FROM THE BOUNDARY
At some time or other, those of you with kids have probably been asked by one of them, or all together, which one you love best. They want to please you, and if they’ve done well at school, or been particularly good at home, naturally enough they want your approval. At the back of the question may be a sense of insecurity because from home and school they’ve so soon come to a sense that life is all about rewards and punishments and, even, that they’ve got to pursue that ridiculous concept, ‘excellence’. In asking whom you love best, they’re really saying, ‘Daddy, I’ve done well, haven’t I? Are you pleased with me? Tell me I’m special. Tell me you love me’. Bless them. They think that love from adults is divisible – 16oz here, only 5oz there. They’ve so much to give and so much natural talent. I’m sorry we adults spend so much time repressing them and masking our own love and smiles behind our “frowning providence”.
Adults are not immune. Some time ago, I heard a priest say from the pulpit that if you work hard for Christ you usually come out “on top”, as if to say that Jesus’ teaching was all about merited rewards, in this case doing as you’re told and working for the Church. Well, try telling that to the ghost of the man who’d been a bright spark in the Men’s Fellowship all his life until he died at 42 from cancer. Mind, my Mother used to say ‘only the good die young’. She did. I’m still here. You work it out!
Simon Peter was also hooked on this idea. You remember Matt. 19 when he asks ‘What’s in it for us?’, we who “have forsaken all and followed thee”. Jesus reassures him, but adds, confounding all expected norms, “many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first”. However, you see how Peter is like the rest of us – ‘We’ve done the work. We should get the reward.’ Think too of the elder brother of the ‘prodigal son’ in Luke 15. Didn’t he get shirty when he saw how favoured was the repenting wastrel when HE had ever been dutiful and righteous? And remember also what Jesus said of the rich man in Matt 19, how it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to find the Kingdom. The ‘rich man’ is not merely a man of wealth. He’s like so many of us. He thinks he’s better than the next man, more pleasing to God. For him, our just deserts are measured only by what we’ve done in obedience, not by who we truly are in all our waywardness.
In Matt 20, Jesus confounds all of them. Remember his householder who hires labourers for his vineyard? Early morning finds him hiring men for a denarius a day. The work is urgent, so he goes out again at 9 a.m., at noon, and at 3 p.m. He tells these men he will pay them what’s right. At 5 p.m., he hires men who’ve been liming in the market place all day. He tells them the same thing. They’ll get what’s right too. At day’s end, he tells his steward to pay the last first, the 5 p.m. people. They’re paid a whole denarius. What? The other labourers can’t believe it – paying the last the same as the first, those who’ve worked all day in the scorching sun. They had a point didn’t they? Imagine if Government did that with its minimalist workers. No, surely you pay a man what he’s worth, measured by the hours he’s worked. The newspapers would be full of it. There’d be strikes. “But no,” says the householder. “You suffer no wrong. I promised you a denarius and that’s what you’ve got. Aren’t I allowed to do what I like with what belongs to me?”
Well, of course Jesus little story’s told to shake us up, to turn all our expectations upside down. “We can’t be saved by our own efforts,” he says.
“It’s impossible. But with God’s grace, everything is possible.” That grace is a free gift of love for us all. It’s not a reward for good works or long hours. You can’t buy your way to love. It’s not measured by a man’s deserts. No, because it’s beautiful, spontaneous, unearned. It’s measured only by the inspirations of our hearts. The penitent thief at Calvary is Patron to us all. The eternity of God’s love can’t be longer, or shorter, or incomplete for any of us. What’s boundless can’t be bounded. In a 12-hour day, there’s no such thing as a 12th part of love. We’re very fortunate. If love were divisible, we’d all be in trouble. But you see, the Kingdom is of the heart. It’s a secret kingdom, and it makes us aware of it when we least expect it, like all the most wonderful things.
“So listen kids: your Dad loves you all, equally, unceasingly, to the death no matter what a pain you are at times. Jesus gave us all his whole heart. How, then, could I not give you the whole of mine?”
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Scrying from the boundary: With Love, all is one. It’s our minds which carve everything up. Sad innit?