23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time - Cycle C
4 September 2016
St. Benedict the Moor Parish
Milwaukee, WI
I have been asked to share some remarks in light of it being
Labor Day weekend. Naturally, there are many ways that one can develop a
reflection for this annual September observance. We could talk about the
principles of Catholic Social Teaching. We could be risky and make some witty
comments about the November election and issues like free trade deals, the
“Fight for Fifteen” and maternity leave policies. We could talk about the
decline experienced in union membership. We could speak about rights in the workplace.
Perhaps a better place to begin is Pope Francis. From the
beginning of his Pontificate, my jaw has dropped from his gestures. Days after
the conclave, he returned to his pre-conclave hotel to pay the bill himself. I
like to imagine him saying, “Oh, yes, I checked in under a different name.”
At about the same time, he called the kiosk in Argentina to
cancel his newspaper subscription. Or remember when he visited the Vatican
print shop or ate with Vatican workers in the cafeteria. I
suspect that everyone finished their vegetables that day before launching into
dessert!
What then, might Pope Francis be calling us to, given this
example? First, Pope Francis, over and over again, gives witness to seeing the
poor who are most often invisible to us.
Second, in this Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis asks us to
see our participation in the economy more clearly. So much of what he has
written in recent years is structured around the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Frankly, I hear him talking about confession far more than his recent
predecessors. His recent book, The Name of God is Mercy, recounts stories of
Pope John Paul I as a great confessor, and Pope Francis shares advice to
priests about being a confessor. On Thursday, Pope Francis’ message for the Day
of Prayer for the Care of Creation is structured around the Rite of
Reconciliation: an examination of
conscience, the confession itself, “a firm purpose of amendment,” and, perhaps
a penance in the additional corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
What might it mean for me to see more clearly? There is an old
phrase: “Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of
world you want.” How do I spend and what does it suggest about me? Since
February, I go to the Metro Market on Van Buren and Juneau. Sadly, I do not
know one employee there by name. They have been kind enough: they direct me to
the item I need, they ring up my purchases, and they place my items in my
durable bags. They keep the store clean and shelves stocked, and I have not
bothered to learn one name. Also, if I reflect upon my purchases, I eat cereal
with fruit almost every day for breakfast. Today, I had Honey Nut Cheerios with
fresh strawberries. There is a boycott on Driscoll’s right now as some workers
in Mexico claim that they are paid just $6 a day for their labors. My shirt was
made in Bangladesh. The workers who made this shirt were probably paid about
$2.20, not for this shirt, but for their day’s labor. When we go home for
lunch, the lettuce on our sandwich or in our salad was harvested by an
underpaid worker. If we stop for fast food or go to a restaurant, we know the
wages cannot care for a family. Our cell phones, chocolate, coffee, and
clothing are rife with supply chains that include human trafficking and
systemic violations of people’s human rights. Is there anything we can do? Is
the Gospel simply inspirational? Or is it programmatic?
The second reading, Paul’s letter to Philemon, suggests a
personal way forward. As Catholics, our reading of the Bible is often uneven.
Some may have read the Scriptures cover-to-cover, but, if you have never read a
book of the Bible all the way through, here is your chance. Philemon is just 25
verses, and we heard a very significant portion today. To get inside it, we
need to understand that we have heard just half of a conversation. Another
half-- what lead up to it or what follows-- is shrouded in a certain mystery,
but we can make some educated guesses.
Philemon was a wealthy man is Colossae. He gets a letter from
St. Paul, who had baptized him. Paul was writing from prison, “a prisoner for
Christ.” Getting a letter back in those days was an important thing, and such a
letter would have been read aloud, often in front of an audience. In days
before FedEx and UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, this letter was carried by
someone close to Paul, by all appearances the letter was carried by Onesimus. Who
was Onesimus? He apparently was baptized by Paul, served him during his
imprisonment, and, now, Paul is sending a person dear to his own heart to
Philemon. But there is another crucial detail about the message and the
messenger. Onesimus, a runaway slave, had been a slave to Philemon. Paul’s
message: receive Onesimus as a brother.
What is Philemon to do? He has three choices, it would seem.
First, Onesimus is a runaway slave. If Philemon receives him as a brother,
Philemon risks losing all of his other slaves. He also risks a shunning from
his social and economic peers. He has every “right” to put Philemon to death.
Second, perhaps, he could be merciful and give him a severe flogging or make
him a “house slave” rather than a “field slave.” The third, most radical choice,
is to do as Paul asks: receive him as a brother, again risking all on behalf of
the Gospel.
Given such choices and ramifications, what did he do? I would
suggest, as many others have, that he indeed did receive him as a brother.
First, that the letter exists today suggests that this is true. If he had killed or merely flogged
Onesimus, he probably would have destroyed the letter. Instead, that the letter
survives suggests that it was lovingly cared for and held in a place of
respect. Secondly, and while this is far less assured to be one and the same
person, following St. Timothy as bishop of the nearby city of Ephesus was a
bishop named Onesimus. The romantic in me likes the notion that a former slave
became a bishop in the early church.
We are embedded in networks of privilege, prejudice and power
so commonplace that often neither oppressors nor victims are aware of them.
Hence, the violence and pain that most afflicts us today is hidden: the violence that afflicts the poor, that
poisons relationships between communities and nations, that allows for a slow
decay of culture and makes us indifferent.
Though not as noticeable as a bomb or a gunshot, these realities are
just as deadly. Like Philemon, we must
have the vision to see and the courage to act.
We are called to re-imagine God’s preference for the poor. We
live in what Pope Francis calls a “throwaway culture,” that treats people as
things and is tempted to discard the weak and the vulnerable, those without
money or power or voice. This story upends that vision and makes “useful” one
who was deemed useless. It is life in solidarity, an old word, but our word.
Solidarity is not a one-time gesture, but a permanent way of being in the
world. The vision to see and the courage to act is about being in right
relationship with God, with family, with my adversary, with the low wage
worker, with care of our common home. The radical vision of seeing the other as
Christ, of receiving the other as a brother or sister, is as powerful today as
in the days of Scripture. If we really seek to live it, it will upend our
world, and we will upend the world.
Christopher Cox
Campaign Manager
Human Thread Campaign
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