TRUE PEACE DEMANDS JUSTICE

XXX SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: Ex 22:20-26

This past Friday, we celebrated 50 years of the independence of Zambia, in which people have enjoyed peace. As we rejoice in the independence of Zambia, we are given in the first reading of this Sunday’s liturgy some basic rules, which must guide the nations, which want to live in peace.

The book of Exodus tells the story of liberation and of the journey to freedom of the people of Israel. While telling the story of the struggle for freedom, the book sets out some basic rules, which must be accepted like a charter or a constitution, making sure that all policies and laws remain faithful to it. 

This Sunday’s passage - Exodus 22:20-26 - deals with three basic issues:

1. the status of the foreigner or minorities
2. the care due to the orphan and the widow
3. the lending or borrowing of money.

The rights of minorities

According to Exodus, the foreigner must be treated like the citizens of the country. The Israelites are reminded that once they live in foreign land, being oppressed and enslaved. Remembering that suffering, they must treat all residents in the country as free people. The rights of minorities must be respected, and vulnerable groups must be protected. 

Nowadays, in many countries, we can see minorities being harassed and oppressed. These days, in Syria and Iraq, Christians, Curds and other minorities have to flee for their lives, being reduced to refugees in their own country, without a home where to rest and without food to give them strength and keep them alive. The foreigner who lives in our midst, is always a challenge to our exclusivism and fundamentalism. He forces us to see alternatives to our ways of thinking and living.

The orphan and the widow

In many traditional societies and in the modern ones as well, the orphans and the widows live at the mercy and goodwill of relatives and neighbours. In the Zambian traditional society, the orphans would find a home among the relatives, being brought up as their own children; the widows would be provided for with a second marriage within the family of the deceased spouse. However, as the traditional society and values collapse, we can find many orphans abandoned to themselves, struggling to survive. The State must protect and defend the rights of the orphan and of the widow. 

And Exodus leaves a strong warning: Do not abuse them, because if they cry out to me, I will listen to them “and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans” (Ex 22:24).

Interest on a loan

Finally, the passage deals with lending and borrowing, forbidding interest on loans to the poor. And anything taken in pledge as a guarantee of payment must be given back, because the poor may have nothing else which he relies upon to survive.

For our capitalist society, this rule sounds like a joke. Banks get their huge profits from lending, and in the compounds of our towns, people lend money at exorbitant rates.

For a nation to live in peace, its laws must be based on justice and righteousness. This reading may help us to look back at our journey as a nation. The freedom that we enjoy must be measured by the attention we give to the weak and the vulnerable. Do we have laws that protect the orphan and the widow? Are the poor defended from the rapacity of the rich? Or do we allow them to become the trampling stones upon which the rich climb?

Let us commit ourselves to work for justice and peace.

ZAMBIA CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

It is with joy that Zambia celebrates 50 years of independence. At fifty, Zambia is still a very young nation, looking to the future much more than to the past. It is a nation being built, moving forward, full of expectations and hope. Zambia is a young nation filled with a young population, which struggles for a better future.

FIFTY YEARS OF PEACE

Celebrating her independence, Zambia is celebrating fifty years of peace. In spite of the great diversity of tribes, languages and customs, Zambians have learnt living together, in such a way that one can fill at home in any part of the country. Anywhere in Zambia, one can find a great number of mixed marriages, with the children born out of them filling at home both in their father and mother’s tribes. We find regional tensions, which are normal in any country, and we can find groups complaining of being left out in the development programmes, but the tradition of tribal cousinship allows people of different tribes to laugh at each other without taking offence, thus bringing out the strengths and weaknesses of each tribal group. Indeed, the slogan started by Kenneth Kaunda, the first President, of “One Zambia, one Nation” has proven to be true, with every citizen, no matter the tribe to which he/ she belongs, feeling proud of being Zambian.

UNDER SOCIALISM/ HUMANISM

The Zambia of today is very different from the one born 50 years ago. Following the trend of many other African countries, Zambia became a One Party State, guided by a socialist ideology. A lot of infrastructures were put in place, with free health and education. UNIP, under the guidance of Kenneth Kaunda, tried to build an egalitarian society, where the basic needs were taken care of. The rich were few, and even the children of the poor could go the university, once they proved themselves in the completion of their secondary education. However, the State was in control of everything and everybody, treating the citizens as minors, who are always in need of a tutor to guide them and tell them what to do. Dynamism, creativity and initiative were stifled by a system that thought for the people, creating an attitude of dependence, relying on the State, instead of feeling responsible for one’s own life and future.

A NEW ERA WITH THE MULTIPARTY SYSTEM

With the end of Kaunda era and the introduction of a multi-party system, Zambia has undergone a huge transformation: from socialism to capitalism, opening the gates to private initiative and creativity. There has been an explosion of dynamism and creativity, which has led people into new ventures, taking responsibility for their own livelihood. The fruits of this transformation can be seen everywhere, with new mines, new enterprises, new initiatives and a construction boom, transforming the face of towns and cities.

However, this transformation has not been an easy and painless one. Many people find it hard to survive, with a growing number living in the edges of poverty, while a new class of rich and very rich has been formed, many times trampling on the poor and exploiting them. And one gets the impression that the levels of education and of health care for the majority of the people have suffered, while the rich get the best private schools and private clinics. But nobody would like to go back to the old system, loosing the freedom of speech and the ability to pursue one’s own initiative and try one’s own luck.

GIVING THANKS TO GOD

As we celebrate 50 years of independence, we must give thanks to God for these years of peace, recognising the achievements of our Nation and giving praise to the political wisdom of the leaders that knew how to bring people together and lead them to live in harmony.

At the same time, all Zambians must commit themselves to the service of the country, caring for the welfare of the nation. Zambia needs to invest more in the infrastructures that will facilitate the creation of wealth. The rural areas need much more attention and more concerted efforts of development, so that farmers may see their work appreciated and rewarded. The State must invest much more in education at all levels in all provinces. The wealth of the country must be distributed fairly to all provinces. Not forgetting that Zambia needs to become less dependant on the multinationals and foreign capital, making it possible for Zambian companies to excel. The  future belongs to the youth, as the Bemba proverb says: Imiti ikula, e mpanga. Indeed, the growing trees are the forest. We must create opportunities for the youth and give them a voice. Our youth needs to grow, being given the opportunity to show initiative ad responsibility.

As we give thanks for 50 years of independence, let us ask for God’s blessings. May God bless Zambia, and pour his Spirit upon the Zambian people, so that they may always work for peace.

OUR GOD IS A GOD OF SURPRISES

XXIX SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: Is 45:1,4-6; Mt 22:15-21

The Scriptures are full of surprises, with the unexpected taking the central stage and leaving us bewildered. Our God is indeed a God of surprises, or as they refer to him in Bemba, Shimwelenganya, that is the One full of imagination, always designing new things. 

God’s heart is open to all

Who could imagine that Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, was part of God’s plan, having been called  by God himself who entrusted to him a mission towards his people. Indeed, God’s ways are different from our human ways. For the people of Israel, Cyrus was a foreigner, who knew nothing about Yahweh, but God chose him, as he had chosen Moses long time before, to be the liberator of his people. 

The Jewish people ran the risk of extinction, going the same way that the Kingdom of the North had gone before, being lost in the melting pot of countries, tribes, languages and cultures. That had been the policy of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, who uprooted nations and moved them to distant provinces of their empire, so that they would not revolt, but disappear, losing their identity. The Persians had a completely different attitude towards the vanquished nations, allowing them to live in their ancestral lands and keep their cultural identity. And so the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem, to rebuild the Temple and to keep their religion and their traditions.

With Isaiah, we must recognise that God is not a narrow minded chauvinist god. His heart is universal, and the lordship of his love embraces all. Nobody can have exclusive claims on God. He is the God of all, and all play a role in the fulfilment of his plans, even when they do not know him.

All political power is human and cannot claim divine rights

“Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mt 22:21). This is one of the most famous sentences of Jesus, which we hear repeated whenever people speak about the Church and the State. Jesus makes it plainly clear that we cannot give to the political ruler - be he chief, king, president or prime minister - the respect and the obedience that belong to God alone. 

In most ancient cultures, the role of the king was associated with the divine, in such a way that the ruler was surrounded  by an aura of sacredness, because he was seen as being in touch with the gods and being their representative here on earth. This conferred on the king absolute power, demanding from people total obedience, and punishing the slightest disrespect as a crime and an offence to God himself. In the past, in Bemba, people referred to the Chief as “Mwine nkuni na menshi”, meaning that he is the owner of the firewood and of the water. Everything belongs to him, even the food that someone eats and the water that he drinks. He had power of life and death over his people.

Jesus makes it clear that political rulers are not divine, since they are not gods, but human beings. They are not sacred and they cannot demand a sacred reverence. Their word is not God’s word, and their laws are not God’s laws, but simply human laws. Although many of them claim absolute power and demand absolute obedience, they become oppressors, claiming rights that they do not have. They cannot be worshiped and praised as gods, because they are mortal human beings like everybody else.

Any leader, whoever he may be, is just a human being that should put his life at the service of the people and he should never give himself the power to take away the basic rights and freedoms that are the preserve of every human being.

ALL ARE INVITED TO THE FEAST OF SALVATION

XXVIII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: Mt 22:1-14

Matthew presents a sequence of events, which leads to the three parables we have been reading in these Sundays. Jesus entered Jerusalem, went to the the Temple and expelled all those who were selling and buying in the Temple. That action puzzled many people and enraged the religious leaders. The following day, coming from Bethany, where he spent the night, Jesus went back to Jerusalem, and seeing a fig tree, which had nothing on it but leaves, he cursed it, because it had no fruits. The fruitless tree was a symbol of the fruitless people that did not produce fruits of righteousness and refused to change their ways and believe in the Good News of salvation.

When he arrived in Jerusalem and entered the Temple again, the elders and the chief priests addressed him, questioning his actions: What authority do you have to come in here and disrupt the normal running of the Temple? Who has given you such authority? Jesus did not answer about his authority, but questioned them instead about John’s baptism. Afraid of the people, who held them in poor consideration, they answer that they did not know if John’s baptism came from heaven or was of human origin (Mt 21:27).

Jesus took this opportunity to denounce and indict the leaders for their refusal to believe and for their lack of deeds of obedience and faithfulness, by telling three parables: a) the father with two sons (Mt 21:18-32), b) the wicked tenants (Mt 21:33-46), c) the guests who refused to attend the wedding of the king’s son.

All three parables present the refusal of the leaders to obey, to recognise God’s rights and to ignore and despise God’s invitation to share in his work and in his joy. This refusal went so far as killing the messengers and the son himself. While they exclude themselves from participating in the feast of salvation, others take their place, even the ones that are called at the last moment.

These parables leave it very clear that we cannot take God for granted. Our salvation depends on our actions of faithfulness to God’s call; and no one should think that his salvation is guaranteed no matter what. In fact, the parables of the wicked tenants and of the disdainful guests speak openly of judgement and punishment.

Isaiah had already presented salvation as a great feast organised and prepared by God for his people. Jesus speaks of that feast as a wedding feast, the wedding of the king’s son. The invited guests refused to take part in the feast, finding all kinds of excuses to absent themselves from the wedding. Their attitude was an attitude of defiance and revolt, considering the king’s invitation as insignificant. 

The king easily found a way out, by inviting everybody to the wedding. Nobody was excluded, but the ones that excluded themselves; and great numbers of people answered the call, in such a way that “the wedding hall was filled with guests” (Mt 22:10). Hearing this, it sounds very easy and effortless to enter God’s kingdom and seat at his table, as if God does everything for us and we have just to seat and enjoy ourselves. However, the parable leaves a warning: one guest was not properly dressed; he dared to go in without considering the decorum needed in the king’s presence, and he was punished for that, being thrown out of the feast. God’s call must be answered with the respect due to God.

At baptism, we were dressed in white and told to keep that vestment pure for the kingdom of heaven. Paul wrote that we should “put on the armour of light”, that is “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Ro 13:12,14).

WHEN WE REFUSE TO RECOGNISE GOD’S RIGHTS ON OUR LIVES…

XXVII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: Mt 21:33-43

In this Sunday’s Gospel, we hear the parable of the vineyard and of the tenants who tried to take over the vineyard and make it their own property.

The parable interprets the history of salvation, giving a brief summary of it in a few sharp strokes. A landowner decided to plant a vineyard, providing it with everything needed to get a good production. In the first reading, Isaiah tells us that God is the landowner, who showed great love for his vineyard (Is 5:1-7). This vineyard is the people of Israel, whom God chose and loved, entrusting them with the mission of being God’s people among the nations. However, it seems that God’s trust in them was misplaced, because they were unfaithful, despising God’s love and ignoring his ways and commands, in such a way that God “expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry - (Is 5:7).

Telling this parable about the vineyard, Jesus built on the words of Isaiah and pinpointed the great areas of unfaithfulness of the people, forcing the leaders to see themselves represented, denounced and condemned in the parable.

The tenants took over the vineyard and made it their own property, and they did so by not paying their rentals or giving the owner his share in the produce. Their refusal of the owner’s rights led them to become criminals and murderers, beating and killing their fellow servants sent by the owner. And the story repeated itself time and again. Finally, he sent his son to them, expecting that they would welcome and respect him. However, they had become bold and fearless enough to carry their murderous attitude up to the end, by killing the son and taking over the vineyard.

In this parable, Jesus speaks of the relationship of God with his people, thus speaking at the same time of his own mission and of his own incoming death.

Many times, we hear people proclaiming that the Father sent his Son to death, and we may get the idea that Jesus’ killers cannot be blamed, because they were carrying out God’s plan for our salvation. It is true that Jesus died for us and because of us, but the Father sent him to be respected, listened to and obeyed. The Father’s heart may have trembled with fear, sensing that they would not respect his Son and that they would be ready to commit the ultimate crime and kill him; but he sent his Son so that he might bring them to their senses, leading them to obedience and surrender. Jesus, the Son, was not killed by the Father, but by people who refused to recognise and accept him as the Son, deciding instead to take his place and his rights.

The leaders understood the parable as being directed against them, and instead of changing their attitude, they wanted to arrest Jesus.

God has shown his love for us, but time and again we have the same attitude of the tenants, refusing God’s rights on our lives. Like the tenants we want to take over and to became the owners, excluding God from our hearts, our minds and the plans we have for our lives. Jesus warns that God may transfer the vineyard to others “who will give him the produce at the harvest time” (Mt 21:41).

The stone, which was rejected - Jesus Christ - has become the cornerstone, on which life and salvation can be found and our lives can be built into the house of God.