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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Job 7: 1-4,6-7
Job spoke, saying:
Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?
Are not his days those of hirelings?
He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.
So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
If in bed I say, “When shall I arise?”
then the night drags on;
I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.
Psalm 147
R. Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.
Praise the LORD, for he is good;
sing praise to our God, for he is gracious;
it is fitting to praise him.
The LORD rebuilds Jerusalem;
the dispersed of Israel he gathers.
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He tells the number of the stars;
he calls each by name.
.
Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
to his wisdom there is no limit.
The LORD sustains the lowly;
the wicked he casts to the ground.
1 Corinthians 9
Brothers and sisters:
If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast,
for an obligation has been imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it!
If I do so willingly, I have a recompense,
but if unwillingly, then I have been entrusted with a stewardship.
What then is my recompense?
That, when I preach, I offer the gospel free of charge
so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.
Although I am free in regard to all,
I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible.
To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak.
I have become all things to all, to save at least some.
All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.
Mark 1
On leaving the synagogue
Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.
Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever. They immediately told him about her.
He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.
Then the fever left her and she waited on them.
When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
The whole town was gathered at the door.
He cured many who were sick with various diseases,
and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him.
Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
Simon and those who were with him pursued him and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.”
He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also.
For this purpose have I come.”
So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020721.cfm#main-content
I was shocked in reading something Piercean posted while I was working on this essay about Jeshua the healer. The editor of American Scientist, introducing an issue on Truth v Lies, asked "How do we navigate [...] the post-truth era, where there is no longer even an expectation that politicians or pundits will be honest?"
“No longer even an expectation” of truth in the public domain. And this not from a moral philosopher or a preacher, but from the editor of a serious scientific journal introducing a series of studies examining the why and how of it. We used to imagine we could rely on leaders and teachers to be honest: that's gone now. We live in a world of deception, where official spokespersons no longer even wear the mask of truthfulness but boldly declare that round is square, cold is hot, facts are fake news and darkness is light. More shock this week when the president of a Football Club exposed as racist says 'This is a proud day' for the club. This trumps Trump's, “We won this election in a landslide”, that inspired an insurrection.
We've all been shocked over the past four years, but we have now to face the fact that deception is the accepted culture of our times. Or should that be 'the illness of our times'. It is world-wide, endemic, as integral to modern life as are the illusions of freedom and responsibility that are its smiling face, as pervasive as advertising that keeps inflated the hot-air balloon of capitalism's consumer economy.
Jeshua went about healing. It shows the compassion of God for faltering humanity and, what is more important, the healing of bodies points to the healing of the whole of us. Lying, falsehood, deception is illness in the soul, in the spirit, in the self. And fatal too: it will corrupt the self until there is nothing left of a self. Only the delusion like an insubstantial hologram.
Jeshua went about healing. His job is to convince us that we can get to the healthy stage of being free inside – of thinking true and speaking true and doing true. Then we'll have hope and when we'll not let the suffocating, toxic clouds of lies overcome our hope. When we'll be able to keep on speaking truth without giving in to discouragement and giving up.
It takes a lot of guts to ask someone to believe this healing is already in process. Even more guts to speak up against falsehood in the system, whether it's racism in the club or sexism in the office or criminal deception in advertising or cover-up of wrong-doing when terrible harm is being done; whether it's systemic deception in government or pharisaism in religious institutes. At this stage I'm sick of it all. I'm sick of being Australian, with our vain self-image - We're The Best - and our needless, shameless cruel oppression of so many different victims of our system. I'm sick of being a man, and a white man, saddled with our sense of privilege and superiority. I'm sick of being dressed up in religion with its pretensions. I'm sick of it all. Jeshua had more guts than me but he got sick of it too, and apostle Paul got desperate at one point, asking 'who will free me from this body of death?' The miseries of the fictional Job don't come within cooee of the reality.
The sickness of self-deception, our habitual lying to ourselves, is what cripples us. What is the way to healing, according to Jeshua?
I will identify five items that I think are essential. We can add other elements we think are important.
First we read that Jeshua healed those who came to him. That means, those who wanted it enough to ask for help. The first step is to want it. To start by stepping down and admitting our need of help is the hardest thing. I wonder if we're tempted to turn away even from faith in God because we prefer to think we can fix our problems by ourselves. For all the social progress, when we're on the brink of collapse we've got to admit we're not doing well.
So deep, deep within I become totally convinced of my dependence. That's perhaps the deepest metanoia, the transformation from natural self-reliance to turn towards Someone bigger. To seeing myself not as self-motivating superman that can do anything I choose and have peoples in awe of my achievements, but as what I am, simply an instrument and a contributor to the common Good.
Third, we have to believe it, not in some hesitant uncertain way always half consenting and half claiming to hope, but ingoing for broke, putting all our money on the promise that humankind will in the end take its rightful place in a cosmos brought to completion by the powerful will and love of its Founder.
Fourth, just as nothing can happen without that Power, so nothing will be achieved without us. And the 'us' is me and you individually. We cannot take refuge in some vague idea that humanity will win the day. One by one we change because our commitment to this work is most profoundly personal. The only steps humanity takes are taken by individuals day by day.
Finally (though it is the foundation of all the others) the one who follows Jeshua will recognise and acknowledge him as a man with a divine mission. According to gospel reports and reflections, Jeshua was conscious of being sent and commissioned to proclaim a message in the Father's name. Take this out of the Christian story and there's not much left. Our acknowledgement of the Anointed One is the necessary component and the key to all the rest.
"And you, Peter, once you have it sorted out, strengthen your colleagues." (Luke 22:32 I paraphrase of course.) Everyone who follows Jeshua is commissioned to be a healer. What Jeshua said to Peter applies to all of us. We have to fortify our children against the systemic corruption that is accepted as normal and standard. Just as they reach some understanding of personal integrity, at that point where they're ready to dedicate themselves entirely to being the best they can be and spending their lives in some noble work as doctor or teacher or honest plumber, they discover at work and in sport and even at home that they are expected to fall into line with a system where lying is just the way it goes.
It is terrible to think we have to teach young men and women not to believe politicians, not to be intimidated by religious people, not to be caught by friendly societies, not to think everything they hear or read is true. Governments love to talk up their transparency while they employ spin merchants to weave deceptive announcements.
Speaking out the truth can be as simple as writing letters to newspapers, or as dangerous as telling in public what we know went on behind closed doors or on far-away battle fields. Like Jeshua you can end up on a cross for standing up in witness to the truth.
Here in the forum we do a fairly good job of calling out church statements when they are inconsistent or irrelevant or hypocritical. But we too have to watch out not to toss around our comments with scant concern for truth and objectivity. It is fundamental that we should make clear what is reporting fact and what is expressing an opinion or rumour oreven just blowing off steam.