HOMILY SUN 28 – A
Your Kingdom Come
(Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:10-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14)
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“May Your Kingdom Come, But Not Yet.”
That is the title of Oblate theologian and spiritual writer Ron Rolheiser’s recent article in Catholic newspapers. It resonates very much with the situation in the readings today – resistance to the Kingdom of God.
We are encouraged today to do just the opposite: to put our trust in the Lord, and to welcome the Reign of God into our lives, right here, right now.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is addressing the chief priests and Pharisees for the 3rd consecutive Sunday. On previous Sundays, he has shared with them parables about workers in a vineyard who came late and tenants who were leased a vineyard. Today he recounts a parable about a wedding feast to which the invited guests refuse to come. All are parables about the Kingdom of God.
Those invited refused to come, made excuses, maltreated and as in the previous Sunday’s parables, even killed the servants that were sent. Again, the king is angry and destroys the town. That destruction is a symbol of the destruction of Jerusalem that happened in 70 CE by the Romans due to the subversive politics of the Jews at that time.
Jesus is trying to get them to see that they are the ones in the parable who are not responding to the king’s invitation, and are actually persecuting and killing the prophets.
It is striking that in the parable, the good and the bad were invited. This is shocking except that there is one condition – repentance, symbolized by the wedding garment. There cannot be entry into the kingdom, especially of those on the wrong path, without metanoia, a turning around, a change of life, in a word, repentance, as the one without the garment who was thrown out found out.
In his article, Rolheiser states that Jesus preached very clearly about the Kingdom of God. The problem was not that his hearers didn’t understand him. They understood; but, almost universally, they resisted that message. Much as they yearned for God’s Kingdom to be already here, like people today who keep asking for another ten years to get his life in order, they preferred to push things into the future. Having God become concrete in their lives was far too threatening.
Gerhard Lohfink, the renowned Biblical scholar, aptly articulates both the resistance that Jesus’ hearers had to this part of his message and the reason for that resistance: “Jesus’ hearers prefer to push everything off into the future, and the story comes to no good end. The reign of God announced by Jesus is not accepted. The ‘today’ offered by God is denied. And that alone is why ‘already’ becomes ‘not yet’. …. It is not only in Nazareth that the ‘today’ of the Gospel was not accepted. Later also, in the course of the church’s history, it has again and again been denied or rendered toothless. The reason was the same as in Nazareth: apparently it goes against the human grain for God to become concrete in our lives. Then people’s desires and favorite notions are in danger, and so are their ideas about time. It can’t be today, because that would mean that our lives have to change today already. Therefore, it can lie, hygienically and snugly packed, at rest, inconsequential.”
I suspect that all of us can relate to that: It’s very threatening to have God become “concrete” in our lives, as opposed to God simply being a reality that will one day become very real. Because if God is “concrete” already now that means that our worlds have to change now and we have to stop pushing things into the indefinite future. This isn’t so much a fault in faith as it is a procrastination, a stalling, wanting of a little more time before we need to get serious. We’re like the guests in this Gospel parable who are invited to wedding banquet. We too want to go to the feast, intend to go to the feast; but, first, we need to attend to our marriages; our businesses, our ambitions. We can get serious later. There’s time. We fully intend to take Jesus seriously; it’s just that we want a little more time before we do that.
We are all, I suspect, familiar with St. Augustine’s infamous prayer. After converting to Christianity at age twenty-five, he struggled for another nine years to bring his sexuality into harmony with his faith. During those nine years, he prayed this way: “Lord, make me a chaste Christian … but not yet!”
To his credit, unlike many of us, at least eventually he stopped pushing things into the indefinite future. The call to us today is to be like Augustine, to accept the Kingdom of God into our lives, and make the future a present reality
The first reading hopefully provides us motivation to do just that. Here, Isaiah compares the kingdom of heaven to a rich banquet. God has saved us and given us salvation that is eternal life united with him. That salvation begins already, through peace, joy and bliss. The new heaven and the new earth that will come in fullness someday have already begun. War, abortion, broken marriages, addictions, corruption, ideology, suicide bombers will be no more, not even death. Our task is to facilitate the vision of Isaiah in our present-day society
The well-known Psalm 23 adds its own emphasis on what theologians call “realized eschatology” (the kingdom already here and yet still to come). God has already begun to fulfil our needs, not just material but also personal (to be loved, to belong and to be valued, giving us dignity and identity). We are to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our lives.
Step Three of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is very appropriate here in articulating precisely what we have to do to enter into the kingdom of God here and now: surrender our lives and our will over to the care of God as we understand God.
The Eucharist is our best way to celebrate Thanksgiving weekend, as the word itself means to give thanks. It is also a participation in realized eschatology, as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet of rich food and fine wines that will be our experience when the kingdom of God comes in fullness.
In the meantime, we are invited to accept the invitation to the wedding feast, to stop any procrastination, to put our complete faith in God, to trust the Lord and his promises, to surrender our lives and wills completely to him, and to, already, enter into the peace and joy of the Kingdom of God, already here and yet to come.
