God's Comings and Goings
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October 4, 2020“There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.” (Mt 21:33)
Why did the landowner go on a journey? What does this mean?
The parable of the talents also mentions this:
“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.” (Mt 25:14-15)
Luke’s version of these parables amplifies the theme of departure in time and space:
“A man planted a vineyard, and leased it to tenants, and went to another country for a long time.” (Lk 20:9)
“A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return.” (Lk 19:12)
Since landowners and kings, when occurring in parables, usually stand for God, the necessary question is: why does God choose to go away, to be absent? Or, if he is everywhere present, as we so often hear, then why is his presence not felt? Why does he not make himself known so as to bring an end to evil and suffering and death? Would the tenants have behaved so barbarously if the owner was present? Would we humans behave so badly if our God were near to us, if we could reach out or hands and touch him?
In the book of Kings, Elijah stands as God’s prophet against the prophets of Baal. He challenges them to sacrifice to their god and have him set alight to the altar as a sign of his presence. All day long they hop around their altar and slash themselves, waiting for an answer. Elijah mocks them, saying:
“‘Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.’” (1 K 18:27)
Elijah’s sacrifice, though thrice doused with water, bursts into flame at the first invocation of the true God. Do we not sometimes feel more like these prophets of Baal than like Elijah, hopping and slashing ourselves in useless contortions under an empty sky? Or perhaps we look with discouragement on our soggy sacrifice. Would that God reply to us as he did to Elijah and vindicate us with fire from heaven!
It was not so in the beginning. Adam and Eve knew God as their familiar, and strolled with him in the garden. But, when temptation raised its head, they chose to separate themselves from the source of life and happiness. Thus God became terrible to them and they hid themselves:
“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” (Gn 3:8)
They hid themselves from God because they were afraid. God had become a stranger to them. Genesis says that God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden. We might also say that, since his presence so terrified them, God withdrew and went into voluntary exile. But he sent emissaries to speak to them a word of peace and draw them back to himself. Our Scriptures are like a litany of pleading words spoken by God to his errant people, through the mouths of his prophets. His withdrawal, so to speak, can be seen as one part of a divine strategy for reestablishing the severed relationship. In today’s parable the landowner, with startling innocence and (we might think) poor judgment, sent his son to those who had beaten and killed his slaves, saying: “They will respect my son” (Mt 21:37). God took an unimaginable step in his quest to draw near to us when he sent his Son in our flesh. The Incarnation might be called his return from exile. Ironically, though sadly not unexpectedly, this exile is not recognized or received. Indeed, he will be beaten, thrown out of the vineyard, and killed. Jesus tells this parable to the religious leaders, who stand within reach of their God, without being able to recognize and accept him. They were blinded by fear and self-righteousness. What is it that blinds us to the presence and action of our God among us – in our world, our country, our community, our own lives?
St Bernard speaks masterfully of God’s game of hide and seek with us. He describes a process of alternation in our inner experience between presence and absence, the coming of the Word and his departure. It is vigilance, the cultivation of sensitivity to these comings and goings that is of greatest importance. Even if we do not know where he is going or why, we must be attentive to when he comes and when he goes. Why? Because otherwise we would not acknowledge his presence with reverence, or his absence by desire and the impulse to seek him. It is desire that binds us to him even when he seems to be absent, and that grows in proportion to the duration of his absence and prepares for the more ready reception of his presence. How do we know when he comes and when he goes? We know because we are changed:
“You might ask, therefore how it is that I know that the Word has arrived, since all his ways are beyond scrutiny. I know because he is living and active. As soon as he arrives within, he shakes my sleepy soul into life. He moves and softens and pierces my heart which previously had been hard, stony, and twisted out of shape. The Word begins to root up and to destroy, to build and to plant. He waters the arid soil and enlightens the gloom; he opens up what was closed and sets fire to what was frigid. At the same time he makes the twisted roads straight and the rough pathways smooth. All this is done so that my soul may bless the Lord and all that is within me give thanks to his holy name….
So it is that, when the bridegroom comes to me, as he sometimes does, he never signals his presence by any token, neither by voice nor by vision nor by the sound of his step. By no such movement do I become aware of him, nor does he penetrate my being through the senses. Only by the movement of my heart do I come to realize that he is within me. It is by the expulsion of my vices and the repression of carnal affects that I become aware of the might of his power. I am lost in wonderment at the depths of his wisdom when he subjects my inner life to scrutiny and correction. It is from a slight improvement in my behavior that I experience his goodness.” (SC 74.6)
I wonder if this dynamic of coming and going, of desire and the search for intimacy, of God’s presence experienced in the change of a human heart, is as much at work in our world as in our inner lives. It comes down to whether we read the pain of separation, of all that is not as it should be, as a stimulus for desire and the impetus for a more thorough search. It comes down to whether we have eyes to see God at work, within our hearts, among ourselves or in the world without, in the small seeds of goodness sown by those whose hearts have been touched by grace.
If Jesus’ parables were staged as pantomimes, one could imagine the religious leaders hopping and slashing themselves while crying out “Where is God?” as the audience knowingly shouts: “He’s behind you!” Could this not be us? We cry to him, and he’s behind us. We spin around to catch him, only to find ourselves in a dizzy heap on the floor. The children are laughing. Elijah is laughing, too. Couldn’t we laugh along with them, and with our innocent child-God who longs to draw near, but never in quite the way we are ready for? Let us laugh with the God who would not stay in exile and would not even stay dead, but whose irrepressible love beams forth from an empty tomb.
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes.” (Mt 21:42)
