Saturday, 1/18/13
The Gospel presents
us with a picture of Jesus enjoying a meal with people who were not known to be
religious. It had the town’s upright people being shocked at seeing this young
rabbi associating with such common people. They were saying, “Look at him. Why, he even seems to
enjoy such company!”
We have the custom
of classifying people as being of one sort or another. We see some people as
being mad for football. We see others as being consumed with grooming their
lawn or working with their power tools.” In the same way we classify some
people as being of the religious sort, while others are just not the religious
sort. Today’s Gospel tells us how mistaken we are to classify any individual or
group as not being religious.
We are all religious
in one way or another. I love a story about Venerable Bede. As he was preaching
to the people in an English church fifteen hundred years ago a bird flew in
from the open window on one side, flying out the open window across the way. He
told the people, “Our time on earth is like the quick passage of that bird from
this side to that. Our religion has us all wondering where we came from and
where we are going to.”
My favorite parable has
us mixing with people who are not seen as being religious. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is
like a woman mixing yeast with three measures of wheat to make the whole mass
rise.” Rather than closeting ourselves off in prayer, we should be mixing,
helping the whole mass to rise.
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