30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

If ever you wanted a simple compendium of what is required of us to be believers, today’s Gospel and first reading from the Book of Exodus lay it all out with utter, almost brutal simplicity. One of the Pharisees, a doctor of the law, tries to trip Jesus up. With apparent sincerity, he asks Jesus which is the greatest commandment of the law. Arguing against a lawyer, there are a hundred ways to get that answer wrong.

And Jesus nails the answer.

He goes to the very core of his Jewish tradition, to the Shema, the daily declaration of love between the people and their God spoken by the mouth of Moses: “Hear O Israel: you shall love the lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.”  In citing this text, he encapsulates the first three commandments: to worship God alone, to revere God’s holy name, to keep the sabbath.

Yet he adds more: summarizing the last seven commandments—from honoring our parents to not coveting our neighbor’s spouse or goods, he tells us how we express that love: by loving our neighbor as ourselves. At this point, in Luke’s gospel, the lawyer asks: “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus launches into the story of the Good Samaritan.

Today’s first reading from the book of Exodus tells us the story of the Good Samaritan’s acts in a different way:

“You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for once you were aliens yourselves in the Land of Egypt. You shall not oppress the widow or orphan, or harm your neighbor with extortionate loans, or take the cloak in which he sleeps as collateral.” In a word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus again and again used the sad triad of widow, orphan, and alien as a paradigm of misery, and as a call to loving service. In his patriarchal culture the widow was no one: she had lost her all her status. In his tribal culture, the orphan was no one: the orphaned child had no rights, no protection. In his politically unsettled culture, the alien was then, as the alien is now, no one: the object of suspicion, the “other” who is never to be fully trusted. 

But who is the alien? Who is the exile? In this country, all of us, once, including the first peoples who were then displaced by our ancestors. The first peoples came across a land bridge from Asia, looking for a place to be. Our ancestors came fleeing from hunger, from warfare or religious persecution, fleeing from old ideas that choked them, fleeing towards hope.

Today 60 million people in our world are refugees. One person in on hundred is seeking refuge from the same experiences of hunger, of warfare, of persecution our ancestors fled from. And we talk of building walls.

The foundational stories of our tradition are stories of exile endured, and new beginnings. In time of famine, our ancestors went to Egypt, where they were enslaved; the Lord God heard their cry, and led them out of Egypt dry-shod through the Sea. God gave them the Law, and a land flowing with mild and honey, and that was not enough. They themselves, aliens no longer, began to persecute the alien, to abuse the widow and the orphan. “If the needy cry out to me, I will hear them”, says the Lord, “for I am compassionate.” They did not listen to the warnings of the prophets, and lost their land, enduring two long generations of bitter exile by the rivers of Babylon. This is what they sang, remembering their deliverance:

 

When from our exile God brought us home again,

We were like people dreaming.

 

Are we so different from them? Are our challenges, and the demands the Lord makes of us, so different? Are we not still, even now, strangers in a strange land, people who long for a return to what is innocent, good, and holy?

How to begin the long road home? By loving God, and supporting our neighbor, the widow, the orphan, the alien and the alienated; the undocumented, the tent-dweller under the freeway, the lost addict or the child in the clutches of the traffickers. Only then, when all are gathered into one, will be able to sing the song of exiles returned at last to home:

 

When from our exile God leads us home again,
we’ll think we’re dreaming.

Then will the nations say

Their God does great things for them.

Indeed, you do great things for us, O God. You are our hope.

 

So lead us home, bring us to life again,
even as when the first rain falls,

The rivers in the desert,
start flowing again.

Sow seed in sadness, harvest in gladness.
A man goes his way and sows seed with tears.
Back he comes, singing,
sheaves on his shoulder.

 

When from our exile God leads us home again

We’ll think we’re dreaming.

(Ps. 126)

 

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When from our exile God leads us home again, we’ll think we’re dreaming. Then lead us home, bring us to life again, even as rivers which, in the desert, when the first rain falls, start flowing again. Sow seed in sadness, harvest in gladness. A man goes his way and sows seed with tears. Back he comes, singing, sheaves on his shoulder.  (Ps. 126)

 

 

They come in a throng

White-robed the Scripture says;

Carrying palms and olive fronds

Lilies and roses

That turn into bread

 

Carrying books and electric guitars,

Babes in arms and ancients on their backs

Carrying their history, a promise, a hope.

They come in a throng

Wearing saris and dancing shoes,

Baseball caps and laurel crowns,

Carrying plow and calculator

Spade and chalice and laser

Pruning knife and scalpel;

Ideas and dreams and plans.

 

Their hands are full of flowers.

They come in a throng

Carrying sword and bandage

Fear and longing

Courage and compassion.

Carrying their mortal fear and their mortality

 

Blessed are they, carrying meekness and justice

Long suffering amid persecution;

Hands that once clutched prison bars

now embrace each other, the future, and hope.

 

Blessed are they, the innocent

Pure hearts beating with love,

Willing to witness, whatever the cost.

 

They come in a throng

Carrying ordinary gifts

Food well cooked and work well done

The silence of solitude and pleasure of sharing.

 

Blessed are they who carry doves of peace,

And those who weep for all the losses of life;

Blessed are they, the children of Aleppo and Las Vegas,

The innocent victims.

Blessed are those who carry hankies for the mourners

Broken hearts healed by their touch.

 

Blessed are they who hunger for justice:

They come carrying chains, broken, re-forged, broken again

Carrying a word of truth that suddenly outweighs the world.

 

Blessed are they, Mary and Joseph

Peter and Magdelene,

Agnes and Lucy, Sebastian and Martin;

Blessed are they, Francis and Clare, Ignatius and Joan,

Angela and Elizabeth Ann, Kateri and Frances Cabrini;

And all the anonymous others, Ramons and Juanitas,

Keyshas and Kumars, Hoangs and Habibs.

 

Blessed are they, our parents, our brothers and sisters,

our friends who have gone before, unnamed saints of every age;

The cloud of witnesses who shade us with their prayers

Who rain grace on us by their example.

 

They come home from the fields,

Sheaves on their shoulders

Bread in their aprons, for once, enough for all.

 

They are our hope.

 

When from our exile God leads us home again

We’ll think we’re dreaming.

 

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.