22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 28, 2022
Proverbs 25:6-7
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
While wrestling with today’s readings over the last few weeks, it suddenly hit me that Jesus went to a lot of dinner parties. From the accounts given us in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, he appears to have been a very social guy. He was constantly getting invited to some meal or other, and quite often by people who were not too keen on him and his message; which is curious, to say the least. And it is equally curious that he kept being invited to these soirees, especially since he usually used the occasion to say something that was not to the liking of his hosts. This morning’s story from Luke is a prime example. Jesus is invited to the home of a prominent leader of the Pharisees. So this was most likely a pretty posh, sumptuous affair: cushions to recline on, music, maybe dancers, heaps of mouth-watering food and drink. Most of us would be grateful for such an invitation. We would most likely be courteous, make nice, and enjoy all the sensuous pleasures of the evening. Well, not Luke’s Jesus! What does he do? Well, you might say he becomes the proverbial party pooper. He uses the occasion to deliver a festivity-killing oration.
Luke says that Jesus told a parable. Well, just barely. It’s more a moral lesson than one of his more mysterious stories. He starts out with what sounds like a lesson in table etiquette: how to humble yourself strategically, in order to attain a more exalted place in the social hierarchy of the dinner party. I was reminded here of what Groucho Marx once said about sincerity: “Sincerity is the key to success….If you can fake that, you’ll have it made.” Well, faking it is, to say the least, rather contrary to what we usually take to be the gospel message. Thank goodness Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes on to exhort his hosts to let go of all ideas of social gain; to let go of the ethos of social exchange and reciprocity; to let go of using others as instruments for our own ends; to let go of what, in current parlance, we would call the ethic of the marketplace.
Jesus exhorts his hosts, and US, to embrace an alternative ethic: an ethic of radical altruism and hospitality that gives no thought to recompense for our effort–that doesn’t consider getting a return on our investment; an ethic that enjoins us to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Our Hebrews reading adds prisoners and victims of torture. In our current world, we can add the immigrant, the mentally ill, the addicted, the dying. It is a very long list of “those people” who make us uncomfortable, “those people” with whom we don’t feel safe and secure–people who confront us with our helplessness to understand and control the uncertainty and impermanence of our lives. This alternative ethic envisions a world in which everyone is welcome, in which everyone is a guest; a world which Jesus called the Kingdom of God.
This is one of many examples of what scripture commentators call the “Lukan reversal.” Threading through Luke’s gospel is the theme of reversing “The Establishment,” as we hippies used to call it back in the day. Luke’s Jesus calls us, in both his words and his actions, to see through the conventional, established divisions and hierarchies of the social order, and to act to reverse them. This call comes very early in the gospel’s first recorded speech: Mary’s Magnificat. This newly pregnant, unwed young woman praises her God for bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly; for filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty. Steve Zwettler reminded us in a homily earlier this year that in some Latin American countries it was once deemed criminal to carry a copy of the Magnificat, because it was viewed as a serious threat to the established order…further proof that the gospel message is radically anti-Establishment, radically counter-cultural.
This is, indeed, the call that reverberates in our readings this morning. BUT, how does it become MY call and YOUR call? It has to become our own call. It has to get personal, as we say these days. We can’t just adopt someone else’s call. We won’t make it our own call just from hearing a good speech about it. Just telling someone they need to think or do differently rarely has the desired effect. Anyone who has raised children is well acquainted with that fact. So, how does this happen? A brief statement by Jesus in the previous chapter of Luke gives us a hint, when he says unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. He was responding to people who reported that the Roman authorities had executed some Galileans for sacrificing in the temple. Jesus tells them that they will not be saved from death just because they have not performed such sacrifices. As he does so often, Jesus pivots and responds by holding up a mirror and calling us to look at ourselves and to repent.
REPENT? Really? It’s one of those fraught words that so many of us heard so many times in our Christian upbringings, often with an admonishing finger pointed at us for emphasis. In my memory, it always meant to confess and seek forgiveness for my sins, for all my actions that I was told were not pleasing to God. Sound familiar? Well, “repent” is an unfortunate Roman legalistic rendering of the original Greek word, metanoia, which literally means to change your mind–to turn around mentally and perceive the world in a different way. I would add to this a change of heart and maybe even a change of body. It is a personal transformation such that we not only perceive the world in a wholly new way, but that we are a wholly new person, through and through. Paul’s letters are full of this message when he calls us to put on the mind of Christ, or when he describes his own personal transformation, saying, I live no longer I, but Christ lives in me. Now that’s a transformation!
It is by this sort of change, this metanoia, that the call from Jesus can become our own call. This comes about because, mysteriously, the way Jesus saw the world becomes the way we see the world. This is where the contemplative and the active aspects of our Christian life come together. Neither can flower and grow without the other. We are in the world, acting in it. There’s no way around that fact. And to live with humility and compassion, we must be open to our utter dependence on the Divine Mystery we call God, and to the unexpected, graced breakthrough of that Mystery into our lives at any moment. Without any act of our own will, perhaps in the solitary depths of prayer, or in a moment of communion with a beloved friend, or while immersed in play with our child or grandchild, or while sitting with a dying loved one…in those and other brief but unforgettable moments, we know the certainty of the truth that ultimately there are no real differences between us. We know that we are all manifestations of the Divine Mystery in which we live and move and have our being. We know that to love and help the other–the immigrant, the addict, even the imagined political enemy–is in fact to love oneself…because we know we are not separate. I’m reminded here of a common saying in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition: Know boundlessness, feel compassion. We love our neighbor as ourself, not because someone has told us to. We love our neighbor as ourself because we know with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength that we are not separate. We know our neighbor as ourself–both host and guest, both humbled and exalted. As we will soon say around this eucharistic table, we know truly that we are One Body.