When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the government set up an initiative called Everyone In. This aimed to provide a hotel room plus support to everyone sleeping rough on the streets. This new national homelessness strategy proved extremely effective and resulted in a large number of formerly homeless people moving into longer-term accommodation and therefore leaving the streets.
The policy demonstrated that with the right levels of funding and support, homelessness can be almost eradicated. The government's motivation for this approach was not so much concern for homeless people, as concern that Covid-19 would circulate more rapidly and aggressively if homeless people remained on the streets.
Without that imperative driving government policy, approaches to tackling homelessness have now returned to what they were pre-pandemic and the numbers living rough on our streets have risen significantly once again, and will rise further due to the cost of living crisis.
In our Gospel reading today (Luke 14.1, 7-14), Jesus talks about the limitations of charitable activity that is based on calculations of benefit for ourselves but also uses self-interest as a motivation to move towards a greater degree of selflessness.
Jesus lived a life of self-sacrifice without benefit for himself in order to bring love to others. Through the incarnation he gave up equality with God the Father to become the servant of humanity, as the teacher of his disciples he gave them an example of service by washing their feet, and, on the cross, he laid down his own life for the sake of all.
His ultimate challenge to us is to live life for the benefit of others or, as he explains here, to invite and welcome all those unable to repay us for our hospitality precisely because they cannot repay. True love is only true when we gain no personal benefit from it. When we benefit from our relationships with others, even with God, it means that we are not loving simply for the sake of the other but for a range of other reasons.
Jesus recognises, however, the challenge that this poses to people like us - each and every human being – as those for whom self-interest and survival are hard-wired into our being. Therefore, he teaches us by means of the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, a story of a shrewd manager who learns the benefits of relationships through self-interest after losing his job or challenges us to go further towards self-sacrifice by saying in the Parable of the Persistent Widow that, if hard-hearted people, like the Judge in that story, can do kind things for selfish reasons, should we not go further.
On this occasion, he challenges those who are self-interestedly taking the places of honour at a meal by using the logic of their self-interest to argue for greater humility on their part. He says it's actually of greater benefit to you to take the lower place initially and be called up, than to take the higher place and be demoted. He makes this argument, however, to try to start them on a journey towards greater humility and awareness of others, not to simply maintain them in a mindset of self-interest.
So, where, I wonder, are we on this journey towards selflessness? Are we at the beginning, like the guests at the meal, competing for the places of honour but open to the idea that there may be a different way to achieve their goals? Or are we further down the road of selflessness finding ways to be with others that don't involve personal benefit for ourselves? The important thing is to begin and to recognise that it's a lifelong journey.
Like any journey, though, it is one with a destination. The destination towards which we are heading is heaven, a place where we enjoy God, others, and ourselves for who and what we are, rather than for the benefit we can receive from others.
In heaven there is nothing to fix and nothing we need – no more death, mourning, crying or pain - instead there is just the experience of being with others and growing in appreciation for who they are as themselves. That is the reality Jesus is looking towards here with his talk of relationships that don't involve repayments for us. Once we go beyond relationships from which we get personal benefit and move into relationships which are simply about enjoying others for who they are, then we are approaching heaven.
With that mindset, the name of the government's pandemic homelessness strategy takes on additional significance. Everyone in. That's what Jesus is talking about when he says we should invite to our meals those who are normally excluded and cannot repay us. Everyone in. That's what our churches should be like, because they should be providing a taste of heaven. Everyone in.
But note that what Jesus commends here is also just a stage on the journey. Inviting those who cannot repay because they cannot repay is a way of creating in us a mindset of seeing God in others by appreciating others for who they are, rather than what they can do for us. When we have that mindset, then we are in heaven by being with others and enjoying them for who they are. That is when inclusion becomes reality, with others and ourselves accepted and appreciated and understood and loved as we are. Everyone in. A real taste of heaven. That's the destination towards which Jesus wants us to travel. Have we begun?
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Ho Wai-On - You Are Not Alone.
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