THE ABUNDANCE
September 21, 2008

My little book is getting older but it still stands as one of the best. In Buechner's Telling the Truth, he writes, People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the Lamb . . .

Years before Buechner there was another classic that some of you may remember by a fellow named JB Phillips, I believe, entitled, Your God is Too Small. It is a similar idea, that we humans are apt to shrink the idea of God so that we can understand God better but what we understand, in doing so, is not God at all, which, if you think about it, is not very helpful if it is really God we want to know. Of course, it also suggests that by shrinking God we also shrink what God demands of us making life with God easier and not so exciting. In short God becomes what we think we want God to be and we don't have to become what God wants us to be. Ironically, by resisting the Holy Spirit we oppress our own spirit, by keeping God at a safe distance, we may never even glimpse the abundance that is at the heart of God.

What Jesus tries to tell us and show us with his teaching and with his life is that God is not the result of our expectations but much more, indeed, quite different than anything we expect. In the words of a contemporary mystic, It was as if God had said, I am here, but not as you have known me.

We are prepared for fairness but not for grace. And the problem with that is that we either fall into the trap of self-righteousness where we accumulate enough points to earn God's approval or we fall into the abyss of despair where we know in our heart of hearts that we are doomed, that we can never earn enough points to please God. We either believe that we deserve God's blessing and are therefore entitled to the blessings of life and are probably superior to others who have fallen short or that we deserve nothing, have given up hope that life can ever be good enough. Either way we are not really happy, whether for fear of being unmasked or failing at our task or for having nothing to look forward to, forgetting or never knowing that God does not give us what we deserve but what we can never earn. There is one striking similarity between the texts from Exodus and the text from Matthew and that is that no one is happy, there is grumbling and complaining and much discontent and why not? Keeping score, we either try too hard or give up trying at all, failing in both cases to see or even imagine the abundance that is God present in the life of the world.

In-Yong Lee, a student at Duke writing in the Christian Century this week says, The vineyard in the parable is the kingdom of God, a world that is totally different from ours. Someone else called it a world, where comfortable expectations are withdrawn, and the unexpected prevails. It is no accident that this is so.

Why do you suppose that the landowner in the story not only pays the latecomers an equal amount to those who had worked all day but also paid the latecomers first so that those who were their first were paid last and could see what was going on? Wouldn't it have been easier to simply pay those who had hired on in the morning what they earned and sent them on their way before paying those who had signed up at the end of the day? Obviously the point of the story is not just that God is generous but that we are not . . . . because we, who were perfectly happy with the deal we had made and were paid a perfectly satisfactory wage for it were not happy to see others who had done less receive the same. Think about it. Nothing is changed for the first workers. They have received what they earned. Why are they so upset that someone else could receive what they have not earned? Perhaps it is because we do not operate out of abundance but out of fear. We are afraid that if things are not always fair and equal we may lose out, never imagining the opposite, that if we were to not get we deserve it might actually be something more than we deserve. The assumption with us is if we don't get our fair share we are probably getting less but what if we were to get more than our fair share? In part this is why the notion of grace is incomprehensible to us. Grace is always more than we deserve. That is why it is grace. It cannot be earned. It is always a gift. It is the gift we cannot repay but can only give thanks for. It is humbling because it is acknowledgement that we couldn't do what has been done for us. Grace is, in fact, a matter of profound faith, faith in the sense of abandoning all of our presumptions and assumptions about what is deserved or not deserved and an opening and plain surrender to the love and mercy of God which bears little resemblance to the self-serving love and calculated mercy that we practice. Why is it so hard to receive God's grace? Because it requires letting go of the desperate conviction that we really can take care of ourselves, that we don't need any help, least of all from God who we can barely comprehend. Why is this so important? Because it is only when we learn our limitations that we are finally open to the abundance of God. Until we know how much we need God we will never know the God who can save us. We are surrounded by the abundance of God but we dare not see it for fear of seeing the poverty of our own lives, refusing the generosity of God for fear that such generosity may be demanded of us, closing our hearts to the Holy Spirit for fear that it may take us where we had not planned to go.

Yet even so, grace abounds. In our stumbling, reluctant embrace of God we are given more than we deserve, life that is abundant, that holds out every possibility before us, is ever present, is here, whether we dare to open our eyes and hearts to see it or not, here, overcoming our fears, softening our resistance, breaking our hearts, preparing us for the kingdom of God that is beyond our expectations but not beyond our reach when we dare to stop reaching and grasping and simply hold open our arms to be embraced, to be held, by the love that made us and never abandons us even when we turn our backs and walk away, the love that knows no bounds, is, indeed, the abundance of God, a reason, if there ever was one, to lift up our hearts, to shake off the complaints and the disappointments and fears and be glad for it is not as bad as we thought and it is better than we have yet dreamed. Thanks be to God. We serve such a God not because we are afraid not to but because our grateful hearts can do no less. The generous abundance of God makes us grateful and being grateful makes us generous. So it is that the abundance results in abundance and we are saved by the grace of God, grace upon grace upon grace. Amen.