Reflection for Sunday – August 31, 2025

Patrick FoxSunday Readings Homilies

Readings: Sirach 3: 17-18, 20, 28-29; Hebrews 12: 18-19, 22, 24a; Luke 14: 1, 7-14 
Preacher: Patrick Fox

Today’s Gospel recounts the story of two meals.  In the first Jesus offers a parable of choosing the lower place so that one might be exalted rather than humbled.  The second parable offers inviting the poor, crippled and lame.

As I reflect on these two parables I find myself more clearly aware that the mind of the Divine reasons rather differently that this human mind.

If I am honest, I have to admit I like the attention at times and being, as some say, the “hale fellow well met.”  When I have people join my table they are family and friends. Which leads me to consider, whether I am taking in the message.

But wait a moment. Am I falling into either/or thinking?  Is it one or the other?  Could it be that Jesus is calling the disciple to both/and ways of processing the life journey?

That is something I have been spending a good deal of time reflecting on in recent years. I believe Richard Rohr refers to it when he raises up non-dualistic thinking.

We humans have a tendency, well at least this human does, to think in terms of either/or; right/wrong; good/bad, ah the list goes on more often than not.

I have come to consider that I was schooled to think that way.  I was right or wrong, good or bad, happy or sad, and that list goes on as well.

But the longer I am granted years, I find that the reality of my day is a little more complex. I do in fact hang with friends but I also bring supplies to those in need. I have moments of hope and those of concern. I do some good and I make some messes in my relationships.

So what is Jesus trying to challenge in his meal parables?  Maybe it is about virtue. Those virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. Maybe the key is not raising them in the light of either/or.  Could it be that the key is embracing that  my acts are both prudent and imprudent, that I can both practice temperance and be excessive, that I can live in fortitude and be complacent and that at times I act justly and unjustly.

I begin to consider that if I can embrace that reality I might have opportunities to grow. If I am all that I am I can see more clearly than when I compartmentalize. 

There is an old idea that one grows by dividing and conquering. I think that is flawed.

So maybe today Jesus wants disciples to think about how they can both live with certain recognition while being humble as well. To also think about dining with friends and feeding the stranger in the moments of our lives.

To bring it to Church, to think about celebrating Sabbath liturgy, maintaining devotional practices, engaging in prayer that is conversation, serving the poor, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick and so many of the other spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

All of that is as messy as it seems. If I am a disciple of the one who offered me these two meal stories today, I see that he did not model either/or but called each disciple to enter, as he did, into the messy days of life, doing the best we can.  Wading waist deep into our best, if a little messy self. Doing so because we hear  the words, “You are my beloved…I do this for you.”

So we must do as the one we follow did—feed the hungry, eat with sinners, forgive, challenge many, console even more.

So, I ask, are we the disciples he has called?  If so, we are sent not to divide along the lines of either/or, but rather we are called to the both/and mind of the Divine.

Maybe we need to give more time to living what we have come to believe and walking with all those who are living what they believe.

Only when we all enter into dialogue as Jesus did with the many different folk will we effect the change we seek in ourselves and in others.

Patrick Fox
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