Isaiah 8:23 – 9:3 / 1 Cor 1:10-13, 17 / Matthew 4:12-23
Life is kind of strange and it has its absurdities. At times it sounds like a serious joke, and we can choose to laugh at it, but at times it can also make us frown and we wonder why it is like that.
For example, why does round pizza come in a square box? Why is it that people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?
Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are flat? Why do banks charge a fee on 'insufficient funds' when they know that there is already not enough money?
Enough of examples to tell us that we live in a strange world that at times look rather absurd.
There is this story that one day an elephant decided to go for a nice bath in the river. No sooner had he gone into the water when a little mouse ran up and down the river bank demanding that the elephant get out of the water.
The elephant protested and asked what the problem was. The little mouse was adamant that the elephant had to get out of the water first and then he would tell him.
The elephant gave in and got out of the water. Then the little mouse said: So sorry, Mr. Elephant. I was just checking. Someone took my swimming trunks and I was just checking if it was you who was wearing it.
That sounds like an absurd joke. But the strange thing here is that sometimes it takes a joke to bring out a point, or the moral of the story. And the moral of the story is this:
It is easier to think that an elephant can fit into the swimming trunks of a mouse than for God’s plan to enter into the human heart.
In other words, we can accept the absurdities of life more easily than we can accept the mysteries of God’s plan for us.
In the gospel, we heard about the beginnings of the ministry of Jesus. He heard that John the Baptist had been arrested and He went back to Galilee and settled in the lakeside town of Capernaum.
As He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He called His first disciples – Peter and Andrew, and James and John – and all four of them were fishermen.
And that sounds like a joke already. Just what kind of strategy was that? If the mission was going to be anything serious and successful, then Jesus would need professionals and not amateurs.
More so when it was about the proclamation of Good News of the Kingdom and curing all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people. He would need the media and communications people, as well as doctors and health care specialists on board.
But fishermen? Is there something that we have missed?
The gospel quoted a prophecy that was taken from the 1st reading: The people that lived in darkness has seen a great light; on those who dwell in the land and shadow of death, a light has dawned.
Yes, it was a great light, so great that it didn’t look normal; it looked strange and absurd. But for those that it beckoned and called, the light shines and reveals.
So it was for Peter and Andrew, for James and John, and for all those who follow the light that shines in a strange and absurd world.
One of those who followed the light was Vietnamese Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen van Thuan (1928-2002)
detained by the Communist Government of Vietnam in 1975 in a reeducation camp for 13 years, 9 of them in solitary confinement.
To his non-Catholic fellow prisoners, who were curious to know how he could maintain his hope, he answered: "I have left everything to follow Jesus, because I love the defects (or absurdities) of Jesus."
Nguyen van Thuan said: "During his agony on the cross, when the thief asked him to remember him when he arrived in his Kingdom … had it been me, I would have replied: 'I will not forget you, but you must expiate your crimes in purgatory.' However, Jesus replied: 'Today you shall be with me in paradise.' He had forgotten that man's sins. Jesus does not have a memory, He does not remember sins, He just forgives everyone."
"Jesus does not know mathematics. This is demonstrated in the parable of the good shepherd. He had 100 sheep, one is lost and without hesitating he went to look for it, leaving the other 99 in the sheepfold. For Jesus, one is as valuable as 99, or even more so."
Jesus doesn’t know logic. Van Thuan’s evidence for this “defect” is the story of the woman who loses one of her ten silver pieces and who, upon finding it calls all her friends to celebrate with her. The celebration must have cost more than that one silver piece, perhaps even more than ten silver pieces. This, Van Thuan suggests, is completely illogical, except to the strange logic of the heart of Jesus.
He also said that Jesus is a risk-taker, a man with a publicity campaign that to human eyes is “doomed to failure.” A promise of trials and persecutions for those who follow him. No guarantee of food or lodging, only a share of His own way of life. “Jesus is the risk-taker for the love of the Father and of humanity, is a paradox from beginning to end, even for us who have become used to hearing it.”
Finally, Jesus doesn’t understand finance or economics, as evidenced by the story of the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Van Thuan points out that if Jesus were named the administrator of a community or the director of a business, the institutions would surely fail and go bankrupt. How can anyone pay someone who began working at 5:00pm the very same wages paid to the other person who has been working since early morning? Yet Jesus does.
Archbishop Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan also recalled.
"One day, one of the prison guards asked me: 'Do you love us?'" I answered: 'Yes, I love you.'
"'We have kept you shut in for so many years and you love us? I don't believe it ...'
"I then reminded him: 'I have spent many years with you. You have seen it and know it is true.' The guard asked me: 'When you are freed, will you send your faithful to burn our homes and kill our relatives?'
'No, although you might want to kill me, I love you.' "Why?' the guard insisted. "Because Jesus has taught me to love everyone, even my enemies. If I don't do this, I am not worthy to bear the name Christian. Jesus said: 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.'
'This is very beautiful, but very hard to understand,' the guard replied.
Indeed Jesus is hard to understand. To some, He is strange and absurd. To others, He is a light that is too bright to look at.
To us, He calls and beckons us to follow Him and His light will guide us through this strange and absurd world.
We may look like “crack-pots” to follow Jesus. But only when there is crack that the light can shine in.