<p><em>So often the problem with our vision is not that we cannot see but that we see too much. In this abundance we lose our focus missing what matters most. Todays reflection invites us not only to recognize the abundance in our midst but to respond to these gifts with the gratitude and reverence they deserve.</em></p><p><strong>October 15 2023: Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time</strong></p><p>Isaiah 25:6-10a</p><p>Psalm 23:1-6</p><p>Philippians 4:12-14 19-20</p><p>Matthew 22:1-14</p><div><div class=titan__email-divider>&nbsp;</div></div><h3><strong>What We Owe and What We Earn<br></strong></h3><p><em>A reflection by Lori Ranner</em></p><p>A recent <a href=https://dignityusa.app.neoncrm.com/track//servlet/DisplayLink?orgId=dignityusa&amp;&amp;&amp;linkId=28900&amp;targetUrl=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/nagorno-karabakh-families-anguish-forced-to-flee-homes-azerbaijan>article</a> in <em>The</em> <em>Guardian</em> described the mass exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh a region of Azerbaijan which has lost its semi-independent status and thus the guarantee of freedom and security for the ethnic Armenians living there. Genady Hyusunts wife had just given birth to their seventh child when the evacuation began. Leaving for the front line where ethnic Armenians were hoping to hold off an Azerbaijani advance he left his wife sister and children in an overcrowded basement where supplies of food and water dwindled so rapidly that soon his sister reports we were starving.</p><p>Miraculously all the children including the newborn survived and the family was reunited when the front line collapsed. Now they live as refugees enroute to Armenia where their future prospects are dubious at best. When asked to comment on the sudden loss of his home his war his livelihood and all his earthly possessions the familys father has an astonishing response.</p><p>My wealth is with me said Genady Hyusunts meaning his children. I dont care about the rest.</p><p>His words brought to mind an experience associated with hurricane evacuation that is only too familiar for residents of southeast Louisiana like myself. It is that moment when youve finally arrived at whichever hopefully-safe-and-faraway place you were headed when you look around at an unloaded cars worth of junk food baby pictures grumpy animals and all your people and you think: <em>let it come. Ive got what I need.</em></p><p>There is no way to explain Hyusunts attitude to his personal desolationapart from the fact that he is a father and his children are his chief source of meaning and delight. Knowing that they are safe makes every other loss seem trivial for nothing could possibly make up for their loss. Everything in our lives can be rebuilt in some fashion from the ruinsexcept a human life itself.</p><p>Cultivating compassion is hard work. It is predicated upon a radical embrace of our helplessness upon the realization that we depend wholly upon the mercy and reckless generosity of God.</p><p>Once we accept that we dont control much of anything all of those protective layers weve constructed around ourselves and our so-called self-interest begin to dissolve. Everyone and everything starts to look a lot closer; what previously appeared as walls are revealed to be connective tissue instead. This nearness of God in whom as the Eucharistic Prayer tells us we live and move and have our being calls forth humility gratitude solidarity as well as courage. It is when we live in lovein the unashamed oneness of beingthat we become heroes not because of the greatness of our deeds but because of the clearness of our sight. We can distinguish the true and real from illusion. The gifts of God are the gifts of clarity destroying the veil that veils all peoples or that which we mistakenly believe separates us from each other. Even more radically God lifts the veil behind which no living human has ever seen: death itself.</p><p>Isaiah offers us a blueprint for building such a life. Its most essential foundation is acknowledgement of Gods love. Like Mr. Hyusunts God loves with a parents abandon for whom nothing else matters but the closeness and welfare of their children.</p><p>God sets the standard for us with a profligacy of gifts. Like the psalmist Paul and Jesus Isaiah describes what God has given in unabashedly sensual termsjuicy rich food and pure choice winesfor we understand and grow through not in spite of our bodies. As Jesus knew it is the language of the body through which the most lasting and powerful lessons are learned. Here God is <em>provident</em>a word that bears a key component of any parents care: one who provides is the one who sees ahead who knows what is coming and who has prepared accordingly. God anticipates our needs our weaknesses the dangers that we fear and those that we dont even recognize or are yet to encounter. God is as Paul reminds us the omnipotent one who strengthens and in whom we can do all things.</p><p>The God of Paul and Isaiah is no thundering deity but the parent embracing an anguished child promising what lies beyond pain: here God wipes away the tears from every face. One might well imagine the refugee parents like Mr. Hyusants comforting their children trying to explain the unexplainable with a hug and a kiss: <em>we are here for each other and thats all that matters. </em>This sort of imagery would have been shockingly intimate for an ancient person whose understanding of authority was tied tightly to concepts of legitimacy power and might. After all this is a world where fathers had the right to expose their infants or sell them if they pleased. Children like subjects or devotees were a form of property.</p><p>Yet the psalmist ups the ante even further in his imagery of God as the source not only of care and meaning but salvation itself. To the modern mind contemplating God-as-shepherd is not particularly problematic; its the idea of ourselves as sheep that we dont like. Sheep get a bad rap in our society. To be a sheep means to be a bland mindless cringing follower with no direction or gumption of your own.</p><p>To be a sheep in the psalmists sense however means to have accepted the giftedness of everything; to have let go of this illusion that tells us we are in control. Once that happens we are free to revel in Gods mercy. Here too God has foreseen all our needs so that goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life. The verb choice here is crucial: no one says anything about what is going to <em>confront</em> us - good bad indifferent. What God promises is that like the sheep of a Good Shepherd the one in charge will always have our backs.</p><p>God guides us through the darkest placesnot because we have deserved or demanded guidance any more than a babys screams constitute a logical argument that she be tended. Parents like God tend those in their care because of who they are not because of what they get. Care as an expression of parental identityit makes a powerful and mysterious kind of sense in a way that indifference or hostility just doesnt. What an astonishing thing to name the Sovereign of the Universe as our shepherdwhose focus and purpose centers on us!&nbsp; As Paul points out accepting this kind of sheepishness means empowerment rather than abnegation: he senses the giftedness of the world. He can enjoy what is there without asserting his ownership even as a sheep would scarcely demand the right to graze in its field.</p><p>By contrast with all this idyllic imagery the Gospel finds Jesus at a moment of high drama and unbelievable tension. Its the middle of Holy Week and having just cleansed the temple court Jesus is now unleashing a barrage of parablesone sharper and more pointed than the lastin response to the slippery questions and sleazy motives of the Pharisees. The story of the wedding guests is the capstone to his argument against hypocrisy judgmentalism and selfishness.</p><p>At first glance its an odd piece one of those pronouncements that seem at variance with our image of the warm-and-fuzzy Jesus who never gets cross with anybody. A king invites the <em>beau monde</em> to his sons wedding but his messengers are ignored refused and ultimately murdered. A second set of invitations are issued this time to good and bad alike whoever happens to be around with free time on their handsand thus the banquet hall is filled. Its interesting to note that one version of the Gospel reading ends thereclearly squeamish about continuing on to the parables end where one of the guests is found to be unsuitably dressed for a wedding. When the king asks him to account for his shabby appearance he fell silent for shame and is summarily tossed out into the night.</p><p>It can hardly be the case that a person such as Jesus who counseled complete detachment from worldly goods would have been making a point about dress code violations. Rather much as in the earlier readings one key to unlocking this parables meaning lies in Jesus imagery of the senses.</p><p>God the sovereign has set a feasta completely gratuitous unearned outlay of sensual delightsto celebrate a marriage of the royal heir to whom loyalty is owed just as it is owed to the sovereign. So often we dwell on the indiscriminate appearance of sorrow and suffering in the world which plague good and bad alike; far less often do we notice Gods equally indiscriminate bestowal of beauty pleasure and joy. What guest has ever earned a wedding feast? From the way a fresh piece of baklava melts on the tongue to the whorls of a seashell we are surrounded by that goodness and kindness that follow us all the days of our lives if only we have eyes to see ears to hear a heart to feel tongues to taste. God has also empowered humans to fashion beauty to lavish affection to enjoy the world just as its Creator looks upon us all and finds us Good.</p><p>Moreover the godliness of the parables king lies not in this discernment but precisely in the sovereigns utter lack of discriminationand what better to symbolize indiscriminate gifts than a feast of the sensesthose gifts of God through which choice wines and restful waters are relished by the moral and immoral alike? In the sarcastic shorthand of my conservative relatives God qualifies as the ultimate liberal: <em>sure why dont you just </em>give <em>it all away</em>? Jesus contrasts this kings munificence with the parsimony and prejudice of the temple elite who rather than opening the doors wide are obsessed with rank and exclusion.</p><p>Those who are called to the sovereigns feast decide their fate for themselves: will they attend will they be aware will they be open to what is unfolding before them? Our slovenly latecomer has no excuse for his lack of preparation. He is casual as if this were no royal spread at all; he fails to appreciate the magnitude of this occasion in which he a nobody is placed among the highest of the land. <em>That</em>his refusal to see the value of what has been givenis what gets him tossed into darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. This last detail signifies to Jesus audience that the guest has realized all too late what was lost.</p><p>After such a radiant stream of positive messaging perhaps it is understandable why the lectionary editors shied away from this final image of regret and desolationyet in it Jesus warning is clear. <em>We earn nothing; we owe everything.</em> Refusing to end with a happily ever after what Jesus provides is less a tale than a challenge: ignore Gods call to communion and giftedness and you just might find yourself alone in the dark.</p><div><div class=titan__email-divider>&nbsp;</div><div class=titan__email-divider><img src='https://www.dignityusa.org/sites/default/files/botslori.png'></div></div><div class=mobile-full><div class=mobile-full><p><em><strong>Lori Frey Ranner</strong>&nbsp;is a New Orleans native. She holds a double B.A. in History and Classics from Loyola University New Orleans and an M.Phil. in Byzantine Studies from the University of Oxford (Keble 1996) with a concentration in&nbsp;Ecclesiastical History.</em></p><p><em>Her area of academic specialization is Latin and Greek ecumenical relations in the period following the Fourth Crusade. Between 1999-2014 she held the post of lecturer at Loyola New Orleans in the Departments of History and Classics. She currently teaches Latin Ancient Greek and World Religions at Ursuline Academy.</em></p><p><em>She is married and mother to three children. In her random bits of free time she is writing one novel editing a second and turning a third into a podcast.</em></p></div></div><p style=text-align: center;><a class=btn btn-primary href=https://dignityusa.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/dignityusa/subscribe.jsp?subscription=8>Subscribe to Breath of the Spirit</a></p>