September 22, 2005
Race
Pentecost 19/21A (Mt 21.28-32)
A scene in an old Clark Gable movie shows him seated at a shoeshine stand getting a shine. The lad shining his shoes comments idly, “Great day for the race.” Gable, wondering if he’d missed a turn at the track, anxiously asks, “What race?” The lad answers, “The human race.”
Our vision, our understanding depend so very much on our perspectives. The two sons in Jesus’ parable were asked by their father to work in the vineyard. One said he would and didn’t, and the other said he wouldn’t and did. This, like a lot of Jesus’ parables, beg an explanation that he doesn’t always give. When he does, it’s rarely the one we either want or expect.
So Jesus never said this was a parable of the kingdom until he elaborates. From a parable about two sons, Jesus segués to, “The tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” He’s talking to churchers, and he says that largely about the kind of folk you don’t often see in their midst, the kind you’d never expect to do the will of God, and he says that in their way, they do it anyway.
Then Jesus reminds his audience that they’ve already heard all this from John, the Baptiser, and how they didn’t listen when he’d said it plain as day. Then he reminds them again that the last people they’d ever expect could find John’s “way of righteousness” are the IRS middle management guy and the streetwalkers. They “go into the kingdom God,” for they could never enter it unless they recognized it. They repent. They believe. It might be called “redemptive redundancy.”
It’s what we expect to see, what we look for, that without pausing to think, colors our perceptions. It’s a common communication mistake. We hear about the race, and one thinks about horses while the other thinks about humans.
Jesus’ story is about such presumptions and intentions. Neither a church nor a nation will get very far on such a basis. We cannot and we dare not presume what a religious vocabulary or a flag lapel pin or a patriot act alone means apart from the substance of it. Merely claiming to be a compassionate conservative will never reveal so much about caring or conserving as truly being and doing.
The kingdom of God and its voting citizens are probably always a surprise. For it’s not a place. It’s a companionship. The real litmus test for it is that wherever the brokenness of the world is being healed, there is present the kingdom of God. Least of all may that healing have any discernible religious labels. It could be secular to the core. One way Jesus put it is rather like this, “Wherever you did it unto one of the least of these, you did it unto me.”
In the kingdom of God, it is always a great day for the race.
[Visit Episcopal Relief and Development at http://www.er-d.org/ to make a donation to Katrina Relief or Episcopal Migration Ministries at emm@episcopalchurch.org to volunteer to assist displaced people with housing.]