A Cycle – 28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 23

Mt. 22:1-14

Today’s gospel is a continuation of the encounters of Jesus with the religious authorities after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as recorded by Matthew. These encounters begin in his twenty first chapter as Jesus returned to Jerusalem and He is greeted with by a crowd of people shouting “hosannah to the Son of David.’  A clear reference to the Messiah to come. Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus challenge the Chief Priests and elders with the parable of the two sons.  But to grasp the significance of those parables we should go back to the events immediately following His entry into Jerusalem.

He enters the temple and overthrows the tables of the money changers. Jesus is outraged at the religious leaders’ lack of respect for the House of God and by their inability to fulfil their role in assisting sinners connect with God.  But His concern is their lack of insight, lack of openness and an undeniable belief in their own righteousness as the way to the Father.  They of all people should know how to interpret the prophecies about the Messiah and make the connection to Jesus.  They should like John the Baptist have been able to look at Jesus and recognize the Lamb of God.

As Jesus left the temple that day, He reminds the leaders of their blindness to the reality of who He is. He tells them infants and children; sinners and outcasts see what they cannot see.   

Their obstinacy is preventing them from understanding the prophecies preparing them to respond. The prophecies told them who the Messiah would be, the events that would indicate His arrival and where He was from.  They read and knew those prophecies recorded in the scrolls they read to the people and preached from each week. Yet they failed to believe Jesus was the Messiah.  Their Messiah did not look like Jesus, did not speak like Jesus, and did not associate with sinners like Jesus.  Sinners were doomed while the righteous as defined by the law were the people the Messiah would set free.  Adherence to the law defined their conformity to the will of God.   

I invite you to go back and read the twenty first and twenty second gospels of Matthew.  It is a continual story about all the confrontations between Jesus and religious leaders leading up to His passion.  The scriptures are more than stories about the past they reveal to us God’s desire and how we are to respond. They are Jesus speaking to us today.  They are inviting us to look hard at ourselves and see if we like those religious leaders who are depending on our own belief of who the Messiah is and how we should respond.  There is an invitation being given to us to look within ourselves and answer a simple question, “what is it we want.” Jesus invites us to come. It is an invitation to sit with Jesus and have an intimate talk.  The first question on the table would be “what is it you want, what is it you are seeking, do you believe in Me is all you seek.” 

All the confrontations between Jesus and the religious leaders were because their image of the Messiah was not what Jesus was preaching and doing.  They wanted the Kingdom of Israel restored. They wanted Israel to return to the days of King David and the Kingdom of King Solomon.  The glory days of Israel. Freed from the oppression of their enemies at peace and filled with opportunities.  Jesus was not offering any of that, but He was offering to bring them into the Kingdom of God on earth. 

A place where we would still have wars, famine, pain, suffering and yet remain joyful because they would know what lies ahead was the very thing God intended at creation.  Intimacy with God, in a place where every tear would be wiped away, no more longing, no more insecurities and no more pain.  They would no longer strive to appease God, instead they would exalt in God because the Messiah sacrificed himself for their sin.   

Because the prophecies told them and us God forgives every sin we have ever committed if we just stand before Him and acknowledger we have sinned. We would know that every hurt would be healed. Every rejection would be reversed, and we would see ourselves as God sees us.  We would understand God does not see what we have done but He sees what we need and offers it to us.  The woman at the well shows that aspect of God to us.  God see who He crated us to be not who we have become because of our weaknesses, or the weaknesses of others who have damaged our fragile image of ourselves. 

Sin has separated us from God and Jesus came to bridge that separation.  “What do you want is a haunting question we should ask ourselves because we all know there must be more than what we are experiencing now. Our problem is the same as those leaders who could not see any other way to appease God than what they had done for thousands of years.  We are no different today, we cling to the process of worship and fail to respond to the invitation to seek the kingdom of God. 

What God wants is not our sacrifices, God wants our hearts to open to Him as a lover not as a judge.  That is the one thing we protect because we know the heart ache of rejection.  Each of us understands rejection. It has happened to us at some point in our lives.  A betrayal by our spouse of a close friend is hard to overcome and its impact is for us not to trust anyone with our inner most selves.  Rejection begins early in childhood and can continue for a lifetime.  Name your own reason for holding back and not trusting yourself innermost self with anyone, including God. We doubt God’s goodness and our misunderstanding forgiveness motivates us to appease God rather than allow God to heal us. 

God through the prophets has repeatedly told us “He would forgive our sin and remove our guilt.”  We can look up the word guilt in any concordance and find those references.  But do we believe it is true?  Do we distrust God that much that we doubt his promises to us?  What holds us back is our lack of understanding of forgiveness offered us by God. We are invited to the banquet and this parable we hear today is clear many individuals refuse the invitation because they do not understand the invitation.  They have things to do and are busy, another time, another day but not today. 

If the key to the elder’s failure was a lack of understanding of the promises of God, then we can just as easily misunderstand and rely entirely on our ability to follow the law.  What can we learn from this parable?  Perhaps we should hear the challenge and instead of relying on what we have learned begin to discover the promises of God given to us in the scriptures.  Pray for ears to hear and a mind to understand and allow the Spirit to reveal Jesus to you.