Offered for the Parish of Tazewell County on the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2016 (Proper 17, Year C)
Religion is how we love God. It is through our religion that we are able, by the grace of God, to seek and serve Christ in all persons. In our Collect this week—and let me point out here that the Collect is provided to us by the Church not only as an important prayer on a given Sunday, but as a gift for each day of the following week, that is, today through Saturday; to take time during the week, even every day, to reflect on the Collect is a good and holy activity; for when we pray with the Collect at home, we emphasize the relationship between Sunday worship and our home life, and we invite that relationship to bear fruit—in our Collect, we affirm that all good things come from God: Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things. That is, we affirm that He is the creator and we are His creatures—we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
We need to constantly, every day, many times a day even, affirm this right relationship between ourselves and God. We need this because when we are aware of the right relationship between ourselves and God, we are far less prone to sin, that is, to make choices that lead into degrees of separation from God. When we are aware—really aware, not merely intellectually, but profoundly—of the right relationship between ourselves and God, of Creator and Creature, then almost immediately humility grows in our bodies and souls, and fills our heart—humility fills us so that our souls, to quote Blessed Mary, magnify the Lord. Constantly recalling this right relationship, and living and being into that relationship, is what Saint Luke is telling us today: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Jesus is speaking of how we are to act at a wedding banquet. Brothers and sisters, we do this passage from Saint Luke a great disservice if we make it too small. The wedding feast is not small, but large—inexpressibly large. We must recall that throughout Scripture Jesus presents himself as the Bridegroom, and the Church as His Bride. The wedding feast, then, is the relationship between God and the Church.
Lest that sound abstract, let me be quite specific: we are amid the wedding banquet right now, because the Mass is the “sacred banquet in which, through the communion of the body and blood of the Lord, the people of God share the benefits of [Christ’s] sacrifice, renew the new covenant with us made once and for all by God in Christ’s blood, and in faith and hope foreshadow and anticipate the [heavenly] banquet in the Father’s kingdom” [1].
This is what is meant by wedding feast—not small, but incomprehensibly immense. God is the author and giver of all good things—and He gives all good things for our enjoyment, because in enjoying and celebrating what God has made, we enjoy and celebrate Him. That happens in more abundance the more that the love of God’s Name is, to quote our Collect, grafted in our hearts. It happens as God, to again quote our Collect, increases in us true religion.
Religion is how we love God. Religion is how God nourishes us—religion is what nourished the first Christians at the Day of Pentecost, for what issued forth from what must have been that stupendously powerful day was religion: Saint Luke wrote that they continued in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers (Acts 2:42). We ask God to increase this in us—increase in us true religion, says our Collect. Meaning, there is false religion—activity that instead of binding us to God, binds us to false gods, idols, or lies. The mark of true religion is that through it, God is glorified: more specifically, the mark of true religion is the bearing of fruit—good works that give glory to God’s holy and mighty Name.
And lest that sound abstract, let Saint Luke be quite specific: Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
So, we might ask ourselves, are we no longer to share meals with our friends or members of this Parish? In the words of Saint Paul when he often presents such a question, By no means! Jesus himself shared many meals with his friends, that is, the disciples, and the first Christians shared fellowship and broke bread together constantly, so the lesson here lies in a different meaning.
If we are to represent Jesus in our homes, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, then we are to share His living bread—that is, the Gospel, the good news of Christ—with people around us. Sharing the Gospel, proclaiming the Good News, is a banquet: an encounter with God. We are told to seek out this encounter with the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. Seek out such people who suffer in those ways physically—actually poor, actually crippled, lame and blind—and we are to seek out those who suffer in those ways spiritually. Those who are poor are bereft of hope, of the saving help of Christ; those who are crippled and lame know the right direction in life but are unable to follow that path because of frailty and weakness; those who are blind cannot see the heavenly light because they are oppressed by the darkness of the present life.
We invite these people to the banquet not by proselytizing but simply by loving them. But do realize the challenge Jesus demands we face: “We must remember, that we have a great work to do, many enemies to conquer, many evils to prevent, much danger to run through, many difficulties to be mastered, many necessities to serve, and much good to do; many children to provide for, or many friends to support, or many poor to relieve, or many diseases to cure; besides the needs of nature and of relation, our private and our public cares, and duties of the world, which necessity and the providence of God have adopted into the family of religion” [2]
If this sounds imposing—and I believe it should—all the more reason to ask God daily for the grace and power to faithfully accomplish His work. Religion is how we love God, but it is God that gives us the ability to love Him. Let us pray:
Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
[1] Pope Paul VI, Eucharisticum mysterium 3 a.
[2] Jeremy Taylor, Rule for Holy Living, I.
Cover image “Marriage at Cana” by Giotto is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Cropped from original.