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Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sacrifice - or making holy
Reading 1 Is 25:6-10a
On this mountain the LORD of hosts
will provide for all peoples
a feast of rich food and choice wines,
juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the veil that veils all peoples,
the web that is woven over all nations;
he will destroy death forever.
The Lord GOD will wipe away
the tears from every face;
the reproach of his people he will remove
from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.
On that day it will be said:
"Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!
This is the LORD for whom we looked;
let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!"
For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.
Gospel Mt 22:1-14
Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and elders of the people
in parables, saying,
"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who gave a wedding feast for his son.
He dispatched his servants
to summon the invited guests to the feast,
but they refused to come.
A second time he sent other servants, saying,
'Tell those invited: "Behold, I have prepared my banquet,
my calves and fattened cattle are killed,
and everything is ready; come to the feast."'
Some ignored the invitation and went away,
one to his farm, another to his business.
The rest laid hold of his servants,
mistreated them, and killed them.
The king was enraged and sent his troops,
destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
Then he said to his servants, 'The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come.
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.'
The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests.
But when the king came in to meet the guests,
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
The king said to him, 'My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?'
But he was reduced to silence.
Then the king said to his attendants, 'Bind his hands and feet,
and cast him into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'
Many are invited, but few are chosen."
http://sites.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/meta-4g.htm
It is unusual to have two stories so closely parallel on consecutive Sundays. Last week Cathy treated us to some ways of viewing the story of the vineyard and its unworthy tenants. This week it's about a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son and invited the notables of the town.
In both stories there is acute disappointment when trust is breached; the difference in the stories lies in the people who disappoint.
In the first the tenant farmers were managers responsible to send proceeds to the owner; their failure amounts to downright greed and dishonesty.
In the second the invitees are a cross-section of ordinary, hard-working, local people: one goes off to his farm, another is caught up in his business. The insult this offered to the king lies in their failure to prioritise correctly. They should have given more importance to that invitation to take part in an important celebration with the First Family.
Matthew aims both stories at the religious establishment of his time (the gospel says the stories were directed expressly to the pharisees and chief priests); it will be for us to apply them to the church in our time and place. If the people managing the vineyard represent our bishops and priests, then the invited guests of the second story could represent us, the ordinary people of the church - the "laity". While obviously connected, the fault in the two groups shows with different symptoms and requires different remedies.
About the clergy, Pope Francis names the cancer at the heart of the church as clericalism.
'Clericalism,' writes Michael Kelly s.j., 'is that culture of presumption shared by those in Orders who believe they run the Church, and everyone in the Church is there to be run by them. It is secretive, exclusive and judgmental.
'[Clericalism] reserves to itself and its leaders the right to make all decisions without consultation beyond its narrow confines, and relegates lay people to their proper functions: pray, pay and obey.' https://international.la-croix.com/news/not-just-george-pell-is-on-trial/6076
This is a hard judgement and the remedy is no less drastic. Kelly calls for a spiritual conversion coupled with a vigorous campaign of affirmative action (which would include the insertion of set quotas of women into leadership roles as has been done in the secular world), as well as a relentless attack on clericalism itself, and clericalists. It needs to be organised and disciplined, he adds.
As severe as this critique is, it is at the conservative end of ideas blowing in the wind. The bishop of Paramatta, Vincent Long, says that the model of an exalted, separate and elitist priesthood is "drawing its last breaths". Looking beyond its demise, he sees the crisis as a "unique opportunity to accompany our people in a spiritual exodus... to a new dawn for the church. http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/7828/0/separate-and-elitist-priesthood-model-drawing-its-last-breaths-says-australian-bishop
A spiritual exodus out of the bondage of old forms into a new way of living our christian lives. Perhaps the plague of sexual abuse of children by clergy and its cover-up by the hierarchy is in parallel with the plagues of Egypt, but hopefully this exodus will be achieved without destroying people or their good names.
In the 21st century a new exodus will be conceptualised in evolutionary terms. It will be a growth experience. We are called to evolve, which in this case means to develop our christian life to a new stage, one that goes beyond the need to depend on a clerical cast. It will also take us beyond dependency on cultic formulas that smack of magic, such as ontological characters, sacraments effective ex opere operato (automatically), fulfillment of the law seen as justifying, etc.
Such an evolution could well entail the correction of an anomaly which lies at the core of christianity, dating back to the third and fourth centuries. It is the very notion of the community leader as a priest who offers sacrifice. How this cultic priesthood developed among the followers of the Way of Jesus of Nazareth is still not clear, but a scholar of the stature of Dr John N. Collins is convinced that such a thing was foreign to the thinking of first-century christians. "I don't believe in sacerdotal priests" he wrote on the forum recently, and he backs up his position with recognised scholarship. http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=204304
The leader of the christian community is a presider, a presbyter, not a sacerdos. The latter is an ancient concept common to the great religions prior to christianity: a person who is consecrated and dedicated to the role of bringing sacred gifts to the altar and dispensing to the people sacred favours from the gods. The Jewish temple and its priests were such a system, with the important distinction that it was dedicated to The One God. The temple was destroyed in 70 CE and that priesthood has not functioned since, but it had an extended life in the catholic church. As our exodus entails the shedding of this enslaving factor we need to talk about it, to develop our thinking and our languagen if we are to cope with the future reality.
The layman, Jesus, had as little to do with the temple as any average layman. The radical change of attitude, the metanoia, he proposed was based on personal integrity, a personal spiritual consecration of the self that is pleasing to the Father. Among his last words was this summary of his purpose and method: "For their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth." (Jn 17: 19)
It is a tragic mistake to so focus on his violent death that we miss the steady commitment of daily life in which Jesus consecrated himself in truth in a way that we can all follow. Our mission like his is one of service to the Word, as Herbie points out in this forum from time to time. We are God's messengers and ambassadors, in Paul's terms. Our task is to persuade and convince the world that all are loved by God.
The 'sacrifice' that pleases God is not in the shedding of blood, but in the gift of a pure heart characterised by integrity and truth, justice and love. In our exodus let us avoid destroying anyone.
* * * * *
Coming now at last to today's parable where the focus is on us, the "laity", we need to investigate this unique opportunity of a spiritual exodus. A new day is dawning for the church, and we need to take seriously our invitation to the wedding banquet. What do we need to do to get ready?
Clearly our problem is not indifference. Readers of Catholica certainly do give priority to the kingdom. Many put in much time and thoughtful energy to various ways of caring. This is all very good, but we still need to ask ourselves is there something else we might be deaf or blind to?
Generation after generation over centuries we have been schooled in obedience, to take directions from the divinely appointed sacred leaders, the hierarchy. Nothing so deadens the hearing as blind obedience.
Vatican II brought this to an end when it proclaimed the Age of the Laity. Although the idea had been brewing for some decades it was far from mature. It had reached the point where the apostolate of the laity meant they were encouraged to be doing things beyond the reach of the real apostles, the bishops and their priests.
Experience of the half-century since the council shows that something much bigger is happening. We as the community of the people of God are becoming conscious of the fact that living our christian lives as Jesus lived his, in witness to the truth, is bringing to reality what God so greatly longs for - a world he could be proud to claim as his own. This has little to do with what happens in the church building or what guidance might be available from the clergy. The reality of christian living is experienced in the home, in the workplace, in the leisure place, in any place where people meet.
We all know this, but the question is: do we talk about it enough? Do we share our experiences enough? Are we learning from one another? Are we growing in confidence in our local communities? Are we becoming leaders, or are we still waiting for the clergy or someone in authority to commission us to a leadership role?
The commission has been given. The examples are all around us of people quietly reaching out to others, motivated by the faith and hope and love to be another 'Christos', an anointed one sharing the blessing they have received, whether in compassion, or in partnership, or just in mateship.
Sometimes I feel that the conversations on Catholica are too much about the doings or ill-doings of the clergy, and I wonder whether this is getting us anywhere. Are we still facing backwards, looking to what has been with a critical eye?
Perhaps it's time to say: Enough of that. We have work to do. We need to be more forward looking, pushing ahead to make that banquet of the kingdom a reality in our neighbourhood, among our friends and acquaintances. I don't think we have to make it expressly 'christian', but that is something we need to talk about in more detailhere on Catholica.
Our task, walking the walk with Jesus, is to consecrate ourselves to the truth that the lives of these others may develop in truth, honesty, integrity and humanity. This is what “making holy” really entails. This is what we need to talk over endlessly because it involves developing a new language and new ways of understanding.