A
long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Well, if you were around in the 1980s
then these words probably spark movement in your memory. They are words that scrolled up the screen of
probably the most popular science fiction movies ever created: they are from
Star Wars. Beginning each movie these
words were an invitation to the movie-goer to go on a journey: a journey to a
new place; a journey to a new world; a journey to encounter something never
encountered. A journey to visit a
destination never thought of and to be transformed through the experience.
With
the election of Jorge Cardinal Bergolio as the 265 successor of St. Peter, the
church has been invited to go on a similar journey. But rather than being invited
to a galaxy far, far away, we are being invited to a different reality. We are being invited to the periphery: the periphery of faith, the periphery of
people, the periphery of ourselves, the periphery of life. Just as Star Wars provided for us new
encounters that in many ways changed our lives, this journey has potential to
do even more. This journey has the
potential for us to be eternally
changed.
In
his address to the bishops of Latin America Pope Francis wrote: “That is why I
like saying that the position of missionary disciples is not in the centre but
at the periphery: they live poised towards the peripheries… including the
peripheries of eternity, in the encounter with Jesus Christ…The disciple is
sent to the existential peripheries.”[i]
Still
more, in his recent Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium Francis writes: “The word of God constantly shows us how God
challenges those who believe in him “to go forth”. Abraham received the call to
set out for a new land (cf. Gen 12:1-3). Moses heard God’s call: “Go, I
send you” (Ex 3:10) and led the people towards the Promised Land (cf. Ex
3:17). To Jeremiah God says: “To all whom I send you, you shall go” (Jer
1:7). In our day Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples” echoes in the
changing scenarios and ever new challenges to the Church’s mission of
evangelization, and all of us are called to take part in this new missionary
“going forth”. Each Christian and every community must discern the path that
the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from
our own comfort zone in order to reach all the “peripheries” in need of the
light of the Gospel.”[ii]
Historically,
whenever a Pope addresses the faithful in an exhortation, he usually does so in
a way to correct something that has been lacking or waning in the church. It seems, then, that Francis is pinpointing
that a vital struggle in the church this day is the church’s lack of missionary
zeal: that zeal which shakes us up, that zeal which sends us off.
And
so he is calling the church back to her fundamental reason for existence: to be
missionary. But he does not stop by just
calling the church to mission. He says
that missionary activity must be focused on the periphery of life. Going to the periphery of life, I would
maintain, means for us two things: 1.) to be shaken out of our comfort zones by a
profound experience with Christ, and 2.)
to be sent out to people with whom we normally think don’t deserve to hear the
good news.
It
is to these two ideas, being shaken out of our comfort zones, and to go out to
those on the edge that I would like to now elaborate. In order to do so, I am going to the very
teacher himself, Jesus Christ. It was
Jesus who modeled this kind of missionary Spirit: for he lived on the periphery
of life. And he is the one who has
called each of us to be with him, and has sent us out with his Spirit to carry
his work out on the peripheries.
In
order to illustrate how Jesus models this type of missionary work I would like
us to visit the calling of St. Matthew.
As we all know Matthew himself was a tax collector, who after being
called by Jesus immediately left everything to follow him, becoming an apostle
and also providing for us one of our four Gospels.
Now
we all know a little bit about tax collectors during the time of Jesus. They were hated, despised and had few
friends. They were charged by the Roman
government, the oppressors in the eyes of the Jews, to collect a certain amount
of money from taxpayers. However, that
amount was never clearly known to taxpayers, and the tax collector could easily
abuse the system by asking for more than was required, and pocketing the
rest. And so they were hated. They were on the periphery of society.
We
can imagine how much the Jewish people of Jesus’ time would have hated a person
like Matthew. Every time he came around
to collect money, the people not only had to fork it over. They knew that most likely he was ripping
them off for his own benefit. Still more he was a terrible reminder that they
were occupied by the Romans. They were
controlled. Their freedom was
limited. And that for all intents and
purposes, God had not upheld his bargain of sending them a messiah to liberate
them from oppression.
But
Matthew did not bother Jesus at all.
Being a missionary to those on the periphery Jesus saw Matthew as the
very person with whom his mission was directed.
And so the story goes:
“As
Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs
post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was
at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus
and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why does
your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the
meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call
the righteous but sinners.”
Matthew
was on the periphery of life. Yet Jesus
went unflinchingly to his side. When the
Pharisees so easily wrote Matthew off, Jesus saw him as a person in need of his
love. For us to grow as missioners, we
need to reflect more deeply on why it was so easy for Jesus to approach a
person like Matthew when so many others would have passed him by.
We
know that Jesus himself was the Son of God.
Being God’s only Son the divine will of the Father flooded every part of
his being. The will of the Father has always been that all people experience
his love: especially those in the
periphery. So for Jesus every part of
himself was directed at going to the periphery.
There was no tension in Jesus between what God’s will was and what he
did. God’s will flowed from his life,
and so he was always going toward the periphery.
Unfortunately,
the same could not be said of the Pharisees, and the same probably cannot be
said of us. Divinity had not reached the
periphery of the lives of the Pharisees.
They made judgments. They held
grudges. Their eyes were blinded by
pride and by a misunderstanding of God.
In other words, they had not allowed the Spirit of God to penetrate to
the very periphery of their own
souls. They were holdings things back
from God. They could not realize that
they were the ones in need of the physician.
And because of this, they could not be disciples to the periphery.
If
we want to be disciples of Jesus who go to the peripheries of mission, we must
allow Jesus Christ to visit the peripheries of our very beings. We must let him into every part of our lives. We must not hold back. In other words, we must let grace into the
peripheries of our souls. If there is a
deep-seated past wound in our lives, we must let the physician enter. If there is some sin in our life that haunts
us, we must let the healer in. If there
is an ugliness that keeps us up at night, we must find comfort in the
Lord.
There
is tremendous freedom in recognizing that we are the ones in need of
physicians. We are the sinners. We are the tax collectors. We are the ones that without God’s forgiveness
we would have no hope. This is what it
means to have a profound encounter with Christ.
This is what it means to be shaken from our center. This is where we will be moved from our
comfort zones and be able to then carry the message of Christ to the
peripheries. This is why it was so easy
for Matthew to follow Christ: he knew he needed a physician. He knew he was on the periphery in need of
God’s grace.
Once
God’s Spirit begins to flow to the peripheries of our own life, we begin to see
how necessary it was for Jesus to visit people like Matthew. We begin to see how necessary it is for us to
go to the peripheries, too. If God was
willing to forgive, save and sanctify us, then all people, whether we like them
or not, deserve to know Christ, too. So
we begin to look for the people on our own peripheries:
Do
we hold biases against certain groups of people? Are we racist or sexist in any way? Are there certain people in our lives that we
simply can’t seem to forgive or that make our blood boil? Is there a certain political party that we
just simply hate? Are there certain sins
that when a person has committed them we write them off as being outside of
God’s love, and with whom we find ourselves not wanting to associate?
All
of these questions are dangerous questions. Because if we can answer any of
these questions, and I know we can, myself included, then these are the people
on the periphery for us. These are the
people we are called to love, to show mercy to, and to invite to follow Jesus
in a profound way. It takes every effort
in our being to accomplish this task.
But that is why to serve on the periphery we must let God transform the
peripheries of our lives.
We
all want the Catholic Church to grow. We
all want our missions to expand and develop.
The desire we have is the desire of our Pope, too. The only way to see this happen though is if
we take up the radical call of Christ to be people of the periphery. We are being invited to a new world, on a
journey where we will not necessarily know the outcome. But let us go to the peripheries
together. And may God bring to
fulfillment this good work he has already begun in us!
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