What do we mean by “deserve”?
I still remember a sermon three years ago one Sunday evening by Dr Jay Hogewood pastor of University Baptist Church discussing the idea of grace.
He referred to a recent episode of “Extreme Home Makeover” in which Ty(sp?) and his buds are doing their usual thing for some struggling family whose home is in bad shape. Ty tries to motivate his crew and the volunteers by explaining “these people really deserve this”.
Jay focused on this. What do you mean by “deserve”? Who deserves anything? I have never forgotten that.
Finished sermon for this Sunday on Matthew 20 and the parable of the vineyard and the workers with this quote from The Dispossessed by science-fiction writer Ursula LeGuin. (Shevek wants to visit the home world from which his society comes. But a few powerful people oppose this and threaten him if he ever tries to come back.)
Rulag said. “And if there is violence you will have caused it. You and your Syndicate. And you will have deserved it”.
A thin, small, middle-aged man began speaking, at first so softly that few heard him. He was a visiting delgate, not expected to speak on this matter. “… what men deserve,” he was saying, “For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving hile others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, he idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
My eyes watered when I read this and typed it into the manuscript. Such beauty and power and challenge to our human notions of economy and reward and deserve – notions above which as far as the sky is above the earth are the thoughts of God who has the authority to do what he wants with what is his.
The kingdom of heaven is not an economy.
