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.

 

A Heart Problem

Galatians 3: 26-29; Luke 9: 18-24

As I watched coverage of the events that unfolded in Orlando last weekend, I was struck by the words of a minister that was speaking, not just about the events in Orlando but the fact that it’s also a year since another mass shooting, the one in Charleston last June. Of course, they were speaking about the senseless activity of taking the lives of innocent people for one reason or another, but what the minister pointed was that the real crisis we face in the country, or even in this city for that matter, is a crisis of heart. We have a heart problem. Our hearts become calloused and hardened that we can no longer empathize with the other, feel their pain, lost in this endless cycle of dividing and separating, while feeling helpless at the same time. We see that after all these events. We immediately divide into our camps and the leaders of our camp tells us how we’re supposed to think and decided what’s really wrong. We never get to the heart of the heart, the heart of the problem. When we don’t, we too become complicit in the crime.

There is more to it as well but also part of the heart problem. The heart reminds us who we really our, our true identity. These readings today touch upon that very reality and take us to the heart of who we are as people. Paul sums it up quite simply, we are “children of God”. That’s it! That’s as easy as it gets and yet so hard, all at the same time. That belief will eventually lead to his death, but until then, both here in this letter to the Galatians, where he’s really just getting started and will begin to go after them, but also in Corinthians, he uses this language of even back then they used to divide. There were Jews and Greeks, there are slave and free person, there are male and female, and we can add our own, there are black and white, there are gay and straight, there are Christian and Muslim, all this language that is used to separate. Paul tries to move them to a deeper identity. When we remain trapped in the separateness, it’s often for our own advantage. We want to feel superior in our own way but often at the expense of putting someone else in a lower position.

It’s what Jesus will confront with the Pharisees. They do it to everyone! Everything is viewed through their own lens of separateness and worthiness. If you somehow don’t meet their standard, then you fall into the unworthiness category; you become separated from them. So today Jesus is testing the disciples on this whole reality of identity. It’s really the heart of it all as to who this God is that they believe in. First he asks what everyone else says. Bear in mind, Jesus isn’t playing the popularity card. He doesn’t much care what they are saying. He doesn’t follow the polls like a politician and morphs into what they want to hear. Quite frankly, any label that they place upon him doesn’t do him justice. Elijah, well, alright, but still more than that. One of the prophets, well, alright, but more than that. As soon as we begin to box God in we no longer really know the true God, the God of endless mystery. But the same is true for other people. When we start to label them by what we see or who we think they are or who we think we are, it’s never enough. We start to limit ourselves and settle for something less than we really are, children of God, and at the heart of it, as the opening prayer stated today, is love.

Now it doesn’t come without great cost. As I said, Paul will die for it. Jesus will die for that reason. They don’t do it for some law or label that’s been placed upon people. They don’t do it for some kind of popularity, standing for nothing in the process. They have found and are this endless mystery and they reach the point where nothing else matters. They have found the great gift buried deep within their very being, that they are children of God, and at the heart of it, love. That’s it. Yet, it’s so hard for us to grasp because it is something that we just can’t and never will be able to grasp. All we can do is continue to fall into this deeper identity that goes beyond color, beyond religion, beyond sexuality, beyond it all, if we take up that cross, suffer at times greatly, and fall into love.
We have seen the best of religion in this moments and the worst. We don’t always want to admit the darkness that comes with religion as well, and yet, it’s there and it shows it’s weary head, trying to separate and divide. But you know what, there is only one that is content with dividing and separating. Only one. That one is evil. Where God tries to embrace, invites us to fall into, making whole and one, evil will try to divide and separate. It thrives on division. We see that in our politics and we see that in our churches. That’s not the work of God! It’s also not who we have been created to be and it’s not who we are at our very core. We have a heart problem, as that minister pointed out.

The readings should challenge us today to go deeper into our own lives but also as a city and country to look more deeply at the real issues facing us as a people. The amount of division is only going to increase the violence. The god we may have thought we believed in isn’t real and yet we find ourselves clinging to something that will bring us down as a people. But the real God can handle that. The real God invites us down into the depths of our hearts and souls, into hearts that have become calloused and hardened, for the healing and reconciliation needed to return to our deeper identity, our identity in Christ, our identity in love. The world needs love more than anything right now. If we’re not allowing ourselves to be transformed by it and into love, we too become complicit to the problem, fear holds us to the point of popularity, and the cycle of violence continues. We pray for our city, our country, and ourselves, that we accept the invitation to go to the heart of it all, hearing that question today, “Who do you say that I am?” and allow ourselves to fall into this endless mystery, into Love.