TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Know Your Place
Today our Lord Jesus invites us to his table. He knows that we are people with faults, people who have hurt him and others, by the wrong we did or the good we didn’t do. Knowing who we are he still loves us and invites us, as his friends, to join him at his table. Let us humbly take part in his meal and ask the Lord to make us more open to the humble, to people who have erred, and to the poor.
First Reading: Sirach 3:17-20,28-29
Child, work hard but don’t trumpet your success; you’ll be ranked above the one who gives but expects something in return. No matter how great you become, humble yourself at every opportunity; you’ll find appreciation in the presence of God. Many think they’re high and mighty, but God reveals his mysteries to the humble.
A sinful heart heaps sin upon sin. A proud heart has no remedy. A fruitless heart suffers from canker and rot. But there’s a remedy. The wise heart understands the words of the wise, the cocked ear desires wisdom. The well-instructed heart refrains from sin; in works of justice it meets with success.
Second Reading: Hebrews 12:18-19,22-24
Unlike your ancestors, you didn’t come to Mount Sinai—all that volcanic blaze and earthshaking rumble—to hear God speak. The earsplitting words and soul-shaking message terrified them and they begged him to stop.
No, that’s not your experience at all. You’ve come to Mount Zion, the city where the living God resides. The invisible Jerusalem is populated by throngs of festive angels and Christian citizens. It is the city where God is Judge, with judgments that make us just. You’ve come to Jesus, who presents us with a new covenant, a fresh charter from God. He is the Mediator of this covenant. The murder of Jesus, unlike Abel’s—a homicide that cried out for vengeance—became a proclamation of grace.
Gospel: Luke 14:1,7-14
One time when Jesus went for a Sabbath meal with one of the top leaders of the Pharisees, all the guests had their eyes on him, watching his every move.
He went on to tell a story to the guests around the table. Noticing how each had tried to elbow into the place of honor, he said, “When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he’ll come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.’ Red-faced, you’ll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left.
“When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”
Prayer
Our Father, you who lift up the lowly;
your Son Jesus came into our world
as the servant of all and he cherished the helpless.
With him, make us respect and appreciate
the weak, the defenseless and the humble,
and accept to be numbered among them.
Dispose us to help them and to seek their help.
For you have poured out your mercy on us too
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection:
28 August 2022
Luke 14:1,7-14
Love freely, do good in pure loss
In Israel, a Saturday or Sabbath lunch was a banquet where relatives and friends met and talked about work, family and social problems. They discussed theological and moral themes if they had a rabbi among the guests. Gospels speak of Jesus giving many of his teachings at the table during such banquets.
Today’s passage presents Jesus in the house of a Pharisee for the banquet. Banquet etiquette called for reserving the centre seats for people of honour, followed by the host, then the rest arranged by position, wealth, and age.
On the surface, it might appear that Jesus was addressing the issue of human hunger for recognition and honour. “Whenever you are invited, go to the lowest seat so that your host may come and say to you: friend, you must come up higher.” If taken literally, this could mean Jesus was teaching his disciples how to be crafty to succeed, gain recognition, and achieve honour.
Yet Jesus always reprimanded the disciples for their ambitions for power and recognition. He even forbade the use of honorary titles. When we reread the passage carefully, we notice that Jesus does not speak as a guest but as if he is the host, even though he is in the house of the Pharisee. Luke uses this setting to present Jesus’ teaching to the already “invited” guests- the Christian Communities of the time.
Dissensions and disagreements in matters of hierarchy often explode in these communities as it happens even today. The presbyters and the heads of the various ministries nurtured the desire to occupy the “first places.” It is an eternal problem of the Church: the Lord teaches us to be servants of all, but, in practice, we aspire for power and positions, honorary titles.
Jesus foresaw the tensions that would arise among his disciples because of the frenzy for the top places, and therefore, the one last teaching of the Lord at the Last Supper is to wash one another’s feet. “For who is the greatest, he who sits at the table or he who serves? He who is seated, isn’t it? Yet I am among you as the one who serves” (Lk 22:26-27).
Israel’s tradition dictates inviting only four categories of people for a banquet: friends, brothers, relatives, and neighbours! Here, the Risen Lord wants a reversal of the four categories of “good people” to give way to the groups of abandoned people: “When you give a lunch or a dinner, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.” (v. 13).
Jesus announces that he has come to begin a new feast, a banquet where the excluded and the rejected become the first guests, and the seats of honour are reserved for them.
Jesus asks us to love freely, to do good in pure loss. He recommends to welcome home those who cannot give anything in return.
Video available on Youtube: Love freely, do good in pure loss