Wealth,
power and status do not belong in the Kingdom of Heaven. I’ve said this before
and tonight’s Gospel is another example of this, particularly emphasizing
status. Yet quite frankly, other than in a remembering to check your privilege
sense, none of us here this evening have all that much status. And I expect
that not many of us desire to seek it, though only God knows what’s in a
person’s heart, so I’m not going to get into that. What I’m going to get into,
what stood out to me in the Gospel as I read it this time, is what Jesus had to
say about repayment or reward.
Before we
get to what Jesus said, I want to make clear what Jesus did not say. “You’ll
get your reward in heaven” is a concept that has been wielded as a weapon of
religious abuse. Jesus never said, “Do nothing to defend yourself or better
your situation because you will get your reward in heaven.” He never said, “God
wants you to suffer hear on earth so you earn your reward in heaven” Nor did he
say, “Love your neighbor instead of yourself.”
That last
one reminds me of the saying, “there’s no such thing as altruism” which is
usually followed by an example of how there is some selfish motivation behind
helping anyone. So what? I mean, Jesus is not saying don’t be selfish in
tonight’s Gospel. He’s actually suggesting a very selfish motivation. The
question here isn’t do you want to be rewarded, the questions is what kind of a reward do you want to get? Not
when do you want your reward, but rather do you want an earthly reward or a
heavenly one?
Now I
confess in my personal piety, I’ve fooled myself into thinking that I’ve
rejected reward and punishment as motivations.
I must admit I’ve been rather self-righteous about it at times. What
I’ve confused with reward and punishment in general, is the specific wielding
of promises of Heaven and threats of Hell as ways to control people, or as a
very twisted moral compass. There are moral arguments in the Bible, the Golden
Rule is a moral argument for example, one rooted in empathy. “Do it or God will punish you” is not
a moral argument, though.
So in
rejecting Heaven and Hell as motivations (which in my case motivated me in the
wrong direction, the more I worried about the afterlife, the worse my behavior
was) I instead embraced “We love because God loved us first.” I sought out
connecting to God’s love for me in prayer and meditation and reflection on the
Gospels. This led to my actually falling in love with Christ. And while I don’t
think I ever saw that as altruistic, I think I was blind to loving and being
loved as a reward in and of itself.
Perhaps this
is what Jesus was getting at when he said his yoke was easy and his burden
light, despite the suffering that is inevitable in leading a Christian life;
inevitable, by the way, not
demanded. The first commandment love the Lord your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength is its
own reward.
Now I have
said, but really had no right to say, that living out this love will inevitably
lead to loving one’s neighbor as oneself. There is still effort and work to do
to get there and so we
need a second commandment to summarize the law. What I can say is that having
felt the love of God, and spending time with that, actively seeing yourself
through God’s eyes, it is much easier to see others as God sees them. We can
transfer the feeling onto others. We cannot see into their hearts, but we can
see the image of God in us all; even in those who cannot repay us for inviting
them to our banquet, cannot repay us for our kindness, who in fact may be
incapable of loving us back.
It is true
that Jesus refers to a future reward for this behavior, at the time of the
resurrection, but I believe that the being blessed, the actual righteousness
(as opposed to self-righteousness) is a present reward; the reward of loving
and being loved by God. And certainly I look forward to the beatific vision, of
seeing God “face to face” so to speak. But why deny yourself the reward of
living in God’s love, of having a love affair with God here now as much as
possible? For it is possible. Like any relationship it takes work. Prayer and
meditation and reflection on the Gospels is work, but the rewards are great.
And while they happen on earth, they are not earthly rewards.
We can make
all the earthly changes we want, but without love, without God, as Paul has
told us, it is empty and just a lot of noise.
Soon we will be participating in an enactment of the Heavenly Banquet.
We will be feasting on God’s own self. We will be participating as the body of
Christ. This all came about from God loving us so much that God became us, so
that we are not just in the image of God, but God’s own flesh and blood. This
is here now, both earthly and heavenly.
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