26th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 28 September 2025
Here we are at the weekend of football Grand Finals! Whether we are AFL supporters or Rugby League followers, the country is abuzz with the excitement of challenge over this weekend and next
But this weekend spare a thought for another football league which I came to know when I lived in Melbourne many years ago. In that Aussie Rules league in Melbourne there were six teams each from a different welfare agency. One year, in the A Grade competition, the Melbourne Street Demons beat the Salvation Army by 42 points. They had started the season sleeping in squats, on park benches and in doorways. Their coach remembers gathering the squad for training twice a week from the heroin precinct in the early rounds of the season. In the B Grade competition, it was the Sacred Heart Saints from the Sacred Heart Mission in St. Kilda that used to win. The team included teenagers, a 44-year-old woman and even a man with one eye and one arm. They were victorious over Odyssey House, the drug rehabilitation centre.
There was not much glamour about that footy league. There was nothing very successful about the footballers in the Sacred Heart Saints. Most of us would term them real losers. But maybe they are also an illustration of the inversion that the gospel speaks of today The real battlers are the real winners. Why?
The gospel challenges our notions of success. Through the story of Lazarus the notion of success is put upside down. It’s not what we have that determines success but the quality of life, companionship and hope that we have. That is why the real battlers in that Melbourne welfare Aussie Rules competition were the real winners. In the midst of all their difficulties and in the face of all the negative which could threaten to overwhelm them they experienced life, companionship and hope. And therefore, they were the rich ones despite all the appearances.
In our own life we have a choice to follow the values of either the rich person in the story or the poor person. Both the rich person and the poor person exist in us metaphorically. We make a choice for the values of the poor person whenever we replace domination with service, competition with mutuality. Whenever we refuse to let cynicism squash our hope, fear overwhelm our love, bitterness overrule our openness, vengeance overtake forgiveness and justice the life of Lazarus comes to the fore in us.
The gospel indicates which set of values lasts eternally and which does not. The values of domination, competition, fear, bitterness and vengeance might reassure us now and give us a certain sense of power. But in the end, they cannot endure
Most often it is the poor, like those in that Melbourne Aussie Rules football league, who teach us these things. They are the ones who have nothing to defend or control. They can be the ones who are more open to the simple but lasting pleasure of companionship and hope.
Today the gospel calls us to be challenged by their example. Indeed, the gospel calls us to be evangelised by the poor, lest we go the way of Dives, the rich man. Do we dare to be taught by the poor in our midst though?
Who are the ones that we don’t expect much from, the ones we normally overlook, the ones we react poorly to, the ones we don’t want to be associated with, the ones we want to separate ourselves from? Who are the ones in our own community, in our parish, in our school, even in our family who might teach us through their very vulnerability and poverty what it means to be truly rich? Rich, because of the freedom of companionship they enjoy; rich because of the depth of hope they enjoy; rich because of the wealth of simple joy in life that they might enjoy.
Our place in the kingdom is given to us when we have learnt the lesson they have to teach us.
