16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings of the day: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5-6; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34
Are you here? This question is the only text in a nondescript black font on several billboards I saw this past week while driving from New York City back to Rochester. I suppose the effect of this billboard art project is to call into question the expression we see often, especially on maps: “You are here.”
Are you here? This question was so simple that it became for me, while driving, even a bit disturbing. Are you here? Of course I’m here! But are you really here? Yes, I am here, enjoying the scenery and the music on the radio; hoping I get home without any mechanical problems with my car; thinking about the ton of work I have waiting for me once I arrive at home… Wow, I’m hungry!... I need to get out and stretch so I do not become too tired by this long trip! Yes, I’m here, I think, but maybe I’m “here” just enough that I can drive well and attentively. Have any of us ever experienced being “here,” but just enough in the present to be able to achieve or complete a task?
From time to time have any of us felt like the “vast crowd” following Jesus in our Gospel reading today, or like Jesus’ first Apostles in the same Gospel? Jesus recognizes the multitude as “like sheep without a shepherd.” The people following him might have been able to say, “Yes,” to the question, “Are you here,” if only imperfectly. “Yes, we are here, along with our many worries of daily life. Yes, we are here, just present enough to function well, at least by appearance. Yes, but…” Jesus the Good Shepherd invites this disoriented and tired crowd to rest; to listen and to be fed by his Good News and later also physically. Mark’s Gospel says to us today that Jesus “began to teach” the crowd “many things.”
What does Jesus teach them? How does Jesus act as their shepherd? Here to teach is an act of shepherding. Would Jesus have taught them about living in peace? In his letter to the Ephesians; our second reading today St. Paul says that Jesus “is our peace.” What better way to teach and to be taught about peace than to be in the presence of Jesus Christ? Jesus is no military leader. He is not a political or business elite (this is not to say that to have political power or wealth is wrong in itself). But Jesus is the humble shepherd. In him peace is not a feeling or something we promote when we feel like it, or when it suits our political interests; our ideology. In this way Jesus “is our peace” in person and so teaches us peace.
Did Jesus teach the crowd about justice? The prophet Jeremiah in our first reading describes the “righteous” and Good Shepherd, chosen by God from the line of King David, as first and foremost a just shepherd. The name God, through Jeremiah, gives to this shepherd; to the Messiah, is “the LORD our justice.” And so justice is the most important characteristic of the shepherd to be chosen by God to care for God’s people.
And what kind of justice does God, speaking though Jeremiah, want of his shepherds? A “shepherding” justice is justice by which we care especially for those most in need: Immigrants and refugees; those who are poor; the unemployed; the sick; those who long for forgiveness and mercy; those who experience divided households and families. The greatest injustice committed by the false “shepherds” Jeremiah reprimands is this: Not to care for those most in need of God’s flock. The greatest injustice is not to care for these most vulnerable out of compassion for them; until we are able to identify with them both in their joy and suffering; until, as our Pope Francis has said many times, we have on ourselves “the smell of the sheep.” This is justice. This is the only way to respond rightly to the question that now is much more than a clever saying on a highway billboard; that is a fundamental question of justice: “Are you here”? Are we here with the most in need; those who cry out most to God and to us for relief from their suffering; for an end to all forms of violence; for our kind presence, an image of the presence of Christ the Good Shepherd, working through us?
It would not have been a surprise, then, had Jesus taught the crowd following him about justice. Jesus “began to teach them many things.” Is it not probable that Jesus taught them about the kind of justice God wants of us? Justice, like peace, is the identifying mark of the Good Shepherd; of all of us to the extent we are shepherds; leaders. We are at the same time “sheep” of God’s flock and shepherds called to care for and to love one another. God calls us to be the authentic image of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, in our homes; in our places of work and study; in our country; in our world.
But all this talk about the importance of being examples of justice and peace; about being the authentic image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, could give us the dangerous idea that to be a leader; a shepherd is based on constant activity. Or worse, it could give us the idea that we can work effectively for peace, for justice, or for whatever other value of the Kingdom of God almost without a regular commitment to prayer (sometimes silent prayer; alone; us-with-God). But without God, to be the kind of shepherd; the kind of leader God calls us to be is impossible.
Does this not seem self-evident to us? But this is precisely the dangerous thinking that Jesus tries to correct in his own Apostles. In our Gospel reading today the Apostles return from a successful mission. With great enthusiasm they report to Jesus “all they had done and taught.” And Jesus invites them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” These words of Jesus reveal to us another identifying mark of the Good Shepherd: To know and to anticipate the needs of those for whose well-being we are responsible.
In this same Gospel today, Jesus recognizes the need of the crowd following him; a people “like sheep without a shepherd.” And even though his Apostles, amid all the success of their activity; their mission; their teaching do not recognize their own need for rest; for retreat; for prayer; to be alone with God, Jesus recognizes their needs for them: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”
Like Jesus’ Apostles, we as Christians will need at times to be more active in building the Kingdom of God in our world. We will be more active in our leadership of this Church of Jesus Christ; more active in promoting justice and peace. But at other times we will need to “rest a while”; to pray; to enter into intimate conversation (many times without words) with our God.
Jesus invites us, always with his help, to find this balance. I believe this is true not only for priests like me, or for women and men religious, or laypeople in active ministry. I believe this is true for all of us. On the one hand, activism almost without prayer will make us at best into good social workers (not that anything is wrong with social work of itself as a profession). At worst, this lifestyle will endanger our faith; our relationship with God. On the other hand, solitude without community; without activity; without an element of social justice is equally dangerous to our faith.
But if we find a balance we can be leaders and, yes, shepherds in the image of Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, in our Church and in our world. We can answer the question, “Are you here”? not with “yes, but”… but with a confident “yes”!
Yes, we act for peace; for social justice, supreme values of the Reign of God! At the same time, yes, we are so alive in our prayer, the way in which we recognize intimately the voice of Jesus, our Good Shepherd; in which we can rejoice in times of solitude in deserted places with our God! Firmly and with a meaning more profound than on any highway billboard, we can answer: “Yes, we are here”!
