God is at home with the lowly – Rom 12:5-16, Lk 14:15-24

Tuesday of OT Week 31; Holy Cross parish.

You might notice that today’s reading from Romans sounds pretty different from all we’ve read from Romans over the past few weeks.  For one thing, you might have noticed that the word “God” didn’t appear once.  We’ve moved from the first, and longer, section of Romans, which is the proclamation of the good news of God’s action for us in Christ, to the second: the exhortation, which fleshes out what it means to live as recipients of such a gift.  And it’s easy to misunderstand what this structure is trying to communicate, that after Paul has proclaimed the grand grace of a Gospel apart from the Law, he’s going back on himself, constructing a new Law, a set of instructions of how to work our way into heaven.  Nothing could be further from the Spirit of Romans!

Our salvation is merited solely by Christ’s sacrifice, that, as Paul put it earlier: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  Christ made his home with us, poor sinners that we are.  Like the banquet host in the Jesus’ parable, God invites the poor, crippled, blind and lame to the feast.  He invites us, us who are always needy before God, who (as our Holy Cross Constitutions put it) “wish to be wholehearted yet are hesitant,” are crippled and lame in walking our pilgrimage, and so often blind in discerning God’s healing hand at work.  That’s who get invited to the feast, whose place is won by the fervent love of God who won’t give up on His people, who sent His son to be at home with poor sinners and now has sent the Spirit as a first installment of the glory in store, for which we wait in eager expectation.

So, when Paul tell us “be at home with the lowly,” that’s not the entry fee for the reward… that is the reward.  Christ paid the price for us.  It is fundamental to who God is, to how God loves, that he humbles Himself to dwell with us.  And now he invites, he wants so much to be close to us and have us come close to Him and so says: “Come, you’re invited, you’re welcome; come, dwell with the lowly, because that’s what I do, that’s where I am.  Welcome!”