Seventh Sunday Of Easter Year B
May 2006
I sometimes watch the snooker on TV. Recently at the world championship at the Crucible one of the commentators (himself a retired world class snooker player) remarked that there were thousands of snooker players all over the British Isles who could score a 100 break any night of the week, in practise or when playing with friends. But 99% of these excellent players never make it to the Crucible or to any other major championship because being able to play like that in a major championship, before a large audience and the TV cameras was a different ball game altogether.
In everyday life we pick our wife or husband very carefully. We train our children to live in harmony with us insofar as possible. We make friends, and associate only, with those we like. We carefully choose the school for our children that upholds our values and our philosophy of life. We only join those clubs and associations whose members we find it pleasant to be with, and to work with. In short we try insofar as possible to surround ourselves with a group of people (neighbours) we find it easy to get on with and easy to love. If asked 'Do I love my neighbour' I can truthfully answer yes. This bolsters my pride and strengthens my conviction that I am a good Christian. I conveniently forget that my neighbours (or those I allow to be my neighbours) are carefully chosen.
Then I come to church on Sunday and find myself among a whole bunch of different sorts of people. Some I know and avoid, some are numbered among my carefully chosen neighbours, and many I don't know. I can find myself sitting beside someone I actively dislike and would never associate with in everyday life. I have to endure the indiscipline of other people's offspring, which of course I would never have allowed in my own children.
And I am told that all these are my neighbours!!!
My Sunday obligation fulfilled, I may:
- Leave the church as quickly as possible and on my way home I fill my wife's/ husband's ear with my complaints, and how things would be done if I had any say. Or ...
- Lo and behold, it might just occur to me that the answer to the question 'do I love my neighbour?' is no.
If this happens it is very bad for my pride. I can find myself (like all those very good snooker players) involved in a completely different ball game and way out of my depth. I may find myself crying out 'God be merciful to me a sinner.'
This is the first step in true humility and does wonders for my relationship with God.