Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reacting to the chaos in the world around him and the chaos in the world of art in the early 20th century, the great French painter Henri Matisse once said that art should be like a comfortable overstuffed chair at the end of a long day. Truth to tell, many people, myself included, would like that to be the description of our religious practice as well: a place of comfort and ease and simple repose. And then I open up the lectionary and find readings like today’s: readings full of challenge, impossible expectations, readings that are going to cost me to follow them. On days like those, on days like today, if I am honest with myself, it’s hard to preach the gospel. And it’s yet harder to follow it. It’s hard to hear what it demands, knowing what it will demand of me.

The Book of Sirach warns us against wrath and anger, which seem to have become in recent years the best descriptors of our civic discourse. We nourish that anger with 24-hour news cycles and the shouting of raving pundits on both sides of the aisle. We are enraged by injustice, and are no longer surprised when our streets and break out in violence. Even nature seems to have turned against us; the hurricanes of recent weeks are a fitting emblem for where we find ourselves as a nation, as a people.

On the personal as well as the national and global scales, we find we have to deal with impossibly difficult situations. We have disappointments to deal with, unrealized dreams. We have old resentments to nourish, and new ones to foster, often for good reasons, more often for not-so-good reasons.

Our families are stressed. Many of us have aging parents to deal with, and some of us, children who never seem to grow up and out. My sister and brother-in-law have just taken in, again, their deeply troubled adult son, this time with his highly questionable girlfriend. They have to find him help, since he’s on the brink. They’ve suffered through this before, with him and his siblings; it rarely has ended happily.

Yet hearing today’s gospel, I’m challenged by their goodness, their godliness. I live a long way away from their home in the Bay Area, yet I can see the danger, the disaster that looms on their horizon as clearly as if I were standing across the street. I try to warn them of it: they’ve been through so much, too much already. And yet they persist. And I am shamed by their mercy and generosity. They see the hurricane coming, and have decided not to flee from it. They will hunker down and ride it out, again. They have their provisions: not batteries and water, but their love for each other and for their family, and their impossible hope, hope that humbles me in my cynicism. “We’ll get through this,” my sister said on the phone yesterday. “We’ll figure it out somehow.” I dearly hope so for them.

“Lord, how often must I forgive my brother who sins against me? As many as seven times?" Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servant…”

Sirach reminds us today that anger and vengeance, wrath and self-righteousness, are not the ways that lead to life. In the gospel, the forgiven steward is shamed by his own ineptitude, and shamed even more by the generosity of the king who shows him mercy. He does not respond with equal generosity toward his own debtors. He shows them no mercy, and squeezes them until they bleed. There’s the challenge. And there’s the invitation.

“How often do I need to forgive my brother, my parent, my child, my friend?  Seven times? Seventy-seven times?”

“Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the LORD? Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins? If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins? Remember your last days, set enmity aside; Think of the commandments, hate not your neighbor; remember the Most High's covenant, and overlook faults.”

Some days, it’s hard to hear the gospel. I suspect it’s then when we need most to hear it.

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.