An Upside-Down World.


Homily for the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 31, 2025

 

In ancient times a king decided to find and honor the greatest person among his subjects. A man of wealth and property was singled out. Another was praised for her healing powers, another for his wisdom and knowledge of the law. Still another was lauded for his business acumen. Many other successful people were brought to the palace, and it became evident that the task of choosing the greatest would be difficult.

 

Finally, the last candidate stood before the king. It was a woman. Her hair was white. Her eyes shone with the light of knowledge, understanding and love.

 

“Who is this?” asked the king. “What has she done?” “You have seen and heard all the others,” said the king’s aide. “This is their teacher!”

 

The people applauded and the king came down from his throne to honor her.

 

In today’s gospel, Jesus focuses on a theme he emphasizes many times in the gospels: humility. He is in the home of one of the key members of that society, described as a “leading Pharisee.” I’m sure it was a sumptuous meal with a lot of important citizens in attendance.

 

Jesus actually offers two examples about humility. The first one, I am sure, must have been received with openness because it gave advice about how to save face. Imagine a person being invited to a wedding, and he plunks himself down in the seat that was reserved for the mayor of the city. Many other guests arrive, and the seats fill up pretty fast. And finally, the mayor arrives. Where on earth is he supposed to sit? Out in the kitchen? At the children’s table? No, his seat is taken, and that seat, embarrassing as it is, is taken away from him. It makes sense to avoid being shamed in this way.

 

The second teaching of Jesus was, I’m sure, more difficult for the guests at that dinner party to take. “When you hold a lunch or a dinner,” he teaches, “do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors…” I’m sure that would have eliminated just about every person at the Pharisee’s dinner party. Instead, Jesus teaches, “Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind…”

 

Can you imagine the looks on people’s faces? The cream of society inviting the dregs? That must have hurt their sensibilities! But it is precisely such people as this that Jesus has been inviting: those left out, those shunned, those considered sinners and losers.

 

But here is Jesus the teacher, challenging the prevailing concepts and proposing a new wisdom—a wisdom that turns everything upside down, that creates a new pecking order! The poor, the lame, the blind, the crippled, the sinners: these are the new cream of the crop.

 

At the end of the passage, Jesus adds one more bit of wisdom. You invite these people precisely because they are unable to repay you. No way can they have a dinner party in your honor. But you will be repaid by the One who is in charge of this new order of things: you will be repaid by God “at the resurrection of the righteous.”

 

This is an entirely new teaching by a unique master teacher. And it gives us something to think about. Basically, it is this: you no longer go up by going up. You don’t succeed by climbing the ladder of success. Rather, you go up by going down! You please God by taking care of his children who are hurting, who have been beaten down by life, who have few neighbors that take an interest in them.

 

In the story of the king searching for the best citizen, the king honors the teacher, the one that enabled others to succeed. Now, Jesus, our teacher, is asking us to succeed by helping those who are seen, in one way or another, as failures. Will we honor our teacher by basically turning our world upside down?

 

That’s what today’s gospel offers. We don’t succeed in this new Kingdom by succeeding! Rather, we succeed by helping others to succeed. Whose philosophy do we choose to live by? Which teacher do we embrace?


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