Jesus makes a proclamation in this Sunday’s Gospel. “This is the time of fulfillment. The Community of God is at hand.” By doing so Jesus shifts the meaning of fulfillment. People longed for centuries of promise to be realized in a time of fulfillment. They had been promised fulfillment in the form of a lone Messiah who would use violence to liberate them from oppressors. But Jesus started proclaiming fulfillment in an encompassing whole Community of God. It is an ever broadening and diverse gathering of people. It is people who would achieve, through their own participation, the fulfillment of people living together in peace.
Helping people live together in peace is a fulfilling call. It is a call not fulfilled by being or following a revolving door of violent messiahs promising to liberate us from oppressors. We are called instead to do what Peter, Andrew, James, and John did in this Sunday’s Gospel. They turned away from other priorities to participate in co-creating a peaceful Community here on earth. Erica Chenoweth is a former member of the military and thus once believed in violent messiahs. She has had a change of mind and heart based on evidence. She has been gathering evidence that proves the effectiveness of peaceful people and peaceful communities. She relates that it is peacemakers, specifically during times of social conflict, who fulfill our human longing for peace. In her books, “Rethinking Violence” and “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Professor Chenoweth provides statistical analysis confirming that nonviolence is successful in achieving social transformation whereas violence is not. “The key factor to success is the power that mass, broad-based participation provides for a movement.” “Nonviolent campaigns tend to attract far more participants … (and they) create or exploit cracks within the regime’s pillars of support (economic elites, business elites, security forces, state media and civilian bureaucrats).” Peacemakers help these pillars of support to convert to supporting the people’s movement.
Are we sometimes like Jonah in this Sunday’s first reading, resenting our call? In response to his call, he feels more fueled by anger against enemies than by love for his brothers and sisters in Nineveh. He was not physically violent but he was certainly more invested in the destruction of his opponents than their loving conversion. Yet it’s precisely such loving intention and conversion that Chenoweth shows as fulfilling our longing for people living together in peace. Every age in which people participate in their own peaceful liberation is the time of fulfillment.
Prayer: Spirit of Conversion, may our decisions and actions be guided by a realization that this time is the time of fulfillment.
Question: How are we staying connected to or reaching out to those with whom we disagree?
January 25, 2015 Gospel Mark 1:14-20 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time