4th Sunday of Lent B - Homily 4

 Homily 4 - 2015

Allowing for exceptions, of course, I would suspect that most of us here are familiar with the comic strip, Peanuts, and its chief character, Charlie Brown. We might even remember Charlie’s remark, “I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand!” Whatever about Charlie, what about God? “God loved the world”, as the Gospel spelt out so clearly. But could it be that there are some people God can’t stand? And could it be at times that I might be one of them?

The catch is that we tend to think that love depends to some extent on how good we are; and we realise that there are times when we know that our behaviour has not been good. I would guess that most of us are not quite sure that God will love us – at least without confession, or some other means to gain God’s pardon. I am not sure that we even like the idea that God loves us, as Paul claims, “not by anything of our own”, “not by anything we have done”. Salvation, forgiveness, is always gift – sheer grace. “Nobody can claim the credit”. I think we might feel safer, more comfortable, if we could have some say in it at least. Otherwise, why bother trying?

Trying what? Why bother trying to win or to deserve God’s love? To judge from what St Paul said, to judge indeed from what today’s Gospel claimed, trying to win God’s love makes no sense. To put it rather beautifully, we are, each of us, already one of “God’s works of art”. That raises another possibility.  What about trying simply to enjoy God’s love? That could be eminent sense. Jesus in fact assured us that believing him, believing his love, is “eternal life” [not will be, but already is].

I am not sure which is harder – to believe that God really does love me, or to believe that God loves the world, that is, everyone else, just as much as me, even those who have not tried anywhere nearly as hard as I have. Do I even want God to love them? not just to tolerate them perhaps, but to  love them? 

 God loves the sinful world, the sinners. Just as well, because there is no one who is not. Now God’s loving us means that every person has a God-given dignity – whether we/they realise it or not, whether we/they act from it or not. It is that inviolable dignity of every human person that is the basis of the Church’s teaching about social justice. From the point of view of our human dignity, we are all equal. No one is more significant, more valuable, than another. We may never violate or compromise the human dignity of one individual or social group for the sake of another. The ramifications are immense.

We may not directly kill another for some other worthy cause. We may not kill a child in the womb for the sake of another’s lifestyle or convenience.  We may not directly kill another human person in the hope of deterring the activities of drug smugglers, even though their actions may have contributed to the death of innumerable others. We may not sacrifice the dignity of some, hoping to deter others from awkwardly claiming asylum.

It is one thing to proclaim the inviolable human dignity of the person, of every human person. It is another thing to act accordingly, to do something about it. As I look at myself, I ask myself, despite all I say, do I really believe it? Perhaps the answer is not Yes or No. It may be more a question of how much. Where do I start, or improve? I think I need to keep convincing myself of my own dignity – totally unmerited, but real. I am personally loved by God, as I am. If I cannot believe that, really, I will not believe the dignity of others. Which may be why the world is such a distressing mess, two thousand years after Jesus came among us.