July 16, 2015
Much attention has been placed on the police these days. But before them it was teachers. And before them it was clergy. And before them it was business people. And before them it was politicians. Police have been tarred with the broad brush of Ferguson and Freddie Gray – the chief of Police had to resign in Baltimore. But hasn’t it been very common for people to lose confidence in many public servants precisely because they have placed something before their responsibility to serve others? Power. Tenure. Abuse. Money. More power.
This is God’s complaint in Ezekiel’s first reading. God has placed shepherds over Israel but they have used the sheep for their own gain. They have used authority for their own sakes. They have not cared for the people. Therefore God will remove them and place in shepherds who will do what is right, what is right for the people.
We could look at this situation in one way: folks think of themselves too much. They are weak, greedy, power-hungry. But we can also look at it from the other side: these are all people who could not keep their eyes on the ones they were supposed to take care of. They lost sight of the sheep – of the hurting, the vulnerable, the weak.
Jesus keeps his eye exactly on the sheep. The crowds would not let him be. There was not even time for Jesus and his followers to get a bite to eat. Although he wants to get himself and his apostles a little break – time to recoup, to recover their strength – the people just keep coming. The last line of the Gospel is so powerful because it perfectly shows the priorities of Jesus: his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
Our lives so often get into routines. We get used to our roles, and we learn how to hide behind those roles. We know the system, we know the language, we have the title. But then comes the danger—that we will not look beyond and through that role at the people right in front of our eyes. We can so easily become like bureaucrats and others, in their suffering, become invisible to us.
This is so true about us as Christians: we have the motions, and the language, particularly we Catholics. But it’s so hard for us to see the hunger of people without faith all around us. We ignore the need for clearer witness in a world that sees no limits, and so pays the price because God is not at the center. “I got mine,” seems to be our attitude. Or, worse, “It doesn’t matter what people believe or think. Who cares?”
Yet God asks us precisely to attend to the deepest needs of those around us, because that’s where faith has to work in the depths of our hearts. Pope Francis emphasizes this again and again: it’s by looking at the needy that we understand what faith is about. People have told me this for years: when they started serving others, they found out how rich their own lives were – and how the people they were serving ended up enriching them even more.
There are, of course, many ways to address the spiritual needs of others, and the worst way is to be self-righteous and to nag. The best way is simply to attend to others, to listen to them, to be willing to share ourselves, and to speak to them from the richness of the faith that is inside us – how our lives make more sense because God has touched us.
I don’t think there is a greater hunger than spiritual hunger. Unlike bodily hunger, people with spiritual hunger often don’t know they are starving. With so many distractions, it’s easy not to notice the big hole in our hearts, and the emptiness of our souls. So we can think our faith is just about us, and not about how we can be of loving support to others. But that makes us just like everyone else that’s getting criticized – the police, the teachers, the clergy, the business people, the politicians.
We are not in it for ourselves; we are in it for what God allows us to bring to the lives of others.