Scripture readings for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Isaiah 66:18-21
Psalm 117:1, 2
Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13
Luke 13:22-30
The promise, you see, always included you. Me too.
The promise of God is what I’m talking about, a promise innumerably repeated in the Scripture, that God would gather us in – all of us. It’s a promise perfected in Christ; a promise still being made.
Early on the promise was made to Abraham. God told him he would make of him a “great nation” (Genesis 12:2). “Look toward heaven, and number the stars,” God would later say. “So shall your descendants be,” God promised him (Genesis 15:5). This was a beginning, repeated, as I said, throughout the Scripture, the promise of God’s ingathering.
Pay close attention and you’ll hear this promise over and over again. Isaiah calls out to “islands” and “peoples from afar” (Isaiah 49:1). Gloriously, the prophets declare, the promise is made not only to the Jewish people but to others too. “Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered” (Isaiah 56:8). This – to cut simply to the chase – is us; this promise includes us.
Such is the message ending the whole of Isaiah, that God “is coming to gather all nations and tongues.” The nations “shall come and see my glory,” God says through the prophet (Isaiah 66:18).
Again, God is talking about us; he’s talking about you, epochs before you were even born. The eternal Lord just works that way, I guess. Our salvation is part of the primeval plan; he knew we would need him ages before we knew we would need him. There is something beautiful about that to me, comforting, this notion of God’s foreknowing care.
Now, as I said, this promise is perfected in Christ. Christ and his Church, I think, is the “sign” set among the nations (Isaiah 66:19). This, of course, is a debated interpretation because here I am insisting upon faith. But it’s a reasonable interpretation.
I mean it fits well with what Jesus said and did, like when he said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32). Jesus said this after some Greeks had asked to see him; the Lord here is simply repeating the promise made to Abraham, repeated through the prophets. It’s just that now the promise is embodied in Jesus himself; now the promise is incarnate.
Which is the sign, what demands faith. It’s the challenge of this passage from Luke. “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” somebody asks him. At first it seems that Jesus insists only very few will be saved; “many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough” (Luke 13:23-24). But he isn’t talking about numbers; he isn’t inviting into the kingdom these and not those. Rather, Jesus is saying that to enter the kingdom of heaven is not fundamentally a matter of inheritance but instead a matter of faith.
Jesus is saying that if you think you have a right to inherit the kingdom of heaven simply because you were born Jewish or, say – to extend the argument – Catholic, then you’re in for a rude awakening.
When you see Abraham and all the prophets at table in the kingdom with those from east and west and north and south, those you assumed would come last as confidently as you assumed you would come first, it will be so painful and shocking, Jesus said, that you will weep and grind your teeth (Luke 13:28-30). Because you thought the kingdom was the reward for an accident of birth. Because you didn’t realize instead that it was the reward for faith.
The call of the Gospel is for faith, that we may have faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God. The promise made to Abraham, repeated through the prophets, comes to perfection in Christ’s advent – his advent in the world, in the Church, standing now mystically right in front of you in your crisis of faith.
What do you make of Jesus? That’s the pressing question. Is your faith not really faith but instead just an inherited cultural form? If so, this passage should frighten you very much. Jesus, you see, I don’t think is impressed too much by credentials. I don’t think he cares where you went to school.
Pray then and beg for faith. Seek out the face of Christ in the Scripture and in prayer. Seek out Christ’s touch in the sacraments. Seek out his love in community and in neighbor and in the poor.
I don’t want to frighten you or make you think I’m exaggerating the point, thinking me a crank and a fool to be laughed at and discounted just because I dare to warn you of the eternal stakes of all this. It’s just that at some point the door will be locked and only faith will determine what side of that door you’ll be on. And it’s just that as a preacher, I feel obligated to tell you that.
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books.
