Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 15, 2023 – Isaiah 25:6-10A; Philippian 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

The most important person in a dialysis unit is the dietitian. He or she is always a registered nurse. And their job is to look at everybody’s bloodwork every day and, if they see any changes in certain chemicals in the blood, to give the patients medicines to react to those changes. And the chemicals we’re talking about, everybody has them and they are really good things.  Potassium, phosphorus, calcium, vitamin D. But we have too much of them and, ordinarily, our kidneys filter out what we don’t need. But when our kidneys aren’t working, they build up. And most people who are on dialysis die of a stroke or a heart attack because those chemicals build up. 

I have known the woman who is the dietitian at dialysis for about eight years. She is efficient and she’s cordial. For the little children who are here this morning, that means she does her work really well and she’s a nice person. One day, early on in my treatment, she came to me, and she said, “Your potassium has gotten a little bit low. I want you to have a half a banana twice a week.” And I chuckled and I said, “Why can’t I just have a whole banana once a week.” And she said, “Because, if you do, then your potassium might spike, and that would be very dangerous.” 

Friday, as I was leaving dialysis, she happened to be behind the main desk. And she called me over. And not, in her nurse voice, but in her lady voice, she said, “Would you do me a favor?
Would you please pray for my people in Israel?” And I said to her, “Do you have family there?”  She said, “No, but I have some very good friends. And I’ve been there. And I want desperately to go back and help as soon as I can.” And, as she said that,  I could see, because we were so close to each other, that she’s not a young woman. I’m guessing she’s in her late sixties. And her face got kind of flush, and her eyes filled with tears, but none trickled down. And, all of a sudden, for me there was a face on the tragedy going on in Israel and Palestine.

Palestine, in the time of Jesus, was a great big place. It wasn’t called Palestine by the Jews. It was called Palestine by the Romans. It went all the way from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Jordan River. A big chunk of land. But, in our first reading today, the reading goes back to a time almost a thousand years before Jesus was born.

After King Solomon died, his sons fought over who would inherit the kingdom. And so, they split it into two halves. The northern half was called Israel and the southern half - where Jerusalem was - was called Judea. And, even though the people who lived in both places were Jews, and even though both kings and their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons were related to each other, they were always quarreling. What they would do sometimes is, they would make a treaty with some Pagan king next door, in order to conquer their brother. Then their brother would make a treaty with a Pagan king next door to them, in order to defend themselves. And the prophet Isaiah’s job was to warn the King of Judah to stop doing that. Because they were not supposed to associate with Pagans. They were supposed to trust in God alone.

And that’s where today’s first reading comes from. Isaiah has this wonderful vision of a time when…  A time when...  Notice how it begins by saying, “On this mountain - because Jerusalem was built on a mountain - On this mountain, this is what’s going to happen. Everybody’s going to come and have a big feast . Even the people we don’t like next door, those Pagans. They’re all going to come and have a big feast on this mountain. They’re all going to come and worship on this mountain.” Hmm. Sounds pretty good huh? Then he says, “And the web that’s woven over all the nations, the veil that veils all the nations, death, will be removed for everyone forever.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like spiders very much. However, their webs fascinate me. All summer long, this one spider has been building a web on our back door. It’s just a little circle web. But sometimes go out and look at the hedges, and there’s these webs that are like a piece of cloth, they’re so thick. As a matter of fact, the American Indians used to look for those. They’d get a bunch of them and use them like gauze to cover a wound. A spider web, in its own way, is as strong, has as much tensile strength, as steel. It’s amazing stuff. And that’s what Isaiah says covers all the nations. They are stuck in their wartime stance. They can’t get out of it. They’re stuck in it. They’re stuck in a time of death. God will change all of that. 

But, in order for that to happen, apparently Isaiah thinks that the way everybody is going to pray together is that everybody is going to become Jewish. He can’t get quite beyond the them and us. Even with this great vision of what God’s going to do and how wonderful it’s going to be. 

But there’s an interesting line in the middle of the poem. It talks about wiping away the tears. I’m sure that he and his contemporaries could walk through the ruins of war. The two-story buildings that they had, crumbled to the ground. The ruined orchards and the burnt out fields of wheat and the dead bodies lying by the side of the road just like it is today. 

How did we get here? The current situation in Israel dates back to the end of World War I. What was left of the Ottoman Empire had sided with the Germans in World War I. And, as spoils of war, the British took a big chunk right out of their lands and simply gave them to the Jews. It was called the Balfour Accord. But Mr. Balfour was, himself, anti-Jewish. This was his way of getting the Jews out of England. So much so that Hitler was in favor of the Balfour Accord. Get them all out of Europe and stick them in the place where the Palestinians used to live.

After World War II, the allies took another chunk away from the Palestinians to add to the Jewish homeland. And it set up the eternal conflict we have now. This conflict, that has been going on since the time of Isaiah, and may never end.

So, what are we going to do? It’s way beyond our pay grade. There are several things we can do. We can determine, in our lives, to be more just and more charitable to our own near neighbors. We can look for what seem to be genuine and legitimate helping societies and send them a donation. The Cardinal wants us to invite people to send money to the Parish and we’ll send it on to the Archdiocese, if you want to do that. And we can pray. That’s what my friend, that’s what my nurse, asked me to do. To pray. I told her about the letter that’s on the back of our bulletin today. I told her it was going to be mitzvah. And she smiled. 

We are going to put the Blessed Sacrament out at the end of the 11 o’clock Mass and leave it exposed until 4 o’clock. And just invite you to drop in sometime during the day and spend a minute or two praying before our Eucharistic Lord for this mess. At 4 o’clock we’ll have Benediction.

And, maybe, the hand of the Lord will rest once more on that holy mountain.