On the last day of 1999 this newspaper carried a chart comparing "Our World" with "Their World". It contained amazing statistics. Did you know that 1.3 billion people live on less than $1 a day? About 840 million people are malnourished and 2.6 billion have no access to sanitation. Since 1970 40 per cent of the forests of the earth have disappeared and the availability of water today is 60 per cent of 1970 levels. By contrast, the richest one-fifth of the world's population is 74 times wealthier than the poorest fifth. Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics and Europeans spend $11 billion a year on ice-cream. The armies of the world spend $780 billion a year. The figures speak for themselves. There are extraordinary inequalities in a world which has an estimated population of 6,034, 867,134. And that number has gone up since those figures appeared last week. In St Mark's Gospel (6:34-44), Jesus instructs his disciples to get food for the crowds. They come back with five loaves and two fish, feed the crowd of 5,000 people and have food left over. More extraordinary figures. You could say this was an amazing miracle performed by Jesus and leave it at that. You could even push it into the realm of magic and forget about it. On the other hand, you might try to give it real meaning - meaning that would make sense in the world we live in today.
Could it be that the real miracle in this Gospel is that Jesus changed the mind-set of the crowd? As a result of his lifestyle and preaching he convinced them to share what they had in such a way that there would be enough for everyone. And that would be in itself an extraordinary miracle. But that sort of thinking is indeed far more provocative and daring than putting an etherised gloss on what Mark is saying. The figures published in this newspaper last week are the startling reality of the inequality that causes such misery and suffering on this planet. No Christian can sit happy with such knowledge. No Christian can get lost in the "holy" and not acknowledge what Mark is telling us in the Gospel. Has greed run mad in our world? And what can I do about it? No, I am not going to change the face of the earth. But I can spare water, I can recycle much of my waste. I can suggest to the Government that it speaks out in my name against the madness that makes some people crudely wealthy and others impoverished. The Christian can never be content with a system that allows the inequality that we see in our world. And whatever about attempting to change the ways of the world, it is preposterous to shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, that's the way things are." That is exactly what Jesus did not do. He made the impossible happen. Maybe that is the real meaning of miracle. Maybe sometimes, when we give the "holy" meaning to that word miracle, we are opting out of the real meaning of the Gospels. The Gospel is all about people, the sufferings of people and the idea of God freeing the captive. Christ changed the minds of people in such a way that they were willing to give rather than take. It's so easy to do the reverse.
At the beginning of a new year, a new decade and (that punchdrunk word) new millennium, it might be a good idea to make real the message of the Gospel, take it out of the shackles of an amorphous holy casuistry and use it as a tool in changing the face of the earth, in accordance with the plan of God our Father.
M.C.