26^th Sunday of the Year - 30 September 2012

Numbers 11:25-29; James 5:1-6; Mk 9:38-43, 45-48
There is legend told about Abraham, the grand patriarch of the Jews, in the Mideast. According to the legend, Abraham always held off eating his breakfast each morning until a hungry person came along to share it with him. One day an old man came along, and, of course, Abraham invited him to share his breakfast with him. However, when Abraham heard the old man say a pagan blessing over his food, he jumped up and ordered the old man out from his table, and from his house. Almost immediately, God spoke to Abraham. “Abraham! Abraham! I have been supplying that unbeliever with food every day for the past eighty years. Could you not have tolerated him for just one meal?" We are all children of God, and, hence, we have to love and tolerate everyone, as explained in today’s first reading and the gospel.
Introduction: Today’s readings give us a strong warning against jealousy, intolerance and scandal.
In the first reading, we find jealousy, in its destructive form of envy, raising its ugly head in Moses’ assistant and successor, Joshua. Joshua could not tolerate the two men who had been on the list, but had not attended, the Spirit-giving ordination ceremony Moses and they had been called to by the Lord God in the Tent of Meeting, yet had started prophesying in the camp. This selection is intended to provide a Biblical background for Jesus’ response to the same kind of jealousy. In the second reading, James warns the rich against giving scandal by their denial of social justice to their workers in refusing to give them a living wage, by ignoring the needs of others and by condemning and murdering the innocent and the righteous. Baptism commits every Christian to work for social justice through peaceable (rather than violent), means. In the Gospel, we find intolerance among the apostles of Christ. John complained to Jesus that a man outside their group of selected disciples was exorcising demons in Jesus’ Name, in spite of their attempt to prevent him from doing so. Jesus taught the Apostles lessons in his kind of tolerance and in the reward to be given to outsiders for good deeds they had done for the disciples of Jesus. We also hear the strong warning of Jesus against giving scandal, especially to innocent children, vulnerable members of the community and beginners in the faith. Jesus warned the Apostles, and us, that, just as a doctor might remove a limb or some part of the body in order to preserve the life of the whole body, so we must be ready to part with anything that causes us or others to sin and which leads to spiritual death. Jesus is inviting us to integrate our bodies into our following of Christ, so that our hands become instruments of compassion, healing and comfort, our feet help us to bring the Gospel to the world and our eyes learn to see the truth, goodness and beauty all around us.
In the Gospel today the apostles wanted to reserve God's love and healing power to themselves as the "sole owners" and "authorized distributors"! We hear John complaining to Jesus that a stranger was driving out demons in Jesus’ Name, though he was not of their company. They wanted Jesus to condemn the man. As occasionally unsuccessful exorcists, they may have been jealous of this stranger. Jesus, however, reprimanded his disciples for their jealousy and suspicion and invited them to broaden their vision and to recognize God's power wherever it was found. Like Moses in the first reading, Jesus challenged a rigid understanding of ministerial legitimacy. He wanted the apostles to rejoice in the good that others did, for God was the Doer of all good. Jesus enunciates a principle for his disciples: "Anyone who is not against us is for us." God can and does use anyone to do His work. The Church has no monopoly on God's work, truth, love or power to heal and reconcile. The work of the Kingdom is not confined to the baptized, although it is certainly our special work. This lesson is especially valuable today. Intolerance rising from fear and envy has a long history in the Christian Church and Christians are still known for a spirit of intolerance. Ask the average person on the street what he/she thinks is a Christian attitude, and he/she will use words like "judgmental," "narrow-minded," "dogmatic," "condemning," and "intolerant." The road to the brotherly love Jesus commands must begin with each of us. It is through mutual respect that we find common ground with others and discover strengths in different beliefs. Wherever we see God's work being done, we should give it our support and be ready to work together with those doing the work, whether they are Christians or not, believers or not.
Jesus' second warning is against scandal-givers: those who cause the “little ones” to sin. The Greek word for "little ones" is micron, meaning the smallest or the least. It can mean children, those who are new to the faith, or those who are weak in faith. Jesus is pointing out that the scandalous behavior of older believers can be an obstacle to those whose faith is just beginning to develop.

The truly dangerous people to whom Jesus is referring are those evil ones who wear the mantle of religious leadership, and at the same time, by their counter-witness, turn the weak and the innocent away from God, and cause them to sin. Today, we know the irreparable harm done to the Church and the faithful by the scandals of clerical sex abuse. Likewise, scandal is often given by unorthodox theologians and false preachers, who propagate their anti-Christian ideas under the guise of Biblical and psychological research. Do they not give scandal? Our major social institutions — the news media, the Internet, law, public education, and the entertainment industry -- under the guise of “freedom of speech and expression,” often seem hostile towards religion, erecting stumbling blocks to believers. We have an obligation to make known, with Christian courage, our views on these matters so as to protect the innocent.
3) Interpreting Jesus' words about self-mutilation? Our hands, feet, eyes do become instruments of sin according to circumstances. However, it is important to understand that, in these passages about "plucking out an eye or cutting off a hand," Jesus is not speaking literally. We have more sins than we have bodily parts. Besides, even if all offending parts were removed, our hearts and minds -- the source of all sins-- would still be intact. Hence, these sayings are actually about our attitudes, dispositions, and inclinations. Jesus is inviting us to integrate our bodies into our following of Christ, so that our hands become instruments of compassion, healing and comfort, our feet help us to bring the Gospel to the world, and our eyes learn to see the truth, goodness and beauty all around us.
By these startling words about self-mutilation, Jesus also means that we must cut out of our lives all practices that keep us away from God, and retain only those habits that draw us closer to God. Jesus is setting before all his disciples the one supreme goal in life that is worth any sacrifice. That goal is God himself and His will for our lives, which alone leads us to everlasting peace and happiness. Just as a doctor might remove a limb or some part of the body in order to preserve the life of the whole body, so we must be ready to part with anything which causes us to sin and which leads us or others to spiritual death.
What messages do we take for life? First of all, we need to avoid conduct that can lead to scandal. We give scandal and become stumbling blocks to others when we are unkind or unjust in our treatment of them, when we reject them because of their weakness, faults or sins, when we humiliate them by hurting their pride and damaging their self-image, when we discourage, ignore, or refuse to accept them, when we ridicule them or deflate their dreams, when we set standards which are so high that we are unable to meet them ourselves, and when we become judgmental of those who are still struggling to reach a level of commitment that we feel is too low to be useful. On the other hand, we become good role models when we support and guide others in moments of doubt, weakness, and suffering, when we increase other people’s self-confidence by accepting them as they are and enabling them to discover their hidden talents, when we help them to grow by inspiring and correcting them, when we forgive them and listen to them with patience, and when we make ourselves examples of Christian witnessing.
#2: Let us learn the Christian virtue of tolerance: Christian tolerance asks that we bear with the weaknesses of others, without condoning the evil they do. Intolerance is a sign of a weak faith. Intolerance is also ineffective. It does nothing but damage to the cause it seeks to defend. When we attack a heretic, we don’t change his mind, for the most part. We just give him an audience. To ban a book, is, almost surely, to make it a best seller. Condemning a sinner immediately draws people to defend him. An intolerant attitude will alienate, rather than attract, sinners. Only genuine agape love can overcome hatred. The Church should display this patient love to a hate-filled world. The Church is expected to present Christ to the world. How can the Church present him when it is arrogant or intolerant rather than loving others as Christ loves us? We cannot exalt love by encouraging hate. Hence, let us try both to learn and to practice the virtue of Christian tolerance in our interfaith and ecumenical endeavors by remaining true to our conscience and beliefs, respecting the differences we encounter, working together on projects of common interest, affirming what is good in the other person’s position, even when we disagree on certain things, and allowing the light of Christ to shine through our loving words and deeds.
(adapted from the reflections of Fr. Tony Kadavil)