16th Sunday Year A - Homily 7

 Homily 7 - 2023

Today I have chosen to comment only on the shorter alternative of the Gospel instead of on all or some of the topics covered in the longer version [that came up on the screen]. I think it has enough meat in it to keep us busy for a while. Particularly I like it not offering the explanation of the parable’s meaning or its application — as if there were only one.

How come? Scholars these days are virtually unanimous in thinking that Jesus purposely left his parables tantalisingly unexplained and open-ended, in the hope that people might feel prompted to think more personally and more deeply, and thus see the particular relevance of Jesus’ message to their own lives. Ready answers to unasked questions easily fail to engage our interest.

The Gospels were written two or more generations after Jesus had given his message. Many believers were converts from paganism. The context of their lives would have been considerably different from that of the first generation of Galilean peasants to whom Jesus spoke personally. Consequently their needs may have been quite different. Over those sixty or so years, the early Christians were no longer all that interested in how Jesus’ teaching might have applied to those first Galilean believers; but they were quite concerned to work out how it might apply to their lives. What we often have in the Gospels is the practical relevance that those later Christian communities [still very much under the influence of the Holy Spirit], saw in Jesus’ teaching. They were the believers for whom the Evangelists were writing their Gospels.

What we believers have today is the record of how those slightly-later formerly-pagan communities thought Jesus might have expressed himself if he were talking to them and answering the questions that surfaced under their quite different conditions.

Following their lead, we modern Christians, in our quite different world, but with a similar courage and confidence, need to reflect on what Jesus, through his Spirit, is saying now to us personally. What we see today might well be different from what we saw as children, because we have had the opportunity to mature in the meantime. What you see might be different from what I see because our experiences have been so different. God’s Spirit wants to lead each of us, according to our needs and capacities, to an ever deeper, helpful and life-giving sense of the Truth.

I’ll tell you what I am coming to see in today’s short parable. For me, today, the story is not about kinds of people or about who is good and who is bad and what will happen to them. It is about me, who is both good and bad — and often I cannot honestly be quite sure of the difference. Will it become clearer as I mature? I haven’t much time left! In the meantime, I can only hope to do my best — but my record there is by no means reassuring. The experience, though, is having the effect of inviting me to be slow to judge others. I see that as a great thing.

How will God see me when I die? I think God will see just as I am — simultaneously good and bad! How will God handle that?

What I think that God will do is simply to see all that is bad, destructive, negative, harmful in me, all that gets in my way of accepting, respecting, caring about, loving everyone [including even myself] — all that contributes to the chaos, all the utter nonsense, of our present world — and simply eliminate it forever.

At the same time [and this will be the truly wonderful thing], God will allow me to see God as God is — overwhelmingly loving, overwhelmingly forgiving. And I believe this will inevitably change me forever, enabling me to love God and everyone else in a similar way; and enabling everyone else to do likewise.

That is my present sense of heaven.