(Please read the Scripture passage before reading the homily.)
On Monday we had a passage from Luke’s gospel account about healing a woman. Today we have one about a cure of a man. Luke likes to put opposites together. The kingdom of heaven is a collection of opposites, men and women, Jewish with gentile people, young and old, sinner with saint.
Jesus has a kingdom of opposites. He came to call sinners to conversion, to heal the sick, to forgive sinners, to eat and drink with all kinds of people. Those who take no offense ate this will sit and eat with the outcasts who are already enjoying the banqueting of the kingdom of God.
Perhaps this is God’s logic. God sent Jesus to call sinners to salvation. Sinners who listen become saints. Good people who found this scandalous rejected God’s plan and so became sinners. In turn, since they were sinners, Jesus found them and offered them forgiveness. Both ways God in mercy has offered each of us salvation.
We have one example of this in the second part of the passage. Some were scandalized because Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Jesus caught them in their lack of logic: he observed that we water our animals on the Sabbath,; feed our families on the Sabbath, and does other kinds of necessary work. He might well have observed that having a big banquet on the Sabbath is a worse work on the Sabbath than healing a person with dropsy.