Last week, we reflected on how the Bible, unlike the Koran as I had heard it explained by an Imam several weeks previously, speaks in principles rather than in detailed instructions. The particular example last week was Jesus’ command to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God, which led us to reflect on the current financial crisis and the implications of Jesus’ words for ourselves and the world we live in. This week it’s an even more fundamental principle, the most fundamental of all for anyone trying to live the Christian life in the midst of the world; Jesus’ command to love God and love our neighbour as ourself. And it’s on the meaning of this commandment, the greatest of all, that I invite you to reflect today. It means many things, but to help us focus on one particular aspect of it which has particular relevance to the times we are living through, I would like to go back to the first reading where we heard these words:”Tell the sons of Israel this,’You must not molest the stranger or oppress him’” The attitude of the people to strangers and foreigners was already an issue in Moses day, but, living as we are through a time when globalization is turning the world into a very small place, involving enormous movements of people around the globe, it is even more relevant now than it was then. There was a time when loving our neighbour as ourself was a fairly local affair. Now, however, it is, like everything else today, international, with all the challenges that brings. They are many these challenges, and prominent among them is our history.
One of our greatest needs as human beings has always been to know who we are, where we come from and how we fit into the great scheme of things; what sociologists would call our sense of identity. Sadly, however, from the beginning of time, we have tended to answer this question in a negative rather than a positive way. In other words, we have defined ourselves not so much by who we are as by who we are not. We are not those people in the next village; we are not those people who live over the hill, a way of thinking which has led us from earliest times to see those different from ourselves as our enemies. And so, from time to time we raided their village stealing their cattle or their wives and from time to time they would do the same to us. And because of this, the process by which people gradually came together to form regions and then countries was slow and painful, nearly always involving years of warfare and violence. Great Britain, like every country in the world was formed in this way, as was Scotland itself and, as we watch the phenomenon of separatism in so many places, it is clear that the process is far from complete, even if some of us engage in it now more through politics than violent confrontation. But, having said that, there are still parts of the world where the old ways continue and the age-old process goes on.
But even as that part of the process goes on, in other areas of the world, the next stage is already well under way as, under the influence of largely, but not exclusively, economic forces, the world is becoming more and more international. The best example of this, of course, is the European Union which, from the very beginning, was about much more than economics. It always had at its heart a drive towards a deeper union which would involve moving beyond old national boundaries and national priorities and this, of course, is one of the reasons many people in Britain have resisted it. As an island nation we have an extra barrier to overcome and only time will tell how this will resolve itself. But what I want to suggest to you today is that, leaving aside the politics of it all, the overall movement from the tribe to the nation and from the nation out into the wider world, is the most basic movement of God in history. It is what Jesus’ command to love our neighbour as ourself is ultimately about. It is a movement which will not end until, in the fullness of the kingdom, all barriers and all differences between peoples are at an end and the whole of humanity is one in Christ Jesus. That, ultimately, is what Jesus is talking about today.
But, of course, we are still a long way from living that vision, the vision which inspired St Paul to speak the way he did in today’s second reading to the people of Thessalonika, the first major Christian community in what we now know as Europe. Many people in St Paul’s day resisted the movement of the Church out into the wider world and at the root of that resistance was the same thing that causes so many of us to resist the movement outwards today: fear. Dating no doubt from those days when the people from the next village were likely to come and attack us, we seem to have a deep, instinctive fear of what is different, from what we don’t understand, whether it be the colour of people’s skin, the language they speak, the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the way they live. And out of this fear, rooted in ignorance, grows prejudice, the kind which stalks our country like the plague, allowing those with their own hidden agenda to stir in us feelings and attitudes towards foreigners, immigrants, asylum seekers, and migranr workers – especially if they are a different colour from us – which go directly against the teaching of Jesus we heard today.
And in the midst of this God is calling us to generosity of heart, a generosity of heart which enables us to see the good rather than the bad in people different from ourselves. It enables us to open up our hearts to the stranger who presents his/herself in our midst. It allows us, as followers of Jesus, to be in the vanguard of a movement outwards into the world, a movement beyond the barriers of race and nation, a movement which is God at work deep within our history, slowly and painfully drawing humanity to unity and to himself. And it’s happening. Only this week a woman who prays seriously and has done so for many years told me how, as she walks down the street sometimes, she looks at people she has never seen before and deep within herself she knows that that person is her brother or sister.
Believe me, it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to her but our father in heaven.
BIDDING PRAYERS
We begin today by praying for the world. Called by God through the events of history to embrace new ways of living and leave behind old, tired ways of relating to each other, the peoples of the world are caught between an attraction to what could be and an attachment to what has always been. And so we pray that, in the course of this still new century, the world will have the courage and vision it needs to build a better future for all God’s people............Lord hear us
Rooted in a toxic mixture of fear and ignorance, prejudice distorts the way the people of the world see and think about each other, a situation made worse when it is exploited by politicians and others with a personal agenda which has nothing to do with truth and goodness. And so we ask God to reach deep into our hearts and minds through the power of the Spirit who lives in us, and draw us beyond our most deep-rooted prejudices against people different from ourselves...........Lord hear us
To help them empathise with the strangers in their midst, Moses, in today’s first reading, invites the people to remember what it was like when they themselves were strangers in Egypt. And so we pray that, although most of us will have no personal memory of such things, the fact that so many of us are the descendants of immigrants who came to Scotland in search of work and a better life, will help us feel for and reach out to those who are doing the same thing now...........Lord hear us
In the case of asylum seekers, Britain has committed itself, through international agreements, to certain ways of acting. Pressurised by the gutter press, however, who are very good at stirring up the worst instincts in us, our government is in danger sometimes of forgetting these commitments and treating those who come to us in fear of their lives in unacceptable ways. And so we ask God to give the officials concerned the courage they need to stand up for what is right...............Lord hear us
One of the great benefits we have today compared to those who have gone before us is the possibility we have of visiting other parts of the world. And so we pray that, as we do this, we will learn to appreciate rather than judge the things we find there. We pray, in particular, for a profound openness to other people’s culture and ways of thinking which will enrich us and enable us to be more open to the movement of God in history calling us to unity in the midst of diversity..............Lord hear us
Writing to the people of Thessalonika in northern Greece, Paul thanks God for the way they have broken with idolatry. But idols come in all shapes and forms and there are many of them in today’s world. And so we pray for the grace to see them for what they are. In particular, we pray that the peoples of the world will see through the extreme forms of nationalism which can turn even a country into a god and which have caused so much trouble throughout history................ Lord hear us
Saturday, 25 October 2008
Saturday, 18 October 2008
29th Sunday of the Year A
One of the things which has given me most pleasure in recent years has been the fact that the Islamic community in Kilmarnock hold their Friday Prayer here in our hall. And so, when they invited me one evening last month to join them for a meal in the Gateway Centre during Ramadan, I was delighted to accept their invitation which, as well as a meal, involved prayer and speeches, including a short one from myself. But what struck me most, and this is the reason I mention it today, was the difference between the Koran as it was explained that night and the New Testament as we encounter it in today’s Gospel. One of the speeches was by a young man currently studying in Saudi Arabia. He spoke, mainly to the young folk present, about daily prayer. They had, like all Moslems, to pray five times-a-day but what surprised me was how adamant he was about the fact that, if they went further than this and prayed six times, they were doing something wrong, the reason being that the Koran specified five and there could be no deviation from this. But you will search the New Testament in vain for such specific instructions. They’re just not there. And it’s this lack of specific detail which makes Christianity more flexible and adaptable than Islam, for all its strengths and insights. ‘Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar’ says Jesus today, ‘and to God what belongs to God,’ but what that means in the fifth tenth or twenty first century is something we all have to work out for ourselves from general principles, like the one we have just heard. And so, since we have heard it, what does it mean for us today, especially in the light of all that is happening in the world of economics and finance? What does belong to God and what does belong to Caesar in the complex world of the early21st century.
Well, the first thing we have to say about this complex financial world is that we have to live in it. But we don’t have to live by its values. Driven by market-forces and consumerism, we have been told by politicians since the 1980s that there is no alternative. These laws, the laws of one particular economic theory, have become commandments written on tablets of stone which,as we have worshipped each day at the altar of the goddess money, no one has been allowed to question. And not only have we worshipped at this altar. Like our primitive pagan ancestors we have practised human sacrifice on it, offering as tribute to the goddess the lives of so many people whose health and family relationships have been destroyed in the service of efficiency, productivity, ever increasing profits, the company, the business - she who must be obeyed. And since this deified economic system needs winners and losers, some who will grow rich while others grow poor, we have also sacrificed – literally in the case of millions throughout the world – the lives of the poor. And now, as the ugly under-belly of the system is exposed for all to see: the greed, the irresponsibility, the self-interest - the sheer madness of it all, it’s time to reflect, to ponder what has happened, to think about what we have done and, with God’s help learn from it. As many have already said, this is a potential turning point, an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, a chance to read the signs of the times and one of the functions of the Sunday liturgy is to help us do this: to work out together what it means to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and the God what is God’s. So where do we start?
Well, at its root, the current crisis facing the developed world is a spiritual one, part of the journey from religion to faith we speak about so often. For very understandable reasons millions today have rejected traditional religion without yet discovering the faith that lies beyond it and the result has been a huge void deep within our western psyche. And into that void have come the sellers and the advertisers. Tapping into this spiritual emptiness, with the fears and insecurities that go with it, they have very skillfully sold us the notion that, if we can only acquire more and more material things, we will be happy. They have to do it, of course, because the whole system depends on us consuming more and more things, and it has been in pursuit of this illusion that, as a country, we have spent money we don’t have and built up the highest level of personal debt of any country in the developed world. And, as the last few weeks have shown, it cannot go on. Something has to change. We have to change. This time there really is no alternative. The question is how. Now I hope it does not come as a disappointment to you, but I don’t have the answer to that question except to repeat what Jesus himself says. ‘Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’ But I can say some general things.
The first is to re-state the obvious point I made at the beginning. We need to live in this financial world. We all need money. People need mortgages. There will be times when we may need to take on debt. It’s important to plan for the future and sort out things like pensions. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with investments so long as they are ethical. Credit cards can be very useful. But what is really important is that we remain free in the midst of all this, understanding the forces we are subjected to and not being controlled by them. This means resisting the pressure to keep buying things we don’t need. It means knowing the difference between need and want. It means standing up to one of the most powerful tools used by the advertisers, the pressure to keep up with the Jones’ and do what everybody else is doing. It means sorting out our priorities and not, for example, allowing pressure of work to destroy our health or our family relationships. It means learning to do without sometimes and learning to share more, not just from what we have extra, but, like the woman in the Gospel, from what we have to live on. But, in the end, we all have to work out the details for ourselves.
But perhaps we could leave the last word today to Pope John Paul II who, in his encyclical on work, tells us that economic systems must exist to serve people, not the other way round. Now there’s a principle, the implications of which need worked out, if ever I heard one.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading this week, the anonymous author of the second part of the book of Isaiah, written during the Exile in Babylon, sees God as the Lord of history, guiding by his infinite and unfathomable providence the events which shape the lives of his people. And so we pray that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God will guide the world at this time of serious economic crisis, and show us how what is happening can lead us to more just and sustainable ways of living........................Lord hear us
And we hold up before God in a special way all those who are suffering in especially severe ways from what is happening in the world’s markets. We pray in particular for those in the world’s poorest countries who, unlike us, have no protection from the worst aspects of the crisis. We pray, too, for those in our own country who are caught up in unmanageable debt, who are in danger of losing their homes, whose jobs are under threat or whose security in retirement has been affected..................Lord hear us
We also pray this week for those who govern our country at this time and for those who have power to influence the present situation for good or ill in other parts of the world. We pray that God will guide them in their decision-making, keep them free from narrow self-interest and enable them to work for the common good. And we pray in a particular way for the people of America as they prepare to elect a new president, a choice which will affect us all in some way................Lord hear us
If the current crisis facing the developed countries of the West is, at its roots, a spiritual one, then the ultimate solution will also have to be spiritual. Millions today have lost sight of God, while millions of others believe in a god who does not exist, the god of religious fundamentalism, no more than a projection of what is worst in ourselves. And so we ask the real God to lead us beyond religion so that we can come to know him again through faith and in a way fit for our time...................Lord hear us
Today is Mission Sunday throughout Scotland, reminding us that, at the very heart of what it is to be a follower of Jesus, is the command to go out and teach all nations. And so we pray for the wisdom and courage we need to do that at this time in history, offering to people everywhere an alternative way of living to what we have now, a way of living based on the teaching of Jesus and which, because it comes from God, alone has the power to fulfil humanity’s deepest longings and desires......Lord hear us
The 20th Annual Week of Directed Prayer takes place in the parish this week. And so we pray for all those who will take part, either as participants or as Prayer Guides. We pray that the whole experience, one rooted in the Scriptures as they touch the personal experience of each individual, will bear rich fruit, not only in the lives of those directly involved, but in the life of the whole parish.........................Lord hear us
Well, the first thing we have to say about this complex financial world is that we have to live in it. But we don’t have to live by its values. Driven by market-forces and consumerism, we have been told by politicians since the 1980s that there is no alternative. These laws, the laws of one particular economic theory, have become commandments written on tablets of stone which,as we have worshipped each day at the altar of the goddess money, no one has been allowed to question. And not only have we worshipped at this altar. Like our primitive pagan ancestors we have practised human sacrifice on it, offering as tribute to the goddess the lives of so many people whose health and family relationships have been destroyed in the service of efficiency, productivity, ever increasing profits, the company, the business - she who must be obeyed. And since this deified economic system needs winners and losers, some who will grow rich while others grow poor, we have also sacrificed – literally in the case of millions throughout the world – the lives of the poor. And now, as the ugly under-belly of the system is exposed for all to see: the greed, the irresponsibility, the self-interest - the sheer madness of it all, it’s time to reflect, to ponder what has happened, to think about what we have done and, with God’s help learn from it. As many have already said, this is a potential turning point, an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, a chance to read the signs of the times and one of the functions of the Sunday liturgy is to help us do this: to work out together what it means to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and the God what is God’s. So where do we start?
Well, at its root, the current crisis facing the developed world is a spiritual one, part of the journey from religion to faith we speak about so often. For very understandable reasons millions today have rejected traditional religion without yet discovering the faith that lies beyond it and the result has been a huge void deep within our western psyche. And into that void have come the sellers and the advertisers. Tapping into this spiritual emptiness, with the fears and insecurities that go with it, they have very skillfully sold us the notion that, if we can only acquire more and more material things, we will be happy. They have to do it, of course, because the whole system depends on us consuming more and more things, and it has been in pursuit of this illusion that, as a country, we have spent money we don’t have and built up the highest level of personal debt of any country in the developed world. And, as the last few weeks have shown, it cannot go on. Something has to change. We have to change. This time there really is no alternative. The question is how. Now I hope it does not come as a disappointment to you, but I don’t have the answer to that question except to repeat what Jesus himself says. ‘Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’ But I can say some general things.
The first is to re-state the obvious point I made at the beginning. We need to live in this financial world. We all need money. People need mortgages. There will be times when we may need to take on debt. It’s important to plan for the future and sort out things like pensions. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with investments so long as they are ethical. Credit cards can be very useful. But what is really important is that we remain free in the midst of all this, understanding the forces we are subjected to and not being controlled by them. This means resisting the pressure to keep buying things we don’t need. It means knowing the difference between need and want. It means standing up to one of the most powerful tools used by the advertisers, the pressure to keep up with the Jones’ and do what everybody else is doing. It means sorting out our priorities and not, for example, allowing pressure of work to destroy our health or our family relationships. It means learning to do without sometimes and learning to share more, not just from what we have extra, but, like the woman in the Gospel, from what we have to live on. But, in the end, we all have to work out the details for ourselves.
But perhaps we could leave the last word today to Pope John Paul II who, in his encyclical on work, tells us that economic systems must exist to serve people, not the other way round. Now there’s a principle, the implications of which need worked out, if ever I heard one.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading this week, the anonymous author of the second part of the book of Isaiah, written during the Exile in Babylon, sees God as the Lord of history, guiding by his infinite and unfathomable providence the events which shape the lives of his people. And so we pray that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God will guide the world at this time of serious economic crisis, and show us how what is happening can lead us to more just and sustainable ways of living........................Lord hear us
And we hold up before God in a special way all those who are suffering in especially severe ways from what is happening in the world’s markets. We pray in particular for those in the world’s poorest countries who, unlike us, have no protection from the worst aspects of the crisis. We pray, too, for those in our own country who are caught up in unmanageable debt, who are in danger of losing their homes, whose jobs are under threat or whose security in retirement has been affected..................Lord hear us
We also pray this week for those who govern our country at this time and for those who have power to influence the present situation for good or ill in other parts of the world. We pray that God will guide them in their decision-making, keep them free from narrow self-interest and enable them to work for the common good. And we pray in a particular way for the people of America as they prepare to elect a new president, a choice which will affect us all in some way................Lord hear us
If the current crisis facing the developed countries of the West is, at its roots, a spiritual one, then the ultimate solution will also have to be spiritual. Millions today have lost sight of God, while millions of others believe in a god who does not exist, the god of religious fundamentalism, no more than a projection of what is worst in ourselves. And so we ask the real God to lead us beyond religion so that we can come to know him again through faith and in a way fit for our time...................Lord hear us
Today is Mission Sunday throughout Scotland, reminding us that, at the very heart of what it is to be a follower of Jesus, is the command to go out and teach all nations. And so we pray for the wisdom and courage we need to do that at this time in history, offering to people everywhere an alternative way of living to what we have now, a way of living based on the teaching of Jesus and which, because it comes from God, alone has the power to fulfil humanity’s deepest longings and desires......Lord hear us
The 20th Annual Week of Directed Prayer takes place in the parish this week. And so we pray for all those who will take part, either as participants or as Prayer Guides. We pray that the whole experience, one rooted in the Scriptures as they touch the personal experience of each individual, will bear rich fruit, not only in the lives of those directly involved, but in the life of the whole parish.........................Lord hear us
Saturday, 11 October 2008
28th Sunday of the Year A
I don’t know what Fr Willie McFadden said to you last week about the parable of the tenants who killed the landowner’s son, but I would like to back for a moment to what I said myself just before that. Three weeks ago, having heard the parable about those coming to the vineyard at the eleventh being paid the same as those who had been there all day, we reflected on the nature of a God whose love is pure grace. There’s nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it, increase or diminish it. There are no deals’ no quid pro quos. It’s given freely and without conditions.
Then two weeks ago, presented with the two sons, one of whom said he would go into his father’s vineyard but didn’t and the other who said he wouldn’t go but did, we reflected on the other side of this mystery of grace, the freedom we have in our relationship with God. Infinitely free in himself, the idea that God could force anyone into anything is a contradiction in terms. Love is, by its very nature, freely given and freely received. And so we have a God who offers us everything but leaves us free to choose it or reject it. And herein, as we have said so often, lies the drama going on deep within the life of every human being.
But what does this mean? How do we make this choice? Well, in an attempt to answer that question I would like to return to today’s Gospel and the story, not so much of the wedding feast itself, but of the man who turned up without a wedding garment, a completely separate parable, scripture scholars tell us, which, over time, has got tangled up with the other one. At first sight, of course, what happened to the poor man seems very unfair and completely at odds with the image of a God whose love is free and unconditional. But a closer look at an older rabbinic parable on which this one is based can help us understand better what Jesus version of the story is really about.
I have a nephew getting married in February and one of the things my sister talked about as we wandered around the shops in Malaga the other day was her outfit. But in the rabbinic story this would not have been an issue, in that, strange as it seems to us, the King, when he sent the invitation to the wedding, also sent the wedding garment to be worn at it. This man’s crime, therefore, was to have received the garment and turned up at the wedding without it, a powerful image, it seems to me, of what it means to have been offered everything by God and chosen not to accept it. God has given us the wedding garment we are to wear at the great wedding feast which is the kingdom, so beautifully described by Isaiah in the first reading, and the message of the parable is that if we turn up without it, then there can be no place for us at the banquet. But what is this wedding garment we have all received? Well, I would like to offer you one answer to that question which has struck me quite forcibly as I have reflected on the story over the last two weeks.
Essentially, as I have come to understand it, the wedding garment God has given to each one of us from the first moment of our existence is our unique individual self. No two of us are the same. From the beginning of time we have existed as unique individuals in the mind of God, each of us with our own gifts, our own personalities and our own particular part to play in God’s great dream for his creation. It’s so easy to say but so difficult to grasp; that there’s something each one of us brings to creation which no other person can bring – ourselves - and that if we fail to bring it creation itself and everyone in it is the poorer for that failure. We are called to be, in other words, who we are and, by being who we are, in all our fullness, like a great work of art, give glory to God, the artist who made us. And fundamentally there’s only one thing that can stop that happening. It’s the mortal enemy of everything God longs to do in the world. And its name is fear, the same fear which made a man in another parable bury his talent in the ground rather than develop its potential. And so when he turned up at the wedding feast there was no place for him at the banquet either. But what is this fear, and what makes it so destructive and deadly?
Well, in its most basic form it’s the fear that all the things we have just said about ourselves and God are not true. And so, while faith tells us that we are loved by a God who has created us in his own image and likeness, another voice, deep within us, tells us that this cannot be true; that there is something wrong with us; that whoever God dreams of us being we cannot be that person; that whatever God is calling us to do in our lives we cannot do it, because - and here is the root of this great lie - we aren’t good enough, a way of thinking which misses the whole point about the mystery we call grace which is that, yes, left to ourselves we can do nothing and, in that sense, are not good enough, but that, with God, all things are possible. And can you just imagine the impact we could have on the world if we really believed that.
And so the fear of not being good enough, the fear that we cannot be the people faith tells us we are called to be, traps us in mediocrity. Like the people in the first parable we make excuses for not attending the great wedding feast and busy ourselves with things of no lasting value. We become more and more afraid to take risks, try new things or think in new ways. We settle for what we have, what we know, what is familiar to us and slowly but surely, as the gifts and talents we have been given lie more and more dormant, the spark of God in us, the dream God has had for us since the beginning begins to die and we become mere shadows of our real selves, the people we have always been and always will be in the mind of God.
And if this becomes permanent in us... no wonder there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The Church has been described as a sleeping giant. Called to make the teaching of Jesus a living reality in society, it has so often throughout history lost sight of this vision and adopted instead the values of the world around it. And so we pray for the Church at this time, that it will finally embrace the process of renewal begun at the Second Vatican Council, put on its wedding garment and become what it is called to be, a beacon of light for a world on its journey through history.................Lord hear us
As the financial markets tumble and fall about our ears, the world is living through a moment of profound shock. For years now we have worshipped at the altar of the goddess money and lived by her commandments, the laws of the market-place, dismissing as some kind of deviant anyone who dared to question these laws. But now the world is seeing the goddess money for the idol she always was and we pray that this experience will prove to be a turning point for us all....................Lord hear us
Humanity in every age longs for something better. We dream of a more just world. We long for the day when there will be no more war. We allow ourselves to imagine humanity dressed in its wedding garment. And yet, at the same time, something in us prevents us believing that these things are really possible. We have swallowed the lie that we are not good enough, that we ‘cannot do it.’ And so we pray for a deep sense of the fact that, with God, all things are possible................Lord hear us
Young people in every age can seem brash and aggressive and, since the beginning of time have been criticised by the adults around them. The truth is, however, that what lies behind these sometimes unpleasant ways of behaving is the most profound insecurity and feeling of not being good enough. And so we pray for young people today that, in a world where society bombards them with images of who they should be, we and they will be happy with and rejoice in who they are.................Lord hear us
To become the people we are capable of being, the people we already are in the mind of God, will always involve moving from where we are now to a place God will show us. It will always involve risk. It will always involve doing new things, embracing new ways of thinking, overcoming our prejudices, confronting our fears and in every sense moving out of our comfort zones. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see what that means right now and the courage to do it.........Lord hear us
There are few pains in life to compare with the pain of regret, the sense of what could have been had we not been so foolish and spoiled things; the ‘if onlys’ of life. And so we pray for the grace we need to live every day to the full now in such a way that, when the end comes, as it will for each of us, we are free of such regrets with no need to indulge in any weeping and grinding of teeth............Lord hear us
Then two weeks ago, presented with the two sons, one of whom said he would go into his father’s vineyard but didn’t and the other who said he wouldn’t go but did, we reflected on the other side of this mystery of grace, the freedom we have in our relationship with God. Infinitely free in himself, the idea that God could force anyone into anything is a contradiction in terms. Love is, by its very nature, freely given and freely received. And so we have a God who offers us everything but leaves us free to choose it or reject it. And herein, as we have said so often, lies the drama going on deep within the life of every human being.
But what does this mean? How do we make this choice? Well, in an attempt to answer that question I would like to return to today’s Gospel and the story, not so much of the wedding feast itself, but of the man who turned up without a wedding garment, a completely separate parable, scripture scholars tell us, which, over time, has got tangled up with the other one. At first sight, of course, what happened to the poor man seems very unfair and completely at odds with the image of a God whose love is free and unconditional. But a closer look at an older rabbinic parable on which this one is based can help us understand better what Jesus version of the story is really about.
I have a nephew getting married in February and one of the things my sister talked about as we wandered around the shops in Malaga the other day was her outfit. But in the rabbinic story this would not have been an issue, in that, strange as it seems to us, the King, when he sent the invitation to the wedding, also sent the wedding garment to be worn at it. This man’s crime, therefore, was to have received the garment and turned up at the wedding without it, a powerful image, it seems to me, of what it means to have been offered everything by God and chosen not to accept it. God has given us the wedding garment we are to wear at the great wedding feast which is the kingdom, so beautifully described by Isaiah in the first reading, and the message of the parable is that if we turn up without it, then there can be no place for us at the banquet. But what is this wedding garment we have all received? Well, I would like to offer you one answer to that question which has struck me quite forcibly as I have reflected on the story over the last two weeks.
Essentially, as I have come to understand it, the wedding garment God has given to each one of us from the first moment of our existence is our unique individual self. No two of us are the same. From the beginning of time we have existed as unique individuals in the mind of God, each of us with our own gifts, our own personalities and our own particular part to play in God’s great dream for his creation. It’s so easy to say but so difficult to grasp; that there’s something each one of us brings to creation which no other person can bring – ourselves - and that if we fail to bring it creation itself and everyone in it is the poorer for that failure. We are called to be, in other words, who we are and, by being who we are, in all our fullness, like a great work of art, give glory to God, the artist who made us. And fundamentally there’s only one thing that can stop that happening. It’s the mortal enemy of everything God longs to do in the world. And its name is fear, the same fear which made a man in another parable bury his talent in the ground rather than develop its potential. And so when he turned up at the wedding feast there was no place for him at the banquet either. But what is this fear, and what makes it so destructive and deadly?
Well, in its most basic form it’s the fear that all the things we have just said about ourselves and God are not true. And so, while faith tells us that we are loved by a God who has created us in his own image and likeness, another voice, deep within us, tells us that this cannot be true; that there is something wrong with us; that whoever God dreams of us being we cannot be that person; that whatever God is calling us to do in our lives we cannot do it, because - and here is the root of this great lie - we aren’t good enough, a way of thinking which misses the whole point about the mystery we call grace which is that, yes, left to ourselves we can do nothing and, in that sense, are not good enough, but that, with God, all things are possible. And can you just imagine the impact we could have on the world if we really believed that.
And so the fear of not being good enough, the fear that we cannot be the people faith tells us we are called to be, traps us in mediocrity. Like the people in the first parable we make excuses for not attending the great wedding feast and busy ourselves with things of no lasting value. We become more and more afraid to take risks, try new things or think in new ways. We settle for what we have, what we know, what is familiar to us and slowly but surely, as the gifts and talents we have been given lie more and more dormant, the spark of God in us, the dream God has had for us since the beginning begins to die and we become mere shadows of our real selves, the people we have always been and always will be in the mind of God.
And if this becomes permanent in us... no wonder there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The Church has been described as a sleeping giant. Called to make the teaching of Jesus a living reality in society, it has so often throughout history lost sight of this vision and adopted instead the values of the world around it. And so we pray for the Church at this time, that it will finally embrace the process of renewal begun at the Second Vatican Council, put on its wedding garment and become what it is called to be, a beacon of light for a world on its journey through history.................Lord hear us
As the financial markets tumble and fall about our ears, the world is living through a moment of profound shock. For years now we have worshipped at the altar of the goddess money and lived by her commandments, the laws of the market-place, dismissing as some kind of deviant anyone who dared to question these laws. But now the world is seeing the goddess money for the idol she always was and we pray that this experience will prove to be a turning point for us all....................Lord hear us
Humanity in every age longs for something better. We dream of a more just world. We long for the day when there will be no more war. We allow ourselves to imagine humanity dressed in its wedding garment. And yet, at the same time, something in us prevents us believing that these things are really possible. We have swallowed the lie that we are not good enough, that we ‘cannot do it.’ And so we pray for a deep sense of the fact that, with God, all things are possible................Lord hear us
Young people in every age can seem brash and aggressive and, since the beginning of time have been criticised by the adults around them. The truth is, however, that what lies behind these sometimes unpleasant ways of behaving is the most profound insecurity and feeling of not being good enough. And so we pray for young people today that, in a world where society bombards them with images of who they should be, we and they will be happy with and rejoice in who they are.................Lord hear us
To become the people we are capable of being, the people we already are in the mind of God, will always involve moving from where we are now to a place God will show us. It will always involve risk. It will always involve doing new things, embracing new ways of thinking, overcoming our prejudices, confronting our fears and in every sense moving out of our comfort zones. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see what that means right now and the courage to do it.........Lord hear us
There are few pains in life to compare with the pain of regret, the sense of what could have been had we not been so foolish and spoiled things; the ‘if onlys’ of life. And so we pray for the grace we need to live every day to the full now in such a way that, when the end comes, as it will for each of us, we are free of such regrets with no need to indulge in any weeping and grinding of teeth............Lord hear us
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