You’re late
Trains
run on time in Italy and last year I had the experience of catching a train with
only seconds to go before the doors closed. An hour of tension and frustration
had preceded this final triumph as we lost our way and later got held up in
traffic. My ticket was for that train only and if I had missed it heaven knows
what palaver I would have had to endure.
From
our schooldays on many of us, I suppose, have heard those dreaded words,
“you’re late!” They announce we are cut off from what we expected and
unforeseen and sometimes unpleasant consequences follow. Mutemwa, a settlement
near Mutoko originally for people suffering from leprosy and – while still that
- now also a community that welcomes
other chronically ill or destitute people, literally means “a place cut off.”
There
are many ways in which we can be excluded and though our world is a more
tolerant one than that of our forebears the experience is still very real.
Migrants driven from their homes by persecution or poverty often find they are
not wanted in the countries they try to reach for security and a better life.
The host nation closes its doors and they find themselves on the outside in
frightening conditions.
What
if this experience of exclusion was to reach beyond the grave and we find we
are not known or wanted on “the other side?” How would we feel then? Jesus
seems to point to this when he warns his hearers in the parable of the master
locking his door (Luke 13:22-30). The people knocking hear the words, “you’re
late. I do not know you or where you come from.” They plead, “don’t you know
me? You walked in our streets and ate in our house.”
It
is a frightening story about presumption. In the first instance it is about
those in Israel who thought, “we are God’s people. He is on our side no matter
what we do.” No, they had to show the “works of God” (John 6:29) which was “to
believe in the one whom he has sent.” Otherwise they would be excluded.
But
it goes further: the message is also addressed to anyone who presumes that God
is on their side and no matter how they live their life they will never be
excluded. Well, I hope they are right but the words on the gospel give little
support of this view. On the contrary they suggest that we cut ourselves off,
we shut ourselves out, by the bad choices we make. “Then there will be weeping
and grinding of teeth when you find yourselves outside. And others will come from
east and west, from north and south, and take their places in the feast in the
kingdom of God.”
Jesus
is “making his way to Jerusalem”, the city of the climax of his mission. The
whole passage is charged with promise and threat. It mirrors our own time and
experience.
25 August 2013 Sunday
21 C
Isaiah 66:18-21 Hebrews
12:5-7, 11-13 Luke 13:22-30
No comments:
Post a Comment