For Sunday
Proper 22C
Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
A writer once pointed out something so obvious, we should have seen it. They wrote that a father looking after his own kids isn’t babysitting. He’s doing his basic job as a father. This was similarly articulated as a recurring joke in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, that the eponymous character would seek to be rewarded for doing the things he is supposed to do. The same character would also feign incompetence to get out of work, too. These are so common as concepts that millions of people nod along and say too true!
When Jesus offers his apostles this same teaching, he is reminding them that the commands are, in fact, the baseline. This is is what it means to be a follower of Jesus: to love God and neighbor. To be as Jesus in the world. Not as aspiration, but as normal, command, very way of being.
I’ll note that he says this after commanding the apostles forgive the repentant sinner every single time. After saying sin is terrible. Call it out. And also forgive the sinner in their repentance. That is why the apostles balk at it, asking him to give them more faith. Because that seems like a lot to them. And I suspect it seems like a lot to us, too. Given that, I suspect Jesus’s response might translate to some as Tough. Figure it out.
I don’t think it says that, exactly. Because I think Jesus would have us invite the servant to our table. That our own obsession with getting the things done in the right order is more a reflection of the kingdoms of earth than the dream of God. That our work, for all that it is oriented toward the will of God, ought to have at its heart, the work that God would have us do. Repentance and forgiveness, love and devotion, service and commitment. That this is God’s work, our work, and our mutual conviction. May we be so ordered, so generous, so convicted.