Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Some smug person taps Jesus on the shoulder and says, “Excuse me, but can you tell me if only a few will be saved?”  Jesus tells the person: “Listen, you are asking the wrong question.  You are trying to convince yourself that just because you say your prayers, pay your taxes, and belong to the ‘right’ religion, you’ll be saved, but the rest of the world will be damned.  You see that gate over there leading into this village?  It’s a narrow gate, not wide open, but open.  You and anybody else, even those not in your religion, not of your color, not of your country, not of your morality, can enter through it.  You’ll be surprised who is going to enter the kingdom through the narrow door.  And you’ll be surprised who is not going to enter the kingdom through the narrow door, because they carry too much smug baggage with them.”

Smugness is an evil not just reserved to creepy characters in the Bible nor to today’s polyester prophets.  Smugness abounds in the so-called “heroes” of our day.  It seems that whenever big stars, politicians, TV preachers, are caught in the act of a crime, they seem to show more concern for legal technicalities than for ethical principles.  The most they are willing to admit is, “Mistakes were made” – loosely translated, “I was caught.”  It seems so difficult for the heroes and heroines of our time to break from smugness and to apologize for their sins.

What has caused this modern smugness to descend upon our land?  What makes our heroes think they are above the law and do not owe us an apology?  What makes them think that they belong to some privileged “in group” with its own rules of conduct?  Did it begin with the schmaltzy novel Love Story where Oliver is told, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry?”  Did it begin when Richard Nixon claimed, “I am not a crook” and substituted “Mea culpa, mea culpa” with the now popular line, “Mistakes were made?”  Or does the problem of smugness in our land stem from something deeper?  Have we lost one of the key insights of our biblical tradition: that we, whether members of the “in” group or the “out” group, are all capable of evil and are also free to choose to do good?

Conservatives preach as if there are only two kinds of people in society: “the criminals” destined to commit evil acts, and the rest of us, who are by nature, more or less, rather good people.  Such a simplistic painting of the world in shades of black and white, prevents conservatives from ever owning up to the shadow side of their lives and ever discovering the good Samaritans and the prodigal sons and daughters of our time.

Liberals, on the other hand, are so bent on blaming society and environment for all the violence and ugliness of our times that they fail to recognize the individual capacity each of us has to choose evil or to choose good.  The truly wise of this earth are skeptical of liberal sentimentalism.  They know that love means you have to say you’re sorry until your dying day.

The gospel today reminds us that we religious people, in particular, can succumb to the sin of smugness as we battle those “not saved.”  We should remember the story of St. Anthony who went out into the desert to fight the devil.  At the end of his life of battle, he taught that we must learn to find good, even in the devil.  We eat and drink today in the company of Jesus who banishes our smugness and opens up for us a narrow door.  But the door is open to everyone.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor