23rd Sunday of Year C
Over this last week, throughout Australia, National Child Protection Week has been commemorated. On this Sunday, the Church in Australian celebrates Child Protection Sunday. These are important commemorations especially given our recent history.
We know only too well that those who are vulnerable in our midst suffer most when there is a culture of silence and suppression both within families and communities. Closed families and closed institutions create situations of self-preservation which place them above a sense of genuine self-examination and, on occasions, even above community responsibilities. It is precisely this inward absorption of both families and communities that Jesus himself confronts in the gospel we hear this weekend.
Jesus calls us into a more open society. And more open societies are known for their transparency and accountability. They are not self-interested; they are both aware and sensitive to an ethics of responsibility for that which lies beyond them, for they never fail to recognise that they find themselves only in relationship with something other than themselves. For this reason, we find who we are only in relation to that which our lives are at service. When we know who or what we are the service of, then we know who we are.
This is expressed beautifully in the wonderful African notion of Ubuntu. Desmond Tutu of South Africa defines it in this way:
“In my culture and tradition, the highest praise that can be given to someone is an acknowledgement that he or she has this wonderful quality, ubuntu. It is a reference to their actions towards their fellow human beings; it has to do with how they regard people and how they see themselves within their intimate relationships, their familial relationships and within the broader community. Ubuntu addresses a central tenet of African philosophy: the essence of what it is to be human.”
“The definition of this concept has two parts. The first is that the person is friendly, hospitable, generous, caring and compassionate. In other words, someone who will use their strengths on behalf of others – the weak and the poor and the ill – and not take advantage of anyone. This person treats others as he or she would be treated. And because of this they express the second part of the concept which concerns openness, large-heartedness. They share their worth. In so doing, their humanity is recognized and becomes inextricably bound to theirs.”
“People with ubuntuare approachable and welcoming, their attitude is kindly and well disposed, they are not threatened by the goodness in others because their own esteem and self-worth is generated by knowing they belong to a greater whole. To recast the Cartesian proposition ‘I think, therefore I am’, ubuntu would phrase it, ‘I am human because I belong.’ Put another way, ‘a person is a person through other people’ . . . “[1]
All this means, as Jesus teaches us in the gospel of today, that we must think, live and reflect beyond the limited boundaries of culture and self-interest. And the most important thing is that this is effected in the smallest ways – through a smile, a hello, a handshake, a moment of our time. As we give these gestures to one another we will discover ourselves to be the new community into which Jesus invites – a community not of culture or similarity to one another – but a community founded on a new principle: the principle that in Jesus we have become brothers and sisters to one another.
To live this truly is to create communities of safety in a world that is fragile and fearful.
[1]Desmond Tutu, “Introduction,” in Ubuntu, Compassion: The words and inspiration of the Dalai Lama (Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2008).
