A priest dies and is waiting in line at the pearly gates.
Ahead of him is a guy dressed in sunglasses, a white tee shirt, leather jacket, and jeans. St. Peter addresses
this guy, “Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the
kingdom of heaven?” The guy replies, “My name is Vinnie Bambino, I’m a taxi
driver from New York.” St. Peter consults his list, smiles and says to the taxi
driver, “Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the kingdom of
heaven.” The taxi driver goes into heaven with his robe and staff, and it is
the priest’s turn. He stands erect and booms out, “I am Father Joseph Snow,
pastor of St. Mary’s for the last forty-five years.” St. Peter consults his
list. He says to the priest, “Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter
the kingdom of heaven.” “Just a minute,” says the priest. “That man was a taxi
driver, and he gets a silken robe and golden staff. And, I, a priest, get a
cotton robe and a wooden staff? How can this be?” “Up here, Father, we work by
results,” says St. Peter. “While you preached, people slept; while he drove,
people prayed.”
I think we can all understand the priest’s indignation.
Don’t you just hate it when people budge in line, especially those who we think
aren’t worthy of budging in front of us? I remember as a kid how much I
disliked those who budged in line, especially when I had been waiting and standing
patiently in line for a long period of time. I remember people around me saying something
like, “He really has his nerve breaking into line!” From our own human experience,
we can understand the people in this parable feeling a bit cheated when the
workers who worked fewer hours received the same amount of pay as they did. We
tend to look at things from our human experience and perspective and that is
exactly the problem that Jesus is pointing out in today’s gospel.
From our human experience we seem to be always trying to earn things.
We try to earn a living in order to support ourselves and our families. We earn
and save to buy the house, or the car, or whatever it is we think is important
to our lives. This human inclination leads us to think that we need to “earn”
our way into heaven. If we say all these prayers, and do these specific “holy” things,
then we are going to earn all this grace. No pain, no gain, right? Therein lies
the problem. The Church has always taught that grace is not earned, it is
freely given to us by God. God freely distributes grace to us. Grace costs us
nothing. We tend to think that grace is something that we can accumulate and
redeem like airline frequent mile points to get us into heaven. The problem is
that we cannot buy our way into heaven. It was exactly that notion that brought about
the Protestant Reformation. The Vatican was selling indulgences to the very
rich in order to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It was like, “Buy a
brick, and go to heaven. Buy 20 bricks and skip purgatory altogether.” It was this human notion of buying ourselves a piece of heaven
that caused the then priest and theologian, Martin Luther to nail his 95th
Theses to the door of Our Saints Church in Wittenberg thus commencing a major
schism in the Church. We cannot buy our way to heaven, with money nor
indulgences.
If we cannot buy our way into heaven, then why do we pray? Why
do we follow the commandments, and try to live as faithfully as we can the
Great Commandment of loving God and loving neighbor? Will all our prayers make
God any greater than God already is? Well, no. Will following the commandments
and living the Great Commandment of Jesus fulfill God in any way? Well, no.
Then why do we do these things?
Over and over, the past several Sundays we hear Jesus imply
or say literally that human reasoning is flawed. We need to quit thinking as
human beings think. We need to begin to see the world through the eyes of God
and begin to think as God thinks. So why do we spend a lifetime in prayer? Why do
we strive to live good lives by following the commandments, and living to the
best of our ability the great commandment of Jesus? We do it for ourselves.
In our praying, we acknowledge that that there is something
beyond this very short and finite life, something for which we long more than
life itself, union with the divine mystery which for lack of adequate language we
call God. We know instinctively that the only way to find true happiness and
peace is being united to the God who created us. Our prayer is a way in which we are able to communicate individually and collectively to the God who loves us.
Why do we follow the commandments and try as faithfully as
we can to live the Great Commandment of Jesus? Again, it is all for us. It is
the way in which we fulfill our nature as human beings, to truly live out the
destiny that God meant and wishes for all of humanity from the creation of the
world. Many people spend an entire lifetime trying to find their true selves,
to fulfill themselves, and all the while the only way we can do this is by
living the commandments, by loving God and our neighbor. We do not earn our way
into heaven during our lives. Rather, our entire lives are a time of
preparation, our life experiences, both good and bad meant to prepare ourselves
for the happiness that awaits us in heaven. As disciples of Jesus, if we truly
love God with all of our heart, with all our mind, and with all of our soul,
would not our love for our neighbors
lead us to hope and delight that they receive exactly that for which we hope
and long for ourselves?
In St. Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians, he writes,
“Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in
abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for
the glory of God. Therefore, we are
not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away,
our inner self is being renewed day by day.” (2 Cor 4:15-16) This one very
profound phrase sums up human life and why Jesus was born, lived, died, and
rose from the dead. Everything indeed is for us. Everything that God has done and does is for us!
God is not about exclusion, God is about inclusion. This
past weekend, Pope Francis presided over the weddings of many people whom once
we would say lived in irregular relationships. He officiated at the weddings of
couples who had been cohabitating for a number of years, many of whom had
children and had been excluded from the sacraments of the Church. He did not
want them to be excluded from the Church, rather he wanted them included in the
Church, to be part of the Church. He was soundly criticized by some cardinals
and bishops for what he did, but wasn’t Pope Francis doing exactly what the generous
landowner was doing in the parable today? I think so.
It matters not whether St. Peter greets us with silken robes
and golden staffs or cotton robes and wooden staffs. It matters not whether we
are first in line or last in line. What matters the most is the eternal
happiness and peace that awaits us, and to rejoice in all those with us, whether
they budged in line, or not.
