Journey's Weekly Homilies

Journey Catholic Community September 22, 2002
Matthew 20: 1-16
Tom Kinzie

There is one doctrine that some Christians hold that those of us in the small “c” catholic tradition certainly do not believe.  That doctrine is the one concerning the total depravity of man.  (Though I did hear an exasperated female seminarian say that she believed in the total depravity of men, all right, though she did hold a little more hope for the possibilities of human beings.  I also remember the character of the wise elder in the movie, “Little Big Man.”  He referred to the Sioux as Human Beings.  The whites had such destructive and odd behaviors that he wasn’t quite sure what to call them.  But let’s leave that aside for now.)

We believe in the abiding presence of God, a presence within and among us. We know that human beings have been and are capable of committing some very depraved acts—we recently marked the one-year anniversary of just such an act.  Indeed, in this country we spend millions and millions of dollars every year making sure we can commit such acts with all the technological skill at our disposal.  Even in our hearts we can be surprised by the petty jealousies, manipulations, defensiveness, and emotional violence that can overtake us.
 
But for all of that, as the poet Hopkins put it, “there is the dearest freshness deep down things…”  That freshness is the abiding presence of God.   It can become well hid, but we believe, it cannot be done away with.  And further, we believe, that we have the freedom and we are given the grace to ever more closely associate and align our lives with that sacred presence.  It is there waiting for us.  It calls out to us, calling us by our own name.

The wisdom traditions have many stories like this.  There is a beggar who sits on a box just outside the gates of a city.  He is so ill that he cannot work for a living and he has to depend upon what people give him in order to survive.  On this day he gets nothing.  Finally, one person stops, but to the consternation of the beggar the stranger says that he has nothing he can give the beggar.  The stranger says to the beggar, “What is that box you are sitting on?”  The beggar replies that it is just an old box he found and he has been sitting on it or years.  The stranger asks the beggar if he can look at the box.  The beggar stands up and the stranger picks up the box and notices that under the dust there are intricate carvings and designs and the box seems to have a lid.  The stranger opens the box and sees that in the box are many gold coins, enough for the beggar to live out his life with all his needs satisfied.  The story is at least about the nearness of God and the new life in God.  This presence is available to us whenever we are open to finding it…within us and among us.

It was the summer after the 7th grade that my father decided it would be good if I had a summer job.  Before I could formulate a persuasive argument against the abhorrent notion I discovered it was a done deal.  It was on the front yard of my home town church, and after church services were over when we boys were chasing each other, that Brother Walt Law walked up to me.  He was the largest apple orchard in our church and he said, in his halting, stammering speech, “Well, Tom, you want to do some apple work, do You?”  Evidently it was a rhetorical question because before I could answer that I certainly did not want to do apple work, he went on, “Well, be at my house at 7:00 am tomorrow and I’ll put you to work.”  7am on a summer morning?!?  I had one of those “aha” moments in which I realized that my life had taken a sudden and precipitous turn for the worse.

Of course it was my poor mother who bore the brunt of it.  Getting me up, fixing breakfast and a sack lunch, and then driving me out to Walt’s house by 7am.  There was a bunch of people waiting to work and we piled into jeeps and pick-ups for the drive up to the orchards.  There Walt gave me a quick lesson in apple thinning, how to place the little green apples between my thumb and index finger, twisting the apples off in order to create space so the other apples would grow large.

Well, the ladders were heavy, the trees large, the sun hot, and the work boring but not too difficult.  The first week went by and it didn’t seem like more than a month or two had passed.  Walt came out to hand us paychecks and that was exciting.  Walt came up to me and said, in a kind of mocking and apologetic manner, “Tom, your check is only about half of everybody else's, but I figure that’s about what you’re work is worth.  Why, I’ve seen ticks sucking on a dog’s tale move faster than you do.  You got to light a fire under a tick to get it to move.  I don’t see any fire under you.”

This wasn’t Jesus point of course and Jesus wasn’t talking about a mad farmer who paid everyone the same wage regardless of how much work they put in.  Jesus is saying, among other things, that when you discover the God source within and when you begin to open up your life to the presence of God, a presence that has always been there and is waiting for you, you have arrived.  You are there.  I mean you have arrived and you have not arrived.  In the spiritual life there is always more arriving to occur.  But you are nevertheless there.  Wherever and whenever you discover the presence of God you are in the right place at the right time.  The good news of God is not just about second chances, but about third and fourth and fifth chances.

We come when we come.  We arrive when we arrive.  We are continually arriving again and again.  And every time is the right time.  As one writer put it, “Each new arrival, each new change in the depth of our consciousness of the presence of God changes us, changes how we see each other, changes the very way we see and live in all reality.”

Thomas Merton wrote a prayer that very much is about all of this:

In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling as if we did not know where we were going.  In another sense we have already arrived.  We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are traveling and in darkness.  Burt we already possess (God) by grace, and therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.  But oh! How far have I to go to find you in Whom I have already arrived.

I used to think the ones who worked all day and only got paid what everyone else got were really gypped.  I now think they were the lucky ones, if only they had known it!  They said yes to God’s abiding presence.  They had the whole day to say yes, again and again.

There is no moment like the present moment to open ourselves to the love of God.  Indeed, as spiritual writers often say, there is only the present moment in which to open ourselves to God’s love.  First hour, third hour, sixth hour...it is irrelevant.  For when we do say yes, God is already there.