26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
A long time ago I heard a priest give a homily to group of
children on this passage. I can’t
remember the priest’s name, but I know that his words have always stayed with
me, and so I share his homily – in paraphrased form. It went something like
this:
“Before the dawn of time God was in heaven preparing for the
creation of the world. God had many
angels assisting in very many ways, including one angel named Harold. Now, Harold was a kindly angel, but he was a
bit of a klutz, so he was usually given menial tasks so that he couldn’t do
much harm. That is why Harold was quite
surprised when God called him over and gave him a very important and profound
task. You see, God pointed to a huge,
beautiful, highly polished mirror and said, ‘Harold, this is the Mirror of
Truth. I need you to take this down to
earth so that all who look at it will see and know the beautiful and glorious
Truth. But it is very fragile, so you
will need to be especially careful and cautious in bringing it down to
earth.’ Harold was so proud to have been
given such an important job, so he very, very carefully picked up the Mirror of
Truth and walked very slowly and gingerly toward the edge of the heavenly cloud
so he could descend to earth. But with
each step he became more and more excited and forgot himself, and began to walk
more quickly, then TOO quickly, and then….. he tripped and fell! And the Mirror of Truth slipped out of his
fingers, toppled over the edge of the heavenly cloud, and tumbled down to earth
where it smashed into billions of small pieces spread out over the whole
world! Poor Harold. Poor, poor Harold. He failed.
In shame and humiliation, he walked back to God with his head bowed, and
his face buried in his hands, muttering, ‘I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.’ But God embraced Harold lovingly and
mercifully and said, ‘It’s OK, Harold.
It’s OK.’ ‘How can it be OK,
Lord?’ Harold replied through tears. ‘Because of me your children on earth will
never now the Truth.’ God reassured
Harold, ‘That’s not true, Harold. You
completed the task I asked you to do.
You have delivered the Truth to my children, just like I asked. Only now, as each person travels through life
and finds a small shard of the truth, they will have to share it with others. This way, as they put their pieces together,
they will each see and learn more and more of the Truth. At the end of time, before they return to me,
they will know the whole Truth, because they worked together.’”
A simple child’s tale, but oh, so instructive. We are so tribal, aren’t we? It seems the need to belong, to be part of
the right group is so strong that we will often turn to violence against those
who aren’t “one of us.” We see it when
we place too much importance on our identity whether it be our politics, our
race, our nationality, our ethnicity, our town, our sports team – yes, and even
our faith. Even Jesus’ closest followers
couldn’t help but try to exclude and push away people who were healing others
simply because they were not “one of us.”
Are we any different? So often
we believe WE know the truth, because of how we were raised, because of what we
were taught, or what we’ve experienced.
Or because of who we are and the group that we identify with. We look only at that small bit of truth that
we hold in our hands, and ignore the truth that the other holds – even if the
truth that THEY hold leads them to bring God’s love and mercy and forgiveness
and hope and consolation – in a word, healing – to others.
Dear Lord, help each of us to see your Truth in the other.
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