26th Sunday 2021
Numbers 11:25-29; James 5:1-6; Mark 9: 38-43, 45, 47-48
Are today’s readings positive, affirming, encouraging? Or are they stern, alarming, frightening? The answer, I think, is “Yes”. They are both, holding both encouragement and warning, promise and alarm.
The reading from the Book of Numbers is probably the most consistently positive. The Spirit comes down on the seventy elders and gives them the power of prophets. There is, for someone whose pronunciation of English takes a northern form, something particularly comforting about the names of the two outsiders, who receive the gift of prophecy, even though they did not go to the Tent of Meeting: it is very affirming to hear that Eldad and Medad (mi dad=my dad) are prophesying in the camp.
On a more serious note, Moses’ attitude to these two is also encouraging. He accepts their right to prophesy, and refuses to stop them. Indeed, he goes further: “If only the whole people of the Lord were prophets, and the Lord gave His Spirit to them all”.
Wait a minute, though. The whole people of the Lord ARE prophets, and the Lord HAS given His Spirit to us all. Have we not all been baptised? Have not most of us been confirmed? This is not the place to discuss whether it is right to separate confirmation from baptism as a different sacrament: suffice it to say that God’s Spirit is given to us in both. Why is that Spirit given to us? The prayer which accompanies the anointing with chrism immediately after baptism gives the best explanation. In the old translation, it reads: “as Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king, so may you live always as a member of His body...” So the Church, and you as a member of it, have received the Holy Spirit and have been anointed to be a prophet.
“Grand as owt!” you may say. “When do I begin?”
It is to be hoped that you have already begun. St. James gives us a clue. We are to denounce injustice, exploitation, neglect of the poor, and failure to be aware of them. Wait a minute though! To whom do we prophesy first? Must it not be to ourselves, complicit as we are, as members of the developed world, in the exploitation of the developing world, (which we used to call, rather patronisingly, “the third world”)?
To take an immediate example: have you supported attempts to persuade the government to ensure that sufficient supplies of vaccines to fight COVID are made available to the developing world? That seems to me to be a prophetic duty. And have you interrogated yourself as to how your own lifestyle may contribute, not only to the oppression of the poor, but also to the degradation of the planet, an issue of daily increasing urgency?
From the days of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum to Pope Francis’ Laudato si and Fratelli tuti the Catholic Church’s social teaching has consistently spoken prophetically of the demands of justice; but unless we apply those messages to our own lives, we are liable to find James’ condemnations being applied to us.
So, James offers us both encouragement and stark warning. The same is true of Jesus in today’s Gospel. Our Lord takes a positive and inclusive approach to those who act positively in His name. Indeed, He goes further, promising to reward apparent outsiders, who are kind to His disciples.
Yet He is uncompromising in His attitude towards those who exploit others, especially “the little ones who have faith”. I suspect that it is impossible to hear those words today without thinking of child abuse, and especially child abuse by the clergy and others who represent the Church.
But there are no grounds for anyone to be complacent, as Jesus goes on to insist that we must all be uncompromising in opposing and rooting out the deep causes of our own sins, those tendencies in each one of us which prevent us from realising our full potential as children of God. So our readings today present us with both encouragement and warning: God is on our side, but we have to respond and play our part.
