Archbishop of Sydney

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Jer 20:10-13; Rom 5:12-15; Mt 10:26-33

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
22/6/2008

As something of a break from talking on the Sunday gospel, I thought I would use this sermon to speak about the passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, our second reading.

As a starting point I will bounce off from the last section of today’s gospel, which, I must confess, gives me, some personal consolation. In these few lines we hear Our Lord promise that if we declare ourselves for him in front of others, He will declare his support for us before God our father. He does not require that we do this wisely or cleverly; he does not require us to do it successfully, so that others are convinced. His protection is assured if we have a go; if we speak up publicly for Christ before our family, or friends, or Christ’s enemies or the general public.

Incidentally this touches on the theme of World Youth Day where young people are urged to witness to Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit which they will receive. We hope many more will do so as a result of their participation in World Youth Day.

Paul is the witness to Christ above all other witnesses; a greater teacher than St. Peter, the rock man or foundation of the Church and even than St. John, the author of the fourth gospel the epistles and probably of the Book of Revelations.

Paul was a trained theologian, an extreme Shammaite Pharisee, who believed violence was justified in God’s cause. We know he was present at the stoning of Stephen the first martyr and approved of the killing, and in this brief passage we hear him talking about sin and death and the role of the law before Christ came to turn the Jewish world upside down.

Paul shared the conviction of his people that the Jews were the chosen people of the Creator God, the one true God. Only God’s love explained the unlikely choice of this small difficult collection of tribes, squeezed between Egypt and a succession of powerful kingdoms to the East: Assyria, Babylon and then Persia.

Sin had come into the world with Adam and Eve and human rebellion had led to regular strife, fed by arrogance and pride.

Even before the Law of Moses there was evil and humanly-caused suffering, because the calling of the Jewish people through Abraham was the beginning of God’s particular answer to the problem of evil and the challenge of correctly focused worship.

Israel was to be the light of the world, showing what it meant to be truly human. There, among them, true meaning was to be found.

We should remain clear on this connection today also, the connection between sin and death, between evil and lies, violence, exploitation and injustice. Pope John Paul was right to speak about the culture of death as he opposed abortion, euthanasia, and hostility to children as the birth rate dwindles through the spread of a contraceptive mentality. Truly knowing God improves society, increases peace and harmony as well as personal well being.

Sin is inherently expansionist, which is why we need to oppose evil doing and the law to Moses was part of God’s plan through Israel to combat wrong, to restrain evil people and, as we would now say, respect people’s rights.

The law came from God and does in human life what the sun does in creation. It brings light and life into the human heart. The hidden rules of the universe which bring peace of heart and harmony to society and reveal the answers to the riddle of existence are found in the Law, while the pagan nations blunder in the darkness.

Tolerance and respect for others should not distract us today, and especially today, from recognizing that when people don’t follow God’s teaching, their lives become a mess; or at least the lives of their victims become a mess. Abraham and then Moses with his law were called to undo the sin of Adam. We are even better equipped to battle against sin because we have Christ and his teaching, which completely outweighs the sin of Adam; Christ’s redemptive love conquers the hatred and violence; his amazing grace saves us even at our wretched worst.

Like the Law, Christ’s coming is a free gift from God, which we have not earned and is not due to us from the nature of things.

God worked in stages through Adam, Abraham, Moses and then Our Lord, the Christ, the long awaited Jewish Messiah. It is not as though the good God made a number of attempts to help solve the human problem and improved with each attempt. In his wisdom the good God geared his interventions to the human capacity to receive and the capacity of the Jewish people to deliver the goods, to demonstrate his love.

God’s spirit was not entirely absent before Abraham and Moses, nor was the Spirit inactive in the other great civilizations and the other wilder groupings outside Judaism, any more than the Spirit is absent outside Christianity today. But in all those societies, the further they are from the truth the stronger the reign of death.

All the ancient societies were cruel and oppressive with life organized to support the ruling minority. I don’t know of any pagan society without slavery.

Christ called us to universal love, not just respect for our own people. He urged us to forgive, rather then urging an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And Our Lord showed us that salvation does not come from the power of force and violence, but in some mysterious way was achieved through his suffering and death. This transformed the status of the majority of the people, the losers and underdogs. No longer were they individuals who had lost out in this life and the next, but in some way a privileged group. Blessed are the poor; blessed are those who mourn; It is the pure in heart who will see God, not the men of violence.

The gifts from Christ’s coming still outweigh the price paid for the fall of Adam.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.