10th Sunday 2024
Genesis 3:9-15; 2 Cor 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35
I don’t know whether you have noticed, but the only creature to emerge with any credit from today’s Genesis story is the serpent, since he is the only one not to attempt to evade responsibility. The man says “It wasn’t my fault: it was the woman’s—the woman YOU put with me (so it’s her fault, and YOURS)”. The woman says “It wasn’t my fault: it was the serpent’s”. And the serpent says “I haven’t got a leg to stand on”.
Does all that sound vaguely familiar? Is it characteristically human to try to shift the blame, to evade responsibility? “I didn’t wreck the economy. It was the Deep State.” “I didn’t invade Ukraine. I have just gone to rescue my compatriots from Nazis.” “I m not suppressing freedom in Hong Kong. I am simply stopping people from destroying unity and the rule of law.”
What about you and me? Can any of us look into ourselves, and claim honestly that we have never attempted to excuse ourselves by shuffling off the blame onto someone else? It is a fault so deeply rooted in human nature that I wonder whether it, rather than humankind’s initial disobedience, is the real original sin. If Adam and Eve, representatives of the human race, had been honest, had admitted their guilt, would their original transgression have been blotted out, as our transgressions are blotted out by a sincere and honest confession? A metaphorical window had been opened for both the man and the woman to confess and to repent. They slammed it shut by their refusal to own up, and this has been the pattern of human behaviour ever since.
As a matter of interest, what was their fault in the first place? “Disobeying God’s command” we might say; “going against His will”. Certainly that is the root of all sin, but do we have to be a little more nuanced, to examine things rather more deeply? Ronald Rolheiser, the Canadian spiritual writer, describes it in terms of taking something which should have been received only when offered. In that sense, it was theft, but also the basis of rape, a word whose root is rapio the Latin for “I seize”. We have no right to seize anything, especially the sexual integrity which is crucial to a person’s identity.
To identify original sin simply with disobedience is to head down a dangerous road. I have been puzzled at times, in the confessional, to hear an elderly lady confess to being disobedient. Perhaps I should have asked them what they meant, but I have never had the nerve. I suspect that they were confessing to not doing what their husbands told them, to which I should have asked “Why should you?” This attitude is probably rooted in the old promise now, thank God, removed from the marriage service, “to love, honour, and OBEY”, a promise which, I suspect, has given rise to a huge amount of domestic abuse in its time.
Obedience is a tricky concept. Members of religious orders take a vow of obedience; secular priests and deacons promise obedience and respect to our bishop. What does this mean? The word obedience comes from the Latin obaudire, of which the audire part means “to hear”. In other words, obedience entails hearing what the other person says and responding appropriately. Despite what many superiors, I imagine, and many bishops, definitely, have tended to claim, it does not entitle them to tell people to do anything and everything, and to expect them to do it. Blind obedience may be necessary on a battlefield, where everyone’s life may depend on an instinctive response—though even there soldiers have been punished for obeying unjust orders—but it has no place in Holy Church, where all parties must act in accordance with conscience, which must have its basis in the will of God which never condones or demands unjust behaviour.
Another thought: is it reasonable, indeed necessary, to assume that God would have, at some point, freely given human beings the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Without it, human beings would have been trapped in an eternal childhood, innocent, but essentially without free will. Our Lord tells His disciples that they must have the simplicity, the openness, the enthusiasm, the spirit of wonder which children have, but He also warns them to be as shrewd as serpents. At some point, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil had to be eaten: the fault lay in seizing it, instead of waiting to receive it as a gift.
Taking, receiving, thinking, acting, speaking, ordering, obeying, must all be in accordance with the will of God. Hence, Jesus says that anyone who does that will is His brother, sister, and mother. Why His mother? Because she is the only one to have fulfilled that will perfectly, as expressed in her response to the angel: “Let it be done to me according to your word”. Thus, she who was “fully graced” renewed her total commitment to God’s will. If we were able to live a similar commitment, we should be as close to Jesus as is Our Lady.
People also wonder who the brothers and sisters of Jesus may have been, causing some to question Mary’s perpetual virginity, others to make Joseph a widower with children at the time of his betrothal to Our Lady. This displays the limitations of the western world’s concept of family. A Ugandan priest who lodged with me told me that he would be greeted by strangers in a village with the words “I am your brother/sister. My father is such and such, my mother is such and such who is related to your father: I am your brother.”
Notice too that, at the foot of the cross, there stood, according to St. John, “His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas”. We surely cannot assume that Joachim and Anne, if those were indeed the names of Our Lady’s parents, were so lacking in imagination that they had two daughters and called them both Mary. Mrs. Clopas must be, at best, Our Lady’ cousin. No one needs to get their nether garments in a twist over the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus.
