Ebola: Building a Bridge of Trust

The fight against Ebola is taking place on two well-known fronts: on the grounds of some countries  in West Africa, where governments and aid groups are racing to build treatment centers; and inside the lab, where scientists are trying to create vaccines and therapies to halt transmission. A third battleground, harder to track but no less important, focuses on efforts to win trust and change the behavior of the people most at risk of spreading the virus. It’s something many global aid groups were late to.

“A huge mistake of the outbreak from the start has been that people have responded to the outbreak from the outside without really getting the people on board,” says Emmanuel d' Harcourt, senior health director of the International Rescue Committee, which has worked in Liberia and Sierra Leone for more than 15 years. “That, from our perspective, is a massively under-recognized problem.”

A lot is riding on how well the global response engages the local communities in places where Ebola has spread. The virus has now infected more than 13,000 people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization. The three countries are home to 21 million people. The population is mostly young—more than 60 percent are under age 25—and largely rural. Literacy is low, poverty is high. So is mistrust of government, particularly with the fresh legacy of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. How people respond when a family member develops symptoms or a neighbor dies has a great deal of consequence for how fast Ebola spreads.

“In a place like Liberia, rumors are reality for a lot of people,” says Blair Glencorse, executive director of Accountability Lab, which works in Liberia and other countries to help citizens hold the government accountable. Misconceptions about how Ebola is and isn’t transmitted—or whether it’s even real—can feed the spread of the virus. Glencorse says global aid in Liberia so far is “largely a technical response: How many beds can we provide? How many treatment centers can we set up?” Those are no doubt urgently needed, but the equipment alone is insufficient.

“People aren’t going to go to those treatment centers, even if they have the best facilities, if they believe that’s where you go to get Ebola,” Glencorse says. “There’s a danger that we build lots of treatment units, and then no one shows up.”

The world is puzzling over an apparent decline in the number of new Ebola cases in Liberia that has left empty beds in treatment centers. “The actual number of newly reported cases is beginning to decline in Liberia,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, the WHO official leading the response, told reporters on Wednesday from Geneva. Authorities are trying to determine whether the decline is real, or if it reflects changes in how people are reporting cases. “One of the big concerns is, does that mean people are not seeking care because they aren’t happy with how people are being treated potentially in facilities or how burials are being conducted?”

In every disaster is an official response and a grassroots response. The top-down nature of global aid—often driven by donors’ agendas, with shifting commitments and quick turnover of international staff—makes it challenging for governments or aid groups to credibly convey the messages that can get people to change behavior. The best messengers in Liberia are Liberians themselves. A handful of local projects have put community members first in campaigns against Ebola.

Glencorse says Liberian volunteers working with his group have trained citizen journalists who set up chalk boards at intersections in Monrovia to spread information about treatment centers and numbers to call if you get sick. Another effort, Kriterion Monrovia, is a youth group teaching community members about Ebola face to face.

Liberian volunteers coordinating with the Purdue Peace Project at Purdue University have been recruiting the drivers/riders of motorcycle taxis in Monrovia to relay the facts about Ebola to their passengers. The 20 volunteers have reached 1,500 drivers, known as “pen-pen” drivers.

The early results of the campaign in September surprised Stacey Connaughton, director of the Purdue Peace Project. “People didn’t really think that Ebola was real,” she says. By the first week of September, more than 1,000 Liberians had died of the disease. “There is now recognition that it is very real,” Connaughton says, ”but there’s still a fundamental tension that citizens feel when they want to bury their dead in a traditional way and touch the body.”

It’s still hard to tell whether that growing recognition has stemmed the rise of new Ebola cases in Liberia or if persistent fear has kept people away from treatment wards. “The capacity to capture a true picture of the situation in Liberia remains hamstrung by underreporting of cases,” the WHO wrote in its latest situation report this week, which casually notes that data on cases in Liberia are missing for five days in October. The WHO’s Aylward said he feared that a glimmer of good news would lull the world into complacency. “I’m terrified that the information will be misinterpreted and people will start to say, ‘Oh, great, Ebola is under control.’ That’s like saying your pet tiger is under control.”

Case counts continue to rise, and the epidemic shows no signs of slowing in Guinea or Sierra Leone. In the weeks ahead, the world will learn whether Liberia has actually slowed the increase in cases. Aylward warned of a danger “that we end up with an oscillating trend where the disease starts going up and down, areas start getting reinfected.”

More treatments beds and staff to trace contacts will be important to that battle. So will the work of taxi drivers, youth groups, and anyone else in Liberia who can cross the gap in trust between the world’s response to Ebola and the people who are at risk.

THE FEAST OF DEDICATION OF JOHN LATERAN BASILICA: Jesus entered the temple and chased away the money-changers (Ez. 47, 1 – 2, 8 – 9, 12; Ps 46, 3 – 6, 8, 11; 1Cor. 3, 9 – 11, 16 – 17; Jn 2, 13 – 22)

One of the interesting things about the Latin American people is that majority of them cannot walk pass a Church building without bowing and making the sign of the cross. The more interesting thing is that even those who do not usually enter the church still do the bowing and the sign of the cross. The reason may be cultural. This means that it could be some kind of traditional religious piety entrenched in the culture. Whatever it is, they still do that up till today. And today we celebrate the feast of the dedication of a church building, St. John Lateran. This basilica has the history of being the first church building completed in AD 324, November 9, and dedicated for the worship of God in a Catholic Christian world. It is symbolical because of what it represents to the people: the end of a brutal persecution that left hundreds of thousands of Catholics dead. It is also a symbol of religious freedom or freedom of worship.  Today we have millions of Church edifices with different architectural styles all over the world. Each church building has at least an architectural works that says something about the culture of the people, the saints connected to the culture and some sacred vessels for worship that bears the imprint of the people’s culture.

The Church for many years has been the place of gathering of the members of the community; it is a symbol of unity and faith for each community that has one. It is a place where we establish the fact that we exist, survive and live together. The basilica of St John Lateran became a sign from God that the gates of the netherworld can never prevail against his people. This is also the symbol of the church building in our local communities. The Church doors should be open for anyone who seeks quiet moment with God. It is a place people go for inner peace, healing, and the forgiveness of their sins. The church building brings people together not for political purposes; and it shouldn’t be a place for financial transaction or trade either. The church should be a place where hospitality, charity, and respect of human dignity are exemplified. It should be a place of hope for the hopeless, shelter for the homeless, free banquet for the hungry and most importantly refuge for sinners. Life should flow from the Church to revive the spirit of the many that walk along our streets half dead due to economic hardships, social injustices, and psychological torture. In the Church, no one should be condemned either by word of mouth or by attitude. I believe that people who go into church desire to experience all the things mentioned here. The question is, “what does the Church building mean for people of our time, especially the young people?”

In Europe and North America, Churches dedicated to God like The Lateran Basilica, are closing or been sold-out and used for things like business (money changers’ game). As churches close, more prisons are been built and young people are forced into it. As churches close more hotels, resort centers, casinos, amusement parks and movie theaters and sports centers are been built. These offer services to people but they can never replace the symbol of the Church for us. People are being killed by mass murderers in movie theaters, sports centers and amusement parks. We do not hear such news in the Church.

Young people move away from the Church in the so-called civilized world because there is conflict in their hearts. Many big Church buildings in big cities are very close to each other. This may appear like sign of overwhelming faith but it is not; it is more of the sign of extreme segregation existing among people who claim to believe in the same Lord and savior. In those days, an Irish cannot enter a Polish church; a German cannot let French person into ‘their Church’; blacks are not allowed in the “White man church”; and Latinos dare not come close to other races. People built churches for themselves and not for God. Besides, the Church has a message different from what the contemporary society is saying. The Church says forgive unconditionally, the modern world says revenge is sweet and manly. When the Church says ‘Do not use sexual intercourse as fun,’ the modern society says ‘You are free to use your body as you wish.’ The Church preaches the value of meditation and quietness, the world of technology produces more musical apparatus that we can fix in our ears and shut out other people from ourselves. The young people want the Church program and messages to meet them where they are, but what they see are scandals and what they hear most times are messages dragging them where they are not yet ready to be. The Church becomes more like grandmother living with the fourth generation of her kids, and trying to force them into her experience as teenager. What this grandma says makes a lot of sense though; unfortunately, it does not add up so well in the minds of these young people.

When we build anything and dedicate it to God, His spirit inhabits the thing or object, and he makes his presence felt in it. It is about time we stopped looking at the Church as belonging to the pope, the bishops or the pastors. The Church does not also belong to any individual or group of individuals, not you not me, but to all of us together. However, there are still lots of money changing in the Church, and these need to be cleaned up. For those that still use the Church for their personal gains, be warned because the Lord Jesus Christ still has his whip of cord in his hands, and do not think he will spare us if we make ourselves into money changers in the church. As the living water still flows from the Southside of the Church, let us swim deeper in it and be filled with life.

Novemeber 2, Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (ALL SOULS DAY) : SAVED, AS THROUGH BY FIRE

Native American tribes are known for their elaborate and colourful quilts. Often the memories of the tribes are woven into large quilts used in religious ceremonies. Native American peoples are believed to be among the best quilt makers in the world. What many people do not know is that they have an unwritten law governing the art of quilting: every quilt must have some flaw. Even when they could easily produce the perfect quilt, they go out of their way to introduce a flaw into it. Since the quilt for them is basically a representation of human life and the human condition, the symbolism is clear: no human life is perfect. In a way, the feast of All Souls which we celebrate today echoes the same message: no human life is perfect, not even the Christian life. The Good News we celebrate today is that God loves us even when we are not perfect, and that the love of God does not abandon the souls of our departed brothers and sisters in the faith even when they did not measure up to the ideals of Christian perfection.

In the feast of All Saints which we had yesterday, we, the saints who are still struggling on earth (the church militant), celebrate fellowship with the saints who have already arrived in heavenly glory (the church triumphant). Today we celebrate our fellowship with the saints in purgatory, a state of temporary suffering for departed souls who are not yet fully ready for full fellowship with God in the glory of heaven (the church suffering).

All Christians believe in the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. Purgatory is not mentioned as one of the “last things” because, strictly speaking, purgatory is a part of heaven. Purgatory is the remedial class for heaven-bound souls. Souls who go to purgatory are those who have been judged worthy of heaven, but not straightaway. They still need some purification (purgation) before they are ready for heaven because, according to Revelation 21:27, “nothing unclean shall enter it.”

Some Christians have a problem with the teaching on purgatory because purgatory is not mentioned by name in the Bible. Yet the same Christians believe in the Trinity even though the “Trinity” is not mentioned by name in the Bible. We arrive at the doctrine on purgatory the same way we arrive at the doctrine on the Trinity, by making a logical inference from what God has explicitly revealed. We shall take three examples:

(1) The Parable of the Unfaithful Servant, which teaches the need for disciples to be faithful to their tasks till the coming of Christ on judgment day, concludes with these words: “That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating” (Luke 12:47-48). This shows that in the last judgment, even though the results will basically be either pass or fail, go to heaven or go to hell, there may be those who are not bad enough to be thrown into hell and not good enough to be admitted right away to heaven. These then will receive some remedial purification to make up for what is lacking in their faith and good works before being admitted to heavenly bliss. That period of interim punishment before being admitted to eternity with God is what we call purgatory.

(2) Paul compares the different ways in which Christians live their lives to different builders all building on the one foundation which is Christ. They build with different materials: gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw. On judgment day what each person has built will be tested with fire. “If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:14-15). How can the soul after judgment “suffer loss” and still get saved “but only as through fire?” The answer is what we call purgatory.

(3) The Apostle John reminds us that a Christian can commit two types of sin: mortal sin which kills one’s relationship with God and venial sins which does not. “If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one – to those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin that is mortal; I do not say that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not mortal” (1 John 5:16-17). Believers who die without sin go to heaven. Believers who die in mortal sin go to hell. Where do believers who die in a state of venial sin go? The answer is purgatory, where they can make up for their imperfection before being admitted to the company of the saints in heaven.

Even though officially Catholics believe in purgatory and Protestants do not, unofficially almost everyone seems to believe in an interim state of purification before heaven. When we lose loved ones, Catholics and Protestants alike pray for the dead. We all say, “May their souls rest in peace.” Wait a minute. If the souls of are in hell, why pray for them? Our prayers cannot help souls in hell. And if they are in heaven, why pray for them? Our prayers cannot help those in heaven either. They are already in heaven. Any sort of prayer for the dead has meaning insofar as the souls of the dead are in an interim state where they have not yet reached perfect union and peace with God, and where our prayers can help them get there. That is purgatory.

In the feast of All Souls we pray for the souls of the faithful departed who are being purified in purgatory. In this we profess our belief that, just as God has not stopped loving these poor souls because of their imperfections, neither have we. For us the belief in purgatory is Good News: even though we may not in this life be perfect as our heaven father is perfect (Matthew 5:48) we can still hold fast to the hope that there are mansions for us in the kingdom of heaven.

The Solemnity of All Saints, November 1: The Beatitudes: Road Map to Happy Eternity (Rev. 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 Jn. 3:1-3; Mat. 5:1-12)

Why is it necessary to celebrate the feast of all saints? All year round we are celebrating feasts of saints: Thomas Aquinas, January 28; Augustine of Hippo, August 28; Theresa of Lisieux, October 1, etc. Why then is it necessary to set apart a day to celebrate the feast of all saints? I can think of two important reasons.

1. Beside the handful of saints whose feast days we celebrate on specific days in the year, there are countless other saints and martyrs, men, women and children united with God in the heavenly glory whom we do not celebrate. Many of these would be our own parents and grand-parents who were heroic women and men of faith. Today we keep their honourable memory. In many ways, therefore, today's feast can be called the feast of the Unknown Saint, in line with the tradition of the Unknown Soldier. We celebrate what the first reading calls "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands" (Rev 7:9).

2. This celebration gives us a peek into our eternal destiny. The saints we celebrate were men and women like us. Where we are now they used to be, and where they are now we hope to be someday.

 As Christians we know that a person's life story is not limited to what happens to them between the day they are born and the day they die. Our story starts before we are born, at our conception, and goes beyond the day we die, to all eternity. That is why we do not simply forget people after they die. Didn't St Theresa of Lisieux say that she would spend eternity doing good on earth? In our mortal eyes she is dead and gone. But in the eyes of faith we know that she is alive now more than ever, because she is now fully alive in God. She is now more alive than we are because the life she now enjoys can no longer be diminished by suffering, disease and sin, or death.

Unfortunately, our reaching the fullness of life with the saints does not happen automatically. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). How do we live a life of doing the will of our heavenly Father? The answer is given us in today's gospel, the Beatitudes, where Jesus gives his followers a road map to a happy eternity. All the saints we celebrate today walked the hard and narrow path of the Beatitudes to arrive at heavenly bliss. On the feast of All Saints the church invites us and challenges us to walk the walk, not just to talk the talk, of the saints.

The Beatitudes propose to us a way of life, inviting us to identify with the poor, those who mourn, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst after justice. They challenge us to be compassionate people, to be men and women who are pure in heart, and to become the peacemakers in our dealings with one another, in our families and in the society at large, even when this approach to things exposes us to ridicule and persecution. None of the saints we celebrate today had it as their aim in life to amass wealth, to acquire power or to gain popularity. Rather they looked forward to the eternal reward which God gives to his faithful ones at the end of this short earthly life of illusion.

Today we are invited to walk the path of the saints, the way of the Beatitudes. The way is narrow and hard. We need faith and courage to walk it. The example of the saints and their prayers encourage us and help us on. St Augustine found it hard to live the Beatitudes, but when he read the lives of the saints he said, "What these ordinary women and men have done, why not me?" Why not? Faith assures us all who heed the call of Jesus and live the life of the Beatitudes that at the end of life we shall, together with all the saints, hear the consoling words of the Lord, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joys of your master" (Matthew 25:21).

Thirtieth Sunday of the Year: Love in three Dimensions (Ex. 22:21-27; 1 Thes. 1:5-10; Mat. 22:34-40)

There is an immortal poem written by an Englishman Leigh Hunt about a man called Abou Ben Adhem. Abou Ben Adhem woke from his sleep one night and saw in his room an angel writing in a book of gold the names of those who love God. "And is mine one?" inquired Abou. "No, not so," replied the angel. "I pray thee, then," said Abou, "write me as one who loves his fellow men." The following night the angel came again and displayed the names of those who love God and Abou Ben Adhem's name topped the list. This poem makes the point that true love of God and true love of our fellow human beings are like two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist apart from the other. That is what we find in today's gospel. Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment in the law. The book answer, of course is love of God. But Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to give a more practical answer. He gives the other side of the coin as well, which is love of neighbour. True love of God and true love of neighbour are practically one and the same thing. As Jesus said:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40).

Jesus is here reacting against a one-dimensional understanding of love. For Jesus, true love must express itself in three dimensions. These three dimensions are (a) love of God, (b) love of neighbour, and (c) love of oneself. The first two are positively commanded; the last one is not commanded but presumed to be the basis of all loving. The commandment to love your neighbour as yourself presumes that you love yourself.

Even though Jesus' answer touched on all three dimensions of love, what is the emphasis, the point Jesus is trying to make? When you ask a question that demands one straightforward answer and the person answers your question and goes on to add another thing that you did not actually ask for, it is most likely that the person is trying to get your attention on the second element of the answer. We saw it last week when Jesus was asked about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus answered, "Give back to Caesar's what is Caesar's," and then went on to add "and to God what is God's." Here the emphasis of Jesus is not on Caesar's rights, which are apparently obvious, but on God's rights which they were ignoring. In the same way, the emphasis in today's question about the greatest commandment is not on the obvious love of God but on the love of neighbour which they were trampling upon.

Remember that the persecution of Jesus and his followers was championed by well-meaning religious people motivated by what they believed to be zeal and love for God. The same people asking about the first commandment are the ones trying to entrap and kill Jesus. They are so conscious about love of God. Why then are they so insensitive when it comes to love of neighbour? Saul who later became St Paul is a good example of this kind of skewed religiosity. Jesus prophesied that "an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God" (John 16:2).

The error of the Pharisees is still here with us. There are still many Christians who try to separate love of fellow human beings from love of God. Their commitment to faith does not include commitment to human rights and to justice and peace issues. We shall do well to heed the message of Jesus in today's gospel: that true love of God and true love of neighbour are two sides of the same coin. Any attempt to separate them is a falsification of the message of Christ."Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen" (1 John 4:20).

Twenty Ninth Sunday of the Year: Giving Back to God and Ceasar (Isaiah 45:1, 44-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21)

"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" (Matthew 22:21). For some politicians and rulers this verse ranks among the most popular verses in the Bible. Until a few years ago, many African countries were under a military dictatorship. The military succeeded in disorganising the labour union and the academic elite. The only viable resistance left was the church. The Bishop's Conference (of Ghana) issued fearless and incisive statements denouncing the dictatorship. The military often replied by quoting this passage and accusing the church of interfering in politics. Didn't the Bible say to give to Caesar what is Caesar's -- meaning the whole sphere of civil, economic and social affairs -- and to God what is God's -- meaning the sphere of spiritual affairs? According to this interpretation, human affairs are divided into two areas: the spiritual side which belongs to God and God's ministers, and the secular side which belongs to civil authorities. Does Jesus really teach this kind of dualistic view of human existence? To understand the full import of this saying of Jesus we need to consider it in relation to the context in which Jesus said it originally.

While the statement, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" is true, we must not forget that Jesus said it as a way to escape from a trap. "The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ... Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" (Matthew 22:15-17). This is not a sincere question coming from people who really wanted to know the truth about church-state relations. It would, therefore, be wrong to treat the saying as a straightforward teaching of Jesus on the ideal relationship that should exist between church and state. Faced with the double-ended trap of the Pharisees and Herodians, in which it was unsafe to clearly say yes or no, Jesus framed his answer in such enigmatic language that it would be hard for either party to trap him. In this way he succeeded in confusing not only his interrogators but also many of us who read the Bible today. If you think Jesus meant that we should have two parallel loyalties, it might help to know that the Pharisees who heard him did not understand it in that way. In the trial of Jesus before Pilate one of the charges they brought against him was that he forbade paying taxes to Caesar (Luke 23:2).

An interesting shift in Jesus' answer could point us in the direction of the import of the saying. The question was whether one should give (Greek didômi) tribute to Caesar. But Jesus' answer spoke of giving back, paying back (paradidômi), as if one already owed something. What Jesus said could be paraphrased as: "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's due, and to God what is God's due." Instead of answering the direct question of whether one should pay the forced tribute to Caesar or not, Jesus raises the question to another level, that of the principle of justice. Greek philosophers before Jesus defined justice as "giving back to everyone what is their due." Jesus seems to be saying that the only binding obligation is that of justice, that of giving back to every person what is due to them. Serving God is basically a matter of justice? If God has given us all that we are and have, then we are bound in justice to give back to God some gratitude, loyalty, and service. The central act of Christian worship is called Eucharist, which means "thanksgiving." It is basically a question of paying back the debt of gratitude we owe to God.

To conclude, what then is Jesus teaching here regarding loyalty to civil authority? Jesus is recommending not absolute but qualified loyalty. That is to say, if a government provides needed goods and services then we must, in justice, give back to the government our loyalty and support. But where a government is a dictatorship that imposes itself on the people's will, a leech that sucks itself fat from the life-blood of the people and provides no services, what then do the people have to give back? To such despotic governments, the principle of justice does not demand that people give their loyalty and support. To use this passage as a justification of unconditional loyalty and support of corrupt and totalitarian governments in a misunderstanding of what Jesus is teaching. Christians must together discern whether and to what extent a given government and its policies merit their loyalty and support. But total and absolute loyalty and service is a debt that we owe to God and to God alone.

Twenty Eight Sunday Of The Year: Are We Having Fun Yet? (Is. 25:6-10; Phil. 4:12-14,19-20; Mat. 22:1-14)

At a church conference in Omaha, people were given helium-filled balloons and told to release them at some point in the service when they felt joy in their hearts. All through the service worshippers kept releasing balloons. At the end of the service it was discovered that most of them still had their balloons unreleased. If this experiment were repeated in our church today, how many of us would still have our balloons unreleased at the end of the service? Many of us think of God's house as a place for seriousness, a place to close one's eyes and pray, but not a place of celebration, a place where we can have fun. The parable of the Great Supper in today's gospel paints a different picture. The Christian assembly is a gathering of those who are called to the Lord's party. In the Eucharist we say of ourselves, "Happy are those who are called to his supper." The Lord invites us to a supper, a banquet, a feast. Can you imagine a wedding feast in which everyone sits stone-faced, cold and quiet?
The parable shows us three possible kinds of guests. There are the absentee guests who initially accepted the invitation, but when the time came to honour the invitation they drew back. There are the guests without wedding garments who attend the feast but do not take the trouble to prepare adequately for it, as the occasion deserves. And then there are the guests with wedding garments who make the necessary preparation to present themselves fit for the banquet of the King.
The scary thing about the absentee guests is that they are not sinners. They were not engaged in sinful activity. One went to his farm, another to his business. These are gainful and noble employments. Sometimes what keep us away from the joy of the kingdom is not sin but preoccupation with the necessities of life. To be serious with your job is a good thing, but when your job keeps you away from attending the Lord's Supper, then it becomes an obstacle that hinders you from experiencing the joy of the Lord in your life. There is a saying that the good is the enemy of the best. If only those absentee guests knew what they were missing by not attending the feast! It used to be that people attended church service to fulfill a "Sunday obligation," otherwise it would be counted against them as sin. This kind of fear no longer motivates young people today. More people would probable come to church if they knew they were missing out on the fun of celebrating and feasting with the Christian community.
On the guest without the wedding garment, to speculate on whether he had enough time to go home and put on his wedding garment is beside the point of the parable. The point of the parable is: if you must go the dance, you must wear your dancing shoes. If you must go to a wedding, you must wear your wedding garment. By not wearing a wedding garment, he was physically in the party, but his mind and spirit were not there. He was in the feast but he was not in the mood for feasting. Jesus hates this kind of hypocritical attitude. In fact, it is better not to attend at all than to be there and yet not there. The invitation is to all, the party is free for all, yet anyone who decides to attend has a responsibility to present himself or herself fit for the king's company. The kingdom of God is freely offered to us. Those of us on the way to the kingdom must spare no effort in acquiring the moral and spiritual character that is consonant with life in the kingdom.
Finally there are the guests who attend the wedding feast, taking care to appear in the proper wedding garment. They are the only ones who have fun and enjoy the party. They are the models whose example we should follow. Today's gospel sends a message to those who are keeping away from the Lord's Supper that they are missing out on the joy of life. To those of us who have accepted the invitation to come in, this parable warns us not to take God's grace for granted but to clean ourselves up and become the most beautiful person that we can be in God's sight. The message is the same as we have in Colossians 3:14: "Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."