{"id":6746,"date":"2015-04-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turski.me\/?p=4155"},"modified":"2015-04-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-25T23:00:00","slug":"4th-sunday-of-easter-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/?p=6746","title":{"rendered":"4th Sunday of Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"

My arrival in Elgin in September 2007 slightly stirred up the Polish community, both there and in the neighbouring towns and villages. They welcomed a priest from their homeland, speaking their language, and they expected him to ring-fence their national identity. A surprisingly similar view was held by many members of the local community, clearly expressed in a virtual label that read: ‘Polish priest for Polish people.’<\/em> From day one I was fiercely (though politely) fighting against such a narrow classification of myself. I didn\u2019t want to be restricted to any particular national or cultural group of people. I considered myself to be ordained into the Church to go and preach Jesus Christ to all people. I kept on correcting people by saying: I\u2019m not a Polish priest; I\u2019m a Catholic priest born in Poland.\u2019<\/em> I like to think that, had I given in to having a label stuck on me back then, I wouldn\u2019t be here now.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s gospel is part of Jesus\u2019 sermon on his ministry, where he compares himself to the Good Shepherd. Among the main topics within the sermon, Jesus talks about those \u2018sheep\u2019 that know his voice, i.e. belong to him, as well as those \u2018who are not of this fold.\u2019<\/em> It\u2019s unclear who the latter might be; the range of possible suspects is pretty wide, from the Jews contemporaneous with the preaching of the gospel, through pagans, to the divided Christian denominations that used to fight for religious and political supremacy. Yet such an open, general, unspecified term makes the message all the more universal and thus applicable to many varied situations and circumstances. The division into \u2018us\u2019<\/em> and \u2018them\u2019<\/em> has been, is, and always will be, an integral feature of any community or society. The division itself is not the problem; but the way we deal with that can cause some problems.<\/p>\n

In the past these words of Jesus: \u2018there will be only one flock and one shepherd\u2019<\/em> have been interpreted as the ultimate goal of any missionary work, aimed either at indigenous peoples or at fellow-Christians from different denominations. It\u2019s been understood as a call to fit all people into a single, one-size-fits-all uniform. As the religious wars in Europe of the 16th<\/sup> and 17th<\/sup> centuries didn\u2019t determine any clear winner, the struggle moved from battlefields to more sublime fields of discussions and less deadly exchanges of arguments. That has led to an increasingly better understanding of others\u2019 points of view, and eventually to mostly friendly co-existence, mutual respect and collaboration. As we can see in the likes of Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, or most recently in South Africa, there are still people out there whose first and last argument in political discussion is the bullet, and whose ultimate goal is the total annihilation of their opponents.<\/p>\n

Sadly the inability to deal with differences in a peaceful and civilised manner isn\u2019t limited to international, political or religious matters only. It goes down to our everyday interactions with family members, workmates or neighbours. Too often we have a tendency to mould people into our own image and likeness rather than to make an effort to walk in someone else\u2019s shoes in order to understand them. Too often we treat differences as obstacles rather than as opportunities. In the gospel Jesus compares the Good Shepherd to a hired man, and says that the latter \u2018has no concern for the sheep.\u2019<\/em> The hired man\u2019s concern is self-centred. The Good Shepherd, however, lays down his life for the sake of the sheep; the perfect leader dies for the sake of imperfect sheep in order to win them over. Paradoxically sometimes in order to win friends we have to die to our own pride. And this is not a bad thing at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My arrival in Elgin in September 2007 slightly stirred up the Polish community, both there and in the neighbouring towns and villages. They welcomed a priest from their homeland, speaking their language, and they expected him to ring-fence their national identity. A surprisingly similar view was held by many members of the local community, clearly expressed in a virtual label that read: ‘Polish priest for Polish people.’ From day one I was fiercely (though politely) fighting against such a narrow classification of myself. I didn\u2019t want to be restricted to any particular national or cultural group of people. I considered myself to be ordained into the Church to go and preach Jesus Christ to all people. I kept on correcting people by saying: I\u2019m not a Polish priest; I\u2019m a Catholic priest born in Poland.\u2019 I like to think that, had I given in to having a label stuck on me back then, I wouldn\u2019t be here now. Today\u2019s gospel is part of Jesus\u2019 sermon on his ministry, where he compares himself to the Good Shepherd. Among the main topics within the sermon, Jesus talks about those \u2018sheep\u2019 that know his voice, i.e. belong to him, as well as those \u2018who are not of this fold.\u2019 It\u2019s unclear who the latter might be; the range of possible suspects is pretty wide, from the Jews contemporaneous with the preaching of the gospel, through pagans, to the divided Christian denominations that used to fight for religious and political supremacy. Yet such an open, general, unspecified term makes the message all the more universal and thus applicable to many varied situations and circumstances. The division into \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018them\u2019 has been, is, and always will be, an integral feature of any community or society. The division itself is not the problem; but the way we deal with that can cause some problems. In the past these words of Jesus: \u2018there will be only one flock and one shepherd\u2019 have been interpreted as the ultimate goal of any missionary work, aimed either at indigenous peoples or at fellow-Christians from different denominations. It\u2019s been understood as a call to fit all people into a single, one-size-fits-all uniform. As the religious wars in Europe of the 16th and 17th centuries didn\u2019t determine any clear winner, the struggle moved from battlefields to more sublime fields of discussions and less deadly exchanges of arguments. That has led to an increasingly better understanding of others\u2019 points of view, and eventually to mostly friendly co-existence, mutual respect and collaboration. As we can see in the likes of Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, or most recently in South Africa, there are still people out there whose first and last argument in political discussion is the bullet, and whose ultimate goal is the total annihilation of their opponents. Sadly the inability to deal with differences in a peaceful and civilised manner isn\u2019t limited to international, political or religious matters only. It goes down to our everyday interactions with family members, workmates or neighbours. Too often we have a tendency to mould people into our own image and likeness rather than to make an effort to walk in someone else\u2019s shoes in order to understand them. Too often we treat differences as obstacles rather than as opportunities. In the gospel Jesus compares the Good Shepherd to a hired man, and says that the latter \u2018has no concern for the sheep.\u2019 The hired man\u2019s concern is self-centred. The Good Shepherd, however, lays down his life for the sake of the sheep; the perfect leader dies for the sake of imperfect sheep in order to win them over. Paradoxically sometimes in order to win friends we have to die to our own pride. And this is not a bad thing at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-b"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}