Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 28, 2022 – Sirach 3:17-18; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24A; Luke 14:1, 7-14

This is kind of a strange Gospel, isn’t it? The first parable just seems like a humorous story told at the expense of a few people at the dinner. The second parable seems like a needless poking of someone in the eye who was just invited to dinner. In order to understand what it is all about, let's talk about something else for a couple minutes.

Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, has been made into a movie or a television program at least twelve times in the twentieth century and twice since the beginning of the twenty-first century. They call it a comedy of manners. It was written in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. You have to wonder why it remains so popular. It may be because of its main characters and its main themes. The star of the show is a very plucky young girl named Elizabeth Bennett.  Her family are peers of the land.  That is to say that they have a land holding that entitles them to a seat in Parliament. But there is a very strange attachment to that parcel of land. The deed says that it can only be passed on to a male heir. If there are no male heirs, the land returns to the state. And that law goes back in English law to the thirteenth century and is unbreakable. So, the Bennett family is faced with the problem that they have all daughters and the parents are getting older. And so, the challenge is for them to get all the girls married off to someone else who has land so that they can maintain their exalted status in English society. And Elizabeth is a kind of a thorn in their side because she is not the most attractive of the girls and she is a very independent spirit. And she rejects all of her suitors. Until along comes a very strange man, named Mr. Darcy, who enters their lives in a very unwelcome way and completely turns Elizabeth off. For three-quarters of the novel, she and Darcy go at it head-to-head and she despises him. There are two other main male suitors - a Mr. Bingley and a Mr. Collins. And both of them have the same attitude as Mr. Darcy. They have an unconscious patriarchalism about them. But one of the three suitors also kind of leans toward misogyny. That’s a very dangerous thing. Of course, all’s well that ends well. Finally, Darcy and Elizabeth find each other and fall in love, and all the girls get married off, and everybody lives happily ever after.

But notice the issues that are raised in the story. The first one is the position of women in the society from the legal point of view. The second one is the position of women in society from an attitudinal point of view. And the third is prejudice based on wealth. Deliberate breaking up of society into caste systems. And those attitudes, those problems in society, we have in different ways in our society today. There is still a patriarchalism that drifts through our society. There is also a multi-faced issue about the role of women in society, their place in society, their rights. And there’s also a great deal of bigotry. Some of it based, still, on finances. Some of it based on skin color. Some of it based on national origin. Some of it based on religion.

That’s where today’s Gospel comes in. And you have to understand where today’s Gospel is situated in Luke’s gospel. Way back in chapter 7, there was a curious incident that takes place. Once again, Jesus is at the home of a prominent Pharisee on the Sabbath. And a woman bursts into this all-male dinner, throws herself at Jesus’ feet, weeping, until her tears soak His feet. Then she begins to dry His feet with her hair. And Luke says to us, “The people at the table thought to themselves, ‘If this man were really a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is, that she is a sinner in this city.’” She is being condemned in their minds because of how she makes her living and where she lives. And Jesus has a very interesting reply. He says to the Pharisee, “See this woman. I am a guest in your home. When I came into your home, you did not have My feet washed (which was the custom). You gave me no kiss of greeting. This woman has not ceased to kiss My feet and wash them since she came into the room.”

And then the episode is completely forgotten. We get today’s parables. And today’s parables look forward to something else that is coming up in chapter 15. Chapter 15 will begin with Luke telling us this. “The tax collectors and sinners were coming in droves to see and listen to Jesus, and He ate with them. And so the Pharisees got ahold of Jesus followers, his disciples, and said to them, ‘Your Master eats with the sinners and Pharisees. What do you think of that?’” And so, Jesus told three parables.

In the first parable, a shepherd goes out to look for one lost sheep and leaves 99 home in the pen. In the next parable, a woman loses her household money and searches the whole house to find it. When she finds it, she calls in all the neighbor women and has a party because she found her savings.

And then He tells the story of the prodigal son in which there are two sons separated by caste. One has gone to live with the pagans and behaved like a pagan and sullied himself with sin. And the other has stayed at home, resentful of his position in the family. The father is equally kind to both of them. Luke is very cunning in the way he builds his Gospel. It is very subtle, and it's very deliberate, and all moves in one direction - toward the margins, towards the outsiders, toward those whom polite society and religious society tends to ignore and condemn.

There’s an article in today’s Record. The Pope just appointed a whole bunch of new cardinals. The way it works is this. He can appoint any bishop he wants, or even a priest, to be a cardinal, but unless you are under the age of 80, you can’t vote for the new pope. So, he appointed a whole bunch of younger cardinals. One of them came from the untouchable class in India. An absolutely unheard of thing for the Catholic Church in India, for an untouchable to be made a cardinal. And in the United States, he only made one cardinal. He made the bishop of San Jose a Cardinal instead of the bishop of San Francisco, who expected to be a cardinal. Interestingly, the bishop of San Francisco had condemned these people who are on the side of the abortion controversy and want to receive communion. The bishop of San Jose said that he would not publicly refuse those people communion. The same thing that Francis had said.

We are at a pivotal point in our society, where we are being called as a nation, to honor our conviction to “bring me your tired and your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Whether we want to be true to our convictions, our founding convictions of the nation. Did we always observe them? Of course not. But, by and large, our country has been the place of haven for people who have no place else to turn. Our church is at a crossroads, where our Pope is saying that we need to find some way to go out to the people in the margins and bring them in. To find ways to reconcile people to their own faith and to make communion more inclusive for all people.

You know, if we tried very hard to be less prejudiced and more accepting, we’d go to our graves not having succeeded. Because it’s very, very hard to do. It just is. It just is. But, the lesson that Luke is pointing to is not the lesson of what they call the Prodigal Son, but the lesson of the forgiving father, that God’s arms are open wide.