31st Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 3, 2013
10 AM Liturgy
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Sometimes the gospel message is remarkably complicated.
And sometimes the gospel message is remarkably clear. Today
belongs to the latter group.
We have a new herald in our midst who thinks the gospel
message is most often rather clear. His name is Francis. I confess
I’ve become a bit of a “Francis junkie” of late. Maybe it’s just that
I’ve had a lot of time on my hands during my convalescence, but I
have reveled in the day-after-day quotations coming out of the
Vatican. They are, for the most part, so simple and clear. Most
unusual for Vatican pronouncements!
Francis has already said that “The church must be the home
of all….” The church is “not a small chapel that can hold only a
small group of selected people.” He has also already said “I see the
church as a field hospital after battle.” And offering just one
example (among the many he could have chosen), Francis said
(rather infamously to some): “When God looks at a gay person,
does God endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject
and condemn this person?” You can guess his answer.
Even some U.S. bishops are finally getting on track. Cardinal
Donald Wuerl of Washington D.C. was trying to explain the new
Pope to some who seemed confused in his flock. And he
interpreted Francis saying: “The message is simple. Don’t trip
over it. Don’t let it become so complex, so confusing that nobody
can hear what you’re saying.”
It appears that some within the Catholic Church are having a
hard time keeping it simple. Some on the inside do seem confused.
But on the outside, non-Catholics are loving it! Even atheists, not to
mention Jews and Muslims. Two recent comments caught my
attention. The Israeli Ambassador to the Vatican said last week
(and I quote): “The relations between the Jewish people and the
Catholic Church may be the best they have been in 2000 years.” A
bit of hyperbole, perhaps, but impressive nonetheless. And a
prominent Muslim leader, Mohammed Bashar Arafat, called
Francis “a model of what a religious leader should be.”
With all this water already under the dam in the past seven
months, we now have today’s scripture readings! I can only
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imagine what the good Pope will have to say at today’s liturgies or
at the noon Angelus.
Today we have the story of Zacchaeus. It’s not just that he is
short that makes him “the outcast” in today’s story. (Although he
must have been really short for St. Luke to note that particular
attribute.) No, he is also apparently not a very nice man. He has
declared himself an outcast from Judaism by becoming a
mercenary, a chief tax collector for the Roman occupation forces.
And on top of that he appears to cheat quite often.
Just to whet your appetite for what Pope Francis might have
said earlier this morning, I googled Vatican Radio for his Angelus
homily. He did not disappoint. He, too, spoke of Zacchaeus’ poor
choices in life, his sin. But the Pope hastened to add that there is
“no sin or crime of any kind that could erase from the memory and
the heart of God one of [God’s] children. Zacchaeus too had to be
included—even though he and his family had to prepare this
banquet.”
In fact, St. Luke’s story is precisely about inclusion and
exclusion. Who is “in” Jesus’ gang and who is outside it? This story
is unique to Luke’s gospel, but there are so many other instances in
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all the gospels. In fact, scripture scholars note that Jesus eating
dinners with social and religious “outcasts” is one of the most
historical pieces of data we have about him: Jesus regularly ate
with outcasts. Zacchaeus is just today’s example.
But there is a whole assortment of other outcasts in the
gospel stories: other tax collectors, public sinners, prostitutes,
drunks and gluttons. Zacchaeus has a host of companions. They
are all just as unacceptable. They are all outsiders. They don’t
belong to “our group,” whichever “group” we belong to these days.
There are always people around who just embarrass us. Today’s
questions are simple: Whom does God invite to the Kingdom’s
banquet? And whom do we exclude?
I think here of a line theologian Sebastian Moore (who used
to regularly worship with us here at St. Ignatius) once said: “The
world does not like what Jesus shows us God is like.” Another
contemporary theologian, James Alison, says much the same thing
only more pointedly: “The beginning of Christian moral life is a
stumbling into an awareness of our own complicity in hypocrisy,
and a becoming aware of quite how violent that hypocrisy is.” Or,
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as he says in another place: “Sin is resistance, in the name of God,
to the creative work of God which seeks to include us all.”
The world and some in the church continue to want to make
this complex and hard to understand. There are volumes of
footnotes added so that few can understand. St. Luke’s story is
rather simple. So is the author of today’s Wisdom reading as he
addresses the creator God: “You love all things that are and loath
nothing you have made; for what you hated you would not have
fashioned.”
Today’s gospel is not really about the vertically challenged at
all. It is about Jesus trying, yet again, to tell us who his God really
is. All must be welcomed or none will fully enjoy.
“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was
lost.” That’s not just Zacchaeus. That’s us! All of us! So what to
do? Keep your eyes peeled in the Sycamore trees out there. There
may be someone who needs your love, who needs to come into the
banquet.
Sometimes the gospel can get complicated. Sometimes it is
embarrassingly simple. Good luck. And let’s all watch for Francis’
own take today. Peace!
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