Snake Wine & Splinters

3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

Have you ever had snake wine? I have. One time in China, our host brought out this big jar of a clear liquid with three big snakes, dead of course, coiled up in the bottom. He ladled out some of the liquid, which still had bits and pieces of stuff in it, and gave it to us to drink. It was so strong that I actually felt its warmth flowing down my gullet and out into my fingers and toes. Two weeks later, I was walking down the street and I suddenly shivered from head to toe. The wine was still affecting me.

And right now I have a sliver in my finger, right at the knuckle joint. I can barely see it, and I can’t seem to get it out. I forget about it until my hand brushes up against something and that little splinter gets hit, sending a jolt that I feel up my arm and into my back.

We hear once again today St. Paul’s beautiful analogy of Christianity as the Body of Christ. And we are reminded once again that the greatest sign of Christianity is our unity with one another. We hear that all parts of the body are indispensible, that all work together for the good of the body, and that one part is no more important than any other part.

We tend to think of Christianity as mainly a Western religion; we rarely think of the all members of the body throughout the world. I think that we American Christians often think that we’re what it’s all about. I think Americans in general act like we’re what it’s all about, and it’s become a cliché that we’re really ignorant about what’s going on in the rest of the world. If we’re not exactly the entire body, we’re at least the head and the heart. We don’t think much about all the other parts, do we? We worry about our own problems – the priest shortage, the abuse scandal, the assault on religious liberty – and forget sometimes that we are only about 3% of the Christians in the world.

Author George Marlin reports that Christians throughout the world are experiencing far greater persecution than here in the States. Just in the last year alone, Church officials throughout the countries of the “Arab Spring” fear that there will be a mass Christian exodus from them because of Islamist fundamentalism that denies religious liberty.

Eighteen years after the end of the war in the Balkans, discrimination against Catholics is still rampant. Confiscated Church property has not been returned. Catholic parishes and homes are denied electricity. Priests are refused medical care. Abuse of Catholics, particularly nuns wearing habits, has significantly increased. Nuns travel in pairs out of fear of abuse and they are turned away or harassed at local shops.

Tens of thousands of Catholics were killed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and since then a majority has fled. Today, there are approximately 450,000 down from 835,000.

In Albania, Orthodox Christians represent 20 percent of Albania’s population and Catholics 10 percent. Here in Blessed Mother Teresa’s homeland, widespread corruption and unclear property rights has halted construction of chapels, churches, rectories, and parochial schools.

In Syria, Christians are being targeted and driven from their homes. More than 120,000 Christians have been driven from the city of Homs, which had been home to one of Syria’s largest Christian populations. Bishop Antoine Audo, S.J. of Aleppo predicts that Christians will be targeted and driven away in Damascus and Aleppo as well. He said, “The fear of Christians is particularly strong. We are a minority. Always we are threatened.”

In January 2012, without warning, the Punjab government in Pakistan ordered bulldozers onto land owned by the Catholic diocese since 1887 and demolished a church, a girl’s school, and homes for the poor, elderly, and homeless. New blasphemy laws, as well as growing intolerance and fanaticism, has led to an increase in arbitrary actions against many of the nation’s 1.2 million Catholics.

The Christian population in the Holy Land has gone from 18% of the population to less than 1.5% of the population in the past 60 years. Similar stories can be told of Christians in Mali, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

St. Paul tells us today that “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.” It’s like snake wine and slivers. The body is affected by suffering, even when one little insignificant part suffers, and the body is affected by rejoicing, even when one little insignificant part is happy. Even the smallest thing, the splinter, can cause us to be aware of greater pain. Even the simplest pleasure can make us forget the pain.

That’s why we have to be aware of what the rest of the body is experiencing, because we are all in this together. We cannot ignore any part of the body. When one part hurts, we all hurt. When one part rejoices, we all rejoice. We cannot ignore any persecution of our body and we cannot despair that what good we do has no effect.

And what we each say and do affects all of mankind. Each small, individual action does affect everybody else on the planet, for good or for evil. We like to think that we are each our own little world; that my little sin doesn’t mean very much. But that’s not the case. What may seem like a little splinter to you can actually make the whole Body hurt. Whenever we sin, it changes our own attitudes and future actions, so that it becomes easier to sin again, and again, and again. And when we all do it, society’s ideas on right and wrong change, morality is debased, and what was formerly seen as evil is now seen as good, and vice versa. And society does not want to hear that what is now considered good is actually evil, so it has to silence the voices that tell it so.

And it becomes easier and easier to lose hope that good will actually prevail. We can tend to think that when I rejoice in something good, it’s really not going to do anything to help get the world back on track again.

But there is good reason to rejoice. In the face of a concerted push towards secularism in the West, in two out of three countries in the world, the majority of the population identifies as Christian. Christianity may be declining in the West, but is flourishing in the developing countries of the world. The Pew Research Center's "Global Christianity" reports on major shifts since 1910, when two-thirds of the world's Christians lived in Europe. Now only one in four Christians live in Europe. Now, 37% live in the Americas, 24% in sub-Saharan Africa, and 13% live in the Asia-Pacific region.

Meanwhile, the faith has grown exponentially in sub-Saharan Africa, from just 9% of the population in 1910 to 63% today. And in China, Pew researchers believe Christianity has flourished despite a policy forbidding Christianity among Communist Party members. Researchers estimate the Christian community in China includes 5% of the population, or 67 million.

Here in the U.S., there is a new awakening of faith, especially among young adults. Over 500,000 people gathered in Washington D.C. this week to pray for an end to abortion. Our seminaries are filling up, and best of all, you are here today.

There is great reason to be hopeful. There is precedent. We heard it today from the prophet Nehemiah. He tells the story of Ezra the Scribe who was charged with rebuilding the temple Jerusalem after the exiles returned from 70 years in Babylon. Part of the Jewish people had been amputated from the body when they were taken into exile. The exiles had fought hard not to become assimilated into the Babylonian culture. One way they did so was to write down all the books of the law, what the Jews call the Torah and we call the first five books of the Old Testament. The law was the thing that identified them as a people. It was the glue that held them together and gave them purpose, gave them hope. It was a sign of their relationship with God, who had not abandoned them.

Everything they had had been destroyed along with Jerusalem. Now they had returned and the first thing they did was read and hear what their God had done for them. And the people wept when they heard the law being proclaimed to them, because the hope they had lost had been restored to them.

When was the last time you heard the gospels, and wept?

There will always be persecution, and there will always be hope. The good news of Jesus Christ is that in the end, joy will triumph over pain, and the Body of Christ will weather any storm. The body is a resilient thing, and God will find the way to restore to us anything that was lost.