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