23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 4 September 2022
The populist American writer, Robert Fulgham once told of the story of a famous international chess player, Frank Marshall. Marshall made, what Fulgham termed, the most beautiful move ever made on a chessboard. In a crucial game in which he was evenly matched with another master player, Marshall found his queen under serious attack. The queen is the most powerful piece on the board. There were several avenues of escape, and since the queen is the most important offensive piece, the spectators all assumed that Marshall would observe convention and move his queen to safety. Deep in thought, Marshall used all the time available to him to consider the board conditions. He picked up his queen – paused – and then placed it down on the most illogical square of all – a square from which the queen would be captured by any one of three hostile pieces.
Marshall had sacrificed his queen – an unthinkable move, to be made only in the most desperate of circumstances. But Marshall’s opponent and the crowd watching soon realised that Marshall had made a brilliant move. It was clear that no matter how the queen was taken, his opponent would soon be in a losing position. Seeing the inevitable defeat, his opponent conceded the game.
Marshall had won the game in a rare and daring fashion – by sacrificing his queen. Writing about this, Fulgham said,
To me it’s not important that he won. Not even that he actually made the queen-sacrifice move. What counts is that Marshall had suspended standard thinking long enough to even entertain the possibility of such a move. He had looked outside the traditional patterns of play and had been willing to consider an imaginative risk on the basis of his judgment and his judgment alone. From now on in life I often hear myself whispering to myself, “Time to sacrifice the queen.
If chess were played in first century Galilee, Jesus would have been the master of the queen-sacrifice move. To reject the ties and social expectations of ‘family’ in first century Jewish life was unthinkable. A person’s whole identity depended on family, particularly on mother. Yet, Jesus was prepared to push forward with his vision of a new community which exploded the social boundaries, a new community based not on social conventions but on a new understanding of God. Jesus was prepared to sacrifice anything that stood in the way of this vision.
Jesus calls us to the same sacrifice. What is in ourselves which inhibits this new community coming into being? It may be something very dear to us: an opinion, a long-held idea, certain fears, even our laziness. What is the most treasured playing piece in our life? Is it obstructing or enabling the Kingdom of God?
During this coming month, our Church community is being invited to reflect on two very important issues.
Firstly, through September, leading up to the feast day of St Francis of Assisi on 4 October, Pope Francis invites us to reflect on our need for ecological conversion. This year, the proposed theme is: “Listening to the voice of creation” with the symbol of the burning bush. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, many have become familiar with the concept of being silenced in conversations. Many voices are silenced in the public discourse on climate change and the ethics of Earth conservation. They are voices of those who suffer the impacts of climate change. They are voices of people who possess ancestral wisdom about how to live with gratitude within the limits of Earth. They are voices of a diminishing diversity of species rather than humans. It is the voice of the Earth.”[1] What do we need to sacrifice in order to allow these voices to be heard?
Secondly, over the same period our Diocese invites us to reflect as it does every year through September on our responsibility to ensure that all our communities are places of safety and care. This year we focus on the communities of our families. Through this Safeguarding Month, we celebrate the important role families play in keeping children safe when they have a strong sense of belonging and connection to family. What do we need to sacrifice in order to ensure the greatest sense of belonging and connection for our children? A particular question, perhaps, as we celebrate Father’s Day?
The Christian life is a conscious one. It is not passive. We need to know what is involved, what the price is for following this way. It means constantly coming to terms with the right order of things – weighing it all up and making choices. If belief in the way of Jesus is not impacting daily on the choices we are making, if it is not consciously informing what we do and how we do it, then our faith has become passive. It has become like salt without taste.
When it is a conscious way of being, however, then, even without any republican sentiment, we too may be free, when the time requires it, to say, “Time to sacrifice the queen.”
[1] See https://laudatosimovement.org/news/what-is-the-season-of-creation/
