Absurd faith
Is 5:1-7; Ps 80:9, 12, 13-14, 15-16, 19-20; Phil 4:6-9; Mt 21:33-43
One of the things I most love about Christianity is that it is so absurd. When viewed from the perspective of common sense, it proposes a way of life that seems tailor-made for failure and misery.
Indeed, this has been the primary critique of Christianity throughout the ages. Turn the other cheek in the face of violence? Love your enemies? Forgive those who offend you 77 times? Strive to be last?
Even Paul acknowledges as much when he writes that the proclamation of Christ crucified is a “stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23).
Christianity only makes sense if Jesus really is who Christians claim he is. The radical humility he espouses becomes the doorway to freeing our hearts from the prison of anger and resentment and opening them to the unconditional love of God. It also allows us to see the fundamental good in every human person, despite their specific actions, which gives the foundation for hope and the encouragement to work toward conversion, both within individual hearts and throughout larger communities.
This “absurdity” is ultimately grounded in the radical forgiveness and humility of Jesus Christ. Recall last week’s second reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians in which he praises Jesus for not grasping at his divine power but instead choosing to take on our human vulnerabilities.
Jesus himself pointed us to the loving forgiveness of his Father. We see this clearly in the parable from Sunday’s Gospel. The vineyard owner who represents God the Father seems over-the-top in his trusting generosity toward the wicked vineyard workers. After the workers beat and kill his messengers, he decides to send his son because “surely, they will respect my son.” Really?
If I were the landowner, after my first messenger was beaten, I would send in reinforcements to settle the matter swiftly. But the owner keeps reaching out peacefully — maybe the next time the workers will relent and change their ways. Maybe next time. And he chooses to invest more and more deeply with each new foray, ultimately sending his own son.
Any objective observer would conclude that he is almost certainly sending his son to his death, which is, of course, the whole point at the heart of the Christian paradox. Jesus knows that the story of his mission will not end with the outcome of the parable. The sending and the killing of the “son” will culminate in the salvation of the world.
But we should not lose sight of another absurdity in this parable. The belief of the workers that if they kill the owner’s son, they will somehow be written into the owner’s will. How could they possibly expect that? This outlandish expectation reflects the fact that when we are moving further and further away from God, we lose our sense of justice and right order. We begin to delude ourselves that the world should be oriented according to our own desires and sensibilities.
In his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, St. Ignatius of Loyola refers to this as the “false logic” that the devil tries to trick us into believing. As their hearts grow darker with the seeming success of their murderous desires, the vineyard workers become less realistic and more reckless in how they view the world, which ultimately leads to their demise.
This interplay of absurdities (one fruitful and the other destructive) extends beyond the colorful world of biblical parables. Many consider the practice of nonviolent resistance to be futile and weak. Such have been the criticisms levied against Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu and, more locally, the eucharistic procession participants at the Broadview Detention Center.
The absurd power of nonviolence is grounded in the equally absurd act of an infinitely powerful God choosing to become weak out of love for us.
So take some time and assess how you are living your faith today. What values are driving your decisions? What relationships are you nurturing and which are you avoiding? Is there anything about how you are living your relationship with God today that the world might label “absurd?”
If not, then perhaps it’s time for your faith to be a little less reasonable.