NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 32 in Ordinary Time Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. In today's Gospel we've jumped a bit since two weeks ago. Remember, last Sunday we had a special Gospel reading for the Solemnity of All Saints. The Sunday before, we were still in the Temple, where Jesus had been previously talking to the priests and the scribes, and then more latterly he was talking to the Pharisees. But in each case he was speaking the words that shall never pass away. Since that Gospel, he's left the Temple, and he addressed his disciples and others about what we would now call the inner workings of what it's going to be like to live religiously after the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem. In other words, the beginnings of the structure of Church, and in particular how to be extremely suspicious of fake religious leadership. A huge amount of what he's talking about there is to warn us about the kind of forms of hypocrisy and violence that we will see exercised in God's name in our midst, and how to see through them. Then he moves on with his disciples and starts to speak to them privately. He gives them the apocalyptic discourse, telling them about the collapse of the Temple, the terrible things that are to come, and how they're not to lose their heads in the midst of all those things, but they are to learn how to be vigilant, to stay awake. And what we're going to get for the next three Sundays are the parables about vigilance. How it is that we are to have our eyes trained to see the one coming in. So that's where we are today in the preparation for vigilance. "The kingdom of heaven is like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom." Okay, first thing to notice is that the bridesmaids know that a wedding is coming — all ten of them. It's not as though some of them weren't really bridesmaids and didn't know this was a wedding. No, they're all aware that a wedding is coming. The only question is: when? What's it going to look like? They all have lamps because they'll need to see. The understanding is that the ability to see what's going on is going to be necessary. And in this, our reading from the Book of Wisdom, the first reading helps us, because part of the role of wisdom is to come into people so that they can see. Wisdom isn't, if you like, a form of extra intelligence. Wisdom is the creative force that adjusts us from within towards being perceivers of and participants in reality, the reality of the creation that is emerging before us. So these lamps and the wisdom are very much part of the same thing. So here we have the bridesmaids who know there's a wedding. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. Okay, Jesus is immediately taking us back to the difference between the foolish and the wise builders from the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to see that the passage from the Sermon on the Mount is much referenced today, because if you remember, there it was the foolish who built the house upon the sand and the wise who built the house upon the rock. It is of course much more difficult to build a house upon a rock — it takes time, excavation, hard work — but the results are more solid. So here the notion of having oil for the lamp would have been understood immediately as the way in which you seek constantly to acquire wisdom, so as to be able to see. You go to seek wisdom and wisdom gives itself to you. "As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout: 'Look, here is the bridegroom. Come out to meet him.'" Okay, the shout is at midnight. Matthew is a genius. Not long after the disciples have heard this, one of them will have particular reason to have remembered this teaching, because as we'll see, he is going to be involved in becoming the illustration for us of the working out of this teaching. When the cry came at midnight a few days later, they were in the garden of Gethsemane, and the bridegroom arrived. The arrival of the bridegroom looked like the handing over of Jesus to his death. Remember that — we're going to come back to that in just a second. So the foolish: then all the bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. Remember that, as in Gethsemane, all the disciples were asleep — they all got up. All the bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out." They were not able to see in the midst of the chaos and the confusion that occurs when the bridegroom arrives for the marriage, when the handing over comes, because it's always going to be a time of confusion and darkness. But the wise replied, "No, there will not be enough for us and for you. You better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves." The kind of light that is necessary… to deal with the coming of the bridegroom in the midst of the chaos and confusion, seeing the arrival of the Lamb who is handing himself over to the marriage feast of the Lamb. That can only be acquired personally by having gone through, having trained your eyes through it, so that you're not thrown by the first signs of the winds of confusion. "No, there would not be enough for us and for you. You had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves." And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the banquet and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, "Lord, Lord, open to us." But he replied, "Truly I tell you, I do not know you." Now, beautifully, only a few days later, Peter tries to get in to the high priest's courtyard while Jesus is being tried. Three times he denies, and in one of those he denies it with an oath, saying, "I do not know the man." Please remember this phrase. The "I do not know you" is not simply a "I'm not sure I've heard of him." It's the formal way of ostracizing someone with an oath. It's the casting-out word. And here of course is the irony, because the one who casts out, or is on the side of the casting out, is the one who is in fact cast out. The one who has recognized the one who is being cast out and followed them in to the banquet — that is the one whom the Lord knows. Beautifully set up here, we have Peter immediately failing the test of the parable — for which, thank heavens, because it means we know that we can get it wrong and come again. This is one of the wonderful things of the Petrine witness. It's about being wrong and coming again, not being let down. "So keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." Here's what I'd like to suggest is going on, which is that Jesus is preparing his disciples for being awake. Being awake means constantly learning how to train your eyes on the moment when the Lord arrives. And the Lord arrives in one being cast out. And it's in our reaching out to and accompanying that person that we find ourselves going into the wedding feast. Pastor Niemöller has a famous phrase about: "They came for the Jews and I did nothing, because I'm not a Jew. They came for the Socialists and I did nothing, because I'm not a Socialist. They came for the Union members…" You know his sentence. He is trying to say the same thing: you know that the One is coming when you see the being handed over, when you see the ones being cast out. And I think that this is one of the extraordinary things for which our Lord is preparing us — that after the time of the collapse of the Temple, when finally the The sacrificial system was undone, when the fakeness, if you like, of ordinary human sacrificial systems was finally revealed to be what it was. After that, nothing will ever be clear again in the same way. Our learning what is good, how to be on the side of the good, how to allow ourselves to be made good — all of that is going to be shown as we find ourselves all through the process of learning to see the one who is being handed over, the one who is being cast out. And it's as our eyes are trained to that that we are finding ourselves on the inside of the light of the Gospel. It's actually a thrilling reality rather than a morbid one. It's incredibly alive-making, but it's lifelong. There's no amount of, "Well, yes, I know what this is about, so I'll just hang around, and then I'll be able to make the right decision at the moment, I'm sure." No, we won't. It's only as we allow ourselves to be trained constantly into seeing the one who's being carried away that we will be able to see the one who is arriving. In the midst of all the chaos and confusion, all the fake goodness, all the growling sacred noises, all of that which Jesus has exposed for us — it's only in the midst of all that that we'll be able to see. I always remember the tale of Andreas Schmidt — I think that's his name — who was a low-ranking German soldier who became aware that part of his job was to escort trains with Jewish passengers bound for re-establishment in Eastern Europe. And after a fairly short time he became aware what they were really for, and unlike all the others in his platoon, for some reason he saw what was going on, and he knew that it was better to be dead than to be taking part in that. He saw the arrival of the bridegroom, and he spent the next three months trying to hide Jewish people, hiding them in the forest. He was eventually caught by the Gestapo and killed. And who is greater in the kingdom of heaven than he? Because his eyes were trained, and he saw the arrival of the bridegroom, and he went in to the wedding feast. This, I think, is what we're being invited to do. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.