25th Sunday Year A - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2008

Those of you who are parents will know better than I how children gradually learn to make sense of their world.  Initially, they are totally self-centred: what they want, they want!  But mum and dad can have other ideas, so that what they want, they can’t have; and if they get it just the same, then they get punished in some way.  The fact, or the threat, of punishment leads them to see that bad behaviour gets punished.  In fact, bad simply means: what gets punished.

As they grow older, they learn that it can make sense to put up with the pain of not getting what they want, at least in the short-term, not just because it means avoiding punishment, but because it may lead to an eventual reward – Santa Claus begins to make sense!  Good behaviour gets rewarded.  In fact, good simply means what gets rewarded.  Everything is still self-centred.

As they grow older still, they learn that it makes sense to get on with bigger brothers and sisters.  But if the bigger brother wants what they want, rather than getting nothing at all, the smaller ones see that it makes sense to share.  Half is better than nothing – even it it’s not as good as the lot.  The child begins to develop a sense of what’s fair, and can loudly object when things don’t seem fair.  At least early on, fairness is the cry of the smaller child, the less powerful one, saying that half is better than none.  Fairness hardly operates the other way: The claim for fairness is usually a one-way street, and is still very much self-centred.  If they can get the lot, and get away with it, that’s better than half.  I remember hearing of the practice in one family, constantly bombarded by the complaint: It’s not fair!  One child could cut the cake, the other had first pick.

I remember hearing today’s Gospel story when I was a lad, and feeling: It’s not fair!  Children’s, and adults’, moral sense of right and wrong can and should develop a lot further – yet there are a lot of adults whose moral development gets stuck at this level, or who quickly revert to it when it suits them.  Fortunately, God is not stuck at that level of moral development.  God operates purely from undifferentiating love, that has nothing to do with deserving, but immeasurably surpasses it.

A lot of people are much more comfortable in a world governed by reward and punishment.  They find it hard to believe that God really does love unconditionally, and does not really use threats or promises to persuade us to be good.  God’s unconditional love can seem not only unfair but reckless and irresponsible.  [I remember being criticised back in the 70s for talking too much about God’s love and forgiveness and not enough about hell and heaven.]  I suppose that, if that’s where people are at, then that’s where they are at!

The tragedy is that they could grow so much more, and their capacity to handle the complexities of life could be much more nuanced and adequate.  And I also think that somehow their sense of inner peace would be so much deeper and secure.  But, while everybody sings about love, those who have really discovered it are fewer.  To discover love means learning to surrender control.  It means feeling vulnerable.  It runs the risk of being exploited and even victimised.  It means dying to self-interest.  Is it worth it?  To those who have further to grow, it doesn’t make sense.

God thinks love is worth the risk ... and that is the God that Jesus would love us to discover.