Hear, O Israel...

This post is the written summary of a homily given at St. James Episcopal Church on October 11, 2020. It refers to the parable in Matthew 22:1-14 - the last of a triad of parables - known as The Great Banquet. The parable should not be taken in isolation, as it was not told in isolation. It is a summary of the metanarrative of the entire canon of Christian sacred texts including the whole of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: The story of a distracted and stubborn people being continually called home by a faithful and patient Triune God. Therefore, I recommend that before you move into this reflection you first read Matthew 21:23-22:46 which forms a complete unit. In this way you will have the advantage of understanding for yourself how this parable upon which the Church meditates on this particular Sunday drives home Jesus's indictment of the religious establishment of which he was a part. This indictment was also intended for his own followers upon whom he charged the development of a reformed Judaism (later Christianity) that would be, unchecked and unguarded, just as vulnerable to the temptations of the temporal.

Despite our 21st century obsession with the individual - this parable is not about our personal salvation. Rather, it is an indictment of a failed system - of a failed religious institution. We tend to look at the failure of institutions in practical terms; loss of financial feasibility or a state of failed health in which the cancer of corruption has become so widespread, so pervasive and so profound a system is no longer able to function effectively. There are many examples of failing institutions in our world today - educational systems, governmental bodies, health systems, etc. But the institutional life of the Jewish temple, the Pharisaic Jews of Jesus' day did not fail necessarily in this way, but rather it failed in its fidelity to God. It failed to adhere to the Shema. Let us refresh our Jewish memory. The Shema in Jesus time was this: 

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 4:6-9) 

The resulting corrupt nature of the religious institution Jesus dealt with was but the symptom of a far greater "sin" (missing the mark) - that of losing heart for God. 

When the Church, as an institution, and specifically, the congregations that are within it - fall away from God - fail in their fidelity to adhere to Jesus's carrying forward of the Shema (known to Christians as the Great Commandment) then the church loses its heart and thus its ability to assist the people in the process of awakening. Individuals cannot realize a radical reorientation of their life while remaining concerned with the preservation of anything temporal. There is no greater failing for the Church as a whole or for any individual parish. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matt. 18:6) - Jesus is speaking to the failed religious institution of his day. 

The dire warning intended for religious bodies in this set of three parables holds within it a personal element in that individuals are the fabric out of which all human systems are made and have life. Therefore we are warned, in our own time and place, to hold our religious institutions to the highest standard - so that they continue to call people into a radical reorientation of life. If the people are not awakening to the knowledge of their higher selves they cannot be in the world but not of it - they only know how to be of the world - fully and completely identified with every temporal element of the physical plane - oblivious to a life of freedom and peace. As one of my teachers says: You are so free you can choose bondage... and you often do. But you don't have to.

When we read the Gospel of Matthew, the parables in particular, with this perspective in mind, we understand that as member of the body of Christ we are called daily to attend to the intimate relationship we have with the one Triune God... to write the name of God on our heart a thousand times a day... to hold a space for the Spirit to make itself known to us.... to feel our eternal nature tied to the eternalness of the divine. This we do first. And from this place of connection we are far more open to loving our neighbor, all our relations, not with the conditional love the world has trained into us, but the love of the divine. We cannot offer others what we do not yet know.  "So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart." (Ram Dass)

When we attend to our own spiritual well-being it enriches the whole Christian community. The things we care about shift. The attachments we hold to things that are passing away, pass away of their own accord. We experience a kind of freedom, at least some of the time. We feel joy, at least some of the time. And our houses of worship become expressions of peace.