30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ex 22:20-26; 1 Thes 1:5c-10; Mt 22:34-40 

Writing to the Christians in Thessalonica,
converts from paganism,
St. Paul commends them for having
“turned… from idols
to serve the living and true God.”
Idol worship was common in the time of Paul;
indeed, the Jewish people 
were thought to be oddballs
because the temple where they worshipped 
contained no representations of their God.
But the Jews were adamant that their God,
the living and true God, 
could not be represented 
by something made by human hands,
and that those who practiced idolatry
worshipped gods who were dead and false,
glittering products of craft and ingenuity
that could neither see nor hear,
could neither give love nor receive it.

For St. Paul, as for all Jews,
the problem with idolatry 
is not that God has no image.
Indeed, the book of Genesis tells us
that human beings are created 
in the image and likeness of God,
so images of God are all around us.
The problem with idolatry 
is that it ensnares us in the illusion
that the images of God that we create
are the true image of God,
so that we are relieved of the burden
of having to honor
the image of God that God creates,
the human images of God 
we encounter in our daily lives.

The Jewish alternative to the worship of idols
is summed up by Jesus in today’s Gospel:
the true way to worship God
is to “love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind,”
and to “love your neighbor 
as yourself.”
Love of God and love of neighbor
constitute, in their unity,
what it means to worship God.
All other acts of worship—
prayer and fasting,
ritual and sacrifice—
are nothing without these two,
because we find the true image of God,
the image not made by human hands,
in the person of our neighbor 
and in ourselves.

Of course, avoiding idolatry
is nothing so simple 
as not making physical images of God.
We can craft idolatrous images of God
with our minds as well as with our hands.
We can imagine God 
as a heavenly police officer
enforcing our rules,
or a divine therapist
salving our consciences,
or as cosmic life-coach
telling us that we can have it all.
We can imagine God 
to be a god who suits our needs,
a god who serves us
rather than the God whom we serve.
Such a god, no less than a statue of Zeus,
is an image fashioned by human beings,
and to set up such a god
in place of the living and true God
is no less an act of idolatry.
Indeed, for most of us
it is a much more common, 
much more tempting, 
form of idolatry.

But even if we banish 
these false images of God 
from our minds,
this is not enough to avoid idolatry.
We must not only avoid honoring false images;
we must also properly honor the true image.

We honor the true and living 
image of God in ourselves
when we give up on the idea that we are self-made:
that our accomplishments are somehow our own,
that we owe nothing to anyone,
perhaps not even to God.
This is a false image of ourselves,
for a true image is one that always reflects
and is dependent on that of which it is an image.
No less than the human-made idols in a temple,
the image of ourselves as self-made 
is an image that is lifeless and false,
a glittering product of human craft and ingenuity
that can neither give nor receive love.
To know myself as an image of God
is to know my true worth and dignity,
it is to know my own existence as a gift
that I neither earn nor deserve.

We honor the true and living 
image of God in our neighbor
when we see that they too exist as divine gifts:
gifts to themselves and gifts to us.
Among the first laws that God gives to the Israelites
after they have been freed from captivity in Egypt
are laws protecting widows and orphans
and foreigners living among them.
These, whom scripture describes 
as the “little ones,”
are groups uniquely vulnerable:
foreigners have no tribe to protect them,
widows have no husbands,
orphans no father.
Each of them is subject 
to abuse and exploitation,
to being used by the powerful
to enrich their coffers
or indulge their appetites.
Even if not actively exploited,
they are all too easily 
overlooked and abandoned
by those who ought to come to their aid.
But God does not overlook them;
he says to the Israelites,
“If ever you wrong them 
and they cry out to me,
I will surely hear their cry.”

Perhaps the problem is that we presume 
that the image of God
is to be found only 
in the great and powerful—
in those self-made people
who have clawed their way 
to the top of the heap—
and not in those 
weak and vulnerable ones 
who lie crushed 
and shattered in their wake.
But this too is idolatry,
for it fails to see that the image
of the true and living God, 
is to be found in these little ones 
above all others.
For God has shown their image 
to be his image
by taking vulnerable flesh 
and dying on a cross,
abused by the powerful
and abandoned by his friends,
abandoned by all but his Father,
who heard his cry and raised him to new life.

God calls us today to turn away from idols:
the idol of a god who suits my needs,
the idol of myself as self-made,
the idol of my needy neighbor 
as one whom I am free 
to exploit or overlook.
God calls us to turn 
to the true and living God,
to love that God with all of our 
heart, soul, and mind
and to love our neighbor as ourself.
May this God—
living, true, and merciful—
have mercy on us all.

 

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 25:6-10a; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

VIDEO

I am always struck, 
when reading Matthew’s version
of the parable of the wedding feast,
by how violent and disturbing it is.
Luke’s gospel includes the same parable,
but there it is a pretty straightforward story
of people refusing an invitation to a great feast
and other people being invited in their stead.
But in Matthew’s version
we have emissaries murdered,
cities destroyed,
and guests who are underdressed
being cast into the outer darkness.
Luke’s simple story of the abundant feast 
to which God invites us,
and the importance of accepting that invitation,
takes on in Matthew a dark and somber coloring.

Matthew’s parable shows a world 
in which people act 
against their own self-interest:
what do the unwilling invitees gain
by killing those servants
who brought them the invitation?
It shows a world in which people
more than match evil for evil:
why destroy the innocent
alongside the guilty
in retaliation for murder?
It shows us a world beset by,
as the prophet Isaiah puts it,
“the veil that veils all peoples,
the web that is woven over all nations.”
It shows us a world 
enclosed in the shroud of sin 
and entangled in the mesh of mortality.
It shows us, in short, our world.
It shows us how we reject and react and retaliate.
It shows us how even the joyous event
of a wedding banquet
can be turned into 
one more manifestation
of the evil in which we 
are enclosed and entangled.

But the parable does more that,
for if that was all it did 
then it would hardly be good news.
The image of the wedding feast
draws our minds to God’s promise
that this sad, violent world 
will one day be transformed.
It draws our minds to Scripture’s promise
that God “will provide for all peoples
a feast of rich food and choice wines,”
the promise that God 
will wipe the tears from every face
and that death itself will be destroyed.
And it draws our minds 
to our liturgy’s promise that, 
even now, 
in the midst of all this sin and sorrow,
we are blessed to be called 
to the supper of the Lamb,
who bears away the world’s sin
and gives to us his peace.
Even now, beneath the veil 
and within the web that death has woven,
the Lamb of God feeds us with himself,
sustaining us each week in his banquet of love,
a feast of rich food and choice wine.

Matthew’s version of the parable
weaves together in a striking fashion
the promise of the wedding banquet
with the violence and sorrow 
that shrouds our world,
as if to remind us that death’s defeat,
which is already won for us 
in the resurrection of Christ,
is something that is not yet 
fully realized in us.
It reminds us that the Lamb’s peace
is truly present to us in this meal,
but veiled under sacramental signs
that only faith can discern.

But what about that 
underdressed wedding guest
who is cast into the outer darkness?
How does he fit into the picture?
It does seem strange that someone
who was dragged in from the streets
should be faulted for not wearing
something suitable for a royal wedding.
But in Scripture, clothing 
is never merely clothing.
The Psalms speak repeatedly 
of the righteous being clothed
with joy and salvation,
and the wicked being clothed
with shame and dishonor.
In the New Testament, St. Paul speaks
of clothing yourself with compassion, 
kindness, humility, 
meekness, and patience.
He speaks, above all, 
of clothing yourself with love,
which, he says, 
“binds everything together 
in perfect harmony” (Col 3:12-14).

If the wedding banquet 
is the Lamb’s high feast,
then surely love is the festive garment
in which we should be clothed.
It is not enough to be invited
out of the sad world of sin and death
and into the joyous banquet of life; 
it is not enough even to accept the invitation
and to gather with others to celebrate.
As St. Paul says, 
“If I comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge…
but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own… 
but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:1-2).
For it is love that carries us out of this world of death
and into the banquet of life,
and it is the lacking of love that leads
out of the banquet into the outer darkness.
In the face of the violence and sorrow of the world,
we who have been invited must clothe ourselves in love.

But where do we find this love?
After all, are we not those 
who have been called in from the streets,
who arrive unprepared and unworthy?
But, St. Paul says in our second reading today,
“My God will fully supply whatever you need,
in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
We come to the banquet with nothing,
but if only we ask 
God will clothe us 
in joyful wedding garments 
of compassion, kindness, humility, 
meekness, and patience.
Above all, God will clothe us in his love.
And finding ourselves in such bright array,
we can reflect the light of God’s love
to a world enclosed in the shroud of sin 
and entangled in the mesh of mortality,
so that every tearful eye might hope to see
that day when all the saints will sing
“This is the LORD for whom we looked;
let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!”