My friend, move up to a higher position.
In this world of success and getting ahead, who does not long to hear these words spoken to them?
My friend, move up to a higher position
Promotion
Advancement
Oneupsmanship
Profit and Gain
This is the vocabulary of victory in a culture of achievement
And yet, in the mouth of Jesus this attractive invitation offers us even more
Brothers and sisters, the Gospel today offers us a palpable image of the paradox of call in the parable of the wedding banquet.
Many were invited and many came, just as many have been invited here and many have come on this glorious Sunday morning as we gather to begin this new formation year in the only fitting way, with an act of rededication, rededication of this chapel, rededication of the altar, rededication of ourselves to the work of formation that we will undertake here in the coming days, weeks, and months.
Many were invited and many came, and like some of those guests at the wedding banquet we might be asking some formidable questions today, although perhaps not out loud.
Questions like:
O God, what am I doing here? I don’t think I have what it takes to be a seminarian. The invitation was a mistake. Maybe I’ll just slip out the back.
My friend, move up to a higher position.
or
O God what am I doing back here? The summer was so pleasant and now. There are the monks again. Looks like they hooked a couple of new ones over the summer to torture us. Maybe I’ll leave after mass. No I’ll stay for lunch at least.
My friend, move up to a higher position.
or
O God I am glad I am here, at least I guess so. I don’t really need to be here and frankly, I don’t really think there is anything for me to learn that I haven’t already learned from the blogs. How to say Mass maybe, but I could watch a video. O well, I guess I can put up with anything for 6 years. Those monks look pretty surly though, especially the fat one that is preaching.
My friend, move up to a higher position.
or
O God, here I am at the end. I hope this year goes by fast. That’s a nice vestment the abbot is wearing, maybe for my mass of thanksgiving.
My friend, move up to a higher position.
So many questions, so many thoughts, so many expectations, so many dreams. God has chosen and God has invited us. We guests, however, may even today be approaching a very different set of realities.
And yet, the banquet is one.
No matter if we come with anxiety, with confidence, with trepidation, with uncertainly ,with piety, with cockiness, with humility, with exasperation or with pride.
The reality of this celebration is ONE.
My friend, move up to a higher position.
Always to a higher position
Because, brothers and sisters, today we approach Mt. Zion and we come here today not in fear and trembling of the great and vast unknown. We come as fellow pilgrims and sojourners. Today and every day we gather in this place we approach Mt. Zion, the dwelling place of God, God truly present, God truly alive in the sacrament of which we partake, in the Word broken apart, in the presence of the priest, in the assembly of the praying, worshiping faithful. We approach Mt. Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem at this altar.
So my friends, move up to a higher position.
Come to this altar, for this altar is the throne of God
This altar is the habitat of humanity
This altar is the place where our cares and burdens are offered up and our souls refreshed and cleansed in the one sacrifice of the cross, that sacrament that keeps the world from flying apart.
This altar is the place where we unite our hearts with the sacrifice of Jesus and by the pure grace of God we become what we eat and thus unite ourselves to that heavenly reality of myriads of angels and archangels who approach with impunity the Living Light of Heaven.
This altar is the place where countless saints in festal array gather, although we look more like folk in our Sunday best. Our halos are hidden but at this altar we soar, we mount those heights of Zion upon which our forebears feared to tread.
At this altar we hear the voice of Jesus, his call: My friend, move up to a higher position.
So on angelic wing we boldly approach, with fear of God and faith we approach, not to consume the bread that cannot satisfy, the mere panacea of divine food, but the living God, he who said to his disciples on the Mount Zion of the upper room in days long gone, this is my body, this my blood.
My friends, in the context of this sacrifice we are even now moving up to a higher position.
Here brothers and sisters we find ourselves in the assembly of the just made perfect. Not that we are perfect, far from it. We will learn all too well in days to come where the imperfections of each and all of us reside. But here we are in the company of the perfect, the Church militant entertains the Church suffering and the Church triumphant in a great cacophony of hospitality that is the paradox of the first becoming last and the last first.
And it is a paradox, for here at this altar we find Jesus, the living God who died upon the cross for us.
Here is Jesus, the same Jesus whose hands stretched out to save, to heal, to offer comfort to the hordes of humanity sinking in their sin. His hands outstretched on the tree to save the ones whose ancient parents stretched out their hands to the serpent. And with those nail torn hands he beckons us to come up higher
Here is Jesus, the same Jesus, who though tried by the folly of human courts in the sham representation of human justice, now stands as the mediator of a new covenant, not forged on the anvil of human logic, but intermixed and intermingled, intertwined in the hot blood of the lamb flowing down from the altar of heaven over the littered landscape of the human condition. On that river of blood we rise and go up higher
Here on this altar is Jesus, the same Jesus from whose pierced feet trampled out the vineyards, the grapes of wrath, the wrath of the human condition, healing the sick, freeing the captive and raising a fallen world to new life and cries out to us, we who stand shamefaced in our own corruption to come up higher, to be greater, not on the merits we possess but by his gift, his grace.
Here at this altar on this altar is Jesus, the same Jesus who rose from the dead and seated at the Father’s right hand will come to judge all the fallen hordes of humanity and in that dread judgment we pray that He will speak words to us of invitation, come up higher, the last shall be first and the first last.
Today brothers and sisters we approach Mount Zion, we rededicate this chapel to God’s service, we rededicate this altar for its purpose and, most importantly, we rededicate ourselves for the labor of discipleship. It is a lifelong labor, an endless labor, a herculean labor, a privileged labor, our only labor.
In this house of formation, we are angelic witnesses of God’s power in the quotidian accidents of mundane living.
He calls us and he takes us in our poverty of mind, body and spirit and transforms us, entitling us to a place at this table, at this altar. He exalts our supine selfishness in his divine selflessness.
He calls us and he takes us, just as we are and makes us that distinguished guest, clothing us in the garment of righteousness that we neither fabricated nor deserved.
He calls us and he takes us without price to reward us with the prize of eternal salvation
He calls us and he takes us even as we take him, he consumes us as we consume him, he who knew, through the folly of the cross how truly the first shall be last and the last, by God, shall be first.
How will we respond to this summons today, this clarion cry to mount the very heights of Zion?
My child, conduct your affairs with humility,
and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts.
Humble yourself the more, the greater you are,
and you will find favor with God.
God, in your goodness you have made a home for us here. You have spread the banquet. you have mixed and poured out the wine. You have invited your guests.
My friends, let us now with confidence in his love, his mercy, his great mercy move up to a higher position.
Happy are those called to Mount Zion
Happy are those called to this altar
Happy indeed are we who are called to his supper v
