Last week we reflected on the nature of a God whose thoughts, as the first reading that day put it, are not our thoughts, and whose ways are not our ways. And we saw how, with this God, there are no deals, no quid pro quos, no earning and no deserving. Nothing we do can make God love us any more or any less. Everything we receive from God is freely given. Since God is love, nothing we do can either increase or diminish the love that is God. Nor can we persuade God to give us what we need, because, if it’s for our good, if it is consistent with God’s dream for us, then God is already giving it before we even realise we need it. And we saw how the traditional religious word to describe this is ‘grace’. Everything that comes from God is grace. Or to put it another way, everything is gift.
But there’s a question around all this which may have already struck some of you. And it’s this. If God loves us so much; if nothing we do can increase or diminish this love; if God loves us when we are bad and when we are good, then what’s the point in being good in the first place? Why not do what everybody else does because, in the end, God loves us all the same anyway? These are, of course, religious rather than faith questions, belonging to a world where people are good, not because they really want to be but because they are afraid not to, but they are important questions nevertheless. And that’s why I would like to try and deal with them now. And the clue is in today’s story of the two brothers.
If it’s hard for us to get our heads round a God whose love is so freely given that there are no strings attached, then it is almost as hard to grasp the other side of the mystery we call grace which is our freedom to choose So free is God in God’s self that the very idea of forcing anyone into anything is a contradiction in terms. As every tyrant in history has discovered, you can make people fear you – which is what religion does – but you can never make people love you. And so at the heart of everything that exists there is the most amazing drama unfolding. It’s the drama of a God who offers us everything, the only problem being that we have to exercise the greatest gift we have as human beings created in the image and likeness of God, and freely choose it. And since we have to choose it, and this is not some great game where the board is folded up at the end and everyone goes home, there must exist the possibility at least of our rejecting it. And that’s the drama that’s unfolding, not only in history, but in the life of each one of us. If there are people in hell – whatever that means - then it’s not because God has sent them there but because to be ‘in hell’ is the only logical conclusion to the way an individual has chosen to live his/her life, although there are theologians who would say that the degree of freedom required to make such a choice is so great that nobody is actually ‘in hell’. In other words, what saves us in the end is our stupidity and the fact that a lot of the time we are so blind to what we are doing that we can’t be held fully responsible for our actions. The problem with that is that if there is anybody in hell it will be people like us who, having been exposed so often to the teaching of Jesus and having been fed and nourished each week by the Word and the Eucharist, should have known better. In other words, we run the risk of being the son who said he would go into his father’s vineyard but didn’t.
But the choice we are talking about is not one that is made once and for all. Rather, it is one that goes on all our lives with, as we heard in the first reading, the constant possibility of change and conversion. Nothing, in other words, is predestined, as the people in Ezekiel’s day thought and as some Christians still think today. The choice we make builds up all through our lives. Every day we are making it by the way we choose to live our lives. It is nothing to do with keeping rules or performing religious actions but about the choice Moses offered the people of Israel long ago in the book of Deuteronomy. ‘Today’ he says, ‘I set before you life or death. Choose life then so that you and your descendants may live in the love of the Lord your God.’ This is the heart of it. LIFE! To choose God is to choose life in all its shapes and forms, rejecting everything that is harmful and destructive in our human nature as well as in our individual personalities. In general terms this means becoming more like Jesus and learning to live by the values of the Gospel, but for each one of us it means looking into our own hearts and recognizing there everything that is negative and destructive and, with God’s help, dealing with it.
But on this weekend when politicians in America are struggling to deal with the crisis in the world’s financial system, it is surely right to say something about that too. For years we have talked here about the worship of the goddess money with her commandments written on stone, the laws of the market-place. Over and over again I have invited you to recognize the ultimately unsustainable nature of our consumer-driven society and the deeply ungodly nature of an economic system where the rich get richer and the poor poorer. And now, for a few days at least, we can see it exposed in all its ugliness. We have seen greed almost destroy the world banking system. We have seen the effects of years when the credit card companies kept pushing up our credit limits, encouraging us to spend money we didn’t have and buy things we didn’t need or couldn’t afford. And now this house built on sand is falling about our ears.
And yet it’s potentially a very important moment in history, an opportunity, if only we can grasp it, to escape the tyranny of the goddess money and choose life, not only for ourselves, but for people everywhere. So pray that, in the midst of this crisis, the world will have the insight and vision it needs to make the kind of choices which will lay the foundations for a more just world..
BIDDING PRAYERS
Much of the apparent prosperity we have enjoyed in recent years has been built on credit. For years, banks have inundated us with offers of credit and, as a result, many people, driven by a variety of forces, have spent money they did not have or could not afford to spend. And so we pray today for all those in the community around us who are now facing debts they cannot pay and whose lives have been devastated by what is happening to them...........Lord hear us
While we are all responsible for our own actions and our own decisions, we are also, in today’s world, subjected everywhere we turn to the influence of advertising. Using all the insights of psychology and playing on our deepest fears weaknesses, the advertising industry, always in pursuit of our money, has conned us into confusing want with need. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see what is happening to us and the courage to resist it.............Lord hear us
But, of course, we cannot blame it all on advertising. The greed which has caused so much trouble in the banking system in recent times is in each one of us. We have seen a bonus system at work which has encouraged people to put short-term personal gain before the good of society and of other people. This is the ‘I’m alright Jack’ approach to life, and we pray for the wisdom we need to see the ways in which it is at work in ourselves........Lord hear us
Although we are created free human beings, there are things which, in the course of daily life, limit our freedom. In the Christian tradition these are known as ‘inordinate attachments,’ and we all have them: things in ourselves which stop us doing what we want to do and keep us doing what we don’t want to do. In their extreme form they become addictive and can almost destroy the freedom in us. And so we pray for the insight to recognize addictive, un-free behaviour in ourselves.....Lord hear us
Religion based on fear has done great harm. In the short term it can work as a way of controlling people’s behaviour, but, in the longer-term, it is very destructive. It is one of the main reasons so many in the world today have turned their back on the whole notion of God and for many who remain it is the cause of deep anxiety and even mental health problems. And so we pray for all who are caught up in fear of a god who does not exist except in our heads........Lord hear us
The first reading today spoke of how conversion and change are possible for everyone. Sometimes they may be very difficult, but, with God’s grace, they are never impossible. And so we pray that, both as individuals and as a society, we will never give up on any person, no matter what they may have done, but will always be open to the possibility that they may change and so willing to give them a second, third or fourth chance........Lord hear us
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