A fascinating talk exploring the strangeness of the resistance that formed against Jesus and the Good News he was proclaiming. Tom looks in some detail at Mt:2 and Lk:4 and tries to uncover the dynamic that operates when God enters the human condition ostensibly as ‘good news’ but for many he somehow becomes ‘bad news’ which causes them to harden in their opposition to him. These people, Tom suggests, have vested interests (like wealth, learning and power) that makes it impossible for them to be open to his message. Why does the coming of Jesus create an existential crisis that will determine who is open and who is closed, who grows in holiness and who stagnates in hardness of heart?
Learning – A Love of Truth
Father Tom often spoke of the gifts of wealth, learning and power – especially in the first talk in this series, “Christ: Holy Crisis”. Here Fr Tom takes three different approaches to learning: first, Jesus’ attitude to the Torah and the love of learning of the scribes and lawyers of his day. He urged them and us to go beyond the security of our mindsets – to always seek truth in humility. Then a look at education and the dangers of subjecting a love of learning to utilitarian economic use – again urging a love of truth for its own sake. And thirdly knowing the Unknowable – journeying from knowing about God to knowing God, who is beyond knowing, and in whom we come to know our true selves for the first time… And finally a postscript on the meaning of redemption.
Wealth – For Whom?
Following the first talk “Christ: Holy Crisis”, Fr Tom continues the theme of how God’s holiness, incarnated in human life in Jesus, both raises the significance of human life beyond what we can dream – and points up where evil lies, leading to crisis, to the cross. In particular the misuse of wealth, learning and power block our understanding, our openness to God’s presence. Here Fr Tom traces the significance of wealth in Jesus’ time, in the early church, in the fourth century, then in the middle ages and finally in our age. Ownership has always posed real questions and Jesus, Aquinas and Populorum Progressio continue to challenge us!
Power: Whose Kingdom?
Jesus doesn’t deny power; he redefines it in the context of the Kingdom of God. As Tom demonstrates with the Cure of the Man Born Blind the religious authorities are unable to accept the change because they are trapped in their position of power: to perceive how the created order is reshaped by the Cross and perceive what God is achieving in the power of the Risen Victim Resurrection, people need humility and imagination to come out of the structures and powers of our world. Tom’s explanation of the symbolism of the Lamb and the Dragon in Revelations shows how the Risen Jesus, not the might of the Roman Empire, holds the real power.
