By Greg Jones
The love of God is not fair. No, the love of God is not fair. It’s more than that, it’s enormous, it’s gracious, it’s true, no matter what.
Paul knows this. He writes about the love of God from prison, and while he knows that neither life nor the love of God are fair, they are indeed much more important than that.
In his Epistle to the Philippians (written from prison to a dear congregation who though poor and at the bottom of the Roman ladder support Paul’s missionary work) Paul speaks of shared mission in working for the Kingdom of God.
Paul knows he’s potentially facing execution for preaching the Gospel, and that the Philippians too face opposition from Rome, doubt, and from the hard road of life itself.
Paul speaks of his suffering, which they too share, not like some Pollyanna who can’t see how life isn’t fair, but like someone who has decided to offer up his life, his suffering, his pain for the King of Love. Paul’s working for the King, and they’re killing him for it, and he keeps on keeping on, with a new kind of joy knowing that Christ is working through him.
No, Paul knows that God’s love and life in Christ aren’t fair, they’re bigger than that.
What about us? Are we working for the King? Is anybody opposing us for doing so? Are we working for the King, Or are we more likely working for someone else, and moonlighting on the side for the King when we safely can? Are we working for the King all day long, or only a little bit late in the day?
The good news is hard to understand, but here it is: If we are working for the king at all, because the king is so good, we are one. We strive as one, in this work for the king of creation, and no matter whether we’re all day help, or Johnny come latelys, because the King is so good, so gracious, so merciful, we are all one in Him, by the price paid for us through the suffering of Christ Jesus.
This good news, if you can believe it, that God is this gracious, this kind, this loving, even so as to seem unfair by human ways, is the kind of good news that inspires in those who believe it
a gratitude and joy that is hard to understand sometimes.
I know I’m a Johnny come lately to working for the King. I know I’m a sinner. I know I don’t deserve the same share of God’s love as so many other better people. Yet I have been taught that there’s so much of God’s love, that even though I don’t deserve a lick of it, He offers it anyway. That’s the Good News.
Yes the news is Good, and the love of God is enormous, and fairness by our standards just isn’t part of the equation. Yet, any who suffer for the Kingdom, but cherish their place in it, know this.
It is pretty radical stuff indeed. So radical that many just can’t believe it. Things should be fair. Isn’t that what the opponents in today’s parable, and the Israelites in Exodus say?
No, those who share in Christ know that fair just isn’t gonna happen. But the saints keep going, still, somehow rejoicing in the unfair love of God.
I’ve told you about my friends who are also working mightily for the King, and who lost a child, our godson. Every year at this time, for about a month, they tell me that a season of grief arrives at their home. Every year, for seven years now, a cloud of tears and heaviness and suffering comes upon them. Every year the old opponent, Death, comes to dwell in their house.
And every year, they suffer. They don’t enjoy it. They don’t relish it. They don’t look forward to it. They suffer.
Yet, they have decided to follow Jesus. They continue to work for the King and his kingdom, and though they suffer, they rejoice in the Hope that God’s love is so powerful it will put the broken back together, raise up the dead, and make all things right, somehow, someday.
They have decided to follow Jesus through thick and thin, and they know that to live is Christ. And I’m so glad, because they are showing me, the way Paul showed the Philippians, and Jesus showed us all, that God’s love ain’t fair, it’s better, and it’s worth it to give our life to working for Him.
The life of we who work for the King will involve sharing the sufferings of earthly things. It will involve working perhaps harder than others. It will involve knowing that others are working harder than we. It is all based, however, on the knowledge that the abundance of love that God has in store is so huge and beyond our control, that all will be well.
Are you standing idle? Do you not see that the King has come for you? Follow him.
The Rev. Samuel Gregory Jones (‘Greg’) is rector of St. Michael’s in Raleigh, N.C. A husband and father, Jones is also the author of Beyond Da Vinci (Seabury Books, 2004), and the bass player in indie-rock band The Balsa Gliders – whose fourth studio release is due on iTunes in November of 2008. Jones is a graduate of Sidwell Friends School, the University of North Carolina, and General Theological Seminary – where he serves as a General Convention-elected trustee.