HOMILY FOR TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME (C)

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. We hear much today about inclusion and rightly so. To be included is to feel acknowledged, valued and embraced in a life-giving way. To be excluded is to feel out in the cold and rejected. To be an inclusive society is something that we all must strive for and create. So too in the Church. We must be inclusive because Jesus was inclusive of all. He loved all, called everyone to conversion, holiness and made it clear that it was the Father’s will that all be saved.

However, there are also times when Jesus spoke about exclusion, like he does in the Gospel today – of people being turned outside of the great feast of final salvation with Abraham and the saints. We also see this with the parable of the wedding hall being filled with all kinds of guests from every walk of life but then of a man who was chucked outside because he wasn’t wearing a wedding garment. So, what do we make of this apparent contradiction where Jesus is inclusive on one hand but some being excluded at the end?

The answer lies in the biblical concept of election. God chose people like Abraham and Mary for a special calling – not just for themselves – but to be a sign for the saving of all. We see it in the first reading today. God chooses a people to be a sign, a light to the nations, to lead all peoples to Jerusalem – to faith in the true God, to right worship and praise. Israel was to be both the sign and the instrument to bring everyone into saving communion with God and one another.

This is precisely the role of the Church today at both the local and universal level. As the Body of Christ, together we are called to be a sign and the instrument of gathering people from all nations to right worship and right living. This is why the early saints referred to the Church as being like Noah’s ark guiding her members to everlasting life on the hostile sea. It is also why the Second Vatican Council called the Church the ‘sacrament of salvation’ – the sign and instrument of God’s presence and action in the world. This teaching is really important especially since we have traditionally placed so much emphasis on personal salvation and who will be saved as the person asks in the Gospel today. By way of response, Jesus questions their question by asking us to focus not just on the example that ‘I’ give but on the witness that ‘we’ give as a community.

In this light, to be included in the Church means that everyone is welcomed and offered the gift of God’s truth, mercy and love. Everyone is invited to holiness and conversion. So far so good. But then comes the challenge. Not everyone will accept this because we want to be included on our own terms and not God’s. God’s love is not sugary and fluffy but dangerous. It draws us into itself and then begins to change us. It involves discipline, sacrifice, focus, new ways of thinking, new hearts or as Jesus describes it in today’s Gospel, ‘walking through the narrow door’.

Jesus is warning us here against complacency. In times past there was a great fear that we might not be saved - by committing mortal sin we might lose the eternal happiness of heaven and end up in the fires of hell. Nowadays, we rarely hear of hell or of God’s judgment, despite the fact that Jesus frequently mentions them. We seem to have gone from one extreme to another in a short space of time. The downside of this complacency is the false assumption that what we do doesn’t really matter for we will all end up in heaven anyway. This is a heresy known as ‘universalism’ that was condemned by the Church many centuries ago.

At the end of my life will I be saved? We don’t know for sure but it is something we all hope for, pray for and live for. It depends on God of course but it also depends on us. God cannot save us without us wanting to be saved. From today’s Gospel, being a baptised Christian is no guarantee. Jesus even suggests that many outsiders will be admitted to paradise while many who expected to be saved will be locked outside. Look at the Good Thief on the cross - an excluded criminal all his life and then admitted to paradise at the last minute. Look at Judas. Many would have assumed he would be saved as he was chosen to be part of the twelve. But because of his sin and despair, Jesus said it would have been better if he ‘never been born’ (Matt. 26:24).

In obedience to the Lord in today’s Gospel, let us not get too hung up on being saved in the future but strive for holiness, integrity of life and fidelity to God in the present. Complacency is the enemy of the spiritual life. Vigilance, discipline and faithfulness are the essentials. Is everyone welcomed and included in the Church? Yes, but on God’s terms, not ours.