When we had the parable of the Prodigal Son three weeks ago, one parishioner told me she hated that story. It was, she said, so unfair. And many people do instinctively feel sorry for the brother who played safe, stayed at home and kept all the rules, perhaps because we see something of ourselves in him. And then there’s that other story of the workers who came at the eleventh hour and were paid the same amount as those who had worked hard in the vineyard all day long. That, too, seems unfair to many, although the parishioner who hated the parable of the Prodigal son was prepared to give this one more of a hearing. The ones who had worked all day had, she acknowledged, made an agreement, and having been a trade unionist all her life, she was prepared to come and go a bit on that one. And then we come to today’s story. It doesn’t seem unfair in the way the other two do, but it doesn’t seem entirely consistent with them. Any master would expect his servant, even after a hard day’s work, to get his supper ready before he had his own. But what has happened to the lavish generosity of the first two stories? And what about the Jesus who washed his disciples feet and told them that the greatest among them must become the servant of all. Well, this is what I would like to reflect on today.
The reason, I believe, why we struggle with some of the parables of Jesus is because of the things we are taught from a very early age. ‘If you don’t eat your peas there will no trifle.’ ‘If you don’t start behaving yourself there will be no football this weekend’ ‘If you don’t go up there right now and tidy your room there’s no way you’re having your friends here tomorrow tonight’ And so it goes on. Very quickly in our lives we learn that all manner of things are conditional. If we please others and do what they want, they will like us more than if we annoy them or upset them, and very soon this message becomes part of the hard-wiring in our brains. It fundamentally shapes the way we respond to each other, setting us up for all kinds of complications in our relationships, not least of which is the way we learn to use emotional blackmail to manipulate others. We soon learn that there is no such thing as a free lunch. More and more as we move out into the world we discover that it is a ‘dog eat dog situation’ out there. One good turn deserves another. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Such and such a person owes me one. Agnes gave me a birthday present last year so I better get her one this year. We got a Christmas card from the Brown’s today so we better send them one back. It’s the way the world works, the problem being that it’s not the way God works.
To enter the kingdom of God, you see, is like entering another dimension, something I know about after ten years as a prison chaplain. In our country, you see, there are people who don’t live in the same world as we do. They belong to an underclass and although they occupy the same physical space as we do, live their lives in a another dimension altogether. It looks to us as if they break our rules, but the truth is that they live in a world with different rules, where things don’t look the way they do in our world and where the values we take for granted often have no meaning. At another level, scientists speak about the possible existence of up to eleven different dimensions, possibly also occupying the same space as we do, and speculate about whether what we think of as the basic laws of physics which govern everything we know about the physical universe would apply in these parallel worlds. And the kingdom is like that. In it, everything that makes our world go round is turned on its head and the basic laws by which we live most of our lives do not apply. In our world things are earned. In the kingdom of God everything is freely given. That is the whole point of the story Jesus tells today. The kingdom of God cannot be earned and that is why, no matter how hard the servant has worked, the master owes him nothing. The very concept of owing or being under an obligation to do something makes no sense in this new dimension. Fairness, the idea that we should get what we deserve is redundant. Love does not understand fairness and far outstrips it in generosity. It is just not like that. We cannot control or manipulate God in any way whatsoever, which, of course, is what religion as opposed to faith has always tried to do. We can perform all the religious actions we like, but nothing we do or don’t do can make God love us any more or any less.
But it’s so hard for us to understand this. It is so different from what we are used. The idea that we should love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, or that we should turn the other cheek makes no sense to millions. And even when they can see the attractiveness of it, many dismiss it as unrealistic. One politician friend of mine with whom I have discussed these things many times over the years has felt the need to remind me on a number of occasions that we have to live in the real world.
But, of course, in saying this, he begs the question, which is which of the worlds we live in is the real one. Is it the world where virtually all love is conditional and has to be earned or is it the world of the Prodigal son and the man who paid all his workers the same. Faith tells us that it is the latter and that, while the world as we know it now will pass away, the world described by Jesus both in these stories and in the one we heard today will not pass away but will last forever. This is the vision of the kingdom of God the prophet Habakkuk speaks of in today’s first reading. ‘Eager for its own fulfilment’ he says, ‘it does not deceive. ‘If it comes slowly,’ he continues ‘but wait, for come it will without fail.’
It may seem unrealistic. It may seem impossible. It may be hard to believe. But as men and women of faith we are called, not only move mulberry trees, but to turn whole worlds upside down.
BIDDING PRAYERS
It is not possible to enter the kingdom of God unless we turn upside down and inside out many of the things the world has taught us from childhood. The kingdom involves new ways of thinking, new ways of loving, new ways of treating others, new way of seeing the world and new, faith-filled rather than religious ways of relating to God. Its values are very different from those of the secular world and challenge us as human beings to the very depth of our being. And so we pray for the grace to understand this........Lord hear us
In the first reading, the prophet Habakkuk struggles to hang on to the vision which God holds up before him. He is surrounded, he tells us, by tyranny and injustice. Outrage and violence is all he sees and wherever he looks, contention and discord flourish. But in the midst of all this he hangs on to his vision for the future. The vision, he says, does not deceive. If it comes slowly, wait, for come it will without fail. And so we pray for some of his trust in God’s vision for the world which we call the kingdom........Lord hear us
The kingdom of God is not just something for the future. It’s not about ‘pie in the sky when we die.’ The kingdom, Jesus tells us, is among us. It is already growing in our midst wherever the hungry are fed; wherever enemies forgive one another; wherever people in our consumer-driven society sense that something is not right and begin to long for something deeper; wherever religion begins to give way to faith; and so we pray for the wisdom to see this is happening in the world today.........Lord hear us
Many people in the world today can see the need for radical change in the way we live. Politicians speak about it and, in their speeches during election campaigns, promise that, if we vote for them, they will deliver it. But in the cold light of day most revert to old ways of thinking and old ways of doing things. Many lose sight of the original vision which inspired them and cynicism is a constant danger. And so pray for those who govern us, that they will never lose faith in our capacity for something better........Lord hear us
In the second reading, Paul urges Timothy to fan into a flame the gift God gave him when he, Paul, laid hands on him. The gift he had received then was not a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, and he must never be ashamed of his faith. But we, too, had hands laid on us at Confirmation and received the same gift as Timothy did. After the Pope’s visit, Archbishop Nicholls of Westminster has called on us, too, to be less afraid to witness to our faith in public and we pray for the courage to respond to that call.....Lord hear us
In the end, only God loves us with unconditional love. This is because God is love. But through the power of the spirit living in us, it is possible for us to grow in love and for our love, slowly but surely throughout our lives, to become more and more like God’s. And so we pray for this grace for ourselves. And we pray, too, for those people in our lives who, when we have not perhaps been very loveable at a human level, have continued to love us and shown us something of what God’s love is like........Lord hear us
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