\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
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?\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, they offered excuses, or insulted you when you contacted them, or just ignored you.\u00c2\u00a0 Anger and resentment come to mind over such an ungrateful and insensitive group of guests.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet, this had happened to our ever merciful God over and over again in salvation history.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Jewish people had been given a very special status- they were the chosen people.\u00c2\u00a0 They were blessed with special covenants between God and themselves- covenants with Abraham and Moses and David.\u00c2\u00a0 And yet they failed to show up at the party over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 But our most gracious, loving, and all forgiving God kept trying.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, there is a theme of universal acceptance in our first reading today.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the context of our Gospel reading.\u00c2\u00a0 Because Jesus is foretelling the rejection of the new covenant that He proclaims, the message of the Gospel, by the Jews.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus words in the parable implied all this for those who cared to listen.\u00c2\u00a0 And that would have been absolutely scandalous ion his cultural establishment.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, we are the establishment- the Christian believers rather than the Jews.\u00c2\u00a0 But we face the same challenge as the Jewish people did.\u00c2\u00a0 Many of us pay lip service to our invitation; some of us have excuses; some of us ignore it; and still others are hostile.\u00c2\u00a0 And our leaders- well some of them are beating up God’s messengers pretty severely.\u00c2\u00a0 If we accept the invitation- that means we accept our faith and we ready ourselves for the banquet. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0We give a resounding AMEN to the invitation.\u00c2\u00a0 But recognize that God sees in the hearts of all men.\u00c2\u00a0 And so many will be invited, even those our establishment thinks it would be scandalous to include:\u00c2\u00a0 Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, even Jehovah’s Witnesses and other sects.\u00c2\u00a0 They could get in to the Kingdom instead of us.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, God sees the hearts of all men-. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0And so, He knows whether we are covered by a wedding garment or not.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}