Boundless Creative Love and Relentless Redemptive Compassion

Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

As we listen to the Word of God this morning, we find yet another chapter in St. Matthew’s discourse about forgiveness and reconciliation.

We begin with a reading from the Prophet Isaiah in which God is self-defined as generosity – boundless creative love and relentless redemptive compassion. But we are fools reading with one eye, listening with one ear, if we do not realize the tremendous exigency that the revelation carries with it.

Strange as it might seem at first, in our sinful condition we do not really want God to be indiscriminately compassionate. It offends our sense of law and order. Our notions of justice are petty and self-serving when compared with divine justice. Isaiah is sadly right in his own day as well as in ours when he proclaims that God has said: “Your thoughts are not my thoughts… As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” In its original context, it is a Word of promise and of peace, a word of encouragement and affection. Why, then, do we need to hear it as a word of reproof and condemnation? The passage promises that God will freely forgive. It offers universal compassionate welcome to those who will abandon evil and return to God. It tells us that we can hope for more than our own hearts would offer.

The parable that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel illuminated the matter so well that it is rather embarrassing. I suppose that most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, must admit to a strong reaction to the story. It simply does not seem fair! To be sure, it isn’t fair if we think of this story as some sort of negotiation between workers and employers. However, this is not such a story. This is a story about God’s justice, God’s willingness to forgive. If we try to read the story as a way to resolve the strike between autoworkers and car manufacturers, or the strike between screenwriters and actors with producers of movies, we will find that it simply does not work. However, if we look at it as a story of God’s willingness to forgive our sins, whether we repent early in life or later in life, then the story makes all the sense in the world.

This particular parable is Jesus’ answer to a question that Peter asked at the end of the preceding chapter of the Gospel. A rich young man had asked Jesus what he needed to do to gain eternal life. The interaction between Jesus and the young man did not go well, for Jesus asked the young man to sell everything he had, to give the proceeds to the poor, and then to follow him. As the young man walked away, Jesus said: “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” This prompted Peter to ask: “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” Jesus used the parable that we have heard this morning as his answer to Peter.

While we may try to look at matters spiritual through the same pair of glasses we use when looking at matters temporal, the fact remains – the lenses we use for temporal matters simply distort spiritual vision. To go back to the question that the rich young man asked Jesus, one can only say that the man has asked the wrong question. He cannot do anything to gain eternal life. Eternal life is a freely given gift from God. We cannot earn it. Good deeds do not guarantee it. A multiplicity of prayers has no effect on the gift. God freely bestows eternal life on all who put their trust in God.

This is a hard lesson to learn. Since our childhood, we have been taught that hard work results in gain, and we have tried to apply that principle to our relationship with God. We have even used the familiar scales of justice to illustrate the day that we enter heaven. On one side is a pile that represents our sins. On the other side, a similar pile is used to represent our good works and prayers. Those who get into heaven are the ones who have offset their sins with good deeds and prayers. This image is absolutely wrong. We should not look upon God as judge, jury, and executioner instead of the generous, loving, and compassionate person that God is.

I agree. It seems ridiculously easy to say that eternal life depends upon our faith. Yet how many times have we heard Jesus say to a person whom he has just healed that it was their faith that saved them? A blind man, a woman with a hemorrhage, a man whose daughter has died, a leper, a paralytic, a man possessed by a demon, and everyone else who experienced the healing power of Jesus had been told succinctly that it had been their faith that saved them. However, we fail to hear these words and to understand what they really mean. Faith saves, faith heals, and faith is needed to believe that our sins have been forgiven. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts and our ways are not God’s ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways, and God’s thoughts higher than our thoughts.

If St. Paul really means what he wrote to the Philippians in the passage excerpted for today, he must indeed have shifted his position quite drastically from the stance that he attributed to himself in his days as a Pharisee. Perhaps it is only something that he prays for and aspires to – the greatness of Christ should shine out in his person, whether in a laborious life or in an early death; because in any case, life to him is Christ with all the implications which that holds. Thus, it is for us as well. Like St. Paul, we must shift our ideas about forgiveness, about compassion, and just about every other facet of our spirituality to really appreciate God’s generosity, God’s boundless love, and God’s compassion.