There
are three different ways in which we may judge others: with our passions, our
reason and our faith. Our passions induce us to love those who love us; our
reason makes us love all people within certain limits; our faith makes us love
everyone, including those who do us harm and are our enemies.
Fulton Sheen Way
to Inner Peace (1955) 110.
You can
tell a man by the company he keeps, or so the saying goes. The Scribes and the
Pharisees certainly subscribe to this idea and in this morning’s Gospel are not
afraid to express it. They are more than happy to be judgemental – to only be
seen with the right sort of people, certainly not with sinners, outcasts,
people who ‘aren’t like us’ It’s a good thing that God doesn’t treat humanity
like it treats itself: as to put it simply the human judgement of others, to
which each and every one of us falls prey from time to time, has no place in
the Christian Faith at all. God in Christ seeks the lost, the outcast, the
people outside the religious in-crowd, seeks them out and eats with them. How
shocking! It offends our human sensibilities and breaks down human distinctions
to show us the radical freedom of the Kingdom of God.
We are each and every one of us sinners,
we are not worth of having God come to and eat with us, but that is exactly
what happens day by day and week when Christ feeds us with himself, so that we
may become what he is, so that we can be transformed by grace and share in the
divine life. That is why we are here this morning to be fed by Him and with
Him, to be healed and restored by Him, to share in His life. God takes the initiative, He goes to seek out
the lost, He doesn’t wait for them to come to Him. The banquet of the Kingdom
is one to which everyone is invited, if they turn away from sin, if they repent
and believe the Good News of Jesus Christ.
God does the hard work, so that we have
the simpler task of turning away from all that separates us from Him and each
other. To do this takes humility – knowing our need of God, and his grace and
mercy, knowing that without his help we are and can do nothing. Our response to His love is to love Him and
our neighbour – to put our faith into practice in our lives. This is a cause of
joy in heaven, whereas its opposite, the reaction of the Scribes and Pharisees
is to moan and begrudge, to criticise. It is a response of misery and
bitterness, a smallness of mind and heart. Such feelings should have no place
in the Church.
Christ is the Good Shepherd, who goes
after the lost sheep to carry them back on his shoulders – likewise the Church
is meant to be there for those outside it, to welcome them back inside the fold
rejoicing. Our faith then should be the cause of our joy, a deep happiness that
comes from being known and loved by Our Heavenly Father, who sent His Son to
die for us, so that we might live.
With our joy there comes freedom, a
freedom from being constrained by the ways of the world, from conforming to its
ways, a freedom to welcome them to Banquet of the Kingdom, where the clothes
that matter are those of baptism a sign of humility, where God gives himself to
feed us to transform our human nature, to prepare us for eternal glory. So let
us cast our cares on him so that his grace may be at work in us So that we may
believe and be transformed, and share our faith with others that they too may
believe and be transformed and give glory to of God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all
might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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