20th Sunday of Year C
17 August 2019
In an interview, the winner of the Miles Franklin Prize for literature this year, the aboriginal writer, Melissa Lucashenko quoted the philosopher, Rosa Luxemburg: “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”[1] Luxemburg is a Marxist thinker, but I think this declaration is to be something quite true. The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening. It reminded me of a wonderful sentence in Pope Francis’ recent exhortation to the Youth of our Church when he declared, “I ask you to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes you are incapable of responsibility, incapable of true love.”[2]
If we are to be revolutionaries then we must be prepared to see things as they are, and not to be afraid to speak out what we see. Nearly 50 years ago, the famous Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann defined the prophet as the one who could articulate the grief of the people that is denied its recognition by the dominant consciousness. Reflecting on the great prophets of the Old Testament, Brueggemann recognised that a society can live in a passive state of grief seduced by the lie that everything is fine.[3]The prophet is the one who rouses the society from their slumber, awakens them to see things as they are, and to take action to change. This is the vocation of Jeremiah the liturgy shares with us in the First Reading.
Yet, his fire is the passion of Jesus as proclaimed in the Gospel we have heard. It is our responsibility.
To have a passion for the truth. This is no easy vocation. It makes our presence uncomfortable, disturbing. It sets us apart. It is extraordinary that over the centuries the passionate reality of compassion, at the very heart of the Gospel, has become confused with a type of timidity. However, the original word for compassion in Greek means a strange combination of rage and empathy: it’s a feeling that galvanises us into action; it literally means “to have one’s bowels churn”! It is a gut feeling which moves us to action. True compassion leads us to speak out about injustice; it leads us to protest. It cannot remain silent in the face of evil. It does not just take pity on those who are suffering, but revolts at the causes of that suffering and seeks to change those causes. It does not simply lead us to comfort the disturbed. It also leads us to disturb the comfortable.
True compassion never sacrifices truth but speaks it out loud and clear. From the Christian perspective truth and compassion are two sides of the one coin. We cannot have compassion without truth, just as we cannot have truth without compassion. Only the two taken together break a numbness created by indifference. It is the kind of compassion needed today to conquer what Pope Francis calls, “the globalisation of indifference.”[4] This is the indifference to the concerns of the world that would have us withdraw into ourselves, into a preoccupation with our own immediate worries. At worst, then, our faith becomes a private, personal matter rather than a public, socialforce which it must also be for it to be legitimate. We always have to question ourselves when the exercise of our faith has rendered us less involved in the state of the world rather than more involved.
Today’s readings challenge us with the implicit question of are we concerned with being acceptable or are we concerned about affirming the truth of things? But standing up for truth comes at a price. It will not always be welcome; it will separate us. And that is not so comfortable.
In our first reading the prophet Jeremiah knew this. He knew that in war the first victim is truth. He did not go along with the propaganda of the rulers which was designed to keep up the inhabitants’ morale, to keep them feeling good. He said it as he saw it. That truth was disturbing and bad for morale. And so he was considered a traitor and treated as such.
In some ways, we, as Christians, are called to be traitors, too: traitors to the lies peddled around us as to what makes a fully human life. We are called to be traitors in the face of the many messages we receive about what makes for happiness. We are the traitors of a society which is built on the ethic of greed, or consumerism or self-interest. But as Jesus reminds us today to be a traitor is to be treated as such. Are we prepared to follow that way – his way?
Jesus’ compassion, his willingness to speak the truth, came at a price. Is it a price we are willing to pay? A hard question is given us this day by our liturgy. Let us pray this little prayer of Michael Leunig’s:
In order to be truthful
We must do more than speak the truth
We must also hear truth.
We must also receive truth.
We must also act upon truth
We must also search for truth
The difficult truth
Within us and around us.
We must devote ourselves to truth.
Otherwise we are dishonest
And our lives are mistaken
God grant us the strength and the courage
To be truthful.
[1]See Kate Evans, “Miles Franklin Literary Award won by Melissa Lucashenko for her novel Too Much Lip,”
[2]Pope Francis, Christus Vivit, “Christ Lives” Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation to Young People and to the Entire People of God, (25 March 2019), n. 264.
[3]Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2ndEdition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).
[4]Pope Francis, The Name of God is Mercy: A conversation with Andrea Tornielli,translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky, (Bluebird Books for Life,2016), 92; Pope Francis, Message for Lent 2015 (4 October 2014), https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/lent/documents/papa-francesco_20141004_messaggio-quaresima2015.html, accessed 13 August 2016.
