Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 21, 2022 – Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

So, religion and politics.  A very thorny issue. 

Back in the 1970’s Paul Simon had a big hit record called Me and Julio Down in the Schoolyard. And there is one stand-out line from that song. “When the radical priests come to get us released, then we all on the cover of Newsweek.” What was that all about? All of a sudden, in the 1960’s and early 70’s, priests and sisters appeared in public championing various political causes, marching with Martin Luther King for civil rights, and opposing the Vietnam War. Two very famous priests, one a Jesuit and one a member of another religious order’s brothers, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, took a leading role in opposing the war in Vietnam, and one of the Berrigan brothers actually became a part of the Catonsville Gang. They burst into a local Selective Service office one morning and poured pigs blood over all of the Selective Service records, were arrested, tried and convicted and spent time in jail. This was a scandal to many Catholic people who never envisioned their leaders taking part in the public fray.

I had a very good friend who used to come from Ireland every summer to assist at parishes in the United States. This priest was beloved by the people in the parish that he almost always came to. Until one morning, being Irish and really not understanding the political climate, he preached a sermon in which he condemned the war in Vietnam. People walked out of church. And afterwards, a delegation came to the pastor and demanded that he be silenced. It was only because the pastor was an even-tempered person that he was able to quell the issue and tell his dear friend that he needed to back off from talking about politics in the pulpit while he was here on vacation, otherwise he would not be invited back.

This morning there is a political cartoon in the Times Herald Record that takes a really mean swipe at Catholic schools. But that’s nothing new, because 140, 150 years ago we had a political party in the United States known as the Nativists. Their popular name was called the Know Nothings because any time that they were called on the carpet, they said, “I know nothing.” But their platform was isolationism, anti-immigration, and, because of anti-immigration, anti-Catholicism. It got so bad in the 1840s and 50s, that the Archbishop of New York, John Hughes (who never became a Cardinal because of this), actually had the lay people in his parishes arm themselves and stand guard at night around the convents and churches to prevent them from being attacked, set on fire, and our sisters attacked, and our Priests attacked. That’s how bad it got. But that political platform is still familiar to us today, is it not?

The reason I bring all this up is because, in order to understand the message in Isaiah, you have to understand the politics of Isaiah’s time. There were three Isaiah’s. They didn’t know each other. And they weren’t related. The first one’s task was to try to get the Jewish kings in Israel and Judah to stop making alliances with foreign powers that were run by pagan governments, because it was against Torah to associate with pagans. And, because the kings did not listen, eventually, the countries were overrun, and all the able-bodied people taken off into captivity to what eventually became Persia. Once they were in captivity, they weren’t kept in jails, they were integrated into the rest of the population as craftsman, as servants, as slaves, and eventually some of them became corrupted by the pagan religions that their masters and their associates were practicing. On the other hand, some of them were able to convert pagan people to following Yahweh, the One God.

The Isaiah we had this morning is the third Isaiah. He writes after the exile is basically over and people are coming home to a deserted area to rebuild their cities and re-establish their religion. It is a great moment, a defining moment. And Isaiah’s saying, “Look, because of your experience, you have a two-fold opportunity. You can bring back people who have been away for a long while, even people who’ve established businesses and established families in these foreign lands. They can come back, as least as visitors. And, because you are now known all over the Mediterranean basin for lots of different things, you have a golden opportunity to tell other people about your belief in the One True God.” And once again, just like they didn’t listen to the first Isaiah, the people that time did not listen to the third Isaiah. As a matter of fact, what they did instead, was circle the wagons. They said, “Never again will we associate with pagan people. Never again. We’ll be exclusive to ourselves.” Of course, that wasn’t true because they were making money off pagans the whole time. But, nonetheless, they said, “That’s what we’re going to do.” 

And that’s where today’s Gospel comes in. Because part of the message of Jesus, during His lifetime, was to pick up the fallen torch of that third Isaiah, and talk about a religion that welcomed everyone.  That went out to the world, in invitation, and drew people in. That’s the last paragraph of today’s reading. “People will come from the East and the West and the North and the South,” all those places where the Pagans live, and find their place at the table in the Kingdom of God.

By the time Luke gathers together the sayings of Jesus, he is dealing with a particular political situation in his time and place. The situation is this. Almost all those Jews who’ve decided that Jesus is the Messiah, have made their decision. Making that decision has caused generational rifts in Jewish families. Rifts that are now two and three generations old. Between those who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah and those who do believe and are now called Christians. That rift has caused heartache and heartbreak throughout the Jewish Christian and the Jewish families.  But, at the same time, the Church had experienced a tremendous influx of people into its ranks from where? From the Pagans. These two are like oil and water; they don’t mix. And so, Luke gathers together several sayings of Jesus that have different moods. Did you catch the moods?

The first one is encouragement. Try to come in through the narrow gate. Try. It’s hard to do. Not everybody is able to do it, but give it a shot. See if you can follow religion strictly. Try to come in through the narrow gate. If not, there might be some other way for you to be saved. But try, at least. 

His second mood is severe criticism and warning. “You will say to me that you know me. And I will say to you, ‘I do not know you because you do not follow what I taught you. I do not know you.’ And you will be locked out.”

And the third mood is hope. Because people will come from all around to share in the banquet of the Eucharist. And to share, eventually, in the great banquet of eternity. It will happen. 

Three moods. That the Church offers us through our scriptures today, to consider the thorny issue of the Church and politics. Why? Because there will always be both cooperation and conflict between the world of politics and the world of religion. Why? Where does the word politics come from. It comes from the word polis in Greek. Polis means ‘the people.’ Both religion and statesmanship are meant to serve that same group. The polis, the people. And so, sometimes we’ll see our road together, and sometimes we will not. But, in times of conflict, the church says, “Think of three things. Try, give it your best shot and see what happens. Beware of not practicing what you preach. And have confidence and hope that God truly loves all the polis all the time.