Matthew 16
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
In our Gospel reading, Matthew continues to disturb and disrupt the comfortable and the status quo. Not just the materially comfortable, but those who see themselves as spiritually comfortable. Matthew is pointing the finger at those in the synagogue. Jesus is pointing his finger at Matthew and the disciples. And at us.
Do not become comfortable and self-assured you have it all together, that the stories you have heard and the way you read or listen to the prophets will keep you safe. In modern terms, be careful how you worship your tradition and your interpretation of scripture, especially how you pride yourself on so doing. Your salvation is not solely yours, nor can you secure it in any way.
In fact, you must deny it, give it up in favour of saying yes to another, someone un-like you who has been excluded, marginalised, less than; those who were and are embodied in the crucified and resurrected body of Christ. Those who society says you are to fear. You do not know why you fear them. You just do. It’s there and cannot be explained. They and their powerlessness are to be feared. They have always been feared, as those who know the truth of your privilege is to be feared.
Living in the
Age of the individual
Number one is the one and
Only centre of reason,
Being, doing;
the fulcrum on which all
life swivels, turns,
fluctuates.
The individual lives life
Within 8 centimetres
Of their nose,
All else is too far away to
See, feel, hear,
Touch, Disturb
The fortress
Of privilege,
Built without question,
By the one Who occupies.
The individual is smugly
self-made, announcing to
all who care to listen
this entitlement is his/her creation
the sole outcome of hard work
And determination.
No-thing existed before
during, after. It belongs
to ego who will not let
It go to anyone else
Without a song and dance
And a viciousness worthy of god.
Privilege, the possession of the
Individual cannot be
Shared; only ceded,
given up, foregone
renounced, denied.
Without it there is no individual.
Just the space where one was.
Privilege, the property of one
And one only
hoarding, boarding up, burying
What they have in a violence
Of self, haunted by the ghost of others.
Privilege the father, fear spouse,
Violence their offspring.
(Pause)
Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk, writer, and mystic in a Letter to Dorothy Day on 20th December 1961 wrote:
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbours worthy if anything can.”[1]
Privilege, not the
Raison d’etre of the person
For he/she recognises their
Place in society as one of many,
In need of each other,
And the other beyond Knowing.
A person
Exists in relationship,
Connected,
Indigenous of the universe,
Sentient kin of the un- like.
Belonging to self and other.
Recognising
There is no “I” in world,
Only an “o”, me displaced
By others in kaleidoscopic
Immensity, beyond imagination,
control, dictate, manipulation.
A person
Denies the propensity to exert
Self, ego, the desire to
Use and discard, fix and repair,
Convert and disappear the unseen,
In homage to the myth of separation
Religion, class, caste, and colour.
No laws to be fulfilled,
Ideologies to be believed.
No creeds to be agreed to.
For in denying self the
Universe is laid open and
Life, others, and creation
cease to be out there.
Border security is no longer required.
All is one, within.
A person who ceases to be an individual,
denies self,
Laying open the empty space,
An unbounded invitation
To all who exist to unearth
Refuge, hope, welcome, safety
Within, unsullied, unstained
except by the hesed-like
Love of the Alpha and Omega,
The Always Was and the Always Will Be
Of the every’when our ancestors sang into being
For us to inhabit yesterday, today, and forever..
The Golden Calf remains,
Blatantly perched on its pedestal,
in a world preferencing
individual sovereignty,
A world where privilege, so the myth goes,
Is earnt, not given or received
and celebrated as being
Available to all, yet is, beneath the lie,
The blighted issue of position, power
And genealogy. The universal right
Of conquerors who stole, and exterminated
Those who were unworthy of such a gift,
Then, now, and forever. Amen.
It is the right of the chosen
Whose sole claim to it is to be
born of the right race, culture, family, and inheritance.
Privilege, the only word that matters.
To relinquish it, shame,
Denying self,
Ungracious and ungrateful,
A slight on those who
Made self, the individual self,
The goal of all people and
Standard by which they
Are judged as admire-able or superfluous,
The goal of every person worth their salt.
Saying yes to another
Recognising their created worth,
The image of the one or ones
Who created, is without shame.
A yes worthy of the one who spoke
via the only thing he had on, his body,
accomplishing Makarrata
for those without privilege .
A Yes echoing across centuries,
No, millennia,
of spirits and ancestors,
old people and new,
saying yes to those
denied recognition, voice,
on their country.
(Pause)
Thomas Merton, in the same letter quoted above wrote:
Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action. To shut out the person and to refuse to consider (them) him as a person, as an-other self, we resort to the impersonal “law” and to abstract “nature.” That is to say we block off the reality of the other, we cut the intercommunication of our nature and (their) his nature, and we consider only our own nature with its rights, its claims, it demands. And we justify the evil we do to our brother “and sister” because (they are) he is no longer a brother “or sister”, (they are) he is merely an adversary, an accused. To restore communication, to see our oneness of nature with (them) him, and to respect (their) his personal rights and (their) his integrity, (their) his worthiness of love, we have to see ourselves as similarly accused along with (them) him … and needing, with (them) him, the ineffable gift of grace and mercy to be saved. Then, instead of pushing (them) him down, trying to climb out by using (their) his head as a stepping-stone for ourselves, we help ourselves to rise by helping (them) him to rise. For when we extend our hand to the enemy who is sinking in the abyss, God reaches out to both of us, for it is He first of all who extends our hand to the enemy. It is He who “saves himself” in the enemy, who makes use of us to recover the lost groat which is His image in our enemy.
In conclusion:
Jesus names us
Followers and friends,
Persons,
Deniers of ego and individuality,
Needs and desires.
In a world of no,
We are yes people,
A gift from his mother
He cherished and became,
A gift he shared
For moments just like the one
We are in, a moment where we
Are called to stand with the
dispossessed and desolated,
People and planet.
Now is our time to repair
By denying privilege and
Saying yes.
[1] Letter to Dorothy Day, quoted in Catholic Voices in a World on Fire (2005) by Stephen Hand, p. 180.