NewCreation

Homily for 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. And there's quite a big jump from where we left off last Sunday and today's Gospel. Last Sunday, if you remember, I tried to bring out how Jesus was putting us on the spot with regards to how we are going to have to learn to discern signs, how we're going to have to learn to work out which side we're on. And this is always going to be up to us, and it's going to be a difficult matter. So it's no surprise that the next few verses are about signs. He teaches about the interpretation of the time, saying, "You know how to interpret when it's going to rain, and when you see the south wind" — how do you not know how to interpret the present time? And the same thing about people going to trial: if you don't learn how to settle the case beforehand, you will be caught up in something that will drag you to the very end. And then again, interpreting the sign of some people being killed by Pilate, or others on whom a tower fell — learning to interpret the sign of what that's about. And a parable of the fig tree, the healing of a crippled woman, and the parable of the mustard seed and of the yeast. All of them: learn how to understand what's going on, what signs are going to be like. So then, having gone through that teaching about the difficulty of interpreting signs, there's a little break, which is where our Gospel starts. This is like the second part of Jesus's trip towards Jerusalem. So Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. So there's been a little — just a little — break between our sign session before. And someone asks him, "Lord, will only a few be saved?" He said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able." Now, what I'm going to try and do with today's Gospel is to bring out something of how shocking what Jesus is saying must have seemed to people at the time, how stern and shocking it must have seemed. It's not going to be easy to do that, and forgive me if I don't do it very well, but I think it's worth trying to pick up — if we can get something of the shock he must have produced for his listeners. So the question: "Lord, will only a few be saved?" Well, the kind of people who ask that question are people who basically assume that they are amongst those who are saved, and look at all the wicked others and think, "Gosh, there's only going to be a very few of us who are going to be saved, because the —" others are so bad. It's very rare that anybody asks that question from a position of deep compassion about everybody. "Lord, will only a few be saved?" So he says to them that that kind of person has a pretty strict mind. So he said to that person, "Strive to enter through the narrow door." In other words, he will not answer the question. That kind of question is the kind of question that somebody with a speculative mind, who wants to know the metaphysical state of things, comes up with — who considers themselves to be on the goodies' side. Jesus's answer is effectively: none of this speculative stuff, as though you're from a strong position and you can work out the meaning of the universe and who's in and who's out. None of that. Instead, you strive to enter through the narrow door. In other words, the entry is through the hard work of self-criticism, in one way or another. "For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able." Will try to enter and will not be able. Now there's just a hint here, under the surface, of the one who tried — and the verb here behind "will not be able" is actually "will not have the strength" — and of course this refers to Jacob, Israel, because Jacob and Israel strove with God and prevailed, and he was told, "You have been strong with God, you have beaten God, you have been strong against God." And that's part of what made Israel Israel: the one who struggled with God, as part of his process of learning, of overcoming himself. It was then that he was able to go and see his brother Esau face to face, whereas before they had just been fighting. Many will try to enter but will not have the strength, will not be Israel. So what he's talking about here is what it's like to be Israel. So, having used the image of the narrow door — the one that you have to slim down to get through, the one that you can't carry your bags through, over with broad yokes and things like that — basically it's the image of the possibility of self-criticism, rather than imagining yourself in a stable, broad place. Then he tells this tale, which is much more curious than it seems. "When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then in reply he will say to you, 'I do not know where you come from.'" Okay, what I want to bring out here is that there's an awful lot of hidden reference behind these words. The owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door saying, "Lord, open to us." Then in reply he will say to you, "I do not know where you come from." Notice that he doesn't say, as in Matthew's Gospel, "I do not know who you are." He doesn't say "where you come from," and that's part of the clue of what's going on here. "Where do you come from?" Now let's remember a story where an owner of the house has, after dinner, got up and shut the door, and a group of people stand outside and begin to pound at the door, saying "open to us." This lord says, "I do not know where you come from." But that owner didn't say that. That owner said, "Don't do such terrible things to my guests." Then you will begin to say, "We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets" — or actually, "in our squares." But he will say, "I do not know where you come from. Get away from me, evildoers." And get away from me — in that scene in Genesis to which I'm referring, when Lot comes out of the house and stands in front of the door, they say "get back" — it's the same verb — "get back from here." They want to grab the people inside the house. But he said, "Get away from me, all you evildoers." Now what I suggest here is that actually Jesus is telling the Sodom story in reverse, but with it being used as a judgment story, which forces the proper reading of the Sodom story. So he's suggesting to his listeners, by saying "I don't know where you come from," hinting: are you in fact the people of Sodom, who knock against the door, tell people to get out of the way, but in fact reject foreigners, the weak, those who are precarious? That's what's going to make the difference. Are you able to overcome your group feeling, your group togetherness? Because that's what's going to determine where you come from — whether you are in fact Israel, or whether you're Sodom. So when he says, "I don't know where you come from, go away from me, all you evildoers," he's bringing to mind that terrible story of how a group of people knocked at a door and wanted to commit acts of great inhospitality against precarious migrants. And they filled the square outside the house, and the Greek verbs appear again and again — even the pounding on the door. Actually, the pounding happens in the Judges' version of the same story, when it's the Levite's concubine: they pound on the door, and the same verb here, which is the parallel story but told about a similar act of inhospitality within Israel. So he's saying: maybe you come from the Gibeonites, the Benjaminites — or maybe you come from Sodom. I don't know where you come from. The suggestion being that it's not a question of having seen… somebody or known somebody, or listened to somebody teaching in their squares. It's not a question of any kind of identitarianism — that won't do at all. It's always going to be a question of: have you undergone the change of heart? Have you undergone the route to becoming someone else? Because that's where you've come from. It's a very, very strong suggestion here that the question of who is to be saved is going to be a question of a journey. Nothing identitarian about it. And in fact, for those for whom it is identitarian, this is going to be a tremendously shocking thing, because they're going to discover that what they thought was Israel was in fact Sodom. And then he says at the end, "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" — very much what happened in the destruction of Sodom — "when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God." So he's bringing to mind Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, which means Israel. What is the real Israel? Are you the real Israel? "I don't know where you come from. And all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out." Thinking yourself good and throwing out others, you will in fact have thrown yourselves out. "Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God." And this is a quote from Psalm 107: "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south." The interesting thing about Psalm 107 is that unlike many psalms, it doesn't then go on to recount a potted history of Israel. It gives a whole series of examples of people doing things with no reference to their nationality or their ethnicity or anything like that. So he's saying that those people will come from wherever, who will have made the journey away from this identitarian, over-against-others kind of suggestion that that's how we're saved. And then he says, "Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last." And this is the phrase which — apparently the Aramaism behind it is more complicated than that. It's not a simple reversal. It's the suggestion that wherever you are, whoever you are, there will be lastness in your firstness and firstness in your lastness. It's a more complicated thing, but it does try to bring out the complete reversal of expectations that is going on. So this must have been hard to hear; this must have been hard to listen to. Of course, Luke is writing it from his account as someone after the Holy Spirit has come out and been poured on the Gentiles. He's writing as someone who realizes how difficult this is for the Jewish people to accept the one who has come, and what a complete turning around it does of anything identitarian. And this of course is enormously important for us as we struggle to separate ourselves from our own identitarianism, whether the ones that we all have and we're blind to, or the ones that in some of us we actually profess as being a good thing, and learning to detect where we are Sodom rather than Israel, and so learn to receive those from east, from west, from north, from south, those who are utterly unlike us and yet who are coming in alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and reclining at the banquet. Amen. O Father, O Son, O Holy Spirit, Amen.