Join the Jesuit Institute South Africa as they celebrate Sunday Mass for the
5th Sunday Ordinary Time 2021 - Year B
This morning's Mass is celebrated by Fr Anthony Egan SJ.
Owing to COVID-19 and the suspensions of Mass in various parts of the country, we invite everyone to make a 'Spiritual Communion' with us during this Mass. More resources are available at [ Ссылка ].
Our readings for this Mass are:
First Reading Job 7:1-4,6-7
Psalm Psalm 147:1-6
Second Reading 1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22-23
Gospel Acclamation Matthew 8:17
Gospel Mark 1:29-39
Homily (begins at 09:15)
The question addressed in Rabbi Harold Kushner’s 1981 book When Bad Things Happen to Good People is on all our minds. In a world marked by COVID, growing unemployment and poverty, public service corruption and the spread of irrational populist politics, it is not inappropriate to wonder what the hell God is up to. Our world and all the resources we use to make sense of it – the rule of law, reaching out to others in love, the routine of work, and for religious people, the opportunity to worship together – is on lockdown.
Where is God when you need God?
Many of us, I suspect, feel a bit like Job, in our first reading today. Suffering for reasons beyond our control. In many cases, too, sick without an apparent cure in sight. Overwhelmed.
The Book of Job is a classical story – the hero suffers adversity, keeps the faith, and is rewarded by God – and subverts it: while never denying God’s existence, Job rejects all the pious platitudes to explain away suffering and the apparent indifference of God. Job systematically demolishes such rationalisations – that suffering is the result of one’s sins; that God works in mysterious ways and we must just accept things as they are, and that we must adopt a position of piety, humility, contrition for what we may have done, so as to ‘win’ God’s love back, prove oneself worthy, and sit back and wait for divine reward. Job refuses to accept such empty rationalisations and yet keeps faith – by challenging his own understanding of God.
Firstly, Job focuses on lived reality, not some ‘fake news’ packaged to keep him from thinking clearly. We see this in his relentless observation of his experience – “months of emptiness”, “nights of misery”. The temptation – his and ours in our situation – is to rationalise this, to fool himself that the situation is not so bad.
It is the temptation of many preachers to do the same, to ‘soft soap’ the situation; to offer reassurances that make congregations feel ‘good’; at worst, to offer a ‘biblical explanation’ that alleges the current crisis is a divine judgment for some or other collective sin.
In fidelity to the evidence, the reality of our experiences of suffering in these times, and to a God far more complex and unknowable than is dreamt of in even our most sophisticated theology, I am not going to do this.
Just as Job didn’t know the whole story behind his suffering, and just as he sits in this text honestly expressing his suffering, we must just sit with reality as it is.
Looking at Jesus and Paul, two themes emerge, service and flexibility. Jesus’ mission entails an ever-widening practice of service. Jesus does not spend his time pondering the nature of the world, trying to understand God’s role in suffering, let alone blaming the people he heals for their conditions. He gets out there and does things, whatever he can, to alleviate human suffering.
With Paul, we see a remarkable degree of flexibility, a willingness to adapt himself and his thinking to proclaim the risen Christ. Paul readily embraced diversity of practices, so long as they led people closer to God.
It is unhealthy and unhelpful to deny the reality of suffering – and indeed the mystery of why God allows it. Even the argument that suffering builds character or ‘soul’ is problematic: experience tells us that for many it is soul-destroying. The terrible truth we must face, too, is that we don’t know why God allows suffering. The model of service we see in Jesus is a kind of answer. We must choose action over paralysis – even if we may not know that our actions will prove fruitful. We must embrace flexibility. Flexibility in what we do, how we interpret events, and flexibility in how we relate to others. Even, dare I say it, flexibility in how we think we understand the mystery of God.
You can listen to this homily at
[ Ссылка ]
or download it to read here,
[ Ссылка ]
