2nd Sunday after Pentecost 25.5.08 Banquet
Preaching would be a lot easier if we could say, ‘You are all wonderful and you are all going to heaven. You are all welcome to Holy Communion, just come, whoever you are, wherever you are from.’ It is harder having to say, ‘Everybody come, but not if you are in mortal sin, or if you are not a Catholic.’
It is understandable that people have gone simplistically, saying things like: ‘I don’t think Jesus would refuse me. The Church might, but they are out of touch.’ There is no division between Jesus and the Church. How could there be, between the Head and the Body? What the Church says is what Jesus says. ‘Those you bind on earth, they are bound in heaven’.
When all said and done everyone is welcome and everyone is meant to go to heaven.
So in the end we are inclusive after all. It just means we have to take a few turns here and there to get an exact sense of how it works.
The welcome works like this: Of course Jesus wants you to come. Now if you are a Buddhist, or a Lutheran, or you are living an immoral lifestyle you can’t receive Holy Communion and you could take that hard and feel rejected, but we (the Church) are saying we love you, but you cannot have this sacrament today, because it would harm you, but with a few adjustments in your life you can have the sacrament soon, and then it will do you a great deal of good.
We won’t make you change your life; that is your freewill at work, your privilege, but you are certainly welcome to change it and join us at the altar rail.
If anyone expects to receive Jesus it must be on His terms not ours. He is not some piece of plasticine to be bent into whatever shape we like. We have to wear the ‘wedding garment’.
As with a real wedding reception, it is obviously assumed if not stated that you would have to wash first and wear clean clothes. So for the Church, Come but not just anyhow, clean yourself up morally spiritually, and understand that the invitation does not mean just anyhow, but according to certain established rules.
So all you out there are not being rejected. You are being offered happiness beyond what you could find in any other place, because God loves you and so do we.
The parable might sound like it’s just a matter of dragging people in off the street, with no further change required. This is how some see it. But we can’t do it quite so simply.
A doctor would like to be able to say you are going to live another forty years, but if you have only two weeks to live he must say so.
A spiritual doctor would like to say you are going to heaven, but if on current form you are more likely to go to hell, he must give warning.
This doesn’t mean we don’t like you; in fact we like you so much we are offering you another solution.
We are all One as commonly claimed, but usually wrongly understood. The human race is one insofar as we are all called to union with Christ, and actually one if we all answer that call. And He is beckoning us to the banquet.
Those of us here who are Catholic, and in a state of grace, are very fortunate. We do not think ourselves better than everyone else. Luckier maybe, but not better. We know how much we need this heavenly food, and how easily we could be on the outside instead of the inside. We do not want to turn down the best invitation we will ever receive.
