(The Nationalist, 08 September 2006)
I remember a priest telling me about the time a wealthy businessman came to the parish for a special occasion. He said people fawned over him, jostling each other aside to have their photo taken with him. ‘About the only thing they didn’t do was genuflect in front of him’, he said. People, including some Irish people, drool over royalty and read up on their doings in glossy magazines. The cult of TV “celebrities” or “stars” is another form of the same thing. It means putting people on pedestals for reasons that are insignificant in the sight of God, or of ourselves, if we had sense – matters like power, position, or possessions. Such discrimination excludes and divides.
We see discrimination among teenagers who treat with contempt their peers who wear clothes that are not the brand in fashion at the moment. Don’t we need our heads examined, if we start categorizing people on the basis of wearing Umbro, Gap, Nike, Diesel or whatever, as if they mattered? Should we remain silent about such things, despite the pain they cause?
In the gospel, Jesus showed another way. On one occasion he healed a man who was deaf and dumb. In other words, he enabled communication; and communication is what makes community. A significant point about that story is that the man’s name is not given. In terms of Jewish tradition, that was like saying, ‘He’s a nobody’. It was the nobodies, the outsiders, who received Jesus, and were blessed by him, while his own people, the insiders, rejected him. The “nobodies” turned out to be the ones who understood Jesus. But it was even more than that: the deaf and dumb man was not a Jew, as Jesus was. He was a Gentile from south Lebanon, an outsider. (Remember south Lebanon last month?) Jesus made contact with him; he touched him; that is to say, he enabled communication with the outsider.
There must be few things closer to the mind of Jesus than bringing communities together. Sometimes we see them driven apart, and we are deaf and dumb to it. If we live in separate groups – our side and their side – like the tracks of a railway line, near and parallel, but never meeting, no matter how far they go, there can be little community. If, in the future, we continue to do as we have done in the past, then the future can be no different from the past; it can only repeat it. God calls us to be one human family. Instead of being prisoners of narrow tribal loyalties, we are meant to be one people.
In the gospel, people said about Jesus, ‘He has done all things well’. It could be said of us, too, if we were prepared to think, and act, outside the box.
For those in a hurry: ‘The truth will ouch.’ (Arnold Glasow)