Deacon Larry

 

Thursday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time

Ez 36: 23-28; Matt 22: 1-14

Dc. Larry Brockman

How would you feel if you invited people you really loved to a celebration at your home, a special celebration- a wedding anniversary, a graduation party, or a holiday party; and few, if any of your family and guests attended?  Instead, they offered excuses, or insulted you when you contacted them, or just ignored you.  Anger and resentment come to mind over such an ungrateful and insensitive group of guests.  And yet, this had happened to our ever merciful God over and over again in salvation history. 

The Jewish people had been given a very special status- they were the chosen people.  They were blessed with special covenants between God and themselves- covenants with Abraham and Moses and David.  And yet they failed to show up at the party over and over again.  But our most gracious, loving, and all forgiving God kept trying.  Indeed, in our first reading, he even talks about inviting those who were spread out over the world, those affected by the Diaspora because of their rejection of the covenants.  Indeed, there is a theme of universal acceptance in our first reading today.  As long as these Jewish people would repent and accept God, and would come forward and accept His invitation, they, too, were invited to the party.   

This is the context of our Gospel reading.  Because Jesus is foretelling the rejection of the new covenant that He proclaims, the message of the Gospel, by the Jews.  It is the Jewish leaders who those who kill God’s messengers represent in the parable; and it is the Jews who the people who ignore the invitation to the banquet, or offer excuses, represent.  And so, Jesus is telling the Pharisees and the Jews about the coming invitation to all of us- the Gentiles- because the chosen people have rejected the invitation.  And so, everyone will be invited, including anyone right off the streets regardless of their status- social or political or economic or race or nationality.  Jesus words in the parable implied all this for those who cared to listen.  And that would have been absolutely scandalous ion his cultural establishment.   

Today, we are the establishment- the Christian believers rather than the Jews.  But we face the same challenge as the Jewish people did.  Many of us pay lip service to our invitation; some of us have excuses; some of us ignore it; and still others are hostile.  And our leaders- well some of them are beating up God’s messengers pretty severely.  If we accept the invitation- that means we accept our faith and we ready ourselves for the banquet.   We give a resounding AMEN to the invitation.  But recognize that God sees in the hearts of all men.  And so many will be invited, even those our establishment thinks it would be scandalous to include:  Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, even Jehovah’s Witnesses and other sects.  They could get in to the Kingdom instead of us.  Indeed, God sees the hearts of all men-.   And so, He knows whether we are covered by a wedding garment or not. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Holy Family Weekday Homilies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.