20200731 OVERCOMING OUR PREJUDICES
31 July, 2020, Friday, 17th Week, Ordinary Time
Readings at Mass
Liturgical Colour: White.
These are the readings for the feria
First reading
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Jeremiah 26:1-9 ©
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Jeremiah preaches in the Temple of the Lord and is threatened with death
At the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word was addressed to Jeremiah by the Lord, ‘The Lord says this: Stand in the court of the Temple of the Lord. To all the people of the towns of Judah who come to worship in the Temple of the Lord you must speak all the words I have commanded you to tell them; do not omit one syllable. Perhaps they will listen and each turn from his evil way: if so, I shall relent and not bring the disaster on them which I intended for their misdeeds. Say to them, “The Lord says this: If you will not listen to me by following my Law which I put before you, by paying attention to the words of my servants the prophets whom I send so persistently to you, without your ever listening to them, I will treat this Temple as I treated Shiloh, and make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.”’
The priests and prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah say these words in the Temple of the Lord. When Jeremiah had finished saying everything that the Lord had ordered him to say to all the people, the priests and prophets seized hold of him and said, ‘You shall die! Why have you made this prophecy in the name of the Lord, “This Temple will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, and uninhabited”?’ And the people were all crowding round Jeremiah in the Temple of the Lord.
Responsorial Psalm
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Psalm 68(69):5,8-10,14 ©
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In your great love, answer me, O God.
More numerous than the hairs on my head
are those who hate me without cause.
Those who attack me with lies
are too much for my strength.
How can I restore
what I have never stolen?
In your great love, answer me, O God.
It is for you that I suffer taunts,
that shame covers my face,
that I have become a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother’s sons.
I burn with zeal for your house
and taunts against you fall on me.
In your great love, answer me, O God.
This is my prayer to you,
my prayer for your favour.
In your great love, answer me, O God,
with your help that never fails.
In your great love, answer me, O God.
Gospel Acclamation
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cf.1Th2:13
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Accept God’s message for what it really is:
God’s message, and not some human thinking.
Alleluia!
Or:
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1P1:25
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Alleluia, alleluia!
The word of the Lord remains for ever:
What is this word?
It is the Good News that has been brought to you.
Alleluia!
Gospel
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Matthew 13:54-58 ©
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A prophet is only despised in his own country
Coming to his home town, Jesus taught the people in their synagogue in such a way that they were astonished and said, ‘Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son, surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude? His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So where did the man get it all?’ And they would not accept him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country and in his own house’, and he did not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith.
OVERCOMING OUR PREJUDICES
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [JER 26:1-9; MT 13:54-58 ]
The personality and happiness of a person are more dependent on what he experiences in life, the interpretation of these experiences and the memories that hold them than his character. Understandably, most of us are prejudiced in our views of life and events. To be prejudiced means that we pre-judge a situation or something based on our inherited ideas and views formed by our upbringing and most of all our past experiences. These memories are deeply embedded more in our unconscious than our conscious. Future events are interpreted from the memories of our past.
Indeed, prejudices are formed because of experiences and memories of some past events in our life. Memories of positive experiences will help us to interpret some events of this nature positively. Conversely, memories of negative experiences will condition us to interpret similar events negatively. So what we were taught when we were young, what we learnt, how we were raised, the values that we were brought up with, all these determine how we look at new experiences and events. So for most of us, our minds are already fixed or made up.
This was the case of the prophets and priests during the time of Jeremiah and the townsfolk of our Lord. Their minds were already made up. As far as they were concerned, their message did not fit their fixated views. Indeed, after delivering the prophecy, “the priests and prophets seized hold of him and said, ‘You shall die! Why have you made this prophecy in the name of the Lord, ‘This Temple will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, and uninhabited’?” In their minds, it was unthinkable that the Temple in Jerusalem would suffer the same fate as what happened in Shiloh when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and destroyed the sanctuary. So, too, the townsfolk of our Lord said, “Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son, surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude? His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So where did the man get it all?” In their view, how could Jesus whom they knew so well speak so eloquently and teach with wisdom?
Hence, we can understand why both our Lord and the prophet Jeremiah were rejected, not only by the people at large but mostly by their peers. His own family rejected Jeremiah like Jesus’ family. God said, “For even your kinsfolk and your own family, even they have dealt treacherously with you; they are in full cry after you; do not believe them, though they speak friendly words to you.” (Jer 12:6) St John wrote poignantly, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (Jn 1:10f) In today’s gospel, Matthew noted, “And they would not accept him.”
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is only despised in his own country and in his own house.” This is very true in daily life. The most difficult people to win over are our own kind, our peers and our family. Organizations will pay lots of money to invite a speaker from abroad even when they have better speakers at home. However, because they are not “international speakers”, what they say are not fairly valued. Then again, it is very daunting and intimidating for a fellow doctor or a lawyer to speak to his colleagues, or religious leader to fellow leaders. Everyone thinks that he knows the answer and he knows more than what the other person has to say. Moreover, if they do listen at all, they are listening not with the disposition to understand or to learn. Like the scribes and Pharisees, they are waiting to find fault so that they can put them down.
However, even if our past conditions us, it does not mean that we are condemned to our past and that we cannot break out of our past conditioning. We do not have to be fossilized in our history but we can recreate history and a new future. It all depends on whether we are humble enough to learn from others and new experiences in life. If we are humble and conscious of our limitations in life and especially our conditioning from our past and upbringing, we will be ready to hear the experiences and viewpoints of others without prejudging. Only when there is sincere readiness to enter into the worldview of someone else, looking at life and situations through their lenses, can our perception of the situation expand and grow. This was what the Lord said at the end of the parables, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (Mt 13:52) Unfortunately, the townsfolks of our Lord could not accept the new. Their minds were stuck in the past about what they knew of Jesus.
The greatest obstacle to the removal of prejudices is our ego and pride. We feel threatened most of all by our peers. This is partly because when we were young, our parents would always compare us with our siblings and peers. We were always told that they were better than us and that we were not good enough. This kind of upbringing has bred much insecurity in us, so much so that we are always seeking for affirmation. We feel that we must not lose out to our peers. We must be number one. When someone seems to sing, speak, teach or preach better than us, our defence mechanisms will find ways to put them down. We need to exalt ourselves and feel that we are better than them. This explains why it is easier to accept outsiders because they do not belong to the same class. So there is lesser need to compete since we are not on the same turf. Foreigners come and go but our peers remain with us to compete with us.
The second obstacle to listening is our selfish interests. The priests and the prophets were incensed at the suggestion that God would allow the Temple to be destroyed like the sanctuary at Shiloh. For the priests and the prophets, their power, their status and their rice bowl were dependent on the Temple. This was where they got the power to control the people and the rulers. Without the Temple, they would lose their security, their benefits and power. Ironically, whilst the religious authorities rejected the message, the princes and the people took heed of the message. “The officials and all the people said to the priests and the prophets, ‘This man does not deserve the sentence of death, for he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.'” (Jer 26:16)
Today, there is a warning as well for allowing our prejudice to take over our judgment. The evangelist noted, “He did not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” The prophets and priests in rejecting Jeremiah eventually suffered the fate that they dreaded. The Babylonians destroyed the temple. They were stripped of everything. So too the townsfolk of our Lord, they were deprived of seeing the miracles at work in their little town simply because they could not believe that a prophet could come from Nazareth, an insignificant village. (cf Jn 7:41) When we lack faith in a person who has something good to offer us, to enrich our lives and help us to grow, we deprive ourselves of that grace given to us. Indeed, this is true not just on the individual level but also in society and internationally. When races are prejudiced against each other; when nations label other nations to be rogue, dictatorial, untrustworthy, they lose what these other nations can offer; and when religions close themselves to other religious traditions, they lose the opportunity to deepen their faith. So when we react to a person, an organization or a community, we must search deeply into our motives to see whether it is from pride. It could be due to perceived threats to our vested interests. By not taking the steps to remove our prejudices, we will be the ones who will be the loser.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved. The contents of this page may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission from the Archbishop’s Office. This includes extracts, quotations, and summaries.
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