Pentecost XVI
Another parable about the kingdom of heaven in Matthew, and this one is about Timing. What is this place, and how do I get to it? Is it for some and not others? And, if I come to it late in life, have I wasted my time before? Timing.
(Poor Justice Ginsburg, if her life is defined only by the several months she did not yet live!)
Or, does my ability to see the borders of this kingdom of heaven depend on others being kept out of the vision? If anyone can see it, and enter it at any time, what good is this Exclusive Time Share I thought I had signed up for? I don't want the latecomers on the golf course -- they cheapen my experience valuation...
Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven 'is like' all the workers being paid the same, no matter when during the day they began to work. Quite the imaginative economic model, and more than one corporate board or shareholder, small business owner, worker or employer might balk. But, while it does have things to say to us about how workers are treated in a profit-seeking economy, it is being offered here as an illustration of what one might call grace offered freely to all, all the time, without merit.
You, too, can step into this parallel reality defined by grace at any time. There is no latecomer fee. And, the experience of the longtime seer is not cheapened by allowing the seeming arriviste to join in -- grace is one thing of which there is an inexhaustible supply. That is actually one of the defining characteristics of this place glimpsed from afar, and inhabited very near: grace to see and inhabit it is inexhaustible, for - like the forgiveness and mercy we mentioned last week - this grace and its power are not something we control or dole out, but which come from outside us, from a divine source that can not be used up.
And the pithy way Jesus sums up this economy of grace, renewal, and mercy: 'the last will be first, and the first will be last.' Perhaps there are implications for the economy in the kingdom of this world, after all, and how we might see it with the eyes of grace and mercy, and structure it anew. After all, nothing Real can be lost, or cheapened, or held on to long term, for that matter. What are we waiting for? Jesus says elsewhere that the kingdom of heaven is now, and is within and among us, as well as waiting for us, yet to come.
May our eyes be continually opened, just in time.