Twenty First Sunday of Ordinary Time: Celebrating the Foreigners and Outsiders

Lectionary Readings:

• Isaiah 66:18-21. Distant foreigners will not only be converted to the Lord but they will even be chosen as priests and levites.
• Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13. God disciplines us by trials, at first a source of grief, later of joy. Parents discipline the children they love.
• Luke 13:22-30. Enter by narrow gate. People will come from distant corners of the earth to feast at the kingdom of God. The last will be first, the first will be last.

Thoughts for your Reflection: By John Gonzalez

This Sunday’s lectionary readings give us two related challenges. The first challenge is to our attitude of self-righteousness. Many of us, including this author, can identify many moments where we are so sure of our own moral positions and religious tenets that we consciously or unconsciously form judgments on the moral and religious perspectives of others. Our Christian scripture warns us consistently against the sins of self-righteousness and the resulting sin of casting judgment. It is a message that bears repetition because our human condition, regardless of creed, will move us to be inclined to control our religious perspective with a false sense of understanding. The second challenge tells us that foreigners and outsiders will not only share in the Kingdom of God but they will often times show us the correct path especially when we are blinded by our own false sense of righteousness and social complacency.

There is a fine line that is being walked throughout scripture and we must continuously struggle with this. Scripture offers us a spiritual reality centered on a divine relationship. Based on this metaphysics scripture also gathers a moral teaching to guide us in developing this divine relationship which we humans share not only with God but also with each other. Jesus is a teacher of the law and he follows the prophetic tradition of those like Isaiah. But Jesus and Isaiah are teaching about divine mysteries. Our limited human understanding cannot hope to fully comprehend the divine mysteries so Jesus reverts to teaching in the form of parables so that we learn by way of analogy what we cannot hope to fully comprehend by reason alone. The fine line is that Jesus and the prophets teach about a spiritual reality accompanied by a moral framework, but they also warn us against self-righteousness and uncharitable judgment since we must also be open to the universal mystery that is beyond our human experience and understanding.  

In the Gospel reading Jesus is tackling the self-righteous by repeating the mantra “some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” People will be waiting by the narrow gate assuming that they will be privileged to enter because they “ate and drank in your company and you taught in our street.” But Jesus will tell them “I do not know where you are from.” This challenges us not to be complacent. Just because we are part of a Christian community and we attend Mass and Church services does not give us an automatic green light to pass through “the narrow door.” A share in the divine union is not gained because of who we are but because of what we do. It is when we are humble and at the service of one another that we gain access towards a fuller and more meaningful life.

In the second reading Paul identifies our suffering as a path towards redemption.  It is part of the human condition that when we are comfortable and at peace that we tend to have a false sense of control and security. We no longer become appreciative of our blessings but instead we begin to think that we alone are responsible for our fortune.  It is when we lose everything however and when we feel at our lowest that we again are reminded of the blessings that come from outside of us. That is why Jesus and Isaiah refer to the foreigners and outsiders in this week’s reading as heralds of the divine vision. Through their marginal perspective and painful experience we will be able to humbly appreciate the struggles and blessings that we take for granted and the social programs that serve us all.

Isaiah and Jesus celebrate foreigners and outsiders in their participation with the Kingdom of God. The second challenge that we are offered is to look towards them and their valuable perspective regarding how we should discern the divine vision, independent of our own social status or dominance. The social program that many of us in the United States take for granted came through a righteous struggle that many of our immigrant descendants fought for. This includes social security, education, unions and a variety of labor laws. But now many of us take it for granted and we look down upon the new immigrants whom we feel do not deserve these same rights and benefits. The social program that had been put into place in the 30’s through the 70’s were hard fought victories of a social vision that was based on Christian values and developed after a difficult period of national suffering during the early half of the 20^th century.

We have forgotten this period of national pain and now these same social programs have lost any value to us. We ought to listen to the value and perspective of the foreigner and outsider in our midst with regard to a renewed national agenda in light of the contemporary suffering that we are facing, but instead we further marginalize them and create conspiracy theories regarding the new immigrant population and their “anchor” or “terror” babies. We have become so self-righteous with our own Judeo-Christian and national identities that we are even willing to change the fundamental laws of our nation to enhance our own position and dominance while further marginalizing foreigners and outsiders. As we hear the Gospel reading this week let us keep in mind and reflect on who Jesus say will be “reclining at the table of the kingdom of God”?