When Hannah was 6 years old she went to the Fourth of July parade with her grandmother. At a certain point a horse and buggy went by and Hannah had a question. “Why does the horse have a patch beside each of his eyes?” Her grandmother said, “Those are blinders.” Hannah had another question, “Is the horse going blind?” “No. No.” her grandmother said. “Blinders prevent the horse from seeing what is on the left and what is on the right. That means that the horse does not get distracted and he walks straight down the street. He just follows the marching band in front of him and he never leaves the parade route. The blinders help him to stay on course.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus goes into his hometown and he criticizes the people for wearing blinders. They have such a narrow field of vision that they think that Jesus should bring healing to them and to no one else. They scold Jesus for bringing healing to people in Capernaum and Samaria. Jesus replies to them by saying, “I came into town to hand onto you what God has handed onto me. And I’m telling you that God shows no partiality. God has a wide circle of concern.
God is concerned about everyone. You may not like it; but that is how God does things.” Jesus believes that everyone belongs to the City of God and that’s why he brings healing to everyone.
Jesus says, “Jeremiah was a prophet to the nations…. And so am I. When Elisha was our prophet God brought healing to Namaan the leper who was from Syria.” And recently I brought healing to the leper from Samaria. Why? Because my heavenly Father told me to bring healing to everyone.”
And now for the rest of the story. There is one more chapter, the modern day chapter. The chapter that about you and me.
Jesus is calling us to be his disciples. He is calling us to take off any blinders that we might have. He is calling us to commit ourselves to working for the common good. He is calling us to be impartial – to work for solutions to today’s problems in such a way that everyone will benefit. Jesus is also calling us to hand on to our children what he has handed on to us: namely, his concern for the common good and his desire to stay away from showing partiality.
When we conduct religious education, our goal is to hand on Gospel values. And the value in today’s Gospel is loving concern for all the People of God; not just those who are close to us.
Jesus calls us to love all people and that invitation is very challenging. The call to discipleship has a built-in cost factor. It means that we must serve others without seeking any reward.
St. Augustine said, “You can’t love those that you don’t know.” God wants me to love all people; but I can’t do that until I get to know them. That means that I must make an effort to get to know people at work. And I must make an effort to get to know people in my neighborhood. And I must make an effort to get to know the people who belong to my church and those who go to other churches and those who don’t go to church. If I take on the spirit of Jesus I will reach out people who are not in my age group and people from different countries and people from different ethnic groups.
St. Augustine said, “You can’t love those you don’t know.” And Jesus said that he expects us to love all people.
That was made abundantly clear in our second reading today. St. Paul says that we are called to practice the virtues of faith, hope and love…And the greatest of these is love!
Let us pray now that we can live without blinders and love everyone in sight. We pray that our vision will expand to include all people. We pray for the grace we need to do what Jesus did. He brought his love to people of all cultures and all nations…and with the help of his grace, we can do the same.