Sunday 28A, 2008
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Today we have another parable about the Kingdom of Heaven.
Most of us can remember the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
Who would have refused an invitation to it?
Yet Jesus paints a picture
of a king who is so disliked or disrespected that
no one wants to go
to the wedding of his son.
Some of the invited guests are so offended
to be invited that they kill the messengers.
Jesus said that the highly unpopular king in the parable was God
and the invited guests were the leaders of his time.
As with all the parables we must ask ourselves, where am I in this?
Have I refused an invitation to a good thing because it had to do with God?
Am I among the all-and –sundry attending in place of those
who refused God’s invitation and have failed to honour the occasion;
have received great gifts and honours and took it all for granted?
Let us respond to invitations by God so that we may be chosen.
Let us conduct ourselves becomingly accepting the gifts of God beginning with his
forgiveness,
then his truth which sets us free,
and finally his intimate friendship
and his love and peace that passes all understanding.
In the second reading St. Paul says that he has learned to live both as a rich man and as a poor man.
Money – he said – had no power over him.
He was neither handicapped by self-pity when poor nor did he fall for the pleasures of the body when rich.
He remained level headed in all circumstances, doing what God asked him to do, spreading the Gospel of Jesus everywhere.
The good news of God did not start with the Gospel of Jesus. The 1st reading, taken from the Book of Isaiah, was written some 500 years before his time.
It is a great hymn to the bright future; a picture of the days to come when - like the caterpillar turning into a beautiful butterfly – the world will change into a place of peace and joy.
The writer says:
*God will prepare for ALL peoples a banquet.
*He will remove the mourning veil covering ALL peoples. (not just the Jews, or any selected group of people but all peoples!)
*th will be destroyed for ever.
*Tears will be wiped away.
*Shame will be removed for ever EVERYWHERE ON EARTH. (again every one is included)
*Everyone will see the goodness of God.
This GOOD NEWS that was written 2.5 thousand years ago.
This is about God the loving Father taking good care of his creation.
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