Collect for Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent
O Lord our God, you sustained you people in the wilderness with bread from heaven: Feed now your pilgrim flock with the food that endures to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
There is No "Other" in God's Kingdom (Matthew 19:1-20:16)
In his book The Rules are no Game, Ken Wilden writes: “ in every situation and in every trade there was a code of rules to abide by. In every code, the Rule of Rules told you how to protect yourself against the unexpected. Bad luck aside, these rules guaranteed that you wouldn’t lodge a hook in someone’s ear, or lost your fingers to a machine, or get caught on a lee shore or blow your foot off. These rules were no game. They were all legitimate, and still are. Some codes of rules, like some authorities, are legitimate, some are not. The test of legitimacy is the actual effect of a rule in a real context. Legitimate codes of rules enable people to express their creativity and to protect themselves and each other. Illegitimate rules serve the tyrants who create them. They drive people to destruction.”
My family had rules- rules about fairness and equity, worthy and unworthy, integrity and shame, friend and foe. I was raised with clear certainty that if folks had two good hands and weren’t lazy, they could get a job and support their family, and with a clear imperative that it was a matter of integrity to give more than a good days work for a good days pay.
I don’t like this piece of the gospel because it not only points out the illegitimacy of my closely held rules; it puts me squarely in the camp of the tyrant. My rules require that I blame the poor for being poor (lazy) which gives me “permission” not to become involved when programs that serve the poor are slashed in the name of “the good of the whole” (balancing a budget). I have “permission” to remain silent rather than to speak out against the systems and structures that created, and are widening, the gap between the “haves” and the “have not’s.” (tax cuts for business paid for by reducing benefits to the middle class and slashing programs like Medicaid for the most vulnerable). I can look out my window, watch the police calls to the Homeless shelter and think, “Good riddance” as someone is taken off in handcuffs.
And then Jesus pulls me up short by reminding me that there is no “other” in God’s Kingdom. We are all children of God, without exception, and that God is infinitely generous, showering us with blessings without the slightest regard for our deserving. Our job is to set aside our rules and concentrate on being faithful; to allow ourselves to be taken out of the tiny neighborhood surrounded by the walls of our rules to live more deeply into the abundant community of all persons, to experience a whole new level of wholeness.
Leanne Puglielli
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