This Sunday we are baptising twelve month old twins.
Reading the gospel this week, I was
reminded of the phrase ‘cost/benefit analysis’. It is usually used in the business world to
calculate the financial benefit of projects. For example, if you put new equipment into a factory
it would cost 20 million dollars. If the new equipment will
- double
production, meaning extra sales of 2 million a year.
- a life span of 20 years
- a life span of 20 years
- a total ‘benefit’
of 40 million
A cost of 20 million and benefit of 40
million, it is worth the project going ahead.
The same idea exists in the gospel
reading. People were working out where to sit to maximise their prestige, without
having to be embarrassed by being asked to move to a lower seat. There was a pecking
order, and each host had to work out who sat in the most prestigious seats.
When we attend a wedding today, there
are usually place cards, so you know where to sit. Usually immediate family,
then extended family and friends. What would happen if you moved your place
card from the back table to the table nearest the bride and groom?
In the first part of the wedding
story, when Jesus is addressing the guests, he seems to be working within the
cultural world - a world with a limited amount of honour to go around, and it
was important to get as much as you can, and not give any away. The advice to
sit in the lower place, so you will asked to move to a higher place makes
perfect sense in the world of honour and shame.
Then when Jesus talks to the host, and
advises that you invite people who can’t invite you back, he is going against the
cultural traditions.
By being invited to functions you
gained honour or prestige. Why would you invite someone who isn’t able to
reciprocate your invitation? You are giving them some of your honour, and they
are not going to be able to give you honour. That makes no sense in the society
of the time.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to
happen much today either.
We live in a culture which still
expects us to reciprocate in some way. If I buy you coffee this time, you pay
next time.
When we live with the idea of exchange
rather than generosity, we lose out.
I wonder about the cost/benefit analysis
of having a child, or two?
Not everything in life is able to be
measured and costed – how do you cost a hug? Or a sleepless night? Or the first
day of school?
How do you measure the benefit of a friend who drops everything to be with you in an emergency?
How do you measure the benefit of a friend who drops everything to be with you in an emergency?
We can measure distance and time, but how
do we measure love or grace?
One issue this passage is addressing is
the scarcity model of thinking, that is, there is a limited amount of honour,
so get as much as you can. Sometimes in our society it is prestige, but might
also be property, money, food, jobs or power. Anytime we think there is not enough
of something, we tend to hold tightly to what we have, and see if we can get
more.
“But what if there was? What if there
was enough and more than enough to go around? What difference would that make
in our own peace of mind and the way we treated others? What if we saw others
not as competitors for scarce resources but as partners, even siblings,
commissioned by God to distribute the riches of God’s goodness and grace?” [i]
What if we started living as if there
was plenty to go around?
Plenty of food and housing,
plenty of prestige and power,
plenty of everything we need
more than enough.
What if we lived like that?
Plenty of food and housing,
plenty of prestige and power,
plenty of everything we need
more than enough.
What if we lived like that?
Too often I hear statements about how ‘those
people’ deserve to be without housing or education or adequate health services.
I hear how ‘those people’ deserve to
be lonely or isolated or in prison.
When we work in a framework of
scarcity and the need to reciprocate, we try and give everything a quantitative
value. But what of the most important relationship of all?
We can’t reciprocate with God. “If we insist that our faith, our salvation,
is dependent upon an equal rate of exchange between God and us, then we need to
ask ourselves, in what kind of God do we believe? What happens if we don’t
measure up? And what makes us think we can assume certain systems to quantify
the grace of God?” [ii]
If God only loved me as much as I loved
God ... well, let’s just say life would be very different, and not for the
better J
The story I read earlier is Guess how
much I love you? [iii]
Guess how much God loves you. As wide
as I can reach, as high as I can jump, to the moon and back?
In the baptism service we heard these
words spoken to each child. I want you to listen to them for yourself. When I put
my hand up, I want you to say your name out loud. OK?
[Name
– put my hand up],
for
you Jesus Christ has come,
has
lived, has suffered;
for
you he endured the agony of Gethsemane
and
the darkness of Calvary;
for
you he uttered the cry, ‘It is accomplished!’
For
you he triumphed over death;
for
you he prays at God’s right hand;
for
you, [name - put my hand up],
even
before you were born.
In
baptism, the word of the apostle is confirmed:
‘We
love, because God first loved us’.
We jostle for position, for the best
seats and the best spot on the beach. I have seen children jostling for position
of Mum’s lap. We want to be seen, we want
to be well regarded, and we want to be loved.
The good news is that you are loved,
more than you can measure. Our worth is not determined by how much we have accumulated,
or who our friends are. Our worth is not determined by how other people see us,
or even how we see ourselves. Our worth is determined by God. In the life and death
and resurrection of Jesus, God said, and says, you are worth everything.
What would your life be like if you
lived acknowledging that you are loved without limit?
What difference would it make to our
community if we valued each person as much as God values them?
