Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 123

And people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.
For behold, some are last who will be first,
and some are first who will be last."

It doesn't take a weatherman to tell you the world's climate is becoming more hostile and, once again, is forcing millions of people to migrate  -- as we have for hundreds of thousands of years. One of the first great migrations came out of Africa into Europe and Asia as humans followed the elephants. In the course of time, their descendants disappeared while the elephants remained. Subsequent migrations, however, were more successful. 

In today's Gospel the Lord, who would have known little of archaeology, fossil remains, or climate change, predicts another vast migration. "People will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God." 

His Good News attracts people despite his insistence that they must enter through the narrow gate. Experience has already taught them about "wailing and grinding of teeth." They scoff at consumerism's absurd promises of a life without hardship or sacrifice. Threatened by polarized politics, inconvenient truths, and a culture of death, reasonable people gather to worship the one God. 

During its earliest day, when Rome ruled the "known world" -- a small place comprised of southern Europe, the near east of Asia, and north Africa -- the Church discovered its catholicity. Heretics gathered small group of people here and there. Entire congregations, guided by unfaithful bishops, were given to alternate truths and fake beliefs, but these popular misreadings of the gospel rarely spread to other cities. Arianism was the most successful as the emperor Constantine would make his brand of Christianity the religion of empire. But it perished with the empire. 

The Catholic Church, however, inspired by the LORD, guided by bishops with little political power, and united around the Bishop of Rome kept the faith.  It suffered and absorbed the incursions of Lombards and Huns. Attracted by the civility of the Empire even as it collapsed, the German invaders eventually accepted the true faith and promoted its expansion. Meanwhile, heretical sects faded into history. They are remembered only for the threat they represented and the doctrines that developed in response. 

Americans and Europeans today face another mass migration, one which might make the earlier ones look very small. Because of human-induced climate change, the Earth's tropical regions are becoming uninhabitable. Humans will not be able to endure the heat of the equator, nor will its desiccated lands provide nourishment. 

Christians are again challenged to welcome refugees and migrants with all the adjustments that accommodation requires. Just as water goes where it will despite flood walls, canals, levees, and dams, migrants will overrun natural and artificial barriers. Only the Gospel invitation to east and the west, north and the south can assure a peaceful adjustment. The United States, which has no traditional way of life, should be more ready than most nations to welcome the newcomers. They have always provided new vitality to our inventive way. 

Those who love our way of life will not resort to violence. Warfare coarsens a nation's citizens and escalates family violence. Historians tell us that wars alter societies and peace stabilizes it. Those who prefer the way things are will do well to welcome migrants. 

Hospitality seems like a narrow gate to the narrow minded; it teaches peacemakers peaceful ways.