28th Sunday in ordinary time: Dreaming a new vision

Today’s readings: Isaiah 25,6-10; Philippians 4,12-14.19-20; Matthew 22,1-14.

In the song Imagine, from his 1971 album, John Lennon imagines a world at peace without the barriers of borders or the divisions of religion and nationality. He even imagines the whole of humanity unattached to material possessions. That was the early 1970s, when humanity could still dream that a new world order was possible.

Now things are different, and our generation seems to have lost the power of imagination. We have become too cynical about change, too technological and scientific, perhaps even too down to earth to believe we can make it out of our old schemes of thought.

The letter on human fraternity just published by Pope Francis takes stock of the current state of the world, unveils the symptoms of an unhealthy society, and sets out the vision for a new humanism.

Humanity is on a very important threshold now, and what is urgent is a sense of historical wisdom that can make us go beyond the old divisions and exit the blind alleys we have been pursuing for ages. We urgently need to recover a new thinking in science, a revisioning of economics, a new understanding of the role of religions, and the conversion of politics and the way of doing politics.

The Scriptures here can still serve as a limitless source of true wisdom. The image of an open invitation on the part of a gracious God is today central to both the reading from Isaiah and the parable from Matthew. Both point precisely to a broader perspective of God’s kingdom, a kingdom that starts here and which is not a dream-kingdom in a perceived future.

This broad perspective envisages how the world can be saved and it invokes milestone classics that at every pivotal turn marked the history of Christianity. Classics like John’s Book of Revelation that closes the Bible, Augustine’s City of God, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. Fratelli tutti, just published by Pope Francis, is an urgent call comparable to these classics, sounding an alarm we cannot ignore.

What is at stake now is not how the Church can survive the waves of secularism or what the Church can do to bring back to its fold the lapsed. We need to look deeply into the heart and mind of an age on the brink of bankruptcy where both planet and spirit are concerned.

A society that turns its back on suffering cannot thrive. As the pope writes: “The marketplace, by itself, cannot resolve every problem, however much we are asked to believe this dogma of neoliberal faith. Whatever the challenge, this impoverished and repetitive school of thought always offers the same recipes.”

The good God, as the prophet Isaiah sings in today’s first reading, is still revealing Himself in what the world is going through, “removing the mourning veil covering all peoples and the shroud enwrapping all nations”. Whatever is overwhelming on the world scenario, God is never a cast away.

The politics of the past is becoming outdated and impotent in the face of the sea change marking the globe. Matthew’s parable in this sense is quite provoking. We cannot afford to keep ourselves busy arranging the deckchairs on the sinking Titanic. Matthew, invoking God’s open invitation, says: “They were not interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and killed them”.

The crossroad guests at table substituting those actually invited, may be a clear sign of who, in the new vision, are the people who should matter most. It no longer makes sense to divide the world between Christians and non-Christians, believers and non-believers. The great divide in humanity is between those still blocked in the old schemes of politics, economics and religion and those who struggle to give due dignity to each and every person so that all may be enabled to live fully.