God’s Way

Isaiah 55: 6-9; Phil 1: 20-24, 27; Matthew 20: 1-16

This is a rather unusual gospel we hear today and some proof that God really does have a sense of humor as to what we think is important in life.  All of us have been indoctrinated into a capitalist system, everyone of us.  We know what the rules are and what to expect.  We often know how to take advantage of it and when it takes advantage of us, even at the expense of others.  We want what’s fair.  Whoever works the hardest gets the most in return.  Whoever works the least gets their share but not as much as others.  We know the system.  But the passage was never meant to be a critique of such a system.  It was more a critique of the culture.  However, in the age we live, that system of capitalism has creeped its way into religion as well and certainly a part of Christianity in this country.  It’s about winners and losers.  It’s about who’s deserving and not.  It’s about whoever works the hardest should get the most returns.  In other words, we think it’s about us.

But it’s not.  This is where we get it wrong because as much as we feel we might have to prove all of that to our boss, God isn’t our boss.  As a matter of fact, God’s trying to work for us and through us more than anything.  Isaiah tells us today that our ways aren’t necessarily God’s ways and our way of thinking is not necessarily God’s way of thinking.  That we can be thankful for.  At the same time, we feel the plight of the workers who have slaved all day in the heat.  We’ve been there and we’ve seen people get treated better than us and it immediately begins to poke holes in the system.  For Matthew it was the early Jewish community that had been around all along and they were seeing the special treatment of the Gentiles who were converting.  Like most parables, they’re meant to turn things on our heads, to try to see our own lives, including our failings, through the lens as God sees not as we do.

As much as it’s not a critique of the system it is a critique of our lives that have become consumed by the system.  For Jesus, he was constantly butting up against a similar system that divided folks into greater and lesser.  It wasn’t just about the early community feeling this way.  For Jesus, it was the distaste of the Pharisees that he often had to confront.  They saw him hanging with people that they considered less than for one reason or another.  They saw themselves and deserving and entitled and if Jesus wanted to make a difference, he was going to have to hang with those who considered themselves the respectable members of the community, not sinners nor fishermen.  We’re better than that.  We’re deserving of better treatment.  Don’t you know all we do?  God’s not our boss and we have nothing to prove.  We may have to work like that in our lives, but really shouldn’t, but not with God.  Isn’t even funny how the generous landowner makes sure they’re all there to witness the generosity.  No hiding but in the process of this generosity to deeper truth is revealed, hearts that were closed off to seeing each other for who they are rather than what they did or didn’t do.

Even some of the prayers we use at Mass have language like that that just sends the wrong message.  We use words like merit and attain in our opening prayer.  In our language and in this capitalistic system, those words connote a way of thinking that isn’t of God.  As Matthew’s gospel reminds us, this God is an abundantly generous God who is constantly giving when we allow ourselves to be open to the grace, to the forgiveness and love.  Like they did with Jesus, we sometimes become jealous and envious because we think God has somehow blessed others better than ourselves, somehow someone less deserving than ourselves got something and we didn’t.  That’s where the system has infiltrated our faith.  We’ve associated the things we’ve accumulated as somehow a grace from God.  But you know what?  Eventually that’s all taken away when we begin to question what’s most important to us, what we value and we begin to see how little opening we have in our lives for God’s true grace that frees us from the systems that we often make into our own gods.

Paul sees it as a choice.  For Paul it was a matter of life and death and for him, when you choose God you always choose life even if it means martyrdom.  He finds himself in prison, and although we will be freed this time, he knows if the choice is to be martyred he will go with it rather than giving up what he values the most.  For Paul, the simple desire was to be open to the Gospel.  You know, even for Paul the greatest threat was calling to mind and making others aware of how they had become attached to something that was only benefiting a few.  More often than not Paul had to call out his own communities for falling into the traps of the world rather than being open to God’s thinking and God’s way.  For Paul, the choice was easy.  You choose the relationships, the values, love of God and neighbor, over using people for our own gain.  It’s what the system feeds on when be buy into the illusion that all benefit when we know full well it only benefits some and poverty continues to grow.

No, it wasn’t meant to be a critique of the system.  It was a critique on how they treated one another, especially the new folks that come later to the game.  It’s not about us but it is about us and how we become consumed by it in all aspects of our lives, even in the way we see God, the big boss in the sky, cracking the whip, working us to the bone, and so on.  But that’s not God’s way and that’s not God’s thinking.  Thank God.  We pray for the grace to be aware in our own lives of where we are feeding into and buying into the system as it tries to work us to death, somehow proving our worthiness and creating divisions.  My guess is we can never be totally free of it but we can be aware of it.  Once we’re aware, we can finally begin to let go of and be freed of all that our entitlements in life that prevent us from loving neighbor, caring about people, and being open to a generous God who’s always inviting us, as with Paul, a fuller way of life where we value what is most important to us.  Not an accumulation of things but rather a surrender of it all to an experience of life with greater depth and meaning.

 

No Room in the Inn

Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

Context of the Prodigal Son is important and the lectionary today gives us a taste of it at the very beginning. It says that tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to listen to Jesus while the Pharisees and scribes were complaining. That context sets up the contrast of what we then proceed to hear in one of the most beloved stories in all of scripture and is certainly a hallmark to Luke’s Gospel. We have the sinners and tax collectors on one side of the story and the stark contrast of the Pharisees on the other, with Jesus, of course, standing in the middle, trying to pull these two sides together; that of the younger son and the elder.

Of course, we have a tendency to focus so much on the one who has been named the prodigal. He’s the one that goes off and lives a life of dissipation, for whatever that means, and a life of total filth, literally with the swine. If there was ever a character that gets caught up in the moment and without a great deal of depth, he’s our guy. He likes to have a good time until he can’t anymore. He comes off as entitled until he can’t anymore. He can come off as lazy and avoiding the family duty of work, literally wishing his father dead and living that way, running off and losing it all. For him, maybe that’s the point, and possibly the link between these two brothers. He has to get to the point where he loses it all, gives it all away, before he can be free to return home. Those of us with a few years on us can simply smile sometimes at that part of the story, of course, unless it’s still a part of our lives or the lives of our children and grandchildren that can cause great anxiety in our lives, still living in hope of their return.

But of course, for most of us, it’s the elder son that should make us a little uneasy in our seats. He’s the one that seems to have it all together. Life has been all about duty. It’s about living this honorable life, or so he thinks and tries to project to the world. Things finally fall into place for him. His brother has left. All his judgments have proven true. There is now nothing that stands between him and his father and the inheritance. Everything is just perfect. Until that moment…the brother returns and all that seems honorable and dutiful begins to seethe from within him. There is no room in this house for the two of them. Not only that, but he witnesses the father’s love, which he thought was about duty and honor, only to witness something much different. The life he tried to project onto the world was no more, a crack in the facade and what do we find? Envy, jealousy, resentment, anger, bitterness. You name it and this guy is holding onto it. Makes you wonder what their relationship was like when they were together or was it even a relationship. This young man had no space within to welcome his brother home and for that matter, his father. He had no space for love. There literally was, no room in the inn, within his heart. He fell for the trap as the Pharisees did, that what they did and their role was their identity and that defined them. When love is presented they have no space for it.

We can go on and on with this passage and there is nothing more you can than to find time to sit with it and sit with these characters. They are us and it is love that Love asks us to make room for within our hearts. Jesus doesn’t hate the Pharisees. All he does is try to move them to a place where they can see that they are something more and they can give up the facade, the image they are holding onto. However, the more we hold onto it, the more all that stuff that the elder son had within continues to grow within us. We want and desire love but we’ve convinced ourselves that it’s about something else. We want and desire relationship and reconciliation but we’ve convinced ourselves that we know better. It’s the story of the scribes and Pharisees. There was no room in the inn at the beginning of the gospel with the birth of Jesus and there still remains no room in the inn. We want to judge the other who sins without recognizing it within ourselves. Somehow their sin is greater than my own!
All these lost and found stories of Luke’s gospel have that same reality and why he says tax collectors and sinners are closer to the Kingdom of God. They’re the ones moving in on Jesus at the beginning of the story. Something within speaks and is luring them in, looking for something more in their lives, looking for love. The Pharisees, the elder son, eh, well, they have what they want and it sure isn’t love. At the center of our lives stands the Father, the Christ, welcoming us home, where there are unlimited rooms and unlimited space. The invitation is always there, but it then rests on us. Do we come running home only to find the Father already coming to meet us or turn our backs once again on the invitation, on love, for something we think will satisfy our deepest longing? Oh, it seems so easy but we know how hard it can be to get to that point of giving it all up, whether it’s the actions that have separated us or the interior muck and illusion we continue to hold onto about ourselves. No matter what, the Father awaits.

A Hungering for Life

Genesis 2: 7-9; 3: 1-7; Romans 5: 12-19; Matthew 4: 1-11

In the beginning God created.  Male and female he created them; in his image and likeness.  And it was very good.  Then this happened, the fall.  Adam and Eve in the garden who have everything except one thing.  It wasn’t enough and they became envious of God and wanted to be God and the fall happens.  Born in his image and likeness and it’s very good and yet, not enough for the two of them.  Deep within them and us, there is a hunger that can never seem to be satisfied by anything.  It’s as if God created us with that longing to return to Him!  The entire commercial industry is based on that one premise, that we’ll never be satisfied and always want more and if I just have that one more thing…I’ll feel “full” and it never happens and the fall happens and we begin the journey home once again.

Much has been written about these creation stories of Genesis from those who see them literally as historical figures, giving room to easily blame them for the downfall of humanity and all that goes wrong to myself who sees them as the great mythological, iconic figures who aren’t someone out there or of the past, but rather, Adam and Eve are me and they are you, born in God’s image and likeness, very good, and yet, at times, unsatisfied with what we have and wanting more or to be God, thinking somehow we know better than God and constantly try to fill the hunger and longing within and again, fall.  It’s not that we can avoid the fall or that it somehow won’t happen; it’s going to happen.  Leaving the garden is part of life only to find ourselves wanting to return.

Yet, it is the story of salvation history that continues to unfold within our very lives.  It was the journey of Adam and Eve, it was the story of the Israelites, seeking out the Promised Land, and it is our story.  When we fall, and we will fall as we learn from these iconic figures, the pilgrim journey and the journey of this Lenten season is about going home, back to the Garden, returning to God with our whole heart.  Yet, like them, we are tempted to believe in the midst of our own doubts that somehow we are less than we are and something that we are not.

The temptations or testings of Jesus aren’t just about this one moment in time when he is driven out into the desert.  He enters the scene already hungry, Matthew tells us.  He is at a vulnerable time in his life.  Before he begins his public ministry and is confronted with the realities of his time, he is tested in the same way as Adam and Eve; his story is enfolded in their story and journey.  He will confront these same temptations throughout his ministry through the aspirations of his own disciples and their own misguidance and wanting to be him.  He will ever so gently try to lead them back to the Garden, reconciling their sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world with who they really are; born in God’s image and likeness and it was very good.

Paul continues in his Letter to the Romans today that where sin increases in our lives grace overflows all the more.  It so often seems that we have a much easier time believing in our fall then the grace that flows from the fall.  We tend to identify ourselves with our sinfulness, our hunger and longing, and try to hide it as Adam and Eve do, in shame they cover up their bodies seeing themselves not as who they really are but how they have identified themselves.  It wasn’t enough to be born in God’s image and likeness they wanted to be God and nothing else is going to compare.  Yet, that’s how we get ourselves into trouble and yet at the same time, open ourselves up to the grace of God.  It seems as just when we are on the cusp of believing it and returning to the Garden through conversion in our own lives, we fall and the process begins anew, to a deeper understanding of who we are.  We aren’t our sin as much as we want to tell ourselves.  Yes, a part of us but not our whole or our worth.  It’s no accident that just prior to the fall of man in Genesis and the temptations of Jesus in the desert, their true identity is revealed.  Born in God’s image and likeness; this is my beloved Son.  And yet at that moment, we stumble and fall.

As we begin this journey as individuals and as a community, we enter into it mindful of who we really are…sinners loved by a God who is always calling us home, even in a mess of temptations that exists in this battle of good and evil that we often find ourselves.  We are a people who long and hunger for God and a return to the Garden and everyday we will go every which way to try to get there, thinking something will fill the hunger. How are we filling that hunger in our lives? It will only be in God’s voice calling us back to the Garden that will fill us and we know it’s where we belong because deep down, despite and in spite of and even through our fall, we still know who we really are.  In the beginning, God created.  Male and female he created us and it was and it is very good.