22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Social Justice Sunday – 28 August 2022

In the annals of Christian legend there is a famous story about one of the early Roman martyrs, St Lawrence.   Lawrence lived in a time of persecution, and as a deacon was responsible for his community’s administration.  The prefect of Rome had already taken the Bishop of Rome into custody and was about to do the same to Lawrence. However, realizing that Lawrence had the keys to the community store, and thinking that this might contain much gold and silver, he first demanded that Lawrence show him the location of the store. Being a wily administrator and not losing his cool, Lawrence said, “Give me three days and I will make an inventory of all the treasure we have. Simply come back here to the church then and I will present it all to you. So, the prefect agreed.  In the meantime, Lawrence set about going around the streets of Rome, gathering all the lame and the poor, orphans, and beggars, and assembled them in the church. Time came for the Prefect to return and when he entered the church he saw, as the story has it, “a sight so horrid that his carnal eyes were offended.”  Furiously, he turned to Lawrence demanding the meaning of this outrage.  Casting his arm over the motley assembly, Lawrence replied, “Behold the riches I promised you. Apart from these, the Church has no other riches.”

Lawrence paid with his life, but his insight remains forever for the followers of Jesus. For we are those who believe that God comes to us not simply in personal religious experiences but in the presence of those who are on the margin, those who tend to be excluded. This is a great mystery: God knocks on our door through the one who is need.  It is not just that we are to be kind to those who are needy, but we are to recognize in those who are on the edge the very presence of God.

In Jesus, God has come amongst us not with might and glory, with strength and power, but as one vulnerable and needy to help us unlearn our instinctive expectations, and to learn a new way to understand the nature of God.  And if God has come amongst us in Jesus, in the one who is cast out to hang upon a tree, God continues to come amongst us even now in this way.

Christ constantly invites us beyond our instinctive discriminations, our prejudices, our boundaries into a new way of being in relationship with one another. And therefore, the annual Australian Social Justice Statement available today is so important.

In marking Social Justice Sunday this year, the Bishops of Australia have published a significant statement, Respect: Confronting Violence and Abuse. It points out that the roots of domestic and family violence “lie in the abuse of power to control and dominate others” and that “this stands in contrast to the relationships to which God calls us”. As the Gospel today impels us, our relationships should be “marked by equality and reciprocity rather than domination and violence, respect and freedom rather than coercion and control”. The Statement affirms the work being done by faith communities and organisations to support those who experience domestic and family violence and abuse, and to address the drivers and enablers of violence. It points to further ways in which we can all respond to spiritual violence. Finally, it calls us to support and believe those going through domestic and family violence and abuse, to hold perpetrators to account and work towards individual and social transformation. In other words, it calls us to confront the tyranny of silence. I encourage us all to take a copy that is available at the church entrances.

Such a consideration urges us to ask, Where do we seek God? We can tend to think that God is somewhere other than where life is raw, somewhere other than where people are struggling and hurting. The Cross does not endow us with that illusion. God is to be found in the questions of life through which people are struggling for a better life, a freer life, a more whole life, in other words for a future. Pope Francis once defined the poor as those who were afraid of the future. In them God awaits us.

I often think that we when we get to heaven, several figures will approach us: a resplendent royal figure, a figure that speaks of eternal wisdom, and a street beggar.  To whom shall we run? 

Our instinct will be formed by where we have searched for God now. Heaven will be theirs who have learnt the face in whom our God truly lives.