22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 1 September 2024

We have all heard the expression, “Cleanliness is next to godliness” (to which some might add, “and if you can’t be godly, at least be clean.”) 

We have also probably met some people at different times who are preoccupied with cleanliness to an extreme degree, so that it becomes an obsession.  Sometimes this kind of obsession can even be a sign of neurosis as in the case of people who feel the need to wash their hands continuously even though there is no apparent need to do so.  Compulsive hand-washing is a symbolic act:  it represents the person’s unconscious desire to be rid of some deep mental preoccupation.  The process of washing expresses the desire to escape from the ‘dirt’, to wash away the imagined threat and anxiety that the preoccupation generates.  This of course is a dramatic symptom, but there are many other small and often unnoticed forms of compulsive behaviour which try to deal with anxiety and tension in a ritualised way.  All of us have little rituals by which we try and cope with tension and anxiety, down to the way we arrange our pens ever so neatly on our desk or in insisting that we use the tube of toothpaste in such a particular way.

Tension and anxiety emerge for us in many ways but of course the ultimate source of our own anxiety is the uncertainty of life itself and the unsureness of our own worth and value.  Religious faith, when it works, brings us face to face with this anxiety.  But sometimes religion does the opposite.  We use it not to confront our deepest anxiety but to protect ourselves from it.  The Gospel this Sunday precisely criticises this tendency in religion.  

Our faith cannot, therefore, avoid the questions, How do we know that what we are doing is right?  How do we know that we are doing is what God wants?  How can we be safe?  How can we avoid the ultimate question that maybe in the end, there is nothing out there, even perhaps no God?  Why be good? Why follow this path? Why belong to this Church?  In the end, there is no certainty about these questions and we cannot avoid the anxiety generated by them.  We are free, we are responsible and we are at risk.

And it is precisely here where Jesus meets us:  in our questions, not in our answers.  True religion begins in hearing the deepest questions of our heart and being true to them.  True religion begins in being faithful to those questions, unique and personal, and allowing them to echo against the story of Jesus.  That story does not promise us safety.  It promises us, rather, an adventure – a risky dialogue between our own questions and Jesus’ own experience of a God he knows only as Love.

This dialogue is especially important as we confront the very significant questions in respect to the health of our planet and our attention to those who are made poor by our disrespect for creation. This is the challenge placed before us each year now by the Season of Creation that begins today, 1 September and stretches through to 4 October, the FeastDay of St Francis of Assisi. Our own parish has committed itself to ecological sustainability guided by the seven goals of Pope Francis’ 2015 letter on the environment, Laudato Si’: responding to the cry of the earth, responding to the cry of the poor, considering ecological economics, promoting sustainable lifestyles, reflecting on ecological spirituality, and developing ecological education, and community education – all at the service of participatory action.  

In the Season of Creation this year, our parish is undertaking a number of practical activities. We are greening our church over the month ahead with the plants we can see around us, to remind us of our earth. We will have opportunities for education and awareness raising. We will have some very particular opportunities to promote recycling and ethical retail, and we will have the opportunity to enjoy nature together by a walk through the local forest on the last Saturday of September.

The questions of ecological sustainability have no simple solution. Yet they are the kinds of questions with which our faith in the Risen Lord must engage and with which it must wrestle. This dialogue of faith helps us to recognise creation as an icon of the Trinity, the sacramentality of all created things, the wonder and beauty available to the contemplative eye, and the need for conversion and a change of life.

As we enter this dialogue, we will be made more anxious, not less. Our anxiety however might become the catalyst for real change – a change that is directly informed by our faith.

In this adventure into which Jesus leads us we will know whether our religion is mere handwashing.