Settling for Poverty

Sermon for the second Sunday after Trinity

There are so many decisions in life.

When you start your day, you have to decide what to wear, whether you have time for breakfast, what to eat for breakfast, whether you’re going to take a chance on those eggs that might be past their best.

You have to decide on how you spend your day, what tasks you have to complete first, whether you need to contact that person, whether you need to pop out for some peptobismol on account of those eggs.

Every day, we are having to decide between all kinds of possibilities.

How do you make your decisions?

[PAUSE]

You receive an invitation to dinner from someone you’ve vaguely heard of. Do you decide to go?

Well, clearly, you have to weigh up your options, but you do so based on a series of value judgements. You have just bought that piece of land on which you are hoping to build a new home for you and the family. You have a new wife and want to spend more time with her. You’ve just got that new car and want to give it a spin. And you have this invitation to dinner from this bloke you’ve barely heard of.

The decision you have to make is based on what you know and what you don’t. You have the things that you know – the new car, the piece of land and the new wife. You’ve been involved in these decisions and you roughly know what you’re getting with each of them, but this dinner invitation is out of the blue and you simply don’t know what to expect. With the restaurants you’re used to, you know the food you’re getting, but while this chap could have a Michelin rated chef, he could also have ordered a bargain bucket from KFC. You know your new wife, but this chap you don’t. He could be a sparkling raconteur like Kenneth Williams or Sir Peter Ustinov, or he could be more dull and irritating than the chap who wants to know your favourite humming noise. You have a decision to weigh up.

[PAUSE]

Seen from this side of the parable, we don’t really find the actions of those who refuse the invitation to dinner all that unreasonable. They have better things to do, and this dinner invitation doesn’t really enter their lives. Indeed, the people who do accept the invitation are those whose lives make an impromptu invitation very appealing. They have nothing better in their lives and so what reason do they have to refuse. A dinner invitation beats sitting there with all your aches and pains in all your poverty.

And so this feast, this dinner is populated by people whose lives have been brightened by being invited. They are truly grateful and receive something wonderful. That does beg the question: why weren’t these invited in the first place?

[PAUSE]

Clearly, Our Lord is making a contrast between people who have everything and those who have nothing. It’s not really a question about when people get invited but rather a question of who accepts the invitation. Those who reject it do so on the belief that what they have is better than this invitation to a feast. Those who accept it do so on the basis that this feast offers more to them than their lives do.

The question Our Lord is asking us is, what does this invitation to a feast offer you above what you already have?

To those who are content with this life, this feast offers nothing. To those who recognise the poverty of their lives, this feast makes a welcome opportunity for true joy.

While there is so much in this world that is good – and, let’s be fair, new land, new cars and new wives are good – their goodness depends on something greater. The newness fades. The novelty wears off. The land gets built on, the car gets old, the marriage becomes customary. Even in earthly prosperity, there is poverty and people never really see it unless they accept the evidence of this life.

We Christians recognise that anything that is good in this life is good because God made it good. His feast of goodness is taking place now and while it touches the things we have, it is God Himself Who presents to us Himself as the only true good. Only He is good in Himself, everything else is a pale reflection of Him.

We accept His invitation to the feast when we start looking beyond the enjoyable things of a life without Him. God can bless us with a new car, but that car can be taken away. God can and does bless a marriage, but relationships can falter and people don’t last forever. What is lasting for us is the invitation that we have to enjoy God. That’s not just an invitation to a feast after this life – it’s an invitation to a feast that is available to us now. While the Mass is part of that feast, it is the presence of God in our lives that is cultivated by word and sacrament, and it is this presence, this grace, that is the feast to which we are invited. It is a feast that is happening right now, because God is with us right now.

[PAUSE]

The danger we face, particularly in the West, is a false contentment. We are tempted to settle for a life that makes us comfortably numb to what is truly meaningful. We are not to put our trust in things that pass away but rather look through them to the God Who gives them to us and to enjoy a feast that comes with gratitude and humility. We recognise our poverty, all that we lack, our moral disability, moral blindness, moral lameness, and we accept the invitation to a feast that will open our eyes, strengthen our limbs and set us truly aright with God.