NewCreation

Homily for 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. This week we make a slight jump, but not too big a jump. We miss Jesus's lament over Jerusalem, and then we come to this banquet at the house of a Pharisee. Today's Gospel also jumps over a few verses, which I'm going to include because I think they're rather important for our Gospel. So today's Gospel — remember, Jesus has been going through, he's gradually getting closer to Jerusalem. He's been going through the region between Galilee, Samaria and Judea. He's getting closer, and he's conducting what is effectively a visitation, the visitation from on high, to see how Israel is doing. Is Israel living up to what Israel is about? Last time, you remember, he challenged them: are you being Israel, or are you being Sodom? We're going to have more examples of that. He put the same challenge to them with the woman who was bent over, which was one of the passages we jumped over, and the same is going to be offered today with the man with dropsy. Are you really Israel? And then we're going to look at quite a striking teaching concerning his visitation, and the words to do with looking and watching are going to be very important. So in today's Gospel: on one occasion, so during this journey gradually towards Jerusalem, Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath. The literal text says to eat bread — we would just say maybe to break bread. The reason I say this is important is because exactly the same phrase comes a bit later, where they translate it as "to eat bread." They make it curiously specific, whereas the phrase is exactly the same in both cases: to eat a meal, to break bread on the Sabbath. And it says they were watching him closely. Now that's a particular verb for watching, a particular verb which we get in Greek. It's a fairly rare verb in the Bible, but it comes twice in the book of Psalms. Those are the only times it appears in the Hebrew Scriptures. "The sinner will closely watch the righteous and gnash his teeth at him" — which is in a sense what we're getting here. We're having — they're about to gnash their teeth at him, because they're not going to be able to say anything. But it's also the verb which we get in the psalm where it says, "And if you, Lord, should mark our sins, who should stand?" — if you should mark, if you should watch closely. So it's the notion of this accusatory looking. That's the kind of looking that we're talking about here. Hold on to that, because it's important for a different kind of looking we're going to see. So just then in front of him — in front of Jesus — at this stage he's on his way to the In that house, there was a man who had dropsy, and Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, "Is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath or not?" But they were silent. So Jesus took him and healed him and sent him away. They'd been watching him; they weren't able to say anything — presumably because they were busy gnashing their teeth. Then he said to them, "If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?" So this is the diptych, this is the other half of the woman bent over. In that image she was bent over, and what he said was, if one of you does not untie his ox or his animal on the Sabbath, they'll be able to feed them. In other words, they're bent over, so they're untied so they can lift up and eat. And here he has someone suffering from dropsy, which is someone therefore who has got far too much water in the system, and the image is of someone — an animal or a child — who has fallen into a well. If you have someone who has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath? In other words, in both cases he uses the infirmity as a specific context for the curing. In one case, someone who's tied down and therefore can't feed, and then someone who has fallen into a well and therefore is in danger. So in both cases, curiously, Jesus compares the people concerned to animals, so as then to make them fully human. And they could not reply to this — so they presumably get what he's doing. But this is on the way to the banquet, the feast to which he's been invited by a leading Pharisee. But notice what he does. He's on the way, it is a Sabbath, and he does touch the person. So the question is: would he be required, in order to take part in a banquet, to engage in some sort of ritual bath beyond what would normally happen on your way into someone else's house? He's had no problem in touching somebody who would have been considered both ill and quite possibly a sinner, since at that time they thought that somebody who was ill with dropsy was particularly likely to be avaricious. That's merely the gossip at the time. Dropsy was the sort of thing that avaricious people got. Of course there's no medical basis for that at all. So then we come to the place for the banquet. When he noticed how the guests chose the place of honour, he told them a parable. This is just an example of how Luke gets an awful lot into very little. So here is a verb with Jesus doing the noticing, or the marking, and it's the verb epéron, which is again not all that common for This business of looking, inspecting, intending, holding back — but it does come very beautifully in the book of Sirach, the book of Ecclesiasticus, from which we get our first reading, though not, I think, this chunk of Ecclesiasticus where we get this phrase: "And do not be intent on an unjust sacrifice, because the Lord is judge, and with him there is no respect of person." So there's the kind of looking that is appropriate for a judge in whose presence there is no respect of person. But there are others who are looking on in an unrighteous way, and of course what Jesus is about to talk about is about the Lord having no exception of persons. So Luke is setting this up: we have the wicked looking in an accusatory way and gnashing, and then the Lord coming in and inspecting — but inspecting with no acceptance of persons, no exception of persons. So he notes how they choose the place of honour. So he's doing exactly the reverse, and to try and bring their attention to this he tells them a parable. "When you were invited by someone to a" — again our translation says "wedding feast," but the Greek word would have probably just meant a banquet on particular occasions; when it meant a wedding feast, but probably just a banquet — and it's obviously referring to the feast that's happening in their midst that evening. And remember that this is Jesus telling a parable and enacting the reality of it, because the judge is in fact present at the banquet. "When you are invited by someone to a feast, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host, and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place." Disgrace is shame. Our old, old duo, which we get throughout the Gospel: shame and glory. The two poles within which Jesus is teaching, and within which the whole of the mimetic understanding of humanity functions. Shame and glory. "Give this person a place. And then in shame you would start to take the lowest place" — you would probably fall through the hole in the floor and slink away. And let's say this about ancient feasts — and this is a point which has been made: in an ancient feast, both in Greek and Roman times, if you have a banquet they would be organized by degree of importance of persons. The top table would include better food, and the host giving out the portions himself. So it was a very great honour to be at that place, and you got a better meal. So the rushing in is not only, as it were, to be in the honourable place, but actually to get the best grub. There would be less good food further down, and of course you wouldn't be given it by hand by the host himself. So Jesus says, "When you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher.' Then you will be honored." And again, what is the word for honored? It's "then you will have glory, then there will be to you glory in the face of all who are at the table with you." So shame, glory — and he's teaching all this in this space which is a Pharisee's sabbath party. In other words, he's turning this into a divine happening in which the extremes of shame and glory are being taught about, and it's the judge who is present. Are they going to get that? In fact, the judge who is present is actually showing to them what shame and glory look like. Well, as we'll see later, yes, actually somebody does get it. Then he says, "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." So he brings out the obvious passage. Here the one who exalts is always God. If you need to exalt yourself, then the chances are you're not being exalted by God. You will be brought to the place in the banquet that is your proper place by the one whose party it is. You don't need to fear, you don't need to push yourself forward in order to receive glory. And then he turns to the host as well, because this is obviously a teaching that applies to inviting as well as to receiving an invitation. "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours." Remember, they would have heard that he will have just cured a man with dropsy on the way in — the kind of person who couldn't come to a party. "Do not invite those people, or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return." In other words, there's a risk that you will be repaid — the terrible risk that you'll be doing something that serves to be repaid. Excuse me, the little dog is snoring, I'll just tap him. Nicolas. Okay, a little brief Nicolas snoring interruption. So Jesus is quite strongly breaking the fundamental rule of reciprocity. You invite your friends and they invite you back, because the rules of reciprocity are in fact how we get our safety, how we protect ourselves, and how we keep ourselves together and how things don't turn into vengeance. The reverse of reciprocity, of course, is that reciprocal kindness can very easily — if someone messes up — turn into reciprocal revenge. And that is exactly not the role of the one who is really inviting. The one who is really inviting has nothing to do either with the status of the person or with their notion of what is honour or not, but also has nothing to do with receiving either kisses or blows from each other. It's absolutely beyond that. "But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you." In other words, you will have broken through reciprocity. You will have done something gratuitous, and that means that you will actually be acting like God, and you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous, because it means that God will have been acting into you and you will have become that thing. You will have become this person who is beyond the world of reciprocity. And it's at this point that we get a verse which is not in our reading — it's the next verse of the reading, but which should be — because it's one of the dinner guests on hearing this said to him, "Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. Blessed is the one who will break bread in the kingdom of God." And this person has understood what Jesus is about. Jesus is undoing the Levitical instructions as to who gets to eat in the holy place, at the banquet, in the resurrection of the righteous. He's undoing that now in real time. He's done it with the person who had dropsy, and now he's showing the guests at apparently a relatively secular banquet what might be the sign of the kingdom: the breaking in of the real feast, where not those who are free from blemish, not those who are cast out, can in fact join in the banquet of heaven. One of the dinner guests has understood this, which is why Jesus then goes on to another parable — which is too much for our reading for this week, and it's not even the reading we're given next week. I just wanted to bring out that someone gets what Jesus is talking about, someone understands that he is fulfilling and moving beyond Leviticus in talking about the Lord who invites, who has no favourites, and who breaks through all our reciprocities, which are built on favour and fear, or vengeance. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.