Join the many from east and west

The passage today in the Roman Catholic Lectionary from the Book of Isaiah evokes that deeply held desire within humanity to go to a place where we may learn and live the ways of the Divine. We envision this "new Jerusalem" as a place where nations have beaten their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks and where our preparations are no longer based on the conquest and defeat of our neighbours. The psalmist echoes the commitment to living in a different way in the proclamation of peace and the desire to seek the good of the other. In Jesus time, the "other" certainly was the Roman occupier. In the Gospel of Matthew, written for the Jews of Jerusalem, Jesus acts to bring into the lived experience of those following Him the will of God that "many will come from the east and the west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven". The faith of the Centurion is presented by Jesus as being greater any one in Israel. We have the opportunity to retrieve much from these texts. How do nations move today toward the "new Jerusalem"? Do those coming from the east and the west have difficulty in our society because they wear different religious clothing, observe a different "Holy Day" and are confused with the paradox of exclusion, commercial excess, greed and competition in the society which is supposed to be preparing to celebrate the Incarnation of the Divine in human form? Time to wrestle with our way to Jerusalem?