[Propertalk] 3 Epiphany b 2018 - part 2

[Robert P Morrison]

Part the second:
 Yet Martin Luther King, Jr., knew that this always come with a cost.
He spoke quite plainly that his life would be cut short. He knew,
because those who hated him and his message of justice, and love, and
compassion, couldn’t stand to be accused, to be exposed for who they
were and what they were doing.

	 Somehow, Martin Luther King, Jr., took on the mantle laid down by
thousands before him, and accepted the role of leadership. Somehow,
Jonah, after a very rough beginning, wore that same mantle, as did
John the Baptist, and Jesus, and Philip and Nathanel, and Simon and
Andrew, and James and John, and, later on Paul. Think about how each
of these, and people in our own age, not only accept the mantle of
God, but burnish it and hand it on to others lovingly, making sure
that the mantle will never be set aside, but will be inspiring and
encouraging.

	 THIS is how God calls. Yet not only calls, but also provides a
covering, a source of connectedness with those who’ve gone before,
and listened, and acted for God. God calls and those who hear and
accept cannot leave ministry aside. They cannot remain blind and deaf.
Yet, no matter how much we may have our breath taken away by the lives
of such saints, still we ask “Why did they do it?”

	 Pope Francis seems to have the same sort of charism as his
predecessors in faith. He has the knack of speaking out, truthfully,
yet having a bit of a sting to what he says, a challenge that can and
ought to wake us up to what’s happening.

	 I’ve found myself wondering, sometimes, whether or not when Peggy
reads the Gospel passage assigned for any given day, whether we should
be shaken into a stunned silence. Usually, it’s NOT something that
should leave us feeling warm, as if we’d just been cuddled. Even the
so-called “good stories” have a challenge to them, despite the way
that we can feel exhilarated by being called into Jesus’ Present.

	 In his first trip outside Rome after he became Pope, Francis visited
the island of Lesbos, the Mediterranean island on which so many
refugees had landed, dead or alive, and then the Italian island of
Lampedusa, where camps were set up for those refugees fleeing
persecution. He’d left what some might consider one of the great
centres of religion on earth, where Peter and Paul had left the Gospel
message, where Peter and Paul had both been executed for daring to
suggest that the emperor was not God, and that power had to be shared.

	 Francis had left the opulence of the Vatican State and gazed out
over the water through which people risked their lives in the faint
hope that they might be free, and he talked of the “Globalisation of
Indifference.” Actually, he didn’t just talk, he lambasted “the
rich world for its lack of concern for their suffering and inveighing
against (this) ‘globalisation of indifference’.

	 “‘We have become used to the suffering of others. It doesn't
affect us. It doesn't interest us. It's not our business,” he said.
…

	 “The thought of their suffering had come back to him repeatedly
like ‘a thorn in the heart’, he said.”

	 The pope “celebrated mass within sight of the so-called graveyard
of wrecks, where fishing boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers
end up after they drift ashore, their engines often having broken down
at sea.

	 “He asked for ‘pardon for those who are complacent and closed
amid comforts which have deadened their hearts’ and ‘forgiveness
for those who by their decisions at the global level have created
situations that lead to these tragedies’.” 1

	 This is the sort of thing that Jonah, the first time around, wanted
to avoid – until he, like refugees on the same Sea today, saw how he
was not simply being indifferent to God’s love for the Ninevites, he
was denying them what God knew they needed. This was the sort of thing
that John the Baptist, and the disciples, and the Son of God Himself
faced – from some, a cold, bland indifference, and from others,
swords, and ropes, and spears.

	 Why DID all these people DO this? Why Francis? Couldn’t he do more
if he sat on the throne of Peter, safely tucked in his palace?

	 David Milibrand, former Foreign Secretary from Britain, picked up
and used this very phrase, “Globalisation of Indifference”, to
describe what he sees so missing from our lives. He’s written and
talked about his mother and aunt who lived in Belgium and were told to
report to the train station in Brussels. Guessing exactly what was
going to happen – the attempted extermination of an entire race –
Milibrand’s mother and aunt ran from the city and found their way to
a farm in a small village. There, the farmer hid them, and,
eventually, seventeen other Jewish families, for the duration of the
Second World wat.

	 Milibrand, when he was about ten or so, was taken by his family to
visit Belgium, and the found the farmer still alive, still living on
his farm. Milibrand said that the only thing he could think to say
was, “Why did you do it?”

	 In French, the farmer replied, “One must.” 2

	 Why did Jonah, why did John, why did Jesus, why did Philip, why did
Nathanael, why did Simon, why did Andrew, why did James, why did John,
why does Francis; why, when they were called to follow Jesus, did they
do what they did, regardless of the cost to themselves?

	 “One must.”

	 And now Jesus calls us to ministry. Will we too speak with Monsieur
Maurice, and say “We must”? 

	NOTE:

	1 “globalisation of indifference” - The Guardian [1]
www.theguardian.com [2] › World [3] › Pope Francis [4] John Hooper
[5]_ in Rome _Mon 8 Jul 2013

	2  _“Rescue: Refugees and the Political Crises of our Time”_ by
David Milband, TED Books, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, N.Y. ©
International Rescue Committee, 2017 and TED Talks Sunday 14th
January, 2018, OPB Radio
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/12/577436190/david-miliband-whose-responsibility-is-it-to-solve-the-global-refugee-crisis
[6]


Links:
------
[1]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/08/pope-globalisation-of-indifference-lampedusa
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/pope-francis
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnhooper
[6]
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/12/577436190/david-miliband-whose-responsibility-is-it-to-solve-the-global-refugee-crisis

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