Today’s parable, usually known as the parable of the unjust steward, is considered by most commentators to be the most difficult of all Jesus’ stories to understand. As one writer puts it: “This passage brings before us a new Jesus, one who seems inclined to compromise with evil. He approves a programme of canny self-interest…He bases his teaching on the story of a shrewd scoundrel who feathered his own nest at the expense of a man who had trusted him and then appears to say to his disciples. ‘Let this be your model.’ ” So what’s going on this parable? What’s the background to it? And what is Jesus trying to say to us in it? Well, businessmen two thousand years ago, like businessmen today, were often involved in shady dealings and financial slights of hand, two of which could well explain what’s going on behind the scenes in this story.
In the first scenario, the rich man is a landowner who has rented out his land to tenants at a fixed price to be paid in kind according to the crops they grow. They must pay him this amount come what may and anything they make over and above they keep. Except that the rich man’s agent has to get his cut too. And so the shrewd thing the steward has done is forego his own share in the hope that it will stand him in good stead; a kind of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ ‘you owe me one,’ kind of arrangement, common in the world of business.
And the second scenario, a bit more sinister than the first, is that we are dealing here with moneylenders. Usuary, the charging of interest, was forbidden and one of the ways people got round this law – and where there is money concerned people have always found ways round the law – was to liquidate debts and reinstate them as oil or wheat which were not covered by the usuary laws. The unusually high amounts involved – reminiscent of loan sharks everywhere – add support to this interpretation in which the unjust steward, the debt collector, would be doing basically the same thing as he did in the first case.
But as I reflected on all this and thought about it, it sounded very familiar somehow. Where had I heard it before, and very recently? And then the penny dropped. I was seeing it every time I switched on the News. There it was, right there on TV, as people queued up at Northern Rock branches all over Britain. It wasn’t exactly the same, but behind it, lay the same kind of wheeling and dealing that has gone on for centuries. Banks in America hand out mortgages to people who can’t afford them. They then, as I understand it, sell the debt on at a reduced price, say 80% of what it is worth, to other banks and financial institutions who hope to get maybe 90% of it back. And as long as it lasts, everybody makes money. Except that it doesn’t last. Eventually people realise the emperor has no clothes, the banks, worried about potential losses, stop lending money to each other, Northern Rock, which has lent out far more money that it takes in, can’t get its hands on the cash it needs to keep functioning, the queues start forming and within no time the Bank of England has to step in to prevent financial meltdown. Except that, as always happens, some people somewhere will have got very rich. And it’s never the ordinary folk at the bottom of financial food chain.
And we see the same thing in the first reading. The prophet Amos rails against similar things in his day as those with money ‘lower the bushel, raise the shekel and by swindling and tampering with the scales buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.’ And against this background, what Jesus is saying is really quite simple. He is telling us to be careful with money and make sure we use it well. As Jesus himself says, it is a tainted thing which can be profoundly dangerous. And so, as even the unjust steward in his own dishonest way knew, we must learn to use it well if it is not to corrupt us and lead us away from God. But what does it mean to use money well. What’s money for? What’s its purpose?
Well, first and foremost, money is a means to an end. It’s not something to be acquired for its own sake. It’s meant to be used, and the experience of people such as pop stars, lottery winners, footballers and others shows over and over again that neither money nor the pursuit of it guarantees happiness. If anything, in fact, it’s more likely to bring unhappiness, something many ordinary people who increasingly over the last thirty years have put work and money before family and relationships have also discovered. And yet we need money. The real tragedy of abject poverty in the world is the fact that so many gifted and talented human beings live unfulfilled lives, the converse of that being that the purpose of money in our lives is to help us live our lives to the full. Life is for living and enjoying and the purpose of money is to make that possible. We have it so that we can live healthy balanced lives, enjoy music, appreciate beautiful things, visit beautiful places and ultimately be able to answer yes to the question the God of the old rabbinic story will allegedly ask us at the end of our lives. Well, did you enjoy my creation?
But, of course, that’s not all. On its own it would be profoundly self-centred. And so money has a community aspect too. It’s a means by which we are able to reach out to others. It makes it possible for us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless and do all the other things Jesus speaks of. In his Encyclical of the 1960s, Populorom Progressio. Pope Paul VI went as far as to say that the right to own private property must give way to the needs of others. In other words, if another human being is starving or living in abject poverty, then the money we have acquired ceases to be ours. It does not belong to us. It belongs to the person who needs it, an idea which, not surprisingly, did not go down too well in our western capitalist society where the right to make lots of money and keep it for ourselves, the right to private property, is the whole basis of our economic system.
So spend time this weekend reflecting on the role of money in your life. Is it enriching or empoverishing you?
BIDDING PRAYERS
In Britain today the vast majority of people enjoy a level of prosperity previously unknown in history. All but a handful of us have a degree of comfort which even kings and princes in past ages would envy. Technology has opened up to us things that would have seemed miraculous to our grandparents and great grandparents. And so we pray that, in the midst of this world, we will not be seduced or misled into losing sight of what really matters in life………….Lord hear us
Our prosperity, of course, is based on past exploitation of other people, their countries and their natural resources. It was financed largely, too, by the slave trade. And so we pray for the wisdom to see that the prophet Amos’s crticism of those who exploit the poor for money applies to us today, and that we will finally have the courage to make the changes without which the world’s poor will continue to be exploited by us on a daily basis....Lord hear us
Hanging over humanity, of course, is the spectre of climate change and the inimaginable disaster which potentially lies beyond it. And so, remembering St Paul’s words in today’s second reading, we pray for all those in positions of authority throughout the world that they will have the courage to tell us truths we would rather not hear and lead us to places we would rather not go, regardless of the short-term political implications for themselves………………..Lord hear us
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells calls money a tainted thing. Only the other day, in the daily readings, St Paul told us that the love of money, rather than money itself, is the root of all evil. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see the destructive power of money in our lives and in the world. And we pray for the grace we need to use whatever money we have well, for the long-term benefit of ourselves and others, especially those who are in need both at home and abroad………..…………….Lord hear us
We cannot be the slave of both God and money Jesus tells us today. On another occasion, he reminds us that where our heart is, there will our treasure be too. And so we pray for the courage and honesty to face these two very fundamental questions today. Whom do we serve, God or money? And what is our heart set on, human riches or the riches of the kingdom?………..Lord hear us
Money has always had the power to corrupt. And so we pray for the insight and sensitivity of conscience to see any way at all in which it is currently corrupting us at a personal level. And, in the face of any such corruption that may exist in our lives, we ask God to give us the grace we need to live more honestly and more transparently wherever money is concerned………Lord hear us
Sunday, 23 September 2007
Sunday, 16 September 2007
24th Sunday of the Year C.
Last Sunday was an unusual one for me in that, apart from Mass and the Hour of Prayer, I had nothing else on that day. Having had a few late nights due to my friends from Madrid being here, I initially welcomed the opportunity for some peace and quiet. As the day went on, however, I was getting restless and so, having already begun to reflect on today’s readings, I decided to take out a book I had not looked at for years. It was first published in 1975, and in it the author, who when he wrote it, worked in Beirut, explores how the parables of Jesus would have sounded to the people who first heard them two thousand years ago. And he does this by taking Jesus’ stories into isolated peasant communities in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to see how the people there, whose culture and attitudes had changed little since New Testament times, reacted to them. I was particularly interested, of course, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son and want to share with you how the book helped me see more clearly than before where the turning point is in the story, the moment of conversion for the younger son.
The obvious place to see it, of course, is in the pigsty. It was there, after all that the young man, according to St Luke, ‘came to his senses.’ And this is certainly a key moment in the drama. Having asked his father to divide up his property while he was still alive, he had done what was unthinkable to the people of those days. He had then compounded the insult and lack of respect for the traditiions of his family by selling off his share of the land quickly, within a few days, presumably at a reduced price, before leaving. But what would have really shocked the people who first heard the story was the fact that, by squandering the money, he allowed the family inheritance to fall into the hands of gentiles. This was the last straw plus one. Any Jew in Jesus’ day who even sold a piece of land to a gentile would have instigated a ceremony called the ‘Kezazah’ by which a pot was publicly smashed, symbolizing that someone had, in effect, ceased to exist. It was the ultimate disgrace...Except that it got even worse.
If you had been a story-teller in Jesus’ day trying to describe the lowest point a Jew could sink to, you could not have bettered this story. It would be working in a pigsty owned by a gentile. Jews not only did not eat pigs, they would not even touch them, let alone eat their food. And yet this is what the prodigal son finishes up doing. Apparently the polite way of getting rid of a worker in the Middle Eastern society in Jesus’ day – something everyone would need to do during a time of famine – was to ask them to do something they could not possibly agree to. Except that the younger son, so desperate was his position, did it. He was prepared to do what no self-respecting Jew would ever do, touch pigs and eat pigs’ food. If there were ever a personal gutter lower than which it was not possible to sink, this was it, and there, Luke tells us, the younger son came to his senses. But despite everything, this was still not the moment of conversion for him, as the speech he prepares for his father clearly indicates. “Father” he decides to say, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called you son. Treat me as one of your paid servants,” the words, you might think, of one who has learnt his lesson. Except that it’s not quite what it appears.
In Jesus day, you see, there were three types of people worked on an estate. There were slaves who were part of the estate, lower class slaves who were not, and paid servants. The paid servant did not belong to the estate – he was a casual labourer – but the crucial thing about him was that, unlike the slaves, he was free. Some paid servants were quite skilled and so were considered the equals of those they worked for. They could earn money and when the people in those remote communities of the Middle East heard Jesus’ parable for the first time, they saw quite clearly what the younger son was up to. He wanted to work his way out of the mess he was in and eventually pay his father back. Like his elder brother who had ‘slaved for his father all these years’ he had not yet understood the nature of his father’s love. Each in his own way represents the way of religion rather than faith. The religious person thinks he can save himself by performing good works and religious actions. The person faith is one who has met the God of today’s story and it is when the younger son does this – not in the pigsty – that the moment of conversion comes. It’s only when his father interrupts his speech, calls for the best robe, puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet that he moves from religion to faith, a journey we all have to make if we are to enter the kingdom.
But there’s one other key thing in the story: the fattened calf. What the younger son had done had shocked the whole village. The ‘Kezazah’ involved everyone. There was no way back for the prodigal son in this community, which was why the father killed a calf and not the goat the elder son refers to. If it had just been the family and a few friends a goat would have done. But the killing of a calf means that the whole village is invited to the celebration. They are all called to forgive the son the way his father does and this, in a sense, is the real point of the story. The father is God. The villagers are ourselves and quite simply we are called to love the way the father does. Just as the father drew the whole village into the circle of his love, so God calls us into the circle of his love. The prodigal son comes in all shapes and forms. He is the world. He is found in every family and every town. He is, if you like, the personification of human weakness in all its shapes and forms. He is, in the end, each one of us and until we learn to love and forgive the way we have been loved and forgiven we have not understood this greatest of all parables.
What that means in the concrete circumstances of your own life, of course, is for you to work out.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The parable of the Prodigal Son can be seen as a story about the whole of humanity. Like the people in the first reading this week, humanity in every age is quick to leave the path marked out for it by God and worship false gods. The calf of molten metal takes different shapes and forms at different moments in history and we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize the false gods which lie at the heart of our modern consumer-driven society……………………………………Lord hear us
In that same first reading, Moses pleaded with God and God relented. He did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. This story reflects a very early, even primitive understanding of who God is and yet already the writer has begun to have some sense of God’s love for his people. And so we pray that the men and women of our time will move beyond the limited and inadequate understandings of God which currently dominate our world and learn who God really is…..Lord hear us
Just as the father in the story told by Jesus draws the people of the village into his love and invites them to be part of it, so God draws us into his love and invites us to love the world the way he loves it. And so we pray for this grace. We pray especially that God will enable us to move beyond the natural human tendency to hold people’s sins and mistakes against them, enabling us instead to forgive others no matter what they may have done………………….Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son – or in some cases the Prodigal Daughter – is alive, if not well, in many families. Many of us will know this from personal experience. And so we pray for families, especially here in New Farm Loch, where there has been estrangement. We pray that, with God’s help, we may be able to reach out across the barriers of pain and resentment and be reconciled with those from whom we have become separated but whom, deep down, we continue to love……………………...Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son represents, in many ways, young people in every age. The process by which we cease to be children and move through adolescence into adulthood can be long, painful and difficult. At no other time in our lives is the old saying that we always hurt the ones we love more true. At times the gap between love and hate can be very narrow as we struggle with the strong emotions involved. And so we pray for all involved in this struggle, both parents and young people……Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Paul speaks of how he himself is the greatest of sinners. He speaks of how he was a blasphemer and how he did everything he could to destroy the Church. And so we pray for the grace we need to recognize our own personal sin and the wisdom to take the plank out of our own eye before we start trying to take the splinter out of other people’s……..Lord hear us
The obvious place to see it, of course, is in the pigsty. It was there, after all that the young man, according to St Luke, ‘came to his senses.’ And this is certainly a key moment in the drama. Having asked his father to divide up his property while he was still alive, he had done what was unthinkable to the people of those days. He had then compounded the insult and lack of respect for the traditiions of his family by selling off his share of the land quickly, within a few days, presumably at a reduced price, before leaving. But what would have really shocked the people who first heard the story was the fact that, by squandering the money, he allowed the family inheritance to fall into the hands of gentiles. This was the last straw plus one. Any Jew in Jesus’ day who even sold a piece of land to a gentile would have instigated a ceremony called the ‘Kezazah’ by which a pot was publicly smashed, symbolizing that someone had, in effect, ceased to exist. It was the ultimate disgrace...Except that it got even worse.
If you had been a story-teller in Jesus’ day trying to describe the lowest point a Jew could sink to, you could not have bettered this story. It would be working in a pigsty owned by a gentile. Jews not only did not eat pigs, they would not even touch them, let alone eat their food. And yet this is what the prodigal son finishes up doing. Apparently the polite way of getting rid of a worker in the Middle Eastern society in Jesus’ day – something everyone would need to do during a time of famine – was to ask them to do something they could not possibly agree to. Except that the younger son, so desperate was his position, did it. He was prepared to do what no self-respecting Jew would ever do, touch pigs and eat pigs’ food. If there were ever a personal gutter lower than which it was not possible to sink, this was it, and there, Luke tells us, the younger son came to his senses. But despite everything, this was still not the moment of conversion for him, as the speech he prepares for his father clearly indicates. “Father” he decides to say, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called you son. Treat me as one of your paid servants,” the words, you might think, of one who has learnt his lesson. Except that it’s not quite what it appears.
In Jesus day, you see, there were three types of people worked on an estate. There were slaves who were part of the estate, lower class slaves who were not, and paid servants. The paid servant did not belong to the estate – he was a casual labourer – but the crucial thing about him was that, unlike the slaves, he was free. Some paid servants were quite skilled and so were considered the equals of those they worked for. They could earn money and when the people in those remote communities of the Middle East heard Jesus’ parable for the first time, they saw quite clearly what the younger son was up to. He wanted to work his way out of the mess he was in and eventually pay his father back. Like his elder brother who had ‘slaved for his father all these years’ he had not yet understood the nature of his father’s love. Each in his own way represents the way of religion rather than faith. The religious person thinks he can save himself by performing good works and religious actions. The person faith is one who has met the God of today’s story and it is when the younger son does this – not in the pigsty – that the moment of conversion comes. It’s only when his father interrupts his speech, calls for the best robe, puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet that he moves from religion to faith, a journey we all have to make if we are to enter the kingdom.
But there’s one other key thing in the story: the fattened calf. What the younger son had done had shocked the whole village. The ‘Kezazah’ involved everyone. There was no way back for the prodigal son in this community, which was why the father killed a calf and not the goat the elder son refers to. If it had just been the family and a few friends a goat would have done. But the killing of a calf means that the whole village is invited to the celebration. They are all called to forgive the son the way his father does and this, in a sense, is the real point of the story. The father is God. The villagers are ourselves and quite simply we are called to love the way the father does. Just as the father drew the whole village into the circle of his love, so God calls us into the circle of his love. The prodigal son comes in all shapes and forms. He is the world. He is found in every family and every town. He is, if you like, the personification of human weakness in all its shapes and forms. He is, in the end, each one of us and until we learn to love and forgive the way we have been loved and forgiven we have not understood this greatest of all parables.
What that means in the concrete circumstances of your own life, of course, is for you to work out.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The parable of the Prodigal Son can be seen as a story about the whole of humanity. Like the people in the first reading this week, humanity in every age is quick to leave the path marked out for it by God and worship false gods. The calf of molten metal takes different shapes and forms at different moments in history and we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize the false gods which lie at the heart of our modern consumer-driven society……………………………………Lord hear us
In that same first reading, Moses pleaded with God and God relented. He did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. This story reflects a very early, even primitive understanding of who God is and yet already the writer has begun to have some sense of God’s love for his people. And so we pray that the men and women of our time will move beyond the limited and inadequate understandings of God which currently dominate our world and learn who God really is…..Lord hear us
Just as the father in the story told by Jesus draws the people of the village into his love and invites them to be part of it, so God draws us into his love and invites us to love the world the way he loves it. And so we pray for this grace. We pray especially that God will enable us to move beyond the natural human tendency to hold people’s sins and mistakes against them, enabling us instead to forgive others no matter what they may have done………………….Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son – or in some cases the Prodigal Daughter – is alive, if not well, in many families. Many of us will know this from personal experience. And so we pray for families, especially here in New Farm Loch, where there has been estrangement. We pray that, with God’s help, we may be able to reach out across the barriers of pain and resentment and be reconciled with those from whom we have become separated but whom, deep down, we continue to love……………………...Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son represents, in many ways, young people in every age. The process by which we cease to be children and move through adolescence into adulthood can be long, painful and difficult. At no other time in our lives is the old saying that we always hurt the ones we love more true. At times the gap between love and hate can be very narrow as we struggle with the strong emotions involved. And so we pray for all involved in this struggle, both parents and young people……Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Paul speaks of how he himself is the greatest of sinners. He speaks of how he was a blasphemer and how he did everything he could to destroy the Church. And so we pray for the grace we need to recognize our own personal sin and the wisdom to take the plank out of our own eye before we start trying to take the splinter out of other people’s……..Lord hear us
Saturday, 1 September 2007
22nd Sunday of the Year. C.
I spoke to a woman during the week who had made a very important discovery since our previous meeting. She has been under a lot of pressure recently, and one day during the summer, to clear her head a bit and help her think straight, she had gone out for a walk. Her house is on the edge of the town she lives in and in the course of going nowhere in particular she wandered towards a nearby river to find herself in the midst of what she told me was the most gorgeous countryside imaginable. And what really struck her was that, for twenty years she had lived next to it and had never seen it before. It was within a mile of her home and she had not known it was there. And I tell you this today because of what we heard in that second reading. ‘What you have come to’ says the author of the letter to the Hebrews, ‘is nothing known to the senses… What you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…. You have come to God himself.’ What he is talking about, of course, is the kingdom of God and what I want to suggest to you today is that far from being distant, exotic places, difficult to find or reach, Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, are as near to us as that beautiful countryside was to the woman had lived beside it for years not knowing it was there. Jesus tells us that the kingdom is all around us, that it is among us and within us and that is the truth I invite you to reflect upon today.
So where is it? Well it’s everywhere. ‘The world’ the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins tells us, ‘is charged with the grandeur of God.’ And its not just in the magnificence of the Himalayas, the beauty of a sunset over Arran or the mind-blowing vastness of the cosmos. Only yesterday I was reading about how NASA has discovered in a new developing planetary system enough water vapour to fill the oceans of the earth five times over, the kind of fact or statistic our minds cannot take in or deal with and which momentarily open us up to the immensity of God. But it is not just in this kind of thing that we see his reflection. I remember a few years ago causing a minor stir among some of you when I described how, when out walking, I often see God in an abandoned coca cola can or a old piece of paper lying in a puddle. Anything at all seen through the eyes of faith becomes a window into the reality that is God. Like my friend and the countryside around her home we are all living in the midst of Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and we don’t know it. The kingdom is among us and we fail to recognize it.
But when it comes to recognizing God in the world around us, everything else fades into insignificance compared to the way he is to be found in other people. Every human being on the face of the earth is created in God’s image and likeness and until we see this we are like a blind man in one of the world’s great art galleries. But even the most superficial reading of the Gospels tells us that, in the midst of all the human beings we meet in the course of our lives, there is one group where we meet God in a particularly powerful way. And they are the poor and marginalized, the ones whom the world rejects and considers unloveable. ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat... I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink...I was a stranger and you welcomed me.. I was naked and you did not clothe me’ says Jesus in some of the most powerful and challenging words in the whole of the Gospel. And in this morning’s passage, words ideally suited for the weekend of our monthly lunch for the homeless, he tells us that when we have a party we should invite the poor the crippled, the lame, the blind rather than our rich friends who will soon repay us. Only in last week’s bulletin I spoke of how one of the great things about the homeless lunch is to experience the joy of getting behind the masks and the labels and meeting some lovely human beings who, for all kinds of reasons, live in a very different way from most of us.
Where I see this most of all, of course, is in Kilmarnock prison. Kilmarnock prison, as you can imagine, is filled with all kinds of people. Very few of them are innocent or set up by the police. The vast majority openly admit their offence and, as well as the things they have been convicted of, many have committed a whole series of other offences they were never charged with. There are drug pushers, petty thieves, bank robbers, murderers and umpteen others. Some are sorry for what they have done and others are not sorry at all and will do the same again almost as soon as they get out. There are a handful who should probably never be let out because of the danger they pose to themselves and others. And even within the jail itself there is bullying, sometimes violent, as well as widespread drug abuse. And so when I speak about the jail it is not out of naivety or because I see it through rose-tinted spectacles. After eight years going in there it would be difficult to be quite so stupid. And yet, at a deeper level altogether the whole place heaves with God. First of all there is his infinite compassion for people no matter what they have done. There are times when you can almost touch it. And then there is the sheer goodness in so many prisoners which, despite everything and often against the odds, breaks through and never ceases to amaze.
I know, of course, that some, possibly the majority of you, don’t believe this. Whether it is the homeless lunch, young people down the street or the prison, I have heard the same things over and over again. Scum; junkies; wasters; lay-abouts… Ah ken whit Ah wid dae wi’ them. Its their own fault and so on and so on. And some of you will think like this. I know you do because you tell me. I can even understand it at a human level. But at the level of faith and the Gospel there is only one thing I can say to you today.
You are wrong!
BIDDING PRAYERS
The author of the letter to the Hebrews is a man of vision. He was living through a time of great turmoil in the history of the early Church. Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans and both Jews and Christians, were struggling to come to terms with this catastrophic event. And yet, in the midst of it, he is able to speak words of hope and encouragement. And so we pray for something of his vision so that we can do the same for the men and women of our time………....Lord hear us
There have always been heresies which have seen the physical world as evil. They have tended to sound holy and have used pious words to deceive people. At its best, however, the christian tradition has always rejected them and taught that the world is a fundamentally good and God-filled place. And so we pray for a deep sense of God in the midst of the world around us so that, healed of our blindness, we can begin to see what the letter to the Hebrews is talking about today……………...…Lord hear us
Throughout his public ministry, Jesus associated with the poor and the marginalized. Over and over again he was criticised by the religious people of his day for mixing with tax-collectors and sinners. In today’s Gospel, however, he tells us that, when we have a party, we should invite, not our rich friends, but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to know what this means in the concrete circumstances of our own day…………….….Lord hear us
The book of Ecclesiaticus tells us today that there is no cure for the proud man’s malady since an evil growth has taken root in him. At the root of pride is the failure to recognize the full truth of who we are in our human weakness. We see this reflected in the man who exalted himself, picking the place of honour at the banquet rather than humbling himself and going to the lowest place. And so we pray for the humility we need to see the full truth about who we are…………………Lord hear us
To invite our friends when we have a dinner or a party is the most natural thing in the world. Jesus himself was invited to such events and, on one occasion, had dinner at the house of one of the leading pharisees. But he also ate with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners, showing that he was comfortable with people at every level of society. And so we pray that this church will be a place where everyone feels welcome, regardless of their social status………………..Lord hear us
And we pray, in particular, that this Sunday’s ‘homeless lunch’ will be a genuine living out of what Jesus says in today’s Gospel. We pray that, for all who attend, the lunch will be a time when we move beyond stereotypes, preconceived ideas and prejudices, letting down the masks we all wear and learning to see God in every person there, no matter who they are or what they have done……..……..Lord hear us
So where is it? Well it’s everywhere. ‘The world’ the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins tells us, ‘is charged with the grandeur of God.’ And its not just in the magnificence of the Himalayas, the beauty of a sunset over Arran or the mind-blowing vastness of the cosmos. Only yesterday I was reading about how NASA has discovered in a new developing planetary system enough water vapour to fill the oceans of the earth five times over, the kind of fact or statistic our minds cannot take in or deal with and which momentarily open us up to the immensity of God. But it is not just in this kind of thing that we see his reflection. I remember a few years ago causing a minor stir among some of you when I described how, when out walking, I often see God in an abandoned coca cola can or a old piece of paper lying in a puddle. Anything at all seen through the eyes of faith becomes a window into the reality that is God. Like my friend and the countryside around her home we are all living in the midst of Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and we don’t know it. The kingdom is among us and we fail to recognize it.
But when it comes to recognizing God in the world around us, everything else fades into insignificance compared to the way he is to be found in other people. Every human being on the face of the earth is created in God’s image and likeness and until we see this we are like a blind man in one of the world’s great art galleries. But even the most superficial reading of the Gospels tells us that, in the midst of all the human beings we meet in the course of our lives, there is one group where we meet God in a particularly powerful way. And they are the poor and marginalized, the ones whom the world rejects and considers unloveable. ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat... I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink...I was a stranger and you welcomed me.. I was naked and you did not clothe me’ says Jesus in some of the most powerful and challenging words in the whole of the Gospel. And in this morning’s passage, words ideally suited for the weekend of our monthly lunch for the homeless, he tells us that when we have a party we should invite the poor the crippled, the lame, the blind rather than our rich friends who will soon repay us. Only in last week’s bulletin I spoke of how one of the great things about the homeless lunch is to experience the joy of getting behind the masks and the labels and meeting some lovely human beings who, for all kinds of reasons, live in a very different way from most of us.
Where I see this most of all, of course, is in Kilmarnock prison. Kilmarnock prison, as you can imagine, is filled with all kinds of people. Very few of them are innocent or set up by the police. The vast majority openly admit their offence and, as well as the things they have been convicted of, many have committed a whole series of other offences they were never charged with. There are drug pushers, petty thieves, bank robbers, murderers and umpteen others. Some are sorry for what they have done and others are not sorry at all and will do the same again almost as soon as they get out. There are a handful who should probably never be let out because of the danger they pose to themselves and others. And even within the jail itself there is bullying, sometimes violent, as well as widespread drug abuse. And so when I speak about the jail it is not out of naivety or because I see it through rose-tinted spectacles. After eight years going in there it would be difficult to be quite so stupid. And yet, at a deeper level altogether the whole place heaves with God. First of all there is his infinite compassion for people no matter what they have done. There are times when you can almost touch it. And then there is the sheer goodness in so many prisoners which, despite everything and often against the odds, breaks through and never ceases to amaze.
I know, of course, that some, possibly the majority of you, don’t believe this. Whether it is the homeless lunch, young people down the street or the prison, I have heard the same things over and over again. Scum; junkies; wasters; lay-abouts… Ah ken whit Ah wid dae wi’ them. Its their own fault and so on and so on. And some of you will think like this. I know you do because you tell me. I can even understand it at a human level. But at the level of faith and the Gospel there is only one thing I can say to you today.
You are wrong!
BIDDING PRAYERS
The author of the letter to the Hebrews is a man of vision. He was living through a time of great turmoil in the history of the early Church. Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans and both Jews and Christians, were struggling to come to terms with this catastrophic event. And yet, in the midst of it, he is able to speak words of hope and encouragement. And so we pray for something of his vision so that we can do the same for the men and women of our time………....Lord hear us
There have always been heresies which have seen the physical world as evil. They have tended to sound holy and have used pious words to deceive people. At its best, however, the christian tradition has always rejected them and taught that the world is a fundamentally good and God-filled place. And so we pray for a deep sense of God in the midst of the world around us so that, healed of our blindness, we can begin to see what the letter to the Hebrews is talking about today……………...…Lord hear us
Throughout his public ministry, Jesus associated with the poor and the marginalized. Over and over again he was criticised by the religious people of his day for mixing with tax-collectors and sinners. In today’s Gospel, however, he tells us that, when we have a party, we should invite, not our rich friends, but the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to know what this means in the concrete circumstances of our own day…………….….Lord hear us
The book of Ecclesiaticus tells us today that there is no cure for the proud man’s malady since an evil growth has taken root in him. At the root of pride is the failure to recognize the full truth of who we are in our human weakness. We see this reflected in the man who exalted himself, picking the place of honour at the banquet rather than humbling himself and going to the lowest place. And so we pray for the humility we need to see the full truth about who we are…………………Lord hear us
To invite our friends when we have a dinner or a party is the most natural thing in the world. Jesus himself was invited to such events and, on one occasion, had dinner at the house of one of the leading pharisees. But he also ate with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners, showing that he was comfortable with people at every level of society. And so we pray that this church will be a place where everyone feels welcome, regardless of their social status………………..Lord hear us
And we pray, in particular, that this Sunday’s ‘homeless lunch’ will be a genuine living out of what Jesus says in today’s Gospel. We pray that, for all who attend, the lunch will be a time when we move beyond stereotypes, preconceived ideas and prejudices, letting down the masks we all wear and learning to see God in every person there, no matter who they are or what they have done……..……..Lord hear us
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