Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time – Feb 23, 2025
Jesus’s lessons this Sunday from his sermon on the plain are especially necessary today in our polarized church and nation.
When people are entrenched in their own standpoints, unwilling to let go of their long-held beliefs and give up their staunch positions, there is little chance at mercy, much less peace. In their minds, there is only one ground for truth, and they are solidly on it. Anyone seeing the world from another angle is a threat. However, if we all observed the world in the same way from the exact same point of view, we would only get half the picture.
In God’s reign, polar opposites become necessary partners to reveal the mystery of God present in the wonderful diversity and complexity of our lives.
In God’s reign, polar opposites become necessary partners to reveal the mystery of God present in the wonderful diversity and complexity of our lives. The essential first step is just that—to take a first step toward the other person and to see things from their perspective. And even if only one partner takes that step across the divide, in God’s mercy, the other is also needed. For they are called to perceive their adversary in a new way, not as “coming at them” to attack, but “moving toward them” in curiosity.
The Indigo Girls sang it well: “Maybe that’s all that we need is to meet in the middle of impossibility. We’re standing at opposite poles, equal partners in a mystery” (“Mystery”).
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