Love Makes Whole the Fraction
(Rutgers,
September 19th, 1999; 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A)
Exodus 16:1–3 (OT, pp. 69 - 70); Mathew
20:1–16 (NT, p. 22)
It's Homecoming Sunday here at Rutgers. And that means, among other things, that Sunday School's starting, and that for our young people regular school's already underway, albeit somewhat interrupted = interfered with by Hurr. Floyd. This fall, in grade schools everywhere, children are learning their numerators and denominators, their fractions - they're learning what fractions are, and how they're added, subtracted, multiplied, divided.
Now, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away - Chicago, Illinois - yours truly used to be a grade school student, if you can imagine it. And I had an arithmetic teacher named Mrs. Cavanaugh. She'd have her class stand yup in a big circle, and then she'd ask each of us in turn to add two different fractions. When the answer was wrong, the student would sit down, and the last kid standing was "the winner!" that last kid was often either my best friend Bobby or me. "Byron, what's 3/4ths plus 2/11ths?" "3/4ths plus 2'11ths...uh...41/44ths, Mrs. Cavanaugh." "That's right!"
Well, not everyone is good at fractions, but I think everybody here is good enough to do the arithmetic needed to understand the parable by Jesus that I just read.
In Jesus' time and place, first-century Palestine, the work day for an agricultural laborer was twelve hours. It started at 6:00 in the morning and went to 6: at night.
So in Jesus' parable, the laborers hired at 6 a.m. worked for twelve hours - that's 12/12ths of one whole workday. the laborers hired at 9 a.m. worked 9/12ths, or just 1/4th of a day. And those hired at 5 p.m. worked only 1/12th of a day.
Now, the standard wage for a farm worker in first-century Palestine was one denarius per twelve-hour day. A denarius was a Roman coin - a silver one, but small.
It's impossible to say what the equivalent to the spending power of a denarius would be in our own currency. but let's peg it in our imagination to the daily take-home pay of a modern minimum-wage laborer - $5.15 an hour for an Eight-hour day, minus withholding - let's pretend a denarius was worth something like $36.
So let's say that if wages had been paid equitably in Jesus' parable the all-day laborers would've taken home 12/12ths of $36, or $36. The 9/12ths-of-a-day laborers would've taken home $27. The 6/12ths laborers $18. the 3/12ths laborers, $9. And the 1/12th laborers, those who started at 5 p.m., only $3.
but as Jesus tells the story, the landowner had his manager line up the johnny-come-lately 5 o'clock laborers at the front of the pay line, and then had the manager give them not just $3, but rather the full-day's wage, all 36, for jsut one hour's work. Imagine the surprise and the delight of those workers!
And imagine the shock and consternation felt by the all-day laborers, those who had toiled 12 times as long under that hot, burning, 90 degree Middle Eastern sun - imagine their shock and consternation when they finally got to the head of the line and found that the manager was giving them the exact same $36 he'd given to the 1/12th laborers, a wage that no longer seemed just, that now, in comparison, seemed quite measly and unfair!
Had the landowner pulled a stunt like that in the real world and not just in some made-up story, you can be sure that the next time he went to the labor exchange no one at all would have answered his 6-in-the-morning call. Everyone would have hung back waiting for the 5 p.m. shift!
but of Course Jesus isn't offering us his parable as a lesson on how to run a business.
No, the Gospel of Matthew introduces and contextualizes this parable in such a way as to show that Jesus intends for it to teach us, metaphorically, about how outrageously gracious = loving God is toward those reckoned the last and least among humankind.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus intends for us to see how the generosity displayed by the rich landowner in our parable stands in such stark contrast to the lack of generosity displayed by the rich young man whose story you heard just last Sunday, when Janet Parker read the gospel lesson from Matthew that's found immediately before today's parable.
You'll remember that when Janet's rich man was challenged by Jesus to perform an act of outrageous generosity, by giving away all his wealth and providing for those reckoned last and least among humankind, he had proved unable to be that generous.
Well, Jesus proclaims in today's parable that God is not at all like that rich young man, who went away from Jesus sorrowful, unable to bestow his vast wealth generously upon the poor. No, God is not at all like that man. Rather God is like this other rich man, this landowner who is capable of performing an act of outrageous generosity toward the poor, toward those who are reckoned at a value of just 1/12th. Yes, God is like this rich man, the landowner. For God is one who freely chooses to lavish great wealth, the incomparable wealth of love and grace, upon those reckoned the last + least of human kind.
For in the realm of God, no one is left a fraction. In love and by grace, God chooses to round every fractional person up to wholeness.
This truth is beautifully expressed in a poem about love and grace whose author I've had trouble identifying, but who I believe to be the contemporary writer June Bingham.
the poem is both simple and profound, and it goes like this:
"Love is grace
In action
The eternal
In time
Love makes whole
The fraction
Turns a Person
Sublime."
You see, the payout by the land owner at the end of Jesus's parable, in which he gives those 1/12th persons the whole day's wage - that act of outrageously generous love - that was grace in action, that was love making whole the fraction, that was love turning the social outcast sublime.
For in t he realm of God, no one is left a fraction. In love and by grace, God chooses to round every fractional person up to wholeness.
Those of you who were here three weeks ago will soon surmise that of late I've fallen under the spell of 19th - century novels.
for on that Sunday I illustrated my topic "Exodus from Vengeance" by retelling parts of the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, focusing on the character of Miss Havisham.
And today I'll illustrate my topic "Love Makes Whole the Fraction" by retelling parts of the novel Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, focusing on the character of Jean Valjean. Hean Valjean is an outlaw, a social outcast, a fractional man, who is made whole and turned sublime through a bishop's act of outrageously generous love. And Jean Valjean then goes on himself to become a man, like the bishop, who acts with outrageous generosity + love to make others whole, to turn others sublime.
Jean Valjean's born in 1771 to an impoverished French peasant family. When he's twenty-five, he steals a loaf of bread in order to feed his widowed sister's seven starving children. For this, he's sentenced to 5 years imprisonment in the galleys. he tries to escape once, then a second, third, and fourth time. Each time he's recaptured, and his sentence is lengthened. In the end, he spends 19 years on those prison ships for stealing one loaf of bread.
Finally, he's released. At 44, jean Valjean emerges hardened + sullen + filled with hate, a man of dry eye and withered heart.
The yellow passport he must carry shows him to be an ex-convict, and he's treated as a mere fraction of a man.
He's shunned, and the police watch his every move. If employed at all, he's paid but half the going wage, and no one gives him lodging.
At last however, a bishop takes him in, calls him "brother," and offers him dinner, home, hearth, and bed.
But so embittered against society has Jean Valjean become that that night while everyone else is asleep he robs the bishop and flees, taking 6 silver plates. As I said, the police have their eye on Jean Valjean, so the next morning they question him, find the silver plates, and take both him + the plates back to the bishop's house for a confrontation with justice.
We might think that the bishop had already acted overly generously by giving Jean Valjean food and lodging in the first place. Yet the bishop now acts with truly outrageous generosity toward this fraction of a man. First he tells the police that he'd given the silver to the ex-convict - it's not stolen - and then he asks the by -now incredulous Jean Valjean why he'd taken only the six silver plates since the bishop had also intended for him to take his two beautiful silver candlesticks!
As Jean Valjean departs, a free man loaded down with silver, the bishop attributes to him a promise this ex-convict has in fact no yet made. the bishop says, "Do not forget, ever, that you've promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.... You no longer belong to evil, but to good."
In return for Jean Valjean's act of robbery, the bishop, Christ-like, offers him this altogether unmerited and truly outrageous gift of grace and love. And, as Hugo goes on to show in the rest of his novel, he bishop's gift of grace sets in motion a life-changing process through which this fraction of a man is made whole. In due course, Jean Valjean becomes honest and free of hate and becomes himself an inexhaustible fountain of love, no longer simply a man who's received grace and love but now as well a man who bestows grace and love on those with whom he comes in contact.
There's the hapless man who has the misfortune of being misidentified as Jean Valjean himself and who is therefore threatened with imprisonment for being an escaped parolee. Jean Valjean saves him by surrendering the respectable life and prosperity that he's meanwhile attained under an assumed name, and by accepting for himself reimprisonment in the galleys, bearing the punishment the hapless man would have borne.
so Jean Valjean is once again a convict on board a galley. There a
sailor called
"the topman" loses his balance in the sai rigging and hangs suspended,
ready to fall to his death. Jean Valjean requests permission to climb the
rig to save him, which he does at the apparent cost of his own life. I say
"apparent" because although Jean Valjean falls into the sea after
saving the sailor, he is able miraculously to swim underwater to safety without
being seen - and to a renewed and this-time permanent freedom, for
he is now thought by the prison officials to be dead.
Then there's the orphan girl Cosette, whom Jean Valjean rescues from a situation of violent abuse, adopts as his own daughter, and rears to a life of joy, innocence, and kindheartedness.
And finally there's Marius, the young hero with whom Cosette falls in love. Jean Valjean savees his life anonymously by carrying Marius's unconscious body through the foul sewers of Paris to safety. Marius later becomes the son-in-law of Jean Valjean, who tells him in confidence that he is an ex-convict. Marius proceeds to shun Jean Valjean and sends him from his home. But then Marius accidentally learns that Jean Valjean was the man who had saved his life. And Marius is himself transformed from fractionality to wholeness, as in his view: "the convict was transfigured into Christ." and Hugo leads us to believe that Marius, having been touched by Christ, in the figure of Jean Valjean - that Marius will himself go on to become a person who'll bestow grace and love upon many.
At the death bed of Jean Valjean, he is attended by a physician, a repentant
Marius, an ever-loving Cosette, and the felt presence of the spirit of the
bishop whose generosity had many years before transformed Jean Valjean's life
and being. And with his dying breath, Jean Valjean bequeathes to Cosette
the bishop's silver candlesticks, saying, "I do not know whether he who
gave them to me is satisfied with me in heaven. I have done what I
could...
...I am going away, my children. Love each other dearly always.
There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one
another."
Les Miserables, a story like our parable in which the love and grace of God makes whole the fraction and turns a person sublime, so that that person, too, might make whole the fraction, and turn another sublime.
Let us Pray:
Loving God, how amazing and generous Your grace is!
Make whole, we pray, the fractions of our lives, and help us to become, like You, persons of outrageous generosity.
In the name of Christ, we ask it. Amen.
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