(This was the homily this morning, August 25, 2019. The readings are Isaiah 66:18-21, Psalm 117, Hebrews 12:5-7 and 11-13, and Luke 13:22-30.)
This is kind of a harsh gospel. Maybe some of you are like me and wonder if that Slobig guy is ever going to give a harsh homily.
We seem to be having a run of hard gospel messages. Last week (Aug. 18), the gospel reading had Jesus saying “I have come to set the world on fire,” and warning his followers that his teaching is going to turn families inside out, fathers against their sons, mothers against their daughters, in-laws against in-laws.
And now we hear about the door being locked for the night, and the master saying, “I don’t know where you are from.”
Jesus’s point here is persistence. Keep after it. He’s persistent himself, repeating that the last will be first and the first will be last. Today he uses a meaningful verb, strive. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” The “narrow gate” reminds us of the “eye of the needle”: It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for the rich and comfortable to enter the kingdom.
But that verb, strive. He didn’t say “try”. When you say strive, can’t you feel the effort, the dedication, the persistence? When someone strives, you know they are really putting their heart into it. This is not a context where you want to say “try”. Just “trying” doesn’t sound like persistence or dedication. “Try” sounds like just showing up, and maybe it will work out; maybe it won’t. Remember what Yoda said to Luke in the early part of his Jedi training: “There is no try.” The one who strives doesn’t have any quit in her, even in the face adversity, even in the face of failure.
So, thinking about the difference between striving and just showing up, I got to thinking about what we are doing here.
You’re hearing this, which means that it mattered to you to show up for mass this morning. And that’s good! Some of us here are striving, struggling; some are searching and yearning. Some of us are just showing up.
Do we just show up at mass? Do we merely show up, or are we really putting our hearts into this? Did we bring anyone with us? Do we recite the prayers, joining our voices with everybody else, and do we really mean them when we say them?
Do we sing?
Pope Francis says that “one cannot proclaim the Gospel of Jesus without the tangible witness of one’s life.” That means it has to show. People should know who we are, both by the vigor and care we bring to Sunday mass together, and by the way it informs and illumines our lives the other six days of the week.
The disappointed people in the gospel story tell the Lord, “We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.” But that’s all the receiving end of it. The implicit question is, “Okay you ate and drank with me and listened to me and heard what I taught, and then what happened? Did it make a difference in your life? How did you act on that?” What changed inside you, anything at all?
Was it ever hard? Did it ever make you cry? Did it ever make you change?
If we only called ourselves “Christian” while it was convenient and painless,
God is going to say to us, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me.”
St. Paul picks up on that a little in the letter to the Hebrews, today’s second reading, commenting on discipline.
Discipline seems like a pain, not a cause for joy. But Paul says it will do us good.
When things don’t go the way we want them to – do we lose heart or do we try to see where God is taking us?
And what happens when we respond to God and truly strive to be the people God made us to be? In today’s first reading, from the end of Isaiah, there is a prophecy of all of the people coming together, arriving on “horses, chariots, carts, on mules and dromedaries.” That image means the rich and the poor, the women and the men, the children and the aged, all traveling together, all striving toward the same goal. The different means of transportation is a metaphor for the variety, for the differences among all the people, all going up to our common destination. In today’s culture it might have been written “in minivans and SUVs, on bicycles and in limousines, on scooters and Priuses and Cadillacs,” variety like that. For the Jewish tradition, this is the goyim, the Gentiles: People from outside our clans and circles, all joining together. And it even says God wants to make some of them religious leaders, examples for the rest.
It brings to my mind a line from James Joyce about our Church: “Here comes everybody.”
This is not just about “getting into heaven;” the next life isn’t where the kingdom of God is found. The kingdom of God is at hand; it’s within our reach, and it exists and thrives where God’s will is being done. This is about cooperating in God’s unfolding plan all our lives.
We can show up here to check a box and fulfill an obligation that our parents and grandparents taught us, or we can really throw ourselves into a full, conscious and active participation in bringing the kingdom into being and making this world a place where every tear is wiped away and every person matters and is cared for and cherished. That starts with us striving here and continues with our persistent striving in the world. Sometimes that’s going to get uncomfortable.
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy; I’m saying it’s going to be worth it.
Belonging 