HOMILY FOR THE 21ST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR C
It is a human tendency to want to exclude those with whom we find disagreement. It grates us to be inclusive of people whose thinking, beliefs, culture or lifestyle differs from our own. Sadly, this human trait has perpetuated like a bad genetic strain from one human generation to the next. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Enough is enough! This thinking of exclusion must end.”
Those Jewish people of Jesus’ time who believed in an afterlife, believed that only the Jewish people would have eternal salvation. Jesus tells them, “Don’t get too cocky.” The net of God’s love and mercy is thrown far wider than the Jewish faith, so much so, that it will be those they exclude who will be the first to enter heaven, long before the Jewish people. God’s infinite mercy and love is far greater than our own feeble-minded , finite human concepts of mercy and love. However, this is only a part of the gospel lesson today. The real lesson lies in this very striking passage from the gospel.
Jesus tells the people that they will come knocking on God’s door saying, “Lord, open the door for us.” God will look at them and reply, “Go away, I do not know where you are from.” Then the people will say, “We ate and drank in your company and you taught us.” Then God will say, “I do not know who you are and where you are from. Depart from me all you evil doers!” When we encounter God face to face, will God know who we are? Rather than waste our time deciding who or who will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, a decision that is not ours to make, the real question is when we knock on God’s door, will we be able to enter the Kingdom of heaven?
About this time in 2004, I was comfortably serving as a deacon a large southwestern suburban parish, when I received a call from the Office of the Archbishop that Archbishop Flynn assigned me to be the parish life administrator of St. Stephen’s in South Minneapolis. While most parishes in the Archdiocese are for the most part mainstream Catholic parishes, both Archbishop Roach and Archbishop Flynn believed all Catholics must have a spiritual home. So there was established specialty parishes for those Catholics who were more rigidly orthodox in their faith and parishes for those Catholics who were by and large unorthodox in their faith. St. Stephen’s was counted among the latter.
The parish mission statement of St. Stephen’s at that time was that the parish was a spiritual circus tent under which all were welcome. No one was excluded from the parish. The parish was diversely made up of homeless people, the developmentally disabled, gays and lesbians, ex-priests, ex-nuns, ex-offenders, prostitutes, hurting Catholics who were either on their way out of the Catholic Church or reentering the Catholic Church after having been away from the faith for a long time, and the disenfranchised of some mainstream Protestant denominations. I am now beginning my 40th year in church ministry and St. Stephen’s was, by and large, one of the most challenging, perplexing, fascinating, frustrating, and at the same time most rewarding of my parish assignments. The parish was no paradise, no parish ever is, and there were times at the end of the week when I would sometimes sigh and say, “I think we are still Catholic.”
I remember one Sunday after Mass, a man telling me his story. He was gay. He grew up in a large, strict Irish Catholic family. He was educated as a Catholic from time he was in first grade till he graduated from college. He told me tried to heterosexualize himself for many years, dating girls, and even getting married, trying to fight his sexual orientation. However, he could not live a lie. Overwhelmed with tremendous guilt, he fell into a deep, dark depression and despaired to the point of dying by suicide, when he walked into the doors of St. Stephen. Within this very diverse community of faith he encountered Jesus, who loved him and accepted him as he was, a gay man. He said that this parish saved his life. This man, whose soul had been torn spiritually and emotionally asunder for so many years, finally found peace within himself and with God. He knocked on God’s door and God knew who he was, welcomed him and bid him enter.
Who will be admitted or not be admitted to heaven is a choice that belongs only to God. Would we not best spend the time that we have becoming spiritually the person God created us to be? This requires us to honestly discern and accept who we truly are. Have we grown authentically into the person God created us to be or are we living a lie?
This kind of discerning is like standing in front of a spiritual mirror and one by one removing all the illusions, delusions, and deceptions in which we have been clothed until we stand spiritually naked. To see ourselves as we truly are in that mirror is an unpleasant and shocking experience. It is only when we have spiritually stripped ourselves and clothed ourselves only in humility, that we are prepared to knock on the door of God. And, as we knock upon the door of God, be equally grateful that the mercy and love that God extends to others is there for us, too!
