.

One of these friends of God, somebody outside of the narrow confines of our all to feeble religious definitions, was Etty Hillesum, a Jewish woman who was gassed in Auschwitz on 30 November 1943. She wrote an extraordinary 'spiritual' diary a journey from the edges into understanding a God who came to her in the midst of the Shoah, a God whom she defends in the midst of annihilation; after the death of her mentor and friend Spier, whilst she was in the transit camp of Westerbrok she wrote: "You taught me to speak the name of God without embarrassment. You were the mediator between God and me, and now you, the mediator, have gone, and my path leads straight to God. It is right that it should be so. And I shall be the mediator for any other I can reach". (15 September 1942) That should be our prayer!

I've written a bit about the uncertainties of world and Church in the past few weeks and frankly what I see and hear in the world and church media is simply confounding and confusing, so much so that I just want (and need) to turn it all off, so to speak, and return to the lives of decent honest ordinary people whose words actually mean something! Whatever the cost we must hold on to our integrity as Christians, for we bear the 'name ' of the Lord, we too are called like him, anointed ones, for us with and in Him there should be no 'Jew nor Greek, no male nor female' , like Etty Hillesum, we should learn to walk with God on the camino of the Scriptures remembering that whoever is not against Christ is for him!

What really matters, from Etty Hillesum's diaries:

…… to be truly, inwardly happy, to accept God's world and to enjoy it without turning away from all the suffering there is. … even if you live in an attic and have nothing but dry bread to eat, life is still worth living. … There is so much to relish, life is rich, even though it has to be conquered from minute to minute .... (24 March 1941)

From Nostra Aetate, OCTOBER 28, 1965:

"Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any person, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.

Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of humans and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.

We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly or sisterly way any human, created as they are in the image of God. Our relation to God the Father and God's relation to us his brothers and sisters are so linked together that Scripture says: "(the one) who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8).

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between person and person or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against people or harassment of them because of their race, colour, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to "maintain good fellowship among the nations" (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all, (14) so that they may truly be children of the Father who is in heaven". (15)

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain and Ecumenical Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.