4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 30 January 2022
We all have our limits, our boundaries. At different times, in different places, with different people we are used to drawing the line in the sand. We take our stand from which we will not cross. We have our bottom line, from which we will negotiate no further.
This of course is well understandable, and even necessary for a sense of self and identity without which we can have no genuine relationship. We are not simply reeds in the wind or chameleons who are constantly changing colours. We are constantly in a process of self-definitions, and sometimes that self-definition occurs negatively: we define ourselves as being not something or other.
The Kingdom of God has never followed the ordinary logic though. By its very nature the Kingdom finds it difficult to draw boundaries. There is a certain promiscuity to grace as one person has put it. And that is a scandal to us. Grace, as the promise and celebration of God’s self-giving, is not defined as belonging to this place and not another. Grace is not coloured this way and not another. Grace will look for every crack it can to infiltrate our world. There is no situation where grace cannot enter. Thankfully for us, grace has no pride! Grace appears wherever there is an honesty and openness of heart, a desire for life, wherever there is hope born of hurt, wherever there is the move to justice no matter how obscure, no matter how limited, no matter how small and fragile. Grace does not ask questions before it arrives. It does not have its checklist of criteria. Rather it throws itself at every opportunity that presents itself.
This generosity of grace is a great scandal to us. Its lack of pride is a scandal to us who pride ourselves on the way we define ourselves, as it was for the people of Jesus’ time as we hear in today’s gospel. But the largesse of grace resists any attempt to control or to contain it. It delights in a wild unpredictability. And that unnerves us. That is not quite as clean as we would like it. For who knows where it will appear next? Maybe amidst the very people we have defined ourselves against! Maybe in the people on the other side of the line we have drawn in the sand!
Such is the wild and unkempt freedom of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God will not be tied, will not be enclosed, will not be controlled. As such, the Kingdom of God is far bigger than the Church, just as it was far bigger than the people of Israel. The Church does not own the Kingdom, just as it cannot control it. By no means are the two the same. For it is precisely the role of the Church not to control the Kingdom and the unkempt beauty of grace, but rather to be its harbinger. It is not our role to tame the Kingdom to our likes and dislikes, to our criteria of what is acceptable or not, but to be its instrument, to be on constant watch for where and how it might be entering our world. This is our role as the Church: to be the people, not who own or possess grace, but to be those who can give it its name, who can identify it, and who can then nurture and celebrate its birthing.
Beyond that, we let it go. We can let it run free, ready to be surprised where and how it appears next. Yes, maybe even in those dark corners of our own life we have never regarded as acceptable.
Thank God, for the generosity and abundance of grace.
