Homily for the Evening Mass on the Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 6:1-7; Psalm 32; I Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12
Just over fifty years ago, the English politician Enoch Powell made a powerful speech against immigration into Britain. It was not only powerful, but also, I believe, morally suspect, since its power came from playing on people’s fears and anxieties. What will happen, he asked, to the “native-born” English if the numbers coming into this country from outside continue to increase? We (he was speaking primarily to those same “native-born”) will find ourselves unable to use our hospitals, get our children into schools, find jobs, or sell our houses. We’ll have to adjust to the strange ways of foreigners. The speech ended with his famous reference to “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”, a prediction of coming disaster.
Fortunately, these dire predictions have been largely unrealised, but the concerns underlying the speech haven’t vanished since the 1960s. The political debate about who should be allowed to live and work in the UK is as strong as ever. It fuelled much of the passion in the lead-up to Brexit, with a focus then on poor Eastern Europeans. Yet now in the pandemic we have become much more conscious that our health service relies heavily on immigrant doctors and nurses. So how can a state care for its own citizens while remaining open to welcoming others, including the most needy?
It is interesting to turn from Enoch Powell’s speech to today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. There the Hellenists are complaining against the Hebrews because they believe that resources aren’t being distributed fairly. They feel that they are being discriminated against, and something needs to be done about it, and done now! The list of the names of those made deacon as a response to this situation illustrates the mixed nature of the early Christian community: Jewish, Greek, and Roman. But notice that this is seen by Luke not as a problem, but as an illustration of the power of God, uniting people despite their very real differences
Jesus has an image for this in today’s gospel: there are, he says, “many rooms in my Father’s house”. He certainly means that there is space for everybody, and that everybody, without discrimination, is welcome. More than that though, it’s not just one big space: the idea of there being many rooms suggests that allowance can be made for different ways, different habits. I was struck in visit to Holy Land a few years ago by the way in which the historic churches there have to be shared among different denominations. You find comparatively plain RC altars next to Orthodox ones full of icons and incense; all united in worshipping God, but with great variety. At its best our different backgrounds can give greater richness to life than any single culture is able to offer.
Today’s readings present an ideal, in which people of very different backgrounds live peacefully together. But the readings aren’t simply naïve, pie-in-the-sky. They show that the apostles needed to take practical action to overcome the problems this variety led to. Most of us now have some experience of the reality of some of the problems that living in multicultural societies presents. The Church needs to be every bit as active as it was in the time of the Acts of the Apostles in considering and helping solve these challenges. But that work always starts by holding up the Easter image of the peaceable Kingdom of God to counter those who only see rivers of blood.
Fr Paul Nicholson SJ