“Anyone who has will be given more
and will have more than enough; but
anyone who has not will be deprived
of even what he has.” --Matthew 13:12
Huh?
What on earth is Jesus talking about? And why would He say something that sounds so unfair? The Gospel message is supposed to be a message of sharing and compassion. If someone is in need, we are supposed to go to them and share what we have with them. I thought!
But here is Mr. Nice-guy-Turn-the-other-cheek-Do-unto-others, saying something that sounds a lot like: Tough luck!
This verse is a stumbling block for me. It is something that has always troubled me. I am one of those Christians who desperately want everything to be “fair” and gentle; I want a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light! And this doesn’t fit into that vision of Jesus the love-child and erstwhile hippy/peacenik, sandal wearing vegetarian, commune living carpenter. My childhood vision of Jesus was probably as much shaped by Super-friends and The Archies as it was by church, scripture & random episodes of Davey and Goliath; more Godspell than Gospel, if you know what I mean. I come from a spiritual school of simplicity and the obvious. Guitar masses, tambourines and agape feasts with broken baguettes passed from person to person at the end of a teen-life retreat. Lots of Cat Stevens music intermingled with our hymns.
And so, the idea of Jesus ever saying anything that sounds unfair just feels wrong; un-Christian, even. And yet, there it is, right there in the Gospel. And not just in Matthew but also Mark (4:25) & Luke (8:18). So, what on earth is Jesus telling us?
One of the first things I think we need to do when a teaching makes us uncomfortable is look to our discomfort. Why does this teaching trouble us? Where is it challenging us? What is it asking of us that we are hesitant to give? What are we holding back?
For me, this teaching stings particularly when it talks of taking away even “what little they have.” Too often I can find myself thinking like this; pondering what little I have left. What little time left –I’m 60 now—what little energy, years left to me: to finish my novel, deliver an address to the UN, win the Pulitzer prize and/or a MacArthur Grant… Or even to finish streaming Midsomer Murders! (How many darned seasons are there?) Sometimes, when I feel this way, disheartened and self-pitying, I find myself growing resentful, my heart hardening as I ponder all I have sacrificed or given up or never experienced. The many dishes I have washed, and floors I have swept, the diapers I changed, the date nights when I got the kids to bed, the house quieted, lit a candle, poured some wine and prepared a little plate of brie and crackers, only to find my wife asleep on the couch. In my disappointment, I see not her exhaustion, the work she has done, the burden she has borne and the rest she so desperately needs, only my own wants and needs not being met, the resentful embittering sense of what little I have growing inside me.
And I want to scream out—like a little child—Not fair! I want to cry out to God: This isn’t fair! You can’t do this.
And I think that is the problem, my problem with this reading, this teaching. I am looking for the wrong thing. I am looking for fairness. And God is offering me abundance.
Pondering this reading for a few days now, it occurs to me that it may actually be a teaching about attitude. How do you look at the world? How do you see life? And a phrase occurred to me: imaginative abundance. Do you have an imagination of abundance or of meagerness? Do you look at the world, at your life, and see the abundance of gifts you have received? Or do you look at the world see only what you lack, where you have been slighted or ignored, what little you have received? This ability (or willingness) to see all that you have been given: life, family, friends, sunshine, rain, abilities or talents, laughter and tears, as gift, as grace it brings comfort and it consoles us. It is itself a sense of abundance. Of more… and in some way it multiplies everything we have. It gives us more.
And the other way of looking at the world, the lens of meagerness, of not enough, leaves us always feeling like we have not received what we needed, what we wanted, what we deserve. It leaves us always watching what the other one has, what the other person has received and measuring our share against theirs. We stand there like a small child who has been given half of a popsicle; and instead of enjoying it, we look at ours and compare it to the other half and we cry out: Her half is bigger! That’s not fair! She got more than me!
And aren’t we all that child at times? I know I am. This is the attitude that says there is never really enough. That when you get more, by default I get less and that’s not fair.
And yet… fairness isn’t what Jesus came for. He came to give Himself, and to give Himself completely. He came for grace and grace overflows. It is at the heart of abundance. A heart that isn’t constantly measuring and checking its pockets to see how much it has, and comparing that to what others seem to have. That kind of heart, that kind of thinking, that kind of imagination of lack, of meagerness, blinds us to the truth of grace and God’s abundance, God’s mercy, God’s love.
Open your eyes to the abundance around you? An abundance that overflows. Let your imagination open to it, to the grace of it, the gift of it, and feel it washing over you, the joy of it washing over you like that first cleansing wave as you walk out into the surf on the beach. Think about the last time you went to Galveston. You take off your shoes and begin walking toward the waves. Feel it. It can be a little scary at first. You don’t know what to expect. Seaweed and crabs and fish and shells and the foam clinging to your ankles… it’s all a bit overwhelming at first… but then you realize. Yes. This is why I came. For all of this; for the strange enveloping wonder of it. For the amazing abundance of it. I was made for this.
And speaking of abundance, there’s more. When it comes to scripture, there is always more. In the very next chapter we catch a glimpse of this abundance in action. There is a wonderful little story about a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. And a few thousand hungry people.
Open your eyes. The abundance isn’t imaginary. It is so real it can feed thousands… and still overflow with plenty for more.
