One Flock
Dear sisters & brothers in Christ,
I pray that you are blessed. I am certainly feeling blessed with all the love and prayers, not to mention that the kidney stone has left the body! I want to publicly thank Spectrum’s nurses, doctors and staff for being so good and caring. God’s blessings on their continued care of the sick. I want to also welcome to our staff and parish community, Samantha Jewett, who will be our new receptionist/secretary.
I want to return to something that was in last Sunday’s Gospel were Jesus refers to His “other” flocks, and that there will ultimately be only “One Flock and One Shepherd.” We have to remember that The Apostles were all Jewish, Jesus was Jewish, and his role as “Messiah” was for the Jewish People, the Chosen People. There are even some passages in the Gospels where Jesus says He has come only for the Jewish people, like his encounter with the Canaanite woman, whom at one point He calls her a dog (although He does still heal her daughter). On the other hand, there are many more verses where Jesus’ ministry takes Him beyond the Jewish people. His encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well and then staying to preach for three days more, is a clear example, especially when He tells her, “The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem.”
“The other flocks” of which Jesus speaks are of course the other people & nations of the world. We so often become so parochial in our thinking, whether it is parish vs. parish, Catholics vs. Protestant, East side of GR vs the West side, Michigan vs. Indiana, St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Chicago Cubs, the U.S. vs. China, and on and on. We divide ourselves into all kinds of groups, clubs and organizations, which is fine until the barriers we erect become divisive and permanent. When they truly divide us and we no longer see the other as our brothers & sisters, when we can no longer see the person on the other side of that (wo)man made barrier as our neighbor.
The Church recognizes that nations have the right to protect their borders, but it also teaches about the rights of immigrants. People have the right to safety and the basic necessities of life. I am constantly amazed when anyone in this country starts talking anti-immigration. I would say, “except native-Americans,” but in truth even they came from somewhere else if you go back far enough. The point is that we are a nation of immigrants, many of whom came when there were no quotas. Even today, it is far easier for a European to immigrate and no one says a word, but if they are Black, Brown or Asian, well... The system is broken. Most people who try to file papers have to wait over a decade for results, all the time they are trying to survive poverty, war, and other life-threatening situations.
Besides being a nation of immigrants, we are also an extremely blessed nation. Look at any graph or poll, we consume more of the earths resources than any other nation, with the possible exception of rice. While 1 in 7 children in this country live in poverty, most of us grew up in households that had three meals a day and food in the pantry and fridge. Many immigrants have culture shock the first time they walk into a U.S. grocery store and see shelves packed with food. We sometimes fail to recognize what a luxury it is to simply have the option to buy the many things in our stores and catalogs. If you were living in poverty or in the midst of constant warfare and/or drug trafficking, or a drought that has lasted years, wouldn’t you want to escape? Wouldn’t you want a better life for you and your children?
When we get caught up in the politics, we can quickly forget that we are talking about the life and death situations of children of God, our brothers & sisters, the “neighbor” God commands us to love, as we love ourselves. These are also The Flocks of Jesus, The Good Shepherd, who tells us that there is to be only “ONE Flock & One Shepherd.”
In the Redeemer, Fr. Rick