22nd Sunday

If we could step back in time nearly two thousand years, to AD 32, we might find ourselves on a warm evening in Palestine, looking through the windows of a house glowing with lamplight. A dinner party is underway, at the centre the host, a prominent Pharisee, surrounded by his guests. And among them, looking uneasy, out of place, is the extraordinary figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

By this point in His ministry, Our Lord’s reputation had reached even the highest echelons of society. Wherever He went, the crowds pressed in - drawn by His words, His healing and His commanding presence, mesmerised by His audacity in the face of religious authority. Perhaps even now, some more eager members of that curious crowd have trailed Him all the way to the Pharisee’s house, and they’re peering in through the windows with us, eager to see what He will do or say next.

Jesus was under scrutiny that night, those around Him keen to discern what kind of man He was after all they had heard about Him. But the irony is that while they were watching Him, He was watching them.

The meal would have taken place in the triclinium – a dining hall with couches arranged in a U shape around a low table where people reclined as they ate and conversed, the scene a microcosm of 1st century Judean society: structured, hierarchical, status-conscious. The seating would be arranged in descending order of importance with those of higher social standing seated closest to the host; others edged further down the table as more important people arrived.

So, the air was charged with rank and status, communicated not so much in words but in the tilt of a head or the sweep of a hand, all part of the discrete choreography of deference. The most honoured guests would have had their feet washed and perfumed with oil – practical gestures but also public affirmations of their standing.

The host, no doubt, surveyed the evening with quiet satisfaction. Every detail had been staged to showcase his wealth and influence – it was a living tableau displaying a miniature kingdom which had been fashioned in his own image. 

But, as we heard, Jesus saw all of this through a very different lens. The values on display that night standing in sharp contrast to the values of the Kingdom He had become so well known for preaching.

We can imagine that this scene may have kindled, within Our Lord, a spark of that righteous anger which would soon rage against the money changers in the Temple. 

But seeing the Pharisee in the midst of his made up world may also have stirred Jesus’ characteristic compassion: He may have felt pity for this man ensnared by his pride. A pride which as well as chaining his own heart, cast its heavy links upon all who lived within his shadow, reflecting a chief characteristic of the Pharisees which was to make people feel guilty and unworthy. Sadly, a characteristic of some religious people even today.

Where did this attitude come from? How did the Pharisees get like this? Well, after the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC, Israel’s leaders believed that the nation’s downfall had been brought about primarily by disobedience to the law. So, when the people returned to the promised land, the Torah – the name give to the whole body of Jewish teaching otherwise known as ‘the Law’ - became the bedrock of identity and survival. 

Famously, the prophet Ezra rallied the people by the Water Gate in Jerusalem, inspiring a liturgical renewal, bringing them to tears when they realised how far they had wandered from their covenant with God. He was followed by Nehemiah, the governor, harnessing the renewal, getting the people to rebuild the walls of their city. Within those newly built walls, the Word of God, the Law, became the focus and the mainstay of national life.

Four hundred years later, sometime in the 2nd century BC, the Pharisees emerged as a movement of lay leaders and they took this newfound devotion to the law into extreme territory. What began by the Water Gate as a sincere movement seeking greater holiness through obedience to God’s law became distorted into a system of microscopic rules, rituals and rigid boundaries which brought with it this focus we see in the Pharisee’s House on rank and status, the guests on that evening products of this mindset.

Jesus had stepped, albeit reluctantly, into a hall of mirrors - where people gazed longingly at their own reflections. And, to that world He spoke with a disarming clarity. Not flattering or softening the truth. His stern reprimand would have stung, humiliated but it carried with it the promise of another Kingdom built not on the sin of pride but woven from the enduring threads of humility, mercy and justice. A kingdom that hearts exhausted by the shallowness of this world, long for in every generation.

Our Lord’s words that night struck those at the very apex of Judean society and there would be consequences. His robust teaching fermented resentment which would harden into a hostility that set Him on the path to Pilate’s seat of judgement and, inexorably, here to the cross.

Subtle emblems of the power and status on display that night are stitched into the fabric of modern life. They surface in the quiet calculations people make about each other - measuring worth by wealth, profession, birthplace, education, or even accent. Respect granted then, not according to goodness of heart or strength of character, but on status and belonging.

During one of my postings ashore with the Royal Navy I was assigned to a major training establishment in Cornwall. Over a hundred young people joined each week to begin their basic training for service at sea and, every week, there was a passing out parade for those being sent to join the fleet.

On the eve of that parade, the commanding officer hosted a black-tie dinner attended by a guest of honour – perhaps an admiral, a government minister or, on occasion, royalty.

At the dinner, the Commodore would sit at the head of the table, like the leading Pharisee; to his right, the principal guest who would take the salute on parade the next morning. Down the line would sit other notable figures – perhaps the mayor, a local MP, the chief constable of Cornwall, a fellow Catholic, was a regular, there might be a member of the landed gentry, a bishop - and eventually, me and one of the base commanders, comfortably removed from the centre of attention. And this order served a purpose.

But the Commodore was cut from a very different cloth to the Pharisee. He was a convert to Catholicism – I baptised his children in the base church – and he took his faith seriously. Though he was driven around in a car with a flag on the front, lived in a grace and favour Cornish manor house with a retinue of staff, though everyone saluted him and called him sir, in true military fashion he never forgot he was a servant.

He’s now retired, we still keep in touch. Three years ago, in the first weeks of the invasion of Ukraine, he rang me to tell me he’d taken the decision to go out to Ukraine via Poland. He felt called to do what he could for the people there, putting to use the humanitarian skills he’d learned in the Bosnian conflict. 

Three years on, having helped build networks and channels of support, he continues his work in Ukraine, helping those worst affected by the hostilities. An inspiring example of true leadership, very different from the ‘so called’ leading Pharisee and, for me, a living example of how Christ’s teachings have had a quiet effect on so many throughout the ages, helping make the world a better and safer place.

Jesus didn’t come to erase hierarchy. He knew it had its purpose. What He did was to challenge those who use the privilege of rank to elevate themselves above others for their own purposes. It’s probably the one thing that disappoints us most about those in public life, when someone puts ambition before service. It always seems such a betrayal when we’ve handed them our trust.

So, Our Lord’s teaching that night reorients our understanding of leadership. His message radical precisely because it subverts our assumptions. He said the first shall be last, the greatest must become the servant. He’s continually shaking the boundaries of our world, dissolving the fragile facades people rely upon to feel important. Patterns they cling to for reassurance that they matter. But these things are transient crutches, unworthy of and, ultimately, useless to pilgrims like us bound for another world.

Those who have built their identity upon rank and status and now suffer the corresponding emptiness such a life brings, can find liberation at the foot of the Cross. The Cross is the great reversal, the final unveiling of who God is and who He’s calling us to be. That figure there, in all His suffering, tells us that what’s important is not what the world thinks we’re worth, but what God knows we are worth.

What Jesus unmasked that night was something deep and dark: a kind of narcissism. In Greek mythology, Narcissus looked into a still pool, saw his own reflection, and became enamoured with it. That self-obsession led to his demise. When we look into the mirror, we are called to see not our own image - but that of Christ shining through us – that reflection being a true measure of how far, or not, we have journeyed as His disciples.

The most haunting irony of that warm evening in Palestine is that, while those guests were absorbed in the shadows of their own reflections, the truest, the most perfect image of humanity stood there before them - Jesus of Nazareth – the Son of God Himself in their midst - and they didn’t recognise Him. In a world enthralled by image, status, and self-promotion, we, too, risk overlooking Christ in our midst, hidden in the ordinary, revealed in the humble.

As we gaze through the window of that house, may the vision of Him, seated uncomfortably in the midst of a glittering company help us keep perspective when dazzled by the temptations of the world. And move us to stretch out our arms to those most in need of love, support, and healing.

Few of us will have the opportunity, the experience, or even the courage, of the Commodore who took himself off into a warzone but, as StTherese of Liseaux reminded us  ‘Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.’

In helping others with love, in however small a way, we reveal not ourselves, but the image of Christ alive within us.

And, in the end, His is the only image that matters.